"When you have an injury, you have to have inflammation to heal things. But what happens sometimes is the body loses the ability to turn that inflammation off. And when that ability gets turned off, you get many different things. You get something called tendonosis, where the body's kind of giving up on healing at tendonitis, which is an acute thing, but it goes more than that. So there's many different aspects of it." "Let's get started." Today's guest is Dr. Joseph Farida, a leading regenerative medicine expert and orthopedic surgeon for over 40 years of experience. He's the medical director of the Pure Form Health Clinic in Boca Raton, Florida. And in today's episode, Dr. Farida shares valuable insights about the role of inflammation in aging, while also discussing regenerative medicine therapies like stem cells, ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, and more. "We have ways of turning genes on and turning genes off. And it's not just written in your genes, so to speak. If you really work at things, we can keep genes turned off. Genes that may cause cancer, but if you work hard, you exercise every day, you eat good. That's going to help turn some of these genes off that cause problems." The new science is super clear. Mitochondria are essential for optimum health and longevity. See, mitochondria are the battery packs inside all of your cells that create ATP, giving you cellular energy. And as we age, our mitochondria become damaged and dysfunctional, leading to low energy, brain fog, fatigue, and slower recovery from exercise. The good news is this supplement called Mitopure, created by timeline nutrition and health, because it supports your health at a foundational level by encouraging renewal of your mitochondria. Mitopure is a precise dose of a rare compound called urolithin A that helps your body clear out dysfunctional mitochondria and create new healthy ones, giving you more energy, better workouts, and more endurance to achieve any goals you have this year. Mitopure is the only urolithin A supplement on the market clinically proven to target the effects of age-related cellular decline, and deliver increases in muscle strength and endurance without any change in exercise. Timeline is offering 10% off your order of Mitopure, go to timeline.com/fitfatherproject. That's t-i-m-e-l-i-n-e.com/fitfatherproject to learn more. All right, Dr. Joseph Perita, welcome to the podcast. We are so happy to have you here. It's an honor to be with you. I look forward to our discussion. Me too. And, you know, I'm very impressed with your career and the amount of time you spent in the medical field. I mean, over 40 years practicing orthopedics and now into regenerative medicine. So, you know, we're privileged to have that amount of expertise on this call, and I want to do a wide landscape of different things related to anti-aging therapies, stem cells, ozone, hydrogen. And I guess the promise for everyone who's tuning in listening today is you're going to learn a lot about what's out there and what's possible. And I think a nice way to kick this off is, you know, this term that's coming around is "inflammaging," which is like inflammation and aging together. Do you explain the process of that, like what that is and why that's important in our understanding of longevity today? You know, it's very interesting. I literally just sent an article that I read to my people in my office here to put online as a blog. I said, you know, this is something that everyone needs to know. And I think this term was actually popularized. It was either in, I think it was Time magazine back in 2018 or something where they talked about inflammation. Just as you said, where we have inflammation here, aging here, and they combine. And one kind of feeds in the other. What came first? The inflammation of the aging, the aging of the inflammation, the chicken of the egg. And inflammation is really kind of what is the root of most all diseases. When all is said and done, you know, most of these things stem from inflammation. Inflammation is necessary. Many things. But unfortunately, when it gets out of hand, as we get older, we have more difficulty controlling inflammation. And that's where we get into trouble and big trouble sometimes. For sure. And I guess I'd love to even take a step back from there and kind of explain that we have this immune system that has various cell lines that create responses to injuries or to foreign invaders. And that's what we call inflammation. You sprain your ankle. You have acute inflammation, which is actually part of the healing process. But it's a different kind of inflammation with aging, right? Can you explain the difference between maybe like a sprain inflammation and what this inflammation is kind of doing into our vital organs or circulation system, et cetera? Well, you know, one of the things we can kind of go back down to, it's a very important concept. And let's try and explain it because it is somewhat scientific. It's something called immunocinescence. Now, what do we mean by that in English? Well, immuno refers to your immune system. And senescence means a type of cell. I call it a zombie cell. A lot of people go. And it's a cell that pretty much is no longer dividing, but it's not dying. And what it's doing is it's kind of secreting a number of different inflammatory compounds, things that cause inflammation. And, you know, there's chemical basis to inflammation. And it's a basis