Latest / Age Defiantly with Mark Young / Your Body Loses 90% of Stem Cells Before the Age of 40, Here's Why - Christian Drapeau

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Your Body Loses 90% of Stem Cells Before the Age of 40, Here's Why - Christian Drapeau · Age Defiantly with Mark Young

• 0:00
  These stem cells have been active in your body since the day you are born. They are your repair system. You are healthy today because these stem cells do their job every day. We're not doing anything that your body has not already done since the day you're born. So stem cells are the body's repair system. From that point on, we can start to think about the body has been made to survive and it
• 0:20
  no day of your life has your body ever let you down to date, that it will find ways to repair, and aging and death only happen when the repair systems can't keep up with the amount of damage that we've inflicted. Walk through that innate intelligence with me, and what did you discover and how? Stem cells are literally the body's repair system. There's a direct link between how many stem cells in circulation and the body's ability to repair. There's a direct link. The
• 0:52
  We're back on the Age Defiantly podcast. And I know I say this a lot when I say that I'm talking to my friend, but I'm talking to my friend, Christian Drapeau, who is the lead scientist, researcher, founder, all of the titles that go along with it, for a company you may have heard of called Stem Regen.
• 1:10
  Now, what I love most about this conversation is that we talk a lot here about the body's innate intelligence, that the body understands what it needs to survive, that it's been created for life. And Christian is a researcher and a stem cell specialist who has...
• 1:29
  just spent decades researching this topic of how to increase stem cell production in the body. Now, we hear about exogenous stem cells. We hear about all these things that are being injected into people. But Christian has developed a way that your own stem cells end up creating...
• 1:49
  from the inside. This is not being injected. These are not exogenous or from the outside, but from the inside. And I want him to explain this to you. But first, let me give you a little bit of information about Christian. So nearly 30 years ago, he developed something that most of the medical community considered to be a fringe idea.
• 2:10
  And that is what we just mentioned, that stem cells are not just relevant in embryonic development or bone marrow transplantation, but in the body as an ongoing organism. They promote lifelong repair and how that many circulating stem cells you may have and how effectively they migrate to damaged tissue.
• 2:33
  Christian Drapeau's journey started in 1995 when a company hired him to study the blue-green algae AFA harvested from Klamath Wake in Oregon. People consuming it were reporting improvements across an unusually wide range of conditions. The outcomes were consistent.
• 2:52
  the mechanism wasn't clear, and that inconsistency became his obsession. In 2001, a serendipitous encounter with a paper titled Turning Blood Into Brain, documenting the transformation of transplanted bone marrow stem cells into neurons, changed everything. He went into the literature and found
• 3:12
  Article after article documenting the transformation of bone marrow stem cells into heart cells, liver cells, pancreatic cells, neurons. The body had a repair system. Stem cells were it. The AFA he would eventually prove was.
• 3:27
  was supporting that system by triggering the release of CD34 stem cells from bone marrow into circulation. He held key roles as chief science officer at Celltech, Desert Lake Technology, and Stemtech International. He founded Kaleogen and then StemRegion in 2016, where he now serves as the founder and chief science officer.
• 3:51
  STEM Regen was recognized as a 2024 Inc. 5000 honoree. Christian holds an MSc in neurophysiology from the Montreal Neurological Institute, affiliated with McGill University, has published dozens of scientific papers, written five books, and lectured to scientists, physicians, and biohackers in more than 50 countries, most recently at Harvard University. Welcome to Age Defiantly, my friend Christian Drapeau.
• 4:19
  Thank you so much, Mark. Is that a bio that my team sent or AI? No, this is one that my team provides me. So is there any inaccuracies in there? No, no. I've never heard this bio. It's good. It's interesting. I want to meet this guy. I know. Seriously. That's what I say every time I'm on it, that I'm the guest. I always say that by the time they're done introducing me, I'm like, wow, this guy sounds cool. How do I meet him?
• 4:44
  Well, Christian, I'm super interested here because this topic of stem cells is all over the place. And I mean, people from one end of the globe to the next. And I mean, I know people, personal friends who are flying to Argentina and getting stem cell procedures done and so on and so forth. And it's just become such a trending topic in longevity. But you're doing something that I really want you to unpack for the audience here.
• 5:14
  again, I'll go back to we're injecting stem cells. We're doing all this other stem cell therapy. We're doing plasma rich stem cell treatments where we're centrifuging our own blood to do this. Yours are all plant based. You have found ways to trigger the body's natural stem cell productions, which I'm going to call this fountain of youth from the inside out it.
• 5:39
  Um, correct. Talk, talk us through this because this idea of the body's innate intelligence is fascinating to me.
• 5:46
  These are not plant stem cells, they're plant extracts. Some actives are polyphenols, others polysaccharides. They're different types of active compounds, but they're plant extract that trigger the release of your own stem cells. So within two, three hours of consuming these plant extract, we can count in the bloodstream using flow cytometry, which is sort of the state of the art technology to quantify stem cells.
• 6:11
  we can quantify a significant increase in the number of stem cells in the bloodstream. So essentially, that's what it is. But I think it's important to start this whole discussion by understanding that this is not like a world that developed around stem cell injection. And then on top of it, there's kind of a wannabe plant extract that would like to kind of have a little segment into this whole world of stem cells.
• 6:35
  We need to kind of go back 25 years ago. We are early 2001. All this science is developing at a speed that is, I mean, I don't think in those days, today, I don't know, but let's say between, in the first 10 years of the century, I don't think there was a field in medicine that was as prolific in terms of publication as stem cell research. And in the early days,
• 7:01
  the power of stem cells, first embryonic stem cells, but there's a huge risk of tumor formation. So scientists went to the next best source, fetal stem cells, huge ethical issues they were never really used. Then the next one, umbilical cord stem cells, they are adult stem cells. But in those days, we did not have the network of collection cells
• 7:25
  The method to cryopreserve at scale, then distribution. All of this was not there. So next best source, fat stem cells. Your blood has stem cells. PRP is a form of stem cell treatment. So all of this is developing. People are looking for stem cells.
