Results Overview: My Stem Cell Journey for Rheumatoid Arthritis: Part 5

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Transcript

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Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is my results overview, my stem cell journey for rheumatoid arthritis, part five. And of course, I promised, for those of you who've been keeping up with this, that I would uh give you a recap at some point where I would spend time. I'd tell you more of the specific details, even some of the boring details about the process that I went through to get these stem cells and how it's turned out for me. I told you I'd be honest with you. And so I'm about to give you that information. I got my last infusion of stem cells in the country of Panama, down there on the border of South America and Panama City at Stem Cell Institute, cellmedicine.com. I got the last infusion on Friday, May 15th, 2026. That was 52 days ago. So that means it was seven weeks and three days. So almost two months ago. Because I'm recording this here on July 6th of 2026. So almost two months. Here's what I have to tell you. By the way, right up right up front, I'll give you a disclaimer. I am not a health professional. I am not sponsored by anybody. I am not uh advocating or promoting this for anybody. Um I don't take anything I give you as advice. Okay, I got no special treatment. I paid out of pocket $30,000 for this treatment, just like uh the average person would, I guess, who who gets this type of thing, the same thing that I had. And uh so yeah, there's no um there's no hidden agenda here. And I want to tell you honestly about my experience, and therefore I'm warning you right now that I may use some strong language, some R-rated language, because I'm just going to speak freely and tell you about this however I want to. Um I also, even though I'm gonna give you the whole story, I'm not gonna make you wait till the end to hear how I feel. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now up front, because I know a lot of you have been following this journey from the beginning, because I started recording podcasts before I went down there, and then while I was down there, and then while I was on the way back from there. And if you want to go and like listen to the whole series, uh, I have created a website, stemcellresult.com, stemcellresult.com, that has links to all those. But um, let me just tell you right up front, at this point, you know, people say, you know, how how are you how are you feeling? And would you go back and do it again? Would you spend the 30 grand again and go all the way down there to Panama? Well, here is my honest answer. At this point, I am not sure whether or not I would do this again, or or whether or not I would I would have done it. And and I and I'll tell you this because this is because when my treatment was over for rheumatoid arthritis, for a full six weeks, I did not have any of those classic rheumatoid arthritis symptoms where you wake up and you have terrible pain and swelling and inflammation and various joints, among other things. I didn't even have as much of you know, like the problems that you get with fatigue and all that to a certain extent. But for six weeks, the the classic rheumatoid arthritis issues were gone. But then a couple days after that, I woke up one day and my left hand was sore and it was starting to get a little swollen. I said, Oh shit. But the next day it was okay. But then a couple days later I woke up and now it was my right hand and my left shoulder. And so gradually since then, I have started having more and more issues where I wake up and it seems like that the rheumatoid arthritis problems are coming back. For example, today I woke up and um my left middle finger was hurting, my right thumb was hurting, my right shoulder was hurting, my neck was hurting. Um so I'm feeling a little discouraged at this point, but I also there's a caveat, a huge caveat here, in in my experience. Well, for one thing, um if you actually get online and start looking it up, they say that yes, everybody wants to have immediate relief from stem cell infusions, but that uh it can actually take up to a year for all of the effects to kick in. So I need to be patient before I kind of come up with the with the final conclusion. But the other thing is, I made a big, big mistake that I'm gonna tell you about right up front. When I finished my infusions in Panama, I should have flown straight home to where I live here in Las Vegas and rested. That's what I should have done. Instead, I flew to Texas and spent days visiting with uh friends and in-laws there. And it turns out, bad luck, a lot of them happened to be sick. And I understand that you're in kind of a vulnerable state right after you get stem cell infusions, and I ended up getting really, really sick. By the time I got back home in Las Vegas, I had picked up something, I presume it was something in Texas, and I started getting uh sick with like severe upper respiratory type uh issues, and then um it ended up turning into pneumonia, and then I had to go and get uh antibiotics, and they were very strong, and they tore my stomach up, and I mean that just like was a huge setback. So basically, when I came back, um I immediately was sick, and so that has thrown a wrench into my results. This is so it makes it very complicated for me to try to give you honest feedback because this sort of contaminates my results. If I just flown straight back home and rested and not gotten that sickness that that knocked me out for a month, then I may have a different report for you. I don't know how that may or may not have delayed things. But um I will definitely tell you that you should, if you're gonna go get stem cells, don't don't make any pit stops on the way back home. Go home and rest for a month after that and just stay away from everybody and everything. So that said, um I'm not 100% clear on my opinion at this point of whether or not it was worth it. If if I just end up having, you know, be getting back to normal right now, where I'm starting to have rheumatoid arthritis flare-ups, well then no, it wasn't worth it. But this could just be a, you know, uh again, a hitch because that I happen to have that uh misfortune of getting uh sick immediately afterward. Uh so this podcast is going to be a little all over the place. I just have a bunch of notes here. And now that I've told you as much as I can tell you about where I am right now health-wise, almost two months later, you should probably only listen to the rest of this if you really want to hear the story. Uh, especially if you're somebody who is considering going down there to Panama or a similar place, but especially where I went, you know, I'm going to tell you very specifically about the Stem Cell Institute, uh, cellmedicine.com. I want to make sure that I've I've got their website right. And uh everybody at Stem Cell Institute was just fantastic. Yeah, cellmedicine.com. Everybody was extremely professional, on the ball, very friendly. Uh, it's a it's a top-notch operation. There's no doubt about that. So don't even worry about whether or not you're gonna be in good hands. I mean, that all turned out great. I my experience with them was was wonderful. Uh okay, so if you if you are just brand new to this topic, I will tell you that I decided to do this because that I have an autoimmune condition called rheumatoid arthritis. And this is different than getting old and your joints hurting. That's called osteoarthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis, really, I don't even like the fact that it's called arthritis because that makes everybody think it's just old-fashioned osteoarthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune condition in which your body has an overactive immune system and it starts attacking itself systematically, and it attacks all your organs, and uh it has vast ramifications. Uh, it's it goes beyond joint pain. This is uh it robs you of your energy, uh, it makes you sick. Uh you you feel like vomiting all the time because you you're gastrointestinal, you have gastrointestinal problems, and uh your eyes get real dry and uh burn and just look up rheumatoid arthritis. It's an incurable lifetime condition. And as you get older, if it progresses, then eventually it can deform your joints to the point where you can end up in a in a wheelchair or you just can't use your hands, uh, especially unless you have some type of extensive surgery. Uh, you've probably seen people with big knobby joints and their hands kind of turn into claws. I mean, that's what that's what can happen to you. And I am uh I'm going to be 50 years old in a few months. I'll be 50 on October 25th, 2026. And so uh I figured this was a good time to experiment with the stem cell thing and see if I could maybe you know nip it in the bud. And not that it would cure it. I knew it wasn't going to cure anything, but that it would it would help you know treat this and slow this condition