EP 02: WTH ?!? Regenerative Medicine

And you're live. All right. Well, welcome back, everybody, to what the health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel of Nature Cures Clinic in Portland, Oregon. And today we're going to talk about everything regenerative medicine. This one is near and dear to me. So as episode two of the what the Health podcast, I'm excited to share this with you. I'm actually just back from a lecture that I was performing here that I presented out in the community, and it's a big piece of my mission is to help as many people as I can achieve optimal wellness through an integrative care model. And this regenerative medicine. I've not seen anything in the 18 years of my clinical practice that works as profoundly and as thoroughly as regenerative medicine does. A piece of it. I go out and lecture every week in Portland, Oregon on these therapies. And as I shared in episode one, just a little bit of my background of how I got here and how I got into this. Never in a million years would I have imagined that Dr. Eckel, the naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist, would be lecturing on stem cell therapies and regenerative medicine. However, as life takes its turns and twists, that's indeed what I'm. As I shared, I lost my wife. We actually just passed the year anniversary of her checking off the planet from a very rare, uncurable neurologic condition called Creutzfeld Jacob disease, which is like mad cow syndrome. In people, there's prions that are misfolded proteins that come in and they muck up. Yeah, muck. That's the technical term. Muck up the tissue of the brain and the central nervous system and create holes, basically, and holes in the brain. And it's a really miserable condition. About 300 people a year get diagnosed with that in North America. It's about a one in a million. So super rare. As loving husband and physician, I thought, what the heck, I'm going to swing for the fence. Let's see what we can do to help my love. Soraya and I uncovered this treasure trove of information around regenerative medicine and stem cells. We stopped researching in 1991 stem cells in the United States for political and religious reasons. And it's really unfortunate because it's put us behind the world by about 20 to 30 years of research. So they continued researching in Europe, in China, Asia, Central and South America. They continued the research on stem cells because it is one of the most promising, most disruptive component of medicine today. That I've been able to see. I have not found anything to work as effectively when it's used appropriately. It's also super controversial. So, you know, I got out there onto the research on PubMed and realized, wow, there is a ton of research to support. It's safe and it's effective for a wide variety of conditions that we're going to cover today. But first, the controversy. Just a few weeks ago, the FDA outlawed your fat. In fact, your fat is now considered a drug and you can't use your own cells. I think this is a far overreach of our government and in particular the fda. And it's, you know, it should play out in the courts here, but you know, really they took one third of our options off the table in this country. So it's super controversial. Not allowed to make any claims of what these stem cells do. Can't really even say stem cells are treating a specific thing. But I can share with you what I've seen them do in my clinical experience and share the clinical evidence. So, you know, back to my how I got here, I was looking for ways to treat the brain and help the brain regenerate. In fact, this whole I call it Soraya's gifts. Right? So she's past was not able to bring her back from this incurable condition, but really uncovered a treasure trove of remedies and solutions for folks. In fact, it's led. I've got a book coming out later this summer on. It's called Shake It A Fancy Approach to Parkinson's Solutions. I'm really excited to share that with you all and I'll announce it on the show here when that comes out. I also have an online summit coming up in August, third week of August, it's the Parkinson's Summit, which I will also let you know about then one in the spring, in 2020, April 6th through the 12th of a bigger online summit of chronic neurodegeneration solutions. And in particular it's a Parkinson's summit. So all of these things, I would not be doing any of this had I not just gone through this ordeal and really uncovered a ton of research. When I first discovered two years ago at the International Symposium of Stem Cell Research in Miami, an intranasal procedure was presented. Dr. Frey out of University of Minnesota was working with neonates that had stroke in utero. And these kids were coming out developmentally disabled, did not have a great quality of life and really just were dying at younger ages just because they had a stroke in utero before they Got here, they started doing an intranasal stem cell procedure and found that by using the stem cells right there in the placenta and amniotic tissue and putting those up into the brain via intranasal procedure, they were able to improve the quality of life. All of the metrics of these kids were improving and they were actually living healthy, happy lives. And you couldn't even tell that they had a stroke. So, you know, this information was presented. I have a big neurologic component of my practice here in Portland, Oregon, and I brought it back in my first patient, Mark, and you can check out his YouTube testimonial on my YouTube channel. He said, you know, doc, that's great, but have you had it done? And, you know, he had me there. It's like, no, I actually have not had it. It's a new procedure. I'm there with you. I pretty much try, try to try all of the procedures that I've got that I present to patients here. I want to experience them firsthand to really know what's going on so I can talk firsthand. In addition to using research and clinical evidence, I went, I sought out best sources for stem cells in the country. There's