Transcript of Episode 220: Can Stem Cells Fix Your Pain?
With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Dr. Harry Adelson
Dr. Pompa:
This could be the show of the year, and I’m not just saying that because one of my good friends was in it, but it’s Dr. Harry Adelson. This show is on stem cells. Two years of investigating this topic of stem cells, not only did I find the guy, but I found the answer to my problems, which you’re going to hear more about in this show. I believe this is the future of medicine whether you’re in pain, whether you have autoimmune, Lyme disease. There’s a lot of conditions right now that research is showing stem cells could be an answer.
You know what? You’re going to see some really cool video clips of my procedure and my wife’s face procedure. We even get into the face for the cosmetic appearance in this show. We even talk about Ben Greenfield. You’re going to have to stay tuned for that.
He was considered the man with the micro -inaudible- who injected stem cells. I’m just going to leave it at that. You’re going to have to watch this show. I’m going to see you on the show. You’re going to love Dr. Harry and the information we bring.
Welcome to a show that I’ve been waiting for a long time. The last two years I’ve been diving deep into the stem cell world. I’ll tell you, I’ve interviewed some people. I’ve read a lot, and I found this guy right here.
Dr. Adelson:
Right next door.
Dr. Pompa:
Right next door. As a matter of fact, the reason we are live in his clinic is because it’s so nice. It’s such a nice clinic. We’re live because he is from Park City, Utah, my hometown. He just happens to be the best.
We don’t have to mention names, but you’ve done a lot of big names in our industry, that’s for sure. You’re going to find out in this episode, this is going to be a great episode for you because I believe stem cells are the future of medicine. I really believe that, and that’s after two years of digging into this topic. I think that there is more here than you probably think. As a matter of fact, Harry, welcome to the show, first off.
Dr. Adelson:
Thank you very much, Dan. It’s a pleasure.
Dr. Pompa:
I am going to tell my story because you were just asking me how my back was. It has been a remarkable journey with my back for several years, and I believe this was the thing that really has changed me. You’re going to get to see actual video. I have some clips of my procedure with the stem cells. Harry, I’ll tell you, right now let’s start from the very top because when I mention stem cells to people, believe it or not, I get this response oftentimes. Oh, is that legal in the United States?
Dr. Adelson:
I do too.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s start there because people are going to be like are we doing something illegal here? Talk to that first.
Dr. Adelson:
Here we are in my evil laboratory in Park City.
Dr. Pompa:
The FDA is knocking down the door. You’re going to pass them on the way in.
Dr. Adelson:
It’s one of the best kept secrets that stem cell therapy has been practiced in the United States for about a decade now. I’ve been doing it for eight years. When I first heard about it, I had the same reaction. I had a patient come into me, and I had done prolotherapy for a number of years, and that’s all I did. I did platelet-rich plasma for a number of years, and that’s all I did.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, they are great procedures as well.
Dr. Adelson:
They work very well. They’re very similar. They rely on the body’s natural healing response. It really is the healing power of nature. A patient of mine came to me, and she brought—this was in 2010. She had a stack of articles of mostly animal studies that were on the use of bone marrow stem cells for the treatment of arthritis.
She’s been a patient of mine for years. She said, “I want you to harvest my bone marrow, concentrate it, and inject into my knees.” I said, “I can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that. I’ve heard of a guy in Kansas who’s doing that. I know him. I’ll introduce you to him, and you can go to him.”
She said, “I don’t want your friend to do it. I want you to do it.” I said, “Laura, I’m a naturopath. If I start doing bone marrow aspirations, do you know how much criticism I’m going to get?”
She said, “I’m an engineer for NASA, and I’m a woman. Do you know how much criticism I get? If you want to complain to me about being criticized, hike your skirt up.” I couldn’t argue with her. I found one of the ten guys who is doing it in the country. I watched him do one, and I started doing it.
Dr. Pompa:
You’ve been doing this longer than most. I think that’s why you’re—
Dr. Adelson:
I’m one of the only guys in the US.
Dr. Pompa:
When I asked who’s doing the best work, they said your name. Next question I had because I think I was heading to Miami, where is he? He’s in Park City. You don’t know him? No.
You came highly recommended, so that’s how I ended up here, for sure. When you look at stem cells, it’s progressed. You started in Prolozone, which actually did help me. It stabilized my low back, made a difference at least temporarily in my neck. My disk wasn’t regenerated.
Even my lumbosacral ligament that I had so many problems with, it was still weak, and it wasn’t healing even though it stabilized my back, and I was able to pick up dumbbells again. By the way, I’m seven weeks after I was in this office getting injected and already I can notice a massive difference. I’ve got a long way to go because I believe most of the healing occurs between month three and four, is that right?
Dr. Adelson:
Absolutely. When you inject stem cells, it tends to be the exact opposite of a steroid injection. If you do a cortisone injection if it’s properly indicated and done correctly, you get immediate improvement. If you’re lucky, it’ll last two months, and then it wears completely off. This is the exact opposite. This really takes two months for it to kick in. Once it starts to kick in between month two and six is where the effects kick in. Then it seems to last years.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m excited for that, to be honest with you.
