Channel: Life Time clear
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| 1 | Life Time | Peptides, Stem Cells & Exosomes: Exploring Advanced Therapies w/ Jim L... | 17 | 17.4 | 28:16 | We're back with another episode of Lifetime Talks, and in this episode of our series on performance and longevity with Miura, we are taking a look at advanced therapies for longevity and performance. And Jim, this was a category that I was like, what are these things? Honestly, this is pretty new to me. I feel like we've been covering health and wellness topics for a long time and experience life on this podcast. But I want to make sure we delve into that. Also, I want to make sure people know who you are. Jim Laval is the chief science officer for Lifetime, along with a long-time clinical pharmacist and clinical nutritionist. I got you. There you are. I'm all in. You're all in. All right. So let's talk about these advanced therapies because there are things like peptides, stem cells, exosomes, and plasma ferrisis, which you had to teach me how to say before we hit record on this episode. But they're among several that are revolutionizing regenerative medicine. So what are they? And what do we mean, I guess, first and foremost? What do we mean by advanced therapies? Yeah, I think there's your therapies that people are looking for either because they have issues that nothing else has been working on and maybe prior to surgery or maybe a more in-depth treatment. They want to try and use more integrative or regenerative advanced therapies. All right? So these are things that... So I don't think it's the first thing you go out and do, but I do think as you progress and if you're having significant issues, they can have tremendous impact. Some of them are farther along than others. But at the same time, we need to be thinking forward on what's coming down the horizon, right? Awesome. Well, we've talked one of them already that we've talked about our peptides. And just to get it all level set in this episode, we want to make sure people go back to our previous ones. Right. What are peptides and kind of just in general, why are they important for health potentially? Yeah, peptides are basically small chains of amino acids that are smaller than a protein, but bigger than a single amino acid. So typically when you think of peptides, they're under... And it depends on what you read, but honestly, it's typically under 40 amino acids in length. Okay. And those peptides, for example, you hear about glutathione, right? Glutathione, everybody hears about natural compound. That's peptide. It's only got 80 amino acids. Okay. You don't realize that. KPV, another peptide for the gut. Three amino acids that are just chained together to create a specific signal that helps direct your body towards healing or repair or cellular function improvement. Right. So whether it's generating energy, rejuvenating the release of growth hormone, helping maybe an injury to heal, to get back from inflammation or scarring or those kind of things. So that's peptides. That's peptides. And as I mentioned at the start of when I asked you that, we've got two episodes that we really dive deep into peptides and what they are. So we want to make sure we'll link back to those. We can go in depth there. Sure. The other, we have three more. So stem cells. And I know we've been hearing a lot about stem cells for a long time. Like they can in and out of the news for years. But in terms of stem cells as advanced therapies for longevity and performance, what are we talking about? Well, I mean, so stem cells can be derived from a lot of different areas, right? You've heard about it initially, hey, you can take it out of your own fat tissue, then there's a billiacal cord tissue. But what's really the current thought process is plus actually a placental derived stem cells. And what you're doing with stem cells is you're trying to provide your body with the building blocks of cells that can build into new healthy cells in order to repair an area of your body. So you hear about stem cells for injecting stem cells in a joint, for example, but try and help rejuvenate the tissue and the surrounding the, you know, the particular areas of your joint. You could also utilize stem cells because they help with re-regulation of your immune system. So if you have someone who's, you know, chronically in an inflammatory state, using stem cells could also benefit that. So stem cells basically are this, or that once again, you make these. It's just that either through aging or maybe toxicity, environmental burden, poor decisions, whatever you want to call it, you can start to damage your ability to, you know, make stem cells and do cell renewal. Now, interestingly, there are lifestyle factors like fasting. So atophagy, the breakdown of compounds that your body, byproduct of your body metabolism to clear that. And then if you fast, it turns out that it 48 hours, you actually, your body turns on its ability to make its own stem cells. Sometimes just lot of enough to say repair your knee. Right. The knee is an example, fix that joint, you know, heal that shoulder, it