Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / The Future of Regenerative Joint Repair - Episode 347
Transcript
- 0:00I raised my hand up and then Dr.
- 0:01Murray said, Mark, you have a question.
- 0:03I said, Yes, is there any way to cure arthritis?
- 0:05Is there any way to grow cartilage back?
- 0:07Is there any way to repair a knee and not replace it?
- 0:09And the chief resident pointed out and he's like, No, there's no way at that moment I realized there was such a thing as a dumb question, but a light bulb kind of went off in
- 0:16my head and I said, I'm gonna prove that guy wrong.
- 0:17Welcome everybody to the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
- 0:20I'm your host, Dr.
- 0:21Jeffrey Gladden.
- 0:21And today we're going to be speaking with an orthopedic surgeon.
- 0:24His name is Mark Petropoli.
- 0:26He's a very innovative orthopedic surgeon that's been involved with a procedure to repair the ACL when it's been freshly torn.
- 0:34It's called the Bear procedure.
- 0:36We're going to talk about that.
- 0:37We're going to talk about many other things with regards to regenerative orthopedics and
- 0:41He wrote a book, Repair, Not Replace, and he's on a mission to end joint replacements, actually.
- 0:47So this was a very fun and interesting conversation.
- 0:50He has a sophisticated approach to getting somebody's joint to heal.
- 0:54I think you're gonna really enjoy hearing this.
- 0:56He went from saving hearts as a cardiologist to rewriting the entire aging playbook.
- 1:02Dr.
- 1:02Jeffrey Gladden believes 100 is the new 30, and he's got the science to back it up.
- 1:08This is the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
- 1:11So, Dr.
- 1:11P, welcome to the Glad Longevity Podcast.
- 1:13It's good to see you.
- 1:16So, you know, you are working in a really interesting field.
- 1:19And I love this field of, you know, regenerative orthopedics, this idea of rejuvenating as opposed to replacing.
- 1:27And maybe we can start off with the audience and just talk a little bit about your own transition from traditional orthopedics, which I'm sure you were trained in a traditional
- 1:36fashion, into
- 1:38kind of this regenerative reparative space.
- 1:40Um not everybody makes that kind of move and there must have been something that stimulated it, either curiosity or your own knee or something.
- 1:47But anyway, maybe talk us through that.
- 1:48Yeah, absolutely, no doubt.
- 1:50thank you for having me on and thank you to your audience.
- 1:52And that's correct.
- 1:53I'm a sports medicine fellowship trained orthopedic surgeon, regenerative medicine specialist.
- 1:58And that means I was truly trained in orthopedics and sports medicine.
- 2:03So I still perform minimum very minimally invasive surgeries.
- 2:06But regenerative medicine, obviously, as you know and your audience knows, is our bodies have an amazing ability to heal ourselves.
- 2:12And so I was very fortunate uh in my training and how things went along.
- 2:16That I was exposed to that.
- 2:17So, but it really it kind of first started just that, you know, I knew I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon.
- 2:22I wanted to go into sports medicine.
- 2:23My uncle was the original doctor, Patrick Paul.
- 2:25He was an internist and he said, Well, if you're gonna go into sports medicine, you have to be an orthopedic surgeon.
- 2:29So was like, Okay, I'll be an orthopedic surgeon.
- 2:31So my first day of orthopedics as a third year medical student when I was in Syracuse going to medical school was at the end of my third year, literally about thirty-five years
- 2:41ago.
- 2:42And and so I found out I was going to be watching Dr.
- 2:44David Murray perform a knee replacement.
- 2:45And he's one of the original inventors of knee replacement surgery.
- 2:48He was also our chairman of orthopedics.
- 2:50So I got there really early the next day, and I'm a third-year medical student, so kind of a peon.
- 2:54And the th the junior resident said, Hey, Mark, you're not going to scrub in, but you know, stand in the corner there.
- 2:59Feel free to watch everything.
- 3:00You know, don't touch anything.
- 3:02And then he said, you know, but feel free to ask any question because there's no such thing as a dumb question.
- 3:06You know how that goes in med school, right?
- 3:07You did it.
- 3:08Sure.
- 3:08So the patient gets wheeled into the room.
- 3:11And the nurses transfer the patient onto the operating room table and the anesthesiologist puts the patient to sleep.
- 3:17And then Dr.
- 3:17Murray walks in.
- 3:18He's a tall, stately man, glasses on, and he and the chief resident's there, and he's gonna take the chief resident through the the case.
- 3:24So they prep and drape the patient.
- 3:26And then Dr.
- 3:26Murray says knife and they hand the knife to the chief resident.
- 3:30And so they start the surgery.
- 3:31And next thing I know, there's like this incision about this big and
- 3:35There's saws and drills and hammers and there's blood and cartilage and bone flying all over the place.
- 3:40And at first I was very excited.
- 3:41I was like, wow, this is really cool.
- 3:42My dad taught me how to use power tools and I get to use power tools to fix people.
- 3:46Who would have ever thought of that?
- 3:47But as I watched it and I saw that cartilage and blood and and and bone flying all over the place, I'm like, there's gotta be a better way to repair a knee or cure arthritis.
- 3:57So I remembered what that junior resident said about asking the question.
- 4:01So I was kind of afraid, but my mom always said, you know, feel free to ask questions.
- 4:04So
- 4:05I raised my hand up and he looked at me like this guy's gonna actually ask a question, but he didn't say anything.
- 4:10And the nurses kind of scowled at me and the chief resident scowled at and the anesthesiologist's eyes opened wide, and then it was just complete silence.
- 4:18And so I was about to put my hand down and Dr.
- 4:20Murray looked over his spectacles and he said, Mark, you have a question?
- 4:23I Yes, Dr.
- 4:23Murray.
- 4:24First of all, thank you so much for letting me be here.
- 4:25This is amazing.
- 4:26But my question is, is there any way to cure arthritis?
- 4:28Is there any way to grow cartilage back?
- 4:30Is there any way to repair any and not replace it?
- 4:33And before Dr.
- 4:34Murray could even say anything, the chief resident pointed out, he's like, No, there's no way to cure arthritis, there's no way to grow back cartilage, there's no way to repair a
- 4:41knee and not replace it.
- 4:42So I mean, at that moment I realized there was such a thing as a dumb question.
- 4:45And I was also very embarrassed.
