Mesenchymal Stem Cell Treatment with Dream Body Clinic
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Eva:
Hi, this is the Pure Living Family podcast. I'm Eva. My little brother's Theo. And my mom and dad are Shawn and Angela.
Angela:
Hi, friends. We are here in Mexico in Nuevo Vallarta doing the stem cell treatment for Theo. We have Josh here with us from Dream Body Clinic. Say hi, Josh.
Josh:
Hello. How's it going?
Angela:
Shawn's here as well. And Theo you'll hear running around in the background.
Shawn:
We just did the first treatment and Theo's... We were really worried, but it turned out to go really well today. So we thought it would be a good opportunity for us to sit down with Josh who helps run Dream Body Clinic, and he could kind of tell the story of how it came to be and give everyone inside view and access to what happens here.
Angela:
Well, first off, how we heard about Dream Body Clinic was through an autism mom that's in my little group. We talk about all the time. Shout out to Lindsay. Lindsay had been researching Dream Body Clinic. She had done stem cells at a different location previously, and we knew that we wanted to do stem cells. So after FMT, we started researching a little bit, but really just relied heavy on Lindsay's knowledge.
Angela:
I know that COVID kind of set everything back for a little while for everyone getting down here, but that's when we decided to reach out to Josh. Just a few months ago was when we were like, "Okay, we're ready for stem cells." We're kind of waiting for Theo to pass through a PANDAS flare and we are wanting his body to be calm down in hopes that he would just receive the stem cells better. But then the more we learned, the more we researched and just went with our gut instincts. We were just like, "No, we just got to get down there." That's when we reached out to Josh.
Josh:
Yeah. You guys got a hold of me and happy to help. Lindsay was just here and we've been in talking probably for over a year. Close to it. She's really been doing research and all that. And she went to the other clinic in the past. Yeah, we've had quite the influx of autism patients just over the past probably three or four months. We're getting a lot of patients that initially started doing our intrathecal treatment, which is part of it now. The results from that have been incredible. A lot of those initial patients have been seeing... It's been six, nine months since that, and the word of mouth has gotten out and it's really helped us to help more people.
Shawn:
So you've been in operations for about nine months now?
Josh:
No, we've been around for nine years. Autism wasn't one of our main focuses. We started doing the stem cells five years ago. And with that, joints, knees, elbow, shoulders, those are kind of the... Everybody was already looking for those things. Autoimmune diseases were part of it. And then Dr. Riordan down in Panama, he had started treating autism quite a bit in the past. And so, word starting getting out more and more that stem cells were helping with autistic children and even some adults to an extent. So that started happening and we started just kind of refining our process and the different techniques and treatments that we were doing. Out of that, some patients did come for autism and we saw success. That led to more and more people coming really.
Angela:
I know you touched on stem cells with autoimmune diseases, but will you tell everyone just how stem cells can benefit someone with an autoimmune disease, whether it's from PANDAS to Hashimoto's? I'm sure you've seen everything. Right?
Josh:
Yeah. Pretty much across the board. It works the same way for all of them. The mesenchymal stem cells, we like to think of them as the manager on the construction site. They're seeking out inflammation and immune system function that is not going properly and they go after that. For the immune system, they target it out and they send out what are called cytokines. Those are pretty popular right now, because of COVID and everything with the cytokine storm.
Josh:
The cytokines really are just signaling proteins. They're actually a good thing in most cases. In this case, they send those out to the immune system and it's sort of like antivirus software for a computer. The software is not working properly in that immune system. So in a case like Hashimoto's, like you mentioned, it's attacking the thyroid when it should be protecting it. And in this case, the stem cells reprogram that to basically stop attacking the thyroid and allow it to heal. There's usually inflammation at the site like that and they go in and they start guiding the cellular repair.
