Podcast Transcription: Everything You Need to Know About Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Therapy with Joshua Ketner

Ted Ryce: Josh Ketner, thanks so much for coming on the show today. We were introduced from a mutual friend, and I can't wait to get into this topic. It's something I've been wanting to cover on the show for a long time. So, thank you for taking the time to do this. 

Josh Ketner: Oh, happy to be on. Thanks for having me. And any questions I can answer, I'm happy to do.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And in the intro, I talked a little bit about who you are, what you do, but for someone just hearing your name for the first time and hearing about stem cells and you have this clinic in Mexico, it might bring up a lot of questions for a person. So, I'd love for you to share how you got started, sharing the story about this journey you've taken to moving to Mexico and starting the clinic.  

Joshua Ketner: Yeah, no problem at all. I mean, it's a long ways away, so I was born kind of San Francisco area. I always say I grew up in Seattle, so I went to high school and all that and went over to Washington State University and about not long after that, my dad was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.  

So that's really where it all kind of started for me. Before that, I loved to work out. I loved my own personal fitness. That was always a huge aspect of my life, but it wasn't something I ever thought I would do, like as a career or whatnot.  

So, when he got sick, I ended up moving back, helping to care give, all that. And you just kind of see how messed up the medical system is these days. You call it sick care instead of health care. They can treat any symptom, but they never go after the root cause.  

I mean, I just try to think, when's the last time they really cured something, you know? Like what? Like polio, maybe? It's been a while. So, with that, I got into caregiving, which is more on, like, the elderly care kind of side after my dad passed from Lou Gehrig's disease.  

And with that, I had just this idea one day about maybe doing an assisted living community in Mexico—or somewhere abroad, basically. Because it's so overregulated, the costs are so high, the kind of care these people get isn't great. It's mostly because over regulation drives costs up and they can't really treat them the way they should.  

So, I read an article one day and it says, “Man Outsources Parents To India.” Thought it was kind of funny. And I'm like, “That's a good idea, but too far away. Maybe somewhere like Mexico would work.” My parents had always had timeshare in Mazatlan. I'm like, “Mexico probably would work.”  

Looked into it. Had a friend who had moved to Puerto Vallarta. I was then working for a place for mom, which is a senior care placement group. It was work from home. And I moved down here to kind of see if it was possible.  

Had some investors fall through. And in the process, met a doctor that was doing this legal flying by program, mostly for human growth hormone and maybe testosterone, other things.  

And I had learned a lot about that when my dad was sick because, like, we wanted to get growth hormone for him in higher doses. Same with testosterone because they prevent muscle wasting.  

Things like Lou Gehrig's disease, you eventually pass from the muscle wasting. So, like, why not throw, like, bodybuilder doses at him? At least give it a chance. If you have HIV wasting, that's what they do. And insurance will cover it. But for ALS and many other diseases like that, they just won't do it.  

So, that doctor went back for a PhD program up in the States, and me and my wife pretty much kind of took over from there. He didn't hand it to us. We just kind of started from the ground up, started marketing, making videos, talking to people.  

And that was ten years ago. And about eight years ago, you'd hear rumors and such that we're doing stem cells in Mexico. You hear a lot of rumors about special cancer treatments and other things, and a lot of those actually are true.  

So, we finally found the route for the stem cells, met one of the main labs here in Mexico, built a relationship, and we're right now just about finished with our newest lab. So, I think we've got the largest stem cell facility with lab on site in the world now. So, it's taken ten years, but it's grown like crazy, and we've helped thousands of people. It's where we're at. 

Ted Ryce: Incredible story, Josh, and when you say that—we don't know each other, we just for people listening. You and I, this is the first time we're talking other than a few Whatsapp exchanges. And my father died in October 3, 2020. And we had to put him in assisted living.  

And I saw that…even before that, he was living in Vero Beach, Florida. I don't know if you're familiar with how things are run there, but I'm sure you must have seen a lot of things very similar to it in your stent of assisted living and wanting to make a change there and starting an assisted living facility outside the United States.  

And it was shocking watching not just—it was shocking watching the level of care. And I have a lot of doctors that I'm friends with and connected with, and some of them…There's great doctors out there, but the ones who are great, I think unfortunately, there's a situation where a lot of them, especially dealing with the elderly population and dealing with what we're going to be talking about today, where you're helping people with their orthopedic injuries.  

There's just a lot of… what's the saying? It leaves a lot to be desired. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is I wanted to have a conversation about this and about what the alternatives are. And I think, though, one thing that comes up…You're American, I'm American. We think about go down to Mexico and get some injections in your joints.  

What's the other place that they're doing it? Is it Panama?  

Joshua Ketner: I think Panama. 