of different type of growth factors. There's three different growth factors that can really cause inflammation. One is called IL-6. One is called IL-1 and one is called tumor process factors. The names are not that important. The aspect of what they do is. And as we get older, we lose the ability to really start controlling this. Now, as we said, when you have an injury, you have to have inflammation to heal things. But what happens sometimes is the body loses the ability to turn that inflammation off. And when that ability gets turned off, you get many different things. You can get some things that not as serious. You can get something called tendinosis, where the body's kind of giving up on healing at tendonitis, which is an acute thing. But it goes more than that. So there's many different aspects of it to begin with. Yeah. And I think that's a key concept. It's like that we get these zombie cells that are taking up a resource but aren't actually helping us. And what we know from some of the therapies that do help improve longevity is they typically trigger these pathways in the body to recycle, kill, or get rid of cellular debris. I'm thinking of things like fasting or exercise to stimulate these pathways to recycle that. So can you kind of speak into the ways we can start to make that shift and get rid of some of these senescent cells? Another nice concept I like to give my patients is when we talk about pathways. I want you to think of your body, your organs, and your cells as the computer hardware, and the pathways of the computer software. Now, what do you do when you have a problem with your computer? I said, "Oh, heck, let me just reboot it. Let me restart it." And that's what we're attempting to do with these pathways because the pathways become the problem many times. The organs are usually pretty good until the pathways really get screwed up, until the virus is -- and it could be a literal virus, too. But these pathways are important. Now, when we talk about inflammation, there's two big pathways I like to talk about. One is -- and then, you know, I'm going to give you the initials because the names are very long, complicated ones. One is called the NRF2 pathway. That's the major pathway that reduces inflammation in the body. That's your friend most of the time. You really want to stimulate that pathway because it's going to really help you. The other one is NF Kappa Beta. Now, that's a pathway that causes inflammation in the body. Now, sometimes it's very important. Let's say you're dealing with a virus or an infection. You really want that pathway activated so it can deal with the bacteria. But turning it off is the key. When you don't turn it off, many bad things happen, such as cancers and all sorts of things like that. So that's kind of one little analogy that we can go with. And I think it's a good one. So, is it as simple as saying that, like, healthy lifestyle, like exercise, good circadian rhythm, anti-inflammatory foods? Like, is this enough to regulate those pathways? Are there more specific, targeted things that people need to be looking into as they age to make sure they have good balance of these pathways? Certainly, everything you mentioned is extremely important. But we sometimes get into the field of epigenetics, okay? Now, what that means is we have ways of turning genes on and turning genes off. And it's not just written in your genes, so to speak. If you really work at things, you know, we can keep genes turned off. Genes that may cause cancer, they're called oncogenes, you know, on oncologist, oncogenes. But if you work hard, you exercise every day, you eat good, you basically, and, you know, everybody cheats a little bit, but, you know, do intermittent fasting and things like that. That's going to help turn some of these genes off that cause problems. And that's why lifestyle and diet and things like that are extremely important, because they ask they have an effect also on the pathways, but they really have an effect on the field of epigenetics. And that's going to be something people are going to hear more and more about, because turning genes on and off is really where medicine is heading to. It certainly is. And again, just to add a layer of clarification here, we have our genetic blueprint, our DNA, and then what gets expressed is due to the epigenome, what gets turned on and turned off. And that's why genetics are not some fixed destiny, like your family has some kind of genetic marker for heart disease. That doesn't mean you're going to get it. You might not express those genes if you're actually, or, you know, if you have a healthy lifestyle. So I think it's a very empowering message, and it also is going to be the basis of some of the more precision medicine that you're doing. I want to ask, like, what's the, how much is lifestyle? Like, what's the effect size or the magnitude of importance of a healthy lifestyle for good aging? Does it account for 75% of the results, you know, 50% of the results? You know, maybe it's, and you might find it's an impossible question to answer, but I just want the listeners to get a sense of how important in your experience that healthy lifestyle is for great outcomes, like being active and mobile at 80. Number one importance, by far. Now, I'm including exercise. I'm including diet, things like that. I mean, you know, I was just asked a couple of months ago, I was at a meeting and they asked me to give a little interview on