Dr. Jeff Donatello – 15 Minutes to Live (390)

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Episode transcript below:

SPEAKERS

Mike Malatesta, Jeff Donatello

Mike Malatesta  00:00

Hi everyone, Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the HOW TO HAPPEN podcast on this podcast. I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success to discover not just how it happened, but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. On today’s episode, I’m talking with Dr. Jeff Donatello, the CEO of Center for wellbeing, and an expert at guiding people along life’s journey. By improving their health span and longevity. We talked about the use of stem cells and purified antibiotic fluid to reduce inflammation and chronic pain exercise with oxygen therapy, whether we can live to be 150. It’s an interesting conversation, the Blue Zones sleep, and so much more. What it comes down to your health, you get to exercise mood, you get to eat, right, you get to sleep, and you have to have good emotional relationships, those four things, that’s everything. And are those four pillars is missing, then, then you’re going to be stressed out. And if you’re stressed out, your body’s going to be in a fight or flight response. It’s going to hold on to its back and it doesn’t know when its next meal is right. And then you’re going to stay heavy. Jeff’s a super passionate and fun guy doing great work to help people heal and thrive. I had a lot of fun doing this, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Hey, Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Jeff Donatello  01:29

Hey, glad to be here. Excited to speak with you.

Mike Malatesta  01:32

Yeah, I’ve been waiting for this ever since you reached out to me out of state because you reached out and really, in an interesting way. I was gonna say unusual, but it’s not really unusual. It’s just interesting. And I get a lot of people reaching out to me. I’m sure they are all very, very, very interesting. But they’re not all that interesting in their approach to me. And so it got my attention. And I’m I’m really glad to have you here today. Well, here we are. Great. Excited to. Okay, so you guys found out a little bit about what we’re going to talk about in the intro. But let me give you a little bit more of a proper introduction to Dr. Jeffrey Donatella. Jeff is the CEO and co founder of Center for wellbeing. He’s an entrepreneur who along with his wife, Kelly, took a struggling COVID beaten down medical practice to an eight figure thriving for Office medical practice in two years. That’s phenomenal. We’re gonna find out all about that. He says he used EOS to do it. Entrepreneurial Operating System for those of you who don’t aren’t familiar with that traction for those of you who may have be familiar more familiar with that word or have read the book. By the way, I’m an investor in Eos, Jeff, So full disclosure there and I love the program. But he used ELS to do it. And now he has close to 30 staff members with primary practices in metabolic weight loss and stem cell therapy. Two of my favorite topics. Jeff is passionate about guiding people along life’s journey by improving their healthspan and longevity, his ebook 15 minutes to live is available for free on his website, which is Dr. Dr. Jeff? Donatella, o d o n a t e l l o.com. I hope I’ve got all that correct, Jeff,

Jeff Donatello  03:21

You did!

Mike Malatesta  03:23

Excellent. Thank you for that. And Jeff, I started every one of my podcasts with a very simple question. And that is how did happen for you.

Jeff Donatello  03:32

You know, it happened because of what it is right? Sort of multifaceted. You know, I came I was brought into this world by an immigrant father and a mother who’s whose father played for the Boston Red Sox and entrepreneurs. They Oh, my father’s family on movie theaters in China before the communist kicked him out. And what were to give it a bombed out shelter game here and that my mom had me and I was always raised, there were teachers, right, I was always raised to just move forward, right? And you get knocked down. And you know, you just keep going forward. So what’s happened in my career, I’ve done many things. I always like to help people, but I’ve always liked to be that guy who’s on the cutting edge. I didn’t become a medical doctor, I became a chiropractor, because they were kind of kind of a little bit different in that they looked at things instead of, you know, just mandating right, we try to get to the root cause. So with our medical practices, we really have come to a point where, you know, we help people that struggle with inflammation, and that are in pain. And we use different types of stem cell therapies, different types of health coaching techniques have a big metabolic weight loss program. And, you know, I think in this world of trying to help people, the American medical system, right, it’s broken. We know that and it’s because it’s run by pharmaceuticals, and companies and insurance companies. So I try to find what works. And unfortunately, it has to get out to the general public. So you have to know how to market you have to know how to sell it, it’s a business. So I think, how did it happen? It happened because I surrounded myself with people way smarter than me, Mike, how’s that?

Mike Malatesta  05:17

That’s good. That’s fair. You’ve took us through a lot of different components of how it happened from your, from your family life to the entrepreneurial example to all the things you mentioned near the near the end. So I’m curious, Jeff, the, the early the early Jeff, taught by your parents to always go forward. What, explain to us give us some examples of what that meant to you earlier in your life.

Jeff Donatello  05:44

Um, you know, I think nature nurture makes a big difference, you give it a certain set of genetics, right? And then you have epigenetics, what is what comes at you and alters those genes. And I think the science all shows before age seven, any new parents out there really treat your kids well before seven because that sets the tone for them emotionally. And my mom taught kindergarten in my cellar, and my dad was my gym teacher, right? He was genetically lucky enough to be a big fish in a small pond. So athletically, you know, I wasn’t like going pro, but you know, I have that confidence to play a lot of sports and be fairly good all the way up into college. And, you know, I think that that whole background just kind of put me where I am because, you know, it gave me confidence to know that there’s always another day and you’re gonna get knocked down. But um, get up in every day is a good day. And you know, what, can you what can you learn from today? And that’s, that’s my motto really?

Mike Malatesta  06:46

And what sport in college what did you hang on to the longest Yeah, I

Jeff Donatello  06:51

was a I was a I was a high jumper trapped in a football players body. How’s that? So I was a receiver. And then I started to get some muscle and my eye high jumped on a national level for for an AAU athlete. And I don’t know if they’re sick six, eight, when I was 15, went to the nationals and learned what it was like to really get your butt kicked by a national competition. And I remember going out to Seattle, Washington, and the guys who have seven foot six, and better stay in school. Because I was now a small fish in a big pond, which was a great lesson for me early on.