- 4:47But I a light bulb kind of went off in my head and I said, I'm gonna prove that guy wrong.
- 4:50So it was kind of selfish.
- 4:51I was like, I want to prove that guy wrong someday.
- 4:53So thirty-five years later, you know, I've written a book, Ripp if you can see it, uh repair, repair, not replace.
- 4:59And but that was that was my impetus.
- 5:01You know, and then my dad had a had a hip replacement and I tried to teach
- 5:05Profound let me just interrupt.
- 5:06That's a profound moment, quite honestly, right?
- 5:08I mean, that's a that's a deeply profound moment when you you bump into the dogma, right?
- 5:13And you see just how deeply rooted the dogma is, to the point where, you know, any person off the street would ask the question, you know, can we repair this, right?
- 5:22Do we have to tear it apart and put in a prosthesis?
- 5:25Anybody on the street would ask that.
- 5:27And yet inside the the hallowed halls where you know doctrine has basically taken over.
- 5:33And everybody's waving that flag, there's no room for that question.
- 5:37That's one of the tragedies of medical training.
- 5:39I think we were all brainwashed, quite honestly, as we came through.
- 5:42And then it's just Then it's just a question of whether or not you can be curious enough and stand outside of it and and re ask what's actually the obvious and most important
- 5:51question.
- 5:51So kudos to you.
- 5:53Yeah.
- 5:53Appreciate that.
- 5:54You know, and then but I will say Dr.
- 5:56Murray afterwards came up to me and he was like, Well, that was a really good question.
- 6:00Sorry for that.
- 6:00You know, there's no way to cure arthritis right now, but maybe someday you'll come, you'll join us in the lab and you'll figure it out.
- 6:05So I actually did join him and I was and I was trained traditionally.
- 6:09You know, you have to be a surgeon, you have to l learn a lot of surgery, but I didn't really learn how to take care of patients very well in the office or outside of the
- 6:16operating theater.
- 6:17So when I went and did my fellowship with Dr.
- 6:19James Andrews, who's you know the greatest sports medicine doctor of all time.
- 6:23I went with learned how to actually take care of patients.
- 6:26Yeah, he might do twenty surgeries a day, but he could have done sixty.
- 6:29He had great therapists, he had great athletic trainers, he had great strength and conditioning people, nutrition people, just a great team.
- 6:36I learned the team effort and I learned that probably eighty percent of the people he saw, great athletes, but also moms and pops, even my knee, you know, they ended up not needing
- 6:46surgery.
- 6:46Now I did need surgery, but about eighty percent of people ended up not needing surgery.
- 6:50So that
- 6:51Told me, you know, that there there's something to this.
- 6:54You you don't have to operate on everybody.
- 6:56And Dr.
- 6:56Andrews would even say the mark of a great surgeon is knowing when not to operate.
- 7:00Yeah.
- 7:01And, you know, so when I came back to the New York area after my um residency and my fellowship, my father was being told he needed hips and knees replaced and everything.
- 7:10And I was like, Dad, I don't think you need that.
- 7:12Yeah, there's a lot of things I learned, but you know, the parents don't listen to their kids 'cause it's a payback for us not listening to them as we were growing up.
- 7:19So he got his hip replaced and
- 7:20his knees and he ended up, you he do did okay, but ten years later he got a hip infection from uh probably his teeth, his mouth, you know, that once you put metal and plastic in
- 7:30someone, there's always a chance they can get infected however many years down the road.
- 7:34And, you know, so long and short of it is he, you know, that ended up leading to his demise in the long run.
- 7:39And so I think that yeah, I had the trigger point thirty five years ago.
- 7:43But when that happened with my dad, then I'm like, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna really it's time to do something about this.
- 7:48How long ago was that?
- 7:48How long ago did did that happen to your dad?
- 7:50That happened in twenty fifteen, twenty f well, twenty thirteen was when he had the hip infection.
- 7:56Okay.
- 7:57but it lasted a good, you know, I mean it was a disaster, multiple surgeries and they never were able to put the hip back in.
- 8:02It was just a disaster.
- 8:03So I had been dabbling in some of these things I learned during my fellowship, et cetera.
- 8:07PRP, early PRP, uh laser therapy, non invasive things, and then
- 8:13You know, then I started learning more about this stuff and the stem cells and and all that thing, all that stuff.
- 8:18And in twenty twenty hit, COVID hit and I put it all together.
- 8:20So that's kind of my evolution.
- 8:22Okay, nice.
- 8:23So I think I think you just mentioned something very important.
- 8:26And this is what we've come to understand is that in any therapeutic response there's the components and then there's a sequencing of those components.
- 8:35And so in your world, why don't you explain the components that you are on the shelf that you can draw on and then how you choose which components and how you sequence them in in a
- 8:46particular situation, but maybe we can do that.
- 8:49Yeah, I mean components and sequencing is huge.
- 8:51And as we get I just got back from the IOF and the Toby conference, which are uh orthobiologic conferences, regener medicine.
- 8:57And I think the more we learn, the less we know.
- 9:00You know how that goes.
- 9:01Yep.
- 9:01And so cells know what to do.
- 9:03And now we're talking about exosomes and nanoparticles and peptides and all these other things.
- 9:08And the sequencing, like you said, that's the hard part.
- 9:10Like we don't really know that, but cells kind of cells know how to do that stuff that's inherent.
- 9:14But as as far as uh the sequencing and and the tools that I have, I'll kind of break it down.
- 9:20I'm a gardener and so I like to use the gardening analogy with my with my patients.
- 9:25So I like to let them know that inflammation is kind of like weeds in the garden.
- 9:29You know, it's gonna choke weeds choke out all the the good plants and weeds eat up all the nutrients so the good plants can't grow.
- 9:35So same thing.
- 9:36Inflammation is not just some it's cells, it's it's factors, it's cytokines, it's it's all these different chemicals.
- 9:43But it's also cells.
- 9:45So they choke out all your all your all your good things and prevent your good your body from healing itself.
- 9:50Or if you take stem cells from your your bone marrow and you try to implant them somewhere, they're if your body is systemically inflamed, it's not gonna work as well.
- 10:00It's not it's not a good environment.
- 10:01It's just like in a garden, you're gonna get rid of the weeds, you're gonna put topsoil down.
- 10:04So the topsoil is kind of like your nutrition.
