A Guest On Ben Greenfield's Podcast, Dr. Cook Speaks On The Future Of Cutting-Edge Regenerative Medicine Therapies & More

 On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, this is something amazing that's gonna happen. Science is gonna improve, and then it's not gonna be rich people. It's gonna be everybody that's gonna get access, that immune response if there was already something else going on. Okay. Can be more intense and you have all these other treatments, you know, we're fine.

Alpha one and monoclonal antibodies. And ivermectin again, like I still, maybe I'm not getting it, but why would we need to get vaccinated? Health performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

This is a big deal. I have changed my mind about essential amino acids. That's right. You heard me forget everything I've ever told you about the so-called eaas. Okay. Maybe, maybe I'm being a little bit dramatic here, but now that I have your attention, there's actually some new information in the realm of essential amino acids that I'm pretty darn stoked to share with you.

Uh, my company, Keon, we recently embarked on a huge undertaking. We worked with a third party independent research firm. We conducted a meta-analysis of all the most recent amino research out there, and lo and behold, we learned a thing or two about our ratios of our amino acids, as well as the ratios of every single product out there.

And most of them, including ours, were not optimized. As good as they could be optimized. Now, I just released a banger of an article about all of this research, and you can go check that out in a link that I'll put in the show notes for this podcast. Gonna, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna summarize it for you here.

Okay. There's an overwhelming body of research that pointed to one amino acid in particular for the incredible effect that it has on muscle protein synthesis, muscle repair, muscle recovery, and a whole heck of a lot more. And that amino acid is leucine. So that's the first thing that I did was I adjusted the leucine content.

I bumped up the dose of leucine, then I added histidine. Now histidine, the long-standing belief behind that is that your body could create histamine on its own in the presence of the other eaas, the other essential amino acids. Well, it turns out that idea was based on an outdated method of testing. And at Keon, we want to go for the best of the best and the most up-to-date stuff.

So when we looked at the new research, we used something called the tracer method, which observes amino acids directly inside muscle. And we now know that the manufacturing of histamine inside the body isn't as efficient as it was once thought, and isn't as efficient as the idea that most other supplement manufacturers are operating off of.

So, The, the last thing that we found in addition to adjusting our leucine and histidine content and ratios is that, as you may know, amino acid supplements aren't exactly well known to be tasty. They kind of fall into the same category as ketone esters and incredibly efficacious, not super tasty. So the key on aminos we had before kind of cracked the code on making them more delicious than the average amino acids.

But being the overachievers that we are, we actually went ahead and improved the flavors even more so our new cool lime and mixed berry powders. I, I've been internally testing them, I guess literally and, and figuratively, and they kicked the. But off of any amino I've ever tasted the flavor scientists at Keon, uh, they, they spent months tinkering with only the best natural ingredients.

We worked with some of the best formulators out there. We really kicked those flavors up a notch for the cool lime and the mixed berry. Not only that, but I've gotten some feedback from some people that the tablets we've been using kind of leave a chalky taste in people's mouths. So we figured out how to also encapsulate the tablets in a capsule, an easy to swallow capsule made of a hundred percent natural plant-based ingredients rather than the tablet.

Okay. So we just, the histidine, we just, the leucine, we made the flavor of cool alignment amino is way better and we change the tablet into a capsule and the all new Keon aminos, like I've been experimenting with these new ratios. You thought the other ams were good, these things are even better. And nobody else in the industry has even touched what we've done as far as the ratios and the flavor.

So if you haven't yet tried essential amino acids, if you're already using them, but you want the new upgraded version that we're doing at Keon, uh, you're gonna love this new formula. So you can get them@getkeon.com slash ben Greenfield. That's get K i o n.com/ben Greenfield. So check these new Bad Boys out.

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Matt, how's, how's it feel to be back on the show? Dude, it feels amazing. You, you don't even know. You don't even know how excited I am. A cuz we get to record today's podcast, walking in the beautiful Bay area, sunshine, and, I don't know, what are we? Los Los Gatos Trail. Los Gatos. We're in the Los Gatos Creek Trail.

Does that mean the cat? Yeah, the Cats ahha. Nailed it. Mountain Lion. That's right. Everybody had no clue. I speak French, but now they know the Los Gatos trail. And, um, we, Matt, Matt, if, if you're not familiar with Matt and Matt, you're, you're gonna have to just bl here for a moment. Will I talk about who you are?

Um, Matt's been on the podcast five times before. Uh, he's a regenerative medicine physician who I hooked up with like four years ago when somebody had introduced us. We wound up at a dinner together and, uh, as a matter of fact, what we talked about most of the time during dinner was ketamine, which is like a super hot topic now, and everybody's in the ketamine.

But I was so intrigued and we had so many other things we wanted to talk about. I wound up just like randomly going to your office. I happened to have my mics with me cuz I was in town. Anyways, she records some podcasts. I brought my mics. We report, recorded a podcast. You gave me a ketamine infusion, which was interesting cause I'd never experienced that particular, uh, uh, drug I guess before.

And then since then, we have done, and I'll, I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes. If you guys go to ben greenfield fitness.com/cook, that's Matt's last name. If you go to ben greenfield fitness.com/cook, then I'll put all the show notes there. Uh, for today's episode as well as links to all the other episodes I've done with Matt.

Cause we've done episodes on ketamine, we've done episodes on regenerative medicine, plasmapheresis, young blood exchange. Like we, we've talked about a lot of stuff. Matter of fact, I think we should end this podcast right now cause we have nothing left tos talk about Right. Easy. That makes today easy.

Yeah. And uh, so I, I happen to be in San Jose, uh, and you'll know why here shortly I'll explain it to you guys, but Matt and I have had a good time. Matt played tennis for the first time in 20 years. Yesterday. Yeah. I've won, almost won two games, but I did win one. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yep. And, uh, and, and so we've been playing tennis.

We've been cooking up buffalo bison yak. We made some rocky mountain oysters last night, which are, for those of you I'm familiar with the term testicles, uh, dredge those in in egg. We dredged our testicles. If no one has dredged their testicles before you, you must experience a good testicle dredging. So we did that.

Uh, with, with like some coconut flour and some egg and some olive oil, we had lobster tacos. So we basically spend most of our time geeking out, enjoying the sunshine and cooking amazing food, so, which was super awesome. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, um, and so Matt's clinic here is called Biore Reset Medical.

It's in, uh, uh, near San Jose. I guess, what, what town are you technically in? Campbell. Campbell, yeah. So Campbell down here in the Bay Area, people fly in from all the world to see Matt and get treatments done by him, and that's actually one of the reasons I'm here. So, Matt, do you want me to lay out the history for you of Yeah, tell me of why I'm here.

Okay. So this will be really interesting for, for everybody listening in. So like, uh, Uh, six years ago, five or six years ago, I was teaching at a yoga retreat. And no, I was not the guy in the stretchy pants taking people through down dog. I was there at this retreat. It was actually one of the early, early room go retreats, which still exists this day.

There's actually one coming up in Austin, Texas pretty soon. Uh, and so at this room retreat, you do like kettle bells and ice baths and yoga and meditation and, and I was there to do like nutritional consulting with people. Do q and as. Kinda like be the guy on staff who people could just like, like have a round during the entire event, ask questions to, and two nights in I got stung by a scorpion in the middle of the night.

Literally like felt the, felt the sting saw the scorpion scuttle into the corner of the room. I wound up killing it later with a glass mason jar. I caught it and, and beheaded it. So I got my revenge. It was a tiny little scorpion, which are. Kind of some of the more dangerous variety from what I understand.

And, um, this, this retreat had me all the way up on top of like a, like a cottage at the top of a hill, super far away, like a half mile, not super far, but far enough to where if you're stung and you need medical assistance, it was a little difficult. I had no radio, I had no cell phone reception, nobody to talk to.

So I laid there r in pain for like two hours feeling and watching my knee swell up basically almost to the size of like a volleyball. And I had no first aid anything with me. So I eventually just at about 5:00 AM crawled down to the main resort area and there was like a medicine woman there and she had.

Uh, fig poultice. She had some essential oils. I believe she had frankincense was one thing that she used as a topical. Kind of nursed my knee for a little while, but the next five days I was, I was just hobbling. I was useless. I was pissed cuz I couldn't surf and take part in, in some of the more vigorous activities at the resort.

And ever since then, that knee has been super buggy. It's as though some of the muscles got deactivated and quit protecting and supporting the cartilage in the knee the way that they were supposed to. And, and the knee just got progressively like low, low level pain all the time. Like a three on a scale of one to 10, you know, playing tennis, cutting, you know, playing noon basketball, whatever.