down. So I decided to go down to Panama and get what are called human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells. And if you just go to, for example, the Mayo Clinic website and you look up like what are stem cells? Here's what it says. Stem cells are a special type of cells that have two important properties. They are able to make more cells like themselves, that is, they self-renew, and they can become other cells that do different things in a process known as differentiation. Stem cells are found in almost all tissues of the body, and they are needed for the maintenance of tissue as well as for the repair after injury. And then it says there are various types of stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are the most versatile since they can develop and do all the cells of the developing fetus. The majority of stem cells in the body have fewer abilities to give rise to cells and may only help maintain and repair the tissues and organs in which they reside. No other cell in the body has the natural ability to generate new cell types. Okay, so that's what they say, generally speaking, is a stem cell. Now, these types of there are different types of stem cells. So these stem cells that I got are called mesenchymal stem cells. And it says here what that means is that they are multipotent adult stem cells found in bone marrow, fat, and umbilical cords. They can self-renew and differentiate into various tissues, including bone, cartilage, and fat. Mazenchymal stem cells are heavily researched in regenerative medicine for their ability to modulate immune responses and repair damaged tissue. By the way, the word mesenchymal comes from the Greek word mesos, which means middle, and encima, meaning infusion or tissue. So what that is, it literally translates into a middle infusion, referring to the embryonic tissue layer that develops into the body's connective tissues. Now, this type of this type of uh umbilical cord uh stuff, and I'm gonna explain more about that in a minute, has nothing to do with fetuses. Um there was a time when uh you know many decades ago when scientists were taking you know fetuses and uh using them for stem cell research, and that caused great controversy because a lot of people were equating it to abortion and all that. But uh that actually turned out to be uh a bad way of doing it. I'll explain why uh a little bit later. They don't do that anymore. Now all they do is when they have very select candidates. I'll tell you again in a second more about how they get them. They have a very select candidate woman who volunteers to give her umbilical cord via C section, uh, and it would go into the garbage can, or they can take it, and if it lives up to certain standards, they can use the uh the stem cells from that umbilical cord and then uh treat them in a special way and then inject them into old guys like me. Uh so what's also kind of interesting about this is that and again, you know, I you you have to get cut me some slack here. I have a lot of information in front of me. Um I I talked to my doctors about whether or not I should do this because you know, I I I chose Stem Cell Institute in Panama because that for one thing, everybody says they're the best, and that's because their government allowed them over 20 years ago to start breaking ground on this and and gave them a lot of leeway that we do not have here in the United States or many other countries to go down there or to to start working down there and uh perfecting this. And I started hearing about it all over the place. A lot of celebrities talk about it. Joe Rogan has talked about it on his podcast. Mel Gibson has talked about it and how it's done miraculous things for him and his father. Uh Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker, is a big proponent. I mean, like, there are all kinds of celebrities, people who have the money to go anywhere they want. And they rave about going to Stem Cell Institute in Panama City, Panama. And so I read books, I watched a lot of material. I mean, this I looked into this thing for years. And then finally I said, All right, well, let me make sure I'm just not being some kind of like wacko here who's buying into some propaganda on the internet. So I talked to my actual real doctors. I talked to my rheumatologist, I talked to my general doctor, and uh they both said, Well, look, this is not FDA approved here in the United States, but this seems to be the way of the future. And one of my doctors even said, if I were you, I would do it. And I'm fortunate because I am in a position where I have the resources to do that because it, you know, it's not cheap. I said $30,000. That's just for the treatment. That doesn't include, you know, the trip down there and back and everything else. I'll get into the to that a little bit more in a minute. And um this type of treatment is just not readily available in the United States. And um, I have I understand that right now that there are special experimental trials that are going on where you might be able to apply and see if they'll they'll take you, and there's a very small amount of people who are taken, and I don't know how elaborate that would be, but it's just not the kind of thing that should be as available to people like myself who who want to experiment uh here here in this country. And I think it should be. I really do. Even though I'm not 100% sure how this is going to turn out for me, um, you know, there are people who have lots of different conditions that they they they seek this treatment for. And uh everybody's unique, it's a case-for-case kind of thing. And people, I believe, there I believe there's definitely enough science there, uh, enough scientific research to justify allowing people to experiment with this. You know, the Stem Cell Institute there in Panama, I think they've done over 80,000 procedures. Uh if you look it up, I mean they have rave reviews. And and again, they've been in business like 25 years or something. So yeah, and my doctor said, Yeah, go ahead. Try it out. And what's kind of interesting, okay, when you when you go there, and I'm looking right now at their website, cellmedicine.com, says three benefits of stem cell therapy in Panama City, Panama. Uh one, ethically sourced stem cells. And it says stem cells from adult tissues do not carry the same stigma as the embryonic variety. They exist throughout the body in an adult that is postnatal tissue, including umbilical cord tissue, and act as a natural repair system for the body. Adult stem cells help our bodies in cases of disease, injury, or normal wear and tear. At Stem Cell Institute, we only use adult stem cells in our treatment protocols. We collect these adult stem cells exclusively from donated umbilical cord tissue after healthy, normal births. Each umbilical cord undergoes extensive testing before selection. This ensures you receive the highest quality stem cell treatment possible when you visit our clinic. They also have number two here, what they call the proprietary golden cells. That's trademark. Stem Cell Institute has been a leader in regenerative medicine for over 15 years. During that time, we have improved the quality of life for countless patients. This is not by accident. We are constantly scanning the horizon for the latest innovations as well as evaluating our own processes. This ensures our patients experience all the benefits stem cells have to offer. And this process of forward thinking uh had led us to the discovery of golden cells. After years of treating patients with chronic diseases, we noticed that some patients experienced improvement beyond that of others. And uh so they've gone through and they've they say that they've analyzed things and they've discovered that there are uh some specific characteristics that make what they call the golden cells. Uh the founder, Dr. Neil Rorden, explains if you are picking a basketball team, would you want me on your team or LeBron James, possibly the best basketball player of all time? We are both humans, but our abilities on the court are not equal. It's the same with mesenchymal stem cells. Some perform better than others. And that's why we've been working to select the best cells for use in patients with chronic disease. Now we can retrospectively analyze existing data outcomes. We are the only stem cell company with the data to do that. And then number three, uh, they say treatment. Protocols for a variety of medical conditions, uh, autism, autoimmune diseases, cerebral palsy, frailty of aging, heart failure, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, sports injuries. But they also have this thing there that's kind of strange because they they not only give you the stem cells, but they also give you something that they call MTF, mesyncabel trophic factors. And this is not, these are not stem cells, these are things that stem cells produce. A powerful blend, they say, of free healing molecules, extracellular vesicles, and exosomes containing modifying factors naturally