Live Healthy Longer with Dr. Jim Polakof
Amazing Podcasts Created & Hosted by Dr. Jim Polakof to Stimulate Your Body, Mind and Soul! It's in our nature to explore opportunities that can improve our well-being. As a celebrated podcaster with thousands of listeners, Dr. Jim Polakof continually surpasses normal limits to explore new horizons in creating a better life for his listeners and readers. ‘Live Healthy Longer’ covers a wide range of topics including new advances in health and medicine; the possibility of having past lives and reincarnation; unique perspectives on entertainment, and ‘hot topics’ debates which present both sides of key issues.
Live Healthy Longer with Dr. Jim Polakof
Latest Advances in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine
Discover the latest innovations to combat aging, including Stem Cell therapy, Hormone replacement, Fatigue and Low Energy treatments. Dr. Jim interviews triple-board-certified physician, Dr. Julian Gershon - founder of the renowned Aspen Institute.
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Welcome to Live Healthy Longer with Dr Jim. In this episode, we'll be exploring the field of regenerative medicine, so let's get started with our host healthcare specialist author and very popular podcaster, dr Jim Polakoff.
Speaker 2:This is Dr Jim Polakoff, and my episode is going to focus on the very nature of this podcast Living Healthy Longer. A recent study found that most Americans desire a longer lifespan, with 69% of respondents wishing to live to at least 80, but preferably 90 to 100 years. In fact, 9% of those in the study were actually hoping to live more than 100 years. However, many participants prioritized quality of life, with almost two-thirds preferring a shorter, healthier life over a longer one with health issues. Now I'm going to discuss these factors a bit more following my interview, but first let's meet an expert who specializes in how to live longer in good health.
Speaker 2:My guest for this episode is Dr Julian Gerson, triple board certified in family medicine and sports medicine, as well as his specialty being anti-aging and regenerative medicine, he also holds a fellowship in stem cell therapy. Dr Garzon is the founder of the Aspen Institute for Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine, headquartered in the beautiful Aspen, colorado area. Welcome to my podcast, dr Kershaw. I must say it's a real treat to have a guest who embodies our theme Living longer and good health.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. Very nice to be here. I'm excited to be part of this today.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, you tie so beautifully into our subject matter so it does work out quite well. So, of course, most of our listeners are not going to be able to see it, but you have a beautiful background there of Aspen, colorado and you know most people come to Aspen to tackle the slopes and defy aging, but you specialize in preventing the ravages of age. So, aside from the beauty of your area, why did you choose to practice in Aspen Colorado?
Speaker 3:Well, that goes back a long way, to about age 12, I think, when I grew up in a snowbank in northern Michigan skiing and ski racing through all of high school and college, and it's just been on my list, you know, since I was a kid and you know I had a long career in sports medicine and lost a spouse to cancer in 2009.
Speaker 3:And I'm sorry to hear that my boys, my younger two I have five children, but my youngest two at that time and packed up and moved out to Aspen and started over from scratch and just decided I was going to limit, you know, my practice to anti-aging and regenerative medicine and, you know, start my story and go from there. And so, fortunately, 15 years later, a lot of uphill pushing, but you know, we've gotten to a point where we have a. You know, we help a lot of people and what I do is fun, and as long as I'm having fun doing it, I'll continue for quite a while.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's certainly the great attitude and of course, you know you picked a beautiful area in any case to reside in as well as practice in. Now we're going to get into your specialty anti-aging, as well as your best-selling book, beyond the Fountain of Youth. But why don't we begin by examining some conditions that arrive as we get older, namely joint pain and arthritis? I know some of our listeners suffer from both, so instead of drugs and cortisone shots, apparently you turn to regenerative medicine. Can you explain your approach to each of these painful conditions and similar ones?
