140: Rewriting Fertility: Ovarian Rejuvenation, Mitochondria & the Future of Reproduction with Dr. Samuel Wood

I'll tell you about something today that will blow you away. The interesting new thing is related to a company that I had called Stemogen. What happened with Stemogen is that I had an incision made in my upper arm, and they took skin cells out, and then they were able to take the skin cells, and they were able to turn them into an embryo and eventually stem cells. So in the old days, you could look on Google and say, "People who have been cloned, and I was the only name." For a while. What's interesting now is that at the University of Oregon, what they've done is they've taken skin cells, these are from mice, and been able to create eggs from them. And this is huge because there's so many women that are unable to create eggs. Maybe they had chemotherapy, or maybe they're reproductably older, and they just simply can't make eggs or can't make high quality eggs. And so this will be something that can be done for them. But here's what's really fascinating. Let's say you have a gay couple. One of them can donate skin cells and create an egg. And the other guy, he donates sperm. And so then you create an embryo that's directly related to both guys. Unbelievable. By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition and either yourself or others. Console your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility. This show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lauren Brown. I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I'm on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It's time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose. Today I have returning Dr. Salmiah Wood. Now if you haven't listened to his podcast episode number 69, please check that out after listening to this one. That one was recorded, I don't know, a few years ago. And it was on PRP and Overeign Rejuvenation for Egg Prawley. We're going to talk about PRP again, but the focus is going to be on Overeign Rejuvenation. And I'd like to share a little bit about Dr. Wood. So he is a fertility specialist and an expert in reproductive genetics with over 30 years of clinical experience. Dr. Wood's academic background includes a master degree in psychology. He has a doctor degree in biochemistry and molecular bio physics and a master of business administration. So he knows how to run a clinic. He's done a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Goat-Tar-Hills. And he's also completed a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology and in fertility at the University of California, San Diego. That's where he practices now also at Gen 5. He's broad-certified in obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive endocrinology and in fertility. That's an R.E.I. And as I mentioned, he does a lot of work around Overeign Rejuvenation. I recently got to look at one of his papers on one of those, you know, those drugs on like a Zempic on Semaglutide. And we're going to talk about that, the rapid weight loss. We're going to talk about some of the things he's involved in with stem cell research. We got a lot to talk about today. Dr. Wood, welcome back. Well, thank you. I'm very happy to be here. I thought, I don't know even know where to start. So I'm just going to start with the idea of, is there anything new that we need to talk about today since we spoke about Overeign Rejuvenation? And then I'd like to get into PRP and the things that you are seeing currently that you like and don't like and what's coming down the pipeline. That sounds perfect. Yeah, energy we believe to be one of the primary causes of infertility in women, particularly over the age of 42. And so we give supplements to try to enhance mitochondrial activity because mitochondria are the little organelles within a cell that give the cell energy. But one of the things that we found is that simply giving supplements does not really seem to give us the answer, does not allow us to succeed. You know, 80% of the fertility centers in the world don't have a single live birth over the age of 42. And that's very sad. Now we have many, many deliveries over that age 48, 47, 46. We recently had a 50-year-old become pregnant. And what we do is a different kind of Overeign Rejuvenation. What we do is actually draw blood from the woman and we isolate the platelets. And then we activate those plates. Let's use calcium. And when you activate platelets, platelets release growth factors. And those growth factors are very important in terms of doing several things, increasing the blood supply to the area. But I think the most important thing they do is that they stimulate the stem cells that are already present within the ovary. And likely many people have heard of injecting stem cells into the body. And in fact, that's being done in two major places. And the role one of them is Panama and the other is Venezuela. However, it does not seem to work. And I've seen many patients that have gone to either one or both of those places in the attempt to improve the fertility had been unable to. There are also potential risk involved in doing that. But any time you take a stem cell and you put it in the body and you expect that stem cell to know where to go and what to do, you're going to run into trouble. So stem cells have a lot of promise in the future. But the difficulty is turning the stem cell into the right kind of cell in making sure it's in the right place so that it responds as it should. And so that's the main difficulty. So the last time we talked, I think we spent a good deal of time discussing ovarian rejuvenation and the results that we've seen. What's happened since then is I think we're doing everything much better now. And for being much more precise about where we place the material that comes from the activated platelets. And we're also being very careful not to put in too little or too much. And that's the tricky part. Because there are now other people that are doing PRP. And we can discuss that in a minute. When they injected into the ovarian, they're actually having a negative effect on ovarian function because they're putting too much in. So if you put this material in and you see a lake forming, you're actually going to harm the egg. So it's very, very important not to put too much in. On the other hand, you want to put in as much as you can without having that effect. So we've developed methods now of injecting that material and watching carefully and making sure we get no lakes. We're also doing better with putting it in