Mike Malatesta  07:29

Yeah. It’s amazing how the world works, right? This as you continue to move up this pyramid of Oh, yeah, I call it the pyramid of merit, merit, pyramid of talent pyramid of whatever. But the good thing is you get released so you’re not trapped in that pyramid. You thought you were in that pyramid, right gonna be a high jumper or whatever. And, and you just move you shift to another period of another pyramid and you rise up to the top and in that, at least, that’s how I like to think about it. Yeah, you

Jeff Donatello  07:56

know, I think, yeah, I’m in the human body and this stock just popped in my head, you can adapt, you can be a fast twitch muscle person ended up being a slow twitch muscle person too. It just takes time so we can get into this later if you’d like. But I ended up evolving into triathlon, I ended up owning triathlon and have done well over 100 of them, I own a couple races, big national races, half Ironman races, and a full Ironman distance race. And I was able to take that fast twitch muscle fiber and, and really train a lot and drop a lot of weight and be able to be kind of a slow twitch guy, but still trapped in a football player’s body. Right. So I wasn’t going to Kona Ironman World Championships, but I had fun and you know, it was a great 10 years of my life being in that world of triathlon and athletics and competing so it was funny,

Mike Malatesta  08:45

because that I can’t remember the name of the race, mud, something comes to mind. It’s like a it’s like happens all over the place. And I I’m trying to talk water tough. Mudder Yeah. Is that guy from your part of the country? Do you know him? I’ve I’ve listened to him before but I wasn’t sure if he was from Michigan or from Vermont.

Jeff Donatello  09:07

Vermont. Okay, yeah, I forgot his. He’s. He’s pretty badass. That guy. I forgot his name. He’s really crazy when

Mike Malatesta  09:15

his events he puts on? Yeah, I’ve listened to him on number one

Jeff Donatello  09:18

is, is the Spartan Race guy spotlight show. That’s

Mike Malatesta  09:22

Oh, okay. I think that’s what I was talking about with Spartan Race because I remembered I think I remembered that he was you’re in New Year in New Hampshire, or Yeah, and most of the world and I know you don’t, but most of the world probably considered can’t tell the difference between Vermont and New Hampshire. It’s like, you know this.

Jeff Donatello  09:39

I can’t either. They’re up there. Just the opposite of each other mirror images are very, very different.

Mike Malatesta  09:46

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, that reminded me and I thought maybe you would, you might have a connection there. I do want to get into that further. But before we do, I’m curious about this chiropractic path. When did did so you got to call Would you are doing track and field Hi John. Well was Kyle was becoming a chiropractor the thing that you were focused on from the time you got there was at after your after your pro career dreams went away and Olympic dreams.

Jeff Donatello  10:16

Yeah, I wanted to corporate fitness I was going to be an instructor that I wanted to be a physical therapist that I fell into chiropractic and it just fit my mold, you know, lots of different techniques, you can help people quickly. I’m kind of a high energy guy. And I was pretty successful with it. And I had a lot of free time. And it was just a great profession. Until I realized that I was more entrepreneurial, maybe it took me like 20 years. But I realized that my business was limited to me. And there was so much more that I wanted to do in the world of business. And it’s been really great. And we mentioned Entrepreneurial Operating Systems and ELLs. And I got married to a new woman, my second wife, Kelly, who was in a marketing and sales, and she was a corporate person. And now she’s co Director of Center for well being. And, you know, really, you know, she’s the implementer. She’s the real, real reason why our business is super successful. We have almost 30 women that work for us now. And you know, she’s a really big part to the success for sure.

Mike Malatesta  11:21

Okay. As is often the case, or always the case, right? So the so let’s talk about how you got the practice off the ground, because so you should I assume then that prior to what we talked about what I mentioned in the bio, taking this failing medical practice, you were a practicing chiropractor, or were you straddling the fitness and chiropractic and your course you are running these triathlon businesses tell it tell me more about that. So as a

Jeff Donatello  11:53

chiropractor, you have a lot of free time, right. And that allows for my former wife and I to own these braces and really be embedded in that world. So we had that time. And then about eight or nine years ago, I got divorced. And Kelly came into the picture. And we really fell into the world of stem cell therapy. So if you’re listening to this still and haven’t worked, you know, you don’t have to go overseas for stem cell therapy. There’s different types of regenerative biologics that are amazing. And about four or five, we’ll say five or six years ago, we really were cutting edge in this country were some of the first people to really do it well. And we did very, very well with it. And then COVID hit, and everybody stayed home, our medical practice struggled, and, but everyone stayed home and got heavy migrate. And my background is also functional medicine, and I’m a certified clinical nutritionist. So I have that my background. And we fell into a new weight loss program, a way of balancing metabolism and helping people create new habits and drop weight very, very quickly. And now we’ve had over 3000 people go through this program, we use health coaches and their practitioners and metabolic testing. And it’s really changed everything. So that’s been the the transition that kind of went from chiropractic to, to functional medicine, stem cell therapy, and now putting it all together doing the metabolic reset with the stem cell therapy.

Mike Malatesta  13:16

Okay, so it’s an evolution of the practice than not a new practice. Okay. Okay, well, thanks for the clarification. I wasn’t I wasn’t sure about that. So I’m just going to ask because because it’s it’s it’s like fresh in the news, but, and I’m sure this isn’t part of your program, but the diabetic drugs that are being sort of recast as weight loss drugs, ozempic, and we’ll go V and some of the others. I think people listening are are hearing those names now. And they’re hearing you know, how its how it’s helping people and how they’re trying to everybody who’s got a drug like that is trying to get it the FDA to approve it as a weight loss drug. What’s the feeling? What’s your feeling about, about those?