Dr. Adelson:
What you have going on, Dan, is you have a dehydrated disc. You have a desiccated disc. It makes sense that Prolozone might help because the ozone is a gas, so it can penetrate into deeper tissues. It’s not like you’re injecting a fluid. When you’re injecting a fluid like stem cells, it absolutely has to be completely precise. You need x-ray for that. You need fluoroscopy, which very few people can do.
Dr. Pompa:
I have to say this; I have a unique thing that happened to my neck. I did a show recently with Gerry, who you just went to for cavitation. That’s a whole other story. He got his cavitations done. We’ll put it that way.
I got my cavitation done, and the infection moved up into another cavitation I didn’t know about. Bottom line was, days later all of a sudden I get neck pain. I never had it before. Not only pain, but I started to lose my range of motion. I literally had crepitus arthritis in my neck.
Looking at my neck on an x-ray was like what happened? I just don’t know what happened to my neck, realizing later that that happened right after I got that cavitation surgery. My neck literally went almost a year ago today, so we just injected my neck. When you see me get my neck done, that’s why I was getting my neck done.
Let’s talk about some of the benefits because people are watching this saying you’re talking about your neck. You’re talking about your back. By the way, we’re going to talk about why the whole body because you do a procedure, this whole body makeover that nobody else is doing where you literally do the whole body. We put it in systemically at the end, which you’re going to see me do, the face, everything. Before we talk about that particular thing that you’re doing, talk about some of the benefits of stem cells that are researched.
Dr. Adelson:
The concept with stem cell therapy and regenerative therapy as a whole is that the majority of chronic pain comes from the microscopic level. It’s not from the macroscopic level. The macroscopic level is what it is that you can see on MRI. The problem with that is if you take 100 people with no low back pain who never had low back pain and you do MRIs on them, 60% of them are going to have irregularities on MRI. Fifteen percent of them are going to have irregularities so severe that if they had corresponding symptoms, they would be candidates for immediate emergency surgery.
Similarly, a large portion of people with low back pain have MRIs that are within normal limits to the point where the American College of Physicians has put out a physician paper that for normal low back pain with no nerve symptoms, no loss of motor function, and if you’re not suspecting cancer, don’t do MRI. All doing an MRI does is send you down some expensive and dangerous rabbit holes. What that does is it shifts our focus from the macroscopic level, from the gross anatomy to the microscopic level, the cellular level, the tissue level, the connective tissue level.
The two main things that happen with tissue injury is one, you get chaotic collagen matrix. Now instead of this miracle fabric that stretches just the right amount in every direction and nerves that pass freely through as it stretches in each direction and just the right amount of micro circulation that adequately brings nutrition to the tissue and metabolic waste away, your miracle fabric loses its miracle properties. It stretches too much in one direction and not enough in other directions. If those nerve fibers that pass through get caught up and fire pain signals—
Dr. Pompa:
It’s scar tissue in a sense.
Dr. Adelson:
It is scar tissue. The other things that happens is you get neovascularization. Neovascularization is the growth of highly concentrated irregular blood vessels. Even though it’s a hyper concentration micro vasculature, it reduces your ability to bring nutrients to the area and metabolic waste away. Now you just have tissue that is unhappy and is firing pain signals.
One of the areas with the best research for stem cell medicine is wound care. If you have a non healing ulcer and you treat it somehow, it either gets better or it doesn’t. It’s very easy to study. There’s nothing subjective about it. It’s entirely objective.
One of the best areas of stem cell medicine is the treatment of wounds because you inject stem cells in there. The first thing that happens is you grow healthy blood vessels, and then you grow connective tissues over top. There’s a growing body of literature in all areas of stem cell medicine, but it’s really a small intellectual jump to say if you can grow new skin and cover non healing ulcers, it’s a small intellectual jump to say it can treat most things.
Dr. Pompa:
On that note, I’ve been scouring research, the internet studies for the last two years. People are doing this for Lyme disease now with amazing success. You could say wait a minute. How do stem cells affect Lyme? It has a profound effect on the immune system.
I’ve been a proponent of this for many years. You don’t kill Lyme. Lyme will always be in you if it’s in you. You improve the immune system, and the immune system figures out Lyme. Evidently, stem cells are doing it better than anything right now.
Major universities right now are doing stem cells post cancer treatment, before cancer treatment. What else am I seeing it for? We’re going to show the face procedure, cosmetics in stem cells. Hang on; I’m going to show you a piece of video there.
What else? Am I missing something? I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Those are some studies that I read over the last two years.
Dr. Adelson:
Here at Docere Clinic we just treat musculoskeletal pain. I prefer to just focus on pain. In the literature out there, I’m a member of the Cell Surgical Network, and they have a listing of all their IRB studies. It’s a long page.
It’s neurologic conditions, Parkinson’s, MS. It’s eye disease. It’s macular degeneration. It’s autoimmune disease. It’s including all of them, Sjögren's, and lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.
What’s interesting is the common thread between all the conditions is they’re conditions for which there’s not really good conventional options. The conventional treatment is a bad deal pretty much. It shows particular promise in that regard.