• 7:43
  And at the same time, so early 2001, scientists are asking the question, stem cells in the bone marrow that were known to be precursors to blood cells, can they become more than just blood cells? And very quickly, it became clear, stem cells from the bone marrow can become pretty much like everything. In fact, they are the body's repair system. And very early on, scientists started to use the compounds known to be released by the body when you have an injury,
• 8:12
  to trigger the whole repair response. So your repair system is just like your immune system. You have an injury, it kicks in. So by injecting these compounds, many scientific groups could show that by sort of stimulating this repair response, you could have a huge impact on the repair of just about anything in the body.
• 8:33
  The problem is that those compounds used in humans for the time and also at the dose that were shown to be effective in animal models were toxic in humans. So that part was never developed. Injection develops and now became the big thing, you know, on the marketplace and on the Internet. That's all you see. But to be clear, the science of the release of your own stem cells was from the early days in the scientific literature. So...
• 9:00
  Our contribution is that I've discovered plants that do the same thing, but they are safe. They are milder. They're not as strong as these drugs at all. Nothing close. However, because they're safe and you can do this every day, the cumulative impact of releasing
• 9:18
  you know, roughly doubling the number of stem cells in circulation, which is not insignificant. But doing this every day over long periods of time gives you access to cumulative regenerative power that can be quite meaningful. I want to take a step back there, Christian, because some of our audience...
• 9:36
  Um, they're not as scientifically sound as you out imagine. Right. And so this idea of stem cells, while it's, while it's getting a lot of tailwind right now, and it's a big conversation in the health and longevity space to the average Joe, um,
• 9:52
  the idea of stem cells is still somewhat of a mystery. And I want to take it back to stem cells. And you mentioned embryonic stem cells and then umbilical cord stem cells and whatnot. Now, when stem cells became a thing back, I don't know, what is it, 20 years ago when the research really started becoming mainstream, maybe even up to 30 years,
• 10:19
  I mean, I remember the ethical arguments that were absolutely crazy about harvesting stem cells from embryos. And I mean, the ethical considerations of that were just absolutely just mind boggling and people vehemently fighting on both sides of the argument.
• 10:38
  And of course, it became a big abortion rights conversation and so on and so forth. And I want to clear the mud away to someone who is still hanging on to that history with what we talk about today with stem cells. Because as deep as I am in the longevity space, I know better than that. And yet that's still my first association with stem cells because that was my first association with stem cells. Again, 25 years ago or more.
• 11:08
  those became the arguments. And today, that's not the case whatsoever. So can I get you to unpack a little bit? Because you mentioned several things, stem cells that are coming from bone, from blood, from fat, from internal. You're mentioning the plants that are triggering the production of your own stem cells from within the system. Can you kind of unpack what are the different types or the different sources of stem cells that are available? And
• 11:36
  why one would be more useful over another, and if there's a scenario in which one would be more useful than another.
• 11:44
  It's a big question. So let me unpack all the layers. First, the historical aspect of what you're talking about. It's totally correct. There's a time when it was like a big deal. Today, it has pretty much like faded away. But in the early days of stem cell research, the big discovery was in 1998, when an American scientist was able for the first time to...
• 12:07
  to grow human embryonic stem cells. So everybody remembers like Dolly the sheep, and they had the same thing in cows, dogs, mice. Like it was done since the, I would say late 60s, early 70s, the ability to do these kinds of clones. It's a different science, but it's in the same field if you want. So this idea that if you could take an embryonic stem cell, human embryonic stem cells, and push it to become like a new liver, a new pancreas, a new heart,
• 12:34
  like think about the impact in regenerative medicine and just disease treatment. So that was sort of the dream. And what we need to understand is that the whole concept was taken politically and spun in a direction that was...
• 12:51
  That really was never reality. And it created a lot of confusion. I remember when we started in 2005 with the first product that I put on the marketplace and people kind of telling me it's unconscionable what I was doing to put baby parts in capsules. I mean, think where the collective mind was. It's just like unbelievable. Let me try to unpack it a little bit because it was...
• 13:14
  Part of the debate is a real debate, but a big part of it was a false debate. What I mean is that the source of these stem cells are embryos, but they're not embryos that are made for the purpose of doing research. They're coming from in vitro fertilization clinic. So you get parents that cannot have children. They go to one of such clinic and then you extract sperm, you extract sperm.
• 13:37
  And then you fertilize these eggs in vitro, so called in vitro fertilization. Then you grow these zygote to a one week old embryo, which is called a blastula, which is not an embryo, really. It's a lump of cells.
• 13:56
  And if you isolate these cells, each one of them can develop into a full organism. So they develop them into this very, very young blastula, and then they freeze them. And they cryopreserve them, and then they implant them in the uterus. They will do probably four, sometimes six of them, hoping that one will live forever.
• 14:19
  And through this practice that sometimes was pushed to some extreme, when all of them take on, then that's how you get like the octomom, you know, that you may remember. So that's the whole process. At the end, when a couple have the children that they wanted to have, the family is complete, well, they stop paying to preserve these embryos in the in vitro fertilization clinic. It takes space, there's a cost to it. So when you stop covering the cost for these, well, they're discarded, they're thrown in the trash.
• 14:49
  So scientists came and said, instead of throwing them in the trash, please give them to us and we can do research on embryonic stem cells. So these embryos are destroyed no matter what. So the question is, do you want them to be destroyed through science or do you want to be destroyed through throwing in the trash? But if you go after throwing them in the trash, that means your focus now is on in vitro fertilization clinics.
