The Joe Rogan Experience - #1066 - Mel Gibson & Dr. Neil Riordan

Episode Date: January 17, 2018

Mel Gibson is an actor and filmmaker. Neil Riordan, PA, PhD is one of the early pioneers and experts in applied stem cell research. https://www.cellmedicine.com/

3, 2, 1. And we're live gentlemen, Dr. Neil Riordan. Am I saying that right? Yes, sir. And Mel Gibson. How are you, sir? Hey, how are you doing? Welcome aboard, folks. First of all, thanks for coming here. Really appreciate it. Very nice to meet you. No, it's cool to be here. Nice to meet you, too. So you wanted to come in and talk about stem cells. Yeah.

So what's your experience been and what's this calling that you have here? Well, I was initially, it was for my dad, who was, you know, he was 92, and he was doing all the old man stuff. You know, his hip was killing him, and he was like, he had multiple problems. I mean, I won't get into the whole litany of complaints, but, hey, You know, his hip was killing him and he was like, he had multiple problems. I mean, I won't get into the whole litany of complaints, but hey, you know, your engine starts wearing out and you got to replace the carburetor and a few other things. And I took him to the Mayo Clinic, great place. If I ever get into serious trouble, that's where I'm going. And they were fantastic

there, but they were able to say, oh, you got to leave me here, he'll be dead in 48 hours. I'm like, oh. So they clocked every problem that he had, everything from the prostate to the hip to the kidneys to the heart to the lung, the whole deal. And he, you know, they stabilized him. They said, okay, we'll do this and we'll do this.

And they did some, you know, orthodox medical procedures, all allowed in this country. And they were great. But, you know, I still had reservations about him getting a hip replacement because he was old. And, of course, just the recovery from a traumatic surgery at that age is like it's a big deal. And I thought, oh, what can I do? My brother says, why don't you look into these adult stem cells? I'm like, eh, you know, I've heard things about this, you know. You grow a spare mouth on your head.

You end up with an extra asshole or something. But I was like, okay, we'll look into it. So we did. And, of course, a buddy of mine who was a Mayo doc, he said, stay away from those witch doctors down in Panama. He said, it's like leprosy and banana boats and three-legged dogs, you know. I'm like, can we call them? And so Brad and I got on the phone to Neil. And who else was it?

Yeah, it was Dr. Paz, our medical doctor. Yeah, it was the two of these guys. So they're talking highfalutin terms, medical, all being medicos. You know, they sort of, they know what a mesenchymal stem cell or mesenchymal, how do you say it? Mesenchymal. Mesenchymal stem cell or mesenchymal how do you say it mesenchymal mesenchymal you know and uh you know cytokine mesenchymal cytokines you know out of sight out of kind as far as i'm concerned but it's like they uh they give us the wristwatch show over the phone for about an hour

and the doctor's asking him questions that i can't even think of so when we hang up i said now you know translate what does all that mean? He was like, he translated a few things. He says, you know, it sounds kind of interesting, pretty good, you know, and from being a naysayer, he said, let's call him back. And I think we called you right back. And we spent another hour on the phone. And well, to his credit, Brad, Brad asked for a bunch of literature, and I sent him maybe 30 articles, and most physicians wouldn't even look at it. But it was all relevant to what Hutt had for the heart problems and kidney problems and orthopedic problems. And he read all the articles, and he read the upside, the downside.

And then we had, to his credit, then we had a very educated talk after that. Conversation, yeah. And he was really by this time informed and he just said to me, well, you know, he's 92. He says, what the hell have you got to lose? And I said, no, nothing. Let's go.

So I'm up for it. We asked him, is he up for it? He goes, hell yeah. They took him into the hospital. He was 92. And they said, what medications are you on? And he said, I'm not on any. And they said, you're 92 years old. How do you account for not being on any medications?

He says, it's because I stay away from doctors and hospitals. And he didn't have any problems. He started to have a rough trip. Well, we took him down there. And he got, I think it was like a double dose in the hip. So where did you have to go? This is not legal in America. Is that what's going on? Yeah.

Right now, there are clinical trials going on in the U.S., but it's not broadly available. And in Panama, they passed a law in 2004, which allowed doctors actually to go down there to be able to treat people using adult stem cells. So the bill was actually designed to prohibit the use of embryonic stem cells. And in the same law, they said it's okay to use adult stem cells, including those from umbilical cord, basically from ethical sources. And so in Panama, they gave us – we have a license from the Ministry of Health to manufacture and use those cells in addition to doing clinical trials there. So it's one place on the planet where you can get really high quality umbilical cord, this type of cell. There are two major kinds of stem cells. We only work with one kind, the mesenchymal,

or we just call it MSC. It's a lot easier. And so anyway, that's how I think we were actually, we actually owned apartments in the same building in Panama, never met each other. And we met through his brother finding us on the internet. There you go. And then they brought him down to get treatment. We were quite hesitant to take him, you know, because the last thing you want is Mel Gibson's dad to drop dead in your clinic. And he wasn't in great shape, you know, so. He wasn't in good shape at all.

But, you know, as I recall, when he got there, he was in a wheelchair and really wasn't talking a lot and things like that and having a pretty rough time. And then so after getting medical clearance for him to actually fly down there and Mel flew him down there privately, then we did some IVs on him first in the clinic. And then to do the hip, we need to do that. When you said did some IVs, what do you mean? So we give the umbilical cord. These are isolated from basically the meat of the umbilical cord.

basically the meat of the umbilical cord. They're isolated and they're grown in our laboratory, which is ISO 9001 and very high quality and certified by the Ministry of Health. They're grown in the laboratory and they're certified to be free of everything, any kind of infectious disease. I went into the clean rooms and they make you put on hats and gloves and you feel like all Frankensteined out and you walk into the clean rooms, and they make you put on hats and gloves, and you feel like all Frankensteined out, and you walk into these cold rooms, and you're watching cells divide under the microscope. It's kind of miraculous, really, to look at this stuff.

