Podcast Transcription: Ted’s Stem Cell Treatment Experience: 12 Month Follow Upe

Ted Ryce: I was desperate for a solution. My joints were feeling wrecked. So I flew to Mexico, paid thousands and injected 850 million stem cells into my body. Was it worth it? That's what everybody wants to know. Well, 12 months later, I have an answer for you. It's been a year since I've done this. And today in this episode, I'm going to give you my 12 month update.

What is up my friend? Welcome back to the legendary life podcast. I'm your host, Ted Rice, health expert and coach to executives and entrepreneurs. But today it's going to be a more personal thing. I'm going to be giving you an update 12 months later. Was it worth the money? Was it worth the time? And, and we're going to get into it.

Why Mexico? The back story is this. I chose to go to dream body clinic in Puerto Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to undergo stem cell treatments because I had Josh on the show. He was my relationship to Josh, by the way. So I'm part of a group of entrepreneurs. And in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, I met one entrepreneur and he told me the story of him and why, or his story and why he went to dream body clinic.

He, he told me that he was considering a few different clinics. Decided on going to dream body clinic in Puerto Vallarta. And he told me a good story about it. Now, look, I, I researched the, or I looked over the research and I was pretty skeptical because the research, let's say, isn't amazing on stem cell treatments.

And I'm going to tell you why I think that is a bit later. But just so you understand the backstory, if you don't remember the previous episodes or haven't heard them. So I met my friend, Bobby, Bobby told me that he researched a few different places and ended up going to Josh's clinic. Josh is the CEO of dream body clinic.

And so I ended up having Josh on the show after Bobby connected us because I wanted to have someone on the show to discuss stem cells. Now I'll tell you something. I don't agree with Josh in his and why he thinks that, uh, stem cells are illegal in the United States. He's a bit more, you know, thinks there's a bit more of a, let's say a conspiracy or something like that.

And look, it's not my place to judge people why they think the things they think. What I, the only thing I gave a shit about is like, does this stuff work? Yes or no. And is it safe too? And after having them on the show and having a few conversations with them, I'm like, all right, let's do this. So that's what, cause I was in a place where I want to say this too, because I think it's really important.

I'm someone who did all the things that you're supposed to do. Meaning I went through physical therapy. I've tried a bunch of supplements. I've tried other treatments, although I didn't try PRP, but I've tried different, different treatments. I've tried a mode healing my emotional health. Right. I've tried all these things.

They all work to varying degrees, whether they're placebo or not, but nothing got me to the point where I could go back and train hard like I wanted to and how I think it's important to train long term so that I could be in the best shape possible. So. A lot of people also ask me, let's talk about the investment, the cost and commitment.

Look, it was a big choice to do this and it took time out of my schedule. And basically I stayed there, I forget, maybe five days, close to a week. And it was a pain in the butt to get there. Not really a pain in the butt, but it was like, uh, it was inconvenient to get there from where I was, which is in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

And, um, yeah, it was right after me and my ex girlfriend split ways. So I'm mentioning that because it made the experience a bit more emotional. And by the way, your emotional and state plays into how you're going to recover. And I spent thousands of dollars to go there for the travel, the place, the injections, all the stuff.

And if you, a lot of people ask me like, Hey, how much did you pay? Go to their website, dreambody. clinic. That's dreambody, one word dot clinic. And all the prices are on the website. Okay. All the prices are on the website. So that's what you really care about. Go there. And, uh, they're, let's say they're comparable to other places or even less expensive than other places.

It's not cheap. It's thousands of dollars. Per an injection, but it's, let's say less expensive than the places I looked at in Panama. So he has good prices for what they are, but it is an investment and, um, yeah, it's not, it's not cheap. So if you're hoping that it is, it's not, it's thousands of dollars per area.

So what was the treatment like? Well, when I got there, I did a bunch of, so I did a I got 750 million injections. I got my neck, both shoulders, both wrists, both thumbs, both hips, both knees, my left ankle, my right foot, and both big toes injected. So, uh, and then I got a hundred million intravenous. So it was a total needle party when I got it done.

It was like, I don't have any fear of needles or anything like that, but I felt like, Whoa, it was, it was, I don't want to say traumatic. Cause that's a bit, you know, it's not like I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes having bad dreams about how many injections I got. I don't. Okay. In fact, it's the opposite.

I have, I'll get to the results in a minute, but I just want to detail. You're going to have to hang out for a minute while I detail everything again, just to, you know, go over the process again. So, yeah, it sucked. Right. And also I had my knuckles injected. I forgot to add those. So I got my thumbs and also my knuckles injected because I have arthritis in my hands.

