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The Science of Longevity with Dr. Chris Renna
Transcript:
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Dr. Weitz: [00:00:00] If you’re looking for clinically useful insights, not wellness hype, then this is the place for you. Welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast, the podcast for functional and integrative practitioners who want to practice with greater clarity and precision. I’m Dr. Ben Weitz, and each week, I sit down with the leading clinicians, researchers, and lab innovators to explore the science, lab testing, and clinical reasoning behind modern root cause medicine.
This is a show focused on practical evidence-informed insights that you can actually use in patient care. Please subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. Please tell your friends and colleagues, and if you could give us a ratings and review on Apple or Spotify, we would certainly appreciate it. Finally, to access the show notes and the full transcript, please go to my website, drweitz.com. [00:01:00]
Today, we’re diving into the science and philosophy of longevity with one of the true pioneers in the field. Long before anti-aging and biohacking became buzzwords, today’s guest was already rethinking what functional medi- what medicine should look like, not just treating disease, but optimizing how we live and age. I’m excited to welcome Dr. Chris Renna, founder of Lifespan Medicine, with offices in LA, Miami, and Dallas. He’s been practicing a proactive systems-based approach to health and longevity for over three decades. Dr. Renna has been at the forefront of integrating hormones, immune function, and lifestyle medicine into a cohesive model designed not just to extend lifespan, but to improve how we function, feel, and perform as we age. In this conversation, we’ll explore what most people get wrong about longevity Why foundational habits matter more than the latest bio [00:02:00] hacks, and how to think about aging through the lens of interconnected systems rather than isolated symptoms. Dr. Chris Renna, welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast.
Dr. Renna: Thank you so much, Dr. Weitz. It was a very nice introduction. I appreciate it.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. So I guess it, it sounds like we’ve both been involved in the field of functional medicine for many years. I recall back in the ’80s going to Dr. Jeffrey Bland’s seminars, and I used to be a subscriber to the, uh, Functional Medicine Update or Preventative Medicine Update. I remember back in the days getting these little cassette tapes that I would play in the car every month, and every year going to the Dr. Bland, uh, seminar for Metagenics, and he would blow my mind with the latest, uh, research in functional medicine.
Dr. Renna: Well, Jeff Bland was and still is a brilliant mind. Um- [00:03:00] Yes and you know, part of that brilliance was channeled into an institution that we all were looking for. Um, those of us who became aware of the possibilities of functional medicine in the 1980s had nowhere to go, um, until the Institute for Functional Medicine was established. And it was, as you know, it was established, um, oh, probably f- five or six years before any of the anti-aging, uh, phenomena was publicized.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Renna: So it was long before the American Academy of Anti-Aging or the other, other places where now you could go to get a functional medicine education. Right. Yep, the A4M. Yeah. Um, so where are we in the field of longevity medicine now? I think we’re on the threshold of some amazing, uh, discoveries and advancements. But I think we’re still, I think our feet are still firmly [00:04:00] planted on that threshold, and the way I differentiate that or what I’m distinguishing is, um, over the next 10 years, I would imagine that- We will be given opportunities to have single events in our lives that will improve our, our functionality.
And by improving our functionality, slow the aging or deterioration of our bodies over time. Um, so I think that those treatments are coming, and, you know, they, they fall into the sacred topics of stem cells, uh, exosomes, gene manipulation, um, a number of different, uh, scientific endeavors. uh, mitochondrial loading, mitochondrial cloning.
Um, all of that, I think, is, is right in our, in our, in our windshield. Um, but where we are today realistically is a 90/10 situation, [00:05:00] meaning 90% of how we age and how well we function as we do is determined on diet, exercise, sleep, and your psychological perspective, how you see yourself and place in the world.
Um, those are the four cornerstones in the foundation of health, and that has not changed. uh, it contributes at l- at least 90% of the processes that we’ve now been able to identify as signs of aging and calendars of aging. uh, so I think that lifestyle is still, uh, the ultimate, uh, opportunity, uh, to slow the process.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I’m a big believer in diet, lifestyle, exercise, the right nutritional supplements for the right person. Um, is there something that’s widely accepted in longevity, longevity s- medicine right now that you think is wrong or overhyped? Um, wrong or [00:06:00] overhyped? Um, well I don’t know that it’s wrong, um, and I think that it could be realistically understood and, and certainly have a place, uh, in strategies for improving the, the, our, our health span.
Dr. Renna: Um, but I think that stem cells are probably the most, uh, misunderstood and, um, improperly glorified, uh, opportunities, uh, for rejuvenation. I think that people think that if they receive stem cells, particularly from a brand-new human, a placenta or an umbilical cord, um, that they too will become a brand-new human.
uh, and the reality is that with the exception of one type of stem cell, um, any stem cell i- put into your body that’s not yours, um, in a very short period of time is going to die. And when it dies, it’s going to spill its contents into your system, and some of those contents are gonna [00:07:00] be very valuable. Um, I have a, I have a story that illustrates that.
Um, I, I’ve taken care of a, an NFL player, uh, who, whose season ended in early or late Jan… mid to late January in the playoffs, and two weeks later, he flew abroad, uh, to receive stem cell infusions. He took the month of February and half of March off and just rested and recovered, and he felt great. You know, after he had the stem cell infusions, he was feeling very well.
But he didn’t start training again until the end of March, early April. And he told me, “I can’t believe how much stronger I am. Those stem cells are miraculous. Um, I’m s- I have so much better recovery. My joints don’t hurt. You know, this is… And I’m, I’m gonna have an amazing next year.” He was 36 years old at the time and had two more years on his contract, which is pretty [00:08:00] old.
uh, you know, almost, uh, past the expiration date for an NFL player, particularly at his position. Um, training camp began in July. Remember he had the stem cells in February. Training camp began in July. When he went to training camp, he was so disappointed because he was exactly as strong as he was the last training camp.
He had no more stamina. Um, the joint aches and pains from the injuries and surgeries that he’d had from his career were back. So he had this blush of benefit, and then it passed. Um, and I think that’s n- not really understood. uh, you know, what, what, what we are led to believe is that stem cells are God cells, that they know…
They’re omniscient And omnipotent, they can do anything. Um, and our stem cells when they were younger, our 25-year-old stem cells and our 30-year-old stem cells [00:09:00] Pretty much could represent that to our bodies. You know, they did know everything, and they could… It’s, the stem cells are 3D printers. They can print any part of you that you need, um, for healing, recovery, or restoration.
