A Regenerative Life: Restoring Health from the Inside Out

Welcome to A Regenerative Life 0:00

Hi, I'm Dr. Scott Stoll and welcome to a regenerative life podcast where science becomes hope, food becomes a catalyst for healing and every conversation explores the profound connections between personal health, human flourishing and the earth and future that we will share together. But more importantly, we'll explore one of the most important questions of our time. What happens when we actually begin living in alignment with the way we were designed? Hi and welcome to my new podcast. A regenerative life, the science of healing, and the power of the plate.

You know, when I thought about starting a podcast, my first thought was the world doesn't need another podcast and then I had a number of people that encouraged me They said, you have experienced so much and know so many interesting people in this space. Why don't you start a podcast so you can share the experiences you've had with other people? and to help raise the collective understanding around this idea of regenerative medicine. And my history goes back more than 20 years ago, when I was in my practice, practicing medicine just like I had been taught in medical school and residency, and I heard a patient say something to me that I'd heard 100 times before, maybe even that week.

My patient said to be, Dr. Stoll, can you help me? I'm falling apart. And this was a common statement that I had heard in my practice.

A Patient's Crisis and a New Question 1:24

I'd heard family members say this. But this day, I asked a curious question. And for all of us, this is really the importance of pausing to ask curious questions because it challenges our current understanding and paradigms. Now, I had kind of a preconceived idea as a physician what I was listening for so that I could develop some kind a treatment plan to move things along. Well, there was a long pause, which caused me to look up from my chart, and I noticed that my patient had tears in the corner of her eyes.

And she said to me, she says, Dr. Stoll, my marriage is falling apart because my husband is really exhausted from providing daily care for me. Well, now she had my attention. And she went on, she said, we're facing financial bankruptcy because the cost of healthcare has really put extreme burden on our family finances. I can't travel to see my grandchildren, I was in Pennsylvania and this was traveling to Washington. Can't attend church or social activities. Depressed and I really don't have many friends left.

And then she looked up and she said, can you help me? Well, that was maybe the first time in my early practice that I had no answers. There was no test that i could order, there was medication to prescribe, injection, anything that could do in that moment to actually meet her need, which was helping restore her lost quality of life. I realized a couple things in that moment. I realize I had not been trained to help somebody restore their lost quality of life. It was very well trained in differential diagnosis, interpreting MRIs, lab tests, doing procedures, prescribing medications, understanding drug-drug interactions and side effects.

But now I've realized something for the first time. Everything on her past medical history list. was not being reversed, and the symptoms from those were actually undermining her quality of life. They were stealing the vibrancy, the vitality, purpose, meaning, connection from her life I also realized in that moment I didn't know where these diseases actually came from. They had names. I understood the pathophysiology, the biochemistry, and the way drugs worked. And that was an important question.

What's the root cause?

Discovering Root Causes and Lifestyle Medicine 4:05

Because I was also asking myself, Can they be reversed? Because I'm now realizing these diseases are stealing her quality of life, and I don't know how to stop them. So it sent me on a personal learning journey. I felt compelled, not only by that patient, but the realization now that all of my patients, my friends, family, so many people in healthcare, are facing this loss of quality life because we don' understand root causes, And at that point in time, I didn't know how to reverse them. It started me on this journey of trying to understand how do I restore lost quality of life?

Essentially, how I regenerate somebody's life. Well, initially my focus was very myopic. I was looking at disease processes. What causes disease? Where does inflammation come from? What's the root of insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes? How does someone develop atherosclerosis? Why does the body attack itself in autoimmune disease and what's epicenter of auto immune disease. Can we prevent it? What are the environmental factors? And then I began to discover answers in my research. And through this podcast, we're going to explore all of those pathways.

So don't worry. We're gonna get in some very interesting discussions about the root cause of disease, the epicenter of autoimmune disease. and the environmental factors, the exposure, and some of our genetic susceptibilities that come from our ancestors. And how all those things through an intersexual lens can either cause disease or, when we understand the root cause, can be the pathway to reversing disease. So I began to understand that lifestyle is more important, critically important than I was ever trained or understood.

In fact, in medical school, less than 1% of our total education time today is dedicated to diet and lifestyle. And yet the leading cause of death and disability globally today, is diet. So there's this massive gap that we have in our education process and what's currently affecting people around the world. Diet and lifestyle are the leading cause of death and disability, and yet only 1% of our education time in healthcare education is related to diet and disabilities. There's a massive gap. And that's what I've spent the last 20 plus years of my career studying—is that gap?

