Regenerative Medicine Works By Sending Signals Not Replacing Cells with Dr. Tommy Rhee

The biggest lie regenerative medicine ever sold us is also the easiest to believe: that “live stem cells” turn into whatever tissue you need. We pull that idea apart with Dr. Tommy Rhee, a Navy aviator, sports chiropractor with 30 years of experience, former team chiropractor for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and founder of a topical regenerative platform focused on cell-free signaling. If you care about recovery, chronic pain, joint health, or longevity, this conversation helps you stop chasing hype and start asking better questions.

We dig into what regenerative science looks like when you treat the body like an intelligent system to support rather than a machine to override. Dr. Tommy explains why healing is driven by information: pain is a signal, inflammation can cloud signaling, and aging often reflects weaker activation of the repair processes you already have. From there, we talk delivery and access. Injectable stem cell therapy can cost $3,500 to $15,000 and often comes with downtime, which is exactly why in-season athletes avoid it. A shift toward topical, non-invasive, cell-free approaches could lower barriers and make regenerative wellness tools more widely available.

You’ll also hear the consumer-protection side: what “cell-free” means, why mechanisms matter, how to spot red flags in live stem cell claims, and why traceability and quality control should never be optional. We close with a practical roadmap for the future of healing where AI health tools can help you learn the basics, but informed conversations with the right provider make the difference.

If this helped you think more clearly about regenerative medicine, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s dealing with pain or recovery, and leave a review with your biggest question about healing and longevity.

Transcript

Why Recovery Tools Are Shifting

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Dearlessness, for most human history, the way elite athletes recovered from the injury was completely out of reach for everyone else, right? And we often see, and right now this FIFA is happening, right? I mean, we can see a lot of athletes uh getting that injury. They get and but but the how they recover that that was completely out of reach for everyone else. I mean, the best treatments went to the people with the biggest budgets, the most access, then the right team around them. But but right now, something is definitely shifting, like a new wave of regenerative medication is moving out of that kind of injection room into a form of that that almost anyone can use it. And at the center of that shift, the question comes is that masters, I mean, is like, which is definitely it it matters for all of us that what does the future of healing actually look like and who gets to access it, right? So he dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Abik, and this is the podcast where we talk about wellness, medicine, and everything. So today we are going deep into the most fascinating in frontiers and the wellness and the medicine, regenerative science, and specifically what happens when it becomes non-invasive, topical, and accessible, right? So if you have ever wondered like what's actually possible when it comes to recovery, healing, longevity, then this conversation is going to open something for you. Yeah, stay with us. And in this journey, we have a very lovely guest with us. And my guest has one of the most remarkable I'd say resume is in this, right? So please welcome my guest, Dr. Tommy B. So welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. uh Tommy. And dear listeners, like before we get deep into this discussion, and I'll quickly love to introduce you to Dr. Tommy. So Dr. Tommy is a Navy aviator, TEDx speaker, sports chiropractor with 30 years of experience, former team chiropractor for the Tampa Bay, the Tampa Bay uh uh Buccaneers, and also the founder and CEO of Regen, pioneering topical uh regenerative platform. And he's also the author of The Future of Regenerative Medicine. So there are a lot of things to discuss today. I'll not take much of a time. Let's get started. Welcome to the show again, Dr. Okay. Hey, I'm looking forward to this conversation. I'm excited. Amazing,

The Stem Cell Misconception Explained

SPEAKER_00 2:30

amazing. So here when because when we're talking about the regenerative medicine, before we get into the main part, I want to start with misconception. Like, because regenerative medicine is one of those themes that carries a lot of like both hype and skepticism. So what I mean, what do people get most wrong about it? Like where I mean, what regenerative medicine is and what it can actually do.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

