Why Some Spine Surgeries Should’ve Never Happened- Jeff Gross MD

What if spine surgery isn’t the breakthrough—it's the backup plan?

In a world where millions are told “scalpel first” for back pain, joint degeneration, and nerve issues, a quiet revolution is happening in regenerative medicine, non-surgical spine care, stem cells, exosomes, and peptides. On this episode of the Crackin’ Backs Podcast, we sit down with one of the true pioneers in the field—Dr. Jeff Gross, a spine-fellowship trained, board-certified neurosurgeon who’s pushing healing beyond the knife and toward regeneration.

Dr. Gross has spent over two decades treating back pain, neck pain, disc issues, and sports injuries using both traditional neurosurgical expertise and the latest in regenerative therapies, helping thousands of patients find alternatives to spinal surgery and accelerate healing naturally.

In this episode we break down:
• When stem cells and exosomes actually help back and joint pain
• How peptides are being used responsibly in regenerative care
• The filters Dr. Gross uses to decide who truly needs surgery—and who doesn’t
• What the science actually says (and what’s hype) about regenerative spine repair
• How doctors can match the right biologic tool to the right problem
• What real healing metrics look like—beyond pain scores and imaging

If you’ve ever typed “Can stem cells fix my back?”, “alternatives to spine surgery”, or “non-surgical regenerative spine care” into Google… this episode finally gives you evidence-based answers from someone who’s lived both sides of the scalpel.

 About Dr. Jeff Gross

Dr. Jeffrey Gross, MD is a spine fellowship trained neurological surgeon practicing in Nevada and California with over 20 years of experience treating complex spine and joint conditions. He is the founder of ReCELLebrate, a regenerative medicine clinic based in Las Vegas focused on stem cell therapy, exosome treatments, longevity consultations, and biohacking strategies that help patients heal, reduce pain, and improve overall health without immediate surgery. Dr. Gross has also authored scientific publications, spoken internationally, and helped thousands of patients explore non-surgical options for chronic pain.

 Learn more about Dr. Jeff Gross and regenerative care: HERE

Learn about conservative spine care and second opinions: HERE

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Transcript

Dr. Spencer Baron: 0:01

What if spine surgery isn't the real breakthrough, but there's a that is a backup plan. Today we're sitting with Dr Jeff Gross, a spine fellowship trained neurosurgeon known for pushing medicine beyond the scalpel into stem cells, exosomes, peptides and some non surgical Spine Care. Welcome to the show. Dr Jeff, thank you, and

Dr. Jeff Gross: 0:23

thanks for that great intro. Is it okay that I borrow it and use it elsewhere? That's changing my business card? Let's do it.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 0:35

There you go. That's great. Well, I'll tell you what. This is going to be fantastic, because both Dr Terry and I, we see patients all the time for the last 35 to 40 years that talk about getting surgery, surgery, surgery, and now with this new frontier, you know, we're looking forward to having this conversation. So let me start out with asking you, you trained in one of the most scalpel forward specialties there is. And you know, what was that? What was that moment? A patient, you know, a complication, a recovery, you watch, where you thought, man, there's got to be a better way.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 1:16

I think that was there, you know, brewing all along, iteratively growing with each frustrating moment of going to these annual Neurosurgery and Spine conferences, seeing my colleagues, some are friends, some are idiots, and who knows, I might have been one of those At one point, and hopefully I'm not too much now and and sadly, the Venn diagram overlaps, but you know what I saw was people presenting research. Okay, let's look at a series of 50 spine fusions or something, and that research was presented 40 years ago, so things weren't changing. Meanwhile, professional athletes are going to Europe 20 years ago to get stem cells, and I just didn't feel I was sort of the non surgical surgeon. I would show up in the hospital, which I really don't like hospitals, that's where all the sick people are, but I would show up in my my colleagues was, oh, we haven't seen you in forever, and that's because I was only doing surgery if we absolutely have to. We look back at my numbers a few years back, and it was something like 5% of the patients I saw got surgery. We were just trying everything else. First, I was in a spine clinic. We had a chiropractor as one of the offerings in our clinic. You know other things too. And we would try everything. Surgery was the last option, unless there was some kind of emergency spinal cord involvement, something. So I was sort of the non surgical surgeon. And when you go through surgical training, they tell you, Okay, during your residency, you'll learn how to do surgery, and then when you when you're done, you'll learn how not to do it. And I just really took that the heart and worked hard at it. Meanwhile, my my surgeon friends are patting themselves on the back. I did 350 surgeries this year. I pat on my self on the back when I did less than 50. So that's kind of how it went.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 3:18

You are a rare breed, but a growing breed, from what you see. And I find that really fantastic, because the you know, we always warn, you know, patients about surgery. We've even had neurosurgical nurses. Yeah, we've had, we always wondered why the nurses would end up going to the chiropractor, and they said, Man, if patients knew what went on during that low back surgery, or what how intense it was, you wouldn't do it.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 3:48

