Christian Drapeau: The Stem Cell Science Behind Bone Loss, Muscle Aging & Menopause

Do your lens of ice repair system, what's taking place when women's strength trained and why is it so good for them?

Your bone is your bank of calcium. So it's a very, very tightly controlled system. If you don't have the exact ideal concentration of calcium in your bloodstream, your physiology is not that it's optimal.

Christian Chapelle, 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. Alright, Christian, so uh we touched on this in the last one, but I want to dive deeper into it. So when estrogen drops, right, you said there's a double hit. So you mean on on bone specifically. So skeletal stum cells lose stimulation, and the cells that break down bone get more active. Correct. If I'm saying that correctly. So what is what is actually going on here? Explain this to me.

With the loss of estrogen, is documented the increase in a protein. It's called Wrenkel, but it's it's a protein that normally is known to stimulate osteoclast. So osteoclasts are the cells, so your bone is your bank of calcium. So it's a very, very tightly controlled system, so that if you're lacking calcium, because let's take another step back. Calcium is essentially essential for so many cellular functions all throughout your body. That's the one thing that absolutely amazed me when I was in the when I was doing my study in neurophysiology, is that we study the effect of calcium uh in nervous transmission, like release of neurotransmitter. And then in another class, we study the impact of calcium on protein transcription in the cell. And then the role of calcium on something else that has to do with uh the ribosomes in the cells. And then you go on, it's almost like calcium is everywhere. And my question was almost well, when you block calcium and you look at one of them, how do you know that what you see is what you're looking at and the effect is not coming from something else? I mean, it's involved into so many aspects of your body. If you don't have the exact ideal concentration of calcium in your bloodstream, your physiology is not at its optimal. It's super important. And yet, you don't really hear about a calcium supplement out there because your body has its own bank and it monitors it very tightly. So if you need calcium, it will take it from your bone. And if you have too much, it'll put it back into your bone. Your bone is this like bank of calcium that is very, very tightly managed. So, in order to leave your bone alone, you want to consume calcium. And that way, your body doesn't have to go and take it from your bone, which is the main issue, one of the issues with osteoporosis. And that form of calcium that is physiologically available, that really works, is the one that comes from green leafy vegetables. That's that's your best source of calcium.

Easy enough.

You don't really need to take like additional calcium. There's even quite a bit of data showing that if you actually take more, then your body gets into a phase of like getting rid of it. And as it gets rid of it, it actually also empties the bone and this whole, like it's almost like throwing the baby with the bad water. So you don't want to take too much calcium. Have plenty of green leafy vegetables, you're fine on the calcium front. A lot of the benefit of magnesium on calming the nervous system is that it competes with calcium. So by displacing calcium, everything calms down into the nervous system. Actually, part of my PhD was on manipulating calcium in the nervous system. So I've worked quite a bit on that. Uh, so so that's the big picture of calcium. So, in order to remove calcium from the bone, you have a type of cells called osteoclast. To put back calcium into the bone, you have a type of cell called osteoblast. And they turn into osteocytes that manage all the bone. So you need like a good balance between these two. When you have estrogen, they push the conversion of stem cells into osteoblasts, the cells that are making your bone. So that's why I said, I think in a previous uh episode, that and when you consider everything equal in a man and a woman, women probably have a greater ability to repair bones and maintain bones than men, if anything. But when they lose estrogen, they lose that boost of stem cells going into esteoblast, and they tend to go more into fatty cells, what is called map marrow adipose tissue. So you start to develop bit more fat, if you want, in the in the bone marrow, which can reach, I mean, some some quantification has reached up to like 50 per 15% of body weight can be fat in your bone marrow. You look at your bone, it's not that many bones. So, so so it's it's it's a lot. So you don't have a so it pushes the red marrow, so it basically converts faster your red marrow. So that means you have fewer inside of your bone fattier. It gets fattier. That's right. So the inside of your bones get fattier, which which makes fewer osteoblasts that rebuild the bones. That those fatty cells secrete the compounds that stimulate osteoclast. So now osteoblasts are less active, you have fewer of them, and your osteoglasts that that breaks down your bone now gets more activated. And that imbalance basically makes your bone lose their density. And that's the phenomenon that is happening on the bones. It's a dual effect, both driven by stem cells. Stem cells receding in the bone marrow and no longer forming osteoblast. So it's a dual, it's a dual stem cell phenomenon.

