Mitochondrial Transplants Heal Cells | Tom Benson

Stress burns mitochondria out rapidly. So, high stress jobs, you're taking years off your life. We already know these things. It's just now we know why. Tom Benson, welcome to my podcast. >> Nice to be here. We live to be 90 because our body is constantly supplementing the mitochondria through the bloodstream. Without that, we'd only maybe we'd only live 20 25 years.

Now, let me talk about mitochondrial transplantation. People say, "This sounds like Star Trek." >> It does. If someone [music] experiences mitochondrial dysfunction, what can that look like? Smoke kills mitochondria by the billions. We really need something to help us get over the hump, or we're just going to This is going to sink our [music] health care system eventually. Mitochondria as a part of the health care system is just non-existent. I believe it is a coming revolution in medicine.

There's no doctors anywhere, and I talk to doctors every day, and they're like, "We had no idea." This is not in the textbooks. This is really that new. Tom Benson, welcome to my podcast. Thank you. Nice to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited for this.

I came across you because one of the doctors I follow on X had reposted some news about your company, Mitrix, and I read the website, and I've been doing some research into mitochondrial dysfunction, and I was like, "This is wild." And I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard of it, but I suppose it's pretty cutting edge. And I reached out to you, and you agreed to come on, which is amazing. So, I have a whole bunch of questions for you. This is going to be very good. But, before we get started, do you want to give a brief background about who you are, what it is you do, what it is you've done, that kind of thing. Right.

Sure. So, >> [clears throat] >> yes, I am CEO and founder co-founder of Mitrix. Um I have been starting tech companies for a long time. I used to do I had a couple software companies long ago. And then decided that was boring and went back into physics, which is where my first work was and ended up working in doing a couple startups. I ended up working at uh Stanford Linear Accelerator, which is I'm I'm in the Stanford area, so that's the big >> Cool. the big linear accelerator up on the hill that all the all the kids go to on their school breaks. And uh we were studying mitochondria and other molecular components uh biologics.

And uh I got interested in mitochondria. And then about six or seven years ago I was reading um and came across the the concept of mitochondrial transplantation, which was just this brand new thing. Which sounded crazy to me. I'm like, "No, that's impossible." And the more that I read it more that I realized that like this is real. Um and started digging into it and found out that it was this breakthrough research. And so decided to start My tricks to try to to try to get that commercialized and and developed.

So. Oh. Okay. Well, let's get into it. We were just talking about headphones. This is the less important part, but you said you're not wearing wireless headphones. Is there I don't know whether like I I'm very into this mitochondrial dysfunction information because it seems like the problem behind so many chronic dis- diseases now.

But I'm still wearing wireless airpods or airpods. Is that Is there actual evidence that they're bad? Is that something I shouldn't do if I'm already worried about mitochondrial dysfunction? Uh it's not your your That's that's that's like the far edge of what I know. Um Okay. I wear them just because I'm I'm a little bit Well, you know, I don't really I just somehow don't like the idea of the of the radio waves in my ear. I also use I use plug-in ear plugs for my cell phone.

And I would would have been the first person 10 years ago I would have been the first person to say, "Oh, that's nonsense, you know, and the radio waves, you know, they can't do anything." But I don't know. I mean, we're finding out how how delicate uh mitochondria are specifically and that there is some research that magnetic and radio waves do have an impact on the metabolism and on the body, but we just don't really We don't really know. So. Okay. Okay. Well, let's start off with um like what is what is mitochondria What what is mitochondrial dysfunction?

And what does mitochondrial transplantation look like? Well, first of all, what are mitochondria, right? Well, I think a lot of people know that, but mitochondria are these tidy little uh they're organelles, which means they're little they're little things that flow around inside your cells. And they are literally where all the energy is generated in your cell. And so, if you look at a mitochondria, it's a tidy little thing about the size of a back bacteria. You typically have a couple hundred of them per cell. And they actually have little molecular spinning turbines.

They're really like little turbine jet turbines that are spinning and generating energy for the cell by burning glucose and oxygen or or fat and oxygen. So, they're kind of the last last mile of your [clears throat] of your um digestive system. You know, you have all these nutrients that you bring into your digestive system and they go floating around in your blood. Your cells can't use them unless they're combusted they're combusted into usable energy and that's what the mitochondria do. And that's 95% of the energy in your cells comes from mitochondria. They're extremely complicated. Uh we've we've been in they've been in our in our cells for a billion and a half years.

That's really why we exist at all. The mitochondria are were kind of the key thing that cells needed to develop into a larger organisms. So, yeah, you're about we're all about 10% by weight mitochondria. So, it's a huge >> Yeah, it's crazy. >> huge amount of your body, okay? So, when Yoda says we are energy beings it's true. We are energy beings, okay? We're little we've got these little these little jet turbines running our cells.

So, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, so what so what happens like if someone experiences mitochondrial dysfunction, what can that look like? Well, >> [clears throat] >> first of all, we all experience mitochondrial dysfunction eventually because uh we are born with a set of mitochondria. Actually, our egg the egg cell when it's first fertilized has about somewhere between between 300,000 and 500,000 mitochondria in it. I should say mitochondrial DNA. Each mitochondria has three or four copies or five copies of a tiny little ring of DNA that should be the control system for the for the furnace, right? It's like a little a tiny little ring of DNA, teeny weeny, just controls the engine.

And we're born with those pretty much perfect. So, think of yourself at when you're born of having 100% perfectly functioning mitochondria. And according to what we've seen in recent research that declines slowly at the beginning. When you get to be 55, 60 years old, it starts going to declining really quickly. The DNA in the mitochondria actually becomes damaged just from stress and and usage. And eventually, it just stops working properly. So, it's almost like a battery.

You know how batteries in your cell phone go bad after you use them for a couple years and they just stop holding a charge? It's It's kind of similar to that. Uh by the time you're 90, that mitochondria decline has just basically become a cliff. And you're just boom. And And we think that that is one of the primary reasons, one of the two main reasons that we get old is that our mitochondria just degenerate. Okay? So, that's the first thing.

We all have mitochondrial dysfunction eventually as we get older. And that's one of the reasons why you get weak, you lose muscle, you can't I mean, you know, you get old, you get weaker, right? Your energy levels going down. If you look it up, >> [clears throat] >> they estimate is 50 to 60% decline in energy production in your body by the time you're 90. So, it's really big. >> [clears throat] >> The other thing is they're also very, very delicate. And they're easy to kill. So, when you get poisoned, most poisons actually kill your mitochondria.

That's the first thing to go. If you get radiation, if you get exposed to radiation, radiation kills mitochondria cuz they're very, very fragile. And so, basically, what that means is that if you Oh, and smoking. Smoke kills mitochondria by the billions, okay? What about nicotine? Is it the toxins in smoke? I don't Is it?

