All language subtitles for The.Truth About.Stem Cells

- [Speaker 1] So one of the patients that I saw was a young

lady who had been trying to get pregnant for many years

and had gone through multiple cycles

of IVF with no result at all.

She'd essentially given up hope that she was ever

going to have a child, and so decided

to try a UCF treatment to see if we could stimulate the--

the ovaries to-- to produce a baby.

After the second treatment, got a phone call,

and-- and she said that she was pregnant

naturally with her partner.

So-- so that was an amazing thing.

Nine months later, she texted me a photo of the newborn baby.

And-- and that was very exciting to--

to share in that happiness that she had

and to see the baby that-- that I was partially

responsible for creating.

When you were looking at the blood profile,

you're looking essentially at someone

who's gone through menopause.

And then after treatment, it's-- it's a young

woman who's in the prime of her fertility.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 2] So think of it this way.

Stem cell is a blank slate of all your DNA.

It's a cell that hasn't become a specialized cell yet.

Our whole body is made up of cells.

The most functional part of your body--

the smallest functional part of your body is the cell.

Tissues are essentially cells that are held together.

So there are cells that are contiguous, if you will.

So if you think about it, that stem cell is

basically a replacement part.

- [Speaker 3] Stem cells are the cells in your body

that are responsible for keeping up

all the tissues in the body.

So they're responsible as you age, or as you get injured,

or as you get diseases, in keeping

all the different parts of your body

healthy and in a working order.

So they do two things.

Stem cells are capable of replicating themselves,

so making more of themselves.

And they can also do what's called

differentiate, which means give rise to other types of cells.

- [Speaker 4] In fact, if you did not have stem cells,

you could only live for about an hour because the tissues

would exhaust, and there would be

nothing there to repair and maintain and heal that tissue.

- [Speaker 5] When I began treating patients with stem

cells, I really would not have believed the results

had I not seen them myself.

And I come from very conventional, rigorous training

at Hopkins.

I really have been blown away by what I have seen.

- [Speaker 4] We had a patient present to us one time

with a traumatic brain injury.

She had fallen, uh, two stories and was not found

for about 24 to 48 hours.

She was several months in a coma.

And, uh, by the time she presented to us,

she was two years post-injury.

So she had been chronic.

And, uh, she was not able to walk.

She was not able to talk.

Um, and the only thing she could do

was, uh, type us notes because she couldn't

use her voice to communicate.

She had gone to the internet, uh, with her brain injury

and searched for other opportunities,

and discovered that maybe stem-cell treatments were

something that could help her.

When she came back for her second treatment three months

later, she walked into the office,

speaking full sentences and telling us about how it was

disgusting that she with her, as she put it, "half brain",

had to go to the internet to come up with solutions that

the best doctors in the world were not telling her about

or didn't even know about.

This is why we do regenerative medicine,

and this is why we fight for patients

to have this opportunity to try alternative things

like stem-cell treatment.

- [Speaker 2] We had an Alzheimer's patient who was

on the decline, with over a 2 and 1/2

year diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

We get an MRI volumetric study of his brain,

and his brain was at the 5 percentile level.

A year later, it was up to the 28 percentile.

And two years later, it was up to 48 or 50 percentile.

He went from being dysfunctional to being

able to drive again, play golf and do his normal activities.

It was almost unheard of.

- [Speaker 5] It is magic that's happening every day,

and the beauty of it is that it's not even magic.

It's your own body's ability to heal,

and we're just cranking it up and telling it to go.

- [Speaker 6] We work with hundreds of doctors,

and almost all of them are clamoring

to have us treat them.

On a regular basis, I get phone calls.

Can you treat me? Can you treat my wife?

Can you treat my kids?

I have to tell you that I have never in my life

seen any new treatment or medication come around

in 30 years being a surgeon, that any doctor

was rushing with his family to try on themselves first.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 7] If you look at throughout history of stem-cell

therapy, the first stem-cell therapy

was bone marrow transplant.

So that happened about 70 years ago.

And people just didn't know that they

were doing stem-cell therapy.

They thought they were just transplanting bone marrow,

and they didn't know that there were

stem cells in the bone marrow.

- [Speaker 2] The problem with bone marrow is A, it's very

painful to take out unless you give

somebody a general anesthesia.

It really hurts.

And B, when you do harvest bone marrow,

100 cc's of bone marrow, even with a good harvest,

may yield maybe up to 100,000 stem cells.

So you don't get that many cells out of bone marrow.

While everybody was working on bone marrow,

we had some studies on fat.

And it turned out that fat had this huge number of stem cells

in it.

In fact, 25 cc's of concentrated fat

could have anywhere from 1 million to 1.5 million

stem cells per cc.

- [Speaker 4] You can get about 500 times more

stem cells from fat tissue than what

we can get from bone marrow.

The process that we use here in the clinic

is we remove a sample of fat tissue.

This is all done under local anesthesia,

meaning that the patient remains awake.

We numb just below the skin so that we can isolate

a small sample of fat tissue, about the size

of a stick of butter.

We then use what's called density centrifugation.

We spin the sample so that we can separate the cells

based on how heavy they are.

For example, your red blood cells, which have iron

are going to be very heavy and go to the bottom.

Your fat cells, which are buoyant,

are going to go to the top.

And the cells of interest, which are the stem cells,

are going to be more in the middle.

So we can pull out those cells, which can then be applied right

back to the same patient.

- [Speaker 2] So that's, you know, the hierarchy.

You've got PRP, bone marrow.

You've got SVF, and you've got mesenchymal stem cells.

- [Speaker 7] And then the last one is

the newest kid on the block is getting

cells out of birth tissue.

So if you think about the birth tissue, it's on day 1 or day 0

of our human life.

These are the cells that can continue

to send signals to the baby to allow them to regenerate

or to-- to develop.

- [Speaker 3] Umbilical cord stem

cells are obtained from healthy baby's umbilical cords.

So they screen the mothers for different diseases

to make sure that you have healthy mothers.

And then from there, they screen

the baby's umbilical cords, the blood, the cells themselves

for different diseases.

