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Exosomes Explained: Are Your Supplements Really Working? · Create The Best Me

• 0:00
  Carmen Hecox: What happens when a neurosurgeon calls himself a bio nerd, puts down what he calls the medical Kool-Aid, and starts looking at the body from a cellular level?
• 0:11
  Carmen Hecox: Today's conversation is fascinating because Dr. Jeff Gross is breaking down regenerative medicine, exosomes, inflammation, longevity, and why taking more supplements may not always mean your cells are actually getting what they need. And wait till you hear how he explains exosomes. I promise, once you hear it, the Glinda coming down in the little bubble comparison, you will never think about supplements the same way again.
• 0:42
  Carmen Hecox: So if you've ever thought there has to be another option before surgery, or I'm tired of doing all the things and still feeling not my best, This conversation is for you. Help me in welcoming Dr. Gross to the show. Dr. Gross, welcome to Create the Best Me.
• 1:01
  Dr. Jeff Gross: This is an honor and a privilege to have you on the show. Wow. No, it's my honor and privilege to be here. Thank you for having me. So, Dr. Gross, before we get into today's exciting conversation, I'm excited about it because stuff that I'm real interested in, could you please tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about who Dr. Gross is and what you specialize in.
• 1:23
  Dr. Jeff Gross: My name is Jeff and I'm a bio nerd. I happen to be a medical doctor. I was practicing traditional medicine, neurosurgery, spine surgery for many years. And my patients suggested, encouraged, cajoled, got me to stop going to the Kool-Aid drinking neurosurgery conferences every year and start going to stem cell conferences. Because they wanted other options besides surgery for their spines when other things didn't work.
• 1:53
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And although I am a surgeon, it was always the last option on the menu.
• 1:57
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So being that I had some background in the field of stem cells, which is called molecular cell biology from college, but didn't get to use it much being a physician, I said, you know, I will do that. And I went to stem cell conferences about 8 years ago and reeducated myself. Put down the Kool-Aid, got out of the sick care system, and now I meant to add regenerative medicine based on stem cells and so many other signals to my practice as a tool for spine patients. But now it's all I do.
• 2:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Longevity medicine, you know, a natural, holistic, functional, integrative application, stem cells, exosomes, peptides, All kinds of things, treating each individual's cells. And if your cells are taken care of, then of course it helps you. That's the short version.
• 2:50
  Carmen Hecox: And this is why I'm excited about this particular subject, because I am one of those people that I know that people need surgery.
• 3:01
  Carmen Hecox: I know that that is sometimes the only option.
• 3:05
  Carmen Hecox: But before you go into that road, I like to explore other natural, more kind of like, I kind of see it like, try this, try that before you do that, because there's no coming back after you do that.
• 3:22
  Dr. Jeff Gross: 100,000%. That's accurate.
• 3:26
  Dr. Jeff Gross: That's, I've always believed that, but I didn't have the tools for it. Now the tools have been here, but you know, the sick care system has has us all chained to the same, you know, hitting a stone and rolling the stone up the same hill and having it roll back down. It's that rationing by hassle system. The blinders are on, the scripts are there, the cookbook is there, and you really have to physically break out of that to help people better and more naturally.
• 3:57
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, I mean, because I have a scar on my neck and I have one in the back to match it because I had 2 cervical fusions. The first one didn't take well because my body didn't accept the cadaver bone. So they had to go back there and do the other one. But I extended that, and it hurt. But I waited at least 20 years before I finally said, okay, I give.
• 4:23
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah. There are many things we could have done at the beginning of that to help delay and prevent it without you suffering so much.
• 4:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: There are things that you could have done to prepare your body and get that first one to take that, you know, I look back and with the tools I have now, I could have done so much more for people even when we had to do surgery, putting in the right state of body growth and protein intake and development of cellular division and things to help that bone incorporate. So unfortunately, you got the typical. You got the run-of-the-mill of what's out there, and it's just a transaction.
• 5:05
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah. But yeah, so the reason why I invited you onto the show is because this is another thing that I am passionate about, is plant-derived exosomes or plant-derived alternatives. And you are doing it.
• 5:21
  Dr. Jeff Gross: I'm doing it. It was an accident.
• 5:26
  Carmen Hecox: Accident?
• 5:26
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It was an accident.
• 5:26
  Carmen Hecox: How does that happen by accident?
• 5:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Well, as I mentioned, I fell back into what I'll call nature. Stem cell medicine and cell signaling, you know, is what I started doing for people, not just for spine and brain problems, but for so many other things now. You know, we help do injection procedures to help regenerate joints. We do all kinds of IV wellness, and that's with donated human biologics. At the time of a healthy C-section.
• 5:54
  Dr. Jeff Gross: But, you know, there's a word we should probably unwrap here called exosomes, E-X-O-S-O-M-E-S, exosomes. And exosomes are how cells communicate with each other one of two ways. The other way is through proteins or small proteins called peptides or growth factors.