There's like, there was always, and especially during like Spartan racing and triathlon, just like that low level bearable, but back of the mind kind of pain. And then what happened was, uh, I saw you, Matt, and we talked about some of the cool protocols that you do like placental matrix and like ozone and a lot of these regenerative medicine therapies that we've done previous podcasts on.

And you would, you would do injections on it occasionally, and the pay wouldn't subside for a while, but then kind of come back. It was like a temporary fix. And so then what happened was I decided to get stem cells injected into the knee about three months ago. So I went to a, to a regenerative medicine doc, not you, but a, a a, a different person who, uh, who was nearer to nearer to my hometown cuz I didn't have time to get down to San Jose.

And the knee was really starting to bug me. So I got these stem cells injection in my knee. And the doc also did kinda like everything in the kitchen sink, right? He used placental matrix. He used ozone and he used exosomes, you know, all, all kind of like darlings of the regenerative medicine industry and.

Literally by that night, the knee was swollen back, like as big as it had been, swollen with that scorpion sting, massive swelling, inflammation, redness. And it, it, it was so concerning that I'm like, okay, I need to get an MRI on my knee. I actually called you and you, you helped me schedule an mri. So I went and got an MRI and I had to, like, I went to one hospital, they took three hours of me laying inside that MRI tube.

And for anybody who's never got an MRI before, you're literally just inside a tube with this loud hammering, you know, there's no phone, there's no tv. It just, it was like laying there and they kept trying over and over again to get pictures and they couldn't. Eventually they came in and they apologized.

They gave me a $10 gift card to Red Robin, which is fantastic cuz everybody knows how much I love cheesy girly fries or I don't even know what you get at Red Robin. But anyways, so. I, I got my, my gift card and they rescheduled me for a second mri. I went to another hospital, different MRI machine cuz they thought maybe it was their machine.

Same thing. It was something about the swelling or the oddness of that knee. They couldn't, couldn't get good pictures. They finally, Got, got images of the knee and those images indicated of course, no surprises here. Massive swelling, effusion, what's called a baker cyst in the back of the knee. Um, explain to people what a baker cyst is real quick, Matt.

So if the knee joint starts to get really inflamed, then there's a potential space between the hamstring muscle and the calf muscle and fluid can leak back. And so basically fluid leaks into the back of the knee. And if you kind of imagine what a baker used to do, they would lean into where they a big, uh, bull and then throw their hands in to do the dough.

Yeah. And they would hyperextend their knees. And so they were famous for having fluid leak out the back. Oh my gosh. Because of that, I didn't know that. Unusual. I thought it was named after the Dr. Baker, Dr. Tommy John surgery or something. Yeah. No. Okay, so it's, it was actually baker's and so you get this, this pocket of swelling?

Yeah. Like in the back of the knee. It's like a palpable swelling. And, and even after those, in the past three months, I've had that cyst and the knee drained three separate times and literally pulled 60 to 90 ccs of fluid out of my knee, like nasty yellow fluid. And, uh, this MRI showed, not only was that occurring, but it showed, uh, degeneration of the cartilage on the back of my patella and degeneration on the surface of my femur, probably because I'd just been using my knee so funny for like five years that it had really taken a beating in a way.

It wasn't really, uh, intended to take or in a pattern it wasn't intended to take. So anyways, I talked to Matt and he said, alright, I got some, I got some cutting edge shit we can throw at this. Let's, let's go ahead and tackle this thing once and for all. So now I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna shut up now that I've, I've given you guys the history and by the way, today's podcast, Matt and I decided we don't only wanna talk to you about the latest, kinda like regenerative joint therapies cuz there's some really cool, minimally invasive stuff you can do now.

But Matt's got some super interesting and surprising takes on covid and vaccination and we're gonna talk about those too. So, so sit tight cuz that's coming up also. But anyways, so I, um, I flew down here and uh, my first question for you Matt, is why the heck do you think my knee, after all those cool cutting edge things got injected into it got worse and not better?

What's, what's, what's the mechanism? Cause this will be in for based who's considering stem cells. So then this is an interesting one that I've discovered, which is, is that when you throw several techniques that all have a regenerative and healing potential, the synergy of them sometimes can be a little too much and you can get swelling.

And the other doctor I have kind of infinite respect for and is amazing. So, but sometimes people can have a very exaggerated response. And the interesting thing is you've had a moderate amount of inflammation in that joint for quite a while, you think. And so then you kind of got a little bit unlucky by creating this super crazy immune response.

And interestingly, because you've had real long-term inflammation in the joint and it's kinda like, it is interesting to hear the story because, you know, I, I injected you with placental matrix, which was a pretty simple. Five minute procedure that I've done a couple times that's that's literally derived from a placenta.

Yeah. Yeah. And so then that's a, uh, that's a, a very safe and easy and very anti-inflammatory procedure. But I think when I did that before, it only lasted a month or two. Yeah. Yeah. Everything worked but works temporarily and that's cuz that joint was, was so profoundly inflamed. But then the other problem is, is that you have edema in your bone marrow and if your bone marrow hurts, your knee's gonna hurt and sticking something into the knee joint is not gonna heal that bone marrow cuz the bone marrow is on the other side of the bone.

Does that make sense? It makes total sense. But why would the knee have acted like it got hit by a semi-truck when you'd think stem cells and exosomes and ozone and placental matrix all at once would just be like a miracle infusion cocktail into the knee. You would think that, but it tr often if the joints are already inflamed, it's kind of.

Part of the way that all of these things do, their healing is by creating a little bit of inflammation. And that inflammation creates a healing response. And so if you combine four things that all have a little potential for inflammation and then you add them all up together, one plus one plus one plus one might be 10.

And in the setting of a joint that's already inflamed. And interestingly, you know, the whole scorpion thing's. Interesting. You know this, this has been long term inflamed. So you were set up for a exaggerated immune response. Mm-hmm. And then now what we have to do is calm that down. And so then interestingly what we did is normally we don't inject a lot of steroids.

Mm-hmm. But I had them inject some steroids. That's right. So three weeks ago I went in for a corticosteroid injection into the knee, which was probably the first time in years that for a few days I had almost no pain. And the swelling, which came back a few days later, not quite as bad, but the swelling subsided after that steroid injection.

And that's because of the anti-inflammatory activity of the steroids. Right? Right. And so then this is, I'm gonna telegraph later in our conversation, but so then steroids turn inflammation down and so then that they can turn inflammation down in a setting of covid or in a setting of an exaggerated immune response in a joint.

Okay. So pretty much any inflammatory condition steroids can help out with that. But are, are there, are there downsides to just using that as a long-term strategy? Like every time something starts to hurt, just get injected with steroids? Yeah. Let's say you're, you're like an athlete, you know, playing through your season.

Steroids are hard on connective tissue. And so then, like for example, even in my literature in the anesthesia literature, steroids can be helpful for back pain, but a lot of times, Couple years later, people are worse. So they're a bandaid and a bandaid that we love to use in certain situations, but not all the time.

Okay. Alright, so. Now I, I come here and you're like, we have this brand new protocol, which is really interesting because three days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article about all sorts of new cutting edge, minimally invasive protocols that are allowing people to get remarkable joint healing without an invasive surgery.

Now that article, which I'll link to in the show notes, if you go to ben greenfield fitness.com/cook, it included, talk about a couple of drugs that are currently, I think, under trials that show great promise. I, I forget the, the names of these. Do you recall those two drugs? So, so then what? These are basically early drugs that are gonna help promote cartilage cells and help adhesion of cartilage cells so that they can stick together and, and create a more functional joint.

Essentially. Okay. Alright. Got it. But then the article went on to describe almost like this concept that you can, and you might be able to, to describe the protocol, but I'll, I'll give kinda the preview of the way I understand it. It's called like an intra osseous procedure where they drill little holes in the surface of the cartilage and then put something in those holes that patches it up, almost like fertilizing a lawn to induce new cartilage growth.

That's kinda like the basic idea I got from the Wall Street Journal article. Is that right? Right. And so, so then there, there's, there's two components to this. One is, What's called micro fracture, and then one is an intra osseous procedure. Micro fracture is something that orthopedic surgeons do, and I used to do anesthesia for this all the time.

And so then with that, they stick scopes in a knee and then they look and they see a defect in the cartilage, and then they. Take an instrument and then they poke holes. And when they poke holes, they poke holes from the joint into the bone marrow. And the bone marrow is in the middle of the bone basically.