So intravenous stem cells. Right, intravenous, that's correct. And what's the benefit of intravenous stem cells? What does that do? Well, the good thing is that this kind of mesenchymal stem cell, they're found throughout your body, and normally what they do is they modulate your immune system, they decrease inflammation, and they stimulate regeneration. And the good thing about them is they tend to home to areas

where there is inflammation. So intravenously, they do a lot of things, but they can home to areas of inflammation. And they really reduce inflammation in the body because they upregulate part of your immune system that that controls the inflammatory process which i can talk more about later but um in his case you know his kidneys were in trouble his heart was in trouble and the cells they they don't unlike what we used to think in the early days they don't become anything these kind of this kind days, they don't become anything. This kind of stem cell does not become anything in your body, but it homes to areas that need repair, and it secretes things that stimulates the repair and decreases the inflammation and helps out with the immune system.

So the vast majority of what we treat are autoimmune diseases. diseases. And in Hutt's case, we gave him IVs so that he could basically have these things on board secreting the cytokines and the growth factors that are normally secreted. And when you're 92 and you have multi-organ failure, you're basically running on fumes. And so you put these day zero young healthy cells and they secrete these things that kind of restarts everything. And so what was his response to this IV treatment? Well, I, you know, I could I can wax lyrical about that. He's almost 100 years old and from pretty bad shape. It was like bee stings.

It was like he got a new lease of life. It was like bee stings. It was like he got a new lease of life. Like he got a big dose locally in the hip, which fixed all his inflammation and pain, and he started walking again. And his kidneys were good, and his heart, he had prolapsed valves in there, and they healed. And his cognitive powers improved. His eyesight improved. Whoa. You know.

And other stuff improved that he would hate me to talk about. But he had two nurses that reported to me. And it was like, holy mackerel. Wow. Using it as a towel rack, you know. Well, Dan Bilzerian was telling me about intravenous stem cells. And so was Boss Rooten, you know, Bas Rutten, the former UFC heavyweight champion. He went down and got some – he's had some pretty significant neck injuries and neck fusions, and he said he got intravenous stem cells. The way he described it is like with his Dutch accent.

He's like, it was like I had lightning coming out of my fingers. Like, ah! Did he go to you? Yeah. Did he? Yeah. Yeah. He said it was phenomenal.

I mean, he said it's one of the most incredible experiences he's ever had, the feeling of a regeneration of energy going throughout his body. I reached out to him by email just to see if it would be okay for me to talk about him on here. And he said, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, his cholesterol dropped. All his numbers, you know, basically numbers associated with aging all got better. And like you said, he felt this tremendous energy for some period of time. Why is this not legal here? Well, it's considered to be a new drug by the FDA.

And that's the number one reason. There are four countries so far that have approved MSC products. There's Canada and New Zealand were the first. Do you go to Canada and get this done? Well, only for certain conditions. So in Canada and New Zealand, they approved bone marrow MSCs, which are, in my mind, are not as good as umbilical cord, and I explain why. are not as good as umbilical cord, and I explain why.

And then South Korea has approved umbilical cord for knee osteoarthritis only, so the cells have to be injected into the knee. And then Japan just recently approved the same product. It's used to treat a very serious acute graft-versus-host disease in children after they've had a bone marrow transplant. Now, are there peer-reviewed studies or anything that shows the efficacy of this intravenous use of these stem cells? Yeah, there are hundreds. There are hundreds. In my book, MSC, which is, you know, you don't want to read it unless you want to go to sleep, unless you're looking for something. You know, it's just, it really is purely a research tool.

Looking for something. You know, it really is purely a research tool. We have 800 references, and we reference every clinical trial that's ever been done with MSCs in human beings, and there are 800 of them. Well, I've had some great results with stem cells. Dr. Roddy McGee in Las Vegas shot a bunch into my shoulder. I was at the door of surgery. I was like, my shoulder's in pain all the time. I can't do a lot. Every time I do something,

I have to ice it down for a day. And now I have full function. It's crazy. I mean, it still clicks. I've got some weird shit in there, and there's probably some stuff floating around in there. But as far as the function of my shoulder and the pain, it's like 100%. I can do basically everything.

Right, right. Yeah, I was 57, 58 years old, and this is like what, four or five years ago, and both my shoulders torn labrums, arthritis, bone spurs, like rotator cuff issues, and I went down and I got 10 million cells

in each shoulder. I said to the doc, you know, is this going to hurt? And he says, only when it comes out the other side. But he put it in, and it was, you could feel him pierce the capsule, and you could feel pressure. And I couldn't flap my wings for three days, but after that, no more problems. And this is different than the stem cells that you can get in the United States currently. Yes, yeah. What's the difference?

Well, the big difference. Because I had, from umbilical cords. I had, what is it called? What's the kind that you can get here in the United States? Well, the only thing that's legal in the U.S., at least for now, I don't think it's going to last much longer, is from amnion. Yeah, that's what I got. And there's an exemption in the, it's a federal exemption for the use of amnion for wound covering. And a lot of people have now translated, now they're using it in joints and things like that.

You don't think they're going to be able to do that very much longer? I don't believe so. Why is that? Because this commissioner, FDA commissioner, has made it very clear that he doesn't like it. And they really haven't liked it for quite some time because the exemption is for one thing, and doctors are using it for all kinds of other things. I don't necessarily agree with it. I just know what's coming down the pike from a regulatory standpoint. And, you know, there've been some regulatory things that have come out. They've

gone after clinics and, you know, I think they've shut down three places just in the last couple of months. And they haven't gone after Amnion yet, but I think they're building their case for it. And unfortunately, that's what's going to happen. Now, why would they go after it? That's what's confusing. If you've seen all these benefits, and I haven't heard anything about negative results. Yeah, I don't understand it myself, to be honest with you. You know, Amnion's been used clinically in the United States for over 100 years without, um, without serious adverse events. But, um, I think it's more about the claims that people are making because there, there haven't been studies, for example, of amnion,

you know, amnion tissue injected into a joint. And I think that the biggest concern is the claims that are being made and maybe people are being vulnerable to the economics of it. I'm not really sure, but I have my finger on the pulse, and it seems like they've gone after fat. We were the first in the world to use fat-derived stem cells in 2006. In 2007, we published on using those to treat rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. And then a lot of doctors in the U.S. started doing that. Now there's a new guidance to the industry that came out a few months ago that specifically prohibits using it for, for example, taking your own fat,

isolating the stem cells out of it, and then injecting them in your bloodstream or even injecting them into a joint. So I don't really know the whole motivation behind it, but I know that they very clearly stated that that's not going to fly anymore. So the stuff that you did for Mel's shoulder, what exactly was that? That's basically a new drug product. It could be considered a new drug product in the U.S. And we are in clinical trials in the U.S. We have two INDs for the treatment of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. And we're just going to start a spinal cord injury trial at University of Miami and Thomas Jefferson University. We got funding from the Marcus Foundation. Bernie Marcus is one of our clients. And he's seen all these kids with spinal cord injury getting better.

