The Stem Cell Treatment That Almost Killed Me (And What Healed Me)

We never give our body a break. We're snacking too late at night. Our sleep's not great. We're constantly feeding our body things that don't love us back, and that's creating more of this cellular confusion that shuts down autophagy.

How do we activate that? What— why is that important on a cellular level?

It's our own innate, God-given cellular recycling system pathway.

What is REHIT exactly? Why is it one of the best ways to train our body for longevity?

Yeah, about 5 minutes, 3 times a week. You're doing an all-out sprint, then you're waiting 2 to 3 minutes, and you're doing all-out sprint again.

Walk me through emotional trauma and how that can actually impact our cellular health and cause a lot of chronic health conditions.

We both got really personal in this book. Your journey, your mom's journey, but your specific journey. I talk about the loss of my dad. You talk about the loss of your father-in-law. People are going to be surprised and pleasantly shocked of how personal the book is.

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It's a health ritual I look to every day. Go to manukora.com/axe to get 31% off plus $25 in free gifts with their starter kit. That's manukora.com/axe. All right, today's guest needs no introduction, though I'm going to introduce him anyways. He's a good friend of mine, Dr. Will Cole. And today, we're going to dive deep into how to reverse the irreversible, how to heal chronic health conditions, how to promote longevity. and how to do it in a unique way, and that is through cellular healing and cellular medicine.

You know, today, oftentimes we're treating organs or we're just treating the disease, where if you truly want to heal, we need to go to the root cause of the issues, and that is healing parts of the cell, like the cell membrane and the mitochondria, and getting your cell detoxed, getting your cell absorbing the right nutrients and functioning at the highest level possible.

So we're going to dive into that today and so much more.

We're going to go really deep today on the science of Cellular Medicine. Dr. Will, thanks for coming on.

Thanks, my friend. Appreciate it.

I mean, I'm so excited you're here. We just finished a taste testing, taste testing some supplements. And so, that was fun.

Yeah. I'm well energized.

Same.

Yeah.

We had a lot of mitochondrial support.

Yeah.

Certainly, some cellular hydration, getting our cells hydrated. So, that was great. But man, it's so good to have you here. And, I love having you on because I know we really sort of share this understanding of We both have practiced for a long time helping people heal with personalized medicine. Mm-hmm. And part of that personalized medicine is helping people heal at the cellular level.

Mm-hmm.

One thing I'd love for you to start with is walk us through the difference between, you know, 3 things, conventional medicine, integrative or functional medicine, and then this personalized cellular medicine.

Yeah, I think conventional medicine, mainstream medicine, people know this, right? I mean, they're, they're trained to diagnose the disease and match it with, with a corresponding pharmaceutical drug. As far as chronic health, obviously, if someone needs an emergency room, emergencies, life-saving surgeries, we rank in the West, the United States, one of the best, I think, most years with— for acute emergency care. But for chronic healthcare, we really are last or second to last. Every time there's a new report of how the United States does it as far as managing people actually living long, healthy lives, managing things like type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions. cardiometabolic problems, things like that. And then what the world would call mystery illnesses, they fail even worse. I mean, things like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and chronic Lyme disease and mold toxicity. There's no place for them in mainstream medicine. I mean, they're medically gaslit. I mean, it's abysmal. So that's mainstream medicine. It has its place, but has a lot of people falling through the cracks of that model of sort of this medicinal matching game. And the rest of the people are told, you know, You're just depressed, take that antidepressant, because there's no labs for that, so they just can get prescribed those sort of things. Look, that's being a little bit reductive, but that's more or less people's experiences. When you talk to people for 16 years living through that model, that's more or less what's going on there. Functional medicine, we are both trained in that. I mean, it is a huge progress in people catching the people, helping the people, serving the people that are falling through the cracks of that conventional model. I mean, looking at root causes, looking at what does the scientific literature show of why people have autoimmune problems? Why are we dealing with an epidemic rise of fertility issues and hormonal problems? And then, but what can happen there is they are still within that same model, right? They're operating within that same system. And what we are doing with, at the Health Institute, and what my work and your work has been for our years is how do we take it to the next level? How do we really look the latest science on a bio-individual basis. And I think it's, you could say, functional medicine 2.0. I think it's, what is it, what is a way for us to, instead of just greenwashing conventional medicine and calling it functional medicine, how do we really look at how do we get people healed at the root cellular level? And that's where the science is really pointing to. When you look at all the longevity science, It's a cellular dysfunction. So, I think sometimes functional medicine doctors, people in our space, can get stuck within that systems, right? But when you look at autoimmunity, for example, molecular mimicry, the different organs are being affected. Well, the root causes don't end with organs. They actually— the root upstream, the most core root problem is actually a cellular dysfunction, the communication of cells, the loss of— Ability to recognize itself is really the leading science model of understanding the information. They call it the information theory on aging or chronic disease, the information model of understanding that there's cellular confusion. And, what we are doing is enabling the cell to recognize itself so it can function the way that God created it.

Wow.

Yeah, I think it's a great distinction when we're looking at conventional medicine, to your point there, treating symptoms and people aren't getting better. They don't get better at all. It's like, hey, you get on a drug, you got to be on this the rest of your life. There's no change. Functional medicine today, one of the things that I noticed, Dr. Will, is that most of the time now, a lot of functional medicine doctors tend to recommend whatever diet that maybe helped them in the first place. So, it's like, okay, you go to see a functional medicine doctor, some of them will say, well, you need to be vegan or you need to be carnivore or you need to be keto or Anti-inflammatory.

Yeah, it's just general anti-inflammatory, general Mediterranean.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, I think the big difference there is, no, everybody should be on a different diet that's best for them based on their unique— you use the word bio-individuality, which I think is so great. There are specific supplements based on your unique bio-individuality. And, what I found is sometimes we even have people with a condition like, let me just throw this out there, like PCOS or PMOS. for some of them, it's— most of them, it's an insulin issue. But sometimes, there's still, you know, some nuance and differences in terms of these supplements will work better for one patient, these will work better for another patient.