Josh:
So this type of stem cell... The man who named them, Dr. Arnold Caplan, he's a professor up at Case Western University. We've gotten to work with him and meet him and different things. He wishes he could rename them. He named them back in the early '90s mesenchymal stem cells. He wishes he could rename them messenger signaling cells, because in your body... People get confused thinking they're embryonic, aborted babies, they become anything. That's not how these work. They don't become anything. Their main function is, like I mentioned earlier, they're like the manager on the construction site. It's the different things that they're sending out that allow your body to heal like it did when we were healthy, little kids. That's really the way that it's working. It's the different guidance of either the immune system or of tissue repair. We see a lot of chronic degenerative diseases too, where we see benefits. That's really what they're doing.
Angela:
With these stem cells, it's all donor stem cells, correct?
Josh:
Yeah. We only work with donor cells. The reason why is that you can take them from... In the United States, they'll take them from, say, bone marrow or fat-derived. But they can't culture the cells, meaning replicate them, and it becomes a numbers game. We do an IV of, say, like a hundred million. Where in the United States, you're lucky if you get a hundred thousand from fat. You're lucky if you get 10,000 from bone marrow. And you can't replicate them. There is one lab up there that does take it from umbilical tissue like us. But again, they can't replicate. So they're lucky if they get maybe four or five million. They then have a freezing process to deliver it and usually with about 50% loss in that. So it's just not enough cells.
Josh:
And then on top of that is that first round of cells is the worst round, because it's a traumatic event trying to isolate them or even taking a liposuction for fat or bone marrow aspirate. That first round is not the healthiest, because it's a traumatic event. It's just been taken out of where it belongs and they don't release as many cytokines. They don't release as many exosomes, as many chemokines or trophic factors. So the replicated cells work better.
Josh:
We've also got the advantage that replicated cells, because they're from such young tissue, they haven't experienced a bad immune system. They don't have that response. Which Dr. Caplan goes into this a lot if you pull some of his videos up. You don't want your own cells if you have an autoimmune condition. It'd be pointless. They're already not working properly. By taking them from placenta and umbilical cord tissue, mesenchymal stem cells lack what's called HLA, human leukocyte antigen. That's what would tell your body to reject it. If you were a perfect donor for me for a kidney, my body would still want to reject that kidney, because our HLA markers are different. By the mesenchymal stem cells lacking that, you don't have to worry about it. We could do a biopsy of your bicep right now, isolate the stem cells, and we could inject those into me. No problem. There'd be no risk of rejection. That's why we use mesenchymal stem cells and that's why we take them from donors.
Josh:
Our screening process is still really in depth. The women that we take them from, it's a fertility clinic. They're all live healthy births. They're pre-planned, C-section delivery. And even then, only one out of 100 is viable for us to use, because it's tissue that normally gets thrown away. The doctors aren't being careful and they're worried about the baby, like they should be. So about one of those is viable. We take that. The rest we lyophilize, meaning freeze dried, for adult patients, we use as like a super vitamin shot.
Josh:
And the tissue it's then extracted from, the ladies that donate are third-party lab tested for everything. My son's six. We had him here. The list of blood panels they give women just even for a regular birth, it's a couple pages of markers. Every virus, retrovirus you can think of. A mesenchymal stem cell couldn't carry a normal virus, so you don't have to worry about that. There's a less than 5% chance it could carry a retrovirus, so we check for all those. The women are tested. The tissue that we use is then tested. And then finally, the cells that are isolated are actually tested. So everything's triple-checked, third-party lab.
Josh:
We know we have to be even stricter than maybe a US lab, because there's a bad perception of Mexico. It's kind of funny, because really the doctors, the schooling they get here is better, in my opinion. It's a lot more hands-on. It's a lot more integrated with actual patient care as opposed to just memorizing things. But it gets a bad reputation because, like anywhere, there are some bad ones.
Angela:
So I know people are going to ask. Why can't you receive this type of stem cell treatment in the US?
