Rebuilding the Human Body

How do we rebuild athletes after injury? Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice, and orthopedic surgeon Kevin R. Stone, MD, investigate the world of surgeries and recovery.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chuck Nice?

  Hey StarTalk fans, just a heads up, this episode of Sports Edition features frank, detailed conversation about physical injury, surgery, and other similar topics. We advise you to use your discretion while listening.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. This time, we're talking about rebuilding athletes. We can rebuild them.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  We can make them faster. We can make them stronger.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's of course Chuck Nice, Chuck, there you go.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's up Neil?

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 0:46Chuck Nice?

  Looking forward to this, I just want to know if they can actually give them the sound effects that go choo choo choo choo choo choo choo.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need the sound effects, otherwise it's not really happening.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  The whole show was sound effects.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about a show from 40 years ago, The Six Million Dollar Man.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Hey, look, it's part of my wonderful childhood.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Gary O'Reilly, Gary, you're the only thing that gives us street cred in the Sports Edition, so I want to make it clear to you about that.

• 1:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, my ego is suitably happy. And thank you, good to be here again.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Former soccer pro and sports commentator, actually, before joining us here on the other side of the pond. And today, we're talking about sort of rebuilding athletes. Can we rebuild them? And we've got somebody who's intricately tuned in to just that need. Dr. Kevin Stone, Kevin, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, so you're based in San Francisco, a private practice, and you, I have on your sort of mini resume here, you've worked with the US Ski Team and at the US Olympic Training Center and with various dance and ballet companies. So, these are, these are sports that, that really take a toll on joints and limbs. And so, but, but do you specialize in knees, is that correct?

• 2:09Speaker 03

  Indeed, we see primarily knees, but also shoulders and ankles.

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, now what about toes?

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  What about head and toes?

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want the whole song in there?

• 2:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you sing during surgery?

• 2:25Speaker 03

  Only for patients who sing to me.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's how he remembers how the bodies connected, right? They need the mnemonics themselves.

• 2:33Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you something, if your orthopedic surgeon is singing head, shoulders, knees, and toes to remind them of where the parts are, you need to come out of that anesthetic

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  haze, come out of that haze and get off that table.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're, I think in your field, you're an orthopedic surgeon, but you're also a scientist and inventor?

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you hold forty-one patents. Whoa. For, for like, including medical devices, among other things.

• 3:06Chuck Nice?

  Now, are patents like babies? Do you have a favorite or are you not allowed to have a favorite?

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Oh, you definitely have favorites, the ones that pay you money are.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ones that make the most money.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, it is just like fatherhood.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just the same with the kids. So, so tell me something, what's, what's the difference between what you do and what someone who might specialize in pain management do? Because in all those sports, they, they experience pain. And is the pain telling you they gotta, you gotta replace their bones or fix their bones? Or is this, where do you land in that landscape of surgeons and other doctors who help athletes?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Sure, so the pain management folks are wonderful in that they help treat the pain. My job in life is to cure the problem that caused the pain.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay, so, so the buck begins and ends with you, okay? And sometimes that means going in and messing with the bones, I guess.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Yes, it's more soft tissue these days because our athletes more commonly tear their meniscus and their ACLs and their articular cartilage than they break their bones.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  So now, I once heard a long, long, long time ago, that when I did try to play some sports, it was chess.

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, ah, the cramping, oh, the cramping, three fingers, three finger cramps, terrible. Um, so that a sprain, a soft tissue injury is so much worse, a bad sprain is so much worse than a break. Is that true?

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Well, breaks heal back to normal, bone heals back to normal bone. Sprains or tears of tissue often heal back with scar. So, a big part of our job is to figure out how to tweak that system and get it to heal back normally, preferably fast, so Gary doesn't have to sit on the bench for too long.

• 5:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Can you speak to the coach?

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but I've, I've heard your profession, uh, I don't know if you take it as a, as a, as a, as a compliment, as a loving compliment, or as an insult, that orthopedic surgeons were like, were like the carpenters of surgeons. Is that a fair characterization?

• 5:27Speaker 03

  None anymore. I mean, I've spent my life as a scientist and as a surgeon, and pretty much because those of us who believe that you should never put something in, or, or do something to a patient, that you either don't know the outcome, or aren't trying to study the outcome. So what that means is we're always trying to make things better. How can I tweak the system? How can I make you heal faster? How can I apply something new to your healing process? How can I push the envelope forward? Because essentially, most of what we know today is probably not true, meaning we'll know more tomorrow, we'll evolve our thinking. And so the scientist's mind is always asking, what's next? How to make it better?

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're, so you're saying you have the right brain wiring for what you're doing, and for, and to preserve your value going forward, always on the cutting edge?

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Uh, yes.

• 6:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. So, I mean, what, let's, let's jump forward here, because, I mean, the hammer and chisel stuff that we are horrified by looking at.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because we've seen the doctor bags of orthopedic surgeons, that's why I'm asking if you guys are carpenters or what.

• 6:33Gary O'Reilly?

  What interests me now is...

• 6:34Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry, Doc, Jesus was a carpenter. You're in good company. You're in good company.

• 6:39Gary O'Reilly?

  How, how do I feel those words aren't as soothing as you intended, Chuck?

• 6:44Gary O'Reilly?

