Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Veterans Business Radio, brought to you by ATL vets, providing the tools and support that help veteran owned businesses thrive. For more information, go to ATL vets.org. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Veterans Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, ATL Vets, inspiring veterans to build their foundation of success and empowering them to become the backbone of society after the uniform. For more information, go to atlvets.org. Today on the show, we have an expert in topical regenerative medicine with an organization called RheeGen, Dr Tommy Rhee, welcome.

Dr Tommy Rhee: Hey, Lee, how are you doing today?

Lee Kantor: I am doing well. So excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about RheeGen. How are you serving folks?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Okay, well, RheeGen is a topical transdermal stem cell cream that helps you regenerate tissue that may have a problem with like, you know, like healing or some like chronic pain, or if you have arthritis that doesn’t really get to be, how would you say a better downtime. So that’s what RheeGen does.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the backstory? How’d you get involved with this in this kind of work? And then developing this, this topical treatment?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Yeah, it’s a long story. So hang on here. So it started when I, you know, I’m, I’m a sports chiropractor and luckily I was with UCLA and their athletic department and these elite athletes would go on to the pros or the Olympics. So when they go on to the upper echelon, they go into that training session game. And then of course, they get injured and they have a process of going through recovery. And one of the recovery patterns are stem cell therapy. So that’s an injectable stuff, right? So you think about these stem cells that help you speed up the healing process. Well, the only way to deliver this type of stem cell therapy or the actual like the signals that help you, you know, your existing tissue to do regeneration is injectables. Well, the problem with that is that you have to have a facility. You have to have to have a provider. And the worst thing about it, you have to have downtime. And other athletes don’t want that downtime. So I was thinking that there’s got to be a better delivery mechanism besides injectables that don’t give you that downtime. And that’s how topical came about. So when you think about topical, it’s just you rub it on your skin. There’s a transdermal agent that goes through the skin and into the deep tissue where you need to have that regeneration process go.

Lee Kantor: Now, what kind of drew you to this kind of healing, working with athletes and things like that? Was there something that happened when you were young that you said, okay, this is what I’m going to kind of dedicate my life to?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Well, I think it all started because my dad was a physician. He was a surgeon, and I saw how he interacted with his patients. And I knew that I wanted to be a doctor, but because I was athletic and I was pretty much in all the sports, I just knew that I’m going to somehow bleed the two together. So I’m going to be a sports guy and I’m going to be a doctor at the same time. And that’s a sports medicine thought came about, but I didn’t believe in the invasive or I didn’t believe in the pharmaceutical world or, you know, like a pill to solve things or a pain med. I believe in your own body doing its own repairing and how to like, take that, that machine that you call your body and then get it into a right environment to heal. And that’s what a lot of athletes want. They want that ability to do that prehab that prevented this stuff to get to the right perfect body, to fight off those injuries, those chronic situations you may come across. And that’s why, you know, chiropractic, the noninvasive approach to all therapies came about in my life.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, how did the military like had what was kind of the process to get into the military and then get out and then pursue this more.

Dr Tommy Rhee: Okay. So, you know, here’s the thing with the military. The military was a necessity for me. I was a typical high school kid back in the 80s that hated the world. You know, I thought I knew everything and I was just anti everything and knew it all. So I was leading down that bad path. So the military gave me that that fork in the road. You know, I could have taken the old road of like problems, trouble, legal stuff. Or I can take this new approach called the military to kind of snap you back in reality, put me back into that non, that non kind of aggressive world and then get me back on track to what I was meant to do. So the military is a great environment for me. When I was going through my adolescent teenagers, kind of like, you know, that that little testosterone burst that you just had to let out. And the military was that perfect machine. That military was the is. I keep on telling everybody that that’s lost out there. The military will give you structure, will give you direction, they’ll give you a sense of belonging. And how would you say more confidence in your ability to do things instead of like, not just talking about what you can do? It’s really like demonstrating you can do it by action.

Lee Kantor: So when you first, um, went in, was it something you were like, okay, now I’m all in now, or were you still battling early? And then they kind of kind of had to show you what’s what.

Dr Tommy Rhee: Okay. So when I first went in, it was like the typical boot camp. You know, you’re going through boot camp and it’s like, it’s not a big deal. You’re going. I was a Navy, so it’s like it wasn’t that big of a deal. I got yelled at at home. So when I go to boot camp, it’s no big deal. You know, they tell you to do this, do that, and you just basically do the same thing you did at home. Now you’re in a, in a, in the barracks. So but the thing is that I went in in a rush. So I wasn’t, I wasn’t designated, I was just, I just went in, I said I didn’t care what job I wanted, I just needed to get in and get out of that bad environment and try to figure out where I need to be in my life. So as far as like being accepting it and understanding where I was going towards and what I needed to change, I understood that, and I knew that the military had some type of like direction for me, but I didn’t really know, you know, when you’re in it, you don’t really know you’re in it. So as I’m going through the process of boot camp and then at somewhere down the line, they saw that I was undesignated, but then they saw my scores and my Asvab scores and they said, hey, you scored pretty high.

