Episode 21: The Truth About Stem Cells, Natural Killer Cells And PRP With Dr. Rafael Gonzalez

 

There is no exaggeration of how important stem cells are to our body, especially when it comes to healing, repairing, and making changes. In this time of COVID, we need to learn how to take care of them more so they can protect us from the virus and other diseases. Haylie Pomroy invites an expert to the show to help us understand the power they hold to our health and wellbeing. She is with Dr. Rafael Gonzalez, a Ph.D. from the University of California, who is responsible for the development of clinical stem cell applications for several disease/trauma states. Here, Dr. Gonzalez dives deep into stem cell research and therapies that can support us in our journey towards good health—from cell-based immunotherapy to growing our NK cells (natural killer cells). He talks about how putting power on your plate can change the trajectory of your health and your cells, sharing the work they are doing now to understand how these cells help you become healthier. 

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The Truth About Stem Cells, Natural Killer Cells And PRP With Dr. Rafael Gonzalez

I have an incredible guest. This is a very special treat for our community. Dr. Rafael Gonzalez is a PhD from the University of California. He is a cell genius. His research is at the top of the stratosphere as far as natural killer cells, as far as stem cell research. We get to talk to him. He has extensive knowledge in all aspects of cell biology. He is responsible for developing several clinical trials with stem cell applications for things such as autoimmune disorders, COVID treatment. He’s got a phenomenal clinic in Cancún. He is going to talk about how putting power on your plate can change the trajectory of your health and your cells. We’re going to also touch base about a few treatments, some amazing treatments as he and I have gotten to work together over the years. I wanted to bring him to you, my beloved community, so that you could have more knowledge, more information, and more options so that you can get outrageously healthy. Please enjoy this time with this incredible guest, Dr. Gonzalez.

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A lot of my community had tons of questions about this. Some of them were very complex. Some of them were basic, but the biggest thing is I want you to talk to me like a third-grader in the sense of I want to know about some different types of cell therapies. As we go through, we’ll talk about some applications. My community is excited that I get to ask you all of these questions, but they want to know things that they hearing about, things like stem cells. What’s a stem cell? What are your own stem cells? What’s somebody else’s stem cells? Can we talk first about stem cell’s basic? We’ll do stem cells, and then we’ll do NK cells if that’s cool with you.

The stem cells are found throughout our bodies as adults, understanding that these stem cells in our body are the same age that we are and come with the same inherent issues that we have. However, they are naive cells in the body that have a lot of capabilities to do a lot, especially in the context of healing, repair, and making changes. The problem is as we age, they’re difficult to work well because of many other extrinsic and intrinsic factors that are transpiring in our body. With that in mind, the biggest place that we normally get stem cells from are our bone marrow. When we discussed the context of, from us, we are discussing what’s called autologous stem cells.

A lot of people ask that question. I’m going to take a step back. When we talk about stem cells, there are billions of cells in our body. There are cells that are skin cells, and there are kidney cells, tissue cells. Stem cells, am I correct in thinking that it’s almost like it doesn’t have a job yet? When you say the word naive, does that mean that it doesn’t have a unique function yet, like a cardio cell or a heart cell?

Not at its starting point. However, for instance, in the context of everybody knows about you get cancer and have a stem cell transplant, that’s following removal of the cancer cells with a chemotherapeutic, then putting them back in. Understanding that if you got a stem cell from a kidney, it’s in that direction of being kidney type of tissue. Meaning, it can form the fifteen different cell types that are in the kidney. Bone marrow is the mother of all our blood. Any immune cell, any red blood cell, if you grab a stem cell from there, it has the complexity or the ability to change into a white blood cell or red blood cell, the various different types of white blood cells or platelets. All the different cell types that are within blood and bone marrow.

When we talk about stem cells, they’re all in our body, and autologous means it’s us. It came from us. That’s different than PRP, Platelet-Rich Plasma.

That does not even stem cells.

A lot of our community will still say, “I had my stem cells extracted, spun, and injected into my shoulder or my knee.” I’ll say, “Did you do a bone marrow?” They’ll say, “No. They extracted my fat and spun it.” That’s a PRP.

They extract the fat, that’s different. The fat has stem cells, and there are particular types that are removed from what’s called the stromal vascular fraction. Think of fat as a bunch of big droplets. In between each one of those droplets, there’s a formal vasculature that maintains how the fat works and everything that transpires in there, plus the immune cells and these other cell types that are in there too. You disrupt the fat and stromal vascular fraction, where within that cell fraction, you can obtain what’s called the mesenchymal stem cell. You can get stem cells from there.

I was telling my community, fats are like a garbage bag. If you have a container, like a dumpster, the stuff outside, that’s where you would extract stem cells. It can come from fat. What’s the difference with PRP?

PRP is Platelet-Rich plasma. It’s a platelet. Essentially, we take it, and those are not stem cells. The concept behind it. We take your blood, spin it, and separate it. When we separate the blood, the very bottom portion of it is red blood cells. The middle small cap is a white blood cell. Right above that, we have these platelets that are small. We enrich for those platelets, and we inject them. When you do this, the concept is, as soon as I inject it in, those platelets are going to break open, then they’re going to release these growth factors that are going to do one important thing.