could be muscle tissue, whatever that is. Exasomes are somewhat of a mere purified version that, you know, once again does the same thing, creates signals. The biggest, for healing, the biggest issue that's been so far is that they're not well characterized. So if you ask somebody that's, you know, a stem cell provider, hey, what's in it? Right. Up to now, there wasn't really good consistency out there in the marketplace about how clean it was. What did the person that you got these from? Did they have, you know, did they have a history of infection themselves? Or is there any viruses in those stem cells? Is there anything there that would be negative when you, you know, go to do a stem cell therapy? And so now where we're getting to the point why I think this is really timely is now there are groups, entities, you know, companies that are making stem cells and exasomes where they're fully, what we call, characterized. They tell you exactly what's in them. So which cytokines, which growth factors, what's not in there? Right. You have any viruses in there? Are there any, anything that doesn't belong in there in there, right? So there, so once we get to that threshold, that then starts to create the ability to utilize them safely in, you know, large populations, which I think is really the times coming. For example, the state of Florida approved the use of stem cells and now doctors can do stem therapies in very specific ones, in specific ways. In a state of Florida, without it being, you know, a research or a risky type of event. So there's different states where stem cells now and exasomes are allowed. And then of course, there's the anti-aging side of by putting these stem cells into your body that all your tissues, you're going to start to turn on cellular renewal for all your tissues. Right. Right. So that's the advanced therapy for longevity standpoint of where, you know, exasomes, stem cells play a role is that, you know, the thought is, hey, if you infuse these, that it's going to allow for, you know, new cell, youthful cell renewal. Got it. So let's talk a little bit. You mentioned that stem cells, and I'm assuming them because they're related to exasomes, they're, they're, they're connected in some way, but they're placental derived. What does that mean? And like if somebody who said, hey, I'm going to do this, how would they know where they're, the stem cells they're getting are from? They have to ask. So pro-acted. How do they pro-acted? How does it know? No, no. Right. I mean, people are going to, I mean, look, people are flying out of the country to do stem cells. And I would say that depending on where they go, it could be good. I'm not going to mention good or bad. But depending on what country you're going to, you, you may not be getting what you think you're getting. I mean, I've actually, look, I have to talk about them as a word of caution because I think we're just getting out of the, the wild west of stem cells and exesomes now. I mean, there's some good, really good literature. There's state approval. And now there is reliability, right? But in the past, I mean, I had a couple of colleagues, both of them were healthcare providers. They're both docs. They've got stem cells in their knees and one got something called a compartment syndrome where the, you know, basically the circulation kind of got walled off around the, you know, around the joints. And I mean, they had to have major surgery and then walk for about six months. And it didn't quite accomplish what they thought it was going to accomplish. That's why I think it's important. I'm so happy that when I brought this up to you that you were willing to talk about it with me because, you know, this is one of those things that's on the horizon now that I think is, is incredibly promising, especially now that there's some, I mean, clear improvement in what they're able to do. Right. Well, and that's where it's like even Joseph and I'm going to keep kind of delving in from a very newbie standpoint on this topic because it's like, if, if they used to be like, you can get stem cells from your own like fat pockets, right? What is more common getting them from yourself, getting them from other sources? Like what, what should you, should you be asking about in that regard? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think, look, the older you are, I'm not sure I want to use my stem cells. I got 65 year old stem cells, right? So I think that depending on how good of health you're in, you know, if you think about trying to do your own stem cells and maybe your 30 pounds overweight in your body makes a lot of inflammatory compounds, what's your stem cell's going to be like? Right. You probably want to introduce something more clean. Yeah. Okay, more clean. Yeah, more pure, more clean, more potent. And you know, they have ways of separating out all these different compounds now to really create, you know, potent and safe stem cells and exosomes, which before that was, you know, this isn't evolving science. It's an, you know, it really is. But I think we're near that point of it being mainstream that everybody's