Podcasts about bactine

In this final episode with Kurt Jacobsen, we dive into pain management for clients during multi day sessions. Kurt shares his thoughts about how, when and where to use Bactine for maximum effectiveness as well as why clients might choose to use a regimen of ibuprofen during the tattoo process. Enjoy! Keep up with us at: https://firesidetattoo.com/ https://www.patreon.com/Fireside https://www.facebook.com/Tattooimprovement/ https://www.instagram.com/firesidetattoo/ Jake's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pluguglyart/

Welcome to another episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast! In today's episode, our host [host name] is joined by the distinguished Dr. Jeffrey Gross, a board-certified neurological surgeon who specializes in anti-aging and regenerative medicine. Together, they explore the groundbreaking developments in stem cell technology and its role in improving health and combating disease.    Dr. Gross starts by offering insights into how he discovered the immense potential of stem cells in the field of regenerative medicine. This led him to establish ReCELLebrate, a cutting-edge initiative focused on providing modern biochemical treatments and, where possible, avoiding surgical intervention. Dr. Gross takes us on a deep dive into the longevity and biohacking consultations he conducts at his ReCELLebrate clinics in California and Nevada.    In addition to his work with stem cells, Dr. Gross also shares how his expertise extends to treating athletic injuries and performing spine procedures. Throughout the conversation, he delves into the nuances of these treatments and provides invaluable information on how stem cells can be an effective solution to many health problems.    Reflecting on his background, Dr. Gross walks us through his fascinating journey in the field of medicine and how he became a leading expert in stem cells and regenerative medicine. Show Highlights: * How Dr. Jeffrey Gross discovered the impressive capabilities of stem cells in regenerative medicine. * The founding and goals of ReCELLebrate, Dr. Gross's innovative approach to employing biochemical treatments. * An inside look at Dr. Gross's ReCELLebrate clinics and the longevity and biohacking consultations offered. * Dr. Gross's expertise in addressing athletic injuries and spine procedures, and how it ties in with his work in regenerative medicine. * A glimpse into the captivating background and journey of Dr. Jeffrey Gross in the medical field.    Join us in this enlightening conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Gross, and learn about the incredible possibilities that stem cells and regenerative medicine have to offer. Don't miss out on the wealth of knowledge this episode has to share, and be sure to subscribe to The Hormone Prescription Podcast for more enlightening discussions!   [00:00:00] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Cade Hildreth, the founder of Bioinformant, a stem cell industry research firm, is quoted as saying, the regenerative medicine revolution is upon us. Like iron and steel to the industrial revolution, like the microchip to the tech revolution, stem cells will be the driving force of this next revolution. [00:00:20] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Stay tuned to find out how you can start using stem cells to transform your health, your life, and your longevity. So the big question is how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you're not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again. [00:00:45] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: As an OBGYN, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss and supercharged energy after 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is [00:01:00] designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results. [00:01:04] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: And to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you're facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kieran Dunstan. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast. Hi everybody. [00:01:22] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive into the use of stem cells for regenerative and longevity medicine with Dr. Jeffrey Gross. This is really one of the most powerful and emerging aspects of health that is available to you now To create the health that you're wanting the healing that you're wanting that you might not be aware of Because it's not offered everywhere and usually not covered by insurance And your regular doctor's probably not going to talk to you about it But as I shared in the beginning the quote it [00:02:00] really is One of the most powerful tools that's going to transform medicine, just like our tech field has been transformed. [00:02:08] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: And there's another quote that I love that I'll share. The next age of medicine will revolve around stem cells, just like there was. the pre intranet age, there will soon be the pre stem cell age, and it will confuse the next generation to talk about it. So although now it seems a little way out and off the beaten path, it will probably become the standard of care at some point in the future. [00:02:32] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So I know that if you're listening, you want to know everything that's available that could possibly help you create better health, live a longer and healthier life and increase your vitality span. So I know you're going to want to hear about extending your health and longevity using stem cells and regenerative medicine. [00:02:53] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So I'll tell you a little bit. about Dr Jeffrey Gross and then we'll get started. Dr Gross is a board certified [00:03:00] neurological surgeon who identified the unique and powerful capacity of stem cells to help not only neurological problems but to regenerate many aspects of health affected by disease. He focuses on anti aging and regenerative medicine at his resellably Great clinics in California and Nevada. [00:03:17] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So we're going to dive into this episode in not only neurologic applications, but arthritic joint applications, musculoskeletal and more. And we're going to talk about beauty applications too, which I know you're going to want to hear about. So please help me welcome Dr. Jeffrey Gross to the  [00:03:35] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: show. Thank you so much. [00:03:36] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I'm Pleased to be here. It's an honor to join you today. Yes, I'm  [00:03:39] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: super excited to have you on fellow physician who now has gone astray just like me and really found some things that can help people, which my audience really loves hearing about because they've done the HMO copay dr tango and [00:04:00] they know it doesn't work for them. [00:04:01] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: The number one question I get from people is why doesn't my doctor know what you know? Why doesn't my doctor offer me what you offer me? And they love to hear stories of doctors like you and me who were in the dark and found the light and what we know that can actually help them. So why don't we start there Dr. [00:04:22] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Jeff with your story from conventional medicine into what  [00:04:27] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: you're doing now. Great. Thank you for the opportunity. Probably a bit like yours, I was trained to be a physician, many years of training, just like you, and came from professors who trained similarly 20 years earlier, who were trained by professors similarly 20 years earlier, and there's a, there's this sort of preservation of these traditional in the box thinking of medicine, and I haven't abandoned that, what I have done is expand on it, because probably like you as well, we're [00:05:00] scientists, And we explore and we ask questions and we want to know what's really happening and what we have to do our own homework on that sometimes. [00:05:08] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So, I was practicing traditional spine neurosurgery. I was taking care of patients mostly with neck and back problems, injuries, disc issues, pinched nerves. A very, very busy practice and I noticed that patients were telling me something they were coming in and saying, Hey, doc, I've tried all the things you've recommended. [00:05:29] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I've tried therapy. I've tried time. I've tried prayer. I've tried supplements. I've tried anti inflammatories. I've even tried injections, but I'm still having problems. And we would talk, let's go over the surgical options. And they'd say, yeah, I'm just not quite ready. And I'd look at them and say, yeah, I think you're right. [00:05:46] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: You're not quite ready. You're not bad enough. And you're in that gap, that no man's land. And then they would say, Doc, what about lasers? And what about this? And what about stem cells? And you get hit enough time on the head with a rubber [00:06:00] mallet and that stem cell's stuck. And I finally said, you know what? [00:06:04] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Instead of going to the same old spine conferences every year And seeing, hearing the same old things reported, I'm going to go a different direction and I started going to different meetings and different educational conferences and got interested and retrained and now I've incorporated regenerative medicine and anti aging medicine and all these things into my practice to expand my tool base. [00:06:27] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Great, so You could learn from a pleasure perspective. I love that. So what happened when you went to your first stem cell conference? Take everyone through that. What really piqued your interest that you said, Wow, this is valid. And I need to know more about this because this could benefit my  [00:06:45] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: patients. I was, I'm embarrassed to say that 32 years had passed since I had my undergraduate degree in biochemistry and I went to the meeting and it just reopened a lot that had happened in 32 years [00:07:00] that built on this really neat background in molecular biology and what we knew about cells and how they function together. [00:07:07] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And I was so busy going down this path of clinical medicine that I had missed. I never got a newsletter on all the updates in this and what we've learned. And so I was a little embarrassed and, but it was wonderful because it reopened that curiosity and that reason why I, I chose that as my undergraduate degree in the first place and all that had happened in stem cells and in exosomes and other regenerative biologics. [00:07:35] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And that had been applied clinically, meaning for patients. So it wasn't just on a lab bench. Yeah. So  [00:07:41] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: let's get into stem cells. I think they're a mystery for a lot of people. And they're confused about what are the different types of stem cells, what can they be used for, what's FDA approved, what's not, what might they get in another country they won't get in [00:08:00] the U. [00:08:00] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: S., and also the benefits for longevity. And there are methods for stimulating your own stem cells. I recently learned about stem cells from endometrium and menstrual blood, which is really fascinating to me. But do you want to start there? Just kind of talking about what are stem cells?  [00:08:19] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Sure. This is, we'll do a little stem cell one on one here. [00:08:22] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And this is, let's take it back. When we were embryos inside of our mothers, We are made up of a ball of cells, and those are all stem cells, and those stem cells are incredibly powerful. They start out omnipotent, meaning they can become anything, and they become further differentiated, and that's a biological word, meaning the cells start to work towards what they're going to end up being, and it's like a job assignment. [00:08:50] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: You go to the vocational office, you say, assign me a job and okay, you're going to be a liver cell and you over there, you're going to be part of the elbow. You get a job assignment. [00:09:00] As the fetus develops, these omnipotent cells become pluripotent. They have less opportunities, but they're still broad opportunities. [00:09:09] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And then they become a multipotent and they get all the way down to where they can only differentiate into certain types of tissues. And those are the vast majority of what's available clinically because they're safer. They can't go backwards in the lineage and create a whole new human or even something weird. [00:09:27] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: We don't want that. And you're coming from the OBGYN field, you've heard of teratomas, these very, very, very Germ cell based tumors and things that can, so we don't want to use those dangerous cells. We don't know how to control them yet. So when we use the word stem cells, we're talking about these, they just haven't made that final job assignment. [00:09:47] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Right. And these are typically from the mesenchymal or the mesoderm layer of the embryo. And meaning they form most of the connective tissues, most of the organs. And when you tap into [00:10:00] these stem cells, they can be very powerful. Now, as humans, we have stem cells in us. They are a bank of cells, a storehouse, if you will, of cells that our body is constantly tapping into. [00:10:11] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: We renew our skin constantly. We're making new skin cells. We renew our liver cells. And if we are injured or hurt somehow, those cells can be recruited to help repair us. Think about Doc, a three year old scrapes his knee on the sidewalk. And you bandage, you clean it up, put some Bactine on it, put a bandage on it, give them a kiss and send them on their way, right? [00:10:34] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Three days later, that bandaid comes off, but that scab is almost completely healed. But then you take, in comparison, a 70 year old who bangs her elbow, and there's a bruise for two and a half weeks. So why does the same person who healed so quickly at age three not heal the same at age 70? Why? Same genes. [00:10:55] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Same bank of stem cells. Of course, our stem cells lose steam with [00:11:00] age. They get exposed to what we learned in medical school is called vaguely inflammation, right? And inflammation is the accumulation of all this environmental damage, exposure to toxins, exposure to electromagnetic fields, what's in our diet, what's in our water, how we treated ourselves with stress or avoidance of stress. [00:11:22] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And I'm sure you've talked about this with others as it applies to hormonal function, right? We want to try to tend towards an anti inflammatory lifestyle. So in any way, our stem cells don't work as well to repair and regenerate us. And that can happen at different rates. So the whole basis of the stem cell biology as a treatment is to tap back into our own youthful ability to heal. [00:11:47] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Our cells have the blueprint and the molecules and the genes to do that. That's kind of the underlying basis.  [00:11:53] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Okay. And regenerative treatment is defined as what, because that's [00:12:00] really what you specialize. In is regenerative treatment versus conventional medical approaches,  [00:12:06] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: right? I suppose I still do a bit of both but Regenerative medicine is the new tool that i've had for about five years Which has really blossomed into many aspects of it And maybe this is a good part to answer your question about the fda So as you know, and many people don't fully understand the fda Is sort of the doctor's first amendment police and they decide based on their criteria what we can make claims about. [00:12:35] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And those claims usually deal with curing or treating a disease or condition. So for example, if a new medicine is being developed. They decide when we can say this medicine has been shown to, to help deal with diabetes or something like that. So, there has yet to be any real regenerative stem cell treatment that has been approved for claims.[00:13:00]  [00:13:00] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: That doesn't mean it can't be done. The doctor and patient have a relationship and that's between them with proper informed consent. There are a couple things that are approved, but I don't know that I Consider them regenerative and that would be a bone marrow replacement for let's say, uh, leukemia. And this is why mothers might bank umbilical cord cells when they deliver a child. [00:13:24] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: That's traditionally been an approved treatment. Okay,  [00:13:29] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: so you're saying no FDA approved claims made indications for the use of stem  [00:13:36] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: cells? But let's be truly objective, since we're scientists. There have been no approvals or denials. So they have not said, we have approved, but we also have an unapproved. [00:13:47] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: It hasn't yet been decided. So the lack of approval does not mean that something is unapproved. And people don't fully, they tend to go only and hear the unapproved. That [00:14:00] doesn't mean, that just means they haven't been fully vetted these claims. You know, the proper full studies have not yet been okayed by the FDA. [00:14:09] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Okay, so can you talk about though what indications are generally agreed upon by experts in the regenerative medicine area as to what are appropriate uses that may not be FDA approved?  [00:14:26] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: You should be a politician that was fantastically worded. For the purposes of doing this correctly, anything I give an opinion on today is not a treatment for an individual, and is not necessarily approved by the FDA, and is just worthy of discussion. [00:14:42] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And every individual is addressed. individually. So yes, there is wonderful scientific reporting, mostly from not in the United States. We have literature out of Europe. We have literature from Asia where they are ahead of us. And you think about this doc, [00:15:00] 15 to 20 years ago, professional athletes were leaving this country to get these treatments. [00:15:04] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And other people, but of notoriety, it would be the athletes. Now those athletes are staying in the country because it is available here in the U. S. The source of the biologics, the stem cells or the related biologic components are here produced by, ironically, FDA compliant labs. So, and these are typically from donors of C section births. [00:15:29] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Where the placenta, the amniotic fluid, the umbilical cord are preserved instead of thrown away and sent to labs where they're under clean and sterile conditions, tested and treated. The main uses start with musculoskeletal issues like joint problems. In fact, some of the best research comes out of France and these are protocols I follow for knee pain. [00:15:54] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And if I may just keep rambling on the, the, a study in France [00:16:00] just reported two years ago on the 15 year follow up. So that means they've been doing this for at least 17 years as a study and probably longer. And what they did is they took patients with end stage knee problems. Ready and recommended for knee replacement. [00:16:16] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So these are conditions like bone on bone patients may have heard or arthritis is terms doctors use painful knee problems that need a knee replacement. Not everybody wants an open knee replacement. It has a role, but they took these patients said, wait, instead of having your recommended knee replacement, join our study. [00:16:36] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And in that study, they injected bone marrow derived stem cells from those patients. And we might circle back to that in a moment, but they took them from these patients, processed them, concentrated them, and injected them into two different areas in the knee. And over 15 years, one of the groups was significantly superior to the other group. [00:16:58] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And the group that [00:17:00] did well was in bone injected, so they injected the bone of the knee just above and below the cartilage. The cartilage injected group did okay initially. But then declined at each five year mark and it was over 80 percent of the bone injected group did not need that knee replacement. [00:17:17] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: They had been recommended 15 years earlier. In other words, those knees were saved. That's amazing. We follow that protocol and we do the bone work and you think about it. Your cartilage in your joints and in your discs of your spine is probably one of the least biologically active tissues. There are not a lot of cells. [00:17:37] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: It's sort of a collection of squishy proteins and collagen and we call this sort of the biological rubber of the body. The real activity, the part of your body that made that cartilage in the first place when you were a fetus was the growth plate bone marrow where you're most of your stem cells reside, your storehouse of stem cells. [00:17:58] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So we follow that [00:18:00] protocol. So  [00:18:00] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: with data like that, 80 percent did not need any replacement and they were bone on bone, which really that's the only standard of care treatment that we have to my knowledge. Why has the FDA not? Given an approval any  [00:18:16] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: insight into that I'm going to go out on a limb here and say i'm sure there are political and economic pressures from Companies that make metallic knee implants. [00:18:26] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I am sure that the fda panels Uh that look at this. I have a very high threshold of studies in terms of number of participants And they love blinded and controlled studies, meaning blinded means the doctor doesn't know and the patient doesn't know if they're getting a placebo or not. And a controlled study means there's a placebo arm, but who would want to be that in that study that might get a placebo? [00:18:54] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So it's going to be very hard to do a large population study with [00:19:00] placebo. So we are sort of at this. You know, difficult crossroads.  [00:19:04] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Yeah, sometimes you have to follow your common sense. Anyone can tell you that the success rate of any cartilage naturally regrowing when you're bone on bone is probably zero. [00:19:19] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So do we really need that control group? That's where I sometimes wonder when did we leave common sense by the wayside or the body of scientific Tiff acknowledge and experience that we have from decades of doing medicine the way we've been doing it. And so this is the place you can be very frank and honest. [00:19:39] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So I throw Mainstream medicine under the bus on the regular because people just don't get it. They're scratching their heads Why don't I get these options at my hmo doctor's office? And so I really help them to understand that medicine is a business and that it has It's [00:20:00] its own motivations and doing lots of surgeries and procedures and prescribing lots of drugs is part of it. [00:20:07] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: And so if you want something different, then you've got to make different choices and look elsewhere, which I think is a great, I was going to ask you in a little bit, but I'm going to ask you now. The second question people ask me after why doesn't my doctor offer this is, Will my insurance pay for this? [00:20:24] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So I think this is a good place to ask that.  [00:20:27] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: You're absolutely right. There's a little bit of a conundrum. Because the FDA has not approved this for claims, your insurance has their hat to hang on that they, they will not approve this. However, there's something called PRP platelet rich plasma, which many people can get in their doctor's office, which is a taking your own blood and. [00:20:47] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: spinning it down in a centrifuge and pulling out the growth factors and the platelets and concentrating them and delivering them back to an area where there might be a strain or pain like a tennis elbow or a knee [00:21:00] ligament or something like that. And it is, it's rather simple. It is, it's sort of the lowest. [00:21:06] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Entry level regenerative medicine item and it is not approved for claims by the FDA But insurances are starting to pay for it because they're starting to see that it's less expensive than a surgical pathway So it might cost 500 to 1, 000 per session, typically people have two to three sessions. So, I think that's probably some good news in the long run towards insurance companies waking up and looking at the bigger picture and avoiding bigger open surgeries if possible. [00:21:40] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: There's always a role for the surgeries, I don't mean to say don't do surgery, I mean to say look at every option first, why not try a regenerative procedure because I can tell you. When I'm addressing a knee problem, it's usually two doses of biologics in the bone above and below the knee. [00:22:00] And we do that at a little injection facility with some sedation so no one has to feel the bone injection. [00:22:06] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: It doesn't take very long. Most of the work is done ahead of time. The targeting, the MRI, the testing. And We've got that down to where it's just under 10, 000 and I think that's a good price when you look at the lost work time, the downtime, the complications, the co pays you'd have just to have a knee replacement. [00:22:28] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Sure, the knee replacement might be less than 10, 000 out of pocket, but there's a cost of the pain and the recovery and the physical therapy and that kind of thing. So it's not cost prohibitive. For everyone. For some, I understand, but not for everyone.  [00:22:43] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Yes, my mother had both knees replaced, and the pain she went through and just never had the same gait and walking ease, and if she could have avoided it at that time, I'm sure she would have in hindsight.[00:23:00]  [00:23:00] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So, let's get more specific, because I know people are wanting to know. So we've talked about knees. What other joint or musculoskeletal problems have stem cells been shown to help with? And then also maybe tie into there, you mentioned bone marrow as a source. What are the sources? Cause some people are saying, Oh my gosh, am I going to have to have my bone marrow removed to get stem cell treatment? [00:23:25] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So where are these? Stem cells coming from? Are they autologous from the person? Are they from somebody else?  [00:23:32] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So let me work backwards. I'll start with that question and then work back to and expand on, on the types of things we can do beyond knees. Okay. So you can have bone marrow, harvested stem cells harvested from your own bone marrow, and even other sources like fat. [00:23:48] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I don't like the fat source. Because those cells are typically in an inflamed environment. And the whole theme here is to work against inflammation, which works to help our [00:24:00] body tissues function better and slow the aging process. I don't like to harvest, autologous is the word you used, and that means from yourself. [00:24:09] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I prefer the perinatal sources. These are again the donated, ethical, and FDA compliant labs that prepare these biologics. The biologics would be either stem cells or stem cell messengers, stem cell derived messengers. And these are the small particles that one cell uses to communicate with other cells in our body, wake up our own stem cells, activate them. [00:24:35] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And I have been able to keep the cost of procedures down with, I believe, at least as good efficacy, if not better in some areas. With the stem cell messengers and we call those exosomes or nanoparticles and they are basically a stem cell giving a message to other cells to behave in an anti [00:25:00] inflammatory, youthful, regenerative, restorative way and that's what we're, that's what we seek. [00:25:05] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Those come from basically what used to be medical trash. It's now medical treasure, and these are donated and screened individuals. Unless you're in a culture that preserves the placenta for the delicacy that it may be in some areas, this is You've probably delivered thousands of babies and thrown away the, all this great stuff. [00:25:30] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Am I  [00:25:30] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: right? Yes. Who knew? You know, that HGTV show, isn't it called Trash to Treasure? But also I recently learned that in a lot of cultures, they actually bury the placenta to ground the energy body of the child into Mother Earth, which is a whole other conversation. So it's ethical to use it for medical procedures in the West, but in a lot of indigenous cultures, it probably wouldn't be so you [00:26:00] prefer the perinatal. [00:26:01] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: And it's not just for joint stem cells, not just for joints anymore. What are the other applications  [00:26:09] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: that we get great results with joints? I would say joints. Joints are a wonderful and relatively successful application in our hands. And by joints, I'm including spine. We don't have the long term data on spine yet, like we do for knees. [00:26:26] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Knees were sort of an easy first study because there's so many people with knees and they're easy to inject in the knee area, right? It's down there. It's just asking for an injection. The spine is a little bit more interesting. You have to be cautious around nerves. And that's where I come in as a neurosurgeon, so I'm, I've been inside the spine thousands of times doing surgeries. [00:26:47] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I love doing fewer surgeries and more of these procedures. So we'll call that the musculoskeletal group. There are other things a little bit within the musculoskeletal group. One is there, there have been studies [00:27:00] showing improvement in bone density, which is very important in someone with declining hormone levels. [00:27:07] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Um, as, as you and your. Listeners must know the bone density is associated with longevity. The better your bone density, the better your longevity. And hormones are a big part of that. Weight bearing exercise is a big part of that. And other factors like certain supplements, vitamin D3, for example, and others. [00:27:25] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So regenerative medicine can help support bone density. There are studies on that. The other longevity or I'm sorry  [00:27:33] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: to interrupt you, but where What types of stem cells are used  [00:27:37] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: and how are they administered? I have to look at the individual study, but you are correct. Most of the studies are either autologous harvested stem cells from that person, their donated stem cells from a perinatal source, or their donated stem cell messengers or exosomes from a perinatal source. [00:27:54] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Those are the three main applications that we call regenerative medicine. [00:28:00]  [00:28:00] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: For bone density, how are those  [00:28:01] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: administered? Oh, sorry. IV.  [00:28:04] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Intravenously. Is anyone doing that in the United States? There  [00:28:08] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: are a lot of us doing that. Okay.  [00:28:10] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: And so. Because I think there are women listening who are going to want to know what would your criteria be for what degree of osteopenia or osteoporosis. [00:28:20] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I would say if there's any evidence for osteopenia and you want to get ahead of this and prevent this from going to full blown osteoporosis and you're already doing the traditional elements, weight bearing exercise, hormone optimization, things like this, the right supplements, it's something to look at. [00:28:38] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Osteoporosis. is associated with shortened longevity. So we want to get ahead of this. And the criteria would be making sure they've tried everything else first. Now if someone has a very focal area of osteopenia, maybe a hip issue, but the rest of their testing, because when they test for bone density, they test the hip, the spine, maybe the wrist, other areas. [00:28:59] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: [00:29:00] If we can focally treat by injection a spot area if needed. Yeah, but  [00:29:06] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: I've seen thousands of bone densities on thousands of women and it's a rare person who has a spot problem. It's usually pretty global. And so how many treatments would they have of intravenous stem cells? Because I know there's some women listening who are thinking, Oh, I'm going to look into that. [00:29:22] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So they probably want to know. We  [00:29:24] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: probably do one treatment. And then monitor the bone density every six to 12 months and see what kind of length of benefit they got and what kind of benefit they got from it and use that as a guide. There's no signing up for, Oh, you'll need this every six or 12 months. [00:29:42] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: This is a individualized person and we guide it for that individual. So hopefully one treatment could give you. Months or years depending on how bad things are to start with how good your own status is your overall Inflammatory burden [00:30:00] and we can do blood tests to look at that in detail Because ultimately aging is an accumulation of this chronic inflammation and we need to not just give IV Regenerative biologics. [00:30:12] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: We need to look at every aspect of of what's causing root cause, right? What's causing inflammatory Yeah, let's  [00:30:19] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: detour and talk about that because I talk about it a lot, but you can never talk about it enough. This is the rust. The inflammation is the rust that corrodes all your cells and degrades them. [00:30:32] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: And this is what causes premature aging, disease, death, everything. It is the enemy. So, it's vital. Every doc I know who works with stem cells, Requires that people reduce their inflammation if they're in a highly inflamed state But I think it would be important to hear your perspective on that  [00:30:52] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I could not agree more and i've converged with you using the the word rust As you have so i'm [00:31:00] glad we've come together because you're right rust is oxidation And we are oxidizing and that's why antioxidants are good for us. [00:31:08] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So We all are in a state of inflammation. That's during the day, during the light hours, we have neuro stress, we have physical stress, we have all these things and we have things in our food source and they cause our cells to react in a defensive manner and that defense is chronic inflammation. At night, we repair. [00:31:29] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: If we're sleeping and we're getting good sleep, restorative sleep, our bodies and our cells undergo a repair process. It's a DNA repair, all kinds of things. And we need to balance that by really understanding those and focusing on them. I think reducing exposure to inflammatory items is probably the easiest thing we can do. [00:31:50] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Eating a cleaner diet, for example, avoiding toxins in our environment to the extent we know they're there and we can, limiting electromagnetic [00:32:00] waves. Turning off the screens at night and the other things we can do to reduce inflammation are lifestyle changes, like making sure we exercise, eating in the light window and not eating in the dark window, intermittent eating, intermittent fasting. [00:32:14] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: We can even supercharge the reduced inflammation. By what's called hormesis. Hormesis as, as you may have, you and your audience may know, is a slight stress upon our cells to build resilience and to clear out the senescent zombie cells that are taking up space and resources. And that might come through exercise. [00:32:35] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: It might come through calorie restriction, maybe a fast for anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. It might come from hot sauna use or cold plunges. And these stimulate the body to release survival proteins, which help reduce inflammation. These are the kind of proteins we find in stem cells and stem cell messengers. [00:32:54] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So ultimately, the regenerative medicine is sort of a hack or a biohack to slow [00:33:00] inflammation. And as it slows and reduces and reverses inflammation at the cellular level, it's reducing aging at the cellular level. And you see many ads on social media. That our product reduces inflammation at the cellular level. [00:33:14] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: That's how we're going to reduce our, slow our aging. We have to do it at the cellular level. And everybody  [00:33:19] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: stay tuned because Dr. Jeff does have a gift for you at the end of the show that's gonna, uh, help some things that you can do to help reduce your inflammation so you don't want to miss that. [00:33:31] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Alright, let's jump back. We were going through the indications and treatments. We talked about knees, spine. We talked about osteoporosis, osteopenia, bone thinning. What other indications  [00:33:44] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: are there? We've treated with IV many things. So we have patients who have come to us with declining kidney function and whether that's related to too much sugar in the life over your life and diabetic changes acquired type two [00:34:00] diabetes, whether it's related to high blood pressure that hasn't been adequately controlled or even other items. [00:34:06] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: What happens is the blood test called creatinine starts to go up because your kidneys can't remove that amount of protein from the body. And yeah, We have seen declining, improving creatinine levels in patients who showed progressive problems with the kidney function, who wanted to avoid dialysis. So we've had a couple patients specifically, and we've only had to do one IV on each of those. [00:34:31] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: patients where their creatinine is improved and we're just watching their blood test with the creatinine. And people come in and say, I've had so much other benefits from that. I think better, more clearly. I have more energy. I sleep more soundly. We get all these beneficial side effects from the IV.  [00:34:49] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Just, I wanted to add something there. [00:34:50] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Just as you're talking, it makes perfect sense that I'm sitting here thinking, why don't we give them to everyone intravenously because just the three year old boy [00:35:00] who falls and scrapes his knee. All you have to do is protect it from infection and getting scraped again. And then the stem cells, the messages throughout the body say, send stem cells to this cut and fix it. [00:35:12] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: It tells what to do. And so that example you gave is beautiful about the kidneys and declining kidney function. You give the stem cells intravenously, they know where to go. And they know what to do and they know to fix the problem. So why aren't we giving it? Do some people just say, I want general longevity. [00:35:33] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: And I know you're going to talk a little bit about that. And I want to heal whatever's broken that I don't know about. And you just. Give them intravenous stem cells.  [00:35:43] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I don't want to give the idea that stem cells fix everything, right? I think they try it. This is not a cure all, but we love to add it when we can as an alternative or an additional item to help repair or recover in medicine. [00:35:59] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: We call it [00:36:00] an adjunct therapy, right? So this is an add on treatment. For example, we see patients who are recovering from heart attack and we show improved cardiac. function from I. V. Regenerative biologics. We see patients recovering from stroke or have suffered what's called traumatic brain injury used to be called chronic concussive syndrome. [00:36:21] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And these people have lingering effects of brain injury, maybe from an accident or something. And we have shown some benefits there. And there are some studies published on this. Now it should be known that the stem cells do not readily cross the blood brain barrier when they're delivered IV. So the benefits we're actually seeing are more with the stem cell messengers, the stem cell derived exosomes I mentioned to you earlier because they are so small. [00:36:49] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Remember they're called nanoparticles for a reason. They're very small. They cross the blood brain barrier and stimulate the glial cells and that support our brain cells. [00:37:00] And you spoke earlier about other types of stem cells like endometrial base and things like this. There is wonderful work in more specialized types of stem cells. [00:37:08] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Right now, we do not use anything that's manipulated. So these are off the shelf, straight from the womb, tested, screened, and filtered. biologics, because the FDA is pretty clear that they don't want us using anything manipulated. Cells that have been conjured or cajoled into doing something very specific. [00:37:28] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: That is the next quantum leap in regenerative medicine, very specifically targeting stem cells and their messengers, engineered for a specific thing like helping to repair the islet cells in the pancreas in the case of type 2. It's for example, and again, most of these diseases of aging are diseases of inflammation and vice versa. [00:37:50] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Coronary artery clogging, atherosclerosis has an inflammatory component. Alzheimer's disease has an inflammatory component. If you look at [00:38:00] the tissue under a microscope, even type 2 diabetes, you look at the pancreas, it has an inflammatory component. We're really simply just reducing inflammatory exposure and effect. [00:38:12] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And that leads me to mention autoimmune, because this is where a lot of hormones get affected. And as your audience knows, autoimmune means the body is having a revved up attack on it, part of itself, for reasons unclear, but it's a hyper inflammation state. Let's list a few of those. Rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's thyroiditis. [00:38:35] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: There are other autoimmune diseases and if you do inflammatory blood tests, you'll see the inflammation system is in high gear. We're not sure always why that is, but it is. Some infections are known for their hyper inflammation. Lyme's disease is one I know you've had guests on before about Lyme's disease. [00:38:55] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And another well known one that is known for inflammation is, [00:39:00] COVID 19. It's a very inflammatory virus, and a lot of these long COVID syndromes do have significant continued hyper inflammatory states involved. So we are seeing that these types of problems respond well to suppressing and controlling, we use the word immunomodulating, the inflammation system, where the regenerative biologics do work. [00:39:27] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: towards declining those problems and those symptoms.  [00:39:31] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Okay, wow, such great information. I would be remiss if I didn't ask because I know people are wanting to know about vampire facelift and beauty applications. Would you like to talk about that?  [00:39:45] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I would. This is probably a little bit on the more fun end of things we do. [00:39:50] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And most of the people we see have a problem and we want to help them with a problem. But we also have enjoyed helping people want to not only feel [00:40:00] better and be healthier, but feel better about looking better. So there are currently two cosmetic procedures that we have. One is, and as your audience knows, a vampire facial is PRP. [00:40:13] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And we talked about PRP earlier for joints, where you can draw your, uh, have your blood drawn from your own veins, spun in a centrifuge, and pull out the growth factors and the platelets, and inject them into the face. So it gives more growth factors to the face to help tighten the collagen. I like to skip over that and go to the high octane stuff and that's to use the wide draw of the blood. [00:40:37] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: When you change the oil in your car, you don't put the old oil back in it. So we use the stem cell biologics and micro inject the face. to stimulate the epidermal cells in dermal cells rather to stimulate, make more collagen, more elastin, get some tightening and youthful radiant glow because of the [00:41:00] improvement in the cells. [00:41:02] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I think you might notice this as an OB GYN in your pregnant patients. They, don't they often say, Oh, my skin is so good while they're pregnant because they're getting all these youthful growth factors from the womb circulating in the maternal bloodstream. They're getting a Yeah, they're getting a dose. [00:41:18] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Radiance is real. You can look at a pregnant woman and see that their hormones are really on point and their stem cells and how about hair  [00:41:30] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: regrowth? You're also using it for that? That was the other one. And I am, I'm also a recipient of that. So we do the same thing. I've had, I had a bald spot and I've had three scalp injections and it's because of the lighting and things, you probably can't see it, but I'll do some social media posts with some befores and afters. [00:41:50] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And it's, I've been able to help people with thinning, thinning hair. You have to have follicles. You have to have some hair. I can't take a bald person and with the current. state of [00:42:00] things. Now, when we talk about the future of the going backwards in the lineage of stem cells, there are some things coming down the pike and I have some colleagues and friends working on that. [00:42:09] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: But right now this is for people who do have some follicles and I'm sure your audience knows when your hormones start to decline, that's And you have a longstanding inflammation, you, the follicles are sensitive, they, that's like when someone is stressed and they lose hair, it's because the inflammation in their body from the nerve is seen in the areas of symptom, where they become symptomatic, that might be psoriasis. [00:42:33] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: It's where they have dry skin, it might be in the scalp with the follicles, it might be in other areas. We have patients with dry eye syndrome who maybe have had LASIK procedures and we've injected, we talk about glands, we inject the meibomian glands in the eyelids. to help improve the glandular function and I've had some limited benefit there and we're still figuring out how to do that best. [00:42:57] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Okay.  [00:42:58] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Before we wrap up, [00:43:00] we must talk about longevity and then I know you've got that gift for them that's going to help them to know some things that they can start doing now to help with anti aging. But what does the data look like and treatments to increase longevity with stem cells?  [00:43:17] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: We don't have enough. [00:43:18] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: Long term data to answer that scientifically, but we do have something called biological age tests, and I think it'd be mentioned this, there are a few different kinds on the market, but basically it's a test that looks at either the markers in the bloodstream and or markers inside the cell bloodstream, of course, is outside the cell, and these markers are associated with certain age groups. [00:43:42] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: So we can do a blood test and estimate The biological age of someone as opposed to your calendar age, because I know at my last birthday, I turned 58, but I can do a biological age test and it has a different number and you can make lifestyle changes or do things in that [00:44:00] number adjust. You can affect your own rate of aging by taking your own anti aging journey and doing things about it. [00:44:07] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: And we have some studies that show improvement in the, in these biological age tests. With the use of IV regenerative biologics, so at least at the cellular level, which is where aging really does happen, there is scientific evidence to show reduced inflammatory markers and age related markers. And  [00:44:28] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: I know people are wondering, what's that test and where can I get it? [00:44:32] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: It has to be ordered by a doctor like me, and I do a lot of Zoom consultations, so if anyone in your audience is listening, this is an additional holiday gift, is if they call and mention your name, I'll do an introductory Zoom or phone. I prefer zoom, but phone consultation and we can go over their aging status and see where they are and see if we can make some tweaks in many [00:45:00] different areas and talk about the biological age tests. [00:45:03] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: I'm happy to do that. But you have to mention your name and they heard us here.  [00:45:08] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Okay. So Merry Christmas to you, listener, you can call Dr. Jeff's office mentioned you heard him on Dr. Kieran's podcast and you can get some one on one time with Dr. Jeff and find out more about your health. I think that's a great place to end. [00:45:30] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: It sounds this is such a wonderful topic. It's a Such I guess it's kind of the wild west of medicine, but I think it is the future of medicine in many ways. So I think it's very valuable information. Thank you so much for sharing it. You have this wonderful gift that you're giving everyone to help them understand some things that they can start doing now for their health. [00:45:56] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: We'll have the link in the show notes. Do you want to tell them about [00:46:00] what that is? And then also all the places they can  [00:46:02] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: find you online. Thank you so much. Yes, if you go to the and I forget the word the young again method. com slash longevity There's a a free guide on some of the anti aging supplements You should start or if you're not already on and if you do schedule Some time to meet with me we can expand on that for you as well as customize it for the individual Please follow us at we celebrate is the name of the business. [00:46:28] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: R e c e f l e b r a t e That's our website. That's our Instagram. That's our TikTok. That's our YouTube. We have lots of fun stuff. Follow us and send me a comment on Instagram. If you're on Facebook, also send me a comment and say hi and introduce yourself. We like to meet new people all the time. Awesome. [00:46:48] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Thank you so much, Dr. Jeff, for your brave journey. It is always a brave journey for any physician to go off the beaten path [00:47:00] of What we're taught and to do something innovative and new and courageous. So thank you for saying yes to that because you're going to help a lot of people. I know you already are. [00:47:11] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you sharing your journey and  [00:47:14] Dr. Jeffrey Gross: expertise with us today. Thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure and honor. And thank you for  [00:47:20] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: joining me for another episode of the hormone prescription. Stem cells are super exciting and the indications are growing. Access is growing and availability. [00:47:35] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So. I know you learned something that's going to inspire you today. I look forward to knowing what that is. Reach out to me on social media and let me know. And if you want to take Dr. Jeff up on his very generous holiday offer, please do so. We will have all the links in the show notes to his free gift and to how you can reach out to him and contact him. [00:47:58] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Until [00:48:00] next week, peace, love, and hormones, y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. [00:48:22] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription. com where we have some free gifts for you. And you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. [00:48:44] Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Talk to you soon.   ►The Best 5 Anti-Aging Supplements that YOU Need to be taking NOW by Dr. Jeffrey Gross - CLICK HERE ► Feeling tired? Can't seem to lose weight, no matter how hard you try? It might be time to check your hormones. Most people don't even know that their hormones could be the culprit behind their problems. But at Her Hormone Club, we specialize in hormone testing and treatment. We can help you figure out what's going on with your hormones and get you back on track. We offer advanced hormone testing and treatment from Board Certified Practitioners, so you can feel confident that you're getting the best possible care. Plus, our convenient online consultation process makes it easy to get started. Try Her Hormone Club for 30 days and see how it can help you feel better than before. CLICK HERE.   ► Do you feel exhausted, moody, and unable to do the things that used to bring you joy? It could be because of hormonal poverty! You can take our quiz now to find out if your hormone levels are at optimum level or not. Take this quiz and get ready to reclaim your life; say goodbye to fatigue and lack of energy for good. We want every woman to live her best life — free from any signs or symptoms of hormonal poverty, so they can relish their everyday moments with confidence and joy. Imagine having a strong immune system, vibrant skin, improved sleep quality… these are all possible when hormones are balanced! CLICK HERE now and take the #WWPHD Quiz to discover if you're in hormonal poverty — it only takes 2 minutes! Let's get started on optimizing your hormone health today.    

We are in the party zone now. We have a bunch of Reeds and a bunch of villains and a bunch of kids.....and don't forget the mistakes and regrets. What else can POSSIBLY go wrong. First of all, we probably should talk about underestimating the problem. You make plans and you estimate the size of the opposition and then you head out to fight. Now, what could be the worse that can happen during this step...well, bad intelligence and low balling the threat. You can end up out there all alone. One little man against a mob. That brings us to fire power. Do you have the right weapons for the job? Do you have competent people to operate the weapons? Do the weapons work? Honestly, it is amazing that we are able to be successful at all with the number of moving pieces in the world. Sometimes we just need suction cup guns to even the playing field. If you have the correct response and the appropriate weapons, do you have a good visual on your enemies? This is a good question to ask when you are attacking or about to be attacked, or if you have fallen into a deep dark hole, or if you have been hit in the face with webs....or something. OK, so now you are in trouble. You have failed and have been caught....maybe by a net, or just by a bad decision.....or by a crustacean. Whatever happened, here are some things you should do . First, don't panic. Second, get some Bactine, that looks nasty and could get infected. What about villains? Yeah, you got them, and you should be worried about it. They usually come with big plans, big guns, big lackeys, and big egos. So what are you gonna do? Well hotshot? Oh, you are going to shoot them with a gun. Nice. Way to go hotshot. Now you have really made a mess of things. I don't even know what we are doing. No really...I don't....I am watching a movie while I am writing this so I really do not know what is happening. Well, I just hope that you have accomplished what you wanted to. I hope that you are sitting in the chair that you so richly deserve. I hope that you have destroyed your enemies and made the world see how awesome you are. If not...I hope that you had fun.   Check out the pictures we talked about by clicking on this link:  https://jeffandrickpresent.wordpress.com/2023/04/28/episode-133-ff-5-the-sound-of-war/   We also have some merchandise over at Redbubble. We have a couple of nifty shirts for sale. https://www.redbubble.com/people/jeffrickpresent/?asc=u You can also subscribe and listen to us on YouTube!  Our show supports the Hero Initiative, Helping Comic Creators in Need.  http://www.heroinitiative.org/ Eighties Action by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3703-eighties-action License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Energy 2013 by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/211-energy-2013 License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Annie was a 16 year old from Fairfax County, VA. On October 31st 2008, Annie failed to make contact with her parents at the end of the school day. Upon returning home, Annie's father received an automated telephone message from the school saying that Annie had never arrived at school that morning. Two days later on November 2, a person discovered Annie's lifeless body behind a dumpster, in the housing projects of Perkins Homes which is a high-crime Baltimore neighborhood over 50 miles away from Annie's hometown. At that point the investigation became the responsibility of the Baltimore Police Department, who were certain they were dealing with a homicide despite reporting "no signs of physical trauma" on the body. Among the garbage detectives located another item: an empty bottle of Bactine spray, with the lid removed. Another piece of evidence surfaced a few days later. Annie's white Volvo was found abandoned at a nearby gas station with no immediate signs of a struggle. Police were able to lift a single smeared print from the car, which they quickly matched to a known offender in their database: a local teenager named Darnell Kinlaw. During his interrogation, Darnell claimed that he and a few of his friends had found the Volvo with Annie inside by chance, and decided to take it for a joyride after depositing her body behind the dumpster where she was later found. He insisted that Annie was already deceased by the time they came across the vehicle and has consistently maintains to this day that neither he, nor his friends, had any involvement in her disappearance or death. Police carefully scrutinized the empty Bactine bottle that was found alongside her body. Even more significantly, Annie's DNA was found on the open rim, yet her fingerprints were nowhere to be found anywhere on the bottle. The manner of death was ruled a suicide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you remember Dippity Do, Lite Brite, the sting of Bactine spray on a scraped knee, cigarette machines in restaurants, Sunday drives and road trips with he family, you're going to enjoy this candid conversation with Stephanie Stuckey, the legacy namesake of the familiar Stuckey's highway stop. So, how do you revive an icon, nostalgic brand after a year of neglect? In this episode of the Customer Experience Advantage Podcast, Stephanie Stuckey talks about growing up with an icon name synonymous with the company founded by her grandfathers, watching the company be run by outsiders and eventually falling into neglect. Purchased back just one year ago, Stephanie is on a crusade to refine the value proposition, refresh the brand, and re-establish the Stuckey's name as relevant for a new generation. You can find David Avrin on, https://www.davidavrin.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidavrin https://twitter.com/DavidAvrin https://www.facebook.com/therealdavidavrin https://www.instagram.com/therealdavidavrin You can find Stephanie Stuckey on, https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniestuckey https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.stuckey65 https://twitter.com/StuckeysPecans https://stuckeys.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fat One is back with a trip down the medical Memory Lane as he recaps his day, reads a 2020 Census and takes a voiceletter! Happy National Brandied Fruit Day.