Yeah, it's still, it's still quite barbaric in in certain ways. Don't get me wrong. There are cases, fractures, massive situations where you need, still need, right? You know, to have these open surgeries, these hardware placements. It still exists, but it's overdone. And what happened in this watered down healthcare, sick care system, institutionalized, driven by payers. You know, you get five minutes with a surgeon. He throws up an MRI, doesn't even touch you, and he's treating the MRI, not the patient. And sometimes what we see in MRI has nothing to do with the pain. So, so that that art of medicine is lost in that interaction, and it's just, it's just transactional.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 4:30

So, you know, like, I so I gotta ask you, if you sit down and you go to, like, this black tie affair, and somebody hears your neurosurgeon, and they're like, Ooh, I got to talk to this guy about this. And we think of surgeons as repair shops, and you're actually more like a mechanic. And how does that conversation go when they hear your neurosurgeon? But then what's your simplest North Star line that you give them back? That that you. Kind of educates him and tells you the direction you go.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 5:03

Well, I tell them a lot, what I what I just explained to to you folks, and I say, I'm, I'm a recovering neurosurgeon. I think a good, a good neurosurgeon knows how to help patients avoid surgery. In fact, I used to tell patients, and it's still true today. No one knows better than your neurosurgeon how to avoid spine surgery. Like I really know how to because I've been in there. I've touched the muscles, I've touched the facet joints, you know, I have a different I have an internal understanding. This goes for the radiologist too. You know, patients come in and say, Oh, I looked at my MRI report, and I have a disc herniation or something. And I'd say, well, the radiologist got this a little bit wrong. They missed one up here, but he's a radiologist who looks at those all day. I said, Yes, but the last time he was inside of his spine was in medical school cadaver lab. So surgeons really have an understanding of the anatomy and the pathology, so we should know best how to avoid that surgery, and we have to start early and prevention, and so many things go into that. And I've really sort of upped my game on that now, when I about eight years ago, when I I tiptoed and then jumped full both feet fully into the regenerative medicine, you know, cellular biology side of medicine.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 6:22

You know, you mentioned a little while ago that athletes were going to Europe for stem cells, 20 years ago, and and yet, a lot of people still to this day think of stem cells for your shoulder, for your knee, like maybe a hip or something they're not really thinking about for the back. And, yeah, can you listen? And you're known as the cell whisperer. Is the stem cell whisperer. So let's, let's whisper, and then start shouting. Talk to us. Educate us about stem cells for the back and and how it works.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 6:53

Well, listen, there's great research literature, slash medical evidence, publications out of Europe and Asia. For a few decades, we are late to the party here in the US, but they have applications for joints. So not just, you know, knees and shoulders and thumbs and ankles, but facet joints, and in some cases, disc and we have growing opportunities to help people with disc issues. And a lot of that we learn from the peripheral joints, because knees, for example, are the low hanging fruit. They're very common an issue, commonly an issue. They have a flat, interactive surface, so you get a lot more coverage when you do something, as opposed to sort, you know, ball and socket joint, a shoulder or a hip or an elbow, which take a lot longer to benefit. And we do those too, but yeah, facet joints are incredibly amenable to regenerative options, and we have, again, some some things we can do for disc degeneration that have come out of this research. So what we do is we don't make anything up. It's based on good science somewhere, just probably not from the US

Dr. Spencer Baron: 8:13

good so who? Oh, go

Dr. Terry Weyman: 8:15

ahead, sorry about that. Can you elaborate a little bit more on we hear umbilical cord stem cells, blood stem cells, you know, fat cells. Can you elaborate a little more on on what works well with spines?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 8:29

Yeah, well, so spines is where you put them. And we'll get a little more granular with that in a moment, I guess. But the the different biologics are what you put in. So that so we try to pair the best of both worlds. So what you can put in is a spectrum of things, all the way from PRP platelet rich plasma coming from your own blood or your own fat, can be spun into some stem cells, or your own bone marrow can be made in stem cells, but I prefer the younger donated sources. This is super ethical. It's handled here in the US from accredited tissue donor services. Same same place you get a liver or cornea. And these are from non covid vaccinated mothers who are having a C section, baby, congratulations. Here's your baby. Hey, you're kind of done with the umbilical cord, placenta, amniotic fluid. We were going to throw it away. Can we have it? And that's kind of how that goes. Those go to accredited, registered FDA, registered, certified labs who handle the tissues and the cleanliness, you know, guidelines, cGMP guidelines. They these are, these are places that are audited by the FDA. They come do site visits, and they have documentation testing. They get quarantined for two weeks to make sure there's nothing growing or infected. They do viral viral testing, every possible viral you can think of. You. And West Nile virus, and they only make available the biologics, stem cells, stem cell signaling, which are exosomes, growth factors, what we call secretome and other components that we can use for these regenerative approaches to things where we're restimulating the old, inflamed body that's just not able to heal itself anymore like it used to, and we're reminding it how to do that.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 10:28

Why was there such an issue with umbilical stem cells? You know, for years ago, there was, like a there was a big controversy of not you would have to go out of the country to get umbilical

Dr. Jeff Gross: 10:42

you know, I don't think that. I think that was some mythology. And there are all these clinics popping up in Tijuana and Mexico and Central America, and they love to advertise that it's illegal in the US, or it's unethical. They come from a board of fetuses. I mean, this was all mythology that big pharma probably had their hand in to suppress us from seeking these natural, non pharmaceutical, non surgery approaches.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 11:10

