Can A *Frequency* Simulate Nicotine, Caffeine, Melatonin, THC & Alcohol (+ Fixing Broken Knees WITHOUT Surgery?!) with Dr. Pradeep Albert

Ben Greenfield: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of The Boundless Life Podcast...

Dr. Pradeep Albert: ...if you apply certain frequencies to these stem cell media, it actually expresses different things. You can use a particular frequency, and these mesenchymal stem cells turn into bone. It has this ability to put you to sleep in a way that I've never seen anything else do before. I put on the caffeine frequency, and all of a sudden I felt...

Ben Greenfield: ...in this podcast I interviewed Dr. Pradeep Albert. He is a leader in the field of regenerative medicine, and we talk about frequency wellness, but also a whole lot more: peptides, stem cells, exosomes.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Again, I was a big skeptic, right? Like, I'm not a guy that, you know, you would never expect someone like me to talk about...

Ben Greenfield: Show notes are juicy for this one. Go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrAlbert, that's BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrAlbert. Here we go.

Ben Greenfield: Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. You might be familiar with my book, Boundless: Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body, and Defy Aging. It got a little out of control writing it; the original manuscript was over 1,500 pages. I got it down to like 700 pages and released it about a year ago. The fully updated version of Boundless, kind of like the bible of biohacking, a cookbook for everything you'd ever want: hormones, gut, digestion, etc. And I realize it's a little bit intimidating to pick up and read, and here's why I'm telling you all of this. I am curious, if you would like the audiobook version of Boundless, like on Audible or elsewhere, for you to download and listen to at your convenience: in the gym, on your commute, on your hike, while you're cleaning your kitchen, in the bathtub, whatever. So, if that is remotely interesting to you and you want me to make that audiobook happen so that you can have it in your ears wherever you go, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/BoundlessAudio, BenGreenfieldLife.com/BoundlessAudio. Your opinion matters.

So, Pradeep, I've dialogued with you before, just via email and text and stuff, mostly in the realm of stem cells, exosomes, and peptides, which is a big one. I would love to talk about that stuff later on, but one of the reasons we connected for this episode was because I've used this concept of frequency medicine before, like using certain frequencies, things you wear or things that are near your body, to simulate what a supplement or medication might do. And I was talking with the folks at Hapbee, and I think they're called...

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, they're called Harmonic, though.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, Harmonic, like HarmonIQ. And I said, well, do you have a doctor, physician, scientist, someone who could kind of speak to frequency medicine and the idea behind it and how it works in an informed and intelligent manner? No pressure. And they dropped your name. So I'm like, all right, that means we can talk about regenerative medicine and frequency wellness all in one show. Welcome.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Thank you so much. Again, it's a pleasure and an honor to be here. So, yeah, let's just jump right into it.

When you talk about frequency modulation and all these types of things, it just sounds like it's way out there. It just sounds almost... and I'm a conventional MD, so the reason I keep saying that is that to some of my colleagues, it just sounds like it's from outer space.

Ben Greenfield: Right. And no offense to anybody in this profession, but a lot of times you would expect to come across something like this in, like, chiropractic medicine, and a lot of my friends are chiropractic docs, but sometimes you tend to come across more woo-woo type of concepts in that field. Not trying to throw them under the bus; I go to the chiropractor and appreciate it. And you also tend to hear, "Well, that's easy for a company to make something with lower COGS, better margins, and just say that the frequencies do what something with higher COGS, more expensive to make, like a supplement, could do." So yeah, you see pushback like that all the time. You see the same thing in quantum energy or quantum medicine as well. Explain to me, with your background in conventional medicine as a respected doctor, how the whole frequency medicine thing works.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Okay, so I'll just give you an example. Like, we have people who use red light therapy all the time, and it's just accepted that red light therapy helps you heal faster, right? And that's a wavelength of light. The same way, and I'm going to use an analogy here which is relatively straightforward, is sound, because that's the most akin to these ultra-low-frequency things that we can use. So when you use these things, there's no sound produced from it; it's not like you hear anything. But it's at a very ultra-low frequency, you know, in the spectrum of sound.

