Dr Adeel Khan is a Canadian board-certified physician and globally recognised pioneer in regenerative medicine, redefining the future of health, vitality, and recovery. As the founder and CEO of Eterna Health, he works at the forefront of cell-based therapies, specialising in stem cells, peptides, and emerging gene therapies designed to repair tissue, reduce inflammation, and optimise human performance at a cellular level.

Originally trained in sports and musculoskeletal medicine, Dr Khan developed a deep interest in regenerative approaches after seeing the limitations of conventional treatments for injury and chronic disease. This led him to focus on therapies that aim to restore function rather than simply manage symptoms.

Blending clinical practice with innovation, Dr Khan is part of a new wave of physicians pushing medicine toward a more proactive, longevity-focused model—one centred on regeneration, resilience, and optimising human biology.

> During our discussion, you’ll discover:

(00:03:48) How would you define ‘Regenerative’ medicine

(00:05:50) Why is traditional medicine so siloed in its approach

(00:09:08) What is longevity, and what are the biggest needle movers to improve it

(00:14:55) The importance of reducing the load on the immune system

(00:17:36) Stem cells

(00:22:18) How does the immune system respond to stem cells

(00:23:57) How to regulate SASP with senolytics

(00:25:31) Why is HRT overlooked for its longevity benefits

(00:32:58) Why is it important to maintain good sex-hormone levels as we age

(00:35:53) How to start optimising your hormone function

(00:38:05) How to balance out thyroid hormones

(00:42:09) How can gene therapy be used to improve your hormone levels

(00:46:58) HGH replacement therapy

(00:48:40) Klotho and Follistatin

(00:49:32) When will gene therapy become mainstream

(00:50:06) Trevogrumab and Garetosmab

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Research Links:

• Eterna Health - Revolutionizing Longevity & Regenerative Medicine
• Dr Adeel Khan | Instagram

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Welcome to the VP Life Podcast, the show

where we bring you actionable health

advice from leading minds.

I'm your host Rob.

My guest today is Adil Khan, a Canadian

board certified physician and founder of

Eterna Health, working at the forefront

of regenerative medicine using stem

cells, peptides and gene therapies to

repair tissue, reduce inflammation and

optimise human

performance at a cellular level.

Expect to learn how regenerative medicine

is shifting healthcare from symptom

management to true biological repair,

what stem cells, peptides and emerging

therapies are actually doing at a

cellular level and how these therapies

are being used to treat injury, chronic

disease and even influence

the aging process itself.

Now, under the conversations, Dr.

Adil Khan.

Good morning, Dr.

Khan and thank you so much for joining me

on the podcast today.

It's an honour to have you on to discuss

all things longevity

and regenerative medicine.

Now, I can't imagine there are too many

in this space who aren't familiar with

you and your work, but for those who have

been living under a rock, would you mind

introducing yourself and

how you got into this space?

I know you've got quite the story there,

everything from sort of sports medicine

all the way to Tesla.

We've got time, so yeah, if you could

just run us through that.

Yeah, the Tesla thing is I guess

interesting, but because I was a regular

doctor with like a GP, just doing family

medicine and then I started doing sports

medicine and in sports medicine, we are

dealing with chronic injuries, people

with shoulder and shoes, knee, elbow,

whatever, the gamut.

And so people typically do physiotherapy,

they do cortisone injections, which are

just steroid injections to

help with pain and inflammation.

And if that doesn't work, you're usually

sent off to a surgeon or, you know, or

tell or or to take some pain

meds and just live with it.

So I was obviously not

satisfied with that approach.

And so I was kind of like, okay, there

has to be other

options to help these people.

And that's what led me to PRP, which is

platelet rich plasma.

And that's essentially where we just take

your blood, we concentrate the platelets,

which act like little molecules and

signals to help with healing.

And I worked with the guy

who actually pioneered PRP, Dr.

Gallia, he was kind of the first in the

world to do it for like Tiger Woods, a

bunch of other people.

So I was very fortunate to have him as a

mentor, and really learn, let's say the

foundation of regenerative medicine,

which is just the principles of how your

body can heal and cell

biology and all that stuff.

And, then that kind of

led me down this whole road.

Eventually, I got involved in a clinical

trial, using stem cells in

osteoarthritis, and for using body

people's own stem cells.

And we'll obviously go into, you know,

about what stem cells really are.

But, but the point was, this was a

clinical trial, and I was involved in

research, and I kind of just went down

the whole rabbit hole, of trying to find

what's the best for my patient.

And again, this was a lot of this was

driven by curiosity.

And, you know, just because you mentioned

the Tesla thing, I guess I had a little

bit of good fortune, and I

was an early investor in Tesla.

And so because of that, I had a little

bit more, let's say,

leeway and taking risk.

You know, unfortunately, most doctors

can't take much risk, because if they

have to follow, they have to follow their

college guidelines, they

have to stay within the box.

And you know, because

they're scared, right?

They're scared of their license, they're

scared of getting medical legal stuff.

And so I was kind of like, well, you

know, I have some, I have a decent,

decent foundation to kind of go lean back

on if I can't practice

medicine or whatever.

But, but it all it worked out pretty

well, obviously, in the sense that I was

able to build something outside of Canada

and get people coming to me from all over

the world, because I was just very

curious and trying to figure out what's

the best for my patient.

And that I think that's the kind of the

take home message is when you're driven

by curiosity and problem solving, then

you're going to eventually come and do

something that's meaningful, hopefully

for a lot of people.

And that's, that's what led me to the new

cells, which ultimately is what I think

got me a bit more well known in the last

last year or two, because I was the first

doctor in the world outside of Japan to

really start using those cells and

helping a lot of patients with that.

Yeah, that's incredible.