• 6:13
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, these exosomes are smaller outbubbling from an already small cell. But they're about 1/1,000th the size of a cell. So if you had a cell and your cell's under attack, let's say infected by a bacteria, it's gotta send warning to its neighborhood watch program. And it does that through making small out-bubble messengers. And those takes a little bit of the cell membrane and some of the contents of the cell, usually other proteins and peptides, small lipids and microRNAs. And those go into neighbor cells and they take them in that content is delivered and that exosome or vesicle membrane fuses with the cell and delivers its contents, then the cell can change what it's doing. It can make a certain set of peptides, proteins, and infrastructure. It can change the factory settings to do something, to fight an infection or, you know, forewarn, and then it warns its neighbors and it tells 2 friends and so on. So, that is what an exosome does. When we use the word exosome, we're usually speaking to stem cell-derived exosomes found in amniotic fluid. We'll get to the plant part, I promise you, Carmen. But these exosomes are why a pregnant woman has glowing skin and growing hair and a good mood and all that stuff.
• 7:37
  Dr. Jeff Gross: She's getting a daily dose of these stem cell exosomes through the placenta. The cells are too big to cross, and we don't want them to cross because they're genetically half foreign to her. We don't want the rejection. But the exosomes are not rejectable, and the body loves them. It gives a youthful restorative signal. And we want a mother, a pregnant woman to have those potential— a new mother to have those because she's not going to sleep for a long time. She's going to take care of her little one. She's got to make breast milk. She's going to carry on the species. We have to give her some advantage. So, the body gets ready naturally.
• 8:12
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, I read every morning on stem cells and exosomes. I have a Google alert set, so I get all the news items over the last 24 hours every morning. I can have my coffee. I can see what's going on in the world. I'm a nerd. I do that anyway. And so, I'm reading a few years ago, and it turns out plants make exosomes, and they have stem cells. And mushrooms make exosomes, and algae makes exosomes. And probably all eukaryotic cells make exosomes, cells with a membrane.
• 8:40
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, very interesting. This is how plants communicate with us, and they do at the cellular level.
• 8:49
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, take a step aside from that. Plants, why do we benefit nutritionally from plants, from fruits and vegetables? They have specific nutrients we need.
• 9:01
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-hmm.
• 9:01
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Those are called phytonutrients. Phyto means growth or plant, in this case, plant growth nutrients.
• 9:08
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And we've heard of some of these words. We've maybe heard of resveratrol, an anti-aging phytonutrient. We may have heard of all the B vitamins except B12. Vitamin C is a phytonutrient. How about glutathione?
• 9:24
  Dr. Jeff Gross: How about spermidine, berberine, sulforaphane?
• 9:28
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Which is from broccoli sprouts, credible anti-aging capabilities. So, most plants produce their phytonutrients, guess how? In an exosome. So, hmm, I thought, that bottle of resveratrol capsules I have and take one every day because it's an anti-aging supplement, how do they make that? So, I looked into it.
• 9:51
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Turns out there are 2 ways they can make it. They can take Red grapes and various fruits that make resveratrol, and they can juice them and extract with solvents, biological solvents. It's not like they have to use kerosene necessarily.
• 10:08
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And they extract that molecule into the naked molecule, get a bunch of it, powder it, and put it in a capsule.
• 10:16
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Interesting. That's not how nature intended it though.
• 10:21
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Nature figured out how to deliver that in an exosome, but no one was extracting the exosomes because it was very difficult until a few years ago. And when I stumbled on this, I found a lab in Italy that had perfected a method for extracting plant exosomes. So, why does it matter? Why do we need a capsule of the exosomes instead of just the molecule? Well, the exosomes survive digestion. The molecule some does.
• 10:51
  Dr. Jeff Gross: That means in your stomach with the acid. The exosome gets through the intestinal barrier, whereas the plain molecule maybe. The exosome bounces around your bloodstream safely because it's protected by that membrane that it borrowed from the cell, where the native molecule is not protected, it can get consumed. And then the exosome delivers to the cell by that same process I mentioned earlier, where it fuses its membrane through a process you may remember from high school biology called endocytosis. Well, the native molecule doesn't have a receptor on the cell surface to get into the cell, so your cells barely get any of the naked native molecule. And that's why you hear this term expensive urine, because you buy a bunch of supplements and most of it goes out in your urine, if it still exists at all.
• 11:45
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Whereas, if you got them in an encapsulated form with a membrane, it delivers it, protects it, and gets it to your cell, delivering it to the cell at, guess what, 4,500 times the amount.