Ben Greenfield: To clarify real quick, this is like, in the case of Harmonic, they have a thing that you wear around your neck, kind of looks like, no offense, a dog collar, and then they have a little mat that you could put underneath your pillow or behind your back on an airplane or whatever.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's exactly right. It looks like an old-school device that you put around your neck, like old-school headphones, and then basically a mat. So let me just jump into the basic science of it. For example, I'm known in the world of stem cell medicine, and I've grown stem cells. They go through this growth media, and when you add different things, different proteins, different antibiotics, all these different types of things, the stem cells grow in different patterns. What's fascinating is that if you apply certain frequencies to these stem cell media, it actually expresses different things. The Australians did an incredible study where you can use a particular frequency, and these mesenchymal stem cells turn into bone. If you apply a certain type of frequency, different types of exosomes are released by these stem cells. So from a very cellular point of view, we all have a certain resonance at a certain frequency. And from a basic science point of view, if you play around with it, you can actually release different biochemicals and things of that nature. I'll just tell you how I got into this, just like you: I ran into this thing randomly when I was talking about stem cells. I actually tried it because I travel so much, all over the world, lecturing and doing all these things. If you put this around your neck and you turn it on, it has this ability to put you to sleep in a way that I've never seen anything else do before. So I came at it just like everyone else: "My God, whatever." The fact that they gave me one, and I said, "Does this thing work?" No. I was so tired, I was going through jet lag. I put it on, put on the sleep frequency. I slept like a baby in the middle of the day flying from New York to the UAE, a very long flight, and it was just amazing how well it worked. Then the next day I turned it on, and I was like, "Okay, I've had some sleep and I don't feel groggy." I put on the caffeine frequency, and all of a sudden I felt like a jolt. So it's very, very interesting how well it works, and it uses non-pharmacologic frequencies. You don't hear anything, you don't feel anything; it's literally just like wearing a funky-looking headset.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And the frequency, so we've established it's not an audible sound frequency. Would you classify it as a magnetic frequency, a radio frequency, or how would you describe it?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: I'll use light as an example, something visual that people can identify with. From a physics point of view, you have wavelength and frequency together, and they make up an object. For example, there's a visible spectrum of light, and different wavelengths give you different types of light; remember ROY G BIV from grade school? The same way, if you play with hertz, which is one over the period, inversely related to frequency, for sound, you're in the audible spectrum. Remember, dogs hear differently, bats hear differently; there are different animals and biological things that produce these frequencies, and even our cells react to them. In fact, our bodies resonate at different frequencies, and there's a kind of silent hum of the universe, as you'd say. Normal stem cells, normal medications, all these things work at that level. We are constantly vibrating at a cellular level; there's a particular frequency we resonate at, and different organs resonate at different frequencies. So the idea is that if you take this particular ultra-low frequency and apply it at a cellular level, it helps foundationally with health and sleep and things of that nature.

Ben Greenfield: And is it like a magnet or some other kind of device? Because obviously you have to charge these; they have a USB-C cable, producing the frequencies.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: The only analogy I can use is that it produces a certain frequency that's not really sound-based, but using a sound analogy, it's almost like a mini speaker.

Ben Greenfield: It's not a speaker, though.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: No, you won't hear anything.

Ben Greenfield: Is it like a magnet?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, it's a magnetic resonance. All speakers have small magnets in them, right? So it just vibrates. Yes.

Ben Greenfield: There's the one that you wear around your neck, and then the mat, which you would put underneath you or lay against. Does it really matter which one you use, or do you have a favorite?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: I use the neck one, the one that makes you look like you're back in the '90s with the big headphones. I like that one best because it kind of focuses on my head and it helps me sleep. And I'll just tell you how I've been using it clinically, totally as an aside. When you do these stem cell injections, for example, I treated a very high-end athlete and I used these Dissolve Muse Cells, which are some of the top stem cells you can use...

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, Dissolve Muse Cells, by the way, I have a couple of podcasts on them and I'll put them in the show notes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrAlbert. My favorite stem cell I've ever used, in terms of how my body responds to it, so I'm on the same page.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, it's amazing. You're doing some really great work in terms of musculoskeletal medicine, injecting into areas of like meniscal tears, injecting subchondrally to help address arthritis, those types of things. So I had a very elite athlete who had to have a pretty significant procedure done on the knee, and what happens is, if you use lidocaine or bupivacaine, those local anesthetics, it actually kills the stem cells. It kills the sodium-potassium pump. So we try to use almost no anesthetic. I use vibrational technology for pain distraction, and then post-procedure, some of these things can actually interfere with how well the stem cells work. So I actually used this device around the athlete's knee, put it on the pain relief/soothing frequency, and the patient felt very, very little pain after the procedure. That circular piece that you can put around your neck, you can put on a joint, put it on the knee or shoulder, and it seems to work really well. And then you can put it back on your neck and fall asleep afterwards. So I've been using it, frankly, post-procedure for non-pharmacologic pain management.

Ben Greenfield: Do you know what supplement or medication the pain or soothing frequency is supposed to simulate?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Well, they have different ones. They have adenosine, they have nicotine, they have caffeine, they have THC. So for calming some people down, I'll put the THC frequency on. And then there's one just for stress and relaxation.