And then when they do that, you see bone marrow leak into the joint and their goal is to start to heal and let that bone marrow start to come. And the bone, the bone marrow is not like bone marrow, they're getting from somewhere else. It's just leaking from right there in the joint as a response to the micro fracturing.

Right. And the goal of that is to start to heal that defect in the cartilage. If that doesn't work, then they try to do something called an oats procedure where they'll put a little graft to fix that cartilage defect. What we're gonna do is we're actually gonna stick a needle into the back of your hip.

Uh, into Aurelia Crest and we're gonna pull some bone marrow out and then we're gonna spin a needle into your bone marrow and then inject that bone marrow to try to heal. Because right now you've got, uh, inflamed bone marrow edema situation going on in your femur. And what's happening with that is that's causing a lot of, uh, pain and dysfunction.

And then that's, that inflammation and lack of the bone marrow serves as like a nutrition source for the cartilage. Mm-hmm. So we're hoping that by doing this, and this is probably the first in a series of several steps to try to, uh, create a healthy bone marrow and then start to rebuild cartilage there.

Now for someone listening in who hears about all these needles and everything, I called this minimally invasive. Now talk to me about like, how big, like are you making incisions? Are you using like ultrasound, you know, like digital imaging to guide the needles into where you want them to drill the little holes and inject the bone marrow?

Or how's this working from an invasiveness standpoint? So there's, there's two ways to go. One is more invasive and one's more minimally invasive. And so we're gonna start with more minimally invasive, just to see how you do the minimally invasive thing that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, Spin a needle into the bone marrow in the hip, and that's just a relatively small needle.

And so then that's gonna be very comfortable for you. I'm gonna pull some bone marrow out. That sounds, it sounds comfortable spinning a needle into my hip. Well, you're gonna be under the influence of Ed Ketamine and nitrous oxide. What's ed? Ed's a benzo, benzodiazepine. It's kind of, uh, kind of similar to Valium and it's a very incredible anti-anxiety medication that I used every day for 12 years in the operat.

15 years in the operating room. All right. So, so if we play, like, uh, if we play, uh, uh, uh, you know, like Trivial Pursuit after this protocol, I'm gonna be a little bit useless probably. Okay. But, but it sounds to me like in terms of, I. Compared to, let's say, a scoping or like a, you know, like a resurfacing.

This is, this is incredibly less invasive, right? And so then what I'm gonna do is we're gonna look and we're gonna find a spot where we can spin a, uh, needle into the bone marrow of the knee. And we're gonna spin right by where your, um, bone mar edema is, and by that defect. And then we're gonna inject bone marrow from the hip to heal the bone marrow in the knee.

Now, let's say somebody's listening, they got elbow issues, knee issues, joint issues, et cetera. And they're like that, that sounds dope. I would, I would rather try that before surgery. Is this a common protocol? Like are there doctors now that, that do this? Or how, how new is this type of thing? There's a lot of people that are starting to do this and I think doing a, a great job with it.

And so there's people all over the country that are doing this. Um, the question for them is gonna be, do I ha do you have inflammation in your bone marrow or do you just have a problem with your joint or do you have a problem with some of the nerves and arteries going to the joint or the fascia? So then basically what you're gonna wanna do is have somebody look and try to figure all of that out.

And would that be an MRI or would that be an ultrasound or how, how, when you say have somebody look, how, how, what do you think is the gold standard way to look for something like that? So the gold, the, the only good way to look for bone marrow edema is with an mri. And then the best way to look at everything else is with ultrasound.

Okay. And that's a lot of what you do in your office. We've talked in the past about, Speaking of the nerves, another really cool protocol you do. And I've literally seen people sit up from your procedure table who have had like tennis elbow for years, or golfer's elbow or chronic issues that they thought were related to joint degradation.

And with that nerve hydro dissection, uh, which we have a whole podcast on, I, we won't, we don't get into it now cause we've literally talked for like an hour and a half about that before. Sit up and feel like, like I, I saw one guy sit up and start crying on your table. Cause we were just like gone. Now question for you compared to your, your left knee or your, your right knee.

Do you feel like you don't activate your V m O as much on the affected side? Well, that's the thing. Um, you know, Ben Patrick, very popular, uh, guy right now in the fitness industry has a program called Knees over Toes, right? To strengthen the, the VM o, the tibials, uh, and, uh, some of the toe muscles.

Fantastic program that gets really great results in people who have a lot of muscle deactivation due to poor biomechanics or muscle D training. You know, I, I have a master's degree in biomechanics. I've worked with a ton of people specifically to strengthen areas around their particular joints. I have paid extreme, like for the past five years, particularly my VMO training, my utilization, even in the past few months of Ben Patrick's Knee Over TOES program, my use of electrical muscle stimulation to keep stabilizing musculature like the V M O activated has been honestly, Probably about the level of what I'd be doing if I were working with a physical therapist.

In addition to that, tons of deep tissue work, it band work, like really keeping the fascia nice and supple using lots of traditional anti-inflammatories. You know, Turo, saccharide and all that stuff helps. But it's one of those things where at the end of the day, and I'm sure other people have experienced this, you know, there's something deeper going on that that stuff seems like it's helping and that the problem would be a lot worse without.

But that still isn't providing like lasting relief. Does that make sense? Yeah. So then we, there's a, I'm gonna examine you and look at the femoral and saphenous nerves and operator nerves, and there's a chance I may do a little bit of hydrocision with this procedure. Mm-hmm. And so then step two would be potentially to do a bigger procedure where you stick a needle into the hip, pull out a little bone dowel.

And then spin a needle into the knee and then stick that bone dowel in and that bone dowel becomes a graft that good bone marrow can grow on. Mm-hmm. But I think that's a little bit bigger of a procedure. And if, is that some of like the expanded stem cell procedures that the They do. Is that something totally different?

Cuz I know in Mexico you've done like expanded stem cells before. Right. So then the, the, so this, these are just treatments that are taking bone marrow from the hip into the bone marrow and the need to fix it. The other thing you can do, and I've done with quite a bit of good result is to take, uh, P R P, which is just platelet rich plasma that you got from the blood.

Yes. And you can spin a needle into bone marrow and P R P can be quite effective for bone marrow edema. By comparison, what happens with stem cells? Most stem cells that people in all stem cells that you can get in the United States are just basically some stem cells that were harvested when somebody had a baby from around the umbilical cord.

For the most part, those have some potential. The downside that would be like non autologous, umbilical, amniotic, yes. Uh, placental, uh, jelly, et cetera. Yeah. The other thing that you can do is you can actually take. Uh, culture expanded stem cells. These are stem cells that are grown in a lab and so they're very healthy, they have a little bit more regenerative potential, and then you can put them in the joint.

The only thing is just like what happened with your stem cells in your knee, they can cause quite an inflammatory response. And so that's on my roadmap for you because this is gonna be a pretty substantial problem. And so I think I'm gonna treat it again, but, um, I wanna make sure that the knee really calms down before I do that.

And it's not an, an exaggerated inflammatory response, and it's illegal to really like expand stem cells in the US So a lot of those protocols need to be done internationally. Right. Exactly. That's why we take people to Mexico. Mexico, you, you, you, as part of your practice have like a setup in Mexico and you take people down there who want to get like the full on expanded stem cell treatment, right?

Yeah. We do that all the time. Okay. Interesting. All right, here we go. Free ground beef for life. For life. ButcherBox, just let me know that they are now doing two pounds of grassfed, grass-finished beef, that that's all, uh, harvested with a great deal of care by them about the lives of the animals, the livelihood of farmers.

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From my friends at Organifi RI folks, it is officially happening. It is officially happening, and there's still room left. There is an event that I will be at in Austin, Texas, October 7th through the ninth, 2021. Uh, it's called The Gathering. It's put on by my friend. Do Joe, sorry, I'm gonna start this one over.

All right, folks, this is it. It's happening. There's an event in Austin, Texas called The Gathering. It's put on by my friend, Joe DeStefano, uh, runs this amazing event called, and the dates for this are coming up quick, October 7th through the ninth. 2021. Uh, so this October, a whole bunch of people from around the globe are gonna join a team of experts and athletes and practitioners and instructors on a pristine Texas ranch for one of the most.

Intimate wellness experiences in the world. You can choose to stay in one of their coveted on property suites You can attend as a commuter. Either way, prepare yourself for a pretty extraordinary experiences. It's three full days of immersive wellness programming, chef prepared meals that are intimate, organic, and amazing.