Dr. Weitz: Um, but as we get older, our stem cells, you know, they got beaten up a little bit and they have some damage, and they’re not, depending on what age you are, they’re not what they used to be. Um, so I think stem cells are probably over-hyped. Um- Well, what’s, what’s… Why is it so? The h- the thought about stem cells is that these stem cells are gonna come in and they’re gonna turn into whatever cells we need.
So if we have damaged cartilage, they’re gonna become new cartilage cells that’s gonna rejuvenate our joints, or they’re gonna become new tendon or ligament cells or brain cells and, and help, um, various organ systems in the body to heal. But if, if, if that’s not what’s happening, what is the problem? And, and [00:10:00] first of all, why, why do people go to Europe to get these stem cells?
Dr. Renna: What are they doing in Europe that we’re not doing here? And I hear people say, “Well, you have to just get a lot more of the stem cells, so we have to go to a place where they can grow ’em outside the body and then put ’em in, and then they’ll be effective.” And yeah, so you know, part- parts of that are true.
Um, but, uh, I think it’s g- like grossly misunderstood. Um, the reason people go abroad, uh, is because the United States made a decision, the government made a decision in the early 2000s, um, after some s- stem cell, um, studies, uh, aff- affecting little kids went terribly wrong, um, and the little kids died. uh, and as the literature was evolving, we were very interested initially in the 1990s in embryonic stem cells, because they have the ability to make any tissue that we, we need as adults, including cartilage.
[00:11:00] Remember, cartilage is an embryonic tissue, and our adult stem cells neither know how to make it nor recognize it. Um, so the adult stem cells we have, you know, even when we’re a child, um, can’t really help us fix cartilage or replace cartilage. Um, so the United States government made a decision, uh, after those experiments went wrong and when we learned that embryonic stem cells were far too dangerous, uh, to try and give to other human beings, uh, for reparative processes, um, they…
And also, um, the idea that we, the scientists were collecting- placenta, uh, from aborted fetuses Right. That whole anti-abortion thing was a problem Right. Um, and then if they allowed the science to go forward in the United States, um, there would be many, many more abortions. uh, so you know, for political reasons and for scientific reasons, um, our government made laws that said, “You, you can’t do that.
uh, you can’t extract a stem cell from someone else’s [00:12:00] placenta or umbilical cord and give it to another person. And if you take stem cells from that individual person, you can’t manipulate those stem cells and then give them back to that individual,” which is unfortunately necessary to rejuvenate the stem cells so they can rejuvenate the body.
Um, so the law has really gotten in our way, and it set us way back. Um, it gave tremendous advantage to the Israelis, it gave tremendous advantage to the British and German scientific communities. Um, and that’s probably why people fly abroad. Now, m- many fly to Central America, where Americans have set up stem cell clinics.
Neil Riordan in Panama, Vincent Gianpop in Costa Rica, a n- number of people in Cabo San Lucas and other, uh, port, ports of Mexico. Um, and the clients or the pe- patients that I hear go there generally go there as opposed to, you know, [00:13:00] Switzerland or Austria, um, or the health spas in Italy. uh, they do, uh, go there, and they receive stem cells in those places too, but it’s more Central America that attracts the most people.
Dr. Weitz: So that’s why we set laws that, got in the way of that. That was just- And why, why is it that you think those stem cells are not doing what we want them to do?
Dr. Renna: Every human stem cell speaks the language of a human body But every human body has a dialect, and someone else’s stem cells, although they may understand our language, they don’t understand our dialect. A stem cell– For a stem cell to help a tissue repair, it has to have a homing signal to an injured cell migrate to that injured cell.
Then it has to have an exosomal conversation, [00:14:00] secretions of information from the cell, secretions of information from the stem cell in a conversation, and a third party is always present, and that’s an immune system cell. So the stem cell and the immune system cell have more of an exosomal exchange than the stem cell and the injured cell.
Um, you know, you can look at it… This is a gross simplification, but you can look at it as if the stem cell can provide whatever repair materials are needed for the cell to restore itself But it doesn’t know the timing. It doesn’t understand the sequencing. The immune system cell understands the sequencing from what it senses in the injury, and it provides the sequencing for the utilization of the repair materials, and the stem cell provides the m- repair materials in that sequence.[00:15:00]
And the cell accepts those repair materials and heals itself. That’s how a cut heals. You cut yourself shaving, and it disappears after three days, that’s what happened. Your stem cells, your immune system cells, and your injured, um, epithelial cells all got together, had an exosomal conversation, and the stem cell made the, the materials that the, the dermis needed to heal, and the immune system oversaw the process, as well as prevented the cut from getting infected.
Dr. Weitz: So stem cells are not doing what we want, and you think in the future they might be able to? Yeah. Well, stem cells are, are not omniscient, and really, when we talk about stem cells, we’re talking about, um, two categories: your own, um, which have a great deal of information and understanding of your body and what it needs, as…
Dr. Renna: And then we’re talking about someone else’s stem cells. Um, the only type of stem cell that is in each of our [00:16:00] bodies that can be removed from someone else’s body, um, treated in such a way that all of its antigenic characteristics are taken away cloned, uh, to expand the population and then given to you that have a chance to live inside your body and actually get engaged in that healing process are called Muse cells, M-U-S-E.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Renna: Any other stem cell, and for all of, you know, for all the years that we have heard about people going either abroad or somewhere abroad to receive stem cell infusions from umbilical cords, they haven’t been Muse cells. They’ve been the entire type, all types of stem cells.
Dr. Weitz: Are, are some clinics using Muse cells?
Dr. Renna: Yes. So the Muse cell was first identified by a Japanese investigator named M- Marie Dizawa Dr. Dezawa is a contemporary of [00:17:00] ours. Um, she identified and, uh, characterized those stem cells, um, over the past 10 years, and, um, she worked in a Japanese clinic that was using MEW stem cells to treat different types of injuries with ver- you know, very good results. She has since left there, um, I’m sure for economic opportunity, uh, and now has a, uh… is associated with a clinic elsewhere, but she also has a business of supplying interested parties with MEW cells. Um, and she will be, you know, a good source. There- I’m sure there will be other sources of MEW cells.
