The Single, Most Comprehensive Stem Cell Procedure Known To Humankind: How A "Full Body Stem Cell & Exosome Makeover" Works.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. I've got a lot of questions since I got my whole body injected head to toe up and down with stem cells. So today you're gonna find out what happens when you inject your whole body with stem cells. Because I got these two brilliant docs on the show who fill us in not only on stem cells, but also things like exosomes and prp. It's an interesting show, so if you're into anti aging and recovery and some more bleeding edge techniques. Notice how I say bleeding edge instead of cutting edge because I bled a little bit. For the procedures you're about to hear in today's show. This show is for you.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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It's pretty rare that I do this, but what you are about to hear is a two parter, a two part episode on the entire full body stem cell makeover with cosmetic and sexual enhancement that I did down in Park City, Utah several months ago. It's been a while since then, but it's also taken a little while for me to a hunt down both of the skilled physicians who oversaw my procedure and b for me to wa a long enough period of time after the procedure to be able to actually tell you whether or not it worked. And as you're going to hear me allude to a few times, especially in part two of this podcast that will come after part one. They're both in this episode. The effects have been profound, not only in terms of much faster workout recovery, but also the appearance of my face, reduction of wrinkles, volume of my hair, length of my orgasms, sexual performance. Pretty much everything that I wanted and expected from the procedure I experienced, along with the peace of mind knowing that I have now a bank of stem cells in each of my joints that my body can rely upon as I age. So this really is one of the more advanced procedures that currently exists when it comes to upgrading your body. It is admittedly not an inexpensive procedure. I mean, what you're about to hear all said, and you know, depending on which adventure you choose is gonna cost around $30,000. However, if that's the type of thing that you're interested in doing to your body, it is well worth it in my opinion. In addition to that, there are many versions of what you're about to hear, meaning you could just go in and do a PRP treatment, a P shot for the crotch for guys, so to speak, or an O shot for women. Or you could just get exosomes and stem cells combined and one joint. So we're talking about, in the case of this podcast, me going in and doing everything, which is what I wanted to do for the purpose of immersive journalism. But ultimately I'll quit talking here and bring you behind the scenes of this full body stem cell makeover. The first interview you're going to hear is with Dr. Harry Adelson, who is really one of the more well versed stem cell physicians in the us. The dude is constantly learning const, adding special things like exosomes and bone marrow, aspirate concentrate and bone broth soup of your body. All of these things that he does that you'll hear him talk about. He's very good at. This is what the dude specializes in. Then after I interview him in part two, you'll hear the interview that I conduct with Dr. Amy Killen, who is kind of the cosmetic and sexual enhancement specialist. So between the two of them, they went to town on my body for about 4 hours. I'll include links to every everything@BenGreenfieldFitness.com STEMCellMakeover the URL again is BenGreenfieldFitness.com STEMcellMakeover Part 1 was recorded at a coffee shop sitting there with Harry sipping espresso in Sardinia, Italy, where we were both speaking at a longevity conference. Part two with Dr. Amy Killen was originally supposed to take place right there in Sardinia, Italy as well, but wound up taking place via us conversing on Skype thanks to the wonders of technology. Ultimately, you're going to find out everything that you need to know from both of these folks. So stick around for this special two part episode. Enjoy and remember, you can leave all your comments, all your questions, access all the little things that I did to biohack my recovery coming out and also to enhance my ability to be able to produce more of my endogenous stem cells going in. I'll also include all the infrared light, ketone, photobiomodulation, all that kind of stuff that I did as part of this procedure, enhance recovery and I touch on that a few times during the episodes that you're about to hear. Alright, let's do this.

The Italians certainly know how to make their coffees, don't they?

Absolutely.

I've got my Americano, just a small spoonful of hazelnut gelato in there which makes for an amazing creamer. Your plain Jane espresso over there.

Harry, an espresso from the people who invented espresso.

That's the best way to do it. So for those of you listening in, I'm here in Sardinia, Italy, as I alluded to in the introduction to today's show with my friend Dr. Harry Adelson. Harry is somebody who you've probably heard me talk about before because he is the man who oversaw my full body stem cell makeover along with his partner, Dr. Amy Killen, who oversaw my complete sexual and cosmetic enhancement procedure that I underwent in Park City, Utah at the time that Harry and I are sitting here in this Sardinian coffee shop just about. What was that, Harry? A month and a half or so ago.

Precisely six weeks ago.

Yeah. So a month and a half I went under sedation in Harry's clinic and Harry did an enormous number of injections and procedures on my body all for longevity, anti aging and enhanced performance. And today, today we're gonna kind of open the kimono on what that was, what all went into it and why on earth someone would inject their entire fricking body with stem cells and other fringe substances that you guys are gonna find out about in today's show. So anyways, we are here in Sardinia. I don't even know the name of this coffee shop, do you?

No, but we just both spoke at a fest.

Yes, we're at a festival awesomeness fest that Vishen Lakiani, another one of our friends puts on. And we're staying in this beautiful village called Forte Village in Sardinia where people actually do live a long time. Why do you think people live a long time here, Harry?

Well, it's the combination. I mean it's the tremendous sense of community. They have beautiful environment, they have terrific food and just a all round excellent quality of life.

Yeah, I mean it's. I'm sure genetics plays some role in it, but I was actually reading an article, one of my friends texted it to me just a few days ago about the copious amount of rosemary that is consumed here and how they attribute the rosamarinic acid to some of their longevity as well.

It's amazing when you walk around and you just smell the ambient herbs everywhere and then you go in and then you Eat the tree cheese and it's the goats that have been eating the herbs that you smell and then producing the cheese. And it's just, it's great because the air that you smell as you walk around is what the salami and the cheese tastes like.

Yeah. And I'm certain that here at a fest, the alcohol fueled DJ parties that go on until 4 to 6am on the beach may not, may not be quite in line with the Sardinian concept of longevity. But moderate drinking and hanging out in a social situation in the evenings, I mean that's, that's another thing that you see prevalent in this culture.

That's right. That's right. Of course red wine contains high levels of pygnogenol. But I think it's probably the social aspects. You know, my belief with health has always been that, you know, the four main pillars are diet, exercise, sleep and sort of psycho spiritual emotional balance. And if you get a B in all four of those, then you get an A all around. If you get a C in any one of those, you get a C. But if you just shoot for a B plus in all four areas, that's a cumulative A.

So you've got a pretty extensive health background. I think I heard you saying like your grandfather was a doctor.

My great, great grandfather was a surgeon in the Civil War.

Now for you growing up, did that mean that you were encouraged to be a doctor? Did you grow up in a household where.

No, not at all. Not at all. He was the only other doctor. I do not come from a long line of doctors. He actually was the only.

So tell me about your training, like how you got from that stage to being really, you know, all these anti aging conferences I attend and speak at. I mean, your name is on the tip of everyone's tongue as one of the leading kind of anti aging docs doing procedures like this. So how'd that happen? How'd that evolve?

It was one of those things. I feel like I worked my fingers to the bone for 20 years and then suddenly became an overnight success. And part of it was because being in the right place at the right time. When I was, when I was in naturopathic school, my first year of naturopathic school, I had an injury to my shoulder. And at that time I was completely fanatical about rock climbing. My whole life revolved around rock climbing. I mean, you could say the reason I went to naturopathic school was so I would have something to do when I wasn't rock climbing and I tore a piece of cartilage in my shoulder. And I saw an orthopedic surgeon and he said, well, I can put a scope in there and we can cut it, cut out that piece of cartilage. And it's going to help you in the short term, but in the long term it's going to cause problems. And here I was, I was, you know, young, healthy, I was in naturopathic school and I just was unwilling to take no for an answer. I said, there's got to be a way that the body can kick start the healing response. There's got to be a way you can supercharge your body's ability to heal itself. And I found out about a treatment called prolotherapy, which is the predecessor to stem cell therapy. So prolotherapy is the injection of natural substances that are simultaneously nutritive and slightly irritating, injected directly into the damaged structure in order to trick the body into thinking that it sustained a new injury, thereby launching the body's natural ability to heal itself. I was trained in that. Well, first of all, I got treated with salvaged my climbing trip to France because I'd been training like crazy for this trip to France, the birth of place of modern sport, climbing. My trip to France was great. I got trained in prolotherapy and I knew that's what I wanted to do. My first four years of practice, I just did prolotherapy. Very simple treatment. You palpate the affected structures, you inject glucosamine sulfate and dextrose and you know, very inexpensive natural substances.

You're literally injecting like in some cases, I've heard it described as sugar solutions into the joints. Right.

It's simultaneously nutritive and slightly irritating, so the sugar makes it hypertonic. So sugar, after oxygen is the most important nutrient to the body. Without oxygen, you don't survive a few minutes. And similarly with sugar, it's the second most important nutrient to the body for moment to moment survival.