Yeah.

So by triggering the release of your stem cells, you can support the formation of osteoblast, but stronger than anything, physical activity. Load bearing, impaction on the bone, vibration to the bone, stem cells have mechanoreceptor, and instead of turning into fat cells, they turn into osteoblast. And so you change this whole balance in the bone in your bones.

So it can be changed. That was my next question. Is like as as the fat builds up inside the bones, is that a permanent thing, or is that something that the body can kind of cycle out? Cycle cycle out. Like, you know, return the red marrow, less of the fat, like, or is that something it's like once it's done, it's kind of done?

I mean, I'm not sure. No, no, you can reverse it. Okay, great. But but the extent of that reversal, I don't know how significant it is. Right. Like, I I'm not sure that well, there you go. Like there's a lot of people that do a lot of exercise in their life, yeah, and they still age. Sure. So so I don't think you reverse that conversion. But but if you take, for example, if you take this was done in a study was done in women, another one was done in men as well. But you take women that are immobilized, so no physical activity for like six to eight weeks. Okay. And you can quantify an increase of their marrow adipose tissue in their bone marrow. And when they resume physical activity, it it reduce it it it's reduced. So that part is is flexible.

Right.

How much it changes the overall evolution and aging of your marrow, I can't tell. But the impact of that change and the the impact that it has on your bone, that can be reversed by physical activity. Got it.

Okay, great. Once again, it's it's all coming. Weird. It's the miracle remedy. Yeah, right. So osteoplast breaks it down. No, osteoclast breaks it down. Osteoplast builds it out. Oxyoblast, yeah. Yeah, okay. Got it. Okay. God, I feel like uh I'm getting a PhD right now. Um so what about uh maintaining muscle? I mean, we talk about that, obviously, exercise is a big component of that. So is is building and maintaining muscle fundamentally a stem cell process?

It's the same thing.

Yeah. Stem cell.

So you've got to, you know, if we go back in the history of the development of all this science, there are a few tissues for which we have known that they have stem cells for quite some time. We just did not call them stem cells because we did not have the full understanding that we have today. So in the liver, they're called oval cells, and in the muscle, they're called satellite cells. They are essentially muscle stem cells and liver stem cells. And now we know every tissue of the body has its own stem cells: skin stem cells, heart stem cells, neural stem cells, they're everywhere. Pancreatic stem cells, they're everywhere. So uh, and pneumocyte, a type of pneumocyte was called pneumocyte two, I believe. Uh, but but they are stem cells of the lung. But before this whole understanding of stem cells, then they were not called stem cells. So they're everywhere. So in your muscle, there's a specific type of stem cells. They are responsible for repair and building of muscle. So when you when you put a lot of pressure on a muscle and you trigger lesions, microtrauma in the muscle, in the muscle, it's the stimulation, the signal that the muscle needs to grow because it needs to respond to the demand of the pressure that is put on that muscle. So these stem cells merge with existing muscle fiber, and it makes these muscles grow through that fusion and provides that muscle more mitochondria, more of the enzymatic and cellul machinery to build bigger muscle fibers and muscle cells. So it's a process of fusion of these stem cells with the muscle. So muscle hypertrophy is all driven by stem cells. Estrogen supports that process as well. So when you lose that process, we go back to something that we've talked about before. The unfortunate reality is that before menopause, women have a superpower in a way with estrogen. It supports a lot of things. When you lose it, suddenly, you suddenly experience a sudden loss in that in that superpower. And and it it translates into a few specific phenomena in the body. One is bone loss that we talked about, and the other one is also affecting muscles. Because now, without estrogen, if you don't give enough stimulation to the muscle, a number of these stem cells are also pushed into the adipose lineage. So you create more fat cells even inside a muscle by the lack of that stimulation. So here again, the solution is physical activity.

Yeah. Shocking. Um there is there uh I guess my question around this is you mentioned there's different stem cells for every different organ or type of tissue within the body, right? Um give us some insights on that. Is there like two follow-up questions? That is is there like a master stem cell that can do anything? And then how many different types of stem cells do you think there actually are floating around in our body?