I just like to sort of dive into the sort

of this idea of regenerative medicine a

bit more, it sort of, it tends to fall

under this whole sort of functional sort

of integrated medicine sphere.

And I sort of found that within this

community of physicians, you have doctors

who are who are functional integrated,

but then they sort of tend to sort of

appear one way or the other.

Some of them tend to end up in this sort

of the regenerative space where some of

them tend to end up

in the gut based space.

Obviously, ultimately, of course, it all

ultimately comes down to the same thing

when you're dealing with something

systemically or chronically.

But how would you define regenerative

medicine and sort of maybe differentiated

from the rest of the sort of the

integrated space

because there is definitely,

well, there's a lot of similarity,

there's definitely a lot of differences

there that I think a lot of people tend

to get maybe just a bit confused over.

So yeah, how would you

define that space particular?

Yeah, I mean, look, regenerative medicine

is really about getting

the body to heal itself.

I know that it's a simple definition, but

that's at the core, that's what it is.

It's like, how do we give it the right

signals, the right cells, the right

scaffolds, and in this in the case, and

then so signal cell scaffolds, that's the

easy way to remember it.

Those are the three kind of recipe

ingredients that you need to help your

body to heal itself.

And it's really the biggest difference

though, it's I don't really like the word

functional medicine.

I know some people may not like that.

But I like I like systems biology.

Systems biology is a medical framework in

which we look at the body as a uniform

system, which if one component breaks

down, then it can

affect another component.

So for example, in Alzheimer's, we know

now that there's gut dysbiosis can affect

the brain from a new

inflammatory component.

That's just one example, but there's

millions of examples.

So the point is, the body is

interconnected and treating it as a

fragmented system as a fragmented

specialty based, which is what we set up

in modern medicine, doesn't work.

So yeah, that solid approach.

I suppose we're just going in on a rabbit

hole here off the cuff.

But why do you think I mean, you've been

through the traditional medical training

system, you didn't start off as a

naturopath or anything like that?

Why is medicine still so

siloed in its approach?

I mean, your systems

biology approach just makes sense.

Why do you feel the establishment such

that it is, it's still sort of driving

forward this idea that doctors should be

educated under this sort of in this sort

of very monocular,

especially the one to the better word

state where they just focus on one?

I mean, medicine is slow moving in

general, I think we're the only

profession that probably

still uses fax machines.

So like, that just that just shows you

how sad our profession is sometimes.

And the, but what's happening is, you

know, as an aside, just, you know,

because of all this tech, people, let's

call them tech bros going into the house

space and longevity space, it's it's

forcing doctors to help to either they're

either just going to become outdated, you

know what I mean, and AI and precision

medicine and all this is going to happen.

And then doctors all of a sudden realize

that they don't have a place that

ecosystem, if they don't keep up with

what's happening, right.

And so I think they're gonna a lot of

doctors are gonna be forced to keep up.

But the reason a lot of them are slow to

change is because they can just get away

with doing what

they've always been doing.

And there's no

pressure on them to change.

It's just like a guy is this is like

having a giant government body, right?

Why are governments so slow to get things

done, at least in you know, at least in

like Canada and UK, I think, and a lot of

times it's just because it's like it's

like turning a ship around like a giant

ship, you know, they're not agile and

flexible, they're just,

they're set up inefficiently.

And so even though the approach makes

sense, and it's logical, they want to

probably have like, you know, they

probably want to have decades of clinical

trials before they'll be like, okay, now

we can put this into guidelines, even

though if from a first principles, and

real world evidence

approach, it makes so much sense.

And clearly, the modern

system isn't working either.

So it's like, why not try something else?

But you know, and that's where I guess

the part of the problem with the system

is the way set up is, you know, to go

through this long regulatory framework,

you know, with phase one to phase two

phase three trials and all that costs

like $100 million in North America.

And it just like, who's who which

tactician, there's no one who can afford

to do that with like systems biology, you

know, I mean, because this is biology

isn't like, it's not like a drug, you

know, it's not like,

it's, you can't pat it in it.

And you can't, you can't make millions of

billions of dollars off of it.

So just, it doesn't it

doesn't work with the system.

And so the only other solution is this

kind of grassroots movements, which is

now what's happening, I think, with

people just taking

healthcare into their own hands.

Yeah, no, it is it is

definitely the way forwards.

And I think there's definite, I mean, a

little knowledge for the average person

and little knowledge can definitely be a

dangerous thing, that's sort of the whole

idea of the Dunning Kruger effect.

But yeah, I do think that it yeah, as you

said, it is ultimately the way forwards

and getting people to take ultimately

responsibility for their own health and

then to be to be more educated when

speaking to someone such as yourself

probably is at least

establishes sort of a baseline.

In any case,

before we go on a complete tangent, I

suppose you might as well get back to the

longevity and

regenerative side of things.

But anyway, so obviously,

longevity is a major is a

major thing at the moment.

Everybody's talking about longevity,

everyone's talking about

increasing their health span, etc.

And I'm of course, it's something I'm

interested in, but more so from the

perspective of say, modulating the immune

system in the inflammatory response and

improving cell energetics.

And then definitely restoring and

maintaining hormonal function.

Maybe more so than I am looking at a

single mechanism, or a single sort of

molecular target that

would extend lifespan.

Maybe it's because I'm not a geneticist

or speak, I will speak some very bright,

but I tend to try and focus on the big

picture rather than the minutia.

Now you're obviously in the trenches with

work you do with regards to sort of

helping the patients that you have who

are looking to sort of

improve their longevity.

How do you define longevity?

And then what do you find the biggest

needle movers are in that respect?

Yeah, I mean, I think

you kind of hit on them.

But my definition of longevity really is

just being able to live your highest

quality of life for as long as possible,

which is very simple.