Now I know I'm going to completely rabbit hole here, but I know some people who are very into like the low carb diet and ketosis will say, well, I thought the body could survive on ketones and its own fat. So when you say that, are you saying that we need to constantly have glucose in our bloodstream? When you say that, are you referring to the trace amounts of sugar required for metabolic function or.

No, you need sugar for metabolic activity, but you can convert other substances into sugar. So you don't need constant intake of sugar, but your body requires sugar.

Right? Your Body can make a lot of these sugars via proteins, via amino acids, via the glycerol backbone of fats, et cetera. Right.

I'm going to climb us out of that rabbit hole. So then in 2006, platelet rich plasma came along. Platelet rich plasma is you do a normal, just peripheral blood draw, just like you draw blood in the doctor's office, but then you put it in a centrifuge, concentrate down the platelets. Blood is comprised of serum red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Platelets are cellular fractions that are responsible for healing of tissue. When you have an injury, the platelets aggregate, they clump and form a clot, but then they release proteins that trigger the healing of connective tissue. Whenever you have an injury, it is platelets that trigger the healing of damaged tissue. So then in 2006, we switched from prolotherapy dextrose to PRP, injecting platelet rich plasma. And I found that I was able to get the job done in half as many treatments. It worked approximately twice as well. But now, because the injections were, we had to use these somewhat expensive kits to concentrate the platelets. It became reasonable to see what it was you were injecting. So we started using ultrasound guidance. We would actually use an ultrasound camera to see the structure that we wanted to inject and then see the needle entering that structure. So from 2006 to 2010, that's what I did. 2010, I had a patient come to me with a stack of scientific journals. And she said all these journal articles were about the use of bone marrow stem cells for the treatment of arthritis. And back in 2010, it was all animal studies. There was almost nothing in the human literature. And this woman said, and she's one of my favorite patients. And I'd been treating her for a number of years, and I'd helped her some, but I just couldn't quite get her to where she was, you know, where we got her knee totally better. She said, harry, I want you to inject bone marrow stem cells into my knee. And I said, laura, I don't know how to aspirate bone marrow. I don't know how to do it. I said, I've heard of a guy who does it in St. Louis. You can go to him. And she said, I don't want to go to him. I want to go to you. I said, laura, I don't know how to do it. And she said, well, learn how to do it. And I couldn't argue with her. So I learned how to do it.

So you went to YouTube and watched some videos on YouTube?

More or less. I found there at that time, There were about 10 doctors in the United States doing bone marrow stem cells. I called the first nine, asked them if they would teach me. I think they actually didn't hang up on me. I think they threw the phone across the room. The tenth doctor, Dr. Joe Perita, and Boca Raton said, sure, come on down. I'll teach you to do it. He's an orthopedic surgeon. I got to watch him do one, and then I had to learn how to do it. At that time, that was really the extent of the training available to me in the United States. Nobody was teaching it. There were no trainings. There was nothing in the literature. So for the next three years, I traveled all through Central and South America, learning from the maestros, from the people who'd been doing it for years. I just sort of went on this quest to find out who the most experienced people were in the world, and I visited their clinics.

Wow. Okay, so when you're saying the bone marrow aspirate, you're referring to that procedure that looks relatively brutal on the video that I'll link to@BenGreenfieldFitness.com stemcellmakeover that's where the shownotes are for this show. @BenGreenfieldFitness.com StemcellMakeover you can watch the entire procedure that Harry conducted on me, but that was the part where you went in through my hip, the part where my wife cringed a little bit because she was in the room and you sucked the bone marrow out of the iliac crust.

It looks a lot scarier than it is actually dangerous or even painful. Now, of course, you were sedated by an anesthesiologist, so you didn't feel a thing. But even if someone were awake, it's really not nearly as bad as it looks, but yes. So a bone marrow aspiration, just like it sounds in the body. There's long bones and there's flat bones. Long bones, such as the femur, do not really contain stem cells. The flat bones, such as the iliac crest, are rich with stem cells. So that's why we take it from the hip, the big frisbee shaped bone in your pelvis. So we place a bone needle actually into the bone marrow through the hard cortical bone, into the middle, the soft, spongy bone called medullary bones, the medullary cavity or medullary bone. We aspirate it Looks to the naked eye just like blood. But if you look at it under a microscope, it's blood plus a ton of stem cells.

It looks like a giant, giant syringe full of blood. Right. And when I was watching the video, the procedure, that's what I thought it was. But that's all stem cells.

Well, it's, it's. There is peripheral blood in there because there's. The bone marrow is the most highly vascularized tissue in the body. So you are getting blood, but it's blood loaded with stem cells.

So when someone comes to you to do a procedure like this, whether it's a full body stem cell makeover or whether they wanted like a bone marrow aspirate like you did, to inject into a joint, they don't have to have their fat stem cells or their bone stem cells previously banked. You're harvesting them right there and then injecting them.

That's exactly right. We mostly just do same day procedures. So we aspirate the bone marrow. We do currently do fat liposuction as well and isolate stem cells from fat. But yes, we do primarily same day procedure.

Now when somebody does something like that, can they take some of that and rather than getting it injected, somehow store it?

There are laboratories that will store stem cells, yes.

Okay, gotcha. So you could go and get the procedure done and then somehow find a clinic that would store those for you. Is it legal to store them in the U.S. do you know?

It's certainly legal to store them, yes.

Okay, all right, gotcha. So I actually want to delve into some of the FDA legality issues here in a second, but kind of backpedaling just a little bit. You were talking to me about how for a guy like me, who doesn't have a lot of injuries, and I actually wasn't really in there to see you for some nagging ache and pain that had been a bane in my side as much as for longevity and, and performance. Now, you were describing to me this thing called the stem cell theory of aging. Can you describe, kind of couching into your description exactly how these stem cells would theoretically work, what that theory is, and why it would be important for somebody who maybe isn't, you know, injured to do something like this?

Sure, sure. So my practice is really the treatment. I mean, the focus of my practice over the Last close to 17 years has been the treatment of chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions. So low back pain, neck pain, arthritis, you know, any sort of long standing chronic pain issue. Because the types of People that we get a lot of farmers, ranchers, oilfield workers, cowboys. We get a lot of very hard working people who I sort of jokingly say have accepted exceeded the limits of their warranty. You know, they've sort of exceeded the conditions of their warranty. They've worked very hard over many years. As a result, they have arthritis through their entire body. Their entire spine is arthritic. And their, you know, their peripheral joints, their hips, their knees, their ankles, their shoulders, their elbows, their wrists. As a result, I have done a lot of treatments over the years of these large treatments where we do, you know, people's entire spine. We do both hips, we do both knees on top of that, because we use an anesthesiologist and people are sedated. It really makes it very easy to do that because someone goes to sleep, they wake up two or three hours later and we're done. Also because I never billed insurance, you know, a lot of guys who bill insurance, you know, when you're billing insurance, you can only do one thing at a time. And if you want to do something else, you got to come back. And I think a lot of doctors get kind of brainwashed into thinking that way. Even though they're not billing insurance for a stem cell treatment, they say, well, we'll just do your knees. If you want your hips done, we got to do another treatment. So my point is, I sort of developed a reputation as the guy who will do these big treatments. People will just come in and get it all done at once. And over the last two years, I've gotten a lot more biohackers in and, you know, as I put out more content on the Internet and just sort of, people have. My name has sort of gotten around. I got more and more people saying, and I would affectionately use this term, the full body stem cell makeover. People would say, I want that. I want my entire body treated. And I thought, okay, why not? So I decided to just sort of formally roll full body stem cell treatment, full body stem cell makeover as sort of a formal package for people who want to address the stem cell theory of aging. Which brings me to the next part of your question, which is, so we have stem cells in all the tissues in our body. Their role is to maintain the health of their micro environment. So whenever you have, they just sort of lay dormant. And if you have an injury, they go to work. What ends up happening is if you have, you know, the three ways to really degenerate tissue. One is through a system, single traumatic injury that's so severe that your body just doesn't, you know, you don't completely heal from it. The second is chronic overuse and the third is just crappy nutrition and shitty lifestyle. I mean, if you just don't take care of yourself and don't give your body the nutrients and the rest that it needs, then it just doesn't function properly for you. So in any of those situations, what ends up happening is you up end either deplete the population of stem cells in that particular reason in that particular region, or those stem cells cease to function properly. In either case, you now lose the ability for the body to heal itself. So what regenerative medicine and stem cell medicine seeks to do is to repopulate that area with robust stem cells that are functioning properly. So the idea with the full body stem cell makeover is we just go ahead and proactively flood all the major musculoskeletal, all the moving parts of your.

It's essentially almost like the shotgun approach. Exactly.

That's exactly. We carpet bomb your body, your entire spine, both shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, both knee, hips, knees, ankle, foot, with stem cells supercharged with exosomes.

And that's the next part I wanted to ask you about, actually. Thank you for providing that perfect segue for me because when I came to your clinic, you said you were going to take my bone marrow aspirate and inject that, but you wanted to combine it with these things called exosomes. And admittedly at the time I didn't know what exosomes were. Did some research myself and also talked to you a little bit. And I was flabbergasted that I hadn't actually heard of these little things but before. So describe me what an exosome is and how something like that would work if combined with stem cells.

