Hey, guys, I'm super excited for my next guest. He's committed the last 16 years to helping people achieve their health goals and he's done all kinds of exciting things. In 2011, he worked on the medical staff at the World Crossfade Games in 2012. He was part of the medical team for the US Olympic team. And he's done so many amazing things. Please welcome Dr. Michael Bannermen.
I appreciate you having me on here today.
Well, let's jump right in. I want to talk about regenerative medicine because this is like a new buzzword now. Everyone's kind of talking about it. But before we do, a lot of people don't know what regenerative medicine is. Can you talk about what it is and give us some real practical explanations so people can kind of wrap their head around it?
Right. So regenerative medicine really deals with any any modality or any therapy that's going to try and help regenerate cells in your body that have broken down or have become degenerated. So the biggest thing that regenerative medicine does is it works with inflammation. But some examples, a common thing that people call our office and or email us and ask is about stem cells. That's that's under the umbrella of regenerative medicine. But there's many other things like nutrient IVs those would help restore and regenerate your body to do a more homeostatic balance. There's things like plasma, rich, platelet rich plasma, sorry, that's PRP, it's called. And younger people will use that to actually help the body heal three to seven times faster than it normally would. But these are really using natural kind of more human being based chemicals or therapies in order to help the body do things that we maybe in medicine in the past have thought were impossible or because of our research and because of the way we use medications, we thought that maybe we couldn't achieve these kind of health outcomes. So regenerative medicine is opening up a whole new way of taking care of patients because we can see some really amazing results in a really short period of time.
So what what are some things you guys do actually in your office? So do you guys do the drip therapy, nutrient IVs in your office?
We do. We do those. We do prep a lot for athletes. So if someone has we had an Olympic hopeful come in and he actually got an injury while he was competing and his arm started to shrink, his chest started to shrink, and we injected him with PRP. And within three weeks, he was back in the gym where he thought he was going to have to have surgery on his neck because the nerves were being crushed, things like that, or are becoming more and more common.
And then we also do umbilical cord tissue injections, which are our Wharton's jelly, which have stem cells in them a lot of times. But those those types of things, we see people avoid knee replacement, hip replacement, shoulder injuries get better. I personally have a story about my knee and that's how we kind of brought it in. And that's how I started to own a medical clinic, is because of my own personal experience.
So talk about the PRP, the platelet rich plasma. That's a tongue twister, isn't it? So explain exactly where where is that platelet rich plasma coming from that's getting injected into you.
Right. So in your bloodstream and your blood system, there's healing factors and there's oxygen delivery factors and there's waste factors. There's a lot of different things that are going on in there. So we draw someone's blood.
We take about ten miles of their blood. They come into the office, the medical practice, and we'll draw that. And then we have a machine that will spin it around and it will actually force the red blood cells, the waste and the oxygen type component down to the bottom. And then the platelets and the plasma will actually rise to the top. They'll get separated and then we can draw out the platelets and some a little bit of the plasma and we can use that because that's really the healing factor in your blood. So when we concentrate that, it's it's the super juice. It's the thing that helps helps your body heal at an accelerated rate. It's amazing. It's it's awesome.
So you're basically taking your own blood and then injecting that those platelet rich plasma. Back into your body, right?
Yeah, so you're using your body's own healing capacity, but you're leveraging it by taking out some of the things that slow it down. So obviously, over the course of your life, you do things that cause inflammation, which is a big, I think, one of the keys to fixing your problems, your health problems. And if we can get rid of some of the inflammatory issues that people experience at a quicker, faster pace, then they get a really quick win under their belt and then they can get back to exercising or whatever their their issues they're struggling with, with their health.
So I just watched two movies recently and they were really talking about being vegan, but they are one of the movies is called What the Hell? Have you seen that movie? Yes, I have. And the other one is called The Game Changer. Have you seen that one? I haven't seen that one, though. OK, so that's on Netflix. You'll have to see that. Yeah. And so they really talk about some of these athletes that have gone vegan and they're still performing really, really well. Yeah, just going. Degan, what is your thoughts on that?