• 11:57
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, the light bulb went off. I had a Thomas Edison moment, a da Vinci moment, if you will. The apple hit Newton's head right there, and I said, we've got to get these out. We've got to figure it out. So, we chose some organic Italian fruits in the Mediterranean Blue Zone, right? People living longer, healthier. It's not the only reason they live longer and healthier in the Blue Zone, but it is one. And we extracted those fruits. They're citrus fruits, they are papaya, mango, and I think there are 7 or 8 fruits that go into it. And we have the exosomes extracted, and that's a bit of lab work. And we make it into a vegetable capsule. It survives the gastrointestinal lining. It gets in, it gets into your bloodstream, and it delivers phytonutrients to your cell. And your cell needs these for various processes. There's a reason they're healthy. One little capsule, you can get rid of a handful of others. So we came up with this. The initial preclinical studies show that age markers of cells all move in the youthful direction.
• 13:07
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Increased SIRT1 gene activity, which is what you see with resveratrol. It's an anti-aging gene in the mitochondria.
• 13:15
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Decreased DNA damage markers, decreased reactive oxygen species, which is sort of this stress inside of your cell, inflammatory stress, oxidative stress, and a few other markers. So, your cells are healthier, living longer, then you are healthier, living longer. So, this is the first-ever purely longevity supplement. It's the first-ever exosome supplement. And it's the first-ever regenerative supplement that does what it does. So, we're first in 3 categories. We plan on upending the supplement market because you need one little tiny capsule in a morning, and that's all you need. So, we call it Longevity Exosomes, or for short, LONGEVEX.
• 13:57
  Carmen Hecox: And when you were describing this, I sort of, in my brain, I was thinking that the exosome is kind of like protected in this bubble.
• 14:08
  Carmen Hecox: And so when you take it, it's like this little bubble and it's traveling. And so when you have all these, like, acids and whatever in your body, it can't break the bubble, versus when you describe the other one, I'm not going to say the word.
• 14:24
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Right.
• 14:24
  Carmen Hecox: To me, I was thinking sort of like a grain of salt, to where you take it, and it's just, it's gone.
• 14:27
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It's dissolved, yeah.
• 14:28
  Carmen Hecox: It dissolved.
• 14:32
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Absolutely. This is Glinda coming down in the bubble.
• 14:35
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Exactly what it is. It's protected, and they have high bioavailability to the cells. There's nothing else like it. Something that's maybe close but not the same amount of concentrated delivery to the cell is called a liposome. some vitamins you can get in a liposomal form, which is in our artificial exosome membrane on a nutrient. So, you may have heard of liposomal vitamins, but this is even better.
• 15:01
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Liposomal are about 700 times the delivery of a regular molecule, but the exosomes are 4,500 times.
• 15:08
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, we've got it, I think, efficient, simple, one little pill; you get rid of a bunch of other things, replaces a ton of things. And we have had a wonderful first year. It's only been out for a year and a week now.
• 15:23
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And the reception's been quite positive.
• 15:28
  Carmen Hecox: How is it different than you go on TikTok, you scroll, you see a bunch of stuff like these different doctors, they say they're doctors, and they, I think it's funny, they even have their little white lab coat on and they say, take this NAD with, uh, what, resveratrol or whatever that word was that you said, your body will absorb it as opposed to the other stuff that you might buy on Amazon.
• 15:50
  Carmen Hecox: You know, that's fake. How can you tell the difference?
• 15:50
  Dr. Jeff Gross: You know, the consumer, what's real and what's not? Well, we know that supplements are very difficult to get into your system, into your cells.
• 16:00
  Dr. Jeff Gross: The vast majority of supplements are needed in the cells, not all. Your cells are where most of the work is going on, not all. But to get supplements there, you have to have a mechanism. Nature's already figured this out. We just didn't have a way to do it until recently.
• 16:15
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So how do you know? You know, there are some decent things you can buy on Amazon. There are some not very credible things. Same thing goes for pharmaceutical drugs. There's stuff out there that'll hurt you.
• 16:26
  Dr. Jeff Gross: There's always something. So, you know, buyer beware. And most of the supplements that we take that are not encapsulated by an exosome are just not doing much. And you have to take tons in concentration just to force some into your cells. And you can have benefits, but let's make it easy. You don't have to try so hard. We've got solutions now.
• 16:46
  Carmen Hecox: So tell me, Jeff, like for example, before we went on, I kind of told you I have some allergies going on right here.
• 16:53
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah.
• 16:53
  Carmen Hecox: What I've noticed, because I'm a woman in midlife, I've noticed that the older I get, the worse my allergies get.
• 17:02
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yep.
• 17:02
  Carmen Hecox: So would your supplements help rebuild my immune system so that next year I'm not going to be worse than what I am this year?
• 17:13
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Well, we look at the whole person, right? We look at all causes of inflammation. You know, as we age, we accumulate inflammation. In fact, we age because we accumulate inflammation. And if you have an inflammatory issue, in this case allergies, which of course are inflammatory-based, the more inflammation you carry, the more likely your allergies will get triggered and the more likely they'll have a stronger response.
• 17:39
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, I'm sure you're working on fighting inflammation, and a middle-aged woman needs to look at sleep, exercise, diet, nutrition, supplementation, bioidentical hormone analysis, and potential optimization. And then above and beyond that, we might look at regenerative medicine. We might look at exosomes from the stem cell side of things.