Jeff Donatello  13:58

I think it was epic, and I think semaglutide And some of these peptide based drugs are amazing at losing weight with side effects. I think it slows down gastric emptying, and it works to lose weight. But it’s like taking a train into the middle of the desert. How do you get out it’s a one way train. So yeah, they’re gonna tell you the weather with a healthy diet, but it’s so sad because it’s like there’s always something that catches the general public’s eye and it they’re looking for that miracle pill. Oh, there is and it loses weight quick, and you know, some of the side effects I think psychosis is one of the side effects so you don’t need to do it you just need to be treated or looked upon by a professional as an individual and and really be listened to. So our whole program is based on real food. We don’t want people to over exercise initially we don’t want prepackaged meals. We want to guide you with health coaching for about three months, you’re gonna lose almost 40 pounds in that timeframe, but we teach you how to keep it off because We establish new habits. And unfortunately, this is not part of our drug insurance based model Mike. So the only people that can do it you have to you have to market you have to be able to quote unquote, sell, right, get that message across to people. So they, they give you your their hard earned money, and what better way to invest in your money except in yourself, right? So, but it takes that whole message. So really what we’ve done, if you really want it, I find that interesting, we use DJs. Right now to we have DJs and find a good one that really has a great following. And we get them to lose weight and keep it off, and they talk about it. And

Mike Malatesta  15:40

so for real DJs, like people that are on the radio, you’re talking about

Jeff Donatello  15:44

real big DJs I mean, Boston all over the area, in DJs, run TV with it. And these are, you know, people that that trust the DJ, and they see the last 40 5060 pounds, and they talked about it. And the great thing, the funny thing was, is that I get to have relationships with these DJs. And they’re cool people and I do a lot of TV commercials, I’m on the radio with them. And it’s just fun to get to know Him. And also, we changed our lives. I mean, the DJs, I just talked to three of them in Boston, between three of them, they lost 150 pounds like a year ago, and kept it off and their lives are different, their health is different. And it’s fun to be on the end of you know, they appreciate you so much. So I’m just going to fix my computer here, let’s say yeah, so they in love, you know, they love the program, and it shows in their daily interaction with their listeners.

Mike Malatesta  16:34

So yeah, just getting back to the the weight loss, diabetic drugs. But I read about them. And I know it’s still early, but I read that, you know, it’s an injection right now, it’s not like a pill or something, you got to have to go and get an injection. And, and it’s very effective. But what’s not proven like most, like most diets, when when or most diets are most fats, when it doesn’t create new habits, except the habit of having an injection put into you, when you go off of it. Your body isn’t your mind, your body, your willpower, whatever it is. And I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on what it is inside of a person that keeps them going. But within case studies, you don’t have a habit. And so when you don’t have a habit, you go off of this thing that’s working for you miracle, a miracle. I don’t know what the right miracle like a miracle, and you don’t you, you’re likely to go back to where you were like you are with many magic pills, because you don’t have the habits. I don’t know, how is that? How do you build habits in the people that go through your programs?

Jeff Donatello  17:39

Um, you know, I think it’s sitting down and talking to people. And you know, we have health coaches, like I mentioned before, that are all certified, they know what questions to ask and develop relationships. And there were them for three months, once a week for, you know, 3045 minutes, and they really determined what their physical, chemical and emotional stressors are, right? Because when it comes down to your health, we always we talked about, you know, you got to exercise move, you got to eat, right, you got to sleep, and you have to have good emotional relationships, those four things, that’s everything, and of those four pillars is missing, then, then you’re going to be stressed out. And if you’re stressed out, your body’s going to be in a fight or flight response, it’s going to hold on to its fact that doesn’t know when its next meal is right. And and then you gotta stay heavy. So you have to address all of those components and, you know, the emotional stress or is a big part of it. And we have people I had a lady that came in and she was down 15 pounds. And she we have we have weekly meetings, like mastermind meetings with our staff, our medical staff, and this lady struggled and she hadn’t lost any weight. And it’s very rarely to be of someone looking to lose 10 or 15 pounds. And I asked them I said What’s her home life like and they sell that’s her problem. So what is it she was three years ago, she got divorced from her husband. And he still lives on the second floor of the house. And he’s every day and he won’t move out. And it’s a nightmare for her. So she couldn’t sleep. She scared of the guy. She’s in this fight or flight response. And her body’s just holding on to all the fat because it can’t differentiate between being scared of her husband and when her next meal is coming right evolutionarily.

Mike Malatesta  19:25

We can’t distinguish between the things it just knows that there’s stress so we’re just

Jeff Donatello  19:30

dealing with this keeps the food on the long term energy source which is fat for women usually right around the middle which is deadly, right because belly fat and visceral fat is the most dangerous type of fat and made exudes different types of chemical messengers. If we get into, you know, science, interleukin six tumor necrosis factor, these are pro inflammatory cytokines. They set you up for cancers. They set you up for all sorts of diabetic situations we know that This. So having excess belly fat is super unhealthy. And it has to go if you’re looking to have longevity of any sort.

Mike Malatesta  20:09

And you know what’s interesting about this real fat is that very, I would say 90% of Americans have never even heard of it, first of all. And so they don’t even know what it is, they don’t know what you just said, you know, the bad things about it, they don’t, they’ve never been tested or measured for it. And even I, until about five years ago, I’d never heard of it either. But then I went in and I got scanned for visceral fat. And I thought go, I thought going in, I’m like, Oh, this is gonna be, I’m in pretty good shape, this is going to be, you know, I’m going to do well. And I didn’t do all that well. And if that not prompted me to take some action that I wouldn’t have taken otherwise, you know, not knowing what was going on inside. And the thing that the thing about belly fat, industrial fat is sometimes as I understand it, at least you can have no outward belly fat and still have excess visceral fat inside of you, which is, which is, as you said, it’s, I would call it maybe likely precancerous, I would say, you know, something happening in the visceral fat is getting into the rest of your body, and likely either promoting the growth of cancer inside of you, or, you know, getting your T cells so busy that they, they don’t get surprised by cancer and can’t find it. Yeah, who knows? For

Jeff Donatello  21:34

sure, I do know that. If you if you don’t have, you know, the visceral fat is not gonna be as prevalent if you’re not overweight, right. But the literal majority of how we’re going to have it, the big thing is non alcoholic fatty liver, right. That’s, that’s mean, I don’t want to come across an expert on that. But that’s something that we’re seeing more and more of, nowadays, which is really scary, too. So just our hell our country’s in a really sad state of affairs when it comes to the health. I mean, 70% of people are obese, right? Or at least overweight. Right? So that’s scary.