- 10:07And the way we figure that out is we use a genetic based swab and we figure out what
- 10:12People's diet is best based on their genetics.
- 10:14It's not as simple as that because there's epigenetics and everything.
- 10:16But figure out what the best nutrients are, real nutrients, real food that you can go to the store or go to the gr or go to a restaurant in order so that you're on the most
- 10:25anti-inflammatory, most nutritious diet.
- 10:27Those are the building blocks.
- 10:29And then getting rid of the inflammation, A, the diet, but B, we also use red light laser for that.
- 10:33We
- 10:34Have a six hundred and thirty-five nanometer red light laser that, you know, to make matter simple, it opens up the pores on the fat cells, the fat drains into your lymphatics
- 10:42and then you eliminate it naturally.
- 10:43And fat is very inflammatory.
- 10:46So the more fat you can get it rid of, the better.
- 10:48And the more visceral fat, even better, as you know.
- 10:50But if people just I tell you, tell people, you know, you may lose two or three or four inches of fat on one treatment, but if you go home and drink beer and eat Twinkies, you're
- 10:58gonna fill those fat cells back up.
- 11:00So that's where the diet comes in.
- 11:01So we try to get the inflammation down.
- 11:03And we try to get the nutrients right.
- 11:06So we call that preparing the fields, kind of getting the fields ready to plant.
- 11:09Then, you know, you're not gonna grow plants by just putting fertilizer down or just watering, right?
- 11:15You need or just having sunlight.
- 11:17You need seeds.
- 11:18And so cells do the work, as I always say.
- 11:20And you can get stem cells or you know, there's other cells that help the stem cells.
- 11:23The bone marrow, I like to use the bone marrow, but
- 11:26Fat has those in it.
- 11:27Every area of our body has some stem cells in it.
- 11:29But the best places to get them are obviously our fat and our bone marrow.
- 11:32And I prefer the bone marrow.
- 11:34And so those are the cells and they're going to be like the seeds.
- 11:36If we have an area that needs to be repaired, like a knee, then we're going to use those in that area and implant those into the area where we think they that it needs to be to
- 11:44heal the bone, especially, because that's really where most of the pain comes from with arthritis.
- 11:49But also the tendons, the ligaments, the soft tissues, the muscles.
- 11:52And those are this kind of like the s the seeds.
- 11:55And those are gonna grow and spread and do all the work and and and help the area heal.
- 12:00But then I also like to use fertilizer in the garden to help those plants grow stronger.
- 12:05So we use platelet rich plasma, PRP.
- 12:09we take the blood, spin it down.
- 12:10I'm sure a lot of your users have know about it or even or uh listeners have heard about it or used it.
- 12:15But it basically platels are those things that when you cut yourself, you form a scab, you stop the bleeding, so you don't bleed to death, but they have growth factors.
- 12:22And they release those growth factors and that stimulates new blood vessels and cells to come in the area.
- 12:26So it's kind of like the fertilizer.
- 12:27And then we use laser, it's kind of like sunlight.
- 12:29I mean, the the you can't you can grow a garden in the shade, but it's not going to grow as well as if it's in the sunlight.
- 12:35And the same thing studies have shown, and our registry has shown that if you use laser, certain healing lasers with these treatments, that it will work synergistically and you
- 12:45will get better results.
- 12:47And then you need someone to tend to the garden.
- 12:50And that's our total body fitness people.
- 12:51You know, if someone has a knee problem, chances are there's a back issue, a hip issue, an ankle issue.
- 12:56We look at people from head to toe and we try to figure out there's there's some mechanical issue that usually that's causing or imbalance or thing like that.
- 13:03So our total body fitness people are all medical and they're all strength and conditioning, and they're gonna evaluate people from head to toe.
- 13:08Now there's other things, you know, there's hormones, there's peptides, there's all those other things, but mostly those are kind of the that's kind of the garden analogy that I
- 13:15like to use.
- 13:16And honestly.
- 13:17That pretty much applies to everybody.
- 13:19Diet and exercise applies to everybody.
- 13:21Maybe you don't need cells sometimes.
- 13:23Maybe you don't need PRP.
- 13:24Laser, if you're in pain, I mean it's great.
- 13:26No needles, no shots, no side effects.
- 13:28But those are the components.
- 13:30And then the biggest thing I think is figuring out what's wrong with someone.
- 13:33So we call that a clarity day.
- 13:35And that's where we spend we'll spend four or five hours with someone figuring out what's wrong with them first before we even decide what we're gonna do.
- 13:40So we use those general principles, but we tailor it to each person's goals and needs, if that makes sense.
- 13:46Yeah, makes perfect sense.
- 13:47You know, it's interesting.
- 13:48We do some regenerative procedures here.
- 13:50We're not orthopedists, but we're but we, you know, we get in involved with some things, knees and shoulders and things like that.
- 13:56And basically it's what's interesting is to hear the parallels.
- 14:00Our approach is to actually decrease inflammation.
- 14:03First.
- 14:04And one of the ways we do that is with diet with some supplements we know that will decrease inflammation, SPMs and special pro-resolving mediators, as well as you know,
- 14:13omega-3s, adequate vitamin D levels, all those things.
- 14:15And then in addition, we'll do uh total plasma exchange.
- 14:18So we do plasmaphoresis to actually get rid of the inflammation.
- 14:22Yeah, right, with albumin and saline.
- 14:25And then right, and then we bring them in and we'll use laser activated PRP.
- 14:29Put in it along with cord blood and placental rejuvenation factors.
- 14:34And then we put in some hyaluronic acid and we put in some ozone at times as well.
- 14:39Yeah.
- 14:39And then support that with ongoing peptides.
- 14:42Tremendous.
- 14:42Yeah.
- 14:43So it's kind of a a sequence.
- 14:44And sometimes people need, you know, more than one procedure to get where they want to go, which is okay too.
- 14:49But it's interesting that we've kind of landed on similar components and also a similar sequence.
- 14:56Yeah, exactly.
- 14:57Right.
- 14:57Well, it's basic it's basic stuff though.
- 14:59It's I mean, it's nothing new.
- 15:01The ancient Greeks knew that knew this stuff, right?
- 15:04I mean the diet, the X let food be the medicine, medicine be thy food.
- 15:07We've known exercise is important.
