The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market podcast, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, it was once a controversial topic, but now just a few years later, it's a growing trend, get the latest information regarding stem cell therapy, plus later... We'll tell you what's going on around town. But first up, we're joined today by another prominent physician when it comes to alternative medicine, Dr. Allan sasson, and he is the founder and medical director of the institute for progressive medicine. He's been practicing medicine for over 40 years. His Institute treats people of all ages through comprehensive state-of-the-art new medicine techniques, and we welcome him back to the mother's market Podcast, Dr. saw and how are you?

Good, Kim, how are you?

I'm great, thank you. And before we get to today's topic, please fill us in on your mission and your work... Well, I'm trained as an internal medicine doctor, which I did for many years and still do, but about 30 years ago or so, I started getting involved with other ways of working with people because I was seeing that medications were not the answer, and people are running into complications from medications and from surgery, so the purpose of our practice now is to work with folks to try and handle their problems without resorting to medications, if possible, although we still use them and without resorting to surgery, although we still use it, but you can initiate treatments in other ways, nutritionally, lifestyle changes, nutritional supplements and a lot of other things that can help them without exposing them to so many side effects and complications and a better effect to... Today we're talking about stem cell therapy, and so Dr. Anwar, stem cells, stem cells are cells that everybody has, that have the ability to develop into other cells by differentiating, meaning they change in what they're doing. So a stem cell can become a heart cell, it can become a nerve cell or a brain cell, it can become a skin cell, the STEM, so can become any part of the body depending on where you put it and how you work with it, so it's something that people have innately, that allows them to really stay young or get younger, it's our own stuff that we're using in the body, uses them cells on a regular basis to help itself, you can rebuild heart and rebuild brain, etcetera, with stem cells. And we know that this exists. The problem is that what we have been working on is concentrating the number of cells that you apply to an area to make it better faster, and that's this whole movement in medicine these days, this is the new fat I would suppose that's going on is using stem cells in a concentrated way to aggressively fix an area that's damaged for ourselves or for others as well, so my stem cells can be used in other... For others, now your stem cells are for you, okay. That's what I was confused about because I've heard about stem cell therapy, but I belong to me that you...

Okay, thank you for clarifying. Yeah, so can you expand on how stem cells can be used... So when you say for repair, how does that work?

Well, we've done the most in our practice for the last several years, I was doing pro therapy, which is another type of treatment with sugar water and then with ozone to build up damaged muscles and tendons and ligaments, basically orthopedic medicine. Its orthopedics without surgery. And we've had very good success with a number of different problems, so we'll treat... Knees will treat, hips will treat shoulders, lower back next, any part of the body can be treated with stem cells or with these other treatments, but the stem cells are stronger, so we've been working with stem cells the last three years, which we actually use another name for it called bio-cellular treatment, because I've been told that the FDA doesn't like the use of the word stem cells, but everybody says themselves 'cause it's easy to say, but that's interesting because I have heard more bio-cellular treatment, but I didn't realize that was the same thing so thank you for clarifying that too. So that's the new... That's how the... This is it. Bio-cellular treatment. What are the different sources of stem cells, bio-cellular treatment?

Well, the ones we use almost entirely from the person's own body, which is called autologous, it means it's your own, and we extract that ourselves from fat.

I have a lot of that to donate to your good... Yeah, we can use your good... I'd like, yes.

Okay, so we break down the fat with like a needle or a cannula, and you extract it from the fat of the body, which is basically in the belly or in the flanks, so from women, we usually get it from the belly, though we can get it from the flanks, and then we usually get it from the flank, but we can get it from the belly, but flanks are better and guys, so you extract this fat and then you don't use the fat part of it, you put what you've taken out into a centric... You would... Which will separate the stem cells from the fat, and I'm gonna use stem cells because bio-cellular is too difficult, right.