I think the biggest misconception is when you talk about regenerative medicine and the next phase, which is like the stem cell therapy, and you hear the words live stem cells, people think that these live cells, when you inject it into your body, it becomes this cell that mutates into the damaged or the tissue you're trying to like recover. So the question you have to ask yourself is that how does the cell that has a nucleus and then the chromosome and DNA, when it goes into your body, how does a body number one, you know, stop from it, it's it's antibody antigens kind of scenario to fight that whole cause. So that's the first thing. So when you start working with that kind of theory of that cell mutating into your own tissue, well, then you have to think that it can't, because if it does, it's what they call tumor formation. You don't want irregular two cell growth. So then you start thinking about the next step, which is the actual cellular signaling. It's about your own tissue doing its own job. And as you understand about injury or age, we start going into that aging process. Our cells are not doing its job. Well, is it because the cell is dying down, or is it because the signal is not inhabit in in enabling your own existing tissue to do its job? So, stem cell therapy, regenerative medicine, is that it's giving the right signals to your existing tissue to do its job. So it's it's important to understand that you're not actually in grading some new cell that's gonna have its own type of DNA and chromosome into your cell, into your body, and then all of a sudden it's gonna turn into your own cells. It can't do that. What it's gonna do is gonna signal. And that's what regenerative medicines it's an ability to have the signaling increase so then you can have the activation of those cells to do its job. And the whole process of this whole thing is about keeping your cells in activation mode.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Exactly true. And uh also like when someone moves, moves past the hype and understands what actually is happening at the cellular level, then how does that change how they think about healing?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. So we have a signal. We're we're we're all about information signals. Yeah. So when you feel pain, well, people say we have to mask the pain because we don't want the pain because it kind of like, you know, it's uncomfortable. But really, it's a signal. You have to identify there's something wrong with that tissue. If it's torn, if it's degrading, it's something going on. If you understand what the signal means, then you have to get the right information to send back to it. Say, okay, I want you to turn on those cells to regenerate. I want to send that information to stop the inflammatory process. Well, as we age, we start getting our signals cloudy. It gets messed. There's a problem with the ability to get the right signal at the right time because it's either decreased in its powerful signaling or is it cloudy from inflammation? So you have to clear those mechanisms or provide better signals to that target tissue to do its job. So that's where it's all moving towards.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

That's interesting. That's really interesting because something I mean, there's something uh in what you just said about the body's in net capacity and uh the idea that the regenerative medicine with the body's own intelligence

Pain As Data And Better Signals

SPEAKER_00 6:10

rather than just overriding it, that I want definitely uh to just feel that. So and obviously it uh makes the body uh sound less like a machine to be fixed and more like uh the system to be supported, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

So I mean the most important thing is that our body can do the job, you know. When we're 10, 20, 30, fantastic. Once you get to my age, we start losing that signal. It's all about sending those right information. Absolutely. We can we can do great things if we have the right environment, the right signals. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

And coming to this, I definitely want to uh get uh I mean uh go into your personal story because I think it it tells us something important about why you ended up here, right? So you worked with NFL Olympic athletes with military, and uh also at some point you saw a problem as well, right, with the existing tools. What was the gap that you kept seeing? And at the same time, like what made you decide to build something entirely new to this, new to Atlas artists? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