They’re going to cause a strong pro-inflammatory response. Let’s go back to when we were kids. Remember when you were a kid, you run, fell, and started crying, and it was so painful it’s because you had such a strong pro-inflammatory response. The reason why you need that is because what happened when you were a kid? You healed like that. When we’re adults, we don’t have that inflammatory response. What we’re doing is we’re changing that to make it a strong inflammatory response, whether it’s in the shoulder, when it’s in a knee, in a tendon ligament so that we can get that strong healing anti-inflammatory response versus that goal response that takes a long time.

I had PRP and a platelet disorder. It was an interesting process. With that, the way I thought of it or the way I wrap my head around it, it was almost like adding a secondary opportunity. With the first injury, you have an opportunity to heal and repair. It’s almost like inducing a second pseudo injury so that your body has another opportunity to heal and repair. When my clients have PRP infusion, especially in the joint or somewhere like that, we will feed them for injury. We’ll feed them a lot of food. We have a pain and inflammation protocol. That one is a good post-PRP.

I appreciate separating that because in LA, Denver, and in different places where I live, there’s a lot of people that are doing PRP therapies for joints. We have a lot of individuals, the clients that I travel with that is how you and I get to work together is they’re doing maybe stem cell extractions from the outside the fat, a trash bag. That would be autologous. Bone morrow would be from your cell, would be another autologous. We have the other kind of stem cell therapy, which comes from another body, another person. We got a lot of questions because I have clients with community members that traveled all over the world for different therapies. Many years ago, I was traveling with a client, and they went to the Caribbean. They did stem cells and then sheep cells.

Sheep cells are what’s common, and there’s a famous center in Switzerland that started, La Prairie that a lot of people go to, and it’s very expensive. Ultimately, it’s ground-up sheep tissue. What you need to understand with these types of therapies, including when you get bone marrow from yourself, when you get fat from yourself, it’s a mixed population of cells. It’s not essentially a 100% stem cell. It’s one 5% stem cell. There’s a bunch of other cells in there that play a role in what they need to do, but it ultimately deals with trillions of cells in our body.

Every cell in your body has to communicate to survive. One cell helps the other cell. That’s the only way that we are in what’s called homeostasis, feeling well, in a consistent struggle in our bodies to feel well, to maintain well. These are what causes changes in our body are these factors. Now they’re called exosomes, the way one cell communicates with another cell. This is how we maintain health in general. Even though, for instance, if you take bone marrow out of the average 40-year-old, you’re discussing 0.0001% stem cells. That’s a hematopoietic stem cell, which is a blood stem cell. That’s another cell type called the mesenchymal stem cell.

Most bone marrow extractions are what they call hematopoietic, which is blood. I always try to say it has a preconceived idea of everything associated, and I love the way you said it, the mother of all blood from the marrow. When we talk about stem cells now from another human body and particularly cord blood stem cells, we have a lot of individuals in our community that asked. I’m older. When I was having babies, it was new to bank your children’s cord blood. Is it different to bank their cord blood than the cord itself? Can you explain that?

PYP 17 | Stem Cells

 

When we discuss somebody else, the term is called allogeneic. The term allo is from another. In the context of obtaining cells in general or stem cells, we discuss it being from what’s called perinatal tissues. There are many tissues there. There’s amniotic fluid, amniotic tissue, placental tissue, cord blood, and cord tissue. They are all different in their own unique way. When you discuss, for instance, the banking business that people take, you have a child, your bank the cord blood, the concept behind that is in case your child has cancer and now the child’s able to have chemo. Now you’re able to use the cord blood. This is the mother blood stem cell that, after chemo, can reconstitute or rebuild that immune system and that blood system for the baby again. Granted with an understanding that it’s the amount of cells per body weight. The use of that for your child is only good for X amount of time in the state for cancer. Until they’re about 4 or 5 years of age. We’re discussing using it in the context of cancer.

I had a client, and it was a fascinating case. They did bank cord blood and tissue. We were working together. A high-risk pregnancy doctor, a friend of mine, referred me to this client to get her through pregnancy. She was diagnosed with heavy metal toxicity during pregnancy. We worked through the pregnancy, and they got this most beautiful daughter. Things were going well. The daughter is 2 or 3 years old, very verbal, had a vaccine reaction. It went completely apraxic, which means no speaking for a nine-month period.

We pulled in some amazing docs at Duke. We worked a little bit of magic. They did do the cord blood transplant. We flew to Duke. They said, “We’re not sure it’s experimental," this and that. I was able to work together on the team. I would love to ask you, this wasn’t your patient or client, but in a situation like that, she had remarkable healing. She’s in grade level now. Within six months, we saw a complete regression of all the symptoms associated with her vaccine injury. It was phenomenal. You, and I have worked together with a lot of clients. I want to talk about some of those cases too.

I know from a vaccine injury, it was shocking to watch. She had this huge fever syndrome. Her fevers went up to 107, had some seizures, and completely apraxic, did not speak a word. She was a little chatterbox. She’s completely on the other side now. It’s a wonderful thing. There was a hype- immune response. How did those cells help quell that immune response? I know we’re seeing that improving with stem cells.

