February 4, 2026 • 47 mins
Arthritis affects over 50 million people in the U.S. Dr. Thomas Buchheit, a specialist in regenerative and auto-biologic treatments for joint and nerve pain, discusses new therapies to heal joints and nerves, reduce pain, and restore function. Dr. Buccheit is founder of Triangle Regen Medicine and Biologics Center in Chapel Hill, N.C. and adjunct associate professor at Duke University. He is author of Healing Joints and Nerves: Immune Stimulation and the New Science of Regenerative Therapies.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
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Speaker 2 (00:21):
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Speaker 3 (00:42):
Welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your host, Melanie Young.
Thank you for joining me today if you're joining me
for the first time. I love helping women make smart,
confident choices about how they choose to live perfectly life
on their terms, stay fit, healthy, and always mindful of
(01:04):
enjoying life to the fullest. I am going to be
addressing a topic today that actually hits home in a very,
very personal way. We're going to talk about new therapies
to treat painful joints and neuropathy, including arthritis with a
specialist and regenerative medicine of pain specialists. This hits home
for a lot of reasons. At first, I W was
to start with some stats. Arthritis, which was a big one,
(01:26):
effects over fifty four people in the fifty four million
people in the United States. Sixty percent of US adults
with arthritis or working age eighteens is sixty four. Arthritis
can limit the type of work they do or prevent
them from working at all, and it is the leading
cause of work disability, with annual costs for medical care
and lost earnings of three hundred and three point five billion.
(01:48):
That's from the Arthritis Foundation. Why does it hit home
for me? My mother, who worked to eighty five as
a professor in Tennessee, was crippled with both and rumature
earth threads to the point that she could no longer
feed herself. She was given many, many types of medication
(02:08):
with no explanation of side effects and went bald, lost
her hair. Toward the end of her life, she ended
up falling and never getting up and was the point
where she was unable to feed herself and was malnourished,
so we had to range very expensive rounds of people
to help her until she eventually died, never got out
of her bed again. And watching that and being reminded
(02:30):
almost daily as I cared for myself that this is
genetic or could be genetic. I was fearful as well
about becoming disabled through pain, and likewise, my husband experienced
an episode, a neurological episode in twenty sixteen that has
left him with ongoing neuropathy. So I am interested in
(02:51):
this because I deal with my own pain through some
degenitive back issues. My husband has neuropathy. So many people
have confided to me they're getting my abie. They're all
getting surgeries now to deal with joints. I mean, if
I hear another friend who's getting knee surgery, I'm going
to like, everybody's getting new knees. But there's also non
surgical options, and we're going to talk with a regenerative
(03:12):
medicine specialist to address these, because I think many people
would love to avoid surgery, avoid expensive medications and side effects,
and find ways that they can manage pain without going
into extremes. Sometimes you can't avoid it, but let's find
out more from doctor Thomas Buckheit, who is a physician
(03:34):
specializing in regenerative and autobiological treatments for joint nerve pain.
He is the founder of Triangle Reagan Medicine and Biologic
Center in Chapel Hill in North Carolina. Go Chapel Hill,
and he has worked as an adjunct associate professor at
Duke University. He is a book called Healing Joints and Nerves,
(03:54):
Immune Simulation and the New Science of Regeneritive Therapies. Doctor
Buckett Wilcolm to Fearless Abulous you well.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Thank you for having me, melanieus And I'm delighted to
be here.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, I see You're in Montreal. He's giving a speech.
He travels a lot, so thank you for your time.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yes, no, thanks. And I think this is this is
a really exciting time. We have learned so much over
the past couple of years and our ability to treat
arthritis's ability to treat neuropathies that we didn't know even
even recently. And I think what comes down to is
that our bodies have the ability to self repair and
(04:34):
to self heal. The goal and my goal is a clinician,
and I think the goal of this of really the
medical specialty is how do we find ways to turn
on those healing mechanisms. And that's what the book is about.
The book is about teaching and giving people the tools
giving women the tools, how do they turn on their
own healing mechanisms. Some of that is with exercise, some
(04:55):
of that is with regenerative therapies when they're needed, and
some of it is also is a waiting some of
the things that can lead to further problems. And we
can talk a little bit more about that as well well.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Definitely, And I read your book. There's a lot of
clinical terms in it, but you have these great giveaways
at the end in a glossary. Thank you. I'm all
about glossaries. And I went through and I'm one of
these people that likes to get the book sent to me.
I actually have a book. I put it in the images.
I don't know if one hasard or not, but holding
it up right now sort of yeah, there we go.
(05:26):
So I'm going to start with this. Let's talk about
causes first, because my mother reminded me every day from
her bed, it's genetic. You're going to get it like
the wicked witch. So what causespathy and who is more
susceptible to it?
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Let's start with perhaps let's start with arthritis, because I
think you've mentioned that, and that's an important thing that
affects a ton of people. The good news here is
that the genetic components to this are are low. Most
of this are things that we have control over, and
I think that's an important message for everyone or everyone
out there. There's also a bunch of mythologies that I
(06:07):
deal with in the book, and one of which is
the concept of wear and tear, which is just not true.
Exercise is good for joints. Matter of fact, one of
the most effective ways of keeping joints healthy, even in
folks who have mild to monitor earthritis, is walking is
just as simple as as simple as that walking and
exercise improve the environment to the joint. They improve the
(06:31):
capacity joint to kind of renew and restore cell health,
and so that's really an important thing. The drivers of
arthritis is really it's chronic inflammation and the enzymes that
chronic inflammation turns on. So if you have chronic inflammation
and a joint, the enzymes can actually start to digest
(06:51):
the cartilage parts and that's what drives That's what drives
osteorithritis in particular. The challenge that we've been into the
past seventy five years now, we've been doing steroid injections,
for instance, for neoorthritis for seventy five years. The first one,
the first case series was done in nineteen fifty one,
so it's exactly seventy five years. And those are really
(07:13):
good of shutting down short term inflammation. We also used
to think that those steroid injections helped long term inflammation.
It turns out that they don't. In fact, those repeated
steroid injections actually can backfire and cause more problems than
they create, especially if we have them repeated fashion. What
(07:34):
happens is is that the steroid might decrease short term information,
but it also turns off our natural healing capacities. We
have the ability to produce growth factors, to produce healing
mechanisms and healing proteins in the joint and repeated use
of anti inflammatories, repeated use of steroids shut down those
(07:56):
natural capacities. And so the book is about how do
you regain that And again, exercise can do it. Nutrition
and foods. There's certain foods that can be very helpful
and it can do that as well. And then I
do a deeper dive into the regenitive therapist, things like
completely ridge plasma atologous conditioned serum stem cells and the
like and what their actual role is.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Let's talk about the simplest and least expensive way to manage,
which is diet and exercise. I want to start with exercise.
I am a big believer in motion is the lotion.
I wake up every day feeling like the Tin Man.
I'm sixty seven now and I have degenerate back. I
also had some stomach issues that have been stomach surgery
that has just been so painful. So if I don't exercise,
(08:42):
I literally feel like I'm like the tin Man in
the Wizard of Oz and so I walk a lot.
Too many people these days are sedentary. Let's underscore the
importance of how the simple, inexpensive process of walking matters,
but also what else can people do in terms of exercise,
and also what are some exercises that may exacerbate the
(09:05):
situation as well, So you have to be careful.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Well, you have nailed it on the head, so you've
got it exactly right. Exercise it is, it is. Motion
is important. Motion lubricates their joints. Walking will actually increase
literally the lubrication in our joints. So we have as
substances we can call hyaluronic acid some people know of
it because it's in cosmetics as well as our joints.
(09:29):
But this is a lubricant. It's a lubricant for skin.
It's a lubricant for a joints, and your body will
make more of that with exercise. You increase blood flow
and nutrient flow to cartilage with exercise. So a daily
walk is about the most effective thing that somebody can do.
There are other very effective treatments and therapies, things like
yoga and taichi. Taichi can be, you know, a very
(09:50):
powerful tool for someone who already has very stiff joints.
And foods, healthy foods that I wrote the chapter on
nutrition and food was to think, one of the more
difficult ones I wrote because I did not want to
use the word diet in it because diet is a
triggering word to a lot of people and everybody has
the very strong feelings about that, And so I wanted
(10:12):
to talk about or foods that fuel our bodies. And
they include healthy fats. So for instance, fish oils, olive oil,
avocado oil, those are healthy fats. They include leafy green
vegetables and colorful vegetables. Those colors are protective compounds for
the plant and then when we eat those protective compounds,
(10:33):
they help us protect ourselves. And so there are ways
of getting our body these fuels. And so that is
the starting point for really everyone, which is give your
body the healthy fats and the plant color compounds that
are protective, and go for a daily walk. And it's
a wonderful place to start for anybody who can do that.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
So I agree with you about the word diet. I
call it editing. So, as you know, the US dietary
guidelines came out were moved around a bit. The Mediterranean diet,
which was a big focus on whole grains, kind of
went down to the bottom and animal fats and dairy
went to the top. And anyways, I thought it was great.
(11:14):
I do believe in whole grains. I'm a big believer
in the Mediterranean diet. However, a lot of people still,
I think, let a lot of people confuse about what
fats are, okay, because when they hear animal fat, it
doesn't mean you go out and eat less of burgers.