exactly the right location. And we've seen much better results over the last, let's say, six months, something like that, doing those techniques. And I'll tell you one other thing, and then any question jab. Recently, we've had, I think in the last two months, we've had three women who became pregnant spontaneously after doing ovarian rejuvenation. Now that's not typical. Usually you do ovarian rejuvenation, and then you do IVF. And we get an egg out. Many of these women have not made any eggs or rarely make eggs. But when you get the egg out, there's a reasonable chance, depending on the patient's age, that that egg will be genetically normal, and they'll be able to have a baby. But two of these women actually sent us pictures of their babies. And it was really amazing to me. Both of them had no regular ovulation had been trying for many years. And then after doing ovarian rejuvenation, they got pregnant on their own. And so we've given us a great deal of thought. And we're now, even more than we did before, recommending that certain women attempt to become pregnant on their own before they go to IVF. And I think we've, by looking back at our data, we've been able to determine what types of patients are likely to do well when you do that. And I think that's very important, because I would love patients to be able to get pregnant on their own and not have to do IVF. So lots of questions around that. And thanks for sharing an update. As you're talking, there's an expression in Chinese medicine. Two little, two little, too much is too much, right? And in the West, we have a habit of taking something that's good. And then if we give it more thinking, it'll make it better. But that's when the too much becomes too much. I've had an opportunity to view a few physicians that are doing PRP. And I want to revisit your PRP talk that we did back in episode number 69. I've heard that even the needle gauge makes a difference. Make a big hole versus a tiny hole. That could impact the results of PRP. Are you agreement about as well? I don't know if that's true. If you think about it, IVF is very similar to doing a variant rejuvenation by IVF. I'm referring to the egg retrieval. And different sized needles are used for egg retrievals. And they can be considerably different. Now, the way we do a variant rejuvenation, we use a very small needle, because we're not trying to get eggs out. The reason you use larger needles when you're doing an egg retrieval is you don't want to damage the egg. But when you're doing an infusion of the materials that are used for a variant rejuvenation, a very small needle will work. I don't know that it has any negative effects. Studies that have looked at the effects of different needles in IVF have not really seen any difference long term in terms of responsiveness. Now, you might think that using a large needle would be better. You might, because you might think that would stimulate those areas to respond better. That's something that's done polycystic ovary syndrome, for example. But I doubt that the-- the needle is really very important, but we picked the smallest needle, the highest quality needle that we possibly can. I want patient to receive the best treatment possible. - So size and needle, you don't think makes a difference. I've heard some say that they prefer definitely a smaller needle that the needle size gauge could impact that. So again, the way you're doing it, you don't notice the difference, but you're using the smaller gauge needle like the other physicians I've talked to. - Yeah. - They also shared that timing. So I was wondering like, if they're going to go, their goal is baby. Obviously the how-to, the everybody wants to conceive naturally. Who would want to go through IVF? But if you can get you the baby, we'll do the IVF. I don't own an IVF center, so I'm not best at IVF. I prefer my patients get pregnant naturally. My goal always is healthy baby and healthy mom and or healthy parent, right? Or parents. So do you agree then that you have a window to benefit from that PRP? 'Cause a few physicians I've talked to since we've chatted and said that there's kind of a period of time after the PRP that you'd want to try to conceive naturally or do IVF because after three to four months, you've kind of lost that benefit. And so that's my first part of the question. So I'm just from strategy. It's great that people are going to have an opportunity to conceive naturally like you shared the spontaneous pregnancies. But the strategies to have a baby, would you still recommend that if they can afford and they're able to do IVF to do the IVF shortly after the PRP to maximize the chance of a take home baby because of the PRP? You know, we have different generations of a variant rejuvenation that lasts for varying periods of time. So generation one is PRP. And my opinion, we have data, published data on this. PRP just simply doesn't work for age-related in fertility. I know people are doing it. So let's emphasize that 'cause this was in our episode 69. You stated this very clearly that you have, and we're gonna talk about the different for variant rejuvenation. So there's PRP, straight PRP, and what I recall is, that was for the 30 year old that's having issues, but not for the advanced matured age when they saw in the late 30s or 40s. Yeah, so we see many women that have had PRP. There's a entity in New York that does a lot of PRP, even for age-related infertility. And apparently it doesn't go well. I've seen so many of them. And in fact, they tell me they say, they don't over-promise. And anyway, they say, we're gonna try this. We're studying it. We're gonna see if it works. I think you gotta do things that work. And if there's no data to support what you do, I like them being honest with the patient about it, but it does not work. And we've seen this over and over again, and published on it. Now, when you go to generation two, we call that, "implaff," and "implaff lasts three to four months." That's exactly right. And that's different how. Because PRP, you take the blood, spin it, put back the platelets. What is generation two that you're discussing where it lasts three to four months? How is that different than straight PRP? So with PRP, you take the platelets out, you activate them, and you immediately inject them into the ovaries. That's what the calcium, I think you said. Yeah, well, you calcium is a part of all of this. There are other ways to activate. But the key is that you put it back immediately. And once you put it back into the ovary, and then the amount of release, continued release of