Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (40 page)

SS:
What about the gut? The second brain? Is there any connection from the gut to these diseases?

DM:
I think so. If you look at chronic inflammatory disorders like diabetes, or if you look at the predictors of stroke or heart attacks, you will see that increased abdominal girth is a predictor. We think the reason is that toxins are being absorbed from the gut, causing inflammation; this results in increased abdominal fat, which predicts for these chronic diseases.

SS:
People are getting weird bacterias, like
H. pylori
, from different sources, one being nonorganic chicken.

Is there an end point to having multiple bacteria in the gut? These things cause inflammation to one degree or another and they can lead to serious disorders, yes?

DM:
Of course, anything that causes inflammation is not good.

SS:
This is another reason to make good food choices. I grow my own organic food and only buy organic, but I’m on the road … a lot. Sometimes you just can’t get good-quality food. I believe strongly in detoxification. I have an infrared sauna, and I also take detoxification measures through IV treatments with my antiaging doctor. Talk to me about detoxification.

DM:
When I was in Scotland working on my doctorate, we discovered that the patients whom we were treating with the apheresis procedure for stem cell harvesting or plasmapheresis were receiving an albumin solution that was highly contaminated with heavy metals and toxins such as aluminum as a side effect of the manufacturing process. Because of these heavy metals, the patients’ disease state was actually being made worse by these toxins. Part of my thesis was figuring out a way to remove those heavy metals from the solutions we were using. We were able to treat the patients who had developed heavy metal toxicity using chelating agents.

SS:
I’m glad to hear you mention chelation because you are an orthodox doctor and so often chelation gets dismissed as antiaging quackery. But from where I see it, what else can we do when we are exposed daily to mercury, cadmium, aluminum, arsenic, dioxins,
and PCBs? Does chelation, which cleans the blood of these contaminants, help control the inflammatory process these toxins create?

DM:
Yes, you are correct. Certain heavy metals can circulate in the blood and then get deposited in the tissues, and this has been associated with Parkinson’s. Chelation is effective in accomplishing the removal of heavy metals deposited in the tissues. The body responds to heavy metals by producing an inflammatory response, causing damage to the tissues, and that is when you can get disease. The problem with Parkinson’s disease, or many other diseases, is often financial and related to approval of the treatments. For example, a patient goes to the doctor and is given an approved drug that insurance will cover, and most often that is the only option a patient has regardless of the effectiveness of that drug. Another example is with cancers, for instance, pancreatic cancer, where the drugs clearly are not producing cures but are covered by insurance and it is therefore what the patient is going to get. If you look at the survival rates of this disease and the effectiveness of these drugs, it’s measured in months. There are many other ways these patients could be treated, but they are not given options because the reimbursement system through the insurance companies does not allow the physician to prescribe other treatments that could be effective.

SS:
Yes, I know that the survival rate for stage IV pancreatic patients is 2.4 percent if they take conventional chemotherapy—2.4 percent! That is a total failure of a protocol. Give me hope … You think the answer is in stem cells?

DM:
Well … yes. [Laughs.] As a stem cell transplant physician …

SS:
[Laughs.] Sorry, of course … you are, after all, a stem cell transplant physician!

DM:
I have discovered that patients who had neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s and stroke, may be able to recover with their own stem cells. The procedure we are researching is noninvasive, and the exciting part is that these patients can release their own stem cells from the bone marrow into their blood circulation, which then goes to the different areas of damage. In a small number of patients, improvements of about 55 to 60 percent have occurred and as an added plus, their medications are being reduced. Unfortunately, these patients are often on three or four different medications, and it’s often the side effects of their medications that can delay the improvements in their condition.

SS:
What about diabetes, that other big killer disease?

DM:
Yes, we are doing similar research with diabetes as well as with people with liver failure.

SS:
This is very exciting. It’s not just about overcoming the disease; it’s a return to quality of life. After all, what is a long life without quality?

DM:
Right, and what excites me is finding a solution to these devastating problems. If we can regenerate the tissues, then we can repair the damaged tissues and we can continue improving a patient’s condition. We can also reduce inflammation, which prevents further destruction; and by doing this we improve the lifestyle of the patient. And you are correct; it truly is all about quality of life. I’m seeing it on a day-to-day basis.