Dr Tommy Rhee: You get to pick any job you want to. And I said, well, I know that, um, I’m an active guy and what’s, what’s what’s fun for active guys. Then you start talking about these jobs like you can do, like, I don’t know, all kinds of stuff from like from nuclear. Uh, you know, you can go to submarines or you can do like, uh, what’s a corpsman? You can do that? And I said, well, okay, I mean, that sounds fun. And then the, one of the guys said that, hey, do you like swimming? I said, yeah, I like swimming. He goes, well, do you like flying? Goes, yeah, I like flying. And then they said, all right, well, how about this? Why don’t you go aircrew? Why don’t you do this? And I said, okay, well what is that. Well, there’s a couple of tests. They test you for swimming during boot camp. And then if you pass that, then you start going down that pipeline. So you’ll go into that. They first do a flight physical. They do all that stuff to make sure that you have that anatomy that can match into that particular aircraft. Then they go into the physical and then they go into the the testing route. And then from that point on, it was just like, it was real simple. It was a process that kind of like, you just follow their steps.

Dr Tommy Rhee: You just just do what they say to do. And it just became easier and easier as you get taxed with more like educational, like testing and physical testing. It was like, it wasn’t that difficult. For some reason, when I look back at it, it was more just following the steps of what they gave you and just apply it. So with that, it kind of it kind of like set the template, the template to do anything you wanted to do. Because when you go through what I went through, which is like, so what my job was when you go into aviation, there was like three platforms. There’s the P-3 back then was called the P-3 patrol plane hunt submarines that way, or you can go to helos and it’s like, you know, go around the aircraft carrier, make sure nobody crashes, right? So then you dive in there, rescue swimmer, or you dip these little sonobuoys in there and you can look for submarines and by actor passed away. Or the third one was the Jets. And that’s the platform I went to. That’s the S-3 Viking. That was the one that sounded exciting because during that time Top Gun came out. So I said, well, shoot, I want to do the same thing that Tom Tom did. So I’m like thinking like, hey, I’m gonna be a Top Gun guy.

Dr Tommy Rhee: So that’s why S-3 Vikings was attracting me. So when I went that route, it was a learning process because when you’re when you’re in the aircraft, you can’t carry, you know, confidential information. You can’t carry things that are helping you like track down these particular submarines or surface ships. It’s all by memorization. So they teach you how to memorize. And these these are we’re talking about every particular. Back then was the Soviet Union. Every submarine, every submarine, particular signals and their identifying marks. So you have to put this in your brain when you’re flying and being taxed by, you know, the G forces, the the environment of yanking and banking, the stress of you having multiple aircrafts on the station trying to find the submarine. And it just taught you how to like take that particular, like stressful moment, collect all the information that’s in your brain and not on a piece of paper and get like a little analysis and a conclusion at the end. And then, you know, the process of tracking and continue on. So that was a great learning process for me in that regiment that I needed. So from that point on, I knew that I needed to get out of the military. So I did my time, and I knew that college and I needed to continue on with my, my, my goal to become a sports doctor.

Lee Kantor: And then so you get out of the military, you go to school. How did you get involved? You know, you you were um, you’re working at the highest levels in the sport with NFL teams. And you know, top college athletics. How did that come about?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Let me tell you something. I don’t know. It’s just if you think you are that type of person, like I always had confidence in myself. I’m telling you that military put a good piece of, like, template in my brain that says I can achieve anything. You take someone that was probably going to be in jail or something real bad. Now in an aircraft flying in a jet, catapulting off of a carrier and, you know, trapping back and seeing things out there in the world that a lot of people don’t see when you fly out there in the you’re in the Aleutian Islands, you’re in the Indian Ocean, you see the most unique things. And it just builds so much confidence that when you go back into the world and you’re applying in the civilian world, it becomes easier because you’ve got that extra edge on everybody else, because you’ve seen a lot, you’ve been through a lot and you’ve been tested. So now anytime you put something on me? It’s not a challenge. It seems like it’s just a stepping stone. It’s not a big deal. So with that, I said, well, I’m going to be the best sports doctor out there in this world. So I followed everybody that was involved with some type of elite athlete becoming like a sports chiropractor or an elite doctor.