I don't know for sure. I'm not Okay. But, I know they've done studies. They've looked at mitochondrial quality and you could see I mean, like there's the line decline. And if you should look at smokers their line is down there, right? So it's like Yeah, okay. >> And if you stop smoking it comes back up but it doesn't come all the way. And so a lot of these things could be permanent.

If you get cancer and you take chemotherapy, chemotherapy is just destroys mitochondria. It's designed to destroy mitochondria. That's actually what they're that's what chemotherapy does. Okay? So the point is that you can kill off your mitochondria earlier. In which case you don't make it to 95 or whatever the normal lifespan is. You're going to only going to make it to 75.

If you have a very high stress, stress stress burns mitochondria out rapidly. Okay? So high stress jobs, you're taking years off your life. That's and we all know this, you know, it's all like we already know these things. It's just now we know why. Interesting. Yeah.

Okay, I I've always wondered um cuz I've like I've done a bunch of research into medications and I know that there are certain medications will where they'll say, you know, it impacts lifespan and I always thought that was odd if someone takes it for a certain period of time and then stops taking it then why would it impact the end of their life? And it's because of this finite amount of mitochondria? Right. Yeah, I mean >> gosh. >> I want to say by the way, I should have said this at the very beginning. Everything that I'm telling you right now is based on our research and our our working hypothesis. You will find other people who will say they don't believe any of this. So just so you know.

This is our theory within my tricks of how this all works. Okay, okay, that's fair. I have read though like there was a study um just recently published in March out of China. I want to say like Guangzhou. I'm probably pronouncing that Guangzhou, China where they were doing mitochondrial injections into the brain of mice with Parkinson's, reversing Parkinson's. >> Yeah, absolutely. We've done that >> isn't We've done that with Alzheimer's in our own in our own company. We we did a bunch of injections where we saw the brain tissue actually regenerating in the in the area that you associate with Alzheimer's.

Did you inject that How did you get that to the brain? Okay, so Let me just Let me talk about mitochondrial transplantation, okay? >> Okay, okay, one thing at a time here. No, no, that's that's okay. And and and people say this sounds like Star Trek. And the truth is >> It it is kind of like Star Trek. I mean, uh Um so, what And so, what happened was it used to be people always thought, well, mitochondria just kind of sit in the cells, and whatever the cell needs to do, when it just makes it. And so, there wasn't really any way for us to do a lot for them except make sure they have the right nutrition.

That's not very hard, though. It's easy to get the mitochondria are very flexible, and as long as you're eating a kind of a normal diet with enough reasonable amount of vitamins, your mitochondria are fine, okay? But, what somebody discovered almost about 10 years ago was that you could take mitochondria out of cells into the outside world, isolate them as a tidy little bit of fluid in a test tube, and reinject them back into the body, either into the bloodstream or directly into the muscle, or any number of ways. It turns out that mitochondria are extremely mobile within the body. They move around constantly. And Nobody knew that. Like, that is not in any of the textbooks that you see in high school.

Is that outside of a cell? >> Yeah. Yeah. Cells Cells actually trade them. >> [laughter] >> Okay? They They >> That's crazy. >> literally trade them like like player like, you know, baseball cards. They just they hand them back and forth between themselves. They are being delivered through your bloodstream at all times. You are getting a continuous flow of supplemental mitochondria in your bloodstream right now and mine.

Billions of mitochondria in the next 5 minutes, there'll be a billion mitochondria that have been transferred from our bone marrow to the rest of our body. Okay? I'm going to just going to self-sabotage and pull out my pull out the That's the problem with having a cord on your earphones. I wave my hands around and then I pull them out. So So you mitochondria are transplanting through your bloodstream as a as a Literally, they're like a supplemental flow of mitochondria that your body is sending out to the tissues to try to keep them, you know, full with fresh mitochondria. Okay? >> [clears throat] >> And that's what we call the mitochondrial cycle of the body. We believe that there is a very, very well-designed uh distribution system for rationing young, healthy mitochondria out into the outer parts of the body, the brain, the heart, the you know, muscles, in order to keep us alive longer than we normally would be would we we we would live.

Without that, we'd only live maybe we'd only live 20, 25 years. But we live We live to be 90 because our body is constantly supplementing the mitochondria through the bloodstream. Okay? Imagine your favorite lecture, dial that up on max, put that on steroids, and then add some cinematic elements to it. That's the best way I could describe a Peterson Academy lecture. There's always that one [music] professor who's like, "Oh man, you know, you got to take this one professor. They're the best."

But, at Peterson Academy, it's all of those that one professor. I'm still paying off college from 10 years ago, and I'm [music] also still questioning the value that I got out of college. >> It's very common nowadays for students to be in thousands [music] and thousands of dollars of debt. >> It breaks my heart that interest rates that are just going to keep on piling up on them for an education that doesn't entirely [music] serve them. >> You are stuck in the room. You have to do a particular set of courses. And I have to convince myself to stay focused. It's just pretty dry. >> With Peterson Academy, it's a fraction of the cost, and you get access to all these different topics. >> anything from sciences, nutrition, why we get sick, all the way up to history, tons of courses, tons of [music] really good lectures. >> I'm always looking for high-quality educational content. Peterson Academy provides it all. >> The instructors are amazing. They're so well-known in their field that you just want to pay attention. >> The more I access, the more I listen, the more I learn, the more I want to learn.

I just keep expanding, and I just want more. >> Traditional university can sometimes grind you down. Peterson Academy will be able to scratch that itch of you wanting to learn and continuing to grow as a person. >> I [music] can't wait to see where Peterson Academy goes. There's just so much potential, [music] and it's just the beginning. >> to college because I had to. I go to Peterson Academy because I want to. >> You just kind [music] of have to focus on what's going to actually change your life. Stop paying attention to what things [music] are supposed to look like, and actually aim for something, and you might just stumble across something like Peterson Academy. So, you said, like, one quick question. You said, like, from an egg, we get 300 to 500,000, but then you said that there might be a billion moving around.

Is that because they're are they created in bone marrow? Like where do these come from? Or does each cell create its own? >> Well, cells >> body? Cells are Yeah, the cells create the mitochondria, but the stem cells specifically. So, all the cells create can create mitochondria. But but all the cells out there like muscle cells, they create mitochondria. Or they refurbish.

They Actually, they kind of rebuild them every 3 months. Mitochondria wear out really fast. But the But the But the skeletal muscle and the heart and all those organs, they're not very accurate at creating the mitochondria and they tend to create a lot of errors in the code because they they're working frantically. Like especially that's why it's bad if you're under stress. If you're under stress, your cells tend to replicate much more quickly and they do a sloppy job on the mitochondria. So, they get they get they get damaged. The bone marrow in our view is kind of the factory that is preserving the heritage of the best mitochondria and creating fresh younger mitochondria and sending those out to the body in order to replace the ones that get burned out.