But at the end of the day, what happens,

and this is a real statistic over 90% of

people over age 60 in

America have a chronic disease.

So meaning their quality of life gets

affected, and they can't do the things

that they want to because of their

illnesses or diseases or pain or fatigue

or whatever, maybe mood, depression,

there's so many things

that happen as you get older.

And if you can maintain a high quality of

life for that, as you get in, especially

as you get older, that's really what

longevity is, right?

Being able to live to

your fullest, so to speak.

And that's, that's, that was the whole

thing with my original kind of, let's

say, profession, which was giving getting

people out of chronic pain, because pain

affects people's life a lot, not just

from a purely mental health perspective,

but it can affect their ability to stay

active, which ultimately then affects

their whole health, right?

So because if you're in too much pain,

and you can't stay active, then your

whole body becomes the condition, right?

So that's, that was one of the big things

I realized is that

it's all interconnected.

So you can't just, and that's why you

have to look at the body as a whole.

And so when you're coming to the point of

what moves the needle the most, you kind

of hit them both, which is hormones and

immune, immune system, and the immune

system, the reason immune system is so, I

mean, immunology is

such an interesting topic.

And there's so much, there's so much

stuff going on in right now.

And I'm, I spend most of my extra spare

time reading about immunology these days,

because it's just, that's the hot topic

right now in medicine, I think.

And the reason is because it turns out

the immune system modulates or controls

all these other cells, meaning they

dictate, if the, if your immune cells

send the right signal, you're going to

have good regeneration and good healing,

for example, versus if they send the

wrong signals, and you're going to have

scarring and fibrosis.

So your immune cells, that's just one

example of, but it turns out even with

even cardiovascular disease, there's an

inflammatory component with

plaques and heart disease.

And, and like we talked about

Alzheimer's, neuroinflammation, and so

many different things come

back to the immune system.

So if we can keep your immune health

better in terms of slowing down the aging

process, and that's going to have a huge

impact on your aging.

And that's not just me saying it again,

there's, there's data to back this up.

There's a study in Stanford, which is

really interesting, is

a 17 year long study.

So they looked at seven, like, so almost

two decades, and they track people's

immune system health.

And they found that the immune system

metric that they were using out predicted

their out predicted epigenetic clocks for

predicting mortality or death.

So by up to seven years, so they could

predict more accurately by seven years

more than those epigenetic clocks on, you

know, how long someone's going to live,

which is super interesting.

So what that comes back to is if we can

slow down your immune system aging, we

can likely help you live a healthier,

longer life and, and also

prevent chronic diseases.

And that's, and that's why people have

heard of this whole inflammation concept,

right, chronic inflammation being one of

the biggest drivers.

But so let's come back to why does your

immune system get

older in the first place.

And a lot of this has to do with your

bone marrow micro environment, because

that's where the cells are made, right,

the bone marrow micro environment is

where the stem cells get made, and rest

where your immune cells get made, too.

And so what happens is there's something

called a hematopoietic shift, which means

that more of the, let's say, bad immune

cells are being made, and less of the

good immune cells are

being made as you get older.

And so there's a, there's a

shift that happens with aging.

And so, and then the other thing is your

thymus gland, which is starts to shrink.

Yeah, exactly.

It starts to shrink, and

that trains your T cells.

And that that also doesn't

work as well as you get older.

So the bone marrow and the thymus gland

are two hot areas of research right now,

because if we can do thymus regeneration,

and then if we can keep the bone marrow

micro environment healthy, so that you

can continue to produce a good immune

cells, you can significantly slow down

the aging process, and potentially even

reverse aging, I think.

So that's why there's because there's a

research study that was done in mice, but

it's super interesting, where they were

able to use these engineered stem cells

are called IPSC HSCs.

So they're basically, you know, the

Yamanaka stem cells with hematopoietic

stem cells that were able to reprogram

the bone marrow micro environment, and

significantly slow down

the aging process in mice.

So that just that's just

a very interesting study.

But I think the real world application at

the moment is we do have therapies that

can slow down the immune system aging

process, such as immune cells.

But obviously, I think the I think, you

know, the, the regeneration or repair of

those micro environments and that tissue

in the thymus is going to be a really

interesting area for longevity.

Yeah, no, it's fascinating, especially

when you start looking at some of these,

I don't know what you think of

bioregulators that are supposedly have

been shown to help regenerate the thymus.

Specifically on the immune system,

though, what do you feel about this idea

of the fact that the immune system is

going to for the most part is going to be

triggered by a huge number of

environmental factors, anything from

mold, microplastics, etc, that are then

sort of going to drive up this

inflammatory response that was then going

to result in the development of the

inflammation specifically.

Do you think that I suppose part of the

picture here is looking at ways to sort

of reduce that that load on the body so

as to reduce the 100%

in fact, there was a study the research

on if you look at the research on

multiple sclerosis, which is an

autoimmune condition, it's almost it's

every like they found like something like

I can't remember the exact number, but

it's really high, like 95% or something

was linked to EBP, like so almost

everyone who has MS has EBP, which what

does that show you that shows you that's

probably the actual cause of MS, you

know, that's like like like likely the

causative or most important risk factor.

And so chronic infections and chronic

toxins in the body, microplastics,

pesticides, all these things play a role

in kind of hijacking our immune system

and making it in balance or dysregulated.

So that's why we know this.

I mean, the medicines know this for a

while too, as they

call it molecular mimicry.

That's kind of like

the medical term, right?

And so essentially, just meaning like

these toxins are kind of making your body

think that the tissue that's healthy is

actually unhealthy, and

then they start attacking it.

And so why is that tissue presenting as

an unhealthy tissue in the first place is

because there's intracellular pathogens

inside of that tissue, or there's

microplastics, or there's all this

garbage that's

building up inside the cell.