And so our product is we were able to figure out which cells work, which umbilical cords give cells that are really useful and which ones aren't. So we throw away the vast majority of the umbilical cords that we get. How can you tell? Well, we had the advantage of having thousands of cases. And I'll give you an example of one case of a football coach from Dallas where I live. And he had diagnosed with MS. He was in and out of a wheelchair, was on, you know, basically out. diagnosed with MS. He was in and out of wheelchair, was on, you know, basically out. And he was out on disability and retired from a very successful three-time state champion in Texas.

That's really saying something. And he came down in 2010 for the first treatment and we gave him the treatment and he got much better. He improved for about 14 months. And then he came back again in 2011 and got another treatment, improved not as much about 14 months, and then he came back again in 2011 and got another treatment, improved not as much as the first time. And he came down in 2012, and boom, all of his symptoms were gone. And now he's back coaching, and he is completely normal. He's a bit younger than me, but he's probably healthier than me. I mean, the guy works out all the time.

He's out there in the field. He doesn't have any heat intolerance, doesn't have any problems. So I wanted to know, what's the difference between those cells in 2012 and the ones in 2011 and the ones in 2010? And then we took other cases similar to that where we'd had less than spectacular results. I mean, they were still good results, but they weren't, you know, ba-boom. And so we took cells from those different lots, and we grew them up, and then we had them analyzed for 1,200 different molecules that they expressed. And we found that these cells, we call them our golden cells,

because they just seem to work all the time. And we found that they underexpress certain proteins, and then so early on in the culture process, we can select for those and say, hey, these are golden cells. These aren't. Throw them out. So we throw a whole bunch out, and we keep the golden cells, and we grow those up. And those are the only cells that we use. So that's the big difference.

And the advantage we have is that we've had all those cases. We're able to look back retrospectively at which cells really work, then analyze them from a molecular basis, and then now we can select using that system. So when Mel came in with his shoulder injuries, did you do an MRI first? He had one. We didn't do it there, but he had one, yeah. Did you do a follow-up MRI? We did not, no. Not on him.

We do a lot of them. It feels great, so you don't even bother. It feels good. I don't bother. It's like my dad was walking without pain. Right. You know, his hip was dissolved. He was doing okay.

Wow. And so are you still no problems with your shoulder? How long did you have that done? Oh, when was it? I had it done twice. It was, I went 18 months, and then I started, it started to return the symptoms of discomfort, pain. And so I did it again and like it's been like a couple of years almost three years it's fine Wow yeah yeah I was

really impressed with what I was able to get done but the stuff that I wish I had dr. McGee telling me exactly what it was the stuff that he had done to me about a year and a half ago is no longer available. They decided that it was considered a drug, and they weren't allowing that form of amniotic stem cell treatment. So now there's a less effective but still effective form. Right. So it seems like there is some sort of an effort afoot to diminish this in the United States. Yeah.

Well, I think they just want to control it, and they want it all to go through their deal and their processes. But in the meantime, a lot of people are probably suffering from some pretty significant injuries that they could deal with that far easier if this could somehow or another be sped up. I absolutely agree with that, yeah. So when did you start doing this down in Panama? We started there in 2006 and just because of the regulations right well we found out about the regulations around 2006 and and we went straight there once we found that law the law was passed in uh 2004 and then we

found out about it and we went down there and uh we built our lab out we were actually functional in 2007 so it's uh we're having our 10-year anniversary. What's it like in Panama? Never been to Panama. Is it weird? Seems like. It's cool. Is it?

You like it? Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. It's real friendly with the U.S. I think that's the currency you spend there is U.S. dollars. Oh, really? Except it goes further. Yeah.

They use U.S. dollars? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, they use U.S. dollars? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, they use U.S. dollars. I mean, we kind of ran that joint for, you know, many years until 1999 when we gave the canal back. And that was pretty much the vast majority of the economy. So when we gave that back to them, then they just kept the dollar. And it's been, you know, explosive growth.

It looks like Miami now. Yeah. You know, the building I live in is 70 stories tall, and it's not even the tallest building. Our clinic is on the 63rd floor of a 65-story building. They're just full of high-rises. Of course, there's a little bit too much traffic if you get that much concentration of people in one place, but fantastic restaurants, movie theaters, malls, high-end shopping malls, you name it, you've got everything that you want down there.

I'd love to spend time there. I spend a third of my time down there. It's friendly and it's not dangerous. Wow. So you have people that hear about you from the United States and they find out about your treatment and then fly down to Panama to get treated. Yeah, that's right. Not just the U.S., but probably the majority of the clients are from the U.S., and then we have people from all other places around the globe.

Do you anticipate this moving back to the United States in any way, or is this something that the hurdles are so steep that it's going to take a long time? I think we're going to figure out a way to do it. I think ultimately we're going to do it. We're, you know, just having, we were the first to get an eye in to treat a human being in the United States with these cells. And that was three and a half years ago with a young man with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. And my, you know, my other book that's hopefully interesting to read, it starts and finishes with his case where we were, we treated him in Panama for a number of years, and then we just petitioned FDA and said it's kind of ridiculous for us to do this down there.

Please allow us to do it. So we're using the cells that we isolated and expanded in Panama. We're using it to treat him and another now a 7-year-old with Deschamps muscular dystrophy. So that was the first wedge. And then our next wedge is going to be for spinal cord injury. And there are a number of clinical trials that are going on, not just outside the U.S., there are a number going on in the U.S. The biggest hurdle is that a new drug, if you look at the last several years, cost $2.5 billion to get to market.