Dr. Weitz: There’s no patent on a type of human cell.
Dr. Renna: There’ll be other suppliers, but Dr. Dezawa, any company that she’s either owns overseas or is part of is probably gonna have the greatest reputation.
Dr. Weitz: So are you using these MEW cells in your office?
Dr. Renna: Well, the state of Florida just recently [00:18:00] approved the use of umbilical cord cells of any type for the treatment of osteoarthritis, which was really a very, a very good but also very clever choice, um, because if they had chosen a different disease to say that this needs to be the indication, it would’ve narrowed the population of people who might be eligible to receive the cells. But we can demonstrate evidence of osteoarthritis in a 20-year-old. Um, so- Right … pretty much anyone out of their teens could receive these cells in the state of Florida, and the doctor would, you know, be practicing according to the rules. Um, so yeah, Lifespan is, is, uh, in the process, uh, of working with a Dezawa, um, endorsed company, uh, to provide MEW cells to our patients.
Dr. Weitz: And are MEW cells the be-all and end-all? Do, do MEW cells sit on top of that [00:19:00] behavioral platform that I talked about as the golden statue of youthfulness, of rejuvenation? No, they’re not. Those behaviors- Can these, can these MEW cells regenerate the cartilage in your knee?
Dr. Renna: They can’t regenerate cartilage because that’s an embryonic tissue, um, and MEW cells are harvested from adults. Okay. Um, but what MEW cells can do that other types of stem cells that are infused into your body can’t do is they can survive. I’m sure that not all of them survive. If you receive 40 million, an infusion of 40 million MEW cells, I don’t know the exact number you’re gonna have still circulating three months later, but you’re gonna have many of those MEW stem cells still circulating three months later.
Dr. Weitz: They- So what benefits are we gonna get from these?
Dr. Renna: A boost in our ability to repair ourselves. Okay. [00:20:00] Let, let’s talk about aging for a minute. Um, and let’s- Yes … separate aging from differentiation. Um, let’s just say that this is a very generous estimate, but that for the first 30 years of your life, you’re going through a process of stem cell differentiation.
In other words, the stem cells in your body are creating the adult you. And you look at pictures of yourself or your s- your children or your grandchildren at five and 15 and 25, and you can see what differentiation requires. You can see how the five-year-old strongly resembles the 15-year-old, but the 15-year-old is very distinctive in his appearance, or her appearance, from the 25-year-old.
So you see what differentiation does, and that’s all being managed by stem cells that are dedicated to that process. Um, by the time you reach 30, [00:21:00] about 30% of your stem cells with which you were born are gone, and the reason they’re gone is because they’re differentiation stem cells, and you’re fully differentiated at 30, so you don’t need those stem cells anymore.
Now you have a population of stem cells that has been significantly reduced, but at the same time, still robust and able to provide you with any kind of healing process you need. Healing, if I work out today, I’m gonna have to heal tonight. Right. Um, if I, if I get exposed to a virus, uh, and my immune system has to ward off that virus, um, and I get fewer little symptoms because I was successful in that, I’m gonna have to heal from that process.
There’s gonna be some damage done, collateral damage done to the cells that the virus was, were bound to and trying to invade. Those in, in capturing the virus and, and [00:22:00] neutralizing the virus, those cells are gonna get injured, and there’s gonna be an inflammatory response, and I’m gonna have to heal from that.
So healing is a daily process. Um, when we wake up on our 30th birthday, it will be the first day of our life that we didn’t completely heal from the day before. There’ll be some cellular errors that were made that weren’t corrected. There’ll be some products that were made that are not usable, and those products now become waste.
Um, and there will be, um, a, a, a dissonance, a disorganization of some of the processes that have otherwise necessary to restore you to full functionality. So you’ll wake up on your 30th birthday slightly less functional than you were the day before, and you will never wake up again completely healed The, the problem is that as we grow [00:23:00] older, day by day, we make more cellular errors, intranuclear errors, cytoplasmic errors, membrane errors, and community errors.
We make errors, and those errors result in wasted energy and wasted nu- um, resource, mostly nutrients. Um By the time we’re 31, we can no longer neutralize all of the oxidative stress that is now contributing to more waste. And the waste becomes a difficult thing for your energy to manage, so you spend a lot of your energy moving waste around, trying to excrete biological waste, which is almost impossible, and storing and shifting waste products that are in the way of other processes.
Dr. Weitz: So you can see where, you know, for these collection of trillions of cells that make up our body, um, that things [00:24:00] start to go wrong in the direction of aging, um, at that very early time. I, I know that you have, um, specialized in injections for joints. Um, and um, I, I saw where you, uh, use something called Regenokine as well as I saw some discussion of, uh, A2M injections.
Dr. Renna: Can you talk about some of the joint injections that are most effective for, uh, helping patients with inflamed or osteoarthritic damaged joints? Yes. Um, I sure can. So necessity is the mother of invention. Um, in the first 10 years of my… of this practice, of lifespan, between 1990 and 2000, my practice was pretty young, and the people who had knee pain or hip pain or back pain, um, it was mostly [00:25:00] derived from a recent injury.
So I didn’t have a great need in that decade to treat people’s chronic pain. In the first five years of the millennia, um, now my practice is older. Um, I started this practice when I was 40, so now I’m 55, and my patients, many of my patients are following right along with me. And we’re all developing, um, a, a some degree of chronic pain, and it’s, and it’s interfering with our sleep, it’s changing the way we eat, um, it’s impairing certain types of exercise that we would otherwise benefit from doing.
It’s a problem And at the time, this was before PRP. At the time, there were no biologicals that were used to inject into joints. Hyaluronic acid, um, which is the HA product that is injected into an arthritic knee or an arthritic joint and forms a, a rubber cement type of barrier for the joint [00:26:00] that somewhat mimics the cushioning effect of cartilage for a few months.
That wasn’t even approved by FDA yet. The only thing you could take for a sore back or sore knee or sore hip was a steroid injection, and what you and I know is that steroid injections are wonderful because they stop the inflammatory process in the moment, but they impair healing and that, that damage that you might have otherwise healed had the steroid not been used now becomes a scar.
