FORMATTED TRANSCRIPT: IMMUNOSENESCENCE & REJUVENATE PRO WITH DR. ELIZABETH YOUTH

Opening Quote

"Because you're going to get infections. You're going to get exposed to flu viruses and COVID viruses and every other virus that comes along in the future. And there's going to be more. We have to be able to fight them off."

Introduction

Well, hi everyone and welcome to this educational webinar. I have the wonderful Dr. Elizabeth Youth from the Boulder Longevity Institute with us today who has been a scientific adviser for us. My name is Lisa Tamati and we're going to be talking today about immunosenescence - about the aging of the immune system - and a formulation, Rejuvenate Pro, and how this tackles some of the problems that we have with the aging of the immune system.

So welcome in, Elizabeth. Wonderful to have you. Thanks for joining us today.

Dr. Yurth: Really thanks. You know, I always love talking to you and your brilliance, but I'm really eager about this product. So I'm thrilled to actually be able to share some information with you. Thank you.

Lisa: Yeah. No, thank you. And thank you for your guidance along the last few years as I've tried to put together a formulation.

The Personal Story Behind Rejuvenate Pro

So I came to you a couple of years ago and we were looking at - I was looking out on the market and trying to find something for my aging mom. So if anybody knows me, I have a mom with a very, very, very complicated medical history, and Dr. Youth is actually her physician. And so we were talking about mom and what we could do, actually. And that's where it all started - with mom. And there's always - personal passions are always the best, right? When you have a personal passion for something.

Dr. Yurth: Yeah. And I will say, from the physician perspective, Lisa's mom is tough. She has cancer, she has chronic infections, she's frail, she's - every hard thing to deal with that we've been dealing with. And honestly, this is the - kudos to Lisa - but she keeps looking for answers and it's continued to move things forward. I mean, she's actually continually improving in her health instead of declining. We have little hurdles along the way, but overall, if we look at one year to the next, things are getting better.

Lisa: Exactly. Which doesn't usually happen when you're 83 with B-cell lymphoma cancer in your brain and...

Dr. Yurth: Right, exactly. And aneurysms and strokes and everything in between - sepsis, hip fractures, everything that bleeds, GI bleeds...

Lisa: Yeah. You name it.

What Is Immunosenescence?

So in my desperate search, I was trying to help her immune system because you'd always taught me as one of my teachers that the immune system is absolutely fundamental to the aging process. And when the immune system starts to go awry, which is immunosenescence - do you want to define what immunosenescence is and what actually happens there?

Dr. Yurth: Right. Honestly, I think this is kind of neglected a little bit in longevity medicine. But when we look at where everything begins, our ability to fight off cancer, our ability to survive an infection - because you're going to get infections, you're going to get exposed to flu viruses and COVID viruses and every other virus that comes along in the future, and there's going to be more - we have to be able to fight them off.

We also have to remember that our immune system is the surveillance for cancer, because the first thing that kills off cancer cells is natural killer cells, which come from our white cells. And so if we don't have healthy immune systems, that's why as we get older, we don't fight infections and we die of an infection, or we don't fight cancer and cancer is able to take over.

M1 vs. M2 Macrophages

So the main player there is our macrophages. And macrophages are these white blood cells that play a really critical role. And there's kind of two types of macrophages - what we call M1 macrophages. Those are activated, kind of bad macrophages. We need them, but they shouldn't stay around. And then we have the M2, which are these healthy macrophages that are doing their jobs.

And what we know is as we age, we get more of these M1 macrophages, and we get less of these good M2 macrophages. So we have the inability to be able to tolerate the stressors that come along.

The 1000 Immunomes Project

And I know you recently met with Dr. David Furman. He runs what's called the 1000 Immunomes Project out of Buck Institute. And they actually are so passionate that this is what we need to be following for aging that they created a test that really looks at factors - cytokines, chemokines, proteins - that really relate to the immune system.

And they think that's a better marker of what your biological age is truly than some of these other methylation tests and things that are out there. The immune system - and actually we can directly look at the immune system. We don't have to indirectly look at it with methylation factors and things. We can actually directly look at the immune system.

So we can look at the proteins that are produced by our immune system and say, "This is a healthy or unhealthy immune system." So they developed this test called the iAge test to really look at that. So this is a group that studies aging, and they're so passionate that the immune system is the root cause that they developed this test to show that.

The Immune System and Mitochondria

I will also - I was actually just this weekend at this entire three-day course on mitochondria, and it was incredible. You could spend three days just on mitochondria. And I took 100 pages of notes. But one of the things that I became aware of is that when our immune system is constantly being activated by something - either the viruses we're exposed to, the toxins we're exposed to, the stressors we're exposed to, the bad diets we're exposed to - that constant stimulation of the immune cells, one of the things that immune cells need is a whole lot of energy.

So they actually start taking all the ATP. Your brain needs ATP, your heart needs ATP, your muscles need ATP, but your immune cells need a lot as well. So if our immune systems aren't functioning well, we actually start shuttling all of that ATP to our immune system.

The Cascade of Dysfunction

So that now explains why - well, then secondarily, what happens is now because the immune system is creating all this oxidative stress from all this ATP production, making these free radicals, finally the mitochondria go, "Hey, shut it down. Shut it down. Things have gone awry. Things are messed up. There's too much oxidative stress. Shut it down." And they stop making ATP.

So what does that cause? Fatigue, sarcopenia, brain loss. So could this immune system upregulation be at the root cause of the mitochondrial loss that causes the heart, the brain, and the muscles to all become dysfunctional? Our overactive immune system, our overstimulated immune system causes that.

So I think that we really are on to something here in this product that you guys developed, because I think it is really going to restore those factors that are going to help all that. And so I'm really eager about this after learning this this weekend. I'm like, "Oh my god, light bulb click." I'm like, "Right, that's why the mitochondria fail - is because they're trying to keep up with this other stressor in the immune system." Forget that immune cells need ATP just like other cells.

Lisa: Yep. And it's sort of suppressing - we're constantly having to suppress the viruses, the Epstein-Barr. Our body's always taxed with that constantly. And so that's draining.

Dr. Yurth: It's very draining. So think of all the insults you're exposed to. Most of us had mono - mononucleosis is an Epstein-Barr virus. So almost everybody, not everybody, but almost everybody had Epstein-Barr. Well, Epstein-Barr doesn't ever go away. Our immune system keeps it in check, but it never goes away. Herpes virus is the same thing. Coronavirus, the same thing.

These are all infections that are staying around, and our immune system is keeping them in check. It's kind of like birth control for these viruses - our immune system has them, they're not replicating. They're not gone, but they're not replicating. So that, and then you look at the environmental toxins. You can't get away from them. We can try really hard to live really clean lives, but these environmental toxins - so our immune system is really overwhelmed.

Lisa: Yeah.

The 1000 Immunomes Project - Deep Dive

And when I interviewed Dr. David Furman - coming back to the 1000 Immunomes Project - this is the largest human longitudinal human immunology study in the world.

Dr. Yurth: And it's huge.

Lisa: They've been working on this project for years.

Dr. Yurth: 15 years.

Lisa: 15 years. Yeah. So they have their own immunology center where they test everything. They've had thousands of people go through this for 15 years. So they've got the biggest database really. And they've identified a number of proteins, and we'll get into one of them particularly later, called CXCL9 and CXCL10, 11, 12, and 3 as well. And I think the CXCL9 was one of the main ones that was one of the big players that they looked at as being probably the highest link - the highest marker - to this dysfunctional immune system, this elevation of CXCL9.

Who learns about that? Who tests for that? Nobody. And so that was really, to me, key. What can we do to address these high levels of CXCL9?

Dr. Yurth: Yeah.