Yeah.

So, really being able to dial that in, I think, is really that one of those differences there in personalized medicine is we're really customizing this for you. And, this is how people get the best results. You know, I know we co-authored a book called Heal Yourselves, which I'm super excited about. I feel like it's the best book I've ever written or been part of writing with someone by far. And, I think the book does such an amazing job of walking through how do you reverse a chronic illness and then also how do you promote longevity, kind of those 2 things together. What are your favorite parts of that book or what do you feel like makes this book so different than other books you've been part of writing in the past?

Yeah. That means a lot for you to say that. That's how I feel too. I wondered how you felt about it because This is my 5th book, right? How many? You've had 5. How many books have you had?

I think I've written, I think this will be my 7th, maybe.

Okay.

Okay. Maybe. So we lost count. That's pathetic.

Yeah.

Like, please forgive us, all our past books. Um, no, but I, this is my 5th book and I never wrote with somebody else. It was a lot of fun. It was really fun. And I liked our standing, we had these standing writing sessions every week.

Yeah.

And I, I loved that too. It was like my little Josh time, right?

It was great. I mean, we did that for almost a year.

Yeah. Just working chapter by chapter and refining it. It was a lot of fun. So the writing process was fun 'cause I wasn't siloed by myself. I would typically write all my other books on the weekends too, which wasn't good actually.

Yeah.

And I, we talk about it in the book. Like we both went through times of burnout.

Yeah.

'Cause we love what I, what we do, right?

Right.

And, but we weren't necessarily always practicing what we taught in this sort of constant, even if you love it, we have to check ourselves. So that is one of the areas that I liked, we both got really personal in this book, your journey, your mom's journey, but your specific journey.

Yeah.

Of your, the spinal infection and your recovery. I talk about the loss of my dad. You talk about the loss of your father-in-law. So I think it's, people are gonna be, I think, surprised and pleasantly shocked of how personal the book is and how we learned through all of that, what we did right, what we did wrong. How we, and this is what we do for a living, right? We help people through wellness, through functional medicine and cellular nutrition, and we don't get it always right. So, I think we are very vulnerable in wanting to share our own journey. So, I like that part of it. I never went as personal as I went in this book, and I think that what I love about Heal Your Cells is we're applying the latest longevity science, but in an accessible way, in an easy-to-understand way. And it also is for, I'm thinking of all the people that are reading, gonna read this. It is the people that have been so systemically medically gaslit. They're told there's nothing you can do with this. And the subtitle of the book is Reversing the Irreversible, which you fought for, 'cause the publishers, I don't know if we can say this, you can cut this out if you need to. Yeah, you can cut it out. But I, the publishers wanna be safe, right? And we love our publishers. They're amazing people and they advocate for us. So, I'm just, no, but it's just an industry and they wanna be safe. They want to protect us. So, the idea of saying reversing the irreversible, how could you say that, right? I mean, that's— are you overpromising? No, this is what we see on a daily basis helping people get better. They're told there's nothing you can do, take these medications, see you in 6 months. These mystery illnesses, these complex autoimmune problems, these complex chronic health issues, we see people reverse the irreversible all the time. So, of course, we could say that on the COVID of a book.

And just, I want to throw just the example there is, We have people come into us that we help every day with autoimmune disease where doctors are saying you can't reverse it, type 2 diabetes, which is crazy, but also even things like, I mean, I'll throw this in there, natural cancer support. A lot of these chronic infections like long COVID and mold, I mean, they go into other doctors, there's just no answers there.

Yeah.

And, we've been able to, with our protocol, because we personalize so much, help people reverse these conditions, get their blood work back to normal, or even the craziest thing we get into in the book is how Oftentimes, people go in, they get their blood tests done, and their doctor says, hey, your labs are normal, you're fine. And then, the way that we interpret and teach people what to get tested for in the book, what to look for, there's such a difference even there.

Absolutely. So, it's people that are told there's nothing you can do. There's actually a lot you can do in the overwhelming majority of cases. So, I love talking about this idea of what's happening at the cellular level. Like, when you look at all the differentiated different type of chronic health problems. Actually, if you look at the latest science and understand mechanistically of what's happening on a cellular level, how cells have that confusion and the way that God made the brain cell to be a brain cell or the heart cell to be a heart cell or the gut cell to be a gut cell, and the cells kind of— the researchers call it ex-differentiation. They kind of lose their purpose. And then you think of this—

Yeah.

symbolism of it all, right? Humanity, in many ways, have lost where they came from. They forgot their purpose. They're hypervigilant, they're defensive, they're confused. That's what humanity is. Well, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Because there's a lot of cellular confusion going on right now.

Yeah.

So I think of that ripple effect, that cascade of what's happening on a cellular level, because when mankind pretends to be God, there's unintended consequences and sometimes intended consequences. And I think you're seeing that play out in humanity. And as far as chronic health issues, as far as geopolitical issues, as far as people's loneliness and spiritual disconnection from God, what's all— it's all happening in our space. If you look on a cellular level, that's what's happening. Cells are confused and dysregulated and hypervigilant and have lost where they came from. So I'm so excited that we got to have that conversation in the book.

Well, it's a big deal because when you think about— here's the reality. When you don't live in tune with nature, the way God created, it leads to illness.

Yeah.

Right. You know, I think I was, I was watching this, um, uh, yeah, you're, you're, by the way, Will, Will will understand this because he'll do this too. Like I went back and, you know, took college courses for fun, you know, just to, just to be able to learn. And so I was going through this theology course and one of the instructors is going through the life of David, but he's also going, and there's another one on Genesis. And he's really talking about, there's really 3 relationships you have to, have to have to be healthy. A relationship with God, deep relationships with others, and a good, healthy relationship with nature. And if any of those 3 things fall outta balance, that's what equals illness and disease. And think about how true that is.