Josh:
Because of the cultivation factor, meaning replicating. Now there are stem cell clinics in the United States. They are now about to start cracking down on those, because three and a half years ago, the FDA gave a moratorium on stem cell therapy saying, "All right. We can't culture, but we're not going to really come regulate anyone for the next three years." They then gave it a six month extension. And that time frame's up. And we're already seeing different clinics in the United States looking to move to Mexico and other countries, because they're not even going to be able to do those fat-derived or bone marrow derived exosomes. They were kind of a legal workaround. Those have been regulated. They're going to crack down on all of it according to what I've been reading recently from different lawyers and such.
Angela:
So in your personal opinion, why won't the FDA approve it? Because it works?
Josh:
Because it works. It's exactly that. When's the last time they cured something? There's no money in curing anything. There's a lot of money in treating it. And I think that... The head of the FDA is always an ex-head of big pharma. Almost always. Usually Pfizer. As many good medications as they make, they're stuck on their stock price. They have to keep it going up perpetually and they got to have more and more patients. Why would they want to cure something?
Josh:
Then you have the orthopedic surgeons. People don't realize they have a billion dollar lobby in DC that they want to cut. A good example are back treatments for a lot of patients. We put ozone into the disc then stem cells, because the ozone shrinks it. Well, that treatment's been approved in Spain since the 1980s. So many people have back problems, but they're not going to let that in the United States. They know it works. It's too simple. They want a cut. You've got a few. Those are just two of the top level factors.
Angela:
Yeah. That was such a good answer.
Shawn:
For sure. Well, there is a health tourism market. We were just in Rosarito, Mexico last year for fecal microbiota transplant. How does Dream Body Clinic stand out versus maybe some of the other clinics that are offered in like Cancun or Panama?
Josh:
For sure. Panama's amazing. That's Dr. Riordan. He trained up under Dr. Caplan. That's why he knows so much and why he's so good at what he does. But it doesn't seem like he's really as involved in the clinic now. It looks like he may just now be back, but he's taken a few years off. And they're not doing some of the things that we're doing. I think maybe we're pushing things a bit further.
Josh:
First, it becomes a price thing. They got Mel Gibson. He didn't have to say that they helped his dad. And people want to think, "Oh, a celebrity endorsed it." No, a celebrity didn't just endorse them. He saw results. He didn't have to tell anyone. And it was good for the whole industry. He said, "Look, stem cells work," which was awesome.
Josh:
So we've now gotten to work with Dr. Caplan. Most of the top clinics do. There's some in the Bahamas, some in Columbia, other places. And they're all doing the same thing. Fortunately, our lab has been doing this for over 10 years. Their equipment's paid off. Because Mexico has a socialized medical system and private care, it keeps the cost of private care down. So unfortunately, doctors, biologists, compared to Americans, they make nothing. It's really crazy. But because of that, we're able to keep the cost down. And we're not trying to just jack the prices up just because we're treating Americans. We're doing things at the same price that they're doing it for Mexicans and we want to help as many people as possible. So we've got the cost advantage over most places.
Josh:
And then on top of that, we've got an amazing staff. We're pushing it with the intrathecal. Other places have done it and some are, but the intrathecal has been a huge difference. And that's where we go into the spinal fluid. With brain issues like autism, we're seeing children that weren't making eye contact, make eye contact same day or next day. We're starting to post more videos of those. And kids that weren't talking that are talking now. It's not a cure. There is no cure. We want to just think, "Hey, here's a pill. This will fix that." But we're making the quality of life of these kids so much better. And that's the goal. We want them to have as comfortable-
Angela:
Lower the inflammation, right? That's the huge part of what we're trying to do for Theo with PANDAS is lower the inflammation that he has in his brain. So you touched on intrathecal. What other routes of administration would you do for someone... Just explain what we're doing for Theo and what you would do for autism.
Josh:
So if you go to our site, you can see the kind of standard package. And the reason it's packaged is I hate it when you go to a website and it's just information. You don't see prices. You don't even know if you could afford it, if you could do it. So we just put together an autism package there. It's $7,000. That's the hundred million IV, two nebulized sessions and then 25 million via intrathecal. And we have to do that in the operating room for the kids and all that. That's what we're doing for Theo. He just did the nebulized and the IV portion of that. It was the hundred million IV there. And we'll do the second nebulized after we do the intrathecal.