The Strategy: Target the Immune System

Lisa: And so we looked at that project and we looked at the immunosenescence and the causing of the systemic chronic inflammation - sort of a cog in the middle of the wheel that's causing all of these downstream age-related diseases and problems that we have, whether it be obesity right through to cancers - is the systemic chronic inflammation which increases over time.

And so we started to put our heads together to search for things that could help with this immune system, and understanding that this immune system is affecting all of the 12 hallmarks of aging. So rather than - which I was doing before - I was trying to tackle each of the hallmarks of aging. And you see so many people - they're like, "I'm taking this supplement for this and this supplement for this and this supplement for this," and they're on 50 supplements, which sometimes is causing more harm than good.

When if we were to target this one piece aggressively, these other things would fall into place.

Dr. Yurth: That's exactly right. So coming down at the immune level rather than the whack-a-mole type of 12 things I've got to hit - we're going to affect it. It makes so much sense and yet it's not the way we're working in the longevity field so much.

Lisa: No, not yet. But it's coming.

Ingredient #1: Immune Defense Proteins (IDP)

And so I came across, through one of my colleagues Peter Leeke, who is co-founder with us at Aevum Labs, had contacts with Quantec. And Quantec have produced a product, an ingredient, called Immune Defense Proteins, which is a suite of 50 bioactive whey proteins from New Zealand cows. And these - they have 40% lactoferrin. And if anybody knows about lactoferrin, the list of things that lactoferrin influences in the body and helps in the body is huge. And this has been studied for decades.

But this IDP is 40% lactoferrin. It's 18% something called lactoperoxidase. And then there's a suite of 48 minor bioactive proteins. Now, it's the synergy of the 50 together that made it much, much more powerful than say lactoferrin alone, which we've been using for decades.

And so they started to do a lot of research. And Dr. Rod Claycomb, who I've also done podcasts and interviews with - and he's been on our panel, so I'll put all the links over for you guys so that you can watch all of that as well - this was the ingredient that we just went, "Wow, this is what we are looking for for our immune formulation." And so this was the very first thing that we put in and decided to add.

Betsy, can you explain what Immune Defense Proteins do and what are some of the benefits of say lactoferrin and the lactoperoxidase and that whole suite - that synergistic suite? And knowing that this was developed - if you like, just taking it one step further - this was evolved in the cow to protect the mother from infection and inflammation.

How IDP Protects

Dr. Yurth: So let's start there. It protects the cow from inflammation and infection. And when we take this product, it does similar things. You have to imagine that these cows have this dirty little calf nursing on their udder all the time. And so these infections could get very easily transferred to them. So something has to actually not just supply the baby cow, but also protect the mother. And it's one of the things they found IDP did - this Immune Defense Protein.

And so it really - if you look at the main thing about IDP, number one, and why it might be a whole lot better than even colostrum (and we'll talk about combining it with some of the other things we've done), but the big thing is that it comes from a pasteurized skim milk, but they don't use heat to pasteurize the milk. So they can basically use this cold extraction, this freeze-drying process, to extract this Immune Defense Protein as this bioactive protein from milk.

And they can actually then actively test the amount of this protein, these proteins. So they can look and see how much protein is in each one. So you know you're getting this really active immune-modulating agent.

IDP and Gut Health

So if you think about what is that doing? Well, our gut is the biggest immune network in our body. The gut outperforms everything else as defense against - it's your first line of defense against all the pathogens. And so if your gut's not operating well, if your gut's inflamed, if you have a leaky gut syndrome, then your immune system is not going to function well.

So one of the things we know is that IDP actually improves the gut tight junctions. When we have chronic inflammation, it's going to damage the tight junctions in your gut. It's going to separate the walls. So now you get exposure of everything you eat, everything you're taking, straight to your immune system. Your immune system gets hyperactivated. You have an already stressed immune system, and now it's getting even more stressed.

So you absolutely have to fix the gut. And we all know that in functional medicine - fix the gut. So we're throwing all sorts of things in to try and fix the gut - our prebiotics and our probiotics and our postbiotics and sometimes drugs to try and kill off, like Xifaxan to kill off the bacteria, the bad bacteria in there.

Well, actually, this product is going to actually do all of that. So it's actually going to repair the tight junctions, which is hard to do. That's a difficult thing to do - is to actually get these effective tight junctions again. And that's going to be the first step that's critical.

Selective Antimicrobial Properties

And then the other thing it's going to do is it actually is going to actually inhibit these pathogens and viruses directly. So it's going to attack the harmful organisms like staph in your gut, but not the good organisms.

Lisa: Yes. So selective antimicrobial.

Dr. Yurth: Yep. The incredible amount of antimicrobial - much more so than lactoferrin or colostrum. It's about twice as effective as inhibiting these pathogens.

We also found that IDP is extremely beneficial against viruses. So there was a US lab that looked at it against influenza virus - influenza A, influenza B, which I don't know about you guys, but that's rampant right now around here. And they used a control group of using 95% - so really good lactoferrin, 95% lactoferrin - and compared it to IDP. And the IDP was significantly better at preventing the viral infections than the lactoferrin was.

Lisa: Yeah.

Barriers Throughout the Body

Dr. Yurth: So I think one of the big things that we're doing with this is helping and supporting the gut itself at a primary level. We can actually look at a microbiome - if you're doing microbiome testing - and have a look at your zonulin levels in your clients and your patients to see whether the zonulin starts to go down and the inflammation goes down.

So these are markers that you could be looking for. And there's over 15 years worth of clinical research gone into Immune Defense Proteins. They have a whole lot of clinical research behind it, and one of these is getting the tight junctions back together. And it's not only the tight junctions in the gut, but we have barriers right throughout our body. So we have barriers in the blood-brain barrier. And of course when the blood-brain barrier and the gut are very closely connected - you get a brain injury and within hours you have a leaky gut. Our eyes, lungs, our reproductive tract - these are all barriers that are going to benefit from having better tight junctions because it's not just the gastrointestinal tract.

Biofilm Disruption

And then that selective antimicrobial activity that you said - it's actually helping with the lactobacillus and the bifidobacterium, but it's not... What else do we have that does that? Kills off all the bad bacteria but helps the good bacteria?

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr. Yurth: And I think one of the reasons it was so much better than lactoferrin is that it had something called Lactoferricin B. I think it was this 25 amino acid antimicrobial peptide that's actually taken out of the lactoferrin, and that actually disrupts bad microbial cell membranes that are damaged. So it takes these bad bacteria and actually ruptures the cell membrane.

In so doing that, that's going to actually inhibit biofilm production, because the way it's disturbing - one of the things bad bacteria do that makes them hard to get to is they create a biofilm. They create a protective armor around themselves. That's why antibiotics don't work very well when you get some of these bad infections. Pseudomonas does that. Lots of infections do.

So you have this bioactive biofilm. Well, this antimicrobial peptide that's in the IDP actually inhibited the biofilm production from most of these bacterial species, which is really difficult to do.

Lisa: Wow. That's - because...

Dr. Yurth: Yeah, it is a real massive problem, those biofilms.

Lisa: It's a huge problem.

Dr. Yurth: That's a huge problem all in wound care, in gut care. That's a huge problem.

Lisa: Yeah. Even things like with COVID and things - we create these colonies that have a biofilm over them. And so it's really, really important for that.

Additional Benefits of IDP

Then it's also antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory capacity as well - this Immune Defense Protein.

Dr. Yurth: Right.

The Thymus Gland Problem

Lisa: And the other really cool thing is that one of the things we didn't talk about with the immune system is the lack of a thymus gland.

Dr. Yurth: Oh yeah.