something, and I said the most, or I should say, the best medicine one can take is exercise. There's nothing better. All the functions that exercise can do for you. There's things called myokines, which are basically growth factors secreted by the muscles. You know, there's a lot to it when they say a sound body leads to a sound mind, and when you exercise it, so your lifestyle is so important. Now, we can embellish that with other things that we can talk about a little bit, you know, like hyperbaric oxygen, things like that, but lifestyle is number one. No question about it in my mind. And how important of a risk factor is carrying belly fat, abdominal fat. So, like, let's say someone has a modestly good lifestyle, but their waist circumference is high. Their body fat, let's just say, is maybe 25%, like, it'd be ideal if they dropped a little bit, but they're not grossly overweight by, unfortunately, American standards. Like, how dangerous is it to carry that extra fat there if you're doing other things well? Okay. How dangerous is it? Very dangerous. Why? Because when we look at fatty tissue, fatty tissue is not just fat cells. It's a symphony of cells, including certain types of mesenchymal stem cells, certain kinds of other immune cells called macrophages. And the environment that these cells are found, if you have a lean person, it's a very clean and a very good environment, but if you have a person who is somewhat obese, those cells are going to cause inflammation. That's why we know that there's a definite correlation between people with that big belly, so to speak, and diabetes, cancer, and things like that. So, extremely important. It's better if your fat almost is kind of throughout the whole body, rather than just in the belly itself. That seems to be really a problem, and unfortunately, I think it's a big problem in the United States, especially. For sure. And that's the interesting aspect of that term we hear about visceral fat. It tends to be when you have that abdominal fat accumulation, it's also around those organs. So, those inflammatory cytokines coming from that fat are in an area where they can do a lot more damage than this kind of like more blanketed, distributed white fat, so that makes a lot of sense to me. What kind of dietary approach do you follow personally? Like, what has worked for you? You've seen all these fat diets come and go. I know you've read a lot of the research. Like, what is your approach to nutrition to control inflammation? I'll tell you exactly what my regimen is. 18 hours a day, I do intermittent fasting. And I mean, I'm pretty strict. I may cheat a little bit in that. I'll maybe take a little bit of omega-3 fish oil in the morning. But other than that, I'm very strict about it, and until that 18 hours rolls around, I'm going to be strict. Now, I kind of have somewhat of a Mediterranean diet. I use a lot of olive oil. I mean, olive oil, I think, is very good for many different reasons. I'm not a big beef eater. I may eat one half a hamburger a week at most. A lot of chicken, fish, shrimp, things like that. Sweet. No soft drinks at all. I mean, the only soft drink I'll take is basically club soda or something along those lines. No sugars. I mean, that's one of the worst things you can take. No juices, things like that. So, I really try and avoid these sugars and realize one thing. Those of you that say, "Well, you know what? I'm not taking sugars. What I'm taking is I'm taking a diet Coke that's sugar-free." Well, that may be worse for you than just drinking a regular Coke. So, look at some of the literature out there. So, your diet is important, but it can only do so much for you also. You have to take some supplements and things like that also. Okay. I just want to do a quick plus. And it's not just because we're both Italian, but I also am on the camp from what I've seen in my own personal life and the research that getting a good, high quality, extra virgin olive oil into your routine can be huge for it. And we're talking single source country, probably in a glass bottle, maybe even advertises as rich in polyphenols. I'm making sure I'm getting that on the greens every day or just drizzling on anything. It's just good. It's just healthy. It's good for you, healthy, and it does so many good things. Now, I mean, I also make sure I eat a salad every day, too, being a Italian or something. But, you know, those greens for so many different reasons are good for you, but the olive oil, you can't beat it. And the fish oil, one little trick I learned about fish oil is put it in your freezer and take it frozen, better absorbed, and it doesn't give you that fishy aftertaste. That's cool. I like that. And maybe that's a nice transition to supplements. I mean, the fact is we live in a crazy landscape right now where there's so many different supplements that have some backing that could work. But, like, really, there's probably a smaller subset of those that actually really move the needle, like fish oil, perhaps vitamin D, in certain instances, maybe a really high quality probiotic. But, like, what are the supplements that you think are the more foundational core ones that you really believe in and that would work for a vast majority of people? Okay. Well, there's a, you know, I wrote an article, I think about two months ago, my 12 go-to supplements, I mean, I take a handful every day of supplements, and that's, you know, kind of docile for me. So, what are some