released by our golden cells during their growth in the lab. Okay, so I know you're thinking, like, what does that mean? A vesicle is a small membrane sac that stores and transports materials within a cell. They say it's like a microscopic delivery truck. And exosomes are these tiny nanosized membrane-bound vesicles that are released carrying proteins, lipids, and genetic material. So, in other words, what they're saying is that yes, we have stem cells here, which can transform into other things, but perhaps what's also maybe even more important is that these stem cells they produce the stuff called MTF, mesyncable trophic factors, which are all this is the this is the magic dust that the stem cells produce here that actually goes in and and does the work to help your cells repair. And again, I'm just speaking based upon what I think I understand as a patient. Do not take anything that I tell you as some form of uh of medical wisdom. So you have two things that we're talking about here. One of them is stem cells, and the other is MTFs, which are the things the stem cells produce, and they give you a combination of those two. So after I talked to my doctors and I decided that I wanted to try this out, um I went to their website, I filled out an application, which uh that they wanted, you know, my whole medical history, of course. And at that point, if they were just some sham operation, they could have just said, Okay, you got 30 grand, come on down. Welcome. Yeah, we'll we'll give you some stem cells. Fly on down here, you're good. But they didn't do that. Um, they wanted more information, so I had to get go back and get more records and more lab reports and things and send that to them. And even that wasn't enough. Uh they wanted so much information that I finally had to contact my doctor, my general doctor, and go see him with a letter from them saying that they wanted a an up-to-date report from him, which was an overview of like all of my entire medical status. So I had to do a whole special doctor's appointment and have him sit down and do this examination and then write up, you know, this report that I sent to them, and then finally they had enough. It was a big pain in the ass. Then um I had to schedule a phone call with one of the doctors there. So I got on the phone with the doctor. We talked for a good 30 minutes or more. He asked me a lot of questions about my situation and my expectations. And uh finally, when it was over, he said, you know, I think you I think you sound like a good candidate for this. Like this is somebody who might benefit from this. So they were very thoughtful and meticulous with the whole process. And then after that, I got an email saying you've been approved. Now, you know, it's payment time. So they it was going to be almost $30,000. And that was going to include it was a package where basically I would fly down to Panama, and I live in Las Vegas here in the United States. I'd fly down to Panama with my wife, Lauren. When I got off the plane, they would meet me, somebody would meet me right there. If you want a wheelchair, they'll put you in a wheelchair, they'll take you down. They have a representative there who will basically fast track you through customs. Make that simple for you. And then you go out and you get into uh a van where a guy transports you about 30 minutes from the airport to your hotel, which is a big, nice, fancy five-star Hilton hotel. And then you get in there, you go to the front desk, everything's already set up for you. They give you a packet that's got all your information in it, and uh special access cards to different floors of the building and everything. And then uh, so your room's included. And I got in on Monday and I checked out on a Saturday. So I was there what, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So five nights stay at the Hilton was included, as well as transportation from the airport to the Hilton and from the Hilton back. And um it was it was top-notch, you know, service. So you so you get that included with uh about four days of treatment. Day number one, I'm gonna go over what they do each day in a minute, but but basically, you know, like day number one is where they they draw blood and they do some final lab tests to make sure there's nothing that's unexpected that's popped up at the last minute. And then for the next three days, you get your infusions and other things. So I'm gonna get into that in a second and tell you how that process goes. So the thing is you can make payments on this if you want to, but it the whole thing has got to be paid before your appointment. I think like two weeks before your appointment, they've got to have all the money. So it's not like you can just put this, you know, in a in a in a finance arrangement where you make payments for the next five years or whatever. No, they got to have all their money up front. Now, one option is to wire transfer the money to them all at once. The other option is to make payments, which you can make with a credit card or credit cards if you want. I opted to go the credit card route. And that and here's why. And here's just my opinion on this. If you take a large sum of money, $30,000, and you just wire transfer that to another country, if something goes wrong, it's very unlikely that you will get that money back. And by something going wrong, I mean, who knows? There could be a natural disaster that wipes out the half the country. There could be a war. There could be you just don't know. So if you send, if you wire transfer 30 grand to another country for something like this, good luck if something goes wrong getting that back. But if you put it on credit cards, credit cards usually have protection in there built in. They have some insurance and fraud protection, and they can dispute things if something goes wrong. So I thought that it was the wisest thing to say, I'll make payments, even though I could have paid for it all at once. I said, I'll make payments on it and put it on different credit cards so that if there's a problem with one payment, it doesn't affect the rest of the payment. So I just paid for it little by little as I went along on credit cards, and that way I felt that everything was secured and insured for me, and that worked out well for me. So that would be my advice if you want to do something like that. So here's pretty much how it all went. I arrived on a Monday. Now, when you're getting ready to do this, and certainly throughout the process of doing this, uh you obviously want to try to stay as healthy as possible. You you you really want to like like no drinking alcohol, no smoking, no eating terrible, greasy fast food, or doing anything that might cause inflammation. And one thing that they talked about was that you know, if you have inflammation in your body and you go there and you get these stem cells, the stem cells are going to automatically be attracted to that spot of temporary inflammation and try to work on that. But you don't want that, you want them to distribute evenly throughout your entire body. So you're kind of wasting them if you go down there and you have a flare up with a problem area because they might attack that problem area uh instead of again sort of spreading throughout your body and trying to help you uh generally speaking. So I will tell you right now, if you are a person who has an addiction or some kind of problem with drinking or smoking or uh eating or taking some other kind of drugs, and you don't think that you can pause that for a month or so, you probably should not do this. And I know that that is a bit ironic because the fact that you have these bad habits may contribute to why that you you need this kind of help because those bad habits are hurting your body. And that's so it's a bit of a catch 22. But I would say that if you if you have any doubt that you can clean yourself up for a month, you probably shouldn't spend this kind of money and go do something like this because you're not gonna get the most out of it. So here we go, day one on a Monday, flying down there. Um I was on a very nice plane. Uh at this point in my life, if I can't afford to fly first class, then I can't afford to fly. So I always, you know, I I I try to, I mean, I'm a big guy, I'm six foot two, and uh, you know, I got joint problems, and so I try to make myself comfortable. And I'm just gonna sort of tell you now about my day-by-day experience with this. And uh, I don't know, you may find this boring, but that you know, you don't have to listen. It's funny because speaking of being a tall guy, you know, it's weird when you get on an airplane and you go into that airplane bathroom. I can't stand up straight in an airplane bathroom. I always have to hunch over. And may, I don't know if I'm the only person who thinks about this, but I'm hunched over. My hair is brushing against the ceiling, basically. And I think, can you get lice from this? My head is brushing against the ceiling of every other tall person who's taken this plane. Oh