Speaker 3:Well, sure, I think they all have the same commonality is, you know, the more we've enjoyed our life when we're young, the sports we played, the things we've done Over time, there's a price to pay. You know, the cartilage has a lifespan. Cartilage degeneration, tears of tendons and ligaments, overuse injuries, certainly acute injuries, but you know, it just happens as we get older. You know, the number one cause of night shoulder pain, night pain, is a degenerative rotator cuff.
Speaker 2:Did I do?
Speaker 3:anything last week to it? No, probably not. It's that water skiing accident. You had when you were 20 or whatever. You know a number of previous microtrauma, and so as our cartilage wears out, you know, then we start looking for options.
Speaker 3:Chronic pain is no fun. I just spent this last weekend training with a new device called a focused shockwave device from StemWave. That is fantastic. I'm so impressed with this therapy because there are so many people with chronic pain, inflammation at a cellular level, and so this device is an addition to things that we may do, like platelet-rich plasma injections using your own stem cells, exosomes, and so I'm really excited to introduce that and bring that into the practice here in the next just few weeks.
Speaker 3:And so, um, I won't, can't. I won't go into all the specifics of that now, but it's a tremendous device that has been around for a while, but, like anything, they just keep refining the technology and it gets more powerful and more powerful, and so when we can pinpoint focus of these shock waves, which literally travel at 3,300 miles per hour into the tissue, then they can help break down the scar tissue, the inflammation response, stimulate recruitment of stem cells to that area. They really do some exciting things, but you know what I've been doing now. I did a stem cell fellowship back in 2012 through our anti-aging academy and have been harvesting and utilizing your own stem cells Since then. I've used mine every year since 2012.
Speaker 2:Well, I definitely want to get into the stem cell therapy in just a bit, but we get quite a few questions from our listeners talking about can you discuss this or that subject, and one of the things that I know that you do treat is fatigue. So when you come across patients that complain of fatigue, they just don't have the energy level there Do you then turn to hormone replacement replacement, I should say, in women and men as well.
Speaker 3:Well, absolutely. In fact, just before this call, I had a telemedicine visit with a 41-year-old gentleman in Serbia whose business partner lives here in Aspen. He was a professional basketball player and he's only 41. But at that point where he's tired, he having muscle soreness, he's gaining a little weight, he doesn't, isn't motivated to continue to do the things in business he would like. Just, quality of life is changing and so, as I told him, you know, no one is immune to the effects of aging right. It starts as young as age 30, we lose one to 5% of our hormones a year, and so fatigue, energy loss. It's at the top of my list, it's number one on. I have a checklist of, let's say, 20 items that I like to have people fill out before I see them, and the left side of the page is never, and the right side is severe.
Speaker 3:And most are on the right side or somewhere in between, and, as I tell them, I'm like look, I want you to live on the left side of this page. And so how do we do that? Well, we find that most and it doesn't matter men and women, male or female we start losing all of our hormones. And testosterone is extremely important for cognitive function, for energy production, muscle mass, body composition, you know, across the board, and so not just we think of it as sexual function, but it does so much more than that, you know, and decreasing inflammation overall, and we call inflammation the silent killer. Well, how do we lower those levels? If you're not optimizing your hormones, you may not be able to, and it's really that simple and it is not difficult to do. It's just rather unfortunate that mainstream medicine is still very slow to the dance as far as learning the protocols.
Speaker 2:So you actually replace the hormones?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, absolutely, and sometimes at a young age. And so I see, you know, the majority of people I see need some balancing. In the case of women, you know they lose testosterone and progesterone, sometimes one or two decades before menopause, and so it can just take small amounts, but it's a game changer.
Speaker 3:I have a number of different testimonials on our website of women in their 30s and 40s that feel great. You know they've lost 20 or 30 pounds. Everything's changed and they have been to multiple providers and it's just well. I don't know. Your levels look okay to me and it's just part of getting older. Well, I hate to hear that, because that's not just part of getting older, not the case.
Speaker 2:So you take a different approach than Wigobi or Zepbound or Ozempic. I assume that hormone replacement. How do you approach that?