You go into the book, you do dive into fatty
acids and fat quite a bit. So could you provide
a little more explanation about what you considered. I mean,
(11:36):
you touched on it with mono and sadra to olive aall,
and you mentioned avocado oil. But what are some other
examples of fats that you think are better for you
versus maybe hold off.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Well, yes, and I tried to think of it, so
I try to think of them as fats that are
straight fats so that line up and can stiffen things
like membranes and sell membranes. Fats that have a kink
in there. So, for instance, olive oil has a kinkin
and it's a fat structure. And ones that are curly,
so omega threes that are seen in fish oil and
flaxseed oil, those are those are curly and they have
(12:11):
different they do different things based on their shape. But
the other thing that we have to keep in mind
is that if someone cooks and I am a big
believer in the Mediterranean diet as well, but if someone
cooks with olive oil, yes, they're getting the healthy fat,
but they're also getting all the wonderful plant compounds that
come in the olive as well. So it's a two fer.
(12:32):
They're getting the healthy compounds and the olive fruit, and
they're also getting the oil that can be healthy.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
What are your thoughts of canola oil.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Oh, well, that's the subject I wouldn't mind avoiding talking about.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I know there's a lot of pros and cons, and
I have dieticians that love it and dietitians that don't.
But there's a cooking issue to it too, because it's
very hard to cook sometimes with olive oil, and we
use it all the time.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
But yeah, and I would I would preface this by
saying I am not I am not a dietician either
am I am health coach. So what I tried to
do in the book was look at things that are
healthy for joints and nerves, right, And there's enough literature
and there are enough studies to say that a Mediterranean
diet and the components of that are healthy for our joints. Yes,
(13:23):
they decrease chronic inflammation, and they're healthy for our nerves.
And that's kind of where I That's where I start,
and that's where I stop. Is what do we know?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Absolutely? And of course you know if you travel on Mediterranean,
which I am blessed to do often in my wine
and food life, they move around a lot. People in
Europe take walks, They walk after Yeah, they walk in
the morning, they walk after a meal. They don't lie
around sitting around staring at their computers and phones all day.
And you know, kudos to them that long life. Go
to Sardinia, one of the Blue zones, and you'll see
(13:51):
some of the healthiest people ever. It's incredible. I am
going to ask you about one food area and then
we can move on some other Sugar. And the reason
I'm going to ask you about sugar is I have
issues with it for a variety of reasons, emotional as
well as physical. I actually get physically ill now from
eating sugar. And my mother was a sugar addict, as
(14:13):
you as I have prefaced, she had probably one of
the most severe cases of arthritis imaginable. It was tragic,
and she was a sugar addict. Also, is there a connection.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Well, yes, I think the short answer is yes. And
unrefined sugars do things metabolically to our bodies that are
not healthy for us. They spike our sugar, they cause
insulin resistance, they cause diabetes, and any any metabolic derangement
from simple excessive simple sugars can cannot it can be
(14:57):
harmful to us. Now I am also guilty I I
do enjoy a chocolate chip cookie and uh, and so
I can't be critical of all refined sugars. But I
think every it's like everything, you know, we should consider
it as diet and moderation and sugar and moderation. But
anything that is chock full of raw sugars that absorb
(15:21):
quickly that spiker spiker glucose and that cause these surges,
having you know, of insulin to compensate for it may
not be good for us and certainly aren't good for
our joints either.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Are there other and then we you know, dietary food
choices that should be considered or not considered other than
what we just talked about, which is vegetables, fruits, whole grains,
and healthy fats.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
What I talk about in the book is a very
broad scope. And I look at it and I think,
the more food colors that one can consume, the more
plan colors the one can consume, is a wonderful thing.
And I take the blueberry or the grape for instance.
You know, even these compounds called flavonoids or polyphenols that
(16:10):
are in grapes, they are in blueberries. You know, we
have tried as a as a culture and a science
to try to isolate a specific compound. Resveratrol was one
of the compounds where everybody was very excited about it.
But it turns out that it's not just for zveratol.
It's probably the three hundred other compounds that come in
the blueberry, in the strawberry, in the grape, in those
(16:33):
colorful berries and fruits and vegetables that are also part
of the picture. And so for me, it's not about
isolating one specific food or one specific molecule. It's really
about that beautiful complexity of diet that we can get,
that you get when you travel, for instance, and then
we all get, you know, if with a Mediterranean diet,
(16:55):
but I think a collection of a rich collection of fruits, vegetables, fish,
olive oils. I do think it's it's the heart of
healthy joints and nerves.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
I couldn't agree where I have to smile and laugh
them in Italy a lot for my wine life. And
the Mediterranean diet for me looks white because whenever I landed,
moved in duskany you know, depending on the time of
the area, are there are fewer vegetables. It seems like
all I'm ever served now is white posta and rice
because I don't eat me in moderation. Basically everything in moderation,
(17:30):
even sugar. I mean, it's morning raw here in New Orleans.
You have to have a king cake. You have to
have some king cake. It's just what you do. So
you gotta, you know, not give up, but don't go overboard.
One last thing on exercise, and then I want to
move on to some other topics. A lot of people
my age or even younger now I feel like I'm
the older part. Of the older part. They're doing pickleball,
(17:50):
and there's been a lot of injuries, including my husband
on pickleball, and yet everybody seems to be doing it.
Tell you why this is a risky sport. What are
some other sports other because people want to do other
things besides walking. I have a friend who's constantly saying,
I have to keep moving around, going to die, you know,
so she wants to find sports that are better for
(18:12):
her joints.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Well. I think weight training is also an important thing
to consider. Hi, you know, so I consider pickleball is
a high velocity sport. There's a lot of starting and
stopping very suddenly that puts tremendous strain on tendons and ligaments,
and I've took taken care of several people who have
had hamstring terrors and other kinds of knee and hip
issues and shoulder issues the pickleball. We need to consider
(18:37):
the fact that training is necessary for pickleball, just like
any high velocity sport. And I am a big believer in,
you know, not just aerobic exercise, but some strength and
flexibility training as well. So I think part of the
pickleball routine might also be a little bit of time
in the weight room to put muscles under strain. One
(18:59):
of the things, one of the core things I talk
about in the book is that we need these cycles
of inflammation and recovery to be healthy. And any of
us who exercise, whether it's walk, whether it's aqua therapy,
whether it's pickleball, we kind of know that our core.
If you go out and you play two hours of
pickleball and you haven't played all season, you might not
be able to move the next day, right, So you
(19:20):
have to build up and exercise. Is this wonderful technique
of short term inflammation, kind of goldilocks zone inflammation and recovery, inflammation,
recovery over and over again, and those cycles make us stronger.
And that's the core. That's the core of exercise, that's
the core of how we make ourselves stronger. That's the
(19:41):
core of how we protect ourselves from injury with a
pickleball game is to go ahead and train ourselves prior
to And interestingly, that's also the core of all these
things that we call regenerative therapies. They use the same
mechanisms they use. They stimulate the immune system like inflammation does,
like exercise does, and then it releases these growth factors
(20:06):
that can strength and tendons and ligaments that can that
can repair tissues. But we do that with exercise as well.
And so I love hearing how how evident an exerciser
you are and how much you believe in it, because
I think it's a really important part of long term health.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I'm a big believer. I do believe that one of
the problems is people don't stretch. There's not one, there's
not adequate stretching before you You got to prepare your
body before you exercise. Two, you don't just take up weights.
You've got to go and pay and hire someone to
teach you how to do it properly. And it's like
that with any sport you actually write about in the
book how you went to you know, you had a
(20:41):
whole mess with your knee skiing because you were with
some young people. And you know, I tell my husband
David all the time, he wants to go skiing, He
wants to go skiing. Okay, he had an episode I
referred to it where he has the ropathy in his
left side still because he didn't do the physical therapy
he should have, and he wants to get back on
a snow board. And I said, let me check my
(21:02):
life insurance policy and make sure it's up today, because
when you go on that snowboard, there's a good chance
you're not Your body is not going to be the
same as twenty years ago. And I think a lot
of people when they reach fifties and sixties, they keep
trying to do the same sports and activities that they
were doing in their twenties and thirties, and they've got
to do it differently, right, I mean, you can have
a terror.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
It just takes it just takes more time. Yeah, you know,
you know when we're all I'm fifty seven, I'll be
fifty eight, and so it takes me longer to train
than it did when I was twenty. Yeah, and that's
just I think that that's just part of that's just
part of life. But the good news is we can
still get there. Yeah, you can still get there. It
just takes a little more time and a little more dedication,
(21:43):
and perhaps the ramp up is a little slower.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, but you can.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
You can still get there. You just have to give
yourself time. And I think that's that's back to your
that's back to your your pickleball reference, which is a
really wonderful, great one to use, because you can get
there to where you can handle those high velocity well,
but you've got to train yourself beforehand and strengthen because
tendons and ligaments again, they need those cycles of strain rest, strain,
(22:10):
rest to be strong enough to handle the sudden stop
in a court.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So, you know, how do you define it? So I
regenitive is regenerative is a buzzword in many industries now,
regenerative farming and wine regenif for what does regenerative medicine mean?
And give some examples.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I like to think of regenitive medicine as ways to
restore tissue health and joint health and nerve health. There
are different definitions that people talk about growing organs and
growing new body parts, but the way that we use them,
for instance, to treat osteoarthritis or nerve issues, it really
is restoring health of those tissues. And that's how I
(22:54):
see it. I've used the perfect example of plately rich plasma,
which is commonly used therapy that people use for joints,
the use for hair replacement. It's also called PRP. It
can restore and improve tissue health. It doesn't grow new cartilage. Actually,
none of these therapies will grow new cartilage where there
(23:15):
is not cartilage now, but they will take whatever somebody
has and can improve it. And it's the same thing
that our body does. So it's a stimulus. PRP is
an inflammatory stimulus, and then that releases growth factors, and
your body takes us growth factors and it improves that
the tissues and improves the strength of the cartilage, the
(23:36):
tendons of the ligaments, and so it's it's the same
process that we use with the workout.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
So I have a question, why is it that when
you go to the doctor in a doctor and you
have pain. The first thing they want to offer you
is a steroid injection for medication. Ranging how do you
say ness ads to? You know, I've got a slew
(24:05):
of them in my place. I hate all pain medication.