well. Like I say, I'm just rambling a little bit. I got different notes here. So anyway, we get there, and uh, it was great. You know, it's very interesting flying in. I'd never been to Panama, never actually thought I would ever go to Panama in my life. Never, never once have I said, I want to go to Panama someday. Um, so again, we do the 30-minute drive to the hotel. Hotel is very, very nice. Um and at the front desk, they they said you can pay extra if you want a balcony for your room. And I said, Well, sure, that sounds great. I'd love to have a balcony. And not surprisingly, Panama is stiflingly hot and humid. I mean, just incredible. I mean, I'm I live in Las Vegas. I'm I'm I'm used to heat, but the humidity there is insane. I mean, it's like instant sweating bullets. One day we were running around and I had my passport. You know, passports, an American passport's a very hard, durable thing. And the passport was just in my pocket, and by the end of the day, that passport was just curled up, like it was almost ruined because of that much moisture had had sort of soaked into it. I had to put it under something heavy and straighten it back out. When I got to my room, um, my room was really nice. It was, I mean, it was it was a luxury room. Uh, but it was weird, and that's the thing. It's like I'm gonna tell you about some of the weird things about going to the country of Panama, in my opinion. Now, listen, I was born and raised in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I am not the most cultured man you'll ever meet. So don't consider me an international man of mystery here if I tell you about how some of the things uh were kind of weird and a little uncomfortable to me in this other country, because you're a long way from uh the US of A. Like, for example, the bathroom in the hotel room had a clear glass door. So if you're sitting there taking your shit, everybody can see you. And you know, fortunately, it was just me and my wife, but I I don't like my wife seeing that. And um, I thought, why would anybody do that? Why would you put a clear glass door on a bathroom where you're clearly sitting there? Oh well. The elevators there were very confusing. The whole the whole property, it's a very like I say, it's a super nice hotel, but the property is quite confusing in terms of how it's laid out. I mean, it's like they had three sets of elevators. One set was for kind of like the main areas, like the lobby and the valet. But to access that, you would have to hit like either 11 or L2, and you never knew which what was gonna be. There was one set of elevators for the rooms. Then there was another set of elevators that you could only access if you had a a special card because they were behind glass, and then you would go in there, and there was a keypad, and you would type in the floor number you wanted to go to, and then it would pop up another number, which was the number of the elevator you were supposed to get on, and then you go to the elevator, and I know this is you know, I this is gonna be too confusing if I try to explain it to you, but I'm telling you, the elevator setup there, like everybody you would come into contact with who was on that property would kind of roll their eyes, like, yeah, who's the idiot who designed this? Stem Cell Institute was on floor 63, way up there, way up there. Also, there is a casino attached to the hotel, which is actually cool. You know, it's open, I don't know if it's open 24-7, actually. Might not be, uh, but it's open late, and it will you know, it was it was a decent casino. And I I live in Las Vegas, so I'm obviously uh biased when it comes to casino quality. But it was a decent casino. I mean, I won some decent money there. Um, they had the best late-night food there. They had two or three places where you could buy food late at night, so that was that was nice to have that as just something else to do. There also is a really nice big swimming pool there. Uh, it's like kind of like almost, it's not an infinity pool, but it's kind of like it's almost close to it. It's like a big rooftop swimming pool with a great view around it. Um, but the property is is confusing, so get ready for that. And when you get on that elevator to go up to the Stem Cell Institute, I mean, again, it's on it's on level 63. So 63 stories is quite a bit for me. And I remember one day we got on the elevator and we were coming down, and it seemed like every two floors the doors would open and people would step onto the elevator until finally that elevator was crammed with so many people. I was there in the back and I was I started freaking out. And I looked at Lauren and I said, Fuck this. I'm out of here. And I just like shoved my way out of there. I had to get out of that elevator and like just chill out for a minute. And there wasn't even any air conditioning in that elevator, so very claustrophobic. Um, the they had a variety of restaurants there, and everybody was super nice, okay? Everybody was really nice, but the food was always very weird. It's like, for example, I ordered a Caesar salad in one of these nice restaurants. And by the way, the prices at this place were not cheap. This is not like going to some you know remote island. I'm like, no, these it was everything was expensive around that little particular area. And um, I got a Caesar salad, and I swear to you, it was just smothered with mayonnaise. I'm not exaggerating. It was mayo. And I'd be like, I don't I'm not gonna sit here and like badmouth all the food I had down there, but most of it was really weird and didn't make any sense. And even if even if you ordered something like a pizza, I mean it didn't have any. I ordered a pizza and I was like, how can this go wrong? And the pizza didn't have any sauce on it, and it was real bland and dry, and anyway. The best food that I had there was at this fast food chicken joint. Four-minute walk from the hotel. You exit the hotel, I think you make a right, and then you kind of cut through a parking garage and you go around a corner, and there is this little fast food joint called Buco Pollo. And I believe that means something like a whole lot of chicken. Buco Pollo. That was very affordable, very tasty. If Buco Pollo was here, I would eat that all the time here in Las Vegas. Also, on that little four-minute walk over to Buco Pollo, there is a uh there's a grocery store along the way, nice little grocery store. I believe they had a pretty good-looking salad bar, so that's something you can keep in mind. And uh kind of across from Buco Pollo was a Buffalo Wild Wings. B-dubs, they call them. And uh it was very much just like a Buffalo Wild Wings here in uh the United States. And so, I mean, if you want to get out and walk around a little bit, I mean, there are some nice options. You're right on the water when you're staying at this hotel. I mean, you look out and but the water is when I was there, the water wasn't very pretty. I was surprised to see how much like garbage and stuff was floating around the shore. So it wasn't very well taken care of. Um, but anyway, look, when day one, when we got there on Monday, all we did was we familiarized ourselves with the property, we had we had some dinner, and uh, you know, just settled in for the night. Day two, Tuesday, that is when I finally went up to the Stem Cell Institute for my first encounter. So you go up to the 63rd floor, and this was pretty, I don't know, it was maybe like noon or something around that, you know, like it was, I mean it wasn't like super early. I think all my appointments were were pretty much around, you know, noon or a little after. So I I like the fact that I never had to get up at the crack of dawn. Uh went up to the 63rd floor. You walk into the Stem Cell Institute, it's magnificent. It looks like Tony Stark's office. I mean, they have huge windows, and you look out and you see this magnificent view of Panama City.