three ways that you can get stem cells up to this point. About five years ago, you could only get them from your fat or from your bone marrow. It's called autologous. And using your own cells. Then this third way came around, which is from the stem cell banks. I went to Utah with some colleagues of mine of the stem cell affiliated network. I'm actually the clinic director of services, assuring outcomes for our clinicians that are part of that affiliated network. We've got a goal of helping a million people out of chronic disease and pain by the year 2020. Last summer, we sat down and did the math on that with about 30 clinic owners. And we're. And we're on track to actually hit that goal. So I'm excited to hit that goal and then actually create a larger game for ourselves and really taking a stand for health and healthcare, and healthcare that promotes thriving, which is what I shared with you in the first episode, that is my explicit agenda. And I hope that you come to me for your trusted source of information. And this is one of those things because all you're going to see from the mainstream media is just hit pieces on this therapy because it's super disruptive. So those three sources, your own fat, your own bone marrow, or a stem cell bank, that's what we can use now. Well, actually, we can't use the one. The FDA just recently in the last month outlawed you using stem cells from your fat. Called them a drug. There's a component, there's a big clinic using fat derived stem cells. And they were manipulating them I think is what the story is, expanding them outside of the body. And that is a no no in the United States. So for regulatory components. So one major player overstepped the bounds and FDA and I'm not sure how they came up with that decision. They haven't really written much about it. But I find or feel that it is very unfortunate. But that hasn't limited my patients options here at NatureCure. So we use amniotic umbilical cord derived stem cells. These women are screened, they're good Samaritans. They donate this tissue. Medical birth waste. Basically the amniotic and placenta tissue that would have been discarded and thrown out previously. Unless you live in the Northwest. Maybe you'll plant a rhododendron or put it in the freezer or something. That's what we do up here in the Northwest. But there's this treasure trove of medicinal signaling units and or mesenchymal stem cells. So don't glaze over with that science. It's just mesenchymal stem cells, MSCs for short. They are, we use a full tissue derived type. I'm not going to cherry pick. A lot of people are talking about Wharton's jelly or certain layers in those cells. And it's not the stem cells per se that are working. It's really the whole complement of anti inflammatory cytokines and other signaling units and growth hormone and growth factor. There's a whole milieu of extracellular matrix and exosomes is another term in there. All of these things come into the body to help your body heal itself. Those are the ones that I used on myself. I had my patient Mark saying okay, that's great doc, have you done it yourself? I went and I got trained on how to do an intranasal stem cell procedure but also how to do injections for orthopedic uses. I had the intranasal done and I was hoping. I wear hearing aids. I've got middle aged hearing loss genetic in my family lineage. I was hoping for middle aged vision loss. I got a temporary benefit there. But the most remarkable thing, within less than 24 hours I had chronic hip pain, right hip pain. My boy Simon. In 2006 we were in Colorado inner tubing on a river and went over a little waterfall. And my papa instincts were grab the Boy. So I grabbed Simon and then my right hip hit the rock at the bottom of the river. And as you can imagine, that was some impact and force that I hit because we went over a waterfall. I'm grabbing the boy and then boom. And I'm in the industry. I had acupuncture, I had physical therapy, massage therapy, injection therapy. I did diet, I did supplements. You name it, I had all of the therapies. And for a decade I struggled with this hip pain. I play hockey. So it kept getting exacerbated, worsened, and I would get a couple days relief, three or four, maybe a week, maybe 10 days sometimes. But the pain kept coming back. And man, chronic pain sucks. I was not anticipating this because I had the stem cells. I had a half a unit put in each of my sinus cavities. Within 10 minutes it was in cerebral spinal fluid surrounding my brain. Hoping to get some brain effects there. I've got my wife at home with a central nervous system issue. No known cure. I need to get cells into the brain. We get this research out of Miami showing, hey, this is safe and it's effective. So I gave it a go. Have a patient challenging me. Have you tried it yet? So I did it. My pain gone in less than 24 hours. And then also at dinner the next night, I was sitting there going, and I still am amazed with my hands feel so different. So with they're just not swollen anymore. I didn't even know that they were swollen so bad until the swelling was gone. I still do that. It's like, oh my gosh, my hands feel so good. No swelling in my joints. So really potent systemic anti inflammatory benefit from that intranasal. The FDA doesn't like me saying that either. So I got to. We'll keep it between you and I. Right. So perfect. So anyways, uncurable condition at home. Really looking for ways to help brain and brain health. I wrote about this actually in my fancy approach to Parkinson's solutions as well. I really feel like it is a therapy that we should be allowed to do in this country and we're going to lobby hard for that. Have had some really great benefits with Charcot Marie tooth disease. Very rare central nervous system neurologic issue where really folks just disintegrate from the inside out and have had some really good benefit. I'm looking forward to writing those cases up for peer reviewed journals. Just because there's no known cures for these, why do we think chronic