Why is that that that's the first thing you're given
versus other alternative options.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
I think there's two reasons. One is history. We've been
doing it for a very long time. We the medical
profession have been doing this a very long time. And
I have done a lot of steroid injections. I've done
twenty five years of steroid injections, well, probably twenty twenty five.
The past ten I've really tried to focus on things
that improve tissue health. So one of it is history
and tradition, and one of it is it's a quick fix. So,
(24:38):
you know, we know some if we inject a steroid
into somebody's shoulder or knee or back, that they're probably
going to feel a whole lot better in two or
three days right afterwards. It's a very quick fix. We
also know that there are down there are downstream issues
with that, and there was a paper that came out
in twenty seventeen that for me, was a wake up call,
(25:02):
I think for a lot of us as a wake
up call. And it was a study that looked at
individuals had nearthritis. Half of them got steroid injections for
two years, half of them got sailing injections for two years.
At the end of two years, there was no difference
in pain. Not a big surprise to anybody, right, because
we know that steroids tend to work short term and
may not last. The problem was those who got steroid
injections actually had less cartilage in than these than the
(25:24):
ones that got sailing. So to me, that was a
wake up call. We had all thought, and I had
thought prior to that, that yeah, we're doing steroid injections
and they help, and they probably don't do any long
term harm. Maybe they help a little bit long term harm.
I had no idea, and a lot of us had
no idea that we're we were probably actually worsening the
problem of arthritis and patients. And that's why I think
(25:46):
we are in such an important paradigm shifting moment. This
is a particular issue for women who are more affected
by austereothritis than men, who get more steroid injections than men.
This is an important issue that I think all for
your listeners and your viewers that a stereo injection once,
I think is just fine, but they really need to
be careful about repeated injections because it can actually harm
(26:10):
the very joint. We're trying to cheat and trying to
trying to treat.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, aren't some of these protocols You can't And once
you stop, everything reverts back, like you know, because I
always worry about that, like do you ever get off
of these sture drugs?
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Right? And and and so they it does revert back,
and they's short if the effects are short term in
terms of the pain relief. But I'm more concerned about
how do you keep the cartilage, attendons, the ligaments, and
the nerves healthy long term, right, And ster injections are
not doing that. Stereo injections are giving us a short
term fix right now. If that if that short term
(26:48):
fix gets somebody back into the gym and get somebody
back to their exercise routine, well that's that's good long term, right,
because they're exercising again, right, Yeah, But if it's used
just in a repeatd fashion, if somebody's giving four steroid injections,
a year. It's the same joint. We know now that
that's gonna that's going to do harmful things to the
joint longer term.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
So what are the ways to repair cartilage and tissue?
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Well, that's when I look at well, so you've you've
mentioned the first two important ones, which is which are
healthy foods and exercise. A lot of people that is
not enough, you know. I'll take example somebody who's had
a prior injury, an ACL tear, which we've heard a
lot about that, and Lindsay Vonn has been front and
center with dealing with she is an amazing woman first
(27:33):
of all, but but dealing with dealing with those kinds
of issues of ACL tears or meniscus stares that set
people up for athritis. But sometimes exercise and healthy foods
may not be enough, and that's where things like plate
let ridge plasma, a therapy called autologous conditioned serum which
is also called reginicine, which I do and started in Germany,
(27:54):
and even stem cells, which don't actually grow new cartilage.
Stem cells also work by turning on our own healing systems.
All these therapies can help push us to the next
level and help kind of turn the page on healing,
healing a joint that won't heal.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Why are they? Why are all my friends getting knee surgery,
our shoulder surgery or elbow surgery. Somebody's always every week,
somebody's going in for surgery.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So I knee surgery, knee replacement surgery for someone who
has significant pain and bone and bone arthritis, I think
can be an effective It's an effective procedure for eighty
percent of those who have it, and I think it's
a good My goal is to allow people to hopefully
avoid that knee replacement surgery. And I mean I believe,
(28:45):
I truly believe that if we can get to people
early enough. For instance, somebody who had a meniscustare someone
who had an ACL tear, they still have cartilage in there.
The cartilage may not be healthy, but it's still there.
If we can get that cartilage healthier, they may never
need a knee replacement surgery. And that, to me is
the exciting part of where we are now, is what
(29:06):
we now know how to improve the health of those joints.
If we can get to it early enough before it's
bone and bone arthritis, it may not need surgery.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Well, the first thing is if you have pain, don't
just shovel it away and go there there and pop
your pills. Go see somebody. That's number one and number two,
you know, get on the diet, get on the healthy
eating and exercise movement. If you don't like the word
to exercise, track and do that. And those are simple
(29:37):
things to do immediately, and don't wait because the longer
you wait, the worst it gets.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
I think that's very good advice if you if somebody
has persistent pain like many of us did, like I
did after a couple of knee injuries, If you have
persistent pain after knee injury, that's a sign that they,
for lack of a better term, the biochemistry that joint
is not is off, and we need to find ways
to improve the health of that joint. Fluid to improve
(30:05):
the health of the joint, But you don't want to
wait until it's eroded the cartilage and you're bone and
bone arthritis and you're end up looking at joint replacement surgery.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
At that point, well, you know, I was reading the
book again. My mother was given a lot to drugs.
I was devastated actually when I saw I hate mentioning drugs. Two,
I'm going to gabapentin. Yes, can lead to cognitive decline.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Gaba Penton is a double edged sword.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
She was on Gabba petten for years.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Sure, and it can decrease nerve pain. But what I
talk about the book also is well, gaba Penton was
developed as a seizure drug because it prevents nerves from
firing in the brain. So we know it's going to
dull brain function because it was designed to dull brain function.
Now it also happens two dull nerve it's called automaticity,
(31:03):
so nerves that are firing out of control in our
personal nerve system. And that's why I can help out
with neuropathy pain. But the side effects to me are
almost expected because it was designed to affect our brains.
And when it was when it was you know, when
it was the first to put together.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Well, I always tell people because the other one she
was given methyal treks eight hair fell out. I thought
that's precular therapy. So you know, Unfortunately, a lot of people,
including the elderly people and my mother, people don't ask questions.
They just take what the doctor tells them and they
take it. Maybe they take it incorrect good, but you've
got to a know your side effects and your food
(31:42):
interactions and is it's the right medication for your lifestyle?
And too you got to say how long you have
to be on them, because I would think a lot
of these there are long term side effects and or
they or they had the law of diminishing returns, do
they no longer work right?
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Right? And any medication kind of a side of fact.
As matter of fact, the anti inflammatory medications, the iyberprofins,
nappersons and everything else are notorious for this because how
many people have you talked to who have had upset
stomach or gastritis or even bleeds from their stomach or
are intestine from chronic use of these medicines. So they
all have side effects, and to me, I want to
(32:20):
focus on the ways our body can heal themselves. First.
Some people will do well with the medication, but I
don't want to use the medication, and I would prefer
somebody not being a medication and unless they really need to,
unless we've gone through everything else and the the Again,
I think the really encouraging moment in time we're in
is that we have many more tools now and we
(32:41):
know how to use them. I'll use a good example.
Actually we talk about exercise in that the cycle of inflammation,
recovery and plately rich plasma. For instance, we now know
the dose we need for PRP to be effective. There
were PRP has been a very controversial topic. There are
studies that should it have worked? And that was a
big study that should it didn't work and everybody kind
(33:03):
of said, it just doesn't work. Well, it turns out
if you look at what they're actually dosing, you have
to get to a certain dose to make it effective.
And it makes sense. It's like exercising. If you don't
push yourself at least a little bit, you're not going
to get stronger. You have to push at least a
little bit, and you have to find that goldiluck range.
And that's the same thing with regenerative therapies. Can all
(33:25):
these therapies come back to our own bodies And it's
not rocket science. We're just trying to figure out ways
to harness what our bodies have been doing for a
very long time.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
And just PRP I'm in your glossary is platelet rich
plasma created by spinning blood in a centrifusion, allowing the
platelest to separate is that like plasma.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Perosis, it's a little different. So it is basically take
whole blood, you centrifuge it and cells at different weights,
so the red cells sink to the bottom, the plasma's
on top, and in the middle the platelets sit. The
platelets are helpful because they well we know them is
causing clotting, but they also contain a lot of growth factors,
(34:09):
and so it's the growth factors that we use to
go ahead and inject, and that's and those are the
things that we're looking for. We really are looking for
the contents the platelets which they'll release after after injection.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
So these are injections that you get.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
It's an injection exactly. So you take that, you take
out usually using a device that middle layer that has
a platelets in it, and then you inject it into
a knee, into a shoulder, into a hip, other areas.
But the key is is you've got to get the
dose right. And that's what we didn't know even a
couple of years ago. So that's another, I think, really
(34:45):
an exciting advance.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Well, you know in the glossary, you know platelet dry clothes.
There's a lot of interesting things in here in your glossary,
by the way, including a pack of tax hal which
I always dyed from during treatment. And everybody out there,
don't just say I'll take the drug. Learn what it's
going to do to you. Yes, you can have some
amazingly bad side effects. So here's the million dollar question.