And then your immune

system's like, hey, what the heck?

What's wrong with you?

And then it starts attacking it.

And so then the doctors are just

suppressing the immune system.

They're not going- Biologics.

Yeah, which is biologics or

immunosuppressants or f-prednisone or

monoclonal antibodies.

They're not really

fixing the problem, right?

Which is fine.

We didn't really understand all the

science before, but I think now it's

becoming much more clearer.

And so what we do is we

try to remove the bad.

And there's all these technologies out

there that can do that pretty effectively

now with, there's something called in-use

phoresis, which is in Europe.

It's been around for a while and they've

had, they have data showing, they've

helped autoimmune patients and they can

remove microplastics

and all these things.

And you can combine that with other

therapies to kind of

reset the immune system.

So that's the whole idea.

Yeah.

And where do stem cells

start to fit in this picture?

I suppose you might, it's a good sort of

juncture to start talking about stem

cells in particular with

regards to immune system.

Of course, I think most people view stem

cells purely from the sort of tissue

regenerative standpoint.

I think that is what comes across in

social media the most in any case.

You take stem cells, whether it's, yeah,

whatever form it is, whether it's an

autologous stem cell, such as, I believe

that's PRP, something like that, if I've

got that right, or some sorts of

harvested stem cell.

And most people sort of associate that

again, whether you've got some sort of

cartilage degeneration on your knee or

some sort of aesthetic procedure.

But how are you utilizing these therapies

in these cells to then sort of modulate

the immune response in particular?

Yeah.

So the first problem is, I always have to

get a little bit of a history lesson,

unfortunately, because the first problem

is the word stem cells,

mesenchymal stem cells.

And mesenchymal is kind of like an

embryological term that all these stem

cell clinics that are out there, they're

using what are called mesenchymal stem

cells, which are either derived from fat,

bone marrow, or umbilical

cord tissue or placenta tissue.

Those are perinatal tissue, those are

typically the three most common sources.

And so the problem is the guy who coined

that term in 1992 wrote a paper in 2017

saying that we need to rename it to

medicinal signaling cells.

His name is Dr.

Arnold Kaplan.

And so essentially he was saying that he

named them wrongly because

they are not true stem cells.

They're just not able to regenerate

tissue, like you were saying.

What they do is they do something called

paracrine signaling, which is a signal

and they modulate their environment,

which can still reduce inflammation and

still be helpful, but it's not true

regenerative, which is what people are

looking for and what people are hoping

for with these treatments.

And that was a problem with all these

stem cell clinics and why most of these

stem cell clinics, to be

honest, are scam in a sense.

And a lot of them are

just marketing and hype.

And there's just a lot of

misinformation out there.

And that's also why a lot of mainstream

doctors don't like it because it's like

these clinics are offering these things

which aren't true stem cells.

And that's still a problem because all

these clinics are saying we do stem cell

injections, but they're not

doing stem cell injections.

They're doing signaling molecule

injections or what are, or the other,

other technical name is what's called a

committed progenitor cell, which means

it's already committed

to a certain cell lineage.

It's not able to differentiate into all

the different types of cell types.

So what is a true stem cell?

A true stem cell, it can

turn into any cell in the body.

What's called a pluripotent stem cell.

And so that's, that's, but the issue with

pluripotent stem cells has historically

has been the risk of tumors or cancer

because they could not

turn into tumors as well.

Right.

And that, that's the kind of the big

breakthrough with these new cells, which

is what we're using because they're

pluripotent, meaning they can turn into

any cell in the body, but

they're non-tumorogenic.

So they have the best of both worlds.

So they can not only differentiate into

cartilage or heart or liver.

They've been shown to generate into new

bone, like new brain

tissue to like neural neurons.

So they can turn into anything you need

them to, but there's no risk of cancer.

And in fact, there's research suggests

that they may even

suppress cancer growth.

So it's really, really promising in terms

of their future of, for so

many different applications.

But to come back to your question, what

the immune cells do more than anything is

they help modulate your immune system.

And this has been shown in, in clinical

clinical research, but also with some of

the evidence that we published, we just

published some, we

just published a paper.

I mean, it's just a few cases, but we

used, you know, we use this generation

lab, which is like systems biology aging

test, and essentially measures 19

different organ systems.

And we're able to show like, with just

one or two infusions of the immune cells,

you can see like 10, up to 10 years of

reversal of biological

age in the immune system.

And then you can see

significant slowing down of that.

And then you see the inflammatory

response completely become blunted.

So there's a shift that happens after the

immune cells, which

is really interesting.

And the whole idea is that we combine it

with that blood cleaning technology.

So for, let's say someone who has an

autoimmune condition or dealing with

chronic infections, you know, whether

that's mold or lime or whatever, then one

of the things you can do is you can

remove all the bad stuff using that

technology, like the endocerases, and

then you can put in the new cells.

So it's like you're, you're preparing the

soil before you plant the seeds.

And then you can also you can, of course,

we touch on hormones a little bit, you

can also optimize our hormones using, you

know, functional genomics and blood work

and all that stuff to really look at

their hormone metabolism, and then figure

out and make an

individualized plan for them.

So that way, you're kind of like

optimizing the hormones, you're

optimizing their body

before you put in these cells.

And that's really what

leads to good results.

Yeah, definitely.

And I'd love to come

back to homes in a moment.

Mechanistically, what is going on, I

suppose, at this, at the level of the

immune system, when you're introducing

these stem cells, is there sort of an

increase in natural killer cell activity?

No, it's actually a Treg and TH17.

It's increasing the balance of that.

And then so basically

more T regulatory cells.

And then the other thing is it's

increasing macro, what's called

macrophage polarization.