Uh, there will be everything from not only those organic, vibrant, paleo inspired meals each day. All day access to their signature coffee bar, keto friendly wines from Dry Farm Wines, biohacking with things like hyperbaric oxygen, infrared, and p emf, along with instructions on how to use all that stuff.

Classes and everything from meditation to kettle bells to ice baths. Uh, there's yoga there, there's a whole bunch of other speakers in addition to me and Joe Joe's wife, who's a chef. My wife will be teaching there. My kids will be there. Dr. Chris Shade, founder and CEO of Quicksilver Scientific will be there.

Dr. Melissa and Dr. Jason Saunders, experts in hyperbaric oxygen therapy will be there. Garretts Peter, who's also been a podcast guest of mine who specializes in electrical muscle stimulation. He'll be there. Um, Mike Brooks will be there. Uh, he's an anti-aging. Sorry, start that over. Mike Burkins will be there.

He's a board certified anti-aging and functional medicine expert. The list goes on and on. Uh, and there is still time to get in. Just go to rga life.com/the-gathering. I'll also put a link in the show notes, so it's rga, r u nga life.com/the gathering. And you're in.

What I'm gonna do, and, and Matt, you and I talked about this a little bit is we'll kind of do like a part two later on for you guys where we talk about what's going on with this whole realm of regenerative medicine for joints. But I wanted to give you guys a preview of the type of things that a regenerative medicine doc will do that's kind of unique.

And in my case, I'll be able to give you guys updates and of course, related to these type of joint protocols. If you go to, um, to ben greenfield fitness.com/cook, you can leave your. Comments and your, and your questions and your feedback there and, uh, and, and, and pipe in with your own thoughts or, or, or things that you're wondering about this type of protocol.

Mm-hmm. And then remember we're at the very beginning of a super amazing journey about joints and bone marrow edema and this stuff type of stuff. You know, there's protocols where people are putting human growth hormone into joints. There's actually some protocols where you can put testosterone into joints.

There's protocols where you can put peptides of different kinds into joints. Just, I encourage people to be careful and not go crazy in combining. In general, almost all of these things do better when they're done individually, but the future I think is. Super exciting in terms of eventually preventing joint replacement.

That's the goal. Okay, got it. So this is gonna be super cool and, and I, I just had to kind of get, get a little news flash out to you guys about regenerative medicine and it's really interesting because kind of to pivot here big time, uh, you know, when, when I was talking with Matt a couple nights ago over whatever we were eating, bison ribeye, or he's got all sorts of stuff in his freezer.

We've been, we've been smoking up on the Traeger. Um, he started talking about, uh, about covid and vaccinations as people inevitably talk about these days when they're huddled over dinner. And, you know, Matt's interesting cause he has an interesting take on it. I wanted him to share with you because a lot of times, um, I, I guess what you see in the functional medicine space in many cases in naturopathy and what we call might call alternative medicine or you know, non-standard medicine, Sometimes, um, you'll see a real, real black and white approach.

And, and in many cases in the alternative health community or kind of like the naturopathic community or the functional medicine community, people are like, um, basically vaccinations are horrific and they're unproven and come with a lot of potential side effects. You'll see some people focused on just targeting a specific high risk portion of the population, such as the elderly and the immunocompromised, which I've always thought seems to be a reasonable approach.

And, um, then people will propose a lot of alternative remedies. You'll hear people talk about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and, and, you know, that's, that's honestly kind of what I did when I personally had covid and it worked out for me and I never did actually get vaccinated yet. I'm not, I'm not anti-vax, it's just I, I haven't been comfortable yet with some of the safety data that I've seen.

Uh, and, and so I just, I, I haven't gotten it. Not because I'm against the idea of vaccinated. I'm vaccinated. My kids are vaccinated. They use a, we did an extended scheduled vaccination with my children. We chose, not all the vaccines, but some of them, particularly those that we felt comfortable getting for international travel.

I don't know if I do things differently if I go back over again, but regardless, you know, I'm not anti-vax. I'm one of those guys who's super open-minded and loves to just look at the research and see what's working and what's not. So kind of. Perked up my ears when you said that you had, you had some interesting takes on, on covid and vaccination.

So, um, where do you wanna start, Matt? Okay, let's, uh, let's start with the vaccination. And so then, you know, it's, it's super interesting because for me, you know, my, all the people that I love for the most part in my practice told me we're gonna get vaccinated. And a lot of 'em were on the fence. And I talked to 'em and I talked a bunch of them into it.

And then as a, and you talked to a bunch of the people, your patients Yeah. Your employees cetera, into getting the vaccination. So I've talked 100% of my employees into getting vaccinated. And it turns out if you're vaccinated as a healthcare provider, your patients are less likely to get covid if they come see you.

And interestingly, You know, I live with Barb, who's immunocompromised. She had a kidney pancreas transplant. Mm-hmm. Your, your CEO at Biocept Medical is CEO definitely falls under the category of an immunocompromised person. And so, and they, the, of, of all people who have a super hard time with Covid, they're almost at the top of the list and she's taking medication that blunts her immune system.

But it turns out, if you're vaccinated as a healthcare provider and there's data on this, you're less likely to come home if you got exposed to Covid at work and in fact somebody in your family. Okay. Are you, were you concerned, I'm curious what vaccination you got and what kind of concerns you had or do have about what a lot of people are talking about, which is the lack of what seems to be long-term safety data on the current vaccination options for Covid.

Okay, so this is like a one in a hundred year pandemic. It's, um, Uh, and so we're on a very accelerated schedule with the vaccines. I chose the, the mRNA platform and I chose the Pfizer. Moderna and Pfizer are both the mRNA vaccines. And so then basically, you know, I've got quite a bit of experience with the immune system and immune problems and stuff like this.

And what the mRNA vaccines are is it's some mRNA that encodes for the spike protein. And so when you get the vaccine, that vaccine has mRNA and it's wrapped in a little casing to kind of protect it because it's pretty unstable, which is why it need to be kept cold. That's why they gotta keep it super cold.

So then that gets absorbed into themselves and they take, and they put a little bit of spike protein on. That only lasts for about two weeks. But when that happens, it stimulates your immune system and it stimulates actually your whole immune system. So it stimulates the B cells that make antibodies, but it also stimulates the T cells.

And then what happens as a result of that is you create an immune response. The immune response is not as intense as with the other vaccines, and so you gotta get two of 'em. So you get one. Creates a little bit of an immune response. You wait somewhere between a couple weeks and a month and you get a second one.

Now a lot of people are concerned about the idea of mRNA, the idea of that somehow affecting your genetics or causing longer term exposure of the spike protein or many of the side effects that we seem to be seeing with some people who have gotten vaccinated are, are those fears unfounded or, or is there risk in terms of like genetically altering the human body when you use something like mRNA?

Okay. That, that is an, a fantastic question. Um, mRNA does not get encoded into your, your dna. So mRNA is just an instruction to print a protein. So that mRNA vaccine is gonna live for a few weeks inside you. It's gonna instruct cells to make a protein. It's gonna cause your immune system to go, wait a minute.

Let's make some antibodies and let's focus on this and let's memorize this. Then you're gonna make a bunch of antibodies and we test to see if you make antibodies in our clinic. But then what happens is the, you create some long living cells that now know how to recognize that those are the B cells and the T-cells.

Yeah. The long living ones are like plasma cells. Okay. And then the long living ones are gonna live for the next 10 years. And so then they're just hanging out in your bone marrow. They're happy and they're just waiting. But if another horrific covid came around, In two years, your immune system is kind of primed and it's gonna be able to react to it better.

If that's the case, why are people who get like the Delta variant who are already vaccinated having issues? Uh, it like, do we have to get a new vaccine every single time a new variant pops up and, and like eventually be getting like 10 different vaccines? So then what's get, what happens is the, you know about like antibiotics, people give use drugs, they use drugs like antibiotics to treat a bacterial infection.

And you, we've had antibiotics for 90 years and they, they're the. Bacteria slowly over a long course of time start to have, uh, an ability to out-maneuver the, the drugs. Viruses on the other hand can rapidly change. And so then, but still if you've been vaccinated, we still have some protection against Delta.

And so most of the people that we see that are getting Delta, if they were immunized, they have a much less intense covid, less likely to go to the hospital, and they may have. A little bit of a breakthrough infection, but it's nothing like what would've happened to them if they hadn't been vaccinated.