the growth factors is reduced. So what I love about generation two is you activate the platelets, but then you incubate them for a couple of hours. And then what you actually isolate are growth factors that have been released from the platelets. In fact, you don't actually inject the platelets. You only inject the growth factors. And we showed some time ago that the growth factor concentrations are as much as 10 times greater. When you do generation two as opposed to generation one, and I think that's why it worked so much better. But three to four months, you have then. Now, if you do generation three or four, then what we found is you get six to seven months. And most people do generations three or four, because especially if you've been trying a long time and you don't have much in the way of eggs, most people are not that confident that they're gonna succeed within three to four months. We've had many succeed in that length of time, but many don't too. So the majority of people do generation three or four and that's six to seven months. So that keeps you more time to try and your own before you do IVF. And so I like that. You gotta make sure the firm is good and everything else is good in order to do that, but it makes some sense. - Yeah, and what we call that preconception of follicular genesis, 100 day period. It's nice they've done the PRP. And again, that integrated, we talked last time, everything for ovarian rejuvenation. We're looking at diet and lifestyle. We're doing acupuncture. The Chinese herbal medicine that's shown to help with ATP production, low level laser therapy. There's lots of things to do on an injured level and that window while trying to conceive naturally. And it sounds like though there's still a line in the sand that if you're not pregnant by three months or four months of trying to conceive naturally in that seven month window period, then maybe move into that IVF during that window. - I think the real key here, and I think we've just come to fully understand this relatively recently is does the patient ovulate and how often does she ovulate? If you're gonna try naturally, you gotta be ovulating. - Yes, you're ovulating. - You gotta be releasing an egg. If you're not releasing an egg, you've got no chance. So the women we've seen that got pregnant on her own, we're having a period each month. - Yeah. - They were ovulating each month. - I've gotta share a little story with you on this, with a tangent, then I wanna ask a little bit more about Gen 3 and Gen 4, just a different shape. But a woman came to me and she was 39, elevated FSH, and she's went to a clinic saying they were gonna kick her on as a patient. This was even before the PRP days were so public. So we're recommending donor eggs. You can't do your own eggs in their facility. And so she came to me to see if I could help lower her FSH so she could go to another clinic so they would accept her with her own eggs. And we do a holistic approach, with the long and short of it. She wasn't ovulating regularly. And so I said, well, I don't know if your FSH will get lower, but we're gonna do what we can to optimize your egg quality. And often that would lower your FSH if we can do that in theory. And also our goal in Chinese medicine, which I think we can be, we're good at with metabolic disorders, PCUS and just women that aren't obviously ovulating regularly, the acupuncture herbal, what I've seen anecdotally clinically, we can often help these women. And so in her case, let's see if we can get you cycling. So her goal was to do IVF. We worked with her for six months. In that six month period, the last three months, she started to ovulate, ovulation one, two, three, three months in row. And she had a consult with the IVF clinic, but she got pregnant naturally before that appointment and had her baby. So I agree with you that you're talking about PRP and the IVF is, hey, if you're gonna try naturally, you gotta be cycling. And so there's two ways here. If you're not cycling, I'm hearing you're gonna go into IVF sooner than later because you're not gonna get pregnant if you don't ovulate. And I'm saying that also just to let you guys know that acupuncture is another avenue that may be able to help you get having those regular ovulations. Can you tell us the difference between Gen 3 and 4? So there's straight PRP, put back the platelets. Gen 2 is you actually don't put back the platelets. You take back the growth factors and inject that. And Gen 1, it's like a three month window. Gen 2 was, was that up to seven months? - Well, Gen 1, yeah, it works for three to four months, but only if you're under the age of 35. We see a full mental benefit. - You don't see that very often. There's not too many. So Gen 2, so tell me a little, what's the difference between Gen 3 and Gen 4 than in the timing that they have to either try to see if naturally or use it in an IVF setting? - You know, a lot of this was experimental. And what we do with Gen 3 is we do Gen 2 plus Gen 1. And it's really interesting that when you do that, you see a much longer level of effectiveness. In fact, we have some women that are two years out and they continue to show a reduced FSH and improvement in AMH. They've gotten pregnant, some of them are trying for a second baby. I mean, it's really quite impressive. We didn't know if that was gonna work, but we tried it. So we published on that. Gen 4, I always wanna do things better. I never believe that what I'm doing is the best. I don't think anything I'm doing now is going to be the BL end all. And so we said, what if we inject something else into the ovary, not just the growth factors? And we try to try to wide variety things. We try to FSH, we try to LH, we try growth hormone. Several things, nothing work, nothing improved outcome. And then we tried NAD, which is kind of an anti, very popular anti-aging medication. And this was based on work in mice that showed a true rejuvenation for mice that were close to menopause. And it returned them to an earlier stage and restored their fertility. And when we did that, we really saw impressive results, not everybody, but impressive results. Many more eggs, much higher pregnancy rates. So I'm a big fan of Gen 4, we're planning on publishing something on it soon. That again seems to last six to seven months, something like that. If a woman does ovulate, as we talked about, or they go to you and you help them ovulate, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to try to become pregnant on your own for two to three months. And, uh, Some women obviously consistently. The reason