Ted Ryce: Right. And so there's these other clinics, and it starts to bring up these questions for the average American thinking like, well, if stem cells are so good, why isn't the US allowing it? Why aren't they putting and investing money into it? I mean, certainly, all the wealthy people and the politicians are getting older and dealing with a lot of this stuff.  

So, can you talk a little bit about what the situation there is and why you decided to do it in Mexico?  

Joshua Ketner: Yeah, so I guess that's always a good place to start. Like, what is… you can do stem cells in the United States? Well, kind of. I mean, what they allow you to do there is they let you use what are like they'll do a liposuction where they keep you awake. It's not like a full liposuction.  

They'll just take some stomach fat with a local anesthetic, get it, and then put it in a centrifuge, spin it up. Put some collagenase to separate the tissue, and then you're left with some liquid. Well, they do the same thing with bone marrow.  

Bone marrow is the worst source because mesenchymal stem cells like we use, they live on the capillaries. So imagine my arms like a capillary vein. They live here. They come off when they detect inflammation. They go to the inflamed area, and they start acting like the manager on the construction site.  

In fact, the kind of stem cell we use, mesenchymal stem cells. I've met and had conferences and spoken at length with the man who named them, Dr. Arnold Kaplan. He wishes he could rename them ‘medicinal signaling cells,’ because they really work by sending out signals, guiding everything, the healing process.  

So, they're like the manager on the construction site. They don't actually become tissue, which, that's like the embryonic cells. Those don't work. Those always want to become a baby, so they always become a tumor. So the ones we use actually can prevent that. There's no issue, nothing.  

So, in the United States, they made this weird, dumb rule—because they can't fully deny it, and they can't fully regulate it because it exists naturally in your own body, the mesenchymal stem cell. So, what they did is they made this obscure rule that you cannot cultivate, meaning replicate the cells in the lab and then administer them.  

And the problem is that's what you really need to get the healthiest cells. Those first round from fat or bone marrow, those aren't very good cells because you just took them from their home tissue. It's a traumatic event. So they release these different signals, is how they work. They get lazier. They're kind of scared. They're holding everything in because they're just worried about survival.  

Then you have the fact that bone marrow, you're lucky if you get 10,000 mesenchymal stem cells. Fat, you might get 100,000. And they're from your own aging body. And if you have, like, an autoimmune disease, they will not help. They're already not working the right way.  

So, you've got all these things. And then what they're injecting, less than 1% of that is actually mesenchymal stem cells. Dr. Kaplan likes to compare it to Coca Cola. Oh, yeah, they'll sell you an apple juice, but go read the back label. 99% sugar and water, 1% juice from concentrate.  

And that's the same thing they're doing in the US. The third option that is really stem cells is there's one lab, they let them take a whole umbilical cord and isolate the stem cells, but no replicating. So, you might get five to 10 million that way. But they have to cryo freeze these cells. And when you thaw them, there's a very high chance of die off.  

And again, they're that first round of cell that is just trying to survive. It's not like what we do, where we cultivate them in the lab. It's like the Garden of Eden, this perfect solution where they can replicate. And we replicate anywhere from the second to sixth round, and we can get hundreds of millions of cells for a single treatment.  

And it becomes a numbers game. So, you can kind of do it in the US, but the overregulation, the fear of big pharma, that this actually treats root causes and isn't just a cover up like, say, a cortisone shot for your knee. Great, you might eliminate the pain for a little while.  

But what they don't tell you is it's highly acidic. It destroys tissue faster than it would normally. And you end up needing surgery faster. And that's the other angle people don't see, is that the Orthopedic Surgeons Union, I mean, their lobby group in DC is like a multi-billion-dollar lobby.  

They have a lot of power as far as rules go. And to take it a step further, and Canada is the best example, they did allow Canada to do what we do with the replication of cells nine years ago. A lot of Americans think they have this perfect healthcare system and all that.  

Well, we work with a lot of Canadians. I can tell you that's not really true in most cases. But seven years ago, the Orthopedic surgeons threw such a fit because they were losing so much business from replicated stem cells that they actually got stem cells banned nationwide.  

Canada has no stem cells. America, at least can still do these things. But they also don't tell you, is that to get a new medication approved can cost anywhere from…Well, first, you have to get approval from, like an application, which is two and a half million dollars.  

If you have one period or comma out of place, they will make you do another application. I know a lab in Boise, Idaho that tried this, and they're like, “We're not going to spend that much money.” Because then you have to do all four phase trials of the FDA, and the cheapest you can get through is $50 million, and the most is 150,000,000.  

