STEM CELL CLINICS- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

Are you sick?  Need help but can’t seem to find it?  If you have a serious chronic disease or injury, your primary concern is to get well as soon as possible.  If a cure is readily available, your licensed physician will prescribe it, your insurance company will pay for it and soon you will be back at work and play! However often the “CURE” is not available or the drugs, surgery or radiation wind up being worse than the disease or condition itself is. Conventional physicians seem to know only about the use of toxic drugs and dangerous surgeries and little if anything about safe, simple, natural remedies that stimulate and augment the bodies’ own healing mechanisms.  Many doctors downplay and even dismiss non-drug treatments that have yet to win FDA approval as well as those they are unacquainted with. “Regular” physicians in general only study and use drugs, surgery and radiation techniques to treat chronic medical problems since that is what they are trained and licensed to do. In fact if they use agents (like vitamins) that are NOT generally considered to be drugs their licensing board can try to take their license away from them since they are no longer following the “standard of care” given by their colleagues. Ask your physician about the use of an herb, vitamin, hyperbaric oxygen, chelation, ozone, magnetic or other safe, natural therapies and you will often be told that you should not use these safer, more natural healing therapies since they “could interfere with your drugs!”  Countless people suffering from one chronic health problem or another have been snookered by their doctors into refusing help from alternative, integrative, complementary, holistic, natural types of health providers and have elected to stay with their conventional orthodox doctors all the way to premature death and the cemetery.

One area of medicine that virtually all physicians know little about is the use of stem cells. Specifically, the use of stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood, bone marrow or fat to treat chronic medical and health problems. Most doctors also appear unaware of the fact that stem cell rich bone marrow and fat tissue can be harvested and given back to patients in their offices, so long as the extracted tissue is not processed beyond what the FDA calls “minimal manipulation.” This means that YOUR STEM CELLS CAN BE USED TO TREAT YOU – right here in the USA!

For those of you reading this who have an intractable or terminal disease that might respond favorably to an infusion of adult stem cells from umbilical cord, placenta, amniotic fluid, bone marrow, fat or other tissues, you basically have three (3) options: (1) find a licensed physician like Dr. Steenblock who will treat you with your own stem cells; (2)Get admitted to an FDA approved clinical study; or (2) Travel to a stem cell clinic in a country that allows the clinical use of pure adult stem cells.

If you can get into a clinical study this is great, provided it is well designed and you actually get the treatment being tested (Keep in mind that some clinical trials are placebo-controlled, randomized and blinded such that participants have no way of assuring he or she will get the actual therapeutic agent.)

However, many stem cell studies being conducted here in the US are flawed, according to knowledgeable critics. Clinical stem cell use expert Dr. David Steenblock has found that many completed clinical studies likely failed to reveal what stem cells can do because the researchers involved  either administered the wrong stem cells to begin with or used a single type of stem cell when a combination of them would have been better, or else put stem cells into people whose bodies were riddled with readily identifiable impediments to stem cell engraftment, proliferation and activity (Things that kept the stem cells from working).

Dr. Steenblock, who has done over 1,000 stem cell rich whole bone marrow treatments since 2006, is perplexed by the fact that the individuals who are designing stem cell clinical studies do not routinely consult doctors who are experienced in their clinical use. This oversight can result in their missing things that should be included in the study or else including things they really shouldn’t. Also, most do not appear to be taking into account things like occult (asymptomatic) infections, dietary practices and patterns, as well as other things that tend to interfere with or impede stem cell engraftment and activity.

This failure to consider asymptomatic infections, as well as dietary and lifestyle practices and such is, in Dr. Steenblock’s opinion, tantamount to letting people who chain smoke or drink alcohol into stem cell studies (Habits that can throw a monkey wrench into the inner works of stem cells or even kill them.) And this would obviously skew the outcome enough as to make a treatment that actually should work into a statistical failure.

For most people living here in America, your first consideration should be using your own stem cells to treat your medical problems.  First of all you will not get any new infectious diseases from the cells since they are your own. Second, Dr. Steenblock has determined new ways of invigorating even an “old” person’s stem cells to work in a much more youthful manner which results in a much better healing response. Third, Dr. Steenblock’s clinic is located in Southern California which is safe, beautiful, has a lovely climate and is fun to travel to. Finally, Dr. Steenblock’s prices are the most reasonable of anyone anywhere!

Even so, you may have no money at all and that is when you should be looking into getting into a clinical trial (You can research approved clinical trials at www.clinicaltrials.gov).  The next option is to try the use of a nutritional supplement that helps your own stem cells work better. You can read about Dr Steenblock’s formula and product StemGevity™ at www.stemgevity.com and you can order this product from his office toll free at 1-800-300-1063. To help you determine what your best course-of-action is please consider calling for a free consultation 1-800-300-1063.

If you can’t get into a stem cell study, this leaves travel to a stem cell clinic in one of the countries that allow the clinical use of pure adult stem cells such as Mexico, China, Thailand, Germany, or Panama.  The first thing to determine is whether you are dealing with a referral service or broker that has a nice web presence.  These people may or may not be ethical but in general have no responsibility to provide you with good care or much else, and are primarily interested in convincing you to fly off to some foreign clinic to get stem cells. They don’t practice medicine nor are they licensed by any organization so they can say and do pretty much whatever they want to. In other words, if you are not happy with the care at the place you are sent to, they don’t have any obligation to refund your money or to help get you out of the trouble that they got you into by their referral.  A better choice is to contact facilities you are interested in directly and see how they respond to your questions.  If they won’t talk to you when you call or all you get is a recorded menu with a litany of prompts to “enter this or that” number, you would be well advised to move on to the next clinic or firm on your list.