Lisa: So about puberty - when we're young, our thymus gland, which is the main immune-modulating organ in our body, starts to atrophy. And by the time you're - I'm in my 60s - by the time you're old like me, it is a little fatty nub. It's not doing anything, which is one of the failures of my immune system.

So there's things that actually help to act a little bit like what the thymus gland does. Like it actually - IGF-1. So IDP contains these growth factors like IGF-1, which maintain some of the thymic architecture and also helps T-cell development from the stem cells. So this IGF-1 in IDP - and I can tell you we use that a lot. I'm very big into peptides. So I use IGF as a peptide to help healing in people.

So this bioavailable IGF-1 that's in IDP can actually partially reverse some of the age-related thymic involution that we're seeing, at least in animal models. So that's really cool.

Growth Factors in IDP

And then the other thing is some of these other growth factors that are super important to healing and recovery that decline as we age - like transforming growth factor beta and epidermal growth factor. These are all really big pieces to chronic infections and age-related disease. And so by maintaining these growth factors - I don't know of anything else that does that. I play with peptides to do these things. Well, here I have a nice, easy, simple little compound that can do it now without big expense of peptides I have to have people inject into themselves, which...

Lisa: We don't get those down here. So we...

Dr. Yurth: And you guys can't even...

Lisa: Yeah. So you can...

Dr. Yurth: I mean, you look at the growth factors that are in here - TGF-beta, colony-stimulating factors that support neutrophils and macrophages to go to the site. These are huge. These are how the body heals. These are what the immune system is supposed to do when it's healthy.

So we've got a compound now that's antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and reparative to try and activate our own immune system so that we get fired up and start acting like a normal young immune system.

Daily Use vs. Acute Use

So what if I took this all the time, instead of just when I was sick? What if I took it all the time? Especially if I started in my 30s - would I be able to maintain a much healthier immune system as I age? It would certainly, at least from a theoretical perspective, do that.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The Thymus Gland Explained

And the thymus gland - so we can give back to some of the things it does. It's like the education university for your T-cells, I think is the way you explained it to me. The thymus is your education center.

Dr. Yurth: It's - your T-cells are these - I always think about like soldiers. But if you don't have an active thymus gland, the soldiers - it's like you send a bunch of 15-year-olds into battle and they had guns but had no idea where to go.

Lisa: Right. Yeah.

Dr. Yurth: So basically we need those messengers. We need things like colony-stimulating factor, epidermal growth... And these messengers to go and tell our stem cells to produce these cells and tell them what to do.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.

Proline-Rich Polypeptides

And then when you talked about the anti-inflammatory effect, that's actually mostly through what are called proline-rich polypeptides. These proline-rich polypeptides are really cool, and they actually stimulate functional T-cells. So they actually stimulate T-cell production, and they downregulate the pro-inflammatory cytokines like interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and then upregulate the good things like IL-10 that are going to help me fight an infection.

So these proline-rich polypeptides are also really cool, and I don't know where else you can get those.

Lisa: Yeah.

Ingredient #2: Immuneel (Colostrum Extract)

And this actually leads us into the next ingredient in our repertoire. And again, we'll give you all the research papers for Immune Defense Proteins.

The next thing that we added - so we covered a lot of our bases with Immune Defense Proteins. And then we were still looking at what we were missing. And we came across an ingredient called Immuneel. And Immuneel is a really super powerful extract of colostrum.

And so I wanted to tell a little bit of the story of colostrum first and then tell you why Immuneel is actually colostrum times 10, so to speak. It's taking all the actives out of it, getting rid of the fat, getting rid of the lactose to a 99% degree, and the things that we don't want that's in colostrum, and it's leaving you...

So tell us a little bit about the colostrum story, because I know you've been a fan of colostrum for a long time.

The Colostrum Story

Dr. Yurth: I have. I've recommended colostrum, and when I can get Rejuvenate here, we'll be recommending this a lot more than colostrum. Because if you think about colostrum, it is the first fluid a baby gets exposed to. It's the biological fluid that we produce before milk even comes in. And it's very different from milk that's produced afterwards.

That colostrum is actually what provides the immediate immune protection to the newborn. So our newborns are born with a little bit of immune function that they got from us. But cows - they are born with zero immune system. So bovine colostrum has often been the go-to because it contains more immune-modulating agents than our own breast milk does. It's actually better and more powerful than our breast milk, because we've adapted because we have babies who have a little bit of immune function, but cows not.

So that's why bovine colostrum has been sort of the choice. It's also probably hard to get human colostrum, but bovine is actually better - has more of what you need to transfer immunity to somebody.

Colostrum as Gold

So think about this as gold. It's the thing that sustains a baby in its first days of life, be it an animal or a human. Without that colostrum ingestion, any animal would die. In humans, we do workarounds, but even if a mother can't nurse, we encourage them to have the baby suckle to get that colostrum in. It's that critical to forming the gut immune system, to training the immune system.

The Parallel with Aging

So if you look at our bodies, as our immune system is declining, we're kind of back to that baby state. When you look at your mom as an 80-year-old, she's got the immune system of that baby. So we can support it the same way we would a newborn baby.

I'm a big fan of trying to do things the way the body does them. Well, this is the way the body helped our immune system. So colostrum has cytokines and immunoglobulins and antimicrobial compounds and maternal immune cells. So it's incredible. It's gold.

Lisa: And it helps the organs develop. It helps the brain develop quicker and strengthens, and most importantly the gut.

Dr. Yurth: Most importantly getting that gut developed appropriately. Because babies are born with a completely permeable gut, just like our 80-year-olds, or our population. There's a lot of similarities. Or anyone who's got leaky gut or immune challenges - we have this leaky gut. And so do babies. And so colostrum heals that leaky gut.

So again, that's adding to the Immune Defense Protein, which also does that. But Immuneel has some other things that are actually different to the IDP. So these are both very, very powerful. One is a whey extract, one is a colostrum extract. So one is taken from the milk protein, and one is extracted out of the colostrum.

Making Colostrum Better

Lisa: So you and I kind of talked about: what if you could take all the really cool things out of colostrum and condense them? Make them better. It's sort of like - if I eat a steak versus could I just take the protein out of that steak - I wouldn't need as much volume.

And so basically, Quantec Lab kind of discovered that you could extract these 50...

Dr. Yurth: Sterling peptides.

Lisa: Yeah, Sterling Tech did the...

Dr. Yurth: Okay, Sterling Labs.

Lisa: Yeah. Similar - 50 bioactive peptides.

Dr. Yurth: So they figured out, okay, you can actually take this out of the colostrum and put them all together. These 50 bioactive peptides - that's what you want. That's the pieces I want. I don't need all the other stuff that's in colostrum. I need these bioactive peptides.

So basically by doing that, we got colostrum gold. I mean, we got the better colostrum without - that's going to be much, much more potent than any colostrum you could ever buy. Or even if you look at people who are taking lactoferrin - lactoferrin was kind of the second generation of a milk immune protein. And we did that with the IDP. We made the lactoferrin better. So now we can make the colostrum better with this.

So when you look at the changes, I think that's phenomenal. Now we have everything I want to function.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Why Breastfed Babies Have Better Immune Systems

And colostrum is - babies who are breastfed have a much better immune system throughout their lives. We know that because they've had colostrum and they've had that advantage from the get-go. And if you weren't breastfed, okay, now would be a good time to start colostrum.

But this - and that's why it's really hard to substitute for breast milk, is because it does contain a lot of these things that formula does not. So could you maybe even add a little bit of this - we don't know - but could this be really useful even in babies that aren't breastfed?

The Bioactive Components of Immuneel

But if you look at what's in these - so the bioactive part of colostrum - that's what Immuneel is, the bioactive part. So you have this beta-lactoglobulin. And that is really antioxidant. It's basically an amino acid, and it is extremely antioxidant. So one of the things it does is it helps to maintain our own glutathione levels. We know glutathione is a key antioxidant, and that's really critical for immune cell function - is to maintain our glutathione levels.