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Some people describe it as looking kind of like a miniature Miami. And I can I can kind of see that. I mean, from that point of view, it's it's really impressive and airy and bright, and it feels good. And so they they took us back, and I never had to wait long at all to go back. They took us back, where a nurse uh who was my nurse the whole time, uh very, very professional, nice, warm lady. Uh, she took all my basic stats, you know, like my height and weight and blood pressure and all that. And then uh the doctor came in. And uh, the doctor was great, you know, young man, very intelligent. Uh, both of them were extremely articulate, spoke English uh amazingly well, all the nuances you could ever ask for. And um, they would be the the same two people that I would deal with from every single time I would go for my appointments, and they would they'd take you in there and they'd stay with you the entire time and then basically, you know, show you the door. So you were never alone in there. So on that first day, I went in there and um and I was Mr. Inquisitive, you can imagine. I'm just asking questions constantly the whole time. And uh they were great, you know. They they enjoyed answering our uh my questions. They uh they drew blood from me so they could do their lab tests, and then they uh they hydrated me. They had it, they put an IV in there to hydrate me. Hydration's a real big part of all this. And I knew that the next day I was gonna start the infusions where they'd start actually pumping the stem cells into me. And I didn't know how it was gonna feel because I'd been told that people react differently. And sometimes after you get the stem cell infusion, that uh some people feel kind of sick. They might feel like they have flu-like symptoms, they have a fever, um, maybe some nausea, um, very tired, you know. So I wasn't I was concerned about how this was going to affect me. But I'd never been to Panama before, so I figured, you know what? Why don't we go ahead today and uh get the touristy stuff out of the way? Because I wanted to go kind of see Panama before I possibly got sick from this treatment. And the same guy who picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel, uh, he does custom personalized tours. And I told him I wanted to go see the Panama Canal, of course. And so he gave me his card and he said, Yeah, just give me a call, and you know, I'd be happy to do that. So, sure enough, that day, and again we're talking about day number two, after I finished my appointment, and my appointments never lasted more than an hour, regardless of what they did. We met him out front, and it was just the two of us. It was just me and Lauren, and he he I thought he charged a very reasonable amount of money. And uh we got into his van and he took us on, you know, like this multi-hour experience. We were driving first to the Panama Canal where they have a visitor center. And one thing that I will tell you that surprised me was that once we got right outside of Panama City, on our way to the Panama Canal, there was an incredible amount of slums all around there. The kind of thing that I've only seen in movies, frankly. And you know, and I've traveled a good deal in this world, and I've seen a lot of places, but I've never seen just mountain upon mountain of slums like this, with you know blankets and laundry hanging outside, and just everything looked in disrepair, and there were, you know, there were people who obviously were in need, and uh I was surprised to see that because when you're right there in the middle of Panama City, you you don't really you don't really think of it that way. On the way uh to the Panama Canal, we passed this big old military fort. It was an old US military fort, and they call it the city of knowledge, and it's now a giant scientific laboratory, and that is where they actually um that's where they actually culture if that's the right word, these stem cells at the city of knowledge. And so it was it was interesting to see that campus, if you will, and then um they they take that and deliver it straight over to the stem cell institute where they're frozen, but they have to be put into a human body within a very limited period of time because these cells cannot survive outside of the human body. That's why if you do this, you cannot be late to your appointments. When you when you I mean, you've got to show up on time because they're prepped and they're ready to take these things out and put them in you. And I'm gonna tell you in a minute what that process was like. But Panama, you know, as we're going there, he's telling us all this interesting information about it. Panama has the largest rainforest in the hemisphere outside of the Amazon. They get eight months of rain. They have a river there that gets so much rain it rises 40 feet. When you finally get over to where the canal is, and the Panama Canal is not that big, there are all these little, you know, rivers and creeks and stuff around it, and there are crocodiles around the Panama Canal. If you know anything about what I do for a living, I'm fascinated by ghost stories and legends. Over 25,000 people died building the Panama Canal. So there are all these kind of haunted stories. You know, the French were the first who tried to build it, and then the Americans came along, and Teddy Roosevelt was leading the charge. Uh it at that time, Panama was part of Colombia. Uh, it was basically considered South America, but then uh there was sort of a revolt, and then they broke off and became independent. And of course, the mosquitoes were the big problem back then. At that time, and we're talking the 1800s, mosquitoes early on uh were considered a theory. Uh malaria and yellow fever, they didn't know for sure that mosquitoes caused that. Let's see here. When did Teddy Roosevelt help build the Panama Canal? Let's see here. It says 1906 is when he went there and visited, supposedly. So yeah, this is a long time ago. And they had to figure out how to get rid of these mosquitoes. They hired a doctor, and he came in, and you know, before they a lot of people thought mosquitoes uh were not the cause, and that malaria and yellow fever were caused by some kind of weird vapors released by the jungle. But this doctor they hired, he said, Yeah, I I think it's you know, I think it's the mosquitoes. So he brought in mosquito nets. He drained a lot of stagnant water. They started putting, if they had a that of drinking water, they would put cooking oil on top of the water to create an oil slick. So mosquitoes would not want to land there and lay their eggs. They had quinine and you know, tonic water, which helped with malaria. Um, they did all these kind of interesting things that really helped the work people there, the you know, the the workmen survive. And before the Panama Canal was built so that ships could pass through there, it would take two or three weeks to send a ship around the tip of South America. And once the Panama Canal was built, it would take eight to ten hours. And I believe I can't remember how much they said it cost a ship to go through the Panama Canal. Let me look that up real quick. It was a lot of money. Cost to travel to traverse the Panama Canal. Let's see here. So for a big cargo ship, it could be like four hundred thousand dollars to go through the Panama Canal. It's amazing, isn't it? And um when we were there, there there's a big, like I say, there's a visitor center, and you you walk up this kind of catwalk thing where they have uh an observation platform, and you can stand there and watch ships come through. And right when we got there, this giant ship, the RCC Antwerp, was passing through the canal. It was a Bahamian ship, actually. And one thing that was kind of interesting was that it turns out there's not a single water pump in the Panama Canal, it's just all gravity that operates that whole thing. It's crazy. So we got to stand there and watch this gigantic ship go through, and I got all kinds of cool video footage of that. And then afterward, um, you go to the visitor center where they have uh restaurants and gift shops and stuff, and they have an IMAX theater, and it's a 3D IMAX theater. You put on your glasses and you sit down, and it lasts 45 minutes. They show you a movie about the history of the Panama Canal narrated by Morgan Freeman. He gets all the good work, and it was great. I I mean I was really impressed. So we had a good time there, bought a couple souvenirs, and then uh our guide took us. He was gonna take us back to the hotel, but I said, Well, look, instead of that, can you drop us off in what they consider their old historic district, old town, Costco Viejo? This is a town that's 353 years old. It was originally destroyed by pirates back in the 1600s, but then they rebuilt it a couple years later. So he said, sure. So he dropped us off in this old cobblestone town. It reminded me a lot of old San Juan, Puerto Rico, but frankly, it wasn't as as charming and nice, to be honest with you. Uh, old old San Juan is uh it's very spacious in many ways, and it has great a great breeze and wonderful views of the ocean, the Caribbean there, and uh that town, uh old Costco Viejo was kind of claustrophobic. So we walked around there for a little bit, and you know, everybody says, uh, hey, did you buy yourself a Panama hat? You know Panama Jack? Because I'm a big hat guy. You may or may not know. I like to wear hats, fedora type hats. And um, I did not buy a Panama hat there. I didn't do it because, well, for one thing, I you know, I had enough stuff to carry around with me on this trip, and I figured the last thing I need is another hat that's gonna get crushed. But also, Panama hats are actually not from Panama. They the real authentic Panama hats are made in Ecuador. But when all the workmen were building the Panama Canal, these hats got shipped from Ecuador to Panama. And uh so uh it became known as the Panama hat. But if you buy a Panama hat in Panama, it's probably gonna just be some Chinese-made thing or something. That'd be my guess. So you'd you'd want to go to Ecuador