So that was all going on back then, even more now than ever before. So that's good to hear.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 11:16

We're more aware and open to the concept of it now, I think it's always been.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 11:23

Could you explain, you know, the the average listener is not as aware of where exosomes comes from and from the stem cell? Can you explain a little bit about that, and when you would use a peptide versus a stem cell. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 11:43

So this is my day to day practice, and I see patients, and we we talk peptides and biologics and all kinds of things, lifestyle, all kinds of things. So the, you know, the peptides are small protein molecules, but some of them have therapeutic benefits, and this is growing, and it's really under the heading of cell signaling, like we're trying to encourage and nudge ourselves into behaving more youthfully, more restoratively. That's the, that's the hack of regenerative medicine. That's, that's, that's the, you know, that's how it works, tapping back into the womb and the incredible, you know, protected environment of, you know, healthy cell baby making machinery and and just like, you know, we made our knee, you made the cartilage in your knee. Well, that same factory is there. It's just off, and regenerative medicine can turn it back on. Peptides can be used to also encourage those cells. So all cells signal their neighbors. It's like a neighborhood watch. They tell them, hey, we're under attack. Get ready. Or they tell them, hey, we're all going to help restore this joint. Help us out. And they do that by communicating with their neighbors in two ways. One is with the small proteins, peptides, growth factors, and the other way is through these small vesicles, extracellular vesicles, which we call exosomes. Cells make exosomes. Plants make exosomes. Probiotics in our gut make exosomes, and there's this sort of Symphony of communication going on. We are just now beginning to understand that communication to nudge ourselves into doing what we want them to do. Dr

Dr. Spencer Baron: 13:36

Terry, Don't you find it interesting that he's that that they make sure that stem cells come from the fetus of a non vaccinated covid vaccinated mother. I mean, if you would have said that a couple years ago, I think that been very challenging

Dr. Jeff Gross: 13:53

as to why California would have been illegal.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 13:56

Yeah, yeah, legal a couple states, but you're absolutely

Dr. Spencer Baron: 14:03

not Florida. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Anyway, so can we, can you just go over, like, who would be a candidate for what like at what point? Because we, you know, over the years, we see a variety of different levels of low back pain that don't seem that sometimes don't respond to even conservative management when they come to your office. Do you like have a hierarchy of trauma or injury that you see that goes, Okay, this one would be good for peptides. Or is that just where you start, and then you go exosomes. Or, you know,

Dr. Jeff Gross: 14:48

well, I think we say, you know, everyone's different, right? We start with, yeah, let's talk about your lifestyle. How's your sleep, your exercise, your diet, your nutrition, etc, you know. Because we don't want to offer people regenerative biologics, exosomes or peptides, if the environment is not yet ready. You know, are there other cellular pathways we have to work on? Maybe we do some lab tests. Maybe we need some imaging, and we do imaging at the highest level. So we're talking about MRIs three, Tesla or better, with some additional ordering off the secret menu to get some sequences that that bring the we want to look for the inflammatory changes in the bone edge, so subchondral bone edema, or what in the spine we call modic changes. Are, you know, named for Michael modick, who's a radiologist, and this is, this is really the target, because if you have inflammation in your bone edges, the cells that produce cartilage, which live in the bone, can't work. They can't do it. They can no longer produce cartilage and generate the maintenance of the cartilage, or the lubrication of the cartilage. So just like your hair is a protein that's made in the scalp from a follicle, your cartilage in the joint space is made from a Chondrocyte cell in your bone. And this was well demonstrated by the French over 20 years ago, and they have 15 year follow up studies showing why that's where you have to treat this if you're going to move the needle. So I probably went a bit off outside. I colored outside the lines of your question. But I think that is important, yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 16:37

when a patient comes to you or is referred over to you, and they go, Well, I got I got MRIs, I got X ray, I got CAT scan, you know, the whole nine yards. Yeah. How often will you order one, reorder one with maybe contrast to determine, you know, with gadolinium, you know, whether it's scar tissue or or healthy tissue.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 16:58

Rarely, in my in my spine. Practice, for decades, I've rarely ordered contrast. You know, some doctors think if, oh, you got to get contrast to compare scar tissue to non scar tissue. I think contrast is a heavy metal, gadolinium, and it's, it's not non toxic. So we use it sparingly. I use it to look for infection or cancer. I rarely look at it for scar tissue. I think that's a bit overkill.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 17:26

Wow. That's great. How long, I mean, how long do you think you're still seeing surgeons, and there's, you know, you have a five, six millimeter disc, and they're still doing laminectomies in cages, and they're doing it. And in my opinion, that's 20 years old. Yeah, it's 100 years old. So how do you see this information getting out that people are like, they go to the surgeon. He's like, Oh, you have a you have a six millimeter bulge, and I'll schedule you for surgery in three weeks. And the person's well, you hardly even touch me. And how do you know? And then they but that the surgeons are God, and then they come back, and then six months later they came and move, you know? So, yeah, how do you how do we get the word out that there are other things and they have to trust, yeah.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 18:19