Dr. Pompa:
The neurodegenerative, the brain stuff from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, there’s some major help here for people.
Dr. Adelson:
If your brain is degenerating, tell me how a drug is going to help that.
Dr. Pompa:
It doesn’t.
Dr. Adelson:
You need the body’s natural healing response, and that’s what’s wonderful about this treatment is it truly is drugless medicine.
Dr. Pompa:
I got it done even for the anti-aging properties of this. I could name a lot of people who’ve come here for the exact same thing. Obviously, my neck and my back, but even more so I’m looking at my body as I’m in my 50s. I’m degenerative. You’ll see in a moment how we put it in the IV.
Talk about that. A lot of people are doing this. This is new, but a lot of people are realizing that putting this stuff in systemically, letting these stem cells go where they’re needed, you’re going to see in my video you injected into my sacrum where that lumbosacral ligament was, and you see it just travel right down to where the old injury was. These things have a way of making their way to the injured tissue. Talk about systemically.
Dr. Adelson:
When you asked me about stem cell medicine, I kind of launched into a thing about the indications and the pathology and the approach. How the stem cells actually work, the actual mechanism of action is we have stem cells in all of our tissues with a couple of exceptions and all the major musculoskeletal tissues and all the organ systems. Their job is to maintain the health of their micro environment. The way they do that is the two super human powers they have. This is actually the definition of a stem cell.
They have the ability either to self-replicate, when they divide they turn into versions of themselves, or they differentiate. They turn into target tissue cells. The most important of the stem cells is the mesenchymal stem cell, and that’s what we harvest from your bone marrow.
Dr. Pompa:
I call it mesenchymal.
Dr. Adelson:
You can call it either. You can say it either way. We get it from your bone marrow. We get it from your fat.
Dr. Pompa:
Which you’re going to see.
Dr. Adelson:
Right, now, when you have an area of pathology like an arthritic knee, like a dehydrated disc, or like a—whatever it is, an SI ligament, whatever it is you’re treating, when you have chronic injury, the idea is that—from the stem cell theory of aging is that part of the degeneration is you have the injury that you sustained or the multiple injuries that you’ve sustained has overwhelmed your body’s ability to replicate itself. You’ve shunted those stem cells into differentiation to such an extent they haven’t been able to go the other direction and divide, self-replicate, so you actually deplete the population of stem cells in that particular area. What we’re doing is we’re taking the stem cells from areas where you still have a robust population, mainly your fat and your bone marrow, and we place them exactly where you have the depletion, where you have the population that’s been beaten down. You’re, a sense, effectively repopulating that area and giving the body the ability to heal itself once again.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, so let’s show—I want to show this first clip. Okay, you talked about we’re harvesting them from the bone and the fat because we have the most there, and I’ll let you speak to it after of why you do bone and fat. There’s something new that I’ll let you speak to that may replace the fat, but I’ll let you talk about that. We’ll play this clip. This is just how it was taken from me, and then the process of how you actually make this—concentrate the stem cells. Inject it back in me. Matt, go ahead and play this. You can speak to it. They’re taking it out of my bone.
Dr. Adelson:
The needle, that’s a bone needle. It’s a called a Jamshidi needle, developed by Dr. Jamshidi. It’s placed in Dan’s iliac crest, so it’s the ilium, the large Frisbee—the two large Frisbee-shaped bones in your pelvis, which put it into one of those. The flat bones contain stem cells. Long bones do not. Actually, here, that is—that’s actually his fat. That’s the adipose. I’ve already done a miniature liposuction called a lipoaspiration, and there’s a fair amount of blood in there because Dan’s slender. When we get somebody who’s not as thin as Dan, then it’s a lot more yellow, but slender people tend to get more bleeding.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s happening there?
Dr. Adelson:
It’s in the incubator. It’s soaked with collagenase. It’s enzymatic digestion, so it’s in the incubator being agitated. The next step is it’s centrifuged. Then it’s filtered, and it’s centrifuged again.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, all right. Yeah, so that just shows the process. Now, why do you do it from fat and bone in most cases?
Dr. Adelson:
Let me back up because I’ve left something out of the last question. I’ll address that.
Dr. Pompa:
All right, go ahead.
Dr. Adelson:
I talked about differentiation of stem cells. The other major mechanism of action of stem cells is the paracrine effect.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s that?
Dr. Adelson:
That’s actually probably the more important of the two. The paracrine effect is the stem cell’s ability to—first of all, it’s intercellular communication. It’s the stem cells ability, first of all, to recognize that it’s in the presence of damaged tissue, and then second, once it identifies that it’s in the presence of damaged or dead tissue, it sprouts vesicles filled with growth factors called exosomes. It releases the exosomes, so once it comes out of the cell, then it’s an exosome.
Dr. Pompa:
Those are communication molecules, if you will.
Dr. Adelson:
This is filled with growth factors, with RNA, with all the necessary communication tools to, basically, trigger that tissue to heal itself through growth of healthy blood vessels, through triggering dividing of stem cells, mitosis, through—they have strong antimicrobial properties. You were talking about treating Lyme. I mean, I just wanted to mention that. That differentiation is really—we’re coming to believe is actually the lesser of the two mechanisms of action, and that paracrine effect, that intercellular communication is probably the more important.