And that's all coming from the stem cells in the bone marrow. Okay? Specifically, the stem cells create platelets. Each platelet has five mitochondria. Anywhere between five and 10 mitochondria. You You create 100 billion platelets per day from your bone marrow. And then you retire 100 billion at the end of 10 days.

And at the end of their lifespan, the platelets before they go off to be recycled, they squirted out their mitochondria in these little extracellular vesicles. And the other cells The other cells pick them up. >> That That's crazy. I don't I don't know if that's just like the nerd in me. I took cell biology a long time ago, which was my favorite course in university. Because it was so well like well-designed and complicated. But I didn't I certainly didn't learn about platelets delivering mitochondria. >> This is I'm telling you, nobody knows this because it's so new. This actually was discovered by our chief scientist.

Uh a guy a guy up in Quebec discovered this in his lab. He's a very very He's a He's a an amazing scientist. And um they discovered Oh, platelets give off mitochondria when they're when they when they're at the end of their lifespan. Like nobody knew. And then we went in and we and we did some studies where we said, "Well, what happens to them after they're they're given given off?" What we found out is within 5 minutes almost all of those have been absorbed by all the nearby cells. Cuz they're they're they're in these little vesicles.

They have little targeting molecules on them. And all the other cells go, "Oh, yum. I'm going to grab these." See See, mitochondria are like money. If you see a $100 bill in the street, it's not going to be there for long, okay? Mitochondria are like money. They're very very hard to make and they're really important.

And so the cells will grab them. And pull them in. And that's all been that's all part of evolution from a billion years ago. That's a what they call an evolutionarily conserved process. Same thing Same thing in the brain. There are specialized little vesicles in the brain. The mitochondria are manufactured in star cells and other types of cells in the brain.

They get put into vesicles and they float over to the neurons. And the neurons grab them and use them. And then when they burn out, they put them into other little vesicles with different receptors and float them back to be re- rebuilt. Okay? That's your brain. That's Yeah. crazy. If I hadn't done the amount of reading on mitochondrial dysfunction and these kind of things before I reached out to you, I don't know if I could even believe this.

It's so It's so um Well, it's hopeful and futuristic and it sounds too good to be true until you start linking all these weird chronic diseases being like, "Well, why are there so many people so many people who are sick with like multi-system failure?" It's not just their brain, it's not just mental illness, it's chronic fatigue, it's pain. Like, what hits the whole body and why are there so many kind of untreatable disorders like people talk about chronic chronic COVID like long COVID is a big thing. Lyme disease like >> COVID destroys mitochondria. It is a proven fact. They've the study the papers came out two two years ago. COVID destroys mitochondria on a massive basis.

So, it just hit some people like some people got hit harder and ended up with long COVID and they don't know what to do with that. >> there's many other things. The thing about mitochondrial dysfunction is it's kind of like it's always there in the background, but it may it may not be the main reason. But, it's a contributing factor for so many things, okay? If your energy levels go down, what happens when we hit 55, 60 years old? People start getting Alzheimer's, they start getting Parkinson's, they get ALS, they get arthritis, they get, you know, all these diseases, right? If they get can- or and cancer, of course, your odds of getting cancer at 60 are like 10 times more than when you're 30 because your mitochondria have gotten weak and they can't power the immune system anymore to keep the keep the all the cancer under control. There's also other things that cause cancer that have nothing to do with mitochondria.

But, it's like it's like a car that's all beat up that's running out of fuel. Well, it's beat up, it doesn't work very well, and it's running out of fuel. You know, right? You You can fix all those things. So, that's the thing about mitochondria is they they may not be the main reason, but they're always a contributing factor in all these diseases, okay? And what you're saying, what you're getting to is that we as a society are not dealing with this at all. I mean, there's no doctors anywhere, and I talk to doctors every day.

And they're like, we had no idea. The scientists have no idea. This is not in the textbooks. This is really that new. Uh where, you know, mitochondria as a part of the health care system is just non-existent. And so, it's a revolution, and I believe I believe it is the coming revolution in medicine. So.

Uh yeah, I so do I. Um are there any doctors using this that you know of, like in any way? Yeah, I mean, we we're the So, that the people who discovered mitochondrial transplantation, that was about 10 years ago. They've been using it in human patients on a very, very small scale. You like it This This was originally used for heart surgery on on babies. The guy who invented this did it because he wanted to restore some of the damaged tissue in the heart when he was operating on these children. And so, it's it wasn't just chronic In that case, it wasn't chronic disease.

He was doing it to fix an injury, okay? There are Northwell Health, which is one of the which is the actually the biggest hospital chain in New York state. It's a 23-hospital chain. Their whole system is working on this. They've got projects going to look at how to use this in the emergency room. Really? People have heart attacks.

If you have a heart attack, give you a big jolt of a fresh mitochondria that get into the heart and you could bring back a bunch of that tissue. There's been studies on stroke victims. Very successful. They've used it for skin vic wound healing. There's people using it for burns. There's people using it for for chronic diabetes wounds. Um You know, you just smear Smear it on.

You smear it on a wound on the outside of the body and put a band-aid over it and the mitochondria are in the or in the the gel that you put on there and they get into the tissue and they and they Whoa. Yeah. It's like that that uh uh Remember uh uh The Hunger Games, you know, they had a She had this little jar of cream and she put it on and it made the wound magically disappear. It's science fiction kind of stuff, okay? Uh uh The biggest [clears throat] problem is that when people hear all this, they they think, "Oh my god, this is, you know, you guys are crackpots." >> [sighs] >> Yeah, I mean that I mean yes, obviously, that's what it sounds like, but if you actually like read the studies and think about it, it does make sense. Like it does make sense. It's just I guess it in nature, you wouldn't have this huge influx of mitochondria.

So, it's science fiction as in like the body can produce it with stem cells and you can slowly heal, but you wouldn't ever have a paste with a huge dose of mitochondria to heal things. Well, actually, when you get sick, if you get an infection or if you get cancer, the number of mitochondria that are put loaded into each platelet doubles. That's been proven. And so, the body is responding. Oh, okay. >> more mitochondria when and needed to fight an infection. And then people always say, "Well, why doesn't it just keep setting that number all the time?" Because it's rationing, cuz that has a limited quantity, see?

So, the body is constantly trying to adjust, like it doesn't want to use them up too fast, but it also needs to keep you alive. So, >> That makes sense. >> really interesting. So, what we can do then as doctors is say, "Okay, well, we can we can we can take them from the outside world. Either get them from donors or get them Hold on a second. Waving my hands around again. So, what I was saying was that the idea of mitochondrial transplantation and what all these all of all of these researchers are researchers are testing is that we could take mitochondria from potentially from donors or more likely we grow them in a in a bioreactor, which is what we're focused on primarily. And then you could have your bioreactor growing new mitochondria for you.