Yeah, it is so true. And what if you call Heal Your Cells a longevity book? 'Cause we're talking about longevity science, right? And, and how to live a long, healthy life and adding life to your years and years to your life. Yes, but I would never— I've never seen a book in that space talk about the spiritual side of things and nature as much as we got to have that conversation in the book. You're absolutely right. Those 3 things, and then science is substantiating that ancient wisdom.

Yeah. You know, one of my favorite chapters in the book is where we dove in mitochondrial health. And it was so— one of the things I love about writing books is You go so much deeper than you ever would before. It's like, you know, I mean, you're the same, you're a 5 Enneagram. So that just means, you know, you're just going very deep all the time into the research and the rabbit holes there. But, uh, you know, the mitochondria was so fascinating in some of its historic, you know, like origins in the human body.

So talk a little bit about the mitochondria, what makes it so unique.

I mean, look, we don't— a lot of these things are mysteries when you think about it from the details and God's beautiful ability to create something out of nothing, right? That the, the vast deep of Genesis, we don't understand it. But scientists are looking at the fact that mitochondria are cellular energy factories. Every cell has this cellular energy factory. That's anybody struggling with brain fog, fatigue, any type 2 diabetes. I mean, most chronic health problems actually have a mitochondrial dysfunction component. It's a hallmark of aging in the scientific literature. So, there's some sort of dysfunction with this little cellular energy, this battery pack, this energy factory. It has its own DNA separate than ours.

Wild.

And researchers talk about the fact that it's sort of descendant of a bacteria and somehow got engulfed in our cells, probably part of creation.

Well, you think about it, we come from the dust of the mud. I mean, think about that.

Exactly, some sort of soil-based microbe that got enveloped in every cell of our body that then communicates to the gut microbiome, all the trillions of bacteria.

Yeah.

So, we have this sort of microbiome-mitochondria crosstalk, this communication line of how our gut health communicates to our cellular health and vice versa, how our cellular health communicates to our microbiome health, and then of course the microbiome Mind axis too. So it's this beautiful communication web that God created that allows every cell of our body to communicate with the other cells. And if that cell's healthy, you have beautiful symphony of communication, right?

Mm-hmm.

Just like humans when they have healthy relationships. If a cell is unhealthy, that mitochondria can become leaky. It's like, it's what people have leaky gut syndrome or leaky brain syndrome, increased blood-brain barrier permeability. That's what's connected to so many different chronic health problems. Well, actually, it's a cellular function problem. The mitochondria get leaky and release all these reactive oxygen species, these pro- inflammatory cytokines, and the cell becomes hyper-defensive.

Yeah.

That cell membrane becomes more rigid, and it throws everything off. It's the cell danger response. It's an ancient pathway that's meant to protect us, and our cells cannot differentiate between either a physiological threat or a psychological, spiritual threat, right?

Right.

And the cell membrane becomes more rigid, and then you have this cascade effect, and one cell affects other cells, and then you have whole organs being thrown off. And we talk about the research out of Stanford showing this uneven aging that many people have.

Yeah.

Like, over 20 million Americans have one organ aging more rapidly than another, and the organ that's aging the fastest, they're at an exponential increased risk of some health problem of that organ. So, yeah, it gets me excited when you think of the science of it, because we're not just looking at problems for the sake of it and being a hypochondriac. These are things you can reverse and heal and overcome.

That's right.

And deal with, but you have to know what you're dealing with to do something about it.

Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I— when I was coming out of that spine infection, I was exhausted for 2 years. I mean, absolutely just exhausted. And, I thought, well, maybe it was just because I'm still overcoming and healing. But still, no, I realized at one point, I thought my energy isn't where it should be. And, I finally did some blood work, more of the advanced type of blood work that you and I run on patients, not what they do in conventional medicine, but the more advanced panels. And, I really just had 2 main things show up. I was really deficient in vitamin B2, riboflavin, but then also my mitochondrial score was in the tank. I mean, everything else looked good, but those 2 things were on the floor. And so, I said, okay, well, I really need to start taking B2 and really fixing my mitochondrial function and focusing on that. And, Will, it was crazy. I mean, within a few weeks, my energy went from a 6 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10 by just fixing those things.

Hmm.

And so, I started doing deep research on And, a lot of the stuff we put in the book, hey, how do we start to— what does the mitochondrial need to be healthy? Of course, it needs sleep. That's a big deal. But, it also needs this thing, oleic acid or urolithin A, PQQ, NAD+, a lot of these sort of— so, I started eating more pomegranate. I started doing CoQ10, doing a lot of these supplements. I just noticed, wow, what a difference it made in my energy. And, there are certain conditions out there that tend to be more correlated with mitochondrial dysfunction. I remember the biggest, some of the ones we talked about in the book were chronic fatigue syndrome is number one. So, if you are very fatigued and tired all the time, that's the number one sign that your mitochondria are worn out. Hypothyroidism, that is a big one. Men that have testosterone that's extremely low, that's another one. And then, the other one was things like long COVID. Yeah. Like those were the, those were the conditions I believe that like were most correlated with this mitochondrial dysfunction.

Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's, people don't realize that. I mean, they, they don't, they think it's, they make it their personality, right? Especially if they're like being people that are diagnosed are one thing, right? I mean, they know they have something wrong, but these ex— these things exist on a spectrum. There's so many people that don't even know why they feel the way that they do.

Yeah.

Right. And they may, may or may not even be able to be labeled But the mechanism's there. So, no matter where you're at on that cellular energy deficiency spectrum, yeah, these are— mitochondrial dysfunction is a part of it, cell membrane dysfunction is a part of it, and that's why you have to heal your cells.