Ben Greenfield: And then you don't have to smell weed in the operating room.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: No. Well, I give it to people and let them use the app outside the operating room, outside the procedure suite. But all joking aside, again, I was a big skeptic. I'm not a guy you would ever expect to talk about frequencies or harmonics or any of these things. It's not something I was ever really comfortable with, but after using it clinically, it's just amazing how well it works.

Ben Greenfield: You know, I've never used it for this reason specifically, even though I have some friends who go through a whole canister of nicotine pouches by noon, but I've heard it could be used for addictions like smoking, vaping, pouches, lozenges, gum, whatever. Have you seen any evidence of that, or seen it in your own practice?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: What happens is that when you're addicted to something, you're using an oral reflex or you're using something to just kind of get yourself going. Using this non-pharmacologically, I think attenuates or decreases the urge to reach for a substance. I'm not an addiction doctor, but it significantly reduces pharmacologic use. We're in a very transactional world where we want to take something to suddenly feel better, whether it's peptides, stem cells, or anything else, but with this you don't have to physically take anything, inject anything, or take anything orally. It just kind of relaxes you. So it seems to work well for patients I've seen. Again, I'm not an addiction specialist by any means, but I've seen people use it to control nicotine cravings and to use fewer pharmacologic interventions.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. How do you think it compares for sleep, like with magnesium, melatonin, common sleep OTCs, or even pharmaceuticals?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah. So what those things do, and first of all, it works really well compared to them, but they work neuropharmacologically. What happens is, they downregulate your sleep receptors. What you really want to do is achieve delta sleep, deep sleep, and wake up with an incredible sense of relaxation and rest. That happens when you hit certain frequencies, and this puts you into deep sleep without downregulating those receptors. Every single thing has an action and a reaction. If you suddenly start taking the same thing again and again, it disrupts those channels in your brain, the receptors, and you downregulate them. For example, there are people who take a ton of Ambien to go to sleep and just can't sleep without it. It creates a pharmacological need; they get addicted because they can't sleep otherwise. But this doesn't do that. You just turn it on and off, and you're good to go.

Ben Greenfield: So with the neck one, I think it's stronger when I wear it, maybe it's the proximity to the body. But if somebody didn't have both, they could take the collar and just put it under their pillow, right?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's exactly right. And like I said, you can move it around. I like it a lot for joint pain too, just put it around your knee or your shoulder. That's not the way they promote it, but I'm telling you, I use it clinically on patients after procedures, and it seems to work incredibly well without medication. That's a big deal, especially when you're using something as important as Dissolve Muse Cells or targeted peptide therapeutics. What you don't want to do is undo all that work. It's also quite expensive, so you don't want to negatively impact it. So I use it for that.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. I could potentially get torn to pieces in the comment section for saying this, but I put it on the social function, which is supposed to simulate alcohol. I've had these units for like two or three years. I put it around the neck of my son during dinner, rather than giving him a glass of wine or a shot of tequila, and he got all loosey-goosey and started making jokes. I don't know how much of it was placebo versus how much was him getting the actual frequency of alcohol, and again, I did not give my son any actual ethanol. But I put the thing around his neck and I'm like, "Gosh, it seems to induce a pretty strong effect." So it kind of leads me to the question: with kids, is this something people use with kids? Am I the only irresponsible parent, or what's the deal?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: No, I mean, you turn it on and off, right? From a purely scientific point of view, it's completely safe.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, he wasn't operating heavy machinery either.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, right. No, you shouldn't be wearing this and then playing sports or doing something like that. But absolutely, to calm you down, like everything else in life, use it within reason and use common sense. From a foundational point of view, if you don't get sleep, none of the other stuff works, all the biohacking, the hyperbarics, the red light therapy, the peptides; it just doesn't work if you don't get sleep. So for me, this is a major sleep device; that's how I use it clinically.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I want to talk about pets, because I heard, this is news to me, I heard literally last night preparing for the interview, they wanted to expand this into the pet market. Do you know anything about that?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Sure, yeah, absolutely. If you have a dog or a cat, and you put the pet on top of the mat and turn on the sleep modulation, especially, at least I've seen this, I don't have a pet, but I have two friends who are using this. They're using it to calm down their cats and their dogs, especially if you're in New York City where there's a lot of loud noise, or you're traveling, or going on an airplane. It seems to work really, really well to calm the animal down; it just puts them into a deep sleep. In fact, a friend of mine is using it on a dog that was rescued and has what's like post-traumatic stress, stressed out all the time, and with this, it doesn't bark all night; it just sleeps. And dogs and cats don't speak, so they speak by their actions, and sleeping through the night is a big deal.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. It's a fascinating device. By the way, I'll link to, I guess they have a new website, Harmonic. You might be familiar with it as Hapbee, but go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrAlbert, and I'll put some links there so you guys can check out more and see what the collar looks like, what the little mat looks like. It's maybe a little bit bigger than a laptop, so pretty portable and pretty easy. And I was this week, I didn't know you did much writing, Pradeep, but I went to your website, and you have this fantastic, relatively new article on emerging technologies beyond just frequency medicine in the field of longevity, primarily longevity and anti-aging. What are some of the things coming down the pipeline that you think are pretty cool, whether it's sirtuins, gene therapy, or anything like that?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Sure. You know what's so funny about this, Ben, is that as a conventional MD, you'd figure that every doctor is a longevity doctor, right? Because the whole argument is to keep you alive. So this whole concept of the "longevity doctor," which is obviously a good thing, but this attention to trying to get people to live longer is kind of an oxymoron. Every doctor should be called a longevity doctor; that's our job, to keep you alive.

