Anti-aging enthusiasts are having stem cell injections in their knees — at more than $16K a pop
It’s a joint venture.
Longevity enthusiasts are flying around the world and spending thousands of dollars to have stem cells injected into their ailing knees.
Bryan Johnson, the businessman famed for spending a whopping $2 million a year to try and reverse the aging process. recently revealed that he flew to Physical Longevity in the Bahamas to undergo treatments in his knees, hips, and shoulders using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs).
Stems cell therapy has been used to treat a range of health conditions including leukemia and diabetes, but using another person’s cells to keep knees healthy is a relatively new feat and is not approved by the FDA.
The FDA only allows procedures in which a person’s cells are used on themself.
That’s why anti-aging enthusiasts — and athletes including Peyton Manning — are flying to places like the Bahamas and Panama to undergo the procedure on their knees.
When healthy cells are injected into a person they can regenerate and repair tissues that have been damaged.
Medical experts are hoping the therapy can be used to treat a long list of medical issues.
“What I’m really hoping for is that in the future, when we go to the office for the yearly checkup, and we get our flu shot, maybe we’ll also get a stem cell boost either to treat our current conditions or to delay the onset of them, to treat our bodies in the best possible way independently of whatever the genetic lottery gave us,” Matthias Bernow, the CEO of the biotech company Cellcolabs that provided the stem cells for Johnson’s procedure, told Business Insider.
However, stem cell therapy is currently very expensive and requires much more research, especially when used for newer treatments such as joint regeneration.
Johnson, for instance, has spent $16,500 per injection.
The tech mogul said he hired a team of medical experts who evaluated and peer-reviewed studies on potential longevity treatments, which led him to undergo the procedure at Physical Longevity.
Johnson was injected with cells from young, healthy Swedish volunteers.
Because his health is already in peak condition, he said he has not yet noticed a major change, but is awaiting objective data from his personalized longevity tests.
“That’s probably because my health biomarkers are already in the top 1% as far as muscle, fat, metabolic health, cardiovascular health, et cetera,” Johnson told Business Insider. “So, it’s pretty difficult for my subjective feeling of wellness to improve.”
Doctors are optimistic about this type of stem cell therapy but want eager patients to understand that it is still being studied.
“I have to temper expectations and let patients know this isn’t magic pixie dust. We’re studying this under a clinical trial, and results do take time,” Johnson’s doctor, Steven Sampson, told Business Insider.