- 15:09We have more advanced ways of maybe testing things and figuring things out, or or or maybe speeding things up, hacking things, whatever you want to call it.
- 15:17But it still does come down to
- 15:20You know, you can inject all the cells into somebody, you can inject all the PRP, but if if you don't have a good host or the inflammation's not down or they're not gonna maintain
- 15:28themselves, it's gonna it's gonna break down.
- 15:31The even the greatest car, the greatest airplane or spaceship's gonna break down if you don't maintain it.
- 15:38So tell us a little bit about the genetic testing you do relative to food.
- 15:42We do, you know, food sensitivity testing and gut testing and things like this to look for signs of inflammation, more occult signs of inflammation, if you will, which of course has
- 15:51an impact on the brain, but also on the systemically and the joints as well.
- 15:55And we use genetics to give us an idea of food intolerances and histamine uh release and you know, things like this.
- 16:02But it sounds like you're doing something analogous but maybe a little bit different.
- 16:05So I'd be curious to hear about that.
- 16:07So it's a cheek swab and it goes to the lab and it's about a thirty-two page report.
- 16:13Mine's around here somewhere.
- 16:14But uh we have a health coach who is very specialized in diet, and she will go over that.
- 16:20And we do have other doctors who can interpret that if need be, andor ourselves, but she really handles most of that.
- 16:27But basically the bottom line is it's about a 30 page report and it comes back with, you know, the macros first.
- 16:33So what percenta you know, what percent proteins.
- 16:36carbohydrates, fats, and a lot of people I think are surprised that they need to eat more good fat.
- 16:41Like they always think they don't need to eat fat.
- 16:43And actually a lot of people come back where their percentage should and of course that's going to create, you know, a fullness feeling, satiety.
- 16:50And and people don't realize that.
- 16:52So once they realize that, you know, get rid of the seed oils and eat the good fats, it it's pretty amazing.
- 16:57So that's kind of one part of it.
- 16:59Then there's the micronutrients and what form of micronutrients.
- 17:02Then there's sensitivities, there's allergies.
- 17:05And also there's exercise, which is interesting.
- 17:08So my report came back that I am an endurance athlete.
- 17:14Well, I didn't know I didn't know that, but you know, I used to play soccer, which is I guess it's kind of it's sprinting and it's endurance.
- 17:20But once I went to college, I didn't play soccer.
- 17:23And I I roomed with a lot of cross country and track athletes.
- 17:27So I started taking up just running and running.
- 17:29And I got, you know, the the more stress that you have,
- 17:32And the more you went through medical school and the farther the longer and longer I would run.
- 17:35And I've run seven marathons and a bunch of other long runs over my years.
- 17:40And it turns out I followed my genetics.
- 17:43Not everybody does.
- 17:44Some people try to be an endurance athlete and they just can't be.
- 17:47They can't, they're not meant to.
- 17:48So I think that helps us with our V motion fit people as well, can help them tailor the right exercise program.
- 17:55It doesn't mean you can't adapt.
- 17:57I mean, human body's amazing, right?
- 17:58Even your diet, what it says on the genetics.
- 18:01doesn't guarantee that's what actually y you're presenting with what your epigenetics is, what you how you actually present.
- 18:08Like I'm supposed to not like bitter food, but I love dark co you know, I love black coffee and I love red wine.
- 18:14So your genetics is one thing.
- 18:15You can't just go by only your genetics.
- 18:17You have to interview the patient and and introduce things slowly.
- 18:20And that's what our health, you know, our our nutrition health coach says she's really awesome doing that over three months with these people.
- 18:27And
- 18:28getting them on the right diet that they tolerate the best that that matches their genetics, but it doesn't always match the genetics a hundred percent.
- 18:35Like I'm supposedly lactose intolerant, but I just ate yogurt.
- 18:38I I I tend not to have any issues with it.
- 18:41I'm allergic to cats, but we had cats growing up.
- 18:43So your how you express your genes, it it can be different and can actually change based on your diet, your exercise, everything as you know.
- 18:50Yeah, I think a l in a lot of respects w we do quite a bit of genetic testing here and for for me it's like your genes are not your destiny for the most part.
- 18:58It's really a set of proclivities and then it's the the environment in which you, you know, bathe those genes, if you will, that determine how they're expressed.
- 19:05So we're looking to, you know, optimize expression.
- 19:08Absolutely.
- 19:09That's a great it's a great expression, optimized expression.
- 19:11That's exactly what you're trying to do.
- 19:13Yeah, exactly.
- 19:14No, that's that's very, very cool.
- 19:16Uh you know, you made a really interesting point about seed oils, and I think that these are now coming into the mainstream as people starting to understand that how inflammatory
- 19:25they are and how they really are ubiquitous almost when it comes to any kind of packaged product.
- 19:30There's I've only found maybe one or two things in a grocery store like Whole Foods that doesn't contain seed oils.
- 19:36But even in a in a quote unquote healthy kind of approach, these things show up over and over again.
- 19:41And they're they're so inflammatory.
- 19:43So it's uh it's really interesting that you mentioned those.
- 19:48I have a question for you on that as well.
- 19:49Do you think that it's more how they're prepared and extracted kind of right?
- 19:56I mean I think it's
- 20:02I I mean that's not a hundred percent of it, but that's a big part of it, I think.
- 20:05That's right.
- 20:06I think that's right.
- 20:06I mean, you could take linoleic acid, right?
- 20:09So I mean, if that's, you know, exogenous, then that's pretty inflammatory, but your body, you know, makes some of it, right?
- 20:15So you're gonna have some and there it's not.
- 20:17So again, I think it's it's how these things are processed.
- 20:20It's the idea of processed foods and processed oils, you know, soybean, sesame oils, you know, all these different ones.
- 20:28So what are you excited about when you think about sort of next steps?
- 20:31What's on the horizon for you when you think about well, I've
- 20:35learned how to be a gardener and we're pretty good gardeners, but we can always be better gardeners.
- 20:40So what are you thinking about as next steps?
- 20:42Well, I mean, our mission first of all is to end the need for knee replacements for basically on those two stories.
- 20:48W one, the story how, you know, I was kind of embarrassed and it happened to be a knee replacement I was watching.
- 20:52My dad's was a hip replacement that got infected.
- 20:55So you can kind of translate that.
- 20:56Obviously, if we can end the need for knee replacements, we can probably end the need for hip replacements and other joint replacements.
