Who Wants To Live Forever? With Dr. Jeffrey Gross

Can we truly live forever? In this episode, we explore the possibilities. Join Adiel Gorel and guest Dr. Jeffrey Gross for an enlightening conversation about regenerative medicine, stem cells and the ways we are advancing medicine to not only heal the body and mind, but to restore and elongate our lifespan and health span.

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Who Wants To Live Forever? With Dr. Jeffrey Gross

New Research On Regenerative Medicine Advances And The Implications For Longevity

Everybody, it’s a great joy to be back here with you. I’m particularly excited because we have a fascinating topic. I’m very much looking forward to learning from Dr. Jeffrey Gross. Dr. Jeffrey Gross. It’s great to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. Please call me Jeff. I want to be able to make myself available to yourself, your readers, and help educate and help people along the way.

The Journey To Regenerative Medicine

I’m going to go ahead and call you Jeff. Welcome to the show. Again, your topic and your specialty is fascinating to everyone in the world these days and getting more and more so. Why don’t we begin with your own background? How did your own journey in medicine lead you to stem cells?

We can thank my patients in part for that as I was practicing traditional neurological surgery with a fellowship in the spine. I took care of neck pain, back pain, disc problems, pinch nerves, and injuries. We would offer treatments like therapy, medicines, and injections in the spine. If all else failed, sometimes even surgery. We were always trying to make that the very last option for people and patients helped that. They would come in and say, “These injections and the therapies didn’t help enough. They were temporary, but I’m not ready for surgery.”

I would say, “Great, because I didn’t want to offer it to you unless we had to. I understand you still have symptoms, and your quality of life isn’t perfect.” They would say, “How about lasers? How about this? How about stem cells?” You hear that stem cells enough time and chance favors the prepared mind and because I have undergraduate background in that area, that molecular cell biology. I know you spent some time at Berkeley Haas. I have my undergraduate, so go Bears. I’m from Berkeley as well.

I’m a Stanford guy. The enemy.

We get along well, but I thought I saw something on your website.

I do work in Berkeley and I spoke the Haas Business School. I like Berkeley, but I’m the enemy. I’m from Stanford.

That’s okay. We can come together once a year and enjoy the big game together. I decided instead of going to the same old spine surgery conferences every year, where nothing was changing, I would go back and see what had happened in all those decades. A lot had happened, and most of it did not happen in the US. It had happened in Europe and in Asia and other places. The US was just slow to adopt it. There’s good science. Good evidence-based medicine is the phraseology we use on these studies.

For a long time, professional athletes in the US would leave the country to go get these treatments. Now, we have them here. I retrained, reeducated, and adopted regenerative medicine to add a new tool to offer people, and it has blossomed in the years to so much more than that. It’s almost all I do now. I love it. It’s version 2.0 of my practice. We even treat people from Stanford.

The Role Of Stem Cells In Development

It’s come a long way. Let’s take it back one step, to stem cells. If I understand it as a lay person and you can explain more. Stem cells are there when a baby is born or even maybe in utero. They create all the parts of our body as it needs to be. In other words, they have flexibility. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

We hear the phrase stem cells, but we should break it down a little bit for the purposes of getting smarter about it because it’s something that’s available. We should know about it. Stem cells are the basic building block cells that create us in the first place. All of our cells stem from those cells, hence their name. The most powerful stem cells are when we are a new embryo. We were just a fertilized egg. Those are called omnipotent stem cells. They can make a human. That’s super powerful.

As the fetus is growing into a human shape, those cells cannot make a whole human. They become less powerful, but they’re still growing a human. They’re called pluripotent stem cells, not omnipotent, but pluripotent. They can grow a limb, and they can create whole organs, and some species preserve the ability to induce pluripotent stem cells. For example, a lizard can regrow its tail, and a starfish can regrow an arm. We’re learning from those. When we’re born, when the fetus finally comes out, and it becomes a baby at that moment.

Most, if not all of those cells that we use to grow and develop and maintain, replace, heal, and restore as an adult in our stem cells that we still have are called multipotent. They cannot make a limb and cannot make a human, but they can replace a liver cell. They can change your skin cells, which are happening all the time. They can go to an area of injury and help heal it. The whole basis of regenerative medicine or stem cell-based medicine is to tap into that knowledge and use it strategically in people who need additional help.

I recall very vaguely when my son was born. We were offered something by a bank, so to speak, called a blood cord registry and retain some of the fluids. Again, I’m speaking like an idiot, but you understand what I’m talking about, and I said yes. At least in theory, we still have an account there with the blood cord fluid or whatever it is that came from my son. I assume this is related, isn’t it?