SS:
Unfortunately, there are limitations in the United States. In what is currently allowable, how far away do you think we are (in terms of years) from being able to fully utilize the full potential of stem cell therapy?

DM:
If we focus on patients’ own stem cells (which is a safe way) and from current research, I think it will be allowable in the next few years. As far as the embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, I think that will take longer, maybe five to ten years.

SS:
When you talk embryonic, do you mean actual fetuses or adult fetal stem cells taken from the adult bone marrow?

DM:
We use adult fetal stem cells taken from their own body. By embryonic, I’m referring to cells grown in culture from the cell lines of embryos.

As I mentioned, we obtain pluripotent stem cells that are produced when cells taken from the skin have four genes inserted to produce a cell like an embryonic stem cell, called an
induced pluripotent stem cell
. I refer to adult stem cells as the stem cells taken from adult bone marrow.

I differentiate embryonic and adult stem cells so individuals who are not advocates of fetal stem cells do not become confused. I am familiar with very small embryonic-like (VSEL) stem cells. One of my collaborators, Dr. Mariusz Ratajczak from the University of Louisville, was one of the first to describe VSEL cells. You are correct. We can find these cells, which have characteristics of embryonic stem cells and also pluripotent capability, within our own bone marrow.

If we continue to develop the treatments for patients using their own stem cells, we will be able to bring this therapy to the general population at a faster rate with less controversy and few, if any, side
effects. When we use our own stem cells, we do not have to worry about rejection. We don’t have to worry about using immunosuppressive drugs that carry with them other diseases and problems from complications from the drugs themselves.

The public has to become educated as to the potential of stem cells, and to be as proactive as possible. It’s important to bank your stem cells for future use when you are healthy. Frozen stem cells do not age, so when we do thaw them and use them for a procedure, we are actually putting back cells at the age at which they were when they were collected. Your body will continue to age but your frozen stem cells will not, which will be a huge advantage when they are put to use.

There is research coming out of Stanford and Harvard that involves taking old mice and young mice and connecting their circulatory systems; the young stem cells from the young mice will go into the old mice and repair the tissues. These are genetically identical mice. Using the same idea, if we have our own stem cells collected when we are young, then when they are put back at a later date, the younger cells will have the potential to repair the older tissues.

SS:
So it’s putting a younger
you
back into
you
! This is a true turning back of the clock and redefining what we think of as aging, the possibilities being that we can eradicate these particular diseases you have mentioned that are killing us now, using stem cells from our own bodies. Could this eventually be the protocol for any human ailment, for instance, heart disease?

DM:
Yes, let’s take the common heart diseases such as heart failure following heart attacks, chronic heart failure due to damage to the heart from other causes, hypertension, or cardiomyopathies where the heart is damaged.

It is possible that all the chronic diseases can be eradicated, that tissues can be repaired, and in the future, stem cells will be able to
regenerate organs. There will be no worry about rejections, or having to be on antirejection drugs or using somebody else’s tissue. The catch is the healthier you keep yourself, the better your outcomes overall. We need to deal with chronic diseases proactively, to prevent and slow down the aging process so when we need stem cells, we use them only for the dramatic cases, where it requires an immediate fix of the tissue that’s damaged.

SS:
So the hope with stem cells is that we can tweak and fix all the parts of us that are worn out and repair them and also, in time, tackle all the major diseases?

But what about cancer? It is known that chemotherapy kills cancer cells in some cases but it can never kill the
cancer stem cell
, which is why most of the time the cancer comes back. Is anyone close to unlocking the key to killing the cancer stem cell?

DM:
If you have a normal cell, a mutation occurs in the DNA that causes that cell to become a cancer cell. That mutation can be a single mutation, like say, chronic myeloid leukemia, or you can have ten thousand mutations, as in the case of a very aggressive cancer like a pancreatic cancer. If you introduce a drug that blocks a mutation and the effects of that mutation, you can treat the disease effectively. A good example of that is a drug called Gleevec, which has been very effective in treating chronic myeloid leukemia. It has improved survival and works well, until the patients become resistant to that drug. But recent research shows that Gleevec does not kill the cancer stem cell. So this drug can control the disease, but not kill it.