So working with these athletes, people think that athletes, it's all about the workout, it's all about the performance. Well, believe it or not, when you're in that level of like athleticism, it's not so much about pushing, it's about the recovery. It's how to get back to zero to get to baseline. And that was really important. And these athletes knew that I need to get back as quick as possible so that I can start working out again, or I can go in the game, or I can recover from an injury. So when you start seeing what they do, and that includes different kinds of machines, high class, like hyperbaric chambers, all kinds of things to recover them, those are great. But when you get to the cellular level, how do you get those tissues to regenerate itself? Then you have to get into the world of stem cell therapy. And that's how this old evolution of recovery with these athletes go goes into this, what they call the the regenerative side of it. So then you have to look at what is a mechanism. That's the very crucial thing. They know it works, but they don't understand it. So once they understand what it does, it's a signal. Now they said, I want more. So the gap became when these athletes are doing this treatment protocol, it's always off-season because off-season is where you can have enjoyable time, a lot of rest. And when you do this delivery mechanism in the present and the past times, it was due it was through an injectable, like a syringe. Well, when you do an injection, there's downtime. So when you have downtime, you can be down for a week after the injection. Now, an athletes don't want to sit back in a week. They rather do pain management. They want to mask the pain so they can keep on performing because the more times they play, their their money's there, right? So it's all about, you know, the finances more of it. So that's why you hear a lot of athletes do after season surgery, after season therapy. Something's more aggressive, they they can rest. So the gap was why can't we do regenerative medicine stem cell therapy during a season because of downtime? Well, if you can get a better delivery system, like a topical, a topical is not aggressive. All you need to do is understand that these little bioactive bottom molecules that's cell-free, no nucleus, that can get through the skin. And when it gets through the skin, now it's into the deep layers. When you get down there, now you're giving the right information to that damaged tissue. So now you're starting to see the trend moving away from needles into topical. When you get in the topical, here you go with the easier access into the patients, more readily available to the patients, and the cost is a lot cheaper. So that's what's fantastic about this trend that's moving forward here, the topical application.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Exactly, exactly. And exactly what you mentioned is about like it's not only about the the uh the gymming or that fitness part. Because today it's uh today only, right? I was just reading one article where because FIFA is going on, right? And I I really follow that as well. But their their uh one article it says like prior to this, Messi, Messi has I mean, he was going through uh I mean obviously fitness level he is very very very very uh flexible and very uh uh I mean it's a high level fitness, but still he was facing like a lot of vomiting, a lot of issues with the stomach, the bloating, everything. Then he went to uh I forgot the doctor name he mentioned, that Italian doctor. So so there he started about some regular uh I'd say habits change, then about

Athlete Recovery And The Downtime Problem

SPEAKER_00 10:35

some nutrition difference. So I mean, it's not only that means it's not only about the fitness level, how the gyming is doing, how much he's running, how much about the skills, it's a combination of everything.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

So yeah, yeah. Remember, if you can get your body in the best type of environment where it can handle like an acidic environment, alkaline environment, or just any type of antigen or viral or you know, anything that your body gets introduced, if you have the best type of like an ecosystem, it can combat that quickly. But if you're off balance, if you have inflammation, you have a little bit of acidity in your blood, there's something that's off, it's hard for your body to fight off things. So when it comes to the athletes at that high performance, they're really in tune. But sometimes because of maybe there's some environmental issues or some stressors, you can be off balance. When you get off balance, now you're prone to things like you know, just not only like you know, like sickness, but you can also be prone to like injuries. So you need to be well-rounded and importantly speaking, your body has to be really in tune with each other.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Exactly, exactly. Love it. So, and also if you talk about the uh our like an average person, right? Because I think the most exciting part of where this is going is like for most human history, the best recovery tools went to the people who are having big pockets, best access, everything. So, what does a move to a topical and non-invasive regenerative medicine mean for the normal people, the everyday people who want to support their recovery?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah, you you know that in here in the United States, the cost of doing that injectable stem cell therapy, it can run as you know low as maybe $3,500 all the way to $15,000. So that's a high cost. That's a high cost for an experimental therapy, and you know, it works, but are people willing to spend that kind of money or some people just barely get by? So that's a big that's a big dilemma in our world as far as a cost. So now when you start thinking about eliminate the doctor that does the injection, eliminate the actual live cells and just go with the actual signals. Cost gets lower, you know. Now you're down to a price point probably like near a thousand dollars. Now let's do the same signals from the human tissue and get it from plants. When you get it from plants, now the cost goes down a lot more. Now you have a topical application that's gonna be a plant-based. You're looking at a price point about less than $100. Now you're looking at a large expansion of people that are available to take this type of therapy. And the neat thing about this is that it's gonna be under the world of like over-the-counter OTC. So now you can see it in the local store on the uh shelf right there, so it's easier, easy to get to instead of going to a doctor and getting all those type of uh you know screening processes and injections.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Exactly. And 3,500 to 15,000 is huge. It's really huge. So so for someone like who's listening who is dealing with that chronic pain, joint discomfort, and or maybe just once to age better, then what should they actually understand about like what this kind of approach can can and cannot do for them? Well, you think about aging.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Aging number one is when your cells are like what they say is like dying off, right? So we have to get the ability to do things like regenerate our tissues so that it does a cycle, right? We have to recycle. A bad cell goes out, a new cell comes in. So as we age, that ratio starts declining. When it declines, now we're having two, two tissues die off, one get res one gets replaced. So right away, the people that are looking at this are like people at the age group that are going into like arthritis. When you get arthritis, you start destroying their cartilage around those joints. You gotta grow those things. There's not much you can grow it. You can do all kinds of topical pain cream, it's not gonna grow the tissue. It's gonna hide the actual injury by masking the pain. So, anybody with arthritis, perfect candidate. When you have repetitive injury, like a tendinitis that you're just constantly using over and over again, well, that tendon gets compromised. So you have to think, how can I speed up the healing process? Well, regenerative medicine. Then you look at other things like injury, sports-related injury. Athletes want to heal faster, introduce more signal, regenerative medicine. So it can be from all the way from just arthritis for age-related, repetitive injury, sports-related injuries, injury itself. And the grand scheme of it is gonna be a longevity, an anti-aging. It's gonna elongate your cells to get that active lifespan excreased to like instead of being at 80 years old, you can go all the way to 120, 130 years old just to activate your tissue over and over again so it has a one-to-one ratio. Get rid of the old, bring in the new. And that's what's fantastic. It's a well-rounded