It is, and what you were offered and what you did was a very basic early manifestation or offering. There are a lot of layers you can grow from that. When you did it, and still now, the main reason you did that is, God forbid, your child gets leukemia and has to have his entire bone marrow zapped out with chemotherapy. You would not have to find a donor matching to replace that bone marrow with a bone marrow replacement. You would have the actual stuff from the original factory. Can you now use that for other purposes? Yes. You can use it for your child, your son. You can use it for yourself and others.

The reason you banked it, it’s there for that purpose. Now you can bank these materials and use them for all kinds of things. As an adult, you can have your cells harvested. The stem cells are separated from them and go into a bank. Although, that may not be the most efficient thing to do, both for the number of steps and cost involved and because your cells like mine, have had decades of exposure to an inflamed world. We would rather have brand new, fresh out, uninflamed, and naive stem cells. There are other ways to do that.

Again, we are all exposed to the people who care about health, wellness, and longevity. We are literally bombarded with this now everywhere from people that harvested from themselves and we inject it into all kinds of places, some of which I might not even mention here, or maybe I will if I get a little more comfortable. You seem to talk about using it in the context of resolving pain.

That’s probably the most common thing I do because I came from the musculoskeletal world, the moving parts, the joints, the spine. Most of my patients are already in that area. When we deal with joint problems, the earliest manifestation is pain. You are correct for those reasons.

How Stem Cell Therapy Can Help Neck Pain

Let’s take a person who has neck pain. I’m saying neck on purpose because I don’t want to go to the back, which is a very large place. Somebody comes to you when they have neck pain. Maybe it stems from just a muscular contraction or maybe they got hit, and the muscles seized up, and it doesn’t release. That’s probably very simple, or maybe one of their discs is a little bit degenerated. Let’s say that it is a disc. How would stem cell therapy help?

We would take each individual and help identify the source of the pain before we start throwing stem cells at the person. We want to be very precise and targeted. There are some clinics that just give you stem cells and say, “They’ll go to the place where you need them.” You could do that. You can go to Mexico or Central America and have IV stem cells.

IV stem cells get into your bloodstream and the assumption here is that they will find the weak spots. I understand. I’m assuming that’s not what you folks do.

It’s not. Although, we do have some patients that we treat with the intravenous offerings and not just stem cells. Maybe later we’ll talk about the other options. We do that for people with overall body inflammatory issues. If we’re targeting a certain area, as you said in your example, neck pain. They’ve got some muscle pain. We want to identify the problem. We want to examine the patient, ask lots of questions, and take a complete history.

We want to look at the patient’s lifestyle and epigenetic factors, meaning are they exposing themselves to pro-pain inflammation all the time through diet, lack of exercise, or toxin exposure like smoking or too much drinking or something? Are they not doing all the good healthy breathing and restorative sleep, nutritional things, and hormesis? A slight stress to the cells to build resilience like fasting or time-restricted feeding, hot sauna, cold plunge, and high-intensity exercise. All kinds of things.

That helps the whole body because, in one way, it stimulates our stem cell activity. Let’s say the patient’s optimized and have a specific thing. We may order labs or an imaging test like a high-quality MRI to study any areas of an inflammatory pain. We will look very closely to help identify exactly the source of the pain. Sometimes, we’ll do a little numbing block to see if we can temporarily remove the pain to prove where it’s coming from or confirm.

If it’s persistent and not responding to low-level, inexpensive treatments like stretching, strengthening, massage, acupuncture, or maybe chiropractic care, then we might consider as an alternative to cortisone shots or steroid shots, which might help in the short run but can cause advanced degeneration in chronic use. We might look to inject the stem cell-based regenerative biologics because they are so heavily anti-inflammatory and reparative.

I’m making up an example which could be a silly one because that’s not my field at all. Let’s say you did all the diagnostics and something is wrong with how C7 sits on its base. It’s tilted. Something there is a little bit degenerated, and it’s causing the pain. Are you going to inject stem cells right into where that vertebra is?

Essentially, yes. That would be the goal under image guidance in an injection room under sterile conditions with a little twilight sedation. That’s exactly what I would recommend.

Let’s say that this is done, and let’s assume the optimal scenario of healing. It was done well. You guided it very well. It went to where it should be and it will heal according to what you most rosily expect. What would it look like?

Initially, we’d hope for an anti-inflammatory effect where the pain would come down significantly while the regenerative piece begins. Regeneration doesn’t happen immediately, but because these biologics are so heavily anti-inflammatory like a steroid shot, usually pain is improved. People think, “I’m healed,” but they’re not healed yet. They’re just feeling better.

