[Transcript] – Fixing A Knee Without Surgery, Building “Young Muscle”, Zenjections For The Vagus Nerve, Peptides For COVID & Much More with Dr. Matt Cook.

Affiliate Disclosure

Transcripts

June 3, 2023

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/matt-cook-youngmuscle/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:13] Podcast Sponsors

[00:05:33] Who is Dr. Matt Cook?

[00:07:12] Resetting the vagus nerve

[00:10:49] Stellate ganglion block

[00:16:39] Ben's experience with Dr. Matt

[00:30:11] The importance of nutrition

[00:32:15] Podcast Sponsors

[00:36:25] cont. The importance of nutrition

[00:38:03] Link between muscle, ligament, and joint health and COVID

[00:50:17] The benefits of peptides

[01:00:06] The latest version of flywheel training

[01:03:03] Bonus audio

[01:06:47] Upcoming Event

[01:08:13] End of Podcast

Ben:  My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Matt:  You have more bacteria and yeast in your gut than there are star in the sky, in the colon. But then, in the small intestine, it's supposed to be nothing. When the bacteria kind of crawl up into the small intestine, it's small and it can't take being distended. So then, what we do is we do a trio test. We look to see if there are bacteria and if they're methane dependent–

Ben:  The trio is a breath test, right?

Matt:  It's a breath test. And then, based upon that, we'll do potentially some antibiotics and then we will potentially give them some peptides. And, the peptides would be maybe an immune peptide and LL-37. In parallel to that, then we may give them a diet that focuses on avoiding fermentable foods like specific carbohydrate diet or a low FODMAP diet.

Ben:  Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Earlier this year, I made a pretty big statement that I think that when it comes to NAD, Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, this molecule with great cellular protective and anti-aging properties. When it comes to the bioavailability of it, I think that nothing beats from what I've seen NAD3. A version of NAD that's very bioavailable, difficult to find. But, there's a new product that has added other proven longevity compounds. Namely, spermidine, niacinamide, and resveratrol to the NAD3, making it the most complete and efficacious NAD supplement that I think exists anywhere. And, it's called BioStack NAD Regen, made by BioStack Labs. NAD Regen, like regeneration. Now, this is pretty impressive stuff. I'm popping three every morning right now. I'm also taking their Cell Shield. So, those two in combination give an enormous age reversal, longevity, anti-aging punch. When you get a 3-month supply of this stuff, they're going to send you a fourth bottle totally free. So, you're getting a bottle completely free. You go to BioStackLabs.com/Ben. BioStack, B-I-O-S-T-A-C-K Labs.com/Ben, if you want to try this stuff out. So, again, it's called N-A-D Regen. 

I'm often asked what do I wear when I'm at the gym, church, yoga, walking around the house, recording a podcast, even sometimes just pajamas going to bed. I have one brand of clothing that bar none is the brand that I'm wearing like 90% of the time. It's called Vuori. The reason I wear them is they are incredibly comfortable. You can wear them anywhere. They really support a healthy planet because they 100% offset their carbon footprint. My wife wears their joggers, the softest joggers you're ever going to own. They've got their leggings, again for women, with the high waist, it's a drawstring tie, and upgraded no-slip fit. They got the most comfortable lined athletic short called the men's Kore Short. They got a perfect lounging and work jogger, they call it their men's Sunday Performance Jogger. Everything Vuori makes just fits, performs, and looks great no matter where you bring it. So, if you're sick and tired of traditional old workout gear and you want new perspective on performance apparel that's good for running, training, swimming, yoga, lounging, weekend errands, you name it, go with Vuori.

I'm going to give you 20% off your first purchase, which is huge, and free shipping on any U.S. orders over 75 bucks. And, free returns if you try it on and you don't like it, it doesn't fit. Send it back. Here's how: go to Vuori.com/Ben. That's V-U-O-R-I.com/Ben and you'll automatically get that 20% off free shipping on any U.S. orders over 75 bucks and free returns. 

Alright, you want to know my secret meat rub weapon in the kitchen that caramelizes meat, boosts nitric oxide levels, and is full of potent adaptogens and antioxidants and even a clinical dose of cordyceps mushroom which is one of the most powerful mushrooms you can get your hands on for lung performance and overall energy levels. 

Well, I use this stuff called Organifi Red Juice. I blend it up with salt and black pepper and use it as a meat rub and a steak rub. I write about this in my cookbook. It's a game-changer. It wasn't even made for being a meat rub. It was honestly made just like mix in some water or blend up in some coconut milk and give you this natural caffeine-free boost of energy that unlike these overpriced juices that you get from the refrigerator at the overpriced health food store. This stuff is pennies on the dollar, 100% USDA certified organic super simple to make with no shopping and chopping and clean up afterwards. They've even got these handy on-the-go stick packs. It's all high-quality freeze-dried berries, extremely low in sugar, dairy-free, soy-free, vegan, non-GMO, 100% organic whole food, USDA organic, certified gluten-free, this stuff just works. It's a freaking blood-building, energy-enhancing nutrient-packed powder and did I mention it tastes great as a meat rub. 

You get 20% off go to Organifi.com. That's Organifi with an I.com/Ben and that will get you your 20% off of anything from Organifi. But may I recommend to you as your superfood powder sommelier, that you grab this red stuff because it's pretty amazing. Try it out Organifi.com/Ben. Matt Cook is I think one of the most Matt Cook is, I think, one of the most repeated guest in my podcast of all time, Dr. Matthew Cook. Now, I'm going to link to all of his fascinating previous episodes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungMuscle.  Why BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungMuscle? Because Matt took my knee over the past year and a half from hobbling swollen and barely being able to run, walk, squat, play tennis, play pickleball, anything, and now it's at 90% and continually getting better. He uses exosomes. He uses stem cells. He uses placental matrix. He uses nerve hydrodissection. He has all these crazy tricks up his sleeve but has a really, really cool perspective from where regenerative medicine standpoint on muscles, ligaments, tendons, joints, and maintaining this so-called young muscle, and even combines it with things like vagus nerve resets and other combination that help to treat not only the muscles in the joint but also the brain.

Now, if I happen to sound like I have the voice of God on today's podcast or more specifically a smooth buttery best podcasting voice ever because I do have, I think as we were talking about earlier Matt not only a voice for radio but also both of us have a nice face for radio.

Matt:  I know.

Ben:  Yeah. It's probably because of that weird needle you just stuck into my neck. And, I would be curious as I'm sure my listeners would also be about what this thing is that you do with the vagus nerve. So, what is that that we just did?

Matt:  So, that is something called a vagus nerve hydrodissection. The traditional thing that I do for people with PTSD and trauma or people with chronic nerve pain, especially in the head and neck is I will take a needle and put it in the area where the fight-or-flight nerves are on the front of the neck, turns out the rest and relaxed nerves are right next to those. And, that's the main rest and relaxed nerve that goes to your heart and lungs and intestines that comes from your brain is called the vagus nerve. And so, what I do is I take that needle and I come close to the vagus nerve and then I put a little fluid of growth factors around the vagus nerve. And, what it does is it tends to support it. It seems to turn it on and you feel kind of your voice starts to reach in. And, part of that is because one of the branches of the vagus nerves goes to your voice box.

And so, I did that kind of selfishly just to improve the vocal tone in Rocky Roots.

Ben:  Right. So, when we bring the band back. And, if that went over everybody's head, check out rockyrootsmusic.com where Matt and I have an EP of an album that we recorded. We're actually recording at Matt's office passing a microphone back and forth. So, this is probably going to be the least you ever hear me interrupt the podcast guest since we are doing the mic passing.

But anyways, this whole vagus nerve approach, I feel a combination of super relaxed de-stressed kind of zen after doing it, almost I would love to test my HRV right now because I would imagine it's pretty high. What would be the reason besides just sheer curiosity on my part which is why I did it that people would do a procedure like this? 