- [Speaker 7] First tissue actually

have a full composite of different

types of-- of stem cells.

And their properties are actually

more potent than what's existing in our body.

It's actually more potent than what's existing in the baby,

not to mention a 20 or 40, or 60, 80-year-old person.

So the umbilical-cord-derived tissue actually

are obtained from live, healthy birth that has gone

through extensive screening.

And those are the tissue that otherwise would have been

thrown into the biological wastebasket,

but now we can capitalize on the regenerative potential

of those cells.

- [Speaker 8] What I think is going to happen is that as we

learn about stem cells, we may find that there are different

types of stem cells that are perfect

for different conditions.

I'm sure that when we first discovered antibiotics,

it was penicillin.

And we thought, that's it.

Fantastic.

We have antibiotics.

We can kill all bacteria.

But that wasn't the case.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 9] There's currently about 500,000 people a year

that go through knee replacement in the United

States, and that figure is expected to rise to 3 million

in the next 10 to 15 years.

- [Speaker 7] I would advise anybody against

a total knee replacement until they

have tried stem-cell therapy.

And I'm saying this not just because I

think stem-cell therapy is amazing,

but because I've seen studies.

There was one study that compared people who have--

who needed bilateral knee replacement

because both their knees were dysfunctional.

So what they did was that these 30 people, one knee,

they did a total knee replacement.

The other knee, they actually gave stem-cell therapy.

And they compared over the long run how both groups did.

Out of the 30 knees from these 30 people

that got stem-cell therapy, only one actually

needed a knee replacement.

But for the people who did the knee replacement, not only

there are a lot more side effects,

you know, where the stem-cell therapy didn't have any side

effects, but the people who got knee replacement-- the knees

that got knee replacement, 6 of the 30 needed revision surgery,

which means that things were not doing well,

that they have to do the surgery again.

- [Speaker 4] In the largest orthopedic study using stem

cells from fat tissue, 93% of the patients demonstrated

improvement in the functionality

of their range of motion and reduction of pain.

There's no pharmaceutical or surgery on the planet that has

this kind of response rate.

- [Speaker 5] So I'd love to tell you about

a patient who came to me, having

had multiple spine surgeries.

He had hardware extending from the top

of the lumbar spine, L1, all the way down to the pelvis.

He had pain and disability for 13 years,

starting with a small surgery and then

domino effect, multiple surgeries

and then coming to see me.

He had low back pain, buttock pain, leg pain, foot pain, rib

and mid-back pain, deformity above the area

of his previous surgery, neck pain, arm pain,

and a disk herniation in the neck causing

the arm and neck symptoms.

We approached his situation with a full-spine

regenerative treatment.

Six months after treatment, 100% neck pain relief,

100% arm pain relief, 100% thoracic/mid-spine relief, 100%

buttock and leg pain relief.

He has one foot that still has 30%

of the pain, which again, this pain

had been present for 13 years.

And he has been able to golf, hike in Costa Rica.

It really shows that the boundaries of what

regenerative medicine can do are being pushed every day,

and we can do so much more than we

thought even a few years ago.

- [Speaker 1] One of the patients I treated with UCF is

a woman who had rheumatoid arthritis,

and she'd been suffering with this for many years.

Now, rheumatoid, unlike osteoarthritis,

is very difficult to treat because it's

more of a systemic disease.

It affects multiple joints.

There's not a single joint that you can inject

into and get a result from it.

This woman had very, very deformed fingers and joints.

She couldn't straighten her fingers out.

She couldn't do the activities that she was used to doing.

She used to be a piano player, wasn't

playing the piano anymore.

So three months after her first treatment,

the bones in her fingers had straightened.

She didn't have the-- the deformity anymore.

And she said, come here, I want to show you something.

We went into the lounge room.

She sat down at her piano and just began to play.

I was speechless when I saw her do this.

She'd really regained that function back

and that passion for what she used to do.

- [Speaker 9] And one example that I can talk

about is a patient who had a partial

tear of his triceps tendon.

He had tried everything conservatively

and was actually on the schedule for surgery for us

to perform a repair.

In his case, what we would have had to do

was actually complete the tear and then refix it and then

begin the rehab process.

At the last minute, he decided to try a stem-cell injection

and not only was this pain relieved,

but we were able to perform a repeat MRI.

And where we saw a nearly torn tendon on the MRI previously,

we now saw a completely normal and healthy tendon.

- [Speaker 10] As a professional ballplayer,

we're always trying to chase velocity.

You know what can get us to the next level, what

can make us that much better.

And velocity, throwing harder, is one of those things.

You know, from a young age actually, I always felt like--

most kids feel like they can get to the pros,

and they have that dream.

But I just--

I really believed it.

And then one day, I just felt like, you know, not right.

So I got an MRI.

And we did find out that I had a SLAP tear, a Superior

Labrum Anterior Posterior.

So you got to realize at this time, I'm in the Minor Leagues.

I'm not in the Major Leagues where

a lot of people, uh, you know, envision

a professional athlete being.

And so, like, the option for me was you're going to rehab it.

And if you can't get it right with rehab,

then you got to get surgery.

Like, that's the only option.

I'm thinking, man, if I get surgery

right now, that's, in a sense, a death sentence to my career.

You know, a year of rehab after surgery,

then you got to build up.

And now I'm in my upper 20s, you know.

So we tried everything, all these different techniques

with deep tissue, massage, strengthening.

And just nothing was working.

There's just been a ton of athletes that

have been getting stem cells, you know,

a lot of world-class athletes.

And I thought, well, I got to look a little bit more

into this.

And that's when I met Dr. McGee.

I met with Dr. McGee, and I got my first dose of stem cells.

And I saw a slight improvement, not a huge improvement.

I went again, and he threw in some PRP

with it-- the stem cells and the PRP,

which is Platelet-Rich Plasma.

And I went back to Florida.

For the first time, I remember going out there and throwing

and being like, holy smokes, like, this

is better than before.

People around me were shocked.

I went from months of not being able to throw it,

like over 50%, let's just say.

I mean, if I tried to get any zip on it, it would just bark.

My arm did not feel good at all,

and I could not let it fly.