of the things I take? Well, I think you want to take something, a methylating agent, you want to get your homocysteine levels down. So, that's extremely important. I take an NAD... Can you give people an example so you can, like, methyl B vitamins or something different? No, I take TMG, trimethylglycine. Really inexpensive and works well. So, that's what I use. I mean, and that is a very important thing because that can really cut down almost 16 levels, and, you know, with some of the other supplements you take, you may meet some methyl groups, which these things supply. Yeah, I don't want to pause there for a sec, because I think this will be a really valuable discussion, and, like, that does go along with the epigenetic stuff that you said before, because we use methyl groups to turn genes on and off. And many people do have those single nucleotide polymorphisms where they don't methylate well, or they have MTHFR, CYP, whatever the other variant is, and so we do need some more methyl groups, and TMG is great. And actually, people that are getting into those, like, NAD boosting supplements actually have higher needs for something like TMG as well. So, that's cool that you take that. Another common name for them, too, is I believe, beta-dinging or something like that. Yeah, it's in betaine, yeah. Yeah, so betaine, right? So, another thing I do is, like I say, I take an NAD precursor, because I don't think you can really take NAD orally too well. So, the one I take happens to be NR, and I have a reason for that, because if you look at the science, some people say, well, I want to take NMN, actually be NMN, because it basically is one step closer in AD, and the problem is that has to be converted back to NR to get into the cell where it gets converted. So, that's why I take that, but that's another one. Another one that I really am high on, urethane A. Okay. I've been taking it recently as a little test, but, like, explain this to people. Alright, so urethane A is interesting. It comes, they say, from pomegranate, but it's not like taking a pomegranate extract. That's not going to do the trick for you, because a lot of the population has difficulty really converting pomegranate to urethane. So, you take a supplement ahead of time. What does this really do? Two very important things. It basically increases the body's mitophagy and mitogenesis. Now, what do we mean by that? Mitogenesis means you're going to make more mitochondria. Mitochondria are basically the key to most diseases. Inefficient or insufficient mitochondria are going to give you many big problems. Now, mitophagy means the ability of the body is looking at these mitochondria and saying, "Hmm, I think I can fix you if I do this, this, and this." Or, "Yeah, you're beyond repair. Sorry, you're going to the junkyard." So, it basically takes the mitochondria and gets rid of it, tries to recirculate it. That's what's so important about urethane. I think it's one of my go-to things to really keep my health going. And it's the same pathway that exercises basically. It would augment the effect of exercise because exercise is going to do similar triggers to that. It just enhances that pathway more directly. Like I said earlier in our talk, exercise is one of my most important medicines. Hey, Fit Mothers. 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Very important. One time I was taking Metformin, and Metformin is known as a diabetes medicine to a lot of people. As far as I know, I had no diabetes. But I was taking Metformin because I want to control this pathway. But when I really looked at the science, there's one thing that really disappoints me about Metformin. It seems to nullify some of the effects of exercise. Yes. I've seen those studies too. Sabaroon does not do that. That's why Barborin is one of my go-to things. And if you want to take it another step further, there's something called a TRM, T-R-I-I-M study, which is actually a study that the FDA actually recognizes and says, "Hey, I think that this actually does reverse aging." This is from Dr. Greg Fehe. So this study used human growth hormone, DHEA, which is a simple supplement that can be bought anywhere, and Metformin. Now, we actually, in our office, we've revised that a little bit. Instead of Metformin, we're using Barborin. We're using DHEA, and instead of HGH, we're using Somorlin. That, I think, is a good combination, and it should work. And this affects the thymus gland. And thymus gland basically helps with our immune system. And when you get what they call an evolution of this thymus gland, as we age, it doesn't work too well. If we can stimulate it, you're going to stimulate your immune system. You're going to get rid of that immune senescence. You're going to have a healthier patient. And these are nutraceutical triggers of AMPK. And just to kind of tie this holistically, too, for someone, let's just say, if you didn't go ahead and buy a supplement or take Berberine, like fasting and exercise also will create that low cellular energy state, high AMPK, do a lot of figures. So these things are taking are really cool. And actually, people call these supplements exercise memetics in the sense that they work on the same pathways without you actually, quote, unquote, needing an exercise. But I know from our discussion, you're still in the camp of, like, we're exercising, baby. Oh, yeah. Every morning, I'm up at 4 o'clock. I read a little bit, then I go out and do my four-mile