And unless we do something a little bit differently on the regulatory side, it's going to be kind of hard to do this. Japan has a law that went into effect two years ago that basically allows you to, once you demonstrate your product is safe, then you can go ahead and start marketing it, and then you have seven years in which to demonstrate efficacy. So safety first, then efficacy. And that's resulted in four new drugs already in less than two years, and we have zero. We have zero. The only cell product that's approved by FDA is umbilical cord blood for the treatment of when you're doing a bone marrow transplant.

That's the only thing that's approved. Now, is there an argument for that? Like, are they just being cautious? They want to make sure that there's no adverse side effects that could really be significant? Yeah, I think there is an argument. There's an argument that they want to err on the side of safety. I mean, that's their number one priority is to create a safe environment for receiving medicines in the United States.

I think the model is a little bit antiquated for the cell products just because they are natural products. I mean, if you think about it, every woman that's ever given birth to a baby, they have stem cells from their baby in them, these MSCs. You can find them 50 years later. And they're not toxic. And we wouldn't exist as a species if there was an inherent toxicity to genetically distinct cells because the cells are 50% mom, 50% dad. And you can find them in mom, you know, for her entire life.

So the Cures Act was supposed to address some of that, and we'll see that that went into effect last year, and we'll see going forward if that actually does affect things. Now, I know that they're doing some stuff in the United States where they're injecting them into discs. This is a new thing to regenerate disc tissue for people that have degenerative disc disease and bulging discs and disc injuries. And as an alternative to either artificial discs or fusion as a first step before they move into those. Do you do any of that down there? We don't do any right now. We're working with a hospital that we're actually going to have a room just for doing backs,

just for doing spine. Because there are studies, a study out of Europe just came out a couple months ago, and it showed about 50% of the patients had their discs become normal on MRI after treatment. So it's not every case, but I'd take a 50-50 shot versus having a fusion, right? Yeah, so that's the same sort of situation that we're talking about where you're injecting it right into the discs. Yeah, and you can in the United States. We have a clinic in Dallas, the RMI clinic, where we can do bone marrow, right? And so we use autologous bone marrow, we do do the disc in the United States.

And it does help a percentage of people. Doesn't help everybody. And we were talking before about not just not just the disc, but the muscles around the disc. So if you take somebody who's had an injury, my partner, Dr. McKinnon, is an orthopedic surgeon and he's been talking about this for years. But if you take somebody with a disc injury and you look at the muscles right on either side of the spine there, and you'll find that they're withered away or they're marbled with fat and that sort of thing. You take an elite athlete, somebody who's super healthy, works out all the time, those muscles, they're like ropes. That's a filet mignon of the human body, right? And you look at that, and they're just black on MRI. But you take somebody that's had a disc injury at any level, and you can look, and there's marbling in there, and it's withered and that sort of thing.

So one of the things we do in Southlake and Dallas is we inject the disc but also inject those muscles along the side. And that's using your own bone marrow, and that's still allowed in the United States. So the bone marrow draw, concentrate the stem cells and inject them in those areas. Well, that's something that we were talking about earlier when I showed you the reverse hyper, when I showed you that machine and then that Dex back stretcher. I think that's a significant part of the injuries that you see with people with discs, with back injuries. They don't have strong backs.

The tissue, the muscle around the back that protects the spine is just very weak. Right, right. Yeah, it's a fantastic machine. I'm going to get one. Yeah, you got to get one. You too, Mel. Yeah. You got a crazy back, dude.

That picture you showed me of your back is fucking bananas. Yeah. No, it's like out of a nursery rhyme. Hey, is that what I had done down in Texas? Yeah. Bone marrow. Yeah, Mel actually had that done in Texas. How many treatments have you had?

Well, there was that one. and then i had the shoulders twice and then i just had him drop it into my vein you know just run around what's that like it's pretty cool i mean you feel a little sleepy for a couple of days and then you feel pretty energetic really sleepy yeah it kind of i think it takes its toll on you. I mean, I don't know why you feel sleepy. Neil may have an explanation for that. Yeah, well, the cells kind of re-educate the immune system. A lot of what we treat are rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, autoimmune diseases, and there's a retraining that's going on in the immune system. diseases and there's a retraining that's going on in the immune system. And so that involves cytokines and those molecules, those peptides are the things that make you feel sick. I mean,

when you get the flu, the flu virus doesn't make you sick. It's your body's immune reaction to that. That's the stuff that's being thrown off from the fight. That's what actually makes you feel sick. And so when you're activating certain parts of the immune system and they're throwing off things you make you a little bit tired some people very small percentage have some flu-like symptoms for one day but those are that's kind of like the extent of the the side effects that we typically see but if you if you look at like yeah you ask why isn't being done us for forumatic drugs, so you see them on TV. They're advertised basically every hour of every day on almost every station.

You see these anti-rheumatics. And, you know, if you have rheumatoid arthritis or if you have psoriatic arthritis or this sort of thing, these are biologics and these are antibodies to a certain molecule called TNF. TNF is one of the commanders of the immune system. It kind of says, hey, let's cause a bunch of inflammation and make you miserable. And so these drugs basically bind up or sop up the TNF that's in your body for a period of time. That's why you have to get retreated, like every month, every six months, every two months, something like that, six weeks, two months. And you have to get retreated and retreated. There's a study of rheumatoid arthritis where they, it was 172 people that were already on medication for

rheumatoid arthritis, not adequately controlled. They gave them like the equivalent of what a typical dose we give in Panama is like roughly 120 million cells. And all of them got better. All of them symptomatically improved. And the cool thing was that TNF-alpha and another molecule similar to it decreased by 50%. And that decrease persisted for eight and a half months. That was the length of the study. So rather than putting an antibody in to sop up what's being produced apparently by your immune system, the cells tell your immune system to stop it. The cells, they upregulate a certain immune cell called a T-regulatory cell.

That says to the immune system, hey, quit making TNF-alpha. Quit making this IL-6 stuff. And they took 30 patients of the subcohort like three months later and gave them another shot, the same dose, and it dropped their levels another 50% from that baseline. So from baseline to post-second treatment, two treatments, two IVs sitting in a chair, dropped their levels 75%. It just seems like something that would be amazing for overall repair. Like just go down there and let your body just get a little dose of healing to figure out what the fuck is wrong with it. Well, talk about like we talked about something in Costa Rica.