And if you do get approved, it's only for one thing. So, it could be like mesenchymal stem cells work for autoimmune diseases, joints, chronic degenerative, a lot of things. So, you'd say, okay, just knees, right? You could spend over $100 million, and you can't patent it because it naturally exists in the body.  

So, nobody's going to spend that money and then not have a patentable product to then come back and make their money back. The cofounder of Home Depot did. He did this for autism, a study at Duke University. They made it to stage three trials.  

And Duke gets a lot of funding from Big Pharma. They started dragging their feet and refused to release data. He eventually, actually just recently took all funding away because he knew it would never go through.  

So, the deck is massively stacked against this ever getting approved. Not because it doesn't work, but because the health care industry is designed to make money. And making money is okay, but you hit a point where you need to fix people, too.  

Ted Ryce: That's a lot, Josh. But let me try to… 

Joshua Ketner: I know. I know. I'm sorry.  

Ted Ryce: No, absolutely, you're passionate, you're knowledgeable, you have experience. And so what I hear you saying is you can kind of do some treatments in the US, but the treatments from the fat, from the bone marrow, you're getting the apple juice, that's 99% water and sugar, and that 1%—just to use a metaphor.  

And then the other thing you said is that Canada banned stem cells altogether, which is interesting because the claim you're making is that the orthopedic union or whatever it's called over there, the lobby just shut it down.  

I'll ask you this… There are so many different ways we could go with this, but one question, I had one of my high net worth clients back in Miami Beach when I was still doing personal training. He had some issues with his knees. I think this is worth mentioning.  

He went to one orthopedic surgeon who said—this is what he told my client, “Looks like you jumped out of an airplane without a parachute and landed on your feet and then your knees took the brunt of the punishment.”  

And then he went to a Rheumatologist who said, “No, you don't have that. You don't have the level of arthritic wear.” And I'm like, how the hell can you go from that extreme to like, no, it's not that bad. So, I bring that up because there is a lot of disagreement inside the mainstream medicine.  

There's a lot of controversy just inside of people who kind of agree or are part of that system. And one of the other things is he asked his Rheumatologist about getting a stem cell injection because he was looking at the place in Panama, and the Rheumatologist put him on some medication instead, says, “Hey, there's no research showing that stem cells are effective.” 

Just to play devil's advocate here, and I'm sure you have some great answers, but one of the reasons that it seems stem cells have been pushed against is because the evidence isn't very strong that they help people with what people like yourself say. They help people, right, the conditions. 

Joshua Ketner: Totally. That's what they'll tell you because they're not going to go do the work. But if you want to Google it, you could do it right now and verify this. But if you go to PubMed and type in Mesenchymal Stem Cells, you're going to get like 30,000 results. If you go to Google Scholar, you'll get over 100,000.  

I have some top-level doctors. One is like, at the top there. He was at TRICARE in DC. You know, military, all that.  

We've got some of these guys that, I mean, even they will tell you there's more evidence that stem cells work for knees than just about anything.  

Now, it depends what part of the knee. For the meniscus, there's probably the most data. For the cartilage, there's a lot, but they tend not to. It's really tough to do these studies with humans. We have before and after MRIs of patients where we can physically prove we've regenerated cartilage, meniscus.  

I mean, I had multiple meniscus tears and a partially torn ACL. You can see my before and after MRIs. Now, there's plenty of evidence, but that's kind of their argument, too. Like Dr. Kaplan told me he meets with the FDA at least once a year, and they always tell him the same thing.  

He named these in the early 1990s, and they've been telling him now for 30 years that, “Oh, we just need more research.” And it’s just so they don't have to actually answer the question. And then these orthopedics, I mean, look, there's awesome orthopedic surgeons out there, but what is their job? It's to cut. So, you'll find… 

And I see this way too often, they will just do an x-ray... And anybody can tell you, an x-ray only shows bone. It does not show cartilage. They can guess and infer how much space there is, but they only take one angle, and they're not thinking from every angle to infer that space.  

So, all the time I have patients tell me, “Oh, my orthopedic told me I’m bone on bone and I need to go get a replacement.” And I said, “Well, let's get an MRI.” We do an MRI with all of our joint treatments. We require it. Either patients do it before they come, or we do it here.  

And you can see the cartilage, you can see the ligaments, the tendons, the meniscus, and nine times out of ten, maybe they're third degree. Maybe they're just barely fourth degree, but very, very rarely do we get someone who truly is bone on bone, and we cannot help.  

And we have patients all the way to fourth degree that we won't get them 100% with one treatment if they wait that long. We can get fourth degree to maybe third or second degree arthritis on one try. Six months or a year later, get more and get it all the way. But it's a huge difference. 