In this episode, I play a song by Witch and talk about the Watchmen TV series; I discuss why I won’t listen to Bill Burr; white privilege could also be called “black penalty”; throwing absurdity into the race discussion is uncool; IoT smart home device setups are fragile and I never thought about maintainability of … Continue reading Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for June 21 2020 – Skinned Knees and Bactine

Erin discusses the crimes committed by Christopher Porco who allegedly attacked his parents with an axe while they slept in their Delmar, New York home in 2004. Stacey recounts the murder of 16-year-old Annie McCann who was initially reported as a runaway, but was found dead 50 miles from her home only 48 hrs after disappearing. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/ISGDpodcast)

VT 2019 – The French Farce (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Vermont2019.mp3] Link Farce. A farce is a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. Farce is also characterized by physical humor, the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense, and broadly stylized performances. … Covered in dirt, sweat and sawdust.  There I was, laying on the table in the emergency room at my local hospital.  A nice thick maroon swell of blood blobbing out of the gash on my shin.  Waiting for the doctor-lady to come back.  You might think this would make me cranky.  But, on the contrary I was having a pretty good day. It was, ironically, Memorial Day.  A long weekend and I had gotten a lot done, including running the marathon in Vermont.  I was relieved to have that off my agenda, be done training and back to working on other stuff.  Like cutting up the trees I had felled in the yard.  Then the machete glanced off a branch and I whacked myself square on the shin bone with that long, heavy, sharp blade designed for slicing. Right on the shin bone.  Nothing serious just a bit of a rent on the protective covering of skin that keeps the red stuff in.  Editor's note: “Rent”, to divide, usually violently or abruptly from the middle English Renden and Old English Rendan. I staunched it with a rag from my chainsaw box and hobbled inside for some awkward first aid.  I flushed it out with Bactine and taped a bunch of gauze to it, wrapping the tape around my calf, ending up with something that you might see in an old war film or maybe an even earlier mummy movie.  That held it in place long enough for me move enough trees out of the driveway to get my truck out.  I drove to the emergency room. I wasn't looking forward to the emergency room.  On a major holiday it was sure to be filled with drunken yahoos, with “hold my beer” accidents.  I brought along a book and was going to start working on this report for you in the hours of waiting that I anticipated.  But, I was positively thrilled with service.  I barely had a chance to sit down in the squeaky, vinyl, institutional seat when I was called.  I was attended to by no less than 4 or 5 charming, enthusiastic and competent medical professionals.  It turned out that the doctor-lady on duty's favorite thing was stitches.  We had a great chat and I was in and out in 45 minutes!  They were impressed that I could tell them exactly how much I weighed.  They were almost as impressed with me having run a marathon in Vermont the day before as I was impressed with myself for, well…just being me.  It's a curse.  I drove home and finished chopping up my trees.  … The next night I went to the local Red Cross and tried to give blood.  I see you rolling your eyes.  Chris, what the hell?  You run a race Sunday, your put yourself in the Emergency room Monday, why are you trying to give blood on Tuesday?  In my defence they really want my blood.  They are on me serval phone calls and emails a day about how much they want my blood.  But, I'm usually in the middle of a training cycle and can't really afford to tapped of my basic circulatory life essence.  Consequently, I try to schedule blood donations for after my target events.  The nerve of them.  After begging me for weeks and putting me through all the preliminaries, they turned me away when I told them of my recent forestry mishap.  Apparently there is have some silly rule about ‘no open wounds'. I mean, you're after my blood, wouldn't this be a positive proof point that I've got some to spare? … No worries.  On to my next thing.  I like to be tightly scheduled.  I'm happiest when I have a nice pile of tasks in my que.  That's how my weekends go in the spring and summer.  A yellow sticky pad list of chores in my pocket that I try to get done to have that warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment from washing the car or folding the laundry or … maybe even running a race.  … Teresa had come home from the City to pick up some stuff Friday.  We had to do a bike swap. I had procured a new city bike for her.  A city bike is a bicycle that is perfectly functional but has a low value and low probability of being stolen.  The 40-year-old Schwin I had previously procured was broken.  She had managed to crank out the bearing, which is not something I'm going to fix on a bike where the tires are worth more than the bike.  I procured a ‘new' old bike, cleaned it up, got most of the gears working, and transferred the rack from the old-old bike Saturday morning.  As we are all destined to do, I have turned into my father.  I had to drive her back into the city on Saturday.  I had to be in Vermont Saturday night as well. … I had packed up my race stuff.  Since I was driving, I didn't need to be picky.  A little of this, a little of that.  I opted to go back to my old Brooks baggie shorts with the bike short liner, because they have enough pockets to carry all my standard race stuff. A couple gels, a baggie of Endurolytes, a small thing of lube. I was trying to make the 7:00PM deadline to pick up my bib in Vermont.  Burlington is about 3 hours and change from my house.  After the side trip to the city it was going to be tight.  … The weather forecast called for clear skies Saturday slowly changing to rain in the evening, then into thunderstorms through the morning.  I try not to think too much about the weather when I'm approaching a race.  There really isn't much you can do about it. No sense wasting your energy fretting. It was starting to drizzle when I pulled into the race expo hotel in South Burlington with 8 minutes to spare.  I was able to get my bib and pick up a couple Expresso Love Gu's – old-school nutrition.  In a change of pace, I got a medium shirt, instead of a large due to my current waifish deportment.  Then I wandered off in the strengthening showers to find my campground.  My comfy rustic home to pitch my lonely tent for the evening.  … To get to my camp I was routed right by the race start/finish area. Which was nice.  The college town of Burlington sits on the edge of Lake Champlain.  The race course for the marathon is a sort of figure 8 that goes out north of the city, turns around and runs back through the city, turns again and comes back by the park again to go north, again, then comes back south along a bike trail at the edge of the lake to the finish.  Eyeballing it on the map I thought I might be able to walk to the race start in the morning from my camp.  The bike trail that the race finishes on runs right by the edge of the campground.  I measured it to be over a mile by the road. I figured I probably wouldn't want to hike that, especially in a storm, in the morning, and definitely wouldn't want to hike back after the race.  I called Brian to see what his plans were. He told me he wasn't racing. He was running with his son Chris.  Good for him.  That completes something special for him.  Running a marathon with every one of his kids.  But, for me, I wouldn't be able to pace with him. Did I mention I was racing?  Yeah, I had a goal.  I was trying to spin that fitness from my Boston training cycle into a qualifying race.  I thought it would be a no-brainer.  I was in good shape.  This was supposed to be a more reasonable course.  I'd just hang on to the back of the nearest pace group to 3:30 and be done with that.  Piece of cake.  … Checking in to my camp site it was raining fairly hard now, and of course, as I unrolled my tent it started pouring.  I was trying to hurry but that just made things slower.  The way these tents work is that there isn't a real roof.  The roof part is a screen, a mesh, to I suppose, let your foul camping breath and farts out.  But that let the rain come right through.  The way you make it watertight is to string another bit, called a fly, over the open part, which was giving me trouble in the wind.  Picture ma trying to do all this in the pouring rain and wind.  I must've looked incredibly pitiful.  Hold that picture in your head next time you think hiking the Appalachian trail is a good idea.  Some guy even ran over from a neighboring camp site to help me.  At least it wasn't dark out yet. The good news was that I was right next to the shower & bathroom facilities buulding. The bad news was that I was right next to the shower & bathroom facilities building.  Lots of traffic. Lots of lights.  People wandering around.  I took a few minutes to pump up my mattress. This all seemed like a great idea when I set it up last month.  Not so much now.  Soaking wet.  Pumping away in my little tent with the rain beating on the sides. … Now I'm thinking I should have some sort of meal before I crash out in my soggy hidey hole.  I did what any sentient 21st century droid would do and asked Siri for a grocery store nearby.  I was thinking maybe a Wholefoods or something similar.  But, Burlington, being an old New England Town, is filled with corner grocery stores. Basically, one room affairs with beer, chips and lottery tickets. I was getting tired at this point, so I gave up and bought a turkey sandwich and a beer. I returned to my campground and sat in my truck, thinking how sad a spectacle I was soggy, in my truck with the rain pouring down, chewing on a gas-station sandwich.  Having paddled my canoe through these types of adventures before and thought to myself, smiling a bit, ‘this will make a great story'.  I was worrying a bit about logistics for the morning.  I didn't want to hike the mile plus to the start in a rainstorm.  I decided I would drive in early and find a place to park. They said there was municipal parking, but after my ‘grocery store' adventure I wondered what that would be like, or if it even existed.  Ce'st la vie.  Time for beddy-by.  … In normal conditions my tent, mattress and sleeping bag are pretty darn comfy.  These weren't exactly ‘normal'. It was storming hard, with blowing wind and driving rain. I could hear the waves crashing down on the lake shore with a steady roar. The spotlights on the facilities lit up my tent like an operating theatre. I crawled into my tent, dragging mud and water with me.  Crawled into my sleeping bag and wrapped my throw away shirt around my head like a bandage to block the light, put my phone on airplane mode and set the alarm for 5 AM. That should give me plenty of time to get ready and find a parking spot. Now, on a normal night, in the campground, hard up against the communal bathroom, I probably would have been kept awake by the noise of the park denizens coming and going and recreating. This was not a normal night. I considered my good fortune. The roar of the waves and the wind and the steady drum of a hard rain was like a meditation track, right?  White noise.  The song “The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was running slyly through my head. “The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they called 'gitche gumee' The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy” That's when I realize that I had to pee.  At the same time I realized I would rather have my bladder explode and die of sepsis than go out int o this storm.  Then I fell asleep.  A couple hours later I woke up to an eerie, (no pun intended), silence.  I was woken up by pause in storms.  It was a bit before 11:00 and I thought, now would be an excellent time to make a run for the facilities next door.  As I started moving around I realized that there was a fair amount of water inside my tent.  