neurodegeneration, Alzheimer's, dementia, these things, Parkinson's they're all on the rise and we don't have any solutions. I mean, Alzheimer's, diabetes of the brain. We can do some stuff around diet and blood sugar regulation, but ultimately not great. No drug therapies that are corrective or curative. Possibly we could go back to this prionic activity that I talked about that Soraya had with Creutzfeld Jakob. Sticking on this stem cell train for a moment. We've got this amazing procedure that is in total gray area land right now in the United States. I've been trained by a great mentor and colleague, Dr. Joel Baumgartner out of Minnesota. He's been at it for 15 years. Colleague of mine, Dr. Harry Adelson, down in Park City. I'm looking forward to hanging out with him this fall. Traveled to China with him 20 years ago. We're in the right circles, we're having the right conversations with people and we're really affecting lives. But we need more research, we need better research. This stuff isn't going to come into modern mainstream medicine for probably 20, 30 years because that's how long it takes these ideas. Once you see the initial research, then once it gets incorporated, it's got to go through the medical societies, then to the universities, then train the next generation of physicians as that research comes out. But we don't have 20 to 30 years to wait. It's a very safe and effective treatment. I keep coming back to that because that is the first tenet in medicine is do no harm. What I'm seeing now, I have a patient, Malcolm, he's a goalie, airline pilot for 20 years, had some hip issues and when he came to see me, the orthopedic docs were saying, hey, you're going to need a hip replacement and thought, you know, there's got to be a better way. He loves playing hockey. And you know, I've got a video of him out on our YouTube channel. He's playing hockey three nights a week now, still has his hips and using them, full functionality, no pain. You know, they were telling him he needed a hip replacement. Had he got that hip replacement, he wouldn't be playing hockey anymore. He loves the sport. I love the sport. I love the Pittsburgh Penguins. You know, what can I say? But you know, on that front there are options and this is a really viable option. I had a fisherman from Alaska with right shoulder pain. He was lugging 80 pound halibut out of the ocean and developed a really painful shoulder with some torn rotator cuff and inflammation, bursitis just inflamed shoulder, not able to really work as well as he wanted to. He's coming back in the fall to get other areas of his body treated. We had a very successful fishing season with no pain, able to ride his mountain bike again. It's just stuff like that. Where had he gone under the knife? Who knows? He could have had some complications. For knee replacement, 1 in 200 people die. Sorry, not 200. 1 in 400 people die. I'm not a fear monger, but I am a truth teller. That should be on informed consent. If you're considering getting a knee replaced. No. On the possibilities there is death of an elective surgery. So I'm super conservative when it comes to medicine, but you should be able to, you should have medical freedom and freedom of choice of what you're doing and how you're going to treat your body. This One I had Rita, 76 year old, she already had her left knee replaced. She was getting ready for the right knee replacement, came to one of my seminars and decided to go through with the treatment. Two weeks later, she had brought her husband and her sister to another lecture and they got up and said, doc, I don't know if you realize this, but Rita was bedridden before coming in here. So she had so much pain in her right knee that hadn't been replaced yet that she was bedridden. And she admitted to me three months after the procedure, like, you know, doc, not that I was getting depressed, but I was thinking like, is this it? Like, is this what I've got? I'm 76 years old, I'm kind of bedridden, I'm in chronic pain. Is this what I have to look forward to the rest of my life? And thankfully not. We had an amazing response for her. Within two days she was pain free. In two weeks she had full functionality of her. Now that's on the very high end, fast responder piece of the. On the continuum there. However, she was out jet skiing on the Willamette river here in downtown Portland with her grandkids. Her sister shared that she was out playing cornhole with the 40 year old. So really reversed the clock for Rita and she gave me a hug. It's one of the best things as a doc is to get these hugs from patients. Just saying, I really wish I would have met you 10 years ago because you radically changed my life. It's so heartwarming and it's really part of my purpose and passion and why I'm here is to help people like that and really get their Lives back and thrive. Healthcare should promote thriving. I also have her testimony up on my YouTube channel as well. So I encourage you to go over there. If you're just tuning in. Welcome to what the Health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel. You can go to my website naturecuresclinic.com and if you're just coming in now, this will be up posted and you can start from the beginning to get the full story. Also watch the other episodes as they arrive. We've got episode one up there already. We want you to subscribe to our channel here at Contact Talk Radio and really join us for this journey. We're making a stand for your health and your healthcare. Really want to have healthcare that promotes thriving, not just surviving or just making it or cobbling through. Really, we should be able to thrive. The type of aging that I want to promote is what I saw in Vienna, Austria when I was over there as an undergrad hiking mountains with 80 and 90 year olds. And the only difference between me and them was they were using ski poles and it took them a little bit longer to get to the top of the mountain to enjoy the pint of beer. You know, that's aging. What we have in America is chronic disease