Dr. Pompa:
Which actually brings me to another point. I don’t want to get too far off my second question.
Dr. Adelson:
I’ll remember what it was.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, good. The exosomes, we’re going to talk about. Now, one of the new things that you’re doing and only a few clinics in the U.S. are doing is actually using direct exosomes. Okay, back to the other, which is part of this topic, we talked about why bone and fat?
Dr. Adelson:
Sure, so I started doing bone marrow in 2010, and I was very happy with the results. What I found is we would do one treatment, and then we’d do a second treatment about two months later. We were getting really very good—we were very happy with the results. Then I heard about isolating stem cells from fat. There were all these rumors flying around about whether or not it was legal, so I waited. After about three years, 2013, I decided that it was okay to start doing it, so I started isolating stem cells from fat.
Dr. Pompa:
There’s more stem cells in fat.
Dr. Adelson:
Far more.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, and so the older you get, fat becomes maybe a better play on that?
Dr. Adelson:
Yes. The populations of mesenchymal stem cells in bone marrow diminish over time, but to begin with, they’re still low. From 60 cc of bone marrow, you’re going to get in the neighborhood of tens of thousands of stem cells. From 60 cc of fat, you’re going to get tens of millions of stem cells. However, what I found was—so when I started doing—we call it SVF, stromal vascular fraction, adipose-derived stem cells. When I started doing SVF, I thought—my instinct was to mix them together, but I thought maybe I don’t need to do bone marrow anymore. Maybe the fat will work just as well, or maybe it will work better without the bone marrow. In that case, I would mix it with platelet-rich plasma.
What I did is, for a period of four months, I would offer people one or the other. I’d say we can do bone marrow with which I have a lot of experience; there’s scientific data on it, or we can do fat, which I have far less experience. There are a lot more stem cells. Theoretically, you might get a better outcome, but I honestly don’t know. During those four months, people picked one or the other. Then what I did is—at that time, my dad came to visit. I wanted to just do both with my dad.
Dr. Pompa:
My family always experiment as well.
Dr. Adelson:
Right, after that, I just felt like if I’m—it should be in the Hippocratic Oath. Do unto your patient as you would do unto dear old dad, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, or dear old wife, who’s sitting to my right.
Dr. Adelson:
What I did was is there’s four months of people that I just did one or the other. I called them one year out, and what I found was, as had been my experience with the bone marrow, I got very consistently good results. I usually have to do two treatments. With the fat people, when it worked, it worked better than the bone marrow. It only took one treatment, but I had a higher non-responder rate. I had a 30% non-responder rate instead of a 10%.
Dr. Pompa:
I read maybe the reason, tell if I’m right, is one of the things about bone cells, stem cells, is they differentiate very well into discs and ligaments and things like that. Is that correct?
Dr. Adelson:
That could be. I mean, that might be the reason, but I really don’t know. Then, when I started combining them and I called people one year out, I found that I got the consistency of the bone marrow and the augmented improvement of fat, and I usually only do one treatment. I published an article on this very thing, on this survey that I did. It’s on my website.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that brings us to the next topic. The FDA is getting a little weird about the fat extracted for whatever reason, but now, there’s these things called exosomes that, again, you’re leading the way. You mentioned exosomes as being this communication molecule for stem cells to activate the healing to wherever you inject it. Talk a little bit about exosomes. You put my bone, you put my fat, and you put exosomes in me. Then you injected it systemically, talk about that. My wife had an IV of exosomes, a push of exosomes.
Dr. Adelson:
That’s right, so exosomes are—I get it from a laboratory in New Jersey. What they do is they purchase placentas from—so a woman gives birth through a C-section, and this lab purchases the placenta. By the way, the woman’s been screened for every imaginable communicable disease and genetic disorder and has passed that. This lab then takes possession. They purchase the placenta. They take the stem cells, the placental stem cells, which are very primitive, excellent mesenchymal stem cells, the most robust mesenchymal stem cells available, and they culture expand them. They grow them into hundreds of millions of stem cells. They then take those stem cells, those culture expanded stem cells. Now you have just tons of them, and put them in a stressful medium. They’re, basically, tricking these cells into thinking that their host is undergoing duress, so they start preparing for lean times, injury or starvation.
Dr. Pompa:
I love that.
Dr. Adelson:
They sprout these vesicles filled with growth factors, and then they actually lyse the stem cells. They destroy the stem cells, and harvest the exosomes. Discard all the other cellular debris, and just keep the exosomes. Now, when I was—the reason I wanted to make sure to talk about that paracrine effect is because we think that paracrine effect is actually more important. The exosomes do not have the ability to differentiate, but that is the currency for intracellular communication. That is how cells communicate with each other, and you’re just dumping them all into the system all at once.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that sounds exciting. Yeah, that’s exciting.
Dr. Adelson:
You’re not taking on the other person’s DNA, and that’s the real kicker about it is there’s no question of any sort of immune reaction because there’s nothing to react to.
