Transcript
This is a very important, extremely important article about the very difficult and heart-wrenching problem of how to help a woman become pregnant who is struggling with a particular form of infertility where the lining of the endometrial cavity is or the endometrium is too thin. If you think about it, and this was pointed out in the article, it's really miraculous that a woman can have bleeding and shedding of the endometrium every month throughout her reproductive years without scarring. Any other tissue in the body would have trouble with scarring. But unfortunately, there are some women who do scar, it's talked about in this study, is Asherman's syndrome where intrauterine adhesions happen, which the miracle is that all women don't have that as this bleeding and shedding takes place every month. Or then some people just seem to have somewhat genetic propensity to it. And then there is this lactobacillus-dominant endometrial microbiome that's supposed to be happening and sometimes that happens to not be the case. There's something other than lactobacillus dominating the endometrial microbiome.
And I know that there are those who poo-pooed the studies of putting yogurt in the vagina, but just as a sideline, it makes sense. There's only two places I know of in nature where lactobacilli live, the woman's vagina, the endometrial cavity and in yogurt. So unflavored yogurt, it really just does help change the flora and there are studies to support that. How many studies we need to make it a prescription accepted thing, I don't know. But I know this, if there was a medicine that had the same sort of biological and logical reasoning for working and I had a patent behind it, you'd see ads about it on television. But anyway, that's a sideline. The bottom line is that some people don't have lactobacillus-dominant endometrial microbiome and some women do have scarring and some people do have thinning.
So there were two studies that are referenced in this article about using PRP, which is known in dentistry and known in wound healing, plastic surgery, orthopedics for 20 years. This is not new science in those arenas, but as pointed out here, it's new to the arena of gynecologists. And you see gynecologist jumping up and down saying, "There's no research to support this." Well, this as in using PRP or platelet rich plasma to help women with urogynecological problems, it's because they've lived in a bubble where this research hasn't existed. If you read dental research or if you talk with dentists, orthopedists, they've quit debating about whether platelet rich plasma does anything. It's not the magic cure-all be-all, but their discussions are on a deeper level about what does it do and what can we do with it and what can we not do with it.
Hence, you're starting to see, as pointed out here, that there has been minimal investigations in date in gynecology about PRP, but minimal in relations to other domains or specialties like dentistry and orthopedics, but still a growing number. And hopefully in the next 10 years, it's usually 20 years for a new idea to take effect, we're 10 years in with the O-Shot®, so probably in the next 10 years it will become widely done. Just watch, it will happen.
So what's happened is there've been two people published studies showing that infusing the uterine cavity or in bathing the endometrium with PRP helps rejuvenate the tissue to make it healthier, to enhance the probabilities of becoming pregnant for a woman with the problems that happen with endometrial thinning. So hence, this study to say, "Okay, we have those clinical reports. Let's look on a cellular basis in vitro, in a culture, outside of the body with those cell types and see what happens with platelet rich plasma."
So they use saline as a control. They use platelet rich plasma and platelet poor plasma, and they found that platelet rich plasma does enhance the growth of the right kind of tissue and migration of the right kind of cells to the right place for the same things you see in dentistry to prevent scarring and to grow healthier, more vascular tissue, which in theory would explain why they saw the effect in the two studies that were done to show that it may actually help women with this as a cause of their infertility. The other thing is that we have in vitro studies showing that PRP, which is what your body normally makes ... It's not some esoteric thing. When you scraped your knee as a child, PRP is what caused the scab and the healing and the regeneration of the skin. PRP's what happens every time you have surgery or you have a wound. That's how it heals. The platelets bring growth factors, the [inaudible 00:05:11] cascade happens and you recruit stem cells to the area and you grow new tissue.
It's not a new idea. It's been around since people have been wounded. When people fought in the middle ages with swords, the PRP healed the wound. So it's not a new idea. The newness is, how can we take what's already happening in the body and harness that to help people with disease. The other thing is because we know that's part of the healing process, we have multiple studies showing that PRP has anti-microbial ... It acts as an antibiotic. And it could be that's another reason that's happening, because it may help take care of the bad microbes and therefore help the good microbes or lactobacilli flourish.