What we essentially look at is, remember, we said a little bit ago in the case of, for instance, cord blood bone marrow, there’s an abundance of the vast majority of what’s in there is immune cells. When we discuss the context of cord blood, think of it like this. Mom has a baby, which essentially baby is part of that too. How is that not rejected? It’s because of that fountain in there that’s connecting one to another, and the nutrients are a match for both individuals. Yet, the immune system keeps everything under control and in check.

There’s no rejection. There are no issues when babies have receiving nutrients and receiving DNA from dad and from mom. Baby is unique in its own way, and it’s not rejected. In the context of, I take cord blood, there’s a bunch of cells in there that regulate the immune system. These are the white blood cells that regulate the immune systems besides stem cells. When we discuss these types of injuries that transpire all of it, for me personally, you know this, and we’ve talked about this before, is the immune system is key because every single disease has an immune component to it. Everything you can think of.

When they put those cells back in there, she had an injury, and there were small inflammatory molecules that transferred from outside. I call the peripheral system outside. Inside would be the brain and the spinal cord, which transferred over into there and cause some form of cerebral injury or something that happened. You’ve seen this, I’ve seen this, it happens. Once you get the immune system in check, which is what these cells can do, that goes away with time. It’s not just one thing. I’m sure that you were working with them. It’s giving them on a diet. It’s giving them the right nutrition. It’s a bunch of little different things at one time. One of the important components is getting that immune system in check is what these cells do, and they do it well.

To land the plane on this one, with the women that are pregnant, do you recommend banking, and how long do you usually recommend storing if you do?

I would recommend bank. Both of my kids have their cord blood bank, tissue, and they’re extracting stem cells, and anything else I get out of it. Science is evolving significantly. There’s a lot more work than we have to do, like myself and my colleagues at work with me. Some of the things that are happening now that we’re doing now, it’s amazing and things that we’re learning and ways to change things in the body. You have to store it because A, if there’s a cancer, B, if something else goes wrong, you can use exactly what example you gave 3 or 4 years later. They turn around, use those cells, and help the child under normal development. I would say yes that you should do it.

I’m going to shift gears a little bit into some of the things that you and I have worked together with. I want to jump from stem cells to NK cells or Natural Killer cells, and then we’re going to come back to stem cells because I want to talk about some of the studies, the trials, some of the cases that you and I have worked together with. Why do I feel like I tracked down and stalked you for a long time because you’re a genius? I needed help with some of my most difficult clients. I want to stick to this because this is what comes from your own body.

They’re natural killer cells. They’re extracted through your own blood. I’ve hung out with you, and we’ve done this with some of my clients. One client, in particular, and this was a cool case that had stage 4 throat cancer. Sometimes pre-chemotherapy. In your ideal world, if a person’s going to go into chemo or some immune suppressive treatment, is the dream that we can bank their NK cells prior to treatment so that we can give them back after, or what’s the dream there?

In the ideal situation, unfortunately, once we hit 50, you’re about 50% prone to get cancer, the remainder of your life. When you get 60, it goes up exponentially as time progresses. If you’re able to capture cells or your immune cells at an early stage, then you can manipulate them later on, make changes and necessary changes. You can use them as therapeutics. This is called the immunotherapy, which everybody has heard of, but in this case, it’s cell-based immunotherapy or what’s called an adoptive cell transfer because we’re taking cells, and then we’re transferring it back to you.

Let’s go back and talk about the immune system and natural killer cells. We have two components of our immune system. One is called the innate, meaning immediate, and the second one called the adoptive, meaning the one that’s a secondary responder that comes in, for instance, in the case of what we know COVID and viruses. This is the guy that comes in on many times and starts wiping everything out and call the calling in the whole cavalry.

Every day immunity and then crisis immunity. Would that be good?

The innate or the immediate immune response has these cells called natural killer cells. Just like they’re called, they are natural killers. Unfortunately, as we age, they are no longer natural killer cells. They become signalers or what we call dormant government workers. They’re chill, signaling, and not doing the natural killing that they need to do, and they don’t do the right job. Natural killer cells have three fates. Three jobs that they do. Number one, they wipe out viruses. That’s their key job. They’re surveilling on a regular basis in your body. You have a couple of billion of them that are in there surveilling, and they’re waiting for a virus to come in. Their job is to attack. When too much virus comes in, and then they need help.

Why I wanted to pull you in on this case, in particular, was this with this throat cancer, it was viral based. It was herpes virus-based. One of the reasons why we were going, this would be a great ideal. A lot of times, why they pull me in on these things is because if we’re going to do something like bank NK cells, you grow the cells. I try to create the most fertile soil for those cells to grow. I try to give you like a bang for your buck, that someone’s going to do that. In working together, I’ve manipulated a lot of my nutrition programs based on what you tell me is happening to the cell after you pull it out. You’re like, “We only got this many billion. We only got this many hundred thousands.” I’m going, “I need billions. I’ll manipulate their nutrition or manipulate their supplementation.” The virus is the first one with NK cells. What were the other two?