Dr. Pompa:
I mean, I read there’s not—I mean, there’s not a lot out there about it because not a lot of people are doing it, but the studies I did read, I mean, I was like I want more. I was ready to come back in. I made my wife come in. I’m like you’ve got to get these things injected in you. I mean, the benefits already that they’re seeing, I mean, it could be the new thing, could it?
Dr. Adelson:
I think it could be a new thing. I think it’s worthwhile to combine them with your own stem cells.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s what we did.
Dr. Adelson:
That’s what we did, and that’s what we do here. The reason for that is, if you want—a single dose of exosomes we’ll give you a burst, but if you combine it with your own stem cells, now you’re repopulating your knee, or your back, or whatever with your own stem cells giving the exosomes in addition to that to really give it a huge burst. Potentially, your own stem cells can then take up those exosomes.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s cool.
Dr. Adelson:
They are the currency of stem cells.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, I would argue that’s why autoimmune all and all these conditions. You’re taking up those communication molecules and start making better immune cells. I mean, that’s what happens after a fast, by the way. When we’re fasting, we have autophagy that’s eating bad cells, and then we have a raise of your own stem cells. Your own stem cells start to replace all those bad tissues that your body actually got rid of, so you’re basically dumping a bunch of these incredible communication molecules into your system that know how to heal. They actually go into those places of healing.
All right, you do a few things that are very, very unique. One of which is—I made mention of it. It’s this whole-body makeover that you’re doing. I can’t say I did the whole-body makeover because I missed a few joints.
Dr. Adelson:
We came pretty close.
Dr. Pompa:
We came pretty darn close, though, right.
Dr. Adelson:
We did a full spine.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we did a full spine. I got my knees, my elbows. I got the infusion of the stem cells. Talk about the full-body makeover. How did it come to be? I think, again, if I’m the guy who wants to be as healthy as I can, I want a full-body makeover. Why?
Dr. Adelson:
The stem cell theory of aging states that we age specifically because our stem cells slow down.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.
Dr. Adelson:
We deplete the populations of stem cells. We age, and we get arthritic. Things start to change, and that is largely a function of us overwhelming our stem cells’ ability to replenish healthy new tissue. How the full-body stem cell makeover came about is that I’ve always—I started out doing prolotherapy. When you inject prolotherapy, first of all, insurance doesn’t cover it, and second of all, it’s very inexpensive solution. It’s dextrose. I, from the beginning would do—someone would come in, and they’d want to do their hips and their knees and their ankles, yeah, sure. They want to do more than that, fine. There’s no problem. When you go to a conventional MD, even the ones who are doing regenerative medicine, many of them get stuck in this mindset of for so many years insurance will only pay for one thing, so we’re just going to do one thing. They get stuck in that.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s true.
Dr. Adelson:
I never got stuck down that road. The second reason is a lot of my patients are farmers, ranchers, and oil field workers. We get a lot of busted up cowboys. That’s a diagnostic code for—when I put in their chart notes, it’s, assessment, busted up cowboy. These guys are busted up.
Dr. Pompa:
We do live in the West.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, I mean, the joke I make with them is that they’ve exceeded the terms of their warranty.
Dr. Pompa:
Actually, I was in your waiting room, and I actually met one of those guys. That’s good.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, so that, and then the third thing is two years ago we switched to doing all of our procedures under sedation. We have a board certified…
Dr. Pompa:
You’re going to see that in a second.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, we have an anesthesiologist who puts you to sleep. It’s not general anesthesia, but it’s sedation. You’re asleep. It’s the same as you get for a colonoscopy, or getting your teeth pulled, or something.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, I have to say that was the best part.
Dr. Adelson:
It’s great.
Dr. Pompa:
I woke up two and a half hours later, you tell me.
Dr. Adelson:
It’s great.
Dr. Pompa:
I was like, is that—that’s it? I was saying stupid things because—look. My wife’s laughing over there. I was talking about—well, I won’t go into that.
Merily:
I have leverage for another show if I need it.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m going to get in trouble here. Needless to say, I woke up going that was it? Honestly, I had no pain.
Dr. Adelson:
You’re happy.
Dr. Pompa:
When you see the next clip here, you’re going to be—I was happy.
Dr. Adelson:
That’s the thing. What I found was I’m convinced—the reason I switched to doing all of my procedure under—all my procedures under sedation is I’m convinced I get better outcomes. The reason is, when people go through a bone marrow aspiration, a liposuction, getting their disc injected, getting their C1, C2 injected…
Dr. Pompa:
Stressful.
Dr. Adelson:
It hurts and it’s stressful. Now, when they think of me and they think of this treatment, they’re pissed off, understandably. It’s like they’re enduring the…
Dr. Pompa:
They anchor into negative.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, so when they think of me, they have this negative connotation. Now, they go to sleep. They wake up. Diane, our recovery nurse, is this very lovely person.
Dr. Pompa:
She’s so sweet. Oh, my God.
Dr. Adelson:
She’s so sweet, and you wake up to her. We give you a little IV Tylenol, and it’s just like you’ve had this—now, you have this great association with me. Wake up kind of stoned.
Dr. Pompa:
Saying stupid things.
Dr. Adelson:
That’s how the full-body makeover came about is it just organically grew.