We were both there. And I had a, you know, they looked at my neck. I had a 50% occlusion in the right carotid, like buildup of stuff. Like you don't feel it happening. All of a sudden, when your carotids are shut down, they think, well, you have to eat the statins, right? Yeah. Like Crestor or Lipitor. I looked at what the side effects of those things are.

Terrible. Yeah, and I said, I'd rather die than eat those things. And they said, well, you—and they try to make you feel guilty for not doing it. You got kids, you got, you know, like, eh. But it's, I don't have that stuff now. And I didn't get anyone to go in and remove it. And I don't know if I can attribute that to the cells, but I got a bunch of cells, like, twice. And that went away. Now,

talk about that for a minute. Does that sort of? Yeah, well, just in general, your body, you have a certain number of these cells when you're born and they age just like the rest of your body and they perform more poorly as you age, right? So if you take one of these cells from a newborn, like when you were born, you could pluck one of these cells out, throw it in a Petri dish and let it grow. You let it grow for a month. It divides roughly every 24 hours, or that's the doubling rate. So at the end of a month, you have a billion cells. cells. And then if you take from a 35-year-old and do the same thing, doubling time is like two days instead of one day. And at the end of the month, you have 32,000 cells. And you take them

from a 65-year-old who's relatively healthy, and they divide every 60 hours, you get 200 cells at the end of the month. So if your problem is 1,000 cells, or it's 20,000 cells, or if it's a million cells, you can't get it done past a certain age just because the cells don't have the regenerative capacity. And the good thing about the umbilical cord cells is they, if you co-culture them with these older people's cells, with the young cells, they don't even have to touch each other. Just the secretions of the young cells will make the old cells start dividing faster and behaving younger. And the mitochondria, you see pictures in my book, you can see a picture of cells from

a 65-year-old diabetic without any juice on them. And then you put the juice from the young cells on there, and they look like 18-year-old MSCs with functional mitochondria all throughout the cell body rather than all bunched up. They look healthy. I mean, as a cell biologist, I know what looks healthy, and anybody else would. You can see just from the picture how vastly different it is just to be exposed to the juice. You heard of this parabiosis study they did at Harvard where they took young mice and they sewed them together with old mice. And then the old mice actually got younger.

And that's mean they'd use the blood of the young mice and put it in the old mice. Well, they literally sewed them together, sewed their bodies together, sewed their bodies together and sewed their bloodstreams together. Oh, geez. So the bloodstream is mixing. And so the young that's some Frankenstein together. Oh, Jesus. So the bloodstream is mixing. And so the young- That's some Frankenstein shit. Yeah, that's pretty Frankie. But they, so at the end of the study, they showed that the older mice got, their neurologic system got better, their cardiovascular system got better, their skeletal muscle got better,

everything got better. And one of the key molecules in there is called GDF11. And GDF11 is, if we, when we look at the secretome, that's what these cells secrete when they're growing. And we pull that out and we quantify it. In the top four, every time is GDF11 from the golden cells. So the golden cells are overproducing GDF11, which is one of the key molecules for stimulating regeneration in your body. So what other autoimmune diseases do you think could be assisted by this? Well, we do a lot of MS. That's probably our number one indication. We just finished a clinical trial, prospective clinical trial. We submitted it for publication. It should be coming out in the next month or so. And statistically, significantly, these patients improved dramatically.

And as far as side effect profiles, it was highly minimal. I mean, you feel headaches and a few flu-like symptoms, things like that. How many people? This was with 20 people. And one of the individuals actually clinically is perfect, and all of his lesions went away. And we only did one treatment with these. Typically with MS, it's more refractory than rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis, usually after one treatment, people get a ton of benefit. With MS, they usually see after two or three treatments that they really see the most

benefit. And we only did one treatment in this trial. But one gentleman had three lesions in his brain. All three lesions completely disappeared. So MS is a big thing. Rheumatoid arthritis is a big thing. And I tell you, there's stories in the – not stories, but people talking about their responses. And it's pretty incredible. There's one lady that her husband is a PhD

physicist. He carried on working just so she could afford, just so she could have insurance to afford the medications, which were around a hundred grand a year for her to get treated for rheumatoid arthritis. And she came down about, it'll be, it's a little over three years ago, November, and she hasn't been on any medication since. She actually started walking around the mall when she was in Panama. And then when she got home, she's completely pain-free, and she's been pain-free for three years. And her husband finally retired because he didn't care about having the insurance to pay for these very expensive drugs that she was taking. So MS, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus.

We don't have a lupus protocol. There's a group in China that's published six really good papers on lupus. It's very, very effective in their trials. We haven't done it yet. And then autism, you know, it's not considered an autoimmune disease, but we have a trial. We just completed our autism trial with 33 enrollees with very good results. Many of those kids became non-autistic after treatment. So that's confusing to me because you're talking about people that are young. Right. So why would it have such a benefit for them?

Well, I wrote an article in 2007 about why these cells should be good for autism. And basically, it's the most downloaded article this journal's ever had. Something like 75,000 people have downloaded a scientific journal article, which really doesn't happen very often. But people with autism have inflammatory things going on in their body. A lot of times in the gut, at the end of the small intestine, there are these inflammatory nodules that look a lot like Crohn's disease. And they secrete this inflammation that then goes to the brain, inflames the white matter of the brain. The white matter of the brain swells, decreases the blood goes to the brain, inflames the white matter of the brain. The white matter of the brain swells, decreases the blood flow to the brain.

All that's intertwined. And then just a few years ago, there was a study that came out, and this is what allowed us to go forward with our clinical trial. They found that there are these two inflammatory molecules that are MDC and TARC, and they perfectly correlate

with the severity of symptoms of autism. And so we measured not only those two but another 30-some biomarkers. We did quantitative EEGs. We did a lot of standardized scoring with a neurologist that read them before treatment, during treatment, after treatment. So I believe a lot of the problems with autism stem from the inflammatory status, and these cells are definitely anti-inflammatory. Yeah, they've had some benefit with changing the diet and changing the gut biome of kids with autism,

and they've made some benefits with that, which they believe is also connected to inflammation. Yeah, absolutely. If your immune system is freaking out every time you eat a piece of bread and that immune system is throwing out molecules that are swelling your brain and inflaming your brain, then it makes complete sense. And, yeah, you know, I think in general the people with autism that do the best are the ones that get that addressed before they come down. You know, there's some other doctors that do functional medicine. They look at their diet.