The second one is cancer. Anytime you walk outside, you’re exposed to the sun, and there’s a possible mutation or anything like that. The NK cell is the first responder. He goes in, and he kills any white cell before it becomes malignant in nature. Even when it’s malignant, it’s still a responder. The last thing is the part that I have most interested in, and it’s called a senescent cell. Everybody’s going to be like, “What is that?”

PYP 17 | Stem Cells

 

This is an age cell. Every cell in your body has a finite number of doublings or meaning grow and double. At one point in our life, the cell no longer doubles. All that does is occupy space, release, and form havoc. I’m going to give you simple examples of this. Gray hair. The pigment cell is no longer functioning. What I have is a cell that’s in there that’s occupying space and no longer is releasing the pigment of the natural brown that I should have. A wrinkle is a cell that’s no longer functioning the right way and releasing havoc in there that collagen is not being released the right way. Elastin is not being released the right way. The fat is not produced for the plumpness the right way. A fat cell, too. It disrupts the fat cell. Fibrosis of the lung, cirrhosis of the liver, all of that is essentially senescence or aged dormant cell that causes them.

When I had a client that I worked with you with that had dermatomyositis and autoimmune disorder, and there was tissue in the lungs that was negative tissue or fibrotic tissue. We saw a significant regression in the fibrotic tissue. I know we were going to talk about using stem cell, NK cell, in combination, we used a lot of herbs, a lot of nutrition. It’s a team, it’s an effort. When we were talking about some of the senescent cells, is that the reinfusion of the NK cells? NK cell infusion goes like this, and I’ve sat with him and watched it take the blood. You are very careful.

With how to manipulate the blood, get the blood, collect the blood, correct amount of versions of the tube.

That’s how I took care of my little babies. We ship them off, they go to your lab, and then grown for how long?

They’re grown for approximately three weeks. Anybody naturally walks around when you’re relatively healthy, anywhere from all the white blood cells in your body, 5% to 15% are NK cells. With about 170 milliliters, which is about 1/4 or 1/3 of a pint of the blood of a blood donation, we start off with about twenty million NK cells. The goal is within three weeks. We don’t want them to multiply too much and activate them. We activate them to make them strong killers again. We obtain anywhere from 800 million to 2.5 billion sometimes.

I always feel like when you call or text me and tell me how many cells, I feel like I’m back in college and I’m waiting for my midterm results. I don’t know why I get so nervous when you give me that number. I get neurotic about what I feed them coming into your draws.

That’s important because people call all the time, and they say, “Should I be fasting?” In this case, no. “Should I have done exercise?” In this case, “Yes. A real light exercise. You should have been on a good diet previously." We want to start off with a decent, good, healthy population of NK cells to be able to achieve that goal of hitting two billion NK cells and make them really strong, active killers. It is what we want.

To recap for everybody. Your own NK cells, we pull what you got. If you’ve been hit with an immunosuppressant drug like I had been, or you go cancer therapy, or you’re aging as I have, and you pull the cells, the goal is to grow those cells. They help fight viruses, fight cancer cells, and do they remove senescent cells, or what do they do to the third one?

They remove senescent cells. This all started back in 2010 when there was a publication on Progeria Mouse Models. It’s a premature age mouse model who had no hair, no muscles, couldn’t walk the maze. It was a particular genetic model that they use. They transfuse the blood of normal mouse into this mouse model that was skinny, no hair, no muscle, couldn’t walk a maze. The mouse grew muscles, grew hair, and was able to run through the maze like nothing. When they went back and looked at what transpired, it was that the natural killer cells from that healthy young mouse were able to kill and wipe out all the senescent age cells. They’re forcing that model to now regenerate.

There have to be targets and triggers in your body to tell you, “You need to release out stem cells from the bone marrow. You need to release out stem cells from kidney or liver.” There have to be triggers. The only way those triggers are happening is by signaling. Otherwise, we’re in a state that we want to maintain. If we wipe out senescence, the bone marrow is now forced to release out some new, healthy NK cells. When we wipe senescent tissue, fibrotic tissue, we now have some form of healing because we’ve removed tissue from that area, and we have healing. That’s the stuff from that fibrotic tissue in the lung that’s being secreting out more. What’s called this thing called now that we know is senescent associated factors.

Human growth factor elevation in that situation?

No, it’s not. These are detrimental signals that these senescent cells release out, causing havoc in the area. There’s now evidence that this causes more inflammation, these secondarily other things such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, all these different neurodegenerative diseases, heart diseases, all that. There’s a ton of evidence that shows that. The goal is to remove that.

How would the average person that thought that maybe they wanted to investigate NK cell therapy for themselves? I’ve done some crazy things in the many years in my practice. We’ve been to Moscow. You researched in science and trying to figure out what’s the best for your patient and your patient’s health, and my clients. We’ve done cardio sites in Moscow. We’ve done some crazy things. In the States, a lot has changed. In NK cell specifically, if someone felt like consulting or doing NK cell, we’ve seen it from an anti-aging perspective, what would be some of the top three applications that you say, “These are the three that are awesome?” I’ve had clients that have done it for a lot of different reasons. We’ve had bladder cancer, throat cancer, post-therapies. Anti-aging would be a cool one.