Dr. Pompa:
Let me tell them what it is exactly. Basically, he does every joint in your body.
Dr. Adelson:
We take a lot of bone marrow. We take a lot of fat. We isolate the stem cells.
Dr. Pompa:
Everything, yeah.
Dr. Adelson:
We use a lot of exosomes. We have you face down. We do the spine from the base of the skull to your tailbone, every level of the spine, epidurals in the cervical spine, epidurals in the lumbar spine, turning you over, both shoulders, both elbows, wrists and hand, hips, knees, ankles, foot.
Dr. Pompa:
You de-age, man. I’m telling you, you de-age. Not to mention the face, which is an option.
Dr. Adelson:
Oh, yeah, you have the option.
Dr. Pompa:
You don’t have to get that.
Dr. Adelson:
You have the option. Dr. Amy Killen will come in and do the skin of your face and hands.
Dr. Pompa:
I got it.
Dr. Adelson:
She’ll do the scalp for hair growth. You guys didn’t opt for…
Dr. Pompa:
Face and hands?
Merily:
I did the scalp.
Dr. Pompa:
I hate my hands.
Dr. Adelson:
No, but you guys didn’t do the O-Shot, P-Shot.
Merily:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Adelson:
She’s do also the…
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, I interviewed Amy, Dr. Amy. Do you remember the title of that? It was sexual dysfunction was where we started. Then we ended up in stem cells, and we talked about the face. You’re going to see a clip of her as well.
Dr. Adelson:
She injects the penis and the vagina, whichever one you have.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, now I’m going to use his name.
Merily:
Or both.
Dr. Pompa:
Ben Greenfield, I sent him here. He’s coming.
Dr. Adelson:
Next week.
Dr. Pompa:
Next week, yeah.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, a week from tomorrow.
Dr. Pompa:
Matter of fact, he’s staying at our house. Ben’s getting what I got. Ben is now world known for injecting his own penis with stem cells. Now, in Ben’s defense, he didn’t inject his own penis, but he did have it injected.
Dr. Adelson:
I actually have a patient, a Green Beret, who wants to—because I don’t do it. I don’t do the penis injections. He said, “Oh, I’ll just do my own. Just tell me what to do.” I was like, “Are you kidding me?”
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, first of all, in Ben’s defense once again, he was actually paid by a very popular men’s magazine to examine every sexual enhancement there is. Then, basically, rate them, and write an article on. He was actually paid to do it.
Dr. Adelson:
He lost one of his big sponsors.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, he did. I know. They didn’t like it.
Dr. Adelson:
I guess, any kind of performance enhancement, that counts…
Dr. Pompa:
They made him out to be a lunatic. I mean, he’s there with the syringe. He’s like man injects his own micropenis, actually. Okay, I don’t know anything more than that. I don’t think he has a micropenis, okay, but that’s what they pinned him on.
Merily:
He told us he definitely does not.
Dr. Adelson:
I got to just tell you guys.
Merily:
He does not.
Dr. Pompa:
Can we cut this? No, I’m kidding. No, we’re not cutting.
Dr. Adelson:
I have to tell these guys this. Ben Greenfield, I was in the airport, flying down to Austin, Texas. I’m sitting there, and there’s this guy. I hear this W-A-A-A-A-A. I look, and this guy has this jackhammer massage thing. He’s facing away from me. I just see his back, and he’s got a hoodie on. He’s going like this W-A-A-A. I go that’s got to be Greenfield. Sure enough, it was.
Dr. Pompa:
It was. Yeah, it was.
Dr. Adelson:
There’s only one guy. Okay, sorry.
Dr. Pompa:
We digress. Hey, Matt, let’s show the clip because I think this is—I want to put out one thing before you show it, though, is that you do a couple other things very special, which is really important in this area is you use an X-ray video.
Dr. Adelson:
Fluoroscopy.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, fluoroscopy. It’s low-resolution, but it’s also low-dose radiation.
Dr. Adelson:
Very low-dose radiation.
Dr. Pompa:
The best part about it is you’re able to go exactly where we need it, and you’re going to see that. You’re going to see him go right into the disc exactly where it needed to go. Matter of fact, you’ll see him show it. There’s the spot. It’s this big, and you’ll see him go right in there. Then you’ll see a side view, and that’s my sacrum. You’ll see it go in, and then you’ll see it, vroom, go right—they go right for the injury. They know what’s injured, and they went right for the injury. You’ll also see him do my knees in this clip as well. You’ll see him do an IV, how they—well, IV, the push, so let’s watch the clip. That’s my dried up disc.
Dr. Adelson:
This is L5-S1 disc. That is, basically, the deepest part of your body.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re going in now.
Dr. Adelson:
That’s a seven inch needle. We’re looking at it in oblique angle. That just switched to a transforaminal epidural.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, now I’m showing my neck. Now you’re going in, under video, into the exact facet joints, right?
Dr. Adelson:
That’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and then there’s the actual injection.