Right. So no biologicals. Um, I had a, I had a guy who, um, if he could remain active and vibrant, um, could be paid a, a tremendous, a lifetime of money, um, for a one-year project. It was a movie, and this guy was gonna star in this movie, and he just needed to be physically capable. Um, he was an action figure Well, um, he had a bad knee, and [00:27:00] he was originally planning, um, to go to Europe to have his knee replaced and to try and hide it from the press so that his fan base wouldn’t start thinking of him as an older guy.
Dr. Weitz: He had a hang-up about people knowing that he had a bad knee and may- might need a knee replacement. So because he was oriented toward Europe and because now he had to make this knee functional in a very short period of time, he didn’t have time to go and have a knee replacement and recover, um, I started looking through the international database for solutions to osteoarthritis of the knee.
Dr. Renna: And I found a, a paper written, uh, by a German group, um, that talked about this autologous serum. Autologous means from you, for you. So this was a serum that was made by taking the person’s blood, isolating immune system cells, incubating those [00:28:00] cells so that those cells would respond as if your body had a high fever, um, and harvesting the beneficial byproducts of your immune system under that circumstance.
Turns out that fever is a universal stimulant for immune system benefit. If you incubate blood at the right temperatures, you get significant concentrations of very beneficial exosomes and chemicals in your, in your body, um, that will help reduce inflammation and trigger, initiate, and, and chaperone the healing process.
Um, it was called Orthokine at the time. So I called the, the author, first author. I told him I was very interested in this. I had a patient to send him. He said, “Well, I’m… I don’t do this. I just… I’m, I’m at a university. I’m an investigator. Um, and you have to call this other guy who has a… is an orthopedic surgeon, has a practice.
He’s the one who invented it.” [00:29:00] We just independently tested it, which made me think it was m- even more credible, um, because the person who would benefit from this product if it were worthwhile was not involved in the research that demonstrated its worth So I contacted this other fellow, Peter Dus- um, Wehling, Peter Wehling in Dusseldorf, Germany.
I told him about my patient, and I said, you know, “Can he come to Germany and receive this?” And Peter said, “Sure, you know, we treat people every day.” Um, that fellow went there. He had this autologous serum made, injected into his knee. Um, he was a very good responder. 20% of people are quick responders, 80% are not.
Um, and I’ll tell you about Regenokine in a moment what the statistics are. Um, so he had a one in five chance of being the guy who could take one of these… You know, while [00:30:00] he was getting the treatment, which is a series of five injections done over… If you go to, if you go to Europe to get it, it’s done over a five-day period once a day.
If you come here, it’s done over a two to three-week period. We spa- we space out the injections a little bit more if you’re not in a hurry. So he had these injections. He did the film. He did four more of those films. Um, he had, you know, pretty advanced osteoarthritis of his knees. Um, and he didn’t have a knee surgery for 11 years.
Dr. Weitz: He took this Orthokine autologous serum, now called Regenokine, same thing. Um, he took those injections about every two or three years during that period of time, and his knees were fine. And he finally, you know, s- And so what kind of a… This was the Regenokine injections? Yeah, these were Regenokine injections.
And, and j- And, and so that concentrates something called interleukin-1 receptor [00:31:00] antagonist protein. Is that correct? It does. Um, the analysis of the Regenokine serum, uh, can identify about 300 active signaling agents. Um, IL-1RA or interleukin
Dr. Renna: receptor blocker A, um, is… was thought to be the most potent, um, because it’s the interleukin-1 receptor that continues and creates inflammation in the tissues of the joint, and inflammation is what hurts and stops you from using the joint. So for many years, it was thought that the IL-1RA was the, the key ingredient, although there were many, many more, hundreds more, anti-inflammatory factors in that serum Well At about the same time in the early 2000s, um, there was a discovery made actually by the same fellow who invented [00:32:00] Regenokine and someone else working at the University of Pittsburgh in the orthopedic department.
There was a discovery made of signaling agents that actually become the written script or the written dialogue between cells, among cells, and they named those signaling agents exosomes. Um, an exosome is a little bubble, it’s a little lipid bubble that contains stuff, messenger RNA, signaling proteins, peptides, number of different types of ingredients.
Um, they coined that exosomes because cells form these bubbles, and they give them off. So it’s exosome, out of the body. It leaves the body of the cell. Huh. It turns out that exosomes are the language that cells speak to one another. Um, if you have a primarily anti-inflammatory serum, you’re going to have huge [00:33:00] amounts of anti-inflammatory signaling proteins in those exosomes, messenger RNA, that will be taken up by the injured cell and enable the injured cell to repair itself.
Dr. Weitz: It fixes the cell. So are, are… H- how come I, I haven’t heard too much about these Regenokine injections? Are they… Are you still doing them a lot? Um, what’s, what’s the story?
Dr. Renna: We’ve been, we’ve been doing them. That same German company licensed us to, uh, give them to our patients in 2010, and we’ve been doing Regenokine injections for people every day for 15 years.
And- Wow … um, if you look at independent studies that compare Regenokine to PRP, to HA, to A2M, uh, to other biologicals that can be injected into joints and are injected into joints, Regenokine is the best performer of the, of the group. Wow. [00:34:00] Now, point of caution, um, because of our genetic variability, Regenokine works in 70% of people.
If, if we do a, a thorough interview and understand your injury, and we know that that’s the type of injury that responds to Regenokine, we can increase the percentage to about 85% of people, but that leaves one, you know, one out of 12, one out of 15 that is gonna get treated and they’re not gonna have a response.
So what’s the kind of injury that responds better to Regenokine?
Dr. Renna: It’s those that are actively dr- It’s, you know, those that have active inflammation. Um, and- You know, you can say, “Well, that’s every injury.” Mm. You know, that’s every arthritic knee, that’s every arthritic joint is chronically inflamed. Like, that’s the problem, um, is the immune system is seeing byproducts of damaged cartilage [00:35:00] and not recognizing it as us, recognizing it as foreign, and makes antibodies and chemicals that will further damage that cartilage trying to destroy it.