Sure. So let's go back to biology class and we're looking at the diagram of a cell. And you know, you see there's the cell membrane surrounding it and then there's the big nucleus that contains the genetic material and there's the mitochondria and there's the Golgi apparatus and there's. Let's see if I can remember all those, you know, organelles, but there's all the different structures of the cell and then these, you see these little vesicles and they're called exosomes. And when I was in school, back in the, when I was in naturopathic school back in the 90s, we thought that was the cellular excretion. We thought that was the waste product, because we didn't actually know what they were. Okay, so what exosomes actually are. So the way that laboratories create exosomes to be, to be used therapeutically are as follows. They take placental stem cells. So placental stem cells are the most robust. They're considered adult stem cells because they're older than embryonic. So you take these placental stem cells, which are incredibly robust, and you culture expand them. So you grow hundreds of millions of these stem cells. You then put them in a stressful culture medium. So what, what that means is you make, you trick the stem cells into thinking that their host is under duress. So they prepare for lean times. They think that they need to get ready for, you know, for starvation or for injury. They sprout these vesicles filled with growth factors that are the exosomes. And the membrane around these vesicles are exactly the same as the membrane around, around the stem cells. So their ability to communicate with surrounding tissues is exactly the same as the actual stem cells ability. Then the laboratory destroys the stem cell and just harvests the exosomes. So you're actually getting rid of the other person's genetic material and you're just collecting the active ingredient. It's what I like to call the currency of the stem cell. Because when your own stem cells lose their potency, when they lose their ability to function at full optimal levels, what they are actually doing is they are losing their levels of the contents of these exosomes. So this is the very thing, as we age and our own stem cells cease to function properly, that they are missing. So supplementing with these exosomes is really, you're getting all the benefit of culture expanded placental stem cells without the actual stem cells, without the other person's genetic material.

Some of the studies I saw on exosomes were fascinating. You know, like that they, that they serve even as one fascinating one was they serve as an endurance exercise mimetic, meaning that when used exogenously or injected, it appears that they can induce some of the same response responses as you get when you're, when you're like a heavily trained aerobic or endurance athlete. And there's a host of other research I was able to dig up on exosomes, but justjust those alone are fascinating. One thing I want to get back to though, is you said they get rid of the DNA, they get rid of the genetic material. So you're just getting the exosomes. Does that mean that if you're injecting stem cells that do have other DNA or other genetic material in them like umbilical or amniotic that a lot of people do in the US that that would be potentially unsafe or less efficacious compared to something that has your own DNA or no other DNA at all.

Well, the truth is we don't know. We don't know the answer to that. We think there is no risk. We think there is, you know, minimal to no risk. Part of why it's less scary than it sounds to use somebody else's umbilical cord stem cells or such is one thing we do know is that your body does not actually integrate them, these cells. And there's been studies where they take radioisotope marked stem cells, umbilical cord stem cells, and they use them in somebody else. And they're able to see that they have this strong paracrine effect, they have this sort of intercellular communication to launch your own endogenous stem cells to activate. But then they don't divide, they don't. They neither do they self replicate nor do they differentiate. They just die off. When you use allographic stem cells, meaning stem cells from another person, they don't actually take up residence in your body. They have a strong short term effect, but then they don't seem to have a long term effect, which is sort of the good news, bad news. Because the good news is we don't think that that cellular material gets integrated into your own DNA, which is sort of all the more reason to just use the active ingredient. That's why I like the idea of the exosomes, because you're getting, you know, instead of 1 million, like a typical, if you get, if you get umbilical cord stem cells from most manufacturers, usually a single vial is going to contain around 1 million mesenchymal stem cells. Whereas with the exosomes, I mean, you can do many millions of the equivalent of many millions of stem cells, just the active ingredient, without the cells themselves.

And then when you combine those with the bone marrow aspirate, which has your own stem cells, I think you use the term supercharging those stem cells to better be delivered to where they're needed in the body. Because you're combining them with the cell.

To cell communication vesicle, you're combining the vessel with the exosomes with your own stem cells that do get integrated into the area that you're injecting.

Okay, that's pretty cool. It's a, it's a one, two combo. You hear a lot about this idea of Medical tourism, though, people going to Panama is one that's very popular that I hear a lot of people talking about going to Panama for their stem cells. What's the legality currently and why would people be going overseas still to do procedures like this? That kind of confuses me.

Right.

So the main thing you would go over to for is for culture expanded either umbilical cord cells or placental cells. You can do, you know, you can just go completely bonkers with that. That is the main reason because currently it is not legal in the United States to use culture expanded umbilical cord or placental cells. That's sort of what's very elegant about the exosomes is it's sort of a step around it, your culture expanding these placental cells, but then you're destroying the cells. So you're no longer, you know, that's, you're no longer breaking that rule because you're not administering the cells, you're just administering. We would consider it actually an organelle, but with the main reason you would go abroad is either to culture, expand placental or umbilical cord cells or to culture expand your own cells. There are outfits in the United States that are, are culture expanding cells. It is definitely a gray area. Legally, the FDA is saying that it's illegal, but they have not been proven to have. Well, I mean, that's a very complex answer. Let's just skip that part of it.

Okay. All right, gotcha. So basically it would be to get a placental or an umbilical culture expanded stem cell. That would be why you would go overseas. But if you're able to simply do something like a bone marrow aspirate, take it out of the iliac crest and then even better yet, combine with exosomes, you're getting a lot of the same effects.

That is, you know, I haven't been working with exosomes long enough to say with any degree of certainty, but so far I'm very impressed with it. I mean, I have been doing bone marrow stem cells for eight years and I'm very impressed with the use of bone marrow stem cells. And it seems when you add the exosomes, it seems to really give it this super juicy boost and I'm very pleased with it.

What about the risks? You know, we talk about legality. A lot of times there are legality considerations because it's considered risky or unsafe or unproven. Are there risks? I mean, and I say that because there's talk too about like people, you know, I think you're aware I got my fat stem cells harvested from the US Stem cell clinic, and people right away were tweeting at me and saying, oh, they made people blind with stem cell injections. There are other people. I was having dinner with somebody a couple weeks ago, and he's like, dude, stem cells can go anywhere in the body, which means that they could be carcinogenic and cause undifferentiated cell growth, especially of a tumor or something like that. So are those kind of risks legitimate, and are there other risks? Like what should people be aware of as far as risks go?

Well, the literature that does exist overwhelmingly still, you know, really, I am not aware of anything that makes me really afraid of cancer. Especially when you're using your own stem cells. When you're using your own bone marrow stem cells, there's really nothing in the literature using autologous stem cells. So autologous is where donor and recipient are the same person. There was one case in the cosmetic surgical literature where they were using fat derived stem cells combined with a cosmetic filler. And it was a specific cosmetic filler that had hyaluronic acid, but it also has these little plastic beads in it that are supposed to form like scar tissue. So, like, you inject this hyaluronic acid with the plastic beads into the lips, scar forms around the plastic beads and actually makes the lips fuller. Well, something about the plastic in those beads caused the stem cells to differentiate into bone. So there's sort of one case in the cause literature where this woman developed these bone chips in her face, but that was one where they really got too cute. I mean, they were mixing it with this cosmetic filler that had plastic beads in it. So, you know, I think as far as using bone marrow stem cells, the safety is just. Is really.

So the moral of the story is.

Don'T combine your stem cells with plastic and inject them into your eyes.

Well, first of all, yeah, don't inject stuff in your eyes, period. I mean, we just don't know enough about it. I mean, that's neural tissue. That's not musculoskeletal tissue. The eyes are neural tissue. As far as the exosomes, there is a small but growing body of data that seems that it is very, very safe. There is a theoretical risk of cancer, and the manufacturer recommends you do a cancer screening.

Okay, so I also want to. Want to backpedal here to the idea of why you would use bone. I've seen the folks who harvest fat and use fat say fat is superior as far as the mesenchymal active stem cells that you have. I've seen people say bone is better. You know, I've had my bone harvested and stored from Forever Labs in Berkeley and then I got my fat stem cells stored from the US Stem Cell Clinic in Florida. And both said that their method was superior. Right. As far as bone versus fat, fat versus bone, what do you say? What's your thoughts on fat stem cells versus bone stem cells?