  So, you have a wonderful term, which I must admit, I gravitated towards immediately, called biologics. Now, it's that point where you, which you've just discussed about, we would take things out and hope that what we did was enough to enable an athlete or a patient to continue onwards. But now you've fallen into this area of biologics. Can you explain just how, why, and everything it kind of encapsulates?

• 7:10Chuck Nice?

  And can you start with what the hell is biologics?

• 7:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, please.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  So biologics is when you were in high school, you dissected the worm, where bionics, you went and rebuilt the engine. So biologics means everything from a living organism, whether it's animals, plants, or microorganisms. And in my world, what I most commonly get the phone call for is, hey, doc, I've injured my knee. Can't you just put a shock absorber back in it so I can go back out and play? I can keep playing. I don't want to have a joint replacement. So a big part of my life is creating bionese or biologic joint replacement, where we regrow the cartilage, replace the venescus, rebuild the ACL. And

• 7:55Speaker 03

  today, we're in what I call the anabolic era of orthopedics, meaning we want to add growth factors to all those tissues and stem cells and other such things. And so in the past, you injured your knee, you went to the doc, he took the tissues out, sent you back out in the field, or maybe jammed some cortisone in, which shuts down healing, right? And today, you injure your knee, my job is either to repair it, regenerate it, or replace the tissues that you've injured, and then add growth factors and cells to accelerate your healing process. That's what biologics is.

• 8:28Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, are you able to specifically target an area, and I'm speaking particularly to regeneration. So would you be able to target an area to regrow, like if you were using stem cells? Or is it just something that is a support in terms of strengthening?

• 8:48Speaker 03

  It's both. So you are much more like a salamander than you realize, meaning you have-

• 8:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, thank you. Thank you, doctor.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, let him finish. Let him finish that thought.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  You have

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I know where he's going with it, but go on.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  You have all the regenerative capability inside your genes and inside your body. You just don't usually have the templates or the scaffolds to regrow tissue through. So my job is to either rebuild that scaffold or give you a new collagen scaffold or a new tissue. And then tweak the systems that you do what your body knows how to do.

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:27Gary O'Reilly?

  What's been the game changer, doctor? Because people must have had that thought. Give me something that's a shock absorber. Wouldn't it be great if... dot, dot, dot. So what's been the game changer to take you from the thought to the action?

• 9:40Speaker 03

  So I would identify, there have been many, of course, but I'll identify two big game changers. One is tissue donation. So now, when a young person falls off their motorcycle, which we call donor cycles.

• 9:52Chuck Nice?

  Or I call it Tuesday.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Right? They'll donate their parts to us. So we get the meniscus and the ACLs and the tissues that we want to rebuild with. Or when a mom comes to her healthy C-section. That amniotic fluid in birth tissues are loaded with growth factors and stem cells and all the things that we want to use. Nothing's growing faster than the fetus.

• 10:16Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  And so that bathing fluid has all the potent fountain of youth that we've always wanted to have. And we want to apply that to an old guy like Gary and get him back out to play the sports he wants to play.

• 10:28Chuck Nice?

  I used to like you, Doc.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  So, so those two, those things, that number one, donation. Number two, we've learned that we can work with growth factors in the body's own, what we now call not stem cells. But stem cell derived self-repair cells, terrible term. We don't have a shorter term for it yet, but we will. And that's because we don't necessarily inject stem cells anymore, as you've heard about with so many athletes.

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  We now do is we inject growth factors to recruit the body's billions of cells to the site of injury to accelerate the healing.

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's cool. It's, it's almost like a really super advanced skin graft.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Well, that's not a bad analogy. It is.

• 11:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. What sort of timeline when you say accelerate? Because it could take five years and everyone's going, wow, that's really quick. But I'm guessing it's not going to take anything like that sort of time.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Oh, no, we're using these today, of course. So Gary, in your day, a footballer will injure his ACL. He's out for a year, right? Why does it take a year to come back? So there's two reasons. Number one.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  I have a guaranteed contract.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's one.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Number one, it takes time for the tissue to mature. And so we can goose that tissue these days and help it mature faster. And number two, one of the really big problems when I hit you with an axe, otherwise known as surgery, is that you have this huge cortisol release, a stress hormone. And within eight hours of surgery, your muscles start to atrophy. So ask any athlete who's gone through a knee surgery or a shoulder surgery. It's not so much the surgery that is painful, and it is a bit. It's really the pain of going to rehab for a year, trying to build back that muscle that you lost. So we're doing a study right now with a natural substitute

• 12:28Speaker 03

  that can block those receptors that the cortisol binds to in the muscle and maybe prevent that muscle atrophy. So two ways in which we can accelerate the athlete getting back to sports. The growth factors and preventing some of the damage that happens at first time.

• 12:44Chuck Nice?

  Can I just say this, Doc? Can I just suggest this? Okay, maybe instead of operating with an axe, you use a scalpel.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just help him out there. Thanks, Chuck, for helping the good doctor out. He never thought of that. That's good.

• 12:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Doctor, you know, I'm going to use the very basic of medical terms because that's all I will understand, more or less. But the knee is a bony hinge in a sack of fluid, more or less. And it's the fluid that. Is able, and you you came up with the most wonderful term, lub- lubricity?

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I like it.

• 13:20Gary O'Reilly?

  I, isn't it Chuck? It's a, it's a word I can feel, yeah.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I still have to think about it, but go on.

• 13:25Chuck Nice?

  Is that, is, is the fluid the same in all the joints? It's like the, is, what is that, synovial fluid? Is that, is that in all the joints?