Whether it was from me bumping the sides or the rain coming sideways under the fly, I don't know. My sleeping bag was wet.  As I extracted myself and went to the rest room I thought that this might be a problem if the storms returned and temperature dropped a bit more.  Woke by quiet after 10.  Goodtime to pee.  Sleeping bag wet.  So, we held an executive meeting in my head and decided to sleep in the truck for the rest of the night.  It was surprisingly comfortable with my sleeping bag and the seat all the way back.  I slept great.  … My 5 AM alarm woke me to a humid, cool morning with scattered, pudgy clouds.  I was still worried about parking so I got my stuff on and drove into town.  Not only was the parking garage available and deserted, I'm pretty sure it was free.  The gate was open and the display had some sort of non-descriptive announcement.  I didn't have too many options for breakfast so I ate one of the SpringEnergy gels I had brought.  They're more like baby food than race gels.  My next mission would be to find a cup of coffee somewhere.  I took $5 with me and went out to walk around the start area.  After a few laps I found a gas station with some coffee and checked that box.  That left me with another problem.  Now I had $3 left over that I didn't know what to do with.  I could just drop it on the ground.  I could try to carry it.  In the end I just handed to some guy in a Bruins shirt.  He was confused.  He was pretty sure I was up to something nefarious.  … Then I just hung out in the park and stretched and relaxed.  It was partially sunny, very humid with a bit of wind and lots of puddles.  The race starts at 7:00 now, ever since the heat incident of 2 years ago.  Looking out over the lake there were towers of blackish clouds.  As I wandered about someone called my name and it was Brian and his son.  I was glad to see them.  Glad to have someone to chat with.  We hung out and listened to the race announcements.  Bart Yasso was saying something to the assembled throng.  There were maybe 3,000 people in the race.  Lots of 50 staters.  A nice size for a race.  About 15 minutes before the start the announcers came on and told everyone to leave the park and take shelter in the parking garages.  Apparently one of those black clouds out over the race had us in its sites.   The crowd filed out of the park across the street and down the road.  Brian, his son and I went into the Courtyard Hotel lobby.  We chatted with some of the folks in there, but basically stood around for 45 minutes while another small storm cell passed over.  That's a first for me.  They let us go back to the race start after the danger had passed.  Speaking of passing, I got passed by Bart Yasso leaving the hotel.  I said hi but he was in a hurry to get back to the announcing.  We found our corrals.  I hunted down the 3:30 pace leaders.  And we were off and running about 7:45.  It was a bit humid but nothing terrible.  I hung close to the pace leader and we were quickly up to pace.  There were two pacers for 3:30.  They did a good job. They kept us within 5 seconds of the pace even with the rolling hills, the hard lefts and rights, and the slight wind.  They did something really useful.  Instead of running together one guy ran about 50 to 100 feet behind the other guy.  I started out with the lead guy but then filtered back to the second pack.   The effort was steady but not hard.  I felt fine.  … It was hillier than I had surmised from Brian's description.  There was one long hill back into the city that wasn't steep but was a nice long pull.  There was a pretty good head wind in one direction.  It was useful to be in the pack and I was able to draft the pacer.  There were some good crowds in the city but not much as you got out of town.  When the sun came through the clouds it was a little hot.  I was staying on my nutrition, taking enough water and sipping from my bottle of F2C.  The gels they had on course were maple syrup gels.  Which is fitting for Vermont, but basically, you're drinking pancake syrup.  I knew the “big hill” was coming up at mile 15ish.  As we turned back towards that hill I put a little extra fuel in the fire and dropped the pace a bit.  I knew, from my training I had some faster miles in me.  I figured I'd put a little buffer between me and the pace group in case I struggled on the hill.  I thought that once I got over the hill, I could relax into the rocking chair and just glide home.  … Up to this point I was pacing well.  Not easy but not hard either.  Race pace. The hill was a monster.  For some reason it really knocked me back on my heels.  I had to grind it out.  I lost some time but stayed ahead of the pace group.  I was suffering badly as I neared the top, but I got over it.  On the back side of the hill I was trashed and focused on finding a recovery pace.  My hips were tight.  My stride was painful.  That high hamstring tendonitis was biting me in the ass.  Remember when I said I “had some good training runs and some not so good since Boston”?  Remember how I said I had somehow managed to give myself tendonitis in the ass?  Well, one of those workouts was a 20+ mile tempo run.  And what happened on that run was I got to about 16 miles and this tendonitis flared up.  It hurts.  Like some monster biting your ass.  It makes it hard to lift your legs and makes running up hills really hard.  It makes it hard to keep your stride length.  I ended up doing a fair amount of walking at the end of that workout.  This showed up again at Vermont after the big hill about 16-17 mile in.  It wasn't the ‘wall' I had plenty of calories.  It wasn't cramps, I had plenty of salt.  It was this pain in my ass that kept me from holing my pace.  And that's where I stopped racing and started limping in.  In a few minutes the 3:30 pacers went by me. I said “That hill was a bitch.”  He said, “Yeah, but it's done now.” I said, “Yeah, but so are my legs.” At this point I still had about a 2-1/2 minute cushion but I could race anymore and had 8-9 miles to go. There were still some rolling hills and each of those little rises hurt like hell.  I threw in the towel and started walking and jogging, just to get it done.  I ran by my camp ground a couple more times and thought about just leaving, but my truck wasn't there, it was downtown.  I was depressed and having dark thoughts.  I thought to myself “Now I know why those people cheat.  You can put in the work and do all the right things and what do you get?  Nothin.  That's why they cheat.:” I might even have had a thought or two about how I'm just getting slower and what's the point of staying in a world that's just a constant loss of ability?  Such is the death march.  When you get into the death march late in a race you notice there are people there doing the same death march pace you are.  You see them walking, stumbling, summoning the strength to run a bit, walking some more.  The comradery of zombies.  It wasn't awful physically.  I was fit enough to not be physically suffering.  Not like a calorie crash.  Not physical exhaustion.  My HR was fine.  I just couldn't get my legs to turn.  And my mind had left the building.  I was done.  Done with training.  Don't with chasing unicorns.  Done with it all. At one point the course cuts through a wooded section in the high miles.  Just a short bit of trail to connect to road sections.  With the rain and the runners it had turned into a mud hole.  I felt bad for the runners who were still racing.  Also, late in the race, in one of the neighborhood sections, there was a bunch of people, a couple neighborhood families handing our Budweiser pony cans.  I had no desire for a can of beer but one of the guys in front of me took one, took a sip and immediately dropped it in a big splash of foam.  The guys handing out the beers yelled at him for dropping it.  It was a bit surreal.  Finally we found our way onto the bike path for the last couple miles back to the finish.  I came upon a guy clutch his calf, hopping around and screaming with a cramp.  I dug out the rest of my Endurolytes, gave him two and said “chew these, to get the salt into your system.”  Hope he had some water with him.  With the late start it was pretty hot and really humid.  It didn't impact me.  I was out of the fight before any of that would have hit me.  As I was pulling into the finish, I was trading places with an older, grey haired woman wearing a singlet from one of the regional running clubs I know.  I thought to myself, ‘great, my finishing photo is me being out kicked by this lady!”  I wasn't in a good place mentally.  I managed to find a pretty fast last mile heading into the finish.  It didn't matter.  I had turned a 2-1/2 minute buffer into a 12 minute hole with a 3:47 finish.  I got my medal and a bottle of water.  I stood around waiting to see if maybe Brian and his son weren't close behind me since I lost so much ground.  I had passed his daughter out on the bike path and she hadn't seen them yet.  I saw the club singlet and congratulated her.  She turned around and said “Chris?” Turns out it was Linda one of the Goon Squad runners.  We had a long talk catching up.  She was coming off AFib surgery and starting her recovery.  The doctors had told her to quit running and it took her a long time to find a doctor who could give her a correct diagnosis and fix it. Now she's on her way back.  I got my truck and made my way back to the campground.  I didn't see any reason to sleep over another night, so I broke it down and loaded up.  I stopped to tell the kid I was leaving early and he insisted on giving me my $36 back. Good Karma.  … I drove the sunny, warm day home to get back onto my list of chores.  I must tell you I was relieved to get this race over with.  But, now I'm out of qualification and I don't have the time or the energy for another campaign this summer.  Maybe I can't make the standard? I don't know.  I kills me to give up, but I'm not having fun anymore and my body is talking to me.  I need some time off.  It took me a few days to come to grips with not running Boston.  I'm not making any proclamations.  But, I'm ok with letting it go after 21 years.  I'm not saying I am.  I'm saying I'm ok with it.  That's the best I can give you coming out the back of this farce of a long weekend.  I'm ok with it.  … “To be alive: not just the carcass / But the spark. / That's crudely put, but … / If we're not supposed to dance, / Why all this music?” – Gregory Orr