walk. I'm not going to do my elliptical for 25 minutes, getting my heart rate to close to 150, then swim, then get to the office. Nice. That's awesome. Cool. Any other supplements that are, like, I know you have more, but any that are kind of on top of mind, because I definitely have some other areas I want to go here, too. I take some enecetal cysteine. I take some ethylapolic acid, zinc. I take magnesium. A couple others, probably. I don't even remember right now. Yeah. That's great. I think particularly enecetal cysteine and zinc, at least in my opinion, are really useful things to have in your home medicine cabinet. You know, good anytime you're having any kind of sickness or, you know, you want to boost the immune system. NAC is particularly helpful for respiratory stuff. You know, a lot of people were using that in different kind of coronavirus therapies, so that's cool. I love that. And obviously, it supports glutathione, too, and that's a whole rabbit hole we can go down. Exactly. Okay. So I want to talk a little more about some of your clinical applications of regenerative medicine. Can you define what regenerative medicine, like, means and how that comes to play with, like, the orthopedic stuff that you help people with? Well, okay. So basically what regenerative medicine is. I mean, I'm kind of taking the word to define it, but we want to regenerate things. Now, we can't cure arthritis. We're not going to say somebody, "Yeah, you're 65 years old. We're going to make your knee like you're 20 years old again." But we can make it better. And I tell patients, it does it by a couple of different ways. We can regenerate some of the cells, but we can hopefully arrest the process. And more importantly, perhaps, we can change the chemistry of the joint. Many times a joint is inflamed, and sometimes you can feel like, "Oh, it's hot and it's angry because these growth factors that are secreted to cytokines are basically inflammatory ones." If we put cellular therapy in it, it can basically eliminate a lot of that, and it can balance it out. A lot of people say, "Oh, you have bone on bone, so you can never have any cell therapy work." Actually, not the case. I mean, if you think about that, a joint replacement is basically metal on plastic, so it's the same thing, basically. So that's the thing. So, you know, regenerative therapy is something that everyone can benefit with. Now, some cases are not a case for it, obviously, and some patients are not candidates for it. But, you know, I've been doing this for a long time, and I remember when I started doing it, you know, people were throwing things at me more or less. I mean, figuratively, saying, "What are you nuts? This is not going to work. This is stupid. You're an orthopedic surgeon. You're doing hocus-pocus surgery." That's what I remember one guy said, hocus-pocus. I said, "Yeah, fine." And the common types of this, I'd love to get into this. Like, if someone was looking locally into someone that does regenerative medicine injections, in the case of orthopedics, it would be things like prolotherapy, platelet-rich plasma, or various forms of stem cell injections. Can you speak into those and the ones that you actually like to use? I'm sure it's a case-by-case basis, but I'd love a little explanation. So therapy's been around for many, many years. Basically, prolotherapy uses high concentrations of compounds, be it dextrose or something along those lines. And what it's designed to do is create a local inflammation. And by creating a local inflammation, lo and behold, that can sometimes enhance the healing. So that's a good thing. And then we go to the next step, which is PRP. And that PRP means platelet-rich plasma. Now, let's kind of go over the blood a little bit. You know, the blood is composed of red blood cells, white blood cells, and plasma. And then it has some other things in here called platelets. Now, most people think, "Oh, the platelets." Yeah, that's the stuff that just basically, when you get a cut, it just kind of, you put pressure on it, it makes a scab, and that's it. It helps heal things. It helps clothings, I should say. Well, that's the case, but not the case. In this, yes, that's what it's for for clotting. But really, what it does is it releases growth factors. And that's the key, okay? It releases growth factors. So when I talk to someone about regenerative therapies, I say the platelets, I want you to think of us planting a garden. And in a garden, you have soil, you have seeds, and you have fertilizer. Well, the platelets are actually the fertilizer. They are the guys that are really going to help things grow along. They're growth factors. And there's ways of enhancing them. They have some things called exosomes, as do other cells, and they are little microparticles that can also help. We're learning more and more about it. So the next thing that we have is, we have stem cells. Now, I don't like the word stem cells, because when we do a procedure, it's more than just stem cells. It's a symphony of cells, okay? For instance, if I take someone's bone marrow aspirin, I'll get into that shortly, or I take someone's adipose or fatty tissue, it's not just stem cells. If I were to use stem cells alone, I'm not sure how good the result is going to be. Again, it's a symphony, and I get back to my gardening concept. So when we're planting a garden, the stem cells and other regenerative cells are basically the seeds. So we have the