• 15:16
  And if you attack this, then you probably have today, I don't know, 100,000, 200,000 Americans today that are in vitro fertilization babies, probably more than that. So you suddenly make them like illegitimate human beings. So the focus was turned on the research that is done on these embryos. And it mustered a lot of political energy that was probably very important in the Bush election.
• 15:44
  So it became extremely political. And at the center of all of this, and I'm not taking a position here on one side or the other, because at the end of the day, at the time, my language was, it's a false debate. The future is with adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. Right. We just need to go over it. The main reason why embryonic stem cells was pushed in the news is...
• 16:06
  I mean, we can go back to that if you want later on, but it was to cloud the overall issue because the entire medical world knew that the future was with adults themselves, but this curative method was bypassing the entire current pharmaceutical system. It was the biggest threat of the pharmaceutical system. And in order to cloud the issue, we kept this embryonic message into the air. So that's really in reality what was there.
• 16:35
  But in the big question, if we really want to address the embryonic question, was when is ensolment? And it's very interesting because it's really religious culture. If you look at the Buddhist, Hindu, and I believe as well the Jewish tradition, Islam the same, they believe that ensolment takes place at month three, around the third month of gestation.
• 17:00
  But Catholics and Christians, to a large extent, have decided that no, ensoulment takes place on the day of conception. So if you decide through belief, because at the end of the day, what is the truth? I mean, nobody knows. So through belief, we say, no, it was on the day of the ensoulment. Then that means either by throwing them in the trash or doing research, then you destroy a human life. Understanding that that human life will never, ever exist anymore.
• 17:27
  outside of the system in which it is right now. Like it has no chance of survival. And if you decide that it's after month three, then nothing is done to these embryos that really affect human life. I'll leave it there. I'm not taking a position. I think it's important to understand where it's coming from.
• 17:46
  Well, yeah, and I don't want to take the conversation too far down that ethical road. The reason I bring it up is because I still think that for those of us in my age group or your age group, that was our first exposure to stem cells was the political argument. And for whatever reason...
• 18:03
  It became such a big thing. And I really thank you. You did a great job just debunking that for anybody who had ever avoided stem cells in general, just based on perhaps ignorance of the actual topic or...
• 18:19
  I don't know what to say, but maybe they just didn't understand everything you just said, so they just shied away from the entire thing. And that's my thing, because stem cells are absolutely phenomenal in multiple applications. And I think there was this, yeah, but you take a baby stem cell, you've got the ethical issues of life, and then you've got all of the misappropriated science about people who use stem cells end up growing a third arm because the stem cell doesn't know what it's supposed to do.
• 18:48
  You know, it's just you get a lot of that. And I think new science ends up getting a lot of skepticism simply because of misunderstanding. And while stem cells have now become very mainstream and like you're saying, I mean, do most people even realize that PRP is is a stem cell treatment? And I would say most people don't.
• 19:06
  But nevertheless, I want you to take us down this journey, though, pivoting away from there and getting into stem cells. And that is a phrase that I use a lot is this innate intelligence that the body has, that the body has been made to survive. And no day of your life has your body ever let you down to date.
• 19:29
  that it will find ways to repair and aging and death only happen when the repair systems can't keep up with the amount of damage that we've inflicted. And most of your damage, I would arguably say, comes from environment and life choices and everything else, as opposed to just normal decay. Walk through that innate intelligence with me, and what did you discover and how? Because what a fascinating world you opened for yourself, truthfully.
• 19:57
  Yeah, so the question is right, meaning like it's, I wouldn't say inappropriate, but it's kind of a, it makes the whole topic not easy to understand if we start the discussion from the point of view of the treatment. Like what is the best treatment? What's the best stem cells? It's much better to start from the other end, which is to understand that just like the human body as an immune system, we have a repair system.
• 20:27
  the human body literally as a repair system. And what I find fascinating in this question, which was unknown until very recently in medicine, and even today, I do not believe that what I'm going to share right now is taught in med school. Just to tell you how fresh it is, and how still to this day has not reached, I could say like the sense of medical consensus
• 20:51
  to be taught in college to med students it should but every human being on this planet has had this experience that the human body repairs everybody has had a broken bone a cut a bruise something everybody there's not one exception on the planet
• 21:07
  People witness that the human body repairs, and yet there's no clear understanding of how this happens. Now we know that it is because the body has stem cells. So anytime we talk about stem cell research, the technology of it, the science of it, it oftentimes raises fear in people's mind like,
• 21:26
  Could we, like is it Frankenstein medicine? Could it lead to tumor formation and all of that? And we just need to take one step back and just to say, these stem cells have been active in your body since the day you are born. They are your repair system. You are healthy today because these stem cells do their job every day.
• 21:44
  We're not doing anything that your body has not already done since the day you're born, and that is your innate intelligence of the body. When we say innate intelligence, it is kind of a vague term, you know, what is? How do you put your finger on that innate intelligence? But in reality, when we talk about repair, it is your stem cells.
• 22:03
  Stem cells are called to be released from the bone marrow when there is an injury. Then they are literally attracted to the area where there's an injury. And then when they arrive there, they migrate in that tissue and then coordinate the entire process of tissue repair in that organ or in that tissue. So stem cells are the body's repair system. From that point on, we can start to think about which are the best stem cells to use.
• 22:26
  And no, I agree with you. And the concept of innate intelligence, you know, we hear a lot about human intelligence and artificial intelligence. And this innate intelligence, what I refer to as, you know, your body's innate intelligence is really referring to the fact that we don't know how it does what it does, but it knows what to do without guidance.
• 22:50
  that no one's training the body on how to do what it does. Nobody, you know, when we think of muscle development, we think we're impacting it, right? We're lifting the weights. We're eating the protein. We're doing these things to trigger, you know, in many ways, I would argue the whole biohacking community is,
• 23:09
  is finding ways to trigger the body's defense systems or doing all of these things for some kind of downstream result. And yet your body's been doing this without provocation.