• 18:01
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And then, you know, back to the nutrition piece, I think product that we've come up with fits inside a nutrition and supplementation category. And can it reduce inflammation? Yes, it reduces reactive oxygen species, which is a measure of cellular inflammation of sorts. So ideally, are all your cells affected? And does that affect your immune system, allow it to do a better job? Theoretically, yes. We, you know, the FDA has not evaluated these types of statements. So I don't want to create something we haven't studied. But hypothetically, that's the reason we came up with this. Theoretically, it should help your cells fight inflammation and therefore help reduce an allergic response.
• 18:43
  Carmen Hecox: 'Cause I don't like to take allergy medicine because I do know that in the long run, it's gonna affect my brain, and I don't need that.
• 18:50
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah, we now have to worry about Benadryl and antihistamines. You're absolutely right. There's a recently published some increased risk of dementia with chronic use. Now, spotty use here and there on a really bad day, you can't function, it's probably reasonable. But yeah, if we can suppress your inflammation by all kinds of other pathways naturally, we would be doing a service. And that's what we all should be doing if we want to live both longer but healthier longer.
• 19:23
  Carmen Hecox: And how long does it take for people to start to begin to feel different once they start taking the exosomes?
• 19:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Well, it probably depends on a few factors because there's a variety of responses.
• 19:38
  Dr. Jeff Gross: how bad is your inflammation to begin with? How healthy are your cells? How young are you? How sensitive are you to supplements? some people feel nothing, but we know it's helping at the cellular level. We have some people reporting energy, so we like to take it in the morning. We have some people reporting improved skin and hair, hair growth.
• 20:00
  Dr. Jeff Gross: We have other people with mood improvements, people with joint pain. The same people with joint pain that might feel better if they eat a really clean anti-inflammatory diet tend to have some improvement on this product. So anything involving inflammation, and frankly, most disease processes have Inflammatory pathways. Most age-related disease processes most definitely have an inflammatory component, and many other day-to-day problems of inflammation are there. Plus, if you want to do something for longevity besides sleep well, eat right, exercise, all those things, here's the only demonstrated longevity supplement.
• 20:42
  Dr. Jeff Gross: If you want to live longer, take action, make a plan. This could be a simple daily routine, consistency.
• 20:50
  Dr. Jeff Gross: some people feel benefits, they feel energy the next day. some people don't feel anything. There's a wide array.
• 20:58
  Carmen Hecox: So I guess it kind of depends on each individual because a lot of people don't realize that we're all different. I could have a twin and the twin could be exactly like me and say we're identical twins, but we don't react the same to Either having a car accident or, you know, taking a supplement because our bodies just genetically are just different.
• 21:21
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Right. That's exactly right. And, you know, having practiced medicine for so long, we, we see that. And one treatment for one person isn't proper for another person for, for sometimes reasons we can't explain. And that's why cookbook methods that are, you know, forced on us by the the payers, the insurance companies, are just not proper medicine.
• 21:41
  Carmen Hecox: What are the
• 21:44
  Dr. Jeff Gross: key drivers, like inflammation and oxidative stress, that accelerate aging and cause chronic aging or chronic disease? Yeah, I mean, if you look at the diseases of aging, they all have an inflammatory component. And if you didn't accumulate so much inflammation over your life, you're less likely to develop that disease, or you'll delay it completely. Never have it. So the same goes for how long you live. If you don't accumulate this inflammatory damage, the degeneration at the cellular level, which then manifests at a macroscopic level like a joint degeneration or cardiovascular, you know, vascular clogging or hardening of the arteries or dementia, which has an inflammatory component, some of them, or autoimmune or so many things. This is happening at the cellular level and you, the earlier you start to be aware of that and address it. And the more you do to be aware of it and address it, the healthier you'll be and the longer you will live healthy. That's called healthspan. The drivers are bad things in our water, bad things in our air, certain electromagnetic fields, things in our diet that we're now paying attention to and starting to remove, pesticides on the strawberries, for example.
• 23:00
  Dr. Jeff Gross: We have bad meat here. Our meat is corn-fed, not great.
• 23:04
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It doesn't have the free-range grass consumption with the omega-3s that we need. We have an omega-3 deficiency.
• 23:13
  Dr. Jeff Gross: We have a vitamin D deficiency. Those are anti-inflammatories that we desperately need in our body, the omega-3s particularly. You cannot eat a couple servings of fish here and there and expect you're getting enough Omega-3s. You have to be conscious on these things.
• 23:31
  Dr. Jeff Gross: The lab value for vitamin D level in your bloodstream is inappropriately low. It says, I think it's 30 to 100 or 30 to 99 is normal. That's a deficiency number.
• 23:43
  Dr. Jeff Gross: That's the, do I have rickets or not number. If you want to be optimized for longevity, I like people at 125 or a little higher. Which will report as high on your lab value, but be a, you know, forward-thinking consumer and look at the real studies out there about vitamin D levels.