I think everyone should tailor their we sit down in our office, we sit down with people and figure out what their objectives are. So I think I don't know that any one specific diet is good for everyone. So I think whatever someone's objective is to work within those parameters and know what your body's needs are, figure out how different nutrients that you need to perform at your top level would fit into what you're consuming. I think that's the most important part. And I'm of the belief system that whether you're vegan or vegetarian or Coronavirus, paleo or whatever the case is, is that you keep your inflammation down in your body and that your you have the ability to sustain that over a long period of time, because I think we've gotten into trouble just trying to trying to go on these quick diets as you're you're in that space, you know a lot more of that stuff. But I think I think a lifestyle is more important. And then tailoring your habits around your lifestyle is a huge way to help you get the most out of what you're trying to do.
Yeah, in my I just finished my second edition of my book, Waste Away, and I talk to people about how they don't have to deprive themselves when it comes to food, but everyone has to decide for themselves, what are there red light, yellow light and green light foods. And what your red light foods are is that when you eat that food, you're causing your body massive amounts of inflammation. For whatever reason, your body doesn't do well on that particular food. And then you might have a yellow light food where you go. This food for my body doesn't do well and it could be something healthy that people would think is healthy. Maybe you don't do well with red peppers or something, and you just that body inflames you for whatever reason. So for you personally, do you have any red light or yellow light foods for yourself personally?
I mean, my red light foods are potato chips. I mean, I'm like, that's a pretty obvious one.
But as far as red light, I, I would say probably bread for me. I know that if I eat any greens, I get really inflamed. So I try to I try to do what I can to if I am going to consume that which I try not to, but I'll try to eat Salvado or sprouted sprouted green stuff. But I find even with the sprouted green I get inflammation. I know. So yeah I would say, I mean for guilty pleasures it would be chips hands down. But, but for, for leaning more towards the healthy side of things with creams and oatmeal, pasta breads, those kind of things.
Gotcha. So I now the question I ask all my guests take me through a normal day in the life of Michael. So like what did you eat yesterday? What what was your diet looking like?
That was funny yesterday. I am speaking of depriving yourself yesterday I did a fast. Oh so yeah.
So I did actually have some bone growth and bone broth soup in the evening when I got home from work just to keep my electrolytes, I'll get some collagen in and but it's pretty boring story one.
That's great.
I have an insulin regulating supplement that I use and and then and then I had some, some soup so to speak, when I got home.
Awesome. Now how often do so was it a. Four hour fast, was it a 48 hour fast, 20?
I just went from like seven to seven, seven in the evening till 7:00 the next evening, so.
Gotcha.
But this this week, my goal is to do, um. I really like fasting, too. I think it's really great for your stem cells in your body. It's been shown it's really one of the only practices that's been shown to actually grow your cortical.
To create cortical growth in your brain, to get your brain back, and it's really, really helpful for inflammation. So I know this week I want to try and do a seventy two hour fast, but I started out with just twenty four hour one this week and then I want to do over the next month I'm trying to do three forty eight hours. That's just part of my goals. I don't know that everyone's at that level where they want to do that kind of stuff. I don't think that people think that's the funnest thing to do when when you're looking from the outside in your body. Just it's an amazing practice. It's an amazing way to clear your head and get yourself healthy again.
Yeah, I've been recently I've been doing at least two to three twenty four hour fast every week. And then really for the last three weeks I've been doing like each week. I did a forty eight hour fast every week I did a 48 hour one. It's so good. It's really magical. You don't like doing it when you're doing it. You're kind of like why am I doing this? But yeah, there's so many amazing things that happen from them.
So let's jump right into the listener questions. This is from Trevor in Duluth, which I'm not sure where that is about. Oh, it is. OK, good. OK, see, I'm not good at geography. Yeah. If you know where it is, always tell me. About four years ago I tore my ACL, I had surgery and I did physical therapy, but I'm still having ongoing pain. Is there anything else I can do at this point?