Sure. Well, first of all, I use both. I started out using bone marrow. I started doing bone marrow in 2010, but then I started using fat in 2013. What I did when I integrated fat in 2013 is my instinct was to combine them together. But I thought you, you know, here's an opportunity to find out, maybe one is better than the other. Maybe I can just do one without doing the other. So for a period of four months, I would do one or the other. I would offer it to people. I would say, do you want to use bone marrow with which I have quite a bit of experience and there's quite a bit of scientific data, or would you rather use fat which has less data? You're going to get more stem cells. But, but you know, I, I would just leave it up to the person to decide and people would self select as such. And about 50, 50, you know, one group, about half the people would take bone marrow and the half, the other, the other half would take the fat. What I found is I phoned people one year after the treatment and as had been my experience, the people who got bone marrow got consistently good results. I had about a 10% non responder rate, but 90% of people got satisfactory outcomes with the fat group. When it worked, it worked better than bone marrow. It was a superior outcome. However, I had about a 30% non responder rate, so it was less consistent. So what I did was I switched to combining bone marrow with fat. And what I found was when I combined the two, I seemed to get the consistency of the bone with the augmented improvements of the fat. And this is a paper that I had published in the Pain Practitioner and you can find it on my website. But one of the things that I've just noticed in the industry is those people who are, because you know, you definitely have the bone marrow camp and then you have the fat camp, they tend to sling arrows at each other. And what I found is the ones who have, who sling the largest arrows, who like who dis the other one the most are the ones who have no experience with whatever the other one is. And really, you know, I think there's a lot of bias involved. And there's some people who like doing bone marrow and they don't want to do fat, and there's other people who like doing fat and they don't want to do bone marrow. I like using both. I'm going to continue to use both unless the FDA tells me I need to quit doing fat, which may come to pass.

Okay, thanks for enlightening me as to the bitter battles that go on within the. Within the stem cell industry. Physicians fighting fat versus bone.

There's Ford guys and there's Chevy guys, and there's fat guys and there's bone marrow guys.

Exactly. That's what it sounds like. Okay, so before we kind of go into what a step by step walkthrough of the full body stem cell makeover.

Is.

The other thing that I'm curious about when it comes to, to the use of stem cells would be some of the things that go beyond just joint pain. People talk about TBIs, they talk about concussion. When you're doing something like this and it's not for the joints, would you instead just go straight into the bloodstream? And even for something like longevity.

Right.

So I've got these fat cells harvested and bone cells harvested, and I've been encouraged to inject those every one year, two year, or five years for longevity purposes. How would you use stem cells aside from injecting them into the joint for other conditions? What would be some of the more common reasons?

Sure.

Well, my practice is the treatment of chronic musculoskeletal pain. So we only treat pain. Having said that, every single person who comes to my clinic gets a little bit of stem cells iv we give. Currently we give the adipose derived stem cells intravenously. We do not give the bone marrow stem cells intravenously. And that's just in case somebody has an undiagnosed bone or blood cancer. I don't really want to give that IV if I. We additionally give a little bit of exosomes iv. So, you know, if someone's coming to me, I'm going to give them a little systemic boost with stem cells. As far as the treatment of you mentioned traumatic brain injury, I mean, the list of indications for stem cell therapy is staggering. I mean, really, it's like this mushrooming cloud. Every year there's a larger body of scientific literature showing a broader spectrum. Name all of the specialties in medicine. Neurology, pulmonology, cardiovascular. I mean, just like give me the entire list. There is somebody studying stem cells for Conditions in that category.

Okay, so the one where you go where you mainline via an IV into the bloodstream, that would be what you do for longevity, though?

Well, I do the full body stem cell makeover. I put it. I mean, me, I'm addressing the musculoskeletal system. And additionally intravenously, if you just wanted to treat the brain, for instance, or if you just wanted to do internal organs, yes, you would just do iv.

So for something like decreasing the rate at which telomeres shorten or that anti aging effect, would you get some of that just from getting injected into the joints?

Theoretic. Well, you. Well, when I inject the joints, I also give a little bit iv, so yes.

Okay, so you're getting that either way if you go to your clinic and get this done. All right, so the full body makeover, you kind of alluded to injecting, you know, every musculoskeletal joint from the ground up with stem cells combined with exosomes. What else goes into this procedure? You know, when I walked into that room a month and a half ago, all. All I remember is somebody telling me to count from 100 down to zero. And I think I blacked out at about 97 or maybe it was 93. And then three hours later speaking French. Then what happened? Yes, I woke up speaking French. And I can put a link in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com stemcell makeover if you want to see the hilarious video of the crazy things that I said when I woke up, including speaking French. But between that time and the time that I was counting down to zero, what happened?

Right, so as you're saying, the first thing that happens is you lay down on the table. Well, first thing when you come to the clinic is you and I talk. So we go over everything, make sure we've got everything exactly right. You meet with the anesthesiologist, they make sure that they're happy, that you're happy, everything's on board, ready to go. You speak with my nurse, so she's going to tell you what to expect afterwards when you wake up. Then you go into the room, lay on your stomach, get a tiny little needle in your hand, count backwards from 100, get to about 96 and you go blissfully to sleep during that time. The first thing currently I do a lipoaspiration, which is a miniature liposuction, take between 50 and 100 cc's of Adipose. That adipose goes through a process where the stem cells get isolated. Then we do a bone marrow. Now, we didn't do that with you because you don't really have enough fat. And we. The full body stem cell makeover. I'm moving toward just using bone marrow and exosomes. But with you then we did, you know, we did the bone marrow aspiration was the first step. So we place a, you know, a jam sheety needle, an 11 gauge 4 1/2 inch needle into your iliac crest. I do both sides because we want to get lots of stem cells. I'm taking a very large volume of bone marrow. We need a large volume of stem cells for this treatment. The bone marrow goes to. Through an ozone machine. We ozonate the bone marrow to supercharge it with oxygen. Once it's been ozonated, then it gets centrifuged. It goes into a centrifuge for eight minutes. The buffy let you. When you centrifuge bone marrow, the serum goes to. Well, this fat goes to the very top. There's a little bit of fat in bone marrow. The serum is above that. At the bottom is the red blood cells because of the iron content, they're the heaviest. And then the middle layer is the platelets and the stem cells. We draw off the buffy layer. That's the good stuff. We then add the exosomes to the bone marrow to our bone marrow aspirate concentrate. BMAC bone marrow aspirate concentrate. When we do a full body stem cell makeover, we're using six vials of exosomes, which is a huge dose. Then we've got you faced down. So I go ahead and inject the spine from the base of the skull to the tailbone on both sides, every level. We then have a very elegant way. We safely turn people from their feet, from their stomach onto their back. I then inject both shoulders, both elbows, wrist, hand, both hips, both knees, both ankles, feet. You then gently wake up in the recovery room, in your case, speaking French, and that's it.

I like how you allude to the fact that you have elegantly rolled me over. I think according to my wife, I was. I was flopping like a rag doll, like she said. That was the worst part, when you turned me over and I was just completely limp.

Well, we're very, very careful not to. Not to let people get hurt. No, we're very.

We're very careful. Yeah. And, you know, the next day, I obviously still had sedation chemicals in my bloodstream. I was walking a little funny, frankly. I felt like I'd been hit by A truck, just, just, you know, just, just stiff. I went for a long walk. Within two days I was, I was moving pretty mobile. And then I, I kind of launched into doing a lot of things to enhance recovery. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that too. You know, there are certain things that we know that you'd want to do going into the procedure that, that I was very careful with to ensure that my own stem cells were, were healthy and that I was healthy. Going into a procedure like that, being very careful with inflammation, eating extremely clean, consuming a lot of herbs and spices to enhance my own anti inflammatory process, but also potentially my own stem cell production with a lot of sirtuin enhancing foods like blueberries and dark vegetable powders and a lot of these things that are considered to be almost like whole food, wild plant extracts. We see a lot of people here in Sardinia consuming. I did a lot of infrared light therapy, I did a lot of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy which has some actual interesting studies on it in terms of your own endogenous stem cell production. But then for recovery I continue to do a lot of those things.

Right.

PEMF and the Joov Lites, you know, continue to do a lot of infrared near and far. But when someone leaves your clinic after this full body stem cell makeover, do you have certain biohacks or techniques or protocols that you think allow them to get back into the game or to make the procedure all the more effective?

I keep it very simple. I think that I mostly tell people what not to do. And really what kills stem cells more than anything is alcohol. I've just found that people who drink, I mean it really just like crushes those stem cells.

Now we just got done saying though that like in Sardinia, where people are living a long time, they're drinking a moderate amount of alcohol each day. I think one to two glasses of wine. So when you say alcohol, do you mean no alcohol?

I mean, I mean specifically binge drinking. Because the Sardinians who are living to be, you know, these 120 year old Sardinians are not binge drinking generally. I mean there's a big difference between one drink a day and you know, one drink an hour. But for the first, definitely two weeks after stem cell therapy, I recommend no alcohol. Two months is better. You know, just it's not going to kill you to take a little time off. Alcohol smoking is a big one and then not overdoing it physically is a big one. And of course you went and did a massive endurance race like five days later or Something which was against medical advice.

I broke the rules. I kinesio taped myself and braced myself to the hilt and went and raced in a spartan for basically to keep my sponsors happy and fulfill my contractual obligations. But I was somewhat careful. I raced gingerly, if that can be done.

That's right.

What about things like Myers cocktails, IVs. I know that you do those kind of things at the clinic. Anything like that that you would do.