• 24:07
  Dr. Jeff Gross: You know, there's no big pharma pushing that, so there's not a lot of money or advertising behind it, but high-dose vitamin C, we do that, we do all kinds of things.
• 24:15
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-hmm. I remember a couple of years back, my doctor tested me for vitamin D, and he was very upset with me when the results came back because my vitamin D levels were at 125.
• 24:26
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Love that number.
• 24:30
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah. And he says, " What are you doing? That's dangerous.
• 24:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: No, it's not.
• 24:34
  Carmen Hecox: Because on that little thermometer thing, it showed up high. And I'm like, I take vitamin D with olive oil every morning.
• 24:42
  Dr. Jeff Gross: What an oversimplified response from your doctor. Totally Kool-Aid-consuming, blinders on. Just sad.
• 24:52
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Well, I guess I was maybe part of that once, so I understand it.
• 24:56
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It's indoctrinated. Medical school is long, residency is long, and you just wanna, you know, do what you were told was proper. But these people who are so smart to get into med school stop thinking for themselves. Shame on you. Shame on me at one point.
• 25:19
  Carmen Hecox: I'm gonna throw a little wrench in here because these are 2 things that are popular nowadays. What is the difference between using exosomes and PRP, or stem cells and PRP?
• 25:31
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah, so, you know, when we look at the— this is a very good question. So we're looking at, uh, all three levels, if you will, of regenerative biologics. The lowest entry level is PRP, which comes from your own blood. It's basically just the growth factors, the proteins, and the peptides that are concentrated from your own blood, and those do signal your cells to do good things. Then you look at going up a level. You've got stem cells. Stem cells could be split into two subcategories. Category 1 is from your own body, usually harvested from your fat or your bone marrow where they're stored, or from a more youthful active source donated at the time of a C-section birth, which I prefer because when I change the oil in my car, I always put in fresh oil. So, I like the young stuff. If my old stem cells or my old PRP was so good, it would've healed the problem in the first place.
• 26:32
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Why would I have the problem, right? Yeah. Now, you can concentrate that and put it in a place. It does have some benefit. It's not wrong. It's just very 2018. Okay. So, we discovered about 15 years ago or so that exosomes were really what stem cells were delivering. In fact, there are exosomes in PRP. There are exosomes in stem cells. Stem cells don't last but a day or two in your body when you get them delivered to you, but the benefits last longer. some of the benefits are permanent. Why? Because they are delivering the cell signals. They are delivering the exosomes. Well, shoot, let's cut out the middleman, cut out the Amazon trucks. I just want the package. We love the package. We love the exosomes. They're easier to store and handle. They're a third of the cost of stem cells. They travel through tissue better. They cross the blood-brain barrier. The cells do not. They don't get hung up in the heart and lungs like stem cells, which is great for the heart and lungs, but— the rest of your body doesn't get much. So, we focus on those exosomes because that is what we're doing in 2026. A lot of people haven't updated. A lot of the stem cell clinics out there haven't updated, but that's the latest and greatest. And we're getting even better at it. We're going to have more specific exosomes, those for hair growth, those for musculoskeletal cartilage regeneration, et cetera. Right. Right now, we're sort of using generic stem cell exosomes.
• 27:56
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So, the different levels would be strength, efficiency, cost.
• 28:00
  Dr. Jeff Gross: The best cross-section of all those worlds is the stem cell-derived exosomes. That's where the party's at.
• 28:08
  Carmen Hecox: Because I just kind of wondered, because I know that now it's become more popular. A lot of people are doing PRP for certain joint issues.
• 28:18
  Carmen Hecox: But I've also heard that you do stem cells too.
• 28:20
  Dr. Jeff Gross: For 20 years, PRP has been available. The insurance has started paying for it because they figured out it's less expensive than surgery to inject that into your joints. Usually, you have to do a series of 3 or 4 of them. The results, if you look at the metadata literature, that can help, but it doesn't last. So that's out there. It's very, it's more and more popular. You can do stem cells in the same application or a different application. You might get some better results, but we also have literature suggesting how you do it is almost more important than what you put in. And then lastly, exosomes are probably in the strength category of around the stem cells, but have those other advantages I mentioned. And most doctors, if you went to your general doctor, they probably don't even know what an exosome is.
• 29:15
  Carmen Hecox: Well, you know, when I first started reading about you, I looked at it and I remembered I have a gal that does, you know, my facials and stuff. And she told me, here, you should use this product.
• 29:26
  Carmen Hecox: It has exosomes in it, you know, for your skin.
• 29:26
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Sexy word.
• 29:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah.
• 29:30
  Carmen Hecox: I'm like, I don't know. I mean, it's nice. It's very hydrating. But that was where my brain went when I started reading about you.