Speaker 3:Well, I do use the GLP-1 inhibitors a fair amount. You know we're finding that in very low doses they have significant longevity benefits. With diabetic patients they were shown to have over a 33% reduction in rate of heart attack and stroke, and so that's now been extrapolated to the general population. And who wouldn't want to reduce their risk of serious health issues by 30 percent and trim a little body fat at the same time? But you know, the key is balancing all the hormones first. That's the most important factor, because that's what's really driving the changes in muscle metabolism and fat metabolism. You know we don't see many sick 20-year-olds or that they have high sugar, unless they're a type 1 diabetic or high cholesterol. Why does that happen as we age? Because as we lose testosterone, metabolically we don't function the same.
Speaker 2:Well, in men, men who suffer from sexual dysfunction, obviously do you go beyond hormone replacement. Are there other therapies that you use to treat men with that condition?
Speaker 3:Well, there are. I think that the foundation is we have to restore testosterone levels.
Speaker 3:We have to look at thyroid, because we see something called subclinical hypothyroidism, which is low free T3. To me, the free T3, the amount of thyroid hormone not bound to protein, that's all that does anything in our bodies, and unfortunately, many physicians don't look at it hardly at all, and so that is important. We also use different peptides to help stimulate sexual function, something called they all have funny names PT-141. I use peptides to stimulate growth hormone production, and then vitamins, nutrients, simple things like B vitamins and folic acid.
Speaker 2:Right, I want to get into supplements in a moment, but you're throwing out letters and I have not heard of this one. On your website you have an EB02. What is an EB02?
Speaker 3:Well, eb02 is high-dose ozone blood purification and I have the only system in Colorado. I was trained by Dr Joe Parita in Miami. He's probably done more stem cell procedures than anyone in the United States, for sure, and it is actually. We treat five to seven liters of blood. Literally it's coming out of one arm dark blue and going back in the other arm bright red. The blood first goes through a dialysis filter, removes heavy metals, toxins, mycotoxins, viral particles, microplastics, and then it's supercharged with ozone and before it comes back in the other side, it goes through four wavelengths of UV light to be totally sterilized. And when I first heard of it I'm like you have to be kidding. Whose blood is sterile?
Speaker 2:It is imaginary to a sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if it wasn't sterile I'd be dead, but that's not the case. You know, we're full of a credit card worth of microplastics monthly, and so we have to do things to help cleanse ourselves of that, and so that's what the high-dose EVO2 does. It takes about 60 to 90 minutes to do that procedure, but patients notice a significant increase in energy levels. We can document that we're removing mycotoxins, heavy metals and such, and so it's just an exciting treatment that we do.
Speaker 2:Now you mentioned supplements. As a nutritionist, I am aware that many people go to the drugstore or supermarkets and they buy over-the-counter supplements, and my finding, at least, is there's definitely a mediocrity in quality, I should say, but also bioavailability. Does your brand of supplements differ from what you get over-the-counter?
Speaker 3:Well it does, and I'm fairly proud of that. We use pharmaceutical grade vitamin manufacturers with natural products that are not wax matrix pills that come out whole many times and you know when you think about it. If you're at one of the I'll just say the big box stores I won't call names, but you know those products they're putting a lot of dollars into marketing. They want the cheapest stuff they can sell you to get you to make a purchase Exactly. You need to find and seek out.
Speaker 3:And there are some good companies out there that both in direct sales and in retail, that have good products, but there should never be Centrum or Stress Tab tabs or one a day, a wax matrix pill, because they don't dissolve well, and so it is important to try to be sure as much as you can. I have a lot of people that do shop on our website and we ship vitamins all over the country. But, yeah, it's important that you have vitamins with good availability, and sometimes that's pretty tough to determine other than just the reputability of the company that you're buying those from.
Speaker 2:Now you touched upon cognitive function. To my audience in particular, since most of my audience is 55 plus, how do you approach this aging challenge?