Alpha-Lactalbumin and Tryptophan

So it also contains this stuff called alpha-lactalbumin, and that actually is really cool because it contains very high levels of tryptophan. So now we don't need to take our tryptophan and all these things, because remember that's the precursor to serotonin and melatonin. So this alpha fraction is actually going to improve tryptophan metabolism in my gut. I can make more serotonin and melatonin, which is that whole immune-gut-brain stuff.

Lisa: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really important.

Dr. Yurth: That's really cool. So now we've made - and I will tell you, one of the big things we've seen in the long-haulers is this decline in tryptophan - the ability of the gut to make tryptophan or to modulate tryptophan and make serotonin. That's why you're seeing a lot of depression and anxiety post-COVID.

And so if we can use this to improve that tryptophan metabolism, you're going to improve circadian rhythm, you're going to improve depression with this immune-neuroendocrine kind of interaction of these.

Lisa: Wow.

Dr. Yurth: So that's, to me, super cool. And I don't know something else to do that with.

Additional Components of Immuneel

And Immuneel also has - so we talk about proline-rich peptides - it has sialic acid, it has nucleotides, it has all of these aspects to it and the immunoglobulins that give that antibody response. So it is covering all the bases that the IDP - some of it there's overlap, but some of it is different in the way that it provides the protection.

Prebiotics and Beta-Glucans

But the other thing is we talked about the prebiotics. What else do we need when the gut suffers? Prebiotics. So one of the proteins that's in this is beta-glucans, which act basically as a prebiotic - galacto-oligosaccharides, which are really important for promoting the growth of bifidobacteria and lactobacillus and help produce short-chain fatty acids.

So these beta-glucans and oligosaccharides that are in this component are going to now act as your prebiotic-probiotic to really restore that gut immune function and microbiome.

Summary of Benefits So Far

So again, we've got a product now that's acting as an anti-inflammatory, where we have a product that's actually restoring our immune cell function, helping the immune cells migrate to where they need to go and help to repair, and repairing the gut, and then restoring the gut's microbiome back to a healthy level.

Lisa: Yep.

Lipoxygenase Inhibition

And then there was something called lipoxygenase inhibition. Can you explain what that is? Because that's another aspect of what this does.

Dr. Yurth: So lipooxygenase - I'm trying to remember the lecture that you gave... I'm trying to think about... There's so many aspects to this thing. But it inhibits lipooxygenase. So lipases are the things that are breaking down some of the cell membrane. So by inhibiting the lipooxygenases, that's going to help that cell repair, cell membrane repair.

Lisa: Okay. So it's doing all of that as well.

Safety Profile

Now, the next thing that we came across - so those two are also very, very safe for people to take. And I think safe for everybody. I honestly think safe for everybody. These are containing everything you need to improve your natural killer cell activity, to reduce your viral activity, to reduce your bacterial activity. There's really - and they're very natural to what our body needs.

So there's - I think maybe if you're undergoing chemotherapy, you might be helping your immune system too much. In chemotherapy, sometimes we want to downregulate the immune system. So those patients might want to wait until after they're done with chemotherapy. But after chemotherapy or radiation therapy, it's going to be huge to use something like this because you've got to go into repair mode.

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr. Yurth: So it's pretty much safe for everybody.

Ingredient #3: Carnosic Acid (Rosemary Extract)

Lisa: And then we looked at - there's a couple of other ingredients that we have in Rejuvenate Pro. And one is called carnosic acid, which is an extract of the rosemary plant that has a lot of good stuff in it. But we sort of focused on the standardized to the 20% carnosic acid.

Can you give us a bit of a brief on - I mean, when I started looking into carnosic acid a year ago, it was like, "What does this not do?" This has so many aspects. It's neuroprotective. It's antioxidant. It upregulates the NRF2 pathway. Can you talk a little bit about carnosic acid?

Carnosic Acid Overview

Dr. Yurth: Right. So carnosic acid comes out of rosemary. So rosemary, we know in small amounts used for cooking and things like that, is going to have a small amount of carnosic acid. But we actually took this extract, put 350 milligrams of it in. So a nice dose, but not a super high dose that's going to have problems for most people.

And what that's going to do is really help again in supporting some of the other things we're missing and just going a little further to restore some of the immune function.

The Right Kind of Antioxidant

I will say maybe - if we look at the other two ingredients, they're so incredibly powerful. Are these little add-ons critical to them? But I think what they do is round it out. They're super safe. They're supernatural. And if you look at them now, they're used a lot as antioxidants.

So now we've got this - and I'll call them more of a... They're - when you look at antioxidants, I'm not a big fan of taking massive doses of antioxidants. But when you look at things like rosemary, they regulate oxidative stress. So they don't kill it off. They have this good antioxidant properties without being overly aggressive.

Regulating Mitochondrial Stress

So that's going to again help to restore - remember I talked about the mitochondria being stressed? And that's because now there's too many reactive oxygen species being produced. When this mitochondria is spinning out of control, it's producing these reactive oxygen species. We need to get those back down under control.

So I think that's where the rosemary or the carnosic acid really comes in - is to now regulate back some of that oxidative stress that's been created. So if we really want to go back to repairing the mitochondria, we do have to bring down the reactive oxygen species so that my mitochondria now sense, "Okay, danger is over. I'm going to start producing ATP again." That's going to now support my brain and my heart and my muscles and my immune system.

So I think that's where its potential is. We wanted an antioxidant that wasn't so overwhelming, because you need some oxidative stress when you're trying to heal. So carnosic acid came out as this perfect just balancing antioxidant.

Lisa: Yeah.

Interleukin-10

And it increases interleukin-10, which is one of the - along with the IDP, they both do...

Dr. Yurth: But and cocoa actually.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah, and cocoa.

Dr. Yurth: Yeah, they all cover the interleukin-10, which is an anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory. So it's one of the cytokines that goes down as we age.

Dr. Yurth: So remember, there's good and bad interleukins. So interleukin-6 - high levels as we age, we get very high levels of interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha. Those are cytokines of aging. And if you look at the iAge test, those are things that are measured. But IL-1 beta is another one. But this improves that.

CXCL9: The Key Chemokine

And then the CXCL9, which we talked about with the iAge test - this is one of the things in the world that actually lowers CXCL9. One of the only things.

Lisa: Yeah. So I did a lot of research when I first learned about the iAge test, and I looked at all these different inflammatory things. I sort of looked at, "Okay, how do you get CXCL9 down?" And it was actually a really difficult one. There's a lot of things that affect IL-10 and help improve that. There's a lot of things that lower TNF-alpha, interleukin-6. But there's not a lot that addresses this chemokine.

And as we said, the Immunomes Project found this one chemokine as being maybe the biggest player in this age-related decline of our immune system. So carnosic acid was one of the few things that we found that actually addressed the CXCL9.

Dr. Yurth: Sorry, the carnosic acid. Yeah. Yeah.

Additional Benefits of Carnosic Acid

Lisa: So that lowers - I think that in of itself is huge.

Dr. Yurth: Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa: And it's also - carnosic acid is also upregulating that NRF2. So that's upregulating your own endogenous antioxidant capacity without stopping the signaling, which is really important. And kawakawa, which is the fourth one we'll get on to in a minute, also does that.

It's also very neuroprotective. So there's a lot of research now coming out on studies on how it helps with brain if you've had a brain injury. It helps with diabetes. It helps with metabolism. It helps with cardiovascular through that chemokine, that CXCL9.