They look at see if they have any heavy metals and that sort of thing. And the ones that just are slam dunk, do the best, have been cleaned up before they come down. Wow. So what about heart disease? You were talking about people that have heart issues? Yeah. We have a number of patients with heart failure that have responded quite well. Heart failure?

Heart failure, yeah. So heart attack, need of a transplant, that kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah, on transplant lists and that sort of thing, yeah. So I have a friend who's on a transplant list. Yeah, right. So there are different kinds of heart failure. And so, but the interesting thing about heart failure is the cells don't need to go to the heart and to actually become new heart cells and that sort of thing.

It's actually the secretions of the cells. Like I said before, there was a study at University of Buffalo where they took, they injected cells IV in a hamster model of heart failure. And then they looked in the heart and there were very few cells, but the heart failure got better. And then they said, oh, let's inject those same cells. These are MSC, umbilical MSCs, inject them into the hamstring muscle. And they demonstrated that none of the cells came out of the hamstring muscle and yet the heart failure got better. demonstrated that none of the cells came out of the hamstring muscle, and yet the heart failure got better. So then they took just the juice, the liquid that the cells secrete, and they started simulated the amount of juice that the cells would have produced in the body and just injected the

juice and the heart failure got better. So it's really the secretions of the cells stimulating the natural repair, augmenting the natural repair process of the body that has been stretched to its limit. You know, if you have a 65-year-old, those cells aren't dividing very well. The juice can help the cells divide faster and produce more repair molecules and make it better. So do you think that it could take someone who's on a heart transplant list and literally fix their heart? I've seen it happen time and again.

Wow. And there are clinical trials using similar cell types that also have demonstrated that. You know, there's a molecule called BMP, which is high in heart failure. The BMP came down in every single case. The ejection fraction, which measures kind of like the efficiency, how much blood your heart's pumping on each stroke, went up in every single patient. much blood your heart's pumping on each stroke went up in every single patient. You know, I think in the book, the craziest case was a gringo who was down in Costa Rica. And he was, I don't know, he was probably 20, 25% routinely.

But he got a viral disease or something else. And he was 11% ejection fraction. Normal is about 60. And the regular hospital who worked a lot with us with our spinal cord patients and seeing results, seeing people walking again, they just said, you can't get on a plane. You're at 3,700 feet. If you get on a plane, you'll be dead. You might as well go see these guys over at the stem cell place and see if anything can happen. And I think his case is in the book as well. But he went from, I don't

know, 11 to 42 or something like that. But he wasn't the first case. The first case was a doctor who's a friend of Georgie's, a friend of Dr. Paws, our medical director, who had congenital. So his mother had died of heart failure. His sister had died. His brother had died. And he was, you know, not even 50 years old and his ejection fraction was, you know, hovering around 30 percent. And a lot of people at, you know, at an advanced age, you're not even going to get on the list because if you're a 50 or 60 year old and there's a's a 20-year-old ahead of you, 20-year-old's going to win. And so he begged and begged to come down. He was our first patient. We didn't even really want to take him because we didn't know what was going to happen because nobody had ever

done it. And we treated him and he went back and he had an ejection fraction, he had an echocardiogram and it was 52%. And then the doctor didn't believe it, so he redid it a month later and it was 55%. So, you know, it's not – I don't think it's for every case. I mean, you have people with like a super bad heart attack and there's not enough to repair and you really need a heart transplant. But I think you're going to see that it's ultimately – I think in 20, you're probably going to see standard of care for diseases, chronic diseases, like any chronic degenerative disease for which there's no good treatment. You're going to see standard of care is going to be young, healthy mesenchymal stem cells. Because if you look at the root cause, I get a question a lot.

How is it these things work for so many things? question a lot. How is it these things work for so many things? Well, when the root cause is a lack of or dysfunction of those cells, then it makes sense that replenishing those or restoring them with young healthy ones could be a useful treatment. Well, Mel, this is so important to you that you wanted to come on and talk about this. You wanted to let people know about this shit. Yeah, I think it's amazing. And it seems a crime to me that it isn't easier to do in this country where we're an advanced country. I mean, they should look a little harder at it and it's

a mystery to me why it isn't the case, but hey, if there are places where one can go and get some help, it's good. I mean, I know another gal, she's a good friend of mine, she tore her shoulders up because she was like an athlete and she had her shoulders up because she was like an athlete. And she had her shoulders done and she got some dropped into her.

And it actually helped greatly with an autoimmune disorder that she had. And then she was able to have kids. It was that kind of thing, you know. Yeah, there's some really good animal data showing that you can inject these cells and you can take ovarian failure and reverse it. And in her case, she had an autoimmune disease and she was unable to have children, told that from a very young age. And after treatment, she got pregnant pretty quickly. This sounds almost too good to be true. This is almost like skeptical people that are listening to this right now are probably like,

why? This fucking shit cures everything? Yeah, it sounds like the old spooker on the corner. Good for moles, holes, and pimples on your ones. But you've got studies. I mean, you've got real trials to back this up, and you've got a host of patients that are healed up and healthy. Yeah, yeah. I don't have anything wrong with me. I want to go down there

and get shot up. You see a 92-year-old man who's about ready to kick the bucket and he's almost going to celebrate 100 years in August. That's incredible. He's better off than he was, let me tell you. Yeah, this young guy with the

Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, you know, the cells don't last forever. This is also an important point. with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, you know, the cells don't last forever. This is also an important point. With Duchenne's, it's a genetic defect. So they're missing a protein. And these cells go in. In animal models, these cells, you give them to the animal, they go into the muscle, and then they start secreting that molecule that they're missing.

