Change Your Brain Every Day - Stem Cells: Separating Fact from Fiction, with Dr. Todd Ovokaitys

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

The conversation surrounding stem cell research and treatment can get muddled and confusing. Some say it’s a miracle cure while others say it’s not viable or practical as a treatment method. So what’s real and what’s just hype? In this episode, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen are again joined by stem cell research scientist Dr. Todd Ovokaitys to shed some light on the truth about stem cells, how they are implemented to repair the body, and how they really work to rejuvenate ailing body systems.  For more on Dr. Todd Ovokaitys, visit his page at: http://drtoddo.com/

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. This is really the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Brain Warriors are into science.

We want you to be armed, prepared, and aware to win the fight of your life. And what better tool to use than your own body to help you heal? Obviously, you have to eat right and exercise, get the right nutrients to put your body in a healing environment. But the idea of being able to use your own stem cells. It's pretty exciting. So talk to us about what you think is really the truth about how people can use stem cells in their own lives. What do you think is hype and what do you think there's actually solid science to support? Very good question. And our work really has focused on a very special type of stem cell that is kind of like, I would call, God's gift to stem cells. It's astounding, the implications of it, what it is, what it does, how it works. And if we really had the time, I could go through like the menu of,

for different types of situations, what would be the preferred type of stem cell? And that is an evolving art from the downside, from the aspect of, where is the hype that is over-promising and not delivering, I believe it's largely from those areas where allogeneic stem cells are produced. They may have some benefits because for a period of time in the body, they're making growth and repair factors, but it can be very variable. The cells probably are not going to incorporate in any meaningful way. And there's a lot more promise than can actually be delivered. And there's a lot of that going on. Then we get into the autologous world.

And there are strengths and limitations of the different types of autologous cells. The limitations of the mesenchymal stem cells from fat are that the older the person gets, the older the stem cells get and the less effective they become. So it's known that the stem cells from fat from a 20-year-old person are much more active and effective than from a 70-year-old person, for example. In addition, the cells are big. The average size is 12 to 30 microns, which is okay if you're going to inject them as is into, say, a joint space. But if you want to use them, say, for neuronal repair or for cardiac repair, or at least to turn back the aging clock,

if you inject them intravenously, as you know, the first place it goes to is the right side of the heart and the pulmonary circulation. And pulmonary capillaries are only about six microns in diameter. So you don't very effectively get a 12 to 30 micron ball through a six micron tube. So if you deliver them intravenously, they basically lodge in the lung. And there again, they may provide a chemical factory growth and repair factors that can have a systemic effect and that can be benefits. But other than wanting to get them to the lung, what might be useful for COVID-19, for example, and some studies are showing some benefits there that they're not likely to

get to a target organ that you want them to go to and incorporate S cells in that tissue. The workaround, the revelation, the aha moment is that there embryonic like stem cell or V S E L and the abbreviated name is a V cell and what's unique about these cells is that for unknown reasons added around the time that we are born, these cells go into hibernation. What's unique is that they are truly very small, typically two to four microns in size. And they're also truly pluripotential, which means that they can literally become, depending upon the chemical or cellular environment you put them in, any type of cell in the body. Not only that, because they go into hibernation around the time we're born, their telomeres are at a newborn caliber, and they tend to remain at newborn caliber throughout life.

So if someone is 5 or 10 or 50 or 90 years old, their V cells may be just as robust, active, and potent as the day they were born, like literally having saved their own core blood and circling around their bodies their whole life. What we have proven in laboratory work in the UK with a collaborator named Dr. Peter Hollins, is that we have effectively developed a method just from someone's peripheral blood to separate and concentrate these cells,

and then with our photoacoustic method, also to awaken these cells from their lifelong slumber. And then once they are awakened and functional, metabolically active, and we give them intravenously, because they are so small, only two to four microns in size, they easily can get through the pulmonary circulation

and go anywhere through the body. And the next step is using the photoacoustic signal, the song of the stem cells. We can direct that beam, usually from a few different directions. So where the beam overlaps is the strongest signal for exactly where we want the cells to go three-dimensionally in tissue.

So at any age, these cells can be used to go anywhere in the body three-dimensionally and turn back the clock, in essence, to newborn cells. So every individual pretty much has these cells and you are learning how to isolate or you have learned how to isolate these cells from the rest of the cells. Right. That's pretty wild. And you're getting them, you said, from peripheral blood. So you just needle in someone's vein in their arm.