Like, third degree to fourth degree or second degree to fourth degree is a big difference. So, there's a ton of evidence out there. They just don't really want to look at it.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I want to speak to that because I feel like I'm halfway...Like, I appreciate a lot of what the doctors that I've worked with and who I've interviewed, a lot of what they do, and there's some good things inside our system, I think.  

But ultimately, what you talked about, where it's become such big business. I don't know if you know this or not, but Florida is like one of the top places for Medicare fraud as an example, because it's just like, there's all these aging people.  

It's like, hey, let's do a surgery. Let's do this test, let's do that. And people are getting in trouble all the time over there who are part of that system. And it's just gotten to the point where it's hard to…Even being a medical doctor or having that MD after your name, you really have to know the person and develop a relationship and really not trust that they know their stuff, but they also have done their due diligence.  

I remember a doctor saying, “Well, I don't believe in supplements.” It's like, dude, it's not the tooth fairy, it's not unicorns. There's study out…Like you mentioned…I'm not well versed on the research on stem cells. Just never really looked at it.  

But for supplements, it's like you can't say that you don't believe in it. There's randomized control trial, after control trial, after control trial on some of these things, and it's just like you're not taking the time to go over this stuff.  

And granted, a lot of them are busy, but then just say you're busy and you don't know. And the reason I bring that up, if you're listening right now, because I know Josh, you already feel this way, but you really have to trust your doctor not just as an expert, but as someone who is willing to say, hey, I don't know what's going on. 

Or like, what you brought up, Josh, with the bone on bone. It's like, well, how do you know that? You took one x-ray from one angle and then that's what you say. You have to be careful with people who give you that level of confidence with just trying to…I don't know why they do those things or say those things.  

Joshua Ketner: Well, they're putting on that big white butcher jacket, sharpening up the knife and they're ready to start cutting.  

Ted Ryce: I'm sure that's true in many cases, for sure.  

Joshua Ketner: It's not. I know. 

Ted Ryce: Not all are like that.  

Joshua Ketner: Of course not all. It's just the way the system is designed. They've got to take care of people. But they only have so many resources to do that. They've created and moats to a lot of alternative things and they have to tell what they know. And that's why they're not lying to you. It's just what they know and what they've been taught. So, it's up to you if you want to explore alternatives or other options.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, well, I agree with you. And that's why I'm having you on this show, and not just for the benefit of people listening, but I want to come to your clinic because of some of my issues. And one of the things that I wanted to go into is some of the things that you said when you filled out your form to be on the show and you said, “Nerve pain can be healed. Hearts can be healed.” 

I talked to someone on Twitter, and they said, “No, I have permanent nerve damage because of a herniated disc.” And I have, by the way, Josh, I herniated a disk. I have three herniated disks in my neck. I saw a neurosurgeon and I was like, “How do I know when I need surgery?” He's like, “Well, you know when you know.” 

But he wanted to do three replacements in my neck, three disc replacements. And I was under the impression it was like, oh, just go in through the back and just pop them in. But it's like, they go in through the front, and it's very intricate, and there can be big problems from it, and those replacements wear out.  

And then with the nerve pain, it's like I've tried so many different things. And one of the things that I tried the most or that worked the most, sorry, was specific physical therapy exercises that weren't taught to me by the top physical therapists that I saw.  

I had to learn them from other people who were kind of more on the edge, and taking Acetyl-L-Carnitine, but nobody talks about it. I had to dig through the Internet and experiment a lot to figure that out. And why isn't that…? For someone struggling with nerve pain, it's like, why don't you just tell people to take that stuff, right, to give it a try? And it's a bit of a mess. 

Joshua Ketner: And you can only get the pills there. You can't get, like, even the injectables, right, for the L-Carnitine? 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I mean, you can't buy that in vitamin shop or get it shipped to you through Amazon, the shots, no. 

Joshua Ketner: No, I know. It's over the counter here in Mexico. It's hilarious, but they know you're a big boy here, and if it's not going to kill you, it's safe enough, you can usually get it. It's pretty nice like that. 

Ted Ryce: For sure. I think when you say something like that, it also can bring up some alarm bells for people, like, well, if people are just getting away with whatever there, then so how can I trust…What would you say to someone who might feel that way?  

Joshua Ketner: I think it's funny because, I mean, if you're in Florida, anywhere in the States, look at all the opioid problems. I mean, you can buy tramadol over the counter anywhere here. There are zero drug addicts running around. All the drugs go up north to you guys.  

When it's not like a big deal and it's not bad, and it's being used medically, it just doesn't become an issue. It's like a weird thing of human nature when you know you're not supposed to do it or can't, you want to.  