But they only last for about four, five, six months. And then they start maturing, and then the immune system clears them. It's a real important point. You don't have that with embryonic stem cells because they cause tumors and things like that. And the great thing about these cells, they don't cause tumors because they differentiate. They don't want to be a baby. They're just there to do their job, which is to keep homeostasis, keep the immune system controlled, help with regeneration, all that sort of thing. And talk about that, but the embryonic stuff, because I find this interesting.

The embryonic stuff is full of weird anomalies and stuff, right? Yeah. A few of us got together and wrote an article when they finally put the clamp on the last embryonic stem cell treatment. And we've been saying for years that embryonic stem cells aren't going to work because they want to become babies. Their number one problem is they want to become babies. They don't want to, these cells, the cells that we start with, they don't want to become babies. The baby's already born. These are, they're mature, they're mesenchymal, and that's what they are. And that's, they're never going to be anything else. Whereas the

embryonic stem cells, the biggest problem with them is they always form tumors. They form teratomas. And so in order for them to be functional, you have to grow them out. And if you want them to have MSC-like qualities, you have to force them to become MSCs. And then you have to make darn sure that there aren't any, it only takes one. If there's one left, then it's going to form a tumor. So that was the big problem, that the expense, you know, it's $300,000, $400,000 a dose just to make sure that they didn't have one in them. And then they weren't as beneficial. And they'd been monkeyed with in the lab from when they were embryonic and then converted and converted and converted and converted and then grown up in huge numbers. And so they were monkeyed with.

And these cells, you don't have to monkey with them. They just do it naturally. You just take them out. You digest them. You put them in a nutrient broth in the right temperature and humidity and oxygen levels, and they just grow. And so we wrote an article about embryonic stem cells. We call it the king is dead, long live the king. Because, you know, the California voters knee-jerk $3 billion towards embryonic stem cell work, you know,

against the Bush administration's restriction of spending money on embryonic stem cell research. It wasn't banned, as most people said. All they said was we're not going to use taxpayer money, federal taxpayer banned, as most people said. All they said was, we're not going to use taxpayer money, federal taxpayer money, to go towards that. And what people heard was, they don't want progress. Well, what's happened is, at last count, I think they spent, you know, two and three quarter billion dollars. They got $250 million left. And guess what they're studying now? Adult stem cells. They're studying umbilical cord stem cells.

They're studying mesenchymal stem cells. They've completely cut out everything on the embryonic side because it just took that long. There was so much misinformation out there. And now, thank God, it's gone. And we've regained our sanity. But we blew a lot of dough on the whole embryonic thing. Oh, yeah. It was a lot of money.

And we paid as taxpayers in California for that, you know, because people were misinformed. So if a person's listening to you right now and they've got some issues, what's the first step they should take? Well, um. Like say a guy's got a blown knee and is thinking about getting surgery. Yeah. Well, they could go, you know, our website is cellmedicine, C-E-L-L medicine.com for Panama. If, you know, if it's something that can be addressed with bone marrow in the U.S., rmiclinic.com, that's our. But the bone marrow is just not as effective.

Well, it can be. It's hard to say because everybody's bone marrow is just not as effective. Well, it can be. It's hard to say because everybody's bone marrow is different. Your age is different. You know, if you're 85 years old, even if you're 65 years old and you're a smoker or you're diabetic, I don't think it's worth typically using your bone marrow because it's just not going to do a lot. But younger people, healthier people, a lot of times you can, you know, when it's in a joint, because that's the only thing we can do in the U.S. is orthopedics. But if it's an orthopedic problem, then, you know, they could check out, see if they could, you know, we could

do something for them in Dallas. If it's not orthopedic and you need systemic treatment for autoimmune disease, if you have a spinal cord injury or autism, any of those conditions, then they go to CellMedicine, C-E-L-L, medicine.com. And that's where we have – there's all the information there, and they can fill out an application. Doctors get back with them and get in the system. Now, how difficult is it to go down to Panama and get treatment? Like, how do you schedule that? Well, that's all taken care of. There's a whole team of people that do that.

The only thing is you need a passport, and there's no visa required or anything like that. How long is that flight? From L.A., it's six hours. It's way far east. So it's like going to Miami. It's like two hours. Yeah, it's actually a little over two hours from Miami because it's way east. It's almost due south of Atlanta.

It's closer to New York, right? Yeah, it's four and a half, five to New York. So CellMedicine.com, they go there, contact you. Now, do they need to have some sort of a consultation with a local doctor, an MRI, or anything like that before they go to see you? Oh, yeah. They need to have a diagnosis from a physician for what they have. We have a team of doctors there, and they'll talk to them and see what they need.

If they need any other information, any other, you know, x-rays or MRIs or whatever, they'll sort all that out. This is all fascinating stuff, man. And I never thought about going to Panama until about an hour ago. Now I'm thinking of taking a trip. Be there in six hours. It's worth it. Yeah.

I just want to feel the intravenous stuff I want to feel what boss root was talking about the lightning bolts coming off my fingers he's a little dramatic yeah well he's definitely dramatic I wouldn't say that to his face I would with a smile only but yeah he's uh when you treated him he was going through some pretty significant issues with his neck. Yeah. Yeah. What benefits did he find off of that?

Well, you know, I don't think for his neck, structurally, we weren't able to get the cells there. And I don't know if there's enough left, you know. A lot of people, yeah. He's had several fusions in his neck. If there's nothing structurally to do anything. A lot of people talk about hair loss and these cells work for hair loss. And, yeah, they do a pretty good job, but you can't grow grass on concrete. You can't stimulate a nerve to regrow.

There's not even a thread left. So he didn't get – I don't believe he got any benefit from his accident problem. But the metabolic benefits were fantastic for him, and energy-wise and things like that. Yeah. One of his issues is that he has some atrophy on one of his arms because his nerves in his neck were being pinched for a long time, and he didn't address it quick enough, and it got to the point where his arm was shrinking. Right. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why he went down there. Did he experience any benefit from that?

I don't believe he did, no. No. That's a tough one, right? Regeneration of nerves. Well, especially really long time out. You know, like for spinal cord injury, we did a cohort analysis, and basically if they're within one year of injury, 100% of the patients had restoration of some neurologic function. If it was between one and two years, it was 82%.