Matt:  Our primary trajectory of using this procedure is people with PTSD and trauma and for those people we are rebooting and resetting the fight-or-flight nerves. But then, we'll also treat the vagus nerve. One of the things I started to see is sometimes people would lose weight after I did it because they have less visceral fat. Sometimes I would see people they would say, “Oh, all my abdominal pain went away” or people will start to say, “I just start to feel better in my intestines.” People with chronic pain in their intestines often will start to get better. And, we were doing that with numbing medicine. So, I'm using ropivacaine, which is a local anesthetic. And, the concept of that is to turn those nerves off kind of like you're turning your computer off and rebooting it. And, that was why I actually called my company, BioReset, in the very beginning because we were doing this fight or flight reset and kind of turning the computer off, resetting you to the factory default settings, and turning it back on. However, we eventually started finding that people would do better if we rebooted both rest and relax and fight or flight. And so, then that's when we started doing that.

And, I noticed people did so well. I realized I put growth factors around every nerve in the body. And so, it kind of made sense to me what would happen if I started putting plasma and growth factors around the vagus nerve. And, sure enough, that is a way of not blocking it to get it better but putting growth factors around it to get it better. And then, almost 100% of the time, what people will say is, “Oh, my voice starts to feel a bit more rich. I start to feel a little bit of a vibration on my chest.” It's a fairly repeatable sense of wellness and calm.

Ben:  So, I've heard of the thing called the stellate ganglion nerve block before. Is this the same thing as that?

Matt:  I'll get into the weeds a little bit. The fight-or-flight nerves in the neck, in the middle of the neck basically kind of between C4 and C6 tend to run in between the two deepest muscles in the front of the neck. Those muscles, the superficial one is called longus capitis and the deep one is called longus colli. The fight-or-flight nerves tend to run primarily in that plane at that level. However, they can also be a little bit in the muscles there. And then, eventually, they come down and run on the front of your vertebra in the thoracic area. When you stick a needle into that fascial plane, when you do a stellate ganglion block, we block those nerves. Often when you stick a needle in that plane, the fluid will shoot over by the carotid artery and go kind of get the vagus nerve. What I started doing is intentionally going over there because it's very safe for me when I create a fluid. I'm just sticking my needle, tracking my needle in the fluid, and then going over and putting it.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  Kind of in the corner pocket where the vagus nerve lives.

Ben:  Okay. And, you'd think, I mean for people listening like whoa, needles in my neck. Even for me as I was laying there for a brief second, I was like, “Wait, I felt really vulnerable.” And then, you have this nice soothing approach where you talk me into a state of relaxation but then also you don't feel anything. Honestly, all I felt was just your fingers around my neck.

Matt:  Right. But, I would say of things to do, that could be just about the most advanced procedure because I'm right next to your carotid artery.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And, I do–

Ben:  Which I could see on the ultrasound, by the way. I can see the needle [00:13:14] _____. Yeah.

Matt:  So, I do five or six big procedures on the neck almost every day since 2001. So, it's something that I do a lot. We say we're starting a teaching organization to teach basically everything that we do hydrodissection from nerves, arteries, veins, every joint in the body, fascial planes. And, it's a fairly substantial journey to get to the point where you feel comfortable knowing where a needle is to be able to do that.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like any surgery you'd want somebody to do it who's done a lot of procedures before especially when you're playing around in that area where there's a lot of sensitive nerves, vessels.

So, this might seem like a far cry from regenerative medicine lower down in a joint, for example, and we might be kind of working backwards here. But, do you actually combine this with, let's say, work on a knee or a hip or a shoulder? Is there any crossover effect on the joints?

Matt:  So, the crossover is what I like to do is get a sense of where are people in their pain cycle. So, some people will come in and have been in long-term pain and their central nervous system and their spinal cord are sort of upregulated from a pain perspective.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  In those patients, they tend to do really well with a stellate ganglion block. And so, often what will happen is people will come and let's say they've got debilitating back pain and they've been in pain for quite a while. For those patients often as part of their journey of three or four days, I'll do a stellate ganglion block on one side on one day, on the other side on another day. The right stellate ganglion resets blood flow to the right side of the brain.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And, the right vagus nerve comes from the right basically side of your brain stem and goes through your liver and kind of the right side of your intestinal tract. And, recently, a couple weeks ago, had a woman come in that had abdominal pain and I did the stellate. And, she goes, “Oh, all the pain on the right side of my abdomen is gone but the left side is still here.”

Ben:  That's crazy.

Matt:  The next day, we did the other side. And so, then the left vagus comes from the left brainstem and so on.

Ben:  Yeah. I mentioned HRV, but have you ever actually had anybody either in real-time measure their heart rate variability or track their nervous system response in some quantified manner or afterwards track it and see that went up?

Matt:  Oh, yeah, all the time. It almost always goes up when you track it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And, what I tell people is that mindfulness and meditation and everything good that you've ever heard of that anybody has ever talked about on your podcast, fundamentally at somewhat level drives you into higher levels of heart rate variability.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And, all of those are techniques that drive you in so you can experience and sort of maintain a connected state that is a “rest and relaxed state.”

Ben:  Right.

Matt:  This is just one more tool that will drive you into a rest and relaxed state. And, I like to say that you leave some breadcrumbs along the way. And, at the end, after having gone through the experience a lot of times, then that just as a way for you to help to reconnect. And, for some people, just to realize it's possible to get into a kind of a deep, connected, calm coherent state, and then often once that happens, like I did a stellate ganglion block for somebody yesterday and I said, “How's it going?” And, she goes, “Well, my fiancé's flight was canceled and he couldn't show up here but I was totally fine with it.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And so, I was kind of stuff–

Ben:  You've got a changed in there, we call this injection or something like that.

Matt:  This injection. That's what we're going to call it from now on.

Ben:  Yeah, I love it.

Okay. So, I mentioned that I was pretty hobbled up. I was actually almost not depressed but super disappointed two years ago when I felt I was getting old. I couldn't play tennis. I hadn't yet discovered the sport of pickleball, but there's no way I would have been able to play that. I couldn't run, bike riding hurt, couldn't squat heavy, couldn't deadlift, couldn't lunge, and going up and down stairs hurt. And, I went to three different orthopods, they all told me that I was probably going to have to get surgery, that I probably had arthritis and that my knee was pretty much shut, and that they might be able to scope but that might help but no guarantees. 

And then, I came down and saw you. You did some stuff on it. And then, here I am, we're what, 10 months out now and I'm doing all like I'm running, I'm playing tennis, I'm playing pickleball, I'm squatting, I'm deadlifting, I'm going up and down stairs. Basically, my knee, I can tell something happened to it in the past but it's not an issue at all. Walk people through what you actually did.

Matt:  I'm going to do something even better hopefully. What happened is in addition to that, Ben was a hardcore endurance athlete who was–

Ben:  For a lot of years.

Matt:  Competitive for a lot of years. And so, when I first met you, at the very beginning, you had an effusion in that knee, and that knee–

Ben:  Explain what an effusion is.

Matt:  So, you had water on the knee. And so, when I first met you, I pulled out 30 CCs of fluid. You had what's called synovitis, which was inflammation of the joint lining. And, as a result of that, you were just–you damaged your meniscus a little bit and you damaged some of the ligaments in your knee a little bit. And so, your body has this idea, I got a great idea, let's put some more WD-40 in there. And so, the body says that it starts to secrete some fluid and the knee is kind of a sealed joint. Next thing you know, you got a little water on your knee but you're tougher than the average bearing, you just kind of train through that.

Ben:  I know. I trained to race. I did one Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii where going into the race, my knee was like the size of a softball and I just taped the hell out of it and hammered on it for 12 hours. It was teeth-gritting pain, just on ibuprofen. I took a Valium that night and went to bed and I would do that kind of stuff every few months.