Ben Greenfield: It's good, it's good for business too; you've got a patient that sticks around for longer.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: And what's fascinating is, I don't think people understand the nature of aging itself. One of the challenges for me is that conventional medical doctors, you know, we're not taught this. I wrote this, let me show you. This book is not out yet; I just mailed your copy. It's like a 530-page textbook on peptides.

Ben Greenfield: A textbook of peptide science, as you can see in the video, it's thick.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, it's not out yet. It's not for sale yet. I wrote it from an academic point of view to help not just patients, but doctors, understand the indications and contraindications for peptides, how to use them clinically. But going back, what's happening in conventional medicine right now is that physicians are very skeptical because they're learning this through their patients. Patients are doing these things and getting better, and doctors just don't know, because a lot of this stuff isn't taught in medical school, or I should say, it's not concentrated on. So for me, medical education is a big deal. Changing medical education to cover cellular therapeutics, whether it works or not, that's a discussion you can have. But you can't just ban it and say it's illegal; you should study it and go through the proper process. The same thing with peptides, the idea is to look at the science, do double-blinded studies, figure out the indications and contraindications. To me, that's a big deal. One of the most exciting things about cutting-edge longevity is that with the younger generation of doctors coming out, there's been incredible acceptance of these new approaches. They want to learn about them, when to use them, when not to. And that's a big deal whether it's stem cells, peptides, or any of these other things.

Ben Greenfield: It kind of makes you wonder, at what point will this infiltrate actual medical education? Especially as some of these doctors become professors or educators or guest lecturers, when will there be tracks on peptides, stem cells, that kind of thing in medical school?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Well, it's coming now. This book is a textbook, and it'll be used in that context. I wrote a textbook of stem cell medicine about five or six years ago, before AI, before ChatGPT. That took me six years to write.

Ben Greenfield: I know, because I own it.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Thank you. Yeah, that took me a long time. This book took me about a year and a half because it's a lot faster now. I wrote it from an academic point of view to try to get, not just patients, but doctors, to know the indications and contraindications for peptides and how to use them clinically. Going back to what I want to get across, especially to anyone in medicine who's listening: the actual science of aging itself is really not taught. We age in spurts. Aging is not linear; we don't just get older and older in a steady progression. We go through spurts. When you're a child, we call it a growth spurt, but what it really is is an aging spurt. From zero to two, you suddenly change morphologically; you go from a five-pound baby to a twenty-pound toddler. Then you have another aging spurt through puberty, around twelve to fourteen. And then, when you get older, from about 40 to 44, and again from 60 to 64, you have these aging spurts. Most people go through their final one, unfortunately, in their 80s. So aging doesn't go linearly; it goes in a staccato pattern, up and down. That concept is not well known in the biohacking world. If you're going through one of those steps and you're dealing with major stressors, say you're going through a bankruptcy at 42, that can cellularly degrade you because your whole body is working against you. Conversely, children who go through very stressful times, family separation, poverty, war, during certain developmental windows will have stunted growth. It's not just lack of nutrition; it's elevated cortisol and decreased mTOR activity. And all the things we talk about, medications, stem cells, frequency, sirtuins, mTOR activity, all play into this. If you understand that concept, you can measure it, you can manage it, and you can help heal during those times.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it. So basically, there are different phases of the lifespan for which certain interventions are better indicated when it comes to longevity.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's correct. I'll give you the perfect example; think about a lobster.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

Dr. Pradeep Albert:A lobster molts, a snake molts; there's a physical metamorphosis that happens. The same thing happens to us. Let's say you're born with 100 stem cells, just using that as a unit; by the time you're 40, you've used up like 70 of them already. You're using them up as you go through those staccato growth spurts: zero to two, twelve to fourteen, and so on. And if you don't have optimal nutrition, and going back to Harmonic, optimal sleep, which is foundational. Think about what a baby does: a baby sleeps all day long.