- 21:01But that's our overall mission and that does excite me.
- 21:05And it's nice to have something that you really believe in and you really want to do.
- 21:10And so our mission is really to be knee replacement free by twenty forty three.
- 21:13And the reason it's twenty forty-three is cause we kind of started that in twenty twenty-three.
- 21:17It also rhymes, so I kinda like that.
- 21:19But if we, you know, if we could put a man on the moon and bring him back in the sixties, there's no reason we can't end the need for joint replacements.
- 21:25Now, how are we gonna do it?
- 21:26Right now, we're treating people too late, in my opinion.
- 21:29I think you're on the right track trying to prevent people from getting to the bad point in the first place, because that's the most important thing.
- 21:35So right now there's a ton of things that we can do to help joints that are already pretty far damaged.
- 21:41And that includes the stem cells and that includes the PRP.
- 21:44And you know, I I was just at this conference, you know, exosomes are are a hot topic.
- 21:48There's pluses and minuses of that.
- 21:50Using other people cells, using other animal cells, using Muse cells.
- 21:54And there's all these different things out there.
- 21:56And some of them we don't even have close to access in the US yet.
- 21:59I was in Dubai before all the conflict, and there's a lot of doctors doing a lot of different things.
- 22:04But that's all treating after the fact.
- 22:06So number one, getting the word out.
- 22:08Like I wrote a book, Repair Not Replace.
- 22:10Hopefully you got a copy of it.
- 22:11If not, we'll send one.
- 22:12But it I go through kind of at the end.
- 22:15The first step is getting the word out.
- 22:17And thank you for letting me get the word out.
- 22:19But a lot of patients, I mean, 90% of patients or more, probably more, have no idea that there's another option.
- 22:27They're just told you gotta have a knee replacement or suck it up in pain till you need a knee replacement.
- 22:31So the first step is just getting people.
- 22:34I get excited about telling people that there's a third option.
- 22:37They get excited about it.
- 22:38It's like wow, there actually is an option where we can repair things.
- 22:41So to me, getting the word out first and we're partnering with the arthritis foundation to try to raise a million dollars to get the the word out there.
- 22:48Then yes, we are advancing with all these new gardening techniques and things that we can use, all these other cells and things that I was talking about, but really it's still
- 22:57gonna come down to a little bit more simpler thing.
- 22:59It's gonna come down to prevention and being proactive.
- 23:02So, you know the
- 23:03The diet and the exercise and all that stuff, getting that's the hardest thing is the prevention and all that stuff and the proactive.
- 23:09But I I can tell you one thing we can prevent.
- 23:11We can prevent ACL tears.
- 23:13You know, the ACL is the main ligament inside the knee that stabilizes as people are running and cutting and pivoting.
- 23:18And once somebody tears their ACL, even if you go in there and you reconstruct it and make a new ligament, they still have a high risk of arthritis.
- 23:25It's it just pushes it off twelve to fifteen years.
- 23:29So two things.
- 23:30One,
- 23:31There's there's simple programs, six week preventive programs that teach people, especially females, because it's five to ten times more common in females, well, how to
- 23:41run, cut, jump in the appropriate way, use the right muscles in the appropriate balance, train the muscles in the appropriate balance, and lessens the risk of tearing that ACL by
- 23:48fifty to seventy-five percent.
- 23:51Yeah, because most of those injuries are non-contact.
- 23:53The person's not even getting hit.
- 23:55Right.
- 23:55They're twisting or turning, right, in a run or a or they twist an ankle or something like that.
- 24:00knee is too extended or too valgus, too knock meat, or the muscles are imbalanced and those are all preventable.
- 24:07And so preventing just doing that can prevent a lot.
- 24:10What would be an example of those exercises?
- 24:13What kind of exercise would you do to kind of uh to me it's a little bit about proprioception, in other words, keeping the joint aligned properly as you're knowing where
- 24:21you are in space, right?
- 24:22That's a piece of it.
- 24:23And then the other one is it's gonna be some tendon and ligament strength and some muscular strength to kind of keep the the knee aligned so that it has resilience when it
- 24:31does take some sort of a hit or unexpected twist.
- 24:34Right.
- 24:34So part of it so that's and and that's kind of the planetrics proprioceptive type things, perturbation therapy, while someone's standing on, you know, a balancing thing, throwing a
- 24:44ball at them and talking to them, you know, sh those things are really higher level things.
- 24:48But some of this other stuff is even a little simpler.
- 24:51You just have jump off of a box and you watch their knees.
- 24:54If their knees expand and you take video of it, and if their knees become knock-need, valgus, it's simple.
- 25:00You train them hip over knee over ankle.
- 25:03Every time they land.
- 25:04Every time they land.
- 25:05And then females especially, but even males, you when you land, you want to bend your knees.
- 25:09You want to flex more.
- 25:11Uh the more flexion, the less chance of injury.
- 25:13Just like if you're skiing and you're gonna fall and you know you're gonna bite it, bend your knees and wipe out.
- 25:17You're not gonna probably tear anything.
- 25:19If you extend your leg to try to stay up, you're gonna that's when they tear.
- 25:21Yep.
- 25:22So those two things are really simple and you can videotape and you can show the the athlete, and then it just it just become it's it is kind of pro perceptive getting your
- 25:31reps in.
- 25:32landing the correct way, flexing enough correctly, then how you cut and you pivot.
- 25:36But also females, interestingly, when you pull the tibia forward, the shin bone forward, their quad fires first, most of them pulls it even more forward versus the hamstrings
- 25:48which are protective and flex the knee and are protective of your ACL.
- 25:52So just retraining them to fire their hamstring first instead of their quad is a huge thing.
- 25:58So yes, all the things you mentioned
- 26:00are part of it, but it's it's even it's like when you look at the program, most of it's pretty simple.
- 26:05Now you can get really high level and and and even be more proprioceptive, plymetric, you know, strengthening, videotaping, balance, all those things are are big, but it's really
- 26:16they're they're not the most difficult exercises in the world.
- 26:20And there's even like a warm-up, you can do a dynamic warm up program for five minutes before each practice.
- 26:25And that will it won't cut the risk as dramatically as going through a full six week program, but it will significantly still cut the risk.
- 26:31So most most athletic trainers nowadays know to at least do a dynamic warm-up program versus your static stretching like used to be.