kind of gotten to that point now. We're going, wow, the value to stem cells and exosomes is pretty significant because it does create that new palette for your body to re-engineer itself, right? You're re-engineering your tissues because you're making newer health through your tissues. That's, that's, I mean, I would never even thought of that. Like when I started in healthcare 42 years ago, actually more than that, if I think my internship, you know, yeah, it's like, I've been almost 50 years for me. Right. You know, you just want to think about these things. So that's where I think those have value. And then there's the fact that, you know, look, as you're aging, your body, the process of aging, depending on how hard you are on yourself, and I don't just mean, oh, how much alcohol you drink or G, did you, you know, you're a, you know, casual drug user or something, you know, I'm not talking about that kind of hard. I just mean, if you are making a lot of inflammatory chemistry, so your byproducts of your cell metabolism, you have a lot of old, worn out tissues. And say, for example, you're not exercising and you're not getting a good night's sleep. Even there's something called the glimphatic system, the glial lymphatic system, which clears the byproducts. You got to think about your body needs to go through a process of cleansing. The byproducts of your metabolism need to be cleaned up. And so if you aren't able to do that, basically, it's like clogging a bunch of filters. Right. The same gets clogged, right? Right. The same gets clogged. The same gets clogged. The immune system reacts even more and you create more damage to your tissue. So over time, your body has, you know, this clogged sink effect at the cellular level, waste products from immune function, waste proteins. That brings up our next topic, which is plasma ferrisis. So they call it, you know, total plasma exchange or plasma ferrisis. And you know, this is, and you think of stem cells and exosomes and total plasma exchange or plasma ferrisis, they kind of can work hand in hand together really cool. Okay. Right? Because in plasma exchange, what they're doing is basically filtering your blood, getting rid of these waste products of your metabolism, but also getting rid of some environmental burden. And you get rid of microplastics, which is apparently, you know, as we know, a bit of... Kind of everywhere, right? Yeah. That's hard to get to avoid it. Yep. So, so I think that's incredibly interesting that you can filter out all these waste products, maybe even, or drug therapy sort of run around. I think there's a caution in it. It's not, you know, hey, I just go get my blood filtered like an oil change and it's all over. I mean, I think there's some things that are stored in different tissues and you've got to work on cleaning things up. But this is created a very big jump start in people feeling better when they've been chronically ill. Right. And then so you, if we think about this in simple terms, you filter everything out and then you think about the stem cells or exosomes after to reprogram those newly freshened cells that have, you know, kind of been beat up and now you're saying, now we can reprogram and rebuild. Right. So, so... Because what you're saying is like, if I'm just, layman's terms here, it's like really, if you're saying, if I were to do stem cells and you, this wouldn't necessarily be the case, but like, I haven't done plasma for instance and there's a lot of stuff that's just circulating around. But then I do stem cells that may not be as effective as it could be if you did that filtering out first. Because again, it's like that cleansing, that filtering, you're kind of... Right. And then there's things that are preventing more optimal. Yeah, exactly. And there's some things like, I'm a huge, I'm a huge advocate for doing things in actually wherever you can. But sometimes people are just past that. Or we have to all of a sudden have to think about the fact that the environment has created a tremendous amount of burden on us. For example, the plastics. But just like that, pesticides, things like glyphosate, you know, round up as everywhere. Yep. And then things like environmental burden from metals. So there's... So that could be very difficult at times to get that out. Or years. Right. Using just natural compounds. And so it really ends up being one of these situations where, yeah, if this can hasten the process to get someone feeling better, quickly. Mm-hmm. Great. But then you also want to back that in with, okay, how am I going to change my life stuff? So what am I going to do that's going to start to promote health because the things that I was doing probably wasn't helpful. Well, it got you to that point potentially, right? That's right. Like, especially if it's like a lifestyle-related chronic condition. That's right. There's like an acute injury to a knee or something like that to... Totally different. ...to scenarios, right? That's exactly right. Yeah. So when we hear about these, like, I'm just thinking about how accessible they are. Because like you said, they're not quite