to buy a Panama hat. That's funny. So we we knocked around there for a while, and I was, you know, I was getting tired, and it was hot, and like I say, we're pouring sweat, and so I got online and uh I got a guy on my phone and I I called an Uber. Yes, you can get Uber there, no problem. And um, so an Uber car picked us up. The guy who picked us up, real nice dude, spoke perfect English. As a matter of fact, he used to live in the United States. But instead of going straight back to the hotel, uh not too far from our hotel was a TGI Fridays. So uh I figured, you know, well, let me I can I always hate it when people go to other countries and they just order a bunch of American shit. But I was kind of in the mood to just have something familiar and normal, and so I was like, let's go to TGI Fridays. So we went to TGI Fridays, it was very much like a TGI Fridays here in the States. So we got some food to go there, and um then uh I got another Uber and it took us back to our room. When we got to the room, we sat down to eat. I turned on the television, and it was kind of funny because I was watching the uh History Channel, and all the shows were in English, but then they go to the commercials, and the commercials were in Spanish. And by the way, um everybody right there within Panama Cities that I came into contact with, pretty much everybody spoke English well. But my guide told me once you get outside of that little circle, most people do not speak English. So I can only tell you about what my experience was like sticking like right in the heart of the foreign tourist, you know, community there. But it was kind of funny because you here I'm watching the History Channel, and again, the shows are in English, and then there's like a commercial that comes on with Tom Hanks, and he's speaking Spanish. I remember there was a commercial for Ajax, you know, the cleaning substance, and they called it Ahucks. AHUX. So that was the end of day two, and it was time to uh time to get some rest because I knew I was gonna have a big day the next day, day three, when I would finally start my infusions. All right, I'm gonna take a little break for a minute. I've been talking for an hour. I'm gonna wet my whistle, and I will be right back. Okay, I am back from my break, and we are now talking about day number three of this experience. And, you know, I was I was so tired from just all the traveling and everything that on day number three, I really just wanted to sleep as late as possible before I had to get up and go to my appointment to start the infusions. But they sent an email and they said, Hey, if you want tomorrow morning, you can come to this conference room here in the hotel, and we're going to have one of our stem cell doctors there to do like a one-hour QA where you just sit there and they're gonna give you a little presentation and you can ask all the questions that you want. And I thought, well, you know, I've come this far. Uh and I knew I was gonna be talking to all of you about this, and so I said, okay, I guess I'll get up and go to this QA. And you know, I again I'm full of questions. So sure enough, I go to the uh the conference room, and there weren't many people in there. There were only about seven people. Uh, and again, this was Wednesday, and uh, so this lady got up there who is a stem cell doctor, and she was acting like that this was a surprisingly low amount of people, that they usually have many more people than this. But so she started talking about you know where the stem cells come from, and as I mentioned to you before, they're all women from Panama, and they volunteer, once they're told they're pregnant, to give up their umbilical cord. Has to be through C-section. They uh they track the woman all throughout her pregnancy to make sure that she's healthy and she's not doing any drugs or anything like that. And um then when she finally gives birth, um they say that actually out of every ten women, only three are chosen to provide golden cells, because they look at those umbilical cord cells and they have their own special secret sauce, their you know, herbs and spices that they're looking for to determine what makes it a golden cell. And so, therefore, you know, only uh three out of ten women are chosen for their golden cells. And they said that the reason they don't use fetal cells anymore is because that when a when a when a fetus is producing cells, it is expanding at an incredibly rapid pace. It's growing uh at an almost unimaginable rate. And they found that it was growing too much, these were overactive, that you would put fetus stem cells into a person, and this is decades ago, and it was growing so much that the person would often end up getting benign tumors because it was going too far. But these cells that come from these umbilical cords are perfect because at this point the baby's already formed, the umbilical cord is neutral. And the the doctor said, like, for example, a woman who has a baby with a different blood type. Okay, so the woman has one blood type and the baby has a different one, they can still share the same umbilical cord because it's neutral. She said it's similar to how some people have O negative blood type, and that is considered a universal donor. You can donate to anybody if you have that. And so um, she also, however, was pointing out how that it's a little bit weird to uh to focus these days. She said that she said originally everybody would focus on the fact that a stem cell was like a blank slate, and then it would go to a problem area, and then it could morph into whatever that problem uh cell was to repair it. And that's what we classically think of. She said that we are now learning more and more that yes, they do that, but almost more importantly, they produce the stuff I was calling what MTF, uh, meaning that they they signal, they send out chemicals that signal your body to start repairing itself. And she doesn't like the term uh cure or or heal necessarily. She said, like, look, these stem cells, they send out signals that make the body start repairing parts that it wouldn't otherwise repair, and that some scientists are now saying that these should be called something like signal cells or signaling cells instead of stem cells. So you might hear the terminology change on that at some point here in the near future. I don't know. But uh let's see. Going back to the golden cells, again, Rorden says using high throughput analysis of over eleven hundred molecules, we found a distinctive protein expression pattern shared only by the most effective cell lots. These characteristics were confirmed to be preserved and even enhanced when grown using 3D culture systems. And you know, it's this is this is gross, but it's also interesting that. That when I told people that I was going to go down and have, you know, experiment, this is what this was. It was an expensive experiment that I was willing to do on myself and get these stem cells. People started emailing me because you know I host all kinds of podcast stuff. And uh people started emailing me and saying, Well, you don't need to do that. All you have to do is drink your urine. Your urine has stem cells in it. Just piss in a cup and drink it. That'll work a miracle for you. Well, look, again, I'm not a doctor, but if you want to drink your piss, go for it. Um, but the thing is, it's like anything that you put into your stomach gets destroyed by stomach acids. So that doesn't make sense to begin with. And then I got an email from a woman who said that she went one time to a doctor and got some sheep embryo stem cells put into her and and it worked for her. I was like, huh. So I asked my uh stem cell doctor about that, and he goes, I never heard of that. So um, and then there are people who are saying, Oh, you can get cancer from stem cells. But maybe they were talking about the embryonic stem cells that create benign tumors. There are a lot of myths out there, and that's why I say, Don't listen to me, don't believe me, you know, do your own research. But I learned a lot from uh being at this Q ⁇ A session with people who do this every day. And uh I ask a lot of questions. I ask more questions than anybody else. One thing that did disappoint me, however, was I uh I had a little audio recorder with me, and I asked her if before I leave Panama, if I could interview somebody with Stem Cell Institute about just the basics of stem cells. And she said she'd get back to me, and then the next day she told me that yes, somebody would be contacting me, and that nobody ever did. So I uh I was disappointed that they had an opportunity to be uh interviewed by me and and to speak to you directly, and they didn't they didn't do that for whatever reason. So after the QA, uh I guess it was probably like you know, an hour later, I went for my first infusion. So we get on the elevator, we go up to the 63rd floor, we walk in there, and um everybody's all bright and smiles, and sun was out, beautiful day. They uh the nurse came, she took me back to the this