(35:13):
I'm ready treatments like PRP are they covered by insurance
or do you have to jump through a million hoops
and get approvals in what not? Because when David, my
husband had to get plasma phoresis, which is a different protocol,
but there was another one he got to proved of that,
but there was another one in there. We don't know,
but it was rejected.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Right now, almost none of the regenerative therapies are covered
by insurance. In the future. In the future, I think
that they will be. I think that I think as
we learn more. But right now, it's very easy for
an insurance company to call these therapies experimental because they
can point to studies that were done where they didn't help.
(35:57):
And that's why we need to go back and we
need to redo those studies. I talked about dose redo,
the studies with doses that are effective, but they're going
to remain experimental in the eyes of insurance companies until
their research is done.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Well, that's why my mother didn't get it, by the way,
because she was rejected. So that you know that it
stinks for you because you want to help patients. Yeah,
and it stinks for anyone who needs the treatment. So
you know, the only winner in that one is the
insurance companies and everybody else loses out.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
You know, I liken it too. Right now, it's very
easy to get coverage for things that suppress the immune
system but don't but not those that stimulate the immune system.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I get so mad when I watch TV.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Doctor Beggatt was every damn commercial to drug commercial for pain, pain, pain,
And I get really mad because it's like, stop paying
all that advertising and let us all get insured so
we can get these other treatments.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Now. Now you know who you know who's also kind
of at the forefront of a lot of these therapies
through are the physical therapists.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, I'm a big do They're great. I've been doing
one for my back.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yes, they do wonderful work. And they also do things
like dry needling, which you could argue dry needling is
a bit of a regentitive therapy. They do things that
all those things that we talked about that stimulate a
healing response.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
But eventually their insurance is not covered anymore because I
did it for my back and then I had to
leave because you know, it was a covered and now
my back hurt's again.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Mm hmm. But you can get coverage for the anti
inflammatories and steroids that suppress the immune system, but not
things that stimulate.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yes, right, And it's just like crazy. I think we're
on the same page there. So you know what is
on the horizon that you're excited about.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
I am excited about the ways to tailor therapy. So
we now have this these broad therapies that can be
very effective, and my question is always how do we
make them, how do we make them more effective, and
how do we choose who's going to respond or not?
So I think that the science of understand standing how
our bodies respond to a therapy. I'll use PRP as
(38:03):
again as an example plate lar ridge plasma because it's
fairly commonly done. Although we've actually had a lot of
the research that I've done with colleagues at Duke and McGill,
which where I am now in Germany. Our research is
really focused around more atologous condition serum, which is the
regenicine program. We actually know how that works deep What
is that?
Speaker 3 (38:23):
What is a regenderaize your program.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
That that is a program that uses a it's a
blood product, but it's not PRP. It's it's a blood
product that it also creates exosomes and some other things
that can reprogram house cells behaved. Some people know of
regina kind when there are a lot of there are
a lot of professional athletes that fly to Germany and
that I treat now in my clinic as well. But
(38:49):
when you hear professional athletes going to Germany for treatment,
oftentimes it's for the regenic kind program because that's where
it started and that was that was one of our
research colleagues in my mentor doctor Peter Whaling. But well,
we know how deeply how that works, and we're also
learning now how PRP works. But to me, there's a
question of some people will respond and some people just
(39:10):
aren't going to respond to PRP no matter what you do,
and we want to know why, and we believe it
has to do with the body's immune response, the ability
to trigger bodies immune response some people may need a
stronger trigger than others. And I would love to see
a test that develops that allow us to find out,
because you don't want to spend a lot of money
(39:32):
out of pocket for an expensive procedure if it's not
going to work. And I'd love to have a test
that says that we can make this work, but we
have to add in these two or three additional components
to make it work. So that's exciting and all these things,
all these therapies, they're helping us to understand how we
heal more fundamentally. I think it's a very exciting time.
(39:54):
And this actually gets back to not just a regenerative therapy,
but how do you heal a cut, a will to fracture?
How do you heal from surgery? All these these mechanisms
are common for all these things that we do, and
how do how do we increase our ability to heal well?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I'm healing from surgery from October. I actually I had
surgery and then I have a that infection. I had
their surgery and that did me in and it's still
healing and I'm in pain, and I'm going to go
deal with it. When I see my PCP and surgery
this week. But healing from surgery is as a much
(40:30):
slower process, particularly do you get And that's been a
learning lesson.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Yes, well, right, healing takes time, and the more we
can understand the mechanisms that drive it, I think better
off we are. And there's also a growing question of
should we be taking long term anti inflammatories after surgery
as well? That's been this standard has been for people
to take anti inflammatories, whether it's hyberprof and NAP or
(40:59):
in meloxa, can any of those medicines, celebrates as well,
to take them for weeks after a procedure, after a fracture,
after a surgery. And I think we are appropriately questioning
whether or not that's the right guidance, because.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Well, I didn't take any I first of all, none
of it appealed to my very sensitive stomach. And again,
my mother had no stomach left. I think she was
in so many drugs, and I think that's happening to me.
So I'm big on tapering off. I tapered off the pain.
I papered off the pain medication almost immediately for all
(41:36):
the reasons that you would expect. Yes, it was and again,
you know, I'd rather have a higher pain threshold and
strengthen that than just succept that. You know, so many
people live with pain. It's just chronic pain. It's like.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Everywhere it is, and it's one of the challenges. One
of the things that I want to talk about in
the book is this difference between cute pain and chronic pain.
Chronic pain is always bad. There's not a single scenario
where chronic pain is good for us. But we have
as a medical profession, we have assumed that therefore all
(42:12):
inflammation is bad, and if chronic inflammation is bad, then
acute inflammation is also going to be bad for us.
That's just not the case. Acute inflammation, short term inflammation,
can turn on these healing mechanisms that our bodies have
and actually prevent long term chronic pain problems. Acute inflammation,
acute inflamation. Example of acute inflammation, well, Alex sh I'll
(42:35):
use the example since macguil right now in Montreal. Actually,
there was a research study that was done here. They
looked at one hundred patients who had acute back pain,
and they looked at the inflammatory response to the back pain,
and those who had a strong inflammatory response actually healed
faster and were less likely to have pain three months out.
(42:57):
If they suppressed it with anti inflammatories, they're more likely
to have They're more likely to have pain.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
That should work into the pain. I mean, like you know,
sometimes you work with exercise, you work into the pain.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
Yes, So there there's again there's a Goldilocks position here
that you don't want to hurt so much you can't move,
because if you can't move, if you're never going to
get better, and you're gonna get a blood clot, you
have all those other issues too, Right, So we want
to have been a move But we want to have
some inflammation the time of an injury, whether it's whether
it's a back pain injury, whether it's an ankle spring,
(43:29):
whether it's a fracture, we want to have some inflammation
because that inflammation will turn on our natural systems.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Well, that's interesting because I've been doing the work into
the pain all my life, you know, through you know,
versus hiding from it because I'm so fearful of pain pills.
So I think that's very interesting. I have one. There
was The FDA recently approved or announced a new hope
for easing remot turn authority it's a set point system.
What do you know about that?
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Very little, very little. So yeah, and you know rheumatoid
athritis is that's a little different argument too. I can
compare the studies that were done. For instance, your mother
may have been on one of the what are called
d marts, the disease modifying antibraeumatic These these drugs that
suppress inflammatory proteins. Interestingly, they can be very powerful for
(44:20):
rhumatoriy athritis. They've all been tested in no osterothritis. They
don't work at all.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
My mother was on so many drugs for her pain
and osteo and and the other, and then the pain
from the stomach ailments from that that there were just
bags of drugs everywhere.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Was awful.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
You know, I want to live in a world and
I think you do too, where we're not on pain killers.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
That would be a wonderful world and we're living better,
even better. We don't need to.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Use them, right, living without pain.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
We don't need to We don't need to use them.
That would be that's the ideal.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yeah, And as we said, you know, a lot of
it just starts with the simple, most basic thing is
to improve the quality of life, improve how you eat,
how you move, and how you manage your stress. Absolutely,
and get off. Get off your seat, like I'll be
doing in a few seconds, to go take a walk
because between I have another show in an hour. I
(45:16):
get up at a walk and stretch. I mean, I'll
even at the post office waiting in line. Yesterday forever
I started doing yoga exercises and everybody started following me
a line because we're all going crazy. You just find
ways to move at all times.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
Well, I think that is the secret. So you have
the first two secrets, which is a good Mediterranean diet
and movement. And there are other tools that we can
tap into, but those are the most important and most fundamental,
aren't they.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Well I really enjoyed talking with you weekend at doctor
Thomas book. Kait He is a regenerative medical medicine therapist.
This is the book Kaling Joins the Nerves. Oh God,
I can't see that. This is great. I'll put it
up on Melanie fabulous. But immune stimulation and the new
Science of regenerate therapy. It's clinical, but it's helpful and
there's some great takeaways at the end of each chapter.
(46:06):
The biggest takeaways you should not have to live with pain.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
I think that's great. And and you know, don't don't fear,
don't fear exercise.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
It's not exercise, it's movement, movement.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Movement in motion and.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Movement in motion. Yeah, just movement and emotion. And you
know there's simple thing go take go, go go do
walk a dog or go to an animal shelter and
go borrow a dog. That's like one way to walk
with your friends. The social thing, because we need socialize.
I walk with my husband and we actually don't talk shop,
which is great. Just if you don't want to walk alone,
(46:39):
walk with people and socialize, there's always a way.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Yes, And actually you're getting into the blue zones now,
aren't you of this social connection being a really important
part of that right exercise, food and social and social
connection and meaning meaning in life and rest and rest
and arrest and recovery.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, R and R. Well, thank you for joining me.