And are there any concerns about adjuvants in the vaccines? And I realize that's a difficult question because I believe there's adjuvants in like every vaccine that we're getting these days. That's, that's a, you know, that's a platform a lot of the anti-vaccine community stands upon is, you know, aluminum and albumins, like all these, all these other things.

Like is there any concern about, you know, cuz you and I, I know you, I know you're aware of this because you don't like the concept of sous v cooking, which we were talking about last night, and the idea that plastics from those bags might degrade. You know, that's one of the reasons I use the, the stature brand.

Uh, higher grade, uh, it's not a plastic, but it's, it's, it's kind of similar to it, but withstands heat. But I know, I know you're aware of and concerned about things like microplastics in the human body, or toxins or metals. You know, you got molecule air filters in your house, et cetera. So with you being as aware of, of all that is, is it for you kind of an issue where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks of any adjuvants in the vaccine?

Okay, so we're, we're on mRNA and then we'll go to the other ones next. There's no adjuvants in the mRNA vaccines. Okay. And so then for me on the, the good side, this could be a downside, but on the good side, the mRNA vaccines I think come into the body. The mRNA is very unstable, so it's gonna get broken down and be gone, but it does create an immune response and it creates some cells that are gonna be ready to protect you.

And I think long-term there's no adjuvant, there's no anything in there that's gonna be triggering any long-term thing. I think what you're getting at, and I'll kinda, maybe we talk about this a little bit. What happens is when you create a big immune response, just like what happened in your knee, that immune response, if there was already something else going on, okay.

Can be more intense. So if you already had a scorpion bite when you had a big immune response in your knee, and it could have been an scorpion bite or something else, you're more likely to have a bigger reaction to a vaccine. And so then yeah, so the, the, the classic ones is we see if somebody's gonna have a crazy reaction to the covid vaccine.

Almost always. Those people, we test them and they either have mold Lyme, one of another handful of viruses like Epstein Barr, herpes six cmv. Really? Oh yeah. Not a lot of people are talking. So these stealth co-infections that people have, which are quite common mold, Lyme, heavy metals, mycotoxins, et cetera.

If you get vaccinated, you're far more likely to experience these deleterious side effects. Yeah, because what happens is those populations of people, and that's a lot of the anti-VAX community, have, you know, I've taken care of tons of those patients because, Often they had a vaccine that triggered a crazy reaction.

That was because their immune system was in 10, outta 10 stress. And so when your immune system's in 10 outta 10 stress, or even seven outta 10 stress, and then you get something that taps on the shoulder of your immune system and says, let's go. We gotta make antibodies and turn the immune system on.

Sometimes that can be a little too intense. If you don't have a way to turn it off, then you can be stuck in kind of an inflammation cycle, kinda like you were in, in your knee. But the same thing can happen in your entire body. Okay. So do you think it's prudent for someone who was gonna get like, let's say, an mRNA vaccine to do a screening beforehand for some of these stealth co-infections as as annoying as that might be, and as big of an extra step as that might be?

Wouldn't you say that'd be like a prudent approach, like in terms of best practices, you know, It's intriguing, but the testing for all of that stuff is pretty expensive. And if you don't have a clinical indication for that, I probably wouldn't do that. And in general, what happens is the other side of the equation, which is a little bit of a problem, is that.

You know, COVID was somewhat, I would say somewhat, and don't take this the wrong way, somewhat infectious. Okay? But the Delta variant is like massively more infectious. You know, they, they say it's, it's, it's more contagious than smallpox. And so what's gonna happen is as this virus continues to grow and replicate in primarily the unvaccinated population, what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a potential for it to get dramatically worse.

And we don't know when that's gonna happen. And so I think from an immune perspective, if you can, I think the best course probably is to think about getting vaccinated. But then I think what's gonna happen is, and then know that there's gonna be an evolution of this stuff, but the platform's pretty good.

And we may end up needing boosters. For the next couple of years, even once a year, but that may not be that bad of a thing. And then we end may end up with a very robust immunity against Coronaviruses from kind of a vaccination program. Now, similar to the already existing argument pre covid about, for example, you know, amping up a child's immune system with, you know, vitamin D and um, and, and, you know, feeding them like a West Aric diet and, and exposing them to good, uh, floral, uh, you know, variety to support, you know, the, this, the, you know, the, the, the biome, the, the, uh, the gut biome and the skin biome, et cetera.

People say, well, that's, that's just as good as getting a vaccine. You know, my kid's never gotten small pox or polio or anything like that. I've fully protected them. And, and you'll hear a lot of people now similarly saying, well, Why can't we do like, so, you know, it was like Joe Rogan was a recent figure, you know, he did Ivermectin and he did like sauna and he got some kind of like, I think he may have done some kinda like peptide bio regulators like Dimus and Alpha and you know, a lot of things that people are using as a treatment for covid.

But many people are also using those as like an alternative to vaccine saying, well, I, I could, I don't need a vaccine because like Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or some of these things negate the need for it. Cuz if I get sick they'll just crush the, the virus and therefore don't get vaccinated. Like, what, what's your, what's your take on that?

Cause I know people are gonna say in the comments section, why the hell would you do like a vaccination. Especially people who are more, you know, libertarian or conservative or, or who wouldn't like the idea of a forced vaccination. They'll come in and say, well, why wouldn't we just use more natural means to knock this out and perhaps just vaccinate the immunocompromised and the elderly.

Okay. So I don't know Joe. But I would be a fan and I think he's totally hilarious. And I think what I read in the paper is that he also got the monoclonal antibody. What do you mean the monoclonal antibody? So then what? What happens is if you get a vaccine, the idea of the vaccine is that triggers your B cells to make antibodies.

Those antibodies basically bind on to the virus and inactivate it and help your body locate and and eliminate the virus and the monoclonal antibody. And so then what a monoclonal antibody is, is they actually take cells, they're hamster cells, and then they induce those cells to secrete an antibody that is active against covid.

And actually, to be honest, that's a super effective treatment for Covid. And why get vaccinated? Well, the issue is you're all the people that you talk about that, um, don't have smallpox. That's because back in the day, we were better at just getting everybody vaccinated quickly and eliminating something so that it didn't really exist anymore.

So we for the most part, eliminated smallpox. We, for the most part have eliminated these infections, but what's happening now is that virus is gonna continue to cycle. And I'm getting, you know, it's interesting, I was, I would get calls from, you know, basically friends of friends and then with the mRNA platform that came out, I didn't get any calls, so I was kinda relaxed, like, Hey, this is, you mean you weren't getting calls about the mRNA vaccine issues?

No. About covid. Okay. Now I get five calls a day from, you know, VIPs and just people. What's happening is people are getting covid right, left and center, and if you get it, there is, I always tell people there's problems with the vaccines. There's problems with covid. The problem with covid is a hundred to a thousand times worse than, than the vaccine.

I've seen a handful of kind of small problems from the vaccines, right? The problem is worse in the immunocompromised, in elderly, or the problem is worse in like everybody. Oh, and everybody. I mean, I've got like N F L football players. I mean, I've got all kinds of high-end, incredibly young, healthy-ish people that.

That ended up having crazy long-term problems from Covid. And so then you may be able to get the monoclonal antibody. You may not, you may be in a position where you can't get it, and then even then you're fighting an uphill battle again. Something, you know, I don't treat Covid anymore, to be honest. If there was no regulations, like I'm just afraid somebody would come shut me down.

But if I could, I would literally go open up a hospital tomorrow and treat Covid full-time. Just cuz it's so interesting to me. And I think we have a lot of good things to help it, but from a regulatory perspective, it's so crazy we're not doing that. But what I can tell you is covid is super for real and there's, oh yeah.

I mean, I, I, there's, there's no denying that. What I just don't understand though, is if you say you could open a hospital, And you have all these other treatments, you know, th thymosin, alpha one and monoclonal antibodies and ivermectin like, again, like I still, maybe I'm not getting it, but why would we need to get vaccinated?

Because this, this, if as this continues to mutate and become more lethal, it may become more lethal very fast, and then there's gonna be a large percentage of people that end up Right now we get a lot of long-term covid people. I got another one yesterday, can't sleep at all. We just get people who are otherwise healthy where all of a sudden the immune system gets quite inflamed.

And just like me trying to go in and turn off the inflammation in the knee, we're gonna do our best and we tend to have pretty good results with that. But when inflammation, Starts to go haywire in the entire immune system in the entire body. And covid can fundamentally go anywhere. What can happen is you're behind the eight ball and sometimes you don't catch up.