Speaker 3:Well, again, that is something that is affected very much by testosterone, by your hormone, and we find after someone, and that doesn't matter in the age. My oldest patient's 84. So whether we're in our 60s or 70s, I'm 72. And I've been doing testosterone for 22 years and started at about age 50, because I believed in being proactive. And some sports medicine colleagues and buddies of mine founded our anti-aging academy and at first I thought they were nuts which I talk about and joke about in my book. And then one day I show up at a conference with thousands of physicians from all over the world, back in around 2000, 2001, and I was. I was blown away. I'm like they're on to something. This makes complete sense.
Speaker 3:As I became an athlete, I wanted to feel my best and interact with my family. I've got, you know, 10 grandkids and one on the way. I like to have fun with them and you know if you're wiped out at five o'clock it's not much fun, it's hard to even, you know, keep them out from under your feet. So you know it's about replacing hormones early on. Nutrients and vitamins certainly do affect our cognitive function as well. We think of the sexual effects of hormone therapy. Oh yeah, sex, energy strength. But cognitive function is a little slower to improve, but it's always impacted by changes in our hormone levels.
Speaker 2:Interesting, very interesting, because many people don't identify it in that fashion. So I think you've hit on something interesting here. Let's get to your specialty stem cell therapy. I know you have a fellowship in that area and you've had success in reducing knee pain and improving flexibility by regrowing cartilage naturally. Can you describe how this works and what stem cell therapy is all about? Because that's kind of a woo-woo with some people at this point. There's not a real understanding of it and how it works.
Speaker 3:It's unfortunate because many people that you have to go to Costa Rica, you have to go somewhere else, and that's not true. We don't use embryonic stem cells. Those are illegal, and there's obviously many ethical reasons that we don't use cells from dead babies. I mean, that's just doesn't even make sense. But we can harvest your own autologous stem cells, your cells, in a pretty simple office procedure. It takes less than an hour, and then about an hour to process them and have them ready for injection, and also we send them to specific facilities for stem cell banking so they can be used for the rest of your life, which is really exciting, because I banked mine in 2012 and I've used them every year since. I've used them for my hip for my knees infusions for general regenerative purposes.
Speaker 3:They're my cells, so why wouldn't I use them? We know it's safe. I'm not going to have any kind of a reaction using my own stem cells. But interestingly, you know, as my background in sports medicine, I've referred a lot of people to surgeons and and I have some great friends that are surgeons and I still send people to them, not as early on, because there was a point when I just have to say you know, I don't know, there's nothing else I can do. Maybe it's time for a joint replacement. Now half of the clients that I see have already been told you need a joint replacement if we're talking about knees, sometimes shoulders, hips, and after one injection we see on average 80 to 90% reduction in pain by anywhere from six weeks to 90 days. From six weeks to 90 days by six months. It's almost, you know, always that level or better.
Speaker 3:Over 90% of the time it's one and done, one injection. You know if, for me, I wasn't gonna be happy. I came out here and hurt my knee, blew it out ski racing, and I won the old guy nationals back in 2015 racing. I fell in the finish line, blew out my ACL, my MCL, my price of victory, yeah. So I got to have a reconstruction, but during that time I dislocated my patella, my kneecap and just shredded all the cartilage. So they fixed it and they know what I do and I said, well, I'm going to do a stem cell injection in a month. And their attitude was, yeah, okay, whatever. So, but I, my kneecap, where I shredded that cartilage, was so bad I couldn't even do the rehab.
Speaker 3:And without the rehab, you know, it's very difficult improve at a rapid rate. And so I did it one month at six, that injection. At six months I did a second one. My pain was down from an eight and a nine to a one or two, but I wasn't going to be happy until it was zero. So it was kind of like scaffolding the injection just built on what the previous one repaired and I was skiing in a knee brace at six months at a year. Well, I had no pain long before that, but I had zero pain at a year and it's never bothered me since, and it's now been 10 years. So, um, you know, I'm pretty happy with with the results that I received, but it's a lot easier and simpler than you might think.