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is.

• 13:33Gary O'Reilly?

  So, do we lose some of that? And as such, we have the grinding and bone on bone. And then, can I get a, a do it yourself kit for home? That I?

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called WD-40.

• 13:49Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm, I'm just about there with the WD-40, by the way.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  So, I happen to take, take care of lots of skiers and I have a huge number of skiers with arthritic knees who come in in October, November for their annual lube job before ski season. And so, yes, we can augment the lubrication that's inside the joints. We can add an injection of that actual lubricant called hyaluronic acid. But even better than that today, we can add to the lubricant some growth factors that stimulate your body to produce more lubricant. So that the effect will last longer than just the length of time of the lube job.

• 14:28Gary O'Reilly?

  How many athletes, elite athletes, come to you, doctor, and say, I ain't got nothing wrong with me, but I could do with an upgrade because I know in the next few years, I'm gonna get hit hard. I'm gonna need to run harder, faster. Can you upgrade my ligaments? Is that, is, is, is that me imagining something or is this an actual real thing?

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I, I worry about something. If you do all of this to an athlete and you prolong their career and they're excellent for a longer period of time, like, at the end of it all, do they just decompose into a pile of dust?

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you over prolonged them so that in fact, there's a secondary effect later on? Which is the consequence of all this that you're doing?

• 15:12Speaker 03

  So I just finished a book which will start to publish, which is called

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you didn't just say no. Wait, why didn't you say, why didn't you say no, they don't turn into a pile of dust?

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Because the title of the book is called Play Forever. And so our goal is to have you drop dead at a hundred, playing the sport that you love.

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's so cool. So if you drop that sport from walking to the mall down to sitting on the couch eating donuts, then I'm all for it.

• 15:39Chuck Nice?

  I was just gonna say, because Gary brought something up with this almost preventative, so let's go from upgrade to preventative. I would like to know if when you have a tear or you detach a ligament, is that due to a repeated stress that starts as perhaps a micro tear or a small tear? And then all, or a just a stretching, forget the tears, just like a rubber band, a stretch and then pop. So if that's the case, what could you do to recruit building blocks to that area to reinforce it before the injury ever happens?

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Yes, so it's a great question. So we want you to pay attention to yourself. Don't just ignore those injuries and play through them. The earlier we get to you, the more likely we can prevent you from taking a small tweak and making it into a big break. And a big part of that is that so many of the injuries that I see in athletes are actually mental errors. Meaning they were going a little too fast and thinking about something else. They made a decision to reach out their leg when they knew they shouldn't. Most sports injuries are actual mental errors. And so if we can teach people to really be paying attention to themselves, to be in the game, to put the cellphone away, to think about what they're doing.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop texting while you're playing tennis.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Exactly. We'll see a lot fewer errors. But then, once they have that little tweak that you're talking about, Chuck, we can address those. We can inject those often. We can treat them with soft tissue massage. We can treat them with exercises that help them heal. If we can get to you early, we can prevent that late injury.

• 17:15Gary O'Reilly?

  So doctor, do patients come into you and you look at them and go, or you look at the imaging, whichever way it works like for this particular patient? And you go, I can't give you a biological solution?

• 17:28Speaker 03

  So 80% of the people in the world who are told that they need a knee replacement actually don't. What's happened is that part of the knee has often worn out. And so our guideline is if it's worn out, but there's still joint space, we can often rebuild it biologically. If it's worn out, but it's bone on bone in one part of the knee, we can resurface just that part of the knee, not a full knee replacement. If it's worn out completely across the knee, then we've reimagined what knee replacement is. So it's not your grandfather's knee replacement. Now what we do is we use a robot and a computer system. We can make extremely precise cuts so we can put a metal cap on the bone that your

• 18:12Speaker 03

  body will grow into the metal porous surface and become part of you. So no more cement to worry about loosening. So we have so many of our patients going back to playing tennis, to running, to hiking, to doing the things they thought they could never do on these reimagined joint replacements.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  So you're like a brick specialist, man. Like, that's what you are.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Realign your bricks.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  You're like a brick specialist. It's so cool.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Want to realignment?

• 18:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we gotta resurface your rotors, like, you know what I mean? Maybe we'll replace-

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I need a lube too, while you're there. We'll do a lube.

• 18:44Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 18:46Gary O'Reilly?

  We've taken one of the world's leading orthopedic surgeons.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Made him a brick specialist.

• 18:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Basically, thrown him in the trash.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let me, let me, we gotta actually wind this up, but let me-

• 19:00Chuck Nice?

  Aw, man.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, it's, well, time goes fast. Um, so Kevin, a question. We didn't spend much time on this. Is there some brief promise you could give to us about the future of this technology? Where you create a collagen scaffold, is it made of collagen? On which the cells that your body already knows how to make, um, it clads that scaffold and basically regenerates an entire organ or an entire functioning element of your physiology?

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Yes, so that was my first invention. It was called a collagen scaffold for the meniscus, a collagen meniscus implant. And it acted like a rose trellis. The body would grow through it and regrow a new meniscus cartilage. And now we're using that same technology to regrow other tissues, ligaments, articular cartilage, things that keep you functioning. So the idea that you're just referring to- How do we create scaffolds and cause the body to regrow it? Again, back to that salamander that Chuck is still thinking about. I think you have the ability within you to regrow an awful lot of things. For instance, we never thought you could regrow your liver, or that brain cells regrow, and we now know both of those.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  Both of them do.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  You bet. So if you stay in touch with orthopedics, you'll find that we'll be regrowing your parts more than replacing them.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's end on this.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last question rights here. So if you... The last rites.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you?