I'm fearless, fabulous you. I really appreciate your time, Good
luck with your whatever you're doing in Montreal, with all
your speaking and whatnot. Thank you keep going and help
us all live without pain.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
A pleasure to speak. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
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(00:20):
be directed to those show hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your host, Melanie Young.
Thank you for joining me today if you're joining me
for the first time. I love helping women make smart,
confident choices about how they choose to live perfectly life
on their terms, stay fit, healthy, and always mindful of
(01:04):
enjoying life to the fullest. I am going to be
addressing a topic today that actually hits home in a very,
very personal way. We're going to talk about new therapies
to treat painful joints and neuropathy, including arthritis with a
specialist and regenerative medicine of pain specialists. This hits home
for a lot of reasons. At first, I W was
to start with some stats. Arthritis, which was a big one,
(01:26):
effects over fifty four people in the fifty four million
people in the United States. Sixty percent of US adults
with arthritis or working age eighteens is sixty four. Arthritis
can limit the type of work they do or prevent
them from working at all, and it is the leading
cause of work disability, with annual costs for medical care
and lost earnings of three hundred and three point five billion.
(01:48):
That's from the Arthritis Foundation. Why does it hit home
for me? My mother, who worked to eighty five as
a professor in Tennessee, was crippled with both and rumature
earth threads to the point that she could no longer
feed herself. She was given many, many types of medication
(02:08):
with no explanation of side effects and went bald, lost
her hair. Toward the end of her life, she ended
up falling and never getting up and was the point
where she was unable to feed herself and was malnourished,
so we had to range very expensive rounds of people
to help her until she eventually died, never got out
of her bed again. And watching that and being reminded
(02:30):
almost daily as I cared for myself that this is
genetic or could be genetic. I was fearful as well
about becoming disabled through pain, and likewise, my husband experienced
an episode, a neurological episode in twenty sixteen that has
left him with ongoing neuropathy. So I am interested in
(02:51):
this because I deal with my own pain through some
degenitive back issues. My husband has neuropathy. So many people
have confided to me they're getting my abie. They're all
getting surgeries now to deal with joints. I mean, if
I hear another friend who's getting knee surgery, I'm going
to like, everybody's getting new knees. But there's also non
surgical options, and we're going to talk with a regenerative
(03:12):
medicine specialist to address these, because I think many people
would love to avoid surgery, avoid expensive medications and side effects,
and find ways that they can manage pain without going
into extremes. Sometimes you can't avoid it, but let's find
out more from doctor Thomas Buckheit, who is a physician
(03:34):
specializing in regenerative and autobiological treatments for joint nerve pain.
He is the founder of Triangle Reagan Medicine and Biologic
Center in Chapel Hill in North Carolina. Go Chapel Hill,
and he has worked as an adjunct associate professor at
Duke University. He is a book called Healing Joints and Nerves,
(03:54):
Immune Simulation and the New Science of Regeneritive Therapies. Doctor
Buckett Wilcolm to Fearless Abulous you well.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Thank you for having me, melanieus And I'm delighted to
be here.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, I see You're in Montreal. He's giving a speech.
He travels a lot, so thank you for your time.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yes, no, thanks. And I think this is this is
a really exciting time. We have learned so much over
the past couple of years and our ability to treat
arthritis's ability to treat neuropathies that we didn't know even
even recently. And I think what comes down to is
that our bodies have the ability to self repair and
(04:34):
to self heal. The goal and my goal is a clinician,
and I think the goal of this of really the
medical specialty is how do we find ways to turn
on those healing mechanisms. And that's what the book is about.
The book is about teaching and giving people the tools
giving women the tools, how do they turn on their
own healing mechanisms. Some of that is with exercise, some
(04:55):
of that is with regenerative therapies when they're needed, and
some of it is also is a waiting some of
the things that can lead to further problems. And we
can talk a little bit more about that as well well.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Definitely, And I read your book. There's a lot of
clinical terms in it, but you have these great giveaways
at the end in a glossary. Thank you. I'm all
about glossaries. And I went through and I'm one of
these people that likes to get the book sent to me.
I actually have a book. I put it in the images.
I don't know if one hasard or not, but holding
it up right now sort of yeah, there we go.
(05:26):
So I'm going to start with this. Let's talk about
causes first, because my mother reminded me every day from
her bed, it's genetic. You're going to get it like
the wicked witch. So what causespathy and who is more
susceptible to it?
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Let's start with perhaps let's start with arthritis, because I
think you've mentioned that, and that's an important thing that
affects a ton of people. The good news here is
that the genetic components to this are are low. Most
of this are things that we have control over, and
I think that's an important message for everyone or everyone
out there. There's also a bunch of mythologies that I
(06:07):
deal with in the book, and one of which is
the concept of wear and tear, which is just not true.
Exercise is good for joints. Matter of fact, one of
the most effective ways of keeping joints healthy, even in
folks who have mild to monitor earthritis, is walking is
just as simple as as simple as that walking and
exercise improve the environment to the joint. They improve the
(06:31):
capacity joint to kind of renew and restore cell health,
and so that's really an important thing. The drivers of
arthritis is really it's chronic inflammation and the enzymes that
chronic inflammation turns on. So if you have chronic inflammation
and a joint, the enzymes can actually start to digest
(06:51):
the cartilage parts and that's what drives That's what drives
osteorithritis in particular. The challenge that we've been into the
past seventy five years now, we've been doing steroid injections,
for instance, for neoorthritis for seventy five years. The first one,
the first case series was done in nineteen fifty one,
so it's exactly seventy five years. And those are really
(07:13):
good of shutting down short term inflammation. We also used
to think that those steroid injections helped long term inflammation.
It turns out that they don't. In fact, those repeated
steroid injections actually can backfire and cause more problems than
they create, especially if we have them repeated fashion. What
(07:34):
happens is is that the steroid might decrease short term information,
but it also turns off our natural healing capacities. We
have the ability to produce growth factors, to produce healing
mechanisms and healing proteins in the joint and repeated use
of anti inflammatories, repeated use of steroids shut down those
(07:56):
natural capacities. And so the book is about how do
you regain that And again, exercise can do it. Nutrition
and foods. There's certain foods that can be very helpful
and it can do that as well. And then I
do a deeper dive into the regenitive therapist, things like
completely ridge plasma atologous conditioned serum stem cells and the
like and what their actual role is.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Let's talk about the simplest and least expensive way to manage,
which is diet and exercise. I want to start with exercise.
I am a big believer in motion is the lotion.
I wake up every day feeling like the Tin Man.
I'm sixty seven now and I have degenerate back. I
also had some stomach issues that have been stomach surgery
that has just been so painful. So if I don't exercise,
(08:42):
I literally feel like I'm like the tin Man in
the Wizard of Oz and so I walk a lot.
Too many people these days are sedentary. Let's underscore the
importance of how the simple, inexpensive process of walking matters,
but also what else can people do in terms of exercise,
and also what are some exercises that may exacerbate the
(09:05):
situation as well, So you have to be careful.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Well, you have nailed it on the head, so you've
got it exactly right. Exercise it is, it is. Motion
is important. Motion lubricates their joints. Walking will actually increase
literally the lubrication in our joints. So we have as
substances we can call hyaluronic acid some people know of
it because it's in cosmetics as well as our joints.
(09:29):
But this is a lubricant. It's a lubricant for skin.
It's a lubricant for a joints, and your body will
make more of that with exercise. You increase blood flow
and nutrient flow to cartilage with exercise. So a daily
walk is about the most effective thing that somebody can do.
There are other very effective treatments and therapies, things like
yoga and taichi. Taichi can be, you know, a very
(09:50):
powerful tool for someone who already has very stiff joints.
And foods, healthy foods that I wrote the chapter on
nutrition and food was to think, one of the more
difficult ones I wrote because I did not want to
use the word diet in it because diet is a
triggering word to a lot of people and everybody has
the very strong feelings about that, And so I wanted
(10:12):
to talk about or foods that fuel our bodies. And
they include healthy fats. So for instance, fish oils, olive oil,
avocado oil, those are healthy fats. They include leafy green
vegetables and colorful vegetables. Those colors are protective compounds for
the plant and then when we eat those protective compounds,
(10:33):
they help us protect ourselves. And so there are ways
of getting our body these fuels. And so that is
the starting point for really everyone, which is give your
body the healthy fats and the plant color compounds that
are protective, and go for a daily walk. And it's
a wonderful place to start for anybody who can do that.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
So I agree with you about the word diet. I
call it editing. So, as you know, the US dietary
guidelines came out were moved around a bit. The Mediterranean diet,
which was a big focus on whole grains, kind of
went down to the bottom and animal fats and dairy
went to the top. And anyways, I thought it was great.
(11:14):
I do believe in whole grains. I'm a big believer
in the Mediterranean diet. However, a lot of people still,
I think, let a lot of people confuse about what
fats are, okay, because when they hear animal fat, it
doesn't mean you go out and eat less of burgers.
You go into the book, you do dive into fatty
acids and fat quite a bit. So could you provide
a little more explanation about what you considered. I mean,
(11:36):
you touched on it with mono and sadra to olive aall,
and you mentioned avocado oil. But what are some other
examples of fats that you think are better for you
versus maybe hold off.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Well, yes, and I tried to think of it, so
I try to think of them as fats that are
straight fats so that line up and can stiffen things
like membranes and sell membranes. Fats that have a kink
in there. So, for instance, olive oil has a kinkin
and it's a fat structure. And ones that are curly,
so omega threes that are seen in fish oil and
flaxseed oil, those are those are curly and they have
(12:11):
different they do different things based on their shape. But
the other thing that we have to keep in mind
is that if someone cooks and I am a big
believer in the Mediterranean diet as well, but if someone
cooks with olive oil, yes, they're getting the healthy fat,
but they're also getting all the wonderful plant compounds that
come in the olive as well. So it's a two fer.