they're doing ovarian rejuvenation is that the number of follicles that they have when they do an ultrasound is reduced. Unfortunately, fertility specialists, many of them are not pro-patient. They're pro themselves. Like the century you mentioned, that wouldn't take her. Said, you need an egg donor. I just saw a patient like this. She said, I went to the center and they said, we're not gonna, she was 30 none. They said, we're not gonna work with you unless you use an egg donor because you have no chance at becoming pregnant. And she said, I don't wanna use an egg donor. Two months later, she got pregnant and her own and delivered a healthy baby. So a lot of things are being said that are not actually true, but they're doing it because they're afraid that patient will fail. And that will make them look bad. But I don't think you do anything like that. I don't do anything like that. You help patients the way they are. You help them with what they want to accomplish. You don't have them come in and say, no, not gonna do what you want. You're gonna do what I want. And so everything that you do and I do is about helping patients where they are. Do some of them end up failing and needing to use an egg donor? Yeah, some do. But you do everything you can to help people where they are. - Absolutely. And difference in IVF versus say, the Chinese medicine conscious work is, we're looking, if you do an IVF and it doesn't work, you don't say the 19 or 15,000, hey, I'm still happy because I feel better because you usually don't gain a few pounds on the waist in it. When you do the integration Chinese medicine, often your migraines go away, you don't have diarrhea or constipation, your headaches go away, your back pain goes away, your PMS goes. So they're at least we're creating health to create fertility. And so that's where I like the integration is, IVF will often override the body in order to get that baby, right? 'Cause you're at least one egg a cycle now we're getting multiple eggs. And so the integration is great. The other thing I'll say though for the centers, 'cause I've gotten to work with many centers over the years and work with one in particular in Vancouver, I would say that they don't want to take advantage of the patient also as in if they don't think it's going to work 'cause statistically they haven't helped somebody over 45 get pregnant, say, they don't want to inject them with hormones or take their money and they're not going to get pregnant. So they don't believe it's going to help. And I do think sometimes they'll tell them that and then say, but we'll work with you, but you need to know what you're up against. 'Cause they don't want, so I do think, every country's different, every center's different, but I would say with some of the centers I've gotten to work with, I know years ago, some of them, I think it was a, there were stat hores, they were rejecting people 'cause you would hurt their statistics. I've been doing this over 25 years. The docs I meet, I think majority of them are like, they don't think they can help you. You have, they're not using PRP here in Canada, so you have other options. So they're saying you should do donor egg because it's going to cost a lot of money. There is some, you know, this isn't beneficial to your health, so if you want a parent to do donor egg. What you're sharing though is if you know these stats and this is still experimental PRP 'cause when I do the open meta links and all that, you know, I, they still say it's experimental, they don't recommend it yet. They're saying the evidence is not there. I know you have published data, other people have published data, but when you look at the collective data, we're not there yet. That doesn't mean it doesn't work. It just means we don't have the data to confirm that this should be standard of care. That's my understanding yet. And you're one of those pioneers, where in 5, 10 years, they'll be, they'll say you're right. But right now they can't say you're right 'cause there's not enough centers doing what you're doing as my understanding. It takes a long time to move away from the experimental status, X-E, which involves taking a single sperm and injecting it into an egg was experimental, despite hundreds of thousands of babies. And then eventually they said it's not experimental anymore. So it's not really clear what's experimental and what's not. And I always say that research doesn't make it work. It's always worked. Research, it's, it's, it's, it now works, right? People like so, so you're seeing in your clinic some changes here. So I want to go to Gen 3, then, and 4. You were talking about the NAD, and I'll, I'll let our listeners know. I'm asking to see if anything's changed 'cause we did a deep dive into this in episode 69. So I don't want to do deep dive 'cause I want to talk about the, those, um, GLP1 drugs and I want to talk about the stem cell. But in the NAD, are you doing NAD into the eggs or is it intravenous NAD that somebody's having NAD therapy? Well, they, they do an IB infusion and then we inject the NAD directly into the ovary when we're also injecting the growth factors. So you're doing both because a lot of people getting NAD infusions, but you're also putting it into the ovary and you've, and that's where he says six to seven months. And is that a different population that benefits from that? 'Cause you, Gen 1, it sounds like if you're under 35, go for it. Gen 2 is a common one, but 3 and 4, when are you choosing to use that one? You know, I believe that, uh, the key to caring for patients is to just tell them the truth. Tell them the truth about everything and let them decide. Now, I'm not gonna do something that has almost no chance of working if they're doing it solely for financial reasons, for example. Uh, so I agree with that. On the other hand, once you explain things to patients, they decide some people choose Gen 2 and we actually have many babies from Generation 2 types of therapies. We don't have a particular bias. We certainly don't prefer Generation 4. In our mind, that still is experimental, because until we publish on it, until it's approved in a peer-reviewed journal, that's, that's my definition of experimental. So patients decide, but I would say probably half of patients choose Gen 4. Many have on many patients we see no a friend who did Gen 4 and succeeded. And, uh, that's the most compelling evidence anybody can have. A friend's been trying for years and they become pregnant. And then they refer you to us. Uh, so your preference would be Gen 4, if you could recommend to the people