To separate the stem cells, and then we combine them with platelet-rich plasma that we take from the same patient's blood, because platelets have growth factors in them, and then is all know that 'cause they're using... A lot of them are using plate-Libris plasma to repair problems and gums, it's very effective, so we combine the two, and then you can take that combination and inject it into wherever you're trying to treat, so it could be a torn muscle, could be an arthritic joint, an area of paying, an area of sort of... That's kind of falling apart. You know someone who's older or has been running too much or something like that, and we use ultrasound, ultrasound allows you to visualize where you're treating and you can see exactly where the needle you're inserting is going, and you can see the stem cell is actually being pushed through the needle into the tissue, so we do that routinely, a lot of practices do not, because it takes time to learn how to use ultrasound, but it's a far more comprehensive and more effective treatment, at least in my opinion, 'cause you know where is that needle... This is where it is, and we can show the patient down the screen, this is where the needle is in your knee, and this is where we're injecting... Wow. And it's right out, patient can see that, but I also, I would think get a little bit more precise, you're seeing it right there in front of you. And it's more precise.

Yeah.

Wow, I think this is fascinating. You mentioned... So for patients that are, therein have had lumps or terrors, what about for patients that have special needs or that... I know that's been a little bit controversial as well, well, stem cells are being used for everything that can't be treated.

Okay, right.

'cause what else do we have? Let's use this. So it's been used for heart disease, I had a patient with a bad heart situation, he had a cardiomyopathy, which means a weak heart muscle due to radiation therapy, he'd been given years ago for a cancer that they got rid of, but the hearts suffered and his heart went into failure. So there's a very limited number of things you can do in that situation.

And we had him do repeated treatments with intravenous stem cells taken from his fat, and he had a fair amount, and he had about five infusions of these stem cells over the course of about three years, and his heart condition was at least stable, in other words, it was not getting worse, which is what you almost always see, so he was maintaining his cardiac function, he passed away from other causes a while ago, but his state, fine. I've seen the usage of stem cells is, there's certain places using it for eyes... Like for retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. And certain kinds of things that are difficult to treat that has not shown has yet to be effective, meaning probably that the technique hasn't been developed, stem cells are relatively new and oftentimes takes years to learn how to do them in a way that they're gonna work.

So I don't suggest to people that they run out and try getting stem cell treatments into their eyes right off, you can use it for liver disease, you can use it for lung disease, and it's been used a lot for brain diseases.

Really, how do you treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis? You don't... How do you treat Alzheimer's disease? You basically don't... Because the medications ready don't work, so it's being used for those kinds of conditions and I don't know at this point, there isn't a lot of proof. I have one patient that we've used stem cells for Parkinson's disease, and this was very dramatic, this guy was 85 years old in a wheelchair, couldn't stand up, he was trembling all the time, he couldn't move very well, and the speech was garbled, so he had very advanced Parkinson's disease, in spite of medications, 'cause he was on two medications, which everybody is, I guess, and not doing well at all, and we gave him stem cells along with those on therapy. Along with some other things that we do, they're all alternative. And he got out of the wheelchair. He walks with a cane, his speech is clear, and his tremor is over 50% gone, he can get into and out of a car by himself, and is really dramatic, really amazing is... How does this happen? But it worked for him, and I think the stem cells were a large part of his improvement, and how long does something like that when you... From all of the therapies that he had, how long did that take for him to go through that process?

He was getting better within four to six weeks, wow.

Now, we tell people that these stem cells are gonna keep working in your body 'cause they're alive, these are living cells you put in for four to six months, some people say longer than that, but that's usually what we tell people.

You start to get better in a month or two, and the question is, is he gonna stay better... That's a big question, but if he doesn't stay better than we can probably just go back and do the same thing over again, and hopefully he'll respond again that I don't know the answer to, but to get that initial change was quite a lot and... Amazing is really a wonderful thing, and it would be nice if we can learn how to use it appropriately for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis that has no cure and no treatment. And a number of other things, there are folks who are using it for autism, and these kids are getting intravenous stem cells, usually it's not their own cells, 'cause there's other sources that you can use, you can take cells or growth factors from other places like placental tissues, after the baby is born, the placenta has stem cells and growth factors in it, and you can extract them and you can use those intravenously, if you're taking lactarius cells, you gotta take it out of the person himself. And that's another procedure.

So I don't think people wanna do that for autistic kids, so you'd be giving them something from another source, not in my opinion, gonna be as effective in treatment 'cause you can get more stem cells and better stem cells, in my opinion, then you can... From these other sources, but that's a big area of controversy and there's different opinions about it, other folks are getting stem cells from bone marrow, which used to be the most common site, but our opinion these days is that the STEM social in the fat, you get larger numbers from what you take out, and that they just work better, but other folks would disagree, there's other folks who are doing this orthopedic medicine with stem cells from bone marrow, and they're getting good results too.