mainstream yet. A lot of these. I mean, where are people getting these... You said some people go out of the country to get this right now. It's starting, like, in Florida. There's certain, you know, docs that are doing this or it's been approved for use there. But how accessible is it to kind of the general population? I think about how unhealthy as a general population Americans are. It's something like... Right. What are even the stats around? Like, what is it? Some 30% or more are obese. Almost three-quarters are overweight. Most people, like, almost 95% plus of us aren't doing one basic health habit, which one of them being not smoking, right? So it's like, how do we, you know, like, if we want true change in our health, like, how do these things become more accessible or at some point will they? That was a lot of convoluted way of saying all that. Yeah, I don't even know where I started or where I'm going to end on that one. No, honestly, no, I got it very clearly. One is, they're absolutely becoming more and more accessible. You know, in the previous years, if you're going to use exosomes or something like that, you would just be a part of an IRB and you would have to record that, that vial. What is IRB? It would be an institutional review board. You would have to do a part of a research. Okay. And then you would record, hey, this was the vial. Here it is. Here's the number. Here's the treatment. Here's the result. So that created a lot of ability for more and more practitioners to utilize it. Okay. So I wouldn't say that, you know, stem cells, if you want to find them or not rare, I think the consistency of the material is what needs to improve now. So it's like that quality piece needs to improve. So obviously there's states that have approved it and therefore there's a lot of drugs that are, you know, a lot of stem cells being used by doctors, you know, because it's approved in the state. So for example, in Florida, I've got several colleagues that are using stem cells like crazy now because they're allowed to. Right. So, and then are we anywhere near where it's going to be? No. Stem cells, exosomes are going to absolutely be an explosive part of care. Rate limiting stuff on them right now is cost. As all things, as procedures are improving and the manufacturing's created to be as efficient, I think cost will come down making it more, you know, available, you know, I think a little more easily for folks. And then total plasma exchange, right now there's already groups coming out where they, you know, will set up a doctor's office, have the device in there, have a train nurse in there, running it for a doc. So that's on its way. Okay. And you're seeing a lot obviously in social media, people holding up their bag of their filtered blood. Right. Which I think is a little interesting, right? Like, look what I just filtered out of it. It feels like a trend versus something that's like proven and like got more data behind it, right? Yeah. You know what? There's one colleague of mine I've known. He's been doing this for 15 years and researching it and leading the way on it. So there's good evidence about it. But you know, I think, you know, with social media, of course, everybody's looking for a hot cool new story, right? That's the quick thing. So if you're the, we're not just that. If you're the patient sitting in the chair, and you're, you're going to hold your bag up. You're thinking it's kind of cool. But the reality is there's some real science behind it that I think can be transformational. So when we think of these advanced therapies, I mean, we haven't talked about, you know, red light therapy or ozone, right? There's a lot of different things that you can do. Right. I think these are the few that are at top of mind right now because you're, you know, I know Jamie, you're all over looking at, you know, what's being posted. Yeah. You know, you know, you know, little short spots if you've seen over the last, you know, let's say three to six months, right? It's, it's really heated up. Yeah. That's why, you know, just kind of getting people familiar with it. Not, but once again, you're going to be hooked up on a machine. Your blood is going to be taken out of you. You're going to be exchanging your plasma. This is not, you know, it's different than, I'm going to eat better. An exercise. Yeah. It's a next level. It's a next level advanced therapy that you can choose to do because, hey, you're a, you're an athlete that's really pushed yourself hard or just somebody who's trained really heavy for a long time. And now you're not recovering or you notice more aches and pains. This may apply really well for you because you've tried everything else and it didn't right? But it's just important to recognize it's, we're, that's moving up the tear, you know, diet, nutrition, lifestyle, nutrients, bioidentical hormones, peptides. Now we get into other therapies, right? So you think about your moving through this transition as you're looking for, you know, more and more answers or you're being incredibly proactive. Right. It's kind of like you've got the foundation. You need to have those