It's a big question because scientists like to put labels on things. We like to make everything like organized into this being logical and systemic. As is humans, systemic. And then and if you and if it doesn't work like this, it's almost like we want to like we want to uh like uh lecture nature, you know, it's just you need to fit my system, you know. And and right now, I I'm saying this because I've been saying this for a long time, uh, decades, at least, at least 15, 20 years, based on the scientific literature, this notion that you have all kinds of different types of stem cells and they can only do one thing. Like when a stem cell has become like a liver stem cells, that's it. It can only become liver cells. And and there is data in the literature showing that it's not the case. Like you take some oval stem cells from the liver and you put them in the right context, and they start to make insulin, like pancreatic cells. So that data exists. So we've had data in the scientific literature for quite some time that this nice system that we have developed to define these stem cells as being different types, it's way more flexible than that. But all of this being said, you have a master cell. Let's call it imetopoietic stem cells. In some ways, mesenchymal stem cells fall in that in that bucket as well, but basically, bone marrow stem cell. And in the bone marrow, the stem cells as they have the ability of pretty much becoming everything in the body. When they engage into a specific lineage, they they are not trapped in that lineage, but their future is very likely to go in that direction. So they get into the liver, when they touch the liver environment, they start to become liver stem cells. It can change, but most likely they will become liver cells in their future. They get into the muscle, they become satellite cells. They get into the skin, they become epidermal stem cells, and so on. So they feed those tissues and they form the pool of stem cells that, for that tissue, will ensure the renewal of that tissue. And if there's an injury that is too significant, then the organ will call for more bone marrow stem cells to come. But that phenomenon varies from tissue to tissue. It's very effective in the skin, in muscles, it's less effective in the heart, and not effective at all in the well, not true. It's effective in the brain as well, but stem cells do not go into the brain to become brain cell. Stem cells will circulate in the brain, will hang to a capillary around the tissue, the injury, and will release compounds that will stimulate the stem cells already present in the brain, neural brain stem cells. So it makes the brain less effective at repair. It doesn't have the same extent of in its capacity to repair. The heart is a little bit like that as well. Okay. We thought the heart cannot repair. We know today it's not true. The heart can repair, but much less than your skin, for example, or your intestine. So that whole system here is more or less uh its extent is is more or less depending on the tissue. But it's the same pretty much like everywhere in the body. So it leads to many different types of stem cells along that journey.

Yeah. You know, every once in a while I have to take a moment, and this is actually one of those moments where I have to really reflect on the beautiful design that is the human body or just life in general, right? It's so complicated, but it works. And it works at massive scale. Yeah. Right. And we still don't know so much about it.

Yeah. When you when you dive into the detail of how it works, yeah, it's it's hard for me, even as a scientist, to say, oh, it's all the fruit of like simple evolution. Right. It's it's it's just hard to accept that concept.

But anyway, that's another discussion. Yeah, that's a very deep one. So uh, you know, we've been talking about exercise a lot here in movement. Um, but specifically right now, one of the biggest trends in women's health is strength training. And I love it, right? Like I am, I've been a strength coach for a long period of my life. Um, it's been a big part of it. I love seeing women lift heavy. Um, I see it in the gym here, especially in Whitefish or gyms all across the world, really, where like lifting platforms, you know, we used to have two here, now we have five, right? And when I go, they're busy. Who's busy on them? A lot more women than it used to be, right? So women are lifting heavy, they're lifting hard. It's good. Maybe explain, like, you know, specific to strength training, like what is through your lens of the body's repair system, what's taking place when women strength train and why is it so good for them?

Well, there's there's there's a number of factors. So some of which we've already talked about. So the moment that you put pressure on bones and you add to this a form of like mechanical stress, then there are mechanic mechanoreceptors in both stem cells and osteocytes that will then change the whole physiology of the bone marrow and you stop that conversion of stem cells to fat cells, and they they go more to bone cells. It's extremely good for the bones. Uh, if you also are on estrogen replacement therapy, then suddenly you also kind of support the whole muscle physiology much better. So now you signal to the muscle hypertrophy. So it is it is huge to support uh you know muscle muscle hypertrophy, but the health of your muscles. So preventing sarcopenia and everything that comes with that loss of oxygen of estrogen. Uh and then and we know one of the biggest predictors of longevity and health as you age is your muscle mass. It is right now one of the best predictors. When everything is said and done, you know, grip strength is is one of the biggest uh the biggest marker. So um then your muscle, when you really exercise your muscle, it releases compounds. The name of it now is escaping me, but it is one of the biggest growth factors for your brain. So we talked a little bit about Alzheimer's, we talked about cognitive function, even depression that comes sometimes with with menopause, uh activity in your muscle will also have a huge impact on that aspect of human physiology. So you put all of them together, we come back to the same the same conclusion here. There is one universal, like amazing lever for overall human health, aging, and everything that comes with it, it's physical activity.