• 29:37
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Well, the earliest products with exosomes are skin products. Many of those are plant exosomes, which circles back to why isn't there a plant exosome nutraceutical? Well, now we have one. As I mentioned, there are multiple plant exosome skinceuticals out there, and they're very good products, but they, you know, and they deliver phytonutrients. some of the peptide skin products probably do more than the plant exosome skin products.
• 30:07
  Dr. Jeff Gross: But there are 3 human-derived exosome products on the market. And we launched very recently ours. And it's called— since we brought up the topic, I didn't mean to turn this into a commercial, but it's called ExoAgeless.
• 30:21
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And it is the same human exosomes we use for joint procedures, brain health, autoimmune, all kinds of inflammatory issues, and anti-aging. We now have it in a skin cream. It has to be kept cold. It's the only cold chain product. It goes to your freezer when you're ready to start using it. It goes to your refrigerator and it's good there for about 30 days. These are bioactive. They're not powdered. So, we are the first, I believe, cold chain active live exosome product on the market. Check it out. It's amniotic fluid. It's the same stuff that made your skin good when you were pregnant with children, if you have children.
• 31:04
  Carmen Hecox: And I was going to ask you, what was it— what is the difference between the plant versus the human base?
• 31:06
  Dr. Jeff Gross: The plant gives phytonutrients, and your skin cells love those. And the human gives the anti-inflammatory cells signaling to put your epithelial and your dermal cells back into a more restorative, youthful state, like when you were younger.
• 31:25
  Carmen Hecox: So would this be something that you apply, like, on your face? And your arms, if you— or even like your belly, if you've lost weight and you want to just—
• 31:36
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It's, uh, it's meant, you know, we designed it for facial rejuvenation. You can use it anywhere you want on your skin. It's a topical, but it's, you know, it costs money to get the amniotic fluid and, and, and get it registered to an FDA-registered lab, get it third-party tested. It's very highly regulated and cold-shipped. So we're trying to keep the price where it's still affordable. So, I wouldn't use it everywhere unless you have a burn or something or you're making so much money off of your wonderful podcast and you can do that, then we can fill a bathtub for you. But, it's made in bespoke batches because amniotic fluid's limited and that's how we handle it. And, by the way, it's from non-COVID-vaccinated healthy young mothers.
• 32:26
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Screened and tested on prenatal vitamins, not smoking, not drinking, not drugging. There, it's highly regulated. They have 60 seconds to capture the C-section amniotic fluid before the baby is born. Has to be a C-section so it's sterile. And then it goes to the FDA-registered lab. It's through tissue bank donative services. Nobody's getting paid at the donation level except the people who acquire it and send it to the lab.
• 32:53
  Dr. Jeff Gross: But the mother's not paid. It's a true donation. It's really neat.
• 32:57
  Carmen Hecox: Wow. That's pretty quick because I had a C-section with my 13-year-old and everything happened really quick.
• 33:02
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yep.
• 33:04
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Again, if it's an emergency and they have to get the baby right out, the donation services will not have an opportunity to collect. So anyway, it's gold to get this stuff, right? They have to get, you know, the right people, the right screened mothers. It's, it's a process. Yeah. So, could we run out? Sure, we could, but we have plenty right now in the deep freeze. It gets sent on ice, it goes to your freezer, and then you move it to your refrigerator. You let it thaw to the fridge temp, then you can use it. My wife and I use it on our face.
• 33:36
  Dr. Jeff Gross: She had a burn and we used it on her burn and it's just about disappeared. So, it's not, you know, there's no FDA indication for burn use, but It, it seems to help.
• 33:49
  Carmen Hecox: And how long does one bottle last? Is it like a 30-day supply?
• 33:49
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It's meant to be a 30-day. It's 2 pumps in the morning, 2 pumps at night, so it's a 120-pump bottle, 30 times 4 pumps.
• 34:00
  Carmen Hecox: Okay, so that's why you said be cautious how you use it.
• 34:04
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It's— if you've ever gone to an esthetician and they offered you— there's some other products on the market that are from Human cell lines, exosomes.
• 34:15
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And they add, you know, if you want to pay $20 for a pump or 2, they'll put it on after your treatment. So ours is more affordable than that, but it's meant for home use in your refrigerator.
• 34:25
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And so how do people purchase your plant-based exosomes? It's all online at this point.
• 34:35
  Dr. Jeff Gross: The website is, is our brand is ReCELLebrate, by the way.
• 34:39
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So my clinic is called ReCELLebrate. Because we're celebrating the renewal of your cells.
• 34:44
  Dr. Jeff Gross: R-E-C-E-L-L-E-B-R-A-T-E.
• 34:48
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And our clinic is ReCELLebrate.com, but the product site is reCELLnutra, R-E-C-E-L-L-N-U-T-R-A, or reCELLskin, R-E-C-E-L-L-S-K-I-N.com.
