Christian Drapeau: The Science of Vitality After 40

We have a repair system. It declines as we age. Around 30, 40, we've lost that balance if you count the number of stem cells in the bloodstream of people who have developed any one of those. They all have 50% or less than what you would find in a healthy person of the same age.

Christian Dripeau, a neurophysiologist and pioneer of stem cell mobilization, pulls back the curtain on the repair system framework. He has dedicated his work for over 20 years to helping people age gracefully and feel more vibrant. All right, Christian, so heart disease, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, diabetes, arthritis. Six problems to be solved. But what you're saying is that they actually have something in common, right? They do. So explain. What does that mean?

I mean, there's a difference, obviously, in all of them. The therapeutic approach is is different, but they do have one common denominator is that if you count the number of stem cells in the bloodstream of people who have developed any one of those and many, many more, they all have 50% or less than what you would find in a healthy person of the same age, a person that does not have these problems. So it is fundamentally a failure of endogenous repair. It's it's it's a small deficit that happens over ex extended periods of time that cannot be offset because your ability to repair is not strong enough, and it accumulates into something that becomes what is classified as a disease.

Yeah. Maybe expand on some of that. Give me like an example. I don't know, pick one of these, you know, heart disease, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, pick your pick your your choice here. How does that evolve, right, from a lack of repair in stem cells, uh lack of ability to repair and shortage of stem cells into one of these diseases?