Yeah. And specifically strength training. So strength training. You hear that, get in the gym.

And it's not, I'm not saying here it has to be something exceptional, you have to lift big weights. It's here the the the the the the instruction is very simple. Do something that is so difficult that you don't like it, just do it. You know, it hurts a little bit, it's fine. Right. Don't go in a place where it like there's consequences, but it it needs to be like you hate it when you do it, it's hard, and and it it makes you sweat. That's it. And if that is 20 pounds, great. Yeah, it will do the job.

Yeah. Well, this it brings me into uh the next topic I want to cover with you in this segment. It's like use it or lose it was was a term that we had talked about in our uh pre-recording. And I guess you what is what does that mean for you biologically? And you know, if someone in the maybe their late 40s, right, or or early 50s is listening to this, like, okay, I need to make some lifestyle changes. I need to start paying attention to these different things that I wasn't aware of before. Um, is the window still open for them?

So the the the the use it or lose it is a is a concept that uh is probably true for other things in the body, but where we see it the most is in the nervous system. And by nervous system, I mean everything that is working on neurotransmitters and electrical membrane charge. So it's your muscles, it's your nervous, your brain, everything that is working with this. If you if you don't use it, you lose it. Uh and it is uh everybody has seen it. If you had a broken bone and you're in a cast for just a few weeks, it's enough to really notice the the uh the the atrophy. Atrophy. The atrophy of your muscle. You you see it right away. Oh, yeah. So so that happens without really witnessing it in your brain as well. So if you stop using your brain, it happens. So a lot of the things that we experience, uh, aside from like genetic factors or factors that are really diseased, you know, in the brain, a lot of the brain fog, a lot of the drop in cognitive function is just because we don't use it. So, I mean, what what do they say? Like, you want longevity, make sure that you find some, that you have something to do. Have a project, you know, yeah, and have something that really makes your your your brain work and you will maintain your cognitive function. Translate that to muscle as well, is the same thing. And we can also translate that almost to stem cells because there's a the there's just enough data to point in the direction that if you trigger the release of your own stem cells, either through exercise or by taking a product like the plant extract that we're using, uh, which stem regen release, and your bone marrow seems to gain in its flexibility to be able to respond faster when repair is needed in the body. So, so just maintain these things in a daily manner, and it means a lot in aging.

Uh, last question on this one, because you know, we talked about, you know, proper calcium, taking stem cell supplementation and support, doing the strength training and exercise, you know, it doesn't have to be too much, but enough. Um, stimulating the mind. What about protein intake? Because that's another thing that seems to be very popular, is like, you know, I I assume, you know, if if your body's repairing itself and needs some protein in there, and we haven't talked about that yet. But what what kind of guidelines do you do you offer people for protein?

You've got specific amino acid that are only found in collagen. They are your amino acids that have like a kink in them that are utilized to give this helix formation to elastic protein, like your muscles, your collagen, uh, elastin, all of this, your connective tissue, uh, your skin. So if you don't have those amino acids, your collagen is faulty. So you lose flexibility. And where do you find this? I said in collagen. So when is it that we eat collagen? It's in everything that is chewy when you eat animal product and so you spit it out. Like so we don't consume those amino acids. So if there's one thing in the protein world that needs to be added for overall health, it's right now a product that is sold for just like beauty, almost only for that, collagen peptides. Uh, forget, I mean, of course, you can do it for beauty, but for overall health, I mean, there's one thing. Like if somebody's asking me, okay, I take a product to stimulate the release of my own stem cells, what else should I take with it? I would say collagen peptides. Because you cannot have repair of any tissue without also repairing the soft skeleton of that tissue, like the the the supportive architecture of that tissue, which is collagen and connective tissue. So that is one thing. So for that, protein is is very important, no question. One gram per kilogram per pound of body weight, hey, go for it.

I don't know. Yeah, right on. Fair enough. All right, Christian. Well, that was great, man. Uh, the next one we're gonna get into is gut health, which is obviously one of the most fundamental pieces because if you can consume all the stuff, but if your gut's not healthy, what are we doing here? Right? It's crucial. All right, we'll talk about that next.