And I don't know, I guess that kind of gets off the point. But with nerves, nerves are huge. I have a herniated disk at L4, L5 that we fixed up about three and a half years ago. And I still have a herniated disc, right? Like the stem cells aren't going to magically push it back in. They don't fix mechanical issues.  

But we did four shots at 25 million around L4, L5, 100 million IV, and I flew off to Mexico City the day after treatment, hiked this castle, they got there, carrying my son. Flew to Peru for two weeks, carrying my son. Like, toughest work out of my life for my back.  

And it's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to rest and relax, but I just have this problem with, you know, doing the exact opposite usually, just to see where the limit is. And within, like, two weeks, all my sciatic nerve pain was gone.  

I mean, it felt like I had a cattle rod to my femur. It has not come back. And I've tried to hurt it, dirt bikes, four wheelers, jet skis, you know, dumb stuff that can hurt your back. It hasn't happened. And we've treated more nerve things than I can count at this point.  

The stem cells send out what are called trophic factors, which guide the neurons to regenerate nerves. So as long as we can get them close, they will get to the area and they'll actually fix up that nerve. So, in my spinal cord, you think of the disc, it's like an ice cream sandwich. It's kind of coming out the ice cream, it’s pushing on the spinal cord, and that's impinging on it.  

It's causing the nerves to cause pain. And it feels literally like a cattle rod on your femur, where you get this: can't sleep, it's horrible. Dealt with it for a month before I finally decided I couldn't tough it out. Did that, fixed it up super quick. 

And we're seeing that across the board with people with the neck, they tend to have hands and forearm issues. People with lower back, it's either upper legs or their feet. We've seen amputees with phantom pain that we've actually injected to the area, and it's fixed it. So it's trigeminal neuralgia.  

I mean, people kill themselves because of that, when the pain is so bad with the nerve that comes through here. Had an oral surgeon put it in, fixed it up. It's incredible what they do for nerve pain. And the only other option is maybe they can cauterize nerves, if it's an accessible nerve.  

And they still grow back so that's that pain is going to come back. With the stem cells, it's either going to reroute it around the thing that's pressing on it or heal it so it stops hurting.  

Ted Ryce: Fascinating. I think one of the other issues that comes up, it's like, well, what are the potential side effects from doing this? Because it sounds miraculous. Treating these issues like the trigeminal nerve issue and sciatica.  

And I was sleeping on the floor for several weeks when I had my… I mean, I wasn't writing the suicide note, but I was saying to myself, oh, I totally understand why people kill themselves who are in pain. I could see myself getting to that point if it didn't get better, because there was no, you know, just living in that way is not good.  

So it's not acceptable not tolerable. So, what are the side effects? What are the potential concerns here? Long term? Short term. 

Joshua Ketner: It sounds too good to be true, but there's not much. I mean, the thing is, let's start with how we get the stem cells, right? So, the biggest concern for people that we do, that they don't do in the States, is we take these from another person.  

We take them from the umbilical cord tissue and placenta of a live, healthy birth, and we then isolate the stem cells from that tissue. The reason why is that's the youngest, healthiest tissue, it will replicate the fastest. If we took it from, like, you, for example… 

Or let's say for me, I turn 40 here in a couple of weeks. My cells, if we did that liposuction and then cultivated those cells, oh, man, we might take that 100,000. We might be able to get it up to, say, like, a million in like, four weeks. With someone who's like, 60, we're looking we probably wouldn't even get it to a million.  

But with placenta and umbilical cord tissue, we can take millions of cells and turn that into to hundreds of millions or billions very fast and easy, like, within days as opposed to weeks and weeks or months.  

So, we do that because mesenchymal stem cells lack what is called HLA, Human Leukocyte Antigen. That's what tells your body to reject foreign tissue. Like, say I needed a kidney and you were a perfect match. You decided to give me that kidney to save my life.  

My body is still going to try and reject that kidney the rest of my life. We have different HLA markers. Mesenchymal stem cells do not have HLA markers, so your immune system will never detect them. They just assume they're yours. People ask me all the time, is there, like, DNA transfer, anything? No, because they're just sending out these different signaling proteins, trophic factors, chemical proteins, signals.  

No DNA is being transferred, or anything like that. They simply work. Even with pregnant women that have had babies, they found mesenchymal stem cells in the bone marrow up to 20 years after that were floating in that lake.  

They were male, from a human male. They could tell from the markers, but in her bone marrow, because the baby transfers theirs to the mom when the mom is injured or has any issues during the birth, there's a crossover. So, they're extremely safe. There's no risk of rejection.  

But we have to be really careful where we take them from. We’ve got to make sure these donors have been screened for everything. Mesenchymal stem cell could not carry a virus, but if the donor had a retrovirus, there's a less than 5% chance it could carry that.  