Yeah, so I'm not sure where Trevor's out with the testing as far as what his is and he actually looks like, but I can relate a story about my knee.
I tore my ACL completely, ruptured it, ruptured my MCL, my ACL in my LCL and both my meniscus when he was just blown apart playing basketball. Oh, my God. So for me, I mean, I did I did a stem cell injection into my knee and I avoided surgery because the surgeons told me I needed reconstructive surgery.
So I don't think Trevor's problem is, is to that level.
Maybe it is, but there's a lot of scar tissue that builds up. And, you know, I mentioned these quick wins that we get for health. I think that's really essential.
And pain pain usually comes from scar tissue, coating a nerve or coating the the nerves inside the cartilage. And the quickest way to get rid of inflammation is by doing something like PRP or some kind of regenerative injection. So that's that's what I recommend.
OK, awesome. This next one's from Lindsay in Chattanooga, I'm seven months pregnant and I've only gained about 18 pounds, but lately my back has been hurting so badly. It's especially terrible when I have to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom. The pain starts to my lower back and travels down my left leg. What could it be and what could I do?
Yeah, I think maybe you and I both agree on this one, that inflammation causes a lot of pain in people's bodies. And so in my experience, in helping people with their spines, with their backs, pain usually comes pain and inflammation usually builds up because of improper movement or improper motion. So I would I would have the back checked out by someone who's a movement specialist, a physical therapist, a chiropractor, or go to the doctor and get X-rays and see what is actually going on. And I'm a really big on X-rays. I'm not sure where you stand on that, but some X-rays are a huge way. Instead of guessing, it gives you a lot of confidence as a as someone who's getting the X-rays to understand what what's going on internally. And then you don't have to guess you can actually make a great plan going forward. So we know that pain. Again, I was reading another study last night that when you have pain, your body actually creates more and more nerve fibers that deal with pain. So you actually, as you have pain and you continue within your body, will generate more pain for you to make you aware if you can't control the inflammation.
And they say it all stems from inflammatory chemicals. So another great way is to just do a quick, fast, 12 hour fast, 18 hour fast, but definitely get the back checked out with x rays. That's that would be my my advice.
Now, what is the longest fast you've ever done before?
Did seven days with water, seven days just water. Yeah, that's awesome. That was that was really hard for the first three days. And then after that I felt like a million bucks.
Wow, and was there. Did you take any bone broth or so you just did water, nothing else, water.
That's why I think one day I had coconut water for one I think on one bottle of coconut water because I was getting a little physically in Canada.
I was adjusting one hundred people a day, 30 people a day in my chiropractic office.
So it was pretty physical. So I just felt like and I just need some pick me up here. So I think I had some coconut water one day here.
Awesome. Yeah, we got a new question in today and let's see if you want to answer this one. This is from Katie in Chicago. She says, hi there. Love your podcast. I like how you arrange a range of topics, especially related to thyroid. I've been diagnosed with Hypo and Hashimoto's. However, my levels are normal and feel great overall, especially when I eat 80 20. My question is, if my levels are fine, can I still donate blood or are people with autoimmune not supposed to sending God's love? Thank you, Katie in Chicago.
Awesome, awesome question. I think I mean, I wouldn't say that in that space that I would have the best answer for that, but I could give my recommendations that I think it's really important to take care of yourself. And I hear the heart behind the question. That sounds like she wants to help people out. But I think I think a good a good baseline is to let your body regulate and let it heal itself up so that maybe you hold off on that until your levels have been stable. For I usually give the general general time because in in the research that shows about two years, once you have stable levels, that I think it should be fine to go ahead. A lot of times people are given diagnoses and I think we shouldn't hold on to those for the rest of our life like autoimmune problems. I think people can overcome those things. So that kind of fits into there, too. But if she's stable for two years, I think I think it would be fine.
So have you had any people come in with you with autoimmune issues? And is there been anything, anything that you've done that you've said this has really been powerful for the auto immune?