Mike Malatesta  22:07

So let’s, um, we’ve kind of got these silos that we can go into, with weight loss being one of them regenerator of techniques, like stem cells, for example, we’ve got longevity, we’ve got the ability, perhaps, we certainly will, at some point in the near future. To grow organs. We have pluripotent stem cells, where we can take our own, we can harvest our own stem cells, which is was kind of the thing you mentioned earlier. You said, hey, people should know that you can get stem cells in the US Well, I think everybody’s most people’s ideas of stem cells goes back to the embryonic stem cell discussion, right? Like you have to take it from an embryo or an aborted embryo or whatever. And of course, the science is way, way, way past that. So maybe we should maybe we should, if you don’t mind, maybe let’s just talk about stem cells. And in layman’s terms first, first, Jeff, and then how you use them, how they work, why they work and what they work for.

Jeff Donatello  23:09

Well, you’ve obviously you’ve already got some studying, you know, pluripotent multiphoton embryonic using those terms, right. Yeah. Yeah. Personnel, they just hear stem cells. And some of them were caught up in, in the 80s. Right, the religious right when they were really against what was happening, we were creating life and then we’re killing it. Right, which is unethical and aborted fetuses and all that to be clear, that doesn’t happen anymore. It’s illegal. It might happen in foreign countries, but it’s not something in the in the United States, we don’t need it to happen. We’ve had over 3000 people go through these therapies, we have people to fly in from all over the country. They just two guys flew in from Montreal on a private jet today to do this. So the reality is, there’s different ways to do it. We have evolved with our techniques and using purified amniotic fluid, right, so healthy baby healthy mom, mom raises her hand. There’s nine different cord bank companies around the country that do lots of different things. They’re the ones that go in and will freeze your stem cells for later use, right. But they also will take out that amniotic fluid at birth, no one’s harmed, and it’s third party tested for disease. And it’s super, super healing. What it does the it’s what’s protected us and help us evolve over 80,000 Is it Wednesday comes around, but 80,000 generations, we’ve evolved 2 million years. And that fluid not only protects the baby for mom falling on the baby, but it’s much more than that it protects the baby from Mom’s diseases. So let’s get into a little bit about what’s in it right because we have a scientist where you have to really make sure when you’re vetting these labs out, and is that there’s a lot of cash grabs out there. We want labs that have been checked out by the FDA. They have been audited by the FDA and I use the lab scientist or who has a PhD in stem cell therapy. He’s been doing it over and over again for years, and what he has come up with a way to take Get that embryonic fluid out and not grow, but to differentiate what’s in it. And what he does is he pulls out 250 billion of these little micro vesicles. So think of like a little bubble. And this is exactly what you have in you as a human being, we just have 250 billion of these little micro vesicles. And what they do in utero is they help upregulated and downregulated genes, make your immune system work to protect the baby and make new proteins. So it’s messenger RNA and micro RNA and these 250 billion microvesicles, plus a series of proteins that are there to protect and help heal tissue. So what do you think happens when we take one cc of that, and it’s frozen and shipped up to our little office in New Hampshire, and our nurse practitioner, thaws it out, and injects it into a shoulder or a knee, or hip or a backer neck is full of arthritis, right? under ultrasound guidance. That’s the other thing, we want to make sure that we’re using imaging to look exactly where that tissue is damaged. And then we inject it and it starts healing tissue, and over usually around six to eight weeks, and you’re gonna see a 50% reduction in symptoms. And then over about four to six months, most people are 80 to 90%. Better, as long as we vet them out properly. So here’s the issue. Again, it’s not a poor players in this regenitive biologic world, there are people out there, it’s a big cash grab, and they’ll take on anybody, we want to push people away, if they’re devoid of comorbidities. Remember, during COVID All the people that died had multiple pathology so if your hemoglobin a one C, which is a marker for type two diabetes is above 789, if you’re on multiple medications, if you’re hugely overweight, these are people that aren’t going to heal. So we’re going to push those people away, we’re going to move them into our metabolic reset program, get them healthy, and make a lot of these people never have to have stem cell therapy, it’s amazing once we get their systemic inflammation to die down, their joints heal up. So it’s it’s one of those things that works very, very well. But you got to follow all the steps, you have to really know what you’re doing as far as the skill and the art of injecting and have a good product and, and really have someone with experience that that uses this product on you.

Mike Malatesta  27:16

Okay? And the, the age of the stem cells that get injected into you are very important, right? You need young stem cells, if you’re going to regenerate. You need you need is that correct? That’s my that’s my understanding is you need

Jeff Donatello  27:31

these stem cells use your biologics.

Mike Malatesta  27:34

So what’s the difference? Why don’t you clear that up? What’s the difference between biologic and a simsa? Yeah, so

Jeff Donatello  27:39

a stem cell when you talk about multiphoton, pluripotent endothelial there’s all these stem cells that right now to get from a third party, we don’t really do that from a from a donor. If you want pure stem cells, you’re gonna get it from

Mike Malatesta  27:52

yourself. Yeah. Okay. Which is what I was mentioning. Yeah. Yeah, that’s kind of an old

Jeff Donatello  27:56

way to do it. I mean, it’s still done in this country. A lot of orthopedist still do it. I think a lot of them don’t know that this is super available, and they haven’t really caught up to it, to use your own, especially if you’re older. If you’re pushing 4550 There’s a word called Word call, where there’s a word senescent, right. Through the aging process, she putting old stuff back in that really doesn’t work anywhere near Day Zero. biologics, right.

Mike Malatesta  28:26

The cells have lived their lives basically. Or

Jeff Donatello  28:29

they’ve lived half their life and they’re the DNA is just used up, the telomeres are shortened and it just doesn’t work as well, in my opinion.

Mike Malatesta  28:38

Yeah, I’m sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure I understood it.