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Not until you're age 100.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  While you're playing tennis.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in 10 years, what will we look like as human beings if we continue on the arc that you have engaged?

• 20:41Speaker 03

  So my goal is to have you look fitter, faster, and stronger, and have you be healthy until the day you die.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would...

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  Is that why your skin is so dewy, doctor?

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to make nursing homes obsolete? That's what you're trying to do here.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  Unless they have tennis courts.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Good.

• 21:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounds more like country club.

• 21:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm retiring to a country club. That's a cool thing.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got to take a break now. But Dr. Stone, can you hang out for our third segment? Because that's when we really just chew the fat, and there's just so much fat chewable stuff that you do that we want to talk about. So can you hang out?

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. We'll come back to you. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. We can rebuild them when you return.

• 21:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk's Sports Edition. We're gonna title this segment Medical Lane. So, we've looked at the cutting edge of knee surgery and biologics. And, but what I wonder is, what was it like back before all of this? Way back, 30, 40 years, the first Olympics. Way, way back in the 1980s and 1990s. This way back, because, you know, Gary O'Reilly, Chuck, he's our co-host here. He's usually a commentator, but now, he's our subject. That's right.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, we wanna know what players like Gary O'Reilly, as a professional soccer player, did before people like Dr. Kevin Stone came on the scene. So, Gary, how many times were you injured and had to go away and come back?

• 22:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, gosh, injuries are one thing, Neil. The number of times I had to get sewn back together again through cuts and things, or through surgeries. Alright, let's do this in a, in a sort of organized manner. Let's start at the bottom. You get kicked across the shins all the time in training, but I had, oh, this is really quite modern. I had an arthroscopic surgery on a torn meniscus. So, the cartilage in my knee. And, but, the tear was inside the cartilage itself, so it didn't breach to an outer wall. So, the surgeon sutured it, which was great. And during recovery, it just ripped itself to pieces.

• 23:33Gary O'Reilly?

  So, there I had to go back in and have that removed. In the meantime, I had reconstructive surgery on the same knee for my MCL, my medial collateral ligament, which is the one on the inside that runs sort of north to south. And it would become really, and you hear-

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm an astrophysicist, so when you say north-south, I'm thinking, you mean-

• 23:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Up and down?

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up and down?

• 23:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay, 'cause up is not north. Up is space, okay? Just be clear, who are you talking to here?

• 24:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you for reminding me. Point taken. So- You heard Dr. Stone talk about how you get some laxity in the ligament, and you can do certain things to tighten it up. Well, what they used for me, and this was ninety-two, so one of the last surgeries I had as a player, was a technique called reefing. So if you imagine cheese string, that you, as a child, you strip little pieces off of it. And then what they did was they wrapped it around the ligament. So they took strands of the ligament itself and then wrapped it around in the sort of, in a rope manner. So they were using science. Like steel cable. Correct. Like steel cable, yeah.

• 24:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, so they tried to strengthen the ligament via that technique. Moving up, you have quite a load of horrible groin strains and injuries. I had two spinal operations. When I broke a facet joint, had prolapsed discs. And as a result of that, I have about a mile of scar tissue in my spine. I'm in so much pain right now. I am in, I am in pain listening to this. Then, then you come up to the head where, and Chuck, you'll understand the phraseology I'll use here. I viciously attacked an opponent's elbow with my nose. And ended up with a double fracture and had to...

• 25:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Elbow, nose. Let me see which one that, that explains. And... There's only, that's like when jocks and geeks are like.

• 25:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, there's generally only one winner. And that ended up with rhinoplasty, so I had to have my nose rebuilt after a double fracture. I have had my, unintentionally I might add now, my eyelids sewn to my eyebrow. Because I got cut across just underneath one of my eyebrows. And the surgeon, when he was stitching it, put it through the eyelid and attached it to. And I just sat there, looked at him and said, "Do you think both my eyes should close? Or are you gonna, are you happy with this?" So we had to go back and revisit. There's... Scars all over the face because I would be involved in aerial challenges all the time and elbows would fly.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aerial challenges, that's what you call them.

• 26:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yes.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everyone is airborne trying to get the ball.

• 26:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And hit it with their head, I guess.

• 26:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, and to protect yourself and to ensure that you get there first, elbows are up. And they are armed, literally. So you, you, and thank you. And so you go through.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was good. Chuck, that was, Chuck, admit that was good.

• 26:44Gary O'Reilly?

  I was.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, good.

• 26:45Gary O'Reilly?

  So that's, that's kind of standard procedure. I was lucky I didn't get the bad ankles that a lot, a lot of the players get. Um, so, you know, in my sport, it's, it's a very explosive sport, but it's also a sport that you need to have stamina. So it's, it's an interesting hybrid of being able to be extremely quick and explosive over a short distance, then come back and recover to do it all over again in rapid time, but then to have to replicate this for a ninety-something minute game and do this for ten months of a year.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how, how, how old were you over your time of professional?

• 27:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, I, as a pro, I came in at eighteen and I exited at thirty-two.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 27:31Gary O'Reilly?

  And, yeah.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  That's a long time for a professional sporting career.

