Joe Rogan - Mel Gibson on How Stem Cell Therapy Saved His Dad's Life

And we're live, gentlemen, Dr. Neal Reardon. Am I saying that right? Yes, sir. And Mel Gibson. How are you, sir? All right. Hey, how you doing? Welcome aboard, folks. First of all, thanks for coming here. I really appreciate it. Very nice to meet you. It's cool to be here. Nice to meet you too. So, this, you wanted to come in and talk about stem cells. Yeah. So, what is, what's your experience been and what is, what's this calling that you have here? Well, I was initially, it was for my dad who was, you know, he was 92 and not, and he was doing all the old man stuff. You know, his hip was killing him and he was like, he had, he had multiple problems. I mean, I won't get into the whole litany of complaints, but hey, you know, your engine starts wearing out and you got to replace the carburetor and a few other things. I took him to the Mayo Clinic. Great place. If I ever get into serious trouble, that's where I'm going. And they were fantastic there, but they were able to say, oh, you got to leave me here. He'll be dead in 48 hours. I'm like, oh. So, they clocked every problem that he had. Everything from, you know, the prostate to the hip to the kidneys to the heart to the lung, you know, the whole deal. And he, you know, they stabilized him. And they said, okay, we'll do this and we'll do this. And they did some, you know, orthodox medical procedures all allowed in this country. And they were great. But you know, I still had reservations about him getting a hip replacement because he was old and of course, just the recovery from a traumatic surgery at that age is like, it's a big deal. And I thought, oh, what can I do? My brother says, why don't you look into these adult stem cells? And I'm like, yeah, you know, I've heard things about this, you know. You grow a spare mouth on your head. You end up with an extra asshole or something. But I was like, okay, we'll look into it. So we did. And of course, a buddy of mine who was a Mayo doc, he said, stay away from those witch doctors down at Panama. He said, it's like leprosy and banana boats and three-legged dogs, you know. I'm like, can we call them? And so Brad and I got on the phone to Neil. And who else was it? Yeah, it was Dr. Paz, our medical doctor. Yeah, it was the two of these guys. So they're talking highfalutin terms, medical, all being Medicos. You know, they sort of, they know what a mesenchymal stem cell or mesenchymal, how do you say it? Mesenchymal. Mesenchymal, you know, and, you know, mesenchymal cytokines, you know, out of sight, out of kind as far as I'm concerned. But it's like they give us the wristwatch show over the phone for about an hour. And the doctor's asking them questions that I can't even think of. So when we hang up, I said, now, you know, translate, what does all that mean? And he was like, he translated a few things. He says, you know, it sounds kind of interesting, pretty good, you know. And from being a naysayer, he said, let's call them back. And I think we called you right back. And we spent another hour on the phone. Well, to his credit, Brad asked for a bunch of literature, and I sent him maybe 30 articles, and most physicians wouldn't even look at it. But it was all relevant to what Hut had, and, you know, for the heart problems, kidney problems, and orthopedic problems. And he read all the articles. And he read the upside, the downside. And then we had, to his credit, then we had a very educated talk after that. Conversation, yeah. And he was really, you know, by this time, informed. And he just said to me, well, you know, he's 92. He says, what the hell have you got to lose? And I said, no, nothing. Let's go. So I'm up for it. We asked him, is he up for it? He goes, hell yeah. Because he's, you know, they took him into the hospital. He was 92. And they said, what medications do you want? And he said, I'm not on any end. They said, you're 92 years old. How do you account for not being on any medications? Is this because I stay away from doctors and hospitals? And you know, and he didn't have any problems. He started to have a rough trip. Well, we took him down there and he got, I think it was like a double dose in the hip. I think he gave him. So where did you have to go? This is not legal in America. Is that what's going on? Yeah. Right now, there are clinical trials going on in the US, but it's not broadly available. And in Panama, they passed a law in 2004, which allowed us, allowed doctors actually to go down there to be able to treat people with using adult stem cells. So the bill was actually designed to prohibit the use of embryonic stem cells. And in the same law, they said it's