Stress, Stem Cells, and the Science of Renewal

Opening and introduction to peak span 0:00

Welcome everyone to a new episode of the Longevity Summit. What an exciting time in the history of humanity where longevity with pioneers like doctor Mark and myself have been working on for decades now we see it happening in the market. It's a big pleasure today to host doctor Mark Atkinson. Many of you know doctor Mark is a well published physician. I've been on TV many times. He's actually the brain behind the concept of peak span, which I love that we all talk about longevity and health span.

He took it further. It's not just living healthy long, it's just living at your best long. He does that by helping patients, by coaching executives, by supporting companies, and recently involved also by providing us supplements and programs to enhance our performance and live that peak performance long enough, what we call peak span. Welcome, Doctor Atkinson to the Longevity Summit. Yeah, thank you so much. It's such a delight to kind of be here. And any opportunity to kind of talk about health span, longevity, peak span I'm up for.

So thank you for bringing me in. Yeah. Speaking of which, what's like your definition of health? I mean, we do. One uses the word health, uses positive health. Yeah. The framework as well. You have. Tell us a little bit how you how you define those concepts in your own perspective. Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things I've learned is to be very clear and specific about what we mean when we use a particular term, and health is kind of really one of them. And when I talk about health, I mean the adaptive capacity of the body mind system.

So it's ability to predict, anticipate and respond to change in demand. And the more healthy and resilient we are, the better the body. And our mind does that. And it does add a biological level. And it does add a psychological level as well. So I'm kind of you know, my first book was called the Mind Body Bible. So I always talk about the body and mind as two sides of the same coin. And so health really is this highly adaptive resilient state. And the more healthy we are the more resilient and adaptive we are.

I agree with that. That weren't the key word here is to adapt. When when we can adapt, it means we still have the mechanism of repair, the mechanics of rejuvenation, the mechanism of healing,

Defining health as adaptive resilience 2:25

which at the core of it is really stem cells and and younger cells and being you know, this is our kids, right? They learn fast, they're adapting, they heal fast and adapting. We get we get older and we get a little bit more stiff, a little bit more. Yeah. And that's kind of why having a, a spirited, youthful exuberance and passion and gratitude for life is so important. Right. Because that keeps us young of spirit. And the more curious we can be about life and what is possible. The better. Which is why my career has kind of been at the intersection of integrative medicine, health optimization, and human potential as well.

So I'm kind of in that sweet spot and but really bringing a lot of gratitude and appreciation for the life we have and the opportunity to be here in planet Earth and to live our fullest life. And ultimately, that's what health is in service of. I agree, and one of the Hollywood A-listers you always say, I think it was until Hopkins. They always says, you know, I don't get older, I just get wiser or more experienced or and I love your approach to that because you marry the physician side of health, but also the mental ability and capacity, and the perception is so important.

And I think you put all of that in the model. And now there's the load capacity model that you're behind. Can you explain that to us? Yeah, let's do it. Well, I'll explain it as simple as I can. It's a way of understanding our health comes about and disease and dysfunction comes about. You go one sided equations, what we call load and load is essentially all of the stress is being placed upon the body mind system. And there's your classic culprits from sleep deprivation, circadian misalignment to chronic stress threat perception.

Then you've got your toxins, you inflammation, your chemicals. That's the load of it. And of course, the body mind is designed to deal with some of that load. But if that load is too significant and it overwhelms the right side of the equation, which we call capacity, then dysfunction comes about. Capacity is the body's response to deal with the load, right? It's the ability to adapt and respond to any of the hard of that is a nervous system. Our hormones capacity, such as Mitford G or Topham G.

But the one that I'm really kind of most excited about currently is I've got a much clearer understanding of what it takes for the body to repair itself and that capacity of the body to repair, recover, regenerate can be supported and nurtured. And so that's so the load repair relationship is ultimately what drives health disease or dysfunction. And what we want to do is we want to reduce load. We want to increase repair capacity in a very interesting way to look at it sometimes. Also maybe adding some stress to the load so that the capacity.

So we stress the self through autophagy the cardiovascular systems to stress exercise. Right. So I like our approach of the homeostasis and stability and making sure that the load is not overwhelming us all the time. And sometimes a little bit of stress to improve that capacity response on the other side. Right. Stressing the cells. That's how we gray. That's how we adapt. So load is not intrinsically bad. It's all about the dose.

Load versus capacity and hormetic stress 6:00

And so you know, it's we call these Homeric stresses. So these are intentional constrained stresses that actually mobilize the body's ability to adapt and expand. And then that builds out more capacity. That's why it's really important that we've got to meet our edge in our psychological world, our relational world, our biological world. We meet our edge. We spend a period of time that then we come back and we recover. And so it's that rhythm of challenge and stress, adaptation and recovery that really underpins good health and health span.

I mean, it's such an important concept, right? We the size, for example, of nutrition. Well, we show that people should eat healthy every day. Macronutrients that we have, formulations. We publish a lot on this with the longevity diet, but also we push for intermittent fasting and or periods of prolonged fasting. This is the the load has to be the right one. And then you have to stress sometimes so that the body goes into autophagy, repair cellular reprograming and then push the stem cells. We see the same phenomenon happening in exercise, right.