• 35:03
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Both of those will lead you, and you can cross over and look at both the oral nutraceutical exosomes and the plant-derived Sorry, the plant-derived oral nutraceutical or the skin human amniotic exosome products if you're interested. And if you have any questions, reach out to us.
• 35:18
  Dr. Jeff Gross: There's contact information, email address, phone number. We love your questions because it helps us answer them for others who haven't asked them yet. So don't hesitate, everybody, to ask us hard questions. We like them.
• 35:29
  Carmen Hecox: So it doesn't require a doctor's visit before purchasing?
• 35:32
  Dr. Jeff Gross: No, it's not a regulated medication of any kind. You can buy supplements on your own. You can buy skin products on your own. You, um, and we, again, we just, we can't make any claims that we're curing or treating a disease or condition. We don't have the approval for that. And frankly, we're not really seeking it. That's, that I would need, uh, you know, $100 million to, to get those words approved.
• 35:59
  Carmen Hecox: And who is this for? Who is this not for?
• 36:02
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Well, the oral nutraceutical, I think first and foremost, would be for anyone who wants to foster suppression of inflammation and longevity. And that's what it's designed for. We are actually working on a lower-dose children's gummy of the same product. So, I don't know that kids would take the capsule, but I do open a capsule and put some on my dog and cat food for my dog and cat every day. And for the skin product, anyone who wants that youthful glow but really you know, looking to influence the cells in the skin layer to behave more youthfully, to actually rejuvenate, have rejuvenative benefits, which is well demonstrated with the exosomes in the medical literature. We haven't actually studied our products separately, but if you follow the medical literature on exosomes, and you've been offered exosomes, probably, like you said, the plant exosomes, you can even do a a microneedle, and we, we paint on with hyaluronic acid exosomes here in our office. So, we're going to be working on a serum version shortly. So, we'll have the moisturizing cream version, which is out now, and that's called ExoAgeless Revival Bio-Cream. And we're going to have a serum version shortly thereafter.
• 37:20
  Carmen Hecox: Because that's what I was wondering, because sometimes you hear people say, well, depending on the condition of your skin, it may not absorb whatever you're putting on your face. So, I was just kind of wondering about the delivery or how does it—
• 37:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah, it's a great question. We've been very selective in how we constructed this.
• 37:38
  Dr. Jeff Gross: We've got the most inert cream base just so there's a cream to apply it. It has the fewest ingredients we could find on the market that we could obtain for this use. And it has one minor preservative, which is a very common preservative, but it's not on the bad list. We couldn't find a preservative-free, which we really wanted. So, we'll have to probably develop one. But, in the meantime, it's as inert and natural as you can get. And, we make all the ingredients are available on the label, everything in that base. The only thing we add, twice-filtered, third-party-tested amniotic fluid. So, it has both the exosomes and all the growth factors that come in the amniotic fluid that grow a baby. This is the baby-making stuff. Same thing the pregnant lady's getting. So that's, that's what goes into the moisturizing cream. We want to just have nothing else in there. Same with the oral product. There's, there's a little bit of rice extract, I believe, just, just to fill the capsule.
• 38:38
  Carmen Hecox: And you said the capsules, you just take one pill a day?
• 38:38
  Dr. Jeff Gross: It's one small capsule a day. It's the smallest capsule I take every day.
• 38:45
  Carmen Hecox: Wow. Because my husband and I take, I think we take, uh, 2 NADs with resveratrol. I don't know, some, some other thing in it. Maybe take 2.
• 38:54
  Dr. Jeff Gross: We take, I take a few other things, of course, right? We all take, I make sure I take my vitamin D, my fish oil, a few others, you know, it depends on, on what our current regimen is. But I, I used to, I have one out here on my desk here. I used to make a daily baggie that looks like this that had like 20-some pills in it. But I've been able to get rid of about 7 or 8 of those that were phytonutrient pills, you know, that I was taking. Quercetin, fisetin, spermidine, all those things I now get in the exosomal form. I'm getting one little capsule, I'm getting way more than I was getting before.
• 39:30
  Carmen Hecox: For the listener and viewer who says, I'm sick and tired of taking all this information to my provider and not getting the results that I'm looking for, I want to take control of my health. Where can people work with you if they want to do that?
• 39:45
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah, I mean, we'd love to do second opinions.
• 39:50
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Again, our brand is ReCELLebrate.
• 39:52
  Dr. Jeff Gross: I still treat patients daily. Most of it's by telehealth. Most of my main focus is joints and spine, and we do regenerative procedures, injections. For people trying to avoid joint surgery. That's how I came into this world here. And, but these days we're doing, you know, longevity consultations.
• 40:16
  Dr. Jeff Gross: We help people with various, you know, issues and illnesses or longevity seekers or biohackers. And now we're doing, you know, what's hugely popular and almost everyone we have a discussion about now is peptides. So, I don't know if you've had anyone on for that, but we are covering peptides A to Z. There are so many simple, natural, biological cell signaling tools that we have. Sometimes we pair them with exosomes, different things. This is all doable.