It's the biggest problem of our lives and, and so I would strongly encourage people to consider the vaccinations cuz I think there's been a lot of crazy press against them. But I think a, you're probably gonna do better and this thing may mutate to get a lot worse. And if you've been slowly building your immunity, I think you're gonna be prepared.

B, from a public health perspective, I think we protect, I've become kind of an advocate for the immunocompromised A, because I have a lot of 'em. Yeah. And you live with someone who's B, who's immunocompromised. I love one of 'em. So yeah, it's kind of crazy now, so. So it sounds to me like what you're saying basically is we've got all these, let me use this as an analogy.

We've got all these amazing things that we can do for TBI and concussion that maybe we weren't aware of 50 years ago. Hyperbaric oxygen and ketones and fish oil and you know, infrared light and all these things that can assist with an issue like that, both long-term and short term and still does not negate the encouragement to put on a bicycle or a motorcycle helmet or your seatbelt to potentially decrease the risk of that occurring in the first place, despite us having some pretty cool tools.

To ensure that there's less damage that occurs if a head injury does happen. Is that kinda what you're saying? Exactly. And then, you know, this has been the hardest time to interpret science also of my life, just because of the politicized nature of it. But my general sense from reading the articles has been that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are not as effective as we initially thought.

You know, you re read the initial studies and then what happens in peer reviewed literature is then other people start reading it who are super smart and start poking holes in it. And there's some pretty big holes for both of those. And so, Yeah. Peptides I think can be incredibly helpful, particularly LL 37, uh, thymosin Alpha one.

I think those are your best two LL 37 and Thymosin Alpha one as peptides. Yeah. Are those, are those legal to get in the us? Uh, it's, it's uh, uh, rapidly evolving and changing landscape with those, and so it's kind of hard to say what's gonna happen with those. Okay. A lot of people are just trying to order them themselves.

Um, there's other, is that a bad idea to like order from a website? Well, you know, it's just a difficult situation that people are in because they're, they don't have access to things and they feel things are being taken away from 'em. And I kind of understand where they're coming from and there's some great producers out there.

So BPC 1 57 tends to have a lot of anti-inflammatory effects and some very good beneficial effects for blood vessels. So that can be helpful. There's, uh, another peptide that's been pretty helpful that a lot of people have used called thymus and Beta four. And um, interestingly as people are out there thinking about it in terms of, uh, preventing exposure, you can take LL 37 and do some topical administration of that and sublingual, and it's a pretty good antimicrobial peptide.

Uh, some people are also, yeah, I've heard it's amazing for SIBO as well, and you were even telling me about somebody who had, like, they'll use like a xylitol nasal spray and put the LL 37 in there and use that when they're like, In crowded places as, as like an intranasal spray. Yeah. And because it has antimicrobial and some antiviral effects, then, uh, when that's in a nasal, um, uh, basically film in your nose, it could be helpful.

It turns out LL 37 is actually good for breaking down biofilms. There's a bunch of articles on the internet about it, and so, you know, I'm one of the bigger fans on the whole peptide conversation and I'm. You know, cautiously waiting to see what's gonna happen with the regulatory landscape. But yeah, but honestly, anybody who asks me about peptides, I typically tell 'em to call your office.

Cuz you usually know what you can and cannot get and what's legal and what's not. I'm like, usually at, at this point I just tell people, go talk to Matt and get him from Biore Reset or from this guy named John Francois in, in Canada. He's good too. Yeah, he is. He is fundamentally, I think the, the one of the greatest luminator luminaries in the world.

And uh, you know, he's taught me a lot. I call him all the time and he's incredibly, uh, incredibly helpful. Yeah. And I'll, I'll link, link By the way, if you listen, those are listening. I'll link to my podcast with John Francois. His company is Can Labs, right? Yeah, can Labs Peptide. Okay. So. Back to the, back, to the, um, the, the vaccination piece.

So do you think that if someone were to get vaccinated, that doing something like the MR. MRI is the best way to go? Because you said that there were some other vaccination options you'd look into? Well, yeah. And so then one is that now this, you're gonna love this one. One is that I'm, I'm gonna be a fan of that, that category.

Now then number two, the, the mRNA category. The mRNA category. But then the question is, okay, let's say most people are gonna get it and they're gonna do fine. And you know, I've had hundreds and hundreds of patients that, uh, I often had counseling and I would counsel 'em all, and almost all of our PA patients got the mRNA.

Now, let's say somebody got that exaggerated kind of runaway inflammatory response from a vaccine. What are you gonna do? One of the things I've been working pretty hard on is we submitted a I n D, an investigational new drug application for chimera, exosomes as a, um, uh, chimera is a company that makes exosomes, and so then as a protocol to, uh, treat long haul covid.

Um, and so we're waiting on that, but it turns out that ex exosomes that are derived from stem cells are secrete. Basically what stem cells do is they secrete exosomes. I always say, Uh, uh, bees make honey stem cells make exosomes, right? They're like the signaling molecules via the so-called a pericrine effect.

That's how stem cells work so well, right? Yeah. And so then what happens with, uh, stem cells is they're floating around in the body, and then when they find inflammation, they start to secrete stuff to turn that inflammation off. And one of the things that they secrete is micro rna. So micro RNA is different from mRNA, and micro RNA is kind of cancels.

Remind people what the other m and mRNA stands for. Messenger. Messenger R So is messenger, RNA and microRNA. Yeah. And so messenger RNA. Encodes for proteins and it encodes for proteins to be made. Micro, r n a modulates how messenger, R A R N A works. And so basically, you know, you remember yin and yang?

Mm-hmm. The body at all times, if it turns inflammation up, it's got a way to turn it back down. And so then there's been cases of doctors that I've talked to all over the, all over the country who had people who had an exaggerated immune response and then they gave them exosomes and then they turned that immune response down.

And so part of as as, as a way to treat an exaggerated immune response to a vaccination. Yes. Here's the thing, this is kind of crazy. By turning down the immune response to that vaccination, it could be that what's gonna happen is you're gonna make that vaccination less effective. Okay. Oh, okay. But let's say you've got somebody that had it and they've got a blood clot and they've got inflammation outta control.

That's the type of person you're gonna wanna do that on. You're not gonna wanna do it on everybody, and you're, it's gonna have to be a very thoughtful strategy and algorithm of how to do this. But right now, what people are kind of forced into is they're being told, like, you know, every company over a hundred is gonna have to get vaccinated.

And you definitely can't practice medicine if you're not vaccinated, for the most part, as far as I can tell for how it's going. And so then what's gonna happen is people are getting kind of pushed into getting vaccinated, but they don't have any way to turn that that's down. Okay. That's my concern.

Right. So, and, and, and pardon my, my verbiage here, I. There's all like the richers, right? Who are gonna go to their, their crazy good doc or who have you in their back pocket. They're gonna say, yeah, I'll get vaccinated. Cuz we can totally just like hack our way out of any scenario where there was, uh, you know, accelerated response or anything.

Great. But for each one of those people, if we decide that we're just gonna enforce vaccinations for everybody, there's like hundreds of thousands of people who are gonna get injured due to that exaggerated immune response who don't know what to do and who could potentially die. I mean, it seems like we need to, to really scale these, these solutions for controlling that accelerated response prior to requiring vaccinations.

Wouldn't that, wouldn't that be prudent? Well, so I think you gotta get the vaccination thing going cause. You might have a hundred thousand people with an a vaccine reaction, we might have 20 million people die. I mean if Oh covid. Yeah. If it, if it gets a lot worse. Okay. You're saying the number of people who are gonna die of Covid if we don't get some type of herd immunity set up, will outnumber the number of people who are gonna have an exaggerated immune response and vaccination issues, therefore continue to roll out vaccinations, but simultaneously continue to work on these solutions for the problematic response to the vaccinations.

Exactly. And, and you know, what I'm talking about is hypothetical. We don't know how this is gonna go. We didn't know if, if you were gonna get a Delta variant that comes out, that's hundreds of times more contagious if you get something that comes out. Next spring, there's hundreds of times more contagious and hundreds of times dead, more deadly.

You've got a catastrophic problem. And you know, the, if you're somebody like me, you're not that worried about getting a little bit of an mRNA because I know how to deal with mRNA problems. Uh, maybe this is something amazing that's gonna happen for our planet. Science is gonna improve and then it's not gonna be rich people.