- 26:37Done.
- 26:38Right.
- 26:38Yeah.
- 26:38No, that's a really good point.
- 26:40You know what we find too is that because everybody sits so much these days that the glutes stop firing.
- 26:45And when the glutes stop firing, then the quad's gotta kick in and take over, right?
- 26:49And the back has to kick in.
- 26:50And so a lot of back pain, you know, and you're talking about quads firing first.
- 26:54If you can train the glutes, then all of a sudden you can bring everything back into balance between your back hamstrings.
- 27:00Yeah.
- 27:00The glutes are definitely part of it.
- 27:01That whole that whole lower extremity.
- 27:04I mean, even even your core, it it it starts the whole body.
- 27:07Definitely that kinetic chain um of your lower extremities, including your core, but even the upper body plays a factor in the lower body.
- 27:15I've seen some interesting studies that they've done on plyometrics.
- 27:18And for the audience, what plyometrics are basically jumping up and down is probably an easy way to understand it.
- 27:24Hopping on one foot, hopping on two feet, jumping up on a box, jumping down off a box, you know.
- 27:29So basically it's um it's jumping around.
- 27:32of a explosive movement after it's kind of like you jump down and then you jump up.
- 27:37It's so and different versions of it, but it's kind of an explosive movement after a less explosive movement, but it's a kind of a jump type movement.
- 27:46And even skipping can be sort of a plyometric kind of scenario to some extent, just so people can relate to that.
- 27:53I think you mentioned something important as well.
- 27:54You said two legs and one leg.
- 27:56So you want to master the two legs first before you go to the one leg.
- 28:00And then when you master the one leg, then you start getting into the more advanced things.
- 28:04So 'cause so many people are so weak one leg.
- 28:06They're so weak on one leg, but they try to go to one leg before they're even good on two legs.
- 28:11You gotta start with two, master that, go to one before you start.
- 28:15So people think you do two and then you can go on the field and play.
- 28:18No.
- 28:18You go two to one.
- 28:20'Cause when you're running you're mostly on one leg.
- 28:22So if it was gold, right?
- 28:25Yeah.
- 28:26No, that's right.
- 28:26And the interesting thing about it in the studies was that you can actually build up a higher concentration of fast twitch muscle fibers, which, you know, fast twitch muscle
- 28:35fibers are going to be more power based, more speed based, things like that.
- 28:39And we tend to lose those over time through the aging process.
- 28:42And also because we're not we're not doing plometrics.
- 28:44When we were kids, we were running around jumping off stuff, you know, all that.
- 28:48And then adults were walking and were maybe jogging.
- 28:52And all of that is basically reinforcing slow switch muscle fiber.
- 28:55So it's very important not only to improve proprioception with like balance boards and swiss balls and things like that, but it's also important to do some jumping, hopping,
- 29:04skipping, two legs, one leg, up on a box, down off a box.
- 29:07Because you're you're not only making yourself more resilient, you're actually making yourself quicker.
- 29:13And when you have quickness and you have balance, now you can start to develop agility, right?
- 29:18And so that's really, I think, when people are
- 29:20agile, they can run down the stairs, right?
- 29:23Then th they've actually developed something that's, you know, youthful and that's
- 29:27they can avoid falling when they're when they're caught you know, when they're knocked off balance 'cause they're add on.
- 29:32Which is you know, you fall and break your hip, those people, one third of those people die within a year.
- 29:37One third.
- 29:38I know.
- 29:38It's it's shocking.
- 29:40Yeah, we stress balance here so much and have for years and years and years.
- 29:43We do this little thing that I look learned from a guy, Justin Franson, who's in Orange County.
- 29:48He's an ath he wrote a book called Athleticism and he trains people to be ambidextrous.
- 29:52But one way he does that is to have them walk in a figure eight with their eyes open, their arms out, just a figure eight, right?
- 29:59Then close your eyes and walk the figure eight, right?
- 30:02Then open your eyes and now walk it backwards.
- 30:05Mm-hmm.
- 30:05And close your eyes and walk it backwards.
- 30:08It's really it's really good.
- 30:10I mean, if you want to become a good dancer, my gosh.
- 30:12If you do that if you do Okay, right.
- 30:16If you do that I swear, here's the challenge.
- 30:19My son's getting married in six weeks.
- 30:21I'm gonna start doing the eight the figure of eight
- 30:24Yes, I swear.
- 30:25Yeah, you'll have to shoot me a text to let me know how the dancing goes, but you will be stunned.
- 30:29If you do that for a week or two, yeah, it'll be like, my gosh, you know where you are, your feet are moving.
- 30:34It's just like it's beautiful.
- 30:36Yeah.
- 30:36So all of this is regainable.
- 30:38How large of a surface area?
- 30:41Yeah, so that's a great question.
- 30:42So you can do it in a bigger space, like you can do it in the space of a let's call it a parking space, right?
- 30:48You could do it in inside that parking space.
- 30:50Okay.
- 30:51Or a little bigger.
- 30:52Or if you're in a hotel room, you can actually do it almost Yeah, perfect in microspace, right?
- 30:58Perfect.
- 30:59Yeah, absolutely.
- 30:59Hotel room is perfect to do that in and in a parking space.
- 31:02Although people probably think there's this crazy guy out there doing that, but you I'm I'm still gonna
- 31:06It's okay.
- 31:07I'm over that.
- 31:07You know, they just don't they don't know what they don't know, so it's it's okay.
- 31:11I I really don't care what other people think.
- 31:14So
- 31:14Well that's that's smart.
- 31:16That keeps your uh stress level down, that's for sure.
- 31:18Yeah, for sure.
- 31:19Well, that's cool.
- 31:20So tell us a little bit about ACL repair, because I know that you have been involved with this bear procedure, and maybe you can talk a little bit about how this is different from
- 31:29replacement or some other things and who might be a candidate for it and some things like that.
- 31:34Well, it ties right into what we were just talking about.
- 31:36So ideally we prevent the injury, but you know, you know that if someone plays soccer or football or whatever, someone's gonna collide with them and you can't prevent the cult
- 31:45collision ACLs, and you probably can't prevent some of the non-collision ACLs.
- 31:50So people who play sports or are active or in the military or whatever, ski, some people are still gonna tear that ACL.