So shifting the macrophage.

And one to two.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So those are two of the biggest ones.

But then there's also the other thing is,

is helping with what's called SASP,

senescence associated

secretinative phenotype.

So which is essentially one of the

hallmarks of aging, and it helps to

reprogram those cells to have a different

gene expression profile that's more anti

inflammatory, as opposed to the pro

inflammatory senescent profile.

And it actually clears out this is the

coolest thing about new cells.

New cells have what's

called phagocytosis.

So they actually eat the day so let's say

they go to your heart, and there's a

damage, there's damaged heart cells in

there that are senescent that are old and

your body can't clear them out, the new

cells will actually eat them.

And then they'll use a cellular machinery

to turn to a new heart cell that's

functionally better and works better.

Yeah.

And for the audience, that whole process

of phagocytosis forms into this what's

been sort of popularized as this idea of

autophagy upregulating the sort of the

cell recycling process

within a specific target tissue.

That's fascinating, especially the

ability for it to sort of help balance

out that TH17 response as well.

I mean, I know that's also mediated by

Holman specifically, which we can talk

about in a minute things

like excess of estrogen, etc.

Wow.

And then, yeah, I apologize to everyone

who's listening, I might get we might get

a little technical here.

What do you how are you then regulating

the SASP on the back end of that with

regards to looking at compounds like your

your senolytics, everything from your

natural phi-setins to your pharmaceutical

candidates like dastinib.

Are you utilizing any of those compounds

to then sort of clean up the sort of the

leftovers senescent cells?

We use there's a couple there's a company

called qualia, which

makes a senolytic supplement.

So we've been using that one.

And I don't know if there's anything, you

know, I'm not I'm not a super expert as

you are on supplements.

So there might be

something better out there.

But that's the one I've been using.

And then the other other interesting

intervention from a cellular therapy

perspective are NK cells.

So allogeneic natural natural killer

cells act like a

sponge for senescent cells.

So that's another if you you know, for

for older people, especially, excuse me,

for older people, especially, you can do

NK cells prior to the mucal infusion,

because the NK cells help to reduce that

SASP microenvironment and help to clear

out some of the senescent cells before

you put in the mucal.

I did not know that.

I believe that IP6 phosphate just doesn't

offer you probably aware of this is also

going to increase in activity within this

within well within the

immune system as well.

That's anositol 6 phosphate.

So that's also an interesting one that's

been shown to increase.

I assume it do you mean natural killer

cell activity there?

Yeah, okay.

No, that's an that's one that's also got

shown to be quite

effective at helping to increase.

Yeah, NK cell activity.

In any case, I think we're getting a

listen to the weeds here.

Dr.

Kahn, I'd love to maybe pivot and to talk

about hormones a little

bit now if that's okay.

Specifically, as they again, as they

pertain to these longevity outcomes.

Now, like you,

I follow bodybuilding quite closely.

And, and to be honest, I think maybe

outside of individual societies yourself,

and a lot of these sort of

institutionalized academics, their cohort

of individuals that definitely I find

fascinating because,

for the most part, I think they

understand human biology better than

better than most, especially your sorts

of your newer guys,

like, like your Dean St.

Marty, your vigorous Steve's, etc.

I mean, they, it's in their best interest

to understand the human biology because

ultimately, that's the way

you get the body thereafter.

Now, I'm not saying that what these guys

do is necessarily the

best for longevity outcomes.

I mean, yeah, yes, your tremolones, your

methylated testosterone are great for

throwing on slabs of tissue.

But from a systemic standpoint, they're

just going to

increase oxidative stress and

drive up androgenicity and create all

manner of health

issues related on the line.

The proper use of HRT, however, I think

does interest me as longevity aid,

especially in the society we have today,

where people's levels of hormones for a

lot of the reasons we've already

discussed are just lower than ever.

Now, of course,

yeah, endocrine disruptors

lack of sleep, the list goes on.

And again, as you said earlier, these

environmental toxins, yeah,

two times, so your molds, etc.

Now, I'd love to discuss maybe some of

the nuances of HRT and both men and women

from a longevity perspective.

But why do you think, but before we get

there, why do you think it's often

overlooked as a longevity

candidate or a longevity aid?

I mean, especially when you start looking

at the ITP, most people are just again,

looking at these single molecules to try

and sort of, yeah, improve longevity

outcomes, improve health span, whether

it's astaxanthin, or the latest senolytic

or whatever, but very few people are

seemingly, again, we've discussed this

already, the immune system, but focusing

on the endocrine

system, the hormone system.

Do you have a feeling as

to why that is specifically?

Well, I think part of the problem is

there wasn't personalization and

understanding how to

restore the whole access.

Like, for example, it's kind of, it was

very primitive, and it still is for a lot

of people, which is basically like, oh,

you have low testosterone, so take some

testosterone, you have low estrogen, so

take some estrogen, but there, but again,

it's, it's kind of looking at the whole

body and asking yourself, okay, does this

make sense for this picture?

Or why is it low in the first place?

Or is there something we can do from a

systems biology approach to get your own

body to produce more of it?

And especially for a young, like you

said, younger and younger people are

presenting with low testosterone.

That's not normal, you know, and there's

people in their 20s and 30s going on TRT.

And that, that, that to me is a bit of a

problem, because then you're not, you're

not going to the root cause necessarily,

which could be the adrenal access, and it

could be because of microplastics and the

endocrine, it could be so many different

things that you want to look at and see

if you can kind of restart or re jump the

system, so to speak.

And there's, and I think that's where

kind of functional

genomics was really interesting.

We have a doctor, Dr.

Mansoor Muhammad.