Over the months, we would monitor the patient, and I would expect some improvement in the remodeling of the joint, the cartilage, the maintenance of that joint, and the lubrication fluid in the joint until the joint behaves more like a normal joint. It’s less inflamed, more lubricated, and moves smoothly. That is what we see through the regenerative process of the joint by tapping back into the cells and the behavior of the cells that made that joint in the first place. It’s like putting in a new factory order.

You said two words that triggered me in a positive way. One is the word remodeling, and one is the word regenerative. In other words, we’re talking almost. I know that there is a process and I know, but it’s like a magic wand. There was some degeneration between the discs. There was some tilting. Things were a little tired and chipped maybe a little bit. Those two words, to me, remodeling and regenerative mean that those stem cells are going to go and say, “Here is how it should be. Here is how it is, and we’re going to bring it to where, to how it should be.” Is that true?

Yes, we see that quite often. I’ll give you a secret, though. The stem cells or the biologics you receive, they stimulate your cells to do the work. Your body does its own natural healing. Sometimes, it needs re-encouragement. Remember, your body generated that anatomy in the first place. Through stimulating stem cell type biology, your own cells, you can regenerate what it once generated.

Again, going to the magic realm. If you have a magic wand, and you say, “I’m going to fix you with a magic wand, and it will be like it should.” The question which you just answered is, how do we know what it should be? You’re saying the body knows it and the body built it. Your own body knows what it should be. The reservoir of knowledge of what it should be when it works perfectly is inside of you. The stem cells are the stimulus to make it happen. Is that true?

That’s correct. The other stimuli would be the mechanical and cellular nature of the anatomy. How you use your neck, how you move it, and the weight of your head stimulates those areas to build that joint in the way it’s anatomically designed for our species. As you read in Grey’s Anatomy, that’s exactly how it pans out, and that’s how it would remodel under the proper stresses. Now, if we never correct the tilts, it may not remodel perfectly but often, it remodels adequately enough to remove the pain and improve the function.

I’m running with this example to have a better understanding. In this example, you went in, you know exactly where you go, injected the stem cells, and pain has been relieved relatively quickly, and remodeling took maybe a month. During that month, or the 2 or 3 months to follow or whatever period of time, is there a need for a second or a third shot? How does that work?

Usually not. For this type of application, we try to do it one and done, but it does take often many months. Sometimes 6 to 12 months, depending on the joint. Certain joints respond quicker, like the knees and thumb, the base of the thumb. A ball and socket joints tend to take longer because of their mechanical nature, so the shoulder and the hip take longer, but they happen.

The Future Of Stem Cells: A Promising Breakthrough

Nevertheless, the way you talk about it, and again, this is not the first time I’m exposed to it, but when my brain processes are conversation, there are little fleeting thoughts of, this is magic. It’s magic. It’s not really magic but it’s so promising. How does that bode for the future of humanity? Assuming that the development in the usage of this technology is only making up a quarter of the way that it’s going to be. What’s going to happen when it’s fully there?

First of all, I find this no more magic than a single fertilized cell creates a human in the first place. We’re on a trajectory, as you alluded to, for great things here. For example, there’s an area of work where you can induce these stem cells backwards along the embryonic lineage from multipotent to pluripotent. That’s where we’re going to learn how to regenerate a finger or a limb.

We’re also using that strategically to help fight cancer. We’ve got some other projects even in my clinic. We’re working on to help address cancer using stem cells and stem cell-derived signaling particles called extracellular vesicles or exosomes from the immune system to help fight accidental cancer cells or help fight cancer.

We’ve got other approaches with a little bit of an engineered exosome from a stem cell to help add mitochondria to cells, help fight frailty, and improve muscle mass and bone density. Aging populations need to maintain their muscle mass and bone density and keep moving that help the brain, with longevity, and health span. We have amazing things that we’re working on that will be coming shortly.

Am I correct in assuming that a certain type of physical activity will increase the number of mitochondria in our cells? We’re saying that the injections of stem cells can act as an accelerant of this process. I’m not saying the person should exercise, but even if they didn’t, more mitochondria would be available.

Not only more mitochondria, but more youthful, efficient mitochondria because they renew and regenerate and go through what’s called mitophagy. If you have a younger population of mitochondria, you have effectively younger cells and, therefore, an effectively younger you. That’s what we call biological age because you might be 50 on your calendar, but you could be 35 biologically with this better mitochondrial population.

Where Stem Cells Are Harvested From

Again, I’m running with the same example so far. A person comes to you with the little neck pain, but for people who have neck pain, it’s not little. Where do you harvest the stem cells from?