Topical Regenerative Tech For Everyone

SPEAKER_01 15:26

environmental type of like therapy for just not just uh sports-related injury or the arthritis, but it's for the wellness and longevity. Very true.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

And also, like, I mean, definitely it is something because regenerative medicine can attract a lot of overselling. So, and I I mean, what do you what do you said is something much more uh grounded and supportive as well for for and that works with the body's natural process rather than a kind of magic solution like I did and vanish. So I I think I think people need that kind of honest framing to make good decisions about their health. So that is definitely uh, I believe it's it's really, really supportive. So here definitely also I want to ask about what you what you are building, right? You said that your mission is helping people heal without forcing them to sacrifice their lives in this process. So definitely that's a that's a great thing. And so, how do you keep the human intention at the center of the science and business that you're building?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

So when you think about present science and medicine, you're looking at trying to do something that your body's moving down a bad path, right? If it's like diabetes or you have repetitive injury or arthritis, you're trying to force something. You're trying to force the correction of the right, right? So you're trying to say, all right, instead of you going down that path because of maybe some degrading tissue, or if it's diabetes, you have something wrong with your insulin or some type of receiving information to get the insulin to the glucose, we're gonna force it. We're gonna force by giving you a maybe an insulin that's synthetic, and we're gonna try to couple that into your glucose. You're trying to force it, right? Now, here's something interesting about your own body. You refined at a younger age, but as we get older, things get disturbed. Something changes, right? Could be the environmental behavior, something changed. Well, our cells have the capability, but because of this abnormal something that kind of ingrained into our lifestyle, you went down a different course. Well, medicine these days, right? We want to force it. We want to force it back by some chemistry, some pharmaceutical world. Or could it be a surgical procedure? Could it be a joint replacement? We have to force it. Now you think about the future. The future is about preventative. You get the right signal doing the right thing to activate the right tissue. Now you are never prone to those positions. You'll never go down that pathway. You're continually doing the right growth, the right systems to do the activity for the whole body and that particular area that you're having problems with. So that's what this whole future is moving towards. It's moving towards signaling and activation. When you activate the tissue, you're having your own body do the job. You know, it's nothing better than having a car that has the right parts, the right mechanics, and the right driver doing the job. It's when you start thinking, like, all right, I'm not gonna change the oil, I'm not gonna do maintenance, I'm not gonna give the right type of information in the car and just keep driving it. Well, I gotta replace the transmission. I've got to do some forcing of this vehicle to continue on. Well, it's not gonna be correct because you want to grow together as one. This arm, this leg, this heart, this lung, it knows each other well. Keep it together, give it the right signal, and it works well together. So that's where this whole feature is moving towards too. It's the activating with signals.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Interesting. So, like for someone who wants to understand more about that cell-free uh regenerative medicine. And what separates your approach from others in this. So, what should they ask basically?