Speaker 2:You know so I think the number is over 50 million of those who suffer from low back pain. Can that have a beneficial effect on low back pain as well?
Speaker 3:Well, it can. It is much more complicated because it's multifaceted. With low back pain it can be the facet joints, maybe the disc, it may be mechanical issues. So you know, as a DO, as an osteopathic physician, I do manipulation, I have chiropractor friends, you know, and so that are effective, and so it's many facets. It is if it's facet joints yes, we can inject the facet joints.
Speaker 3:The success rate with actual disc injections is lower, but you know I've done infusions for people with their own cells. They travel through the circulation, target the areas of inflammation and can help quite a bit, and so that's a complex issue. The thing I am excited about, as I mentioned earlier with this focused shockwave therapy, being able to utilize that tool with low back pain, with spinal injuries and as well, will be a great addition to all the other things that we can offer, you would have certainly many thankful patients, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:But a question, a layperson's question, and that is that, in terms of the stem cells, when you're thinking of harvesting your own stem cells, if they're not as effective, why harvest them? And then how do they become effective all of a sudden if they were ineffective to begin with?
Speaker 3:Well, it's not that they're not effective. The challenge is that the blood flow to the intra-articular space, the inside of your knee, let's say, is very poor. Your stem cells can't get there. When you sprain your ankle or strain your shoulder or an elbow, your stem cells travel through the circulation to that area and that's what triggers the healing, that's the repair process. They can't get to the cartilage, and so when we harvest the cells and directly put them into that environment, then they can start their healing process, and it works extremely well.
Speaker 2:Very interesting. Now let's sort of change the subject to a moment and take anti-aging to the next level. So we'll discuss your bestselling book, which is Beyond the Fountain of Youth. So can you tell us a little bit about it and where we would find it?
Speaker 3:So it's kind of the summary of the passion that I've had for the last 20 years of doing this. I came up with the title about five years ago and it took me that long to get completely motivated to put it down on paper.
Speaker 2:You went beyond Ponce de Leon, obviously.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, and I almost had a picture of the Fountain of Youth on the book, but I thought for 72, I didn't look too bad, so I used my picture. But you know, it really just goes through and I did it in a conversational way. So I think anyone can understand the things we're talking about, from my chapter on ageless living to exciting topics about red light therapy, about peptides, stem cells. There's so many things that the foundation, as I like to say, baking the cake is hormone therapy, and then we can ice it with all kinds of things peptides, growth hormone, micronutrients, many things but the foundation is reestablishing using natural, safe, bioidentical hormones. It's on, the book is on Amazon and the e-book is there as well. We have an audio book that will be out within the next one to two weeks.
Speaker 2:Oh good, Did you narrate the audio book yourself?
Speaker 3:I did and that is also will be on Spotify. I think it's launching in the next couple of days. I have a team.
Speaker 2:Well, it's the biggest platform.
Speaker 3:at this point, I have them helping me with all that. That's very familiar Many of our listeners come from Spotify. Yeah, because the technical features are a little beyond me at times, but I have someone helping with that, fortunately.
Speaker 2:So it's called Beyond the Fountain of Youth. Of course everyone knows amazoncom and you can get it there and soon the audio version on Spotify. So that's good to know because obviously you know we've sort of touched the surface of this interview and I'm sure you go into a lot more depth for those who want to learn more about what you've been talking about. Now we're just about out of time at this point. I was just checking our timeframe here and you've been obviously very enlightening. I do have a question though Aspen, colorado, which is where you practice, do you find that many patients actually fly into Aspen to be treated by you?
Speaker 3:Well, I do, and I also have an office in Denver and for some people I have folks that come from a number of states. They might choose to see me down there. I'm not there as much, but you know Aspen, we see people from all over the world and it's pretty easy to get here. Once I've seen someone, we can do our follow-ups, as I say, till the cows come home, via telemedicine, because legally I have to see someone in person to initiate therapy with testosterone, which is right now still a controlled substance. It shouldn't be any different than the rest of your hormones, but that's another story. But so we send people to LabCorp all over the country.