Josh:
We started doing the nebulized and the intrathecal was partly because of an autism patient. We work with a doctor, Dr. Jason Williams. He's based out of Atlanta and Mexico City. He's a cancer specialist. He used to do stem cells like this in the United States I think maybe 15 years ago. And they came after him. This was before it was regulated or anything. He was helping a lot of people. The only reason they didn't take everything and throw him in jail basically was because he was doing it for free. Because of that, he recovered or moved on. But they made him sign an affidavit. He wouldn't do stem cells in the US anymore or anything. He would still go to Columbia quite a bit. It's where his girlfriend's from. And this patient went down there and they did intranasal injections for him. But he's a bit older. He's a teenager. We were like, "Well, no little kid's going to sit there for an intranasal injection."
Angela:
Those are painful too.
Josh:
Yeah, I've done it. I'm always the Guinea pig. Any treatment you see on our site, I've personally done. I was the first one to do intranasal with no anesthesia, nothing. It was not fun. But still a lot of adults do it, because it gets to the mucus membrane, which it bypasses the normal flow of an IV that goes heart then lungs. The lungs act as a bit of a filter, so you don't get as much past that. This gets more directly to the brain. So then we're like, "Well, nebulizer would work." And our lab had been doing that for a lot of different lung conditions. With the nebulizer, we're able to get those to the mucus membrane, which crosses into the blood stream and goes straight to the brain. So that's-
Angela:
It crosses the blood-brain barrier, right?
Josh:
Yeah. The stem cells are very... Think of a hamster going under a door. They can kind of move their shape. They can kind of wiggle their way through the blood-brain barrier. It's still difficult for them, so not all of them are going to get there. The nebulized, a lot of those get to the lungs, which is beneficial, but it's not the best, like the intrathecal, where we're going into the spinal fluid, and that goes directly to the brain. No blood brain barrier to pass, anything. But with kids, that requires anesthesia. It requires... It's so much more invasive that we opted to combine both just to get as many to the brain as we possibly can.
Angela:
Awesome. With intrathecal is it as invasive as a spinal tap? Do they go under general anesthesia? How does that work?
Josh:
No, it's not as invasive. It's a much larger gauge needle, which actually means it's a smaller needle. It's a 30 gauge. It's like the size of an insulin needle.
Angela:
That's like what we use in the dental world.
Josh:
Yeah. It's really not a difficult thing for an anesthesiologist or a neurosurgeon to do here in Mexico. They're the only types of doctors that are permitted to do that. We've got this great anesthesiologist that's been doing these kind of injections for even adults and other patients for about eight years. And he told us, "Look, the kids aren't going to sit still. We need to put them under." So the kids are under for 10 to 20 minutes. I always go in there with them. Just kind of take some video. It's a real quick procedure. The kids drink some... I can't remember what kind of anesthetic it is, but it just kind of gets them loopy. A little drink, then we put them under. Pain-free, easy. It's all done super quick. Yeah, there's a little bit of risk with any sort of anesthesia, any time you're going into the spinal fluid, but we haven't had any issue with that. It's all extremely sterile. It's no problem.
Angela:
With stem cell treatments... I think we kind of went over this, but for the autism package, you have the 100 million in IV, you have 35 million each nebulizer. So I guess that's 70.
Josh:
25 million.
Angela:
Oh, 25 million. Sorry. And then how much are administered through the intrathecal?
Josh:
Intrathecal? We do 25 million. And that does depend on weight. As kids start getting bigger, we can go up higher. 50 million, 100 million. We customize it for each patient. Everyone's different.
Angela:
How long do stem cells last within the body?
Josh:
So there's two areas of research with that. It becomes difficult to keep an eye on them, to track them. There's some studies that basically say they get in and they're done. They don't do anything. But that doesn't match up with the anecdotal evidence where, for us, most patients see the most results three to six months after treatment.