Matt:  Right. So then, you're going to get some excess wear and tear. And then, when your body starts to make a lot of fluid in there, it's supposed to get inflammatory. And so then, that was going on. And, when you do that, then you can cause damage and inflammation at every level. And so, the title of our talk was muscle ligament tendon fascia joint. And, I– 

Ben:  I changed it to Young Muscle.

Matt:  We'll change it to Young Muscle zen injection.

Ben:  Yeah, zen injections.

Matt:  And so then, you came in in a super, super inflamed state. You tore your MCL. All of the nerves around your knee were super painful, so your peroneal nerve is super painful. You had a huge baker cyst, which is fluid in the back of the knee. Bakers used to lean into the thing to pound the dough. And then, they–

Ben:  That's why it's called that?

Matt:  That's why. And, what happened is they would kind of tear their meniscus and then there's a little hole basically between their gas rack and their hamstring, and fluid would pop out. And so, that would–

Ben:  No way. I thought it was because it looks like you have a cinnamon roll on the back of your knee [00:20:47] _____ Baker's. It's almost like Mad Hatter's disease was because of people who used to dye the hats.

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  What happens is that when you're running real hard or take some trauma, you can get inflammation in your bone marrow, and so you get bone marrow edema. And so, bone marrow edema is super, super painful, which is why you were hobbling around in a lot of pain. 

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And, you had a little bit of an osteochondral defect, which is basically where you've lost cartilage that is basically between the cartilage and the bone. And, the reason for that is when you have edema in the bone marrow, then the bone marrow is what's giving all of the nutrition that leaks across the bone to support that cartilage. So then, when you get inflammation in the bone marrow, then it can't make all the growth factors to keep everybody happy.

Ben:  But, thank God for kratom and weed because I could still work out with the former and still sleep at night with the latter. So, I was pretty much good to go. 

Matt:  Pretty much.

Ben:  Shut down pain.

Matt:  And, the one thing that I would never take away from you is working out because I don't know [00:21:56] _____

Ben:  I just keep bouncing off the walls.

Matt:  There's a variety of ways to fix bone marrow lesions. Probably the one that makes the most sense is to treat bone marrow with bone marrow. And so, we pulled some bone marrow out of your hip and then spun a needle inside the bone and put some bone marrow in there.

Ben:  Was that the one that's called intraosseous needling? It's almost like aerating a lawn where drilling holes into the bone patching that up with bone marrow and then the cartilage apparently regrows in response to that.

Matt:  Yeah. And, your cartilage is about 60%, 70% better, but it's not 100% perfect. There's a hint of an osteochondral defect but it's way better than it was. I treated all the ligaments I hydrodissected, which is putting fluid around those nerves. I treated the joint. I pulled all the fluid out, treated the joint. 

This is kind of a testament of one of those cases. A lot of times people come and you have these heroic experiences where somebody has some big problem and you kind of fix it in one time. Your knee was in super bad shape and things were not looking good. And then, I did that. And, it was a slow recovery. And then, I took you to Mexico twice and gave you stem cells. And, you just doggedly kept at it. And today, I treated you again, treated a couple ligaments, treated the joint. I pulled all the fluid out of your baker cyst. So now, we're going to call you Baker Ben.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  I pulled fluid out of the front of the joint. I said, “How much fluid am I going to pull out?” And, Ben goes “35 CCs.” And, we were thinking about the over-under on that and then I thought, “I'm not going to take it over-under because it's within 1 cc.” I don't know why I didn't, so I just didn't even say anything. And then, it was literally 35 CCs.

Ben:  You think [00:23:57] _____. I'll put in the shownotes if people want to see the nasty yellow fluid that you can pull out of a knee.

And, you talked about doggedly keeping at it. I should mention that at the same time that we were doing all of this, I met and interviewed Ben Patrick, the Knees Over Toes guy. And, I started doing knees over toes lunges. I started doing reverse hyperextensions. I started doing a lot of clamshell and external rotator work. I started doing some of his deep squats but unloaded where your knees are actually going over your toe with the idea that despite it being a general no-no in strength conditioning to squat and have your knees go forward of your toes, Ben's theory is that by loading it in that manner, you're actually increasing blood flow causing the cartilage to become loaded, triggering a regrowth response and actually increasing vascularization to the joint. 

So, I got his cheapo little book on Amazon. He's got two on there. One called the “ATG For Life” and one that's more of a knee book. You can find them easily. Go listen to the podcast. I'll link to it in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungMuscle. But, I started doing his program. It only took 10 to 15 minutes. And, I usually do it in the sauna like when my knees are pretty warm. And, most of it unloaded in the sauna, and then occasionally I do a little bit loaded like holding a couple kettlebells or whatever for some of the lunges.

And so, I think that combined with the regenerative medicine protocols helped a ton. So, this wasn't me sitting in my butt in between stem cells and bone marrow and some of the other stuff you were doing. I think that the physical therapy is pretty important as well. Yeah.

Matt:  100%. And, you're still doing the light, you're wrapped in light every day.

Ben:  Oh, yeah. So, what I do now also–I do this for both knees because I just feel when I do my morning workout because I usually work out about 8:30 in the morning, and so I get up about 4:30 or 5:00 and I roll over and grab these little, they're called Kineon lights, the Kineon Move+. And, it's this combination of LED and laser. You wrap it around a joint and then you can just walk around the house making coffee or doing whatever you're doing in the morning while it shines light for five minutes. And, I usually will do have 20 minutes. I'll just press the button when it turns off and go for another five minutes. And, that feels it just kind of wakes up my knees for the morning.

Matt:  Yeah. And so, I 100% believe in that. I believe in the knees over toe stuff. And, I believe we talk about muscle ligament tendon fascia joint. All of that stuff where you're working your muscles and fascia, there's little nerves in your fascia. And so, then when you start to get that healthy, then suddenly that's all of the structures that support the knee. And, what I found is a lot of times what will happen is people will have pain or dysfunction of one or two muscles. So, a classic thing in for people is they'll have a super tight vastus lateralis and their IT bands in pain, and then their adductors and their vastus medialis is weak.

Ben:  Right.

Matt:  And so, they get– 

Ben:  Outside tight, inside weak.

Matt:  Outside tight, inside weak. And so, then now they're pulling their kneecap laterally. And, when they pull their kneecap laterally, now they've got a tracking problem, which is a problem. And, you had that and I actually spun some bone marrow into your patella as well. And, that seems to be way better.

Ben:  And, that's a big part of the Knees Over Toes program too is strengthening of the vastus medialis. Everything from flutter kicks where you have your VMO contracted to some of the inner thigh strengthening exercises. And, there's this step down that you do. I think he calls it a Poliquin step down where your heels are down and your toes are up usually on a slant board and you're stepping down off that slant board and you got to use your VMO to get yourself back up.

Matt:  Oh, you know Charles Poliquin was a really good friend of mine.

Ben:  I knew that and forgot it. And now, when I'm just now talking about Ben Patrick and Charles Poliquin, apparently Ben Patrick studied under Poliquin and learned a lot of this knees-over-toe stuff straight from Poliquin.

Matt:  Oh, really?

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  Okay. So, that's 100%.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  Charles Poliquin is basically one of the greatest strength coaches to have ever lived. And so, then he would come here and then I would do stuff for him and then he would just basically just tell me stories about the strength and conditioning world. And, he would just talk for hours and hours. He is the most hilarious greatest person I've ever met.

Ben:  Yeah. I recently did a podcast interview with another person who worked with him on foot proprioception and treats everything from the ground up like a lot of toe-splaying devices, these proprioceptive texture soles that you stand on, and then different balls that you roll the feet with. Do you ever do feet mats with your patients, folks on the foot?