So you were just talking about that orthopedic, can you explain the use of stem cells for orthopedic problems?

Right, so a person is having pain, I've had stem cell treatments in both of my knees a few months ago, 'cause I have degenerative changes in there, I used to run for many years and I was probably not running right.

And stuff.

So I got some knee problems and I don't really wanna have any replacement surgery at this point anyway, and we've been doing injections for me, and you know the stem cells have been beneficial. It doesn't make me go up to run a marathon again, but that probably wouldn't be the right thing anyway. Right. So... Wow, this sounds incredible. What is... How are you keeping track or... As far as... I guess I think of it as an almost in a clinical trial sort of way, or how... For instance, your patient... Did you say he's 85 years old?

Yeah, so now you watch his progression with the stem cell, is there a place where you're documenting his progress... Right, so we have everybody come in within a month or two of whatever treatment we're gonna give them, he continues to come for these other therapy, so he's still getting intravenous ozone and he does some hyperbaric oxygen, so he's still getting other treatments.

So we see them regularly.

But other people, we have them come in just for a review in a month or two, and just to see what's going on, and then frequently we'll just call them and see how is it going now? 'cause a stem cell treatment for an orthopedic problem, it may not last forever. Maybe the last a year... Maybe the last five years, we don't really know, probably the most dramatic changes for orthopedic problems has been in low back pain, because low back pain is a big problem, a large percentage of people will get it at some time in their lives, maybe half the people... And it's gonna be really hard to treat, and what do you do? Do you do surgery for low back pain, well, good luck, because a lot of times the Surgery doesn't work, I've seen people who had one back operation followed by another, followed by another, followed by another, with seven or eight spinal surgeries, and they still got pain. So that can be really debilitating. And the surgery itself is difficult and hard to recover from, so if you can do another procedure that may be a stem cell injection procedure and help them, maybe it's not 100% better, maybe it's 50% better.

I would certainly want a 50% reduction in whatever pain I have... Right, I'd wanna go beyond that. But whatever you do, if it helps helps and stem cells are safe, the risks, basically, we tell people are bleeding or infection, which we have not seen in anybody thus far, but there's an issue with that. There's some articles in the newspaper I've been reading lately about individuals who are given stem cell treatments from other sources, like the stem cells were obtained from tissue in another country and processed incorrectly so it wasn't sterile and they got infections, which can be not good at all. So there needs to be care involved, if it's coming from you, if it's autologous, the risk is virtually nil, very careful about cleaning out the skin, and our procedure is sterile, the injections are sterile, and it's not coming from another country being transported 10000 miles. So you have to be, if you're gonna get it from some other source, which some people do, maybe because they're not good sources of fat or they're too sick or they're on a whole bunch of medications or whatever, and they have... They're gonna do what they have to get it from somewhere else. You just wanna know Where does this issue coming from and is it being tested for sterility?

Wow, this is really interesting. There's plenty more to learn from Dr. sasson. So please stay with us, we will be right back. Thank you. And welcome back to the mother's market podcast, and we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for podcast and listen to past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com.

And now back to our interview with Dr. sasson, and we're talking about the latest alternative and traditional therapies for heart disease, and doctor, we have been talking about what leads up to heart disease and what is happening in the area of heart disease. What do you practice in your alternative medicine for heart disease? What is going on in your practice or the lifestyle approach is by far the most important, that's the first thing you do.

So you wanna get the person on the right diet, you wanna get them into an exercise program, that's a graded program, so if they can only walk for five minutes to start with, that's what you do, and the more they do this for a few weeks or longer than that, then they can get up to 10 minutes and 20 minutes and 30 minutes. So you wanna get them in an exercise program that's not gonna wipe them out and have them do something that they enjoy doing, like dancing or playing tennis or whatever for a sufficient length of time, which should be at least two and a half hours a week. All together. So the exercise is really key, and those two things will help with the weight reduction that has to happen, and those two things, the lifestyle and the exercise will handle the blood sugar and the obesity and the diabetes, and these things that are coming up more and more for folks, as far as medications go, I think if you can start reversing the factors that you're dealing with, then you can start reducing medication, the blood pressure has been high and they're on three blood pressure medications and you see it coming down with the program, then you can start backing off on the blood pressure pills little by little, one by one, and some people can get off entirely if a person's 50 pounds overweight and not exercising, and he changes that around... He can get off those medications. You can even get off statin drugs frequently, the things we'll do after that, or sometimes if the patient is ill or is really interesting, we'll do things like chelation therapy, which has been around for 50 years, where you're giving an intravenous treatment of vitamins and minerals, including magnesium we use glutathione also, all these things will help the body, help the Heart, help circulation, and you're also giving them these chemicals that will remove heavy metals from the body.