And if you get sick, you could you could get a big a big chunk of that. And even if you're elderly, you know, that you could basically make your immune system much stronger until you get rid of whatever that illness is. So, or if you're in the hospital, they could have bags of transplantable mitochondria. If somebody comes in who's been, you know, a soldier or a firefighter or somebody who's who's been badly injured, they could give them in the mitochondria to help them heal faster. Okay, I've got let me see. I've got a bunch of questions, but where should I start? Okay, if you would so say you can grow mitochondria in a bioreactor, you you need an original source of them, right?

So, would someone have to do a bone marrow transplant or does it have to be bone marrow or could it be muscle or something and then We're not 100% sure yet, but I think we could get right now we're we're just getting them from the blood. So we do a blood Hmm. He gets stem cells from the blood. But I you know, that's all that's like that's still big research. There's a lot of work going into it right now. But that but the best guess is you do it from a blood transplant. I mean that sounds a lot more comfortable to be honest than a bone marrow transplant.

Well, I mean if you've if you've got somebody who's got Alzheimer's for instance, well, I mean you know, it might be worth it to put it in a blood transplant. >> But the key is but that you've got to figure out some way to grow more of them because you can you know, whatever they have in their body they're already using. They're already you know, by the time you're 60 70 years old, you're already low on your your inventory. So it's all about finding a larger source of mitochondria. Your bone marrow just can't keep up after a while. That's what aging is. Your bone marrow just runs out of steam. And so we have to supplement it with an external source.

This doesn't sound as crazy when you've done research into stem cells and what they've been used for. Is there is there reason Do you think the reason stem cells have been useful is primarily because the stem cells have mitochondria in them so you're kind of doing a mitochondrial Yeah. >> Yeah, okay. >> stem cells literally are mitochondrial donors. And that's been shown many times. If you and they've studied it where they see the stem cell comes up and if there's a cell if the stem cell it comes near a cell that is needy that needs help. Let's say it's been damaged in some way, the stem cell will stop and it will build a little tube and you it will start sending mitochondria to that other cell. And you can see them. You can see the mitochondria going down this tube.

It's amazing and they've done this over and over again. And if the cell is not in need, the mitochondria the stem cell doesn't stop. And so it's literally like mitochondria stem cells are like roving repair trucks. And if they see a broken-down car, they come over and they give it a jump start. It's basically what stem cells do. So. >> Wow. Yeah, it's a great it's amazing.

What stem cells are they're factories and they build all these and it isn't just mitochondria. There's other things, too. And there's growth factors and all this other stuff. But then the reason that they might not be as effective for some people maybe is because it's not the same dose as getting well mitochondria. >> So if you get a couple hundred million stem cells, that's that's not enough to cure anything significant. That's the problem the problem with stem cells is not that they don't work. There's just not enough of them. You need trillions, not billions, okay?

You know, [clears throat] you've got about a quad You've got about 10 quadrillion mitochondria in your body. And by the time you get to be 90 years old, you've probably lost 40% of those or 50% of them. And so um the numbers are huge. And so that's our that's the nice thing about mitochondrial transplantation is that you can do it in really, really, really large quantities. Wow. And that must be what what they're doing when they're doing this, trying to save tissue during during organ transplants. Right. >> a large So do they um say with a pediatric heart um are they harvesting from blood and then growing outside of the body to create a bunch more or No, in the case of the pediatric surgery, they actually just take a little bit from the leg muscle.

From the kid's leg muscle. It's It's a a self-transplant. And remember that when they're kids, they're mitochondrially healthy. It's just in a case of this heart surgery, the heart cells have been damaged and so the mitochondria have died off and the and the body just doesn't have enough time to get new new ones in there. And so the surgeon is just taking some from the leg and inserting them into the heart and that works. Works great. In someone who's 60, 70 years old, that probably wouldn't work as well because the ones you get from their leg are not in very good shape.

That makes sense. So you have to do this >> Where is Go ahead. >> How how like how many places is this being done? Because I like I hadn't heard about it. So is it one hospital? Is it just a few hospitals in the US? Is it all over the world in a few places? >> It's all over the world. There's probably 10 or 15 locations now in the United States that are experimenting with it.

Major places. Stanford has three or four different groups that are studying it. Harvard, Walter Reed Hospital, University of Washington, University of Kentucky has a whole center that's doing mitochondrial transplantation. So it's actually very Wow. >> Oh, yeah. And there are there's our company which is really kind of the US and Canada and then there's another startup in Switzerland and there's another one in Israel and there's one in Japan. So there's a lot of companies popping up trying to figure out various ways to to make this, you know, to to scale this up. Okay, okay.

Interesting. >> Oh, it's it's it's really happening. The the first I'll just say that Northwell Health which is this big hospital chain in New York, uh a year ago today they had the first ever mitochondrial transplantation conference there in Long Island. Um that sounds so interesting. >> A lot of people are doing it. It's hidden. >> or is that online? Can people watch that? >> go on YouTube. It's all on YouTube. What was it called?

I'm going to write it down. >> First annual mitochondrial transplantation conference and it was at Northwell Health. I think it was Hofs, Hofstra uh University uh uh research center. And there's a there's a the head of emergency services for that entire hospital group, guy named Lance Becker, Dr. Becker. Is he's pushing this as for a national rollout. They they want to get this in all the emergency rooms. That's crazy.

Okay, so this is very The reason that this sounds crazy is because it's just super new. Like I read some studies I read I think I found a study talking about maybe from 2012 talking about in theory we could do this kind of thing with mitochondria, but all the other studies I've read are from 2020. Some of them are from you guys and they're not all of them, but like a quite a few are from you guys are from like 2024 and 2025 and this year. And then so It's it's it's an It's like the wave, you know, everything comes in waves and it's definitely starting to crest Uh it's it's happening very quickly. We're getting a lot of There's a lot of publicity floating around. Um there was a big article in The Economist and Scientific American and I mean, we have and in in our team, I'll just brag, I mean, we've got some of the best scientists on the West Coast. Really, they are the best.

We've got a guy named Mike Snyder as our co-founder who runs the used to run the genetics department for all of Stanford. He's started like 15 companies. Wow. Uh we've got Scott Parazynski who's a space shuttle astronaut who is on our board. Uh we've got a bunch of we've got some celebrities. We've got all these major scientists who are all at everybody else you know, scientists like to go with something that looks new and exciting. So uh that's why we've had a lot of great people have jumped in because they just they say this has a lot of this has a lot of potential.

We want to help it happen. So So what you guys are are focused on So, people know that this works, but the problem is quantity. Right. >> Because you don't want to get a donation from somebody and steal their mitochondria. Like, that's not ideal. >> Right. And there's not enough donors in the world to do this. You need a lot of mitochondria. That's the problem. >> Yeah.

So >> So, then what what's the solution to that? This is what you're working on, right? This is what you're working on. >> Well, we have two we have two things that we're doing. First of all, we have opened up a few clinics uh just a week ago, we opened up some clinics in uh in California, Texas, and Florida where we're going to be doing some really simple, early mitochondrial treatments, okay? That's a week ago. That's so funny. I was looking into this.