Matt:  Tons. Same thing, ligament, tendon and fascia muscles. And so, then for the foot, one thing is I'm looking at all the muscles, basically the extensors and the flexors. And so, checking out, are those muscles working? Are they in pain? If they are, I may treat the central tendon. I may do a hydrodissection in between the muscles and then I may treat the nerves. And then– 

Ben:  Oh, so you're actually doing injections into the feet.

Matt:  Oh, yeah, all the time. So, that's all basically in the calf. And often, we are hydrodissecting inside the muscle primarily with plasma. And, plasma is basically what's in your blood, which is going to muscles. And so, then we will start to treat basically the central tendons, which is where nerves are. So, we're treating the nerve that's basically going down around the tendon. Tendons hurt because there's a lot of nerves.

Then, in the foot, basically what happens is there's a constellation of important ligaments that if they're partially torn, then we will treat those ligaments to build stability. Probably one of the main things that I do is treat foot pain. And so, then just like you've got a carpal tunnel in your wrist, you've got something called a tarsal tunnel in your foot. And then, basically, your tibial nerve goes down and it splits into three branches. One that goes back to the back of your foot called Baxter's and then one that goes towards your big toe, which is called the medial plantar nerve, and the one that goes towards your little toe called the lateral plantar nerve. And then, we do what's called hydrodissection where we'll put plasma or something anti-inflammatory around the nerves to treat nerve pain.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. And, we did a whole podcast on hydrodissection too where we got deep into the science of it. And, I'll link to that if people want to go listen more about hydrodissection. But, there's also, you haven't talked about this much on a podcast, I know that you appreciate the importance of it, but that's the nutritional piece. 

One of my friends is at my house last week and we're going to do a breathwork session in the sauna. And, she came down the stairs and she was hobbling. She's going down the stairs she's like, “My Achilles tendon is killing me.” And, she said that she had gluten at the dinner party that I threw the night before. She stayed the night at my house. And, she said that she was just super swollen and inflamed from that and had a bunch of joint pain. And then, you have guys like Tom Brady who are swearing by the no nightshades diet for long-term joint health for athletes. How often do you actually step back and look at a patient's diet when you're doing this kind of work?

Matt:  All the time. And, it's interesting, we have a gluten sensitivity in our family. And, because I've treated my mom so much with stem cells, she used to be basically the only person that hasn't had total joint replacements everywhere. And so then, I think that it's going to be something that over time we learn more and more about. And so, we pay a lot of attention to it. And so then, we'll do the Cyrex—

Ben:  Just gluten or all of them like lectins and–

Matt:  So then, all of that is significant. Now, one thing, just a step back, is to say a lot of the people that I say that have the most trouble are the ones that have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or fungal overgrowth, which means they have leaky gut and they're reacting to everything that they eat. And so, in that case, those are the ones that are really susceptible to many of these systemic things.

The next category is the ones that are just the genetically celiac-sensitive. And so, then generally what I do is I'll pay attention to that and then I'll try to do some testing and sort of manage thinking about that. But then, for the Achilles, I would say of things that really respond well is I'll put plasma, basically around the Achilles tendon. And, I'll do a hydrodissection of that tendon. And so, then that's kind of an interesting one.

Ben:  You're probably familiar with the fact that the average adult should get 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. I realize that's not always possible. More and more people are forced to make lifestyle changes to get more deep sleep, especially. But the good news is that quality matters just as much as quantity. So, when you're in bed sleeping, you want the quality of the sleep. Even if you're not able to be in bed 7, or 8, or 9 hours to be as high as possible. The first half of the night is when your deep sleep window occurs, and that's when things start to drop. Your heart rate, your breathing, your blood pressure, muscle activity, your body temperature. And, since that temperature drop is such a crucial aspect of the deep sleep stages, finding ways to activate that sleep switch can help to increase your levels of deep sleep. So, that's where this thing called SleepMe comes in. SleepMe is the system that circulates cold or hot, if you need it as like an alarm clock, water to circulate underneath your mattress. So, it's a hydropower, temperature-controlled mattress topper that fits over your existing mattress. No matter what kind of mattress you have to give you your ideal sleep temperature.

Now, I'm pretty straightforward. I just set that bad boy 55 degrees and sleep all night. Occasionally, I'll switch it to warm water if I need an alarm. I don't want a blurring alarm clock. The warm water function is amazing. You've probably heard of sunrise alarm clocks that make natural sun? This is like that. Works just as well though. It's weird. Warm water just wakes you up and makes you not feel tired like you do in an alarm. Breaks you out of your sleep stages that might not be ideal for getting broken out of early in the morning. So, it's called the Dock Pro System. This new system that they've made. It's super slick. It'll even tie to your phone. You can set schedules. It's really cool. I guess, literally and figuratively, in this case. So, here's you can save up to 25% on the purchase of any new sleep system from SleepMe, and this offer is available exclusively for my listeners only for a limited time. Sleep.me/BenGreenfield. That's sleep.me/BenGreenfield. And, that's how you can get that ultimate discount on the SleepMe. Enjoy!

So, I wrote a book last year that is my guide to dealing with personal struggles, spiritual growth, temptations, and it's essentially a sequel to my original book, “Fit Soul,” in which I talk about, as the name implies, getting a fit soul. But this book called “Endure” is about tools, tactics, and habits for improving your spiritual stamina. As kind of a fun side project for that book, I commissioned an artist to create 13 really cool amazing limited edition covers of super inspirational figures like a bald eagle, and David fighting Goliath, and a rock climber, and an archer and stallions running through like a wildfire, and somebody charging up a hill, and a ship on the raging ocean, really, really beautiful books. And then, I work to get these books printed. I personally signed each one of them and so I've got 13 books literally in my office, all limited edition versions of my book, “Endure.” And what I'm doing is I'm opening up all 13 as an NFT meaning you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/EndureNFT. You can bid on any of the books, and when you do, I send the book to your home, you also own the digital right, and we're doing a VIP book signing party with me for the 13 people who each own one copy, only one copy will ever exist of this “Endure” book. 

So, I'm super proud of the way these things turned out. They're really beautiful. They'd be great for a gift. They'd be great for a cool place on your bookshelf. You could get all 13 if you want to own the whole collection and beat everybody to the punch. That's up to you. 

But, anyways, you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/EndureNFT to bid on a book to own it, get the signed version sent to you own, the digital version, and also have a private virtual book signing party with me. So, check it out: BenGreenfieldLife.com/EndureNFT. 

Back to bacterial and fungal overgrowth, I remember at one time you had mentioned to me this peptide called, I think it was LL-37.

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  That you've used in the past for that. Do you still like that?

Matt:  So, LL-37 is an antimicrobial peptide. And so, there is a company pharmacy that I'm aware of that will make a liquid LL-37. And so, then for people who have active SIBO, which means that your small intestine is supposed to be sterile. And, there's not supposed to be any yeast or bacteria for the most part in there. And then, you can get into a situation where the bacteria and yeast kind of get ahead of everybody in the food line, basically an interesting way to think about this. You have more bacteria and yeast in your gut than there are stars in this in the sky, in the colon. But then, in the small intestine, it's supposed to be nothing. When the bacteria kind of crawl up into the small intestine, it's small and it can't take being distended. So then, what we do is we do a trio test. We look to see if there are bacteria. And, if they're methane dependent–

Ben:  The trio is a breath test, right?

Matt:  It's a breath test. And then, based upon that, we'll do potentially some antibiotics and then we will potentially give them some peptides. And, the peptides would be maybe an immune peptide and LL-37. And then, in parallel to that, then we may give them a diet that focuses on avoiding fermentable foods, a specific carbohydrate diet, or a low FODMAP diet.

Ben:  Okay.

Well, we talked about bacteria and fungus. But, from a viral standpoint, we did a podcast about COVID and vaccinations and long-haul COVID and all these COVID-related issues. Do you ever see a link between muscle ligament, tendon, joint health, and viruses like COVID or even though I realized this is a controversial topic, something like vaccinations?