Ben Greenfield: And cries all night long.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's right, exactly. And teenagers, what do they do? They sleep and eat all day long, and they oversleep on the weekends. All these things, understanding the basics of when to do what, that's a big deal, and it's not studied as much. So yes, Dissolve Muse Cells, using them clinically for cellular therapeutics, big fan. Nothing works better for muscle injuries, neurodegenerative disorders, all those things. But when to put them in, and what the contraindications are, that's actually something nobody really talks about, and I think it's important.

Ben Greenfield: When would you not do something like a Muse Cell, which, by the way, for those who haven't heard my previous podcasts on Muse Cells, they're a small fraction of mesenchymal stem cells, very compatible with the body, they home in to the right area of tissue, you get almost no immune reaction, almost no cancer-causing potential. A lot of the issues you see with normal stem cells you don't see with Muse Cells. But it sounds like even with those, there's a time you wouldn't use them.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Well, you could use those cells; they're actually very, very safe, and you could use them at almost any time. But there are people who call me up and say, "Dr. Albert, I want to get stem cells Monday, Wednesday, Friday every week because it feels so good." Which, okay, but overdoing something desensitizes your body. I think having Dissolve Muse Cells for a joint injury, for neurologic disorders, doing them on an annual or semi-annual basis, especially if you have a specific condition, is a great idea. But doing them every week is, you know... Let me actually revise that specifically for Dissolve Muse Cells. I actually think those are okay to do more frequently. If you use conventional mesenchymal stem cells too much, you can get an immune response. If you're using conventional, not Muse, mesenchymal stem cells constantly, you can get an immune response.

Ben Greenfield: Right, swelling, redness, pain, inflammation, flu-like reaction. I've had it before.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's exactly right. So the Dissolve Muse Cells are much safer and much more effective than any of those types of cells, by far.

Ben Greenfield: Now, you said something some people might be very interested in. You mentioned using them in the subchondral space for arthritic conditions. A ton of people, especially aging, active listeners, have joints that talk to them a lot, worn down from weightlifting, triathlons, marathons, just life. Many of them get recommended a knee replacement or knee surgery at some point. It sounds like Muse Cells could be an alternative when it comes to cartilage regeneration.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Absolutely. I do have to be careful with the phrase "cartilage regeneration." What we do is, most commonly, the most common arthritis of the body involves the medial femoral condyle. We drill a small hole at the medial femoral condyle; we do an MRI and see bright signal, the bone marrow is swollen. We stick a small needle, it sounds complex, but the whole procedure takes five minutes, and inject 20 million stem cells in there. These Muse Cells completely remove that bone marrow edema. They clean up the debris around the articular cartilage. The reason I hesitate on "cartilage regeneration" is that when we do 3-Tesla MRI imaging, the cartilage morphology changes to almost what it was before, but we're not going to go in and do a biopsy to confirm it's really cartilage, because you could damage it again. So we can physically see changes on MRI, and we're assuming that's what's happening. But the big change we see is in the edema pattern of the medial femoral condyle, or frankly, any joint space, when you inject subchondrally and put in anywhere from 20 to 50 million Muse stem cells. And frankly, the biggest thing that happens is significant pain relief. I've done this on a significant number of professional athletes using these cells, and they seem to work incredibly well, not just professional athletes, but elderly people or people my age, 55, with knee pain or shoulder pain. It seems to work really, really well.

Ben Greenfield: Interesting. And you know, a lot of times people talk about peptides like BPC-157 or TB-500 for joint or soft tissue issues. I know you do a lot in the peptide realm. Is there anything new or cutting-edge, or things you turn to frequently when it comes to peptide medicine?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah. Peptide medicine has to be very personalized. One of my favorite peptides, which is never talked about, is LL-37. I don't know if you're familiar with LL-37.

Ben Greenfield: Yes, as like an antimicrobial peptide, right?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's correct. What's fascinating is, we think about ourselves as just one organism, but we have flora and all these other things. What LL-37 does is help your body's own natural antimicrobials kill off any pathological or infectious etiology; it boosts your immune system through macrophages, T cells, and natural killer cells to kill off pathogens. So from that point of view, I think it's probably one of the best peptides there is, because you're not killing off your natural gut bacteria the way a lot of antibiotics do. We do that with children all the time; every time somebody has a URI, a lot of times it's just a virus and it goes away on its own. We start a lot of people on antibiotics, and later we find out there's antibiotic resistance, changes to the gut flora, and patients end up with rheumatologic or GI abnormalities. So I'm a big fan of LL-37, not only for antibacterial use, but also for viral disorders and fungal disorders. So if you have toxic mold or things like that, this stuff works really, really well.