I mean, they all have their different paths. So I'm I'm working on a book that describes that in detail. And and uh and I'm fascinated that as you dive into, for example, type 2 diabetes, as you dive in arthritis, as you dive in osteoporosis, in heart disease, they're all very different into how it develops and how it manifests for that specific organs, tissues, and disease. But fundamentally, it's all like there's a common denominator to all of them. And it's really the fact that everything goes through a normal process of tissue turnover. Like, like your body is just like the seasons. Like there's constant renewal. Life is all like this. Your body is not different. So everything is in constant process of renewal, which means you lose things and then you replace the things that are being lost. If you don't replace the thing, then it's simply degeneration. And we have thought since, you know, with science and the science in the medical science forever that everything is just degeneration. So there's a very deep description and understanding of the degenerative process. So we talk about inflammation and so the impact of inflammation with aging. We talk about uh free radicals, so uh oxidative stress. We talk about mitochondrial dysfunction. Like there's a lot of things here that are part of the degenerative part that are like making your body go down. And what we did not know until fairly recently is that there's another side to that equation, is that you also regenerate on top of this degeneration. And your health is the balance between the two. And it just happens that when you're young, you still degenerate. You are exposed to free radicals, you're exposed more to some extent because you're a kid, you play outside, you're exposed to UV light, I mean you're exposed to it, but your power to regenerate is so much stronger, it does not affect you. As a kid, you spend your entire summer in the sun and you just have a suntan. You take a 60-year-old that spends the summer under the sun and like they've aged five years, you know, in that one summer. It's not the same ability to repair. So as the number of stem cells decline as we age and marrow converts, there's a point where we lose that balance. And now the degenerative side starts to develop. And in the heart, it means the loss of it, it's exp, I mean, it it it they're it's complex. Let me first take it from another angle, which is you take people who have developed these problems. So you take Alzheimer's, you take Parkinson's, you take heart disease, you take uh we you talk diabetes, you talk arthritis, osteoporosis. In animal models, all of these cases, if you inject compounds that triggers the release of stem cells from the bone marrow in the animals so that the animals will have more stem cells in circulation, and you cannot use these pharmaceutical compounds for more than let's say eight to ten days, otherwise, the side effects you kill them. So, so if you increase the number of stem cells during eight to ten days, you virtually reverse the problem in pretty much all these animal models. Wow. You reverse Alzheimer's, you reverse art disease, you reverse Parkinson, you reverse almost all these problems. It just shows the power of just putting more stem cells in circulation. You cannot use these compounds in humans because of their side effects. So, and that's what pushed all the development in stem cell injection. So I happen to have discovered plants that trigger the release of stem cells from your bone marrow, putting more stem cells in circulation. They're not as strong, but they're safe, so you can take them over experience of time. So instead of being like a big boost for a few days, it's a small boost over extended periods of time. So we have studies now that are ongoing testing those very problems. So we have one with stable chronic congestive heart failure. So people who have at least two years, this is where they are with their with their heart disease, uh, they normally receive the treatments that are given to these patients. So it's better blockers, uh, hypotensive drugs, diuretics, uh, uh essentially things that will protect the heart. And so this is where they are. And all we do in these patients, uh, if they have two years of stability in their condition, so their their typical case is they they they climb one flight of stairs and they are a breath. And actually, it's one, it's one of the tests. They call it the six-minute walk test. You make them walk on the little slope for six minutes, and at the end of that six minutes, what's their condition? And then we put them on this blend of plant extract that triggered the release of their own stem cells. They do this for six months. We publish the first 10 patients, so we're at roughly at about 50 patients now, so and we'll continue to about 100. So it's an ongoing study. We publish the first 10 uh because the results are outstanding. So on the first 10 patients after six months, all of them have normal heart function. All we did is that we triggered the release of their own stem cells. We have one on Parkinson, so we're wrapping it up right now, roughly 40 to 80% improvement in the different parameters associated with Parkinson in six months. We're starting one on COPD, we're starting one on liver uh liver failure, liver fibrosis. We don't want to say this is good for heart disease, for Parkinson, for COP. It's not the aim. The aim is just to show the impact of that loss of endogenous repair. The understanding that we have a repair system, it declines as we age. Around 30, 40, we've lost that balance. Now you fall into failure of endogenous repair. This constant failure of endogenous repair accumulates into disease formation. So if you can, and we have seen that people have developed all these problems have fewer stem cells in circulation. What we want to show is that if we put back stem cells in circulation, like what you had, let's say 20 years ago, then your body will utilize these stem cells to do what stem cells do in the body, and it's to repair. Here's is what we can document in in the heart, in the lung, in the liver, and in so on. So that's why we're doing it. So so look at it, if I look at it from this angle, we can see the link between stem cells and disease formation. Now, if we take it with specific cases, you mentioned some of the. Let's take osteoporosis, for example, because it it matters for a lot of a lot of of your listeners right now, a lot of women, past menopause. So you get before menopause, with the action of estrogen, you get a stimulation of stem cell proliferation, which supports your repair system. It supports repair in muscles everywhere in the body, but more documented into blood vessels, muscles, and bones. So it makes stem cells convert into osteoblasts, osteocytes that help support bone health. When you lose estrogen, now you lose this boost. So your bone marrow has a greater tendency to go from stem cells to fat cell in the bone marrow. That conversion also makes fewer stem cells in the bloodstream. So now you suddenly lose. You have that decline that comes with age, but on top of that, these stem cells no longer have the stimulation that they had. So without these osteoblasts, and and and a third factor that is associated with the loss of estrogen is that now there's an environment in the bone marrow that supports the activity of osteoclast, which are the cells that break down the bones. Because your bone is your calcium deposit in your body. When your body needs calcium, it takes it from your bones. So when we say consume calcium to rebuild your bones, it's not that the calcium that you take will go back to your bones. Actually, today it's very well known. It's got it's kind of the other way around. If you take too much calcium, it will trigger a reverse process and you will empty your bones. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, wow. So what you want to do is that you want to have just enough calcium for your own metabolism so that your body doesn't go and get it from your from your from your bones. So that's what you want to achieve when you consume a calcium supplement. What you want to do for your bones is you want to stop the activity of these osteoclasts that breaks down the bone, boost osteoblasts that rebuild the bone, and boost as well the formation of collagen in your bone. And that is another thing that is not really talked about very well, because we talked about bone density. That means like bone hardness. But something that is flexible doesn't break. You need bone flexibility. Your bone is more collagen than it is that it is calcium. So it it there's a lot of collagen in bones. You want these bones to be flexible. They are flexible in a young woman. But when this phenomenon happens of losing estrogen, activating osteoclasts, reducing the presence of osteoblast, uh, and all this, this is all happening at once, the bone paid a price for that. So one way, so it's a stem cell phenomenon. Like the main factor is stem cell activity, shift in stem cell activity. So to reshift that by putting more stem cells in circulation, you can boost the formation of esteoblast. It can help it can help the bone, but take uh collagen protein and exercise that will put pressure on your bone, weight bearing, and vibration. And that is probably like the best recipe to just help the bone correct their trajectory.

Yeah, that's that's that's a big problem for a lot of people, especially women, right? And I think that protocol is is solid. The um one of the things that when you and I were talking in our preparation called uh specific to cardiovascular disease. So this is this was this is interesting. I felt like I knew it, but then you said it and I'm like, okay, you confirmed what I thought I knew, um, which isn't much. But the women up until 40 have a much lower cases of cardiovascular disease compared to men, right? Yeah. But something happens after that age, right? When you have menopause where um it kind of evens out or catches up. So what what exactly, what is that, what's what's what's happening there? What is that a function of?