symptom based model of care which is skewing all of the data where providers say, oh, get used to it, you're just aging. I just did a lecture right before coming on the air here. About three quarters of the folks lifted their hands saying, yep, I've heard that from a provider. Usually the provider's younger and really are seeing a lot of decrepit Americans diseased and sick. They're taking a lot of drugs. And I don't want to compare my patient base or you to the general population in the United States because they're diseased and they're sick, they're on drugs. And we've got what, $12 billion marketed to our brain saying, take this purple pill and you're all as well in life. We know that's not reality. Of course we want to believe it and the stats show we're really believing it by taking the pills. Our prescription rates are going through the roof in the United States. We have the least healthy population of developed nations. So we're out here. We're going to take a stand for you. One of the most promising therapies that I found is regenerative medicine. And it's not just stem cells. So a lot of times a lot of clinics are popping up. The venture capitalists have gotten into this game. I Like to say you want to know your source? I already gave you the three cell types. There's adipose or fat derived, bone marrow derived, and then umbilical cord derived or amniotic tissue derived. So those three and you know, doctors, physicians, good hearted, good ethical practitioners are getting results with all of those types. Now, fat derived just got taken off the table. So we got bone marrow, which is a procedure. You got to tap the bone marrow at the iliac crest, harvest your bone marrow, get the stem cells out of that, and then put those back into the body. Then there's also amniotic and umbilical cord derived, which has a higher vitality. What the stats show on cell life, basically, if there's a graph with time going out this way, as we age our cells, the vitality of our cells decline. So case in point on this, as you age, have you notice your body longer to heal? So story around this, I'll pick on my boy Simon today. I don't know, he's on my mind. Love him. So anyways, he's 12, playing soccer, hurling his body through time and space and then boom, hits the ground and bounces up and continues running. Now I don't know about you, but if I did that, I would be down and then shaken, not stirred, and taking an inventory of my body of like, okay, what's not attached anymore? What did I break? Where am I? Ouch. So what's the difference there? One size one also, I guess fear level and brain power of what did I just do rather than just doing it. But then three is the quality of stem cells. So you know, if we took a stem cell from a newborn, after 30 days of that, one stem cell would be about a million and a half cells. One stem cell from a 35 year old would be about 35,000 stem cells. So it replicate itself. And then from a 65 year old after 30 days, we get about 200 cells. So that graph dramatically declines as we age. I didn't want, when I had the procedure done, I didn't want to use my old toxic cells. We look at levels of toxicity in North America, we're exposed to 83,000 chemicals a week. We all have heavy metals. When I first started learning about heavy metals in the human body in 1998, I started testing all of my patients with that. And what I found was, dang, we all have heavy metals in us. Cadmium, arsenic, mercury, lead. These are the top four that I find in most of my patients. Then the debacle or question then becomes, okay, now we know you have metals in there. Are they causing you your health problem? And so I stopped testing everyone and really use it in central nervous system disorders, chronic neurodegeneration, cardiovascular illness. We're going to really look at heavy metals. But in the stem cell discussion, we got to look at the metals. I know because the data shows like we all have these levels of toxicity in our body. So that's going to make my stem cells less efficacious. They're not going to work as well, they're not as vibrant. They've been around the block a few times, if you know what I mean. So I wanted to use basically if I took from a 65 year old 200 cells in a milliliter versus one milliliter from the stem cell bank, I got one and a half million cells. It was a simple math equation of which one I wanted to use. I'm not knocking the other ones, but you have to look at the vitality of the individual. How good are your stem cells? As we age, we know they're not as good as they used to be. They're older, they're a little bit, they're not as vibrant. And so I got a lot invested in this brain. I got a doctorate, I have a master's of science in oriental medicine. And at that point in time I had 16 years of experience wrapped up here. I'm not going to mess around with it. First tenet of medicine is do no harm. I wasn't going to mess around with my patient base. I wanted to find the best source. We did that. Source matters know that I use the amniotic tissue and I just shared why it's more vibrant, it's got more vitality and I find it does. It works really, really well. So the two varietals of Source Matters stem cells get a little bit old as we age. So I didn't want to use my own, wanted to use them from the stem cell bank. Safety and efficacy. So a lot of times patients will ask, well, do you need to know my blood type? I feel a little bit nervous of using somebody else's cells. When I first started studying this, I thought, oh, these stem cells became my own cells. And a small percentage of them do, but many, many a larger percentage of them don't really how they work is they secrete an exosome. An exosome. All that is is, it's a fancy word for saying there's a packet that's in the cell, in the stem cell that comes out of the stem cell so what's in this packet which is called an exosome, so it exits the cell, that's why it's called an exosome. Well, we got anti inflammatory cytokines in there, growth hormones, growth factor, basically healthy aging activity. And