Yeah, it's huge. Well, let's talk about the cell membrane then.

Why is that so important?

Well, every cell of our body has a cell membrane. It's this protective phospholipid healthy fat protective layer. And God made it perfectly where it's the perfect amount of permeability to let the good things in and let the bad stuff out. By bad stuff, I mean our cells have byproducts of energy production, right? These reactive oxygen species, especially if people are going through a chronic health problem or environmental toxins, right? If these cells, the cells are more permeable, environmental toxins can be stored in the cell. Even stress and trauma can be impacting it epigenetically. We need that membrane to be firm enough to be protective, but permeable enough to let nutrients in and byproducts of energy to be pushed out. And when you have membrane, cellular membrane dysfunction, there's a rigidity going on. There's a loss of that permeability. It becomes more oxidized. Think of it sort of a rusted BB bullet in a way, and it is keeping the good stuff from coming in and it's keeping the bad stuff from fully leaving. So you'll get a lot of this cellular stress, the cellular distress. And what can happen is when that happens, that cell danger response comes up, there's this pathway called mTOR, the mammalian or mechanistic target of rapamycin, which God made it. It's not inherently bad. And we need it. We need mTOR to be healthy levels to build muscle. We need it to have healthy cell growth, but we don't want it so high for so long. And when there is that sort of the city walls, the cell membrane being dysfunctional, there can be a cascade of dysfunction happening right there. And mTOR is going to stay up for too hot for too long, too high for too long. And that sort of byproduct of energy, it just kind of like garbage on the floor, and the body can't keep up with it.

Yeah.

There's these guardian— I call them guardian— the guardian angels of the DNA, of our DNA genome, or guardian angels of our DNA, are these sirtuins, these Cellular Information Regulators is the acronym, and they're trying to clean things up, but the cell's membrane is too rigid. mTOR is kind of leaving all this garbage, and our mitochondria are becoming leaky, and the cell can't keep up with it. So, the— and what happens is the code, the actual DNA code becomes muffled. It's kind of like a CD player or a record player that's scratched. The information is there on the CD, it's there on the record, But it, when you play it, it is muffled, it's skipping around. And that's what's happening on a cellular code level issue.

Yeah.

So, it's a software problem, not a hardware problem. And what the scientists in the scientific literature around cellular health are showing is that you can actually buff, proverbially buff that scratched CD or record. So, the cell can recognize who it, what it's supposed to be. The cell can recognize how, what God created it to be. So, the brain cell can be the brain cell. But it all begins with understanding what— what's this protective layer. You have to heal the membrane.

Yeah.

So, to allow that communication to be happening appropriately. And on all— every cell membrane, it's receptor sites for all the hormones. So, someone that's dealing with thyroid hormone or testosterone issues or estrogen-progesterone issues, my friends, you can get your hormones looking great on a lab with hormone replacement therapy, but if you're not dealing with the cellular communication, the cell— recognizing that hormone, you're gonna have a honeymoon period with HRT and then you're gonna be— hit a wall. And we see this all the time where people— it takes the edge off, the hormone replacement therapy takes the edge off, but then it never deals with the full issue. And maybe it's like a piece of the puzzle, but they know something's missing with their hormonal puzzle. Well, what's missing from your hormonal puzzle is healing your cell membrane. is healing your cells. So, your cells can actually communicate and make good use of the HRT if you need to be on it because you don't ultimately have just a hormonal issue. The body is a lot more complex than just a number on a piece of paper.

Yeah. It's important to remember your cell membranes are made of predominantly fat and protein. And so, when you hear the old saying, you are what you eat, it's most true of fats and protein. I mean, they are incredibly important for these cell membranes. And, this is why One of the things that we do when we run blood work is one of the things I like to do is more of an advanced marker is look at something called an omega-3 index. But, looking at your omega-3 fatty acids are critically important for there. As Dr. Will, I know as you mentioned those phospholipids, which are found in eggs, mostly egg yolks, are also found in things like caviar. But, these phospholipids are really important as well for helping heal and repair that cell membrane. What you want to— as Dr. Will mentioned, you want it really flexible and moldable and pliable and letting things in or out. What happens with a lot of oxidative stress and damage, it'll start to harden and become stiff, and it's almost like a swamp. Nothing's in, nothing's out. And so, but there are ways to reverse that. You know, we see a lot of cell membrane issues, to Will's point, and hormone issues, hypothyroidism, menopausal issues, even testosterone, also heart disease.

Mm-hmm.

So, hormone issues and heart disease tend to be related to the cell membrane. And, if you are saying to yourself, hey, I want to get to the root cause of my issues, Going to the cell, that smallest part of our body, is a way to go and start to repair. That is one of the greatest ways, if not the greatest way, to practice root cause medicine. If you want to learn more, I want to encourage everybody to check out our new book. It's called Heal Your Cells. You can go to Amazon, it's bookstores nationwide for this book that Dr. Will and I are discussing.

Now, I don't say this lightly, but I believe that the information in Heal Your Cells is the most important health content That you'll read all year. And my new book that I wrote with Dr. Will Cole is now officially available at Amazon, Barnes& Noble, or wherever you get your books. And here's the part I don't want you to miss. When you go to healyourcells.com and add your email and your order number, we'll send you hundreds of dollars in bonus resources, including the Cellular Peptide Guide, the Cellular Supplement Guide, and a masterclass and 40 longevity recipes. Order your copy, then head on over to healyourselves.com. That's healyourselves.com to get hundreds of dollars of content for free today.

All right, walk me through emotional trauma and how that can actually impact our cellular health and cause a lot of chronic health conditions, even things like autoimmune disease and cancer.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's a part of the book that I really loved a lot. I really, really loved a lot. And I got to relive it in a way, 'cause there's a distance between when you write a book and when it comes out. So you and I got to read different chapters from the book, and which is a beast. I mean, people wanna hear about this here, and we're gonna put you, we're gonna, we're gonna, if you want a nice functional medicine lullaby at night, we can just calm you down.