• 27:35Gary O'Reilly?

  And, you know, in that, in that period of time, you, because of the catalogue of injuries that you've had, you manage certain things that you have and you know aren't quite the way that you left the factory.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you accommodate them, yes.

• 27:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when people say, uh.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means you changed your game, knowing that you had certain limitations.

• 27:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, you, um, it kind of gets forced upon you. Sometimes you lose some of your explosivity in terms of acceleration, your ability to come off the standing steel to, to reach top speed. Sometimes you don't reach top speed, uh, you know, you, if, if you've got.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just a new top speed. It's not that.

• 28:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I know. Right. It's like the Ferrari that doesn't do the speed it did when it left the factory. You know, but then again, it's fifty-something years old.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you caught that. He analogized himself to a Ferrari.

• 28:27Gary O'Reilly?

  As a Ferrari, yes.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Clear. But so, so, and, and what, what was the medical? Um, a chemical medical regimen associated with all this painkillers, this sort of thing, steroids?

• 28:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, steroids, no, because they were banned. Because the only steroids you'd use were the sort of muscle developing steroids and they were anabolic. So they were, they've been banned for some time.

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but sometimes, and not even the, not even the steroids to help for healing and recovery. I mean, that's, those are different types of steroids.

• 28:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, I think once you say steroid, then you, you have to go and get a medical panel to endorse the fact that it's a-

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, if you're not playing because you're on sick leave, take whatever steroids you want.

• 29:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Nope.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and then cleanse it out of your system by the time you come back and then you got better.

• 29:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Naughty-

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's wrong with that?

• 29:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh, naughty step for that, Neil, because-

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would ever know it?

• 29:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, that, true. Um, but it's one of those things where you'd like to think you adhered to the rules of the game, even though you're injured.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought you just can't be on steroids while you're playing, but if you're not, if you're laying up in a stretcher.

• 29:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm, I suppose it would be seen as performance enhancement because you are recovering quicker.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Enhancing your ability to perform from the stretcher.

• 29:45Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so, so here's the thing with painkilling injections. You've got cortisone injections, but you can only have so many in your lifetime.

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  And, and they're degrading too, right? They create degradation and where, where, at the source of injection.

• 30:00Gary O'Reilly?

  The other thing is, and you talk about the source of injection, you reminded me. One day I had a particularly painful adductor. So it's right at the top of my groin. And the only thing that's going to calm this down is a painkilling injection. Now, the low-

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In your groin?

• 30:16Gary O'Reilly?

  In my groin. So the local anesthetic goes in, which is great. And then the painkilling injection itself is administered. Now, I'm not worried about the needle in the, looking at it and fainting and there's, there's going to be no blood. But what kind of made me wince more than anything was the noise of the tip of the needle scraping across the bone. And you just have these sort of experiences as a professional player. You you have to undergo this sort of experience. And be prepared to accept it as part of what it takes for you to be a professional athlete.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a biological machine that is that makes money. And I don't care about you, your feelings.

• 30:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get the hell out there and play.

• 31:00Gary O'Reilly?

  I don't care how bad you feel.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you something. If the doctor told me that they had to stick a needle in my most intimate of areas.

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you thought we moved past the groin part?

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying. No, I'm still stuck on groin.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A needle in the groin, scraping against bone.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  When I get when I get home, it's gonna be like, what did the doctor say? He said I have to retire. That's what he said.

• 31:27Gary O'Reilly?

  And you see, the thing is that Chuck, as as a fan, and in the end, as a professional, they are everything. Because without the supporters, without the fans, there is no professional sport. They don't want to hear about my problems. They've spent all week with their problems. This is 90 minutes or a few hours of them abandoning their problems and getting invested in this game, this sport. And so I just have to be mindful of what it takes to give them everything as much as I can.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me generalize this. Back in this prehistoric time, the 1980s and 90s, what was the most common sort of soccer injury?

• 32:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, the the meniscus tear would be common.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's because you're changing direction.

• 32:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Abruptly, the acceleration is very high.

• 32:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, you have these shearing forces in play. And uh, sometimes, I mean, that along with the anterior and posterior cruciate knee ligaments, they're quite common.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you retired, was it because you your injuries took you out? Could you have gone a few more years?

• 32:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh, I would love to have gone a few more years.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm talking not whether you would have let.

• 32:39Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no, no.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the owner and the people paying you, would they have loved you to go on?

• 32:45Gary O'Reilly?

  No, because it meant they had to pay someone to walk next to me with a wheelbarrow to pick up to pick up.

• 32:51Chuck Nice?

  What's he gonna play? He's gonna play wheelchair soccer?

• 32:54Gary O'Reilly?

  You know, there's. No, there's all these pieces keep falling off and you're you're no value to the franchise. So what happens? What happened was my my knee reconstruction surgery.

• 33:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Was successful because not just the medial ligament, but both anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments were seriously and badly damaged.

• 33:18Gary O'Reilly?

  I got to a point where I could do just about everything, but the turning, the stopping and going in a sort of 90 degree direction, that was causing a problem. And then when I go back to see the surgeon several months later, he said, "Look, here's the deal. You can continue as a professional player. You've got enough strength in there to continue as a professional player." And as we've said, I'm 32 years of age. He said, "But I can assure you, by the time you're 38, you will be a cripple." And that kind of focuses your mind, so that...

• 33:58Chuck Nice?