• 23:21
  since the day you were born, right? Like my body grew to its current size without me really doing much about it. It knew how to grow from the time I was a baby. It knew how to put the eyesight in the eye sockets and so on and so forth. And that innate intelligence for whatever the faith-based system is that a person adopts,
• 23:40
  exists still. And I think that's the part that I always want to make sure that we hammer out is there's a belief and in the theological communities, there's always argument about has the age of miracles ended?
• 23:56
  Or are we still living in the age of miracles? Or have we somehow managed to scientifically explain them now so they don't seem as miraculous? But when I look at the human body, there's a belief that all of the things that put the body together happened once upon a childhood.
• 24:15
  And now in adulthood, it's a journey of degradation that it's almost like there's this bell curve that we hit our peak and then it's all downhill. And I arguably say the body is still fighting for the next peak. Like the body wants to repair. The body wants to optimize at all times.
• 24:33
  And, you know, I've used the phrase that the balance between the body's repair system versus oxidative stress, like how much can your immune system and your antioxidant system remove oxidation from the body? And when the oxidation takes over, you begin to rust. And then it happens. And you're promoting that repair system, you know, which is probably running in tandem. Would you say that you consider that to be a parallel with the immune system? Yeah.
• 25:02
  Again, it's a deep question. This is a topic of my next book that I'm working on right now. And it's to understand that, think of the nervous system. If I say the nervous system, you immediately think about your brain and your capacity to think and all of that. You go a little bit deeper, all your unconscious reactions, but if you really look at truly the nervous system, it's absolutely everywhere.
• 25:24
  It's coordinating pancreatic function, liver function, breathing. I mean, neuroendocrine function, microcircule. It's everywhere. Your stem cells are the same. We touch a few aspects, like we inject them in the body to repair a specific area. We think like very linearly about stem cells. They are involved everywhere. So their impact in the body is extremely profound. Right.
• 25:51
  You coined the term the endogenous stem cell mobilization. And I kind of want you to talk through that when you talk about how it's everywhere in the body. But I mentioned exogenous stem cells as being things that are being injected.
• 26:06
  But what you're talking about is endogenous, you know, from the inside. But before going there, just going back to your previous question. So stem cells are literally the body's repair system. When I came across the early literature on this, I am 100% convinced
• 26:22
  that I was not the only one thinking about this. But maybe I was one of the few ones who didn't have anything to lose by sticking their neck out and just claiming it. So I published the first paper suggesting stem cells are the body's repair system. Today, it's like, I won't say it's well recognized in the sense that it has not,
• 26:43
  yet cross that gap between research and academia. But I would say 50% of the scientific literature on stem cells today will start in their introduction by saying it is well recognized that stem cells are the repair system, or in one way or another, a statement to that effect. So stem cells are the body's repair system.
• 27:05
  There's a direct link between omni-stem cells in circulation and the body's ability to repair. There's a direct link. The problem is that, and I'm linking this to what you talked about with inflammation or oxidative stress, is that we are born with red marrow that very quickly converts into fatty marrow that makes much, much fewer stem cells.
• 27:26
  Plus, the growth or the development of fat cells in the bone marrow indirectly inhibits the release of stem cells from the remnant red marrow, the remaining red marrow. So at the end of the day, the impact of this is a drastic decline in the number of circulating stem cells that leads us to about 90% decline somewhere in our early to mid-30s. And that's where we all discover we don't repair as well as we used to. We don't repair.
• 27:55
  cover as well as we used to. And that's the threshold where at this point on, we start to no longer have enough repair power to offset any exceptional events that are happening in our life. So let me make a pause and go back to like oxidative stress and inflammation. So now the two main factors
• 28:17
  theories of aging are exposure to inflammation, they call it inflammation, and exposure to oxidative stress. And they're real, I am not at all diminishing their reality in the process of aging and disease formation, but take an ibuprofen and a Tylenol and tell me how much it affects your aging or disease formation.
• 28:38
  If you talk about free radicals and oxidative stress, well, take a whole cocktail of antioxidants and tell me what impact it has on aging and disease formation. It doesn't have like a huge impact. Now, take stem cells. They decline. There's a point where we discover that there are actually two processes in the body. And your health is the sum of both.
• 29:01
  Today, the one that has been very well documented in regenerative medicine, in popular health, it's everywhere on the internet. It's basically the fact that we are exposed to inflammation, free radical oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, protein integrity that goes down, genomic integrity or genomic instability. There's a whole series of things that are happening in the body that leads to, let's call it erosion.
• 29:27
  The thing that is never considered is that there's another side to that equation. You have a repair system that offset that erosion. So as long as I have enough repair power to offset the cellular loss, which is another part that has been shown by stem cell research, we think that the aging is like erosion. You lose cells over time. And in reality, there's a constant process of tissue turnover.
• 29:53
  You get a new skin every month, a new lining of the intestine every five days, a new liver three to five years. I mean, these numbers, the heart that was believed to not renew past 10 years of age. Now we know pretty much throughout lifetime, about 1% a year. It changes everything. We go from saying the heart cannot repair to know actually your heart can regenerate. It's all a matter of stem cells. So if you have enough stem cells to offset this entire process, you are blooming in terms of health.
• 30:23
  The moment you lose this power, that's when you start to experience aging and disease formation. And let me finish with this. I published this idea in 2013, and I was suggesting in this article the way to test if this is all true. Let's go and count the number of stem cells in the bloodstream of people who have developed various types of age-related disease.
• 30:45
  If all this story is true, we should find statistically fewer stem cells in these people. There's about a hundred of those studies now that have been done, at least I have a hundred of those studies, and across the board, it does not matter which condition you look at. Heart disease, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease in general, erectile dysfunction, liver failure, kidney failure, diabetes, COPD, Parkinson, Alzheimer's, lupus, arthritis, migraine. I mean, the list keeps growing.