And so my, my hands were like swollen. My knuckles were swollen. I was like, I could barely walk because I was kind of shuffling doing old man shuffle. People were in back of me and like getting annoyed because there's nothing but a bunch of Americans and Canadians and Mexico and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Sorry, uh, there's hardly any Mexicans there except working in the different places. By the way, everyone speaks English. There are all the Mexicans that I spoke to spoke English. I stayed in a nice Airbnb apartment, luxury Airbnb apartment. Anyway, I was feeling pretty terrible afterward. I felt like, uh, like an old man, right?

I was already feeling old because of the chronic pain. And then I, um, flew out the next day. I wouldn't do that. By the way, I would have stayed longer and recovered. Spend a few days. Now, if you got to run back, okay, but if you can spend the time. I didn't know what to expect. I got a lot of injections, as I said, and so I would have spent a couple days recovering.

I wouldn't have rushed off the next day after getting stem cell injections, and I flew back to Playa del Carmen, and I was going to go to Brazil, but I ended up changing my flight. I forget all the details since it's a year later, but I was like, there's no way I'm going to be able to handle the long, terrible flight from Playa del Carmen, Mexico or Cancun airport to Sao Paulo, Brazil, which was my next stop.

And so I ended up spending another week in Playa del Carmen changing my flight because. Yeah, I felt like it was pushing myself too much and I really wanted to take it easy. I was concerned too, by the way, it's like I just got all these injections. My joints don't feel good because. You know, sticking needles in your joints.

Even you're, you're doing this thing. You're injecting stem cells with the hope that there's going to be recovery later improvement later. But after you get it done, it's you're inflamed, right? And something to mention. And this goes with any injection, right? There's a risk of infection. So I didn't want to like travel through the airport.

It's not a big risk of injection is like, I think the day a day or so after I forget the details. I'm not a medical professional, even though some people kind of think I am because of all the stuff that I know. But I know my limits. And so when it comes to infections and that type of thing and post treatment care, it's not my area of expertise.

But I couldn't go into the beach or into the pool because you can get an infection. And if you're in poor health, yeah. Uh, that's something to keep in mind. I'll talk about that later because some people feel like, well, stem cells are going to save me now. If you're in crappy health, I'll just say this.

Now, if you're in crappy health, you got a belly and you think, oh, I have joint issues. I don't exercise. I have a belly. I drink alcohol. I sleep like crap. Stem cells are not going to save you, right? You're going to have to get to work on yourself. Just want to throw that out there in case any of you are hoping it's, it's going to be magic.

It's not going to, it's not going to get you to eat better and get your your act together. So if you think that's the case, bad news for you. Okay? But if you're a person like me, who you do take care of yourself, and again, you know, I drink alcohol, I do things that are, I don't live a perfect life, nor do I think you need to.

But mostly take care of myself, actually take care of myself quite well. Right. But I was having some issues with these injuries that were from sports and jujitsu, car accidents, skateboarding, and I was having problems. Staying in shape because the joints were, were, were just, you know, they would start to get inflamed and I would have to back off exercise to let them calm down.

And I couldn't push beyond a certain level. So if that sounds like you, by the way, you should seriously consider stem cells. Based on my experience. So progress and milestones. Uh, when I first noticed, so really the hard part about stem cell recovery here is you have to take it easy. I believe I didn't do anything for a week or maybe two weeks.

It might've been two weeks. And then I started physical therapy. They, uh, gave me some physical therapy exercises. They were quite good, by the way, the physical therapy exercises that dream body clinic gave, I followed it, I tried doing my, my own thing at first, I was like, ah, you know what, I'm just going to follow the plan and the plan worked quite well, and I just followed the plan and I listened to my body, of course, too, and I took time off if I started to feel in one of my joints inflamed and the recovery was slow, I forget how long it took, To get back to training, but I had to be very careful.

So if you do, if you're training a lot now and playing sports, you will have to take time off and people hate that. And I get it because I hated it. I was actually training jujitsu regularly before I did this. And I stopped my entire progress with jujitsu. I stopped everything. However, I'll get to this in a bit.

It was all worth it. So the improvements, they came slow at first. I think I started noticing a difference. I think you would have to go back and listen to my, my other updates, but I think about a month or two in, I started noticing like, Oh, I feel better. It's not huge, but I feel better. And one of the things that I think is important is that I started feeling better, not just because of the.