As I alluded earlier, there are multiple sources. You can harvest them from yourself or banked. You can have it banked from a child’s cord to blood or umbilical cord. We have a more efficient process where we can get these from C-section donors. Some mothers have a planned C-section and they become donors. They’re not paid for this. They can be screened ahead of time.

We’re using them from donors who have not had the COVID vaccine. Although, that has all kinds of political underpinning. I don’t mean it to. It’s just that we don’t know enough, so we’re not using those. These are donated. They’re sent right to FDA-compliant and certified labs that screen them. They test the samples, and then my clinic purchases them as an end user.

They go right into my minus 30 centigrade freezer, and they are frozen from the time they’re collected. They’re day zero, fresh frozen, either stem cells or stem cell derived, exosomes, growth factors, purified amniotic products, and Wharton’s jelly. All the good stuff that makes a baby. That’s where we get them, and they’re easy to use. You don’t have to harvest anything. You don’t have to worry about anything. They’re safe and effective.

Why only in a C-section situation? Why not regular birth? There’s still a lot of fluids and placenta and stuff.

Technically, a vaginal birth is a non-sterile situation. There are bacteria, and you don’t want to have an intravenous or neck or joint injection of something that’s not sterile. You don’t want to sterilize the material because you kill the active living cells and exosomes in there. For a C-section, they prep the mother with iodine-based antiseptic. Before they make the incision, so it’s sterile. It’s considered aseptic.

I understand. Now, let’s say that those stem cells that you purchased are now in your freezer. They are brand new, spanking new, but will they match? Is the donor going to match the recipient? Do you need a match? How does that work?

You don’t. Even though you do in a full bone marrow transplant recipient, for use like this, no. The stem cells are immune privileged, meaning they don’t have a lot of cell surface markers to identify as self because, in your body, they haven’t decided what tissue to be yet. They’re waiting to be called upon, “We need some liver cells. The kidney needs some help.” Those cells are naive and neutral, and like the Switzerland of cells if you will.

There isn’t a rejection. It’s a theoretical thing. I’ve never seen it and read about it, even though everyone talks about the theoretical side. If you go even further, instead of using the stem cells, and use the business end of stem cells, these exosomes are even more naive. They’re completely immune privileged. There’s never been a known reaction to those in that way.

That’s very heartening to hear because there is a very significant amount of C-sections happening in the world, and you’re saying that the donors are not being paid.

They cannot be ineffective. At least in the States, the donation requires non-payment.

I think I understand where that’s coming from because you don’t want to encourage an industry like in the third world, God forbid, I don’t want to put it in the same bucket, but there are people who say, “I’m very poor, I’m going to sell a kidney.” You don’t want to go to that.

We don’t want any ethical or moral questions at all, or even encourage that because already, as at least in the States, some people do have more children. They’re encouraged to have more children because of government handouts and things. We don’t want that in this field.

I understand. Now, let’s expand the horizon from the United States to countries that have different rules. Does it exist in other countries? I’m just curious. People will say, “I’m due for a C-section. I already know that. I want to sell it.” “You’re in the US. You’re a rich doctors and have rich patients. I’m a poor person here. I want to sell it.” Does that happen?

I don’t know is the answer, and I don’t use any biologics from outside the country. I cannot.

Not you, but I’m thinking about trends for the future. I know that some of it sounds a little bit too futuristic in the way that nobody likes. Once again, the rich people get all the goodies and the poor people. There’s a lot of bad stuff there. Again, out of no bias, just thinking logically, whether that could become a trend.

It may already be one in some circles. I just don’t have access to those circles. I’m not looking for access to those circles. Yes, there is the possibility of some nefarious activities using these materials. You read about it questionably in some Hollywood circles and other nefarious groups, very possibly.

Let me take the question in an extreme direction from talking about the boundaries of the US, and the rules and the laws of the US. Suppose you get interviewed on this show or on other shows. You get exposure, things go viral, and your clinic gets a gigantic amount of people because everybody has some pain. Everybody has something they would like to work on. You are inundated. It’s a great problem to have. You have patients’ way beyond you ever expected. Now you’re saying that one of the donation sources is a C-section. Are there going to be enough donors to satisfy a large demand?

A single donation is probably 20 or 30 doses of material. At this point, I see no strain on the infrastructure to be able to supply what we need. Plus, if people start banking more of their child’s umbilical cords and things for themselves, there’ll be plenty more. I just don’t see that as a current strain on the system.

Why Someone Would Inject Stem Cells Into Their Penis

That’s very good to know, and that’s very promising and hopeful. Now, from the self-help gurus, not necessarily MDs trained in medicine, I have seen at least two males who say very proudly, by the way, “I injected stem cells into my penis.” One of them was young, like 35, and healthy. The other one was maybe 45. Why would a 35-year-old, healthy as can be, take such a sensitive part of his anatomy and as an experiment on himself, inject stem cells into his penis?