COX-2 Inhibition

And it's also a COX-2 inhibitor, which is actually really important too. If you look at things like the cyclooxygenase system, that's actually really a problematic thing as we age as well. And one of the things that the cyclooxygenase system does is it blocks the formation of what we call pro-resolving mediators.

So basically, using some COX inhibition, we can make more pro-resolving mediators. So if you remember, all of your omega-3 fats - your DPA, your DHAs, your EPAs - all turn into what we call PRMs or pro-resolving mediators. These are resolvins and maresins and lipoxins that actually tell the immune system, "Hey, hey, don't keep acting up. Settle things down."

So if you can block the COX enzymes, you can actually upregulate these pro-resolving mediators. So you can help the formation of these pro-resolving mediators from the fats that you're eating. So that's actually really important as well to support the long-term health of the immune system.

Modulation vs. Complete Blocking

Lisa: And it stops - we take non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and they block completely the COX-2, and that has effects on blood vessels, blood pressure, things like that. So what you want is something that modulates it. It's exactly what I talked about with the carnosic acid and antioxidant effect. You don't want to have something that's just really highly antioxidant. You want something - I mean, some cases you might, but not in most of our cases. We want to modulate it.

So when you look at these agents that are more homeostatic - they turn things to just the right level, not too high, not too low - those are the things we really want to take long-term.

Dr. Yurth: Yeah.

Lisa: And so that's why we added the carnosic acid into it. And yeah, go and look up carnosic acid and all of the studies, all the benefits.

Dr. Yurth: Yeah. Yeah. The neuro benefits for brain injuries has really started to fascinate me. So I've been diving into that more of late.

Pain and the Immune System

Lisa: For pain as well. If you've got pain - because when we have an immune response, we want the upregulation of the cytokines and things in the first instance, but we want those dialed back. And as we get older, the dialing back doesn't happen so much.

Dr. Yurth: Doesn't occur. Yeah. I just gave a lecture on pain, and pain is also a disrupted immune system. We forget that.

Lisa: Wow.

Dr. Yurth: So when you look at what happens to create chronic pain, it is the inappropriate immune response that occurs with an insult or injury. Because when we're older, we don't mount an appropriate immune response early, and we upregulate our immune response later, and it just keeps going.

So really, even pain - we should heal. And when people don't heal, it is a disrupted immune response. Even chronic pain, guys. Osteoarthritis and all these things are related to dysfunctional immune systems.

So that's why to me, this is something I'll take every day, whether I'm sick or not. I'm going to take this every day to help regulate those things I know are occurring in me as I age.

Lisa: Okay.

Ingredient #4: Kawakawa (Native New Zealand Plant)

And so the last piece of the puzzle was something called kawakawa, which is a native New Zealand Piperaceae species, which - in the Māori, obviously I'm of Māori descent with a name like Tamati, pretty obvious. And for those Kiwis listening, this has been traditionally used for hundreds of years by our people.

And as kids, my father used it. We drank kawakawa tea every day for its health properties. And traditionally, it's been used as a health tonic and for gut health and things like that. And it has a little bit of overlap.

What Kawakawa Does

So it's going to downregulate NF-kappa B, which is sort of a little bit higher up the food chain on the cytokine tree, if you like. And it's going to downregulate the TNF-alphas, the interleukin-6s again, the IL-1 beta. It also upregulates that interleukin-10.

And there's not as much studies on the kawakawa - it's an evolving space. So watch the space for more as the next few years - more and more studies will come out on the kawakawa. But I love these traditional medicines as well, because that is medicine that has survived hundreds of years.

Dr. Yurth: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really back in the old days, they didn't have the FDA doing studies. They just found what worked.

Lisa: Yeah. Exactly. They went straight to human studies.

Dr. Yurth: So these elders would light a fire, pick kawakawa, wave the branches through the flames, and get the plant, the leaves - use the leaves of the plant and heal injuries. And it worked, or they wouldn't have kept doing it. So they would treat everything from a toothache to somebody who's vomiting with these substances.

And you have to look at with respect to these things, because there's a reason that they were found and used. That actually means a lot.

Dihydromethysticin

And you look at one of the interesting things about kawakawa - I'm going to butcher the name of this - but it contains a compound called dihydromethysticin.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Yurth: And that's also in carnosic acid as well. It's in carnosic as well, right? A little bit more than the kawakawa. And that's actually a really good immune modulating.

Immune Modulation, Not Suppression

We talked about that one of the big problems is not that we have so much suppressed immune systems - it's that we have dysfunctional immune systems. So just immunosuppressants like putting everybody on steroids - if that was going to solve the problem... No. Basically, our immune systems are upregulated in the wrong places, downregulated in the wrong places.

And that's where kawakawa and the carnosic acid do come in, because they actually balance that immune system. I mean, they've used kawakawa in autoimmune disorders because of that - because it actually balances back this overresponsive immune system. That's what's doing the attack. That's what's keeping things going - is this immune system gets turned on and does not turn off.

So we need something that kind of turns that back down. And so that's where these agents I think play a huge role in adding to this product - is they now say, "Okay, immune system, calm yourself back down. Everything's going to be okay, so we can start the repair process."

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what happens when you're younger, not when you're under...

The Mouse Study

Dr. Yurth: When you're younger. If you look, there's a great study on mice where they created a wound on a mouse, and they looked at all those inflammatory markers - the same ones like with the iAge test, all these chemokines and cytokines.

In an older mouse, nothing happened for the first three days. In a young mouse, huge immune response the first day - lasted about three days, and then it turned down.

In the older mouse, nothing happened the first three days, and then the immune system started turning up and up and up and up.

Lisa: Wow.

Dr. Yurth: And it was still active two weeks later when the younger mouse had gone back to a completely normal functioning. So that's our problem - is we get a virus or something like that, we try to attack the virus. This is what happened with COVID. COVID didn't kill us. We killed ourselves because of the cytokine storm - a huge immune overresponse that attacked our lungs, it attacked our blood vessels, and that's what killed people.

Lisa: Yep.

Clinical Studies on Immuneel

And some of these ingredients are really good for upper respiratory conditions as well. There's clinical studies on that and how fast it clears things. The Immuneel had a study that within one to two hours of taking just the Immuneel...

Dr. Yurth: That was an amazing study, right?

Lisa: Yeah. Literally, within a few hours they saw improvement.

Dr. Yurth: Right. So this is something you'd want to take probably a high dose when you first got sick, because it was this rapid increase in this phagocytic activity of these macrophages to start attacking the virus day one - two hours later after a single dose.

Natural Killer Cell Study

I think the other big thing was the study on natural killer cells. There's companies you can go to another country now and get, for $50,000, get infusions of natural killer cells. What if we can actually upregulate our own natural killer cells, which we can?

So what they found was actually an increase in the numbers of natural killer cells, much more than the placebo. And it reflected the natural circadian fluctuations. So again, do things that replicate what our body is doing.

So we saw with this perfect regulation where natural killer cells were upregulated at nighttime, which is when we want that upregulation - that's when a lot of healing occurs. So those studies were really compelling, and the studies on it compared to even immunizations.

Better Than Vaccines

It was two to four times more powerful than the flu vaccine. With IDP, it helped improve the immune responses. They did it in conjunction with the vaccine for the flu vaccine, and it actually improved the antibody response. Because we know a lot of older adults do not respond to vaccines because they don't have this thymic working - they don't have the thymus. With no thymus gland, you don't...

Lisa: Yeah, that's why everybody gets encouraged to get vaccines when they're older, when actually your immune response is pretty dysfunctional when you're older. So if you're going to get a vaccine, you need to be doing something to support it. You and I would argue there's probably - getting good things like this in you is probably going to be more beneficial over the long run.

Dr. Yurth: Exactly. Than a lot of these vaccines are. Exactly.