If it was after two years, it was 50%. So the longer it is, and also the older you are, the less oomph you have left. The reason these cells work for spinal cord injuries, they don't become nerves or anything like that. But the spinal cord is one of the most replete areas of the body when it comes to blood vessels. There's barely enough blood vessels to keep it alive. And your liver, on the other hand, has just tons of blood vessels in it. And your liver, you can cut 80% of your liver out and it will regrow itself. With your spinal cord, you just kind of ding it a little bit and it won't repair itself. That's because there are no blood vessels and therefore there are no MSCs or very few MSCs. So like 150th

the number of MSCs reside in your spinal cord because we built this wonderful cage around it to protect it. And so all we're doing is we shoot the cells in there. We also give them a MyV and the cells secrete the things that are necessary for the spinal cord to regenerate itself. But the longer it is from injury, the more scarring there is and all that sort of thing, the less benefit you're going to see. So do you anticipate a time where they'll be able to regenerate spinal tissue or someone has got a spinal cord injury where they have partial or some sort of paralysis and they can be able to regenerate spinal tissue or someone has got a spinal cord injury where they have partial or some sort of paralysis and they can be able to regenerate that?

I do. And we have many cases that it's already happened. Really? Yeah. Like what cases? Well, you know, Juan Carlos Murillo

is a commercial pilot from Costa Rica and he was one day flying as a National Geographic photographer around in his private plane, and they pancaked, and both of them got spinal cord injuries. When you say pancaked, do you mean crashed?

Crashed the plane, yeah. Yeah, they were up on a volcano, and it was like some crazy winds and stuff, and it just dropped out of the sky and landed on the ground. And he had no function and no sensation below the injury, basically from his belly button down. He had no erectile function, no bowel function, bladder function, any of that stuff. And, you know, the first time we treated him. And how are you treating him? We're giving him IV cells and intrathecal, so into the spinal fluid.

and intrathecal, so into the spinal fluid. So the first round of treatments, after that, his biggest, he described it as like a 10 out of a 10 pain scale. So he had this neuropathic pain that was just like he was shoveling down narcotics like nobody's business. And after the first treatment, he didn't get any restoration of function or anything, but his pain dropped from a 10 to a 3, and so he got off the narcotics. Then the second time we treated him, he got his left leg back, and he could move it. How long after the treatment?

Okay, we started treating him six months and three days after his accident. So the first round of treatments was the first month, and it was about three months later we did the second round. Three months later he got his right leg back. And then three months later, so it was over about a year, a 15-month period probably in total, he basically got everything back. He got erectile function. He got bowel, bladder, all that sort of thing.

And, you know, I just had dinner with him the other night in Costa Rica. And he can walk in here. And he got his commercial pilot's license back, and he started a new business. So he's 100%? I wouldn't say 100% because he does have a bit of a limp, but he broke his leg when he was four-wheeling. This guy's a fucking maniac. I don't know. Yeah, he can't get enough.

Jesus Christ. Is this before or after the accident that he broke his leg? No. So, yeah, so he got all better. And then he broke his leg? And he was perfectly fine. And then he goes out and four-wheeling and breaks his leg. So, yeah.

So he was 100% and then he fucked himself up again. Yeah. So he limps a little bit. But most people don't know that he ever had a spinal cord injury, you know. That's incredible. So you feel like with conventional treatment, that guy would still be in a wheelchair? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, he made zero progress. So when we were designing this study that we're doing at Miami that's being funded by the Marcus people, there are two neurosurgeons that are on that. So we wanted to, okay, we're discussing at what time point should we accept them? And these very prominent neurosurgeons said, let's do six months, because at six months, you got 98 to 99% back of everything you're going to have. So let's do patients or subjects that are from six months to two years. And so those are the inclusion criteria. That's the timing that we're going to do for the study at Miami. This is phenomenal. So is that study published online? Is there anything where this case rather published online? That case is published online. Yeah, absolutely. It's

referenced in my book. Which book? You have two books here. Yeah. Well, it's referenced in both books, but in the spinal cord chapter. So stem cell therapy, Rising Tide is the one that it's written for the layperson. There you go. So it's referenced in there. And the whole story about Juan Carlos and his journey and how he got started and everything's in there, as well as a reference to the published article that's in a scientific journal about his case. And then MSC is the one that you read if you want to go to sleep or if you're a super nerd. Exactly.

All right. Exactly. And cellmedicine.com, that's the website? Yep. C-E-L-L medicine.com. Well, listen, man, this is fantastic stuff. And, I mean, I'm very intrigued. And I really, I hope people that have issues can reach out to you and try to see if you

can get some treatment. And I would love to hear back from them. I mean what what happened with you and what happened with your dad is just incredible and the stuff that i've experienced in the united states seems like it's not nearly as potent as the stuff that you're using down there and i've had some pretty dramatic results yeah so it's incredible stuff cool tj dillashaw says hi oh you know tj yeah he came down there and did he yeah he came down there like three months before the last fight, and then he got his belt back, and he's really happy. What did he have done?

He told me I could tell you everything. He got IVs, and he got his shoulder done because his shoulder was really bothering him. So that was it. And he went down to Panama to get all that done. Yep. How did you find out about him? Or how did he find out about you?

Frankly, I don't know. Maybe Boz or somebody else in that. We've had a few MMA guys and I asked him and Boz and he both said that it's okay to talk about him going down there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, man, it was a real treat, real pleasure. I'm so fascinated about this stuff because of my own personal experience with the, you

know, the limited amount of stem cell treatments that I've gotten. But I've had great results. I had a knee injury that was bothering me forever. I don't feel it at all anymore. The shoulder doesn't bother me at all anymore. I mean, it's pretty amazing stuff. And from what you're saying, I'm getting a very watered down, not nearly as potent version of what you have in Panama. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. So, CellMedicine.com. Yes, sir. And then the books again are MSC, say that word again, mesol... Mesenchymal stem cells. Mesenchymal stem cells

and stem cell therapy, A Rising Tide. Mel Gibson, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for bringing this man in here. Appreciate it. All right, fuckers, read into this. Look it up.

Get healthy. Thanks, man. Wow.