I mean, what we're doing now surgically goes back to the 1940s so it's, you know, 85 years more accurately, you know, putting a bone spacer where a disc was doing a fusion hardware is a little newer metallic hardware. Yeah, and the goal of metallic hardware is to stabilize the fusion so it heals faster, so you can get out of the hospital the next day. These haven't changed in 85 years. Yeah, there's a new widget, a new incision, maybe a little smaller approach. It's the same thing, right? Neurosurgeons do two things, mainly spine. Neurosurgeons, we decompress, make more room in the spine and or fuse the spine. That's it. Those are the two things we do.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 19:04

And what's your thoughts on the artificial disc? I just gonna ask you're making.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 19:10

I like the artificial disc in the right setting, especially the cervical one. It's been great in the right hands. The it's better than a fusion, but you're still doing one of these surgeries with a slight modification, right? It's, it's, it's an advancement. And when you have a completely, you know, complete loss of dysfunction and pain related to that, then it's an option. It's an option,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 19:37

an option. And yet, I understand that sometimes, because how rigid and use of those disc replacements, they're using a metal, which is great, but yet then, as you get older, the adjacent bone starts to deteriorate. Is that. Something you might see,

Dr. Jeff Gross: 20:01

not so much with the artificial disc, but definitely with the fusion, puts more stress above and below. Absolutely, we know that the second generation artificial disc devices have a little bit of metal and then some, you know, acrylic, or, you know, surround metal mechanisms. So there are a lot, there's a lot more. They're less clunky and less stressful. I think, yeah, interesting. The I think,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 20:33

you know, what we typically would see in the office is, you know, they do a trial of conservative management. They come in from maybe a round of, you know, cortisone, or, you know, you know, facet block, or an epidural or something like that. And it makes it harder for us, because now they're coming off of the medications, and yet they're in more pain. And how, at what at that point, how would you manage that, that type of patient that's had that, you know, quite a bit of medical intervention. I mean, what would be the first thing that you do when they come into your office?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 21:12

Yeah, we would break it down. I would get the records from the pain specialists who did the injections to see exactly where they injected. Was it a shotgun blast just to quell pain, or was it strategic and precise, like the right l4 five facet joint to see if that was a pain generator, and what's the result? Did the patient feel amazing in that spot for a few days, or maybe longer? And if they did, okay, that l4 five joint is a pain generator, then we need to focus on that, and then we have options for it. So I think the diagnostic element of some of these injections is important to isolate the pain gener generator, whether or not we're going to do surgery or try something in the regenerative line of things. And I think the more we know about where the pain is coming from, the better we can help the patient, because not all pain is discogenic, not all pain is facetogenic. And of course, we have multifactorial pains, then on top of that, Myo ligamentis and Central, mediated pains, and then amplified, amplified pains, and coming off medication, you know, rebound pains. I mean, it's, it's complex, right? It's an art that you you guys have to attune, be attuned to. I have to be in tune to. And sadly, so many are not

Dr. Terry Weyman: 22:28

on the same guidelines that Spencer just said, sorry about that. Spence you get in patients coming in, and they go, I can't get out pain. And so I had an ablation. Yeah. And, and, and and my first question to him, did he find, did he ask and research where that pain was coming from, or did he just zero in and that blade, the nerves you don't feel anymore, you know, and they never have to answer that question. How do you handle when somebody comes into you and says, I have either they've had the ablation or there's doctor wants to have an ablation, and what are some alternatives to that?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 23:07

Say, Let's look at the evidence. So did they do the right blocks to confirm that you would be a candidate for an ablation? Ablations can be useful for certain. You know, confirmed facetogenic pain. So confirmed, you can't just ablate things. Now, some pain specialists come at this. I have a patient in pain. I just got to take them out of pain. We're just going to kill everything that's that's a shotgun blast. I don't like that. It's not precise. And some patients need ablations at multiple levels, from, you know, chronic, you know, diffuse, facetogenic degeneration and pain, but we have to sort that out very diligently, and then ablations can be useful, sometimes six months or more at a time, the nerves do grow back and the pain does come back. However, we have now been doing some regenerative facet procedures where maybe you don't need the ablations anymore. Ablations have a downside as sure you know you you denervate, take the nerve supply away to the joint, so it's kind of numb, feels better, but you're also taking the same nerve supplies the paraspinal muscles, and you start to lose bulk, and you lose most muscle, and then there, then your posterior chain goes, and then you have debilitation and other problems. And this degeneration accelerates, and there's a cascade of events that that we'd like to avoid, if possible.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 24:37

Do you know how many patients that I am sending this, this program too afterwards, because this is like everything that I've always wanted to hear from another person who's obviously experienced and way more we were meant to meet. Yeah, very I agree. Now I kind of know the answer to this question, but I want to hear your thoughts. Do. Yeah, you started to allude to the fact that, do you? Do you believe that the art of the physical examination is lost, and then a doctor will go, Oh, you have pain here, right here, here, okay, let's do an MRI. And they become so dependent on MRI. Oh yeah,