Yeah, so you and I actually did the voices for the audiobook. So you'll be hearing us speak on the audiobook. But it, it is recording an audiobook. I don't know why, cuz, cuz they wanna make sure you say everything crisp and perfect.

Yeah, guys.

So you read almost double the amount.

Yeah. Of, of, we had some elocution lessons. Let's just say that.

Yeah.

We, we've been, anyway, so I got to read and that was a very personal chapter for both of us to talk about things that we went through. We were really vulnerable in the book of the things we went through.

Yeah.

The loss of my dad, the loss of your father-in-law and other stresses and traumas in our life that How does this impact our health on a cellular level? And there's many different ways that it can happen. When the body's stuck in that hypervigilant, stressed trauma state, what can happen is another component to what scratches that CD that I talked about epigenetically, that cellular scratching that happens that creates cellular confusion. So the brain or the heart cell, the gut cell, the thyroid cell, whatever organ you're talking about that you're having problems with, if there's scratches, the proverbial scratches happening epigenetically, that cell can't read what it fully is. Well, yes, foods that don't love you back can scratch, scratch that communication. The— or you think of it as like, um, static, right? Static communication. Uh, environmental toxins can, nutrient deficiencies can, uh, uh, herbicides, pesticides, right? Those type of things. But also biotoxins like mold, bacteria, viruses can Scratch. EMFs can cause that cellular communication problem. Well, the mental, emotional, spiritual stuff does too. It's not just the physiological. We have to look at the psychological, the mental, emotional, spiritual, and how that scratches that cellular communication, creating a cascade of health problems in our life. So some of the mechanisms that I thought were interesting that's in the scientific literature of how stress and trauma impacts our cellular communication is the constant elevation of adrenaline and cortisol.

Yeah.

Sort of the breakdown of these things that God made these hormones, of course we need them, but being too high for too long creates this sort of cellular stress.

Yeah.

It's like too much of something that we need, and it's meant to come up and then come down, these stress responses, but constantly being quote unquote on, hypervigilant, fight or flight, fight or flight, or freeze or fawn, creates cellular stress. And then, of course, we have that gut-brain axis and the impact that the gut has. So, when the body is stuck in this stress state, the vagus nerve, the largest cranial nerve in the body, which is responsible for the resting, digesting aspect of the autonomic nervous system, you can imagine if somebody's going through stress or trauma, that vagus nerve is not— it's taking a back seat.

Yeah.

And, what happens is there's a decrease of what's called a migrating motor complex. It's sort of this wave-like motion communicating between the gut and the brain. And that lack of MMC, that lack of that communication between the gut and the brain and the brain and the gut allows bacteria to grow into the small intestine, which these bacteria in small amounts are fine, but these overgrowths are higher in lipopolysaccharides, these bacterial toxins, which increases leaky gut syndrome. So the cells of the gut lining are probably one of the first things that get stressed, cuz they're kind of the gatekeepers for the rest of the body.

Yeah.

So the Cell— gastrointestinal cells are becoming confused first, and then things are passing through the gut that shouldn't be able to pass through the gut, and then that causes a cascade of inflammation in the body. So, yeah, it again begins with our cells, and stress can do a number, a cascade, a perfect storm of issues, and we have to metabolize stored stress and trauma from our body just as much as we would environmental toxins. You have to talk about the spiritual stuff if you're gonna talk about healing yourselves. You can take all the best peptides in the world, but if you're not dealing with your relationship with God and your own self or your family or your partner, you have to deal with these things because they're sometimes the biggest saboteurs to you healing.

Yeah. Yeah, I, I totally agree. You know, one of the things I really enjoyed about diving into in the book even more as well is, uh, talking about all of these different sort of, uh, ways of looking at emotional trauma, how it impacts the body, and then how to resolve it, right? We looked at things like Chinese medicine and how they looked at it. We looked at German New Medicine. We looked at the Bible, right?

Yes.

And how these address healing these past traumas. And you and I both felt the same way. I mean, from both of us treating tens of thousands of patients, one of the greatest things that causes somebody to get stuck and not be able to heal is a trauma that they have not overcome. Maybe it's going through a divorce, Maybe it's losing a loved one. Maybe it's in the past you were dealing with shame and guilt and you're still living with that shame and guilt today. Uh, you know, the lies we believe about ourselves. There's all of these things that, uh, we kind of hold on to, and then that's why we still might act out. Or you might say to— yeah, you know, Paul says this in the Bible, I do what I don't wanna do.

Mm-hmm.

You know, like, like you may say to yourself, I don't wanna, you know, get angry. I don't wanna be depressed.

I don't wanna, lash out.

I don't want to be moody or whatever it is. Yeah.

These self-sabotaging behaviors.

That's right. These self-sabotaging behaviors. And I think being able to get to the root of why did this happen? How do I fix that? That's something. And what a lot of people don't realize is different emotions that you have on repeat, those cause disease in different organs, or they can heal different organs. But if you're dealing with the stress of loss from losing a loved one, uh, or something like that. Okay. Or divorce or whatever it is, um, that affects the immune system. That's your lung, that's your colon. And so that if you live with that for a long time, that's increasing your risk of cancer, autoimmune disease, chronic infections.

Mm-hmm.

It's so important to go back and deal with this. You know, I know one thing I shared in the book a little bit is when my father-in-law pa— passed. I mean, that, that, that was the person that was the closest to me that's ever, ever, ever passed because he was, He was living with us at the time. He was not only my father-in-law, he was one of my best friends, mentors, a father-like figure. And I went and I went and did a series that was called Heart Sync of just being able to do some counseling and things. And, and the thing is, well, it's like, I know some of what to do already. Mm-hmm. But you still have to do it. Yeah.