Dr. Weitz: You know, we lose our cartilage ’cause the immune sy- our own immune system destroys it. So this Regenäkine, is it having an anti-inflammatory effect? Is it also producing some sort of healing of the tissues?
Dr. Renna: Yeah. And- It, it, it has a, a potent anti-inflammatory effect, um, and it’s been demonstrated to stimulate genetic expression of those elements necessary for the joint cells to heal themselves, not the cartilage cells Um, the cartilage cells are relatively unaffected.
There’s no restoration of cartilage. Um- Okay … remember, cartilage is an embryonic tissue. Um, so that’s a big barrier to us figuring out how can we [00:36:00] grow more cartilage in your knees or mine. Right. I think we’re gonna figure it out, and I think it’ll get figured out in the next five to 10 years. Um, I think that, I think the three biggest
Dr. Renna: big– I think the three biggest big pharma or medical device companies fitting into the same category discoveries over the next decade are going to be, um, cartilage repair and possible restoration, um, energy restoration, meaning mitochondrial repair and mitochondrial enhancement, um And
Neurologic restoration. In other words, a drug, a medicine, a biological technique, some kind of a treatment, um, that helps nerves repair themselves. [00:37:00] I think those will be the three most important discoveries. Perhaps the most profitable one will be growing hair on people’s heads. And, you know, that’s been a rabbit whose ears scientific investigators have been feeling for so to pull out of that hat for a very long time, and you can see by my head that no one’s accomplished it yet.
Dr. Weitz: Um, but I think that, you know, that’ll, that’ll probably make the papers, make the magazines. Um, but I think the most important ones are gonna be brain and cognitive restoration, um, cartilage restoration, and mitochondrial enhancement. So what else can we do now for, um, for longevity? What, what can we do to restore our mitochondrial function?
Okay. Let me mention the foundation, then I’ll talk about superstructure. Remember, the foundation is diet, exercise, sleep, and perspective. Um, look for- And what are the most [00:38:00] important things to do for diet? Are you a believer in the Mediterranean diet, lots of fruits and vegetables? What are, what are the most important factors there?
Dr. Renna:‘Cause there’s lots of arguments about what the best diet is. Yes. Um-
Dr. Weitz: I’m not sure I wanna go down that trail, but so- Okay … um, th- what, um, I’ll, I’ll tell you why in a moment. Um, there was, there was a book called Eat Right for Your Type that was published in the early 2000s. Yeah. That diet is probably the methodology through which we could all identify what are the- Peter D’Adamo.
Dr. Renna: Yeah, that’s right. Peter D’Adamo and his, and his father. Um, so that s- they called it the serotype diet. So that diet is probably the best science that we could develop. It was never developed beyond their book. Um, but we could probably develop that science and figure out what is the best Mediterranean diet.
Dr. Weitz: If we’re eating… If we recognize, okay, I have to eat vegetables, [00:39:00] and any kind of oil or fat that I take into my body can’t be a saturated oil or fat. It’s gotta be polyunsaturated, which means I’m giving up some of the things that are, have the richest flavors, but I’m still getting quite a lot of flavor satisfaction from the fats that are healthy for me.
Dr. Renna: So I have to eat vegetables, healthy fats, and lean proteins. Okay. You make that commitment. Where do you get that food? I mean, the quality of our food. Our government made m- made decisions in the 1970s that changed farming in America forever, and resulted in the depletion of nutrient density of our food.
So the carrot that we feed a little child today is not the carrot that you ate or I ate when we were growing up. Doesn’t have near the nutrient density. So we have to look for nutrient-dense foods. That means organically grown whenever possible, farm to table if [00:40:00] you have access, and otherwise, shop on the perimeter of the supermarket.
Stay out of the aisles. Yep. Stay out of the boxed stuff and the processed foods. Um, so healthy, nutrient-rich food, the best you can find. Serotype diet, sure, you can read the book and see what you com- what you get out of it. Um, again, uh, we could spend another, another whole session talking about the, about food and about diet, and what we’ve done to ourselves.
Sure. Um, so I won’t digress. Um, main- maintain hydration, 64 ounces of fluids, non-caffeinated fluids, and if you’re drinking caffeinated fluids, you’ve gotta drink at least an equal or double amount of the caffeinated beverage that you drink. So if you drink 12 ounces of coffee, you gotta take in 24 ounces more water.
Dr. Weitz: Um, okay. So- Eating well, staying hydrated, moving. You know, you say, “Oh, I can’t… I don’t, I don’t go to the gym. I can’t work out. The gym is… Oh, I, I hate the…” Okay, you don’t wanna [00:41:00] play tennis, you don’t wanna go to the gym, you don’t wanna get a mobile bicycle and, and ride around the streets ’cause it’s dangerous, you might get hit by a car.
Dr. Renna: Great. Then you gotta move. You’ve gotta get 6,000 steps a day, and you’ve gotta do resistance training at least beyond the age of 45. 45 to 55, dangerous decade, because you have hormone abandonment during that decade, and unless you replace those hormones in the same cyclical rhythmic pattern that your body once produced them, you’re not gonna get the same results.
You’re gonna get deterioration, rapid deterioration of growth, of repair. So again, that’s another whole subject. Um, so it’s diet, hydration, um, movement and exercise, including resistance training, sleep. I mean, that’s so important, and so many of us turn out the light and think it’s time to solve our problems.
We [00:42:00] turn out the light, immediately we turn out the light, our, our mind is kind of empty of external stimulus, and we think, “Oh, I have to think about what I’m doing tomorrow, and I have to think about, oh, and you know what? What happened today?” Like, that was so unus- no. Our job in that moment is to let go of everything that has to do with life and enter that sacred space of- Well, I think many of us try to do that, but not everybody’s s- successful, or most of us are not successful all the time.
W- we’ve… You know, you would say, Dr. Weitz, that we’ve almost been bred to not be able to do that. Um, you know, the insidious nature of capitalism has driven us to be engaged and activated and stimulated and motivated and ambitious, and the counterpart to that is anything that obstructs all of those positive things becomes a frustration and a stress.
So I’m gonna talk about perspective in a minute, but right now you gotta sleep, and you have to give yourself that time [00:43:00] out. Right. So count sheep, pray, do four by four by four breathing, four seconds in, four seconds hold, four seconds exhale, four seconds pause. Relax your muscles from your feet, from your toes to the top of your he- whatever exercise or need you practice.