  That's six more good years.

• 34:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Think of the positivity. So the thing is...

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, sumo wrestlers are dead by the time those six years are up. I mean, yeah. So Gary, you clearly weren't serious about your sport.

• 34:13Gary O'Reilly?

  No, not at all.

• 34:16Chuck Nice?

  Where's the dedication, man?

• 34:20Gary O'Reilly?

  I know, and I played. I played games with my meniscus torn. I played games with fractured bones in my back. It's just slick discs, yeah.

• 34:29Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were you just a clumsy player? Is that why you had all these injuries?

• 34:32Gary O'Reilly?

  No. I mean, here's another one.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, great play. No, let me just hear this out.

• 34:37Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the greatest players we think of somehow managed to resist injury and had long careers as a result of it. So is it because of how you played that made you more susceptible? Or are you just...

• 34:52Chuck Nice?

  Were you an aggressive player?

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were you more aggressive? Or what is the... Why do some players... Last long and others don't, that's my question.

• 35:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Maybe their game exists inside their physical capacity. Maybe some players' game is built on them playing at the envelope of their capacity. So if their game is built on speed, they will always have to use that speed. So therefore, they're always stressing their hamstrings, their quads, those muscles. If they're a player that's always involved in the melee, the scrimmage, in particular in central areas, or as I was in defence, you're always gonna have that much more contact. And therefore, the liability is greater for you to get contact damage.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like the way you say that. If you're within the envelope of your abilities, if you're performing within that envelope, you're less likely to be injured.

• 35:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the edge of the envelope, then you're at risk every single time.

• 35:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely. I mean, it's... It is something you're mindful of, and going back to something you just said earlier. You play with certain limitations in your mind. And there are very few players who can produce their very, very best games, knowing that they're incapacitated by 20 or 30%. Invariably, any spectator will say, "He's crap today." And that's obvious, but when they look at you and they don't notice that you've got this problem, because your game is so good, then, you know, even guys like me who played for 14 years will turn around and applaud.

• 36:30Gary O'Reilly?

  It's like seeing a guitarist bust a string, and there's no difference in the music they produce. They have freestyled immediately, knowing that that string's gone, and that means compensation in other areas. That's... When you see things like that, that is special, that is genius.

• 36:46Chuck Nice?

  Well, right now, you have made me feel like I need to go see an osteos surgeon, because I feel like I'm injured from this conversation.

• 36:56Gary O'Reilly?

  See, the other thing is...

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's Mary? But Gary, you're a handsome man. What you're saying is, your face has been all chewed up and scarred and stitched. You were more handsome in the past.

• 37:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you might have made one hell of a Jay-Z model before this.

• 37:11Gary O'Reilly?

  What letter in the alphabet am I now?

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent, excellent. Got to take a quick break, but when we come back, Dr. Kevin Stone will rejoin us as we just explore, sort of off the cuff, what's going on with Gary.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Past, present, and especially the future of keeping folks like Gary at the top of their game on StarTalk Sports Edition.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition, Segment 3. Shoot the shit. That's what we call it, isn't it Chuck?

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, we don't.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we do. We do.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we drag Kevin Stone, M.D., back on to just, because he's the guy we want to just sort of chew the fat with. So, so Kevin, let me ask, is this, where does this end? I mean, if you can start regrowing tissue and organs, and then, living to 100 is not even the limit. I mean, the sky's the limit.

• 38:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Chuck Nice?

  It becomes like Robocop, just like, I want full body regrowth, you know?

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just regrowth, and you just regrow it. And so then you just never die. You just go to the trouble spots and fix them. So is that really what you're planning in your basement?

• 39:02Speaker 03

  So I'm not so much about longevity as I am about quality of life while you're here today. So if you, and, but if you look at an elephant, he weighs 15,000 pounds, he can run up to almost 50 miles an hour, lives to 60 years old, doesn't get arthritis. So there's something about their joint cartilage that we can learn from.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how you know they don't get arthritis? How you, how you, how you know?

• 39:27Chuck Nice?

  Because you've never gone to the zoo and seen an elephant go, "Oh God, my back."

• 39:33Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  I'm telling you, it's gonna rain. It's gonna rain.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, there you go.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  So the whole idea, though, is that some tissues in animals either we can use in people or we can learn from the way animals have developed to make us better people.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow. So let me ask you this, speaking of arthritis and elephants and, you know, longevity.

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, where are you going? No, no, no, no.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Is the understanding that inflammation being the greatest enemy to the body, is that true in recent years, just the last couple? There's been so much talk about inflammation and not just from, you know, an osteo- or orthopedic perspective, but even from your organs to, you know, your brain and plaque buildup, all of this is somehow linked to inflammation. One, if that's the case, what is the link? And two, is that really the case?

• 40:42Speaker 03

  Sure. So the term "you're smoking hot" has a new meaning now.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  Well, not for me, doc.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  So it could be that biologics that we talked about earlier, growth factors in stem cells, may be the cure for COVID-19. Because you hear about these huge cytokine storms.