First of all, because it is a sensitive part of his anatomy and he wants to keep it as sensitive as possible and as useful as possible because he’s about to go from 35 to 40. Testosterone is declining at this time, especially for reasons we’re looking into. Function is not always what it used to be. A regenerative injection in that area, which isn’t that bad. It sounds crazy, but we do numb the surface with some topical numbing, and we do these things. It can improve sensitivity, function, and blood flow. Maintaining the blood flow is probably the key element. The health of the vessels because it’s very vascular dependent, artery dependent. It’s a simple procedure. It’s not that big of a deal.

Are there any risks? Again, this particular example struck me because I look at a very healthy specimen, a 35-years-old, at the peak of his powers in every way. I’m thinking, what are the downsides? Are there downsides?

Everything we do has risks. There’s always a risk if you don’t do it in a clean way. It can be infected. The needle would hurt. It wouldn’t work. That could be something, or you mixed it up with a syringe of Windex or something like that. Something crazy. The risks are heavily mitigated. You said earlier, why would he experiment on himself? That’s what we do. Everything in medicine is an experiment on a person in some way.

Now, we do it on a body of knowledge. This penis shot is a very frequent thing in the world. There’s also a female variety. Not to just pick on the men here, where we inject the vulva, the clitoral structures, the vaginal, and periurethral structures in the flora to improve elasticity, strength, tightness, lubrication, and sensitivity.

Going back inside of the bodies, you just talked about females and injecting stem cells into the outer structures and making them function better and be more sensitive. Essentially rendering these female patients functioning better sexually, so to speak. If you go down inside, there are things, the ovaries. That sometimes could go a little bit. Do you see or can it happen that you would go in and put stem cells deep inside to reach some of those internal structures?

There are applications in the fertility realm, both for men and women. For women, I would do an intravenous. These are women who have a known difficulty getting pregnant because of some inflammatory burden. Whether it’s an autoimmune problem, the inflammation is high or some other long-standing problem from an inflammatory burden infection, like long COVID or Lyme’s disease.

There are other pro-inflammatory issues or exposure to toxins, that we might be able to mitigate adequately enough for that person to get pregnant and have a successful pregnancy. The same with the men. We can do that intravenously. There’s also a shot right into the testes for problems that involve an inflammatory burden that’s suppressing their ability to make successful sperm.

What about non-sexual reproductive per se? Although, it’s related. What about the prostate, the bladder, and those structures which, at least in men, later on in life can start growing and affecting the flow of urine? How does that work?

I have a colleague who practices regenerative medicine similar to me, except he comes from the side of urology. He has cases where he is addressing prostate health in conjunction with the right hormonal optimization and bladder issues or pelvic floor problems. There are applications.

If there is the case of a BPH stem cell injection into the area, it can mitigate the growth or shrink again. What’s going to happen?

I think you’re looking for inflammatory issues like prostatitis, things like that, It would have potential benefit from the anti-inflammatory nature of regenerative biologics. Whether it’s intravenous or direct into the prostate. I would consult with my colleague because urology is a little far off of what I normally see.

Using Stem Cell IVs For Preventative Health And Maintenance

Let’s take it again into a bit of an extreme place. Let’s say there’s a person with unlimited resources financially and they say, “Many years old, I try to do everything right, but father time always wins.” How about, “Only I can afford it, I will get the IV.” It seems to be the one that’s the general, I’ll get it as a maintenance. Nothing even specific. If that were to be the case? What would the frequency be?

It depends on the individual. We would do some blood markers and come at this scientifically. We would look at the inflammatory markers, the person’s age and size and figure out a dose. We would do an experiment. We would try one dose and see what they get. I personally do this myself. I do it every three months or so, because I have a good burst of success with my energy, my cognition, and my recovery from exercise. It starts to peter off after about three months or so. I’m on a four-times a year cycle. I am modifying the dose over time, and everyone could be different.

I have a sweet little old lady who’s 82 who has osteoarthritic painful joints. She cannot do her crafts and her things at home and cook. We did an IV for her, and she had this wonderful improvement. She said, “When do I do the next one?” I said, “You let me know when things start to come back.” I didn’t hear from her for two years. Everyone’s going to be different depending on how much inflammatory burden they carry in their cells and ow big of a response they got from the first treatment.

Going back to the sweet old lady. You said you didn’t hear from her for two years. What happened after two years? You did hear from her?

She called me, and said, “I think my symptoms are coming back. My hands are starting to hurt again.” I said, “I’m ready to see you when you’re ready.” She came in and we did another IV. I talked to her a few weeks later, and she felt great. I said, “I’ll either see you in two years or if you call sooner.”