VT 2019 – The French Farce (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Vermont2019.mp3] Link Farce. A farce is a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. Farce is also characterized by physical humor, the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense, and broadly stylized performances. … Covered in dirt, sweat and sawdust.  There I was, laying on the table in the emergency room at my local hospital.  A nice thick maroon swell of blood blobbing out of the gash on my shin.  Waiting for the doctor-lady to come back.  You might think this would make me cranky.  But, on the contrary I was having a pretty good day. It was, ironically, Memorial Day.  A long weekend and I had gotten a lot done, including running the marathon in Vermont.  I was relieved to have that off my agenda, be done training and back to working on other stuff.  Like cutting up the trees I had felled in the yard.  Then the machete glanced off a branch and I whacked myself square on the shin bone with that long, heavy, sharp blade designed for slicing. Right on the shin bone.  Nothing serious just a bit of a rent on the protective covering of skin that keeps the red stuff in.  Editor’s note: “Rent”, to divide, usually violently or abruptly from the middle English Renden and Old English Rendan. I staunched it with a rag from my chainsaw box and hobbled inside for some awkward first aid.  I flushed it out with Bactine and taped a bunch of gauze to it, wrapping the tape around my calf, ending up with something that you might see in an old war film or maybe an even earlier mummy movie.  That held it in place long enough for me move enough trees out of the driveway to get my truck out.  I drove to the emergency room. I wasn’t looking forward to the emergency room.  On a major holiday it was sure to be filled with drunken yahoos, with “hold my beer” accidents.  I brought along a book and was going to start working on this report for you in the hours of waiting that I anticipated.  But, I was positively thrilled with service.  I barely had a chance to sit down in the squeaky, vinyl, institutional seat when I was called.  I was attended to by no less than 4 or 5 charming, enthusiastic and competent medical professionals.  It turned out that the doctor-lady on duty’s favorite thing was stitches.  We had a great chat and I was in and out in 45 minutes!  They were impressed that I could tell them exactly how much I weighed.  They were almost as impressed with me having run a marathon in Vermont the day before as I was impressed with myself for, well…just being me.  It’s a curse.  I drove home and finished chopping up my trees.  … The next night I went to the local Red Cross and tried to give blood.  I see you rolling your eyes.  Chris, what the hell?  You run a race Sunday, your put yourself in the Emergency room Monday, why are you trying to give blood on Tuesday?  In my defence they really want my blood.  They are on me serval phone calls and emails a day about how much they want my blood.  But, I’m usually in the middle of a training cycle and can’t really afford to tapped of my basic circulatory life essence.  Consequently, I try to schedule blood donations for after my target events.  The nerve of them.  After begging me for weeks and putting me through all the preliminaries, they turned me away when I told them of my recent forestry mishap.  Apparently there is have some silly rule about ‘no open wounds’. I mean, you’re after my blood, wouldn’t this be a positive proof point that I’ve got some to spare? … No worries.  On to my next thing.  I like to be tightly scheduled.  I’m happiest when I have a nice pile of tasks in my que.  That’s how my weekends go in the spring and summer.  A yellow sticky pad list of chores in my pocket that I try to get done to have that warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment from washing the car or folding the laundry or … maybe even running a race.  … Teresa had come home from the City to pick up some stuff Friday.  We had to do a bike swap. I had procured a new city bike for her.  A city bike is a bicycle that is perfectly functional but has a low value and low probability of being stolen.  The 40-year-old Schwin I had previously procured was broken.  She had managed to crank out the bearing, which is not something I’m going to fix on a bike where the tires are worth more than the bike.  I procured a ‘new’ old bike, cleaned it up, got most of the gears working, and transferred the rack from the old-old bike Saturday morning.  As we are all destined to do, I have turned into my father.  I had to drive her back into the city on Saturday.  I had to be in Vermont Saturday night as well. … I had packed up my race stuff.  Since I was driving, I didn’t need to be picky.  A little of this, a little of that.  I opted to go back to my old Brooks baggie shorts with the bike short liner, because they have enough pockets to carry all my standard race stuff. A couple gels, a baggie of Endurolytes, a small thing of lube. I was trying to make the 7:00PM deadline to pick up my bib in Vermont.  Burlington is about 3 hours and change from my house.  After the side trip to the city it was going to be tight.  … The weather forecast called for clear skies Saturday slowly changing to rain in the evening, then into thunderstorms through the morning.  I try not to think too much about the weather when I’m approaching a race.  There really isn’t much you can do about it. No sense wasting your energy fretting. It was starting to drizzle when I pulled into the race expo hotel in South Burlington with 8 minutes to spare.  I was able to get my bib and pick up a couple Expresso Love Gu’s – old-school nutrition.  In a change of pace, I got a medium shirt, instead of a large due to my current waifish deportment.  Then I wandered off in the strengthening showers to find my campground.  My comfy rustic home to pitch my lonely tent for the evening.  … To get to my camp I was routed right by the race start/finish area. Which was nice.  The college town of Burlington sits on the edge of Lake Champlain.  The race course for the marathon is a sort of figure 8 that goes out north of the city, turns around and runs back through the city, turns again and comes back by the park again to go north, again, then comes back south along a bike trail at the edge of the lake to the finish.  Eyeballing it on the map I thought I might be able to walk to the race start in the morning from my camp.  The bike trail that the race finishes on runs right by the edge of the campground.  I measured it to be over a mile by the road. I figured I probably wouldn’t want to hike that, especially in a storm, in the morning, and definitely wouldn’t want to hike back after the race.  I called Brian to see what his plans were. He told me he wasn’t racing. He was running with his son Chris.  Good for him.  That completes something special for him.  Running a marathon with every one of his kids.  But, for me, I wouldn’t be able to pace with him. Did I mention I was racing?  Yeah, I had a goal.  I was trying to spin that fitness from my Boston training cycle into a qualifying race.  I thought it would be a no-brainer.  I was in good shape.  This was supposed to be a more reasonable course.  I’d just hang on to the back of the nearest pace group to 3:30 and be done with that.  Piece of cake.  … Checking in to my camp site it was raining fairly hard now, and of course, as I unrolled my tent it started pouring.  I was trying to hurry but that just made things slower.  The way these tents work is that there isn’t a real roof.  The roof part is a screen, a mesh, to I suppose, let your foul camping breath and farts out.  But that let the rain come right through.  The way you make it watertight is to string another bit, called a fly, over the open part, which was giving me trouble in the wind.  Picture ma trying to do all this in the pouring rain and wind.  I must’ve looked incredibly pitiful.  Hold that picture in your head next time you think hiking the Appalachian trail is a good idea.  Some guy even ran over from a neighboring camp site to help me.  At least it wasn’t dark out yet. The good news was that I was right next to the shower & bathroom facilities buulding. The bad news was that I was right next to the shower & bathroom facilities building.  Lots of traffic. Lots of lights.  People wandering around.  I took a few minutes to pump up my mattress. This all seemed like a great idea when I set it up last month.  Not so much now.  Soaking wet.  Pumping away in my little tent with the rain beating on the sides. … Now I’m thinking I should have some sort of meal before I crash out in my soggy hidey hole.  I did what any sentient 21st century droid would do and asked Siri for a grocery store nearby.  I was thinking maybe a Wholefoods or something similar.  But, Burlington, being an old New England Town, is filled with corner grocery stores. Basically, one room affairs with beer, chips and lottery tickets. I was getting tired at this point, so I gave up and bought a turkey sandwich and a beer. I returned to my campground and sat in my truck, thinking how sad a spectacle I was soggy, in my truck with the rain pouring down, chewing on a gas-station sandwich.  Having paddled my canoe through these types of adventures before and thought to myself, smiling a bit, ‘this will make a great story’.  I was worrying a bit about logistics for the morning.  I didn’t want to hike the mile plus to the start in a rainstorm.  I decided I would drive in early and find a place to park. They said there was municipal parking, but after my ‘grocery store’ adventure I wondered what that would be like, or if it even existed.  Ce’st la vie.  Time for beddy-by.  … In normal conditions my tent, mattress and sleeping bag are pretty darn comfy.  These weren’t exactly ‘normal’. It was storming hard, with blowing wind and driving rain. I could hear the waves crashing down on the lake shore with a steady roar. The spotlights on the facilities lit up my tent like an operating theatre. I crawled into my tent, dragging mud and water with me.  Crawled into my sleeping bag and wrapped my throw away shirt around my head like a bandage to block the light, put my phone on airplane mode and set the alarm for 5 AM. That should give me plenty of time to get ready and find a parking spot. Now, on a normal night, in the campground, hard up against the communal bathroom, I probably would have been kept awake by the noise of the park denizens coming and going and recreating. This was not a normal night. I considered my good fortune. The roar of the waves and the wind and the steady drum of a hard rain was like a meditation track, right?  White noise.  The song “The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was running slyly through my head. “The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they called 'gitche gumee' The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy” That’s when I realize that I had to pee.  At the same time I realized I would rather have my bladder explode and die of sepsis than go out int o this storm.  Then I fell asleep.  A couple hours later I woke up to an eerie, (no pun intended), silence.  I was woken up by pause in storms.  It was a bit before 11:00 and I thought, now would be an excellent time to make a run for the facilities next door.  As I started moving around I realized that there was a fair amount of water inside my tent.  Whether it was from me bumping the sides or the rain coming sideways under the fly, I don’t know. My sleeping bag was wet.  As I extracted myself and went to the rest room I thought that this might be a problem if the storms returned and temperature dropped a bit more.  Woke by quiet after 10.  Goodtime to pee.  Sleeping bag wet.  So, we held an executive meeting in my head and decided to sleep in the truck for the rest of the night.  It was surprisingly comfortable with my sleeping bag and the seat all the way back.  I slept great.  … My 5 AM alarm woke me to a humid, cool morning with scattered, pudgy clouds.  I was still worried about parking so I got my stuff on and drove into town.  Not only was the parking garage available and deserted, I’m pretty sure it was free.  The gate was open and the display had some sort of non-descriptive announcement.  I didn’t have too many options for breakfast so I ate one of the SpringEnergy gels I had brought.  They’re more like baby food than race gels.  My next mission would be to find a cup of coffee somewhere.  I took $5 with me and went out to walk around the start area.  After a few laps I found a gas station with some coffee and checked that box.  That left me with another problem.  Now I had $3 left over that I didn’t know what to do with.  I could just drop it on the ground.  I could try to carry it.  In the end I just handed to some guy in a Bruins shirt.  He was confused.  He was pretty sure I was up to something nefarious.  … Then I just hung out in the park and stretched and relaxed.  It was partially sunny, very humid with a bit of wind and lots of puddles.  The race starts at 7:00 now, ever since the heat incident of 2 years ago.  Looking out over the lake there were towers of blackish clouds.  As I wandered about someone called my name and it was Brian and his son.  I was glad to see them.  Glad to have someone to chat with.  We hung out and listened to the race announcements.  Bart Yasso was saying something to the assembled throng.  There were maybe 3,000 people in the race.  Lots of 50 staters.  A nice size for a race.  About 15 minutes before the start the announcers came on and told everyone to leave the park and take shelter in the parking garages.  Apparently one of those black clouds out over the race had us in its sites.   The crowd filed out of the park across the street and down the road.  Brian, his son and I went into the Courtyard Hotel lobby.  We chatted with some of the folks in there, but basically stood around for 45 minutes while another small storm cell passed over.  That’s a first for me.  They let us go back to the race start after the danger had passed.  