• 31:13
  All these people have 50% or less than the number of stem cells find in healthy people of the same age. Just to say, whatever happens to you, it's a pressure that is on your body. And if you don't have enough repair power to offset it, you experience the problem associated with that cellular loss. If you've got enough repair power, you can compensate, repair, and you overcome it. It's that simple.
• 31:40
  I'm going to ask the obvious question first, and then I really want to get back to this cardiovascular conversation because it's a topic that I talk about a lot, particularly as it relates to high blood pressure and different types of cardiovascular dysfunction. But you mentioned that as long as you have enough repair in the system, stem cell population, obviously, then you don't experience that same type of disrepair. But I want you to comment...
• 32:07
  If you already, I'm 50. Now you're saying that the, you know, around 30 ish is when you start noticing that you don't, you know, you don't naturally fix as fast as you used to. And yes, I agree with that. When you're taking this, you know, when you're, when you're increasing stem cell production through stem region or through whatever form that we're talking about, are you, are you stopping decline or are you suggesting that you reverse damage?
• 32:36
  Let me share with you the data that we have now with an ongoing study on stable chronic congestive heart failure. I am not picking a claim here that stem regen has any impact on disease formation, but we use plant extract to trigger one specific phenomenon, which is endogenous stem cell mobilization, which means the release of your own stem cells.
• 32:58
  So if everything that we're talking about here is true, the question, which you position rightly so, well, if we can trigger the release of our own stem cells and therefore on that day boost the body's ability to repair, and if you do this every day for extended periods of time, that cumulative release,
• 33:18
  greater ability to repair, can this lead to actual repair of organs and tissues that today in medicine, we would say cannot repair. So we decided to target the heart because it's probably one of the main organs known to just not repair. So we started this study in a clinical facility that we have in Madrid.
• 33:40
  So it is people with stable chronic congestive heart failure. So at least two years of injection fraction of less than 45%. This is the amount of blood that is pumped out of the heart with each heartbeat. If you go below 45%, your life, depending what degree you are, but your life is, let's say you walk, you climb one flight of stairs, and then you need to sit down for 10, 15 minutes to catch your breath. That's typical life of these individuals.
• 34:08
  So they have been treated by medicine using beta blockers to spare their heart. Pay attention here. Not to repair, to spare their heart. Reduce blood pressure to spare their heart. Diuretic to reduce pressure to spare their heart. So we try to spare them. That's all that we do to make them live longer.
• 34:31
  On top of all of that, we don't change anything to that. We simply put more stem cells in circulation three times a day over six months. So it's an ongoing study. We're about 50 patients now in this study. But we published last year the first 10 patients because we wanted to really promote that study in terms of recruitment and really put out there...
• 34:54
  that there could be a huge impact in boosting the body's ability to repair. So of those first 10 patients, all 10 after six months had regained normal cardiac function. We have a study now on Parkinson, where we have between 40 to 80% improvement on any one of the parameters associated with Parkinson. We're starting one on COPD. We're starting one on COPD.
• 35:15
  liver failure because we have seen results in these conditions, not because we want to show this product helps this disease. All we want to show is that the human body as a repair system, it declines as we age. That decline or failure of endogenous repair, our own innate ability to repair, the decline of that ability is the fundamental cause of aging and disease formation.
• 35:41
  If we can give back to the body its innate ability to repair, it makes a significant change. It affects the development of the erosion of these various organs and tissues. That's all we want to show in these studies. But the short answer to your question, yes, releasing your stem cells can help repair existing damage in tissues.
• 36:08
  Well, and I appreciate that answer because, again, it gets back to your saying you're giving the stem cells to people to stop the decline. But stopping decline is very different than reversing decline. And for a lot of people, I've done a lot of work with the ALS community.
• 36:28
  And one of the things that happens with the ALS community, obviously, it's a very rapid neurological decline. And I've worked with companies that have the ability to arrest decline so they could stop the decline just based on, you know, stimulating and promoting cellular energy. But it doesn't reverse the damage that's already been done, right? If there's been muscle decay, if there's been in those types of situations, again, I would arguably say that, you know,
• 36:57
  Stopping it is great because now it gives you more time to, you know, if we can stop the flow of the water into the leaky boat, we've got a little bit more time to figure out how to get the water out of the boat. And in this particular instance, it sounds like you're...
• 37:13
  suggesting that that's exactly what this can do, is not only stop the leakage, but start to reverse the damage. Yes and no. Let's be careful here. So when I started this 25, 26 years ago, I was not thinking, I would have never thought, oh, the heart will be an organ that can repair, or the lungs, which are known if you have COPD and you get an oxygen tank, that's it. You only spend more time on that tank. Like there's nothing you can change.
• 37:42
  And we're showing that it's not the case. The heart and the lung can repair. But there are conditions which I must say, we have not seen a whole lot of results. ALS is one of them, for example. I have never done a study. So I can only talk about some people who have come and shared their results. And I remember one man coming one day with his wife and thanking me because of the product that we had developed.
• 38:12
  And on that, when they shared that, I was just thinking like, I mean, I was, I smiled and I was sort of happy for her, for them. But quite frankly, I did not understand. I just thought, wait, I mean, swallow is not a big deal. Like, like I, to me, it was sort of a failure. And I understand later that it's huge when you think about the, the, the, the, the lack of swallowing mean you choke on your saliva.
• 38:38
  So, but these are in the big scope of having a normal life. They're very, very small improvements. So we have seen those kinds of things. I would never, ever claim that we can reverse a condition like this. We've never seen it. Macular degeneration.
• 38:54
  Yes, some people have told me stories, but quite frankly, in any case that I have studied, I have not seen those benefits. Kidney failure. We have seen cases. We have seen cases documented. We published one case, but the vast majority of the cases where we gave product to stimulate endogenous stem cell mobilization and we followed these people over time, I have not seen a whole lot of benefits.