Harvesting Stem Cells From Your Own Body

This is beyond exciting when you think about it. Again, the word miracle pops to mind, but you said so correctly, forming a whole human life out of two cells is a much bigger miracle. Except that miracle is very known to us, and everybody knows about birth and new babies. This is like a new miracle in a sense. It’s very exciting that you can even put people on a preventative like you are doing. That is incredible. Going back to the harvesting, we talked about the relatively ample source of C-sections. Sometimes, you do harvest it from the person, him or herself, from their own bodies.

I have patients who have already harvested and they just want to use their own material. We do that. We call from it. It’s very expensive compared to off-the-shelf, but that’s okay. I have some people who just prefer it. We would go along with that. I don’t like to do the harvesting myself. Usually, I send them elsewhere to get it harvested. It’s labor intensive. It requires multiple steps and equipment that I don’t have to have, so I don’t have it.

I’ll even be more of a devil’s advocate and going back to your 82-year-old patient. If she was keen on harvesting her own stem cells, those would be stem cells that have been around for 80 years.

They’re not as active. They’ve been exposed to the same inflammatory stresses, oxidative stresses, bad thoughts and things in the air and water and food that we shouldn’t have that are all of our cells are exposed to. They’re not the best functioning stem cells out there.

Conceptually, the best stem cells would be, as you said, right there from birth, pristine and naive, as you call them. That connects to a larger concept, almost silly, which was satirized in the series Silicon Valley in the form of what they call a blood boy. They talked about the rich Silicon Valley magnates getting young boys to get their blood. In fact, Brian Johnson, the guy who doesn’t want to die. I don’t think we want to die either, but he had a plasma exchange not only between himself and his father but also between his son and himself. In a way, getting the younger stem cells into an older body relates to it in some way.

Yes, this is not new information. The original studies were in mice, where they took blood from an old mouse and gave it to the young mouse and vice versa. As a result, the old mouse started to look young again and behaved young again and vice versa, the young mouse looked like an old mouse. This is not a new concept. It seems nefarious when you talk about blood boys and some of the Hollywood elite, the adrenochromes and all those things.

It goes back centuries of lore with vampires. Vampires drink the blood of their victims and they do it to live forever. This is not new. In some cultures, they take the menstrual blood and they use it for wound care. They eat the placenta or make capsules out of it. These are not new concepts. We just now understand them.

The Cost And Benefits Of Preventative Stem Cell Treatments

There was a movie, I forget the name. It ended with the letters IUM. It wasn’t Etherium, which is I think a currency, but Elysium maybe, with Jodie Foster and Matt Damon. It was an apocalyptic story of the earth as being very toxic. All the population lives on the surface of the earth, and they lived in a pretty bad life. The very wealthy are on a ship out in space, which is enormous, and they can heal anything. Again, those are all the folklore views of what we’re talking about. Ideally, it’s not only for the wealthy and talking about that. If somebody comes to you and says, “Jeff, I want to get a preventative and fairly healthy. I want to get an IV, and let’s see where it goes.” Is it prohibitive in cost? You don’t have to say what the cost is.

I have no problem saying it. We should get it out there because I think there’s a myth that’s beyond comprehension, or you have to leave the country here or something like that. Before I answer, though, your concept about space travel is a big push now. We’re talking about trips to Mars and having banks of stem cells on these trips for whatever reason. We’re already ahead of that. That’s a big push in the arena of regenerative biology. The cost of a low dose IV is under $4,000 of the excess material.

Exosomes are so abundant because there’s so much amniotic fluid that they’re much less costly than the stem cells, but they do the work of the stem cells, and they penetrate tissue better. They cross the blood-brain barrier. Stem cells are too large. Stem cells only last about 10 to 14 days in your body, but the benefits last much longer. The reason is that those stem cells are making and delivering those extracellular vesicles and those exosomes that activate our cells.

At the end of the day, we need to activate our own cells. You can do that without stem cells. You can do it through high-intensity exercise, and fasting. Even yoga has been known to increase your own stem cell activity. A low dose IV is going to run you about $4,000 or so. A high dose IV, you’re looking at maybe double that. When we do joint procedures, we do involve an injection facility with nursing staff and anesthesiologists for the twilight sedation.

You’re looking at a little bit more for that. When you’re looking at the cost of a surgery to replace your knee, the downtime, the missed work, the pain and risks, and the fact that you’ve burned a bridge, you can never go back. You might need that knee replaced down the line again. I think you’re saving a lot of money if you’re looking at a $10,000 or $12,000 multi-dose knee procedure one time with a regenerative biologic compared to a knee replacement.