fertilizer and the seeds. And a lot of times when I do a procedure, I also use the adipose tissue, which is the scaffold, the soil. So I have that term. I'm an old Italian. I like to work in my garden. And there you are. I gave you the terms for that. Now, how we can manipulate these cells are things that are important. Also, we use something called photobiomodulation. What does that mean in English? It means that we use light therapy. Basically, certain wavelengths of light can affect cells in a very beneficial way. And by subjecting these cells to that, prior to injecting them in the patient, can make some big differences. And so I'm grateful to have experienced this myself. I've had bone marrow aspirated from my hip, then used a laser on it, and then re-injected into my knee. Is that, I'm sure you have your own protocols, but is that more or less one kind of option and fairly similar? Very much so. So for instance, when we take it, we take it from the pelvis, because that's the richer source of stem cells in the body. Then we actually have a light that we've invented. It's called a pure form light, where it has different wavelengths of light that we can subject it to. The most important wavelength I'm thinking from most cellular therapies is red light. Now, why is red light so important? Well, red light stimulates the mitochondria. Actually, when you really want to get technical, there's something called the electron transport chain. And that's something we remember from high school, et cetera, the Krebs cycle. But it helps make ATP, which is the body's energy currency. And it basically stimulates an enzyme in the body called cytochrome C oxidase. Makes more ATP. More ATP is going to mean that that cell has a little better chance of surviving. Most of the stem cells that we use are not going to last very long, but if we can get them to survive a little bit longer to release their chemokines and cytokines and things like that, it's going to give us a little better chance of success. Nice. I think this is actually one of the great frontiers in medicine is like photobiomodulation. We're going to be using light for all sorts of things. And it's so cool to me that we have receptors for all the different kinds of light. We have melanopsin proteins in our skin and our eyes for blue light. And I think we're going to see so many more applications of light therapies. And it's awesome that in your clinic you're using this to a big extent. Actually, give me a talk on that in December at the American Academy of Aging Medicine in Las Vegas. Awesome. That's super cool. Okay. So, have you personally like a benefit from PRP or stem cells? Like do you have any kind of stuff you've had in your history and you don't have to share if it's too personal? No, I have no one reason. You know, I've had some problems with various joints. I can tell you. In my walk in the dark, of course, you know, because I'm leaving the house around for something, I tripped on a sprinkler head once. And lo and behold, I dislocated my shoulder. So I told them, I said, "You better bribe me to the ER. I think they're going to have to pull it in." So they pulled it in. And of course, I went to my office that day and did some work and I had a little sling that I wore for about two or three days. But yes, I gave myself a number of PRP injections and some other things. And I also put myself on some peptides because peptides we can get into that if need be can enhance the healing. I used in particular BPC 157 and TV 500 enhanced the healing and it made a big difference for me. I mean, did I get an MRI of my shoulder? No, because I basically am an orthopedic surgeon and figured, "Oh, okay. I probably tore the rotator cuff." And this has really made a big difference for me. So I can, you know, move my arm all around and not have a problem. Nice. That's excellent. And, you know, I think it would be nice to take a little foray and talk about peptides because that's certainly a buzz phrase that's coming out here. And like, definitionally, you know, a peptide is a small protein, a series of amino acids. So there's so many things that are peptides, but there's common ones that we hear people using. And the two you just mentioned, BPC 157 and TB, I believe is 500, TB 400, TB 500. Those are healing peptides that people take. Can you speak into like how you administer those? Do you inject those? Do you use them orally? Interesting. Most peptides have to be by injection, but those two you could potentially take orally because they come from the GI system more or less and they can be absorbed pretty well orally. I mean, you may get a little better result possibly by injection, but, excuse me, I'm not sure if it's that big a deal. Now, one other peptide we should mention to the audience, because there are a lot of them are familiar with it, glutathione, which is also considered a peptide. So, and then the other thing that people wouldn't realize is the new semi-glutides, another bunch of peptides. You know, that, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, my friend is taking that to lose weight. Yeah, so they do work. I mean, there's no question about it. Yeah, that is super cool. And I think, so in Florida, you guys are in a place where I think it's kind of like one of the great frontiers of regenerative medicine. Here in Scottsville, Arizona, we have a lot of different clinics too. If someone is like, let's say living in the middle of the United