I found out about mitochondrial transplantation and was like wonder who's doing that and then found you 4 days ago. I didn't realize you opened the clinics like a week ago. Yeah. This is it's crazy how like new this is. It's wild. Anyway, sorry. Continue.

I'll just say the biggest problem with any medical treatment like this is that you know, the medical system is slow, right? It's just the way it is. And and they say I think a lot Somebody calculated it takes 17 years for any new thing to work its way through to the point where the doctors actually start using it, right? And so when I started Mytricks, that was exactly why I started the company. I said, "I'm not willing to wait 17 years." Because how many people are going to die? You know, and there are children.

There's babies that have mitochondrial damage from birth. They're born that way. There's about 10,000 children in the world who have damaged mitochondria from birth. And and they die. I mean, it's fatal. And it's awful. And so, you know, I'm not willing to wait around and let them have no hope.

So, we we decided with Mytricks it's like, no, we're going to push this. We want this to happen faster. And um um sometimes that causes chaos, but you know, you have to I I feel like you have to push things, otherwise you're not doing your job. So, um yes, we're opening up these clinics and um I'm sure other people will be as well, and there's hospitals that are they're doing We just did some early safety trials. We have a whole volunteer group of of elderly people who are just love the idea of being the volunteers and being the the test pilots for the world, you know. Um I have a guy who's 91 years old, who's a quantum physics professor and has written science fiction books and is just brilliant, and he is our kind of our oldest volunteer. Then I have another guy who's 71, who is one of our test pilots, so we just we also just completed a whole series of safety trials with them.

And we found that it was safe. So, um that's where that's where the world is at right now, is trying to get it trying to get it to the point where we can actually start delivering it to people. Yeah. I Yeah. Is there Okay, I I read a study last week, I think, that it was just published on um ketogenic diet inducing hypomania or mania in some people who were depressed um who hadn't experienced that before. And I was thinking, well, you know, maybe their body is constantly trying to create more energy for their brain, and when they suddenly get flooded with ketones, they kind of spike and get too much energy. Is that kind of thing I mean, I guess it's hard to say, but is that kind of thing a potential possibility if you do this giant infusion of mitochondria? >> Oh, yes.

There's all all kinds of We have to be very careful. Uh because if you take somebody who has low energy and you give them this gigantic infusion all at once. I mean, we this is not a natural thing. Like so, we don't know what's going to happen. Think of think of being the first people to ever do a heart transplant. 60 years ago when they first did the first heart transplant. They didn't know how to do it. They didn't know what was going to happen.

Like and they had to experiment. And just see you know, and and you know, I think the first one the first person passed away, but then I think the second person on they were able they figured it out and they were able to keep them alive. So, this is a major medical procedure and you have to treat it you have to treat it very carefully. Uh this is not something it's not like a pill. This is you know, you need doctors to do this. So. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

But you've done Okay, so you have some mice studies. And what kind of like levels of mitochondria can you inject into mice safely or have it appear that way anyway? Yeah, we could do pretty much huge amounts. Um so, we are doing um >> [clears throat] >> we've done mouse injections for years where we've done as much as 1% of their total mitochondria per injection. Woah. And how how many injections are you giving these super mice? >> 20 30, you know. Uh over the course of a year.

So, we just wanted to see how much we could do. >> [laughter] >> And and these are elderly mice. They're like 24 months old, which is pretty old for a mouse. And they do live longer, although we don't really we don't really look at their lifespan cuz I I don't think mice are that useful. But the the most interesting thing was that when you give them these injections and you see significant increases in strength and endurance and oxygen consumption and cognition. Um you see as the as I mentioned earlier, you see that the brain actually some parts of the brain actually regenerate. And that gets back to this question of that this question of is are neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and also mental health problems like even potentially autism, although that's that's not hasn't been studied, but schizophrenia they found they they did a study of people with schizophrenia and they found out that they had deficient mitochondria in the area where that that is cause causing the schizophrenia. And so there's all these questions now about that we could we could we help with mental illness as well.

Uh uh but as you were just saying, it's like if you just give somebody these gigantic doses, could that cause them to go too far? And the answer is maybe. So we have to be careful. >> Yeah. You know, I keep telling my test pilots I'm like, "Don't run out and start lifting weights that you haven't done before because your muscles are not ready. You may feel really energetic, but your muscles haven't rebuilt yet. Your tendons are still weak. So we're going to have probably have to treat them like astronauts coming back from the space station, you know, when they they take them through and they give them all these rehab exercises to bring them back to where they can where they can walk around on the earth.

So." Well, it makes sense in theory that this could be used on mental disorders because like the evidence now that ketogenic diets help is overwhelming honestly if you actually look into it for serious mental disorders. And then there's people like Chris Palmer from Harvard and he's like, "Yeah, it's a brain energy problem." >> Right. And so why why wouldn't it work for that? Yeah, Dr. Palmer's doing amazing work. There's a lot of other people looking at that too.

Um And yes, the thing about ketogenic diets is they affect mitochondria. When you when you change your nutrient, you change your glucose levels, the mitochondria are forced to adjust. And it causes them to kind of you know, it causes them to readjust. And that's good for them, see? And so that's why I think ketogenic diets you know, historically people who fast usually show a lot of benefit from it because they're it helps the mitochondria kind of shake out the cobwebs, that's what I was calling it. Um The other one that people have been experimenting with is red light therapy. Yeah.

It is there is evidence that that certain wavelengths of light cause the mitochondria to just work a little better. It's not permanent. It's not a permanent fix, but as long as you've got that red light on you, you're warming up the mitochondria in the muscles and they and they just they work a little more efficiently. So. And is that like the I I was reading about that yesterday cuz I was looking into a red light bed, I don't know, to see if that would help my dad out. Which sounds lovely. I was like, it's not going to be a cure, but like it certainly won't hurt.

Is there a certain Is that the 810 nanometer wavelength that >> There's certain wavelengths that'll go through the outer part of the skin and get into the muscle. That's what you want. It's 810 and 650, I think. Um You can You think those These things are cheap. You can get them on Amazon for 45 bucks. You can get a I have a couple. I use them.

If you got a back If you got back pain, I I don't use Motrin anymore. I use one of these red light panels and I found it works really well. I used when I was really sick, when I had arthritis and I was on a bunch of medication, and before I was on a diet, my mom was doing She was a like massage therapist. She has a degree, but she's a massage therapist and then she bought all these lasers home. And this was in 2000 and Lasers. 10. And And we were like, "Okay, Mom, you've brought your magical lasers home." Like this was a very This might have been 2000 and like eight.