It's not one thing. It's a number of things. And I think this is what makes it oftentimes complex because when you start to look at all the different factors, then you don't know like which one then you need to change and you're unleverage. So so it's it's not an easy task for people in menopause having sort of heart issues to figure out like what is the one thing that I that I that I would do. So let's look at the various factors here that are affected. The driver is the decline in estrogen. So that decline in estrogen stops stimulating stem cells, make more stem cells, drive, become fat cells in the marrow. So it's marrow adipose tissue. So it develops faster. So that means their overall ability to repair declines, and estrogen also supports endothelial function, which are you which are your fine capillaries. So suddenly at once, you lose all of that. You lose your you lose the number of stem cells because it declines faster because of that conversion in the bone marrow. You release fewer of these stem cells, and then and of those that you that you release, you have you have lesser of an impact on the formation of capillaries. So now you have less repair and less effective blood delivery. And your heart is among those tissues with your pancreas as well. So it's also tied to type 2 diabetes. It's it's somewhere so it's the same phenomenon that is happening everywhere. There are two organs in your tissues that are sort of the canary in the mind when it comes to poor endothelial renewal. One is your pancreas and another one is your heart. Uh, and it's not just your heart, it will be like numbness and cold feet and cold hands and like things that are associated with just a poor ability of your microvasculature to repair. And your heart will pay the price, your cardiovascular system. So it's all a matter of a failure of endogenous repair. I mean, there are articles in the scientific literature with the title, like cardiovascular disease results from a failure of endogenous repair. It's it's been seen for quite some time. It has just not trickled down into, it has not crossed the gap between research and clinical application. So if you look at, if you boost stem cell function, so we come back to what I mentioned before, take, for example, this blend of plant extract, so stem regen release as a product that puts more stem cells in circulation. Hmone replacement therapy, it's something that is just not, I mean, it's talked about more and more right now. But I think there's a form of fear that was put in people's minds and women's minds some years ago about cancer, I guess. Yes. And uh and quite frankly, I remember in my early days, you know, as as a young scientist, I would have expressed concern, like you should not touch hormones, like they're powerful in your body. But we're like 40 years later right now, and I think like the conclusion is that they work and there's no problem. Yeah, you know, they're quite effective. So they're effective, they do the job. And not everything reversed when you go, when a woman goes on estrogen, you know, hormone replacement therapy, but a lot of those things are reversed. And the impact on stem cells is one of them. So you do get back that impact on stem cells. You don't necessarily get the impact on the bones, but if you do physical activity, yes, you can get, you can get like a good impact on bones. So hormone replacement therapy, release your own stem cells, physical activity, you're doing like three things that are going to have a huge impact on your cardiovascular system.

And all three of those now are extremely accessible.

Extremely accessible.

Right.

And everybody is talking about them. It's not like I'm revealing something you know that is a big secret.

Like comes up on the show all the time.

Throughout the scientific literature, this is what is emerging like everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's um, like I said, you know, as I I age with women of my age group into this, this bracket of of time, um more and more women who have are seeing issues with sudden weight gain, right? The frustrations, it's very frustrating. It's very hard. Um, but the the HRT is a very real thing. And it's it's it's fairly inexpensive, really accessible. You can get a prescription for a lot of it now. So it's it's a big thing. I think coinciding that, and a lot of them are wondering, like, well, uh, how if I'm doing this, right? What other things can I do to support that effort? Because now I'm starting to feel better, starting to look better, right? But there's other things I can be doing that are probably really easy as well. And it sounds like you just gave in two things, which are, you know, exercise number one. Yeah. Undeniable, right? Exercise has been around, we've been screaming at for years, but uh now taking care of the stem cell, the stem cell system, the repair system sounds like a really um powerful add-on to that whole protocol as well.