Dr Tommy Rhee: And I saw what they were doing, and I just followed their footsteps and I knew what they were doing, and I continued on. So when I became a part of UCLA, it was a process. It was a process. They have to vet you. They want to make sure who you are, but you also have to experience. You have to experience what they want. You have to see what they are needing. And they needed someone like me, someone that understands about biomechanics, soft tissue anatomy, and then work as a team. So with that, it allowed me to get to UCLA. Then when these kids graduating go into the pros, they see your work ethic. They see how you perform. They understand that you have a a special kind of gift to take care of their wants and needs and fulfill it with their type of like, you know, injury or, you know, recovery. And that’s why I continue on with these athletes and it just keeps on going. So that’s how it goes into from like where I was working with these college athletes. And then you get to the elite athletes. And then once your name gets out there, it becomes very simple. You know, that’s the biggest thing in this industry is like, it’s not so much like, you know, the product or somehow you’ve got some certifications.

Dr Tommy Rhee: It’s your name, it’s your worth. It’s really what you represent as your, as a, as a person. Me and then how I deal with it. If I don’t know what’s going on, I’m going to be truthful. I’m not going to make things up. Oh no, it’s not your hamstrings, your quads. Well, you just can’t make things up. You have to have some factual information. And again, the military put those standards in me to place it into this real world I’m at. And so athletes love that. They love that you say the factual, tell me if I’m hurt. Tell me if I’m really going to be out this season. Be be truthful. It doesn’t look good. Or he said, no, we can come back, but we have to do a lot of extra work to get you back. So I think that’s the biggest thing is what the military taught me, is that that real factual information laid out in a truthful way. So then the data collection, both ways are going into a smooth communication so that we can derive and figure out how to get their best outcome.

Lee Kantor: So now the, the product region, who is the ideal kind of user of that product? Is it the highest level athletes or is this kind of regular folks weekend warriors? Can anybody benefit from this?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Yeah, yeah. So it started off as professional athletes because they needed once they had great success, it just trickled down. So now I’m thinking if an athlete can deal with this, especially the extreme sports, imagine like an everyday person with like arthritis or repetitive injury or just from strains and sprains and stuff like that, they would benefit. So anybody that has that recovery that slows down or something’s wrong, they’re definitely a candidate for RheeGen.

Lee Kantor: Now, is it something that they need, a kind of a medical person giving it to them, or is it something you can buy off the shelf? Like how do you get your hands on it?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Yeah, exactly. So right now you can’t buy it directly from the manufacturer myself, right? You have to go through a provider and then they dispense it to you just like any type of prescription medication because there’s human tissue in that thing. So but the neat thing about RheeGen right now, it’s redeveloping the sourcing. It’s coming from human tissue to plant based. Once we figure out exactly how to maneuver around that whole system of the FDA, we’re almost there. We’re about to be on public side of this whole OTC over-the-counter that we can sell directly to consumer. It’s going to be the same potency as human tissue, except for now it’s plant. When it’s plant, it has so many so much better advantages. Number one goes right to the consumer. Number two, the price point much cheaper and everybody gets it.

Lee Kantor: So that’s in process. That hasn’t happened yet. But you’re on the path for that to happen at some point.

Dr Tommy Rhee: Yeah. You know, you know how that goes. A lot of testing, a lot of money. So, you know, it’s still going through.

Lee Kantor: And then you have a book out also, right?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Uh, yeah. So that book is called The Future of Regenerative Medicine. It just helped me kind of like describe what was going on in the repetitive motion. So then in order for me to save some time, I would just, I would just give people books here, here, read the book. It’s so much easier. A hundred pages, you’ll learn everything about stem cells, the different kind of stem cells, how it’s evolving from stem cells, the actual cells into what they call the signals, the EVs, extracellular vesicles that cause cell free bioactive biomolecules. And then now you understand that it’s a smaller molecule. Now use a topical application. So no more needles. And now you can just take it into a application of just rub it on your skin. And then that’s the human side. Now the second version of the book I’m working on now is going to talk about the plant side of it that has the same signaling as this human tissue. So it’s, it’s right now on Amazon, You can purchase it. It’s called a future regenerative medicine.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to get a hold of the book, or if they’re an athlete that wants to get a hold of RheeGen right now, or, you know, even just learn more about it, is there a website? What’s the best way to connect?

Dr Tommy Rhee: Yeah, you can go by websites called rheegen.com. So it’s rheegen.com. And you can see everything about the actual signaling of these stem cells. And also my book, there’s a link to my book right there. And if you have questions or something like that, just email me and ask me a question.

Lee Kantor: And like you said, it’s rhegen.com. You can go there and learn more about Doctor Tommy Reath. Thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Dr Tommy Rhee: Thank you Lee. I appreciate that, man.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Veterans Business Radio.