Dr. Jeff Gross: 25:18

overly dependent, you know. And, and I do agree the exam art and detailed and thoroughness is lost, and it's something else that parallels this. I'll mention because I think you'll find it interesting when we research literature, when you search PubMed, you know, say, hey, I want to look up this topic, the research goes back, and all this has been scanned in and digitized, you know, by NIH, or whoever maintains it, goes back to a certain year. Do you know that year? No, 1965 so, so so much of our observational pattern recognition of the physical exam and symptom description comes from before that, before we had CAT scans. And, you know, CAT scans came around the late 60s. So before, before we had, we'll call it, you know, really good axial imaging. Everything was about the exam and listen to the patient. And, you know, the the real great descriptions of those things are in the older books and older articles. So we're, we've lost that. And I really wish, you know someone would, would digitize those and put them in an amazing AI that could, you know, you could, you could tap into and say, you know, my patient has these odd symptoms, and they say, oh, yeah, we know what that is. Boom. It would really help, because patients present with symptoms, right? They don't present with just an MRI finding. And if you're just looking at the MRI finding, then it's not clinically correlated. So I'm

Dr. Spencer Baron: 26:55

with you. Yeah, we see we tend to comment on how like the seasoned doctor, you know, the one that used to make the house calls, the one that's been around forever that almost doesn't exist, well, it's starting to come back. But which would they call boutique medicine, you know? But the the one that's seasoned has experience and intuition that the the younger doctors don't quite have yet. Nothing bad about it. But I mean, on the on the flip side, some of our the interns that we receive are learning new, fresh ideas, or, you know, some of the nomenclature changes over the years, and I'm still using, like, old terminology. So, I mean, so they're good for certain, you know, experiences as well. But you know, there's something to be said about that physical exam being just the you know, to be thorough and ask the right questions. Yeah. 100% Yeah. So what would what would be the most misunderstood diagnosis that you might see walking into your clinic or office.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 28:04

Well, you know, I'm coming off the spine here I do now that I'm in the regenerative medicine side of things, I see more peripheral joint problems than I do spine issues. For example, knees. Knees are very, very common. We treat a lot of knees. And people come in here with I've got knee pain. My doctor says I have a meniscal tear. They've done surgery. It didn't get better. And I'm looking at them, I'm examining them, I'm looking at their MRIs, and it's a patellar or patellar femoral syndrome. It's a kneecap problem. They're stiff after sitting. They have trouble walking up and down stairs, and it's just missed by the orthopedic docs who have trained to do knees, you know? So again, they're just looking at the MRI. Sometimes meniscal tears don't hurt, just like small disc protrusions don't have to hurt, right? It could just be an incidental finding on the MRI, and we can't just rely on that. So a lot of misdiagnoses in my career, going back, I'll add sacroiliitis, sacroiliac joint pain. People come in, I have back pain. I ended up having a surgery. It didn't help. Turns out, I said, Where's your back pain? Oh, it's over here on my left side. Did you show your surge in that? No, I just said I had back pain, and it's sacroiliac joint. All they needed was maybe a single injection in the joint just to calm it down and do some exercises to build up the joint and get it, get their pelvis loose, and all kinds of things. So it's, again, disgusting. That's what's going on out there in the in the world. The problem is, there's the Kool Aid. Is You have five minutes with a patient you know, to get your 60 bucks, and the money is sucked out of the system. So private health insurance and Affordable Care Act have ruined medicine. It was it was expensive already, but they have ruined it.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 29:52

There was a wonderful article, and I'll be happy to send it to you. It was just an article for the Layperson as to why. Say, do we still do knee surgery for an ACL tear, when physical therapy, when a good, solid round of physical therapy, what will help considerably and not need surgery? And the answer was, because insurance still covers ACL tears, and so it'll, you know, until the payers start to wise up, well, you'll still see these, these unnecessary surgeries.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 30:32

We've seen a little inkling of that in the last year or two, in that platelet rich plasma, which is sort of the lowest level of regenerative medicine, where they take your own blood, spin it down, pull out the plasma with the platelet layer, and re inject it into your tennis elbow or tendonitis somewhere, to get this sort of amplified healing response. We've seen insurance companies start to pay for that, even though it's not yet approved for marketing claims by the FDA, so they figured out that it's cheaper in that year than the surgery. But we have patient. I had a patient come in yesterday scheduled for knee surgery. I said, I think I might be able to help you. Let's try a regenerative injection. She's like, well, I'm scheduled. It's already approved. Okay, I'm just giving you the option.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 31:27

Hey, Jeff, don't you think what Spencer just brought up was just really interesting, don't you think with Lindsay Vaughn tearing her ACL and meniscus, and then eight days later, she's going to compete in the Olympic downhill. Don't you think that's going to start shedding some light on we don't need ACL for certain things we may do it neither if you're a soccer player and twisting and torquing, maybe. But do you think this incident, since it's so highly publicized, do you think that's going to kind of open up some eyes?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 31:58