This was She was way ahead of the time. That was way ahead of the time cuz that That's back when nobody believed in any of this stuff. So, your mom Well, we didn't We certainly didn't believe her and it took like So, she's feeling rather vindicated Yes. now. >> [laughter] >> But I didn't I So, she put them on me to try to help with my arthritis and I was just like, "Mom, this is like trying to throw water onto a forest fire. Like Like a drop onto a forest fire. This isn't" So, I didn't believe it cuz it didn't help. But when I got my arthritis under control and then went into like psych med withdrawal when I stopped all my medications, I was using the red light on my head and on my like skin when I was getting rashes and I could actually feel it. And this was a BioFlex laser.

Yep. Um and it that was the first time where I felt it and I was like, "Oh, I can feel a little bit less pain." It wasn't like a Not big. >> magical cure, but it was a little bit less pain. I was like, "Interesting." >> That's right. And that's exactly what I found. I use it 15 minutes a day on our sore spot I have. And it's like it's not magic, but it it just it's like a it's almost like a heating pad, really.

And you know, it warms you up. And of course, I know a lot of people that are saying, "Oh, you you don't need to do that. Just go out and lay in the sun for 15 minutes." And that's probably true, you know? I mean, sunlight has all these safe frequencies in it. So, uh there's a lot of people who they've a lot done a lot of research showing that that I grew up in the '70s and we were all tanning all the time. That was back when you Oh, yeah, you got to have the perfect tan.

So, uh and then and now everybody's like, "Oh, no, we're going to get skin cancer." So, it's it's one of those things that that kind of switches back and forth every 10 years. Yeah, well, the staying out of the sun I'm not sure if I really believe that. I stopped getting um sunburns when I went on the carnivore diet, but even before that when I was on the paleo diet, when I just cut out processed foods, I stopped burning. Which I was like, I don't know what that's about. Um anyway, let's get back to the kind of like science fiction part. So, I feel like in the future, would it be possible to have some sort of like to go to the doctor, have them taken in a blood take the take your blood, put it into some sort of bioreactor that you just have or you store somewhere, and then whenever you're sick, you can take some from that.

Is that the idea? That's the idea. Um Wow. Kind of like stem cell like I guess this is kind of like cord banking. Like when you have a baby, you can send like I I've never done that cuz I was like, eh, I don't know how I feel about that. If it's even worthwhile, I'm not sure. But like you can store your um your cord like blood when the baby's born for future stem cell use.

So, it's >> and the mitochondria >> Like a way better The mitochondria in cord blood is like the best quality mitochondria on the planet, of course, because it's so young, right? And so, yeah, that's a great idea. Except the trick that we have to we have to figure out and that's what we've been working on is taking your 80-year-old stem cells and converting them back into a younger version. So, we want to make your 80-year-old stem cells 20 again or 15 years old. So, that we don't you don't have to bank it when you're a kid. You could just take whatever you have and make it younger, okay? Which is very complicated.

That's that's where the the biology gets really complicated, but we think we can do it. And then that it becomes a question of could we grow enough mitochondria to provide, you know, an entire population because you can't just have this be, you know, this will be so useful that everybody's going to want it. And so the our our company mission actually officially is to build mitochondrial factories all over the world and pump them out by the kiloton. Like we want tons of mitochondria and we want to supply all the hospitals so that it becomes >> sense. >> a standard supplement for anybody who needs it. Just anytime you need to you can go to the hospital and get a bunch of mitochondria. So your concern is really with the bioreactor. Yeah.

Well, the bioreactor and also >> showing figuring out how to do the administration. So we have we have doctors who are practicing with this trying to figure out do we inject it directly into the muscle? Do we do it intravenously? Do we do blah blah blah? You know, how do we do it? How do we measure it? I mean, there's just all the details of how to do this as a medical treatment.

Yeah. People are still trying to figure that out with stem cells. You can get the IV infusions, you can inject it directly into a joint, you can do it where the injury is. There's somebody some neurologist um that's doing exosome like ultrasound exosomes into the brain. They're trying to do that for a treatment. Um and I still think they haven't exactly figured out. I know like my parents' experience was they did IV stem cells that my mom thought helped her dry eyes.

My dad didn't think did anything. Um but he had some elbow pain and he had an injection there and it got rid of his elbow pain. Um my mom my mom actually had much more success with it with like old arthritic damage and she started gardening again. And this was it's not active arthritis anymore, but it was like just joint damage and she started gardening again after So, she's had And then they went to um I don't know if you've heard of Dr. Jiao. He does like stem cell training or something. I I didn't know anything about him. >> I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, right. Re training >> know much about that. I don't know if that like I don't know anything about that. It looks interesting, but they went and did that. Uh I don't know. It's pretty new, right? We need a lot We need a lot more research.

And I like this mitochondrial I like the mitochondrial idea. Think of the mitochondria. Think of the mitochondria as being the next generation of stem cell therapy. That's really what it is. People say, "Well, how does this relate to stem cells?" They say, "Well, this is a stem cell therapy. The only difference is that we're not injecting the stem cells into you.

We're keeping them outside and squirt squeezing out the mitochondria, which are the kind of the effective ingredient. We're injecting the mitochondria into you. And actually it's mitochondria and exosomes. And so um the stem cells you keep outside because there's some risk factors with stem cells, plus the quality that we're talking about doing something that is literally a thousand times higher doses than the current stem cell therapy. So, it's a thousand X. And that's why your mom got a little benefit. Because she was right up in most stem cell therapies are just kind of right on the edge of being beneficial.

It's just not enough. You just need more. If if she'd gotten 10 or 20 injections, she probably would have gotten a lot more benefit out of it. But those are expensive and they're and they can be There's risks because there's there's DNA in the stem cells that can go bad. There's no DNA in mitochondria that can go bad. So, it's a it's a much safer way of doing it, okay? And they're so concentrated that I could get a thousand X into a single shot.

If that was a stem cell and I gave you that many, it would you you'd probably kill you. So, um it's just mitochondria are just a kind of a uh the next generation of stem cell therapy. Wild. Yeah. And so, who do you think is like out of anybody in the world, who's the most ahead in this? We are. >> Do research-wise? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I like that answer. I I's that's our goal. I mean, of course, others would would argue that because they think they're ahead. But, you know, that's my answer as a CEO. Um We're uh but, you know, a lot of us we're all going after slightly different variations. There's different ways of doing it. There's a lot of different ways of doing it.

And so, everybody's kind of picked a little piece of the puzzle and we're all trying to optimize that piece of the puzzle. And I I I'm I I mean, look, I talked to my competitors all the time. We're very friendly because look, nobody's you know, we're not worried about competing with each other. We're worried about just getting the world to accept this at all. That's always the challenge, right? That's like when you're in the frontier, you don't worry about the guy next door. He's your friend.

Peop- What you worry about is can you get anybody from the outside world to even acknowledge your existence? And that's the problem with mitochondrial transplantation. It's just getting any attention at all from the world. Any kind of, you know, Go ahead. It seems It seems like pretty It seems easy to explain given stem cells. Now, stem cells are still considered fringe. Um but, that's mostly from people who don't know what they're talking about, to be honest.