I think it’s much more than just saving money and time. By not needing to go in with a hacksaw and cutting your joint and cutting stuff and putting metal or some other material inside, which could have all kinds of ramifications. I think the savings goes way beyond time and money. It goes very far and very much more than that. You mention low dose and high dose? Can you elaborate on why a low dose? Why high dose? When? How?

A young healthy person doesn’t need the regenerative kick in the pants that maybe an older person does. However, my 82-year-old lady had a low dose and did great. We might start with a lower dose unless someone has significant inflammatory burden from whatever reasons. One, to save on cost, and two, just because you don’t need the bigger dose. Sometimes, we have to do dose escalation to find where it works. Not unlike using a GLP one peptide for weight or other reasons.

Could it be that also the size of the body, like if she was a smaller person and a female?

We consider the size of the person and the overall factors that we go into when figuring out a dose. At the very beginning, we were starting at the low dose because we were being cautious. This was new. Now that we’ve done hundreds of patients, I’m more comfortable doing higher doses. I’ve done a 5X dose on myself. We’ve even done a 7.5X dose on people. It just depends.

If low dose is X, what is high dose? Is it 5X or is it 2X or 3X?

The highest we’ve gone at a single sitting in an intravenous is 7.5X. Now I have had people come in with joint problems, and I’ve done four different joints in the body at the same time. We’ve used maybe 10X to 15X, but they’re deposited specifically.

I’m talking about IV. Generally, the loose definition of high dose is how many X in an IV?

The high dose in our practice is about 7.5X Although, in the right setting, I wouldn’t have any problem going higher even for this reason. A pregnant woman is getting a dose of intravenous exosomes through the placenta daily. She’s probably getting 10X a day. You look at a pregnant woman, their skin is wonderful. It’s glowing. Their hair is growing and nails are growing like crazy because they’re getting this dose of youth. Why is that? It’s for the mother can be healthy and ready to care for her newborn. It’s a survival thing. I would have no problem. We’re learning more about how to escalate these doses.

The Impact Of Stem Cell IVs On Aging And Inflammation

Very fascinating stuff. I’m going to ask you something you don’t have to answer, but I’m asking it not because I’m a nosy bastard but because I want to understand and our readers to understand better. How old are you?

I’m in 50s.

First, I do have to say, whether it’s because of those IVs or not, you certainly don’t look at it. If you told me that you were in your 40s, I would bite in the heart beat. Even that is only because you come off as mature, knowledgeable, and everything. That’s quite impressive. You’re touching 60s, and you yourself are probably eating well, exercising, and doing everything right. Still, you give yourself a high dose of IV four times a year. It’s mainly. Again, going specific and going private, this is only you. What has your experience been? How long have you been doing that?

I started this about a few years ago. I started a lower dose, and my experience is as follows. The first dose was amazing because my body had 54 years of inflammation. I had never been exposed to this massive anti-inflammatory biologic. I felt effervescent and buzzed. Not buzzed in a drunk sense but energetic. I was motivated. I had more libido and I could work out and go past more normal workouts and not be sore afterward. I was sleeping deeper and better. It was amazing.

That lasted a good 3 or 4 months. Each dose after that was the same dose, it was a low dose. I didn’t have as much of a benefit each time. I did notice it, but I didn’t have that wow factor. I started escalating the doses. The last time, it was a 5X dose. I did feel a good boost in all those areas. I also get a cognitive boost. That’s not to imply that I felt like I was impaired cognitively, but I wake up, and I get to work. I have these creative juices, and I can write and work and get a lot done for hours. It gives me that neurological edge as well.

Going to the devil’s advocate side of the conversation, could it be that there is a dependence, even psychological? As the years go by 5X, doesn’t give you a big boost and now you need the 7X or 10X and it comes a time where you cannot function. You know where I’m going with that.

I do. I’ve looked at my labs too, and I think that I’ve kept the inflammatory markers suppressed. What I think is I’ve more maintained the suppression of inflammation and inflammation here being code for age degeneration of cells/age degeneration of parts and organs, tissues and body. I’ve kept it suppressed and I don’t get the overt feeling of amazing of that big switch, but I’m okay with that knowing what this is doing to me at the cellular level. Anything we can do to suppress inflammation suppresses the aging of the cells. That’s why some people have taken the word inflammation and aging and put them together and it’s called inflammaging. We’re suppressing inflammaging.

It’s not surprising that when you came in after years of environmental abuse and others, it was a big jolt. Now, when you have stabilized in a good place, it’s not a big job. Many of the things you described you felt are remarkably close to people who get extra testosterone. Since you take labs, has your testosterone level been affected by this?