Put an ear pod in and listen to, um, you know, a, a sleep relaxation pod. uh, uh, YouTube. Okay, so you gotta sleep. Um, perspective.
The place where we hold stress between birth and five. In other words, be- fi- you know, two, three, four-year-olds are not stressed until we im- impair them of, from doing what they wanna do, um, or they get hurt or frightened. Um, and there’s a place in our brain, a neuronal circuitry in our brain that holds those images of what frightened us and what frustrated us and what was dif- difficult [00:44:00] for us that is carried forward into our adult brain.
And what also gets stored in there, um, between five and 10 is our understanding of responsibility. So by our anatomy and physiology, we store stress in the same place that we use to interpret threats, identify threats. I mean, we store, um, responsibility in the same place that we use to identify stress or threats, and now responsibility becomes stressful.
By the time you’re in fourth grade, you’re stressed over your homework project. You’re stressed over your diet diagrammatic thing. You’re, you know, you’re stressed over whatever your teacher’s asking you to do. Um, you’re stressed by your parents. They’re telling you to clean your room, put your shoes away, take your s- wash your socks.
Um, and we naturally [00:45:00] associate responsibility with stress. In our adulthood, we have to recognize that our responsibility is our, is the product of our life. It’s what we pursue in our life. It’s not stressful, and we have to separate responsibility from stress. I have to be on time. Yes, I have. Yes, I would like to be on time.
Dr. Weitz: That’s gonna be good for me, good for everybody else, too, but I’m not gonna stress over it because it’s just my responsibility to be on time, and if I can’t fulfill my responsibility this time, I’ll fulfill it next time. I get lots more chances to be on time, and I’ll be on time every other time. So- So, so we have to eat, we have to sleep, we have to exercise.
Dr. Renna: How do we- And we have to separate res- the, the sense or perception of responsibility as being stressful. On top of that, um, what can you do? You mentioned it earlier. You have to take nutritional supplementation because our diet will not provide enough nutritional supplements to have a healthy life. Okay.
Um, and you can be selective. You, [00:46:00] it should be selective, but I would tell you that if, if what you’re buying and taking has what the label says it has in it and doesn’t have any adulterants or toxins in it, it’s probably gonna be good for you in some way or another. I don’t think you can take a vitamin that’s not good for you in some way or another.
But if you wanna be practical about it, you wanna take four or six or eight things a day, um, you’ve gotta take a clean omega-3 oil, and by clean I mean, you know, well processed, no mercury. Right. Molecularly distilled. Right. You’ve gotta take a clean ult- omega-3 oil. You’ve gotta take a multivitamin to cover your bases.
Um, you’ve gotta take coenzyme Q10, which helps catalyze energy production, and most of us, the vast majority of us, have to take vitamin D. Um, I think those are the basics. Like, that’s the basic supplement packet every day ingredient. And you can get- What’s your, what’s your favorite multi? Pure [00:47:00] Encapsulations 1 ONE.
Okay. I have
no tie to the company. Um, if I just earn them 20 more dollars ’cause somebody’s gonna hear this and go online and try it, good for them. They deserve it. You know, they’ve maintained a high quality product for a long time. So that’s my favorite. But- What a- what about specific for mitochondrial function? Um, coenzyme Q10 for sure Okay uh, and, you know, mitochondria are ovens.
Dr. Weitz: Um, they’re crucibles. They’re like when you see that picture of the guy working outside the s- right in the steel mill, you know? Right And you see the flames and the fires. So any, any kind of antioxidant combination. What do you, what do you think about, um, uh, NAD precursors like- Oh, sure … NR, NMN? Sure. Um, that’s a big debate, um, between, you know, Sinclair and the NMR guy at Mi- MIT.
Dr. Renna: Um, I’ll think of his name [00:48:00] in a minute. The big debate, which one is taken up by the cell more efficiently, get into the mitochondria, and actually work? The NR, um, nicotinamide riboside, is a smaller molecule, and you can see if you label them that that gets taken up more and gets into the mitochondria more.
Whether it works better or not, you can’t really measure that, or h- that hasn’t been measured as far as I know. Um, NMN is a bigger molecule. Let’s say that NR is a tennis ball and an NMR is a beach ball, but the NMR that gets in– the NMN that gets into the mitochondria is really generating, generative. So I think either one.
If you wanna cover your bases, take them both. Right. Um, so the, those NAD precursors, um- You like Urolithin A? Yeah. Urolithin A, yeah. Um, I, you know, I don’t know this company either, but Mitopure- Yeah … um, I think has Label true [00:49:00] ingredients. Like, I think that’s actually what’s in there. I think all the urolithin A they say is in there is actually in there most of the time.
So that’s a kind of a low bar standard for the nutritional supplement industry, but an important one. Yeah. Um, yeah, so urolithin A, great idea. Um, antioxidants, a great idea. Peptides. You wanna talk about peptides? Sure, yeah. Peptides are the rage today, especially since we got, uh, everybody taking the GLP-1 drugs to lose weight and- Yeah.
Yeah. Um, and having their appetite suppressed and not eating enough protein, um, is the main contributing factor to why people on GLP-1s lose muscle mass, and, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re criticized for that. Um, you just have to eat enough protein. You need half your weight in grams of protein each day to meet your minimum requirement, and then go do 20 minutes of resistance exercise twice a week to m- meet your minimum requirement.
Um, [00:50:00] but certainly, um, the NAD precursors. Um, peptides. Um, SS-31, humanin, um, both have pretty good studies supporting it. What? Say, say that again. Which one? SS-31. Okay. And- I’m not familiar with that. That’s, that’s… SS-31 is a peptide that does what? Um, improves mitochondrial function. Okay. Um, and the other one is humanin.
Okay. Um, both of those have been shown to improve mitochondrial function. Now, you know, part of the problem with peptides is- M- most of us don’t want them to be pharmaceutical. Most of us like the idea that they’re naturally occurring And the problem with naturally occurring substances is you can’t patent them Right
difficult to patent. And if you can’t patent them, you can’t capture the profitability from proving that they’re [00:51:00] valuable. So you don’t wanna spend millions of dollars doing research? So there’s not a lot of human studies on peptides. Peptides are pivotal or finishing proteins that are made in our body to complete cycles of action in which we have invested raw material and energy.