the guy that named mesenchymal stem cells, his Name's Arnold Kaplan, PhD, brilliant fellow. He has gone on record saying he wished he would have called them something else. Because one I know I'm running the risk of saying the scientific term and every time I say it, you glaze over a little bit more. So I won't say the official word anymore. It's not Voldemort, but mscs. But really he said he should have called them medicinal signaling units and that's really how they function. The way the analogy I give is, it's like it's the symphony conductor coming in to orchestrate your body's healing, innate healing ability. It's going to donate pieces and parts for your cells to heal and give your body the direction and reorganization to help it heal. So for Rita, case In point, she's 76, slated for knee replacement in two weeks. No pain. Well, what happened there with a stage four osteoarthritis, which is bone on bone, right? Bone on bone. You got bone and then supposed to have cartilage, but in this case the cartilage is gone and then bone. So the knee, the knee joint and there's not a great circulation in there. So what happens with that is it degrades and degenerates and then it starts to eat away at the joint space. Well, if you go to see the orthopedic doc, they'll say there's no way that cartilage is going to regrow in that environment. Well, we've got patients now walking around pain free and pre and post imaging that shows actually they have joint space in there and they don't have pain and their range of motion is back. So I think that the cartilage has regrown in their body. Now I'm not going to open them up to test that theory. And in fact, they don't really want anything to do with medicine anymore because they're like, geez, why wasn't I offered this before? I got my functionality back. I got my life back, doc. Thanks. The knees, it comes back and it helps the body heal. The body created in its inherent wisdom and memory. It brought back the cartilage in there for the goalies. Hip. His hip is great. He has no pain. Full functionality again. The fisherman's shoulder. The list goes on. As far as the folks that we've helped, I have a patient, Maury, and I use their names if they're on my YouTube channel. So you can check out their Testimonies there. It's NatureCures clinic on YouTube. So we'll come up there and please subscribe there because I'm putting new stuff up all the time. These will be there as well. But, you know, he was going on a bucket list trip and, you know, had some knee, lots of knee pain and was really worried that he wasn't going to be able to walk the hills in Jerusalem. And, you know, he came back, he was pain free. He really got to take in that whole vacation and trip. And it was a bucket list trip where he would have been suffering, his wife would have been suffering as well had he not had the treatment. Had to stop everywhere, be in pain, really worn out at the end of the day, not able to take in all of the sights that he wanted to. So it is something to consider. It's not a panacea for everybody. The two things that I say that rule out most people. One is if you're a smoker, that's the biggest lever we can do for you. If you, you got to stop smoking because the smokeit's a big investment to do a stem cell or regenerative medicine program. You got to stop smoking because the smoke comes in and kills those cells. It's just really not okay. I wouldn't even treat my own aunt because she was smoking. I just told her, hey, Aunt Joan, I think we can help you, but you got to stop smoking because it's just going to kill the cells. The other rule out is uncontrolled sugars and diabetes. So. So if you have a high sugars that are just out of balance or your hemoglobin A1C is above 7.5%, we got to get that under control and get it tightly measured so that you've got low sugars and insulin so it doesn't kill the cells because you want these cells to stick around for as long as possible. And that's important to me. Right? The first tenet of medicine do no harm. Second one in naturopathic medicine is the body can cure itself given the right information, so the body can heal itself. I never close the door on the body healing itself from this chronic degeneration of the joints to chronic stage 4 cancers in the brain. We've seen those things disappear. Like to say we get a lot of spontaneous remissions Here at Nature Cures, meaning no evidence of disease. I'm not doing it, folks. It's your body and it's the medicine. But you know, I get more and more confident and stronger in my statement around that because I've seen it time and time and time again throughout the years. And you know, as you see it, you, you get more confident because it's real. It's not just, oh, I learned this in the book or I read this over there. It's actually, no, I'm seeing it in real people, which is so exciting and such a joy. And really it helps me serve my purpose and passion which is to help people. So one component, I'll invite you in. If you're listening, get in touch with us and ask for a consult. We can see what's going on with you and maybe get you plugged into a local provider in your area and. Or have you fly out here to Nature Cures Clinic. I call it Camp Nature Cures. We've got people coming in from around the globe to be treated here. We can't do regenerative medicine over the airwaves, but we can definitely do it here in our clinic. And we've got hyperbarics and acupuncture and Chinese herbs and diet therapy and mind body medicine. You name an alternative therapy and we've done it through our clinic here over the last 18 years. I like to say I'm a clinician's clinician. We want to use what works and what gets results. This regenerative medicine component is one of the largest, just one of the big needle movers. And why I think you're going to see a ton of hit pieces come out around this sketchy or kind of snake oil, panaceae for everything. And I would be wary of somebody that is claiming cure or miracles left and right all the time with one therapy. I mean it is just one