Right.

And going through the process of writing and doing everything I could to just release any of that emotional pain and, um, mm-hmm. But, but those are things that's critically important. And for a lot of people that don't have anybody to also walk them through how to do that correctly.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, we— what I love about that chapter specifically is we walk people through for— obviously there's— we talk about different types of therapy and there's a time and place to reach out to somebody that's a professional, of course, for trauma work. But there's some things you could at least start that journey on your own with things like journaling and writing things that you maybe never would ever say, and intentional ways of how to get it out of your body and not just ruminating and cyclically living in your cells. You can actually sort of detox it on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level just by putting pen to paper and writing things. A good prompt that I give telehealth patients is, what does it feel like to be me today? And that could be past trauma.

Yeah.

It could be current stress at your job or your relationship. Or it could be a symptom that you're going through, your health problem. That's a heavy question to write out, pen to paper, pencil to paper. What does it feel like to be me today? And do this journal speak protocol of writing at least 20 minutes a day, writing out just this freeform journaling. And you can burn it afterwards. You can make it sort of like giving it to God. But it's not meant to just live out the past. It's meant to get it out so it's not living in your cells anymore.

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's incredibly important. If you want to heal fully, you need to focus on the physical things, the diet, the movement, but you also have to focus on the spiritual things and the mental things because the mental and the spiritual have such a big impact on our body. There's this mind-body connection that you've got to care for that's just as important as what you're eating for reversing disease, what you're eating for longevity, You know, one of the things you were mentioning earlier with mitochondrial health, and I want to kind of share this concept too, is that, you know, our body needs to be both building and regenerating, but also detoxing, right? It's like, hey, well, if you have a building project, you have all this, you know, there's always a dumpster there, right? There's stuff you've got to be getting rid of in order for the project to keep moving forward. But, for a lot of people, they're missing one or the other. Either they don't have enough nutrients to rebuild, Or else their body isn't detoxing and getting rid of the things they need, right? So, it's detox. We've got to take care of toxicity and deficiency.

Yeah.

Let's start off with the toxicity. There's something I know that you wrote about, we wrote about in there, and I've heard you talk about before, autophagy. How do we activate that? Why is that important on a cellular level?

It's our own innate, God-given cellular recycling system pathway. It's there. I mean, if our cells were working the way that God created them to, they would be happening just the way it was meant to be.

Yeah.

Mainly at night when you're sleeping and recoup. That's why REM and deep sleep and heart rate variability, these markers that we look at for telehealth patients are so important. Um, but many people are not optimizing their sleep, and even if their sleep is great, modernity is really messed up and it has a lot of blessings, but we have a lot of unintended consequences sometimes of living out of alignment with how we were created to live. So, What's happening on a cellular level is that going back to that pathway that I talked about earlier, that mTOR pathway, that pro-cellular growth pathway, if it's too high for too long, that creates this sort of think of like trash on the factory floor, and the sirtuins can't these guardian angels of the of our genome can't keep up with the backup of this pro-growth state that. That is happening on a cellular level. And then the mitochondria, the cellular energy factories, are leaky and leaking these reactive oxygen species. And what's happening here is that's the antithesis of a cleanup state. The cell danger response is just trying to survive. It's not thriving. The membrane, the cell membrane, is more rigid, more oxidized. And there's a pathway called the AMPK. It's sort of the kind of the CFO of the cell. It's like the, how are we going to spend energy? So, the AMPK is shunting all the signaling of mTOR because it thinks we're out of alignment. It's confused. The cell is confused.

Yeah.

So, the cell thinks you're eating a lot of foods that are probably very calorically high calories, but empty calories, not very nutrient-dense. You're not getting a lot of the— I'm talking about the average person that's out there, right? The standard Westerner doesn't have a lot of nutrient density in their foods. So, food is information for our cells. So, if you're lacking nutrients, i.e., nutrient deficiencies, your cell needs that to actually be able to communicate properly. So, you're lacking the cellular communication from nutrient-dense foods. And then, a lot of researchers call a lot of chronic health problems chronobiological, meaning that we're eating too much of foods that don't love us back for too long, i.e., the fasting window. We never give our body a break. We're snacking too late at night. Our sleep's not great. We're constantly feeding our body things that don't love us back, and that's creating more of this cellular confusion that shuts down autophagy, that shuts down the cell's ability to clean cellular house. And, uh, but when we can start to live and create more of alignment with how our cells are created, the cell knows what to do. The cell knows what to do. So, what happens is mTOR starts to come down when we start to do the protocol so that we talk about and heal your cells. The cell can start to recognize what it's supposed to do, I guess.

Well, part of it is, it's just, it's like what gets you out of this autophagy is too much, too much in chaos, right? And so, this is why fasting is probably the number one way to activate.

Fasting, nutrient-dense foods, Prayer and meditation, anything that's going to decrease that chasm because our genetics haven't changed in thousands of years, but our world has changed so much. So how can we live in cellular alignment so our cells can recognize what they are? Because what autophagy does is the body's— the cell's so smart. God made it so smart. The cell says, okay, this environmental toxin, this reactive oxygen species, these inflammatory proteins aren't supposed to be there. So it creates sort of a trash bag called an autophagosome. And bundles up all of the environmental toxins, all the cellular toxins, and then attaches a lysosome, which is sort of the— this kind of garbage disposal system. So, it's called— they call it autolysosome, is when it attaches to the lysosome and then it secretes all these enzymes. It actually, guys, dissolves all these environmental toxins and gets rid of it.

Yeah.

It's there. But we need to give our cell the chance to do it. So we teach in the book how to actually tap into these cellular recycling pathways, cuz our body's there if we just give it the chance to do so. We just make it so hard for ourselves to do what it's designed to do.