That's a reach for the explanation, but it's in line. It's not homeopathy or some weird idea from outer space. Homeopathy as not in nutrition as some people apply it, but homeopathy is one part in 10 million somehow make something happen, which doesn't happen. So this is not homeopathy. This is a logical thing that's backed up by every time you heal a wound and by 20 years of research in other arenas and now it's finally becoming more commonly done. We've done it with the O-Shot® now for the past 10 years to help rejuvenate the tissue around the urethra. It doesn't work in everybody, just like antibiotics don't' working in everybody. 5 to 10% of people in the hospital with pneumonia still die, even with antibiotics. 30% of the people in the intensive care unit with pneumonia still die even with antibiotics. But we don't say antibiotics don't work. They just don't work all the time because sometimes a person, their milieu or their body's not able to heal itself for whatever reason.
In the same way, maybe the problem isn't the vagina. Maybe the problem with infertility is hormonal issues or low sperm count with a man. This isn't the end-all, be-all, cure-all, but it's a very intelligently designed way to help a woman who has endometrial thinning or scarring of the endometrium as a cause for her infertility and it should definitely be studied. The problem is, as we found with the O-Shot® procedure, funding is difficult because there's no patent on blood, so yay for these investigators who had to do this out of their own pocket as we have had to done with the O-Shot®. I've spent over $300,000 just in a couple of years with research on the O-Shot®. More coming. We'll spend another 100,000 this year. It's funded by the physicians in our group, who by the way, should be giving money back and almost all of us do, if a patient isn't happy.
You can't be preying on people's pocketbook if you're not keeping their money, if they're not happy. I started taking cash in 2003. I've never kept a penny of a patient who wasn't happy. In that case, we've lost our money and we've lost our time and we're very sorry the person isn't well and we try to find something else to help them. Every procedure is with risk and without 100% guarantee. Every procedure has risk and every procedure is without 100% guarantee. So there's a consent form with our procedure. If you have the O-Shot® or if you have PRP infused into your endometrium, you should read the consent form. You should understand that you don't have to be treated at all. You certainly don't have to be treated with PRP. You should make sure that someone in our group has agreed to use FDA devices that are designed to prepare platelet rich plasma to go back into the body.
If things don't work well, you should discuss it with your physician and continue to demand that someone help you. Don't give up. Sexual function is so important. It's more than about pleasure. It's about relationships. It's about the psychology of feeling whole. It's about even spiritual enlightenment. Hence, the ideas of chastity when it comes to spiritual enlightenment in many cultures and religions. Sexuality has to do with creativity and personality. So it's not just about pleasure, it's about part of the foundation. Emerson said it was the scaffolding of love, hence the scaffolding of our families to build. Maybe you don't need a scaffolding after the empire is built, but it helps build the building of your relationship with your lover. So consider this talk with your physician about it. If your physician wants training, we have training. We have teachers around the world. We have over 2000 doctors in our group. We have people in over a dozen medical schools. We have ongoing research. Read it, think about it, talk with your doctor about it, and let's push our tools for healing women.
It breaks my heart when, when it comes to sexual dysfunction, we keep offering women vibrators and lubes or psychological. Everything's not in your head. If you have an endometrium that's thin, that's not in your head. That's in your endometrium. If you have scarring from having a big baby that tore the vagina, that's not in your head. Hence, the treatment is not psychological medicines that affect the brain. And there's better treatments than just a lube and a vibrator. We have so much better science than we did. I hope that you'll investigate. Read the science for yourself. Don't just blindly listen to the naysayers. Usually, 20 years for a new procedure to take effect in medicine. Read the science. Talk with your doctor and take care of your body and value your sexuality. I hope this helps you or someone you love.
Yogurt for healthier vagina-research