who have earned reserve issues or a quality in their late threes or forties. That currently, I don't really believe in pushing people to do this or that. It's their life. Let's just say everything's free. You live in New York, everything's free now. What would you recommend? And I'll give you a tangent. Like, you know, when you know better, do better. So I use like Vibro acoustic sound table on my active treatment. It uses sound to, you know, it's stimulated, vagus nerve. There's, I see people with the, uh, aura rings were seen. They're sleep, like people that have very serious sleep issues, five of my algea were sleep, seen deep sleep after using the sound table. It relaxes them. Cause I, I agree with this in another doc I talked to once said, when you're, when you get into parasympathetic, you heal. So anything you can do to put people to parasympathetic, please do it. So we have a fee for using the table and people, because the money, you know, we don't charge a lot for it, by the way, it's a couple extra bucks to use the table and a treatment. But people were starting to like, oh, I better want to use it. So I decided it drove me crazy. I haven't had awful. Someone's on the table because I know how much it can help. So it's just included in the fee now. I changed my fees and you don't get a choice. If you don't want it on, you're still paying for it. Now they have an option, my clinic, we have multiple associates. They can go see one of my associates and they don't want to pay for a sound table. But I can't sit and treat somebody doing, I have something right there and I can't use it. When you know better, do better. So I want to ask you on your side, then take money aside. What is Gen 4 then? Because Gen 3 is the NAD. What's Gen 4? And if money was in an issue, because I don't want you to manage people's money, that's on a 101. This is a general podcast here. Just what's about Gen 4 that you would like and which one would you recommend for somebody who's 39 to 40 something based on what you think it can do or hope he can do? Yeah. If someone just said, what would you do? I would definitely do Gen 4. And what is Gen 4? Remime of Gen 4, because Gen 3 is the NAD with the blood. That's Gen 4. Gen 4 is the NAD. Okay. Good. Now I got it. I've seen so many positive results with it and we've had no side effects, no problems at all. I would never push anybody to do it. But if they ask me that, some patients do ask me that. That's what I would recommend. And our patients that have done Gen 4 are very happy. So I'm very pleased with it, but I don't like until it's published, until it's peer-reviewed. It's still experimental for us. Experimental. I seem to work very well. Thank you. I'm looking at the presentation of "Forgot," Gen 1, straight PRP, put the platelets, it playlists in. Gen 2 is your injecting the growth factor. Gen 3 is the blood and growth factors. Gen 4 with NAD. Correct. All right. Now, you have a recent paper and I'm just going to pull out my other computer here because I don't remember the exact title. Well, you can remind me of the title here, but it's using, like the drug ozempic. It's, you know, the GLP ones. I would like you to share a little bit about this paper and is there any caution because, you know, there's literature out there about, you know, being overweight, can impact your fertility. Can you tell us why? I'm thinking of inflammatory marker cytokines. When you lose weight, it can be beneficial. Also rapid weight loss seems to not be good for fertility. So there are patients coming into our practice to start and to use these kind of drugs for weight loss and potentially for fertility. Kind of one of the pros or cons. And what if you learned because you did publish a paper in 2025 on this? You know, it's really. interesting, these medications have almost become miracle drugs now. Their paper saying it reduces the risk of Alzheimer's, that it reduces heart disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure, cancer now, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer. I mean, it's just amazing what they're said to do and the end will find out how much of that is true. But let's ask a question. It's not that the drug does this. It's because obesity puts the body into disarray, which leads to these diseases. And this by losing the weight, the body then gets to repair. Like, like I always say, depression is not a pro-zac deficiency. Right? There's something else going on for a zack of trying to deal with that. I just wanted to clarify that. And I'd like to, I'm sorry for interrupting, but because people get really excited about these drugs, but there's other ways to lose weight. And you can also clarify to me, because I'm understanding with these drugs that we're talking with, GLP1s, you do lose a lot of muscle mass, which is so important for your health and fertility, that if you don't work with your diet and do the right exercise, you will probably not benefit. And when you stop the drug, you're going to have a massive rebound because you haven't made the lifestyle changes of diet and exercise. Well, you're 100% right. See, the question really is, is it about weight loss? Now, obviously, there are many women who are overweight, who have no trouble having babies. And so weight itself probably has a negative effect on fertility. There are papers that say it does, or papers that say it doesn't. But what's been interesting to us, and we mention this in the paper, is that we've looked at women who regulate perfectly normally. We document that they regulate. We look at progesterone levels, and they're regulating well. And yet, they don't become pregnant. And then, when they start taking one of these medications, they're able to become pregnant. So I'm not sure exactly what it is about these medications that leads to the so-called ozemic babies. I'm not sure. Obviously, a woman who is overweight and is not regulating as a result, you would think that the primary weight would help them is by helping them reduce weight. But you see it even when they regulate. So it's really, really interesting to us. And so we're doing a study where we actually do not have women stop these medications. Whichever one they're taking through the egg retrieval. And then we're taking molecular fluid, and we're analyzing the follicular fluid. Because our idea-- I'm sorry, the follicular fluid is where the eggs are. So when you draw an egg out, there's also follicular fluid. So you get both. Our feeling is that it's actually improving the environment that the eggs grow in. And that's how it improves pregnancy rate. And