To enhance the recovery process, I think those are great. The reality is the majority of our patients travel from out of state and many of them are international. So I don't really have the luxury of doing a bunch of stuff. I'm in the process of working with Dan Pompa, who is a friend of yours, and you've done quite a bit of work with. And most of your listeners probably know who Dr. Dan Pompa is.

Is.

We're in the process of putting together a protocol where it will be several, you know, between two or three weeks leading up to the treatment and then for several months after the treatment. And that's something we're working on right now.

Give, give me a sneak peek. Just, just drop, drop a couple of hints for me as to what would be involved with the program like that.

Well, if Dan Pompa is involved, it's going to involve some fasting for sure. But, you know, I really, at this point, I really do keep it simple. You know, when I said earlier about the four pillars of health, diet, exercise, sleep and emotional balance, and just really shoot for a B in all of them. Because a B in all four categories, you get a cumulative A. I tend to keep it very simple. And because people are going to do what they resonate with, you know, I'm get. I get, you know, essentially there's two types of people. There's people who aren't going to do anything even if I tell them to, so why bother telling them do stuff. And then there's people who are already doing a lot of stuff, and they should just keep doing the stuff that they're doing. You know, if I was going to give one piece of advice, I'd say listen to the Ben Greenfield show.

Oh, thanks, brother. Appreciate that. Yeah, you're right. If Dan's involved, I guarantee fasting will be involved. And that's actually one of the, one of the better ways to induce longevity and enhance stem cell production. I know Dan's very into, like I mentioned earlier, this concept of near infrared and far infrared. I know he does a lot of sauna, so I wouldn't be surprised if that from just from a pure detoxification standpoint were included. A couple others that come to mind would be again pulsed electromagnetic field therapy which I'm using almost every day. I have a giant bed at home that I just lay on to enhance recovery. And then another one would be water. You know you mentioned you know, exercise and food. What were your four pillars? Exercise, food, your spiritual state and sleep. Yeah, I guess water we could lump in there with food. And I know this concept that originally I was made aware of by Tyler LeBaron of the Molecular Hydrogen Foundation. Drinking hydrogen rich water as an anti inflammatory or as an antioxidant. I think last time I was with Dan he was using the hydrogen rich water pills and I've got one of those as well.

That's something that Gary Young was very interested. You know Gary just died. Did you hear? Yeah, yeah.

Gary Young of Young Living Essential Oils. So sad.

What it's, what a, what a great, great light we lost with him. I'm so sad to see him go.

And he was a hydrogen rich water enthusiast as well.

That was, he was big into hydrogen rich water.

Yeah. And, and you know that's basically what I did. I was, I was fortunate to be staying at Dan's after I did your pursuit. So I did a lot of little biohacks but I know I've talked to some other people have gone down to Park City where you're located. They've done this full body stem cell makeover, arrived a day or two prior to make sure that they're well slept and that some of the inflammation from airline travel had settled down prior to arriving and then afterwards had stayed a couple of days. That's what I also did because I didn't want to get right on a plane after the procedure and even just bringing a giant suitcase of some of your, your best supplements, your best foods. You know, if you have things like infrared light, you know that all these kind of things you could you guys have like a hotel right across the street from the office.

Two hotels right next door to us.

Is that pretty common. People go there and they just set up shop in the hotel across the street.

Absolutely, yeah. There's a Holiday Inn Express to one side and then there's sort of a chic boutique hotel on the other. New Park Resort.

Perfect. If you're going to get the full body stem cell makeover you probably want the something nice to than the Holiday Inn Express I would imagine.

I think it's actually, people say it's quite nice but the new park, I.

Think has better views. I have a Holiday Inn Express near my house. And that's when film crews come in, folks come in. I just put them all up at the Holiday Inn Express. So it's not bad. Okay, so ultimately, all of the links and the resources for what Dr. Adelson and I have talked about are going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com stem cell makeover. When I was under sedation, of course, Dr. Amy Killen came in and did the full cosmetic and sexual enhancement procedure that I won't force you to detail, Harry. I'll have her do it. But what you're going to hear next is what ensued after my full body stem cell makeover. Because prior to you guys waking me up, I did quite a few other procedures overseen by Dr. Amy Killen. And folks can come in and correct me if I'm wrong and just do this one, two combo the same way that I did. You bet.

Yeah, that's right. A lot of people do it that way. So we have certain days that Amy's in the clinic, and if you want to have us both at the same time, we just schedule it at the same time. You come in, then you add to that list of people to talk to before the treatment. Amy is there, you go to sleep, I do my thing, she does her thing. Then you wake up after about three hours and you have had everything imagined in your body injected with stem cells and exosomes.

Yeah, and that was honestly exactly what I did. And the thing that I noticed the most right off the bat was the sexual enhancement piece of what Amy did. I mean, that was within two days, the stem cells are still kicking in. I was sore for a few days, and now I'm beginning to feel as though all these old injuries are just kind of melting away. And I mean, my body feels amazing now when I wake up in the mornings. And I think you told me it would be, what, like two to six months to kind of really feel all the, all the benefits settling in.

I mean, things, it's. For the first two months, it's a bit of a roller coaster. You know, sometimes people say they're a little bit worse and then they'll have good days and bad days. But at about the two month mark is when the good, really, the trend starts to be for the better. Between month two and month six is where really the magic happens. About, about six months, people tend to plateau. But then the benefit lasts for years. Then, you know, some, anywhere from, you know, three to six years later and I'm talking about for the treatment of pain, I probably am going to hear from people again.

Amazing. Now I do feel a little bit bad because I made you talk so much, Harry, that that wonderful Italian espresso you ordered still sits cold in front of you. So you had a chance. I was talking a few times, could have taken a shot of that bad boy. But anyways, like I mentioned, you guys who are listening in the second part of this interview will be with Dr. Amy Killen. And in addition to that, if this is something that you want done and you want to go to disary clinics in Park City, Utah and fly in and have Harry do this protocol for you, first of all, I'll put links to his clinic and his contact details over@bengreenfieldfitness.com stemcellmakeover just like it sounds Stem Cell makeover. I'll put a video of both part one, my full body stem cell makeover with Dr. Harry as well as the sexual and cosmetic enhancement procedure with Dr. Amy as a video on the show notes for you to be able to access and watch. If you like to sit back and watch surgeries for entertainment, skip the Netflix one evening and watch me getting injected by Dr. Harry. And that's really about everything going to find the show notes aside from some of the little bio hacks that I did to myself to enhance recovery. So I'll put all of that over there@bengreenfieldfitness.com stemcellmakeover and Harry, as they're prone to say here in Italy, grazie and arrivederci.

Arrivederci.

All right, thanks for listening in, folks.

Hey folks, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield and I am back. You actually just heard me interview Dr. Harry Adelson about the full body stem cell makeover that he did on me. But his partner in crime is now with me on this show on this this part two of this episode. So her name is Dr. Amy Killen. We actually haven't seen each other since we were both at a fest in Sardinia, Italy, teaching at a longevity course there for this company called Mindvalley. But even prior to that, Amy, while I was under, I guess, was it sedation or anesthesia?

Amy yeah, it was moderate sedation. So like a light anesthesia?

Yeah, well, I was out cold and Amy did some cutting edge procedures on me that were kind of complementary to what Dr. Adelson did. She is the person to go to here in the US when it comes to cosmetic and sexual enhancement using not Only stem cells, but a lot of these other protocols, including things like prp. She's done some things with exosomes as well. So she's going to fill us in on what ensued after Dr. Adelson did the complete stem cell injection of my entire musculoskeletal system. Now again, you can go visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com stemcell makeover that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com STEMcellMakeover to access the shownotes and everything else that we talk about and also to be able to visit Doceri Clinic or Amy's program is called Docere Medical and she is an M.D. she actually graduated at the top 10% of her class. She attended medical school at UT Southwestern. She did her residency in emergency medicine at University of Arizona and somehow pivoted. I want to hear a little bit more about this from emergency medicine into injecting people's genitals and faces and hairlines. And so how exactly did that transition happen, Amy?

That's a good question. So I did ER for about 10 years. I was an ER doctor toward the last few years of that. I had my three kids in the course of about two years and was working super crazy, you know, 4am Shifts in the ER, was sleeping about two hours a night, was using a lot of sleeping pills and caffeine and just kind of overloaded and stressed. And I started realizing that I needed to start taking better care of myself. At the same time, I was seeing patients that were coming in over and over again for the same kinds of medical problems. So I became very interested in preventative medicine and eventually kind of started learning about preventative medicine and integrative medicine. And then that segued into regenerative medicine, which is sort of the stem cell medicine and getting your own body to heal itself. So it was a journey that took place several years, but it was, it was my dissatisfaction with both my own health and my patient's health.

Your job now seems a lot cooler.

It is super cool. Yeah.