It is because because if if I ex if I isolate that part of this whole discussion, yeah, as I talked a little bit about before, we can tell that people with cardiovascular disease, these studies were done. I'm I'm not just like saying this as a concept. These studies were done. You look at people with heart disease, with aterosclerosis, with almost any kind of cardiovascular disease, with uh hypertension, uh, and in men erectile dysfunction. So everything that is associated with the poor cardiovascular system, people with these conditions have 50% or less than the number of stem cells that you find in healthy people of the same age. If you take people with cardiovascular uh risk factors and you follow them over time and you and you uh quantify cardiovascular events like angina, heart attack, whatever it is that is happening, death even, and you follow them over, let's say, a year and you separate them in three groups: people with naturally a lot of stem cells, average stem cells, and few stem cells. You have way more cardiovascular events in people that have fewer stem cells, almost none in people who have a lot of stem cells. So I mean, across the board, every study that has been touching this, studying this element comes out with the same conclusion. There's a direct link between how many stem cells you have in your bloodstream every day and the development of these problems. And when the problem is there, animal studies are clear. If you put more stem cells in circulation, it really changes the picture. And we have corroborated that data with a product, our products, plant extract, stem cell, stem regen release, that puts more stem cells in circulation. And we have corroborated the same kind of things that have been seen in humans. So across all this studies, the conclusion to draw is that everything is true about what we talked about, like the loss of estrogen affects your bones, affects endothelial, but it affects stem cell function. And if you just put more stem cells in circulation, it can have a very significant impact. We're talking about the heart here, but we can almost like dive into any problem associated with aging. Yeah. There's the same stem cell angle. It it manifests itself at times something somewhat differently, but it's it's a it's a common denominator to all of them. Another aspect of this whole picture is cortisol. Cortis, elevated cortisol has also been connected with Alzheimer's, with neuroinflammation, and it's associated with poor sleep. If you have poor sleep, you have a dysregulated cortisol cycle in your body. Yeah, exactly. So it's it's like it's it's many, many elements that are almost like all triggered, connected together, triggered by estrogen, suddenly disappearing from the body. And and it's it triggers all of these, and if they're not mitigated, they all kind of in a sort of amorphous way lead to that condition.

Yeah. You know, we we talk a lot, we're talking a lot about disease, and and rightfully so, right? It's it's what we all have to deal with at some point in our lives. A lot of people, including myself, right, we also want to look good, right? Healthy skin, healthy hair, healthy teeth. Like we want to look good as long as we can. Um, and I'm presuming, you know, having a healthy repair system also is drastically affecting that. So maybe give an idea. Um, because I think everyone's kind of like, dude, Eric, ask the question like, am I gonna look better too? Yeah. Do we are we gonna look better too if we pay attention to the stem cells?

I mean, the moment that okay, if we now just like Because you look great, by the way. I don't know how old you are. I haven't asked you. Oh, in my 60s. Okay, yeah, dude. Hey, yes, you look amazing. So if if if if we if we dive into stem cells and this whole process of tissue turnover repair and everything, there are a few organs that are like high on the list as big consumers of stem cells because they have a very high turnover rate. It's your intestine, your intestinal lining, and your skin. So you have roughly a new skin every month, roughly. So that means a high consumption of stem cells. A new skin every month. A new skin roughly every month. Wow. So so so stem cells can come into the tissue, they form this layer of stem cells, they evolve into keratinocytes, and then slowly they die and they form like as dead skin cells, like the top layer of the skin. And this constant process is constantly ongoing. So it's fed by stem cells from your blood circulation moving into your skin. We sue this, I mean, it's in the scientific literature, but we see this in some cases that we have had of people with like significant injury. Like one of the cases that we have is somebody who had an injury with a round saw that an accident, it landed on his thigh. Okay. So a round saw injury to his thighs. It's about what 10 inches long, maybe like an inch deep. So the skin is torn, the muscle is torn, like everything is torn. So he's told it will take about what six to eight weeks before he can stand on that leg, another six to eight weeks before he can walk. So he took two capsules of our product every two hours on his waking time. I I don't think he woke up at night to take it, but maybe he did. Maybe he did. So and I have a picture of the guy on day eight where he's standing on that leg. And on day 16, when you look at the scar, this is a round saw injury. You look at the scar, you can detect like a little bit of a yellowishness to the leg, you know, to to where the injury was. But the scar is is finer than probably most C-section that are done, you know, in a in an operation room with a scalp ale. And it's a testament to say if you have enough stem cells in circulation, it's not the local fibroblasts that need to kick in to do the repair. Your stem cells go into the area, they will become muscle cells, new capillaries, new uh skin cells, keratinocyte, air follicules, sebaceous gland, like everything that is normal in your tissue, and you get impeccable repair. So, so that's the extreme. Now let's go back into just a normal life. Your skin renews normally through this pro to this same process. If you don't have enough stem cells in circulation, you cannot fully repair, so it's less collagen renewal, less elastin, your skin does not renew as as as as effectively. And it shows up into all the signs of aging that we know. One of the most common stories that we hear when people take stem regenerates is that they say, Well, I took it for my knee, for my lung, for whatever reason. And they say, Well, you know, I've not yet seen benefits on that, but but everybody is asking me what I'm what I'm doing because my skin look radiant. We hear this all the time. That's awesome. We'll stop right there. We'll pick up with that. Thanks again. That was super informative.

Thank you.