Um but, and because they're not a you know, they're not a cure-all. You can't inject them into somebody and then they all see benefits, you know? So, it it's tricky. But, talking about them as like the kind of upgraded or extremely upgraded stem cell um infusion kind of that should be more effective. >> and PRP and all those kinds of those kinds of treatments they've always the biggest problem is that they they're I think that they're just not quite strong enough. Because you're always on not quite up Did I get a big enough dose to make a difference, right? I see. >> Oh, so Sorry. So, PRP, so if Can you explain PRP for people who don't know?

It's used in cosmetic stuff all the time. But, but what's PRP? >> injections. Um now, PRP is what's called platelet-rich plasma. And that's where they take they take a little bit of your blood, they isolate out the platelets. Sometimes they they they do what's called activation where it causes the platelets to clot. And then you inject it back into uh elbow joints. They use them for cosmetic stuff.

They do use them for wound healing in some cases. Platelets are full of magical ingredients. And so, what you get out of that platelet injection is is useful. But, the problem with the PRP is it's not very much. Mhm. So, it's back to the whole thousand X thing. You need a thousand times more than what you can get out of one of those PRP treatments.

And also, it doesn't work very well on old people. And now we know why, because the mitochondria in the in your platelets when you're older >> Oh. are not very are not very useful. They're not they're not high quality. Wow. >> So. Okay. That's interesting. I've always wondered if PRP was worth trying out.

Just even one of those like I think they're micro-needling facials. I was like, you can do one with PRP. That seems good. But, I was like, what are in platelets that are useful? But, that's the answer. >> We're probably going to do facials and and wrinkle work uh at our clinics, actually. Because it's a it's a good use for mitochondria. Well, honestly, too, just for getting into the public, like red light it it was picked up by a lot of plastic surgeons. >> Yeah.

Right. >> They're like use right same with hyperbaric oxygen. Like the plastic surgeons seem to be they're on the edge of what makes people look better quickly. So, >> that's not a bad place to start. I think mitochondrial injections will be very powerful for cosmetic stuff. But again, where do you get them from? Yeah. So, that's that's a challenge.

That's where you have to have that bioreactor. Yeah, okay. Cool. Okay, let me just see. I didn't even look at any of my notes. Um but I feel like we covered Like I could go on for 3 hours on this, so you'll have to stop me. I will.

I will. Um but I want to just make sure I didn't miss anything. We covered some risks and the risks are we don't know, we need more research kind of. But that mice seem to tolerate large doses very well. >> Look, I just want to say this. I you know, we all talk among each other in this field and it's like nobody has ever had any problem of any kind. Every single person who does mitochondrial transplantation, it works fine. No negative reaction, no danger that we could see.

And we just finished up trial where we were doing a really big doses. They were really fine. These were they they came away, they felt like a million bucks. So, And as these did you you guys just came out with um a human Did you do a human test? What was the recent thing? Okay, so what did that look like? >> We did uh what's called escalating dose tests using mitochondria that we got out of platelets, okay? They're [clears throat] not bioreactor mitochondria yet.

That's kind of phase two is we're going to move to the bioreactor version, but for the first one we used use platelets mitochondria from platelets. And we started really really small with little injections in the arm and then we looked to see if there was a any in you know, any kind of rash and there wasn't so we did another one. So we did four larger injections each time in a 71-year-old and a 91-year-old. And it worked great. No absolutely no problem of of any kind. We did blood tests, we looked at their all their hormones and their cytokines and all their blood chemistry and we saw no problem with that. Could they feel it?

Could they could they >> Yeah, was the dose high enough for them to feel anything? >> No, not really. They felt they felt generally they felt good for a week after, but that's you that could be placebo effect. So you know you know, we don't I tell people I say we don't we're not going to release any data about efficacy until we have better data. I mean that's you have to be very careful. This was just for safety. It was it was called a preliminary safety trial. And it seemed to go off just fine.

So uh and there are there are doctors who are want to treat children and they're looking at the safety data and using it to justify trying that same treatment for some of these children. So it's all it's all you know, has value to do this kind of work. >> for sure. Okay, wow. So the next step after this the safety data, that's when you start doing human trials and is your plan to do these escalating doses there about at much higher doses? >> Yeah, much bigger and so for instance, a typical unit of play of mitochondria for us a typical unit is 300 billion mitochondria. That is that is a unit we we consider that to be a unit of mitochondria and so >> Wow. we were doing like up to a half a unit. That was the most we did in our safety trials and no negative impact whatsoever. Everybody felt great afterwards.

So, um then we'd get into multiple units. Larger and larger doses. So. Interesting. And maybe like in an ideal future long-term like if this comes to fruition and people can like have their own mitochondria in bioreactors maybe what people want to do is a small amount every day, you know, just to boost themselves up rather than these large amounts. That's what people always say, "Well, how long is the treatment going to be?" And of course everybody wants to know how expensive it's going to be.

It's like, "Well, nobody knows." I mean, we we're doing everything by hand, so it's horribly expensive now cuz we're at we do it all by hand. I've got a bunch of lab technicians sitting there with test tubes, you know, on wearing the the you know, the hood and all that. And that's just not the way to do this. You need equipment to automate it if you're going to do this on any kind of large scale. Yeah. >> Otherwise, it just takes too long. So, [clears throat] how much does it cost?

Nobody knows. We won't know until we build the equipment and try to automate this and do it on some kind of large scale. Right now, we're it's like building a car from scratch. Well, it's going to be very expensive cuz building cars from scratch is expensive. You need a you need mass production. Um so, that's our kind of that's what we want to get to next is the mass production environment. Yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, how else are are hospitals going to use it as treatment? >> Right. They can't, right? >> Right. And and if you have an emergency room, for example, well, you're not going to have time for a bioreactor, so you need a subway to freeze the mitochondria in bags. And then maybe you have five there's mitochondria have different what's called haplo groups. Kind of almost like blood types. So, maybe you do the same thing as they do with blood where you have you have like 10 different varieties and somebody comes in and they've been injured and you do a quick test and you give them the closest mitochondria they have and it helps them it helps them heal faster. Uh I mean, think of the military applications for the military applications are amazing, right? >> Yeah.

So, That That haplo Okay, that was one of the questions I wanted to ask is like, yeah, do you need to be specific? Like, can You said you can do transplants where somebody can donate them, yes, but but it needs to be the same haplotype? >> Well, [clears throat] that's something that's actually very important to mention. I'm glad you brought it up. Your mitochondrial DNA is identical to your mother and your grandmother and your great-grandmother. Mitochondrial DNA are passed down strictly through the female line. Because they're ancient and there's no male or female. It's just like bacteria, right?

