I guess you've heard of stem cell therapy,
right? Those very expensive injections you can get of stem cells into your damaged tissues
and damaged organs that will help to repair and rebuild the damage? What if I told you you have
about 700,000 stem cells of your own in your body right now that could be doing that job for
you? Welcome to SHAPEFIXER, I'm Andrew Tunstall, I'm your nutrition and lifestyle coach, and I'm
going to talk to you a bit more about stem cells and the latest research and the latest knowledge
that we have. Now stem cells... we started off as stem cells - embryonic stem cells - that gave
rise to every single type of cell in our body: liver cells, bone cells, muscle cells, all
of them started off as stem cells - which is really just a cell that has got all your DNA
but hasn't differentiated into any particular type of tissue cell yet. We do have a whole
lot of them, as I said about 700,000 still in our bodies. Most seem to be in the bone marrow
but there are numbers of them at... in other organs around our body. Now 700,000 might sound
like a lot, but there are a lot of cells in your body and 700,000 means you have about one stem
cell for every 45 million cells in your body! So they're quite rare I guess and they're
not always easy to find, which is why science is... scientists are still finding places in our
body where they're hiding out! And it's really really exciting. Now these cells are called "Adult
Stem Cells" (as opposed to embryonic stem cells). They're sometimes called "somatic stem cells".
Never mind about that though. These adult stem cells that are packed around strategic
parts of our body must be doing something, and we've known for a while that the ones in the
bone marrow can grow new bone cells or they can grow new red blood cells, but it has more recently
been found that they can also produce liver cells, lung cells and skin cells! And that's what we
know so far... But in addition to that knowledge we also now have more knowledge about stem cells
that are found in in the brain and in the muscles and in the lungs, and we're finding them in new
places all the time. The assumption has got to be that if that's where they are, then that's where
they're working and that's what they're producing. So it's really really important to understand
that we need these stem cells and we need them to be doing what they doing. They regenerate
us all the time. We grow new skin all the time, we grow new hair all the time (our hair falls out
and it grows back) and all that is to do with our stem cells. When we don't look after our bodies we
damage our stem cells, and when we damage our stem cells we suffer from things like hair loss,
kidney disease, cancer, diabetes and dementia. Now it's not to say that those things won't
happen even if you do have healthy stem cells, but with damaged stem cells those problems are
more likely and they are worse and it's harder for us to combat them or fight against them.
So what damages our stem cells? Well firstly, age generally. Unfortunately as we get older they
become slightly less functional um which makes it all the more important to look after them as we
age. Tobacco absolutely destroys our stem cells so we shouldn't be smoking. Alcohol in high
amounts is really damaging to our stem cells so we should drink in moderation. Inflammation
generally impairs the functioning of our stem cells (and I've done a video on inflammation, I'll
put a link down here in the video description) You can keep your inflammation in check by
eating properly. Um, high sugar: high blood sugar damages your stem cells. High blood sugar
that leads to diabetes - once you're diabetic your stem cells are a disaster so we really need to
control our sugar intake, and of course as we know "sugar" means "carbohydrates or starches", those
are all made of sugar. So what do we do? We want healthy stem cells, we want to be able to
repair and rebuild - what do we do? Well there are things we STOP doing and there are things we need
to DO MORE of. The things we need to stop doing are abusing alcohol, smoking tobacco, eating sugar
(or carbohydrates) - all of those three things. Those are the three really bad culprits. By doing
that we lower our inflammation, when we have lower inflammation our stem cells will work better. We
need to get our stress levels down (which is not always easy but there are ways to manage stress
- getting better sleep is one way, getting more exercise is another way) and we need to reduce
our weight. If we're overweight - particularly obese - we are heading for diabetes and heart
disease and inflammation and all sorts of other problems and we need to get our weight back down
through sensible diet and sensible exercise. OK, so what do we do? What did I say? We sleep! We
work on our sleep (I've done a video on sleep, watch the video on sleep). We start getting
regular exercise: It doesn't have to be hectic, crazy exercise; just light, regular exercise. We
need to be fasting - in other words not eating all the time (and we've done videos on fasting
and autophagy) You need ideally 16 hours between your dinner and your first meal of the next day.
It's not all that difficult to get 16 hours, that will get your inflammation down and will get your
repair systems running better. You need to drink more tea - green tea, black tea, any tea. Tea is
very good for your stem cells. And you know what else is really good for your stem cells? It's dark
chocolate! At least 73% cocoa. Make sure it's not spiked with sugar. The chocolate companies can be
a bit sneaky with that so just check the back of the packet to make sure it hasn't got a high sugar
content. A combination of exercise, sleep, proper food, cutting out sugar, cutting out smoking,
getting better sleep will enhance your stem cells and their ability to repair and build and regrow
where you are damaged and where age is just taking its toll on you. And it's a much easier and a much
cheaper way of doing it than spending $5,000 on a stem cell injection! So there you go, take care
of your stem cells so they take care of you! Thank you for watching, please click a like...
on this video and subscribe to our channel.