Dr. Adelson:
Keep in mind he’s asleep for this.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I feel nothing. The next day, I had no pain, by the way, no pain. Okay, now, this is my sacrum. Now, watch, you saw it go right down. Now, watch, you’ll see that black, zoom, right down. That’s my lumbosacral ligament that was tortured. You’ll see the stem cells going right there.
Now, here’s my knee, and you’ll see it going right—there it is, boom, right in. Right in my meniscus that needs healed. There it is. You see it going right for the meniscus. Now we’re seeing him inject it just right into my vein, so it’s going systemic through my body.
Dr. Adelson:
We’ll let the anesthesiologist do that so we don’t we get all—we share the fun.
Dr. Pompa:
There it is. Yeah, I have to say, I mean, it’s—I mean, I had a lot of injections. I did. I mean, Prolozone, like you said, it helped. The Prolozone did not help my neck, even though it did stabilize my low back, but I think the specificity of going exactly into those areas is key. How many people are doing that type of video work with that?
Dr. Adelson:
There are clinics that do—there’s a lot of clinics that do fluoroscopic guided injection of stem cells but nobody who will do as many injections as I do in a single sitting, and not with the same methodology that we use. The problem that I see with a lot of pain management guys who get into stem cell medicine is they just do—they just basically replace steroid injection for stem cells. Instead of just a single injection, they’ll just do stem cells like that whereas I’m thinking of it like a—I’m not thinking of it as a mechanic where I’m looking to repair individual parts of the motor. I’m thinking like a gardener, and I’m treating entire tissue beds. That’s why I do so many injections because there’s rarely one pain generator.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Oh, it’s so true.
Dr. Adelson:
It’s these tissue beds. It’s the loss of the miracle properties of your miracle fabric, the collagen, and it’s the neovascularization, the sprouting up of all these irregular blood vessels. We need to get all of that, so we do the posterior column, which is behind the spinal cord, which is the facet joints, which is the multifidi, which was the nerve roots exit. We do the epidural injection, so now we’re into the spinal canal where it’s been proven that you can have that neovascularization, those irregular blood vessels in the spinal canal. We go in front of the spinal cord into the intervertebral disc.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, I mean, as a chiropractor, I mean, nobody gets it better than us. I mean, you can’t affect this without affecting this, so I wanted my whole spine done. I mean, it makes total sense that if this is not right, how much of it is coming from my injury at C5, which was also an injury wrestling years ago?
Dr. Adelson:
The basic concepts of regenerative medicine are based on the tensegrity, which is—that’s precisely that. If I twist your shirt here, it affects clear up to here. You can see the tissue change.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, you’re messing me up, man. By the way, one of the things I was saying, so funny, even I called you when I was home that night. Did you get into this capsular ligament? I kept asking the same question. He started laughing. I’m like, “Why are you laughing?” He’s like, “You’ve asked me that no less than 20 times, maybe 50.” Anyways, you’re going to say funny things. Look, in that injection you had the exosomes.
Dr. Adelson:
Put it this way. I’ve listened to enough people coming in and out of anesthesia. When I had my colonoscopy, as I was going in, I said when you feel the drugs hit, shut your mouth. Keep your mouth shut. Shut your mouth.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, my wife, she wanted to put it on—she wanted to film it. My son bailed me out and said don’t, no.
Merily:
He had the camera, otherwise it would’ve been filmed.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, that was a seasoned teenager. You can tell who has the smartest.
Merily:
He has us for parents. You’re darn right he’s seasoned, Cajun.
Dr. Pompa:
Anyway, all right, we are going to bring her into it. Anyways, in that injection tube that you saw him putting in, there was my stem cells from my fat, my stem cells from the bone, and the exosomes. Then, boom, we also put them directly into the body. Part of the whole-body makeover is also the face. I want to play a clip. Amy Killen works with you here. I interviewed her on—oh, by the way, all of the—you can watch my whole procedure, the full length of everything, if you’re even more curious. It’ll be up on YouTube, so check out the whole video on YouTube. It’ll be cool to watch, actually. There’s a lot more graphics there so warning you. Anyway, no, there’s a lot there. It’s actually really good to watch.
Anyways, let’s watch this next clip. We talked about the face. I’ll let Amy, Dr. Amy, speak to it. Then you can speak to it after the clip. Matt, go ahead and watch this clip. Yeah, Merily, you’re right here. You want to speak to any of this?
Merily:
Glad it’s over.
Dr. Pompa:
You got to squeeze in here.
Merily:
Actually, I’m so glad I did it.
Dr. Pompa:
She would never do Botox. Is that good?
Merily:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
She would never do Botox. There you go, just lean in. It’s six weeks because we ended up doing it a week after I…
Merily:
Actually, I see Gabby, the girl that does my hair, on Thursday, so it’ll be interesting to see if she detects any new growth. I will say I was itchy. I’ve been itchy. I periodically find myself scratching just right here, so I know that’s a sign of, obviously, something has been stimulated. My face, the first thing I noticed immediately is I was starting—because I was losing collagen, I was getting this puffiness, but it wasn’t like a puffy eye. It was more of an uneven texture to that puffiness, which was driving me absolutely insane. That really has virtually almost completely gone. I’m doing exactly what Amy is telling me to do as far as keeping on course, and the next thing I’m to do, which I actually have scheduled…
Dr. Pompa:
Just some PRP, vampire, they call it a vampire…
Merily:
Yeah, we’re doing that again Wednesday morning.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and likewise, you can speak to this, Dr. Harry, to same amount of time. This isn’t something you put it in. A month later you go, oh, my goodness. It doesn’t work like that.