So, we have to screen the women who donate, we have to screen the tissue, then screen the isolated cells. Everything's triple checked. We provide an analysis from a third-party lab. We check for endotoxins, bacterias. It's mainly infection would be the only thing to worry about.  

But everything is so sterile and done so perfect, it's never been an issue you don't like. We've had patients with graft versus host disease, which is where your body wants to reject an organ. One patient had massive skin graft from a type of cancer that he had. He had to get that. And his body wants to reject those skin grafts from that other person.  

And he comes from mesenchymal stem cells because they lower the amount of immunotherapies or immunosuppressants he needs. And they've done tons of studies on this with patients with donor organs that they found if they give them mesenchymal stem cells, they can actually lower their immunosuppressant drugs.  

So, there's really not a risk. As much as people want to sit there and think, I mean, it sounds scary from another person, you're coming to Mexico, you've got all these things. But we do things at such higher levels, then we know we have to do them at higher levels and more secure and safe just because of those misperceptions. So, we've never had an issue, and we've been doing stem cells for eight years now.  

Ted Ryce: Fascinating. Has there been…? Okay, so your clinic hasn't had any issues, and you're really on top of it. In fact, you go the extra mile because you want to put your potential clients and clients at ease and know that you've done your due diligence to protect them. Has there been cases at other clinics, anything documented?  

Joshua Ketner: Yeah. All in the United States.  

Ted Ryce: No way. Are you serious?  

Joshua Ketner: I promise you. Go to my YouTube channel and the lawyer that has sued all of them and one, is our patient. He's actually a friend of Bobby's. Bobby is a guy that we both know, and because of Bobby's conferences, he came a few years ago, sits down in my office and says, “You know, I sue stem cell companies for a living.” Like, oh, great.  

Ted Ryce: Nice to meet you. 

Joshua Ketner: Yeah, great to meet you, too. Yeah, but I have a great video. We ended up fixing his bronchitis he's had since he was a little kid. And yeah, there's a lot of stories. Like, the most famous one is in Florida, there was a clinic that was doing fat derived stem cells and injecting into eyeballs.  

Now, fat derived stem cells are the most dangerous because there are toxins in fat, and they're not separating anything. They're just putting it in a centrifuge and taking it. And I don't know why they’re injecting in eyeballs. It was stupid to begin with, but, yeah, they ended up blinding a couple of people and that became big national news, all these things.  

There was another group called Livion that was out of San Diego that was, like, exactly the stereotype of what you would think of Mexico. It was like this dirty Tijuana lab right on the border, but in the United States swore that they had all the regulation, and they didn't, and they ended up giving some people some massive infections.  

It really hurt a lot of people. And I mean, their commercials were like Gucci commercials. It was the most—it looks so high end. And they were dishing this out. There's a podcast called Bad Batch that goes into the details of all that. It's sort of like a 60 Minutes type podcast. And you hear that and you just think all stem cells are bad. But when you really read between the lines and see what they're doing, it's like every bad case has happened in the United States.  

Which, it's really what makes it kind of interesting and almost funny, but sad, is most of these medical issues you hear about are people crossing the line in the United States, not in other countries. Most other countries, they'll have issues here and there, but most places know they have to go above and beyond. 

Because Americans have this preconceived notion that everything's the best there, all the regulation protects them, but you still get people that are across those lines, and it almost makes it a higher chance of bad outcomes because people have that built in idea that it is more secure, and a lot of times it's not.  

Ted Ryce: I don't want to open up that can of worms too big, but I will say this, the pressure in the United States on doctors and also to make money... I worked for a plastic surgeon in Miami Beach, and he started giving…He took a weekend certification… 

Of course, he's a doctor, he's a surgeon, he's highly qualified. But he took a weekend certification from Synogenics and started doing hormone. He became a hormone expert over a weekend and started doing these things.  

And I think there's this immense pressure to make money and become successful. And I don't want to, again, open this can of worms up too much.  

Joshua Ketner: What? In Miami?  

Ted Ryce: Miami Beach. He's a good dude, but I don't even know if he kept with it or what happened to him with COVID and all that. But anyway, I ended up seeing some of his clients. But the issue is there's just this pressure, and the pressure can… I think even a better example is, I have a very wealthy client, generationally wealthy.  

And his wife went through two surgeries with a doctor and after it—and he was a well-known doctor, someone I know, actually. We just met in the gym a couple of times when I was a personal trainer. And it seemed like he did these procedures and it wasn't quite clear if that's what she even needed.  

And that same guy, I'm just going say this because I think it's important to paint the picture. And of course, it's a bit of a Miami Beach cliche, but he had different girlfriends he was putting up in luxury buildings that cost more than what I was paying in rent.  