Jeff Donatello  28:42

Yeah. So I guess what it comes down to is if you go overseas, if you have like paralysis or MS or some really weird puppy stuff, a lot of times overseas, they’ll harvest your own stem cells and that might be the best way to do it over a few days and then injected back in in your central nervous system under anesthesia with a an anesthesiologist, that might be the best way for like a paralysis. I wouldn’t treat paralysis in my office. Personally, I would go to Panama or Costa Rica, but for Joint Pain for for muscle pairs or tendon or ligament tears, you know, you can especially arthritis, it there’s a lot of places here that are very, very good. Usually what we use,

Mike Malatesta  29:22

okay, I had I had a doctor on my show, Tim Nelson and he’s at the Mayo Clinic, Episode 354 and Tet Tim is taking these pluripotent stem cells from children who have cardiac defects where they’re going to need a heart transplant. And he and his lab and his team are essentially building new hearts from these stem cells. So it’s, it’s still still early but so amazing. And there are a lot in there. There are a number of companies that are out and we’re going as aliens out there doing that kind of work, and I just was blown away by the possibilities when I was talking to him.

Jeff Donatello  30:08

Yeah, it’s so cool. There’s definitely a future and it’s it is the future and it can’t happen fast enough at this point.

Mike Malatesta  30:16

Yeah, I was at a conference and there’s a woman named Doris Taylor there. And she runs a company called Organa. Med bio. And they are, their plan is basically to create like a heart Hotel. So they’re taking Pig, pig hearts, and they’re stripping all the pig out of them. And they’re using the pig, the district, pig heart as a scaffold to put new. Yeah, it’s amazing. And she, she she believes that in five years, they’re going to be able to actually have an or an inventory in Oregon in heart Oregon inventory. Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. Yeah, sure. So you bet. One of the things you mentioned there was when you know, the COMAR patients with comorbidity that were that were there not ideal for what is it called again, not stem cells, I want to make sure neutral? Again, regenerative

Jeff Donatello  31:19

biologics, is the broad term violent. Yeah, we’re using what’s called purified amniotic fluid. Okay, so it’s just a type that we use. They, they wouldn’t be the best candidate because you’re systemically inflamed. And that just be

Mike Malatesta  31:36

Yeah, and that’s what I wanted to get to because I, I mentioned this visceral fat thing. So after I got that, I changed my habits, I lost about 25 pounds, and I’ve kept it off. So five years, but I had to to your point, I had some pain in my knees, some pain in my shoulder pain here, my foot, my you know, my running would hurt my feet and stuff. And I always I just thought, well, you know, I’m getting all this is this, whatever. But I lost that weight, and the and the inflammation. And I want to get more into that. Because people I don’t think people really understand what that is. And the number of just sort of lingering, chronic aches and pains with me at least just went away. They just all went away, which is what you’re saying is likely can can can happen with a lot of patients without I’ll tell

Jeff Donatello  32:25

you a quick story. I had a lady that was 310 pounds. And she came in and this is when about three years ago when I was actually doing sales and I I talked to her and she started our weight loss program and she had horrible knees and I did the consult on the second floor of her office. I felt bad because she was one of these people that was taking one step, and then rest another step rest. And she came in and she needed to lose the weight. But her knees were in agony. And in her mind it was because she had 310 pounds pounding down on the knees. Right? And that’s what you would think the average person would say that’s a physical stress word. Well, in one week, Lady lost 10 pounds, right, which is pretty normal. That’s normally usually 10 to 12 pounds. But I watched this lady walk up the stairs A week later, and she walked up the stairs. And I said timeout timeout. I didn’t see you last week. You couldn’t do that. She goes oh yeah, my pain was like anatomy 10 skills now to that no, this is not a modification. She’d have any steps? None None. So what the point is this, it’s a molecular inflammation, right? That was causing joint dysfunction, her joints for inflame, I have a broken thumb from mountain biking when I eat ice cream and eat like garbage. This talks to me more, which is why the five pounds down it wasn’t a mechanical stretch very, you have less tumor necrosis factor, interleukin six prostaglandins, all these chemicals that get into those joints and just inflame any damage you’ve ever had in there accelerates them, but it’s reversible, like this lady one week, she felt better. And what I get to see, it’s really frustrating because we see people change like that we’ve had so many type two diabetics, like probably 80% of non insulin dependent type two diabetics are off their medication, the first one and a few give us two months, the majority of insulin dependent is that people with needles, they get off their medications too. And that happens in two months. We see it over and over and over again. So it’s frustrating when they’re just, you know, they they have a blood sugar issue. Here’s a drug, you know, it’s not a disease. It’s a temporary condition, unless you treat it like a disease and that’s that’s the wrong way to treat in my mind. But that’s the pharmaceutical and insurance industry running our country and people suffer is sad.

Mike Malatesta  34:47

And while we’re on the inflammation thing, I think and you I think you explained it pretty well. So there’s a lot of inflammation. Like most people, I think sort of equate inflammation with something they see a bruise or They see something on the exterior of their body and they say, okay, my hands puffed up, right? Because or whatever, but the inflammation and that is a kind of inflammation but the inflammation on the inside you can’t see. Right?

Jeff Donatello  35:12

Yeah. Right. So if you pound your arm and you get red blood, right, the blood vessels bounce or dilate and you get, you get a maybe hematoma, right? That’s acute inflammation. Chronic inflammation is a silent killer, you don’t see it, you know, the number one. Most people know this, I think, I don’t know the number one symptom of people with heart disease is death, they have a heart attack and die. So 60% of people didn’t even know they had a an occlusion, or they had plaquing. So it’s, it’s one of those things that, you know, you have to look at the right bloodwork to see ahead of time. And if you go to your doctor, your doctor, they want to help us they get into this profession, but they’re trained by pharmaceutical companies, and they’re limited. So the CBC that you do a complete blood chemistry is not worth the paper it’s written on, it really isn’t and to narrow, really good pick good blood work is to have a disease, and then you can get the five pages of metabolic blood panel. So you come in our office, and you pay for that. But you get five pages, not only that, we take it all and we narrow down the ranges into functional ranges where a healthy human being should be. So traditional medical people are going to look at the lab normal, who goes to allow my sick people, people think like, yeah, you’re okay, we’re gonna see patterns that pop up. And there’s certain markers that we have to look at that they’re not going to look at like insulin, and homocysteine, and C reactive protein, all these things that the average person is not gonna have any clue. But it’s our job to understand that as functional medicine practitioners, to learn what to do about it. And that’s what we specialize in.