- 31:56So when that ACL tears, it kind it's like a rope, it kind of breaks apart and it's kind of all shredded and the ends are all shredded.
- 32:03And the inside of the knee is filled with fluid.
- 32:05So those ends can never meld back together.
- 32:07Even if you sew them back together, what happens is our knees hate having blood inside our knee.
- 32:12Because when you tear something, it bleeds, right?
- 32:14And usually it bleeds because it forms a clot in between the two torn ends.
- 32:19And that acts like a bridge for your blood vessels, your cells, your nerves to grow across, so it heals.
- 32:24But inside the knee, that doesn't happen because it's fluid.
- 32:27And so that fluid's floating around and there's enzymes in there that dissolve the blood.
- 32:32And so even if in the old days, even the Greeks tried to sew the ACL back together, and it usually doesn't heal because you don't have that bridge gets dissolved unless it's torn
- 32:41right off the bone and that's a different exception.
- 32:43So we went from trying to repair them in the 50s, 60s to doctors like Dr.
- 32:49Clancy was one of the guys who trained me who developed reconstruction.
- 32:53So we take a strip of tendon from the kneecap or the quad tendon or the hamstring tendon or even a donated tendon, cadaver tendon, those aren't as good, at least at this time.
- 33:02And drill a bunch drill some holes, shave away all the old torn ligament, drill some holes and put a new ligament in there.
- 33:08And then it has to kind of revascularize and remodel.
- 33:11And it takes it takes a good year to 18 months to kind of really get back.
- 33:15But it does do a very good job of stabilizing the knee.
- 33:18So people can get back playing very high level sports, professional sports, after they tear their ACL, even a couple of times sometimes.
- 33:24But the problem is you tear your ACL, you got about 50% chance of getting arthritis within four or five years.
- 33:30If you tear your ACL and you undergo a reconstruction, you'll get back to sports, but it doesn't lower your risk of getting arthritis.
- 33:36It just pushes it out, you know, 10, 15, 20 years.
- 33:39So if you're a 14-year-old and you tear your ACL 15 years from now, you're only 29 and you got a really high risk of arthritis.
- 33:46Right.
- 33:46So the bear surgery, bridge-enhanced ACL restoration or repair.
- 33:51Dr.
- 33:51Martha Murray, I did not I do not take credit for developing this.
- 33:54Dr.
- 33:55Martha Murray at Boston Children's, she came up with a collagen implant that is
- 34:00soaked in your own blood and sewn in between the two torn ends and it won't dissolve right away.
- 34:05The body will slowly dissolve it, but it takes eight weeks.
- 34:08So during that eight weeks, that's enough time for your new blood vessels and cells and nerves to grow back across and heal that ACL.
- 34:15So now you keep your own parts.
- 34:16And importantly, like you said, you keep the proprioceptive nerve fibers, your position nerve fibers.
- 34:22So I think that's one of the reasons why if you don't have good proprioception, maybe that knee's going to degenerate or maybe you're going to put more
- 34:29stress on your other knee and people who have an A Cl reconstruction are just as likely to tear their other knee as they are to re tear the other Whereas if you do the bear, number
- 34:38one, animal studies shows that it prevents arthritis and now the FDA has come out after the human studies and human it it's out there in humans for long enough that it does
- 34:49lessen the risk of post traumatic arthritis significantly.
- 34:52So I my first one I did was in
- 34:54twenty twenty one.
- 34:55I I was not able to be in the study group, but I was able to be the first one to do one outside the studies.
- 35:00It was FDA approved back in twenty twenty one.
- 35:02So I have a lot of experience with it and yes, it's a lot less risk of arthritis.
- 35:07You can still tear it again, just like an ACL reconstruction.
- 35:11So that's why that rehab and everything is still important, but it does significantly lessen the risk of arthritis.
- 35:17It feels more normal, you have less risk of tearing your other ACL.
- 35:20And if you do tear it, it's kinda like you're starting from
- 35:23an ACL recon primary reconstruction, which usually does well.
- 35:27Whereas if you do a reconstruction right off the bat and you tear that and you need a revision, those results aren't as good.
- 35:32So it's kind of like starting a step ahead, even God forbid, if you're, you know, one of those ten or fifteen percent who retears it 'cause even with a reconstruction and you go
- 35:40back playing sports, you could re injure it.
- 35:42So it's a collagen, it's a it's basically collagen, which is protein.
- 35:47Bobine.
- 35:47Okay.
- 35:48Bobine collagen.
- 35:49So it's so collagen's kind of tough.
- 35:51And then when when you make that bridge, is it that you're overlapping it with the healthy portions of the tendon to create the bridge?
- 35:59Do you and how far do you overlap it?
- 36:01Do you overlap it all the way down to the insertion of the tendons or question?
- 36:06Yeah, so it's interesting.
- 36:07You'd think when you look at this thing, it looks like a packing peanut and it's pretty big.
- 36:11it's a couple inches long by, you know, a centimeter and a half wide.
- 36:15And it's very porous and it's very hydrophilic, meaning it absorbs fluid and absorbs blood very easily.
- 36:21So once you put the blood in it, well what you what you actually do is you sew some stitches in the stump of the ACL and you you put a couple stitches through the implant and
- 36:31a couple stitches through that.
- 36:33And all you have to do
- 36:34Is get that implant in between the ends.
- 36:36You don't have to pull it really tight.
- 36:38The body knows what to do.
- 36:39So as long as you get that implant in between, it almost forms a hydrogel.
- 36:44So it almost kind of coats the interior.
- 36:45You know, it actually doesn't stay solid, which is interesting.
- 36:48You think, it needs to stay solid, it stays in there.
- 36:51It forms a hydrogel and it kind of coats everything.
- 36:54And that allows the the body to heal through it.
- 36:56So it knows what's
- 36:57Mm.
- 36:57Yeah, so you're not overlapping it a ton, you're overlapping it enough for for structure.
- 37:02But then
- 37:02You i it doesn't the ends don't always even touch at this point because
- 37:06Okay.
- 37:07interesting.
- 37:08So you can have I get it.
- 37:09It can be a true bridge.
- 37:11It can actually be a bridge.
- 37:12Okay.
- 37:13Interesting.
- 37:14And they'll and it'll grow everything will grow back together across the bridge.
- 37:18And the blood that you're putting into it, do you ever put PRP into it or things like that?
- 37:22Okay.