It's gonna be everybody that's gonna get access. Well, yeah, you, you would hope that this technology, this might accelerate that, but it's, it's unfortunate the way that it's having to happen. Yeah. And you know, the, the politics and the mistakes made along the way and kind of the, the lack of proper testing protocols, like a really good antigen test rolled out early on in the process have dictated that we've kind of.

Painted ourself into this corner, so to speak. And now we're almost having to choose the lesser of two evils, which is, which is difficult. But don't you think it's odd from like an evolutionary virology standpoint that the virus would be getting more lethal or more, well, more transmissible is understandable from an evolutionary virology standpoint, but more lethal is odd.

Because as a parasitic type of compound, wouldn't you think that the evolution of the virus would result in it becoming less lethal so that the host stays alive? Well, you know, it's just been, uh, a crazy journey to watch how this is unfolding. You know, we're, we're on a rollercoaster, you know, I'm not sure why it's happening.

I don't understand the, uh, the deepness level. Yeah. But I think there are scenarios where it can get more lethal. I, I suspect that probably one of the reasons that might be is due to the gain of function research and the fact that the virus may not have evolved in an entirely natural manner. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. I didn't wanna say it, but you said it. That was a good one. Are you not supposed to say that on a podcast? Well, no, I don't even know this. This is actually the most, I've talked about Covid on a podcast for a while, so hopefully I'm not gonna get a banned on YouTube, I suppose. Yeah, it's, well, here's the thing.

The trajectory of this conversation is like super vaccine positive from my perspective. And I, and, and I think, you know, I thought about it, I thought, well, should we just talk about like, you know, the type of stuff that we do, or should we actually try to delve into like the problem of our day? Oh, we have to delve into the problem of our day because the way I see things going, you're either gonna need to make the decision to be an isolated and potentially scapegoated person or get the vaccine and let's set aside all issues.

Because I've always had like, If I'm comfortable getting the vaccine, I want a t-shirt that comes along with it that says, I did it because I wanted to, not because you told me to. Just cuz I don't, I don't like the whole concept of, of forced vaccinations. It just rubs me the wrong way because I'm, I'm pro-choice when it comes to one's body, you know, as long as the, the pro-choice inness is is involving the ethics of your body only.

And so I, uh, yeah, I I think it's really tricky. But, but the other thing I wanted to ask you that I, I didn't quite get an answer to yet was, you know, you talk about the mRNA vaccine, what about Johnson Johnson? What about some of these others? Like, do you think that you get the r a cuz you think it's just like the best option out there right now?

Well, yeah, and, and so then I looked into it and this is sort of what I found now, the AstraZeneca and the j and j vaccine are adenoviruses. And so then what they did is they took and actually put DNA into, um, those viruses and then those, but that's like the traditional Yeah. Virus platform, right? That's, isn't that like what polio was like an adenovirus?

I think so. Okay. But, uh, and so, so and so then those, we've had experience with those, you and I have both gotten a bunch of that genre of vaccine and those vaccines are, are, you know, holding up to do quite a bit of good. And, and that's, that's the technology that's been in the world for. You know, the last 50 or 60 years.

And so I think that there's, you know, a lot of good things to be said about it. But, uh, the thing that I like about the mRNA vaccines is that thing is gonna be in there and then gone. So it's gonna do something, it's gonna have an effect that you can either live with or turned down, then time goes on, and then you can get another one.

And so that is, I, I really like kind of the concept of that. There are some people who are suggesting that we may wanna have different types of vaccines, we wanna, may wanna rotate between them. I have, I've heard that before, that there might be a better response if you, for example, get the Moderna and then like for your second booster shot or something, do a, do a different vaccine.

Yeah. Is that what you're talking about? I, I've heard about that. But now just where I'm coming from is I would just pick with one and go with that until there's good data on that. I wouldn't make that decision on your own because there's smart people looking at the data and the science on this. But I have seen of all of the crazy reactions that I've seen, they've all been on the j and j side or the AstraZeneca side.

Okay. And so I, I think that those vaccines potentially have more problems and I have a good logic for where I'm coming from. At least I'd like to think so. So that's where Yeah. Why I'm encouraging people. Okay. Yeah. And, and real quick, like I personally would never endorse the, the j and j because I am, I know, I just, I was pro-choice when it comes to living soul inside of a mother.

I believe that life begins at conception and because the research for the Johnson Johnson relied upon, you know, aborted fetal tissue back in 1985, like I just can't ethically endorse that one. So that, that's off the table for me anyways. But that kind of relates to another question I wanted to ask you is, I've had covid, I'm not immunocompromised, I, you know, I've produced antibodies.

My immune system is, is good to go. Like, do you think that, you know, societal restrictions, being able to travel or go to concerts or whatever, all, all that aside, which I think is just personally, I think it's silly. Um, do you think from a health standpoint that I or others in society would still benefit from me getting vaccinated if I've already had it?

Yeah, because the, the, when you have it, you, you generate an immune response, but it, it looks like, I just read an article that the immune response that you get as a result of the vaccines better than the immune response that you get from having covid. But if you have that, see that's not what I, I heard that I, I've heard the opposite.

I mean, I, I could be wrong. I, I read an article today. We'll find it cuz it's, I didn't close it down on my browser. Okay. But then, and we'll link to that in the show notes by the way, guess. And, and then there's a, there's a, the, this article said the immune response that you get from having covid plus having had the vaccine is even is like the best.

Yes. Yeah, I have heard that. But what I haven't heard is that if you've had covid, well, so what I've heard is that if you get Covid and then you get the vaccine, the vaccine, like that's the very, very best immune response scenario you can be in. However, if you've had C O I D, you still have an immune response that dictates that it wouldn't necessarily be crucial for you to get the vaccine.

Oh. So I'm gonna disagree. And the, the trip on this one is, and this is just like my clinical practice. With Delta coming out here, I've been getting phone calls almost every day of VIPs that have already had Covid that thought they were good and didn't get vaccinated because they were like, oh, I, I'm fine.

And I guess somebody calls me, I got covid again. And so I think the protection that people get from having had covid is not gonna long term be as good as the vaccines. It's gonna take a little bit of time for the data to, uh, play out on this. So I'm encouraging people to do it. And then I think the other thing is, is if you've been vaccinated, you're less likely to be an asymptomatic carrier, and we're more likely so that, that's just gonna slowly lead to this progression to herd immunity.

And then once that happens, then everybody's gonna be able to get back out there and start going to Okay. Dead in company. Okay. So, and Willie Nelson concerts. Exactly. I know that's your favorite. So if I've had covid. There's a possibility that I could, for example, contract the Delta variant, be walking around not having been vaccinated.

I could be fine, but I could potentially get somebody else, let's say like, you know, like Barb, you know, back at home super sick. Or your kids. Or my kids. Okay. Well this is an interesting discussion. You know, it did, we didn't really talk about much of this before at all. So, you know, folks who are listening are kind of hearing me in real time kind of soak up and, and interpret what Matt is saying.

But a, as we are nearing the end of the, of the time that we have for today's show, can I share what, what my thought pattern is after having this discussion with you, Matt? I would love it. Okay. So look, a, as I said at the beginning, I'm not anti-vax. I'm probably after this discussion. Although I still want to see some of the comments come in and hear other people's take, I always listen to a lot of people before I make as important a decision about something I'm gonna inject into my body.

So I would encourage everybody, you know, go to ben greenfield fitness.com/cook and kind of pipe in with your thoughts. But where I'm at is, um, a, if I were to get the vaccine, I'd probably do something like this mRNA vaccine that you've alluded to. And honestly, it wouldn't only be because of the efficacy with that you've described about it, but it would also be because I ethically am against any vaccine that was developed by research on aborted fetal tissue.

And so I would encourage my audience, just from an ethical standpoint to consider that somebody in the audience, if you're listening in, you decide, okay, well this discussion has left me comfortable enough to go out and get Moderna or Pfizer. I would say if there is any remote possibility that you are able to set yourself up in a scenario where A, you can identify or at least ensure you don't have signs and symptoms or even tested evidence of a stealth co-infection or some type of inflammatory condition that could cause a deleterious response to that vaccine.

You should do that first if there's any chance that you can. And b, I think that you should also, if you have access to a doctor who can equip you with things like, uh, like, like LL 37 or Thymus and Alpha or some of the other solutions that will be laid out in the show notes that Matt talked about, that you should also perhaps make sure that you're set up with those at home before you get the vaccine.