• 39:20
  So there's still research to be done to understand why is it working so well with certain organs and tissues and not with others? What do we need to do in addition to make that possible? I do believe that everything at the end of the day can repair because we have seen it, but still work needs to be done.
• 39:39
  Yeah, and I think, and I sound a little crazy here, because while it certainly is doing something, the types of conditions that we're baselining it against here are catastrophic. So trying to use an exogenous dose of a stem cell production stimulant, if you will, against ALS,
• 40:04
  I mean, that's like a drop in the ocean of what's going on in their body. And likewise, you're talking about kidney failure. You're talking about macular degeneration. Those things are big diagnoses. And I think it still fits the general concept that I'm bringing in this new book, which is really health is a balance between two phenomenons.
• 40:27
  Degeneration and repair. And it's how you can compensate for them. So let's take ALS. There's a rate of cellular loss in degeneration that is compensated by an ability to regenerate. But the ability and the speed of regeneration of the nervous system can never overcome the rate at which it's going down. So you can see benefits. You can never reverse it.
• 40:52
  So when you look at other conditions where stem cells can have a greater impact in terms of tissue repair, there you can see the benefits. I remember, so we are in 2002. So I just developed this idea that it looks like stem cells are the repair system of the body. It looks like if you put more stem cells in circulation, you can see a great benefit.
• 41:12
  And then I have this product, this Blue Green Algae extract that we had shown is putting more stem cells in circulation. But these are all ideas, like until I have something from people, then it's just like a cool idea. So I made about 200 bottles that I shipped to a friend of mine in France who was having a clinic.
• 41:33
  some sort of a naturopathic doctor. I'm not sure if he even was a naturopathic doctor, but he was receiving patients that their doctor told them, there's nothing else I can do for you. So last resort, they would go and see him. So I said, give the product to your patients and just tell me what you see. And the results that came out of this was just like mind-blowing. And one of those cases was a young girl, four years old, spinal myopathy.
• 41:59
  genetic disease she had never walked she was crawling some on the floor she had never stood up and the doctor said she will never improve from that from this point on she will only go downward so she had two hands fully paralyzed you know in a wheelchair so the mother asked me well if i take this product will it help
• 42:18
  And I told her, I don't think so. I mean, you're going to release stem cells that have the same genetic defect. So I don't think it's going to help. She says, can I still give it to my daughter? I mean, as far as I know, France is a free country. So she gave the product to her daughter. And then three weeks later, I get an email. For the first time, her daughter stood up.
• 42:39
  another three weeks later she started walking so the only way at that time that i could explain this is that we provide an ability to repair that temporarily overcome the rate of degeneration
• 42:54
  So you provide functionality. We're not changing anything to the disease process. But it is that girl that put the seed in my mind that really it looks like health is just a balance between these two processes in the body. Now, 25 years later, with tons of documentations on both, now my next book is that. It's like detailing this with all the science behind this. And I think that it becomes obvious. It is the most fundamental thing.
• 43:24
  cause of aging and disease formation. No, that's brilliant, Christian. And I mean, let me say thank you for all the work you're doing because you're genuinely bringing something to the world that didn't exist or wasn't understood. In all of that being said, what I find most fantastic about what you're talking about is this balance.
• 43:45
  And again, the integratedness of the human body, that there is no one thing that lives in isolation from all the rest. And we've mentioned oxidative stress and we've mentioned inflammation and talked about the body's immune system. And now you're introducing this concept of a repair system. And that is in, and I'll say that's a pattern interrupt to the decline of,
• 44:12
  where, you know, something is on a steady slope down. I'm curious if you can comment, and I don't know that this is true, so it's more my curiosity than I'm leading the witness here, is when you give your body a respite from decline, does that repair system, I'll say, organically strengthen?
• 44:34
  So, I mean, it's like a water break on a marathon, right? Like, does the repair system get back in the race running better than before because it was given a moment to not have to be running? Or I think of it very often as an engine that is just running and running and running and just stopping for a couple minutes so that it can get a break.
• 44:57
  really puts it back into a better state of you don't pick up where you left off. In fact, you're better than you were before. Is that the case here? I mean, if you're able to slow neurological decline,
• 45:10
  To the point that it's able to catch up. That does the, we talk, you know, you talk about the repair system and the regeneration system. Like if the regeneration system can stop the decline, does the repair system have an opportunity to get in there and, and work better from that point forward? That's probably the most elementary way I can ask that question. If it's even understandable. Yeah.
• 45:34
  We are still early in the field of stem cell research. So I could not, on the basis of the scientific literature, tell you, yeah, a lot of this has been studied. There's a lot of it that has not been studied. This being said, there are a number of things that we can talk about. The answer to your question is yes. But yes, with just a lot of caveat, a lot of extrapolation, like I cannot tell you here,
• 45:58
  Everything I'm telling you is certain and fully documented. No, it is documented, fully proven, let's say. But here's what we can say. It's a little bit of a, it's a cycle. It's a feedback loop. Take, for example, blood glucose. Hyperglycemia reduces the ability of your bone marrow to release stem cells. Fewer stem cells prevent the proper repair of the pancreas.
• 46:24
  And now you go further down into the whole process of, for example, type 2 diabetes, as an example. If you suddenly boost the number of stem cells and you start to repair, then you slowly reverse this loop. So that one has been well documented. And we can probably say there's probably different things in the body that could have an effect on stem cell release. Let's take another one.
• 46:49
  Less control over it, but control nevertheless. Menopause. When you get this sudden drop in estrogen, it basically removes a, I wouldn't say a pressure, it removes like an assistance that stem cells add in the bone marrow to turn into osteocytes, osteoblasts that supports bone. And now they have a tendency to go more to fat cells. Fat cells that then will further reduce the number of stem cells being released from the bone marrow.