(12:32):
They're getting the healthy compounds and the olive fruit, and
they're also getting the oil that can be healthy.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
What are your thoughts of canola oil.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Oh, well, that's the subject I wouldn't mind avoiding talking about.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I know there's a lot of pros and cons, and
I have dieticians that love it and dietitians that don't.
But there's a cooking issue to it too, because it's
very hard to cook sometimes with olive oil, and we
use it all the time.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
But yeah, and I would I would preface this by
saying I am not I am not a dietician either
am I am health coach. So what I tried to
do in the book was look at things that are
healthy for joints and nerves, right, And there's enough literature
and there are enough studies to say that a Mediterranean
diet and the components of that are healthy for our joints. Yes,
(13:23):
they decrease chronic inflammation, and they're healthy for our nerves.
And that's kind of where I That's where I start,
and that's where I stop. Is what do we know?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Absolutely? And of course you know if you travel on Mediterranean,
which I am blessed to do often in my wine
and food life, they move around a lot. People in
Europe take walks, They walk after Yeah, they walk in
the morning, they walk after a meal. They don't lie
around sitting around staring at their computers and phones all day.
And you know, kudos to them that long life. Go
to Sardinia, one of the Blue zones, and you'll see
(13:51):
some of the healthiest people ever. It's incredible. I am
going to ask you about one food area and then
we can move on some other Sugar. And the reason
I'm going to ask you about sugar is I have
issues with it for a variety of reasons, emotional as
well as physical. I actually get physically ill now from
eating sugar. And my mother was a sugar addict, as
(14:13):
you as I have prefaced, she had probably one of
the most severe cases of arthritis imaginable. It was tragic,
and she was a sugar addict. Also, is there a connection.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Well, yes, I think the short answer is yes. And
unrefined sugars do things metabolically to our bodies that are
not healthy for us. They spike our sugar, they cause
insulin resistance, they cause diabetes, and any any metabolic derangement
from simple excessive simple sugars can cannot it can be
(14:57):
harmful to us. Now I am also guilty I I
do enjoy a chocolate chip cookie and uh, and so
I can't be critical of all refined sugars. But I
think every it's like everything, you know, we should consider
it as diet and moderation and sugar and moderation. But
anything that is chock full of raw sugars that absorb
(15:21):
quickly that spiker spiker glucose and that cause these surges,
having you know, of insulin to compensate for it may
not be good for us and certainly aren't good for
our joints either.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Are there other and then we you know, dietary food
choices that should be considered or not considered other than
what we just talked about, which is vegetables, fruits, whole grains,
and healthy fats.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
What I talk about in the book is a very
broad scope. And I look at it and I think,
the more food colors that one can consume, the more
plan colors the one can consume, is a wonderful thing.
And I take the blueberry or the grape for instance.
You know, even these compounds called flavonoids or polyphenols that
(16:10):
are in grapes, they are in blueberries. You know, we
have tried as a as a culture and a science
to try to isolate a specific compound. Resveratrol was one
of the compounds where everybody was very excited about it.
But it turns out that it's not just for zveratol.
It's probably the three hundred other compounds that come in
the blueberry, in the strawberry, in the grape, in those
(16:33):
colorful berries and fruits and vegetables that are also part
of the picture. And so for me, it's not about
isolating one specific food or one specific molecule. It's really
about that beautiful complexity of diet that we can get,
that you get when you travel, for instance, and then
we all get, you know, if with a Mediterranean diet,
(16:55):
but I think a collection of a rich collection of fruits, vegetables, fish,
olive oils. I do think it's it's the heart of
healthy joints and nerves.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
I couldn't agree where I have to smile and laugh
them in Italy a lot for my wine life. And
the Mediterranean diet for me looks white because whenever I landed,
moved in duskany you know, depending on the time of
the area, are there are fewer vegetables. It seems like
all I'm ever served now is white posta and rice
because I don't eat me in moderation. Basically everything in moderation,
(17:30):
even sugar. I mean, it's morning raw here in New Orleans.
You have to have a king cake. You have to
have some king cake. It's just what you do. So
you gotta, you know, not give up, but don't go overboard.
One last thing on exercise, and then I want to
move on to some other topics. A lot of people
my age or even younger now I feel like I'm
the older part. Of the older part. They're doing pickleball,
(17:50):
and there's been a lot of injuries, including my husband
on pickleball, and yet everybody seems to be doing it.
Tell you why this is a risky sport. What are
some other sports other because people want to do other
things besides walking. I have a friend who's constantly saying,
I have to keep moving around, going to die, you know,
so she wants to find sports that are better for
(18:12):
her joints.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Well. I think weight training is also an important thing
to consider. Hi, you know, so I consider pickleball is
a high velocity sport. There's a lot of starting and
stopping very suddenly that puts tremendous strain on tendons and ligaments,
and I've took taken care of several people who have
had hamstring terrors and other kinds of knee and hip
issues and shoulder issues the pickleball. We need to consider
(18:37):
the fact that training is necessary for pickleball, just like
any high velocity sport. And I am a big believer in,
you know, not just aerobic exercise, but some strength and
flexibility training as well. So I think part of the
pickleball routine might also be a little bit of time
in the weight room to put muscles under strain. One
(18:59):
of the things, one of the core things I talk
about in the book is that we need these cycles
of inflammation and recovery to be healthy. And any of
us who exercise, whether it's walk, whether it's aqua therapy,
whether it's pickleball, we kind of know that our core.
If you go out and you play two hours of
pickleball and you haven't played all season, you might not
be able to move the next day, right, So you
(19:20):
have to build up and exercise. Is this wonderful technique
of short term inflammation, kind of goldilocks zone inflammation and recovery, inflammation,
recovery over and over again, and those cycles make us stronger.
And that's the core. That's the core of exercise, that's
the core of how we make ourselves stronger. That's the
(19:41):
core of how we protect ourselves from injury with a
pickleball game is to go ahead and train ourselves prior
to And interestingly, that's also the core of all these
things that we call regenerative therapies. They use the same
mechanisms they use. They stimulate the immune system like inflammation does,
like exercise does, and then it releases these growth factors
(20:06):
that can strength and tendons and ligaments that can that
can repair tissues. But we do that with exercise as well.
And so I love hearing how how evident an exerciser
you are and how much you believe in it, because
I think it's a really important part of long term health.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I'm a big believer. I do believe that one of
the problems is people don't stretch. There's not one, there's
not adequate stretching before you You got to prepare your
body before you exercise. Two, you don't just take up weights.
You've got to go and pay and hire someone to
teach you how to do it properly. And it's like
that with any sport you actually write about in the
book how you went to you know, you had a
(20:41):
whole mess with your knee skiing because you were with
some young people. And you know, I tell my husband
David all the time, he wants to go skiing, He
wants to go skiing. Okay, he had an episode I
referred to it where he has the ropathy in his
left side still because he didn't do the physical therapy
he should have, and he wants to get back on
a snow board. And I said, let me check my
(21:02):
life insurance policy and make sure it's up today, because
when you go on that snowboard, there's a good chance
you're not Your body is not going to be the
same as twenty years ago. And I think a lot
of people when they reach fifties and sixties, they keep
trying to do the same sports and activities that they
were doing in their twenties and thirties, and they've got
to do it differently, right, I mean, you can have
a terror.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
It just takes it just takes more time. Yeah, you know,
you know when we're all I'm fifty seven, I'll be
fifty eight, and so it takes me longer to train
than it did when I was twenty. Yeah, and that's
just I think that that's just part of that's just
part of life. But the good news is we can
still get there. Yeah, you can still get there. It
just takes a little more time and a little more dedication,
(21:43):
and perhaps the ramp up is a little slower.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, but you can.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
You can still get there. You just have to give
yourself time. And I think that's that's back to your
that's back to your your pickleball reference, which is a
really wonderful, great one to use, because you can get
there to where you can handle those high velocity well,
but you've got to train yourself beforehand and strengthen because
tendons and ligaments again, they need those cycles of strain rest, strain,
(22:10):
rest to be strong enough to handle the sudden stop
in a court.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So, you know, how do you define it? So I
regenitive is regenerative is a buzzword in many industries now,
regenerative farming and wine regenif for what does regenerative medicine mean?
And give some examples.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I like to think of regenitive medicine as ways to
restore tissue health and joint health and nerve health. There
are different definitions that people talk about growing organs and
growing new body parts, but the way that we use them,
for instance, to treat osteoarthritis or nerve issues, it really
is restoring health of those tissues. And that's how I
(22:54):
see it. I've used the perfect example of plately rich plasma,
which is commonly used therapy that people use for joints,
the use for hair replacement. It's also called PRP. It
can restore and improve tissue health. It doesn't grow new cartilage. Actually,
none of these therapies will grow new cartilage where there
(23:15):
is not cartilage now, but they will take whatever somebody
has and can improve it. And it's the same thing
that our body does. So it's a stimulus. PRP is
an inflammatory stimulus, and then that releases growth factors, and
your body takes us growth factors and it improves that
the tissues and improves the strength of the cartilage, the
(23:36):
tendons of the ligaments, and so it's it's the same
process that we use with the workout.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
So I have a question, why is it that when
you go to the doctor in a doctor and you
have pain. The first thing they want to offer you
is a steroid injection for medication. Ranging how do you
say ness ads to? You know, I've got a slew
(24:05):
of them in my place. I hate all pain medication.