Josh:
And there's quite a few other studies that show that they will survive in the system for anywhere from eight months to a year, because what they end up doing is a process called maturing. Right now they lack HLA. They are an MSC going through the body. If they don't find a capillary to call home... That's where they naturally live. They're called pericytes. They live on the capillaries. Some of them will find capillaries, they can stay there indefinitely. But others will go through the system and they'll eventually mature. They'll become like an osteocyte, osteoblast, a different type of cell. And they will have HLA at that point. Your immune system just kicks it out. There's no immune reaction, anything. It's very easy for your immune system to deal with. Not a big deal. Usually about eight months to a year is what we see.
Angela:
And I know it's recommended with kids to do it a little bit more frequently, like every year, every nine to 12 months. Is that right?
Josh:
We recommend if people are going to do it as an ongoing thing; we get a lot of people that want antiaging aspects, IVs; we say once a year. If it's something that they're just not quite seeing the results they want, some people will come back as often as six months. But we're more of the approach of once a year is a better time schedule. You kind of have to give it... Why not give them that full year? Again, our hope is that you don't have to come back for most of our treatments.
Angela:
But with someone, for us-
Shawn:
Autism.
Angela:
Yeah, autism and his condition. If we see gains and improvements, we plan on coming back yearly. How soon... So this is a question that Theo's autoimmune neurologist was really interested about. And she's so for this treatment as mentioned. She's super excited about it. And she's an American doctor. Well, I'm not quite sure where she is from originally.
Josh:
Originally. She's in the US?
Angela:
But she's in the US.
Shawn:
She's well-renowned doctor in the US is what you're trying to say.
Angela:
Yes. And she was really excited that we were coming here to do this, which is awesome. Well, it's not surprising for those of our followers who know us, that we just have a really great team. But the typical mainstream American doctor, "Oh, you're going to Mexico for a treatment?" They're not as on board. Anyway, she was really excited about it. But she did have a question is how soon do the effects of stem cells show up in blood work, because she's wanting to run some new panels on Theo in the fall. She was just curious is that going to show up in his blood work? And I think we had asked you, and you had asked the doctor, and he said give it probably two to three months or maybe three to four.
Josh:
Yeah. And it depends what you're looking for with autism. It's tricky. We'd have to first see something that's off. If you've got a certain marker you've seen in the past, like his cortisol is really high or maybe kidney function or something, usually two to three months, you'll see something there. But a lot of kids, and I'd say the majority, you don't really see anything in the blood work. That's the tricky part.
Angela:
Yeah. For us, we do just because he has PANDAS. We have the elevated strep titers and all of that. So we're pretty excited to see what that looks like.
Josh:
Yeah. That'll be exciting for us too, because I don't think we've had anybody check those specific markers. That'll be great.
Angela:
And we had the lab when we did lab works yesterday run those too.
Josh:
Oh, good.
Angela:
Yeah. So you'll have those beginning-
Josh:
And that's why we have to customize everything for everyone. Not everybody we do rheumatoid factor or C-reactive protein. But when people have different conditions, like rheumatoid arthritis or something, there's different markers that you're looking for. It's good you know what you're looking for already.
Shawn:
Treat the patient, not the symptoms?
Josh:
Yeah. Everyone's different. We got to kind of narrow it down.
Shawn:
Love it.
Angela:
Do you get people mostly from the US? Where does most of your client base come from?
Josh:
Now it's pretty much all US. We had a kid last week from Saudi Arabia with autism. We've had people come from very far. Getting a lot of calls from Israel lately. But the United States is the majority. I'm American, so it's just kind of built in. People tend to trust someone from their own country. They see me here, all that, managing everything. We used to get a lot of Canadians, but COVID has really destroyed that. That used to be like half our business. Canadians are very open to looking for treatment outside, because their socialized medicine actually lets them down in a lot of ways. We used to get a lot of Canadians. And Vallarta's known for... We call certain parts of town little Canada, because there's so many Canadians, about six months a year. But now with COVID and all the crazy lockdown stuff they have, they're pretty dried up until things settle down there.