What can be done not only to prevent disease, not only to suspend disease, but what can be done to reverse disease to help somebody actually begin regenerating their quality of life—regenerating tissue, regenerated lost function, generating energy—and then moving from there to regenerate lifestyles, connections, relationships, communities, ecosystems. I also began to see, for the first time in my practice of medicine, people coming back to life again.

Regenerative Medicine and Patient Transformations 7:18

I started to use my prescription pad for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I would tear that off and give it to my patients, things that I actually had the night before. and they would go home and we would begin working together to help them change their lifestyle. And they will come back a few weeks later and say, gosh, I haven't felt this good in 20 years. In fact, my diabetes doctor and chronologist took me off my medications because my blood sugar's normalized. I had a gentleman that couldn't walk to his mailbox without chest pain, taking nitroglycerin for chest to get to the mailbox.

Six months later, he's walking three miles chest-pain-free. I had thousands of patients, because I have a very busy practice, whose lives were radically changed as I was using my prescription pad for breakfast, lunch, dinner, mindfulness, lifestyle changes, movement. And at the same time, I also was practicing musculoskeletal medicine. I began to do a deep dive. to answering the question, how can I begin healing damaged tissues, tendons, ligaments, muscles, cartilage? And that took me down an entirely new road of regenerative medicine, which we're also going to talk about on this podcast.

So I began to combine these things in my practice and the entire tenor, the environment, and tone of my practices changed to such a degree that even my staff began changing their lifestyles. I had an assistant who had chronic Crohn's disease in her mid-twenties. And she asked me one day for assistance and I helped her. And to this day, she is still symptom free, radically changed her life. I was asked to serve on the scientific advisory board at Whole Foods. We started doing one week health immersions for their team members, which I still do today.

And again, I saw the incredible potential for transformation in just a week, when we just change for a weak and we give our body the opportunity and the resources that it needs to begin doing what it knows so well to do. Your body has innate intelligence on how to regenerate, repair, rebuild, restore. It's just looking for the right opportunity, and right resources. When we provide that, your body goes into overdrive. And that's what I began to see. Even in one week, people's medications being tapered down, pain going away, anxiety and depression being lifted in just a week.

It sounded like a miracle, but the miracle really was happening inside, at the biochemical level, where the body was taking the resources from the food and the opportunity through rest and a good night's sleep and some mindfulness and movement, and putting all of that together in a magical alchemy that we think we understand, but we really can't understand to the degree that it's happening. 37,000 billion billion chemical reactions happening every second in your incredible body. and the body starts recovering.

And so I went on to start a not-for-profit called The Plantrition Project. Please take a look, PlantricianProject.org, to educate healthcare professionals globally with this information. I saw such incredible transformation in my patients.I wanted more clinicians and even people that are health enthusiasts to take this apply it to their own lives, share it with their patients, and share with family members so they too can begin experiencing regeneration.

Food, Earth, and the Regenerative Movement 10:50

We started conferences, we started a journal, International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention. It's free, please sign up, continue to follow the studies. And then I began to see something else. I begin to look through a broader lens, kind of opening the aperture. Where does my food come from? And is that really important? I began to see that the earth was suffering in many of the same ways that my patients were suffering—depletion of resources, depletions of energy, inflammation, loss of biodiversity, just like our microbiome, and that the ecosystem of the Earth was also in a chronic disease state.

So I began to ask a bigger question, understanding that average person eats about 2,000 pounds of food per year. What is the impact of 2 thousand pounds times 8.5 billion people? not only on the individuals—we know that chronic disease is at epidemic levels globally—but also the impact of that food production on resources that are being used to create food, the soil, water, inputs. Are they organic? Are the chemical in nature? The impact of chemicals running off into waterways, topsoil, and nitrates going down rivers into the ocean creating dead zones.

The impacts of industry on resources like fishing, where we are hyper-focused on fish being healthy, but we're depleting the fisheries at a cost. And so, I began to ask the question, what if we could do more than just regenerate our bodies? What if, through a collective movement of understanding the incredible transformative power of a healing regenerative plate, healing, regenerate connections and relationships? What if we could actually begin regenerating our families, our local communities, or local ecosystems?

And what would the impact be of multiplied microcultures of communities around the world, beginning to take responsibility for themselves, take responsibilities for the resources that are being used to create food for them. What if we began to reconnect in meaningful ways, moving out of silos and compartmentalization that has become such a part of our Westernized society, and we actually reconnected? We reconnect with ourselves, our own hearts, our minds, our passions, and our beliefs that things can get better.