And this is incredibly important for inflammatory conditions. If you have inflammatory conditions or any sort of toxin overload, this is a problem. I also wanna mention, you know, from the Chinese medicine standpoint, the way that they would put it is yin is detoxification. And so that's most, most yin boosting foods are things like Fruits and vegetables and doing things like fasting versus more of the yang is more of the building regeneration. That's red meat. It's those sort of things that are more high-calorie, more building and regenerating. And, you have to have both systems working evenly. And, some conditions lean more one versus one more the other, but it's very important that you address both of these, the detoxification system and that your body has the right building blocks To rebuild itself, especially yourselves. And so, what are some of the most crucial when you think of nutrition, whether it be macronutrients or micronutrients, that are kind of crucial as we rebuild ourselves? Yeah.

So, a few things. I mean, obviously, food is first, right? I mean, everybody, and we teach specific— something that we put in the book is, are things that we usually would ask telehealth patient on an initial intake. And, of course, we run labs for them and actually look at the specific pathways. So, but this is a book, guys. It's not the same as a lab. So, we, for people, I, but we still wanted to give people a pointer on what organs may be aging more rapidly. So, if your heart cells were aging more rapidly, and what the Stanford study that we talked about there, if you're part of the 20-some million Americans, and the number we actually think is a lot higher than that, but conservative estimates, 25 million Americans having one organ aging more rapidly. If your heart cells are aging more rapidly, you are over a 200% increased risk of heart attack or stroke. If you, and just to say this, not to put fear into people, but just to put some awareness on this, 50% of people that have a heart attack or stroke, their first symptom is death. They have no warning sign. And this isn't to be fearmongering. This is about empowering yourself to know with some basic labs, and we teach what labs are to run, you can actually see where your cardiovascular health Years before any signs or symptoms happen. That's what the science shows now. So if your brain cells are aging more rapidly, you are over an 80% increased risk of neurodegenerative problems. We already are seeing 1 in 2 people die of heart attack or stroke. We are already seeing people, the epidemic rise of brain health, neurological problems. The stats speak for themselves. Anyways, how we can heal that, we need to start to enhance that cellular communication. It starts with food nutrient density. And the reason why I brought up the cellular report card is that your prescription, your recommendation, your protocol, if your heart cells are aging more rapidly, may look different than if somebody's brain cells are aging more rapidly. So we brought in as much bio-individuality as we could in a book for different prescriptions, different protocols based on your specific needs. We took a lot of great lengths to make it unique for the person so you could kind of choose your own adventure of how you're gonna heal yourselves based on your cellular report card score, which you could take in the book. But some key hallmark, like things to call out for no matter who you are, some nutrients. One that's kind of unique, but it's in the scientific literature around cellular health, is spermidine. Spermidine is this unique compound. It's not the same as food. So, start with your meals as medicine. But these specific compounds that are in food, things like ancient wheat germ, high in spermidine. There's a few other nutrient-dense foods that have this unique spermidine, because fasting increases autophagy, but so does spermidine.

Mm-hmm.

Urolithin A is another one, which you mentioned earlier. We can get it from these polyphenols like ellagic acid that's in things like pomegranates, think deeply colored fruits and vegetables. These flavonoids, polyphenols help When you consume them, think a deeply colored blackberry or pomegranate, your gut takes that ellagic acid, those polyphenols, and ferments those in the gut microbiome and produces urolithin, not just urolithin A, but a whole suite of urolithins. These postbiotics are needed for mitophagy, actually mitochondrial recycling, the renewal of mitochondria. So there's a few Handful of compounds that are from foods, that you can get from foods, but also you can supplement to get the efficacious dose that's in the scientific literature, to get the higher doses, basically. That, yes, start with food, but fill in the gaps with smart supplementation around cellular health. And then another one that I would say would be NAD precursors.

Yeah.

Right? Yes, get it from food, and we teach how to do that, but things like NMN and NR, nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide, these precursors to NAD, which your cell needs it for cellular energy. But more specifically, those sirtuins, those guardian angels of these protectors of your cell, need NAD to function properly. And they deplete. I think the statistic is at a certain age, we're losing 1% of NAD every year. And modernity speeds that up because we're living out of alignment. So there's some key ones that are around cellular health that I, um, think people should learn about.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I totally agree. And remember the foundation there, it's food, and then supplementation on top can make a big difference as well.

Hey, listen, if you're on more medications than you ever planned on and you still don't feel great and nobody's actually looked at why, then there's another conversation we should have. The root cause is likely deep down in your cells, and our cellular healing protocols at the Health Institute address the issues that are lurking upstream naturally in the right order, which is absolutely key. The system I've created for helping people heal is so effective that you could go and read the hundreds of 5-star Trustpilot reviews about folks getting their energy back, balancing their hormones, dropping weight, getting rid Brain fog, but most importantly, feeling alive again. I also have so many people saying they feel and look younger, but it all starts with a cellular blood work analysis, an at-home blood test kit, plus a full hour with one of my senior health advisors. If you're ready to get to the root cause of your symptoms, go to mybloodwork.com. That's mybloodwork.com today so we can help.

And you know, when you're focusing on healing the cell, it helps you reverse these chronic health conditions, sometimes better than focusing on the condition itself, almost always better than focusing on the condition itself. You know, one thing I know that I, you know, as we spent this time researching and writing together, I remember we'd kind of come each week with, hey, what about this? What about this? I remember, I mean, the one I'm remembering the most with you is when you did come and you said, hey, did you read the research on, uh, on mitochondria being more bacterial in nature?

Mm-hmm.

And, that was one thing I remember you came and then doing the research, I was like, wow, this is just so fascinating and incredible. And then, even thinking about, well, how do we adjust the nutrition plan and impact the mitochondria in a unique way? One other thing I know you brought up is when we were talking about VO2 max is this REHIT training.