The exercise 3 to 5 times per week you walk your day. This is the hermit. Since this is the stability this is the load. And then you do intensive training 2 to 4 times of rig or if you're a CrossFit or whatever. But that stress is what's going to ask the hard to pump faster to have a bigger load. The hardest saying I don't have enough capacity, let me invest into that. Let me grow the vessels that be widened. Let me here, let me reverse the plagues. This is how the body understands the healing process.

And it's part of longevity. It's part of human longevity, and it's part of actually nature, longevity. Historically. You know, we said why there are four seasons. You get the stress and the leaves kind of go down. There's fall period and then there's winter, and then you rejuvenate in spring every year. So those of you who don't know that the actually the tree and the egg laying business, they also use the same when the chick is all a bit older, they actually fast them for three days. They put them on a stress, and then they start laying back eggs at the same frequency at their peak.

So we see that in nature, in animals, in humans, Macy's was periods of stress is really what the body wants to kind of keep rejuvenating while building stability. So I love that concept. Yeah. And living in harmony with those rhythms and utilizing those natural rhythms. And so our day just needs to be some stressors, some recovery, some fun. We just need a mix of it all and we dial it in for us. But the real revelation for me has been how to support the repair capacity side of the equation through what we call stem cell mobilization.

Because I only learned about this a couple of years ago, and I got a little bit embarrassed because I've been in this field for a long time. And people used to say to me. Well, how does the body heal itself? And I would kind of talk about, well, the healing intelligence, the life force, you know, the immune system. But it was kind of pretty imprecise. And what they came to learn is really at the core of the repair response are our body's own stem cells. And that's been a real revelation. So much of my time now is talking about that.

I mean, we had the same revelation right at unusual. And our company, basically, once we learned what we just discussed about is of stress, support the stem cells, support the body to heal. We started as scientists in the US into okay, can I help the body heal faster? Can I support the stem cell the way we do it with the Christian, with the fasting became light nutrition and the pro lawn, we can invest into inducing autophagy and feeding the cells and the system to rejuvenate. And I think you are helping to do something similar, but by feeding the stem cell and making, we both are trying to make that stressful recovery less stressful and better recovery.

Can you talk? Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that through. And for for your support for this summit? But I'm very intrigued to learn about your supplements, your programs to support, again, making that stress load little bit less and sell the stem cell responsiveness a little bit higher. So absolutely. Yeah. Well, I came across Stan Region a couple of years back. The CEO, Christian Draper, he's a stem cell scientist. And I was listening to a podcast. And you said your body's own stem cells are at the heart, the repair system of the human body.

I never heard it explain like that before.

Stem cell mobilization and repair mode 10:50

And so I kind of deep dive into their research and the research around stem cell mobilization using plant based extracts. And what they came to realize is they're really onto something here because they got two clinical trials showing that Stem region release, which is their main dietary supplement product. It contains bioactive plant based compounds that have been shown to mobilize the body's own stem cells from the bone marrow where they're stored into the circulation, making them available for repair.

And as I dived into the research, I came to appreciate, you know, what circulating stem cells do. They actually cause and catalyze tissue repair. Now the human body is constantly repairing itself. They reckon over 300 billion cells or created each day. And so our own stem cells are normally mobilized in response to injury and damage and high levels of stress. But as we get biologically older, the effectiveness and efficiency with which they do that becomes very significant, diminished, which is why, you know, it takes longer to recover and heal when we get older.

So what he found was if you take stem regain release, it releases the body's own stem cells into the blood circulation within one and two hours of taking the supplement. And then that activates and triggers an accelerated repair response. They had two clinical trials, one with ten patients with class two, three heart failure. So the heart pump wasn't working effectively. They had one intervention. Stem region released two capsules three times a day. That's the accelerated protocol. Then when in six months, all of them had significantly improved heart heart function so they no longer met the criteria for heart failure.

Quality of life improved. They had a second pilot study on patients with Parkinson's disease. So a new gentle disease. Same intervention. Stem ten released two capsules three times a day after six months. Significant improvement in motor symptoms. Mood, sleep balance. So what they started to realize is they're actually onto something because it's ultimately all about activating the body's own repair intelligence. And you can support that by many means. And so I often combine Stem region release with prolong.

So when you combine the two intermittent fasting with Stem region release, you're basically shifting the body into repair mode. When the body is stress and stuck and inflamed and under load, it actually enters into a protective defended mode. Right? And many people will live there and they will know that because their energy is low, the resilience is low, their risk of degenerative disease. But when you shift the body into repair mode, then the body does what the body does. It knows how to heal and recover itself.

And for an extra bonus, if you if you're also reducing load at the same time. So that might be, you know, you stop smoking, you know, you stop eating sugars, all that kind of thing that adds unnecessarily and you dial your sleep in, then you're optimizing the body's ability to repair, to repair and recover. So it's been a real blessing for me to be supporting a company. And I know you have the same thing here whose products genuinely work. There's a clear mechanism of action for it, and it's ultimately about, you know, it's not like you even have to change the rest of your lifestyle.