What if we reconnected with those around us in more meaningful, deep ways, heart to heart, understanding the incredible inherent value of every single person and the privilege of having relationships with these people while we're here on earth? And what if those relationships helped us to aspire to something greater? To say to ourselves, we are stewarding the resources that have been given to us, which includes the earth resources for the next generation. How can we stewer those resources in such a way that we regenerate those things that are damaged?

we regenerate things that are lost, and we hand this earth off to the next generation in better condition than we received it. And so, this is that podcast. This is a regenerative life. It is this joyful, curious journey to explore questions from the simplest, deepest question, how do I reverse insulin resistance in my body and what is it? How can I begin to bring autoimmune diseases into remission and restore my lost vitality and energy? how can i begin reversing my heart disease? to how can I begin even reversing a muscle tear?

How can i begin restoring and repairing relationships with myself and with others? how Can we build healthy, happy microcultures and communities around us? And then more collectively asking questions, how come we repair and regenerate the food system that creates 24 trillion pounds of food every year?

What This Podcast Will Explore 15:31

Is there a way that we can actually grow food and regenerate soil, regenerates the biodiversity of life, creates living ecosystems in our farm fields and meaningful wages for our farmers. I'd like to just pause for a moment and to say that it's my desire through this podcast to elevate farmers to the role of healthcare provider. regenerative organic farmer that is carefully growing food and caring for the earth to provide food so that we can go to the store and buy it is a healthcare worker. They are providing health for earth, for that ecosystem around their farm, and for individuals that are purchasing food.They've often been pushed to side, forgotten even denigrated, but I want to elevate farmers to a new role.

They are participants, they are leaders in this regenerative movement. And then what if we collectively catch a different vision, and this, in 10 years, becomes something that governments are interested in? and we could actually begin regenerating soil, air, water, and hand this world off in better condition. Wouldn't that be exciting? Well, we can do the best that we with our own resources. And that's what I'm doing with this podcast. And I want to take you on a journey with me. I wanted to introduce you to some of the most incredible people that I've met along my journey.

Doctors, government leaders, farmers, individuals who've transformed their lives through this kind of science. I wanna teach you the science of healing, down to the deepest levels. We're gonna do a deep dive into biology and I'm gonna give you biology 101, 201, 301, and ultimately PhD level science that you will understand and it will inspire you and cause you to look at your body with awe and wonder, perhaps in new ways that your not ever imagined before. I want to take you down a journey of regenerative medicine, musculoskeletal medicine building a healthier structure, muscles, bones, joints, connective tissue.

How do we do that? From the types of exercises to our sleep to regenerate treatments that are available today, I wanna introduce you to those leaders. I'm gonna introduce to people in the agricultural arena. amazing farmers and scientists, and teach you about the power of soil and regenerative organic practices to not only create healthier food, but a healthier environment for the world and for future. We're going to go down roads of exploring, regenerating relationships with ourselves and others, improving our communication skills, understanding behavioral science, and translating all of the incredible science of lifestyle and diet into a livable lifestyle.

The science is only as good as it is translated into lifestyle that is sustainable. And I'm going to take you deep into that science as well to help you understand how to create something that's fun and vibrant, food that is delicious, and a lifestyle that becomes an enhancement and not a burden. The podcast is going be filled with joy, with laughter, incredible conversations. I'm always curious and I am looking for new individuals to interview, so we're going to learn new things together, which is really going be exciting.

I love to ask curious questions and we are going do it together by finding leaders from around the world to join us on this podcast and answer those questions. And I want to connect with you, I wanna hear your questions, answer your question, get to know you and take you on an exciting journey with me. So you ready to join me on this podcast? We are going to have an amazing time together. It is possible to live a regenerative life. And I want to encourage you, it is possibly to feel vibrantly alive again.

Join the Journey 19:48

it Is possible live fully alive, to wake up with energy in the morning, To have hope in your heart and vision for your future. Its possible have regenerated healthy relationships to reconnect to all parts of your life in meaningful ways. It's possible to see a different future and actually achieve it. And we're going to get there together by having conversations with experts from around the world that are not only going give us the science, but they're gonna give the pathways to application. So thanks for joining me on A Regenerative Life.

I'm Dr. Scott Stoll. and I will look forward to seeing you on my next podcast. Go make it a great day. Thanks for listening to a regenerative life podcast, if this conversation inspired you, follow the podcast share it with someone you care about and join us changing the world one bite, one conversation, One connection and one life at a time. Please visit PlantritionProject.org or Dr. Scott Stoll for more information.