Yeah, we we take the approach of in my office first. We want to do a great workup with people, do a great exam, physical exam, as well as check out all the physical history, medical history. But what what I've found with things like R.E. and Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, all those different kinds of inflammatory autoimmune you might call conditions is that you have to, again, address the inflammation. It seems to be an underlying theme, but address the inflammation, address the structure, the area, whether it's the gut or different joints or muscles, you have to address those specific areas and then you have to stabilize the person. Then you have to allow their body to regenerate, because we've been I mean, we have a great, amazing God given ability to heal in our brain that helps us every day, even when we're not thinking about it. So if we could tap into that by doing the proper steps, I think people can get results that they never expected. So autoimmune doesn't scare me. I think I think it's something that can be addressed. But there's a lot of emotional stuff that goes with that as well. And we have to get on the same page about everything, I think, as a doctor, as a patient together and create realistic goals and expectations so that we can actually get the best outcomes for people.
Awesome. And then do you have any tips for someone?
Someone says, look, I want to do a seven day fast, like I want to work my way up to that for you. Like, did you have a plan where you said, look, I'm going to start with a twenty four hour and then I'm going to move to a forty eight hour and then I'm going to do five day? Or how did you personally do it and do you have any tips to work up to someone going from never doing a fast to all the way going up to a seven day fast.
Yeah it can be daunting. So I like I when I did it first, I started with little kind of play little games and I would do like a year to O'Daniel fast. Yes. Yeah. So I would do O'Daniel fast first.
Well let me, let me ask you because this is one of my one of my things about the Daniel fast that, you know, I get annoyed with, which if you read the Bible the first time he talks about fasting in the Book of Daniel, he says he did ten days with nothing but vegetables. And then they move to other if you look up, what is the Daniel Fast in the and in the Internet, people have all kinds of definitions of what you can eat right on the Daniel fast.
And people are eating like bean burritos because they're not eating meat.
And I'm like, what in the world? Like now days you're eating and now you're saying Daniel, that's Daniel went down to the local taco stand and got up being burrito.
You didn't know? No, but I, I think, like, if you if you start with a meal and fast and just eat vegetables for a meal, to me that's more like a Daniel fest. And when I talk about. When I talk about. Fasting, I think it's really important. There's also stipulations on that, like for myself, for I'm eating living healthy food, like why am I going to do it fast and then go down to in and out burger after and break my fast. I had a I had one of my patients. He did a 40 day fast. Wow. 40 days. And then he broke. They just do with water. He did it with just water. Wow. And he, he broke it by having a hamburger. And I was thinking he's he's a little a little wild and crazy. But but those Canadians I tell you. But but the Daniel fast. I think you have to you can't you can't take that principle and then try and fit it into our culture, you know what I mean. But you can't say, oh, well, well, Daniel, potato chips are vegetables. So he probably had potato chips to like. That's not that's not the point of it. The point of it is to decrease inflammation in your body. And if it's for a spiritual purpose, then you go and do your praying. You go to you're getting to know God better during the time when you would eat. It's not a time to to do whatever you feel like doing. It's a focus time for your body or for your spirituality or whatever it is. So, yeah, I play games like that for one meal. I would just fast from something that I think I can't do without and just try and try and get that win, get that win under my belt. Or I would do like for breakfast, do some bone broth. For which I live with a Korean guy in college, and he ate like what we would eat for dinner, he ate for breakfast. So there's a lot of ways around the world that people eat that we're not aware of, but they're healthier than us. So we we've taken things, try to make them fast and easy. But I think natural raw food is the best way to go, just as a as an initiator, then maybe do something like if you can do clean smoothies, try that for a day or so, have three smoothies in one day and just gives your digestive system a chance to relax. It's easy to digest, easy to absorb. And then you've done your fast for the day with smoothies and then the next day try and do one one smoothie at lunch instead and skip the the breakfast meal and then it slowly progresses and said, wow, this is fun. It's not as bad as I thought. And I've had people, diabetics who tell me, oh, I can't fast, I need my, my insulin. I can't I can't do this. And we've got them off their insulin within. I don't want to exaggerate, but within three days they're like, oh man, I felt terrible for two days. But now I feel amazing, like I haven't felt like this for 30 years. So though I think we it starts in our mind, you know, like you're saying, that's kind of what you're alluding to, is that you have to make it fun for yourself, but you also have to make it a challenge for yourself to get to your health goals. And that and that's a huge, huge part of being healthy, is being encouraged by yourself over and over again by by having these small victories.