Yeah.

I think most people are familiar with maybe HIIT training or even Tabata or the longer VO2 max training and, of course, cardiovascular zone 2 cardio. But, talk to us about what is REHIT exactly? Why is it one of the best ways to train our body for longevity?

Yeah. So, we really go through the different types of exercise. And, at the end of the day, I think diversity is going to be a good idea. There's a time to do zone 2 and doing a nice steady walk. There's time, of course, with weight training and what that can do for our mitochondria and building lean muscle. It's a longevity organ our muscles are. But this reduced exertional high-intensity interval training, this REHIT is the acronym, it's kind of next-gen HIIT training, high-intensity interval training, in my mind. And it's a great way to— I mean, all of this stuff, fasting, even the times of ketosis, cyclical ketosis, and we get into it in the book. You don't always want to be in ketosis, but certain times. Cold plunging. sauna. What's the common through line with all of these things? It's adversity mimetics. They're all adversity mimetics. They're all kind of cellular boot camps.

Yeah, yeah.

They're kind of teaching ourselves to be, hey, you've got this. God's created you, cell, to be a great little brain cell or a great little heart cell, and be strong. You've got this. And it like, the cell's like, yeah, I remember who I am. I'm gonna pick things up. And I'm going to clean things up, and I'm going to be who I was created to be. Well, re-hit's another way to do that. Decide cell, you got this, and it enhances cellular communication, enhances VO2 max, the cell's ability to absorb oxygen and repair itself. So it's how you do it is you're doing about 30 seconds or so. And the great thing about re-hit is that you—it's so relative to your own state. Like where are you at in your health journey right now? So all out. Exertion's gonna look different from person to person based on your health status. So you can, there's so much, I think, adapt— adaptation, bio-individuality, how this is done. But you're going 80, 90% of your ability to push yourself for 30 seconds, and then you're calming. A lot of times it's done on, on a bike, and then you're letting your body calm. You're catching your breath for another 2 to 3 minutes, and you're only doing 2 to 3 all-out sprints or cycles at that time. And there's different bikes out there. Like I use what's called the Carol bike, which uses AI to—

Mm-hmm.

gauge your own resistance. So it's upping the resistance for your own physical ability and get that good work in. You are being chased by a tiger during these all-out sprints for 30 seconds, and then you break. But it's training yourselves to, again, you're mimicking adversity.

Yeah.

So it's allowing our, 'cause our ancestors would've had time of adversity. So it's training ourselves to be more resilient. And that's what we're doing for all of this stuff. All of these adversity mimetics, these ways to strengthen your cells, are training your cells to become more resilient and recognize what they are.

Yeah. Yeah. It's incredibly powerful.

And you're only supposed to do that 2 to 3 times a week. I mean, you're, you're not doing like, that's like about 5-minute exercise.

So, so wait, what does a session look like exactly?

Rehit is about 5 minutes, 3 times a week. So you're doing an all-out sprint, then you're waiting 2 to 3 minutes and you're doing all-out sprint again.

And how long's the all-out sprint?

30 seconds.

Yeah.

It's based on your— there's like a beginner, medium, more advanced. You can push yourself more. You can go to even 4 of those, but it's just 30 seconds or so sprint. I think that's what I— around what I do.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you're letting yourself catch your breath for another 2, 3 minutes, and you're doing pulses of those all-out sprints or cycles for about 3 to 4 times. And you're doing that non-consecutive days, every other day, about 3 times a week. But the research shows it has ability in a few weeks to significantly increase VO2 max, which is a cellular cardiometabolic marker that's associated in the scientific literature with longevity. People that live longer, healthier lives tend to have better VO2 max scores.

Yeah. It's so good. You know, I know one of the things we do in the book is what we do, we try and meet you where you're at. So, if you're a person that's sort of just getting started, you know, from couch to getting started, we have a great plan in there in terms walking and zone 2 cardio and what to do there. We also get into, hey, if you want to have more play and fun, what are the best longevity sports? Everything from tennis to pickleball to some of the other things that we have in there.

Yeah.

And so much more. So, I want to encourage you guys to check out the book Dr. Cole just wrote. I wrote it with him called Heal Yourselves. It's in bookstores nationwide. And, I think this is the best book that we've ever wrote. Um, individually or together. And if you want to learn more about advanced nutrition, like if you're a person saying, man, I really like to dive into the deep stuff, but also it's really accessible in terms of the science, we really walk you through how to reverse conditions. We walk through a lot of advanced nutrition. We walk you through longevity and so much more. So check it out, Heal Yourselves. You can check out the book everywhere. And I also want to encourage you guys, check out Dr. Cole. He's got a great podcast. Remind me, what is your— it's not The Dr. Cole Show.

No, The Art of Being Well.

That's right. The Art of Being Well with Dr. Will Cole. And you can also find him on social media. He's very, very active on Instagram especially. So check him out there on Instagram as well, @DrWillCole. And any last thoughts, doctor?

No, I'm really excited for people to read this book. I really, I've been praying a lot this past month before release of just that It's going to do something so unique in ways that I never imagined it. So I'm just putting it out there. Let God get it in the hands that it's meant to be. I'm really excited about it. And thanks for doing it with me. It's been, it's been a blast. And to see it come to fruition has been a blessing.

Yeah, it's fun to write books with, with friends, but also with somebody that I greatly respect. And I think the book came out even better because we both put all of our best thoughts and effort into it. And so, I think there's nothing else like it. Again, I think people will read this and say, wow, I'm reading stuff here that I don't just read everywhere else all the time. It is very advanced and well put together. So, we think you're going to love it. And, do us a favor, check out the book, buy it for a friend or family member too as well. We think you'll love it. So, hey guys, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Axe Show. Remember, every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health And your life to the next level.

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