Aging is to maintain immune health. We do have some evidence which we’re putting together a publication that we can revert your immune system back about 20 to 30 years, which is neat. This is based on what’s called immunosenescence or senescence-specific markers like proteins. We can measure that. We can say they’re back to this state based on the biological age of many individuals that we’ve tested, that we’ve looked at. In the context of aging, that’s one. Two, in the context of individuals that you’ve worked with a lot and that I know well that are sick. Traditional medicine tells them they have neurological symptoms, body aches, and whether you call it chronic fatigue syndrome, some have lyme. Unfortunately, it boils down to viral issues.

I’ve seen it with us with chronic EBV Epstein-Barr virus. When I got meningitis with cytomegalovirus, my daughter got a Mono and CMV, the NK support. When I’m getting a client ready for NK cells, we do I-Burn when I’m getting a client ready for stem cells. We do H-Burn. We work a lot on the heavy lipids and the fats with stems, and we work a lot on the anti-inflammatory before the NKs. What I’ve seen, and I get to be part of a team, so I get to float around. You see me work with people. I get to float around, listen to everything, eavesdropping everything, and participate in everything. Those people that have those chronic viral loads that are chronically sick, fatigue, pain, NK cells, it warms my heart how much of a change in that one. I appreciate you bringing that up.

Unfortunately, viruses are completely opportunistic. I call them Martians. They’re complete opportunistic hosts. If something else is going on in your body, whether you have a bacterial infection, whether you have Lyme, this is when the virus takes over and is completely opportunistic. It says, “The immune system is so weak. Let’s take over and cause havoc.” If somebody that had mono, it’s crazy. Individuals that are using it years into it have symptoms of mono still and/or neurological symptoms. A ton of crazy things. It’s because maybe they had a mold exposure. They got sick from something else. They have cytomegalovirus simultaneously or anything like that. It takes over. This is a way to help your immune system remove it.

What I see is almost like put the wind back in the sails. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it’s like the people will say, “I was never sick. I fought everything.” Something slams them to the ground. Is there an association? I’m fortunate. I have all of you, guys, as angels in my cell phone. Does my community go to the clinic in Mexico?

They have to go to the clinic in Mexico because that’s not allowed. Unfortunately, when you grow up cells, it’s not allowed in the US because it’s considered manipulation or a drug. That’s why we’re in phase I clinical studies in various different things with stem cells, soon to be hopefully with natural killer cells too. We’re all going to Cancún. It’s not a bad place to go. There are lots of beautiful places here and the beach is phenomenal.

I don’t want to slam your clinic and flood you, because I know people are going to be interested or want to know or want some introductory package or something. You guys don’t give us who to contact and stuff like that. I coordinate care for my in-clinic clients, but I don’t coordinate any care for our community. We give them the resources, and then we do all these fun challenges together where we can talk about that. Do you have anything else you want us to know about NK cells before I jump into the stems again?

One more thing because we discuss it. The third thing is cancer. The issue is that when it’s a solid tumor, it’s difficult. No, because NK cells are like a gang, and it requires 3 to 5of them to kill one senescent or one cancerous cell. What would you have to do essentially, which we’ve worked with many patients that have chronic lymphocytic leukemia, various different colon cancers, these types of things? To start wiping out, especially lung cancer because remember when you have an IV in the first is the lungs. Everything goes directly into the lungs. We’ve had some great success with individuals that have small masses, millimeter masses, centimeter mass, doing infusions, but it requires more than one infusion because you need many cells. You’re doing infusions on a regular basis.

PYP 17 | Stem Cells

 

It’s not cheap to do. It’s relatively expensive. We’ve had success with somebody that did eight infusions throughout a year timeframe that had exactly what you described, cancer due to high viral titers, chronic lymphocytic leukemia. After the fourth infusion, at first, you can palpate the tumors in the lymph nodes, and they were gone after the 3rd or 4th infusion and maintained. It was a matter of getting the white blood cell counts to control by doing more. It was crazy how when we first started in this individual, starting off with a small amount because this person was sick of 500 million NK cells, which for us is a small amount of, 500 million NK cells. As time transpired, it went up to 800 million to 1.5 billion. The 3rd and 4th infusion, we’re at 2 billion. All of a sudden, we’re producing 3.5 billion to 4 billion cells, infusing them into this. It’s when you see the shift of getting this individual healthy to be able to do that.

I know I’ve talked to you about one of my family members that have been diagnosed with CLL. We’re working on getting a plan put together for him with you. I take it all very seriously, but there’s not a lot of options for him otherwise. They said, “Chill out, spend time with your kids.” It's crazy. We have a lot of clients and close friends at UCLA, and they’ve always been encouraging. I use a hematological oncologist at UCLA because of ITP.