States, I know you don't know what the exact area are, but where do people go? Well, you know, you can go online and you can buy these things. But, you know, realize most of the peptides you're going to buy online, you're going to see a little stuff. Say, like, go to a great clinic or maybe come down and see you in Florida. But like, what's the landscape look like when people starting to explore these things? How do you counsel people to begin to look at? I might be interested in peptides for healing my shoulder after listening to this. Well, you know, you can go online and you can buy these things. But, you know, realize most of the peptides you're going to buy online, you're going to see a little saying there for research purposes only. So, I suspect they're probably okay, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. I think, you know, I think you need to really get a physician to, you know, really kind of give you guidance on these things because you may need to have some certain blood tests done and things like that. So, I don't think you should self-prescribe, really get used and expert. Sounds good. Now, the last area I want to cover is some of these, what you like to term gaseous therapies, using things like ozone, driving oxygen with hyperbaric, and maybe even hydrogen. And I'm really fascinated by this, and I don't have a ton of experience in this area. So, I would love to kind of take these one by one and get people to understand these options that are available, maybe even starting with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Let's talk a little bit about hyperbaric oxygen. So, very interesting. So, what happens is you can breathe in oxygen, you can breathe 100% pure oxygen, but you can't get any more than, you know, the blood will allow you to take what the hemoglobin. Because that's what really binds the oxygen. So, you can breathe, you know, 21% oxygen, 100%, your body's going to have the same amount of oxygen. However, if you go ahead and you take in oxygen through a mask, let's say, pure oxygen, 98% oxygen, under pressure, now what happens is that oxygen gets pushed into the watery part of the blood called the plasma. And that's how you now are able to deliver more oxygen to the tissue because it's dissolved in that and it kind of releases itself. That's number one, but number two, what's very important, this is from the work of Dr. Tom at the University of Pennsylvania. What he found is that basically hyperbaric oxygen stimulates a compound, another gaseous single molecule in the body, called nitric oxide. And what nitric oxide does is it stimulates your bone marrow to release more stem cells to your circulation. So, it's that one, two punch because remember, you can't heal anything unless the cells do it. I have a saying, it's cells not doctors, heal patients. That's why that diabetic that has a wound that won't heal on his foot. When you put him in a hyperbaric chamber, it'll heal because the stem cells actually did the healing. So, that's one thing. So, another gaseous molecule that's extremely important is nitric oxide. And I basically am a big believer in that. I take a nitric oxide stimulant every day. You may have even seen me on TV in a superbeats commercial perhaps, I don't know, but I'm on that. But that's important because it can stimulate stem cells. It's so many different functions that nitric oxide has. And one little thing to remember, do not use mouthwash because mouthwash will kill that certain bacteria on your tongue that helps convert the nitric oxide to a usable form. Now, ozone, very interesting. Ozone is kind of toxic. You know, we know it's in pollution and things like that, but we use it very much in our office. And not only do we do it here, but we set up other offices to do this. We have a technique called EBO2, where we basically mix blood in a dialysis filter with ozone gas. And the ozone gas is pretty much rapidly converted to other things, including oxygen. Then the process goes into a light with red, blue, amber, green. We're getting back to the photomyudulation modulation. And ultraviolet A, and ultraviolet C, and then it goes back into the patient. Now, what does that do? Two things. We talked earlier about something called the NRF2 pathway. It gets rid of inflammation. It manages it. What else does it do? Well, it can definitely diminish the viral load in one's body, especially these viruses that we had as kids that become more active and cause inflammation. The C-M-V viruses, Epstein-Barr, and things like that. And basically, it gets rid of a lot of heavy metals and toxins and things like because they get oxidized. So that's why I'm a big believer in the ozone therapy. Again, no ozone ever enters your body with this technique. That's super cool. And actually, I've consulted with some people that had flares of Epstein-Barr and ozone wiped it out. So it's super effective. Plus, remember now, we're also using, in addition to the ozone, we have an apparatus called the hemolumin, which is subjecting that to ultraviolet sea light, which is also very toxic to these organisms. Cool. That's amazing. And then hydrogen therapy. What does that mean? Let's talk into that. Let's talk about hydrogen therapy. So we have a machine in our office. We use a very expensive ingredient called H2O, water. So basically, what it does is it electrolyzes and it breaks the water down into hydrogen gas. Yes. And basically, you're sitting in a chair, you have a