Speaking of passing, I got passed by Bart Yasso leaving the hotel.  I said hi but he was in a hurry to get back to the announcing.  We found our corrals.  I hunted down the 3:30 pace leaders.  And we were off and running about 7:45.  It was a bit humid but nothing terrible.  I hung close to the pace leader and we were quickly up to pace.  There were two pacers for 3:30.  They did a good job. They kept us within 5 seconds of the pace even with the rolling hills, the hard lefts and rights, and the slight wind.  They did something really useful.  Instead of running together one guy ran about 50 to 100 feet behind the other guy.  I started out with the lead guy but then filtered back to the second pack.   The effort was steady but not hard.  I felt fine.  … It was hillier than I had surmised from Brian’s description.  There was one long hill back into the city that wasn’t steep but was a nice long pull.  There was a pretty good head wind in one direction.  It was useful to be in the pack and I was able to draft the pacer.  There were some good crowds in the city but not much as you got out of town.  When the sun came through the clouds it was a little hot.  I was staying on my nutrition, taking enough water and sipping from my bottle of F2C.  The gels they had on course were maple syrup gels.  Which is fitting for Vermont, but basically, you’re drinking pancake syrup.  I knew the “big hill” was coming up at mile 15ish.  As we turned back towards that hill I put a little extra fuel in the fire and dropped the pace a bit.  I knew, from my training I had some faster miles in me.  I figured I’d put a little buffer between me and the pace group in case I struggled on the hill.  I thought that once I got over the hill, I could relax into the rocking chair and just glide home.  … Up to this point I was pacing well.  Not easy but not hard either.  Race pace. The hill was a monster.  For some reason it really knocked me back on my heels.  I had to grind it out.  I lost some time but stayed ahead of the pace group.  I was suffering badly as I neared the top, but I got over it.  On the back side of the hill I was trashed and focused on finding a recovery pace.  My hips were tight.  My stride was painful.  That high hamstring tendonitis was biting me in the ass.  Remember when I said I “had some good training runs and some not so good since Boston”?  Remember how I said I had somehow managed to give myself tendonitis in the ass?  Well, one of those workouts was a 20+ mile tempo run.  And what happened on that run was I got to about 16 miles and this tendonitis flared up.  It hurts.  Like some monster biting your ass.  It makes it hard to lift your legs and makes running up hills really hard.  It makes it hard to keep your stride length.  I ended up doing a fair amount of walking at the end of that workout.  This showed up again at Vermont after the big hill about 16-17 mile in.  It wasn’t the ‘wall’ I had plenty of calories.  It wasn’t cramps, I had plenty of salt.  It was this pain in my ass that kept me from holing my pace.  And that’s where I stopped racing and started limping in.  In a few minutes the 3:30 pacers went by me. I said “That hill was a bitch.”  He said, “Yeah, but it’s done now.” I said, “Yeah, but so are my legs.” At this point I still had about a 2-1/2 minute cushion but I could race anymore and had 8-9 miles to go. There were still some rolling hills and each of those little rises hurt like hell.  I threw in the towel and started walking and jogging, just to get it done.  I ran by my camp ground a couple more times and thought about just leaving, but my truck wasn’t there, it was downtown.  I was depressed and having dark thoughts.  I thought to myself “Now I know why those people cheat.  You can put in the work and do all the right things and what do you get?  Nothin.  That’s why they cheat.:” I might even have had a thought or two about how I’m just getting slower and what’s the point of staying in a world that’s just a constant loss of ability?  Such is the death march.  When you get into the death march late in a race you notice there are people there doing the same death march pace you are.  You see them walking, stumbling, summoning the strength to run a bit, walking some more.  The comradery of zombies.  It wasn’t awful physically.  I was fit enough to not be physically suffering.  Not like a calorie crash.  Not physical exhaustion.  My HR was fine.  I just couldn’t get my legs to turn.  And my mind had left the building.  I was done.  Done with training.  Don’t with chasing unicorns.  Done with it all. At one point the course cuts through a wooded section in the high miles.  Just a short bit of trail to connect to road sections.  With the rain and the runners it had turned into a mud hole.  I felt bad for the runners who were still racing.  Also, late in the race, in one of the neighborhood sections, there was a bunch of people, a couple neighborhood families handing our Budweiser pony cans.  I had no desire for a can of beer but one of the guys in front of me took one, took a sip and immediately dropped it in a big splash of foam.  The guys handing out the beers yelled at him for dropping it.  It was a bit surreal.  Finally we found our way onto the bike path for the last couple miles back to the finish.  I came upon a guy clutch his calf, hopping around and screaming with a cramp.  I dug out the rest of my Endurolytes, gave him two and said “chew these, to get the salt into your system.”  Hope he had some water with him.  With the late start it was pretty hot and really humid.  It didn’t impact me.  I was out of the fight before any of that would have hit me.  As I was pulling into the finish, I was trading places with an older, grey haired woman wearing a singlet from one of the regional running clubs I know.  I thought to myself, ‘great, my finishing photo is me being out kicked by this lady!”  I wasn’t in a good place mentally.  I managed to find a pretty fast last mile heading into the finish.  It didn’t matter.  I had turned a 2-1/2 minute buffer into a 12 minute hole with a 3:47 finish.  I got my medal and a bottle of water.  I stood around waiting to see if maybe Brian and his son weren’t close behind me since I lost so much ground.  I had passed his daughter out on the bike path and she hadn’t seen them yet.  I saw the club singlet and congratulated her.  She turned around and said “Chris?” Turns out it was Linda one of the Goon Squad runners.  We had a long talk catching up.  She was coming off AFib surgery and starting her recovery.  The doctors had told her to quit running and it took her a long time to find a doctor who could give her a correct diagnosis and fix it. Now she’s on her way back.  I got my truck and made my way back to the campground.  I didn’t see any reason to sleep over another night, so I broke it down and loaded up.  I stopped to tell the kid I was leaving early and he insisted on giving me my $36 back. Good Karma.  … I drove the sunny, warm day home to get back onto my list of chores.  I must tell you I was relieved to get this race over with.  But, now I’m out of qualification and I don’t have the time or the energy for another campaign this summer.  Maybe I can’t make the standard? I don’t know.  I kills me to give up, but I’m not having fun anymore and my body is talking to me.  I need some time off.  It took me a few days to come to grips with not running Boston.  I’m not making any proclamations.  But, I’m ok with letting it go after 21 years.  I’m not saying I am.  I’m saying I’m ok with it.  That’s the best I can give you coming out the back of this farce of a long weekend.  I’m ok with it.  … “To be alive: not just the carcass / But the spark. / That’s crudely put, but … / If we’re not supposed to dance, / Why all this music?” – Gregory Orr

Well, the mayhem was spectacular along with the revelations and the cliffhangers (and a pregnant pause!) in this week's episode! Bactine anyone? We are talking of course about the ultimate episode of the season (and or series?), aka Season 11 Episode 10 “My Struggle IV”. It was written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, and it originally aired on March 21, 2018. We struggled because we had so much to say (and so did you guys!) that we had to split our normal one episode into two! This one is contains our news and analysis. WSB 28 will be filled with feedback! Read More... The post WSB 27- The X-Files S11E10 My Struggle IV appeared first on Golden Spiral Media- Entertainment Podcasts, Technology Podcasts & More.

Well, the mayhem was spectacular along with the revelations and the cliffhangers (and a pregnant pause!) in this week’s episode! Bactine anyone? We are talking of course about the ultimate episode of the season (and or series?), aka Season 11 Episode 10 “My Struggle IV”. It was written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, and it originally aired on March 21, 2018. We struggled because we had so much to say (and so did you guys!) that we had to split our normal one episode into two! This one is contains our news and analysis. WSB 28 will be filled with feedback! Read More... The post WSB 27- The X-Files S11E10 My Struggle IV appeared first on Golden Spiral Media- Entertainment Podcasts, Technology Podcasts & More.

The Beauty of the Christmas Story, Atheists Praying, Breaking Animal News, Don't Judge Cement Head in the Microwave Guy, Christmas Break-ups, God Upholds the Humble, Being Likable at Work, Rudolph, Sending Funny Emails at Work, Talking Fast;   Quotes: “We don't want this show to be the Bactine of radio.” “Take a deep breath. God has given you what you need.” “People are yearning for God.” “Funny is not subjective. It's concrete when it's THIS Funny.” “Rudolph is not a documentary, Sherri.”

Death of Annie McCann. November 02, 2008. Baltimore, Maryland. A 16 year-old girl from Alexandria, Virginia is found dead behind a dumpster in Baltimore, Maryland. A note left behind in her room indicates that she had considered suicide but instead opted to live by starting over somewhere else. In the note she also asks her parents not to look for her. The parents are devastated and cannot account for why their happy daughter would have run away. An autopsy is performed and the cause of death was lidocaine poisoning. The teen had brought a bottle of Bactine with her which contains lidocaine, but the amount contained in a 5oz bottle may not be enough to cause death. Her car, a white Volvo, was discovered several blocks away. A fingerprint identified inside of the car belonged to a person of interest who would admit to pulling a dead girl out of the car before using it to joyride with friends. As more details emerged the mystery deepened. In a case that is just as perplexing as the disappearance of Maura Murray, we attempt to figure out whether Annie McCann was murdered, took her own life, or accidentally poisoned herself.

An unconventional literary success story this week, as we talk about Donald Ray Pollock's 2008 debut story collection, KNOCKEMSTIFF, which he wrote after quitting his job at a paper mill and giving himself five years to "make it" as a writer. We also talk about the proliferation of "20 under 40"-style listicles in the literary world, and why we're so obsessed with youth. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com.  

Something to Worry About, Prison Names, Krusty Kielen, Gravedigger Greg, Saucy Sarah, On The Lamb, WoC, Teddy Ruxpin, Golf Cart, Jersey Name, Scrabble Words, Bactine Benson, Hot Dog Pizza, LeBron, BIKE GALLERY

Grab those bats and torches and get ready for an "Uprising"! Brick has control of the Glades and what's left of Team Arrow is doing their best to stop them, but they are outnumbered. Merlyn offers to help when he discovers that it was really Danny Brickwell that killed his wife 21 years ago. Felicity's not going to stand by and watch our heroes work with this killer though. Instead, they'll get the help of Ted Knight, Sin, and the oppressed citizens of the Glades. They try their best, but it looks like the bad guys are getting the better of them…until a familiar green hood shows up. Jay and Josh slather on the Bactine so a hero can get there in time on this week's Green Justice: An Arrow Podcast. Listen in and justice will be served...to your MP3 player!