Matt:  Yeah. I got just one of the greatest people I ever met, a firefighter came in. Basically, Ian got a recent vaccination because he was going to have to go be around family members who were sick and then has developed a fairly substantial neuropathy. We get a call every day that is a vaccine or a COVID complication. Clearly, there are some substantial and negative consequences that are start at the top neurological. And so, then especially COVID can affect the limbic system and affects the brainstem. The brainstem is where the vagus nerve comes from. It can affect any of the cranial nerves. So, it can affect people. You hear people lose their sense of smell and taste. So, that's the first. And then, basically, the last cranial nerves that can hit everywhere in between. And so, then COVID can affect that. It can have a real profound effect emotionally with depression and anxiety and kind of trauma that is sort of out of proportion to what I've seen before.

Interestingly, you say and I'm in close contact with a lot of doctors in Asia who are very advanced at doing the same type of stuff that I'm talking about, treating the vagus nerve and doing hydrodissections of the carotid artery. And, from a regulatory perspective, they're very limited, they don't have regenerative medicine to the extent that we do. And so, they're mostly doing a lot of this either with plasma or with 5% dextrose. And, like me, they're also seeing very positive experiences when they do hydrodissections of the carotid artery and vagus nerve.

Ben:  Really in patients?

Matt:  For long COVID.

Ben:  Wow.

Matt:  For long COVID with neurological. And, they're also doing a lot of stellate ganglion blocks for long COVID. And, the idea is when you do a stellate ganglion block, it causes a vasodilation of the carotid artery.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And, that causes an increase in blood flow. And, that increase in blood flow seems to reboot and reset basically the deep brain structures. And so, we use that for a long COVID.

The other thing that I will do is I'll use plasma basically from your blood. And then, I treat what's called the C1 plexus where I come to the anterior side of the first cervical vertebrae. And then, I will touch on the anterior side of that and then I will inject fluid. That fluid will go over and it gets the carotid artery before it goes into the brain and it gets the vagus nerve before it comes out. So, I can either do that basically underneath your ear or kind of in the middle of the neck where I did it for you today. And, they're both different but interesting ways to do that.

Ben:  Based on how that affects the carotid artery, what about headaches? Is it something that can help people have migraines or cluster headaches or anything like that?

Matt:  When I think about headaches, treating the carotid is a great way to treat headaches that are in the distribution of the carotid artery. The stellate can be helpful in general. And then, often when I treat the stellate, I'm actually in between the carotid and the vertebral artery because I mean, the vertebral artery is basically deeper and it goes through this foramen and the sides of the vertebra. But, when I get in the fascial plane, I'll see fluid go down towards the vertebral artery. And so, I'll get that and go up. 

And, depending on what's going on, if I'm trying to treat the back of the brain, then we will focus trying to get some fluid to reboot and reset blood flow vertebrally. Those can be quite helpful for headaches. The other thing is that if people have headaches that are occipital headaches, the patients with mold, patients with Lyme, almost all of the chronic immune people will have a lot of headaches and occipital headaches. And so, then we will do hydrodissection with plasma most likely of the greater occipital nerve. And so, then that comes out sort of and wraps around in the back of the head and goes over basically the back of your head. So, we try to differentiate what's the causes. Is it immune? Is it a nerve? Is it vascular? And then, kind of managed to those things.

Ben:  Okay. Now, when it comes to some of these chronic stealth co-infections that you've mentioned like the Lyme or the Epstein-Barr or something like that. Is there one test that kind of there's that try test that you talked about for gas issues like SIBO? Is there one test or are there a ton of different tests you have to do if somebody comes in and they're like, I don't quite know what's going on. We've ruled out almost everything and then you run something and you find out all this stuff that's hidden or is it a whole bunch of different tests?

Matt:   I got a great answer for this. This is the oral board exam, but Ben, I love [00:46:07] _____. This is like rapid sequence. But, I've been telling people lately is, I said, if you pick me and you and Ben Greenfield and all of our close friends, everybody that we know, and then, I did $10,000 worth of testing and I'll say what that is. What I'm going to tell you is all of our friends are going to test positive for three to four things out of the 10 to 12 things. And yet, in our cohort, most of those people are not going to have any symptoms. And so, what that means is we have a microbiome in our gut. And, that microbiome is there's more bacteria in our colon than there are stars in the sky. So then, if you think about this, we also have a virum. And so, we've been exposed to all kinds of different viruses. We've been exposed to potentially CMV, Epstein-Barr viruses, virus millions of people have, and then bacteria. And so, then some people will have– 

Ben:  CMV, that's cytomegalovirus?

Matt:  Yeah. So, some people will have devastating symptoms from this. And, that's because their immune system is dysregulated. They may have toxicity. They may have a big gastrointestinal problem that's driving dysfunctional immune system. And so, then all of it is out of control or you could be like you and you might have some of those things but you don't have any symptoms. So then, the question is, “What do you do for testing?” So then, there's a company that looks at what you're making antibodies to. We know about antibody testing because if people did antibody testing to see if you had made antibodies to COVID.

Ben:  Yeah. 

Matt:  So then, [00:47:54] _____. Well, there's a bunch of different companies, but the iGenics does antibody testing. Probably iGenics is the best antibody testing which looks for borrelia, bartonella, babesia, Ehrlichia and kind of the primary infections from an antibody perspective. 

Then, in the United States, there's a company called InfectoLab and they look at your T cell response. And so, they look at your T cell response to the same things. And then, they look at your T cell response to Epstein-Barr and CMVs. And, iGenics also looks at those.

InfectoLab and iGenics will cover your B-cell and T-cell responses, which is going to be interesting. Next thing is Andrew Campbell has a company called MyMyco that will look to see if you're making antibodies to mold.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And so, then those three labs together–

Ben:  MyMyco, isoGenics, and InfectoLab.

Matt:  iGenics, MyMyco, and InfectoLab.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And then, if you're in Europe, it's ArmonLabs.

Ben:  Okay, ArmonLabs instead of all three of those–

Matt:  ArmonLabs instead of InfectoLab.

Ben:  Okay, got it.

Matt:  And so, then that as a constellation will give you a fairly robust assessment of those. But then–

Ben:  Are those all blood tests?

Matt:  That's all blood tests.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  Now, you can do a mold urine test. There's controversy some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread and some people think it's invalid.

Ben:  Sliced moldy bread.

Matt:  Sliced moldy bread.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And so, you can go into testing for days and days. But, what I'll tell you is what you have to do is get your immune system working, get dialed in from kind of a lifestyle wellness perspective. Heal your gut. And, you're going to do the same thing whether you're focusing on high-end wellness or whether you're in a fairly devastating situation of chronic fatigue. In the chronic illness people, there's usually one thing driving it. And so, it may be that borrelia, which is Lyme disease. It may be the Epstein-Barr is the big driver. And, that's kind of the classic driver of chronic fatigue.

What happens with COVID is COVID comes on and creates the cytokine storm that creates a huge immune stress. And then, often it dysregulates your immune system. And, as a result of that, then these other things that were in the background come out.

Ben:  Oh, okay.

Matt:  So, you get basically two versions of long COVID, okay?

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And basically, data has come out that when it first came out, they said, “Oh, yeah, COVID comes and it's going to be gone, it's no longer in your body.” And, I thought there's no way that's true. And, sure enough now, some people will have a viral reservoir most likely in their gut. And so, the virus is living on and then triggering you. Option two is that you just have viral particles of the COVID bacteria. Option three is–

Ben:  Viral particles, those in the bloodstream or the gut or both?

Matt:  Everywhere.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  Because those viral particles, and that viral particle would be like the spike protein that your body's having a hard time getting rid of.

Long COVID could be those things or long COVID could have triggered your immune system brought all of these other Epstein-Barr, CMV infections, and mold trigger that to kind of come into the forefront. And so, then we're trying to kind of sort that out. And then, when people come in, then we're sorting that out, sorting out what's going on neurologically with them and then kind of building sort of a treatment plan to support them.