• 47:19
  it's almost like a double whammy. You get the hormone decrease and so your ability to repair also decrease. So hormone replacement therapy become very relevant, but also there's a magic bullet that has been shown to pretty much reverse this phenomenon in the bone marrow, which is physical activity that implies weight bearing, pounding pressure on the bones. It has a huge impact on your bones and your muscles.
• 47:46
  There's a lot of interactions in that way. So there is that loop, but generally speaking, in a greater context, there are different things that will affect the ability of your repair system to do its job. The main two is systemic inflammation. So inflammation should be a localized signal telling stem cells, essentially, that's like 90% of the reason why you have inflammation is to tell stem cells, come here, the problem is here.
• 48:15
  But if the stem cells cannot go and repair because of various reasons, one could be you don't have enough. Number two, you can have damaged microcirculation in the area so they cannot reach the area. Then that inflammation leaks and becomes systemic. So now the signal to say come here is everywhere.
• 48:34
  So how can stem cells know where to go if the message is everywhere? So you numb stem cells ability to know where to go. So now you can relase them, but they cannot fully do their job of repair. So systemic inflammation is one element.
• 48:49
  the moment and then microcirculation. So you help reopen microcirculation, beetroot extract, natokinase, already these two will do a great job at reopening microcirculation and healing if you want microcirculation. And then stem cells reach the area. And as they reach the area,
• 49:07
  you heal all those areas that were in need of repair. So now the inflammation stops because the area is repaired. So now all that noise in your bloodstream is gone. So now the stem cells that you release starts to be much more effective. So in that way, the answer to your question is yes. The moment that you start to boost stem cells, slowly there's a cleanup, there's an overall process that is taking place where you could very well find yourself
• 49:34
  today and say, gee, I feel actually stronger today than let's say five, 10 years ago. I've heard this many, many times in the years that I've worked with these products. Yeah. And I think that's true of so many systems in the body that people, I'll say that they try to treat a symptom rather than treating a system.
• 49:53
  And, you know, we end up with one thing causes the next. I mean, right down to, I mean, I'll use the example of metabolism that, yeah, you've gained weight because you have a metabolism issue. But if you're not moving, then you're not depositing glucose properly, which means you're ended up causing metabolism.
• 50:09
  insulin resistance, which means you're gaining more weight. And it's like the circle just keeps going around and around. And one interrupt can end up having a downstream effect on five different things within the body, right? Like you start to work out. Well, that's great. Well, you've increased metabolism. You've burnt glucose. You've fixed insulin resistance. You've, you know, all of these things start happening. Right.
• 50:31
  And it sounds like exactly what you're talking about. The idea that inflammation, and I love the way you phrased that, that inflammation is not the problem. Inflammation is the signal. And again, getting back to the point that I talked a lot about cardiovascular issues, I always refer to hypertension as like we've called it a, we've called it a
• 50:52
  a disease when in fact i would arguably say it's a symptom of something else that's going on and we're trying to we're trying to to silence a symptom and never deal with the repair problem that needs to actually take place throughout the system and i love how you said that that inflammation is the signal and where inflammation exists it's a signal to tell the body where the
• 51:19
  you know, in some people's bodies, every light on the dashboard is on. You know, there's enough data right now in the scientific literature to say fairly solidly that, I mean, we all know hypertension, atherosclerosis, any kind of artery disease is a multi-stage process. Like there are various steps that are happening and taking place that then lead to a problem that is a disease or a real dysfunction.
• 51:46
  So we try to keep cholesterol down. Why? It's simply because if you get a form of cholesterol that gets oxidized, it gets eaten or absorbed by macrophages that then become activated in their inflammatory process. And as they penetrate arterial wall, they start the whole process of inflammation in the arterial wall, calcium deposit hardening, and so on, and then it leads to the problem. But what we don't,
• 52:14
  we don't say or talk about in medicine enough is that this whole process starts where? It starts with a micro lesion in your arteries. Otherwise the macrophage does not have an entry point. So it starts with a micro lesion in your arteries that does not repair because you don't have enough stem cells. At the age at which you develop these problems you have lost that ability to repair.
• 52:36
  So putting more stem cells in circulation pretty much takes care of the whole process. There are studies done in animals where you develop an animal model that automatically develop atherosclerosis at, let's say, four, five, six months of age. And if you simply trigger the release of their own stem cells twice, around one, two, they do not develop atherosclerosis.
• 53:00
  So I've seen papers in the scientific literature, the title was aterosclerosis results from a failure of endogenous repair. There's plenty of documentation now showing that all these issues with your cardiovascular system is fundamentally a consequence of your decreased ability to repair.
• 53:22
  That's so interesting. Recently had a dentist on the show and he had said something. And sometimes people just say things that is like a light bulb. And he made a comment about periodontal disease and people with bleeding gums and so on. And he's like, the problem with bleeding gums is not the gums itself. It's the fact that you have a bacteria-rich biome.
• 53:44
  And the bleeding gums is just letting every bacteria directly into your bloodstream. And that's the real problem with this. I'm like, well, I've always known all of these things were connected and so on and oral microbiome and so on. But it's like something as simple as, well, yeah, but if you've got an open wound in your mouth, which that in effect is what bleeding gums are.
• 54:05
  you've got an open wound in your mouth. You're just introducing bacteria directly into the bloodstream. And if you fix that problem, so many other things get repaired because you're not introducing anything else. Christian, I want to give you the opportunity to promote STEM Regen because I've been a user of STEM Regen for years. Strongly believe in the product, believe in the science. I've watched you speak at conventions multiple times and heard you present a lot of these things on stage.
• 54:32
  I've seen your research. I've watched the bar graphs of how stem regen and how it compares to exogenous stem cell treatments and so on. But tell us what we need to do in terms of stem regen, because I want people to understand the power of what you've done here and at an incredibly affordable cost compared to other types of stem cell treatments. I mean, it's nearly miraculous.