Lisa: And we get a lot more autoimmune because the immune system gets dysregulated a lot more as we get older as well.

Dr. Yurth: So yeah. Yeah. So all of...

The Autoimmune Problem

And that's really the scary stuff. We're seeing so much more autoimmune disease because our immune systems are taxed by a lot of things, and our immune systems don't know how to function and they upregulate. They overrespond. So they keep producing - that's what that test is looking at. Is our immune system just in this constantly overactivated state?

So at that point, it's attacking everything else. And again, then the secondary downflow is now you have this way overactive immune cells stealing all of my ATP, all my energy, upregulation, huge amount of oxidative species, reactive oxygen species produced. Those are starting to do even more damage, and everything falls apart.

So we've got to fix that, and then we got to go back and fix the mitochondria, which we're doing with again with some of these products that are helping to repair some of the mitochondrial energy stores.

What Supplements Can You Replace?

Lisa: So actually thinking about that, Betsy - from a clinician's point of view, from a practitioner's point of view - we all end up with too many things on our list of things that we want to help this patient, this client with, and we end up with supplements up the wazoo.

What are some of the supplements that we could be thinking of replacing with Rejuvenate? It's not going to get rid of everything. We still need our vitamin D and our zinc and our...

Dr. Yurth: You know, vitamin D, magnesium, magnesium. So pretty basics though. I think you're not going to need all these people are taking a lot of prebiotics and probiotics. I don't think - I think this is a much better...

I'm not a big fan of probiotics, quite frankly, because you're taking a gut that is not healthy and you're trying to throw healthy bacteria into it. They're not going to survive. So this is actually repairing the microbiome by fixing the gut, which is really what we want to do - is fix the gut. So we can get rid of a lot of those things that we're doing to try and treat the gut.

Those of you who are taking antibiotics like Xifaxan all the time or things for Crohn's or IBS, a lot of those things can be eliminated. I think when you look at all the antioxidants, I'm not a big fan of taking massive amounts of antioxidants either. I would get rid of all those. I would use something that modulates my antioxidant system like this, as opposed to... So you don't need massive amounts of glutathione or vitamin E.

What to Keep

I think that this is going to eliminate the need for a lot of those things. I think that when you look at for things like... let's see, what else are we taking that's going to be sort of supportive to our immune system that we tell people to take all the time?

I mean, you're thinking selenium and things - you probably want to keep in the mix. Yeah, you probably need some basics of those. They have other values as well for things like bone.

What You Can Eliminate

Trying to think what else is in my sort of regimen that I've been able to take out because of this. I mean, you probably don't need things like spermidine, to say - because I love spermidine. Spermidine is actually doing some similar things for the gut as this is.

I will eliminate my colostrum, which is a really expensive product that I take. I spent a lot of money on my colostrum powder, so I don't need that anymore.

Lisa: No.

Dr. Yurth: So prebiotics, probiotics. And what about postbiotics?

Lisa: This is going to act as a postbiotic too, honestly.

Dr. Yurth: So this should be your perfect gut health product.

Lisa: Yeah.

The One Thing

Dr. Yurth: If you can only give people one thing because money's an issue or whatever, this would be the one thing. I would - I've tried to really down the number of things I have my patients on, quite honestly. I'm trying to look for things like this where I'm like - if I can fix the gut, I am fixing so much else.

I mean, those of you guys who are taking a bunch of amino acids or tryptophan, things like that - you don't need this. I mean, this - if I get the gut healthy, you need to eat protein, good healthy protein. But I get the gut healthy, I don't need these extra things like taking tryptophan to sleep at night or my serotonin uptake inhibitors because I'm depressed, because I'm going to actually increase serotonin with this product.

The Core Stack

So I would say I'd leave my patients on the vitamin D3 with K2, some magnesium - those are pretty critical. Selenium, some people - not everybody needs it. And I would put them on this and some omegas, some good omega-3 fatty acids - fish oil or krill oil. So some good omega-3 fatty acids. Plasmalogens.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Youth: If you... Yeah, either that or... And this, because I feel like - I said, if we're kind of coming down to in medicine that almost everything of the immune system can be fixed at the gut level. And so this is addressing that. This is addressing the gut pathology that disrupted the immune system, and it's addressing what's happening at the T-cell level secondarily as the T-cells are being excreted out of my bone marrow and being replaced.

Stem Cell Activation

Lisa: I think the last thing we should touch on, Betsy, before we wrap this up is the stem cell activation for some of these ingredients. So Immuneel, colostrum, and the Immune Defense Proteins - they stimulate stem cells. They help with the growth factors as we mentioned, like the IGF.

So that's repair. So when we do exosome treatments or stem cell treatments on people - what am I doing? I'm telling these cells to come out of my bone marrow, these active cells, and become something. But they need... what's in these stem cells? It's IGF, it's transforming growth factor beta, it's endothelial growth factors. That's what's actually inside the stem cells that's doing the job. It's not the stem cell - it's the contents of the stem cells.

What's in Stem Cells

Dr. Yurth: So that's what's contained, you guys, when you're doing stem cell therapy. What's contained inside the stem cells is all these microRNAs and growth factors that are what already in these products, these proteins. That's what they are, because they came out of this colostrum that was extracted out of this colostrum. It contains all of that that was needed - those same growth factors were needed to mature the cells and the immune system and the gut for these babies.

So it's actually doing - does it have everything the same? No. But it's actually doing a lot, and activating - it's still telling my bone marrow, "Get busy, throw some more cells into the mix." So it's helping those cells to come out of my bone marrow. So I'm activating stem cells, and I'm giving them the messages they need - these growth factor messages they need to initiate a repair process.

Lisa: Yeah.

Proline-Rich Peptides for the Brain

And then you've got the proline-rich peptides that we talked about that's in the colostrum part that enhances immune function and modulates the inflammatory signals that regulate stem cell activity. And those are really important for the brain too.

Dr. Yurth: Proline-rich peptides are very critical to the brain.

Lisa: Right? Didn't know that. That's a new one.

Dr. Yurth: I mean, yeah. I mean, those are a big piece of cognitive enhancement is using proline-rich peptides.

Lisa: And I think in future we're probably going to do webinars on the cardiovascular and the neuroprotective sides of this formulation, which we haven't even gotten into today, because it's its own whole complete webinar with a whole lot of other studies and stuff.

But there is the aspect that when your gut is better, it impacts the brain.

Muscle Building and IGF-1

Dr. Yurth: So yeah, I think many people are going to see themselves be able to put on lean muscle better with this because of the IGF-1 that's upregulated, because of healing the gut.

But so these growth factors - I mean, IGF is what I'll use in my athletes when they have an injury. So I'll actually give them IGF-1 because that really promotes tissue repair.

Lisa: Wow.

Dr. Yurth: Well, here's a natural way of getting IGF-1 without having to inject yourself every day.

Lisa: Yeah. Right. So...

Dr. Yurth: Injecting. Exactly. And IGF-1's hard to get.

Lisa: Yeah, it is.

Lactoferrin and Stem Cells

And lactoferrin, which is another key component, has been shown to stimulate hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow, which are responsible for blood and immune cell formation. So again, 40% of the Immune Defense Protein is lactoferrin. So that's another sort of aspect of it.

Carnosic Acid and Neuronal Stem Cells

And in the rosemary, the carnosic acid part of it, how it stimulates the stem cells: potent antioxidant and neuroprotective compounds that support neuronal stem cell proliferation, reduces oxidative stress and inflammation, creating a favorable environment for stem cell survival.

And some research suggests that it increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which both of us know how important that is, which promotes neural stem cell growth. So that's pretty exciting as well.