therapy and the whole kind of tool shed of ways of clinical thinking and clinical hierarchy of decision making. But it is one of the biggest needle movers that I've seen out there. And also again, I stress that source matters here. So again, if you're just tuning in, this is what the health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel of Naturecures Clinic. You can go to my website naturecuresclinic.com and follow up with the rest of this episode if you're just tuning in. And also check out the other episode. So I hope you check us out online. Topic today is regenerative medicine and other components. Let's talk about the Continuum of regenerative medicine. So before I got into regenerative medicine and again wouldn't have gotten into this, besides kind of the tragedy that I've gone through, we were doing prolotherapy, which is a simple solution injection into the body to help the body regenerate. It's prolo or proliferative. It creates an inflammatory response and it'll help with tears, ligament tears, cartilage tears, muscle tears, tendinitis, bursitis. Along those lines, that's stage one and then stage two. What we got into is hyaluronic acid or the rooster's comb, as far as a regenerative program. And then platelet rich plasma is another type of injection. None of those have a stem cell component or exosome aspect. But for PRP or platelet rich plasma, what you do is you come in, we do a blood draw, we spin that blood down, we harvest the platelets, and then we inject that back into your body. It's very similar to the prolotherapy. Other than the solution, what's getting injected are your platelets that help the body heal in a quicker fashion. It's anti inflammatory, etc. Then the next step is regenerative or stem cell therapy, which actually can help the body heal itself by replacing cartilage and bone epithelial lining in the stomach for ulcerative colitis. And Crohn's got that brain regenerative program, the fancy approach to Parkinson's that I've mentioned a few times as well on that central nervous system front, but really like to stick to the orthopedic realm, the inflammatory realm. There is an autoimmune or immune system regulatory effect of exosomes, kind of what the stem cells secrete, but again, not treating any of those conditions. I want to be very clear, this is not an FDA approved therapy. And there is a gray area in the United States right now. They're going to be writing some more regulations in November 2020 on kind of the who's, what's and where's of what we're doing with these stem cells and stem cell procedures and treatments. So hopefully you won't have to go out of the country to get these done. A lot of folks fly down to Panama, Central America or Germany and or Asia, Thailand, etc. But again, if you choose to do that, please be wary. Know your source, you want a tracking method, you want to make sure they're using utmost, strictest control methods and you want to know where that sort, what's the Source matter of the tissue, other things that we've seen. So, you know, one of the big names that have currently used a stem cell procedure, Tiger woods, he just won the Masters and he had chronic back pain. Really hadn't been playing good golf for a decade. Had a lot of interpersonal stuff happen about 10 years ago. And then back pain, back issues from being a professional athlete. He went and had a stem cell procedure done on his back. Really had, I think, little to no pain when he won the Masters. And I would venture a guess that it helped him tremendously. I know for me personally, being in pain for 10 years and not having the pain, my energy went up, my creativity went up, my love went up. I was less short with the kids, actually. Now I'm not short with them at all or loved ones. And the vibrancy and vitality, as I mentioned in episode one, my hidden agenda is to increase the love quotient on the planet. And you do that by getting people off of drugs and healthier and happier out of pain. Those aspects. I so treasure my service role. You know, before I went into grad school and into medical school, I just thought, how can I be of service to people and serve the highest, greatest good for us all? And that's really what has carried me through my personal tragedy as well. You know, while I didn't save Sariah's life, I hope that we surrounded her in love and had her, you know, leave the planet in a lot of love. And I think we succeeded at that. But I think what I take out of the whole process is we've got these gifts and really uncovered some really amazing therapies. Regenerative medicine being one of the biggest ones here. What else can I share with you around these cells? Source Matters is one of those components on the histocompatibility. A lot of times I get asked around, I don't want to use somebody else's cells because I don't want them to interact with my own system. And, you know, while that is an important question, you look at surrogacy, right? So you have an infertile couple, they can't give birth. The woman can't carry the birth of the baby in her body. Man's infertile, woman's infertile. However, they get a surrogate mom to carry the baby to term. So they get, you know, egg and sperm put together, implanted in surrogate mom. So this mom is carrying a baby of full genetic differentiation, different genetic tissues, but there's not interaction between the mom and the Baby, it's a pretty sacred environment, that placenta, cord and amniotic tissue. Mom's immune system is not attacking baby, baby's not attacking mom. And so it's a pretty contained, self contained system there. And I would say sacred. And that's the tissue that we're using. But also it shows this woman gives birth to this baby, the baby's healthy, goes back to the parents that were infertile. They get their dreams are met and they have their baby of their dreams. And the surrogate mom has no adverse outcomes and has really done a great service to the infertile couple. And there's no genetic interplay there. That's the same discussion that I have around using the stem