Stem cells, but because of the exercise that I did along with the stem cells, and I'll talk about this a little bit more later, but I really feel what stem cells allow you to do is to get in better shape. In other words, I couldn't do certain exercises. because they would start to irritate my joints or I couldn't load certain exercises past a certain point because they would inflame my joints and stem cells allowed me to get in better shape.

So, um, so I did have some setbacks. I overdid it a few times had to take time off and that's what Josh and, uh, I forget the doctor's name, but the doctor told me like, Hey, when you start to push yourself, if you feel like a little bit of. A campaign aches and pains like you're starting to cause some inflammation back off and then start again.

Once you start feeling better. And he was talking specifically about going back to training, not the physical therapy. If I remember correctly. So I did have a few setbacks, but I followed the plan. I took time off and then came back to it. And even now I'm doing that. And that's what you should do anyway, by the way, whenever you jack yourself up or start to inflame yourself, you want to take time off.

So what are the long term impacts? So, so a year later, I'm a different man. Okay. I feel like completely different. I feel like 20 years younger. And I'm back doing squats, weighted squats. I don't do back squats because I can't get my left shoulder into position to hold the bar on my back. And yeah, there's some ways of getting around that, but I'm lazy.

So I've been doing front squats. And front squats have been great. I go, I'm doing deep squats. Now I'm not lifting much weight. I'm using like 88 pounds right now. I'm on the bar, but doing front squats, but my body, like I'm able to lift more weight and do exercises and go deeper. In exercises, for example, a deep squat, and I feel good, like my body is improving.

So a year later, I'm stronger, I'm in better shape because of the stem cells. One thing that was kind of interesting is that I feel like when I do tweak a joint a little bit, like, uh, in jujitsu, I feel like my joints recover faster. So a year later, oh my gosh, I, again, I feel like a completely different man.

I just want to say this too. I don't get paid by dream body clinic to say any of this stuff. In fact, I really didn't think I was going to have like my business partner, Giselle, she's like, Oh, I'm so happy for you. I'm so excited for you. I'm like, I don't think this shit's going to do much, but I'm, I'm hopeful.

That's literally what I said. Okay. Maybe not literally what I said, but that's literally what I thought. How about that? I forget what I told her, but I didn't want to be a negative Nancy W downer. So I didn't, you know, but I didn't think it was going to do much, but wow, every joint that I got injections in, I feel a big difference.

My hips, my knees, my, my shoulders, my wrists, my fingers. My only regret is that I didn't do my elbows. If I would go back and do something different, I would have done my elbows too. That would be the only change I would make, right? That would be the only thing that I would do different. It is seriously, it's changed my life because living in chronic pain really sucks and not being able to having the motivation to train hard, but not being able to do it because you're in pain also completely sucks.

Most people always come and I don't have the motivation, but what happens when you do have the motivation, but you literally can't do it because I'm literally saying literally a lot today. So bear with me here, but you can do it. You have the motivation to do it, but you don't do it because these joint aches and pains stop your progress.

If you push too hard, So let's talk about expectations versus reality. As I already said, I would imagine, and I'm just speaking from personal experience, and maybe I'm wrong. And if you had a different experience, if you are not a particularly active person, but had great experiences with stem cell injections, I'd love to hear about it.

Because for me, I'm like, I don't think these stem cells do much if people don't do much. So, another thing that's really important, expectations versus reality. Do not wait until your joint gets worse. It's really dumb thinking it makes sense. Logically, you're like, Oh, I don't want to spend the money and the time and then quit whatever I'm doing to go and do this.

It's like, yeah, but here's the thing. You don't, it, that doesn't help you. You don't get a pass. In fact, Doing the work now might save you from needing more work later. For example, my neck still hurts. My left shoulder still hurts. My knees, I need more injections. Had I done this earlier and done the physical therapy, I might not need more injections or at least feel like I need more injections, right?

For sure. I'm going back and getting more injections for sure. And I talked to a client, uh, ironically or coincidentally. He went to the same clinic I went to, and he had to inject, he, he went to two different clinics. He went to one, I forget where, and then he went to dream body clinic this, uh, his second time.

So he had two stem cell injections in his shoulders. Now he's doing well. So it took two stem cell treatments for him to do well. So keep that in mind. So let me give you some advice and recommendations here. If you're considering stem cell therapy, Make sure you try all this stuff to begin with. Make sure you're taking care of yourself, really taking care of yourself, not doing all the biohacking nonsense.