Just so that you're not added to the count of people who have that problematic reaction. That's, that's kind of where my mind's at right now. Oh, now I, I ll 37 is antimicrobial to, uh, covid. I don't think it's that helpful for the Covid vaccine. Okay. So the anti-inflammatories being more like BPC 1 57 th alpha would be, would be probably very good cuz they regulate and modulate just like exosomes, regulate and modulate.

Let's say you were fortunate enough to have in your fridge or your pantry back home, like your first aid kit for, if shit goes south, after you get the vaccine review for people, what you, what you kinda have in your back pocket. Okay. So, so then we're gonna, we have a, an entire sheet and so I'm gonna give you that for the show notes.

Oh, that's amazing. Okay. That we give people. But you know, there's a whole bunch of things. We give people vitamin C, we give people a lot of glutathione. We give people. Um, before or after they get the vaccine. Before the vaccine. Okay. And then people are taking those afterwards. People are taking binders.

It turns out a lot of the binders will bind onto inflammatory things. They bind on mold and stuff and stuff like, exactly. And, and I've had, I have had a lot of people come in and tell me, Hey, I, I took that afterwards and it really helped me. It calmed down my symptoms after the vaccine because you're creating a calmer state in your body while your body is ramping up this immune response against the virus.

Okay. Well, that's gonna be super helpful and don't worry everybody listening in, I will ensure that I follow through. What I'm gonna get from Matt is not only some of these studies he mentioned that he looked into about the, or the discussions at least about the potential, uh, non-efficacy of something like Ivermectin.

I'll get some, some data from him on the idea that being vaccinated plus having had covid is going to make you a safer person to be around. And I'll also get that you said it was like a PDF or something like that. Yeah, we've that, some PDF that Oh, that's, that's excellent. So I'll put all of that. At Ben Greenfield fitness.com/cook.

Hey folks, I'm gonna jump in right now. You may have noted that, uh, on this podcast I mentioned false vaccination cards and I'm totally not one of the guys who endorses, you know, living a lie or, you know, walking around lying to people. And I didn't want to just like throw out that off cuff comment and leave you guys hanging with that.

Um, You know, this idea that, oh, what if you have a false vaccination card and you could just use that to like slip it to a grocery store to buy toilet paper. If it turns out you gotta, you know, have a vaccination proof to go buy toilet paper or you wanted to go to your favorite concert, so why not just have a blank vaccination card that you have filled out to be able to go to a concert?

But you know, Matt, Matt had a thought on that too, and he told me after we recorded, and I just wanted to throw this in there for you guys just to, to close the loop on that piece. So, Matt, thoughts on false vaccination cards? Yeah, I strongly recommend against that. And the reason is you've got all kinds of people with shades of, of, uh, being immunocompromised to fully immunocompromised.

And some people are gonna go to events where they expect everybody's vaccinated and, and, and the data says vaccinated people are gonna be less likely to spread. You could create a super spread or event, and I think that. It's just unfair to people. And so I think that, um, if you don't wanna get vaccinated, probably just don't go to concerts.

And, um, and I think following your integrity and, and, and, and following, doing the right thing is important. And, you know, we just heard, uh, a news story about a, a doctor that may go to jail for 20 years for, for, uh, giving patients false vaccination cards. So I think this is something that, uh, we should be super careful about.

Yeah, so basically like, it, it, it puts your doctor or your pharmacist or whoever would be doing a false vaccination card for you in an awkward position. And I mean, the more that Matt and I have been talking about this, the more I think, well, you know, it's, it's, it's obviously convenient. If, let's say you're not allowed to go to the grocery store unless you're vaccinated or have proof of vaccination, you want to get toilet paper, you get a false vaccine card, you go in, you get your toilet paper, great.

But at the same time, you know, Based on what we're seeing about the potential for, you know, somebody's grandma or somebody who's immunosuppressed, or someone who you run into at said concert or said grocery store. I mean, the whole idea here is that, you know, you'd probably feel pretty bad if that person wound up getting covid or getting super sick or having their life altered in a pretty dramatic fashion from you kind of, you know, tooling around with those kind of fake cards.

So I would say that it's, it's probably prudent to not delve into that category. Plus it also ensures that you're not putting a medical professional into a scenario where you might be that person that you know has. Them getting their license revoked because of you, and therefore they're not able to help people out in the way that God has called them to do.

So again, it's, it's, it's probably better safe than sorry in a case like that. Is that, that's basically what you're saying, Matt? Yep. Good one. Okay. All alright. We just had to throw it in there for you guys. Thanks. And now I gotta appeal to you. Yeah, I was gonna say, like, I, I would love to hear like any thought final thoughts you have.

I, my, my final, I appeal to you that this is a worldwide epidemic that's not gonna go away and it's gonna escalate for the next couple years. And so I think, uh, you actually getting vaccinated, I wasn't gonna go here, but now at the end of this talk, my takeaway is, my goal is you're gonna do amazing when you get the vaccine.

I'm gonna support you and get you through it. And then I think what, you are such an influential person that influences people's judgment and their decisions and how they do things. And I think that you have a great potential to begin to show people, hey, There's been a little bit of an irrational fear about some of these vaccines and these are actually relatively safe.

They have some problems, we've got ways to deal with them and, and, uh, we have to band together as a human race and, and do something amazing to heal ourselves. Well, uh, you know, like I've already said, and I'm not gonna kick this horse to death. I really am very open-minded about this entire situation.

Politics aside, you know, like, you know, I, I've had people say to me, well, even if it was healthy, I'm not gonna get it cuz they told me I had to. And I just don't like that idea of appearing as though I'm jumping through a hoop or being forced to be vaccinated. I don't care about that. If I'm, if I get vaccinated, it's gonna be because I want to get vaccinated and it's for the good of society and for my own health and other people's health.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I can get into a concert. Cuz I'm gonna be totally frank with you. I can get a fake vaccination card and get into a concert, right? Like, that's, that's, that's not an issue. The. The thing is, as you've just alluded to, this, is about the health of the planet and the health of the world, and this discussion has certainly got me thinking.

What I'm, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kind of pay attention to some of the comments and some of the things that people pipe in and talk about or bring, you know, any data about into the discussion that I may have been unaware of or that didn't come up during our discussion. And I'm gonna sit with that and I can probably tell people that from the time that this podcast gets released, I will probably, within 30 days after this podcast gets released, make a decision.

And whatever decision I make, I will make sure that on my platform I let people know about it. Does that sound fair? This is my favorite conversation I've ever had about this whole topic because it's so, been so controversial. But the reality is we love each other and you know, I respect where you're coming from, even though I kicked your ass in tennis yesterday.

Yeah, I know. But basically what happened is I sat there and I realized every single game I played better. And I basically started feeling sorry for you by the end, cuz I realized how much I'm gonna beat you in the future. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, well, you just, you just totally, uh, you, you totally de platformed your credibility for the entire past hour and a half.

Um, well Matt, first of all, you know, I respect, you know, I appreciate you. You know that you're a guy I look up to probably. Probably the top physician who I go to for advice when something goes south with me or my family, or I need help with any medical condition for myself or my family, or even my extended family.

You've helped my dad out, you've helped my mom out, you've helped my brother out, you've helped close friends and clients out. Most of my clients have gone to you at one point or another for some form of treatment. You know, obviously you're the guy I've turned to as a final solution for my knee. And so th you know, th this is definitely one of those discussions that I'm taking quite seriously.

So, um, so anyways, I feel like we we're, we're kind of starting to kick the horse to death now, but what I would tell people is that, again, the show notes are gonna be@bengreenfieldfitness.com slash cook. I would encourage you to go there, leave your own thoughts, whether you're a professional, a scientist, a physician, um, a sh uh, layperson.

I, I just wanna hear from you. I wanna hear your thoughts over there, and I'm gonna be looking at all that, that's gonna be a great place for you to go through and see what other people are saying. And you have my word that I will get a decision out to you that, that I personally made very soon after I sit with this.

And as I do, I walk on things, I sleep on things, I pray on things. And, um, and th this has certainly been. A super, super informative discussion. So Matt, I wanna thank you. Oh, thank you. That was totally awesome. You're the greatest of all time. You're ready to go? Punish some bison ribeye. Um, yeah, I was born ready for that.

All right. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with Dr. Matt Cook. I'll link to all the previous podcasts that we've done, everything we discussion today's show, including what I'm most excited about that sheet for, uh, for decreasing the problems that might occur and being vaccinated. And I'll put all that in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com slash cook.

Have an amazing, amazing week, everybody. Over an hour.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@bengreenfieldfitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormone sleep, digestion, fat loss performance, and plenty more.

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