Dr. Yurth: You do that in combination - you're doing this in combination with making sure that you're stimulating the brain with new activities, games, puzzles, things like that. So we're going to help recruit some of these agents over, cross the blood-brain barrier. And that's one of the things - is these growth factors can't actually cross the blood-brain barrier. So we can actually get them to the brain.

Lisa: Wow, that's amazing.

Dr. Yurth: That's where we can actually get these things to the brain.

Natural Killer Cells

So simply to me - just like I said, I went to a lecture a while ago with this company who's doing this natural killer cell infusions. It's expensive. It doesn't last that long, honestly. But they showed natural killer cell activity up almost 40% after just one month on this product. They showed increased natural killer cell activity. That's huge, guys. I mean, that's huge in the preventing cancer world.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Huge.

Dr. Yurth: If I can increase my natural killer activity by 40%, my likelihood of cancer goes way down.

Lisa: Yeah.

CD69 Upregulation

So this is for cancer prevention. Think about this. And so there is a study that shows CD69 is upregulated. And that's the study we'll include as well in the notes. But you can see what happens there.

Kawakawa and Stem Cells

And the last one for the stem cells - the kawakawa that contains the myristicin, the dihydromethysticin, which are modulating immune responses and reducing inflammation - and they help the pro-regenerative environment, allowing stem cells to be more active in tissue repair.

The Wnt Pathway

And they interact with the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling - the Wnt pathway is a really big pathway, guys, in developing arthritis. So dysfunctions in that pathway are one of the reasons we - when we get an injury, we progress to arthritis.

So there's a lot of products looking at the market of the Wnt pathway in modulating that pathway for preventing osteoarthritis after surgeries and injuries. So this is definitely a product you want to put on somebody when they have an injury or a surgery, because that's a pathway that gets upregulated - well, I'll say abnormally regulated - after an injury or a surgery.

Post-Surgery Arthritis

And that's a huge reason that 80% of these people after surgery... So when you get an ACL repaired or you break a bone, 80% go on to develop osteoarthritis. And it's because things start to go awry early on, even in your 30s. And so we really need to be addressing these things early on.

So I would put everybody post-injury, post-surgery on three or four caps of this for at least a few weeks to modulate that.

Lisa: Yeah. And you're an orthopedic surgeon of 30 years. So...

Dr. Yurth: I do. Orthopedic. So I still see a lot of orthopedic patients. I don't do surgery, but I still do see a lot of patients that we prep for pre-op and post-op.

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr. Yurth: And you know this space very, very well. And the arthritis. And I would use this also after doing platelet injections or if you're doing stem cell injections. And maybe you don't need to do stem cell injections if you put somebody on this. But you would definitely want to use it in conjunction in those patients as well.

Lisa: Yeah.

Summary of Stem Cell Benefits

And so overall, the colostrum provides the IGF, the TGF-beta that enhance stem cell activation. The rosemary has the neuronal stem cell growth by reducing oxidative stress and boosting that BDNF, which is absolutely crucial. And the kawakawa modulates, which can enhance stem cell survival and differentiation.

So just that was just a quick sort of summary on the stem cells, because stem cells are becoming more and more - people are... And there's products out there that are working just on stem cell function. There are products out there that are doing that. I think this is doing that just as well, maybe better. We don't know. But I think that we're working the way the body does this. I mean, this is the body's way of doing things.

Dr. Yurth: Yeah. And that's - the best way to fix things is look at how the body does it. That's why these are so powerful. These are made by our body. I mean, or these same agents are in our bodies. We can find them in very high amounts in the bovine sources, but these are all things that we make.

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr. Yurth: And that's why it's so powerful.

Wrapping Up

Lisa: So I think we've covered it pretty well, Betsy. We've hopefully we didn't lose you all along the way, because it's quite confusing. You've got the Immune Defense Proteins and the Immuneel, which have a lot of crossover and a lot of similarities, but different - same same but different.

Dr. Yurth: I think think about them as synergists. They're sort of working together where one is really working a little bit more at the gut level, and the other one a little bit more on the immune system, the stem cell system itself. And they work so synergistically together.

The Secret Sauce

I think these four compounds together as sort of their secret sauce is that they all kind of are covering the basis to perfectly modulate things to get everything in this perfect balance, which is really where our goal needs to be.

Whenever you throw something that's not that our body doesn't make into the system, then you risk over-modulation, under-modulation, screwing up homeostasis. And our bodies really rely on perfect homeostasis.

So I love that this is going to really just modulate. Adding just a little bit of carnosic acid, a little bit of kawakawa was able to say, "Okay, if we're upregulating things a little bit too much, we can keep that in balance with these ingredients."

Lisa: Yep.

Contraindications and Safety

And so if we just touch briefly before we wrap up on contraindications - there's - I've had questions from some practitioners around things like warfarin, which is a common drug that's used. Is there any blood thinning effects? Is it safe in pregnancy? Those sorts of questions. So can we just quickly address some of those, just from a practitioner's point of view so they have some understanding of where the limitations lie and the dosing sort of side of things?

IDP and Immuneel: Safe for All

Dr. Yurth: So first of all, the Immuneel and the IDP are going to be safe across the board. I think there's nothing - there's no contraindication there.

Blood Thinners

If you look at blood thinning medications like anticoagulants - so rosemary has a very, very small effect on blood clotting, but at this dosage level, it's a little bit like a spit in the ocean if somebody's on warfarin. It's very unlikely.

Like we use a product called pentosan polysulfate a lot. It's also a weak blood thinner. Weak blood thinners interestingly enough have a lot of health advantages to them. And we'll use that with people on warfarin and things. This is going to be similar.

So certainly have your doctor - if they're monitoring you with INRs, things like that - you can have them monitor it. But again, it'd be a little bit like spitting in the ocean. It's going to have such a minimal effect to somebody who's already on blood thinner medicines. It really should not make a difference.

I mean, I would not high-dose those people. You probably want to stick it to maybe two caps a day if someone's on anticoagulant therapy.

Blood Pressure and Diabetes Medications

I think that if you look at blood pressure medicines, these are actually going to help blood pressure. So I guess the only risk there is maybe you need less of your blood pressure medicine. Or the same thing's true about diabetes medicines - could it lower your blood sugar too much? Unlikely. But I bet it lowers the need for some of, like if you're taking drugs like metformin or things like that, you might find you need less.

So you can keep an eye on maybe needing less of some of those medications that are treating disease, because you're going to be modulating some of those things.

Liver Disease

Other things you look at - people with liver disease - we see a lot of people who have elevated liver functions. Both the rosemary, the carnosic acid, is actually really hepatoprotective. It's very protective to the liver. So really shouldn't be any issue. In fact, it probably would be helpful in liver disease.

Kidney Disease

Kidneys - that could be a little bit more of a burden to kidneys. The carnosic acid and kawakawa are both getting processed through the kidneys, could be a little bit more of a burden on kidneys. So I might keep the dose a little bit lower in those people at the one to two caps instead of the three to four caps.

But in general, I don't think you're going to see change in kidney function either. I think that these are small amounts of these components of the carnosic acid and the kawakawa. I don't think we're going to see a big effect there, but something we can keep an eye on.

Herxheimer Reactions

Lisa: What about detox - die-off of bad bacteria, Herxheimer reactions, that type of thing?

Dr. Yurth: So typically, Herxheimer reaction is because as you kill off bacteria, you get this really big overactive immune response to the byproducts of this bacterial death - all these little things that have released.

So that's why this is cool. What are we doing? We're killing off the bacteria, but we're helping the immune system to react perfectly - not overrespond to that. So when I put something on somebody like an antibiotic or an antiviral or antiparasitic that is going to create a big huge immune response, I tell them you may get a Herxheimer reaction.