When I started discussing some of the cell therapies that I wanted to participate in because of my platelet counts, they were supportive of me doing those things and frustrated that they weren’t able to do them in the States. As we’ve worked together over the years, I’ve seen many things evolve with studies, trials, and things getting approved. Especially this time during COVID, which is, I’d love to segue into some of the stem cell trials. We’re going to talk about stem cells coming from someone else they’re umbilical cord tissue stem cells or mesenchymal stem cells, MSCs. That’s what I’ve seen a lot. We got that phenomenal presentation with the Miami COVID Treatment Center at Baptist Health. Before COVID hit, we were working with some clients together.

One was autoimmune, and the other had some cardiovascular lung, part of the lung lobe removed, a lot of scar tissue in the lung, lot of cardiovascular, a lot of pro-inflammatory, had bypass surgery. Also, one of the phenomenal things, and I know you probably expected it, but I think I was delighted the memory, cognition shifts, and changes. If we can go back, and I want everybody to know that we’re now talking about a very unique type of stem cell. Dr. Gonzalez, if you can explain why that stem cell is special.

We are many years into that stem cell. It took an abundance of studies to get it. Essentially, it’s from a fragment of cord tissue. From that, we’re able to produce millions of doses of 100 million cells that are young. We’ve looked at the biology of about how old they are because anytime you replicate a cell, you age it, like every time you age. Our cells are that of around a fifteen-year-old based on Telomere Biology and aging. The way we got them to be able to produce that many of them, when other scientists here, how we do this, we can’t give away our secret sauce, but essentially it’s funny because it all boils down to what you’re doing. It all boils down to diet. A little hint that it’s something that you promote a lot is essentially, when people grow cells, they use sugar a lot because it helps cells divide quickly. At the same time, it prematurely ages them.

If we take a step back and we use formulas that are not that, and the optimal amount of protein, amino acids, and are very low in sugar, we get what we have now, which we’ve gone through twenty different formulations over many years ago, and even looked at what the cells are signaling when they go outside. We work with Cleveland Clinic on this. We published our paper on ourselves and patented that technology back in 2010, which is when we publish it and looked at it. We have a cell that we are very happy with because not only that, we took it a step further. Seventy-five percent of the patient population out there has CMV as Epstein-Barr virus.

We took a tissue from 25% of individuals that don’t have that. Our tissues are not only are they completely viral free, which was a hard find, but another thing that we do is people worry about, “I’m getting a cell from somebody else. I’m worried about the genetics.” We do this stuff called karyotype analysis. We look at the chromosomes. What we do is we grow these cells up until they’re so old already, and we check the genetics of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to give calls when we did this initially to parents and say, “Unfortunately, after this number of doublings, this is the issue popped up. Can you please test yourselves? Can you please test the baby?” A hundred percent of the time, it comes out positive for that.

We grew them up. We made sure that they’re completely cleaned. They’re not problematic. We have a file with the FDA on these cells because we’re doing clinical studies and one of them being an autoimmune disease, polymyositis dermatomyositis. Another one was COVID. What we see with COVID is completely crazy because people not understanding that killing individuals is the immune system going completely haywire. We see a complete control after a treatment use of this in COVID. One of the markers, IL-6 or interleukin-6, is a strong inflammatory marker that people look at a lot, massively high when somebody has COVID. We treat it. Three days later, it’s almost down to normal.

These are unique cells in the fact that you test for viral, you do advanced aging studies on them to see for genetic expression. We’ve seen the studies, and this has been amazing to be part of and get to watch because I have an autoimmune disorder. You said something that is being a nutritionist intrigued me, and something that I saw when I was working in the labs many moons ago was what you grow yourselves in matters as far as the health and the dignity of the cell. We need to take that, absorb that for a minute, and talk about the fact that what you grow yourselves in matters as far as the health and the dignity of the cells. You are all of your cells.

What you grow every day in, the foods that you put into your mouth, the supplements that you take, the quality of those matters because all of that grows. It’s not just our hair and our nails that grow every day. Our heart cells, liver cells, thyroid cells, all of the magic that is our hormones are all nutrient-dependent processes. I pull sugar out of your diet, and there’s a reason. Sugar can be a catalyst for rapid growth, but it’s like building a house out of hay as opposed to building a house out of bricks. You will build. You will grow. We see kids and adults all the time that he processed foods and sugar.

The dignity, health, viability of the cell is not the same. There’s another thing that you said, Dr. Gonzalez, that hit me is when you called viruses Martians. They are invaders into our bodies. It’s different than bacteria that exist outside of ourselves, and a virus comes into the house. The bacteria will circle your neighborhood, but the virus breaks in the windows, breaks down the front doors, and it lives in bed with you. It is part of your cellular ecosystem. The dignity of the cell, how strong your house is can inhibit the permeability of all these viruses as well. The stronger you are, the healthier you are, the healthier your immune system is, the more adaptive your endocrine system.

We do this thing called phase III super intensive. It’s seven weeks of nurturing the adrenals, and people say, “It helps me with stress and cravings.” It helps you be more adaptive. Our adaptogenic hormones help you fight when you’re supposed to fight, retreat when you’re supposed to retreat, make peace in chaos within the body from a hormone perspective. With COVID and autoimmune, there’s this hyper-immune response. We talk about the cytokine storm, this hyper-immune response that wreaks havoc.