Ben Greenfield: Would you ever use it preventively or proactively on a regular basis, or is this something you'd use when someone has been exposed to a viral load, or they're dealing with a microbial issue, mold, mycotoxins, fungi, etc.?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: I would use it reactively, not proactively. I'm a very conservative guy; I don't like to use anything unless we have to. And there are contraindications. Three things you shouldn't use this for: if you have a history of breast or lung cancer, or a history of prostate cancer, this is not good for you. But for everything else, if you have an infection, it's amazing; it clears it up very quickly, your immune system stays intact, you haven't lost your gut flora. I think even in younger people, more studies need to be done, but in younger patients, I think it's an incredible way to cure and heal diseases. It also has an incredible effect on wound healing. For example, if you have a diabetic ulcer or diabetic wound, that's a big topic of research for me. In fact, the way I got into regenerative medicine in the first place was that as a much younger doctor, I would see these ulcers come in through foot and ankle, and these people were miserable. There was no antibiotic we could use, we would put catheters in to open up blood flow; there was almost nothing we could do. It was almost like a focal, intractable problem. And LL-37 does an incredible job of healing that type of pathology.

Ben Greenfield: Now, are you talking applied topically or as an injectable?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Injectable. So you would inject it subcutaneously, and it would have an effect on a diabetic ulcer. Absolutely, more studies have to be done. But that's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of appropriate regulation here. Peptides right now, as you know, are being worked through regulatory issues, and by July or August they should all be approved. But we need to be able to study them, and the only way to study them is to use them. To make it criminal not to be able to use them, to me, that's completely illogical.

Ben Greenfield: The peptide company you're involved with is Vesalius, right?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's correct. I'm the CEO of Vesalius Longevity Labs.

Ben Greenfield: And is LL-37 something somebody can get at Vesalius?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: We're an international company, so LL-37, there are things we can sell outside the US that we cannot sell inside the US because of regulatory issues. We're very mindful of it. We're the first peptide company to manufacture in the US to make sure we follow all regulations. The Wall Street Journal has tested our peptides; they're all clean, American-made, no toxins. In fact, I think we were the only ones that had no endotoxins and no contaminants.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. There was a big article, I think it was the New York Times, kind of a smear piece on peptides. They were talking about issues with regulation in the industry, and they took a bunch of peptides to a lab in Texas and had them tested. There was contamination and improper amounts of the compounds in the bottles. And then they said, "And then we tested this one brand that the influencer Gary Brecka promotes, and it was clean; it had what it said it had in it." And that's Vesalius. They didn't say your name, but I'm like, "Oh, I know which one Gary uses." So it was your bottle.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, Nope! is the brand, and we have two PhDs working on quality control. We have pharma-grade quality control. We were the first. We'll be listing on the Canadian Stock Exchange very shortly; we're excited about that, because we're the largest peptide provider in many countries around the world, and we're growing astronomically in the United States. I'm personally very excited about this company, and we also have a relationship with Dissolve Muse Cells to use them clinically, so people can get those from us as well. We're very, very excited about the quality control we have. Matt Cook, legitimate guy, great guy, he's using all the Vesalius products, and there are people all over the country using them. Very excited.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. One other related topic, I guess in the immunity or "avoid getting sick" space, if you want to call it that, Thymosin Alpha-1, TA-1, is something a lot of people talk about. Do you use that at all in your practice or personally?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll tell you my way of thinking. You're only as good as your weakest organ; that's how I think about it. I think about longevity very, very differently. When you think about lifespan, the average lifespan for a male in the United States is 78 to 82. I know that doesn't sound long. That means 50% of us don't make it there. Half of us don't make it there. So when I look at all this, everyone's into biological age and cellular therapeutics to get us to live longer, but to me, one of the biggest things is: let me just get you to 78. Then technology will take it from there; maybe we'll get you to 148. So the idea is to get you there. How do peptides do that? The things that damage you are mitochondrial injury and sarcopenia. I'm 55, and as I get older, I start losing testosterone, I start losing muscle mass, and sarcopenia is a big deal. You're physically exercising and keeping yourself up with this podcast, which is amazing, kudos to you. But keeping up muscle mass and good nutrition, combined with sleep, are three inexpensive, almost free things. And if you do those three things, you get the foundational aspect to reach your average lifespan. So using foundational peptides like Ipamorelin and Tesamorelin to maintain muscle mass and stop muscle atrophy, or using MOTS-c to help with mitochondrial health, after a certain age, your mitochondrial health declines very, very rapidly. And then there are senolytics. These are things I'm a big fan of. I'm not one for a one-size-fits-all approach, but the things I concentrate on personally are antimicrobial activity, mitochondrial health, and muscle mass. Other things that no one ever talks about, for example, PT-141, which is used for sexual dysfunction. As you get older, having PT-141 available for both men and women seems...