Mike Malatesta  36:51

So when, when someone comes in to see you, take us through the steps that happened. Because when you go to see your doctor, which is what most people have an awareness of, they say, Well, what hurts? What’s the problem? You describe it the best you can they do this, this, this and this? And then they say, Well, I think it could be this, here’s what I want you to do. Take a prescription Take, take ibuprofen, you know, sit, relax for a little while, whatever, whatever it is, I’m assuming your approach is a little bit different. So someone comes in to see you what’s what’s step one, step two, let’s just say they’re there. They’re over over. Let’s just say they’re overweight. Yeah,

Jeff Donatello  37:32

so so just go back for a second you go to your medical doctor, the pre annual checkup, the doctor has seven minutes to sit with you. That’s what I mean, yeah, or their computer. Because this is what the average person doesn’t know. I have medical doctor friends. They’re doing their notes, because they have 35 and 40 people that they have to see in managed care that day. And if they don’t, then they got two hours at the end of the day when they could be home with their family. So there, you only have seven minutes to talk to your doctor and tell them all your problems. And they’re just trying to get their nose down. They’re squeezed right now. So first and foremost is we want to do a metabolic Assessment Program, or what’s called the metabolic Assessment Panel, and it looks at all your organ systems, and we can see patterns develop. So that’s part of the paperwork, we do a complete intake. The first day the health coach will go through all of that with you, and really spend time going over the program what it is we’re going to do, and then we send you off to the lab, lab core, local lab where they’re all over the country. They do bloodwork, we’re going to like I mentioned, the metabolic panel, they get to look at all the bloodwork panels, we’re going to look at cortisol rhythms 20 priority, but heard of the stress test. Yeah, so I think this is the most interesting thing that should be done across the board. So if again, we talked about sleep, right? exercise, diet, super important, but if you don’t sleep, you’re in trouble. And again, the last one emotional relationships, right, you have to have those. But if you have trouble sleeping, and this is for us, you don’t lose weight, unless you get your sleep and back on track. You just don’t. If you have fitful sleep and you’re not sleeping, well, then you’re gonna wake up with Elevate with low cortisol levels in the morning, your cortisol level, your adrenal glands through the night should put cortisol back in your system to get it to a higher level. So you have energy to take on the day, right? And as a day, those cortisol drops, hormones like melatonin show up, right? And you should hit the pillow and happens again. So we may look at that. In fact, we will look at that and but the big thing though, we’re talking about the initial assessment is we want to do food sensitivities and allergen panels on people because if you gluten, dairy, soy, whatever that is ag allergens, you’re going to create pro inflammatory responses from that boot. And that’s going to pack on the pounds to me like why healthy? Well for you, it wasn’t healthy. So we have to look at you as an individual in order to optimize your health.

Mike Malatesta  40:01

And then based on those two things, you get a supplement plan and an eating plan together for the week, and an exercise plan,

Jeff Donatello  40:10

a follow the whole thing. And then we have different topics, we’re talking about trying to figure out, you know what their issue is, and you’re talking, you’re sitting down and listening to someone, right? With a trained professional, that knows how to hear you, right, and how to act and, and that’s what you need. That’s what human beings need, they need to be heard if they’re going to change.

Mike Malatesta  40:35

Do you mind if we switch over to longevity? Let’s switch. So I’m around a lot of people who have very extended lifetime goals. Some may sound crazy, you know, one guy I’m around, he wants to live 256 and other guys 203 lot of people are like, over 100, right. And maybe more of a mind check than it is anything else. But I think I saw in some of your in your stuff that you know, living to 150 Let’s talk about living to 150 What has to happen in order for you to live 250 And before we get there, I want to just scrape away from everybody who’s listening. The things that aren’t health related, that would cause you maybe not to want to live to 150 so forget it, you know, forget about money. Forget about, you know, you’ve got all the money you need. You’ve got all the relationships you need. You got all that stuff. So so let’s just put that aside and just focus on what your actual health is. Jeff, take us through your feeling, I guess about how to maximize lifespan.

Jeff Donatello  41:38

Yeah, you know, I used to have this wonderful crystal ball, but it broke and I can’t really dish I was you had with it too. And

Mike Malatesta  41:45

it smashed. You cheated it so nicely, and then it’s smashed anyway.

Jeff Donatello  41:52

But no, the number 150 No one is gonna hang there. Right? Yeah. Though, I think the record now is 123. And so if you want to put a number out there, I don’t see any reason why, if it’s nature nurture, right? You have to have good genetics. There’s the fox three gene, have you been tested? Genetically? Do you have a bucks three gene? Do you know if you have that?

Mike Malatesta  42:13

I don’t know off the top of my head. If I have that. What is it?

Jeff Donatello  42:17

Well, there’s a company called human longevity. And there’s the look at your genomics and they look at all the single nucleotide polymorphisms or snips that you have, that your mom and dad have given you that if they’ve given you both of these good longevity genes, and you’re gonna live longer, I was fortunate to have a very, very good gene in that box three world. So this is what happens if mom and dad give you a good genes, and you don’t get hit by a bus and you’re not exposed to chemicals. I mean, if you saw Michael J Fox, right, you know, he’s Parkinson’s. He’s, I found an issue the other day in his mind, he’s all in on what caused that he thinks he was exposed to a chemical at the wrong time in his life that caused a genetic snip to get turned on. Right. It was an epigenetic event. Wrong gene turned on it’s you get sad. So I think if you get the good genes from mom and dad, if you can, what we find there’s certain things that we know increase longevity from different different things we do, right? So I think that hyperbaric oxygen, right? Definitely, it’s been shown to do that it increases telomere length, but telomeres sit on the end of your chromosomes. And as you get older, they shrink. Hyperbaric Oxygen is shown to extend those regenerative biologics have been shown to extend those

Mike Malatesta  43:36

and why Why is that good? They What Why is that good? That there?

Jeff Donatello  43:41

Because the shorter your telomeres, that’s a measurement of how long you’re gonna live. And that’s part of senescence. Cell senescence.