Angela:
Right. Do you have any other questions? I feel like we covered a lot.
Shawn:
Yeah. You were very informative.
Angela:
You guys are lucky if you're listening to this, because I feel like we... Their website's amazing too, but I feel like hearing from other parents... Josh connected us with a few other parents that we reached out to on WhatsApp that have benefited from autism treatments here. That was really great. And then we just have our little autism mom group. Two of the moms have come down here recently and they will probably continue to come as well. I think it's just so great to connect with other parents who have gone through it.
Angela:
And we have had a great experience so far. We're only on day two. Yesterday, we did lab work. Today we did the IV and the nebulizer, like we said. And we're here... It doesn't take very much time. We're here for vacation and for Theo. So Eva's just at the resort with Nana and Papa, and we'll be headed back to the pool with them. It's not something where Theo has to be down for the entire week. There's one day where we do the intrathecal, where he just needs to stay in for a few hours. But other than that, everything's completely safe.
Josh:
It's minimally invasive. And I think that's part of, again, why FDA, different things don't want it. It's almost anti-climatic for people. They come down. They're like, "Oh, it's just a shot?" Like, "Do you want more?"
Angela:
Exactly. Really. Yesterday was probably the hardest with getting blood work. Today was easier than yesterday.
Shawn:
Yeah. We started to learn little tricks of utilizing iPad or holding Theo the right way.
Angela:
Or dad holding him the right way. Theo knows that I'm a little bit softer. But I held Theo down yesterday for... When I say held him down, not on top of him, but he's on top of me and I'm holding his chest and someone else is holding his legs. But we're just learning all the things. Every kid is different. But today, he's hanging out with everyone and loving on the nurses and Carter over here. He likes his beard. Everyone's so friendly and so great.
Shawn:
So Josh, just to close it off, those families out there that have kids with autism, any final thoughts you have for them?
Josh:
Just to take a look at what's going on, what other options. There's other things you can do. I think all parents are looking to explore anything they can do. I think we're starting to build more and more people that have come here. Fortunately, it's people like you that are willing to share it and talk. You got to talk to those other parents that have been here. And we'll keep building that up, so there's more and more people to talk to. Again, it's a medical treatment. People have to always remember it might not do too much. Hopefully it will, and that's what we're seeing. But everybody is completely different. Each case is completely different. So you got to figure out what's right for you. I think we're a great option and we're happy to help really.
Angela:
Can you tell everyone your website real fast?
Josh:
Yeah. It's www.dreambody.clinic.
Angela:
.com. Awesome. For us, I just want to throw that out there. We've connected with enough parents that have done stem cells in Cancun, Bahamas, Panama, and they really saw best results after their second treatment. I think that patients or parents that try something, they're like, "Oh, it didn't work." But they're judging within a one week, two week span. And really, like you said, these things need to mature. Just like Theo's FMT treatment, things needed to cultivate. His gut microbiome needed to be more diverse. And we're seeing a lot of improvements just even a year after. That's why we plan to do for sure two treatments to just give it an extra shot to make sure we're seeing the gains where other people are seeing them.
Josh:
Yeah. And I think that's right. Especially when we were only doing IV treatments, because the IV, majority goes to the heart and the lungs. They aren't necessarily all getting where they need to go. We've seen a huge improvement since we started going direct to the brain. But it can take more than one.
Angela:
Awesome.
Shawn:
Well, thanks for joining us for this podcast. You can check out Dream Body Clinic website or reach out to us. If you have any questions, we'd be happy to direct you to Josh and his team, so they could take good care of you. Thanks, Josh, for taking the time today.
Angela:
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Josh:
Thank you, guys.
Eva:
Hi, this is the Pure Living Family podcast. I'm Eva. My little brother's Theo. And my mom and dad are Shawn and Angela.