little room, it was the same room I was always in every time, with a magnificent, calming view of the city skies, skyline, and the the water outside, you know. I guess it was a bay or something. Beautiful. Anyone would kill to have an office like that. So the doctor came in, we chatted for a little bit, and he pulled out basically some test tubes, and he said, These are your stem cells, and it had my name and the dates on it. Now, what they told me in the QA was that when you get your stem cells on a particular day on a particular in a particular session, all your stem cells are coming from the same woman. They don't like mix them all together, blend them all together. I'm getting stem cells from one woman during that session. But the next day, it could be a different woman, it will still be all of her stem cells. Uh, but on the third day, it could be a third woman. So basically, anytime you get stem cells, you're getting them all at once from one particular woman. But by the time all said and done, after you get three days of infusions, you could have stem cells from three different women in you. That should not make a difference, however, because that again, these things are essentially neutral. So he showed me the test tube. These are your stem cells. There was a fluid inside that looked a little bit milky. You know, it was it was basically clear, but just a little bit milky. And then they had a device on a stand next to me that was about the size of like a CPAP machine, you know, not that much bigger than maybe a couple cigar boxes or something. And they put the IV in me, and they wouldn't let us take pictures of the machine or or the process. They did allow Lauren to just take a picture of me sitting there in front of the window with the IV in my arm, but they were can they they were particular about photographing their proprietary technology. So the I had the IV in, they popped the um the test tube into the machine, and I just sat there and just chatted and bullshitted with them for I don't know, 30 minutes and it was done. And uh after that, he said, um, all right, so now we're going to give you some injections of stem cells and uh MTF and some of your problem areas. And so my problem areas were my lower back and then um my rhomboids, kind of up around my shoulder blades, and then also the right side of my neck. So he said, Well, we're gonna give you uh injections now on uh of stem cells on your lower back, and uh then we're gonna give you some injections on your rhomboids, uh, but they at that point some of the injections were were stem cells, some were MTF, which is again the substance that the stem cells eventually produce after they reach a certain maturity or something. So I laid down there, I took up my shirt, I laid down, and he put a big old needle in my back. I didn't see the needle, I try not to look at needles. Lauren said it was a pretty darn significant needle, and he he he he put that needle in my lower right side of my back, and that was the only time I kind of went, oh, because that hurt. She said he he got real deep in there and squirted those stem cells down there, and then uh, but the the other injections didn't really hurt, so that he put some again on the other side of my uh lower back, and um, and then again my rhomboids and my neck. Now, I can tell you almost two months later that uh I think that those areas have improved. I really do. But I can't, again, I don't want to say for sure because the fact that I had pneumonia for for a month kept me bedridden for the most part. And I mean, I was just like laying around in misery, and uh so I haven't even really been able to get out and try to start walking and exercising again. I mean, like that, getting that pneumonia thing that really screwed me up. So that was what was done on day number three, Wednesday, and then after that, um, he said, Enjoy yourself the rest of the evening. And I said, Well, uh, is it okay if I go and swim in the pool? And he says, Yeah, sure, go ahead. So we went back to the room, we changed clothes, we went to the big, nice, fancy Hilton swimming pool there. I went to the bar and got myself a non-alcoholic beer, Heineken Zero, I think it was. And uh, yeah, we got into the pool, swam around, was very comfortable, had a nice time. That evening we we went to dinner uh in the hotel, stayed on the property, and then we uh called it a night. The next day, Thursday, um, more infusions, uh, or I guess another infusion is what I should say. So we went down there, same deal. Uh, very friendly. Hey, how you doing? How do you feel? Everything's fine. I didn't feel any kind of significant problems from getting the initial infusion. Um at one point I kind of felt like I may have had a little bit of like a stress headache, but uh I can't say it was from the infusion. It may have just been, you know, again, all the travel and everything, but nothing to speak of. And so uh I got another infusion, but then he kind of surprised me and he goes, now we're also going to give you a a nasal spray of MTF. And he said that because the blood-brain barrier, you know, there's some kind of lining or whatever that that makes it difficult for cells to go through your nose and and get into your brain. He said they just take the MTF, the little genetic things that are created by the stem cells, and they squirt that in your nose so that it crosses the blood-brain barrier and goes into your brain. Yeah, I was like, well, okay. That sounds a little scary, doesn't it? So he had what kind of looks like uh, you know, just a shot, like an injection kind of thing with a little, I don't know, maybe like a phone foam tip on it. He stuck it, stuck it in my right nostril, said breathe in, squared it in there. Didn't feel a thing really. Same thing with my left nostril. Okay, that was that. So I got infusions and nasal spray. Uh after that, that I mean that was it for that day. So Lauren and I went to uh I actually had I'm looking this up right now because I want to tell you the name of this restaurant. I had tickets that night to a show there at the Hilton, Panama. And let's see, Emotions, yeah. So right so there's a restaurant there at the Hilton, Panama called Emotions Restaurant Theater. Emotions Dinner Theater. And um every night, I mean, they put on what they describe as a Vegas style show. And uh I had gone ahead and gotten tickets for us like as soon as we got there on day number one, and so you go in, and I don't remember how much it costs, but so you so you go in there, and it was very, very reasonable, I can tell you that. And they have a really nice little theater there, and they served a great delicious dinner. That was actually one of the better dinners that we had at a restaurant in the place, and then they put on like a two-hour show, and it was um they considered that one to be like a Brazilian-inspired show. So, I mean, you had all the like flamenco dancers and you know girls and guys running around and their skimpy, glittery stuff and and singing songs, but they also had like you know, uh fire juggler and kind of like a trapeze thing, and it was actually a really good fun time. So if you're going to end up there at the uh Hilton, Panama, I I recommend you you do that. So we enjoyed that. And then, of course, we called it a night. And then the last day, Friday, um went down there, you know, got in the elevator, went up to the 63rd floor, going there. And at this point, you know, we're all kind of like we we feel like we're all friends here, you know. That's how good they are at the Panama uh at the stem cell institute there in Panama of making you feel like your family. I mean, like they're really good at just comforting you. As a matter of fact, my blood pressure had gone way down that last day. So they gave me my my third and final infusion of stem cells, and then he gave me the nasal spray again. And uh after that, before we uh we called it a day, he said, Um, here, I'll I'll let me show you our facility, because he knew what I did for a living and everything, and he knew I was going to be talking about this. He said, Let me show you our little facility where we keep the the stem cells stored. And so we got kind of like a little special little VIP kind of tour where he took me and Lauren behind the scenes and he showed us the area. It it kind of reminded me of one of those rooms at NASA where they store the moon rocks, and everybody who walks in there has got the got the full face mask and suit on to prevent contamination. So, you know, we went in there and kind of saw. I mean, there's you know what's weird is that you spend in in my case, you know, you you you spend years like hearing about this technology, reading about it, watching YouTube videos about it, listening to presentations about it, and it seems like such a big thing, and but yet when it comes right down to it, it's just incredibly simple, really. They take an umbilical cord, they get some cells out of it that they think have the right qualities, they you know, culture those cells, and then