Mike Malatesta  43:48

Okay, I just wanted to tie it back. Yeah, yeah, it’s longer,

Jeff Donatello  43:51

you are younger, your cellular age is younger, right? Your biological age is longer, your cellular age is younger. So that’s what you want. The other thing is we know for a fact that people if you’re 80 bucks, a lighter than normal human being is going to live longer, right? Females going to live longer. And a big one is married people or people in long term relationships live longer. So those are some things that you know, we look at the blue zones around the world and we say okay, what what do they do? And you know, my wife Kelly and I, we talked about this all the time, like, is wine a bad food when the Blue Zones and drinking wine every night? Right? And if you want to strangle these people, but the reality is this, I think that these cultures, they have something in common in that they live a joyous life so happy. Yeah. I think that’s a big component to it. And people, what do you think? I mean, well, I

Mike Malatesta  44:49

think they’re not sitting at a bar by themselves pounding right there. They’re having meals and, and, and having wine or something like that with it. It’s the I’ve come to, to understand that the relationships or healthy relationships, as you mentioned, are so much more important than what I, earlier in life would have thought, you know, because I would have thought, well, you, you basically, decide how you’re going to feel it’s your choice, you can decide how you’re going to feel but but and there’s probably some truth to that. But there definitely seems to be a lot of support for the more you’re around people, the more you’re at a healthy weight, the more that you’re laughing, the more that you’re moving, the more that you’re doing. All the things that a lot of us aren’t doing. The stronger you are, you know, no sarcopenia, right. You don’t want to you don’t want your muscles to just go away. You can’t live you can’t live long if your muscles go away, for example. So yeah, I’d so I think I’m, I’m I, what I find interesting about it is that there’s similarities in all the Blue Zones, but there’s also differences in all the blue zones. And it’s sort of the tricky thing about all of this longevity discussion is nobody knows exactly what’s going to work for you.

Jeff Donatello  46:05

Yeah, no, I would agree. I think that, you know, if you don’t have purpose to think, yeah. Why do you wake up in the morning, if you don’t have purpose, then your brains like, what do I do to fill the day? Anxiety, I remember, I read a study, they took 20 kids, they put them on a farm for two weeks that had anxiety and depression. Every single one of them didn’t at the end of two weeks, because they had a purpose. Right? They were given a job and they dropped the day, they did what they did. So I you know, I think that anxiety and depression is is becoming, you know, pinned to epidemic in this country. And it’s because people just are lost. So I think relationships is where that starts. And if your relationship is sitting on, I got this phone here, right? My relationship is by tick tock influencers. That’s

Mike Malatesta  46:56

right. And the so what? So let’s say healthy lifestyle, healthy weight, healthy relationships. Do you feel as a as a, you know, an expert in what you do from a longevity standpoint? Do you feel like there is a finite life to an Oregon and that finite life will eventually catch up with you? I guess that’s

Jeff Donatello  47:28

thank God. If there wasn’t this would be a Crowded Planet.

Mike Malatesta  47:34

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

Jeff Donatello  47:37

If there wasn’t, we’d have a big problem. We got it, we got to die off. Are we going to stop reproducing one or the other you pair?

Mike Malatesta  47:44

Well, yeah, it depends on what side of the equation you are on. The Fox gene, Fox three gene that you mentioned, you’ve mentioned epigenetics a couple of times. And I would like you to, because I would like you to explain what that is. Because I think people that know it, no it and people who don’t really have no idea. And as, as, as I understand it, this so you’re built, you’re born with genes for a long time, people thought you’re born with genes, you’re born with genes, nothing you can do about it. Epigenetics, I think, is the study of what you can do about it. But I’d like to get your perspective. Like, tell us yeah, I’d actually be

Jeff Donatello  48:23

mom and dad give you pairs of jeans, they matched up, it’s they might give you the same polymorphism. Again, we go back to snips as these gene chains, they may give you similar ones. And if they give you two good ones, it’s awesome. But if they give you two bad ones, and you are under major stress, those genes get turned on they get activated, right, which is why when you’re 40 years old, you all of a sudden might have allergens that you didn’t have before because that gene was turned on by your epigenetic profile. Right. So again, it goes back to your physical, chemical, emotional stressors that you bring into your life, right. So if you’re happy, healthy person, maybe those genes won’t turn on. And your epigenetic profile will be will be mellow. But if you’re under major stress, you’re going to turn the bad genes on those bad snips, those polymorphisms you get turned on, and you now they’re expressed. And you your life is a mess, because you now have this disease or that disease or whatever it is that comes down the pike. So yeah, so really, it goes back to nature, nurture, and the nurture side is the epigenetic component to it.

Mike Malatesta  49:31

So in the example, you mentioned with Michael J, Fox thinking that he had exposure to an environment so that’s an environmental that’s a that’s a nature. Yeah. How would that how would that I mean, I’m just speculate, just speculating here with you, but how would something like that actually impacted gene so if I was exposed to something in an environment, that toxin that I breathed or something? How would it because I don’t know the answer to this How would it actually impact a particular gene that would affect the perhaps would give me Parkinson’s or some other, you know, autoimmune or degenerative disease?

Jeff Donatello  50:10

Yeah, I guess I don’t know exactly at a cellular level, right? I’m not I’m okay. I’ll just but I would say it’s a poison, right? And it’s going to create a us again, we go back to inflammation, it’s going to create this storm in your body, like what’s going on? The same way a divorce would, right? It’s that chemical, a divorce, you’ve talked to people that have gotten divorced, and they end up just going down the tubes. So I think it creates this storm in your body of chemical messengers that you buy isn’t like, and if you’re predisposed to something, your body’s going to try to adapt to that. And a bad gene might get turned on. I guess, a molecular biologist might be listening to that and go, he’s full of crap. But that’s the way I would interpret it.

Mike Malatesta  50:54

Well, okay. Fair enough. That’s I was just looking for your interpretation. And since you your studied enough, where your opinion matters a little bit, even if you don’t know, down to the cellular level, I think so the you mentioned the oxygen hyperbaric what, what is that? What exactly is that? And what does it do for you?