Dr. Adelson:
Precisely.
Merily:
No, so I’m patient with that. Yeah, tell them about how that actually works. It does take time, so I’m not looking for a miracle. Honestly, I’m not looking for that anyway, but I’ll be super excited just to have the benefit of what this can potentially do.
Dr. Pompa:
We’re in new territory here too. We actually had the exosomes done. I mean, how many people have actually had that in their face? I mean, not many. It’s like this clinic and Beverly Hills is doing this.
Dr. Adelson:
The clinic in New Jersey, the guy who developed—the guy who launched a lab, Kimera Labs, Doug Spiel, I think he has someone in his clinic doing it cosmetically. The way he developed exosomes is—I was a telling one biologists that he has a relationship with a friend of his burned his face really badly. His grill blew up. He had a grill accident, burned his face terribly. This lab, the guy who grows stem cells, says I have this culture medium that I grow all these stem cells in. It’s probably loaded with exosomes. Let’s put some of that on there, and he had this miraculous fast healing time. He has pictures on the Kimera website.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve seen pictures pre-imposed with this stuff. I mean, if it can do that to a burned face, I’m like, yeah, you’re darn right I’m doing it. My wife’s 50. Can you believe that? You see her face? That’s amazing. I mean, honestly, why wouldn’t you do it? I mean, the exosomes, I think there’s an amazing future here, and again, this clinic, New Jersey, Beverly Hills, that’s about it, new territory. I know people watching have heard of the vampire face. That’s where they do the micro-needling, and you heard me differentiate what she was doing. She does the micro-needling, which brings the exosomes and PRP into the face.
Merily:
After.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, the vampire facial is just PRP in the micro-needling. This is the vampire facial with the PRP, exosomes, and then she does the deep injections, which is completely different than the vampire facial. It takes it to the next level, yeah, but it takes time. I mean, just like anything else. It heals over six months, even a year from what I read.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, that’s right. It’s very interesting for me. I mean, I don’t do the facial treatments. Amy does them. It’s interesting for me because I get to see with my eyes somebody’s face change, and it’s the same thing that’s happening when I inject their disc, when I inject their knee.
Dr. Pompa:
You don’t see it.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, I don’t get to see it. I’m just basing everything on what they’re telling me, what improvement they’ve had.
Dr. Pompa:
I can tell you, man, you can’t see my disc, but oh, my gosh, it’s so—me even sitting here this long, in the past I would be really—I feel nothing right now.
Dr. Adelson:
That’s great. That’s awesome.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome is right. Hey, you’re the man. That’s why I’ve already sent a bunch of people here, man.
Dr. Adelson:
Thanks.
Dr. Pompa:
I believe in you. No doubt about it.
Merily:
He’s a great guy, just a nice man, super nice.
Dr. Adelson:
Thank you.
Merily:
When I met you, I just was so drawn to your personality. He came home and said, oh, my gosh, I love him, and he’s brilliant. Then I met you, and you just have this warmth. Of course, we love your family, yeah.
Dr. Adelson:
Some cute girls at home.
Merily:
You have adorable girls.
Dr. Adelson:
There’s a lot of cuteness going on in my house.
Dr. Pompa:
There’s a lot of cuteness going on there. No, listen, we appreciate the knowledge you’re bringing, being on the cutting edge of this. I appreciate it. That’s why I send people here. To bring it full circle, I believe this is the future of medicine. I really do. I think it goes beyond pain. I think staying with what the FDA knows it’s good for. We can talk about it, pain, but it goes beyond pain. It really does.
This is the future. Again, go to YouTube. You’ll see the full clips. I’m going to put full clips of Merily’s whole facial there so if you’re interested in more in that. Give them your information here. How do they find you?
Dr. Adelson:
Sure, we’re located in Park City in the Newpark area, which is much—we’re only about 25, 30-minute drive from the Salt Lake City Airport. Eighty percent of our patients come from out of state. We have large population of international, a lot of Canadians, more and more Europeans. We have people come from United Arab Emirates. We’ve got people coming in from everywhere. Our website is Docere—I picked a goofy name. I mean, I love the name of our clinic, but nobody can pronounce it. Nobody’s ever heard it. It’s Docere Clinics, D-O-C-E-R-E-clinics.com, Docere Clinics.
Dr. Pompa:
They could get Dr. Amy there.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Facial, if you’re just interested in that, the full-body makeover, whatever it is, that’s where you go.
Dr. Adelson:
Yeah, or one toe, if that’s what you need.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, man, exactly, or one toe.
Dr. Adelson:
We can even do that.
Dr. Pompa:
All right, man, I know you’re going to get a lot of people calling in, and you deserve it.
Dr. Adelson:
Thank you.
Merily:
Yeah, you do.
Dr. Pompa:
So do you all. All right, see you on the next show.