He's a, he's kind of like the guy who

pioneered, I would say he has, he's the

only one I know, as far as I know, that

has this insight into looking at your

specific genes that

affect hormone metabolism.

Because obviously when you do these

genetic tests, like, you know, from these

DNA companies, they look at there's

thousands of genes and it's not very, it

just gives you a big report and it

doesn't really give you

a lot of good insight.

You know what I mean?

It's very generic.

Whereas Dr.

Mansoor, what he does is he says, no, I

figured out which genes to look at

specifically to optimize your health and

longevity and not just hormonal ones, but

then there's other important ones too,

obviously like methylation

and other things like that.

But so he does a very tailored approach.

And that's what we use personally to

optimize people's hormones.

Because then he can say, okay, look, your

estrogen metabolism or your progesterone

metabolism is faster than it should be.

And therefore, this is like a deficiency

that you're going to or you're going to

have, you know, because of that you have

this X deficiency and this

is what you need to take.

So he can give you a much more

personalized and specific plan than just

kind of being like looking at your blood

work and telling you based off your

genetics, maybe why your hormones, you

know, are presenting the way they are.

Yeah, definitely.

Is his company the DNA company?

Have I got that right?

He was, long story, he

was part of the DNA company.

He was the founder, he was actually the

founder of that company.

He was his chief scientific.

He was the one who

created all their products.

But then he ended up leaving

and started his own company.

And now his company is

called the PhD clinic.

Okay, no, I have to check that out.

No, it's another rabbit hole.

But yeah, no, I love the

fact that you brought that up.

I think, and in a minute, we will have to

talk about the importance

of hormones and longevity.

But yeah, I think people especially women

who put on to HRT, genes

aren't taken into account.

And I think another great test is, as

you're probably well aware of, is the

Dutch test in that respect.

And just being able to identify how

effectively someone is going to

metabolize a certain hormone before it's

introduced to their body, I think is very

important, especially for women sort of

transitioning or going into menopause,

where maybe they've not actually ever

done any sort of hormonal testing as a

baseline previously.

So you don't have an idea of how

effective of where that sort of estrogen

baseline necessarily is.

Now, of course, you can

give someone testosterone.

And for the most part, that's relatively

easy to control in terms of systemic

outcomes, but in terms

of a side effect, sorry.

But when you start looking at estrogen,

and giving it to someone specifically,

and you're not aware of how well they're

going to methylate or break it down,

you're not aware of sort of first and

second phase detoxification, in that

respect, I think it

starts to get quite messy.

And you can potentially start to trigger

the development of certain cancers,

especially where there's just a buildup

of estrogen in the body over time.

Obviously, your estrogen sensitive

cancers specifically.

So yeah, that's amazing.

I love the fact that you take that

approach and you're looking at it from

more than just a serum

blood work standpoint.

In any case,

off track again, this is...

That's interesting.

Yeah, because most people, I mean, that's

what's offered to 99%

of people still, right?

So people need to know that there's

something more sophisticated out there.

It's just educating the public.

Yeah, no, definitely.

And I think it just goes to the sort of

whole cookie cutter approach with hormone

therapy, and why it

fails to so many people.

Obviously, in the UK, I'm sure familiar

with the system we have here, everybody

just gets the overall patch, obviously,

women in this respect, and then all of a

sudden, they're bloated, depressed, and

they have no clue why, but they're on

HRT, why is it not working well?

You are now estrogen dominant, have no

progesterone or testosterone, and you

wonder why you feel miserable as hell.

In any case,

again, apologies to everyone listening,

we've got straight into the weeds.

But Dr.

Kahn, I think it would be great if we

could maybe just take a quick step back

and talk about some of the importance of

the importance of hormones in longevity.

Now, I think when people think of, again,

think of hormones, it's just the sex

hormones that they think about.

Of course, there are dozens of hormones.

But specifically,

your testosterone, your estrogen, your

progesterone, your sex hormones, why is

it important to maintain

levels of those hormones as we age?

What are their sort of fundamental roles

in helping someone to age,

quote unquote, gracefully?

Well, I think we know with obviously with

testosterone, but also estrogen and

progesterone having the right balance,

they all they relate to muscle mass, bone

density, heart health, brain health.

So meaning if you have low testosterone,

you're at increased risk of depression.

In fact, there was a talk I attended

once, where they said the most common

reason for a Prozac prescription in men

is low testosterone.

And because a lot of doctors, I mean, now

there's obviously

more awareness about it.

But 10 years ago, there wasn't that

awareness to check

testosterone routinely.

I mean, I don't think

it's still done routinely.

But you know, at least there's more

awareness to understand that, hey, maybe

you have low mood, and maybe you're not

feeling very good

because of your hormones.

So more people are at

least thinking about that.

And then I think, you know, with estrogen

and progesterone is kind of the same

thing, we know how

protected they are for the body.

And finding the right balance is the key.

It's not about like you said, it's not

about having high levels necessarily,

it's about achieving

balance of those hormones.

And that balance can be a little bit

different for everyone too, I think.

So that's really where, you know, I think

for musculoskeletal health, especially,

that's really, I think the important

thing when it comes to longevity because

sarcopenia and low bone density become,

which is osteoporosis, become a big

problem for women, especially as they get

into their 50s and 60s.

And it only accelerates and then becomes

a big problem for men too, as they get

into their 60s, and they

can't put on muscle mass.

So if there's something, you know, we can

do to combat that from a hormonal

environment, then that's going to be, you

know, obviously ideal.

And I think, I think, you know,

obviously, the thyroid, the thyroid

hormones are also important, those are

just the sex hormones, but thyroid, I'm

sure people know that's

related to metabolism.

And, you know, it can, if you have a

thyroid, it can make you sluggish and

weight gain and all this other stuff.