More, more interesting than the gun and knife club in the emergency room. I used to do a lot of volunteering in the emergency room in undergrad and was actually not super exciting because this was in Moscow, Idaho. So there wasn't, it was more people coming in after having had too many beers or, you know, someone got their toe run over by the car or something like that. But there wasn't a lot going on in terms of very interesting accidents. So it's probably a good thing anyways, though. So you went, when Dr. Adelson finished up on me, walk me through a little bit of what you did. And obviously we'll rabbit hole a bit here. But I believe one of the primary things that you had access to in those giant needles and syringes that you were injecting into me was prp. You're mixing that with certain things. So get into PRP and how that differs from stem cells and what you were up to when it comes to your approach for sexual enhancement and cosmetic enhancement.

Yeah, so I use prp. So platelet rich plasma is what PRP is, and I just take some of your own blood, centrifuge it, and get the platelets concentrated so that there's a high level of platelets in a small amount of serum, because the platelets house these growth factors, which then are kind of like signaling molecules, like fertilizer almost to your own stem cells.

Now, how are those different than exosomes, the growth factors?

They are. It's a good question. They're a little different. Exosomes come directly from the stem cells. So exosomes come from, like, from umbilical stem cells or from your own stem cells. And they're like these little messenger bubbles that carry not just proteins from the stem cells, but also some messenger RNA and microrna, which are that. They're like the blueprints for making proteins. So the exosomes have a little bit more information. PRP is coming from your platelets and not from the stem cells themselves. But the platelets, you know, they're responsible for healing. So, for instance, if you cut your arm, platelets are one of the first responders. And they, you know, they cause the clotting of the wound, but then they also send out signals that say, hey, we need to get some more blood vessels in here, because we broke some. We need some more. You know, the nerves need to fix, get fixed. The collagen needs to get fixed. So the platelets kind of begin that healing cascade, no matter which part of your body they're placed in. So we can use the platelets in conjunction with things like stem cells and exosomes, and they all work together in different ways to create this cool regenerative process.

So this would be another way, too. I think Dr. Adelson calls it upgrading your stem cells. When you combine them with exosomes, you would then combine the stem cells with prp. But then do you also throw exosomes in there as well?

I do, Yeah. I do all of them. And, you know, every case is different. Sometimes we'll just do prp. Sometimes we'll do PRP with stem cells or with. Or all three. You know, kind of depends on what we're working to achieve as well as, you know, what the patient is interested in paying for, honestly. But they all work in different ways, and they all could be really cool ways to get your own body to help heal itself.

So if you didn't, let's say you weren't able to afford exosomes, because from what I understand, those are kind of the creme de la creme. They're more expensive. You could still take your stem cells and combine those with PRP and kind of get that upgraded cell signaling effect.

Yeah, definitely. And you can even just do PRP by itself. You know, usually it takes several more treatments with PRP alone to get some of the same results that you would get from, like, exosomes or PR or stem cells. So, like, we know from, for instance, musculoskeletal literature, you have to get several PRP injections over the course of several months to even approach the kinds of effects you would get from just a single stem cell treatment. So the same is true on the things that I do. But PRP does work. It just. You may have to do it more than one time.

Okay. From what I understand, the stem cells kind of stay in the joint. And based on the stem cell theory of aging that Dr. Adelson laid out in the previous interview, they're there for your body to call upon for a longer period of time after you've had the procedure done. Whereas the growth factors from PRP just kind of. They're in the joint for a little while, they do their job, but they're not necessarily in your body for a long time, which is why you'd need repeated injections if you did PRP without stem cells.

Yeah, well, you know, what's interesting about that is with, like, with the penis shot, for instance, the P shot, we actually have. There's some studies that show that if you inject stem cells into the penis, into the corpus cavernosum, which are those, you know, the tubes that fill with blood, that they'll stay in there for a few days, but they eventually, those stem cells that you injected make their way into other parts of the body, like into the bone marrow of the patient or into the lymphatic system, where they kind of set up shop. So what. What appears to be happening is that the main benefit of the stem cells that we're given are actually the messaging component of those stem cells. So those Stem cells, at least in the procedures that I do, probably don't stick around for all that long for more than a few days in that tissue. But in those few days, they start sending out these messages, and then they go somewhere else in your body, and they can still send messages and still be active.

Okay, so let's start there with the corpus cavernosum. So you did. How many times did you inject my penis with prp?

I injected it five times, and it was PRP and exosomes that I was using.

Okay, so tell me why a guy would do that. And also, I know there's one called the O shot. I want to get into how this works for females as well, because my wife actually recently did her clitoris and her vagina, and that was with stem cells. And I believe PRP mixed in with that. But walk me through this P shot first, how it works and what you're trying to achieve with it.

So we numb it up first because you are asleep, but a lot of people are awake. And we just numb it up. We just use it, some topical numbing cream. And it works pretty well, actually. But we numb it. We do. I do two injections on each side. The corpus cavernosum are those again, those tubes that fill with blood when you get an erection. So we're injecting directly into those tubes. And then we also do another injection at the corona, which is like the ring that's kind of at the tip of the penis. So I do those five areas. And what we see in animal and human research is that there's increases in things like blood vessel development over the course of the next few months, increases in nerve regeneration, improvements in things like nitric oxide levels in the tissue. So basically all of that means that you can have good improvements in things like sensitivity and firmness of erections, inability to get an erection, and sort of staying power of erections. So it's just, you know, you're regenerating or improving or repairing what you have already there.

Yeah, and I actually have done it awake. I've done stem cells awake and just done the nerve block prior. And this wasthis was far more pleasant to do it under sedation as part of the full body deal.

It's not as bad as you think.

I think it's ironic that you actually have to get injected into your penis with the numbing agent prior to actually getting injected, because the initial injection, in my opinion, is uncomfortable. But I actually thought before I got injected the first time that it was actually done in through the Urethra. I thought you just go in through the hole in the front and inject it with something. That's just my base understanding of anatomy and my flawed concept of how this works. So you did the corpus cavernosum, you do the head of the penis and basically what you're going after is better erections, longer orgasms, better sexual performance. Do you also do this for guys with ED or Peyronie's?

Yeah, definitely. So I have a lot of patients, you know, a lot of patients who have some degree of erectile dysfunction, whether it's from, you know, diabetes or high blood pressure or just age related or other, you know, prostatect post prostatectomy patients. So we'll do, we'll do the injections for them. Peyronie's. There's also some good evidence that's coming out now that shows that PRP and probably stem cells can be helpful for Peyronie's, which is like a scarring disease where you get curvature of the penis and it can be painful. So we use it for all of those things. And then I'll oftentimes do the shockwave therapy, the gainswave therapy or something like that along with these treatments because they work really well together.

Yeah, I've gotten the gainswave done a few times as well. So you actually do that in conjunction to almost like drive home the prp?

Yeah, what I actually do in all my patients now who are getting the P shot and we didn't do with you because I didn't have the machine then, but I do a single gainswave or shockwave therapy treatment session right before doing the P shot because you're creating this sort of shear stress or micro trauma to the tissue and then you're injecting the growth factors right afterwards. And it makes sense to me that those growth factors are going to kind of know where to go and it creates sort of faster change if you do the shockwave first. So I do shockwave first, follow with the P shot and then patients will, I tell them to go back wherever they're from and then follow it up with a gainswave series or shockwave therapy series of 6 to x number of treatments in the coming weeks and months, depending on kind of how bad their dysfunction is.

And do you have just that machine at the Park City location or are you operating elsewhere also?

I have another clinic down in South Salt Lake which it's a big integrated medicine practice. So I have a gainswave there. We do a lot of gainswave procedures down there. We do you Know, hormones and naturopathic medicine and sports medicine, all kinds of stuff down there. So it's sort of a bigger, more integrative approach down there. And then in Park City, I do all the stem cell stuff.

Okay, now, how about women? How's the O shot work? And by the way, what does O stand for? An O shot, because the P stands for penis. I'm still trying to figure out what O stands for.

The O stands for orgasm, which is a great name, of course. So the O shot. Yeah. So basically it's the same thing. It's usually it's prp, at least. And then I will oftentimes add other things to it, like the stem cells or the exosomes, but injections into the clitoris and into the anterior vaginal wall, kind of where the G spot is, you know, that upper part of the. The vagina, which is also where the urethra is, which is the tube that drains your bladder when you're urinating. So we can see improvements in things like stress incontinence, which is when you have to pee a little bit when you're jumping, as well as improvements in things like orgasm strength and pleasure and sensation and lubrication and vaginal tightness and all the good stuff.

Have you ever had that injection done to yourself?

I have when I was first starting.

What's it feel like? Just a woman, you know, my wife has a pretty high pain tolerance, and when I saw her get the stem cells PRP injected, because I watched the procedure, she was grimacing. It seemed pretty painful. But I'm just curious. Like, I mean, for me, it was just this really uncomfortable pressure. Like a strange pressure sensation.

Yeah. For me, the vaginal injection was kind of a crampy feeling like I've had before, but like just kind of a pelvic cramp that just lasted a few minutes. I had this done when I was learning how do the procedure myself. So it was other doctors who were learning as well. Performing.