It’s almost like displaced anger when you’re frustrated with something that happened at work, and your sweet husband walks in the door. He says, “What do you want to eat?” You say, “What do you mean what do I want to eat?” It has nothing to do with him. The virus itself in COVID, in particular, from what I’m learning or researching, the count isn’t even always that high in individuals that have these super-strong immune responses.

Your immune system is taking over. The difference between a virus and bacteria is the virus requires a host. The only way it will live is if it’s inside your cell. Otherwise, it’s not living. It’s going to take over. At one point, your immune system says, “What is going on here? I have to make a massive change quickly.” That’s when the havoc comes on. It’s adding on too much inflammation at one time because the secondary effect of this is when we try to get the immune system to work quick and hard, we now increase blood flow everywhere in the body. It’s the only way that it works. This is where havoc happens where you hear individuals that have had COVID stroke, complete kidney dysfunction, which is one of the biggest problems. Thirty percent of the individuals that have gone into COVID a little too far and not tackled it the right way. I don’t know if you saw that study that said, “Vitamin D is the way to go for COVID.” It is.

We were able to acquire what is believed in the world. There are four people that are able to require the raw ingredient of our D3 and K2 in the world. It’s the best in the world. It has my name on it. It better to be, or else I’m not going to put my name on it. One thing that I was telling my clients because we have a lot of individuals that are myself post-menopausal, menopausal in that demographic. We talk a lot about sometimes if you can beg a doctor to check maybe your sex hormone levels, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, one of the things I tell him, “Everybody’s willing to test their D levels.”

What a lot of people don’t realize is vitamin D is great for your immune system. It’s great for an antiviral piece, but it also is a strong pivot point for hormone homeostasis and your natural steroid homeostasis. I tell my clients all the time, and we talk about this so much in our community. Our body takes cholesterol, and it manufactures it into this master hormone, pregnenolone. From there, we make all of our own natural steroids and the sterile vitamin D. We do estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, all the glucocorticoids, which regulate all your blood sugar and your inflammation. The mineral corticoids, which regulate bone density, collagen, elastin, blood pressure, a lot of kidney health there, and then our vitamin D. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, mineral corticoids, glucocorticoids, and vitamin D are steroids and sterile.

That vitamin D is like a leveler for all of those others. It plays a huge role in inflammation, cellular health, and cell dignity, a phenomenal role in sex hormone balancing too, and an immune perspective. I have a burning question here, how would someone find out about the stem cell trials that are available? You are at the forefront of bringing this in the United States as far as a therapeutic option. How would people find out about current studies, things that maybe they could apply for?

 

The issue with ClinicalTrials.gov is where you go to search for clinical trials in general, and sometimes it takes individuals like, for instance, for us, it takes us a while to upload it on there. We have two of our studies, which is the one at the University of Florida for dermatomyositis polymyositis, the autoimmune disease.

With that study, I’ve got a very purposeful reason to ask this. With the dermatomyositis and polymyositis autoimmune inflammatory disorder, would anybody that had Hashimoto’s thyroiditis participate in anything like that? 

They wouldn’t qualify for that particular study, but you can go outside the United States and go to our clinic in Cancún. There are ways that you can get this done. If you qualify over there if you’re a good candidate for it because every single one of us is completely different. You have to assess what you want to do, get them healthy. It’s exactly what you’ve been preaching. I have a cigarette smoker that has pulmonary fibrosis or COPD and comes to me and says, “Can stem cells help me?” They can. The first question is, “Are you still smoking?” He was like, “Yes.” I was like, “Forget it. They’re not going to help you.” That’s what it boils down to help yourself, and we can help you too.

In the level of care that you provided and in the level of research that the stratosphere for which you and your colleagues dwell professionally, I want to thank you for trusting your clients to me because I always try to provide you with the healthiest patients. Same with like in the fertility world. I get a lot of docs that refer people to me, and they say, “We’re going to do the prostate gland. We’re going to do IVF, ICSI, egg donor.” Whatever it is, I try to get them the healthiest human being walking in that door to statistically make all of the studies better. I want to circle back around Hashimoto’s thyroiditis plagues. It is a lot of women, and we see the spectrum on that.

We’re seeing people that have elevated antibodies and having some symptoms associated. We’re having seen people that have middle-of-the-road antibodies that are having tremendous symptoms with it. NK cell or stem cell? I’m an autoimmune girl. I have ITP. I did the prednisone. I did inurement. I did CellCept. I ended up in the hospital with kidney renal failure, lost 35% of my right kidney. That’s when I decided to go back to study Biochem and say, “I’ve got to look at the chemistry of the body. I’ve got to figure out a way to use supplement foods to heal.” I started researching stem cells and NK cells. I feel strongly about that, but with an autoimmune, some of the people we’ve worked together, we’ve rotated stem, NK stem. What pathway do you go down with that?