okay to use adult stem cells, including those from umbilical cord, basically from ethical sources. And so in Panama, they gave us, we have a license from the Ministry of Health to manufacture and use those cells in addition to doing clinical trials there. So it's one place on the planet where you can get really high quality umbilical cord, this type of cell. There are two major kind of stem cells. We only work with one kind, the mesenchymal, or we just call it MSC. It's a lot easier. And so anyway, that's how I think we were actually, we actually owned apartments in the same building in Panama, never met each other. We met through his brother finding us on the internet. There you go. And then they brought him down to get treatment. We were quite hesitant to take him, because the last thing you want is Mel Gibson's dad to drop dead in your clinic, and he wasn't in great shape. He wasn't in good shape at all. But as I recall, when he got there, he was in a wheelchair and wasn't talking a lot and things like that, and having a pretty rough time. And then, so after getting medical clearance for him to actually fly down there, and Mel flew him down there privately, then we did some IVs on him first in the clinic. And then to do the hip, we need to do that. You said did some IVs? What do you mean? So we give the umbilical cord, these are isolated from the, basically the meat of the umbilical cord. They're isolated, then they're grown in our laboratory, which is ISO 9001, and very high quality certified by the Ministry of Health. They're grown in the laboratory, and they're certified to be free of everything, any kind of infectious disease. I went into the clean rooms, and they make you put on hats and gloves, and you feel like all Frankenstein-ed out, and you walk into these cold rooms, and you're watching cells divide under the microscope. It's kind of miraculous, really. Look at this stuff. So intravenous stem cells. Right, intravenous, that's correct. And what's the benefit of intravenous stem cells? What does that do? The good thing is that this kind of stem cell, the mesenchymal stem cell, they're found throughout your body, and normally what they do is they modulate your immune system, they decrease inflammation, and they stimulate regeneration. And the good thing about them is they tend to home to areas where there is inflammation. So intravenously, they do a lot of things, but they can home to areas of inflammation, and they really reduce inflammation in the body because they upregulate part of your immune system that controls the inflammatory process, which I can talk more about later. But in his case, his kidneys were in trouble, his heart was in trouble, and the cells, unlike what we used to think in the early days, they don't become anything. This kind of stem cell does not become anything in your body, but it homes to areas that need repair, and it secretes things that stimulates the repair and decreases the inflammation and helps out with the immune system. The vast majority of what we treat are autoimmune diseases. And in Hut's case, we gave him IVs so that he could basically have these things on board, secreting the cytokines and the growth factors that are normally secreted. And when you're 92 and you have multi-organ failure, you're basically running on fumes. And so you put these day zero young healthy cells, and they secrete these things that kind of restarts everything. And so what was his response to this IV treatment? Well, I can wax lyrical about that. He's almost 100 years old. And from pretty bad shape, it was like bee stings. It was like he got a new lease of life, like he got a big dose locally in the hip, which fixed all his inflammation and pain, and he started walking again. And his kidneys were good, and his heart, he had a prolapsed valve in there, and they healed. And his cognitive powers improved. His eyesight improved. Whoa. You know? And other stuff improved that he would hate me to talk about. But he had two nurses that reported to me, and it was like, holy mackerel. Was it using it as a towel rack? Well, Dan Bilzerian was telling me about intravenous stem cells. And so was Boss Rutan, you know, Boss Rutan, the former UFC heavyweight champion. He went down and got some, he's had some pretty significant neck injuries and neck fusions. And he said he got intravenous stem cells. And the way he described it's like, with his Dutch accent, it was like, it was like I had lightning coming out of my fingers. Like, ah! Did he go to you? Yeah. Did he? Yeah. He said it was phenomenal. I mean, he said it's one of the most incredible experiences he's ever had. And he said it's one of the most incredible experiences he's ever had.