Ben:  How big of an issue is COVID still? Because it seems like there's obviously not a lot of masking policies and stuff like that, but you're still seeing a lot of people come in with it fresh? At the time we're recording, this was April 2023.

Matt:  Yeah. So, when we did our last podcast and you said, “Well, what's going on with vaccination?” And, I said, well, you know what's happening, it seems there's a trend where COVID may be starting to dwindle. And so, then we are minimally involved in hearing about people that are with active COVID. We hear all the time about long COVID.

Ben:  Okay, which means that the COVID that people contracted say perhaps during the pandemic is sticking around for a very long period of time?

Matt:  Well, most likely the COVID is long gone and there may be some particles of the virus or there may be some particles that are related to the vaccine that are triggering an immune response. And, that immune response is what we call long COVID.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And, that is either a pure immune response to COVID or an immune response that is COVID plus whatever else happen to be going on with it.

Ben:  Yeah. Okay.

Now, this isn't a total disconnect from COVID because in our last podcast you talked about some different peptides that can be handy for working with COVID or long-haul COVID. But then, I think a few months ago you told me you had a chance to hang out with Dr. Khavinson, the–

Matt:  Oh, Khavinson.

Ben:  Yeah, Khavinson, the Russian researcher who has all these crazy human long-term studies on decreased all-cause risk of mortality with peptides or peptide bioregulators. Have those become a major part of your routine or your practice?

Matt:  So, the bioregulator peptides are going to be amazing. And, I'm a big fan.

Ben:  Yeah. I mean, I interviewed Phil Micans about them and I'm shocked more people don't know about them.

Matt:  Right.

Ben:  Well, explain to people.

Matt:  So, Phil, shoutout to Phil, you're the best. Basically, all of your major organs have one or two peptides that regulate functions within that organ.

Ben:  Right, liver, heart, pancreas, kidney, et cetera.

Matt:  Brain.

Ben:  Yeah. Gonads.

Matt:  Pineal gland.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And so, then these are small peptides that are two or three or four amino acids. The great thing about that is that there are oral versions of them. And, because there are just a few amino acids, you can absorb them. And so, then I take the oral bioregulators all the time. 

Ben:  I thought you only do a couple stints of them during the year.

Matt:  So then, there are people who will take all of them for a short period of time. There will people who will take two or three of them and then they will cycle through them.

Ben:  Oh, to a new set.

Matt:  To a new set. And so, then–

Ben:  For different organs.

Matt:  You're going to have 18, 20 bioregulators. And so, then you could take four at a time and kind of always be rotating. And then, there are some that help your immune system. And so, I find that it's super interesting. Dr. Khavinson was the person who came up with these because they were able to figure out what the sequence was. There are synthetic versions these available. Not super available right now–

Ben:  [00:55:01] _____ being harvested from the tissue of the animal?

Matt:  Yup.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  And so, then there's a synthetic pills and then there's also pills where they take a thymus gland from a cow that was raised organically. And then, they extract and isolate that peptide and give that to you. And, Ben, there are also versions that are synthetic, synthetically produced in an injectable form. So, you have all of them available.

Ben:  Okay. There's this one company called Ancestral Supplements that has sent me up desiccated glandulars and capsules like thyroid and obviously liver, heart, kidney, spleen, et cetera. Is that kind of the same thing as taking a peptide bioregulator but just direct from the animal or do you think bioregulators are more precise or more bioavailable?

Matt:  All things that are great have been happening for a long time.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And so, then I–

Ben:  Except ChatGPT.

Matt:  Exactly. And so, the glandulars have been a great product forever. And so, people in Chinese medicine have always used them and use them to a lot of success. And, I know a lot of people in Chinese medicine and otherwise, that use glandulars a lot to support people from an immune perspective going through COVID. And then, almost for sure those glandulars have bioregulators in them. If you look at anything from a plant/herb-based product, then there's one theory that you're going to get an entourage effect if you have a constellation of things that came together.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  There's another side of the equation that says, well, what if I had a synthetic one and I could do it in higher dosing? And so, then Dr. Khavinson had protocols where he was regularly treating people. And then, even after they stopped doing their treatment, then they tracked these people and he presented this. I went to a conference in Europe basically just to meet him. And, that's where I met Phil. And, I was just totally, totally impressed. He's done a lot of work. And, what we need to do is we need to have a better way to start to study this. And, I think that we will fundamentally be able to reproduce all of the work that he's done. And, they've got a huge basically clinical research program that they've done for a long time over there that's less impressive.

Ben:  25 or 30 of them, right? At least a couple of dozen.

Matt:  For me, what I've had access to has only been 16 to 20. 

Ben:  Okay. So, let's say 18 or whatever, could you just take all of them, all the fragments, put them all in one insulin syringe, and then just do a stint where you inject all of them for a few days in a row like a couple times a year?

Matt:  That would be an appealing concept to study.

Ben:  It seems to me like that would be a pretty good anti-aging or longevity play if that actually worked.

Matt:  So then, go into longevity. So, what is longevity, and then how are we going to manage that? I think, the bioregulator peptides are one interesting thing and you have Khavinson's data, which is going to be an interesting perspective on it and they had less cardiac morbidity and mortality. That's going to be an interesting one. Then, there's going to be immune peptides, I think are going to be an interesting one because why did they call pneumonia the “old man's friend”? Because what happens is our immune system starts to get derailed when we get old. And so, then we just start to have susceptibility to immune problems.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And so, then there's a theory just like when people get older, a lot of times their thyroid gland is not making enough to support them. And so, they take a thyroid supplement. Eventually, we're going to start to take immune supplements. And so, things to support the immune system from a peptide perspective I think will be standard of care in 10 years.

Ben:  Okay.

Matt:  Okay. If we'll get on a podcast in 10 years, and that's going to be a super normal thing, maybe 15 years, then next thing is the exosome and stem cell conversation, which I think is going to be interesting. And then, the next interesting thing about that is how do you drive exosome, stem cells, plasma to different parts of the body. Part of that is things like doing a stellate to increase blood flow to the brain–

Ben:  Well, there's other doctors using red light, Dr. Todd Ovokaitys, something like that.

Matt:  Yeah, yeah.

Ben:  I met him at The DaVinci conference. He was talking about he'll do stem cells and activate them to the area where they need to travel by using lasers. Have you heard of this?

Matt:  Yeah, yeah. So, there's I think a very good logic of activating fluid. And so, what can you do? If you pull blood out and then you separate the blood and you get plasma, then plasma has a host of interesting things in it. So, one of the things that's in plasma is platelets. And so, that's why we like the platelets and we use those platelets and you can concentrate those platelets. The other thing that you could do is you could just take the plasma with the platelets. What else is in there? VSELs are in there and–

Ben:  Which are the very small embryonic stem cells.

Matt:  Exactly. And so, then those are pluripotent stem cells. My mentor in VSELs is one of my favorite people in the world is Bill Paspaliaris who is in Australia who's done a deep amount of research in this. And, he has company called Tithon. And so, then there's a fairly robust protocol that they have, which is isolating those VSELs and activating them. And, there's a light activation in those. And so, I've done quite a bit of this. And then, Dr. Todd also has a great protocol for activating those cells and then giving them back. And, there's approaches of giving them back around a nerve like muscle, ligament, tendon, or fascia.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  And so, then imagine if I was going to inject plasma into muscle, which I do a lot, then one of the things that happens is there's VSELs in there.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  But, the primary thing that I call it plasma because there may be VSELs, and we do our best to do to activate them, but overall, it's back to the entourage effect is a constellation of kind of positive things that are in plasma that seem to be helpful for muscles.

Ben:  Okay. Alright, got it. That makes sense. By the way, I can't seem to get out of my head since you mentioned about how pneumonia is an old man's best friend, the old Jack Handey quote. You've watched Jack Handey. He's been on Saturday Night Live.