You've just got to take the product. It supports the repair capacity side of the equation. But what it does, it tells people I can influence and control my body's own repair system. And that's really important for people to understand. There's so much that they can do to help themselves. Well, appreciate the explanation. And definitely if we can enhance stem cells circulating in the body, they're going to go and heal. Amazing to hear the heart data and the generative data. Right. The first question that comes to my mind is, hey, this is a plant based supplement.

You're not talking about a chemical or biological. So can you explain to us how it happens? Like what are the ingredients, how they work, how they use to release. So I often think of Christian, you know, the CEO, he's this kind of explorer and adventurer who's been gone to many places to seek plants. And then he's analyzed a lot of different plants to see which ones actually mobilized stem cells. And he's come up with a few of them. There's a species of allo allo macro called from Madagascar that was shown to release stem cells within an hour of ingestion.

Sea buckthorn extract from the Tibetan Plateau afar is a blue green algae extract. And what he did was he basically took his plan samples and he actually in the laboratory, you know, kind of tested them, you know, they gave them to human subjects. They then took blood samples before, during and after. And what we saw was this significant rise in the body's own stem cells. Essentially, what's happening is the stem cells are normally held actively retained within the bone marrow. That's where they're stored.

And then these plants, they loosen those retention mechanisms. And then there's a mobilization of stem cells into the circulation. There's also some other plant ingredients. Panic's noted ginseng which mimics vascular injury. And so those mimicking signals, they kind of fool the bone marrow into releasing the stem cells.

Supplement ingredients and who it's for 16:55

So it's the combination. And then they have two other ingredients which is includes colostrum, which actually supports the movement of those stem cells once they're in the circulation into the tissues where they're required as well. And beta one three glucan does the same. So you got mobilizes and you've got those that support migration. So you know, sometimes when I listen to Christian, I just think he's one of these people. He's on a mission to educate as many people who will listen about this as possible.

You know, I came in because, you know, I can explain this to doctors, practitioners as well as the general public to try and help explain some of this. But the reality is what we know is just through this product alone. And there's two of the ones Mobilize and signal, which helps improve blood flow, helps reduce inflammation, because those are two factors we need to be dressing as well. But the combination and I've seen the testimonials from the customers and the practitioners. And so I just think is like, you know, they're one of the handful of companies here in the world who really genuinely are on to something that the world kind of needs to know about.

And so it's been a delight for me to support them in their education. That's fantastic. I mean, looking forward for like, bigger clinical trials, I mean, remission of cardiovascular insufficiency. I mean, this is a big, big heart condition. So I'm hoping the company is investing into a phase two like and a bigger ones because this is this could be transformational until they're expanding the trial in the meantime I mean you're selling the supplements, right. And I wonder like who if somebody is listening here saying, well, I don't have a heart failure, I don't have Parkinson's, can I still take them?

Who who's tension stem the general lease in that protocol? Yeah. Kind of. For very active people who are physically active exercise, a lot of athletes take it. They take a version called Stem region sport that slightly modified. They have to take cholesterol out because that has growth factors. Replace it with tears still being which is an antioxidant. So a lot of very active people, what they find is they recover so much more quickly. Anyone who's kind of post-surgery post recovery, basically, you can think, does my body need help and support in the healing and repair process?

And if it does, what we say is go in Stem region release for three months, right? There's two protocols. There's two capsules a day. That's the basic the accelerated protocol. Save your post surgery or something. But also anyone with a degenerative condition as well. Anyone with any kind of chronic degenerative disease. So but a lot of people will take it to support recovery and well-being. And what's fascinating for us is some of the feedback we get is people just say, my energy is so much better, my brain fog is gone.

Because remember, we are mobilizing the body's repair system, right? And so we're bringing greater balance and coherence to the human body. So a lot of people will report those side, those effects as well. That's fantastic. Definitely a big revelation even for me. You know, we use the fasting between diet to push themselves and cellular repair. I've never heard that there are supplements that can a little bit allow that released to go a bit faster. I mean, your idea of doing prolonged and the supplements is can be actually a really valid one.

And then a person can look into it as well.

Closing thoughts on recovery and longevity 20:35

And maybe we can collaborate on the research. But like super appreciate your input today. I think you know lessons from this. For everyone listening to us in here, it's so important that you get moments of stress for your body to rejuvenate and otherwise decrease the load so that you live in a good. And that's very important. There are ways to induce stress, like the fasting, like intensive exercise. And if you want to complement that recovery phase with allowing the stem cells to activate, because it's so important for us as we talked about, and this is lesson number three is being keeping the adaptability of the body via the flexibility of producing stem cells is truthfully, our biological age is truthfully the main determinant of how long and how healthy we're going to be.

And going back to peak performance as well. I love the concept. Yeah. So thank you for your company and your supplements and your program that can support with that release. And I appreciate you for your time today and explaining the concept. And hopefully we're going to do another session next year on the Longevity Summit as well as in really enjoy it. Thank you for inviting me. Much appreciate it.