And then how long does it take you to identify these cells? And then do you then go and grow them? Or how does that all work? Well, the beauty of it is that we have validated in a general way the cell separation and concentration method, which is very efficient. For a systemic anti-aging treatment, we just draw 60 cc's of blood or 6 tubes of 10 cc's each, and our preparation process takes 30-45 minutes. We harvest an adequate number of cells that we don't need to expand them. We're not really allowed to anyway in the US, but we don't need to. So within an hour of the procedure starting the cells are separated concentrated and activated awakened

and can be delivered intravenously and then the next process is about 20-25 minutes for that person's highest priorities for tissue regeneration to go from one area to the next to the next wow that's a really short process for something so that is so interesting i want to do this i really want to do this i turned 51 and as soon as i felt like as soon as i turned 50 i really felt like it just like like aging does not happen in a linear fashion it just like all of a sudden there was this massive jump so well one of the things I'm really interested in. So Tana, we talk about this, had a hysterectomy 18 months ago. Two years ago.

Two years ago. It just changed everything. The general anesthesia really did a number on her brain. When I scanned her, it was significantly less active. And what I think our work would be really interesting together is I have her baseline scan. If you did the photoacoustic stimulation in her brain after you injected her, would that show improvement in cognitive function, brain function? And not just my brain. So what I noticed was he often jokes that the only time I scare him is when I act like a girl. I often joke that I felt like I was neutered after that surgery.

So my drive, like I just felt lethargic. And what I'm hearing you say is like it sort of gives you this vitality back, if I'm hearing you correctly, depending on what the application is. And so, yeah, I mean, I would love to try it. What's the harm? I mean, I'm sure there are some risks, and we should probably talk about risks. But that's really interesting. I'm fascinated. I'm in.

Well, and so talking about going to vulnerable areas. So one general overall health and vitality. But you tell me in your experience, where have you seen it really work well and people are really happy and areas where it just doesn't work well and people are disappointed. We have had very good results and our most extensive experience is with neurologic cardiac and joint issues. If we're talking about localized areas where there are symptomatic issues that can be improved, if there's literally more healthy cells in the area to do that tissue's job.

So in general, we tend to get good results with those areas. And sometimes it's really surprising how quickly it can work so one of our really amazing cases was a harvard research neuroscientist so he really knew the brain very very well and he had suffered quadriplegia at 300 feet under the water he apparently got an air embolism in a spinal artery at death and couldn't move his arms and legs and ultimately survived it and recovered some function but was left with a variety of defects including neurogenic numbness in his left leg and no sensation in the palms of his hands. And what was amazing was that only three hours after we did the treatment, the numbness in his left leg that he'd had for 35 years was nearly gone. It was really the same as the other side.

And so that suggests, as he said, his theory was that they're idling neurons that if you give them vital active energetic cells around them it can recruit idling neurons to be more rapidly active like almost flipping a switch so that was a rapid effect and then a slow effect was what he described with the palms of his hands which is he couldn't say, a key from a coin in his pocket. He'd have to take it out and actually look on the counter and pick it out. And that over several weeks,

he started to have more and more sensation. He could actually tell one object from another, but it took probably about three or four months altogether before he said 90% of the sensation was back. And he felt that probably suggested new neuronal generation, actual formation and reconnection of new nerves. So it can be rapid effects and slower effects. Now for heart failure, we did a study in Armenia where we gave the cells IV, as is our protocol, and then directed them through this photoacoustic process

to the heart. That only was five minutes of direction from the anterior chest, five minutes from the left lateral chest. And I pulmonary splutters by drinks and know exactly where the heart lives inside of the chest three-dimensionally. And the comparison was a meta-analysis of almost

1,500 patients where those treatments were given intracoronary or intramuscular in the heart. And the average improvement in function in that meta-analysis was about an 8% increase in cardiac function over six months. So in contrast, our cells given IV with this photoacoustic direction, instead of 8% at six months, we had 14% in three days. Wow. Which increased to 25% in one month, 37% in two months, and plateaued at 50% in three months. Oh my gosh. That's what I was going to ask you is, did it last? But it didn't just last, it actually kept improving. Right my gosh. That's what I was going to ask you is, did it last? But it didn't just last. It actually kept improving. Right. Wow. That's amazing.

That's really good. When we come back, we're going to talk more about the practical application. And I want to know some of the risks. We want to talk about risks. Yeah. And costs for people as well. Yeah, it's just so fascinating. We're so grateful to Dr. Todd. To learn more about his clinic and his work, you can go to drtoddo.com. You can also go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, leave us a comment, question, or review.

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