It will help and the type of things that we're doing in the regenerative and peptide space are are becoming an area of focus that you can find if you have an appetite for it. I mean, I have people walk in my office that have never heard of peptides, and obviously the algorithm is working, because that's all I see on social media. It's feeding, you know, it gives you what you want to see, I guess. But you know, we have so many ways to help your body accelerate its own healing potential, and athletes are doing this. I mean, we just got to pay attention to pro athletes and you know, other people who, you know, look up, what are the options? What are the non surgical options? You know, first, yeah, there's a role for ACL repair, of course, but you know, not everyone. And we have some examples of of ACL tears, if you get them acutely, with some of the regenerative approaches, we've been able to have some incredible results, not with everybody. You know, I'm not allowed to make any marketing claims that we can cure or treat a disease or condition with peptides or or regenerative medicine, but, but physicians can't with so many things that are done every day. You know, even epidural injections aren't approved for marketing claims, but 1000s of them are done every day. Yeah, I

Dr. Spencer Baron: 33:23

want to go back to basics just for a minute for the listeners. Just to clarify, we hear so much about stem cells, we're hearing more about exosomes. But I'm not sure if people really understand when you would use an exosome or when you would use a stem cell. If it's two different things when it well, go ahead. I'll let you explain

Dr. Terry Weyman: 33:42

it, and I want piggyback on that. We hear stem cells like we talked earlier, from umbilical and then some people are the doctors drawn it from their fat cell and then spinning down and injecting. Can you even piggyback on that?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 33:55

Yeah, again, you can use your own stem cells. You can use donated youthful stem cells. I'm 60, I don't want to use my old stem cells. If they would have fixed the problem already, they would have done it on their own. And when you're when you're 12 years old, and you you tear something in sports, you heal. Why? Because your stem cell activity is so robust. And when you're 60, you don't necessarily heal that fast or at all. That's when you you want the youthful signal. So I and it's also a lot easier and efficient just to use donated, you know, parts. So there are many different types of stem cells. There are embryonic stem cells that have a lot more power, and we're not tapping into those yet for my clinical purposes. They are being used in research in different ways. Those are called induced pluripotent stem cells. Most stem cells are called, you know, mesenchymal MSCs, and they come from the umbilical cord. Some people call these medicinal signaling cells, because that's what they're doing. And the you can get them from your fat, you can get them from your bone marrow. You can get. Them from the umbilical cord. You can get them from different sources, and that, that is the mainstay of what's out there in the community. Well, it turns out that those cells aren't doing the work. They're delivering the message. The message is those growth factors, those exosomes. So you can cut out the delivery and go right to the exosomes. And we like that because they're more abundant, because they can come from amniotic fluid, for example, the more abundant, so they're less costly. So for a fraction of what it costs to go to Panama, you can get, you can get that treatment here in the US and and, you know, it's a myth. You don't have to leave the states. It's not illegal to do those things here, but we cannot make those marketing claims, so we're very careful and compliant in that way. That's why I've said it like three or four times here the so the exosomes are really the business end of stem cells. So I'm a big believer, and let's go right to the business end. Stem cells also carry someone else's DNA, not that we see that as a problem, but in the post covid vaccination area with messing with our genome or our genes, I don't like that concept. We also know that stem cells don't last in the body very long, so we go right to the exosomes, just cutting out the middlemen, becoming more efficient with what we do.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 36:18

You know, you brought up a good point too. Is not too long ago or very recently. Actually, you know, donating blood has become a concern because of those who were vaccinated. You know, covid vaccines that the blood isn't isn't void of that. So you could be getting, just like with a stem cell or stem cell, you could be getting the byproduct of what everybody's talking about now, about covid, covid vaccine. So someone has to be really concerned about that. So that's why

Dr. Jeff Gross: 37:00

we're seeing all kinds of issues downstream. Now we're learning about them, and we like to remove that variable where we can Yeah.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 37:10

So do you remove it? I mean, do you is a patient? Can they ask? I mean, how do you remove that?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 37:17

I only acquire biologics from non covid vaccinated donor sources, so lovely. Now, Someone recently asked this, and it's a brilliant question, what if the father was vaccinated? And I don't have the answer necessarily, like, does it get carried in sperm? We know that the egg is the cell and the sperm is sort of the the extra, right? You get the mitochondria from the mother. You don't get them in the sperm, you know, you just get genomes. So, but if that genome is affected, you know, the that half of the genome anyway, the half the chromosomes that come from the sperm, does that affect, we don't know.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 38:01

Interesting is that easy to find out? I mean, if you want to do if you're a patient, you want stem cells, and you ask your doctor, are the Are you sure? Is that something that's easily found out? If it's from a non vaccinate?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 38:17

Well, if your doctor can't answer, then no. If, if you ask, I'm only acquiring by a lot. I mean, I acquire that. I buy the biologics, and we utilize them. I only acquire from labs that source from non covid vaccinated mother pools.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 38:35

Wow, yeah, that's awesome. I love that. He keeps saying that, because that's something we stand behind, really, that's great. Thank you. So important.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 38:45

Let's, yeah, let's talk peptides. Since you've mentioned a couple of times, that's just becoming especially and you also mentioned that's become a buzzword on the internet and and the fact that we're talking about now, my phone is in the other room, and I'll probably have 9 million peptide stuff on my feet and in 20 minutes. But so people get, well, I got my peptides from this company. I got from Jenova, I got from this company. I got from regenerates. And I'm like, well, peptides can be very fragile, and compounding pharmacies may say, just like a vitamin Vitamin C is a vitamin C is vitamin C. Can you break down peptides and how to find quality and to use them.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 39:24