To the point where I'm going out there

and I'm throwing stuff on a line.

I'm getting up there.

Now I'm throwing long toss.

And then I'm getting into, you know, pitching off the mound.

I'm throwing into some practice games.

And my first practice game, I think I hit 95.

That was probably the hardest pitch I had ever thrown,

even before when I was healthy.

It got to the point where I'm pitching in these games.

And now I'm hitting 96, where these guys are turning

their heads thinking, holy smokes, this guy was, you know,

days, weeks away from getting surgery.

Well, it definitely was an absolute miracle.

And here I am, you know, just looking around the stadium,

realizing, hey, like, this is what

I've always dreamed of doing.

So-- so a no hitter in baseball, for those that don't

know, is basically the pitchers on one team

throw nine innings or a complete game,

whatever it is, uh, without giving up a hit.

I was part of a combined no hitter.

I started the first two innings,

and then a guy named Félix Peña, my teammate,

came in for the final seven innings.

And-- and neither one of us gave up a hit.

So it's a really special thing, uh, and something that, you

know, we'll remember forever.

In my opinion, I've seen firsthand how stem cells have

affected me and my career.

I remember calling my wife and my mom and my dad

and saying, like, I can't possibly see how my arm is

going to get better and I'm going to reach my dream

of getting to the big leagues.

I feel like I'm letting you guys down if I don't get there.

I was at that point.

So all of a sudden, not giving up,

having some miracles happen, meeting Dr. McGee,

you know, getting these injections.

And all of a sudden now, here I am, you know,

being able to do the thing that I've

dreamed my whole life of doing and making

my Major League debut.

- [Speaker 1] So one of my patients

is a professional athlete, very high-level rugby player.

He came to see me with essentially no cartilage

left in his knees.

The treatments that they'd tried previously

were things like anti-inflammatory medications,

cortisone, steroid injections.

And all of these are considered, uh,

a Band-Aid therapy to reduce the symptoms.

But it doesn't actually repair anything.

He wanted to increase the level of his performance

during games.

He wanted to be pain-free, and he wanted a way

to do that quickly, so he could get back to training

without the need for surgery.

I did a stem-cell injection for him into both knees.

Within a week, his pain had disappeared.

He was back to training, and now I

believe he's one of the highest paid

rugby players in the world.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 4] We've seen a lot of amazing

things with stem-cell therapy.

We've treated over 10,000 patients using this technology.

- [Speaker 2] We've seen people who were told they were going

to be dead in two months with COPD,

where you can't breathe, emphysema, and then

they're breathing again.

They're off their oxygen.

- [Speaker 11] You know, we've had

kids come in, in wheelchairs with nerve pain.

And they walk out.

- [Speaker 6] I've seen things that

we were told were impossible when I was in medical school.

- [Speaker 2] Let me tell you, we've seen some

amazing things in neurology.

We've worked with a neurosurgeon who's implanted

these Ommaya reservoirs.

And this is a little tube, goes right

in the ventricle of your brain, so we

can put some of the cells right in the cerebrospinal fluid.

- [Speaker 1] Another patient that I was involved with is

a young woman in her early 30s who was involved in a very

bad motor vehicle accident.

And this left her paralyzed.

Essentially, her full body was paralyzed.

However, she was still aware.

And this is what's known as locked-in syndrome.

So all that she could really do to communicate with us

was blink her eyes.

When someone's in this condition,

the prognosis is never very good.

There's not a lot of hope.

We decided we would try stem-cell therapy

to see if we could restore back some motor function.

Got a call from her family.

Come, you have to-- you have to see our patient.

So we went to see her, and she could move her arm.

No one expected that again.

We thought we'd get a few little muscle twitches

here and there, but the fact that she could move that

arm was--

was a breakthrough.

After one year, we went back to visit her.

She was arm wrestling the nurse.

- [Speaker 2] And we can tell you stories about patients that

we've treated multiple times.

I had a patient who was blind from optic neuritis.

I treated her 32 times, and she kept getting better.

She got off all her steroids, didn't need any medication,

actually was able to drive again after about

eight or nine treatments.

- [Speaker 12] I've been involved with stem cells,

uh, like I say, since 1968.

If you have a heart attack and if you survive,

as soon as you can, you want to get stem cells,

and they will go right to this area that's been damaged

and help repair it.

And so that will help prevent you from having

congestive heart failure.

As soon as you do it, the stem cells are in there repairing.

If you don't do it right away, that tissue

will slowly rot basically.

- [Speaker 4] Some of the most amazing

results that we've seen is with patients

with lung disease or COPD.

And these patients are oftentimes on 24/7 oxygen.

They can't breathe.

And for patients who have COPD, they

know there is no drug on the planet that can reverse.

Once you start going on oxygen, it's just a downward

and a rapid downward cycle.

So seeing some of these patients

regain some of their functionality

and get back to activities that they love,

it just reminds me why I fight for this every single day.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 8] Stem-cell therapy can be used

to treat your conditions, your pain, and what

ails you on the inside.

But stem cells can be used on your face.

They can be used to grow hair.

- [Speaker 2] In fact, it's been used in cosmetics

for over 30 years.

When we originally looked at aging face,

we thought everybody had to be lifted

and pulled because gravity was pulling your skin back.

I'm one of the pioneers in rejuvenation medicine,

along with guys like Sydney Coleman and Lisa Donofrio.

Years ago, we were dodging tomatoes

because we were telling people, you

should inject fat back into the face

because that's why we're aging.

Eventually, I realized.

The light went on.

And I go, oh my god, we're aging because of loss of cells,

not because of gravity.

Stem cells will not only grow new blood vessels.

They'll grow new fat cells to replace the dying fat cells.

And we have good studies now that show fat

and stromal vascular fraction together will actually

repair the collagen tissue and make your skin

look better and healthier.

- [Speaker 3] So I use stem cells a lot for aesthetics,

for skin rejuvenation.

And what I like about stem cells in the skin

is that it gives you a very natural, youthful look.

So we know that stem cells and PRP and exosomes, the way they

work is they communicate with your own fibroblasts

in the skin.

So those are the cells that end up making collagen,

elastin, and hyaluronic acid.

- [Speaker 1] So say for instance, I'm going to inject

PRP into a patient's face.

That's going to create, eh, an immune response in the skin.

And that immune response leads to inflammation.

Inflammation then leads to repair.

When you inject it into someone's face,

the inflammation stimulates collagen formation.

And when you have collagen formation,

you have firmer skin.

You can have an improved complexion from that as well.

- [Speaker 3] So as you get older,

and by older I mean like 25 or so, your body starts making

less collagen and elastin.

So what we can do is we can actually give the stem cells

back to your skin, to tell your fibroblasts

to start making more collagen, making more elastin.

So you have better structure in the skin.

You have better elasticity, better

texture, and tone, and color, um better

improvement in fine lines.

You get a really natural, youthful look, um,

that is completely of your own doing,

without having to add in things like-- like chemicals, or

fillers, or things like that.

- [Speaker 1] So one of the treatments that I developed

with stem cells in the cosmetic field was labeled the ultimate

stem cell facelift.

And so this took mesenchymal stem

cells from a patient's fat.

They were expanded over the course of six weeks

until we had 250 million cells.

And then I injected them all through the face and all

through the neck.

I showed my colleagues the photos,

the before and after photos, and they said,

are these photoshopped?

Because the difference that was there was astounding.

They couldn't believe it.

- [Speaker 3] We can also use stem cells and PRP

and exosomes for hair-- for hair restoration

for both men and women.

- [Speaker 8] So stem cells for hair can

be done in a number of ways.

We can use, uh, donated screened umbilical stem cells.

But we can also take your fat, which has the stromal vascular

fraction and the stem cells and rebuild the foundation

of your scalp, which is the nourishment,

and then put the stem cells on top to regrow your hair.

- [Speaker 3] Over the course of the next three to six

months, we'll see increase in number

of follicles as well as the thickness of each follicle.

Now, you do have to have hair follicles to begin with.

So if you're totally bald and you've

been totally bald for a long time,

then this is not going to work for you.

But if you have some follicles, um, then doing these injections

can really make your hair thicker and more healthy.

Even just giving people back, um, some-- some hair on top

of their head or clearer skin, brighter skin,

more youthful skin can make a big difference

in how they approach the rest of the world.

- [Speaker 1] So one of my patients is,

eh, an actress in China.

And I gave her a stem-cell treatment

for facial rejuvenation.

After her treatment, a few months later,

I saw her at a film festival.

And she came up to me on the red carpet

and said, thank you so much for that treatment.

I feel younger.

I have a lot more energy.

My skin is just so radiant now.

She said, look at me.

And we did a selfie together.

And it was great to see how happy she was after that.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 3] In terms of optimizing sexual health

and improving sexual function, I think stem-cell therapies

are game-changing therapies and are revolutionary treatments.

- [Speaker 7] And it definitely can help uh,

both men and women as far as enhancing sensation,

uh, during sex.

- [Speaker 4] For women, you can do injections,

uh, into the vaginal wall and for men

directly into the penis.

We call it the corpus cavernosum.

What this does is help to increase blood supply.

So as we age, our blood supply starts to reduce.

So if you don't have enough blood circulating to the area,

in the case of a man, you might not

have a strong enough erection.

- [Speaker 12] Erectile dysfunction, words that

no man ever wants to hear.

Anything you can do to help increase the blood flow, uh,

is beneficial to that person that is suffering

from erectile dysfunction.

I did this therapy, and it's hard to tell you how great it

was, uh, after the therapy as compared to anything

I'd ever had before.

So I can truthfully say it was the best sex that I've

ever had in my whole life.

- [Speaker 3] These stem cells, when injected into the penis,

can actually create nerve regeneration,

which is pretty cool, as well as improve blood

flow by actually increasing blood

vessel formation in the penis.

And they can change the types of cells that are in the penis

to make them into healthier cells

that are more elastic and more capable of having erections.

So we've seen this in animal studies and human studies,

where we're actually changing the structural architecture

of the penis to make it more effective,

which I think is pretty awesome.

- [Speaker 7] When patients suffer

from Peyronie's, which is an abnormal

curvature of the penis--

and with one stem-cell treatment,

there's a straightening of the penis.

So the problem was solved with one single treatment.

That, I'm sure, has helped him greatly to feel

really good about himself.

- [Speaker 11] A friend of mine who's, uh--

teaches functional medicine, and he always

says, if you're really healthy as a guy,

you should wake up in the morning with a hard-on,

so hard that it hurts.

It's supposed to be harder than Chinese algebra.

I, myself, didn't think that I needed it,

and I didn't think that I had a problem.

But I heard that comment and I thought, well, I'm--

I'm waking up pretty good, but maybe not that good.

And then I did the GAINSWave therapy to myself.

And then I also, uh, injected stem cells into my penis.

And I-- I totally was blown away because I

started to wake up in pain.

- [Speaker 4] By injecting those cells,

we can now increase the amount of blood circulating

to the area, which can also lead to better orgasms,

um, and better lubrication.

And I personally have done these injections

into the vaginal wall, and I've had great success with it.

- [Speaker 12] Something we haven't talked about is with

women who are-- who are trying to get pregnant, who, uh--

whose ovaries are not working.

They can have stem cells, and-- and the stem cells can get

those ovaries to work again.

And they can start menstruating again.

And so that's-- that's pretty exciting.

- [Speaker 7] There has definitely

been evidence of stem cells being

helpful for female fertility.

They've done studies in animals.

And actually it increased, um, the rat ovary size, the number

of follicles and the pregnancies--

the number of pregnancies and improved estrogen level.

So it actually enhances the fertility in animals.

And I have seen that in my patients

as well, helping them to extend their reproductive years.

- [Speaker 1] One of the patients that I treated with

the O-Shot was actually-- she had been divorced for about 10

years, was looking to get back into the dating scene,

but was a little bit, uh, reluctant because she

was a little bit older.

She was having issues with lubrication.

I treated her with an O-Shot.

And afterwards, she said lubrication was much improved,

orgasm was much improved, and this

gave her a lot of confidence in her dating life.

So she wasn't afraid to go out there and-- and just

be herself again.

- [Speaker 11] And then the best thing is when we do it

for a man and a woman, and they both feel

like they went back 20 years.

A lot of times, it kind of rekindles that passion

in the relationship.

So it's kind of fun for me to, uh, hear about that, uh,

and how happy people are with these therapies.

- [Speaker 3] I had a gentleman who was in his 50s,

and he had had prostate surgery about four years

previous for prostate cancer.

And since that time, he'd had severe erectile

dysfunction so really had no ability to have erections.

And he tried medications.

And he tried, you know, all the different things

that his doctors had prescribed,

and-- and nothing worked.

And his urologist told him that essentially, he'd have to have

surgery and get an implant.

And that was the only thing he could do.

He was 55. And he was young.

And he was like, I don't really want to do that.

So he came to me kind of as a last-ditch effort.

So we did a couple of different things.

We did injections into the penis

with, uh, stem cells derived from fat, with exosomes,

uh, with platelet-rich plasma.

We also did a number of low-intensity shockwave therapy

treatments, and then followed up with some more

platelet-rich plasma.

Um, about three months later, he

called me to tell me that he had had sex with his wife

for the first time in four years.

He felt a lot closer to his wife than he previously did,

and that he'd also regained a confidence that he didn't even

realize he'd lost, and that he was looking at the world

differently, uh, and was very happy.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 7] One thing I'm so excited about stem cells

is that it can prolong life--

not just prolonging, but giving you a better quality of life.

- [Speaker 2] If you think about it, we're always--

all our cells are constantly dying,

but we're constantly replacing them with stem cells.

And at some point, you don't have enough stem cells

to replace your dying parts.

If you get old enough, your heart just runs

out of enough cells, contract.

Boom.

That's the end of the game.

Everybody's concerned about the length

of your telomere and everything about anti-aging medicines.

How do we preserve the length of your telomeres

so the cells can live longer?

- [Speaker 4] Telomeres essentially tell us our age.

You can think of them as shoelace caps.

So when you have your shoelace and you

have that little plastic piece on the end of the shoelace,

it's what prevents your shoelace from unraveling.

And at the end of every single one of our-- our DNA,

uh, we have this little cap, which is the telomeres.

And it's what prevents our DNA from unraveling.

So as our telomeres shorten, uh, we start to get cells

and DNA that's unraveling.

And eventually, we all die of shortened telomeres.

So the ability to keep your telomeres as long as possible

in as many cells as possible, uh,

is essentially the fountain of youth.

This is what determines our age and how

long we're going to live.

- [Speaker 7] They've done studies on animals,

mostly mice and rats.

And because they have a short lifespan,

you can actually study whether or not it can extend lifespan.

- [Speaker 1] In most of the established animal research

with stem cells or, uh, therapeutic blood exchange

between young mice and old mice,

what we've seen is that you can increase the average lifespan

of a mouse, uh, by about 30%.

- [Speaker 7] So one study that's fairly recent was 2019,

um, on these mice-- on these old mice.

What happened was that they gave them, young mice,

a-- a bone marrow transplant.

And these old mice are actually at a human equivalent

age of 75.

And at that point, they started to give them regular transplant

of young mice stem cells.

So the young mice are only 3 to 15 weeks old.

And these mice are 15 months old.

When they got the stem cells, the group that got

stem cells actually lived three times as long

as the group that did not get stem cells.

So the remaining time that our life

actually is three times as long.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 2] This is like having car parts.

So right now, you take care of your car.

You change the oil.

You do everything to maintain your car as healthy as you can.

But ultimately, when a car part breaks down,

you have a replacement part.

The replacement parts in medicine

typically have been complete organ transplants.

But now we can give them to you in the form of cells.

So with cell therapy, once a telomere shrinks and a cell

dies, you can replace it.

And guess what, you start with a new telomere.

May not be as long as the original one,

the cell might not live as long, but who cares?

Instead of getting seven years out of a cell,

if you get five years out of the cell

and you can keep replacing it, that's OK as long

as you have replacement parts.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 7] As we age, we have escalating

level of inflammation.

So inflammation will prevent regeneration.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

It's almost like the disease--

is the house caught on fire.

Your body is the house, and when it shows up as disease,

the house has caught on fire.

So when we can reduce the level of inflammation,

we can also reduce the chance of us catching

disease or decline with aging.

And that's where the stem cells can come in with this very

potent anti-inflammatory effects, that it can prevent

this-- this train from going down the route

of disease and aging.

This is definitely a very exciting time

to be alive because this is the first time in history,

we actually are getting as close as possible

to the fountain of youth.

We have not seen it existing any time in our history.

This is the first time we actually have found these--

these intelligent cells that we can give back to the body,

that we can bring back the youth.

This is how you have seen certain celebrities

like Jennifer Lopez actually having this reversal of aging.

This is the first time it's happening in history.

- [Speaker 1] A lot of people think that you're going

to be old for that time.

But if you can live for that amount of time,

healthy and young and feeling that energy,

that is really something that I think a lot of people

would like to do.

No one wants to give up their time

on this planet with their loved ones, with their family.

One of my patients, uh, is-- is an older gentleman in his 60s.

He had a couple of UCF treatments with me.

And afterwards, he claimed that he felt like a teenager again.

He had this vigor and vitality.

And people that hadn't seen him for a while

would say, what have you done?

You've done something.

He was back training again.

He got himself a personal trainer.

He was doing, you know, these long workouts

that I couldn't do.

- [Speaker 4] For myself, personally,

I'm already using stem cells in more of an anti-aging capacity.

I get a dose of stem cells every 6 to 12 months because I

don't want to wait until I don't feel good

or till something's wrong with me.

I feel better now than I did in my 30s, and I'm 43 years old.

I want to stay on top of it.

I want to stay as young and feeling

good for as long as possible.

- [Speaker 2] I'm at the age where most of my friends are

retiring from medicine, and I feel like a kid

who just got out of residency and is

practicing medicine again.

- [Speaker 1] My own personal treatment, I

feel like someone half my age.

What I can attest to with my UCF treatment

was that I really felt that energy boost.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

So one of the things that drove me to be a surgeon,

as opposed to a physician, was the fact

that I could see a problem and fix it straight away,

perform a surgery and have a result.

- [Speaker 7] As much as I love traditional Western medicine,

there are a lot of limitations, especially when it comes

to chronic conditions-- like COPD, like liver cirrhosis,

like diabetes.

- [Speaker 13] We have very good acute medicine.

We got great surgeons.

We got great foot trauma.

We got ICU.

I mean, we are do amazing in that.

And we are progressing every day.

As soon as we move to chronic disorders, we are a disaster.

We have a system that keeps patients sick.

We don't make them better.

We fight against the body.

We have antibiotic, antiviral, antihypertensive.

So it's anti everything.

It's anti the body.

We're fighting the body, instead

of giving the right environment for the body to heal.

Because it knows how to do it.

- [Speaker 7] What I've seen with stem-cell therapy is that

it's incredibly powerful because it's not

utilizing a single drug.

It's actually using the intelligence of the cell that

can give you many, many different kinds of growth

factors and signals and attacking

the body from so many angles.

And what I've seen, the results have been pretty astounding.

- [Speaker 1] Now in internal medicine,

a lot of the therapies are what we call Band-Aid therapies.

So they're treating symptoms only and really just slowing

the progression of diseases.

Now with cellular therapy, it's very much like surgery,

except I'm replacing the scalpel with cells.

You see the root cause, you treat it, and you get a result.

- [Speaker 8] A lot of my patients come to me and say

that their regular doctor says yes,

stem cell medicine, it might be OK,

but we don't know enough yet.

It's still in research, maybe in the future.

Don't do it.

- [Speaker 3] I have a lot of friends,

doctor friends, in fact, yeah, who

don't believe in STEM cells.

They'll say, I don't believe in stem cells, which I think

is-- is crazy because there are thousands of studies out there

that show the efficacy of stem cells.

They show us that stem cells work.

- [Speaker 1] I think the--

the medical industry in general is

very conservative about their response to stem-cell therapy.

- [Speaker 2] Everybody says that's voodoo.

It doesn't work. It's anecdotal.

These guys aren't for real.

You shouldn't go to them.

There's no studies that stem cell work.

And yet people are desperate.

So they come in here, and we treat them,

and they get better.

- [Speaker 3] Now, we're still trying to figure out exactly

what types of stem cells work the best for different types

of ailments and in what quantity, and how--

how should we deliver them?

- [Speaker 8] We didn't know how aspirin works

when we started using it.

- [Speaker 7] People are still saying there's no evidence.

My answer to them is, have you ever looked?

I really wanted to provide the best

stem cells for my patients.

And in the process of finding out what's the best,

I have accumulated lots and lots of articles of comparisons

directly between stem cells from a person's bone marrow,

fat tissue, and the birth tissue.

And that gives you all the scientific evidence.

It's all based on research studies.

So none of them was my opinion.

It's all by research that people

have done over the years.

- [Speaker 4] There are literally thousands of studies

indexed on PubMed, which are, uh,

peer-reviewed journals demonstrating the efficacy

and the safety of regenerative medicine and stem-cell therapy.

We have published more than anyone

in the world with regards to the use of stem cells

from fat tissue in a variety of different indications.

We've even published the largest safety trial to date,

over 600 patients, demonstrating that these cells

can safely be used in neurological conditions,

systemic conditions, and orthopedics.

- [Speaker 7] So the evidence is there.

It's about whether or not we're looking,

and we are being open-minded enough to actually accept

this new branch of medicine.

- [Speaker 1] We have the technology to delve

deeper into the cells.

You're going from a very, very small cell into a nanoparticle.

And those nanoparticles are exosomes.

They have benefits as well, which might be beyond what

we're even dealing with now.

- [Speaker 6] Probably about 150 different clinics are using

our technology, and everyone's getting the same outcomes,

good or bad.

Everyone's seeing the same thing.

So it's not a nichey, you know, this is--

oh, look what these guys did.

What's the hat trick here?

It's that there's something very powerful going on here.

- [Speaker 2] We don't have to keep people

on medicine chronically.

We can stop the opioid crisis right now.

I had a patient just write to me literally three days ago.

I was taking three Vicodin a day,

and now I'm off of everything, and I have no pain.

And they go, they can't believe it.

This is not anecdotal stuff.

This is surgical evidence.

These are your own cells healing you.

And these are your optimal healing cells.

We just have to be luckier than the devil

that they're in your adipose tissue.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 4] Anytime a new therapy comes forward,

there's always going to be concerns.

And a lot of this has to do with the fear of the unknown.

- [Speaker 9] There are concerns

with embryonic stem cells and their potential to form tumors.

- [Speaker 8] The challenge with

the embryonic stem cells is that

they're a bit like wildfire.

Fetal tissue or fetal stem cells, all of that

is designed to make an entire body in nine months.

So those cells are used to replicating

and growing very fast.

- [Speaker 9] The adult stem cells, however,

have been shown for many decades

to not have that factor as a thing

for patients to be afraid of.

- [Speaker 6] They-- they don't form cancer or promote cancer.

There's never been a shred of evidence that they do.

- [Speaker 2] I can tell you in over 10,000 cases within

our network, we've never had a single infection from stromal

vascular fraction itself.

- [Speaker 4] Uh, the concept that these cells could then

start, uh, rapidly dividing or causing cancer just because we

injected them into circulation, is just something that

we've never seen come true.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 6] Some critics will say that there's not enough,

uh, double-blind, uh, placebo-controlled studies.

It's actually quite difficult for a number of reasons.

The trials are very expensive.

It's very hard to get funding.

- [Speaker 4] Large trials like this are done with

pharmaceuticals, and the funding

for doing these trials comes from pharmaceutical companies.

And the reason that they would fund those trials

is because in the end, they have something

to bottle and sell to recoup the money

that they might have spent on a large double-blind study.

Now if the technology is inside you and it's your own cells,

there's nothing to bottle and sell.

So there would be no reason for pharmaceutical companies

to fund a large, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

And the government doesn't fund these trials.

So as a result, there is a lack of these studies going on.

- [Speaker 6] Another reason why it's hard to do these, um,

you know, placebo, so to speak, studies, is that we do

this as a surgical procedure.

And there's ethical issues associated

with doing a surgical procedure on someone,

removing part of their body, remove-- taking some fat out.

And then on half of those people,

you throw that in the trash and tell them

they may have gotten placebo or maybe they got the real thing.

It's not as simple as just, uh--

a drug study where you can take a bottle off a shelf,

and the patient doesn't know if it's

a real pill or a sugar pill.

- [Speaker 13] I mean, I did pharmacology for eight--

for eight years.

I did research just on pharmacology.

And it's a perfect model for drug.

When you talk regenerative medicine, we don't do that.

- [Speaker 3] As doctors, we've been taking, you know,

parts of bodies and moving them to other parts of the bodies

for-- for centuries.

Um, and it's been working.

So I think that stem cells, the way that we're using them,

the mesenchymal stem cells, uh, really

aren't something that FDA needs to be involved in,

but they disagree with that.

- [Speaker 13] We have every government

going against and blocking more and more stem cells.

So for example, in Australia, you're

not allowed to just have the word stem cells on a website.

You cannot say about stem cells.

You cannot explain.

- [Speaker 8] Can you imagine the change to this

multi-billion dollar industry, if you do not need an opioid

medication or an anti-inflammatory

that's a prescription for your pain,

if you don't need medication for your MS

or your Parkinson's, or your ALS?

- [Speaker 6] You know, when someone's working over decades

in labs, trying to produce something and then someone

goes, circumvents them, and then clinicians are able

to provide similar, compatible, maybe

even superior therapies rapidly and for very low cost--

it's a disruptive technology, and it definitely

gets people's attention.

- [Speaker 4] So this year, uh, it was actually Sunday, Palm

Sunday, a week before Easter.

Uh, I got a phone call from my attorneys in Washington, DC.

And they emailed me what was then a draft lawsuit.

The draft lawsuit read, the United States

of America versus Kristin Comella

and the clinic and the organization.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

The lawyers told me, you know, on behalf of our client--

uh, which was the Food and Drug Administration,

and their attorneys are the Department of Justice.

Uh, we intend to file this lawsuit against Kristin Comella

and the organizations, unless they sign what

is called a consent decree.

And the consent decree read that, uh, basically, we

were to stop doing these procedures, using a patient's

own stem cells in an outpatient medical setting, uh,

because they deem the stem cells

from a patient to be a drug.

REPORTER 1 (VOICEOVER): A Florida stem-cell clinic sued.

I-Team investigator, Kati LaGrone,

tonight first started reporting on stem-cell clinics

last month.

And tonight, she speaks to the woman

who is crying foul and the business

owner who's fighting back.

REPORTER 2 (VOICEOVER): US stem cell still

offers experimental therapies for a wide range of conditions,

despite FDA warnings and a recent Department of Justice

lawsuit, calling on them to stop.

REPORTER 3 (VOICEOVER): So last May, uh,

the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit at the request

of the FDA against stem-cell clinics that were

performing surgical procedures, involving your own fat cells--

taking out fat cells out of your own body,

and reusing them because they are regenerative.

You just take them out, put them in a-- a centrifuge,

and that is now considered to be a drug.

- [Speaker 8] What the FDA is trying to do right now is

to say that your cells are a drug and that you

don't have the right to have your cells

to treat your condition.

- [Speaker 6] By labeling it a drug--

how it's manufactured, how it's distributed,

how it's researched, how it's licensed-- everything changes.

And, uh, it becomes just like all the other drugs that,

you know, are currently in the pipeline

for the stem cell products.

- [Speaker 2] When doctors started doing

coronary bypass surgery, you know, they

thought that's the greatest.

And then drug companies came along and said,

well, we can make drugs that will make that unnecessary.

They're free to compete, but we should be free to compete

with them as well.

- [Speaker 4] If you ask a patient,

do you want to wait until somebody funds large,

double-blind, placebo-controlled trials

before you try to use your own cells to heal you, or do

you want to try this now?

Patients are going to say, I don't have the luxury of time.

I want to try and use my own cells to heal.

- [Speaker 2] You know, the funny

thing about medicine is doctors used

to be the king of the hill.

There was doctors, and they went through the hospitals,

and everybody down the road.

Then you got your insurance people.

And politicians were really out of medicine.

You can flip that whole thing upside down.

The politicians, the regulatory agencies, the insurance

companies, the hospital-- everybody

dictates how we're going to run medicine, the doctors

at the bottom of the pile now.

And it's really sad because we have the ability to really

help people right now.

But we have to fight with everybody,

you know, to come up for air, so to speak.

- [Speaker 4] And we have to tell our government

that I am not a drug.

I am not made of a drug, and I have a right

to choose a medical procedure and to consent

with this procedure, with my medical professional.

And that this is not something that the United

States of America should prevent Americans from having.

- [Speaker 6] Nobody is going to invest in autologous,

from your own body cell point-of-care procedures

as a business model because you can't patent it,

and you can't distribute it to a lot of people.

And there's no return on investment.

It's just doctors who'd be doing this.

And if doctors are prevented from doing it because it's been

labeled a drug, the work that's being done by myself

and the hundreds and hundreds of other clinicians here

and around the world to-- to move this science forward,

that work has been, um, marginalized.

- [Speaker 2] I haven't changed the character of the cell.

I don't do anything to your DNA to add or subtract from it.

I don't add anything to it to change it.

So I haven't made anything.

In fact, if anything, you've manufactured it.

In fact, I don't own it.

You own it.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 4] And I did not sign that consent decree

because I've seen enough patients get out

of their wheelchair and walk again,

to know that this is something that we have to fight.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 3] Because stem cells are relying on your own

body's stem cells to start regenerating tissue,

uh, the importance of lifestyle,

it cannot be understated.

So things like what you're putting into your body

from a food perspective, exercise,

um, as well as alternative therapies like using

light therapy and-- and using nitric oxide therapy and things

like that are really important to make

the stem cells work better.

- [Speaker 2] These are all really important issues.

So you want to have a healthy diet.

You don't want to be eating junk food.

You don't want to be smoking, and you want

to take care of your teeth.

- [Speaker 1] If you want a true benefit,

you have to cut out the things that

are causing the damage first.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 5] I see some of the toughest

cases in our community.

So I work in a place where a lot of spine surgeons work,

and there are a lot of people who won't see revisions--

patients that have had multiple surgeries,

patients with chronic neck pain, chronic leg pain,

back pain.

And because I have a lot of experience

in revising those surgically, I continue to see these patients

with tough problems.

And now with regenerative medicine,

I'm able to say I have another tool.

There is hope.

- [Speaker 1] I-- I never thought

that when I started med school, that I would be doing this.

I thought I would be seeing patients

and-- and treating ailments and doing the stereotypical

doctor things.

You know, I really look at myself

and I think, this is an amazing opportunity

that you have that-- that you can make a difference

in these people's lives, and you can make a difference to--

to so many people.

- [Speaker 9] One of the most rewarding things that

we've encountered is seeing patients who've tried many

other treatments and have been very intelligent about

their research and searching out

how to get themselves better.

They've tried everything that they could come across,

from injections to oral medications, and some of them

have even gone through surgeries

and still are not able to do the activities they enjoy.

Then we introduce a new type of procedure,

like an injection with a stem cell, for example,

and suddenly they're better.

They're back to what they're doing,

and they're happier than they've ever been.

- [Speaker 2] We as doctors have a chance to do something

very special, and that's help a lot

of people at a very inexpensive price and do it immediately.

- [Speaker 12] I had one patient who had a stroke, and--

and I gave them-- gave him-- he was 82 years old,

and he had his right arm paralyzed.

And I gave him stem cells.

And within an hour, he's saying, look, I--

I can move my arm.

Doctor, seems like you're amazing.

This is crazy.

How can you beat that?

- [Speaker 7] There was an autistic little

girl, six-year-old.

And she had been wearing a diaper because she

could not use the bathroom.

She was not able to talk.

And then she came to me for umbilical-cord-derived

stem cells.

And then after stem-cell therapy,

she was able to be potty trained.

She started to talk.

She started to be able to communicate.

She had this hypotonia where she

couldn't walk up the stairs.

So at six years old, parents were still taking

her up and down the stairs.

But after stem-cell treatment, she could climb up and down

the stairs on her own.

So to be able to make that kind of difference

and to help the parents--

I've seen autistic children's parents

being some of the most beautiful,

selfless and loving people.

And to be able to bring that kind of hope for them,

it's incredibly satisfying.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 8] My patient who had

a spinal cord injury, he came.

We removed his fat.

We gave him his first treatment.

And when he came to my clinic, he

was using a power wheelchair.

He had minimal use of his arms, no real coordination

in his hands.

So he was technically almost a quadriplegic.

When he came back, he was in a push wheelchair.

And I said, oh my goodness, what's going on?

This is great.

In his physical therapy, he's now

able to stand up and sit down.

And he is working towards being independent

and getting his life back, all because of stem cells.

- [Speaker 2] And we had a guy who was

an award-winning composer, who couldn't barely walk,

couldn't play piano.

He's playing the piano, composing

again-- life of the party.

- [Speaker 12] People can attack you.

They can claim that you're a quack, you're crazy, whatever.

But when you see results like that over and over again,

you can't help but get up in the morning and say,

this is so exciting.

I got to get to the office and see more people

and help more people because as doctors, what else are we here

for but to help people get better?

(MUSIC PLAYING)

- [Speaker 5] In my 18 years of taking care of patients with

spine disease and neurologic disease,

I have seen nothing as powerfully game-changing

as stem-cell medicine.

One of my personal goals is to spread the word about this

and really decrease the number of fusions that

are done all over the world.

I also envision the chronic neurodegenerative diseases

such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,

MS to be treated much more effectively

with regenerative medicine.

- [Speaker 1] We've helped countless

people avoid joint surgery.

We've helped them to become pain-free

from their autoimmune disease.

Already, I-- I don't see how people

can say that it's 10 to 20 years away, when this

is what I'm seeing right now.

- [Speaker 2] But what a fun time!

This is like being the Rocky of the medical industry.

We're the underdog right now, but we're

doing some really neat things.

I don't know if you've ever heard of Arthur Schopenhauer,

but he always says there's three phases of new truth.

First, it's ridiculed.

Then it's violently opposed.

And ultimately, it's accepted as having been self-evident.

We knew it all along.

- [Speaker 12] I don't think we're ever

going to find anything better than stem cells.

And-- and all we're going to do is tweak

the-- the-- tweak it around a little bit.

We change this.

We add this.

There's all these things that-- that we are doing

to make it better, but still, it is fantastic

the way it is right now.

- [Speaker 9] I don't think there's any question that

in the next 5 to 10 years, everyone in orthopedic surgery

and sports medicine will would be

using stem cells to some degree as a part of their practice.

Like all technology, like mobile phones and computers,

as we develop it and as it gets better,

it's going to become cheaper and available to a

wider audience.

- [Speaker 2] People don't understand this.

We're in a new era of medicine.

And it's not just regenerative stem-cell therapy.

It's personal-cell therapy.

We can literally save millions of lives and billions

of dollars right now from our health care budget, which

everybody says was the most important problem

going on in America right now.

- [Speaker 9] I think one of the things that we're going

to find over time is that we really are

on to something new and innovative that's going

to change people's lives.

- [Speaker 8] And I cannot wait until cutting and drugging

is no longer the first option.

Cellular medicine is the future.

- [Speaker 7] Stem cells are not drugs.

They are a form of intelligence that

can be put into the human body to bring about healing

and regeneration.

- [Speaker 12] It is the most miraculous

discovery of my lifetime and I'm sure

for everybody else's lifetime.

- [Speaker 2] It's almost like magic.

And that's why I look at the adipose tissue we collect,

I go, this is liquid magic.

I'm a surgeon, not a magician.

But you know what, this is about as close

as you get to the real trick.

(MUSIC PLAYING)