it's not just about losing weight, but we'll see what this study shows. But because it's being used for everything else now, it makes sense that it would also be used for fertility, and hopefully it'll have a positive effect. And one of the questions to ask is, what should you do them? Should a patient continue these medications during pregnancy? So that's an unknown fact right now. You know, you talk about the follicular fluid and the weight. It's the cascade of events. So I don't know. I'm just-- we're having coffee talk here-- is so many conditions seem to be diseases, including infertility due to chronic systemic inflammation. These cytokines-- you know, we see it in cancers. We see in cardiovascular. We see in dementia. Dementia is often known as type 3 diabetes, because it's inflammatory. So when we have this inflammation and oxidative stress, we age quicker. We have pain. We see all these diseases. And when the inflammatory markers are reduced, and oxidative stress is reduced, the body rejuvenates, including fertility. So the excess weight, like you said, is it because-- is it the weight? Well, the weight is part of the issue, but you can have thin people with systemic chronic systemic inflammation, right? So what I'm thinking about is, is the isopic type drugs-- it will help you lose weight. But if you were a normal weight and you're taking these drugs, would it also change these markers? Like does it have another benefit that will grow the subweight? And you know, we see a lot of patients that are really not overweight that are taking these medications, because it's almost like here in California, you're not cool, if you're in California. I was going to say, that's for you in California, if that's where the date is going to be. And so we're going to be very interested in looking at the effect of weight as well. Obviously, these medications are thought to reduce inflammation apart from weight. So it's going to be really interesting. There are measures of information that we can look at. And we'll see what happens, because one of the things you mentioned earlier is when you stop taking it, you see a rebound. And you really want to have somebody take these medications through the agritriol, and then you say, stop. Stop the medication. Then you do a transfer. And generally, that's done. Let's say four to six weeks later. By then, they've already gained some weight. And then they continue to gain weight during the pregnancy. And that has a harmful effect on the pregnancy. So right now, no one's recommending taking these medications during pregnancy. But many women have. They got pregnant spontaneously. And they kept right on taking it. And so studies are being done to look at those babies that came from these women who took it throughout pregnancy. It's not a great study, of course, there's no control group or anything like that. But I think soon we'll have a much better idea of whether or not it's a good idea to continue to take it. And some women are saying, I'm not going to gain 60 pounds during my pregnancy. I'm going to keep right on taking it. So we'll have some answers soon on that. And I will share, again, about the inflammation. There's multiple ways to address inflammation besides taking GLP1 medications like ozempic. You've got a psychology background. That's part of your training. So chronic stress. Stress is not so bad. It's your perception to the stress. And so chronic can lead to systemic inflammation. Your diet can change that. So again, anti-inflammatory diet. A shout out on the acupuncture website. There is a free diet with recipes that is an anti-inflammatory low glycemic index diet. So please check that out. Acupuncture has been shown to help with inflammation. Low-level laser therapy helps regulate inflammation. That's why I thought the earlier studies I was seeing why it was benefiting not just because of blood flow, but I thought because of its ability to regulate inflammation. Some of the later research I've looked at even helps impact insulin. Right? So all these markers are important. And now we're learning that we have these drugs that we can use. So again, everything is about can we lower oxarditis stress, can we regulate inflammation? Because we need inflammation to heal. We need inflammation to ovulate. We need inflammation for implantation. But when we have too much inflammation, it seems like we have a disease process and we cause more fertility decline. So this is interesting. So we're going to go to stem cells, but there's any else to add on the ozemic drug. So you guys are doing some-- you're using this. There's some studies on this. Currently, they're not on the ozemic when they're doing the transfer, but they can be on these drugs up to retrieval. Did I understand that correctly? That's the current protocol? That's exactly right. And we talked about energy of the cell, the mitochondria you're talking about earlier, that overrestricted or rapid weight loss in your paper can cause energy stress in the ovary and then cause a demise in some of these energy productions that we want activation. So you don't want-- in general, you don't want rapid weight loss of restriction. That's exactly true. All right. I'm patients on our fertility diet. I have patients that we don't count calories on our diet, but the diet when people start to eat an anti-inflammatory diet that's low in glycemic index, they will naturally lose weight without having your calories. They get kind of full easier because lots of fiber. And we've seen people. So rather than forcing the weight loss, you eat, move your body, and it's neat how the weight kind of can come off fairly easy. And yes, when your partner-- if he's male-- does it with you, he often loses weight quicker, which often upsets the female of that relationship. I don't know. It's just something that we often notice. Anything you wanted to add about the GLP1 in your paper before we go to STEM cells that you think is important for the listeners? I think one of the fascinating things about GLP1 is how it works to the patient. And what they say is, I just don't eat. I don't want to eat. I have four or five bites, and I'm done. And of course, it's now being used for gambling, for marijuana, for many other things, because people just kind of lose interest. And whatever it is that they're doing, it's not just the food. It's almost everything. And so when I see the patients that are on it, to me just do not respond as they used to. Maybe before, they would be very concerned about this or that. And bring it up. They're just much calmer. And it's really