Wow, we'll need a few hours for that. But peptides are small proteins that have therapeutic benefit. You know, we're using a lot of them. We even stack them with some of the regenerative procedures we do. I'm currently on multiple peptides. I experiment with myself. First, we source peptides from different there are two different types of labs. They're called research only labs. And then there are compounding pharmacies. You'll pay more at a compounding pharmacy, but we only source from. Research or compounding, or send our patients to go shop there online, if they have third party testing showing the purity 99% or better, and have done third party contaminant testing, we don't want anything in there. Almost all of the raw ingredients for peptides come from China. Now you can buy on temu or Alibaba a bunch of peptides for very little, but you don't they come with no testing. You can verify they may come with a testing sheet, but you got to trust what you're getting is tested. Here in America. To import those, the suppliers have to test them. So we would only buy from a third party, tested source who's only using the good stuff. So there are different sources online. Just just vet them, make sure they share that transparently. The compounding pharmacies have to do that, and that's called pharmaceutical grade. But some of these research use places do the testing to to serve you with pharmaceutical grade, but they're not a pharmacy, so they have to put research use on the label. I use some research use on myself, so that that's so where and the use of where or how do we use them or when? It just depends on the patient, you know, we when they're ready, when everything's, you know, tuned up and ready to go, depending on their goals. Are you looking for energy? Do we need to do some mitochondrial repair. Is it you need to heal from something you want to have more rapid healing? Do we need a Wolverine protocol? You're looking for skin and cosmetic health, maybe you need some copper peptides you're looking to put on muscle. There are some that help you release growth hormone for that purpose. And then, of course, the most studied peptides are the glps, a little weight loss, anti slow inflammation. I've been on a GLP now for four years. Lost some weight at the beginning, and now I just a low dose to suppress inflammation, because the long term research shows reduced incidence of cancer, dementia, heart disease, other issues from suppressing the inflammatory burden our environment causes,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 42:10

yeah, I hope David No, I have yeah and I, I hope David cuts This out, but I put you on mute because he's got a squeaky toy in his anyway, I just recently read that in of course, Silicon Valley, they have peptide raves, and it's exactly what you think they bring in, like A pharmacist or a physician, a nurse practitioner or something, and they, they, they inject peptides, a variety of them, to the participants that are dancing around like crazy people. But the takeaway from the article that was in New York Times was fascinating, actually, because it said that the they buy bulk from China. I know what you're thinking, but the brilliant part was, then they they get the product, and they send it to an independent lab to get testing and assays that determine its, you know, quality. And okay, good. That I thought was a pretty cool idea. I mean, not the rave part, but the testing part

Dr. Terry Weyman: 43:23

California, where we do things fun.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 43:28

Yeah, right, right. So anyway, so I appreciate you sharing the your thoughts about peptides, because it is, you know, becoming something extremely popular. But I also am very cautious, because of the fact that remember how Botox and even now, Botox was used in certain circumstances, and now it's like they have Botox parties. So I'm just wondering at what point peptides, even though I think they're a little more useful in many other areas, is that, you know, could that happen as well? Is it? Is it a fad?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 44:06

The vast majority of peptides are naturally occurring in our body, and just like our stem cells don't work as well when we're older, neither we're not making the right amount or or able to make enough peptides. So it's, it's botulinum toxin, Botox, we don't make. So, you know, as a friend of mine said, you know, she has to drink red wine on the daily because her body doesn't make enough on its own.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 44:36

Very good and very true, yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 44:41

You got these, like you said, you got these peptides. And I think the average person, even some of the doctors, get confused, because it's like, well, we got regenerative medicine, we got peptides. And I guess it's trying to find the practitioner. I would be so nervous about these parties, because. Is it's like, even with, with, you know, micro dosing, you know, it's like, it can go bad, you know, and you need somebody that can actually knows what to do, knowing when to use what and how they use it. Is that correct? Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 45:14

I mean, you want some guidance. Funny thing is, I do, I do hot sauna for my biohacking, I like to sit in the hot sauna for 20 minutes, and I do it at the gym. And, you know, there are these younger guys in there, and they're all talking peptides, and they do it all themselves. And I try to get in the conversation, but they don't want to hear from the old guy. So it's very democratized, and people are out there doing things, and you can screw up, you can screw up. So it's nice to have some guidance. Most of my patients don't live here in Las Vegas, where I'm based. I do a lot of telehealth, which circles back to, you know, not being able to do my physical exam, but we do a lot of guidance of peptides, making sure people are okay. They have a resource. It's good to have a peptide coach or doc or somebody to do that.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 46:15

So going back to like healing and longevity, and how would you typically measure the changes in someone? Is it lab work? Is it just Yeah?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 46:28