cannula or a mask, whatever you prefer, and you're breathing in hydrogen gas. Now, what is hydrogen gas interesting? What's it used for? Mitochondria. Well, yes and no. It's a very potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. Okay. So it can get into all the nits and canis. It can go basically through the blood-brain barrier. But here's an important thing. When you look at most of the antioxidants, where do most of your free radicals, which are basically the things that they're kind of like little terrorists in our body, where do they basically start? They start in your mitochondria. And most of these antioxidants can't penetrate the membrane of the mitochondria. Hydrogen can. And that's why hydrogen is a very important thing. I have my nurses at the end of the procedure, breathing hydrogen. They bubble hydrogen into a little bottle of water and then you drink it right away. Why do I like that? Because apparently it has a very profound effect in a good way on your gut bacteria, which a lot of problems start right there. So that's why I like to do that. That's excellent. Really, really cool stuff. I mean, amazing. Honestly, these different angles we have between light, these primordial gases, using our own cell lines and stem cells, and of course, the basics of a good, healthy lifestyle to tie this all together with targeted supplementation. My final question for you is, looking at the future of medicine, based on you having practice for 40 years, it seems like medicine is shifting towards personalized treatments. Where do you see medical care, whether it's primary care or even more cutting edge regenerative therapies like you're doing in the next 10 to 20 years? Where are things heading? What are you hopeful for? What's around the corner? So where we headed to in regenerative medicine, AI is going to basically be our, you know, our buddy, so to speak. It's going to really allow us to make strides that we weren't even thinking were necessary probably five years ago. And it's going to basically be something that's going to change the landscape in medicine. As you say, personalized medicine is going to take over. There's no reason why. Well, it worked in all these clinical studies that will do that. You know, it's going to basically work in your particular case. And that's what's going to be so exciting. And I think we're going to see lifespan. Some people say, oh, you can't go much past 100. Remember now, we don't want to just increase your longevity. We want to increase your health span. And that's where I think we're going to see tremendously. I think we're going to have still, you know, still be people dying around 100, but they'll really live well just until about that time. That's exciting. And, and a big, we have a big turnaround to make because you look at the health of the average American today and it's worse than it ever has been in the last 150 years. So I'm excited for these pushes in technology. And I'm excited to see it pair with policy interventions, access to better, healthier foods, a change in culture. I'm really behind this whole make America healthy again. I think we have a really cool opportunity to push forward towards like a healthier culture. And, and I'm grateful that you are out there, you know, showing what's possible and running a great clinic. So on that note, you have your pure form health clinic and book where it's on Florida. If someone listened to this and they are interested in experiencing the medicine that you practice, where can people learn more? Well, they can just go to our website and, you know, see us there. They can call us up. They can look me up and that'll, you know, lead them there. They can see some of the places I'm speaking. So, you know, any number of ways they can get to see us. Cool. Well, Dr. Joseph, thank you so much for your time. My honor to talk with you. I know it's been most enjoyable. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. My pleasure. Thank you. Hey, there, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of the Fitmother Project Podcast. If you love what you heard, I have a favorite ask you. Please consider taking 60 seconds right now to leave us a rating your review on our podcast. Leaving us a review is super quick. It only takes a minute. And it's so, so helpful to us as it really boosts this podcast to reach more people who need this information and this message. If you're listening on Apple Podcast, you can leave us a star rating and review. If you're watching on YouTube, you can hit the like button and leave us a comment. Overall, I truly appreciate you being with us here on the podcast. On behalf of me and my entire Fitmother Project team, we truly feel honored and grateful to support you and your family on your journey to fantastic health. I thank you for your support of this podcast and of this mission. Also, if you're interested in joining our complete Fitmother program and becoming an official member of our community, you can visit our website fitmotherproject.com. And on the Fitmother site, you'll be able to see our complete Fitmother program along with our online store with the best supplements designed for busy moms. And you'll also find a ton of free resources like recipes, workouts, meal plans and more. God bless you and your family. This is Dr. Anthony Baldusi signing off. I'll catch you on the next episodes of the Fitmother Project Podcast. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