If that cycle of action is not completed, it’s wasted. So peptides help us complete those. That’s great. Terrific. Um, then the question is The label says that there’s SS-31 in this, in this vial How much is really in that vial? Where was it made? Under what standards? Um, how much can we rely upon a peptide that is not an FDA-approved drug, that is not even a drug, um, that’s a natural substance, coming from where?
Dr. Weitz: Do we really know? Just because it has a label in English on it doesn’t mean it wasn’t made in [00:52:00] Mexico or China or India. Right. I think one of the things you’re pointing to is that today, because, uh, peptides are not approved by the FDA, though it looks like things are changing, um, you, you buy… people are buying them online from, quote-unquote, research labs- Right
Dr. Renna: and they really don’t know what they’re getting. Exactly right. And the research labs, um, separate themselves from responsibility because they put on the label, “Not for human use.” And basically they’re saying, “Look, if this guy was so dumb as to read ‘not for human use’ and then still inject it into his body and he had a bad reaction to it, that’s not our fault.”
Dr. Weitz: It’s kind of the perfect thing for, you know, for the industry, uh, to take advantage of the, of the needy public. It would be great, and really beneficial if- I- isn’t it the case, though, that the FDA just recently changed the classification of peptides, and now, um, it’s gonna be, um, not a problem for compounding pharmacies to make them?
Dr. Renna: They made it [00:53:00] easier. Um, you know, they, the FDA has established a list. I think there are 9 or 10 peptides on that list. There’s probably 50 or 60 that have been identified to be of benefit, um, you know, when taken as a supplement to your own peptide production. Right. Um, but now there’s 9 or 10 on the list.
Um- Oh, there’s only 9 or 10? That’s it? Yeah, it’s less than a dozen. And they’re gonna, they’re going to move, they’re going, they’re, they’re gonna put those in a category that compounding pharmacies with GMP certification, with compounding certification, can make those, and we can all be sure that if it comes from that place, made in, um, Tallahassee, Florida, ’cause a lot of these compounding companies are in Florida, the laws are favorable for them there, that it’s gonna have the ingredient that we want.
It’s gonna be an active product, and it’s not gonna have any adulterants, no heavy metals, no toxins, no things we didn’t wanna inject into our body. Okay. [00:54:00] That is evolving. And, you know, there’s good and bad, um, as people see it, and you can identify by your own opinion what’s good and what’s bad, what falls in each, in each silo, um, from Robert F.
Kennedy’s ideas. Um, but Robert F. Kennedy has some very good ideas. They’re not all bad, and they’re not all good. Um, but But on, you know, on balance, I think the guy’s got some very positive ideas. I’m glad- So if you, if you saw a dead raccoon, uh, while you were walking along, you wouldn’t cut the penis off and put it in your pocket to study it later?
Well, probably not, nor would I encourage anyone else to do that. Um, um, but I, but I would tell you this, that anyone who would go to the trouble of doing that- … has a very curious mind.
Dr. Weitz: All right. Um. [00:55:00] Look, he’s posted this, you know, fewer than a dozen, but still very worthwhile peptides on this list that, uh, that I think are gonna become m- more available and- No, hey, that’s great. I’m all for that. I know he’s also, uh… the, uh, under him, the FDA has, um, uh, made it easier to prescribe, um, hormones for w- hormone replacement therapy.
Dr. Renna: Yes. And they’ve taken, you know, they have debunked, um, they’ve debunked the criticisms that have been promoted by the conventional medical community that has discouraged women and men, um, from, from replacing those hormones at a time when- Well, we, we, we, those have been debunked for the many years now, unfortunately.
Dr. Weitz: Well, you and I- That stupid Women’s Health Initiative from 2002 … exactly right. You and I know that. Um, but there are 700,000 medical practitioners in the United States, and I would easily bet that, you know, [00:56:00] 690,000 of them don’t know that. Right. No, I know. I… m- most, the only very small percentage of women, um, get hormone replacement therapy after menopause.
Dr. Renna: Yes. I th- I think it’s only around 5% right now, which I think is a travesty. We both agree. Um, so yeah. So on top of this platform of behavior, you have to be careful, you have to be mindful of your hormonal needs, um, you have to be mindful of your micronutritional needs. Um, and I think that it would be a good idea to pay some attention to Your, um, emotional psychological interfaces, um, that one tip that I gave you about, hey, start separating responsibility from stress and don’t get stressed if you’re on the way to the meeting and you’re gonna be late.
Don’t associate that with stress. Just say, “I’m okay, I’m gonna be late. I’m gonna have lots of other [00:57:00] chances to be on time. I’ll be on time the majority of those times.” Great. Um, just try and separate that stuff. Okay, so that’s the psychol- that’s a healthy psychology of a person who’s going to age better than a person who would not have any of those attributes or, or behavioral characteristics.
Um, what can we do on top of that?
Dr. Weitz: There are treatments that are available, um, but- By the way, what do you think about Rapamycin? Yeah, so- Some people are taking that for longevity purposes. Yeah. And so I, you know, I was, I was gonna describe the tree and talk about the fruit at the top of the tree- Oh, yeah, go ahead … and the fruit at the, at the, at the low-hanging fruit.
Dr. Renna: Um, Rapamycin is certainly a piece of low-hanging fruit. Um, when do you start Rapamycin? What does it do? Why are you taking it? When do you start it? How do you get it? How much do you take? What are the risks? Um, Rapamycin is a drug that has been investigated. Um, it was approved by the FDA a very long time ago, and now it’s in [00:58:00] a generic form.
Um, it’s, it’s also synonymous with a name called Siroli- Sirolimus. Sirolimus, Rapamycin, Rapamune are the same thing This is a drug that was first approved by FDA, I believe, before 1980 to give as an immune suppressant in people who are receiving transplanted organs. Right. In order to suppress the immune system from recognizing and attacking that organ, um, you needed to take pretty significant amount of rapamycin every day.