- 37:23Now that's off label, so but the answer
- 37:25where that's where we live off labels.
- 37:28Yeah, of course.
- 37:29As long as something has an indication, you can use it off label as long as you let the patients know.
- 37:33And so there's tons of examples of that, as you know.
- 37:35But so interestingly, in the studies, they looked at PRP, soaking it in PRP, soaking it in blood.
- 37:40There was no difference.
- 37:43What they didn't look at was using bone marrow concentrate, which is I so I enjoy I I love putting cells in there, bone marrow concentrate and PRP and blood.
- 37:52I I do all three, which again, that's off label, but
- 37:55I mean, knock on wood, we haven't had anybody retail who we've done that on.
- 37:59So, you know, I'm sure that'll happen at some point, but we it it seems like they recover faster anecdotally and that we have not had anybody who we've done that on retail,
- 38:09including like MMA fighters and skiers and people like that.
- 38:12So I love using that.
- 38:14You know, I would suggest if you're not doing it to consider the peptides here, you know, the B P C, the G H K C U and the T B five hundred, because we've had such good success in
- 38:25helping people recover from virtually any surgery in half the time that it may help those people recover that much faster from the surgery and may even make the integrity of the of
- 38:35the graft, if you will, or the repair that much greater.
- 38:38I don't know, but s thought
- 38:40Well, I n definitely people are using BPC one five seven for sure for that.
- 38:45And there are I am definitely not the expert at peptides, but I do like the direction that hopefully things are going in the next uh you know, month or so here.
- 38:55And I certainly believe in them and would love to talk about where your source yours from and all that stuff too.
- 39:01But I do I do I I'm a I'm a believer in that and you know, even certain types of hormone therapy and things like that.
- 39:09Yeah, for sure.
- 39:10Hormones are very important.
- 39:11Yeah, even laser works for that too.
- 39:13So there it's it's pretty amazing.
- 39:15Yeah.
- 39:15No, that's cool.
- 39:16Would you do the laser for your knees and things like that?
- 39:20Do you is it a coarse in other words, we we tend to use the laser, this particular laser that we use here in the office the day prior to the procedure to kind of prime the area.
- 39:29Then we do it the day of the procedure, and then we use a different laser kind of after that can kind of continue the healing process.
- 39:37And people can even take that home and use it for a while.
- 39:39So I'm just curious kind of what your what your scenario is.
- 39:43Preparing the fields is big.
- 39:44So if I mean it's everybody's different, right?
- 39:47Some people need to get it done right away, et cetera.
- 39:49But the ideal scenario is we do they do maybe get, you know, if you're gonna talk about just specifically laser, ideally it'd be nice to get one to three treatments before any
- 39:57procedure or surgery.
- 39:58If you do a surgery, I do not this is how powerful lasers are.
- 40:03This is why how I how one of the reasons I know they work.
- 40:05If you perform a surgery on somebody and you do the laser the next day, you will see a massive amount more bruising because there's all those
- 40:12You know, there's all the the raw blood vessels in there that all of a sudden you're before they're completely clotted up and and sealed over, you're adding laser, which is
- 40:20increasing blood flow and those people will bruise like crazy.
- 40:23So I usually wait three days after a surgery.
- 40:25Now I I had been chicken to start laser till three days after regenerative procedures, but now we've been doing that and we don't have any issues with like if you're doing an
- 40:34injection, we'll we'll start it the next day.
- 40:36We will photobiomodulate our PRP as well.
- 40:40And I I we
- 40:41personally don't laser the same exact day, but there's no reason not to, either before or after.
- 40:46I know people who do both.
- 40:47We'll even do BFR, blood flow restriction, on a bike for ten yeah, we'll do that on a bike for ten minutes before we draw their blood or draw their bone marrow because obviously
- 40:56that increases some of the growth factors for, you know, maybe an hour or so and and even the growth hormone goes up.
- 41:02So you know, there is there any studies that definitively prove that's gonna help?
- 41:07No, but it's
- 41:08Certainly not gonna hurt and you're you know, D F R is great, we love it, so we use that a lot too.
- 41:14Yeah, that's that's really interesting.
- 41:15The blood flow restriction.
- 41:17We like blood flow restriction, but we haven't done it just prior to a procedure.
- 41:21But I don't see a downside to it at all.
- 41:23In fact, to your point, I think it could be good.
- 41:25We know it's actually going to boost growth hormone release endogenously, and you can augment that with a little CJC twelve ninety five in Open Oreland.
- 41:32So yeah, that's a cool piece.
- 41:33Yeah, there you go.
- 41:34We have a bike and we also have a vasper here, which is blood flow restriction exercise.
- 41:38So all right, cool.
- 41:41So where can people
- 41:42Learn more about you.
- 41:44I know you've got a book out there, repair, not replace.
- 41:46So go to Amazon, just type in repair, not replace, and that's one thing.
- 41:51All our contact info is in there, but victoryinmotion.com, victoryinmotion.com, Dr.
- 41:56Mark Petrapoli on any of the socials or Victory in Motion One on any of the socials.
- 42:01all the socials we're on.
- 42:02And three one five six eight five seven five four four.
- 42:06Three one five six eight five seven five four four.
- 42:08Okay, cool.
- 42:09And you're located where in New York?
- 42:10um
- 42:11located in Skinny Atlas, New York, which is near Syracuse, up in the Finger Lakes.
- 42:15It's a beautiful region, especially this time of year.
- 42:17Great place to to come, Skinny Atlas, look it up.
- 42:20S K A N E A T E L E S.
- 42:22It's really beautiful.
- 42:23Okay.
- 42:23People flying to Syracuse, I guess, to get to you.
- 42:26Yes.
- 42:26Yeah.
- 42:27There's a small I mean some people we had a farmer come from Michigan recently and he flew into right to the skinny atlas, but it's a smaller plane there as far as
- 42:36Beautiful.
- 42:36Well it's been a pleasure chatting with you.
- 42:38appreciate you taking the time.
- 42:40I appreciate you having me on, and thanks to all your listeners.
- 42:42How do we live young for a lifetime?
- 42:45How do we make 100 the new 30?
- 42:47The answers are out there, and we're bringing them to you every episode.
- 42:52Make sure you're subscribed, check out more episodes right here, and follow us on social media so you never miss a breakthrough.
- 42:59Thanks for listening.