interesting. You see how this works out, because psychological studies are being done on patients that are taking these medications as well. It's always interesting when there's a new medication. No one really knows exactly how it works. How does it get in the brain? How does it affect the brain? And there's a lot more to be known about this. And I believe that we're gonna find this is an important factor in fertility as well. - Have you noticed anything with your PRP? You know, it's not really PRP that you're doing. Like you said, that's Gen 1. So over your ovary rejuvenation, is there anything you're seeing with a GLP1 drugs? How people respond differently to the ovary rejuvenation? Like do you see changes in AMH? Do you see changes in hormonal feedback loops? Like when you're measuring the hormones or in the IVF cycle, different responses? - You know, we just don't have enough patients that are doing both. I'm absolutely fascinated by that. And we're keeping track of every detail of everybody we see in both of these situations. But obviously they're choosing to do the ovary rejuvenation. But you don't wanna have a study where someone feels like they're forced to go on to GLP1 for fertility purposes, since it's not known that it has any beneficial effect at this point on that. But we're watching. And I think it's a great question. And I think the answer to that question will be very important in the future. - All right, off camera, let's repeat what we kind of did off camera. You have, you're involved with a company that's doing some stem cell work. You were sharing how you've been cloned. So tell us what you mean by that. And that how two men, one can contribute an egg and one can contribute a sperm. So you're sounding a little bit like Jurassic Park here. That didn't end well, by the way. So I do have some questions for you around that. But can you just kinda, this was the first I've heard of this. So there's probably a lot of people just tell us about this company, tell us what's happening now and what you think potential is for the future, including that you've been cloned. - Well, I have a company called Stemogen. And for many years, people have been trying to clone a human. And I don't mean to clone them reproductively, but to clone them therapeutically. So that if someone needed a new liver, they could use their own cells to create a liver. And no one had been able to do it for many years. And I worked with this guy from Melbourne, Australia. He's a braille cloner. And we were able to do it in humans. But the problem was no one else could do it. And whenever you do something and no one else can do it, people are skeptical that you did it. You need to replicate anything you do. You need replication to show that you were right. And so I was thrilled. There's years later, but I was thrilled when University of Oregon replicated what we did, thrilled. And so the study we're about to talk about is one that they did. So they were able to do it in humans as well. And this is a mouse study, but it's incredible to me. What they did is they take skin cells. And then they create an embryo from the skin cells. And then they create an egg. Where do we? Embryo? Then egg then embryo. It all goes together. You first do one. And then there's a technique you can use to take it from 46 chromosomes and a human down to 23. This was all done in roads. And so they were able to create eggs that work. And that is such an amazing thing, because so many women either can't make eggs because of chemotherapy. Their ovaries are removed. They were born with a genetic disorder that didn't allow them to create eggs. Many circumstances under which an egg is so critically important. One of the most important is being older reproductively. And the idea here is if you could take skin cells from a woman that cannot make a good quality egg because she's over 45, let's say. And you could create a good quality egg. You would give her a chance to become pregnant. So now that this has been done, and I congratulate them for doing this work, I think it really points the way in the future. And I think this will be done a lot. The problem is concern about how healthy those eggs are going to be, how healthy the resulting embryos are going to be, the resulting baby. So there's a lot of work to be done before it can be done in humans. But the thing we mentioned earlier, and I love this. I absolutely love this. We work with a lot of same-sex male patients. And what's very sad to them is that one of them is going to create the sperm, and you got to get eggs from somewhere else. And it's a very difficult decision for them on where to get those eggs. And some try to get them from a sister, for example. They're ways to try to get a genetic component into that baby. But what's amazing about this is imagine you're a male. Someone can take skin cells, and they can create an egg from you. So one partner provides the egg. The other partner provides the sperm. And you create this baby that comes from both of them. And I think that's fascinating. And if this works out, it's going to be an incredible advance in the field in a most difficult area. I have a question. And what about two same-sex women? Can one-- can you take the skin? Well, and make sperm from one of the women then, if a man can make an egg. Yeah, so-- So that's been done. That's been done. In animals, it's been done. You can create sperm as well. So the same thing could happen there. So basically, people can have their own genetic material as their babies. Yeah, send the future. And the future. But in the future. So for now, for now, for those that are listening at the time of this recording, one day this will exist. But for now, just like XC didn't exist, 25 plus years ago when I was practicing, vitrification, the things, chromosomal screening, there's things that change. But for now, Dr. Wood offers a very-- a very rejuvenation right up to Gen 4 now he has. And remember, he has episode 69 on PRP, rejuvenation. We did a little review of it here. He's talked about the GLP1 drugs, ozemic, what's coming around with that. What's coming down the pipeline with that, that's current now. It's still somewhat experimental. My understanding is from the fertility aspect of it. And then reminding people, there's diet. There's lifestyle. There's mind body tools, acupuncture, low level laser therapy, herbal medicine, as another form of overrear rejuvenation. So that's what we have today, everybody. This is what we're limited to today, which haven't been practiced since 2000. It's a great improvement. And it sounds like another 