they freeze them, and then they bring them over and they go poop boop and they put them in you, and that's it. It's I mean, it almost seems like that anybody could do it. And maybe I'm just oversimplifying the hell out of this, because again, I am not a in any way whatsoever, uh, uh a medical authority, but uh it just it really seems like it's that simple. Like you could almost I would not recommend this, but it's like you could almost just take an umbilical cord from you know somebody and uh I don't know, put it in a shot glass, shake it up, shoot that thing in your vein. It might be I don't know, I don't know. So we were we were very happy with our experience though, and uh I was feeling good, and so um that night you know we we we had dinner, we we got into bed early because the next day we were gonna fly off, and then the next day, day six, Saturday. As I told you, that's when I made in retrospect my biggest mistake. I should have flown straight back to my house here in Las Vegas, but instead I flew to Texas. And um, for one thing, we dropped our dog off in Texas with with my in-laws, and so we had to pick up the dog. But we stayed in Texas for a few days, and I felt good, and I felt like I was Superman, and uh I ended up getting sick. I'm almost a hundred percent sure that's where I got sick was in Texas. And so by the time I got back to Las Vegas, Lauren had gotten sick before me. And uh again, a lot of my in-laws were sick, they got sick while I was while I was gone. And then um, so when I got back, I mean I I I I was getting sick, but again, I also felt like Superman. I was like, Oh, I got my stem cells, I'm gonna be fine. But it just kept getting worse and worse, and that's why I think that maybe, I mean, when you go through something like this, for one thing, I was going down there because I already had an autoimmune condition. Um, it it it really I think it screws around with your immune system in some kind of crazy ways, and uh, it may have hit me even harder than it ordinarily would have. And that's why, you know, it very quickly turned into pneumonia. And um I just had one of the most miserable months of my life. So it's possible if I had just flown straight back home, that I would have just continued healing at a normal rate, a normal pace, and I'd be sitting here right now singing the praises of the stem cell stuff, saying, like, man, I, you know, it's been two months and I feel like a million bucks. But it has thrown everything off because that I I got sick immediately afterward. So I'm not sure how all this is gonna turn out. I'm not exactly sure. When I got home to Las Vegas from this trip, we had a ton of mail that was backed up. So I took out this big pile of mail and I was looking through it, and um I opened up a package and it had a pair of underwear in there male tidy whiteies, autographed by Barry Bostwick, and uh Barry Bostwick became famous for playing um one of the lead guys in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But I got to know him later on from some of his other movies that he did, and one of them is called FDR American Badass. And it is a crazy, it is a crazy movie, and there is a point where his character, he's playing Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he gets attacked by a werewolf, and the werewolf bites him on the leg, and Barry Bostwick goes, Shit goblins. And I found out that Barry Bostwick, who is now I think he's in his 80s, he will autograph underwear for you. And I guess that's because the role that he played in the Rocky Harbor picture show. Uh in that role, he was running around in his underwear half the time. But he'll autograph underwear for you. If you go to his website, you can look it up and I mean I'm sure you can search for it if you even know what I'm talking about. So I I ordered, I forgot I ordered it from him, and I said, Write shit goblins on a pair of underwear. And sure enough, I got back and I take out a pair of underwear, and Barry Bostwick has written shit goblins with an exclamation point, and even made a little drawing, like a little funny face on it. And um and it I was I was laughing, and Lauren was laughing, and I thought to myself, man, I have the weirdest damn life, don't I? You know? I mean, I go through all this bizarro stuff, and then I get home and I got a pair of underwear with says shit goblins from Barry Bostwick. And I I was very optimistic, you know, I was feeling good about my future. And then boom, I get, you know, knocked knocked down by this this pneumonia thing. You know, what's funny is that if you look all back throughout human history, they say that the average lifespan in all of human history is 30 years old. How about that? So this whole idea of us getting to live to be old and healthy is a pretty recent modern idea. And uh if you're past thirty and you feel good, then you know you're you're doing well. But medical technology is always advancing. And who knows where it's gonna go from here. So here I am. Again, about two months after my last infusion. Was it worth it? I don't know. I don't know yet. You know, and and and here's something to think about. It may have helped me in ways that I don't even know about. Because these stem cells and their MTF, they go into your body, supposedly, and they find problems that may be undiagnosed, and they naturally are attracted to those problem areas, and they start repairing them. So I may not even know how much it actually helped me. I may have had a ticking time bomb inside of me. So it's too soon. So if you contact me and you say, How are you feeling? Did it work? Well, I'm just telling you, this, you know, I told you I'd be honest with you. I don't think, I mean, I'll I will give you an update again when I feel like that it's appropriate, probably after I turn 50. Um, but I don't think I'm really going to be able to give you an honest evaluation until uh May of 2027, more like June of 2027, after a full year has gone by. As far as the stem cell institute there in Panama City, Panama, again, top-notch. And you know what? I don't think that you can keep a place of that caliber running like that on just bullshit for all these years. Um, they obviously are doing something that's working, but everybody's different. And, you know, again, my results have been kind of thrown for a loop because of what happened to me immediately afterward. So if you're gonna do it, um for one thing, you be prepared to pay out of pocket. Okay, don't your insurance company's probably not gonna do anything for you. It's not FDA approved. You're gonna make at this point a guinea pig of yourself, but you know, some of us are risk takers. And I took a risk. But if you're gonna do it, again, my my big advice for you is don't do it unless that you really think that you can live your healthiest life for about a month, you know, abstain from from your bad habits. When you're done, go straight home. Don't stop anywhere else along the way, like I did. And um I think that you should be able to try this out in the USA. I really do. And I I mean, as long as you understand what you're getting into, and they talk to you and they guide you through it, and they and the doctors look at your labs and they they understand your your physical status, and everything's above board, and you're all you're everybody's honest, and you know the risks. I think that you should be able to try this out in the USA. But, you know, it's different for everybody. So here's what I'll leave you with at this point. I have again created this website where I'm I've taken um links to all my updates and real time from this whole experience and uh posted them there. And this is really meant for people who either are extremely like seriously curious about this or are considering doing exactly what I did. That webpage uh you can access stemcellresult.com. Stemcellresult.com. Furthermore, uh if you want to just kind of keep tabs on the crazy work and experiments and adventures that I that I do and have in general, then um here's the best thing you can do. Go to joshuapwarren.com. There's no period after the pee. Joshua P. Warren.com. I'm sure if you just type in, you just do a uh a search engine uh inquiry for me, it'll you'll just Joshua P. Warren, my website joshuap.warren.com will come up. On the homepage, subscribe to my free and spam-free e-newsletter. I write every single one with my own fingers, typos and all, and uh that is my way of being able to communicate directly with you, uncensored, raw, and uh tell you about all the other things that I'm doing that uh you know I'm I'm fortunate I'm able to do, and I will keep you updated on this and uh many, many other things if you subscribe to my newsletter at joshuapwarren.com. All right, my friends, I I guess that's all I can give you for now. The most realistic portrayal of what it's like if you decide to do something like what I did. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your interest and support. Thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to you again soon.