This will not do that because I'm keeping the immune system modulated while I'm killing off the bacteria. That's exactly the goal of this supplement - is to modulate and not let the immune system become an overactive attack phenomena. So you shouldn't see that.

Pregnancy

Lisa: In pregnancy, young children, infants - caution?

Dr. Yurth: We always are cautious with pregnancy. If you look, the colostrum, the IDP - those are naturally present during lactation. Rosemary is still within a range that would be considered safe for pregnancy. But I always tell people - if you can stay away from something during pregnancy, probably it's not a bad idea to stay away from it.

So I would say probably not critical. And I would probably say we can't say for sure. I think if you were - I think it's always a risk versus benefit. So if somebody's got horrible immune stuff going on, then it might be worth the fact that there's a little bit of the rosemary. And rosemary is the only thing in there that I could think of that would actually... The kawakawa should not actually have a big effect.

But rosemary can stimulate uterine contractions at high doses. So that would be the risk - is if you stimulate uterine contractions. Now, at the low dose, it shouldn't do that. But if you took a high enough dose, it could, and that would cause a miscarriage.

Children

Lisa: Being for kids?

Dr. Yurth: Again, if you look at the component of rosemary, the carnosic acid dose - you've got about 70 milligrams of carnosic acid, which is a safe level for kids. The kawakawa at 100 milligrams - it's probably a little higher dose for kids, but that's still within reasonable. That was kind of in the history of kawakawa, sort of a reasonable dose.

So I think you'd probably stay at one cap for kids and be safe. Maximum one cap.

Lisa: Maximum one cap. Yeah. Yeah.

Cancer and Chemotherapy

Dr. Yurth: Cancer - any things there? If you're on chemo, if you're not doing chemotherapy, this is going to be helpful because it's going to raise your natural killer cell activity, absolutely, and help to repair the gut.

Lisa: After some of the...

Dr. Yurth: And repair the gut. Yeah. So after chemo, not during chemo. We usually stay away from most things during chemo just because it can make things... Remember, chemo sucks because we're trying to basically kill the cancer without killing you. But we don't... General things that are supportive to the immune system might not be the best.

Lisa: Yeah. We don't want to be upregulating good things when you're trying to kill off things.

Dr. Yurth: Suppression of viruses and things like your herpes simplex viruses and your CMV and your Epstein-Barr are going to be very, very supportive for all that.

Chronic Viral Illnesses

I'm really excited for this because I have so many patients who have reactivated Epstein-Barr virus. So I test that now in my patients who have any issues, and we're seeing it in everybody. So it's one of the things we know COVID did - is it reactivated Epstein-Barr, and probably the vaccine as well.

But this reactivation of Epstein-Barr is a big tax to our immune system. Epstein-Barr virus reactivated is linked to things like MS. And so you need something here. We don't have great antivirals. We have Valtrex for herpes viruses. We don't have a great antiviral for Epstein-Barr virus.

So this is going to be a huge player in these people who have chronic viral illnesses, chronic fatigue syndromes. It's going to be huge.

Mold and Lyme

Lisa: And finally, last question, I promise. What is - in relation to mold and Lyme? Any thoughts there? Because we get complicated.

Dr. Yurth: My opinion on mold and Lyme? Yes, you got to get people out of moldy environments. But all of us are going to be exposed to mycotoxins. It is absolutely impossible to reside in this world and not get exposed to some mycotoxins. They're going to be, if not in your environment, in your food. Even if you're careful, it's very hard to get away from mycotoxins.

So obviously, if people test high for mycotoxins, find the moldy source and try and get rid of it. But I will tell you, when you look at mycotoxins in people, I don't ever see somebody who does not have mycotoxins. Now, not everybody is immune-reacting to them.

It's an Immune Problem

So that's the - I can have mycotoxins but not an immune reaction to the mycotoxins. So when you get mycotoxin-induced disease, what's happening? Maybe you've overwhelmed it. We need to get rid of the mycotoxin. But let's say you do that - you still have mycotoxin illness. It's because of an immune system reaction. It's because it stirred up your immune system, and now it has become an autoimmune disease.

The same thing is true of Lyme. Lyme becomes an autoimmune disease. You can kill off the bug. But what gets people long-term is the immune disease that occurs because of the stimulation of the immune system from Lyme.

This Will Help

So this is going to be an excellent choice there. Number one, the Lyme - if you have any secondary bacteria infections like Bartonella, things like that, along with the Lyme, this should help to address those.

But number two - like I said, I think people get so caught up in all these - "Oh, I have to get rid of every piece of mold in my life and every toxin in my life." It's impossible. What I have to do is have an immune system that can tolerate it.

13-Year-Olds Don't Get Sick from Mold

You don't see 13-year-old kids sick from mold very often unless they've been in a horrible environment. Right? Because their immune systems are pretty primed, and they react and they heal and they don't overreact.

The reason we go on and just stay sick - you see these people who are laden with molds and viruses - they don't have an immune system to be able to respond appropriately.

Two Tests

So I do two tests. I will look at mycotoxin levels, but I look at immune reactions. I look at IgG reactions to the mycotoxins. Not everybody has IgG reactions, but almost everybody has mycotoxins.

So it's an immune problem. So I think this is where we have to key in more - is that we have to fix the immune system. We can't keep trying to tackle getting rid of every single toxin in our life. It's important obviously if we can get rid of the stimulus to the immune system. That's important. But we also need to absolutely support the immune system.

Lisa: Yeah. So it's coming again at that higher level, going up the pathway and going...

Dr. Yourth: It's the overimmune system, immune system. It's our own system attacking us and killing us.

Lisa: Wow.

Dr. Yourth: Right. That's why you see this high level of CXCL9 - this chemokine. There's something really dysregulated.

Lisa: Wow.

Final Thoughts

So this is just - I think that really just let a light bulb off in my head, because I've been working with Lyme and mold patients, and you keep going - it's like a constant battle. "Okay, now it's this, and now it's this." And now they're living - I mean, I have people who are living in a cement compound.

Dr. Yurth: You know, I'm like, "Okay, you have to live in a cement compound - probably your immune system is not good as well."

Conclusion

Lisa: Well, Betsy, that's been an absolute wild ride with you today, going through all of the various aspects of this. So thank you so much for your guidance. Thank you for putting all the intellectual work in behind this. And we're really excited for Rejuvenate Pro to help you and your patients and your clients.

Dr. Yurth's Personal Experience

Dr. Yurth: Honestly, I got some myself. And you and I have talked about - I've always had a little bit of a low white count. Don't know why. But obviously my immune system isn't great. I have a little bit of autoimmune stuff. And so I started taking it. You got me a couple bottles of it. I started taking it - was the first time ever - and I've been measuring my labs for a long time - that I saw my white blood cell count come up.

Lisa: Um.

Dr. Yurth: So we're seeing improvements in immune system. I'm like I said, I'm really excited. And I've got a couple kids who have IgA deficiencies. We didn't even talk about the IgA effects. But this immunoglobulin, the IgA effect... So I have two kids who have IgA deficiencies, and so this is going to be huge for them. I maintain them on colostrum right now. This is going to be better because we can really improve IgA function with these products too.

Lisa: Yeah.

Coming to America

So we've got to get it to America very, very soon. We promise we're doing that.

What to Test For

Dr. Yurth: So low sIgA patients - look for zonulin improvements. Look for lymphocyte counts. Look for neutrophils, white blood cells. All of those things that people - you'll see a nice regulation of the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio. You're going to see any of your gut people - you'll start seeing improvements. You definitely see zonulin levels come down.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. That's really good.

Final Thanks

Thank you, Betsy. Wonderful to talk to you again today. And thanks so much for your guidance. And we're very, very grateful for working on this project and bringing it to the market.