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Okay. So the big thing is that when you hear the word of regenerative medicine and they say live stem cells, right? Now, live stem cells, it sounds really like sexy, right? It's ooh, I'm gonna get these new cells and they're gonna go in my body and it's gonna move around and find the damaged tissue, and it's gonna just attack it, and then it's gonna make it grow, and we're gonna change it like an alien in our body, gonna change it into our cells. Well, it's it's it's impossible because you think about what a cell has. A cell has a nucleus, chromosome, DMA, DNA, and they have their own code. When you put it into your body, number one, your body's gonna fight it because it's think it's

What It Can Help And Limits

SPEAKER_01 19:35

a virus. So if it passes that point, it's gonna go start, you know, mitosis, cell division, it's gonna do something. Now, here's the thing: you have your own chromosome, and then you have this new one that's donor injected into your body. It's not gonna match up. There's no way that code is gonna match up. If anything, it's just it's gonna make its own tissue and have an abnormal growth, and that's that tumor formation. So you have to remember it's all about the signal, your own tissue doing its job. So when you start thinking about your own tissue doing the job, it's about the signal. Now, when you think about cell-free, cell-free meaning there's no nucleus, there's no DNA, there's no chromosome. Well, you're just looking at the information. So now it's a the molecule has gotten smaller, meaning that I can get it through the skin. When I get it through the skin, it has the ability to do the signaling without the injection. So cell-free is the most important thing you're hearing about in the future here. You're gonna hear things words like peptides, hormones, you know, all these things are all cell-free. It's just a signal. So that's where you want to ask questions. Ask the doctor what is going on? What is the mechanism? If they give you the general broad stroke, like, oh well, the cells know what to do and it does it. That's too simple. You have to give me the mechanism. What is the cytokine? What is the actual microRNA, the proteins that do this job? If they can't talk like in that kind of frame, you have to be careful because he doesn't understand what's going on. He just knows that I inject, it's gonna do its job. You have to be aware that when you do a live stem cell injection, people always talk about getting sick the next day. Why do you get sick? Well, it's just like a virus into your body. Your immune system drops down because it's attacking this new type of like thing that you put in your body with this nucleus. So that's why everybody reports I felt sick a day or two and I felt better afterwards. Well, that's a red flag right there. So that's what you have to watch out for. Number two, you gotta know where this tissue is coming from. Is it really coming from where they stayed? It's hard to trace that. You can get a piece of paper to say, I the traceability of this comes from this piece of paper, but you know that anybody can make this paper up. You're gonna have to like trust your clinician, and the clinician has to trust the lab. And now the FDA are closing down labs because these donor tissues are not coming from where they're supposed to be coming from. They're coming from animal tissue, they're coming from at odd places because the end user they don't check on it. They say, All right, it looks like a vial of cells that's inject. So they don't know. So that's why. You have to be careful when it comes to that. Now, when you go to cell-free, and more importantly, where I'm going towards the plant-based that have the same powerful signals as the human tissue. Now you have a lot of control. You know exactly where this is coming from. And the wonderful thing is that it's controlled from the mechanism of the laboratory, the manufacturing, and all the quality controls in this world that checks on these products. So that's what's fantastic about the trend. It's moving that way. So when you hear self-free, always ask the question to your clinician if you want to go in the stem cell world. Why live stem cells? Why do we want these live stem cells? You really think that these stem cells are going to mutate into our tissue? Impossible.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Because the bigger thing is like it's one of the which gets settled at the at the bottom.

Red Flags To Watch In Clinics

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Like we are living through a moment where longevity science, regenerative medicine, AI uh assisted health tools, everything all are all are kind of converging. So where do you see the future of healing is going towards, right? Because a lot of things are coming, but people sometimes get confused too as well. So what do you think is the most important thing people should understand about their body's capacity and to heal as all this stuff?