That's always what you want, someone guinea pigging on your genitals.

It's like a whole group, too. So there were like five of them, and one of them was performing it. The other ones were watching. And so it was very weird.

But anyway, go out for drinks afterwards. I pretend it didn't happen.

But the clitoral injection was actually a little bit painful because they didn't give me the numbing cream for very long because we were kind of in a hurry that day. And so I felt like it was more painful than it usually is for my Patients just because it didn't have time to numb. So it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, it was like a five minutes of pain kind of thing. But, but most of my patients now, we give them a lot of time to numb, and it's really not uncomfortable for, I would say, 90% of people.

Okay. So it's basically. Is it two injections? Then you're doing like the, like the labia and the clarus.

You're doing the clitoris and then the, and then the inside that just inside the vagina, sort of at the top. So two injections. Sometimes I'll do more injections in people who have, like, if they have a lot of vaginal dryness and they want several injections, or they have like lichen sclerosis, which is a scarring disorder. You know, we can do more injections. You can put these things, you can put this PRP and stem cells any number of places, but the traditional O shot is just two injections.

Okay, got it. Now, you also. Speaking of sexual enhancement for women or cosmetic enhancement, you also do this thing called the vampire. What exactly is a vampire?

So the vampire facial and facelift are. It's our PRP for the face, where we are either injecting PRP or we're doing it topically with like, microneedling. And we did both of those on you. And what I, you know, what I do oftentimes again is I'll do the PRP and then I'll add other things. Like I'll add the extra exosomes or the, or the stem cells to it. So I'll do, I'm doing injections all over the face, and then I'm also doing the microneedling. So I'm getting the upper layers of the skin and the lower layers of skin as well.

Okay. So when, when you're doing, for example, the face or you're doing the breast, like, what exactly is happening from a biological level when you're injecting those areas?

So with the face, for instance, you're injecting PRP or stem cells. And what happens over the course of the next few weeks is that you have. It tells your own stem cells in your skin to increase collagen production. So collagen is, is important for the structure of your skin, and we all start losing it at about age 25. So that's kind of scary. So increases collagen production, increases elastin, which gives your skin bounce back and also increases hyaluronic acid, which is what gives your skin that sort of moist, youthful appearance. So all of those things are components that start to go down as you age. And again, aging starts at about 25 as far as your skin is concerned. So these are ways to give your skin, you know, improvements in texture and tone and color and sort of just vibrancy, glow, things like that.

Okay.

Does it kick in right away? Because, you know, for example, I am now about three and a half months out from my procedure with Dr. Adelson, and I've noticed profound improvements in my workout recovery, first of all. And then also I've been getting a lot of comments on my face. I mean, that started even just two weeks after the procedure where you did. So it was microneedling PRP stem cells and exosomes into my face?

Yes. Yeah, we did all of those things on your face? Yeah, they could start within a couple of weeks. It's immediate where the signaling starts, but it's really about two weeks out that we start to actually see patients saying that they are feeling better about their skin. And then that will go. That'll continue. You'll continue to have more and more benefits out through about six months. And then that will just kind of stick with you for usually a year or two.

And so tell me a little bit more about the. For the women, the vampire breast lift.

So the breast lift, I don't do as many of those. I've done them before. I don't find that PRP is as good for volume, you know, for adding volume to something as it is for improving the skin itself. So I've done it before. It's not my favorite procedure, honestly. But some people do it where you're basically taking PRP and you're using, you're put, you're injecting that into the breasts and you're trying to increase the volume of the breasts in those areas and maybe even increase, you know, improve the skin texture and tone and things like that.

Yeah, I think that's what Kim Kardashian did. She did like a vampire facelift. But then I think she did the breast lift as well with the. I don't know if she used the exosomes, but I'm pretty sure she did platelet rich plasma, which is kind of like the, the lower hanging fruit and the more common procedure, right?

Yeah, the PRP procedures, I mean, you can find them all over the place and there are a lot of people doing them. They've been around for several years. And you know, you got the facial injections, the O shot, the P shot, the Vampire breast and the hair within the hair regeneration. And then what we've done is just started adding additional things to the prp, which we're finding are actually really helpful and kind of just give you way more benefit.

Like what?

Well, the exosomes and the stem cells. And then we've also done some work with ozone, and we're adding ozone to the prp, which is something else we've been experimenting with. So we're always looking for new ways to make, you know, make these things more effective.

How does the ozone work?

So ozone, you can actually ozonate the PRP before you inject it. So you're just adding this oxygen to. You know, there's a lot of research in ozone for all kinds of things, inflammatory disorders and chronic disorders. And you can give it IV, or you can give it topically. There's all different ways to do it. But what we've been doing just recently is, is adding ozone to the prp. So you're basically kind of giving your even more healing powers to that PRP before you inject it. So it doesn't. It's not a different procedure. It's just a different way of preparing the prp.

Okay, got it. So in terms of the hair part of things, is there actual research that shows that, or have you observed in the patients you've injected, as far as, like, the hairline is concerned, that you actually get restoration of hair growth or staving off of hair loss? I mean, what exactly happens in that scenario? Because a lot of people want to maintain that full head of hair.

So there is actually a fair amount of research with prp, there's less. So with stem cells. There are a couple of studies with stem cells and exosomes, but most of us with PRP that show that if you have to have. You have to have some hair follicles. So, like, if you're totally bald and you've been bald for, you know, five years in an area, then probably injecting PRP and stem cells is not going to be effective. You'll probably need a hair transplant. But if you have some hair, whether it's, you know, thinner or just more sparsely located on your head, then if you do PRP and then other things as well, like the stem cells and exosomes, what they found in studies is you tend to get between 18 and 33 new hairs per centimeter. So if you look, you know, if you add that to your whole head, it actually can make a pretty big difference. With the PRP studies, they generally want you to do several treatments. So like, usually it's three treatments over the course of three months with PRP to see those benefits. We are starting to see some, some better benefits with exosomes, but we've only been doing that for a few months. So, you know, with the jury still out on how much better they are than prp, but I think that they're better.

Okay, got it. Now, do you have an opinion on the type of stem cells that are going to be efficacious for a procedure like this? Because there's this concept of autologous stem cells where you're taking like the bone marrow aspirate that you guys used. With me, I have my fat stem cells stored with us, stem cell clinic, and I've certainly done those intravenously and into joints. And I've gotten umbilical and amniotic in my back before and also seen, of course, some of the data on placental cells. There's exosomes, there's even these new things called V cells, which I'm currently researching a little bit. But which one's the best? I mean, it seems like the opinions vary widely out there in terms of what type of stem cells are the most efficacious.

The opinions vary quite widely and part of the question is what are you using them for? So there's a lot of differences in opinion on that. I don't think we know yet, honestly. I mean, there are studies that look at different types of stem cells and they seem to be affected for different types of things. But there aren't studies so far, at least in the things that I do, the skin, the hair, the sexual stuff. There aren't studies that compare one type of stem cell versus another versus another, versus, you know, versus PRP and do things like that. So it's mostly at this point just making sure that they're safe and they seem to be. And then, you know, keeping track of patient information and patient data as we go and seeing what's working the best for people. So, you know, our approach right now is to kind of do multiple things for each patient. The exosomes, the fat derived stem cel cells, or the bone marrow cells, or the prp, you know, combining a few of those things because they all seem to have benefit. But we don't know for sure, honestly, what the best course is for any given treatment for patients.

Does it kind of vary based on what your goals are, like longevity and a full intravenous injection versus joints versus, say, cosmetic or sexual?

Yeah, I think it does. It also Varies, you know, depending on the patient's health. You know, obviously getting. If you're like a 80 year old man and you're not very healthy and you have a lot of chronic medical problems, then taking your stem cells and putting them somewhere el your body is going to be less effective than using someone else's healthier stem cells like from umbilical cells or exosomes from umbilical cells. So that makes sense obviously, but we just don't know for sure what's the best. If you're a 25 year old or 30 year old or 40 year old healthy guy, where is the best way to get cells?

Yeah.

Have you banked yours?

I have not yet. It's one of those things that I want to do and I don't know why I haven't because I work in the industry so I really should. I need to get her to do some lipo. I had liposuction one time. I've had stem cells from my face before when I was first started doing this and the liposuction, you know, I was pretty bruised and battered afterwards because they take fat out of your sort of love handle area. And so I just remember feeling like kind of sore for so long that I haven't had it done again. But most people aren't as sore as I was so I just need to suck it up and do it.

Yeah, talk to my wife, she got it done. They actually didn't do her muffin top. They did because she doesn't really have one. She's in skinny Montana rancher jeans but they did her thighs and she trouble walking for a few days, you know, because they, they have to do quite a bit of liposuction. But she stored hers at the same time that you know, she, she stored them, got them extracted, did one injection vagina and clitoris combined with the PRP and now she's got the rest banked for if, you know, if she gets in a car accident or gets a concussion and needs to inject them intravenously or something like that. So it's a, it seems like, like a prudent way to go, especially if you are, are young and have young stem cells available. What about these V cells? Do you know anything about them? These progender cells that are called V cells that apparently act like a stem cell?