Why is that that that's the first thing you're given
versus other alternative options.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
I think there's two reasons. One is history. We've been
doing it for a very long time. We the medical
profession have been doing this a very long time. And
I have done a lot of steroid injections. I've done
twenty five years of steroid injections, well, probably twenty twenty five.
The past ten I've really tried to focus on things
that improve tissue health. So one of it is history
and tradition, and one of it is it's a quick fix. So,
(24:38):
you know, we know some if we inject a steroid
into somebody's shoulder or knee or back, that they're probably
going to feel a whole lot better in two or
three days right afterwards. It's a very quick fix. We
also know that there are down there are downstream issues
with that, and there was a paper that came out
in twenty seventeen that for me, was a wake up call,
(25:02):
I think for a lot of us as a wake
up call. And it was a study that looked at
individuals had nearthritis. Half of them got steroid injections for
two years, half of them got sailing injections for two years.
At the end of two years, there was no difference
in pain. Not a big surprise to anybody, right, because
we know that steroids tend to work short term and
may not last. The problem was those who got steroid
injections actually had less cartilage in than these than the
(25:24):
ones that got sailing. So to me, that was a
wake up call. We had all thought, and I had
thought prior to that, that yeah, we're doing steroid injections
and they help, and they probably don't do any long
term harm. Maybe they help a little bit long term harm.
I had no idea, and a lot of us had
no idea that we're we were probably actually worsening the
problem of arthritis and patients. And that's why I think
(25:46):
we are in such an important paradigm shifting moment. This
is a particular issue for women who are more affected
by austereothritis than men, who get more steroid injections than men.
This is an important issue that I think all for
your listeners and your viewers that a stereo injection once,
I think is just fine, but they really need to
be careful about repeated injections because it can actually harm
(26:10):
the very joint. We're trying to cheat and trying to
trying to treat.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, aren't some of these protocols You can't And once
you stop, everything reverts back, like you know, because I
always worry about that, like do you ever get off
of these sture drugs?
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Right? And and and so they it does revert back,
and they's short if the effects are short term in
terms of the pain relief. But I'm more concerned about
how do you keep the cartilage, attendons, the ligaments, and
the nerves healthy long term, right, And ster injections are
not doing that. Stereo injections are giving us a short
term fix right now. If that if that short term
(26:48):
fix gets somebody back into the gym and get somebody
back to their exercise routine, well that's that's good long term, right,
because they're exercising again, right, Yeah, But if it's used
just in a repeatd fashion, if somebody's giving four steroid injections,
a year. It's the same joint. We know now that
that's gonna that's going to do harmful things to the
joint longer term.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
So what are the ways to repair cartilage and tissue?
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Well, that's when I look at well, so you've you've
mentioned the first two important ones, which is which are
healthy foods and exercise. A lot of people that is
not enough, you know. I'll take example somebody who's had
a prior injury, an ACL tear, which we've heard a
lot about that, and Lindsay Vonn has been front and
center with dealing with she is an amazing woman first
(27:33):
of all, but but dealing with dealing with those kinds
of issues of ACL tears or meniscus stares that set
people up for athritis. But sometimes exercise and healthy foods
may not be enough, and that's where things like plate
let ridge plasma, a therapy called autologous conditioned serum which
is also called reginicine, which I do and started in Germany,
(27:54):
and even stem cells, which don't actually grow new cartilage.
Stem cells also work by turning on our own healing systems.
All these therapies can help push us to the next
level and help kind of turn the page on healing,
healing a joint that won't heal.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Why are they? Why are all my friends getting knee surgery,
our shoulder surgery or elbow surgery. Somebody's always every week,
somebody's going in for surgery.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So I knee surgery, knee replacement surgery for someone who
has significant pain and bone and bone arthritis, I think
can be an effective It's an effective procedure for eighty
percent of those who have it, and I think it's
a good My goal is to allow people to hopefully
avoid that knee replacement surgery. And I mean I believe,
(28:45):
I truly believe that if we can get to people
early enough. For instance, somebody who had a meniscustare someone
who had an ACL tear, they still have cartilage in there.
The cartilage may not be healthy, but it's still there.
If we can get that cartilage healthier, they may never
need a knee replacement surgery. And that, to me is
the exciting part of where we are now, is what
(29:06):
we now know how to improve the health of those joints.
If we can get to it early enough before it's
bone and bone arthritis, it may not need surgery.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Well, the first thing is if you have pain, don't
just shovel it away and go there there and pop
your pills. Go see somebody. That's number one and number two,
you know, get on the diet, get on the healthy
eating and exercise movement. If you don't like the word
to exercise, track and do that. And those are simple
(29:37):
things to do immediately, and don't wait because the longer
you wait, the worst it gets.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
I think that's very good advice if you if somebody
has persistent pain like many of us did, like I
did after a couple of knee injuries, If you have
persistent pain after knee injury, that's a sign that they,
for lack of a better term, the biochemistry that joint
is not is off, and we need to find ways
to improve the health of that joint. Fluid to improve
(30:05):
the health of the joint, But you don't want to
wait until it's eroded the cartilage and you're bone and
bone arthritis and you're end up looking at joint replacement surgery.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
At that point, well, you know, I was reading the
book again. My mother was given a lot to drugs.
I was devastated actually when I saw I hate mentioning drugs. Two,
I'm going to gabapentin. Yes, can lead to cognitive decline.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Gaba Penton is a double edged sword.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
She was on Gabba petten for years.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Sure, and it can decrease nerve pain. But what I
talk about the book also is well, gaba Penton was
developed as a seizure drug because it prevents nerves from
firing in the brain. So we know it's going to
dull brain function because it was designed to dull brain function.
Now it also happens two dull nerve it's called automaticity,
(31:03):
so nerves that are firing out of control in our
personal nerve system. And that's why I can help out
with neuropathy pain. But the side effects to me are
almost expected because it was designed to affect our brains.
And when it was when it was you know, when
it was the first to put together.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Well, I always tell people because the other one she
was given methyal treks eight hair fell out. I thought
that's precular therapy. So you know, Unfortunately, a lot of people,
including the elderly people and my mother, people don't ask questions.
They just take what the doctor tells them and they
take it. Maybe they take it incorrect good, but you've
got to a know your side effects and your food
(31:42):
interactions and is it's the right medication for your lifestyle?
And too you got to say how long you have
to be on them, because I would think a lot
of these there are long term side effects and or
they or they had the law of diminishing returns, do
they no longer work right?
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Right? And any medication kind of a side of fact.
As matter of fact, the anti inflammatory medications, the iyberprofins,
nappersons and everything else are notorious for this because how
many people have you talked to who have had upset
stomach or gastritis or even bleeds from their stomach or
are intestine from chronic use of these medicines. So they
all have side effects, and to me, I want to
(32:20):
focus on the ways our body can heal themselves. First.
Some people will do well with the medication, but I
don't want to use the medication, and I would prefer
somebody not being a medication and unless they really need to,
unless we've gone through everything else and the the Again,
I think the really encouraging moment in time we're in
is that we have many more tools now and we
(32:41):
know how to use them. I'll use a good example.
Actually we talk about exercise in that the cycle of inflammation,
recovery and plately rich plasma. For instance, we now know
the dose we need for PRP to be effective. There
were PRP has been a very controversial topic. There are
studies that should it have worked? And that was a
big study that should it didn't work and everybody kind
(33:03):
of said, it just doesn't work. Well, it turns out
if you look at what they're actually dosing, you have
to get to a certain dose to make it effective.
And it makes sense. It's like exercising. If you don't
push yourself at least a little bit, you're not going
to get stronger. You have to push at least a
little bit, and you have to find that goldiluck range.
And that's the same thing with regenerative therapies. Can all
(33:25):
these therapies come back to our own bodies And it's
not rocket science. We're just trying to figure out ways
to harness what our bodies have been doing for a
very long time.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
And just PRP I'm in your glossary is platelet rich
plasma created by spinning blood in a centrifusion, allowing the
platelest to separate is that like plasma.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Perosis, it's a little different. So it is basically take
whole blood, you centrifuge it and cells at different weights,
so the red cells sink to the bottom, the plasma's
on top, and in the middle the platelets sit. The
platelets are helpful because they well we know them is
causing clotting, but they also contain a lot of growth factors,
(34:09):
and so it's the growth factors that we use to
go ahead and inject, and that's and those are the
things that we're looking for. We really are looking for
the contents the platelets which they'll release after after injection.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
So these are injections that you get.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
It's an injection exactly. So you take that, you take
out usually using a device that middle layer that has
a platelets in it, and then you inject it into
a knee, into a shoulder, into a hip, other areas.
But the key is is you've got to get the
dose right. And that's what we didn't know even a
couple of years ago. So that's another, I think, really
(34:45):
an exciting advance.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Well, you know in the glossary, you know platelet dry clothes.
There's a lot of interesting things in here in your glossary,
by the way, including a pack of tax hal which
I always dyed from during treatment. And everybody out there,
don't just say I'll take the drug. Learn what it's
going to do to you. Yes, you can have some
amazingly bad side effects. So here's the million dollar question.
(35:13):
I'm ready treatments like PRP are they covered by insurance
or do you have to jump through a million hoops
and get approvals in what not? Because when David, my
husband had to get plasma phoresis, which is a different protocol,
but there was another one he got to proved of that,
but there was another one in there. We don't know,
but it was rejected.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Right now, almost none of the regenerative therapies are covered
by insurance. In the future. In the future, I think
that they will be. I think that I think as
we learn more. But right now, it's very easy for
an insurance company to call these therapies experimental because they
can point to studies that were done where they didn't help.