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yeah, I think the future is gonna be a big part of intelligence, right? You need to know and educate and understand about just a simple thing anatomy, physiology, and this disease or some issue you're going through. So there's a lot of great sources out there online. You can go through the AI world for ChatGPT, cloud, all these kind of like AI can give you an assistance. Now, are they 100% accurate? No, it's just it's just information. But what that does, it gives you a starting point. So when you start feeling pain or something going on with your body, you want to go ahead and do your own research. Look at your daddy, understand what that function of that organ, muscle, tendon, whatever you want to know. Then you go to a provider like myself or a sports guy or someone that's specialized in what your issue is. Go over there, present your case, meaning that I have pain and I think it's this because of that, dot, dot, right? You can talk about it. If the provider talks to you like one-on-one, like it's a discussion, perfect. Now you're having a discussion, so he can explain to you further why it is or isn't, or maybe more importantly, he can kind of define it even further than what the AI did for you. So then you go, oh, I can understand what's going on. But then if you have a provider that doesn't help you or kind of combat you, you need to stay away from that person. Now he's probably not knowledgeable enough to explain or he's guessing, right? So the future I feel is number one, it's gonna start going into the hands of the patient. The patient is gonna have information as much as a doctor. The problem with the patient is that they've only had one patient, right? themselves. Whereas a doctor, they have hundreds of thousands of repetitive patients that they see this injury over and over again. So they know that that type of patient with that kind of injury, with those symptoms, are gonna go this course and this is your treatment protocol. So that may be the different. But you have to really just get into the world of understanding that education, knowledge is your importance, and that's where the future is gonna go. Once they understand, now they say, What can I do? Where can I go? And then there is things that you can buy online, like my product that can take you to the next step.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So amazing. So if you have to give one advice today to all the listeners, uh, what that'll be. Biggest education.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Educate yourself. Don't be afraid to you know get a lot of information and then go to the provider and ask. Ask, am I right? Am I wrong? What do you think? That's the biggest thing. If you can educate yourself not only about just like the disease, but go further. Go just like a student. Like, I want to know anatomy, what are the structures involved? Why are they not

AI, Self-Education, And Closing Advice

SPEAKER_01 26:10

compromised? But this one is. So now you get to really see the grand scheme of things. So when you go through therapy or some type of pharmaceutical world, whatever you want to go through, you will know why you're doing that. Instead of just guessing and giving faith, like, oh, I believe in you because you know. I mean, the information is most important to everybody out there.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

And if listeners wants to connect with you, what is the great medium to connect?

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Well, the easiest way is go on my website, which is r-he-e-g-en.com, and you can learn about self-free regenerative medicine. And if you have any questions, you can go ahead and just hit the info button and ask me a question. You can also go to uh Amazon dot Amazon and look for my book, The Future of Regenerative Medicine, and it explains everything, like what kind of stem cells are there, what do they really do, what are the signals, what's cell-free, and the future of regenerative medicine. And no social media, all that stuff, you can just look me up.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Amazing. Amazing. So, dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for you, the friends. And I have to say thank you, thank you so much, Dr. Reed. And 30 years of working with LED athletes, it's it's not a joke, it's a huge achievement, I would say. And I definitely think that a lot of people are leaving this conversation thinking differently about like what their bodies are capable of. So uh thank you so much for sharing that. And for everyone who's listening, whether you are dealing with kind of injury, maybe managing chronic discomfort, or just thinking about like how to age well, then here's definitely I want to share with you one thing. It's very simple, like your body already knows how to heal. So it's it's because I I always feel like we talk about AI, right? But I I believe we are the AI only because our brain is doing everything, instructing our bodies, our bodies is working. It's all it's all natural and automatic process, right? So the our body knows everything, like how to heal and everything. So the question comes is like whether you are giving it what it needs to do that work, right? Right. So stay curious about the science, ask good questions, and I'll say never stop looking for better options. That is much important. So the future of healing is here, and it is more and more and more accessible than you think. So, with this hope, this is your host, and this is Mind Nutz Machine. We'll see you in the next one. Thank you so much.