The first pathway is to regulate the system that requires stem cells. It’s something that is well-documented that it does in autoimmune diseases is we have a cell in our body that’s part of the secondary immune response or the adaptive immune response called the regulatory T cells. As we age, unfortunately, that surveils on a regular basis, that makes sure everything is regulated in our immune system, goes down significantly. We know for a fact, our cells increase those cells to regulate the system. It’s the first and foremost thing because that cell type is going to be like the conductor of the orchestra. He or she is the one that’s going to be able to get everything in check, which is something that we want. The second thing that it does is it increases blood flow a little bit to help heal, get the vital nutrients into the body.

These are two key components things that do well with regulating the immune system in autoimmune disease. When anybody has talked to me about autoimmune disease, my first thing is, “Let’s regulate. Let’s get it in check first. Secondly, let’s see what’s going on. We may want to go with a natural killer cell, especially if you’re talking about somebody that’s much older too. Let’s regulate the immune system. Besides regular the new system, let’s get rid of those old dormant cells that are there doing nothing, and let’s get some new fresh population in there that does the job and does what it needs to do.”

I cannot thank you enough for your time. My community is going to love this and eat this up, no pun intended, because it’s so lonely out there when people are struggling with health issues. Weight is just a symptom where the body can no longer process fat and make all of these incredible hormones, structure, life, and vitality. Many times, when they only get this myopic approach of taking medication to help you feel better hopefully. I always tell people, “If you’re going to swallow something, you better have high expectations and a strong demand on what’s going to happen.”

That means supplementation or pharmacological meds. I’m trying to bring to our community that there are ways that you can work in a symbiotic way with your body and from the cellular perspective for a reversal of maybe a negative trajectory that you’re on, but also regenerative. There are options out there. As with healing the metabolism and the fast metabolism diet, it’s not a quick fix. It’s not, "All I want you to do is stop eating peanuts, and your world’s going to get better."

It’s about looking at the metabolism, understanding your body, feeding your body, about those micronutrients. It’s also about learning all the options without prejudice or judgment is how I always come in with my clients. In curiosity, in awe of what’s happening in your body, and being open and receptive to therapies that are changing lives. I am fortunate and blessed to get to work with you, your colleagues, and what I’ve witnessed has been amazing and profound. It’s changed my life. We’ve got some pretty special people we get to work together with. Any questions for me? Any parting words for my community?

I’m blessed to help. I’ve been bought here to help. I’m here to help anybody that has any issues. For those that feel sick and are down, remember, there’s a rainbow on the other side, and you could get healthy again if you take the appropriate measures. Don’t get down on yourself. Life is a struggle, but it’s a beautiful struggle. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

As we always say, don’t forget to put power on your plate. Much love to you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I appreciate you.

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I am fascinated and fortunate that we’re part of a community together, we get to bring these amazing people. On on our website, HayliePomroy.com. you’re going to be able to find some great blog posts about Dr. Gonzalez’s clinic, about how I feed my clients going into stem cell treatment, how I feed my clients going into Natural Killer cell treatment. The theory here is that we can feed for the growth of the natural killer cells. We can feed for the growth of the stem cells because we do have all of those cells within our bodies. Even if you’re not going to go in for treatment, we want to eat that way so that we can prevent Martian or viral overload, and we can reduce inflammation, we can prevent cancer cells from proliferating in our body.

As you put power on your plate, I want you to be thinking about everything that you consume. Now, you have more data. More data is more power. What you consume is this going to help feed your natural killer cells to come in like a gang and kill those viruses, boost the immune system and get rid of those fibrotic tissues or cells that aren’t providing any purpose anymore. With a stem cell perspective, helping create that homeostasis, that level of hormone balance, and striking that perfect level of immune balance of reactivity and adaptability. Are you eating that way?

Make sure you’re spending lots of time looking at the I-Burn, H-Burn, D-Burn. I’m going to talk specifically in our blog post and give you some of those great recipes that I use with my clients to get them ready for those treatments for Dr. Gonzalez. I encourage all of you to keep an open mind and a joyful heart as you consume food in your body. Remember what he said, “When we grow cells in an unhealthy medium, we grow unhealthy cells.” I want you to put power on your plate with this new knowledge that we all have going forward. Make sure your brain’s ready because we’re going to be exploring lots more about your health because I want you all to be outrageously healthy.

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About Rafael  Gonzalez

PYP 17 | Stem Cells

Doctor Gonzalez obtained his Ph. D and BS from the University of California, Irvine where he studied, and his thesis addressed interactions of the immune system following spinal cord injury.

In addition to his expertise in degenerative disorders involving the spinal cord, he has extensive experience in stem cell culture and biology from human embryonic, pre-natal and adult sources. He has extensive knowledge in all aspects of cell biology and health.

Presently, Dr. Gonzalez is responsible for the development of clinical stem cell applications for several disease/trauma states. He leads 2 different investigational new drug applications with patented stem cell technology. Additionally, he works on the clinical development of immune-based therapies using natural killer cells.

He leads our reference laboratory that has tested greater than 12 different regenerative medicine products. Dr. Gonzalez has been in the stem cell field for greater than 18 years and has several scientific publications. In addition, he has taught, spoken and led many conferences nationwide in the regenerative medicine sector.

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