Oh, I put red light and I take, you know, resveratrol. No, no, no. I mean, are you really doing, are you lean? Are you getting good sleep? Do you regularly exercise? Do you regularly do something every day for exercise? Do you get in enough steps? Do you get in resistance training, maybe some cardio to, do you manage your stress?

I don't re maybe I've already said that if you're not doing those things, then really focus on that because you're going to have to do them to recover anyway. Another thing is that people told me not to do this. And when I say people, I, I had medical doctors tell me not to do it. I had some guy. Uh, who said, Oh, they don't even, you're not going to even get real stem cells.

It's very dangerous. None of that was true. Okay. And I appreciate if you're listening, I don't think any of those people listen to my podcast, but if you're listening right now, I appreciate that, but you gave me the wrong advice. You didn't know you felt strongly about it and you, and you acted out of emotion and it's okay, but don't do that.

Stick to facts, stick to research. There's nothing wrong with saying, Hey, the stem cell, the research on stem cells doesn't look that amazing because it doesn't, right. But people do get good results with it. Another thing to consider is that if you don't want to fly to Mexico and get umbilical stem cells, right?

Stem cells taken from the umbilical cord of a birth, right? Because usually they throw it away, but now you can save the umbilical cord and placenta because They have stem cells in it. It's going to be part of the future. I'm sure meaning when you have a baby, you're going to save your baby's umbilical cord and stem cells.

So you can use them later and it will be their stem cells that you're using. Not someone else's like I did, but you can get stem cell injections in the States. It's just, you're going to get your own stem cells. So if you're like me, I'm 48 years old, So there's a question about how effective 48 year old stem cells are going to be.

Now it doesn't mean that they're not effective. It just means that there's a question about it. And that's why, that's why umbilical and placental derived stem cells is preferred, or at least let's say marketed, right? So we don't know that. Another thing is we just don't know enough about. Stem cell injections like are there going to be complications from this from what the research shows the major complications seem to be issues where stem cells weren't injected properly or you get an infection from the injection site, but that's if you get a cortisone injection, you can get that too, so it's not without risk.

Do your own research to make an informed decision. Talk to Josh at dream body clinic. He helped answer a lot of questions and I felt he was quite knowledgeable. Of course, he's a true believer in what he does. But one thing I'll say this, I liked about Josh, Josh gets treatments at his own clinic and put and posted videos of it, which is what you would want.

You would want someone with the confidence. Like if they're offering these services or treatments rather that they would get them done at their own clinic. So he's not just the CEO of the clinic, but he also is a client of the clinic of his own clinic, right? So taking it for sure. It's a bit of a risk.

And look, I'm not the most. I am risk adverse in a lot of ways. And I did even feel a bit like, Oh man, should I have done this? Like a few weeks in, I'm like, my joints are all inflamed because the injections I'm like, Oh man, should I have done this? But a year later, I'm saying it's one of the best things I've ever done for my health.

Yeah. Taking curcumin and Boswellia is not going to do what stem cells do. Sorry. Okay. Supplements just aren't that powerful. Uh, they can be in certain instances, super helpful, but if you're talking about healing joints and if supplements did work for you, then you're, you're, you weren't that injured. Okay.

So keep that in mind. What else can I say here? Continuing future plans while continuing care. Look, I'm going to go back and. the way I look at stem cells right now, it's like, this is something that I'm going to need to do probably for the rest of my life at varying intervals, depending on if I get an injury, like I would totally do it again.

I would totally go back to and will go back to dream body clinic. And it's just, again, it changed my life. I'm in less pain. I'm able to do exercises that I couldn't do before. And I'm really excited with the idea of if I go back and get more stem cells, let's say in my knees. And my low back. Can I lower the amount of pain?

Can I get back to, uh, doing like jujitsu more times per week? And, uh, you know, really stay in top shape because one final note here, the number one thing you can do to not age, not feel old to feel and look your best as you get older is exercise period. It is not diet. Okay. It is not diet. It is exercise.

You can eat the best diet in the world, but if you are sedentary, you are unhealthy, period. And you can get away with a lot of dietary indiscretions if you're in shape. So stem cells help your joints stay fit enough or strong enough or resilient enough so that you can get in the best shape possible. So that is it.

Thanks for listening today. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Would love to continue this discussion. And are you a person that had results, but you don't exercise and you disagree with something that I said, would love to hear from you and to understand where you're coming from.

And that is it for today. Hope you enjoyed it. Speak to you then. On the next episode.