Ben Greenfield: Particularly potent, by the way, for female libido.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's correct, exactly. An amazing, amazing peptide. These are things that make you want to live, right? Like...

Ben Greenfield: A lot of guys just perked up, by the way, about leaving a bottle of that in the refrigerator for their significant other.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, exactly. In fact, we're working on stacks that use conventional medicine, which also increases nitric oxide, and then adding PT-141 to it, so it works on multiple pathways. We have a significant amount of R&D in that space, and we find it to be an incredible opportunity to grow that space.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. Whether it be related to stem cells, exosomes, which kind of fit into that regenerative medicine field, or peptides, or any other tricks you have up your sleeve: talk to me about cognitive sharpness and brain performance.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: So I'm a big fan of something called Cerebrolysin. I don't know if you use Cerebrolysin.

Ben Greenfield: I have in the past, yeah.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Cerebrolysin is a neural peptide growth factor. It has three different growth factors in it. The only downside is that if you infuse it too fast and you have a heart condition, it can cause a change in cardiac rhythm. So you have to make sure it's under a physician's guidance. But if you infuse it intravenously, I'm actually doing a clinical trial now using it on patients who have had recent ischemic strokes. It improves the stroke penumbra, which is just a fancy way of saying: if you've had a stroke and part of your brain is dead, there's nothing else you can really do. People can give blood thinners and things like that, but there's no other real medical option. And using Cerebrolysin in that indication is amazing. But if you're just a healthy person getting older and dealing with ischemia, Cerebrolysin is an incredible tool for cognitive improvement. The same thing with using Dissolve Muse Cells intranasally, putting them at the cribriform plate, positioning the patient in Trendelenburg, and letting that sit there, as well as intrathecal administration, which means going into the spinal canal and injecting. So I'm a big fan of using all three together.

Ben Greenfield: How uncomfortable is that to do intranasally? Is it under anesthesia, or do you just put something up somebody's nose?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: No, it's just as simple as putting it up the nose and having the patient lie back for about 10 minutes. It works really well.

Ben Greenfield: What about exosomes? Are you using those much?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Outside the US, exosomes are perfectly legal, so we're using them. If you think about it: stem cells are like the tree, and exosomes are like the fruit of the tree, so you get immediate anti-inflammatory effect. I've never seen anything work as well as an exosome for reducing focal inflammatory change. You could use them on your skin locally...

Ben Greenfield: I know; I did that this morning. Well, technically they're really only available for practitioners, but because I was supposed to shoot a video kind of holding them up and showing how to use them, I have the kit with the hyaluronic acid and the exosomes in my refrigerator. And today I literally derma-stamped my whole face, whatever, a $10 derma stamp off Amazon, and then combined hyaluronic acid with exosomes and did a full facial.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: So we have a Dissolve Muse Cell exosome and hyaluronic acid combination together, and it's amazing. It's used for topical aesthetic and cosmetic purposes, and it works spectacularly outside the US. We also use these exosomes for major anti-inflammation. What's exciting is we're hoping rules and regulations change for children with inflammatory arthritis, like juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, who currently have to take very hardcore medications that affect the entire body. If you just inject exosomes into a small joint, the inflammation in that joint goes away, and the patient's fingers and joints move very, very quickly.

Ben Greenfield: Wait, what do you inject into the joints? The exosomes?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield: And you would choose that over stem cells?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Well, there's a specific indication. For an inflammatory arthritis, for a rheumatologic disorder, especially juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, exosomes are incredibly useful. Again, we use those outside the US because of regulatory limitations here. But within the United States, the laws have changed and we can use stem cell products, but for children specifically, I find the exosome product for arthritis, especially for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and any of the inflammatory arthritides, incredibly useful.

Ben Greenfield: Now, one thing I'm often asked, and you might know the answer, some cosmetic surgeons say follicular transplantation is really the only way to address a receding hairline, baldness, etc. And yet some people are now talking about GHK-Cu copper peptide, especially combined with some type of abrasion like dermal rolling or microneedling, to actually have an effect on follicular growth. Do you know anything about that?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Yeah, I use it personally. If you saw a picture of me from like four or five years ago, my wife said I should go to Turkey and get a hair transplant. I didn't get one. I just use a dermal roller, I use the Muse XSL product on my hair, I also use GHK-Cu on my hair. I don't have wonderful hair like you do, but it's getting there.