(35:57):
And that's why we need to go back and we
need to redo those studies. I talked about dose redo,
the studies with doses that are effective, but they're going
to remain experimental in the eyes of insurance companies until
their research is done.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Well, that's why my mother didn't get it, by the way,
because she was rejected. So that you know that it
stinks for you because you want to help patients. Yeah,
and it stinks for anyone who needs the treatment. So
you know, the only winner in that one is the
insurance companies and everybody else loses out.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
You know, I liken it too. Right now, it's very
easy to get coverage for things that suppress the immune
system but don't but not those that stimulate the immune system.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I get so mad when I watch TV.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Doctor Beggatt was every damn commercial to drug commercial for pain, pain, pain,
And I get really mad because it's like, stop paying
all that advertising and let us all get insured so
we can get these other treatments.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Now. Now you know who you know who's also kind
of at the forefront of a lot of these therapies
through are the physical therapists.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, I'm a big do They're great. I've been doing
one for my back.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yes, they do wonderful work. And they also do things
like dry needling, which you could argue dry needling is
a bit of a regentitive therapy. They do things that
all those things that we talked about that stimulate a
healing response.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
But eventually their insurance is not covered anymore because I
did it for my back and then I had to
leave because you know, it was a covered and now
my back hurt's again.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Mm hmm. But you can get coverage for the anti
inflammatories and steroids that suppress the immune system, but not
things that stimulate.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yes, right, And it's just like crazy. I think we're
on the same page there. So you know what is
on the horizon that you're excited about.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
I am excited about the ways to tailor therapy. So
we now have this these broad therapies that can be
very effective, and my question is always how do we
make them, how do we make them more effective, and
how do we choose who's going to respond or not?
So I think that the science of understand standing how
our bodies respond to a therapy. I'll use PRP as
(38:03):
again as an example plate lar ridge plasma because it's
fairly commonly done. Although we've actually had a lot of
the research that I've done with colleagues at Duke and McGill,
which where I am now in Germany. Our research is
really focused around more atologous condition serum, which is the
regenicine program. We actually know how that works deep What
is that?
Speaker 3 (38:23):
What is a regenderaize your program.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
That that is a program that uses a it's a
blood product, but it's not PRP. It's it's a blood
product that it also creates exosomes and some other things
that can reprogram house cells behaved. Some people know of
regina kind when there are a lot of there are
a lot of professional athletes that fly to Germany and
that I treat now in my clinic as well. But
(38:49):
when you hear professional athletes going to Germany for treatment,
oftentimes it's for the regenic kind program because that's where
it started and that was that was one of our
research colleagues in my mentor doctor Peter Whaling. But well,
we know how deeply how that works, and we're also
learning now how PRP works. But to me, there's a
question of some people will respond and some people just
(39:10):
aren't going to respond to PRP no matter what you do,
and we want to know why, and we believe it
has to do with the body's immune response, the ability
to trigger bodies immune response some people may need a
stronger trigger than others. And I would love to see
a test that develops that allow us to find out,
because you don't want to spend a lot of money
(39:32):
out of pocket for an expensive procedure if it's not
going to work. And I'd love to have a test
that says that we can make this work, but we
have to add in these two or three additional components
to make it work. So that's exciting and all these things,
all these therapies, they're helping us to understand how we
heal more fundamentally. I think it's a very exciting time.
(39:54):
And this actually gets back to not just a regenerative therapy,
but how do you heal a cut, a will to fracture?
How do you heal from surgery? All these these mechanisms
are common for all these things that we do, and
how do how do we increase our ability to heal well?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I'm healing from surgery from October. I actually I had
surgery and then I have a that infection. I had
their surgery and that did me in and it's still
healing and I'm in pain, and I'm going to go
deal with it. When I see my PCP and surgery
this week. But healing from surgery is as a much
(40:30):
slower process, particularly do you get And that's been a
learning lesson.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Yes, well, right, healing takes time, and the more we
can understand the mechanisms that drive it, I think better
off we are. And there's also a growing question of
should we be taking long term anti inflammatories after surgery
as well? That's been this standard has been for people
to take anti inflammatories, whether it's hyberprof and NAP or
(40:59):
in meloxa, can any of those medicines, celebrates as well,
to take them for weeks after a procedure, after a fracture,
after a surgery. And I think we are appropriately questioning
whether or not that's the right guidance, because.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Well, I didn't take any I first of all, none
of it appealed to my very sensitive stomach. And again,
my mother had no stomach left. I think she was
in so many drugs, and I think that's happening to me.
So I'm big on tapering off. I tapered off the pain.
I papered off the pain medication almost immediately for all
(41:36):
the reasons that you would expect. Yes, it was and again,
you know, I'd rather have a higher pain threshold and
strengthen that than just succept that. You know, so many
people live with pain. It's just chronic pain. It's like.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Everywhere it is, and it's one of the challenges. One
of the things that I want to talk about in
the book is this difference between cute pain and chronic pain.
Chronic pain is always bad. There's not a single scenario
where chronic pain is good for us. But we have
as a medical profession, we have assumed that therefore all
(42:12):
inflammation is bad, and if chronic inflammation is bad, then
acute inflammation is also going to be bad for us.
That's just not the case. Acute inflammation, short term inflammation,
can turn on these healing mechanisms that our bodies have
and actually prevent long term chronic pain problems. Acute inflammation,
acute inflamation. Example of acute inflammation, well, Alex sh I'll
(42:35):
use the example since macguil right now in Montreal. Actually,
there was a research study that was done here. They
looked at one hundred patients who had acute back pain,
and they looked at the inflammatory response to the back pain,
and those who had a strong inflammatory response actually healed
faster and were less likely to have pain three months out.
(42:57):
If they suppressed it with anti inflammatories, they're more likely
to have They're more likely to have pain.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
That should work into the pain. I mean, like you know,
sometimes you work with exercise, you work into the pain.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
Yes, So there there's again there's a Goldilocks position here
that you don't want to hurt so much you can't move,
because if you can't move, if you're never going to
get better, and you're gonna get a blood clot, you
have all those other issues too, Right, So we want
to have been a move But we want to have
some inflammation the time of an injury, whether it's whether
it's a back pain injury, whether it's an ankle spring,
(43:29):
whether it's a fracture, we want to have some inflammation
because that inflammation will turn on our natural systems.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Well, that's interesting because I've been doing the work into
the pain all my life, you know, through you know,
versus hiding from it because I'm so fearful of pain pills.
So I think that's very interesting. I have one. There
was The FDA recently approved or announced a new hope
for easing remot turn authority it's a set point system.
What do you know about that?
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Very little, very little. So yeah, and you know rheumatoid
athritis is that's a little different argument too. I can
compare the studies that were done. For instance, your mother
may have been on one of the what are called
d marts, the disease modifying antibraeumatic These these drugs that
suppress inflammatory proteins. Interestingly, they can be very powerful for
(44:20):
rhumatoriy athritis. They've all been tested in no osterothritis. They
don't work at all.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
My mother was on so many drugs for her pain
and osteo and and the other, and then the pain
from the stomach ailments from that that there were just
bags of drugs everywhere.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Was awful.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
You know, I want to live in a world and
I think you do too, where we're not on pain killers.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
That would be a wonderful world and we're living better,
even better. We don't need to.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Use them, right, living without pain.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
We don't need to We don't need to use them.
That would be that's the ideal.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yeah, And as we said, you know, a lot of
it just starts with the simple, most basic thing is
to improve the quality of life, improve how you eat,
how you move, and how you manage your stress. Absolutely,
and get off. Get off your seat, like I'll be
doing in a few seconds, to go take a walk
because between I have another show in an hour. I
(45:16):
get up at a walk and stretch. I mean, I'll
even at the post office waiting in line. Yesterday forever
I started doing yoga exercises and everybody started following me
a line because we're all going crazy. You just find
ways to move at all times.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
Well, I think that is the secret. So you have
the first two secrets, which is a good Mediterranean diet
and movement. And there are other tools that we can
tap into, but those are the most important and most fundamental,
aren't they.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Well I really enjoyed talking with you weekend at doctor
Thomas book. Kait He is a regenerative medical medicine therapist.
This is the book Kaling Joins the Nerves. Oh God,
I can't see that. This is great. I'll put it
up on Melanie fabulous. But immune stimulation and the new
Science of regenerate therapy. It's clinical, but it's helpful and
there's some great takeaways at the end of each chapter.
(46:06):
The biggest takeaways you should not have to live with pain.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
I think that's great. And and you know, don't don't fear,
don't fear exercise.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
It's not exercise, it's movement, movement.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Movement in motion and.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Movement in motion. Yeah, just movement and emotion. And you
know there's simple thing go take go, go go do
walk a dog or go to an animal shelter and
go borrow a dog. That's like one way to walk
with your friends. The social thing, because we need socialize.
I walk with my husband and we actually don't talk shop,
which is great. Just if you don't want to walk alone,
(46:39):
walk with people and socialize, there's always a way.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Yes, And actually you're getting into the blue zones now,
aren't you of this social connection being a really important
part of that right exercise, food and social and social
connection and meaning meaning in life and rest and rest
and arrest and recovery.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, R and R. Well, thank you for joining me.
I'm fearless, fabulous you. I really appreciate your time, Good
luck with your whatever you're doing in Montreal, with all
your speaking and whatnot. Thank you keep going and help
us all live without pain.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
A pleasure to speak. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
Great you've been listening to Fearless Fabulous. You follow me
at Melanie Fabulous and check out this show on YouTube
and over sixty five podcast channels on demand. You have
the choice in life to live with confidence and in
good health. Always choose to live it on your terms
and choose fearless and fabulous. Thank you.
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