lifestyle foundation pieces. That's right. And then you kind of keep, it's like getting that kind of optimal point, right? To that, that's right. And these are things that you can do. That's right. You mentioned like the circumstances in which somebody might want to do any of these advanced therapies, you know, is it that they're an athlete or is there a long chronic condition that there's just been no relief from? Are there, what are other circumstances in which people might consider, you know, any one of these potentially? Well, I mean, one's just straight out longevity because I mean, if you're aging, once again, there's two principal times that you age. So in your early 40s and in your early to mid 60s, so I, I'm in that category where I would be interested in total plasma exchange to knock out that transition that is known in humans at age, age 62 to 65. That happens that creates a lot of damaging molecules out of your chemistry. Now, obviously, depending on what you're doing, you're probably already or maybe fighting back that inflammation, but just the sheer fact that I've lived this long, I wouldn't mind having an oil change, right? I wouldn't mind getting that kind of complete filtering of the old out. In addition to that, gosh, doing something that would create great signals for my immune system, exosomes, stem cells to help reprogram my tissues. So, so the longevity piece is big. And then there's injury, right? We talked about kind of injury, hey, my knee, my shoulder, my labrum, whatever. Yeah. You know, I tore a muscle. I hurt myself. It's not repairing. What could I do? Some people start with PRP, peptide PRP, and then they'll, oh, I'm going to move to the next level with exosomes, right, inject into the affected area. And then there's, I'm chronically ill, my immune system is really compromised. My ability to rejuvenate is low. So I'm kind of moving down a chronic disease funnel. So those are those three categories that I really look at it. I mean, I've got to look at that with all therapies, to be honest with you is, you know, do you have an acute thing that you're dealing with in injury? Is it because you're trying to live your best possible life as long as you can? And those things should typically be less heroic. Right. You shouldn't, you know. And then it's, well, I have a health challenge. And I want to try to do everything I can. I haven't been successful. Even on the medication side, it wasn't successful, right? Traditional didn't work. Right. I tried some other things in the integrative care side. It didn't work. And, but now I want to step it up. And that's where I think that has, there's a lot of value in these advanced therapies. Oh, I have so many more questions. I know we're going to run out of time here. I'm going to ask one more. And then we're going to wrap up this episode. You just mentioned, you kind of alluded to this. So there's any one of these plasma pharesis, exosome stem cells, peptides. Are they utilized as complementary to traditional therapies? Or are they usually therapies treatments, I should say? Or are they usually used after those haven't worked? You're kind of just getting into that. But I think it'd be done either way. You know, you look at a lot of orthopedics now. They're offering exosomes or stem cells as part of their treatment plan. Okay. So I think it can be a compliment. I think the TPE, total plasma exchange or plasma pharesis, that's not as matured as the, in terms of docs thinking about doing it, not in a hospital base, they've been doing it, right? This is more, hey, I'm walking into a docs office and they're going to do this, right? I think that's a lot newer concept. So that could be, typically right now, that's going to be one of the things aren't working. Yeah. So that, right? It depends on what's going on with you. Exactly. And then the third in regards to peptides, I think now there's just become this general acceptance. It literally was a tsunami of consumer acceptance and interest in peptides because it helped them to accelerate through a problem they were trying to solve with their health. Whether it was weight loss or gaining lean mass or immune issues, just healing, hey, I don't longer have that pain in my knee anymore, right? And that, the FDA is catching up with that. Okay. And I think there's going to be a lot of, I'd say more freedom around peptides over the next year, based on everything I've heard and been to Washington for times to listen. So I think, you know, I think bright times ahead for all things, longevity and performance health. Yeah. I love that. Well, I mean, as always, we want to encourage our listeners to do the research, ask questions, talk to your healthcare providers. And you have to be your own best health advocate, but you have to be informed to do that. So more content and more information is available at miora.lifetime.life. Jim has a lot of content, articles, other podcasts that he's been on with me. So if you want to hear more from Jim and learn more about miora, you can check out our show notes or visit miora.lifetime.life. Jim, thank you as always. Always fun to be here. | ↗ |