Matt:  Oh, yeah.

Ben:  He has crazy random quotes and he goes, “My grandfather used to say that laughter was the best medicine, which is why I guess several of us died of tuberculosis.” Look up Jack Handey. If anybody googles Jack Handey, you're going to laugh for hours.

Ben:  Matt, you're always a wealth of information. If you were to put all our podcasts together, you'd have eight hours of pure regenerative medicine gold and all sorts of crazy ideas when I act like I'm quizzing you for the board and put you in the hot seat. And, I'll link to all those at BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungMuscle. Anything else you want to throw in for folks that's super cool that you're up to lately?

Matt:  I'm going to do a shoutout. And, this one, we're not ready for this, but it was kind of funny just because of this podcast that you brought up Charles Poliquin because my trainer that I go to every week and is training me is one of the greatest people in the world also named Tobe Hanson. And, he's very Charles Poliquin-esque. And, he basically developed something and I'm going to create chaos. I've already created chaos for myself because I got him so busy and he's so great that it's hard to get in to see him. 

But, he basically took and re-engineered basically flywheel training with the original inventor of it who lives in Spain. And so, then they have flywheel training which basically does a profound eccentric load of muscles. And, we've been going deep and he's developed exercises to train basically every part of the body using flywheel training to build eccentric load. And so, then when you said how important is the concept of physical therapy and myofascial stuff and training to go along with basically our hydrodissection  approach, 100% important, is the most important thing.

Ben:  Is there a name for his devices if I wanted to find them and link to them in the shownotes?

Matt:  We're going to find a website–

Ben:  Find it. Let me know. Flywheel training, by the way, I believe has a very high isokinetic component because I worked out on a couple of flywheel-like machines, meaning whether the concentric or the eccentric phase, the harder that you generate force against the flywheel, the harder it pulls or pushes back against you.

Matt:  Exactly.

Ben:  So, it's constant tension throughout the entire range of motion. Very similar if you were like in water and you were to open your palm and move your arms straight up against the water and then down against the water, it'd be hard the whole time. That's an isokinetic force generation.

Matt:  Yeah. And, we see a lot of pro athletes together. And, he's training a lot of pro athletes and seems to be fixing musculoskeletal problems that other people couldn't fix, and often were you doing combinations that's therapy plus stuff.

Ben:  I was here longer. I'd go work out with you.

Matt:  You know what, we can go over there because I have access and we could actually go do it tonight.

Ben:  I'll sneak in there in the morning or tonight after pickleball, after school and pickleball. Alright. Well, I'll put all the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungMuscle, again, along with a link to all the other shows that Matt and I had done and resources for everything that we talked about in today's show. If you want to come see Matt, his clinics in San Jose, super close to San Jose airport, but you can check it out. It's at BioReset Medical, BioReset Medical. Let them know you're a friend of the show and he'll take good care of you.

And, Matt, once again, thanks for coming on, man.

Ben:  Thanks. You're the best.

Female: And now, for some bonus audio from Dr. Matt Cook on hydrodissection and treating joints and connected tissue. 

Matt: People always ask what's the best product to use for the injections that we do. I like to break it down into products that come from your own body, and then products that come from somewhere else. In terms of the products that come from your own body, if we pull some blood out and then spin and separate the red blood cells from everything else, we call that plasma. Plasma has platelets in it, it has growth factors in it, and it has been probably one of our favorite products that we use for hydrodissection. You can further separate out the platelets and have platelet-rich and platelet-poor plasma, and those can have a variety of benefits that we will use for for different problems both in joints and in connective tissue, and the fascial planes.

Another thing that is potentially one of our favorite products of all time is something called nanofat. For nanofat, we do a small adipose harvest and take some of the fat which contains fat stem cells. And then, we size that through these little screens and break it down so that you can inject it into a small needle. And then, that does something that both transfers some of your own cells from one area to another. And so, we can do that and place them either into joints or around nerves or into fascial planes. Of everything that we use, this is probably our longest-lasting product. And, there are some interesting things going on now in terms of being able to bank your own fat stem cells. And so, as a result of that, often what we will do is do a nanofat procedure and then also bank some cells and that would allow you to potentially use those in the future. 

Final thing of your own cells to come from your own body as bone marrow. As you know, Ben, we've used these for you. A great product and something that we have a lot of experience with. It can be a little inflammatory in terms of putting it into joints. We generally find we have so much success with everything else, that is probably our last choice but it can be helpful, and it can be very helpful if there's a bone marrow lesion and we use bone marrow to fix bone marrow. 

In terms of products that come from someone or somewhere else, the thing that has been probably the one of the most helpful products that I've ever found is placental matrix which is connective tissue basically that was gamma-radiated. So, that came from a placenta that was donated at a C-section. And so, this, it doesn't have any stem cells in it but it does have growth factors and it tends to have an anti-inflammatory effect on connective tissues. 

Another one is peptides and there's a whole host of peptides that we could do a whole podcast on, that have different mechanisms. And so, there's different peptides you can use both in joints and in connective tissue and that's kind of a great topic. The growth factor products that had been quite popular in regenerative medicine are fundamentally going away in North America. But then, there's also some other things that are real cheap products that if you do a great job with hydrodization, often, it kind of relieves impingement and compression and opens up fascial planes. And so, we've used 5% dextrose and saline for a lot of injections over the years with a lot of great success.

Alright, folks. It's coming up quick. VIP event with me that occurs during the time that I am in London for the Health Optimisation Summit. I'm throwing in a private VIP meetup at HUM2N Labs with Dr. E over there. This is one of the most advanced biohacking facilities I've ever stepped foot into. We're opening up to a select group of VIPs, very small group. You could be one of them. Kicks off at 5:30 p.m. in London on Monday, June 19th. You're going to get to network with me and a bunch of the other biohacking enthusiasts and physicians there. We will do a special talk on age reversal. There'll be a Q&A, a variety of healthy organic foods, biohack cocktails, a swag bag where you get to try IV, cryotherapy, red light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, different types of nootropics and smart drugs that they have there. So, it's going to be a pretty cool event. And, you can get in now if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/HUM2NLondon. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/HUM2NLondon. If that's too much for you to remember, just go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Calendar and everywhere. And, I'm going that I'm speaking where you can join me. All the events are also there on the Calendar at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Calendar. But, this HUM2N event Monday, June 19th is going to be a good one.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh entertaining, well-informed, and often outside-the-box approach to discovering the health, and happiness, and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And, if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. It means a lot.

 

 

In 2021, I could barely stand on my knee, much less run, and multiple sports medicine doctors and orthopedic surgeons told me I had arthritis and significant knee cartilage degeneration, and the only way out was surgery (and even that might not work).

Instead, I went a different route: namely with regenerative medicine under the guidance and expert hands of Dr. Matthew Cook at Bioreset Medical in San Jose.

…fast forward a year, and after intraosseous needling, stem cells, exosomes, and a few other minimally invasive protocols Dr. Cook and I discuss in this podcast, my knee is now fully-functional and I'm able to sprint, play tennis and pickleball, hike, squat, ride bicycles and engage in all the sports I loved and missed – nearly 100% pain-free.

I was understandably both blown away and incredibly grateful, and so I decided to interview Dr. Cook not only about cutting-edge regenerative medicine protocols like what he did to my knee, but also much more, including stellate ganglion nerve blocks for the vagus nerve and stress rebooting, long-haul COVID and vaccines, and much, much more.

Dr. Cook is a board-certified anesthesiologist who shifted his career to regenerative medicine over a decade ago. He is a global thought leader, educator, and innovator in regenerative medicine, combining cutting-edge, non-surgical medicine and integrative care to harness the body’s natural healing power. Those who have worked with Dr. Cook know he is one of the best in the field, specializing in advanced treatments ranging from stem cell therapy to peptide protocols. He is one of the most knowledgeable doctors I know, and as one of the most popular guests I've interviewed, this marks his 9th appearance on the show.