The next thing to consider is the types of stem cells they are using. Some facilities are legally restricted to using a single source of stem cells such as bone marrow, which means they treat everything on their “diseases treated” list with these.  In addition, the older you are the less robust your bone marrow stem cells are so if the treating facility just extracts your bone marrow and gives this back to you either immediately or during the ensuing 1 to 3 days, the chances of your getting a good result is fairly slim.  In older people, nonfunctioning senescent bone marrow stem cells should first be “flushed out” of the marrow via daily injections of Neupogen® which stimulates the remaining healthier stem cells to divide and multiple very rapidly. Then, 14 days after the last injection bone marrow is harvested and given since by then there will be ten times more fresh, vital stem cells present than were present before the Neupogen® “purge” was done. This process, which was pioneered by Dr. Steenblock, makes for a much more successful bone marrow stem cell treatment.

Other clinics use fat stem cells where the patient’s cells are prepared according to the directions provided by some outside company that specializes in making and/or marketing “fat stem cell kits” for use by doctors. In this situation the physician typically has no way to count the number of the fat stem cells present or assess how viable they are. According to Dr. Steenblock, procedures done using these kits produce such poor clinical results as to guarantee patient dissatisfaction and a resulting backlash against the doctors who used them. Given this, readers considering having a stem cell treatment should make sure to ask if the clinic or doctor has a stem cell lab and, if so, if it is equipped with a flow cytometer (A sophisticated cell counter.)  A good stem cell center will have these since without them neither the treating doctors nor you will know how many genuine stem cells you are getting. Also, only suitably qualified lab personnel can determine whether your stem cells are healthy and robust.

Naturally, anyone considering having a stem cell treatment wants to know if it is likely to work. Unfortunately most foreign clinics and hospitals build a case for doing their particular treatment on patient testimonials AKA case histories since they are not in a financial position to do bona fide clinical research studies. But case histories don’t tell the whole story since these clinics seldom discuss or disclose their failures. Some do not appear to even keep a tally of them and give lame excuses such as, “This sort of thing is what scientists do in big labs, not us”.

This iffy state-of-affairs leaves prospective patients in a tenuous position.  If you happen to have a medical condition or disease that is progressive and especially terminal, or for which the window of opportunity for responding to a stem cell treatment is narrow, these testimonials may be all you have to go on. There are, however, at least a few guidelines that will help you sort the “wheat from the chaff.” Among these:

• Eschew stem cell facilities that make no real effort to insure that their patients are free of asymptomatic infections, especially chronic ones. For example, Dr. Steenblock has found that many people with age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) have undiagnosed and unnoticed chronic sinusitis. Infections in the sinuses and elsewhere produce chemical signals that attract stem cells and as such could result in infused or injected stem cells winding up engrafted in infected tissue as opposed to the target organ or tissue. In addition, infections churn out a host of compounds that are inimical to proliferating cells and that interfere with the stem cells ability to attach to damaged tissues.
• Steer clear of stem cell clinics that treat most if not all diseases with a single type of stem cell.  Doctors and scientists who work with stem cells know that a single stem cell such as one from fat tissue or umbilical cord blood is unlikely to produce improvements in every conceivable disease or medical condition. It is by far wiser to find a clinic that can use or has access to bone marrow, fat and umbilical cord blood for the treatment of patients. Dr. Steenblock has pioneered the clinical use all three and has found that he gets much better results from a combination of them than from using a single type alone (Note: The fat and whole bone marrow treatments are done in his Mission Viejo, California clinic while cord blood derived stem cells are given at a clinic he consults for just across the US-Mexico border in Tijuana.)
• Avoid stem cell clinics that use the wrong methods to infuse or inject stem cells. One example is a foreign stem cell clinic that routinely treats people with arthritis using stem cells given by lumbar puncture, which is to say injection into the spinal canal. Doctors in the know such as Dr. Steenblock characterize the use of inappropriate treatment methods as not only “unnecessary” but “reckless.” The truth is arthritis is best treated by giving specific stem cells such as mesenchymals by direct injection in and around diseased joints. In addition to these direct injections, many experienced stem cell doctors also give stem cells intravenously (IV drip) in addition to the joint injections. Platelet rich plasma is another good question to ask about. If the clinic you are considering going to is not using these, pass it up! These should be used routinely since they add little to the cost of a treatment but add a great deal in terms of clinical benefits since they contain more than seven stem cell growth promoting substances.

If you are seriously considering having a stem cell treatment please keep all the aforementioned points-in-mind as your examine the claims and offerings of stem cell providers. These articles of mine should prove helpful in this regard:

• Foreign Stem Cell Treatments: How to Avoid Being Scammed
• A Checklist for Those Contemplating Doing Stem Cell Therapy Abroad
• For Those Considering Doing Stem Cell Therapy Abroad

If you are uncertain as to whether stem cell therapy will help your condition and, if so, which particular stem cell or mix of cells is likely to give you optimal clinical results, there is a simple straightforward way to find out: Dr. David Steenblock is offering consultations that focus on answering (stem cell-related) questions. All you need do to set up your consultation is to call toll free 1-800-300-1063.