• 41:03Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  These are massive inflammations in the lungs and in other organs around the body. And so biologics, especially the ones around the amniotic fluid, are potent anti-inflammatories. And these are being harnessed to see if they can shut down these cytokine storms. So your analogy that inflammation is the common pathway in so many diseases, arthritis, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease is exactly right. We have a little study going on right now where we're looking at mouth flora to see if people who carry certain bacteria in their mouth Also carry them in their arthritic knee. Those kinds of bacteria, they're very difficult to grow, but we can test with PCR that you've now learned so much about and staining techniques. So you're right, inflammation is probably the common pathway.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just uncomfortable you referring to people's mouths as having flora. And that's just a little creepy. I mean, I, I, I understand, but to talk, oh, let's, let's look at all the, the kingdom of animals in your mouth.

• 41:59Gary O'Reilly?

  So are, are we, I mean, we've always known the body can heal itself to a certain degree. Are we now realizing that it can heal itself to a much greater degree, doctor?

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Yes, we can, uh, well, both it can heal itself to a greater degree, but that healing process can become erratic and out of control, which is what we're seeing in COVID-19.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so what you're saying, so, so when you say your treatment is not to prevent COVID-19, but to, to help protect you against your own defenses.

• 42:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Exactly. That huge inflammation response that kills unfortunately a number of people from that disease.

• 42:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Maybe able to shut that down by using these biologic cells.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So some percentage of the COVID people die from their own physiological reaction to, because your body's not good at, at, at, at fighting it.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Or too good.

• 42:50Chuck Nice?

  Or too good.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or too good.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it, it, it kills both you and the COVID.

• 42:55Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. Your body is just like, you know what, I'm sick of all this. Everybody dies. Everybody dies.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Well, that's what, that's what chemotherapy was for many years.

• 43:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes, absolutely. You just basically you kill everything and then hope the immune system will respond by coming back and coming back without the cancer, but, uh.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 43:19Gary O'Reilly?

  So the blessing becomes the curse, which is the phrase that sort of sits there, yeah?

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I just, I want to make sure I understand this correctly. So your, your collagen scaffold is not.

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rejectible. I mean, you can grow a scaffold, put it in a human body, and it doesn't have biological organisms that can be rejected by the host. Isn't that correct?

• 43:46Speaker 03

  No, in fact, it does. If you take animal collagen and put it in people, it will stimulate a rejection response.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  You have to treat the collagen to strip away the antigens before you put it in.

• 43:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, but it is treatable, though?

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that way. So the collagen has antigens with it?

• 44:04Chuck Nice?

  So when you put it in the person's body, the person's body doesn't see it as a foreign threat at that point?

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it doesn't have antigens.

• 44:11Chuck Nice?

  Right, if there's no antigens. So how do you achieve that?

• 44:13Speaker 03

  So as long as I can kill the tissue, meaning I couldn't do it to a heart, or to a liver, or a kidney transplant, but for a collagen scaffold, I can wipe away those antigens with enzymes and make a essentially humanized collagen scaffold.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you can take cells from the person's own body, attach it to the scaffold, and then they multiply.

• 44:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, you thought of this?

• 44:38Speaker 03

  That's what we did.

• 44:40Chuck Nice?

  Dude, you are really smart.

• 44:43Gary O'Reilly?

  That's why he's on. That's why he's here, Chuck.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why Chuck, that's why he's a guest on StarTalk.

• 44:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We only invite smart people. Let's make that clear.

• 44:53Gary O'Reilly?

  So, I mean, if I think about it in a cynical athlete sort of way, we know Tommy John surgery for baseball pitchers can actually give you two to three mile an hour more on your pitch. Are we looking at potentially doing things like that in the future? And are we now into this ethical mess? Or is that, you know what? That's good, do it.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Yep. So, yes, so it's a field of what I call superbiologics. Meaning, can we make an athlete better than they've ever been and better than they could be, even if they were never injured in the first place? So if you look at the, uh, look at the foot piece that Pistorus used in South Africa, who unfortunately got in big trouble later on, the blade runner. It caused him to run faster than normal humans can, right? So what happened? Nike took that same design and put it in their new running shoes. And people now run a little faster than they've ever run before. So there's an example. We're taking technology and putting in the equipment. What's the difference between putting in the equipment and putting it in the person?

• 46:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow, wow.

• 46:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent point of reference there because like for example, if you run faster with sneakers at all, then that's giving you an advantage over someone who's running barefoot.

• 46:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and I think the ancient Greeks ran all barefoot and if they saw you come by whizz by in a pair of sneakers, they might cry foul. But we accept it as of course you're wearing sneakers, you're protecting your feet.

• 46:24Chuck Nice?

  So what you're talking about may be the answer to steroidal recovery because steroids are damaging and the moral argument against them is that you're harming the athlete, it's a terrible thing and so you shouldn't do it. But if you were able to do that, strengthen and recover and regrow and get stronger without the deleterious effects of steroids, you would, you eliminate that argument.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Sure, so we do that today. So if you take a vitamin, if you take glucosamine, which is a supplement for your joint that improves lubricity in the joint, those things are legal ways to improve your performance. If you take caffeine, you can increase your acceleration on a bicycle, but if you take a specific banned substance, you're over the line, right? And so the question is, where does society want to draw the line for all these different things? Currently, we're helping athletes exceed their potential every way we can legally.

• 47:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's just a matter of where the legal line sits.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 47:35Gary O'Reilly?

  But if we were able to regrow certain things in a body, in a joint that enabled faster running or pitching faster, we've introduced an alien object to begin with, but it's been accepted within the host, if I can call it that. Is that not a natural? Process or are we blurring the line here rather than moving it?