But it can also affect importantly for

us, it can, there's studies showing that

if the thyroid levels are low, it can

affect the micro environment of the stem

cells to do their job effectively.

So that's one of the

reasons we look at hormones too.

And we want them optimized because it can

affect the stem cells

ability to do their job.

Yeah, no, I'd love to get into the

thyroid the minute because again,

something that I think a lot of people

sort of overlook is that if you've got

poor circulating levels of T3, the active

thyroid hormone, it's going to alter, I

believe, its star expression within the

mitochondria and the ability for the

mitochondria to actually

produce energy as well.

In any case, how do you, as a physician,

of course, start to look to help people

optimize thyroid, not excuse me, this

hormone function off the bat, obviously,

you're taking a functional

sort of genomic view of it.

And you're obviously including a lot of

blood work and, and

other metrics in this regard.

But are you sort of starting off with

sort of prohormones, things like

Pringnelen and DHE to start off with just

to see if you can increase

someone's natural sort of

Yeah, that's my approach.

Obviously, everyone's

different with this stuff.

But I'm always of the

logic that if we can get your system to

work better on its own,

why don't we try that first.

And that's where peptides and you know,

you mentioned bioregulators, you know, my

regulators, I don't know how great the

evidence is on that, to be honest, and I,

you know, and I've heard mixed things,

but I have seen, I've seen it helpful in

certain cases, very, bioregulators are

very hit or miss in my experience.

But you know, peptides tend to be a bit

more consistent, for example, something

called kisspeptin, an ACG, which is, you

know, basically can stimulate your LH and

your own body to produce more

testosterone on its own.

And that you can, like you said, you can

combine that with precursors like

pregnant alone and DHEA.

And then, you know, you can really get

your own access going again and get your

own body to produce more testosterone.

But I think so to me,

that's always my first approach.

Same thing with, you know, even with

estrogen, estrogen metabolism, for

example, there's research showing that,

you know, the vaginal microbiome and the

gut microbiome can

affect estrogen metabolism.

So meaning your estrogen, you can become

estrogen dominant because of gut

dysbiosis and because

of vaginal dysbiosis.

And so there's these next generation

supplements now, probiotic supplements,

basically, which help to restore the

flora, which have been shown to help to

restore the balance in

the hormones as well.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

I'll have to do a bit of a deeper dive

into that, especially sort

of the vaginal microbiome.

Yeah, check it.

There's a supplement called Get Happy,

it's from Germany, you know, how to name

Get Happy, but it's from Germany.

And it's a vaginal microbiome supplement,

but it's been, that's

basically what it does.

And they have the research to kind of,

they have like, a lot of research to kind

of back up what they're saying.

Yeah, I'll definitely dig into that.

Thank you.

And then just to sort of, I suppose,

touch on the thyroid piece specifically.

Now, obviously, in aging populations, the

thyroid is naturally going to decline,

you sort of see that that transient rise

in TSH as an individual gets older, and

then I suppose, naturally, sort of lower

levels of the circulating thyroid

hormones, T3, T4, T3, T3, T4, etc.

Maybe, that might be a bit of a technical

question, I suppose, but where do you

sort of, how do you start to deal with

some of these hormones, again, from a

long, well, thyroid hormones from a

longevity perspective, especially taking

into account that as one ages, there's

going to be a sort of a decrease in these

three levels of

circulating thyroid, of course.

And I only mention that because I assume

when you look at it from a sort of a

physiology standpoint, there has to be a

reason for thyroid declining as one ages.

Now, obviously, if you ramp up thyroid

activity too much, you're going to

actually end up sort of burning through

that stem cell pull, I think

I'm correct in saying that.

So how do you find that sort of that

happy balance between helping somebody

sort of maintain optimal thyroid function

so that they aren't brain fog depressed,

overweight, and moody versus not in this

sort of hypercatabolic state where

they're burning through the excess

cortisol stem cells, etc.

Do you find that people generally need

replacement as they sort of get older?

Or is that sort of very individual?

Well, yeah, I mean, you're coming back to

the whole idea, right?

The thyroid is kind of like the metabolic

engine of the cells.

And if it's not functioning properly,

then your whole metabolic activity and

how your mitochondria work and everything

in the cells will be affected.

And so that's why it's such a crucial

hormone to have optimized.

But the way I look at it is there's, for

example, there's a lot of co factors such

as selenium, which is such an easy thing

to supplement with or eat Brazil nuts,

which can be an important factor to help

with increasing your own body's

production of thyroid and

making it work more efficiently.

And then there's something called reverse

T3, which is another way to kind of look

at and interpret that, hey, maybe your

body's under a lot of stress and then get

cortisol and adrenal dysregulation.

I don't really like

the word adrenal fatigue.

But dysregulation is the more appropriate

word, I think, which is, you know, when

your cortisol is low, it's high, and when

it's high, it's low.

And that's what

happens to a lot of people.

So they don't have that spike in cortisol

in the am and then they have that they

actually have high cortisol in the pm and

they can't do wired retired.

And that's that's that kind of

dysregulated rhythm, it can play a big

role in affecting

thyroid function as well.

So I think that's why you have to look at

the whole picture from that perspective.

But to answer your question, it's very

important for us because if at the end of

the day, if you're if you're thyroid

hormone, it's kind of like the one of the

lowest hanging fruit, you know, and if

that's not optimized, then it's going to

affect your whole body's health and

longevity and your metabolic health,

metabolic health is the foundation of how

longevity really that's why that's why

GLP ones, you know, as much as I don't as

much as they have side effects and other

things with them, they're probably net

positive for society, you know, because

at the end of the day, they're proving

people's metabolic health.

And I think if anything, that's going to

help your metabolic health as just from

like a first principles perspective for

health, I think that's going to be a good

thing for your for everyone really.