It’s a great question. The answer, I cannot say myself because I’ve been on testosterone optimization for a number of years. I prefer to treat people with these regenerative biologics who are already optimized. You’re going to get more out of it if you optimize your diet, and sleep and also your hormone status. Your cells will be more receptive to that.

Your cells are starved for testosterone if you’re a male. Estrogen or progesterone and some testosterone if you’re a female. If you don’t have those things, you will be more inflamed, and you’ll age faster and not get as much out of the regenerative biologic we deliver. I was already optimized, and I recommend anyone who’s going to do regenerative biologics be optimized first.

Again, maybe it’s not a controversy. Maybe to the layperson like me, it is. Testosterone optimization might have an effect on the prostate and then prostate cancer or BPH. How does that all jive?

This overlaps in the men and women. There are these controversies. It turns out the latest research shows that the youthful gland, the prostate in the men and ovaries in the women, these want their hormones. The prostate wants testosterone. If it loses testosterone, it looks for growth advantages to survive.

It’s so hungry that that’s where it might form a cancer accidentally. It’s trying to survive. If you give it testosterone, then those cells are already messed up, and you’re feeding them. The best thing you can do, it sounds, is to maintain that normal testosterone without a dip, and then you have the healthiest prostate with the least chance of a cancer formation. There interestingly is a treatment regimen for prostate cancer that involves high-dose testosterone.

There is and has always been a high-dose estrogen treatment for breast cancer. The problem is it’s not well tolerated in women because it causes significant bloating and other issues. Now we’re looking back at what we thought we knew, and we were wrong. There is a reduced risk of breast cancer potentially if you maintain your hormone panel patterns that were when you were youthful.

This may be another boost for getting the IV stem cells because if it’s a male, you just get the IV. You don’t put extra testosterone in the system. Things will normalize hopefully when you get the stem cells an IV. It’s the same for the females. You don’t even have to go there in the first place to put the hormones in. You just go with the IV. Did I make sense at all here?

I would contradict you. I would say you’d want to optimize the hormones if needed first. I think you’ll get more out of the regenerative biologic. Regeneratives themselves replace your hormone production.

How To Get In Touch With Dr. Jeffrey Gross

How can people reach you? What is your website?

Thank you so much. Our business name is ReCELLebrate because we’re celebrating the renewal of your cells. Please contact us to ReCELLebrate with us. You can look us up on the web, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and what have you, all with this one word. If you go to Recellebrate.com/podcast, I have an entry page for you. If you want to join our group, I’m going to start a newsletter shortly. I won’t send you lots of emails. I don’t have time to write them, but I will give news on regenerative medicine, the things and projects we’re working on in case you have interest. We’ll be happy to put you on your list. You’re not going to get bombarded, I promise.

Where are you located? Where’s your clinic?

My clinic is in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the US, but the vast majority of what I do is remote through the magic of this tele-video type of presentation. We only invite people to Nevada who are candidates. Not everyone’s a candidate. If you need labs, help, imaging, or MRIs, and things, we can get that all where you live for the most part. Have them sent to us and I can look at them and share my screen with people. You don’t have to come see me until it’s time to come see me.

Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time. I learned a lot. It’s very fascinating for what the future is going to look like and great to know and learn.

Thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure. I hope we talk again.

Again, same here. Bye-bye.

Important Links

• Dr. Jeffrey Gross on Instagram
• Dr. Jeffrey Gross on YouTube
• ReCELLebrate
• ReCELLebrate on Facebook
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• ReCELLebrate on TikTok
• ReCELLebrate on LinkedIn
• ReCELLebrate Podcast

About Dr. Jeffrey Gross

Dr. Gross graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in biochemistry and molecular cell biology. He earned his Doctor of Medicine in 1992 from the George Washington University School of Medicine. He contributed to virology research during his studies. After graduating, he undertook a residency in neurological surgery at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center until 1997.

He then pursued a Fellowship in Spinal Biomechanics at the University of New Mexico until 1999. Licensed in California and Nevada, Dr. Gross has SPINE practices in Orange County and Henderson, Nevada. A trained neurological surgeon, he specializes in athletic injuries and spine procedures, and offers longevity and biohacking consultations. He’s certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and is a member of several prestigious surgical societies. Since 2020, Top Doctor recognized Dr. Gross as a leading Neurological Surgeon. He also received HealthTap’s 2022 Top Doctor Award as a top Neurological Surgeon in the U.S.

Dr. Gross founded ReCELLebrate, focusing on anti-aging and regenerative medicine. The mission for ReCELLebrate emphasizes offering modern biochemical treatments and considering surgery as a last resort.