Jeff Donatello  51:15

Yeah, so there’s hyperbaric oxygen chambers or soft chambers, there’s Mark chambers, and they get you down to a certain number of atmospheres of pressure, which equate to being like under the sea. It’s anywhere from 15 feet to let’s say, 30 or 40 feet, there’s a number it’s like 3.0 atmospheres like 1.4 to three point out a hard solid hyperbaric chamber is going to be hundreds of 1000s of dollars. They have soft ones for 15 to $20,000. When it does, you get in it, the soft ones take forever, it’s an hour and a half minute, and it’s a slow push of oxygen cellularly into your system. The whole idea is that cancer and disease does not like a hype, they love hypoxia, they love lack of oxygen, right? So if you oxygenate a system, it creates help the body craves oxygen at a cellular level. So my book was about exercise with oxygen therapy. So IE why you’re hooked up to a mask, and there’s a bag and that bag and 50 minutes you’re breathing 93% oh two, and it’s forcing it into the cells in a much quicker way. So if you’re looking at if you’re still listening to this podcast, and I haven’t bored you, and you’re still on Iwan exercise with oxygen therapy is a relatively inexpensive way to get really, really healthy, especially if you have Lyme disease. It makes a big difference with people with Lyme and we have shown that to be true. Over and over again. I can talk a little bit about lying if you want, maybe other people would line.

Mike Malatesta  52:47

Sure you open it up. I just got bit by a tick the other day and I was a little worried about it. Listen, we I pull

Jeff Donatello  52:52

hundreds of ticks off my dog. I had one the other day I’m I haven’t been bitten, but they’re everywhere, right? Yeah. So the spire Keith, that causes Lyme is called Borrelia burgdorferi. And what it does is it stays in your cells in your tissue, and then it comes out and it does damage and then it goes back in. So it’s very hard to really get on it. So if you exercise with oxygen, at the right time when those when those fire keeps are in your system, they do not do well. They hate a high oxygen concentration. They hate a high temperature. So if you elevate your body temp with exercise and you pound them with oxygen, it creates a Herxheimer reaction and a Herxheimer reaction. If you if you have Lyme, you know what that feels like that’s die off from killing the Lyme, the beryllium burgdorferi. So we have seen people that are total train wrecks in 678 treatments of your exercise with oxygen get very, very good, better very quickly. Anything by a unit hyper max is the name of the company. I don’t make a dime off of it. But they have my book. So if you go to Dr. Jeff donatella.com The book is on there. If you’re if you’re into you know exercise with oxygen. That’s a good book to read. I think so I wrote it.

Mike Malatesta  54:09

Okay. Yeah. Well, then it must be yes. So thanks for the explanation. There’s two things I well, you met you talking through that reminded me of a guest that I had Dennis you. And he was talking to me about cocoon water and bathing in Cocoon water. Have you ever heard of cocoon water? K AQ,

Jeff Donatello  54:30

but I pride myself on knowing just a little bit about everything. I never heard a good cooling water.

Mike Malatesta  54:36

I never did either. I never did either. But Dennis was like, Man, you drink cocoon water.

Jeff Donatello  54:41

And what type of cocoon are we talking? Well, it’s

Mike Malatesta  54:45

it’s K Qun. And it’s oxygen infused water is essentially what makes you feel a little better, hyper saturated oxygen infused water and then he bathed in it as well. Not every day from time to time. He talked about his mother having some form of cancer and started bathing in Cocoon water. And similar to what you’re saying, I don’t know if there’s causal or just, you know, related but the, you know, your body’s absorbing the oxygen from the water through your skin cells and repairing things. It’s kind of like what you talked about. So I was just curious, because I saw that you do this. Is it massaging? Is that how you say it? Or this? Massage is a Soji?

Jeff Donatello  55:33

Yeah, so no, I’m SOG is a Japanese term for for one event that you do each year, they have a 50% chance of failing. That’s

Mike Malatesta  55:42

okay. How do you know that it’s a 50% chance of failing, is it because you just tell yourself

Jeff Donatello  55:46

that you pick some strenuous event? You know, Jesse is just Yes. Yeah. So um, yeah, so that’s my Misuzu this year as I’m doing a triathlon and um, you know, I’ve done 100 of them, but it’s been 10 years. So okay, I got to get out there and run more. So that’s why you can,

Mike Malatesta  56:07

you can do what Jesse did and have David Goggins come and spend some time taking your

Jeff Donatello  56:14

list that was living with a seal? On No. New Book. I like it a lot. Yeah. Like, you’re living with a monk. Okay. Work, upstate New York living with a mom living with the monks for like a

Mike Malatesta  56:28

month. Okay, cool. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This is a lot of fun for me to talk about all these different things. And I think we only scratched the surface on what we could have gotten to, before we go. Is there anything that I should have asked you that you want to leave with, with with with the audience, about you are about

Jeff Donatello  56:51

I think that if you are a shoe and all this stuff, you know, it’s the Dr. Jeff thought of Halloween is not the site to go to its center for well.com. If you if you have shownotes, if you want to put it in there, sir. We’re about 70% of the people we work with are virtual. So they don’t need to fly into you know, unless you want it, you got to have the regenitive work done, but the weight loss, functional medicine, we pride ourselves in having a really good system that we can work without ever having you come into the office. Yeah, it helps.

Mike Malatesta  57:22

Nice. Okay, well, so get Jeff’s ebook. It’s free on on his website, 15 minutes to live, or as I gave you, his Dr. Jeff Donatella, his website, and then you’ve got Center for well.com. Thank you so much for coming on. And for those of you listening, thank you for investing your time with me today. And until we meet next time, please maximize your greatness and make your future your property. Something that you are very proud to everybody. Thanks for listening to the show. And before you go, I just have three requests for you one if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me Give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two, I’ve got a book it’s called owner shift how getting selfish got me unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller, and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes and Noble Amazon, you can get it everywhere. If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy. And if you get it please let me know what you think. Number three, my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday. And I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name Mike malatesta.com. You do that right now put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you