cells from the stem cell bank in that they are screened. One of the things I love about the basin down there in Salt Lake is it's a predominantly Mormon population. The Mormons are like Ancestry.com. they know their heritage, they know the family trees, they know back two, three generations. I start asking my patients here, I mean, heck, I think I know maybe one and a half to two generations back of my own lineage. But it's hard if you don't have an aunt. I really thank my aunt Barbara for that. If you didn't have a predecessor or family member that took interest in the family tree, that stuff gets lost intergenerationally. So we're looking at genetic anomalies through two to three generations of family. They're also heavily pre screened. There's a 50 page booklet that they're going through. Then the birth tissue is screened for any infectious diseases, et cetera. Once it's harvested, the cells are tracked. So if you go somewhere else to get this done, make sure you get the certificate number of analysis and they're utilizing the testing at every batch and lot number. And then as a practitioner, I enter that information back into the Cord Banks database. I don't have any of your information in there. So it's HIPAA compliant. It's very private. But we want to make sure we're tracking the tissues so that there's a good paper trail here. Heaven forbid there's some infectious disease in one of these tissues and people get that that has occurred with other companies. So really, source matters. You really want to trust your source. As I said, I'm not going to mess with my brain. I really wanted to find the best company out there for me, my family and you. And so we've done the due diligence on that. Let me talk about kind of complete programs because a Lot of folks are doing regenerative medicine. It's basically come in, I'm going to shoot your knee with a unit of stem cells and see you later. Right. That's really incomplete care. I treat whole centered heart, centered beings moving through time and space. Right. It's all the emperor or the empress right here in the heart. And it's my heart to your heart and it's your heart and there's a lot of love involved with that. So we want to assure if you do a program or procedure like this that you get adequate care. You know, it's a big investment and you want these cells to be around for as long as possible. So what I've done is I put hyperbaric oxygen in on every program. There's no additional fee for that. I include it in there because I'm a firm believer the more oxygen in the body, it helps these cells stick around for longer. They get to secrete more exosome and anti inflammatory cytokines and growth hormones, growth factors, all of the healing pieces that your body uses to heal itself. So that's in essence what's happening is we're creating an environment for your body to heal itself. It's not so much the stem cells doing this, it's really creating the environment in you. You already have that capacity. You know, our job as doctors, or dosery, which is the Latin for doctor is teacher. So we want to remove obstacles to cure and really get your body to be able to heal itself. So we give you the stem cells that secrete the exosome that creates an anti inflammatory environment which then has some cells differentiated to the tissues that we want to have created like cartilage or bone. There's research on cardiovascular disease as well. Autoimmune conditions had a patient 30 plus years of rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is notoriously tough. Rheumatoid is the autoimmune component and then arthritis is the deterioration of the joints. You'll see a bunch of commercials right now for Humira. Humira is a biologic and it is a blockbuster drug, right? I mean, so much so that you're seeing it advertised everywhere. I don't tune a lot mainstream media, but when I get on there, it's like, holy cow, look at all the drug ads. You know, it's just insane. And Humira actually has one of the largest advertising budgets. I think it's $536 million a year. You know, they're getting a return on that. There's no Way big pharma is spending that much money on TV and you know, newspaper and radio ads. If they're not getting a return, well guess what their return is on that drug. That drug, I think the prescription costs $60,000 a year. So people don't have any co pay or minimal copay and then they get prescribed that drug $60,000. You're definitely getting a return on TV advertising at $536 million. The Humira is a blockbuster drug. So haven't seen one of those darlings at big pharma for a long time. But it's unfortunate because we can do regenerative medicine around the stem cell procedure. So 30 plus years showed an 85% improvement rate at three months. Three months, 30 years suffering with this condition. And then a two year follow up showed 95% improvement. So a 10% drift. Now those cells, the stem cells don't stay around that long. You know they're going to last about 30, maybe 60 days. Maybe we can push it out longer, but we can get effects on measure at the three month mark. And at the eight month mark we get about a 50% improvement rate at three months and then we get a 45 to 46% on top of that. So 95, 96% effective rate at the eight month mark. But it's just one treatment that then continues to pay dividends. So this person with rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years, 85% at the, at the three month mark and then 95% at the two year mark. So a 10% improvement through time. So basically the cells come in, they set up shop, they're secreting the exosome, donating pieces and parts for your innate healing ability. We did acupuncture in addition to the stem cells, so we helped circulation. Acupuncture works on circulation front. So the healing properties of the body travel in your blood. If we cut the blood flow off to my finger, what would happen to would go kind of white, then blue, maybe a little bit of purple, then black, then just fall off. Right. So I don't do that with new patients anymore. I figure people like their digits. Sorry, my bad doctor joke of the afternoon here. But we include acupuncture with our treatments too. So we get going on circulation and this person, it was one treatment, got this drift continued of healing ability of their body that is phenomenal and remarkable. Had a non Parkinson's tremor of 25 years. So an essential tremor. Improved 85% at the three month mark. So again those stats are at 50% mark. And these are conservatively depends on the area of the body. You know, the knees respond a little bit slower than the rest of the body. But I just kind of am doing worst case scenario average. So at 53 month mark, 50% of people have experienced change and then we got a 95, 96% change. At the eight month mark, over 500 total knee replacements averted. These people were told had the imaging saying you need a knee replacement, we're able to do this procedure and they didn't need the knee replacement anymore. I mean how great would that be? You know, you're slated, you need a surgery and now you don't need a surgery. You know, there's all kinds of complications that can occur with surgeries. Again, I'm not a fear monger. I have plenty of patients, they've had double knee replacements and they're doing fine. My aunt Barbara is a case in point in that one. However, if you didn't have to go under the knife, wouldn't it be logical to try an option or alternative before you get there? I've had so many people and yes, I am biased because I'm seeing the people that the surgery didn't work for. But they come in, the surgeon said, hey, that was a great procedure, such a pretty new device for your knee. Everything went well. It must be tissue is rubbing on the apparatus or it's soft tissue. So it wasn't even their knee. The degradation of their knee. Three causes of pain really. There's structural, so the degradation of bone on bone there is structural, there's inflammatory. So if you take non steroidal anti inflammatories and or ibuprofen, acetaminophen and you get benefit, then we know, hey, there's some inflammation here. Or if you had a cortisone injection and it worked, this is good information to have because that means it was an inflammatory condition. And there is a higher likelihood of success with the stem cell procedure. When I see that then the third is neurogenic pain. Neurogenic is more chronic nerve pain. Once the nerves kind of been triggered, it sets up a neuronal network in the brain and then that gets worn out. So it's just smaller and smaller stimulus create that pain receptor response in the brain and that one we got a backfill with. But the regenerative programs actually help with all three types of pain. But the inflammatory is one of the best ones to pick on. Doesn't mean if you have neurogenic, that would be like neuropathies or pins and needles in the hands and feet, or the feeling like there's like a towel bunched up underneath your foot. Right. Current treatment for neuropathies are gabapentin, neurontin. You just keep ramping that dose up and hope you don't get side effects because it's a potent central nervous system inhibitor. So that's current treatment for neuropathy. But the regenerative medicine, what we do is if this is your foot and this is your leg, we just do some injections right down your leg right there. And we do an IV therapy as well to help hit that systemic effect of your body working like that. That is some of the pieces that we put together in a regenerative program. So I include the hyperbarics in there as well. So hyperbarics, you get into a chamber, 1.4 atmospheres of pressure, zip up. LeBron James has one of these. And, you know, LeBron is pretty. He's an amazing being athletically, and just what a good Samaritan with his foundation back in Cleveland and the work he's doing with education as well. Really outstanding. So thank you, LeBron. But he also has the most hours played out of any NBA player in the history of the NBA. That guy puts out every night, and his body is holding up really well. Listen to an interview with him and his trainer, and they used hyperbarics. He actually travels with a hyperbaric chamber similar to what we have here in our office. And he's got one in his living room, I think at home, too. So if it's good for the elite athletes, and it sure is working well for his body, hyperbarics. We also have Dr. Amen up the i5 corridor here in Tahoma, Washington, outside of Seattle, showing his work on the brain and healing the brain with hyperbarics. He'll do spect analysis. These color pictures of the brain with head concussions, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD traumas, anxiety, which shows a very holy brain, and then do 40 sessions of hyperbarics and then really show this fully colorful, vibrant brain. So I've incorporated it into a healthy aging or longevity health span treatments for myself and for my patients. It's a vital piece. I really feel like it does help add years onto the lifespan and good quality years as well. Again, I want to just thank you for tuning in to the health chat. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel of NatureCares Clinic, and if you're just tuning in right now, please Visit my website, naturecuresclinic.com and check out the episode there. We'll have it up for delayed streaming later. It's live streaming now. And we'll have the other episodes up there, too. So naturecuresclinic.com, we'll have it under the podcast link there. And if you have any questions, please get in touch with me. I want to be your trusted resource. So if you've got a topic that you're dying to know more about, we've probably run it through our clinic. And if we haven't, I'm really excited to learn about it. You know, we're really out here promoting healthcare that promotes thriving, and we want you to thrive along with us. Please come join the revolution. We're going to start aging backwards. Much love to you all. Thanks for listening. Please share me with your friends and family. Let's get this message out, and let's just change healthcare together, shall we?