I'm sort of learning about them. I know Dr. Matt Cook who's doing a lot of work with those right now.

Yeah, Matt's actually who I was talking with on the phone about.

Oh yeah, yeah. So Matt, I've actually talked to Matt a lot too about maybe working together on some projects. But yeah, I'm really interested in the V cells. And you know, the idea being that they are, they're able to develop even into, you know, more types of tissue and they have a little bit more sort of, they're, they're more flexible in what they can do. So they're these early, early, early stem cells that, that are, can be found in the blood. So you don't actually have to do a liposuction. So I, I haven't used them or done anything with them yet, but I am very interested in them.

Yeah, me too. I'm probably, I think he's in the San Jose area or the Bay Area. I'll probably go visit him at some point. Point and, and learn a little bit more about those or do a podcast about those with him. For those of you listening in who want to learn a little bit more about these V cells, there's, there's also all sorts of these new, new progenitor cells people are finding. I think ultimately the cool thing about exosomes and these V cells is that there's less of a need to go in and harvest your own stem cells. They're just, yes. Basically cell signaling molecules or progenitor cells that work without having to having to go through the stem cell extraction process.

Yeah, it's definitely easier if you can just get the cells either from your blood or, you know, purchase the cells that are already cryopreserved because, you know, there's. It's a lot. It's a procedure. You have to, whether it's bone marrow or liposuction, it's a procedure. You're sore. There's always, you know, there's very small risks of whatever bruising and things and infection and things like that. But I think going forward it's better for patients if we can use these other ways of using stem cells and hopefully eventually it'll become more economical as well and not quite as expensive as it is now.

So I want to ask you a little post treatment care too. Like in terms of getting the most out of a procedure or enhancing the effects, the best. Are there like best practices? Because I know that you guys will do IVs to enhance recovery. Certainly myself, I used photobiomodulation and these joov lights to do near and far infrared on the face. There's this concept of fasting to enhance endogenous stem cell process production and also increase the viability of the stem Cells that have been injected. Do you have any tried and true practices or even biohacks that you would recommend or use yourself if you were gonna get this kind of procedure done?

Yeah, beforehand. I like for patients, I mean if possible in the weeks beforehand at least to do things like nitric oxide boosters, you know, like Neo40 or other nitric oxide boosters to increase your own nitric oxide. Because nitric oxide is really important for stem cell functioning.

So to interrupt you real quick going into like, like a gains wave or going into PRP or stem cell injection into the genitals, you would take things that would increase nitric oxide, like natural forms of Viagra, like beet and nitric oxide precursors.

I mean certainly for erectile dysfunction or erection, improving erections, Nitric oxide as we know is key, but it's actually important for all different areas of your body and for just general stem cell activation. So I think if you can do nitric oxide boosters in the weeks and you know, even months before doing a procedure like this, then you're going to have better results from the procedure or, you know, other things. Certainly I'm a fan of the light therapy, the you know, low level light therapy or different, of different varieties afterwards. I think for the cosmetics can be helpful especially for things like bruising and such can be helpful for that. Intermittent fasting beforehand can be a good way to increase stem cell activity and release of stem cells. So I have some patients who definitely will do intermittent fasting for you know, on and off in the weeks beforehand. And then we always avoid, you know, most of my patients don't smoke, but if they did, I actually probably wouldn't do procedures on them. But avoiding smoking, avoiding alcohol for you know, at least a few days, but better if a few weeks afterwards is really important.

Okay, got it. Yeah. A few of the things that I was looking into in terms of, of recovery was this. Have you ever seen this nanov DNA repair device? It's basically like a desktop device in which you breathe water that generates reactive oxygen species. I did a podcast.

Yeah, I don't know much about it, but I've seen like a commercial for it I think.

Yeah, I use it every day and so I use that quite a bit. I did the infrared light a lot. These joovv infrared lights. I used a lot of. Have you used hydrogen rich water before or heard of hydrogen rich water?

I have heard of it, yeah. I haven't used it in patients but I know about it.

The antioxidant and anti inflammatory results from that are pretty profound. I did a podcast on that as well, and there's some pretty interesting research on that. And also on PEMF and stem cells. I didn't know this until I started to look into it, but some of the first PEMF devices were actually created for NASA for stem cell enhancement.

Oh, I did not know that. Yeah. There's so much cool stuff that you could do to increase your own stem cells and their activity. You know, even if you're not having a procedure done, you know, even exercise, you know, that's simple stuff that can increase your stem cell activity and. And can then make these kind of procedures even better if you have them at some point.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

It's pretty cool how much you can enhance the. Either the surgical repair and recovery process or even your ability to be able to enhance the effects going in using things like those nitric oxide precursors you were talking about. I think a lot of people just go under the knife or going for a procedure and don't think about what they're doing going into it. But there's a. There's a lot of things that you can do to enhance recovery and also to just enhance the efficacy of the procedure before you even go in. And I wanted to ask you about that as well. You know, if people want to actually go do this, like the cosmetic enhancement or the sexual enhancement, how exactly does that work? I mean, is there like this big waiting line? Do people just go to your website? Do they call you on the phone? I mean, what's the best way for. For people who actually want to go in and get needles stuck into their genitals to proceed?

All those people out there who want needles in their genitals. Yeah, they could just give us a call at the clinic at Dossieri Clinics or Dossieri Medical, I think go to the website Dossieri Medical, which is-o c e r e medical.com. and I also have my own Dr. Amy Killen website, which has links to all my other practices and phone numbers and all that. And basically, we. We always have the patient set up a phone, consult with me first, and we kind of go over the procedures and goals and expectations and that kind of thing. And then we get you on the schedule. And it depends on how far out we're booked, but usually we can get you in within a month or so. And that's it. We just do it all in one day. A lot of patients will combine procedures with Dr. Harry Adelson, like you said. So they'll do joint injections and the cosmetic and sexual stuff with me, all under one big procedure. So you're asleep for a couple hours and you get all the things injected and then you wake up and you're good to go.

Go. Awesome. Well, I'm gonna link to all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com stemcell makeover so to kind of summarize this for you guys, basically the procedure that I did, this full body stem cell makeover, started with Harry, who basically did the full musculoskeletal with stem cells, PRP and exosomes. And then he turned things over to Amy. She did cosmetic, she did sexual, she did hairline and everything else that, that you've just learned about. So essentially it's about. How long was I in there, Amy? It was about four hours.

Yeah. Like three hours under sedation and then a little bit to wake up afterwards.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you're. I mean, to warn those of you who do this, like you're kind of beat up for a few days. Like I would recommend if you travel to Salt Lake or Park City to do this, you throw in some buffer time. Not only because flying can be inflammatory and probably not the best way to recover right after you've done the procedure, but you'll want some downtime. I know there's hotels across the street from the clinic. I personally just stayed at a friend's house there and did some easy walks out in the sunshine in the forest out there, back behind Park City. But ultimately, you know, plan on, plan on kind of flying out perhaps, you know, one or two days early, so you're able to mitigate some of the inflammatory effects of flying before you go in for the procedure and then plan on sticking around a couple days after to kind of allow your body to repair and recover. Because I would, I was sore, I was hobbling the next day and actually.

But you did a Spartan race five days later, which is not. This is not advisable.

Heavily against doctor's orders. I went on a 90 minute hike the afternoon. The day after the procedure, I went to the gym and did a weight training routine two days later. And then I raced a Spartan five days later. I do not recommend that particular approach, but. But I tend to push the envelope. So in an ideal scenario, you would give yourself some R and R. So ultimately though, that's your decision, folks. I know we have a lot of other hard charging high achievers who listen in, but I think in an ideal scenario I would have recovered and rested A little bit more. But ultimately I feel great. I mean, this far out from the procedure and now it's kind of cool because my wife's done the osha, so we're all adults here, so we can talk about this. But our sex right now is fantastic because her orgasms are longer, my orgasms are longer. We're both more primed, you know, we both have way more blood flow. I mean, there's so many benefits if you have a partner that you go do this with. I know it's expensive, I know it's better living through science, but man, oh man, it's fun to play around with this stuff. Amy, anything else you want to share with folks before we part ways here?

I don't think so. Thank you so much for having me. This has been really fun and it was, it's been great having you as a patient and hearing about your, your journey during all of this.

Awesome. Thanks. Well, well, folks, if you want to go see the videos of the entire procedure in nitty gritty detail on YouTube, on my YouTube channel, I will put a link to that. I'll put a link to the Doseri clinics and everything else that we talked about. All the recovery biohacks that I use, all of the information that you need to get this done yourself. If you also want to, to use the term again, engage in a little better living through science. This is, this is one of the most cutting edge ways to upgrade your entire body. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com stemcell makeover that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com StemcellMakeover I'll have everything there. And Amy, thanks for coming on.

Thank you. Have a great day.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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