Um, I think the dosing is like 8 to 12 milligrams, and in some cases 16 to 20 milligrams a day, and you would take it every day. Um, and you would take it as long as you wanted to keep your kidney or your lung. Um, so it was kind of a lifelong commitment to rapamycin. When you take rapamycin over that period of time, it creates problems that it will not create if you take it at very low [00:59:00] doses intermittently.
But it turns out that if you do take rapamycin at low doses, 4 milligrams, 6 milligrams a day, once a week for a period of weeks You influence a pathway inside senescent cells, I’ll come back and explain what a senescent cell is in a moment, that triggers the senescent cell’s dissolution Every cell in your body, every cell type in your body has its own lifespan, and that lifespan is determined by how many times it can replicate before the telomeres at the end of its chromosomes become so short that it can no longer safely separate the chromosomes into two separate cells, and that’s the lifespan of a cell.
Epithelial cells, 124 replications. Neurons, one replication. Um, every cell type has a very different [01:00:00] lifespan. Um, well, once the cell has reached this endpoint where it can no longer divide, it becomes senescent, and it triggers a self-awareness of its senescence that triggers gene expression to create hyperpermeability of the membrane.
That hyperpermeability will secrete toxic substances that the cell would otherwise contain and either detoxify or never let go into the surrounding fluids of the community. So a senescent cell is a cell that can no longer support us, utilizes more energy than it used to when it was productive, and the only thing that it secretes is toxin.
That senescent cell needs to die. The reason it becomes hyperpermeable and starts to release those toxins is so that an immune system cell passing by will recognize it and trigger the mTOR [01:01:00] pathway that will cause it to dissolve itself, completely, um, disappear, kill itself. Well, our immune system…
Remember we woke up on our 30th birthday and everything wasn’t fixed, so a portion of the immune system had to go and look at that and deal with that, and that portion of the immune system that has now grown bigger and bigger and bigger in its responsibilities every day, filling the potholes and f- you know, figuring out why the streetlamps don’t work in our body, that section of the immune system is no longer paying attention to senescent cells.
So our population of senescent cells starts to build up at 30, and it builds up more and more the older we get. These are energy-draining, toxic-producing cells. We wanna kill those cells. Isn’t there a drug that would kill those cells or a herbal substance that will kill those cells? Yes. Rapamycin will kill those cells.[01:02:00]
Four to six milligrams once a week, eight weeks. I would say start at 45 at the, probably at the latest, and take one course of that a year. At 55, start taking two courses of that a year. Um, there’s a natural substance that works very well in conjunction and amplifies rapamycin’s effect called fisetin or fis- fisetin, F-I-S-E-T-I-N Right, comes from strawberries Right.
You take a gram of fisetin three days in a row, two weeks apart. You have completed the project. In 10 weeks, you’ve taken rapamycin for eight weeks, once a week, just once a week. Don’t take it more. Don’t take too much. Um, then you take the f- the fisetin one gram a day, three days in a row, twice, you know, t- two weeks apart.
Great. You have significantly reduced your population of senescent cells. You do that every year from the time you’re [01:03:00] 45 on. You’re gonna have a much smaller population of these toxic energy draining cells when you reach 75 What you wanna do, you, you know, wanna live to be 100. You know, Bryan Johnson wants to be 150.
Um, you wanna live to be 100 What you really wanna do is you wanna be able to drive yourself to your 90th birthday party. 90th. Walk in, blow out 90 candles. If you have 60-year-old pulmonary function at 90, it’ll take you three breaths. So take the three breaths, blow ’em all out. You wanna know everybody who’s there and know who they are and what their relationships are.
You don’t wanna look at somebody and think, “Ah, don’t, don’t I know you?” No. At 90, you wanna be completely sharp and cognitively a- attentive. You wanna know everybody who’s there. You wanna tell everybody you really appreciated them coming [01:04:00] out to celebrate your 90th birthday, and you’re gonna go play golf And you go play golf.
Sounds good. Yeah. That next decade… So the threshold that you said, you know, “Where are we, Chris?” And I said, “We’re firmly planted on a threshold.” That threshold that we’re standing on can see that happen. You can do that behaviorally with smart nutritional supplementation, with the utilization of these, you know, agents like rapamycin, um, or spermidine is a natural substance that does this, the use of fisetin You can see that 90th birthday happening.
Work– You gotta work out, you know? And granted, you need a very functional immune system to grow muscle after you reach the age of 70, and you need more follistatin than myostatin. Um, that’s the whole thing [01:05:00] about the balance of muscle building and muscle strength. Okay, that’s another topic we can talk about at another time, but you can still do it, and you’ll continue to be able to do it as long as you do it consistently until that time.
Dr. Weitz: So it’s about diet, exercise, sleep perspective, hormone replacement, nutritional supplementation, and the smart utilization of things that will slow senescence, slow your de– loss of function over time, um, in an orderly and intelligent fashion All right, great. Um, so, uh, let’s, uh, let’s bring this to a close.
What, uh, w- what would be one more message we wanna leave people with?
Dr. Renna: Be aware of the present. Be aware of the present. Think about the s- the scope and panorama of every day. Spend [01:06:00] 30 seconds being grateful just before you go to sleep and stop yourself from thinking about your tomorrow’s tasks, and spend 30 seconds the next morning when you wake up and you realize, “Oh, my alarm’s gone off. I gotta go to work now,” or, “I get to go to work now,” looking at it differently. Um, 30 seconds.
What am I grateful for? You know what? I’m grateful for this warm bed. I wish I could stay in it. I’m grateful for this, you know, ambient temperature. I’m grateful for the hot water. I’m grateful for a toilet that flushes. I’m grateful for the oatmeal I’m gonna eat. Okay, that’s, that’s enough. Spend five seconds, um, appreciating your life so that you don’t end up living it and not experiencing it.
Dr. Weitz: There you go. That’s a great message. So how can, um, those listening to this, if they want to get a hold of you, how can they contact you or seek out your help?
Dr. Renna: Lifespanmedicine.com.
Dr. Weitz: All right. Great.
Dr. Renna: Thank you so much, Dr. Weitz. It’s a real pleasure, Ben. See you later.
Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five-star ratings and review. As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine. If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition and wanna prevent chronic problems and want to promote longevity, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111, and we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine. And I will talk to everybody next week.
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