My previous podcasts with Dr. Cook…

Dr. Cook graduated from the University of Washington School of Medicine, completed his residency in anesthesiology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and completed fellowships in Anti-Aging, Metabolic and Functional Medicine, and Peptide Therapy with the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine.

After a decade focused on functional medicine (with 14 years prior working as an anesthesiologist), Dr. Cook's specialty is addressing the most challenging conditions. His proprietary multimodal approach regenerates, repairs, and restores health on a cellular level, dealing with root causes rather than masking symptoms.

This work has led him to create BioReset Medical and BioReset International, two organizations built on the mission to widen access to restorative medicine around the world.

  • BioReset Medical offers treatments for conditions such as chronic pain, orthopedics, complex illness, anti-aging and wellness, Lyme disease, PTSD, mycotoxin illness, cognitive impairment, and musculoskeletal injuries, especially for professional athletes (use code BEN10 to save 10% on your consult).
  • BioReset International locations offer additional top-of-the-line regenerative products and medical treatments not available in the U.S.

Dr. Cook leverages minimally-invasive treatments, believing that the body can heal itself naturally when supported by the best technology and care. While humanizing the doctor-patient relationship, he is able to assimilate a patient’s complex health history and develop highly specialized treatment plans integrating the best of what both functional and regenerative medicine have to offer.

In this episode, we explore Dr. Cook’s unique approach to restoring youthfulness to muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joints. We also discuss his experience with long COVID, his approach to vagus-nerve resets, and many other goodies related to regenerative medicine.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-Who is Dr. Matt Cook?…05:32

  • Dr. Cook's approach to treating Ben's knees

-How to reset the vagus nerve…07:02

  • Matt tries the Vagus nerve hydro-dissection on Ben
  • Vagus nerve hydro-dissection
    • For people with PTSD, trauma, or chronic nerve pain in the head or neck
    • Putting growth factors around the vagus nerve
  • Rocky Roots Music
  • Ben feels relaxed and de-stressed after the procedure
  • Why undergo this procedure?
    • PTSD and trauma 
    • Weight-loss
    • Chronic pain
  • The goal is to turn the nerves off and reboot them 
  • BioReset Medical (use code BEN10 to save 10% on your consult)
  • Started resetting both rest-and-relaxation and fight-or-flight nerves
  • Growth factor around the vagus nerve 
    • Feeling of wellness and calm

-Stellate ganglion block…10:47

  • Fight or flight nerve runs in between the 2 deepest muscles in the neck
  • Stellate ganglion block blocks those nerves
  • People with chronic pain
    • They do well with a stellate ganglion block
  • HRV almost always goes up after the procedure
  • Mindfulness and meditation are techniques to achieve the rest-and-relax state
  • Stellate ganglion block does the same
  • It's like a “Zenjection”

-Ben’s experience with Dr. Cook…16:37

-The importance of nutrition…30:09

  • Gluten sensitivity affects joints
  • Most people that are susceptible to gluten sensitivity are ones with SIBO or fungal overgrowth
  • Achilles tendon treatment
  • LL37 is an anti-microbial peptide
  • Bacteria in the small intestine

-Link between muscle, ligament, and joint health and COVID…37:53

-Treating the carotid artery to treat migraines and headaches…41:13

  • Differentiating the causes: immune, nerve, or vascular
  • Microbiome in the gut and there is also a virome
  • Blood tests
  • The usual causes of chronic fatigue
    • Lyme disease
    • Epstein-Barr
  • Long COVID creates a cytokine storm that disrupts the immune system
    • Viral reservoir in the gut
    • Viral particles (spike protein) your body can’t get rid of
    • Triggered the immune system and brought on other infections
  • Immune response to COVID or particles related to the vaccine is what we call a long-COVID

-The benefits of peptides…50:10

-Could you take all of the protocols and inject them a few times a year for anti-aging or longevity?…55:04

  • What is longevity and how to achieve it?
  • Bioregulators and Dr. Khavinson’s data and peptides
  • Immune system gets derailed when we get old
  • Immune protocols must be supported from a peptide perspective
    • Immune supplements will be a standard care in 10 years
  • How to drive exosomes, stem cells to different parts of the body?
    • Use of lasers
  • Dr. Todd Ovokaitys uses lasers
  • Qi Technology developed by Dr. Todd
  • Plasma, platelets and VSELs
  • Dr. Matt’s mentor in VSELs – Dr. Bill Paspaliaris of Tithon 
    • Protocols to isolate, activating VSELs, and giving them back

-The latest version of flywheel training…59:46

-Bonus audio from Dr. Matt Cook on hydro-dissection and treating joints and connective tissue…1:03:03

  • Products that come from your own body
    • Plasma
      • Plasma has platelets and growth factor
      • Favorite product for hydro-dissection 
      • Platelets can be separated from plasma
        • Platelet-rich and platelet-poor plasma
    • Nanofat
      • Can be injected with a needle
      • Longest-lasting solution
      • Banking your own fat stem cells for future use
    • Bone marrow
      • It can be a bit inflammatory
      • It can be very helpful
    • Placental matrix
      • From a placenta that was donated at a C-section
      • Tends to have an anti-inflammatory effect on connective tissues
    • Peptides
      • Doesn’t have stem cells, but has growth factor
      • Many different peptides can be used
      • Peptides that you can use both in joints and in connective tissue
  • Cheap products that relieve impingements and compression and open up fascial planes like 5% dextrose and saline injections

-And much more…

Upcoming Events:

  • Health Optimisation Summit: June 17th – 18th, 2023

Join me at The Health Optimisation Summit in London! This is your chance to be part of a community of 2,500 like-minded people and learn from world-leading health speakers. You'll be able to fast-track your health journey, discover cutting-edge secrets and hacks, explore the latest tech and gadgets, and find the cleanest and healthiest supplements and nutrient-dense foods. Don't miss out on this incredible experience! Use code BENGREENFIELD for 10% off regular and VIP tickets. Learn more here.

Don’t miss this incredible opportunity to learn from the best in the field and take your biohacking journey to the next level. You’ll get the chance to be involved with a private network of biohackers, a live discussion with myself and Dr. E, a live Q&A, an experiential biohacking experience, tasty food, and a chance to win some mind-blowing prizes! Learn more here.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Dr. Matthew Cook:

– Podcasts:

– Books:

– Other Resources:

Episode Sponsors:

BioStack Labs: BioStack Labs has formulated their NAD Regen to increase your energy, enhance your cognitive function, and slow the aging process. When you buy a 3-month supply, they'll send you a 4th bottle 100% FREE. Simply go to biostacklabs.com/ben to get this awesome deal!

Vuori: Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at vuori.com/BEN. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you’ll enjoy free shipping on any U.S. orders over $75 and free returns. 

Organifi Red: Recharge your mind and body with a delicious superfood berry blend of premium, organic superfoods that contain potent adaptogens, antioxidants, and a clinical dose of cordyceps. Increase energy and boost nitric oxide levels with zero caffeine and only 2 grams of sugar. Go to organifi.com/Ben for 20% off your order.

SleepMe: These luxury mattress pads keep your bed at the perfect temperature for deep sleep, whether you sleep hot or cold. Head over to sleep.me/bengreenfield to learn more and save up to 25% off the purchase of any new sleep system. This offer is available exclusively for Ben Greenfield listeners — and only for a limited time!

Endure NFT: Develop the tools, tactics, and habits for improving your spiritual stamina with my book Endure, become one of the 13 owners of the digital copy's NFT version of the book, and come to a private dinner and book signing by going to bengreenfieldlife.com/endurenft.

Do you have questions, thoughts, or feedback for Dr. Cook or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

ASK NOW

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *