March 26, 2026 • 50 mins
This week, Emily and Perry go toe-to-toe with the scammier side of the wellness industry: regenerative medicine clinics that claim to inject you with stem cells. Are they the fountain of youth? (No.) Are they even injecting you with stem cells? (Not really.) Are they preying on sick people? (Most definitely yes.) From knee cartilage to sickle cell disease, we've got the miraculous, the bad, and the truly ugly of stem cell therapy.
Plus: the generational woes of lead poisoning, debunking stress as a cause of cancer, and doulas for all!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Emily, I, like, I think all medical doctors am a
completely horrible patient. I am pretty sure I've had a
rotator cuff tear for like eight months and I've done
absolutely nothing about it.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Okay, I am sorry, we need to say more. So
what were you doing? Were you doing something that men
in their forty should not be doing? Like sports?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yep, yep. I was trying to get active and healthy,
and I was lifting weights. I was bench pressing, and
I was, you know, bulking up.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Wait, no, for reals, you were you were bench pressing?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but don't worry. I'd taken my creatine
future fined foreshadowing. I'd taken my creatine and I was
adding weight and something happened and now I can't lift
my left arm above my head. And okay, that's fine.
(00:56):
These things happen.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
That's not fine.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
But okay, I'm just sitting here realizing, because it's getting
into golf season, I need to swing a golf club again,
and it hurts, And I'm like, you know, I probably
should have seen a doctor about this.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
And what are you planning to do about it? Which will?
Have you been watching wellness influencers because they must have ideas.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
They have lots of ideas, and I think we're going
to talk about one of those ideas today because we're
talking about stem cell therapy. But you know what, I'm
actually going to do nothing. That's correct, I'm going to
do nothing.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I have a suggestion for you actually, as a person
who has recently injured their hamstring, I have been getting
a thing called shockwave therapy, where someone puts a shocker
on your injured part and the placebo effect makes it better.
And I would really really recommend it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm a huge fan of the placebo effect.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
The placebo effect is great, but how much does it cost?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That's the question.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, okay, it's about seventy five dollars for each placebo effect,
and you need like four of them for the placibo
effect to really get going, so it's not free. But
I have been running totally fine since the placebo effect
is kicked in.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I'm probably going to do nothing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm Emily Aster, I'm an economist and a data expert.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And I'm Harry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's Thursday, March twenty sixth, twenty twenty six, and this
is wellness.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Actually, because you're getting a staggering amount of health and
wellness information nowadays from every source imaginable, and some of
it is awesome and.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Some of it is well actually both Fortunately we're both
people who know how to read studies, how to parse
the data, and can tell you what's worth thinking about
and what you can safely ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
But before we dig in, a note that this podcast
is for educational purposes and should not be construed as
medical advice. We don't know your unique situation, so talk
to your doctor for personal health decisions.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
This week, we're asking what's the deal with stem cell therapy.
Harry and I will give the official smash or pass,
and then we'll get to your question of the week.
But first let's do the health news roundup. After the break.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And we are back with the health news of the week. Emily,
there's a new Netflix series that's coming out that is
talking all about lead poisoning, something we probably don't talk
about enough. Have you seen this?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I haven't seen it. I was watching the Netflix documentary
on microplastics, but this is next on my list of
things to be afraid of from Netflix. I think this
documentary is about lead poisoning in the nineteen seventies in Poland.
And I think it's really interesting in part because in
the current moment, I get enormous number of questions from
people about lead, because we are constantly seeing these headlines
(03:57):
that are like, there's lead in your baby food, there's
lead and you're you know, or a ring, there's lead
in this and that. And what's so interesting is that
the current levels of lead exposure that like our kids
have are so so much lower than the levels of
exposure that we had, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, like literally you and me, our generation. The main
source of lead in the United States used to be
inhalation from leaded gasoline, and the use of leaded gasoline
peaked in the late nineteen seventies, just like when we
were getting born, leading our generation to have the highest
(04:36):
levels of blood lead. In fact, there's an interesting study
the threshold for blood lead and babies everyone gets checked
is five what are the units nanograms, lead, micrograms, permil leader.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Five lad points, five lead points, farge blood.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Points my units and they there's a study that looked
at the percentage of kids who like have levels below that,
like the kids who were good they're good lead levels
And you see the graph from like the nineteen fifties
and it's like forty or fifty percent have good and
then it goes through us and it's zero, literally zero
from like nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty five. And
(05:10):
now it's back up. I mean still not one hundred
percent obviously, but it's we definitely got hit hard.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, but I think it is worth remembering. So this,
this documentary I suspect is quite scary. And it certainly
is true that high levels of lead exposure like these
kids had in the Poland in the nineteen seventies, and
for example, like kids were exposed to in flint when
there was lead in the water, that can be very dangerous.
But actually some lead exposure is okay, Like a small amount.
(05:36):
Your kid's body can process that. And so you know,
it's one of these things where you want to hold like, actually,
things are so much better than they once were, even though,
of course lead is not good for your cognitive performance,
and we can test that's why, you know, think about
how much more successful we would have been. Oh well,
one can only imagine better luck next time. All right,
(05:58):
let's talk about stress and and cancer. So a lot
of people think that stress causes cancer, but maybe no,
say more.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, really interesting new study came out and you're right.
Surveys suggest that fifty percent of the public believe that
stress is a cancer risk factor, right, Like chronically stressed
doctors think this as well. I will tell you I
have conversations. We all have stories of like the guy
you know who went through a messy divorce and then
like a few years later he has cancer, or you
(06:29):
know the like stressed out woman who gets a varying
cancer at a young age. Like, we construct these narratives
and it's definitely in there. But a new study says, nope,
not really. This is a study that was a meta analysis,
but an individual data meta analysis. So they had individual
level data on four hundred and twenty two thousand people
of whom like thirty five thousand ended up developing cancer,
(06:51):
and they had psychosocial markers on all of them including
chronic stress, neuroticism, death of a loved one in the
past year, like iety of stressors, divorce, relationship status, and
overall there was no link between those things and cancer
provided you accounted for age, which is like a real
(07:12):
clue here, Like the thing is the biggest risk factor
for cancer is age. That's it's not a modifiable risk factor,
but it is the largest risk factor. And all the
like crappy stuff that happens to us in life like
tends to happen more as we get older, we get divorced,
we lose loved ones, like all those stresses kind of
add up, and so of course we think that it's
the stress that led to the cancer. But the truth is,
(07:33):
it's just like getting older is stressful, and also getting
older leads to cancer. There was one exception, which is
that relationship status and loss of a loved one did
seem to increase the risk of future lung and smoking
related cancers, but once they adjust for smoking status, that
basically went away. So it's not that the stress causes
(07:55):
the cancer, but stress might lead you to behaviors like
smoking or drinking that actually do cause cancer. So I
mean there's a way to get from stress to cancer.
But it's not just like people will say, like, oh,
your cortisol levels are high, and.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Your cortisol levels the discussion we need to do a
whole thing on cortosol because think there's so much in
this sort of like keep your cortosol down like, when
you wake up in the morning your cortosol's high. You
need to stand outside on your bare feet to lower
your cortosol.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So it's not the cortisolt, it's the Smoking's not don't smoke.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, it's not the cortasoul. It's the smoking. That's like
a that's a good takeaway from this entire podcast. Keep
it in mind.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
A bit of good news here that I saw that
I thought you would like. Emily, the large insurance company
United Healthcare is starting to cover doulas for births. It's
rare that we get to see an insurance company doing
something that seems to benefit their members, but here we are.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
What do you think I was so excited about this,
Perry so as background, I am like an enormous doula proponent.
It is something that I think everybody should have in
their birth. We have a ton of data suggesting that
doulas are beneficial for all kinds of birth outcomes, lowering
(09:13):
c section rates, improving people's experience of birth. They can
be helpful even if you are having a sea section.
Like duelers are just totally great, and not everybody has
them because they cost money and so seeing insurers start
to cover these is totally awesome. This United move follows
on actually a number of state medicaid programs starting to
(09:35):
cover doulas as part of Medicaid, which is even better
because it's reaching those vulnerable people. So that is totally great.
I will say that you teed this up as like,
isn't it great that this company is doing something nice
for their members? This is something nice for their members. However,
the reason they are doing this is because dulas pay
(09:56):
for themselves because actually the reduction in say ce section
rates or use of other interventions actually makes the berth cheaper,
and so duelos are not that expensive. If you pay
for a doula and then you have a reduction in
the c section rate, you pay much less on net
because people have to say ce sections are expensives, more
(10:17):
time in the hospital and so on. So actually this
is just insurance companies saving themselves money. But since it's
good for people, I'm still a fan, all right, so.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Win when but United Healthcare compliment withdrawn officially.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well compliment, thank you for seeing that.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yes, okay, compliments, the bottom line sometimes aligns. That's it
for the health news of the week after the break,
what's the deal with stem cells?
Speaker 2 (10:52):
All right, Perry? So stem cells. I was really excited
to learn about this. Actually, unlike some of the stuff
we talk about, this is something that I didn't know
that much about coming into and then I found an
amazing clip on Instagram that told me everything I needed
to know. And so we're just going to listen to
it and then we'll be able to stop the episode early.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Okay, hitting play injuries.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Anti aging stem cells might be the closest thing we
have to the fountain of youth. Why is this because
stem cells are very very special cells. They're called plury
potent cells, which means they have the ability to morph
into any other type of cells. It's not your baby
that doesn't know what it wants to be. When it
grows up. You put it in the proximity of other
tissue and it decides to become that tissue.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Stems are the future, guys.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Lots of good anti aging functional medicine practitioners are skilled
using these and topical applications to rate you are improve
fine lines and wrinkles, thick in the skin, improve collagen,
elastin and fibrine, and even reduce joint pain. And discomfort
and accelerate. So real one of those people walking around
with knee, hip, shoulder rotator cuff or ankle pay rotator
(11:57):
thinking about surgery or it's become chronic. Talk to your
phoneunctional medicine practitioner about the using the stem cells to
accelerate your rate of healing.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
So are we done? It's kind of like you weren't
totally sold on all of them. I did hear a
thing about the rotator cuff. I was like, we're going
to fix that.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So you know, in our prior episodes, when I looked
through Instagram, I will say there was often a nice mix,
like when we talked about peptides. Yes, there were people
who were like this is a miracle, but then there
are these people that were like, oh no, be careful
and they can be contaminated and you don't know where
they're coming from. And it was like there was some balance,
even if it was inappropriate balance. As I was looking
(12:37):
through this regenerative medicine stem cell space, I've never seen
it be more wrong. Like everyone is on the side
of like this is the miracle, this is the fountain
of youth, and there's almost no one sitting on the
other side, and when you actually look into the data
as we're going to talk about, it's like there's almost
(12:57):
nothing there. So I'm excited. I'm like, I'm a little
I'm a little piled up. I am amped up about
this because there's a lot of a lot of misinformation
out there.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Okay, So I want to start with it not misinformation,
because I think often in these spaces, like it's not
that you don't go immediately to vampire or facial. You
start with something real. A stem cell is a a
cell that has some flexibility relative to other cells. Okay,
So when we talk about stem cells, you want to
(13:28):
think about that's the stem and then it can branch out.
That's why it's it's stem. It's a stem to branch
into multiple different kinds of cells like a plant. Yes,
and there are medical uses for stem cells. Yes, And
so let's like sort of table stakes start there with
like what it actually is the potential promise of stem
cells in real medical applications.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, I mean they can be miraculous in real medicine applications.
But let me can I like walk you through one, Yeah,
like sycle cell disease. Okay, Yeah, cell disease a genetic
condition that is a genetic mutation hemoglobin, which is the
protein in red blood cells that causes them to deform
and sickle and get stuck in your blood cells, causing
(14:11):
immense pain, clotting, and other problems. So very severe disease,
generally untreatable until recently and thanks to stem cells. So
what there are two FDA approved therapies for sickle cell
disease that are curative now and they both come from
stem cells. And here's how it works. If you're a
sickle cell patient, you go in, you get your bone
(14:32):
marrow harvested from your hip. That hurts a little bit.
That bone marrow is taken to a lab. The cells
are sorted based on what type of cells they are,
based on molecular characteristics on their surface. So the stem
cells are pulled out by like very fancy sorting machines
that use all sorts of tags. Those cells are then cultured.
They are grown up to be millions and millions of
(14:55):
fold higher in number than they were. Those grown up
cells then get gene edited, so the two different therapies.
One uses a viral vector to insert a new hemoglobin
gene into those cells. Like a functional hemoglobin gene. Very cool.
The other uses crisper cast nine to edit a gene
that leads to more fetal hemoglobin in the cell, which
(15:16):
doesn't sickle. Either way, you have these non sickling cells.
You're not done yet. You go back to the patient.
You give the patient incredibly high dose chemotherapy to destroy
all the other cells in their bone marrow. So they've
got no now, no white blood cells, virtually real system,
no immune system. They are in the hospital, in the hospital,
(15:39):
very dangerous situation. Once the bone marrow is cleared out,
you inject those grown up and gene edited stem cells.
You cross your fingers and you hope they ingraft, and
then they start to grow and divide and reconstitute the
immune system, the red blood cells, the platelets, everything else
you need. And if you make it through that, the
patient no longer has sickle cell disease. It is amazing
(16:02):
therapy and nothing at all like what people are getting
in a regenerative medicine clinic. But it is a miracle.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And the reason that this stem cell makes this possible
is because these stem cells have the capacity to turn
into many different kinds of cells.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Correct many different but not all different, and that influencer
up top use the term plury potent. You'll see that
a lot online. There are very few plury potent stem cells.
They live in embryos because they need to be able
to turn like a cluster of cells into a human
so they can turn into any type of cell. But
the stem cells that are harvested from adults, even for
(16:41):
bone marrow transplant and stuff like this, are called multipotent.
They can turn into some cells, so bone marrow drive
stem cells can turn into white cells and red cells
and platelets, and that's about it. That's still cool. That's
three different kinds of cells, but it's not every type
of cell.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And so the other thing that people will be familiar
with I think before sort of in the real medicine
space here is the discussion of embryonic stem cells. So
an embryonic cell cell is truly pluripotent. It can from
the beginning turned into any kind of cell. You start
with two cells, four cells, eight cells, and that embryos
(17:17):
can turn into anything. There is a lot of controversy
which I just want to put aside around through the
use of embryonic stem cells. But are there medical circumstances
where embryonic stem cells are in fact used or is
that still we're not quite there on making anything out
of that.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
There's no approved uses for them. They are used for research,
but that is actually quite restricted, at least in this
country because of the potential ethical issues that you implied.
So really you're not getting that. The real distinction of
what kind of stem cells you get in medicine is
whether they're your stem cells, which are called autologous stem cells,
(17:55):
or someone else's, which are called allogenetic stem cells. So
if you get a bone marrow transplant from someone else,
a stranger, a relative, you can have someone else's stem
cells in your body. But all of these are therapies,
as I describe, which are like incredibly intense, you know,
hospital level stuff and cost millions of dollars, right, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
And part of the reason I think this is the
sort of worth pausing on because I think it it
will link back into why the things that are happening
in these regenerative medicine clinics are such scammy disasters. If
we think about you know, what's hard about that sickle
cell case that you described, It is in part that
(18:37):
when you harvest the stem cells from the bone marrow.
Almost none of the cells are stem cells, right, You
take a ton of cells, so many cells, and then
you get like a tiny number of maybe like you know,
out of an entire harvest, you like four or three,
I mean, very small numbers of cells. And then you
(18:58):
have to grow them. And that the sort of whole
process there is you grow them and you multiply them
and so on, and that is that takes a ton
of time.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Time, expense, effort.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, but it's not like you just pick up a
bunch of cells and you know ninety five percent of
them or stem cells, and it's no problem to find exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So let's talk for a second about what happens in
a regenerative medicine clinic that's advertising stem cell therapy. What
they are not doing is harvesting your bone marrow and
sending it to a lab and growing it up and
gene editing it and stuff like that. Of course they're
not because the FDA says that if you manipulate the
cells of someone more than minimally, that it is not
(19:36):
legal to administer it to them. Again, it then becomes
a drug or a device or something that needs to
be regulated, but it is not illegal to take someone's
cells out of their body and really put them somewhere
else in the body. You are allowed to do that.
Hence vampire facials, okay.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And also if fat grafting that's how you get like
fat from your ass into your face.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Absolutely absolutely, And I think FDA kind of appropriately is like, well,
you know, it's your stuff, and like we're not going
to regulate like whether you can take that or not,
and that's probably fine. So in a stem cell clinic,
what they do is they take out either some bone
marrow from your hip, which hurts a little bit, but
more often it's fat. They do a little liposuction, they
(20:19):
get about like one hundred c sees of fat, and
remember they can't do anything to it, so all they
can do is they take that fat and they centrifuge
it in the back room for about fifteen minutes or so,
and they pipe that off, they suck off the top
layer of cells, and then they inject that back into
you and that's really all they can do. And you
alluded to how inefficient this is in terms of in
(20:44):
terms of harvesting, and I think the most damning paper
on This was from Science Advances in twenty twenty four.
So this was a research group that did this. They
sucked out cells from people's fat. They sucked out bone marrow,
and they spun them just like they do in the
regenerative meta and clinics, and then they analyzed them to
see how many stem cells were there to give you
(21:04):
a sense for like those therapies we talked about, like
for sickle cell and stuff, you want about one to
two million cells per kilogram of body weight. That's the dose.
So seventy five kilogram man, you're talking, you know, seventy
five hundred million stem cells is what's necessary for treatment.
In this study, when they sucked out the bone marrow sample,
they found three stem cells, not three million, three three
(21:27):
stem cells in fat. One point seven percent of the
cells were stem cells. But they had concerned The researchers
said that there were a lot of false positives because
they they were very they didn't look similar to each other.
There was a lot of differences, and when they did
more advanced testing they found actually zero percent of the
(21:49):
cells they found were stem cells when they came from fat.
And so what we have in these regenerative medicine clinics
is attaching a real scientific term to make something sound
fancier than what it is. It's like, it's it's like
if I invented like quantum cola, right, and I'm like,
this is this cola is quantum somehow, Right, you just
(22:12):
like slap stem cell on it for marketing purposes, but
really you're just kind of sucking out fat and reinjecting
fat somewhere else, or sucking out bone maron reinjecting it somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's worse than the
coal example, because at least you put a label on
your cola. At least you're drinking a coke and like
it's doing something. You're getting whatever you were hoping to
get out of out of the coke. This is not
a procedure that does well. We can talk about what
the evidence says, but there's no reason to think that
taking out your fat and putting back in your fat
or whatever would have any particular positive impact on you
(22:45):
in any direction. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
We'll get to that as we kind of dig into
the individual use cases. But I think we should say
that just because there's no stem cells or very few
in the stuff you're injecting doesn't mean it's the same
as injecting nothing. There's other stuff in there, right, Like
if I suck out your bone marrow, there's other cells
in there, there's proteins in there, there's you know, various
molecules of various types. So it's certainly plausible that something
(23:12):
could be happening. But you know, the prices people are
charging for this stuff are like akin to you know,
getting a bone marrow transplant or something like that. Here
actually have a clip of an influencer couple who spent
fifty thousand dollars to get stem cell injections overseas in
(23:33):
Panama City, Panama. Take a listen.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
If you're new into my world, my name is Jess.
My husband and I run an eight figure coaching company,
and we're borderline.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Obsessed with biohacking.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
We found the stem Cell Institute listening to a Joe
Rogan episode where Mel Gibson talked about his experience getting
stem cells and so flying down to Panama City for
a full service package and getting injections for a week
sounded like our idea of a good time.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, well it demands a premium because people hear stem
cell and they think like cool science, amazing. I just
saw an article in the New York Times that stem
cells cured sickle cell disease, Like, of course it can
cure my knee osteoarthritis.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Okay. So that gets us to a place where we
sort of say, these regenerative medicine clinics, there's kind of
it's it's not stem cells. So then the question is like, okay,
but is it is there any evidence that these kind
of things, that whatever is happening there works in some
other sense, whether it's because of the three stem cells
or because of something of something else. And that's where
(24:36):
we need not just the kind of theory for why
this might or might i'll work, but actual data. So
let's start with knees. I love studying knees because people
have a lot of knee problems, tons of knee problems,
and knees are a great example of the placebo effect,
my favorite effect. There's like constant evidence that did we
(24:58):
do to fix your knee actually does nothing right? Like
many of these studies where it's like we did sham
knee surgery, we cut into the wrong knee. We cut
into the knee and did nothing. And it turns out
if you just cut into someone's knee and do nothing,
they feel better, right, Like, oh, tons of stuff happened,
and so it's like a great Knees are like a
great example of the placebo effect, and we see some
(25:20):
of that here too, where different kinds of treatment in
a sort of total vacuum of a control group, it
actually does look like, oh, this is so great. But
of course anything you did to people's knees, you know,
waving your hands over them, saying this shaman words, would
affect your knee, because that's how knees are.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
It's subjective. The best study on this, in my opinion,
was in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. That's a
very very good journal, very good journaly my favorites, Oh good.
A randomized trial of one hundred and twenty patients with
knee osteoarthritis. And this was a blinded, placebo controlled design.
So they had two syringes. One was fat drived stems.
(26:00):
But again, like I'm putting stem cells in CLIs.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
It's some fat that they took Snetrifewgod fat maybe has
themselves don't know, could be anything.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And then the other was just sailing, just straight up
salt water into the knee and there was no difference
in knee pain, which was their primary outcome at any
time point through two years of follow up. So I
actually followed them for two years. This is like the
best quality data you're probably going to get. By the way,
as you pointed out, everyone got better, everyone's knees improved. Yeah,
(26:29):
but saline costs three cents and stem cell fat costs
ten thousand dollars like people are charging. I mean, maybe
less than that.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
But also, just to be clear, it's not that the
saline helped, it's just the placebo effect help. And maybe
you need the sailing, like maybe you need to do
something to get the that's on the placebo effect. Of
course you think you did something, but fundamentally this is
something that would have improved if you did nothing exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Meta analyses, which are combinations of trials, sort of confirm
this gen role thing, which which says, for example, there
was a meta analysis from the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine,
not quite as good as the British Journal, but that's fine.
Meta analyses never get published in the highest tier journals.
But basically finding yes, stem cell injections or whatever you
(27:15):
want to call them, do improve things, but no advantage
over other things like highaluronic acid, which is another injection
that often gets put in the knees also with limited evidence.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
That's the penis injection.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Oh, that's what they were using in the Olympics.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Jumpers were putting in in their penises in the Olympics. See,
you got to listen to all the episodes of this
podcast to go back to know what hiuronic acid is.
But if you did, you would know it has many
uses bake fixing your knee and making your penis big
so you're ski jumping suit is looser and you can
go farther.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Do you think they would fix the rotator cuff? It might.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I'd feel more comfortable I think injecting high uronic acid
into my rotator cuff than in my fat cells. Probably.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I thought you were going to say injecting and grey penis. Okay,
let's move on.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I haven't ruled that out yet.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
No, Okay, So these are one example. But I think
what is true in these studies is that at least
in these medical study settings, there wasn't any downside to Again,
this is like studies being done by actual doctors in
actual doctoring environments. I think the piece that is more
worrisome is all of the kind of wellness face, et
(28:32):
cetera stuff. And so there my read is, there is
again no evidence that anything about this would improve your face. Yeah,
no good evidence.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Things aren't going to improve your face because stem cells
are there doing things. When you inject stuff into your face,
things do kind of get better, right Like, even if
I inject saline into my wrinkles and stuff, at least
temporarily until the sailing gets absorbed, you know, things fill
(29:09):
out a little bit. And if I inject something that
has some mild inflammatory properties like the stuff you might
get from you know, fat or bone marrow, aspir it,
you might get some localized swelling tissue edema as we
call it, that can potentially you know, fill in some
wrinkles and stuff like that. But again, we have ways
(29:30):
to do this. Like, one of the challenges in a
space like this is, especially if you're listening to wellness
influencers online, if you trust everything you hear on a
place like Instagram, and you want to get rid of
wrinkles on your face. You have about three thousand different options,
of which stem cell regeneration, regenitive therapy clinics is just one.
(29:51):
We've already talked about, red light therapy. There's so much
out there that people need a filter to sort of
decide like how, you know, how would I possibly know
what actually works? And that filter is called science, and
that's fundamentally what this podcast is about, right. It's like
it's the only way we have to move from anecdote
(30:12):
to reality and along those lines, because I think anecdote
is so powerful and for all the wrong reasons. I
want to play you a clip of Mel Gibson talking
about his father's experience with stem cell therapy, because I
(30:32):
think we need to address this head on, Like we
can show all the data that shows out it doesn't
look work any better than placebo. But you hear something
like this online and it sticks in your head. So
let's play that for a second.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
He's ninety two and he was doing all the old
man stuff. You know, his hip was killing him and
he was like he had multiple problems. I mean, he
wasn't in good shape at all.
Speaker 6 (30:52):
You know, his kidneys were in trouble. His heart was
in trouble. And when you're ninety two and you have
multi organ failure, you're basically running on and so you
put these day zero young healthy cells that kind of
restarts everything.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So what was his response to this IVY treatment.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
It was like he got a new lease of life,
fixed all his inflammation and pain, and he started walking again,
and his kidneys were good, and his heart he had
a prolapse valves in there and they healed, and his
cognitive powers improved, his eyesight improved.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
WHOA, Okay, yeah, I mean I think listening to that,
it's so compelling, right, It's like this is a person,
Mel Gibson, who we seem to trust for some reason,
and what he's saying sounds amazing. I mean, it sounds
(31:47):
like we basically it's it's too good to be true.
But you know, but I think it connects. This is
why this you using the phrasing stem cells and talking
about stem cells, I think is so much of where
the misinformation comes in here, because it's it like has
this aura of you know, well, these are cells from
a young this is a young cell. You know, this
(32:09):
is a cell from the beginning and so we put
it in and it can do everything. It regrows your valve,
it regrows your brain, it regrows your kidneys. You know,
it just goes all around your body and makes all
the pieces young again. And of course that is totally
not how stem cells work, but it sounds like it could.
(32:33):
You know, it sort of has its like I guess
it could. I guess it could be like that. And
and again it sort of like getting back to the
sales pitch. If you said, you know, we're gonna injact
some fat into your face, Yeah, okay, hey Jackson, fatten
in my face? Like I like, yeah, that's that's the thing.
I can imagine how that would smooth stuff out and
plump it up. If you say we're gonna injact stem
(32:54):
cells in your face, that feels like wow that then
you're gonna make me younger. You're not just gonna like
make my face fatter with the fat, you what in
my face? You're actually going to make the face younger
with the stem cells. And I think that's what people
are paying for. And that's the grift. That clip is
the grift exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And you know, not to say I have no idea
if mel Gibson makes money off stem cells or anything
like that, and people really do believe this, but you know,
anecdote isn't evidence. And when you are telling stories, and
humans are wonderful storytellers, you can manipulate a lot of things. Right.
You even heard them saying like, oh yeah, wasn't he
(33:28):
in a wheelchair and like, oh yeah, he could barely
talk and stuff like that, and it's really and then
all of a sudden he could. And all you have
to do is kind of take that baseline state pre
stem cell and be like, you know, kind of exaggerate
how sick the person was, and then you take the
state post stem cell and kind of exaggerate how well
they became, and you make that delta look really huge,
and it's just it's not reliable. I want to point out,
(33:50):
because we've hit on this a few times, that stem
cells are not magic. Adult derived stem cells can only
turn into a few different cell types, and I will
tell you what they are. So the cells derived from
your bone marrow can only make blood cells that is
as potent as there. They can't make brain cells, they
can't make car filt cells. There are stem cells in
(34:12):
your skin that make skin cells, Fine, no one's harvesting
those because it's quite painful to take out chunks of
your skin. And then there's mesenchymal stem cells, which is
what most of these regenerative medicine clinics are doing, and
they're capable of differentiating into bone cells, cartilage, muscle cells,
and fat. And that certainly sounds like a lot. And
(34:35):
you know, if cartilage is something that you know, it's
particularly when we're talking about neiosty arthritis and things like that,
you can sort of say, oh, well, okay, yeah, cartilage,
but it's not everything. It doesn't you know, it's not
going to fix your brain. We don't have stem cells
for that. And so I think if people just kind
of know that there are just biological limitations to how
this could work. Because I said cartilage, let me just
(34:55):
point out that there have been relatively rigorous MRI studies
looking at cartilage thickness before and after stem cell injection
in the knees. It also looks similar to injection with
other things like hyaluronic acid, and there might be in
both cases about a millimeter of cartilage regeneration, probably by
just increasing blood flow to the area. Some influencers are
(35:18):
starting to be a little bit more honest about this,
So there's still a ton of misinformation, a ton of
like their magic they turn into whatever cell their next to.
Not true. In fact, very few stem cells do anything
when they're in the body in terms of differentiating further,
they do release some cytokine, some small proteins that might
(35:39):
have immunomodulatory effects, so like either inducing inflammation or reducing inflammation.
So these cells do kind of have a talking effect,
like sort of talk to other cells. But we have
lots of different ways, including like steroid injections if we
want to tamp down the immune system. And so you'll
see some people who kind of acknowledge that it's not
just about magically turning into you know, a new heart
(36:02):
valve when you don't have a heart valve. But you
still have to ask yourself, why am I paying these
ridiculous amounts when there are other ways to get the
same effect.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, I mean, I think you know, for me, this
is a I find this space really understandable, but such
a clear example of something we see in many of
these wellness cases where you take a sort of vague
biological plausibility like that that comes a real good story
(36:32):
and then kind of take it all the way down
the road into something which is which is crazy. You know,
they kind of go all the way from this kind
of cure sicco selenemia under these like very very complicated
conditions into like, well that means it must be magic,
and you know, here are all the things we're gonna
we're going to do with it, and it prays on.
(36:52):
Of course, people's like desire for youth, and so much
of this is a kind of I want to look younger,
I want to see younger. I want to be younger.
This is telling you, like, we're not just going to
make you a look younger. This isn't botox. You know,
we're going to like put young cells in. We're actually
make you younger. And that's of course impossible, but very compelling.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
If I could talk about the power of hope for
a minute and get a little bit personal with my
own stem cell story. So a couple of years ago,
my mom was diagnosed with a very rare neurodegenerative condition
called multiple system atrophy. There's no treatment. It's kind of
a horrible neurologic condition where you just sort of like
(37:35):
gradually your body stops functioning. So I'm a doctor, I
run clinical trials. I'm a scientist. I have a lab here.
So when she got that diagnosis, the first thing I
did was go to clinical Trials dot gov and see,
you know, I knew there was no treatments, there's no
nothing approved. But I'm going to go to clinical Trials
dot Gov and I'm going to see what's out there,
(37:56):
like what are people testing right, Like, let's take a
shot on something. And so I'm going through the filters
and what's actively recruiting and whatnot. And I see a
study of stem cell therapies for multiple system atrophy, and
you know, these are trials that are like in the
it reads like it's in the medical space, right, it's
(38:17):
going to be it's the sickle cell thing, not the
regenerative medicine clinic thing. At least that's what I was thinking.
So I dig into this and I'm looking at the
report on clinical Trials dot gov. And the first red
flag I had is that they have to list the
conditions that they're testing the stem cells for and including
(38:38):
multiple system atrophy. Also listed in this protocol are traumatic
brain injury, stroke, progressive supernuclear palsy als, diabetic neuropathies, dementia,
frontotemporal dementia, Louis body disease, cognitive impairment, nervous system diseases
in general, Louis body variant of Alzheimer's disease. That's a
(38:59):
very broad protocol, right, Like, no one is testing that
many things.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
No one treatment is doing all of those things.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And nor would you if you were like a company
trying to prove that your therapy worked, you would never
enroll that diverse group, right, You'd like test it on
one thing, so you know what's going on. I dig
in deeper and I see that this protocol has been
active at least since twenty sixteen and has never reported
any results. So then I dig in to where this
is coming from, and it's being run out of the
(39:27):
clinic in Florida. I think it's called mdstem cells dot
com and it is a regenerative medicine clinic in Florida.
And all over their website they are saying, you know, oh,
we've got these clinical trials that are running to test
these different things. And you know, obviously people searching clinical desperate,
(39:47):
people like me searching clinical trials are clearly a source
of patients for them, But it still seemed odd to
me because as like, well, how can they make money
on this? You can't charge people to participate in a
clinical trial. Well, they're charging people to participate in a
clinical trial. So I found a news report talking about
this same clinic that said where someone pretended to call
(40:10):
so that they you know, like they secret chopped to
them basically, and we're told it would be about twenty
thousand dollars for one of these treatments, which again is
just like taking bone marrow out and they were going
to inject it into your blood and into your nose
like that was the treatment. Twenty thousand dollars. The doctor
who ran this clinic I actually used to have a
license in Connecticut. That license was revoked by my state,
(40:35):
which is a good thing. But he is licensed to
practice in Florida because of course he is. And this
I don't think anything made me angrier than this particular
experience in this space, and I'm trying not to let
it color my view of the entire like regenerative medicine
and stem cell industry. This is someone who's clearly praying
(40:55):
on very desperately This isn't someone who has you know,
it's like, oh, I've got my knee hurts, Like maybe
I should try this injection. This is like my mom
is dying of an incurable disease. Should I give you
twenty thousand dollars to you know, put some some fat
cells up her nose or whatever. But the fact is
these things live in the same space. And although you
know he's promising a lot more than someone who says
(41:17):
we're going to do some injections and make your knee
feel better, people need to understand that these are for
profit enterprises and stem cell is a marketing term and
a powerful one.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
And I think what is so tough also about that
story is imagine you were not a doctor who does research,
and you've come across clinical trials dot com, which is
not some scammer site. Clinical trials dot Gov is, in
fact where people register their actual clinical trials. This is
an actual government website. And people, how would you know
(41:57):
as a person that you're not going to be charge
of being a clipical trial That's like, that's true. You
know that because you're a doctor. I know that, but
people might not know that. You look at this, it's
on clinical trials, like go you go to this website,
they tell you, like, in order to be in this trial,
it's twenty thousand dollars. And of course this seems official
because it is you know, it is has the word
stem cell and is listed on this government website. And
(42:18):
I think it's an extreme example but also not an
extreme example of where people are just there is real,
you know, real costs, especially because you know, in this
case maybe there isn't something else you can do, but
in many cases there is something else you can do.
People are being told, you know, you should get stem
cell therapy instead of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, something that might actually
(42:42):
address your problems. And so it is relative to some
of the things we've talked about on this podcast. You know,
we talked about red light therapy, and you know, my
view is like that's a stupid scam, but like it's
a stupid scam in the sense of like who cares
you bought a mask and like you put the mask
on and you think you feel better, but you don't.
This is like potentially very damaging and preying on people
(43:03):
who in some cases are really really desperate for answers.
And I will say there are a lot of very
bad things that can happen as a result of some
of these things. So there are many cases in which
people going to some of these clinics have actually ended
up with very very bad, dangerous outcomes. So there's a
(43:25):
clinic in Florida in which a number of people were
actually blinded after some stem cells were injected in their eyes.
There are a lot of stories like that.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I saw that report. Also, I think it was done
under kind of a research protocol. And it's actually, like
doing this podcast, I'm beginning to see this other side,
like this world of using research to get around the
regulatory state. Right, Like I file research protocols because that's
my job, and like I do research. And this happened
with the peptides too, Right, It's like, how can we
(43:56):
inject these unapproved substances into people and like not be liable. Oh,
we call it research and we have them sign a
consent form. And yet you know the purpose of research
is to create generalizable knowledge, right, to like benefit humankind,
to publish your results. That's one of the reasons why
it's unethical to charge participants to participate in a research project,
(44:19):
because they are giving you something, right, they are, they're
volunteering themselves to be you know, experimented on. It is
not medicine. You don't do research for curative intent. You
do research to find out whether something is curative or not.
And then once you prove it, then sure you can.
You can sell it all you want. That's how capitalism works.
But research isn't medicine. And yeah, that particular study with
(44:43):
the eyes, Like the dumbest thing you would never do
in a research study where you're injecting something into people's
eyes is do both at the same time. Are you insane?
Would of course only do one and then see what happens,
and then these women you know, are blind in both
eyes because it's a bad protocol.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Okay, so we can do a smash or pass. But
I actually I want to pause here on what I
think is the most important takeaway. So before we started
this episode, we kind of came at it with like,
you know what, what do we want people to take away?
And I think that here is really quite important to
both of us that people take away that you should
(45:26):
not go to a stem cell clinic to do anything
that that you know there are if you are a
person with sickle cell anemia. It is of This is
of course a kind of therapy that you will be
discussing with your doctor. But if you are thinking about
using stem cells or some kind of stem cell clinic
for something in your health, do not do that.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, you're not getting stem cells. I mean, that's what
I want people to take home. It's like, there are
ways to get stem cells. They generally happen in a hospital.
It's generally for people with cancer, sickle cell, very severe diseases.
These clinics say they're selling stem cells, they're not. They're
charging you too much, even if they're safe. You know,
what they're injecting is safe. They're charging you an arm
(46:10):
and a leg for stuff that isn't really there.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Smash your pass stem cell therapy.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, I'm when it comes to regenerative medicine clinics, I'm
a hard pass on this. How about you, Emily?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I am a hard pass. I accept for sickle cellingemium
and a few canclood cancers.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yes, right, real stem cells are great. It's just this
is fake.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
All right. That's it for stem cells. So your mail
back Question of the week after the.
Speaker 7 (46:36):
Break, Hi, Emily and Perry, this is Wade in Santa Fe.
I've read that taking magnesium can help you sleep better,
and I'm wondering if that's really true or is that
just more Internet wellness crop.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Thanks, I take magnesium for sleep, Perry.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Oh okay, cool? What do you think?
Speaker 2 (47:02):
So? I started taking this because I'm a perimenopausal woman,
and I read the evidence as suggesting it is possible
that this could affect sleep in a positive way a
little bit. And I have a lot of self trackers,
and so I figured that I would try it and
I would see if it improved my sleep. So, I
don't know, do you think that it did based on
(47:23):
the data.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I read the data the same way. I think there's,
you know, evidence of modest benefit. We're talking like fifteen
to twenty minutes of increased sleep duration, a little lower
sleep latency, so falling asleep a little quicker. No large
randomized trials. Yeah, but you get so much exercise, I
feel like you must sleep well. But then why are
you taking magnesium? I'm going to say, yeah, I think
it improved your sleep a little bit.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
That is not correct. I am looking at my WHOOP
recovery analysis here on my phone, and it tells me
my magnesium supplement is plus one percent and it's not
statistically significant in contras has to do other things like
not drinking, which is a plus eight percent.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Yeah, I would take magnesium, but I'm not going to
give up alcohol.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Jeez, please'm be ridiculous. Yeah, I mean this feels to
me like something where there's no real downside. And if
you said, you know, I'm interested in trying it, I
can't see any reason people should not, and the data
is not large. I'm surprised we haven't seen larger randomized
trials on this, but I guess the point is that
it's no one would benefit from that because magnesium is
(48:32):
a generic over the counter thing and so there's not
a lot of incentive to run to run a trial.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Yeah, that's probably why doctor hatput On. Don't overdose. Take
the recommended dose you can. There is magnesium toxicity at
super high doses, so don't go crazy.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
My dad asked me about this the other day, which
you know, tells me it's out in the zeitgeist, because
my father will read any fad and try to follow it.
So we'll see what he says.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Let us know.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Emily's dad, Hi, Dad, that's it for us today, stick
with us next week, when we will ask what's the
deal with creating? Wellness Actually is produced in association with iHeartMedia.
Our senior producer is Tamar Avishai. Our executive producer at
iHeart is Jennifer Bassett. Our theme music is by Eric Deutsch,
(49:20):
and our content is for educational purposes only.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
If you like the show, help other people find us,
leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your
podcatcher of choice and help us spread the word about
the show. You can follow us on Instagram at Wellness
Actually pod and don't forget We want to hear from you.
Head over to Wellness Actually dot fm and leave us
a question for our mailbag or suggest a topic for
(49:43):
a future show.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
We'll let the influencers have the last word.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
You did the labor room surgery, no surger, wrap it
out of full length rotator cuff tear okay, And they
used ex's homes and it was gone. The next MRI
have the tear was gone. It just it goes. It
just seals up.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
Mhm
Emily, I, like, I think all medical doctors am a
completely horrible patient. I am pretty sure I've had a
rotator cuff tear for like eight months and I've done
absolutely nothing about it.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Okay, I am sorry, we need to say more. So
what were you doing? Were you doing something that men
in their forty should not be doing? Like sports?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yep, yep. I was trying to get active and healthy,
and I was lifting weights. I was bench pressing, and
I was, you know, bulking up.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Wait, no, for reals, you were you were bench pressing?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but don't worry. I'd taken my creatine
future fined foreshadowing. I'd taken my creatine and I was
adding weight and something happened and now I can't lift
my left arm above my head. And okay, that's fine.
(00:56):
These things happen.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
That's not fine.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
But okay, I'm just sitting here realizing, because it's getting
into golf season, I need to swing a golf club again,
and it hurts, And I'm like, you know, I probably
should have seen a doctor about this.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
And what are you planning to do about it? Which will?
Have you been watching wellness influencers because they must have ideas.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
They have lots of ideas, and I think we're going
to talk about one of those ideas today because we're
talking about stem cell therapy. But you know what, I'm
actually going to do nothing. That's correct, I'm going to
do nothing.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I have a suggestion for you actually, as a person
who has recently injured their hamstring, I have been getting
a thing called shockwave therapy, where someone puts a shocker
on your injured part and the placebo effect makes it better.
And I would really really recommend it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm a huge fan of the placebo effect.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
The placebo effect is great, but how much does it cost?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That's the question.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, okay, it's about seventy five dollars for each placebo effect,
and you need like four of them for the placibo
effect to really get going, so it's not free. But
I have been running totally fine since the placebo effect
is kicked in.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I'm probably going to do nothing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm Emily Aster, I'm an economist and a data expert.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And I'm Harry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's Thursday, March twenty sixth, twenty twenty six, and this
is wellness.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Actually, because you're getting a staggering amount of health and
wellness information nowadays from every source imaginable, and some of
it is awesome and.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Some of it is well actually both Fortunately we're both
people who know how to read studies, how to parse
the data, and can tell you what's worth thinking about
and what you can safely ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
But before we dig in, a note that this podcast
is for educational purposes and should not be construed as
medical advice. We don't know your unique situation, so talk
to your doctor for personal health decisions.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
This week, we're asking what's the deal with stem cell therapy.
Harry and I will give the official smash or pass,
and then we'll get to your question of the week.
But first let's do the health news roundup. After the break.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And we are back with the health news of the week. Emily,
there's a new Netflix series that's coming out that is
talking all about lead poisoning, something we probably don't talk
about enough. Have you seen this?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I haven't seen it. I was watching the Netflix documentary
on microplastics, but this is next on my list of
things to be afraid of from Netflix. I think this
documentary is about lead poisoning in the nineteen seventies in Poland.
And I think it's really interesting in part because in
the current moment, I get enormous number of questions from
people about lead, because we are constantly seeing these headlines
(03:57):
that are like, there's lead in your baby food, there's
lead and you're you know, or a ring, there's lead
in this and that. And what's so interesting is that
the current levels of lead exposure that like our kids
have are so so much lower than the levels of
exposure that we had, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, like literally you and me, our generation. The main
source of lead in the United States used to be
inhalation from leaded gasoline, and the use of leaded gasoline
peaked in the late nineteen seventies, just like when we
were getting born, leading our generation to have the highest
(04:36):
levels of blood lead. In fact, there's an interesting study
the threshold for blood lead and babies everyone gets checked
is five what are the units nanograms, lead, micrograms, permil leader.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Five lad points, five lead points, farge blood.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Points my units and they there's a study that looked
at the percentage of kids who like have levels below that,
like the kids who were good they're good lead levels
And you see the graph from like the nineteen fifties
and it's like forty or fifty percent have good and
then it goes through us and it's zero, literally zero
from like nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty five. And
(05:10):
now it's back up. I mean still not one hundred
percent obviously, but it's we definitely got hit hard.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, but I think it is worth remembering. So this,
this documentary I suspect is quite scary. And it certainly
is true that high levels of lead exposure like these
kids had in the Poland in the nineteen seventies, and
for example, like kids were exposed to in flint when
there was lead in the water, that can be very dangerous.
But actually some lead exposure is okay, Like a small amount.
(05:36):
Your kid's body can process that. And so you know,
it's one of these things where you want to hold like, actually,
things are so much better than they once were, even though,
of course lead is not good for your cognitive performance,
and we can test that's why, you know, think about
how much more successful we would have been. Oh well,
one can only imagine better luck next time. All right,
(05:58):
let's talk about stress and and cancer. So a lot
of people think that stress causes cancer, but maybe no,
say more.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, really interesting new study came out and you're right.
Surveys suggest that fifty percent of the public believe that
stress is a cancer risk factor, right, Like chronically stressed
doctors think this as well. I will tell you I
have conversations. We all have stories of like the guy
you know who went through a messy divorce and then
like a few years later he has cancer, or you
(06:29):
know the like stressed out woman who gets a varying
cancer at a young age. Like, we construct these narratives
and it's definitely in there. But a new study says, nope,
not really. This is a study that was a meta analysis,
but an individual data meta analysis. So they had individual
level data on four hundred and twenty two thousand people
of whom like thirty five thousand ended up developing cancer,
(06:51):
and they had psychosocial markers on all of them including
chronic stress, neuroticism, death of a loved one in the
past year, like iety of stressors, divorce, relationship status, and
overall there was no link between those things and cancer
provided you accounted for age, which is like a real
(07:12):
clue here, Like the thing is the biggest risk factor
for cancer is age. That's it's not a modifiable risk factor,
but it is the largest risk factor. And all the
like crappy stuff that happens to us in life like
tends to happen more as we get older, we get divorced,
we lose loved ones, like all those stresses kind of
add up, and so of course we think that it's
the stress that led to the cancer. But the truth is,
(07:33):
it's just like getting older is stressful, and also getting
older leads to cancer. There was one exception, which is
that relationship status and loss of a loved one did
seem to increase the risk of future lung and smoking
related cancers, but once they adjust for smoking status, that
basically went away. So it's not that the stress causes
(07:55):
the cancer, but stress might lead you to behaviors like
smoking or drinking that actually do cause cancer. So I
mean there's a way to get from stress to cancer.
But it's not just like people will say, like, oh,
your cortisol levels are high, and.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Your cortisol levels the discussion we need to do a
whole thing on cortosol because think there's so much in
this sort of like keep your cortosol down like, when
you wake up in the morning your cortosol's high. You
need to stand outside on your bare feet to lower
your cortosol.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So it's not the cortisolt, it's the Smoking's not don't smoke.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, it's not the cortasoul. It's the smoking. That's like
a that's a good takeaway from this entire podcast. Keep
it in mind.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
A bit of good news here that I saw that
I thought you would like. Emily, the large insurance company
United Healthcare is starting to cover doulas for births. It's
rare that we get to see an insurance company doing
something that seems to benefit their members, but here we are.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
What do you think I was so excited about this,
Perry so as background, I am like an enormous doula proponent.
It is something that I think everybody should have in
their birth. We have a ton of data suggesting that
doulas are beneficial for all kinds of birth outcomes, lowering
(09:13):
c section rates, improving people's experience of birth. They can
be helpful even if you are having a sea section.
Like duelers are just totally great, and not everybody has
them because they cost money and so seeing insurers start
to cover these is totally awesome. This United move follows
on actually a number of state medicaid programs starting to
(09:35):
cover doulas as part of Medicaid, which is even better
because it's reaching those vulnerable people. So that is totally great.
I will say that you teed this up as like,
isn't it great that this company is doing something nice
for their members? This is something nice for their members. However,
the reason they are doing this is because dulas pay
(09:56):
for themselves because actually the reduction in say ce section
rates or use of other interventions actually makes the berth cheaper,
and so duelos are not that expensive. If you pay
for a doula and then you have a reduction in
the c section rate, you pay much less on net
because people have to say ce sections are expensives, more
(10:17):
time in the hospital and so on. So actually this
is just insurance companies saving themselves money. But since it's
good for people, I'm still a fan, all right, so.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Win when but United Healthcare compliment withdrawn officially.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well compliment, thank you for seeing that.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yes, okay, compliments, the bottom line sometimes aligns. That's it
for the health news of the week after the break,
what's the deal with stem cells?
Speaker 2 (10:52):
All right, Perry? So stem cells. I was really excited
to learn about this. Actually, unlike some of the stuff
we talk about, this is something that I didn't know
that much about coming into and then I found an
amazing clip on Instagram that told me everything I needed
to know. And so we're just going to listen to
it and then we'll be able to stop the episode early.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Okay, hitting play injuries.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Anti aging stem cells might be the closest thing we
have to the fountain of youth. Why is this because
stem cells are very very special cells. They're called plury
potent cells, which means they have the ability to morph
into any other type of cells. It's not your baby
that doesn't know what it wants to be. When it
grows up. You put it in the proximity of other
tissue and it decides to become that tissue.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Stems are the future, guys.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Lots of good anti aging functional medicine practitioners are skilled
using these and topical applications to rate you are improve
fine lines and wrinkles, thick in the skin, improve collagen,
elastin and fibrine, and even reduce joint pain. And discomfort
and accelerate. So real one of those people walking around
with knee, hip, shoulder rotator cuff or ankle pay rotator
(11:57):
thinking about surgery or it's become chronic. Talk to your
phoneunctional medicine practitioner about the using the stem cells to
accelerate your rate of healing.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
So are we done? It's kind of like you weren't
totally sold on all of them. I did hear a
thing about the rotator cuff. I was like, we're going
to fix that.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So you know, in our prior episodes, when I looked
through Instagram, I will say there was often a nice mix,
like when we talked about peptides. Yes, there were people
who were like this is a miracle, but then there
are these people that were like, oh no, be careful
and they can be contaminated and you don't know where
they're coming from. And it was like there was some balance,
even if it was inappropriate balance. As I was looking
(12:37):
through this regenerative medicine stem cell space, I've never seen
it be more wrong. Like everyone is on the side
of like this is the miracle, this is the fountain
of youth, and there's almost no one sitting on the
other side, and when you actually look into the data
as we're going to talk about, it's like there's almost
(12:57):
nothing there. So I'm excited. I'm like, I'm a little
I'm a little piled up. I am amped up about
this because there's a lot of a lot of misinformation
out there.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Okay, So I want to start with it not misinformation,
because I think often in these spaces, like it's not
that you don't go immediately to vampire or facial. You
start with something real. A stem cell is a a
cell that has some flexibility relative to other cells. Okay,
So when we talk about stem cells, you want to
(13:28):
think about that's the stem and then it can branch out.
That's why it's it's stem. It's a stem to branch
into multiple different kinds of cells like a plant. Yes,
and there are medical uses for stem cells. Yes, And
so let's like sort of table stakes start there with
like what it actually is the potential promise of stem
cells in real medical applications.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, I mean they can be miraculous in real medicine applications.
But let me can I like walk you through one, Yeah,
like sycle cell disease. Okay, Yeah, cell disease a genetic
condition that is a genetic mutation hemoglobin, which is the
protein in red blood cells that causes them to deform
and sickle and get stuck in your blood cells, causing
(14:11):
immense pain, clotting, and other problems. So very severe disease,
generally untreatable until recently and thanks to stem cells. So
what there are two FDA approved therapies for sickle cell
disease that are curative now and they both come from
stem cells. And here's how it works. If you're a
sickle cell patient, you go in, you get your bone
(14:32):
marrow harvested from your hip. That hurts a little bit.
That bone marrow is taken to a lab. The cells
are sorted based on what type of cells they are,
based on molecular characteristics on their surface. So the stem
cells are pulled out by like very fancy sorting machines
that use all sorts of tags. Those cells are then cultured.
They are grown up to be millions and millions of
(14:55):
fold higher in number than they were. Those grown up
cells then get gene edited, so the two different therapies.
One uses a viral vector to insert a new hemoglobin
gene into those cells. Like a functional hemoglobin gene. Very cool.
The other uses crisper cast nine to edit a gene
that leads to more fetal hemoglobin in the cell, which
(15:16):
doesn't sickle. Either way, you have these non sickling cells.
You're not done yet. You go back to the patient.
You give the patient incredibly high dose chemotherapy to destroy
all the other cells in their bone marrow. So they've
got no now, no white blood cells, virtually real system,
no immune system. They are in the hospital, in the hospital,
(15:39):
very dangerous situation. Once the bone marrow is cleared out,
you inject those grown up and gene edited stem cells.
You cross your fingers and you hope they ingraft, and
then they start to grow and divide and reconstitute the
immune system, the red blood cells, the platelets, everything else
you need. And if you make it through that, the
patient no longer has sickle cell disease. It is amazing
(16:02):
therapy and nothing at all like what people are getting
in a regenerative medicine clinic. But it is a miracle.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And the reason that this stem cell makes this possible
is because these stem cells have the capacity to turn
into many different kinds of cells.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Correct many different but not all different, and that influencer
up top use the term plury potent. You'll see that
a lot online. There are very few plury potent stem cells.
They live in embryos because they need to be able
to turn like a cluster of cells into a human
so they can turn into any type of cell. But
the stem cells that are harvested from adults, even for
(16:41):
bone marrow transplant and stuff like this, are called multipotent.
They can turn into some cells, so bone marrow drive
stem cells can turn into white cells and red cells
and platelets, and that's about it. That's still cool. That's
three different kinds of cells, but it's not every type
of cell.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And so the other thing that people will be familiar
with I think before sort of in the real medicine
space here is the discussion of embryonic stem cells. So
an embryonic cell cell is truly pluripotent. It can from
the beginning turned into any kind of cell. You start
with two cells, four cells, eight cells, and that embryos
(17:17):
can turn into anything. There is a lot of controversy
which I just want to put aside around through the
use of embryonic stem cells. But are there medical circumstances
where embryonic stem cells are in fact used or is
that still we're not quite there on making anything out
of that.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
There's no approved uses for them. They are used for research,
but that is actually quite restricted, at least in this
country because of the potential ethical issues that you implied.
So really you're not getting that. The real distinction of
what kind of stem cells you get in medicine is
whether they're your stem cells, which are called autologous stem cells,
(17:55):
or someone else's, which are called allogenetic stem cells. So
if you get a bone marrow transplant from someone else,
a stranger, a relative, you can have someone else's stem
cells in your body. But all of these are therapies,
as I describe, which are like incredibly intense, you know,
hospital level stuff and cost millions of dollars, right, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
And part of the reason I think this is the
sort of worth pausing on because I think it it
will link back into why the things that are happening
in these regenerative medicine clinics are such scammy disasters. If
we think about you know, what's hard about that sickle
cell case that you described, It is in part that
(18:37):
when you harvest the stem cells from the bone marrow.
Almost none of the cells are stem cells, right, You
take a ton of cells, so many cells, and then
you get like a tiny number of maybe like you know,
out of an entire harvest, you like four or three,
I mean, very small numbers of cells. And then you
(18:58):
have to grow them. And that the sort of whole
process there is you grow them and you multiply them
and so on, and that is that takes a ton
of time.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Time, expense, effort.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, but it's not like you just pick up a
bunch of cells and you know ninety five percent of
them or stem cells, and it's no problem to find exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So let's talk for a second about what happens in
a regenerative medicine clinic that's advertising stem cell therapy. What
they are not doing is harvesting your bone marrow and
sending it to a lab and growing it up and
gene editing it and stuff like that. Of course they're
not because the FDA says that if you manipulate the
cells of someone more than minimally, that it is not
(19:36):
legal to administer it to them. Again, it then becomes
a drug or a device or something that needs to
be regulated, but it is not illegal to take someone's
cells out of their body and really put them somewhere
else in the body. You are allowed to do that.
Hence vampire facials, okay.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And also if fat grafting that's how you get like
fat from your ass into your face.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Absolutely absolutely, And I think FDA kind of appropriately is like, well,
you know, it's your stuff, and like we're not going
to regulate like whether you can take that or not,
and that's probably fine. So in a stem cell clinic,
what they do is they take out either some bone
marrow from your hip, which hurts a little bit, but
more often it's fat. They do a little liposuction, they
(20:19):
get about like one hundred c sees of fat, and
remember they can't do anything to it, so all they
can do is they take that fat and they centrifuge
it in the back room for about fifteen minutes or so,
and they pipe that off, they suck off the top
layer of cells, and then they inject that back into
you and that's really all they can do. And you
alluded to how inefficient this is in terms of in
(20:44):
terms of harvesting, and I think the most damning paper
on This was from Science Advances in twenty twenty four.
So this was a research group that did this. They
sucked out cells from people's fat. They sucked out bone marrow,
and they spun them just like they do in the
regenerative meta and clinics, and then they analyzed them to
see how many stem cells were there to give you
(21:04):
a sense for like those therapies we talked about, like
for sickle cell and stuff, you want about one to
two million cells per kilogram of body weight. That's the dose.
So seventy five kilogram man, you're talking, you know, seventy
five hundred million stem cells is what's necessary for treatment.
In this study, when they sucked out the bone marrow sample,
they found three stem cells, not three million, three three
(21:27):
stem cells in fat. One point seven percent of the
cells were stem cells. But they had concerned The researchers
said that there were a lot of false positives because
they they were very they didn't look similar to each other.
There was a lot of differences, and when they did
more advanced testing they found actually zero percent of the
(21:49):
cells they found were stem cells when they came from fat.
And so what we have in these regenerative medicine clinics
is attaching a real scientific term to make something sound
fancier than what it is. It's like, it's it's like
if I invented like quantum cola, right, and I'm like,
this is this cola is quantum somehow, Right, you just
(22:12):
like slap stem cell on it for marketing purposes, but
really you're just kind of sucking out fat and reinjecting
fat somewhere else, or sucking out bone maron reinjecting it somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's worse than the
coal example, because at least you put a label on
your cola. At least you're drinking a coke and like
it's doing something. You're getting whatever you were hoping to
get out of out of the coke. This is not
a procedure that does well. We can talk about what
the evidence says, but there's no reason to think that
taking out your fat and putting back in your fat
or whatever would have any particular positive impact on you
(22:45):
in any direction. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
We'll get to that as we kind of dig into
the individual use cases. But I think we should say
that just because there's no stem cells or very few
in the stuff you're injecting doesn't mean it's the same
as injecting nothing. There's other stuff in there, right, Like
if I suck out your bone marrow, there's other cells
in there, there's proteins in there, there's you know, various
molecules of various types. So it's certainly plausible that something
(23:12):
could be happening. But you know, the prices people are
charging for this stuff are like akin to you know,
getting a bone marrow transplant or something like that. Here
actually have a clip of an influencer couple who spent
fifty thousand dollars to get stem cell injections overseas in
(23:33):
Panama City, Panama. Take a listen.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
If you're new into my world, my name is Jess.
My husband and I run an eight figure coaching company,
and we're borderline.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Obsessed with biohacking.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
We found the stem Cell Institute listening to a Joe
Rogan episode where Mel Gibson talked about his experience getting
stem cells and so flying down to Panama City for
a full service package and getting injections for a week
sounded like our idea of a good time.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, well it demands a premium because people hear stem
cell and they think like cool science, amazing. I just
saw an article in the New York Times that stem
cells cured sickle cell disease, Like, of course it can
cure my knee osteoarthritis.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Okay. So that gets us to a place where we
sort of say, these regenerative medicine clinics, there's kind of
it's it's not stem cells. So then the question is like, okay,
but is it is there any evidence that these kind
of things, that whatever is happening there works in some
other sense, whether it's because of the three stem cells
or because of something of something else. And that's where
(24:36):
we need not just the kind of theory for why
this might or might i'll work, but actual data. So
let's start with knees. I love studying knees because people
have a lot of knee problems, tons of knee problems,
and knees are a great example of the placebo effect,
my favorite effect. There's like constant evidence that did we
(24:58):
do to fix your knee actually does nothing right? Like
many of these studies where it's like we did sham
knee surgery, we cut into the wrong knee. We cut
into the knee and did nothing. And it turns out
if you just cut into someone's knee and do nothing,
they feel better, right, Like, oh, tons of stuff happened,
and so it's like a great Knees are like a
great example of the placebo effect, and we see some
(25:20):
of that here too, where different kinds of treatment in
a sort of total vacuum of a control group, it
actually does look like, oh, this is so great. But
of course anything you did to people's knees, you know,
waving your hands over them, saying this shaman words, would
affect your knee, because that's how knees are.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
It's subjective. The best study on this, in my opinion,
was in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. That's a
very very good journal, very good journaly my favorites, Oh good.
A randomized trial of one hundred and twenty patients with
knee osteoarthritis. And this was a blinded, placebo controlled design.
So they had two syringes. One was fat drived stems.
(26:00):
But again, like I'm putting stem cells in CLIs.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
It's some fat that they took Snetrifewgod fat maybe has
themselves don't know, could be anything.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And then the other was just sailing, just straight up
salt water into the knee and there was no difference
in knee pain, which was their primary outcome at any
time point through two years of follow up. So I
actually followed them for two years. This is like the
best quality data you're probably going to get. By the way,
as you pointed out, everyone got better, everyone's knees improved. Yeah,
(26:29):
but saline costs three cents and stem cell fat costs
ten thousand dollars like people are charging. I mean, maybe
less than that.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
But also, just to be clear, it's not that the
saline helped, it's just the placebo effect help. And maybe
you need the sailing, like maybe you need to do
something to get the that's on the placebo effect. Of
course you think you did something, but fundamentally this is
something that would have improved if you did nothing exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Meta analyses, which are combinations of trials, sort of confirm
this gen role thing, which which says, for example, there
was a meta analysis from the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine,
not quite as good as the British Journal, but that's fine.
Meta analyses never get published in the highest tier journals.
But basically finding yes, stem cell injections or whatever you
(27:15):
want to call them, do improve things, but no advantage
over other things like highaluronic acid, which is another injection
that often gets put in the knees also with limited evidence.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
That's the penis injection.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Oh, that's what they were using in the Olympics.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Jumpers were putting in in their penises in the Olympics. See,
you got to listen to all the episodes of this
podcast to go back to know what hiuronic acid is.
But if you did, you would know it has many
uses bake fixing your knee and making your penis big
so you're ski jumping suit is looser and you can
go farther.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Do you think they would fix the rotator cuff? It might.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I'd feel more comfortable I think injecting high uronic acid
into my rotator cuff than in my fat cells. Probably.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I thought you were going to say injecting and grey penis. Okay,
let's move on.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I haven't ruled that out yet.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
No, Okay, So these are one example. But I think
what is true in these studies is that at least
in these medical study settings, there wasn't any downside to Again,
this is like studies being done by actual doctors in
actual doctoring environments. I think the piece that is more
worrisome is all of the kind of wellness face, et
(28:32):
cetera stuff. And so there my read is, there is
again no evidence that anything about this would improve your face. Yeah,
no good evidence.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Things aren't going to improve your face because stem cells
are there doing things. When you inject stuff into your face,
things do kind of get better, right Like, even if
I inject saline into my wrinkles and stuff, at least
temporarily until the sailing gets absorbed, you know, things fill
(29:09):
out a little bit. And if I inject something that
has some mild inflammatory properties like the stuff you might
get from you know, fat or bone marrow, aspir it,
you might get some localized swelling tissue edema as we
call it, that can potentially you know, fill in some
wrinkles and stuff like that. But again, we have ways
(29:30):
to do this. Like, one of the challenges in a
space like this is, especially if you're listening to wellness
influencers online, if you trust everything you hear on a
place like Instagram, and you want to get rid of
wrinkles on your face. You have about three thousand different options,
of which stem cell regeneration, regenitive therapy clinics is just one.
(29:51):
We've already talked about, red light therapy. There's so much
out there that people need a filter to sort of
decide like how, you know, how would I possibly know
what actually works? And that filter is called science, and
that's fundamentally what this podcast is about, right. It's like
it's the only way we have to move from anecdote
(30:12):
to reality and along those lines, because I think anecdote
is so powerful and for all the wrong reasons. I
want to play you a clip of Mel Gibson talking
about his father's experience with stem cell therapy, because I
(30:32):
think we need to address this head on, Like we
can show all the data that shows out it doesn't
look work any better than placebo. But you hear something
like this online and it sticks in your head. So
let's play that for a second.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
He's ninety two and he was doing all the old
man stuff. You know, his hip was killing him and
he was like he had multiple problems. I mean, he
wasn't in good shape at all.
Speaker 6 (30:52):
You know, his kidneys were in trouble. His heart was
in trouble. And when you're ninety two and you have
multi organ failure, you're basically running on and so you
put these day zero young healthy cells that kind of
restarts everything.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So what was his response to this IVY treatment.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
It was like he got a new lease of life,
fixed all his inflammation and pain, and he started walking again,
and his kidneys were good, and his heart he had
a prolapse valves in there and they healed, and his
cognitive powers improved, his eyesight improved.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
WHOA, Okay, yeah, I mean I think listening to that,
it's so compelling, right, It's like this is a person,
Mel Gibson, who we seem to trust for some reason,
and what he's saying sounds amazing. I mean, it sounds
(31:47):
like we basically it's it's too good to be true.
But you know, but I think it connects. This is
why this you using the phrasing stem cells and talking
about stem cells, I think is so much of where
the misinformation comes in here, because it's it like has
this aura of you know, well, these are cells from
a young this is a young cell. You know, this
(32:09):
is a cell from the beginning and so we put
it in and it can do everything. It regrows your valve,
it regrows your brain, it regrows your kidneys. You know,
it just goes all around your body and makes all
the pieces young again. And of course that is totally
not how stem cells work, but it sounds like it could.
(32:33):
You know, it sort of has its like I guess
it could. I guess it could be like that. And
and again it sort of like getting back to the
sales pitch. If you said, you know, we're gonna injact
some fat into your face, Yeah, okay, hey Jackson, fatten
in my face? Like I like, yeah, that's that's the thing.
I can imagine how that would smooth stuff out and
plump it up. If you say we're gonna injact stem
(32:54):
cells in your face, that feels like wow that then
you're gonna make me younger. You're not just gonna like
make my face fatter with the fat, you what in
my face? You're actually going to make the face younger
with the stem cells. And I think that's what people
are paying for. And that's the grift. That clip is
the grift exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And you know, not to say I have no idea
if mel Gibson makes money off stem cells or anything
like that, and people really do believe this, but you know,
anecdote isn't evidence. And when you are telling stories, and
humans are wonderful storytellers, you can manipulate a lot of things. Right.
You even heard them saying like, oh yeah, wasn't he
(33:28):
in a wheelchair and like, oh yeah, he could barely
talk and stuff like that, and it's really and then
all of a sudden he could. And all you have
to do is kind of take that baseline state pre
stem cell and be like, you know, kind of exaggerate
how sick the person was, and then you take the
state post stem cell and kind of exaggerate how well
they became, and you make that delta look really huge,
and it's just it's not reliable. I want to point out,
(33:50):
because we've hit on this a few times, that stem
cells are not magic. Adult derived stem cells can only
turn into a few different cell types, and I will
tell you what they are. So the cells derived from
your bone marrow can only make blood cells that is
as potent as there. They can't make brain cells, they
can't make car filt cells. There are stem cells in
(34:12):
your skin that make skin cells, Fine, no one's harvesting
those because it's quite painful to take out chunks of
your skin. And then there's mesenchymal stem cells, which is
what most of these regenerative medicine clinics are doing, and
they're capable of differentiating into bone cells, cartilage, muscle cells,
and fat. And that certainly sounds like a lot. And
(34:35):
you know, if cartilage is something that you know, it's
particularly when we're talking about neiosty arthritis and things like that,
you can sort of say, oh, well, okay, yeah, cartilage,
but it's not everything. It doesn't you know, it's not
going to fix your brain. We don't have stem cells
for that. And so I think if people just kind
of know that there are just biological limitations to how
this could work. Because I said cartilage, let me just
(34:55):
point out that there have been relatively rigorous MRI studies
looking at cartilage thickness before and after stem cell injection
in the knees. It also looks similar to injection with
other things like hyaluronic acid, and there might be in
both cases about a millimeter of cartilage regeneration, probably by
just increasing blood flow to the area. Some influencers are
(35:18):
starting to be a little bit more honest about this,
So there's still a ton of misinformation, a ton of
like their magic they turn into whatever cell their next to.
Not true. In fact, very few stem cells do anything
when they're in the body in terms of differentiating further,
they do release some cytokine, some small proteins that might
(35:39):
have immunomodulatory effects, so like either inducing inflammation or reducing inflammation.
So these cells do kind of have a talking effect,
like sort of talk to other cells. But we have
lots of different ways, including like steroid injections if we
want to tamp down the immune system. And so you'll
see some people who kind of acknowledge that it's not
just about magically turning into you know, a new heart
(36:02):
valve when you don't have a heart valve. But you
still have to ask yourself, why am I paying these
ridiculous amounts when there are other ways to get the
same effect.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, I mean, I think you know, for me, this
is a I find this space really understandable, but such
a clear example of something we see in many of
these wellness cases where you take a sort of vague
biological plausibility like that that comes a real good story
(36:32):
and then kind of take it all the way down
the road into something which is which is crazy. You know,
they kind of go all the way from this kind
of cure sicco selenemia under these like very very complicated
conditions into like, well that means it must be magic,
and you know, here are all the things we're gonna
we're going to do with it, and it prays on.
(36:52):
Of course, people's like desire for youth, and so much
of this is a kind of I want to look younger,
I want to see younger. I want to be younger.
This is telling you, like, we're not just going to
make you a look younger. This isn't botox. You know,
we're going to like put young cells in. We're actually
make you younger. And that's of course impossible, but very compelling.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
If I could talk about the power of hope for
a minute and get a little bit personal with my
own stem cell story. So a couple of years ago,
my mom was diagnosed with a very rare neurodegenerative condition
called multiple system atrophy. There's no treatment. It's kind of
a horrible neurologic condition where you just sort of like
(37:35):
gradually your body stops functioning. So I'm a doctor, I
run clinical trials. I'm a scientist. I have a lab here.
So when she got that diagnosis, the first thing I
did was go to clinical Trials dot gov and see,
you know, I knew there was no treatments, there's no
nothing approved. But I'm going to go to clinical Trials
dot Gov and I'm going to see what's out there,
(37:56):
like what are people testing right, Like, let's take a
shot on something. And so I'm going through the filters
and what's actively recruiting and whatnot. And I see a
study of stem cell therapies for multiple system atrophy, and
you know, these are trials that are like in the
it reads like it's in the medical space, right, it's
(38:17):
going to be it's the sickle cell thing, not the
regenerative medicine clinic thing. At least that's what I was thinking.
So I dig into this and I'm looking at the
report on clinical Trials dot gov. And the first red
flag I had is that they have to list the
conditions that they're testing the stem cells for and including
(38:38):
multiple system atrophy. Also listed in this protocol are traumatic
brain injury, stroke, progressive supernuclear palsy als, diabetic neuropathies, dementia,
frontotemporal dementia, Louis body disease, cognitive impairment, nervous system diseases
in general, Louis body variant of Alzheimer's disease. That's a
(38:59):
very broad protocol, right, Like, no one is testing that
many things.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
No one treatment is doing all of those things.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And nor would you if you were like a company
trying to prove that your therapy worked, you would never
enroll that diverse group, right, You'd like test it on
one thing, so you know what's going on. I dig
in deeper and I see that this protocol has been
active at least since twenty sixteen and has never reported
any results. So then I dig in to where this
is coming from, and it's being run out of the
(39:27):
clinic in Florida. I think it's called mdstem cells dot
com and it is a regenerative medicine clinic in Florida.
And all over their website they are saying, you know, oh,
we've got these clinical trials that are running to test
these different things. And you know, obviously people searching clinical desperate,
(39:47):
people like me searching clinical trials are clearly a source
of patients for them, But it still seemed odd to
me because as like, well, how can they make money
on this? You can't charge people to participate in a
clinical trial. Well, they're charging people to participate in a
clinical trial. So I found a news report talking about
this same clinic that said where someone pretended to call
(40:10):
so that they you know, like they secret chopped to
them basically, and we're told it would be about twenty
thousand dollars for one of these treatments, which again is
just like taking bone marrow out and they were going
to inject it into your blood and into your nose
like that was the treatment. Twenty thousand dollars. The doctor
who ran this clinic I actually used to have a
license in Connecticut. That license was revoked by my state,
(40:35):
which is a good thing. But he is licensed to
practice in Florida because of course he is. And this
I don't think anything made me angrier than this particular
experience in this space, and I'm trying not to let
it color my view of the entire like regenerative medicine
and stem cell industry. This is someone who's clearly praying
(40:55):
on very desperately This isn't someone who has you know,
it's like, oh, I've got my knee hurts, Like maybe
I should try this injection. This is like my mom
is dying of an incurable disease. Should I give you
twenty thousand dollars to you know, put some some fat
cells up her nose or whatever. But the fact is
these things live in the same space. And although you
know he's promising a lot more than someone who says
(41:17):
we're going to do some injections and make your knee
feel better, people need to understand that these are for
profit enterprises and stem cell is a marketing term and
a powerful one.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
And I think what is so tough also about that
story is imagine you were not a doctor who does research,
and you've come across clinical trials dot com, which is
not some scammer site. Clinical trials dot Gov is, in
fact where people register their actual clinical trials. This is
an actual government website. And people, how would you know
(41:57):
as a person that you're not going to be charge
of being a clipical trial That's like, that's true. You
know that because you're a doctor. I know that, but
people might not know that. You look at this, it's
on clinical trials, like go you go to this website,
they tell you, like, in order to be in this trial,
it's twenty thousand dollars. And of course this seems official
because it is you know, it is has the word
stem cell and is listed on this government website. And
(42:18):
I think it's an extreme example but also not an
extreme example of where people are just there is real,
you know, real costs, especially because you know, in this
case maybe there isn't something else you can do, but
in many cases there is something else you can do.
People are being told, you know, you should get stem
cell therapy instead of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, something that might actually
(42:42):
address your problems. And so it is relative to some
of the things we've talked about on this podcast. You know,
we talked about red light therapy, and you know, my
view is like that's a stupid scam, but like it's
a stupid scam in the sense of like who cares
you bought a mask and like you put the mask
on and you think you feel better, but you don't.
This is like potentially very damaging and preying on people
(43:03):
who in some cases are really really desperate for answers.
And I will say there are a lot of very
bad things that can happen as a result of some
of these things. So there are many cases in which
people going to some of these clinics have actually ended
up with very very bad, dangerous outcomes. So there's a
(43:25):
clinic in Florida in which a number of people were
actually blinded after some stem cells were injected in their eyes.
There are a lot of stories like that.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I saw that report. Also, I think it was done
under kind of a research protocol. And it's actually, like
doing this podcast, I'm beginning to see this other side,
like this world of using research to get around the
regulatory state. Right, Like I file research protocols because that's
my job, and like I do research. And this happened
with the peptides too, Right, It's like, how can we
(43:56):
inject these unapproved substances into people and like not be liable. Oh,
we call it research and we have them sign a
consent form. And yet you know the purpose of research
is to create generalizable knowledge, right, to like benefit humankind,
to publish your results. That's one of the reasons why
it's unethical to charge participants to participate in a research project,
(44:19):
because they are giving you something, right, they are, they're
volunteering themselves to be you know, experimented on. It is
not medicine. You don't do research for curative intent. You
do research to find out whether something is curative or not.
And then once you prove it, then sure you can.
You can sell it all you want. That's how capitalism works.
But research isn't medicine. And yeah, that particular study with
(44:43):
the eyes, Like the dumbest thing you would never do
in a research study where you're injecting something into people's
eyes is do both at the same time. Are you insane?
Would of course only do one and then see what happens,
and then these women you know, are blind in both
eyes because it's a bad protocol.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Okay, so we can do a smash or pass. But
I actually I want to pause here on what I
think is the most important takeaway. So before we started
this episode, we kind of came at it with like,
you know what, what do we want people to take away?
And I think that here is really quite important to
both of us that people take away that you should
(45:26):
not go to a stem cell clinic to do anything
that that you know there are if you are a
person with sickle cell anemia. It is of This is
of course a kind of therapy that you will be
discussing with your doctor. But if you are thinking about
using stem cells or some kind of stem cell clinic
for something in your health, do not do that.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, you're not getting stem cells. I mean, that's what
I want people to take home. It's like, there are
ways to get stem cells. They generally happen in a hospital.
It's generally for people with cancer, sickle cell, very severe diseases.
These clinics say they're selling stem cells, they're not. They're
charging you too much, even if they're safe. You know,
what they're injecting is safe. They're charging you an arm
(46:10):
and a leg for stuff that isn't really there.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Smash your pass stem cell therapy.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, I'm when it comes to regenerative medicine clinics, I'm
a hard pass on this. How about you, Emily?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I am a hard pass. I accept for sickle cellingemium
and a few canclood cancers.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yes, right, real stem cells are great. It's just this
is fake.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
All right. That's it for stem cells. So your mail
back Question of the week after the.
Speaker 7 (46:36):
Break, Hi, Emily and Perry, this is Wade in Santa Fe.
I've read that taking magnesium can help you sleep better,
and I'm wondering if that's really true or is that
just more Internet wellness crop.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Thanks, I take magnesium for sleep, Perry.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Oh okay, cool? What do you think?
Speaker 2 (47:02):
So? I started taking this because I'm a perimenopausal woman,
and I read the evidence as suggesting it is possible
that this could affect sleep in a positive way a
little bit. And I have a lot of self trackers,
and so I figured that I would try it and
I would see if it improved my sleep. So, I
don't know, do you think that it did based on
(47:23):
the data.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I read the data the same way. I think there's,
you know, evidence of modest benefit. We're talking like fifteen
to twenty minutes of increased sleep duration, a little lower
sleep latency, so falling asleep a little quicker. No large
randomized trials. Yeah, but you get so much exercise, I
feel like you must sleep well. But then why are
you taking magnesium? I'm going to say, yeah, I think
it improved your sleep a little bit.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
That is not correct. I am looking at my WHOOP
recovery analysis here on my phone, and it tells me
my magnesium supplement is plus one percent and it's not
statistically significant in contras has to do other things like
not drinking, which is a plus eight percent.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Yeah, I would take magnesium, but I'm not going to
give up alcohol.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Jeez, please'm be ridiculous. Yeah, I mean this feels to
me like something where there's no real downside. And if
you said, you know, I'm interested in trying it, I
can't see any reason people should not, and the data
is not large. I'm surprised we haven't seen larger randomized
trials on this, but I guess the point is that
it's no one would benefit from that because magnesium is
(48:32):
a generic over the counter thing and so there's not
a lot of incentive to run to run a trial.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Yeah, that's probably why doctor hatput On. Don't overdose. Take
the recommended dose you can. There is magnesium toxicity at
super high doses, so don't go crazy.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
My dad asked me about this the other day, which
you know, tells me it's out in the zeitgeist, because
my father will read any fad and try to follow it.
So we'll see what he says.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Let us know.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Emily's dad, Hi, Dad, that's it for us today, stick
with us next week, when we will ask what's the
deal with creating? Wellness Actually is produced in association with iHeartMedia.
Our senior producer is Tamar Avishai. Our executive producer at
iHeart is Jennifer Bassett. Our theme music is by Eric Deutsch,
(49:20):
and our content is for educational purposes only.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
If you like the show, help other people find us,
leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your
podcatcher of choice and help us spread the word about
the show. You can follow us on Instagram at Wellness
Actually pod and don't forget We want to hear from you.
Head over to Wellness Actually dot fm and leave us
a question for our mailbag or suggest a topic for
(49:43):
a future show.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
We'll let the influencers have the last word.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
You did the labor room surgery, no surger, wrap it
out of full length rotator cuff tear okay, And they
used ex's homes and it was gone. The next MRI
have the tear was gone. It just it goes. It
just seals up.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
Mhm
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