Yeah, I agree. And I think that the best the easiest fast for people to do is like what you said when you do when once you decide, hey, I'm going to do a water fast to do seven, like you did like 7:00 at night to 7:00 at night the next day or five o'clock at night till five o'clock the next day where you that's that's a first transition.
So start with that twenty four hour fast, then move to a forty eight hour fast, then move to a three day fast so that you're working your way up. It's, it's almost like running for a marathon. Right. Like if you're going to do a half marathon you'd first start by running one mile and then you'd run two miles and that sort of thing. So I actually wrote a book called Fasting to Freedom. It's my second book that I wrote and it's out now. And it is it talks all about how to work your way up to that. So it's like instead of like the couch to bike, it's like never fasting to going to a seven day fast and kind of what breaks down allow you to do that?
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's fun. Once you start doing it, it's pretty it's pretty neat to see how you can progress through that.
And like even if you did a twenty four hour fast than a thirty six hour fast, you're really just stopping after dinner, skipping a day.
It's really a one day fast eating breakfast the next morning. Right. Thirty six hours. That's seems like that's doable. Yes. And then I'm going to try another 12 hours and then I'll eat after 7:00 tonight.
You know what I mean.
Yeah. And I love I love what you said about how the Daniel fast how you can start with hey, let's start with it. If you've never done any fasting. But I do believe that you should start with just doing vegetables like in Daniel one twelve and says he says, please test your servants for ten days and let them give us vegetables, tea, water.
He said vegetables to eat and water to drink. And that's all he did for ten days. Then after that in Daniel ten he for he was mourning and he said he for three weeks he ate no food. No I mean he ate no pleasant food like choice food, no meat or wine. And so I think when you think about pleasant food, like people are saying, well, on the Daniel fast, like you said, having bread and like to me, bread, like, I'm like, that's a choice. Food for me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.
And I think part of it too is just the principle.
Like, once you start getting into this stuff, you realize how how he was doing that so that others could see how powerful God was. Yeah, God's put a powerful ability to heal in our body that we sometimes think we have the majority of control over. But he's he's deposited that in us from the time we're born until the time we die. And our job is just to steward and be faithful to what is is right. Like what the Bible tells us what to eat in Leviticus. It tells us what's good food. And people may think that's legalistic or whatever. It's under the law, but there's still a ton of wisdom in there. And there's still God's principles won't stop regardless of whether we think they will or not. So I think that whole situation scenario was like, yeah, I'm just going to eat the vegetables and you watch you watch and see the strength that God gives me.
Yeah. And he ended up being stronger.
Right? Right. He ended up being the strongest of them all. Yeah. So the skin care in the world. Yeah.
Well, it's been such a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for joining us. Now, where can listeners go to follow you and your work.
Yeah. So you can follow us on Instagram at Aligned Life Med. That's our our Handal. We have a we have a website as well, aligned life med dot com. So I have a YouTube channel that now that we started in the past few months, we have some videos, we have some regenerative procedures that we're putting on there. People tend to get excited about seeing other people get stuck with needles. So it's pretty fun, fun to watch. And I will be starting a podcast within the next couple of months. So hopefully I'd like to invite you.
Yeah, my first guest to come on and. Absolutely.
Your experiences and your wisdom and me, but right now, I would say Instagram is is pretty active, so a line like mad would be where we would want that to to direct people to go awesome.
Well, if you have a question that you want answered questions at Chantel Ray dot com, we'll see you next time. Have a great one by.