And I’m not saying that every…Of course, not every doctor is doing that, but I think there's just this pressure to make money, to have more, and the issue becomes, why is that important? Why is important to talk about?  

Because if you're dealing with someone who's under that pressure and trying to make their Ferrari payments, and they're suggesting, you know what, the only way to deal with this is to amputate or whatever, to do the surgery. It can come at the cost of you and your health. And that's why I've actually experienced better medical care outside the United States as a general rule. Just personally speaking there.  

Joshua Ketner: Yeah. My mom had the same thing. She was going to do a facelift with a plastic surgeon here I know. I mean, this guy is the man. He's Canelo's personal surgeon. I mean, he's that guy, like, Canelo dropped his Hollywood plastic for this guy. He's that good.  

And my mom ended up doing it in Hollywood, because she was in Palm Springs part of the year, with the top guy. And because of all the overregulation, they stapled it instead of hand stitching, and you end up with lines because of the scarring and stuff.  

And also, a lot of them don't go under the muscle. Only 10% of surgeons even know to do that, so it didn't turn out that great. My mother-in-law did it with this guy, and, I mean, it's night and day difference. And yeah, I think the pressure is a big thing, and I think people, they don't think of that when you're going to these big cities, all that extra pressure on these guys. I mean, they're great at what they do, but sometimes they have to push things, so it's crazy.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. I also…Right, if you're a person who's looking for help or alternatives, it's worth exploring outside the United States. Josh, to come back to the stem cells, what is something that we haven't talked about, that you think is important for someone listening right now?  

And for me too, this is something I'm personally… I mean, I feel my back right now, right? It's good, but I would like it to be way better than what it is. I feel the twitch in my calf from the side. What's something that we should know that I haven't asked you?  

Joshua Ketner: I think that preventative, or at least not waiting. I think it's kind of the American way, especially for guys. Wait until it really hurts and you can't bear it before you go do something. So, whether you come down here or somewhere else, it's like, man, I wish I had done my knees way before I did. They'd hurt since high school. I played every sport there was. Had no idea.  

I mean, I don't even think I did any blood work until I moved to Mexico. Even after that, probably not until I was like, 30. Did I even check my blood work? Did I check any MRI, see anything that hurt? And I wish I had, because I could have stopped or at least slowed down a lot of these things.  

And it sucks because you get some of these people in their 60s or 70s nowadays, even guys in their 50s that are just falling apart. And I'm one of the most affordable clinics for this in the world. If you compare me to places like Panama and others, and we do the same exact thing, but it still gets expensive.  

And if you look at it preventative thinking, hey, let's do my knee when it's like first or second degree arthritis opposed to waiting until it's third or fourth degree. You're going to get so much more out of that knee and they don't tell you.  

I mean, that's our most common treatment, are knees. Everybody's knees go. Next would be backs. And if you just get on it sooner, you can fix it better. Like, my lower back, that I fixed pretty soon after it hurt. But my upper back, I recently had to fix, really, really hurt myself.  

You know, like, those old school, like Arnold bars where you're doing curls and it's isolated? 

Ted Ryce: Just to isolate the biceps, yeah. Sure. 

Joshua Ketner: Yeah. I wish I didn't do that. It was dumb because the rope just popped something, I think too much weight, and it hurt. And I tried to tough it out and I finally did the cells. The lower back took a couple of months, like two and a half months to heal. My upper back, it took me, like six months before it stopped hurting. And that causes a lot of sleep loss.  

Ted Ryce: That's after the treatment, six months after the treatment? 

Joshua Ketner: Yeah. I mean, even stem cells aren't instant, right? I think people need to know that. Most people heal three to six months post treatment, and it's kind of back and forth, and then it just feels like magic. It just stops hurting.  

And then that's the tough part, to get a lot of the follow up data, because nobody wants to get in an MRI again if they don't have to. So, it's tough to get the before and after MRIs for that kind of data. You get a lot of anecdotal, but then people forget because I'll call someone, like, six months after treatment and be like, “Hey, how's that leg tremor from your MS doing?” 

“It hasn't tremored in five months.” It's kind of a big deal. You get calls like that all the time. My mom said it, she goes, “Pain has no memory.” Once it stops hurting, you totally forget. It's really crazy.  

Ted Ryce: That's so true, right? It's like when you're sick, I constantly think about the pain that I'm in every single day. It's not even that I'm like, constantly sitting down and thinking. But it's just like, man, that's hurting. It's just the signals are nonstop, if it's chronic.  