And so, >> [clears throat] >> you and all of your cousins, like if you had a sister who had children, those children will all have exactly the same mitochondria as you do, okay? Mhm. So, that is considered to be autologous, which means it's the same as bringing it out of your own body. Wow. Okay. >> Because because they're identical. So, you can get it's In theory, it's very very safe to get donations from sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles. And again, they're doing these treatments for these children with mitochondrial mutation diseases.

Uh that's the kind of thing they're looking at doing. It's just bringing in the family members and get doing this >> Uh Try to You try to get these kids to have more healthy mitochondria. Now, you're not going to get them perfect, but you can get them away from out of danger. And if you can get enough from the family and you can keep injecting them, you might be able to push these kids over to where they can have fairly normal lives, okay? So, yes, that's what you would use family mitochondria. But, it's also possible that other people who even aren't in your family that it might be compatible. We just don't know yet.

There might be mitochondria that are like a type O in the blood, you know, blood type O can be used by anybody. Yeah. It may be that that's true for mitochondria, too. We just don't know yet. Wow. Yeah, I mean, it's a It's amazing amount of work that needs to be done on this. So.

Yeah. Can Okay, where should people go to find out more about what you do? Well, uh go to our website, mytrix.bio. We actually have a lot of information on there. It's a good We We We built it so that people could kind of learn, right? Uh and if you just go on the web and you just put in mitochondrial transplantation, you will see lots of stuff popping up. Um >> [clears throat] >> lots of papers.

Every week, there's something new. It's all over the world now. So, um you could go on YouTube. I've given a bunch of YouTube speeches, and there's also all these conferences. Uh the the uh mitochondrial convention was was all put on YouTube, so you can watch those. >> Yeah, that's cool. I'll link so I'll I'll link the website, uh mytrix.bio, and grab a few interesting studies uh and I'll try to find a link to that and that first annual conference um to stick in the description for anybody listening. But, I think I think from everything I've learned from the ketogenic diet, from my exposure to mold, Yeah. >> which brought up like I I couldn't figure out, you know, why is it that when I went on a ketogenic diet well, meat diet and cut everything out and got better, why did my original symptoms come back when I was exposed to mold even though I didn't change my diet?

And was like, "What's happening that's the same? Something the same is happening." And then, how does that interplay with ketosis? Why does ketosis help? And then, the link is finally, "Oh, mitochondrial dysfunction from all these different There's so many things that that attack the mitochondria that like >> They're very delicate. Very delicate. >> Yeah. >> And we don't even know yet. We know that there's some drugs that will burn out your mitochondria prematurely, and there's people I we you and I've talked about this already.

We talked about Cipro, fluoroquinolones. Oh, yeah. >> Which are very damaging to mitochondria, and there's people whose lives have been ruined. A lot of people. It's called being floxed. Floxed. >> hor- it's horrible. >> Right. There Yeah, anybody listening, there are lots of antibiotics that you can take if you have an infection, do not take fluoroquinolones. So, that's like ciprofloxacin.

It's anything that says >> you're dying. You have no other choice. Unless it's the only antibiotic you you can take and you're dying. But like, they're prescribed for UTIs, right? All the time. And there's other antibiotic classes you can take. They're given and they're really risky.

Um I feel the same way about pay attention to it because usually that is put off 10 20 years down the down the road, see? That's the problem with mitochondrial damage. A lot of times you don't notice it until 10 or 15 years later. Suddenly, one of your tendons, like with your floxed, it's just one of your tendons just breaks. Like people have their Achilles tendon just tears for no reason. And then and then they start getting muscle damage and tendon damage all over their body. And before you know it, they're bed-bound.

It's It's really awful. Uh or they get premature dementia, you know? I'm I'm really worried about premature dementia as a potential outgrowth of all these mitochondrial you know, injuries. And Yeah. Well, and we have my family has a lot of experience with psych mad neurological dis- like injury, which has been brutal and that's from like long-term psych meds and that like Yeah, this is a big problem >> We have no idea what that stuff is doing in the long term. That's the problem. No, and it it's not going to be pretty and it it's going to affect a lot of people.

So, maybe there'll be some solutions cuz right now there's no there's really no solution once you experience that level of damage from a medication or even like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. I've seen some promising things with ketogenic intervention, which is probably because it works on mitochondria. Um but that doesn't it's not just a cure once you get to that stage for everyone. Some people I've seen like the rare case of reversal for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, but by the time you're at that stage like you need a lot of help. So, we need something that offers more help and we need to stop damaging ourselves so badly. Yeah, and you >> other than living. Let me I'll just let me I want to throw out one little thing here about you know, kind of the the big picture, the political picture.

You know, this is so new and there's this I mean there's like you could like I said there's a few dozen people researching this. It's happening all over the world, but there's but there's but there's no support for this at all. Uh it's being talked about a lot. But this, you know, if you look at the amount of disability in our economy, if you look at the number of chronic diseases, the number of people are disabled. A lot of that is because we're good at saving people's lives. But we're not so good at the lot of those cures damage their mitochondria afterwards. And so they end up being kind of in this state and anybody who has chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID can tell you I'm alive but I have zero energy.

I can't get up. I can't move around. >> Oh yeah. And people who are floxed, the same thing. And those numbers keep growing. And so we're we got this this just kind of built-in long-term group of people who cannot care for themselves, can't earn a living. They're disabled. They can't live.

They their families are being impacted. You know, you have all these things. We really need something to to help us get over the hump or we're just going to get this is going to sink our health care system eventually. So I really think this is a significant national imperative, I guess I would call it. I I agree. Um I like I've been talking about with my audience like about psych med damage and the fact that like one out of every five or six, depending on the data, um people is on one of these medications that long-term seem to cause mitochondrial dysfunction and neurological injury that is almost untreatable. That's like that's a huge percentage of percentage of our population.

And then mold exposure, too. We we figured like the approximation from the specialist there is 20% of people are really ill. Those are probably people who are also on psych meds and it's like if if there's one if one in four people are chronically ill, that's their entire family is taken out unless you just ditch them which it's really bad. It's really bad and it's going to get worse. Like I don't know what things are going to look like in 5 years, but It's going to get worse because I mean, if you think about it, people say, well, this wasn't happening 40 years ago that's cuz people didn't live as long. I mean the truth is a lot of this is just related to aging. We live longer.

We have much better medicine now. We're saving people who normally would have died 40 years ago. They die of a heart attack now we bring them back right? All the people who used to be they die of cancer now we bring them back from cancer but they're not really whole. You know they're they're as you said they're just disabled and not able to take care of themselves. And so and of course people are getting older in general the population's getting older. So all these trends are converging.

Yeah. Definitely. Well I think your company is very promising and very interesting and so thank you for your time. Like I said I'll link a bunch of studies I'll link your website below for anyone who's listening but yeah nice meeting you. Thank you very much for coming on. >> Yes. My pleasure.