• 40:48
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And, some of these things are, you can use your health savings account, you can use your flexible spending account, you can write these off above a certain percentage. Percentage of your income. I don't remember the number.
• 41:00
  Dr. Jeff Gross: And because they're exosomes, they're more affordable than stem cells. You don't have to leave the country. You can if you want to go to Tijuana and get a trip out of it, go for it. Nothing wrong with that.
• 41:11
  Dr. Jeff Gross: You know, there are clinics all over the world now, but we have them all over here in the States too. I'm not the only one. In fact, earlier today I was at a conference here. I'm in Las Vegas, so here downtown. And there were hundreds of stem cell doctors there. So it's, we're out there. We just can't advertise.
• 41:29
  Dr. Jeff Gross: So they, Google and Facebook will not let us advertise stem cells, exosomes, peptides, anything like that. So you got to find us on podcasts because thanks to people like Carmen, she is the tip of the spear in free speech.
• 41:42
  Carmen Hecox: Exactly.
• 41:45
  Carmen Hecox: Dr. Jeff, for the woman or man who's watching or listening right now and is tired of his achy or her achy knees hurting when they're climbing up the stairs.
• 41:57
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yep.
• 41:57
  Carmen Hecox: What product would you recommend?
• 42:02
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Well, I think it's a trick question, and here's why. And maybe you didn't know it was, because we need to look at that patient. We need to say, okay, tell me about your sleep and your diet, and what can we fix on the inflammatory side? You know, what's your body look like? How are your muscles? How's your bone density? Are your cells growing? Is your bone marrow and your stem cells in a healthy state?
• 42:22
  Dr. Jeff Gross: We have to start with the basics. Then we might look at peptides next. And then finally, you know, we may have to recommend a procedure, an injection of exosomes to help regenerate your cartilage. So we have examples of that, MRIs before and after. Again, I'm educating here. I'm not allowed to make any claims that I'm treating a disease or condition. So I don't want to imply that, but I'm allowed to show examples.
• 42:52
  Dr. Jeff Gross: I'm allowed to show you medical literature and science and what we call medical evidence, even though, you know, you, you have to know what that means and where to find it. And we have it. So that's the process. We have to start with the basics and, and figure out that individual customized precise solution for that person.
• 43:12
  Carmen Hecox: So it's not a quick fix. I'm going to get a cortisone injection, off I go.
• 43:15
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Oh, a cortisone injection will make you feel better but causes more damage in the long run.
• 43:20
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Yeah.
• 43:23
  Carmen Hecox: Well, again, you said the best way to reach you is ReCELLebrate.com?
• 43:30
  Dr. Jeff Gross: ReCELLebrate.com.
• 43:33
  Dr. Jeff Gross: You can, you can email us at info@reCELLlebrate.com.
• 43:33
  Dr. Jeff Gross: You can call 1-844-4-RECELL. That's R-E-C-E-L-L. And you can, um, Yeah, those— you can also go to our website there. I think there's a little box you fill out and put a note in, say, here's what I'd like to talk about. And if you mention Carmen's Create the Best Me podcast, I will do a 30-minute initial consultation at no charge. But you have to mention, and you have to like and follow Carmen on all of her channels.
• 44:04
  Dr. Jeff Gross: That's the requirement.
• 44:04
  Carmen Hecox: Thank you so much for that, for that, for That generous offer.
• 44:10
  Carmen Hecox: Dr. Jeff, this has been an honor. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I will include all of your information in the show notes.
• 44:15
  Dr. Jeff Gross: Awesome. Thank you so much.
• 44:19
  Carmen Hecox: All right. Thank you. I told you Dr.
• 44:22
  Carmen Hecox: Gross would make exosomes make sense. And now we know why that little Glinda in the bubble visual matters. It's all about delivery, protection, and helping the body work better at a cellular level. And I hope today's conversation reminded you of something really important.
• 44:42
  Carmen Hecox: Taking control of your health does not always mean doing everything at once. Sometimes it starts with one simple step.
• 44:50
  Carmen Hecox: So here is your action plan from today's episode. Choose one area this week where you can begin lowering inflammation. Maybe it means prioritizing better sleep.
• 45:02
  Carmen Hecox: Cleaning up one part of your nutrition, getting your vitamin D checked, moving your body more consistently, or asking better questions at your next doctor's appointment.
• 45:13
  Carmen Hecox: Small steps matter, especially when they help you become the strongest, healthiest version of yourself. And if this conversation helped you, please like, subscribe, and follow, and share it with someone who's ready to take a more. If you want to learn more about Dr. Gross, re-celebrate regenerative medicine, or take advantage of his free 30-minute consult, be sure to mention Create the Best Me. Head on over to createthebestme.com/ep187 or click the links down below in the show notes. And don't forget to come back next week for another amazing episode created just for you. Until then, keep dreaming big, take care of yourself, and remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself. Thank you for watching. Catch you next week. Bye for now.