20 years or less, there's going to be even more wild technology to support people, rather than it's pretty amazing. Anything you want to share, any closing, we're going to put your links in the show notes, how to find you, you're out in San Diego, Gen 5. By the way, I'm assuming you still do the consults from people around the world if you want to talk to you, because I've sent you patients that have been able to talk to you. You're still doing that? Yeah, absolutely. We actually have many Canadian patients. And you know, we, I have to share a story, because we haven't spoken since our episode way back when. But I had a woman that was coming to my practice, diminishing over-em-reserve, egg quality issues, multiple miscarriages. We were using the giga laser, which got popular at Denmark with her in Acupuncture. She worked with you. And you were saying, we're going to get one good egg from you, that's our goal. And here's what you got to do. And she came back to me with your protocol. And I'm like, I've never seen this. This is interesting. I don't know if it'll work, but if you're up for it, go for it. So we did our thing. You did your thing. And then lo and behold, she got some modulation. Lo and behold, you put her through an IVF cycle. And lo and behold, she got to become pregnant. And for our long last Sunday spoke to her. So that's why I wanted to ask you, are you still taking consults from around the world and you do? So fantastic. Any closing remarks that you want to share with the listeners? I don't want anyone to give up. I want to make sure that everybody finds people that helps with whatever they have. And there are many, many different things that can have a negative effect on fertility. But I'm the most positive person you've ever met. And I hope that everyone understands it just because some fertility specialist says, you need to use an egg donor. That they not believe it just because someone says it. You need to look around. You need to find out what's out there. It's very similar to having cancer. In fact, a study showed that having cancer as the same psychological fact is having infertility. So if you have a cancer and someone says, there's nothing we can do. You're going to die in three weeks. You've got to look into it. It's about you. It's about your life. It's about your dreams and your goals. And so no one should give up hope without really, really looking into things and finding out what's available to them. Thank you. All right. That's Dr. Wood. Check out his episode 69. Please follow, like, subscribe to the podcast. If you do so, then every time we release a new episode, you will get notified on conscience for chilling beyond where we talk about fertility. We talk about perimenopause, menopause, and consciousness. Dr. Wood, thank you very much for joining me again. I really enjoyed this. And I learned lots when we chat. Thank you. It was a pleasure. So I'm just going to add on here at the end of my interview with Dr. Samuel Wood. He's over in San Diego. We have a few episodes on PRP. This would be one by him in episode 69. And then we have at least two more as well. So feel free to contact me through Instagram or through the clinic. And again, I want to remind you that diets there, like, The big part of this was how to improve the energy of the, of the exhale. One thing is how to reduce the accelerated loss of that energy, right? Because it's going to lose energy with aging. That's part of it, but you don't want accelerated biological aging. And so there's many ways to do this to, to help with the inflammation, oxidative stress that the body is going through. Because imagine that it has to keep defending itself from toxins and inflammation. That's going to consume energy as well, right? Accelerate to the aging. So there's things to boost it and there's things you want to remove from your lifestyle that's going to accelerate the aging. And so diet is really is key. You're going to eat, you're going to eat every day, not that you're going to eat lots, but you need to eat. So there is the acupuncture fertility diet that is a fertility diet that's anti-inflammatory low glycemic index. Grab that for free from the acupuncture website or from my Lauren Brown website. There are certain supplements. CoQ10, there's certain precursors for NAD and other supplements that can help recycle that I like to share with you guys as well that you can look into again on our clinical website or contact us. CoQ10's popular one for improving the mitochondrial function. There is Chinese herbs have been shown to improve ATP and mouth studies. Certain Chinese herbal formulas, right? And Chinese herbs, so the the young tonics in particular low level laser therapy for fertility, low level laser therapy. Lots of information on our website on how that can regulate inflammation and improve blood flow and improve mitochondrial function and even blood sugars acupuncture as well. So there is an integrative approach and then stress, chronic stress, anxiety, poor sleep. If you're not sleeping well, if you're constantly feeling anxious, that's going to create an inflammatory environment. So you want to do things to help you sleep, preferably non-prescription to really get you into that deep sleep. I talked a little bit about my sound table, but there's a lot of tools out there to help you sleep. Happy to talk to you about that. And the mood, the conscious work around the stress and anxiety, removing some of the chemicals and toxins that are unnecessary that you can actually have control over and remove from your life, movement. So lots of things that are available to you. We have quite a few blog posts on that and again, reach out on my IG or my Lorne Brown website, Accubelance website for more information to support you on this journey. All right, hopefully this information is helpful and do check out the download for that fertility diet. I think that is a good place to start. If you're looking for support to grow your family, contact Accubelance Wellness Center. At Accubelance, they help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low-level laser therapy, fertility acupuncture and naturopathic medicine. Download the Accubelance fertility diet and Dr. Brown's video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to Accubelance.ca. That's acubelance.ca. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility. The show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That's Instagram Lorne Brown official. Or you can visit my websites LorneBrown.com and Accubelance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.