The DNA of Things with Dr. Jeremy Koenig

Episode 113: Stop Treating the Tire, Fix the Alignment: Neuro-Reconditioning Secrets from 37 Years in Elite Sport with Scott Livingston

If you've ever rehabbed an injury only to watch it come back six months later, this episode is going to change how you think about your body. Scott G. Livingston — Master Neuro-Reconditioning Practitioner, Athletic Therapist, Strength & Conditioning Coach, keynote speaker, and host of the Leave Your Mark podcast (now in its 9th season, nearly 500 episodes strong) — joins Dr. Jeremy Koenig to break down exactly why the traditional medical model keeps missing the point. With 35+ years in high-performance sport, 11 NHL seasons with the Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and New York Islanders, and multiple Olympic and World Cup medalists trained personally, Scott has seen every version of how the industry gets it wrong. His methodology, neuro-reconditioning, starts where most practitioners stop: the nervous system. Scott unpacks why patellar tendinitis, ACL tears, and chronic pain aren't the problem — they're the symptom. The real driver lives in walled-off movement patterns, outdated threat responses, and the long-standing communication breakdown between rehab and performance that almost nobody is trained to bridge. Now stepping into his newest role as Head of Rehabilitation for injured touring performers at Cirque du Soleil, Scott brings that same philosophy to some of the most extraordinary athletic bodies on the planet. Whether you're a clinician, a coach, or an athlete tired of being reactive, this conversation will push you to stop treating the vibration and start asking what's wrong with the alignment underneath. 🎯 EPISODE TAKEAWAYS * 🧠 The nervous system runs the show — chronic and recurring injuries almost always have a neurological root cause that the traditional diagnostic model completely ignores * 🔧 Treat the alignment, not the tire — pain and injury are symptoms (the vibration), not the actual problem; the worn tire is not why the tire wore out * 🏒 11 NHL seasons across three franchises — Scott's elite hockey career with the Canadiens, Rangers, and Islanders gave him a front-row seat to how world-class bodies break down and what it really takes to bring them back * 🥇 Olympic and World Cup medalists trained personally — Scott has worked at every level of sport, giving him a uniquely broad lens into how different athletic profiles move, compensate, and recover * 🩹 Rehab and performance are still siloed — most practitioners speak only one language; Scott built Reconditioning HQ to give clinicians and coaches a shared vocabulary and methodology * ⚙️ Reconditioning vs. rehabilitation vs. performance therapy — these are not the same thing; Scott breaks down the critical difference using the F1 pit crew analogy * 🔁 Previous injury is the #1 predictor of future injury — without addressing the neurological compensation patterns left behind, you're just replacing the tire again * 🧬 Your genetic profile is your stock vehicle — DNA informs whether you're built like an off-road truck or an F1 car, and no amount of training fully rewrites that blueprint * 🤸 Artistic athletes changed how Scott sees movement — working with freestyle skiers and aerial performers revealed how the body can do extraordinary things without conventional gym training * 📋 The prehab revolution is overdue — the tools exist to be proactive, but the industry is still largely reactive; Scott argues for identifying "skeletons in the closet" before they ever become injuries * 🎪 Cirque du Soleil as the ultimate reconditioning lab — elite performing artists present a unique challenge: genetically exceptional movers who still need intelligent load management and long-term return-to-performance care * 🎙️ Leave Your Mark podcast — 9 seasons, nearly 500 episodes — Scott's platform interviews people from all walks of human performance, exploring the personal stories behind their excellence * 🤝 Apprenticeship still matters in the AI age — shared information and technology are powerful, but 30–40 years of practitioner nuance can't yet be replicated by any algorithm * 💡 Pain is a messenger, not the message — the body walls off movement it no longer considers safe; the goal is to understand why, not just silence the signal  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 112: Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Your Wearable Might Be Lying to You with Marco Benitez

Most health tech companies are racing to build the insight — Marco Benitez went and built the thing underneath it. Marco is the co-founder and CEO of Rook, the API platform that normalizes and standardizes data from 400+ wearables into one clean, usable signal. In this episode, he breaks down why dirty wearable data is silently corrupting health decisions across insurance, pharma, remote patient monitoring, and clinical trials — and how a biomedical engineer with a fourth-dan taekwondo black belt and a background in big pharma saw the problem before anyone else wanted to admit it existed. From a hardware pivot during COVID to landing Fortune 15 clients, Marco's story is a masterclass in building the boring, hard infrastructure that the entire longevity and digital health world quietly depends on. What You'll Learn: 🩺 Why your Apple Watch, Garmin, and Oura Ring don't actually agree — and what that means for your health data 🍍 The pineapple vs. apple problem — how wearable data looks similar but is fundamentally incompatible across devices 🧬 How clean data is the real bottleneck in digital health, longevity, and clinical research ⚙️ What it actually takes to build the infrastructure layer beneath digital twins, remote patient monitoring, and wearable analytics 💊 How big pharma's clinical trial standards shaped Marco's obsession with data accuracy from day one 🔄 Why Rook pivoted from hardware to software — and how that decision unlocked Fortune 15 clients 🤖 Where the digital twin is today vs. where AI is taking it in the next decade 🚗 Why Marco compares the future of health AI to Tesla's self-driving — and why that analogy actually holds up 🥋 What 15 years of taekwondo taught Marco about building a company, a team, and a life  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 111: "You Can't Sprint — Yet: What Olympic Coach Stuart McMillan Wants Every Athlete (and Non-Athlete) to Know About Speed