Yeah, no, I do appreciate that because I

think, I mean, again, I, I, I don't think

we need we should we should need GLP ones

and everybody's very quick to sort of

throw them under the bus.

But as a society, I think they're an

incredibly useful intervention.

And of course, just from the their

ability to, as you say, modulate

metabolic health by way of obviously

improving blood sugar, but the obvious,

of course, they are starting to show

quite a lot of efficacy for off off label

as well for helping to control

individuals with issues

with MCAS and histamine, etc.

So I do think that they're an incredibly

useful class of molecules.

Dr.

Kahn, I know we're sort of slowly

starting to run up in time, but I'd love

to ask you about mini circle and its

inability and its ability to help

regulate testosterone levels.

Now, the way I understand it, mini

circle, it's, it's, I suppose,

fundamentally, it's a

gene editing system.

And yeah, you're not directly editing the

genes, of course, but you're all

introducing a viral vector or you're

utilizing CRISPR or anything like that.

But from what I understand, you're

utilizing a sort of a plasma vector, a

plasmid vector, I think, to then alter

the expression of various genes.

I've bring this full circle, of course,

could you sort of explain that process to

us and how you're utilizing it to help

optimize testosterone

levels in individuals?

Yeah, so it's what's

called an additive gene therapy.

So we're adding a gene to your body,

we're not editing your genes.

So it's, it's obviously safer in that

sense, because it's not as complicated.

But and traditionally, the problem with

gene therapy, additive gene therapy was,

you know, finding the right vector that

could be both safe and effective.

Mini circle plasmids are definitely very

safe, because they're very inert.

So they're basically derived from

bacteria from E. coli is kind of just

imagine it just like the name says, it's

a mini circle, it's like

a little circle of DNA.

And then you can you can use it to what's

called transfect a cell.

So that cell becomes like a little

factory to produce more

of the gene of interest.

So that gene of interest could be could

be like something for helping with

muscle, it could be something to help

with brain could be there's so many

different genes, obviously.

And the one that became that we've been

doing is something called follow statin,

which is more to help

with muscle strength.

And interestingly,

just to share my experience with people,

the mini circle plasmid has kind of been

like hit or miss, you know, it works for

some people, it doesn't work for others.

So it's not consistent.

But there is something called, there's a

company called triple helix, which has

what's called a viral gene

therapy, a AV, adeno, socio virus.

And that one has, you know, a V's have

been studied for decades.

And the issue historically with viral

vectors was triggering some sort of

immune response, right?

Like you don't want your

immune system to attack the virus.

But now they can engineer the viruses, so

they're hypo immune, and they don't have

that risk with them.

So essentially, you can transfect the

cells with this viral vector.

And it does work more

effectively than the mini circle.

I you know, in terms of safety, it's also

it based off their data, it seems to

equally as safe too.

And it can last.

The interesting thing about the viral

vector is it can last for up to 10 years.

Whereas you know, the mini

circle only lasts for a year.

So there's some

interesting pros and cons of each.

But the point is, these vectors, whether

it's a viral vector or a mini circle

vector, they can eventually be used to

transfect your G your cells to perhaps

produce more kisspeptin or luteinizing

hormone or gene or H.

Yeah, yeah, something to help your body

produce more

testosterone for as an example.

So I think there's definitely going to be

interesting applications.

I know, I know mini circle, they were

trying to produce an LH gene therapy.

That was one of the things but they

couldn't get the levels high enough to

the test for the testosterone to actually

go high enough for it to be meaningful.

So it might not be a thing with mini

circle, maybe it'll be something with the

viral vector company.

But there's you know, this is obviously a

hot area and there's so

many companies in this space.

But I do think it's not that far distant

in the future, well, we'll have a gene

therapy product for hormone replacement

therapy as opposed to having to go on

like TRT or something.

Yeah, I suppose that is dependent on how

effectively the testicles or potentially

the theca cells and women, I think that's

where testosterone is produced in the

ovaries, are functioning as well.

I assume if somebody has

a secondary hypogonadism, something like

this would be effective if it's helping

to stimulate the HPT-8 to

then produce more testosterone.

But if there's a primary defect in the

tissue within the body, whether it's the

theca cells and women or I suppose

potentially the adrenal cells and women,

which obviously produces a certain amount

of androgens as well, or the testes and

men, that treatment like this is

assumedly not going to be as effective.

Would I be correct in my thinking there?

No, yeah, exactly.

It definitely will depend on the person

and their bodies, like let's say receptor

sensitivity and ability to kind of have

the signal because at the end of the day,

this is just introducing an additional

signal to your body,

which is this peptide, right?

And how receptive your body is to that

signal is going to really dictate whether

or not it functions well.

Yeah, no, definitely.

Again, Dr.

Kahn, I want to be

respectful of your time.

So I'd love to sort of end off with a few

rapid fire questions,

rapidish fire questions.

They're never rapid fire, but we can try.

We can try.

We can try.

In any case, okay, so yeah, and these are

going to be a bit all over the place.

Obviously, definitely with the focus on

the regenerative side of things.

But okay, so money, no object, and

someone comes to you and they're sort of

growth hormone deficient.

Are you sort of a fan of sort of Incrolex

or sort of HGH as sort of as a primary

replacement therapy there?

I guess it depends

how deficient they are.

But if they're on just like, let's say,

the low side of normal, which is like, I

would say, typical people as they get

older, then I'm

potentially a bit I'm a bigger fan.

I mean, maybe I'm a little bit biased of

growth hormone peptides.

So for example, like I from relevant and

test from rally and then, you know, the

growth hormone releasing hormones and

trying to get your own body to produce

more of the peptide of

the hormone on its own.

So that's that's personally my approach.