• 54:59
  You did not ask this question that way, but let me start this way, because what people have in terms of reference is stem cell injection, which as the whole concept of stem cell injection started, let's say, 15, 20 years ago, it was with the belief that when you inject stem cells, they are...
• 55:16
  accomplishing the regenerative work in the body, meaning a stem cell will go and repair any organs and tissue that is in need of repair in your body. So from that point on, you want stem cells that are young because they have more power in your body. So you go to fat stem cells that don't multiply a lot so they're younger than your body, or umbilical cord stem cells, which are pretty much like the youngest that you can get. But fast forward 20 some years later, we know very well today that
• 55:45
  stem cells that are injected into your body they go into your venous blood so the first place that they go is your right ventricles and then your lung so in your lung they get trapped eighty per cent of them will die on the first day and then your immune system will clear the rest within a matter of a few weeks
• 56:02
  So of that injections, none of the stem cells remain in your body. I'm not saying it's not working. What I'm saying is that we need to take a step back and realize that the regenerative impact of a stem cell injection is not stem cells doing the job of repair, is that stem cells, as they die, they release all kinds of infections.
• 56:23
  SOS molecules, exosomes, secretomes, your immune system interact with them. That interaction with the immune system triggered the release of tons of growth factors that will boost your body's repair process. But your ability to repair fundamentally depends upon how many of your own stem cells you have in that mix.
• 56:47
  Because you can release a lot of these exosomes, secretomes, and all of these compounds, but if they have nobody to talk to in your body, then the repair is lukewarm. And that's why you get a lot of people who go and get an injection. They come back and say, well, it didn't do anything for me. Stem cells do the job, and they release these compounds. So it's happening in your body. But if your own innate ability to repair is not sufficiently present today,
• 57:13
  then there's nothing to boost. So that's why releasing your own stem cells then really help you gain the most out of a stem cell injection. Now, releasing your own, that's what we have done. So I came across plants and we demonstrated that they act as stem cell mobilizers.
• 57:31
  So the blend that we have today is the five top plants that I have documented over the years. So you take two capsules. I'm making it simple here, two capsules, and we can quantify in your bloodstream two, three hours later, about roughly 10 million on average, 10 million additional stem cells in circulation for an average 50-year-old. You're older, a little less. You're younger, a little bit more.
• 57:54
  And then these stem cells are in your body, can participate in the process of actual tissue repair because they are your own. They are released in your arterial blood and they are your own. It's your repair system. And what we have shown in the heart study that I mentioned is that if you do this every day, the cumulative impact over time then can become like really significant. I would say...
• 58:18
  given the research that is available in the scientific literature, but also in a lot of things that have not yet been published, I think, personal opinion, releasing your own stem cells alone will actually be more effective than injection if you're talking about overall health, longevity, that kind of thing. If you're talking about a joint issue, it's a different story. But by far, the strongest impact is combining both.
• 58:47
  because now you trigger the whole signal. I will call stem cell injection somewhat of a, like exosome, secretome delayed release treatment. And then you release your own stem cells, and now you provide a real ability, like a real boost in your own ability to repair. So that's really what Stem Regen is, a blend plant extract that triggered the release of your own stem cells.
• 59:11
  which does work on its own, but as you're- Oh, totally. Even though the combination of the two is even better. And I've seen your- Totally, but no, yeah, it works on its own. I mean, look at the hard study that we just talked about. It looks on its own to a large, I mean, very significantly. But I just wanted to bring the injection because there's a lot of misunderstanding about injection. People really do believe that because you pay maybe-
• 59:38
  100 times more for it that that it is 100 times more potent. And it's absolutely not the case. There is an interesting dance between the two that really makes the more expensive one really valuable when you combine it with with releasing your own. But other than this, if all you can do is release your own, you already have something that is, if anything, even more, you know, more effective.
• 1:00:02
  And your own are better receptors for, you know, should you have your own stem cells being produced when you do end up bringing exogenous stem cells into the body, the endogenous stem cells work even better because they're there to receive the signal.
• 1:00:17
  I mean, let's just summarize. I don't want to make like extraordinary claim. Let's not say they work better. Let's just say they are your repair system. It has been there for you every single day of your life till today and for decades to come. So if you prop it up, you will give back to your body the ability to repair that, let's say, 10, 20 years ago. It's very meaningful. That's all that we're doing.
• 1:00:40
  Yeah, that's incredible. And again, with the research that you've done and continue to do is, I mean, it really is, and I would arguably say one of the most important things that we're seeing in the longevity space right now, because, you know, the key to longevity is not dying. And the key to not dying is not continuing to accumulate damage.
• 1:01:02
  Actually, the main characteristic, let's say three characteristics that all centenarians and super centenarians shares. They're all happy. They're all thin. But also the other thing, they all do not develop age-related disease until a few months before their passing. Anything that will delay the onset of any kind of age-related disease will give you not only longevity, but quality of life. Right now, there's two things that I know that really can do this. Calorie restriction, calorie restriction,
• 1:01:32
  and putting more stem cells in circulation christian it has been a pleasure we're running way long but i don't care i enjoy talking to you what a great time hearing more about what's going on to those of you who have been watching this episode of age defiantly my friend christian drapeau who is the chief science offer and founder of stem regen all of the links will be down below for you to go check out what's going on follow their research learn more about what's happening because
• 1:01:57
  Literally taking a mobilizer of your body's own stem cells will not only mitigate damage, but as Christian has explained, has the potential to even reverse damage that's already been done in the tissues and the organs of the body that have...
• 1:02:16
  that have damage. I don't want to make big claims here on what you're saying, Christian. I'm cautious not to do that either, but go try it. Use this stuff. I've been using it for ages and, uh, absolutely. We'll speak to not just the, the science, but also anecdotally, um, what I've experienced using the product. So Christian, thank you what you're doing. Thank you again for tuning into aged finally, and we will see you next time.