Stuart McMillan has coached at 10 Olympic Games, helped athletes from 19 countries medal in Rio, and built ALTIS — one of the most respected human performance organizations in the world — out of a million dollars of debt and what he openly calls "straight-up chaos." In this episode, Stuart breaks down what speed actually is, why almost nobody — including trained athletes — can truly sprint, and why that gap between your engine and your chassis is exactly where injuries are born. He unpacks the most overlooked principles of sprint training, explains what "earning the right to sprint" really looks like for everyday people, and shares how decades at the tip of the spear with the fastest humans alive have shifted his focus toward something bigger: helping the rest of us move well, move fast, and keep doing it for decades to come. 🔑 What You'll Learn in This Episode ⚡ Why most people literally cannot sprint — and what to do about it before you try 🏗️ The engine vs. chassis framework — why raw power means nothing without the structure to handle it 🏅 What it took to coach athletes from 19 countries to the 2016 Rio Olympics — and what nearly broke ALTIS getting there 🐢 The counterintuitive lesson Stuart gives every athlete, coach, and entrepreneur: slow down to go fast 🧠 The "seek, sense, share" knowledge framework Stuart has used since 2010 to stay at the frontier of performance 🏃 What sprinting actually is — and why your Tabata workout absolutely does not count 🔧 How Dan Pfaff turned a long jumper with 17 hamstring tears in 3 years into an Olympic gold medalist 🎓 Why traditional coaching education is failing athletes — and what ALTIS is building to fix it 🌍 How Stuart is taking elite sprint science out of the track and into the hands of everyday people 🔮 What the next 10 years looks like for one of the most influential performance coaches alive  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 110: Your Body Can Heal Itself — Here's the Science Behind It | Christian Drapeau on Stem Cells & Longevity

What if your body already has everything it needs to repair itself — and the real problem is that we've been ignoring it? In this episode of DNA of Things, host Jeremy Koenig sits down with Christian Drapeau, stem cell researcher, neuroscientist, and founder of STEMREGEN®, for a conversation that genuinely shifts how you think about aging, recovery, and chronic disease. Christian breaks down how stem cells function as the body's built-in repair system, why that system starts declining as early as your 30s, and what that gradual breakdown actually looks like — from slower recovery after a workout to the onset of age-related disease. He walks through his 25+ years of research, starting with a blue-green algae that sparked an entirely new field of inquiry, and explains how specific plant compounds can mobilize your body's own stem cells to support healing from the inside out. Whether you're an athlete trying to bounce back faster, someone managing a chronic condition, or just trying to build a body that holds up for the long haul, this episode lays the scientific groundwork for why endogenous stem cell mobilization might be the most overlooked pillar of human health today. Takeaways: * 🔬 Stem cells are your body's repair system — not just a medical procedure, but an active, ongoing biological process happening inside you right now * 📉 By age 30–35, you've lost ~90% of your circulating stem cells — and that decline is directly tied to slower recovery, tissue degeneration, and age-related disease * 🌿 Plants can mobilize stem cells — Christian Drapeau's research identified 15+ plant compounds that stimulate stem cell release, with the top 5 now formulated into STEMREGEN® * 💊 Endogenous vs. exogenous stem cells — why supporting your own stem cell production is a fundamentally different (and more sustainable) approach than injections or stored cord blood * 🏋️ Athletes can feel the difference within 24 hours — post-workout recovery, soreness, and tissue repair all tied directly to how many stem cells are in circulation * 🫀 Chronic conditions like congestive heart failure showed 10/10 recovery in a study where mitochondrial function was restored — pointing to stem cell mobilization as a root-cause intervention * 🧠 The medical system doesn't ask the most important question — "Is this person's repair system failing?" — and Christian Drapeau argues that answer underlies almost every chronic condition past age 45 * 🤝 A collaboration with Dr. Jeffrey Bland (the father of functional medicine) is underway, bridging endogenous stem cell science with STEMREGEN®'s approach to regenerative health * ⏳ Paradigm shifts take time — Christian draws a compelling parallel to handwashing in the 1800s: the science is solid, but cultural and medical acceptance lags decades behind the data * 🌍 100,000+ people are already using STEMREGEN® — and the next frontier is getting this into the hands of healthcare practitioners who can document outcomes at scale  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 109: "No Diploma, No Limits: From Dropout to Mars Commander with Dr. Kelly Haston"

Dr. Kelly Haston didn't take the traditional road — she left home at 15, has no high school diploma, and rebuilt her entire life through California's community college system before earning her way to Berkeley, UCSF, and Harvard. Now she's one of the few humans on earth who knows what 378 days inside a sealed Mars simulation actually does to your mind, your relationships, and your sense of what matters. As a stem cell biologist and commander of NASA's CHAPEA analog mission, Kelly brings a molecular lens to questions most people haven't even thought to ask yet — what does reduced gravity do to a developing human embryo, what will our garbage do to Mars, and how do four unconnected people stay psychologically intact for a year with no way out and a 22-minute communication delay? This conversation goes from a garage in British Columbia where a young girl pulled a leg off a salamander to the cutting edge of what humanity might actually look like when we leave this planet for good. Takeaways: 🦎 The childhood salamander experiment that quietly predicted Kelly's entire scientific career 🎓 How the US community college system gave a high school dropout a path to Harvard and NASA 🔬 Why being at the start of a field — not the middle of it — is where the most important science gets done 🚪 The unspoken door rule inside the Mars habitat and what it reveals about human psychology under isolation ⏱️ How a 22-minute communication delay forces radical autonomy — and what that means for future Mars crews 🧬 The difference between cellular aging and maturation, and why it matters before we send humans to deep space 👶 Why having babies in space or on Mars is one of the most underexplored and urgent questions in human biology 🤝 What a year away from everyone you love teaches you about the non-negotiable value of human connection 😌 Why Kelly now takes urgent things less seriously — and why that perspective shift might be the most transferable lesson from the mission 🌍 The COVID parallel: why humans need common purpose to function, and what Mars colonization might finally force us to figure out about ourselves  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].