So you know, body composition is one, hormone status is another. Biological age test is one where you actually look at the cellular markers of aging. Could be DNA methylation, telomere length, a few other glycosylation of antibodies in the system. We also do, you know, inflammatory markers. We might do, you know, pulmonary function tests. You know we could do grip testing. There's so many measures. And that's, that's kind of how we start when we measure before and afters HRV heart rate variability is another if you, if you have any health tech, Apple Watch or aura ring or whoop band or Garmin, you know, you can check your heart rate variability. It's very sensitive marker. And we want to improve that. That's a great marker.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 47:28

Very good, very good. I actually, let's see, Terry, you want to go into rapid fire. I would love to hear the rapid fire. Well, aside from from the overwhelming amount of spot on information, we love this part of the show. It's it's the rapid fire questions. We got five of them for you that may or may not have anything to do with what you your specialty is, but it's all about you, and some of your answers could be as concise and brief as possible, only if you're ready. Are you ready?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 48:07

Dr, Jeff, as they used to say on laugh in soccer to me,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 48:12

oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I haven't heard I just got 60s.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 48:20

We know that I love that.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 48:24

That was fantastic,

Dr. Jeff Gross: 48:27

right there, yes,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 48:30

how great, man, yeah. All right. I almost don't even want to go into this now. That was fantastic. All right. Question number one, what is, what is one spine myth you wish you could delete from the internet forever.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 48:46

Oh, gosh, there's so many. Yeah, here's one. There's there. People come in say, my spinal cord is compressed from my l4, five disc. People, there is no spinal cord below L, 120,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 49:02

I can take this little segment right here.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 49:04

Yeah, all the emergency room doctors out there who who are ordering lumbar MRIs from myelopathy, which is spinal cord dysfunction, check your anatomy class. It's been a minute.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 49:15

Oh my gosh. That one, that one answer I may play over and over again. Patients, thank you for that question. Number two, you went from a small town roots and early research energy becoming the as Dr Terry put the stem cell whisperer, what? What's the most Ohio kid part of you that never left?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 49:39

It'd be the Ohio State Buckeye football that comes in my genes for generations, even though I did not attend the Ohio State University, so I'm still a Buckeye fan that comes with growing up.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 49:52

There. Go Buckeyes. All right. Question number three, if you had to pick one, what's. More you a precision optimization or intuition, instinct, you know, give us a kind of a real example from your own daily routine. That is, that would describe how you, how you, how you do things.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 50:16

I have really tried to focus on movement so muscle muscle is longevity. Muscle is your longevity organ. If you using your muscles with weight bearing exercise, you will build muscle mass. Muscle mass is correlated with longevity. It also supports bone density. It's one of the recipes for building bone is exercise, and bone mass is also correlated with longevity. So if you want to live long, your body serves its ability to move. And if you're not moving, if you spend a lot of time in a in a desk chair, like I do these days, get up and move, you know, and exercise and exercise hard. So going for a walk is great, but it's not enough. You got to use those muscles. They release myokine, small healing peptides.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 51:08

Oh, this is great. You know, we're hearing this among a lot of our guests that come on that are very influential and strength training, resistance training and all that. So thank you for re emphasizing that, especially from your level of understanding. Question number four, Dr Jeff, if everything you know about healing, longevity in the spine had to be distilled into one belief, you'd want your kids, your parents and the next generation of doctors to live by, what would that be?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 51:39

I think that, well, I would add in the exercise piece here too. But I think we can eat our way to health. I think food is medicine, and what we avoid is important. So we need to avoid too much sugar, seed oils. We need to eat more of the earth and that that's fruits and vegetables. And if you know, for meat eaters, good, clean meat source, you know, not necessarily corn raised or or fed pesticide laden corn, but you know, wild grass fed, they have more omega threes, highly anti inflammatory. It's a longevity supplement. So food is medicine.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 52:21

Great, great. Last question, when the wind, when the the white coat is off and the phone is down and nobody needs fixing? What's the simplest thing that makes you feel most like yourself again?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 52:39

Well, that's a hard one. I'm a workaholic. If I'm done with what, you know, the white coat, even though I don't really own one anymore. I i I'm working on something I'm very interested in, nerdy reading about AI, and I'm reading all kinds of new papers every morning. I read new research, what's out there, what's published. So I would say I keep my nose in the books.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 53:03

All right, on that you mentioned PubMed goes back to 1965 where is your go to place to get your research from?

Dr. Jeff Gross: 53:13

Yeah, I still use PubMed. I mean, it's a great database, and I will use AI sometimes to help me source articles to read. I don't rely on AI always to interpret them, and I think we're getting better at that. I just came back from a health tech summit up in the Bay Area, and I pitched, you know, an AI LLM that would take into account all that old literature. I think we're missing something there.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 53:49

Well, I'll tell you, this was a show that was right up our alley. You know, this is something we deal with every day and with patients all the time that are under informed or misinformed. So thank you so so so much. Dr, Jeff, I appreciate you being on the show. Thank you, my pleasure.

Dr. Jeff Gross: 54:08

I'm phone a friend for you guys anytime. Just let me know what you need.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 54:10

I love that. Thank you, Jeff for your time, and we will put all the information to how to find you in your description to show. So please people, before you get cut, before you do anything, at least have a consultation with this guy. Get another thing.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 54:26

Oh yeah, big time. Thank you. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Kraken backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at Kraken backs podcast, catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.