So things like EDTA DMPS, these are the names of the chemicals. They will remove arsenic and lead and mercury and aluminum that we all have in our bodies to a certain degree, some have more than others, but these heavy metals are thought to be involved in the development of heart disease and other conditions in the body. So you wanna get them out as much as you can, and if you can give them vitamins and minerals at the same time, you're doing a few things at once, so we do a lot of chelation therapy, usually it's once or twice a week for a series of about 30 treatments, and I've seen heart disease get better and there's literature indicating that diabetics who have heart disease will have reduced incidents of cardiac events, heart attacks by Du incubation therapy. So that's one group. That should benefit from it.

The other things we do, when I really like is something called external counter pulsation therapy, where you're lying on a table and these inflatable cuffs put around your legs and your thighs and your pelvis, and they are blown up with air to force blood out of the legs, toward the heart, and it builds up collateral circulation in the heart, it also reduces resistance in the arteries of the body and a loss of... An increase in resistance or a loss of elasticity is one of the first things you see in the development of heart disease, so counter-pulsation therapy, I've been working with that for 20 years, and I've seen patients who had heart disease who have chest pain, even congestive heart failure has improved a lot with contemplation therapy, usually combined with cation, to think about these treatments is they're so safe, you can use them together, and often times we're gonna be more effective that way.

So what makes your program so successful, you were just talking about how you combine both of these... Yeah, was a combination of therapies is easier to do it because they're both very, very safe, so you can use them together and get additional benefits at the same time instead of just doing one thing at a time, and there's another treatment we've been working with in the last few years, which is ozone therapy, everybody has heard about ozone therapy, and it's very interesting because it's a powerful treatment, basically you take oxygen and you connect the oxygen to an electrical current, and that creates ozone.

So now you have a very highly charged molecule and you can give this into people's bodies in different ways, but we're using it for heart disease intravenously, and that has the effect of reducing the inflammation within the arteries of the body, and it also provides energy... Ozone is an energy maker, so you can use ozone along with Clayton along with Connor pulsation, along with everything else, and we always use a number of supplements that are heart-friendly, so things like coenzyme Q10, and in that I mentioned will reduce cholesterol levels in their L-carnitine, there's a few other items that are all been official for the cardiovascular system and very safe, you don't have to worry about statin-type side effects with these supplements, I use them a lot. And again, you're saying they're safe, but they're all natural, and you've been doing these kind of treatment, you have been in practice with your alternative medicine for 30 years, is that... That's about right.

Yeah, yes. And so you've seen great success with combining this to the success depends a lot on the patient's willingness, if this is what the patient wants, this is what they decide to do, the chance of it working is very great if they don't really wanna do it, and if they won't commit to it, it's probably not gonna happen. It requires determination, and the need for lifestyle changes is essential, so that has to be involved as the number one priority items, so you know I have to get people away from smoking, have to get people away from fast foods, have to get people away from fried foods and unhealthy foods, which are all over the place, we live near a university, and you see a lot of these fast food places that the students go to that are cheap and fast, and the food isn't good. I know these kids are getting set up 20 or 30 years from now for the kind of problems that we're dealing with... Yeah, they're getting set up for failure is really ultimately what's happening. Yeah, I have a question for you, with the usual medical approach, do you find... And because you were in that practice before was... And I'm not necessarily just asking you because I know where you've come from and what you're just saying with all of the treatment that you're offering, you're also offering lifestyle advice, but do you find that in the medical approach, do they also offer lifestyle...

Lifestyle Treatment.