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Sure, so you don't know what, what, where the line is. Let me correct one thing you might have said. The Tommy John surgery helps athletes, helps pitchers, but it doesn't help them pitch better. It helps them pitch better because they were injured.

• 48:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  You take a healthy joint and rebuild it. You're not making that joint work better than they, Mother Nature did. And for many athletes, when they get injured though, as I mentioned before, it's an excuse to optimize their training program, their nutrition, their technique, and then they come back better than they were before. And that's our goal with everyone who ever gets injured.

• 48:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, that's an excellent point because when you're injured, you think much more about everything your body and limbs do.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a honing of your craft caused by the fact that you got injured in the first place.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  So every patient that comes in, I want them to ask themselves, why don't you treat yourself like a pro athlete? A pro athlete who has an injured knee would work on his nutrition and have a nutritionist, have a physical therapist, have a trainer, maybe a sports psychologist. He'd pull together the team and his coaching team to come back better than he's ever been. You, Neil, sitting in front of me with your injured knee, pull together your team, help yourself come back better than you've ever been. And that's the way to treat yourself like an athlete.

• 49:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you would, there would have been no motivation to have even thought that way at the beginning of that.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 49:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exercise.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Use your injury as an excuse to come better.

• 49:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could you, could you tell me what's the most common reason why a ballet dancer would come to you?

• 49:27Speaker 03

  Ah, so I've cared for ballet dancers for 30 years. So in the beginning, they were very thin in the Balanchine model. They were all smoking cigarettes and their nutrition was awful.

• 49:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Smoking cigarettes.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  They were, they were paid.

• 49:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the middle of Swan Lake.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 49:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait a minute. I gotta, I gotta take a coke.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 49:46Chuck Nice?

  Pleiades, demi-pliades.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  You got it.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  They were all paid like artists but asked to work like athletes. And so I saw them with all these injuries, knee injuries, ankle injuries, back injuries, and they had none of the athletic tools to come back. And so what happened post Balanchine is that dance studios and dance masters realized that their dancers needed to be more muscular, they needed to have more, they needed to be more like athletes to reduce these injuries. And the entire dance field evolved. So now when I see a dancer, they've got phenomenal fitness programs, they've got extremely well-developed muscles, they're tuned into the entire athletic field, but they still get injured. So they leap, they go off on a leap, they land poorly sometimes and tear their ACLs,

• 50:38Speaker 03

  they injure their ankles, they injure their backs.

• 50:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting you say that because I used to dance. And at that same time, I was also very much into varsity athletics. I was a wrestler. But my, my point is, I, I had a strength, a muscle tone that other male dancers did not have. And so that was an interesting, I don't want to call it an advantage, but it was a difference. It was clearly a difference at the time. And I, I noticed that there were things I would have no hesitation doing that other dancers said, well, maybe I might not do that because I could get hurt. And I said, I'm not, I know I'm not going to get hurt because I'm wrestling on a mat, you know, two hours a day.

• 51:20Chuck Nice?

  Where he took that dancing and turned and, and created a move called the pirouetting pile drive.

• 51:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. No, no, I'm just, interesting to hear that dancers had to sort of catch up with the athlete, with, you know, pro athletes.

• 51:35Gary O'Reilly?

  You have, you took away the fear of not being able to execute that dance move. What I'm hearing the doctor say is, with the surgery, with the procedure, with an approach, a holistic approach, the athlete or the patient no longer has to sit there and think, is this going to work? When's it going to break? When, and you take that aspect away. Am I wrong there, doctor? If I am, please correct me.

• 52:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My strength training, I think, gave me that knowledge and that insight.

• 52:05Speaker 03

  It's really right, except for one fact.

• 52:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 52:08Speaker 03

  All athletes cheat.

• 52:10Gary O'Reilly?

  How dare you?

• 52:12Speaker 03

  So even if I tell them it might take a month or three months, I'll find them out on a pitch in three weeks. And so the common denominator amongst athletes is, okay, you told me I can do this. I'm going to do more. And so our job is two things. Number one, to learn from our athletes who cheat and get away with it. Why did it work for them, but not for somebody else? And then number two, to figure out how do we communicate with them? And then how do we provide them with tools and therapies that permit them to go faster than you ever thought was possible? Because mostly we held our athletes back out of ignorance for so many years.

• 52:47Gary O'Reilly?

  What's the most successful cheat so far for you that you've come across?

• 52:52Speaker 03

  Oh, I rebuilt an ACL for a world-class skier and she was on the slopes competing at two months, which is crazy.

• 52:58Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's insane.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  That's what we said. However, to my point that I made, she did not re-injure her knee. She came back and won. In fact, she won X Games Gold that year. So, you know, you learn from these athletes in ways that you never thought you would.

• 53:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to end on that note. Doctor, when does your book come out?

• 53:19Speaker 03

  So I'm just deciding right now on the self-published versus publishing house. So it will take us a month or two.

• 53:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly 2021.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  Oh, no, it'll be out this year.

• 53:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, this year? Okay. And the title was How to Live to a Thousand, if I remember correctly.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Please teach me how.

• 53:35Chuck Nice?

  How to play forever.

• 53:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor Stone, thank you for being on StarTalk.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  It's great to talk to you guys.

• 53:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Gary, Chuck.

• 53:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, good stuff.

• 53:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pleasure, Neil. All right, guys, time to go. This has been yet another installment of StarTalk Sports Edition. We can rebuild them. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bidding you keep looking up.