So, Josh, I want to be clear here for myself and also for the people listening, you say to be preventive, get on it quick, get a treatment quick. If you're going to do stem cells, get the treatment quick. Figure this out fast. Don't put it off. Is that because you need more treatments?  

Or is that because, as you can get to a point… I know you mentioned the bone on bone, and you can't do anything with that, but is it impossible to go from if you're at a stage three to go back to zero arthritis? Or can you explain that a little bit better?  

Joshua Ketner: Yeah, it's not impossible. It just gets tougher. Third and fourth degree, you typically won't get 100%. First and second degree, you can. But even then, everybody reacts different. The majority of… I'd say 80% of people get the exact results they want. There's that like, maybe 18% of people that, yeah, they got better, but not quite all the way.  

And then, like any medical treatment, you're going to have a pretty small percent of people that, well, at least for us, small percent that don't see any results. It's really rare. But when you compare it to other medical treatments, the stats on Ibuprofen, or if you give ten people Ibuprofen for a headache, three will actually get relief for their headache. And that's considered one of the best, most common medications out there.  

So, we're doing way better than that. But there's two things. First, why stay in pain longer than you have to? It doesn't help anything. It can actually lead to other things. All the time, I see someone with a left knee issue ends up, because they try to tough it out, with a right hip problem because the body tries to compensate.  

So, you actually… it's not just that knee is going to get worse. You could throw your back out or you could throw your hip out just because you didn't want to fix that issue and you were compensating, and I see that all the time.  

So, I think the sooner you can treat things, the better. That's not me saying it like, hey, get down here. I mean, go wherever you need to, to get treated. Like, getting treated or feeling better is the point, but the longer you wait, the tougher it's going to be. And it can actually compound to other areas.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, a very important message, especially with people, Americans and high-performing Americans who are usually used to ignoring, just taping over that engine light. The body is equivalent of the engine light comes on, you just tape it over until something blows up.  

So, yeah, that's an important message. And I feel like there's so much more to get into here. But I know you have a grandmother who is surprising you, who you’ve got to pick up from the airport. So if you're interested, if you're listening right now and you're interested in learning more about Josh and his clinic, you can go to www.dreambody.clinic. That's www.dreambody.clinic. 

And you can also find—I know you do a lot of YouTube, Josh, and you would find him at www.youtube.com at Joshua Dreambody Clinic. And is there anywhere else that you'd like people to reach out that you want to share on the podcast?  

Joshua Ketner: Yeah, I think we're on Twitter @DreamBodyClinic. We're on instagram @ClinicDreamBody because I couldn't get Dream Body Clinics, so it's @ClinicDreamBody. And that's it. You can reach out to us anywhere.  

I mean, we try to run it like a small like…We want to keep that personal feel. We're not trying to become like a conveyor belt. We do 100 patients per month, sometimes more. But we're trying to make the time to talk with everyone, explain things and not just be like, where you go to a doctor in the US and you see them for two minutes and you're off with their PA.  

So, our doctors here—and this is pretty much a general rule in Mexico like, a specialist will spend an hour with you. It's totally normal. It's not like a time to clock, like, “Oh, get them out, get the next person.” And we try to do the same thing. We try to answer all questions. We do free phone consultations.  

We try to do everything we can to make sure people understand first. And then if they come down, you get to come down here to tropical paradise: Puerto Vallarta, great weather, great food, and get healed up.  

Ted Ryce: That's in Wahaca, Mexico, correct? 

Joshua Ketner: No, we're in Jalisco. Like, Puerto Vallarta is technically Jalisco, but the bay where we're at, it's called Buceria. It's like a suburb of it. We're still on the ocean. It's just 20 minutes from the airport. We're technically in Nayarit state, but Nuevo Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, it's all the same area. There's only one airport here, and it's a huge tourism destination.  

We jokingly call it Cheap Hawaii because it's like jungle mountain meets Pacific Ocean. Literally, I could turn the camera, you could see the ocean, and there's whales jumping right now. And it's awesome. Super safe.  

Ted Ryce: Incredible. I definitely want to get out to that part of Mexico. I've spent a lot of time, as you probably might imagine, with Bobby over in Playa, Talum area, but definitely…  

Joshua Ketner: That's Florida. Come to the West Coast.  

Ted Ryce: Will definitely check it out. I think you might be a little bit biased there, but, yeah, I got to check it out and see.  

Joshua Ketner: Bobby will be here in February.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Cool.  

Joshua Ketner: Yeah.  

Ted Ryce: Well, Josh, it's been absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show to talk about this, to clear up some misconceptions and to help educate myself and my listeners about the alternatives that are out there for pain and for autoimmune conditions and whatever else we start to learn that stem cells might be effective for. Thanks so much and talk again soon.  

Joshua Ketner: Thank you.