Well, it would probably depend on the doctor, but are they saying with the statin drugs, are they saying you need to exercise, and here's how you giving you... So some examples of how you can live a better lifestyle, it depends a lot on the doctor's own philosophy and his own lifestyle, I mean, how do I convince somebody to do all this exercise if I'm not doing it, how do I convince somebody to eat like this if I'm not doing it, so the doctor has to be an example of what he has, spouses, you have to show that this works for me and it can work for you, and a lot of the system that's out there does not permit it. A doctor has seven to 10 minutes to spend with a patient, Well, how are you gonna tell them how to eat plus exam and then plus plus plus given their medications and whatever in seven to 10 minutes, you can't do it. So you have to have the time for it, and you have to have the commitment from the patient, and these are difficult combinations to get, so we talked a little bit about how they work and you really need to see the commitment from all of your patients and I would suppose that goes for anything, so if they're on the medical side, if they're taking the statin drugs, but again, marrying that with the lifestyle that goes hand and hand on both ends, so on your side with the curation therapy and all of the therapies that you're offering, they also have to exercise and then start to eat healthy, but I think what you're also saying is that you're offering them, you're saying, Stay with me because I'm gonna help you with the vitamins and the minerals, and I'm gonna set you up not to fail. I'm gonna set you up on the right path for success... Yeah, they're gonna feel better. You put somebody on some of these drugs, you're seeing numbers about our blood pressure comes down and black sugar comes down, they don't really feel better, they're not gonna feel better until they can make the lifestyle changes and we'll make that happen. Yeah, drugs generally make you feel worse every time we see these commercials, and then there's all this... He's like, Oh, and by the way, here are all the side effects, and I just... That's just incredible to me that people still know that these could be the side effects, and it's almost, as you say, they're often times so much worse or just... It's insane.

You talked a little bit about the screening test, are there any other kind of tests that people should be aware of besides that as the coronary calcium score, are there any other kind of tests that people can get to check their heart... For heart disease.

Oh yes. Well, echocardiogram is a very nice test that's an ultrasound machine that looks at your heart and visualize the valves in the heart wall and how the muscle is functioning, and it's very informative and it's not invasive, it's so it's completely safe and it gives you a lot of information, so I order them, and cardiologists do them on everybody... It's a very nice test to get, 'cause it tells you as the heart well thickened, which would indicate the blood pressure has been having that effect, you don't want it to be that thick, is the heart enlarged, which can go along with congestive heart flour problems. And when you're treating somebody and you do serial studies, you can see improvements, the heart wall may get thinner again, the size of the heart may come down instead of getting larger, being a smaller... Heart is a better thing.

So you can see a lot of things going on without having to do all of these invasive studies, the core are... One of the most important things in cardiology these days are still getting cardiac catheterization and putting stents in and doing bypass surgery, which is effective, and they're not effective for everybody, but again, we see patients who've had those things done and was the first thing we do get them, my lifestyle, because it's gonna make these things work better, you know that bypass surgery is gonna work for a while, and then it's not gonna work anymore, and stands are gonna work for a while, probably... Maybe not. And then they're not gonna work anymore. And the literature out there that chose that putting extension people will relieve their chest pain, but it's not gonna make them live any longer.

You wanna live longer. Change how you live. You'll have longer.

Great advice.

Can people... You talked a little bit about this too, getting off of medications in that process, how long... This is a piece of information that I think is really important.

How long does that process take to getting off of the statin drugs, and what does that process... How does that make people feel and should they be guided along, what is that... What does that process?

Well, the person can start to feel better depending on how far they've been off the track, within several weeks, two or three weeks, they'll start to feel different.

Everybody is so different, it's hard to say. There are some people I would not take off statin drugs, they have too much history and too many problems, and I would maintain them on them, but I may not put them on the highest dose, they're coming in on a 80 milligram of Atari Statin. We may get them down to 40 or 20 or 10, knowing that the side effects are commensurate with the dosage, so the lower the dose to less, there is a chance there is problems from it, so we don't know, we stop medications or eliminate medications, but we oftentimes can reduce the dosage.

And that's a really good point as well.

This has been fascinating information, and so thank you so very much for your time, Dr. Austin, but we look forward to having you on again. And in the meantime, please check out Dr. sasson website, it is, I progressive Med dot com, and you can learn more about his passion for alternative medicine and the other great things he are involved with, and I know, I think you said your writing a book as well. When can we find out more about that? But we have to finish it, we have to get some illustrations and some organization and stuff, I need some help on that, but to be continued to be continued... Perfect.

Check the website, we look forward to your next visit.

Thank you.

Thanks in the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition, A