Ben Greenfield: Well, I'm not... actually, I have been using GHK on my hair for a year and a half. I don't know if it has anything to do with all of this, but anecdotally, for about a month I've been using it on my face every two or three days, and I've gone from needing to shave every couple of days to waking up every day with dark growth on my face. The only thing I changed was starting to put GHK copper peptide on before my other skincare products. From what I understand, it's small enough as a peptide, like 40 to 50 daltons or something like that, to actually be absorbed transdermally.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's absolutely correct. It's a very small peptide, small kilodalton, applied topically, and it's just amazing what it does. We're also working on a collaboration with the people over at Muscle Innovations to come up with a Dissolve Muse Cell peptide combination that uses GHK-Cu plus Dissolve Muse exosomes for focal applications.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, yeah. One person I spoke with about GHK copper peptide said the pH of a solution makes that difficult to pull off in terms of maintaining the right acid-alkaline balance for the GHK to remain stable, or something like that.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: You know, it's almost like a Lunchable, right? You take one and add the other; that's why they come separately. So the idea would be to do something like that.

Ben Greenfield: In the few minutes we have left, what's another technology or exciting development you haven't had a chance to talk about yet?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Cancer. I'm a personal consultant to several governments, and when I say governments, I mean both governmental and non-governmental entities outside the US, as well as several large funds looking at new technologies. There are about seven different types of malignancies or cancers for which the data have shown they're already being cured, using CAR T-cell therapy and things of that nature. They're coming from all over the world. Our FDA is very slow in approving some of these things, and these are double-blinded studies that have already been done. I'm excited because I think cancer, over the course of the next decade, is going to become a chronic disease, if not completely cured, with some of these biologic CAR T-cell therapies. There are already people living decades with active malignancies where it just becomes like diabetes. That's the goal. I've seen the data for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, several types of Crohn's disease and inflammatory bowel disease, and at least seven types of malignancy being completely addressed. I don't know yet which companies will bring these things to market, but it's incredibly humbling. I think we're living in a time, God willing, we'll live long enough, that we're going to see the cure to some chronic diseases that right now we can't...

Ben Greenfield: And what does CAR T-cell therapy look like logistically? Is it an infusion, a series of treatments, or what?

Dr. Pradeep Albert: So there are two different types. There's one that's personalized; you take your cellular therapy, and for example, you take your particular tumor cell and you use a CAR T-cell therapy where you grow those T cells to attack your particular mutation. Now with artificial intelligence and the rapid rise of computing technology, you can design a personalized CAR T-cell therapy that can basically target and kill that mutation. I think the use of artificial intelligence over the next five to seven years is going to be a game changer, not just for well-known diseases, but for unusual diseases where there's not much research money being spent. With AI, there's an incredible opportunity to cure diseases that people have just been suffering with and for which there's no real cure.

Do you need to go overseas for the CAR T-cell therapy?

Well, right now, yes. But I'm hopeful that our current administration, which does seem very keen on updating rules and regulations to allow novel therapeutics through right-to-try laws and things of that nature, because if you're really sick, what are you going to do? You have to travel to some developing country to get something...

Ben Greenfield: Done. Yeah, which is hard to do if you're really sick.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: That's correct. Exactly. My singular personal goal is to make sure that all these novel therapeutics, wherever they're available, are available in the United States. I think we have some of the best doctors on the planet and some of the best infrastructure on the planet. If we just had the best therapeutics and they were allowed, in a reasonable, double-blinded way, not a blanket "everything goes" or "nothing goes," but a pathway that's much easier for approving novel therapeutics in the United States, I'm praying that that actually happens.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah. I think there's great promise. I was actually just back in DC last week doing an RFK podcast, and he had lots of questions about peptides, stem cells, and regenerative therapy. So I know it's on his radar, and hopefully on the radar of many others who are making these decisions.

Okay, well, we are running short on time. I don't think Dr. Albert's new book on peptides is ready yet, but hopefully I get my copy fresh today and I'll be able to give you guys some feedback on it. I will certainly let you know on Instagram, Twitter, etc., when that book is out. But go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrAlbert. I will link to Dr. Pradeep Albert's website, his channels, Vesalius for peptides, more information on the Muse Cells at the Muse Cell Institute website, and also Harmonic if you want to try this frequency wellness for yourself, or now for your pet, with discount codes and links for all of those, all over at BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrAlbert. Pradeep, thanks so much for doing this, man.

Dr. Pradeep Albert: Thank you, Ben. It's a real pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Ben Greenfield: To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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