Speaker 3:I talk about on my podcast, you know, click on the link schedule something. We send labs to any LabCorp in America. You can walk in and get your labs done. We can do a consult first by telemedicine and then decide if someone's a candidate and most people are, and they kind of know who they are, they know how they're feeling and they know what they've been told by their friends and other providers and they're just not satisfied. And so I think it's imperative that you try to search out the answers, because you know it's to me it's not a new field I've been doing this 22 years but it's medicine.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a new field to many and of course, you know my listeners are all over the country and it's a great excuse perhaps to visit Aspen, colorado. What a nice getaway. Meet a great doctor and you go from there, and then the rest can be done, you know, via telemedicine, as you say. So that's very interesting and obviously, just so I make sure that we have it right, we're going to mention this again in our program. We're also going to have your information about your book, as well as your website on our website, but it's aspen-regenerativemedicinecom, am I correct?
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:All right, as I mentioned, we're going to mention that again. I want to thank you because Dr Gajan has been very enlightening and I think our listeners are quite appreciative of what you've been able to convey and they're probably going to want to know more.
Speaker 3:So I thank you for joining us. Well, I thank you and I look forward to contributing any way I can.
Speaker 1:Once again, you can learn more about Dr Julian Gershon and his Aspen Institute for Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine by going to aspen-regenerativemedicinecom, but you can also find this information, along with many other great podcasts, by coming directly to our website, jamespolakoffcom. That's James P-O-L-A-K-O-Fcom, again jamespolakoffcom. We also have two great books to suggest. My first recommendation takes a deep dive into the topic of today's episode. It's Live Healthy Longer with Dr Jim, written by our own Dr Jim Polakoff. But remember, you need to add with Dr Jim to the title Live Healthy Longer Again. That's Live Healthy Longer with Dr Jim. Plus, you'll also find a series of terrific reviews for Dr Jim's exciting, informative book on Amazon. Also, it's spring and for those who love golf, we have a terrific book about romance. It is called Love in the Pines and it's also available on Amazon. Now back to Dr Jim.
Speaker 2:Thanks again to Dr Gershon for highlighting his approach to anti-aging. Now, you may recall that I began this episode discussing a study where most Americans desire a longer lifespan, preferably between 90 to 100 years of age. The why behind this desire is quite simple People want more time to pursue their passions, spend time with loved ones and continue contributing to society. Of course, I also related that, while a majority desired a longer life, a significant portion nearly two-thirds would choose a shorter, healthier life over one with health problems. So, with this in mind, while most Americans want to live longer, there are studies that also reveal that many are not taking the necessary steps to achieve such a goal. This includes neglecting preventive care, not prioritizing healthy habits and failing to engage in activities that promote well-being. Nearly three in four Americans say they have relied on their primary care physician to help track or manage their health, yet fewer than half have actually discussed this with their doctor. I'm talking about those key factors that influence longevity, including aerobic exercise and strength training, sleep, stress management and, on occasion, depression. In all fairness, though, let's face it, primary care doctors are limited in the amount of time they can spend with a patient. The national average is only 15.7 minutes After a typical examination. How much time does your doctor actually have left to discuss all the things you need to know to lead a long, healthy life? This means that you need to take it upon yourself to be proactive.
Speaker 2:As mentioned earlier, you could certainly begin by reading my book Live Healthy Longer with Dr Jim. It's available on Amazoncom for only $9.95, and I think that would be helpful. But at least please go to my recent blog entitled Lifestyle Strategies for Living a Healthy, long Life. It's easy to find and it's free. You can find it on our website, jamespolikoffcom. All you need to do once you get there is click on blogs and give it a read. You'll probably discover more than what your doctor has actually had time to tell you. This is Dr Jim Polakoff, and thank you for joining me once again, but remember a new episode of Live Healthy Longer is available each and every Wednesday on our website, as well as 22 other platforms where podcasts are heard.
