JCPM2025.11.25

The following is an edited transcript of the Journal Club with Pearls & Marketing (JCPM) of November 11, 2025, with Charles Runels, MD.  

>-> The PDF transcript of this live journal club can be seen here <-<

Topics Covered

• PRP to Help Play Music
• PRP Beats Saline and Corticosteroids for Shoulder Pain
• Vampire Facial® Procedure Beats Microneedling with Vitamin C for Scars
• Our CMA Membership Sites Now Include AI to Answer Your Questions
• Adding Psyodermatology to the Vampire Facial for Active Acne
• The Hidden Population in Every Town (Including Yours)
• The PRP Research Ecosystem & Your CMA Procedures
• Marketing Kit for the Week
• References
• Helpful Links

Charles Runels, MD
Author, researcher, and inventor of the Vampire Facelift®, Orchid Shot® (O-Shot®), Priapus Shot® (P-Shot®), Priapus Toxin®, Vampire Breast Lift®, and Vampire Wing Lift®, & Clitoxin® procedures.

Transcript

Welcome to our journal club. I’m going to go through the research, and I have a surprise for you. This time, rather than just telling you how to write an email, I’m going to provide you with an email template for three different procedures that you can simply copy and paste.

PRP to Help Play Music

I’ll tell you about the research,^[1] and then I’ll show you the document I’ve made for you to share with your patients.

This one is an easy one that was personal for me. I have one son who’s a professional drummer and another who plays piano and guitar, and they hang out with musicians who make their living playing music. One of them plays bass and is now on the road. He came to me when he was just out of high school, and he had carpal tunnel so severely that it was threatening his career. This is very common for a cellist and a guitarist. I’ve had a couple of well-known names that you would recognize, who are professional guitar players, lead guitar players for some very famous bands, who’ve come to see me on the fly.

And this works. It actually works, and it’s not too difficult to do, although they mention using ultrasound. If you know what you’re doing, you can do it without an ultrasound. However, if you want to learn to do it with ultrasound, Karen Rea, who’s part of our group, teaches a comprehensive course on how to do that with Hands-On in Florida. You can look her up in our directory.

And this can be life-saving to someone who has a career that’s based on repetitive movements, but of course there are other professions, and you can actually take this and leverage the science behind it to promote some of your own procedures, other procedures. Say, like the O-Shot® and the P-Shot®, but I put this in your handout.

If you are already injecting joints, this is a very natural extension.^[2] 

Additionally, there’s an online course taught by Jeff Piccirillo, which explains how to find the landmarks. I’ll include this information in the email that will be sent out. But this is very rewarding and very low risk, and can keep people from having surgery or losing their career.

And I’ll show you how to tie that into an email you can send out in a second.

PRP Beats Saline and Corticosteroids for Shoulder Pain

This one is so common now that we’ve seen so many of these that it’s almost clichéd, but it’s worth mentioning because it just came out in the past week, making it news.^[3] So you can send it out.

And once again, PRP, as usual, has superior pain relief. The corticosteroids work more quickly, but over time, PRP is significantly superior.

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Another interesting twist is that saline also had a benefit. Again, saline is not a placebo.^{[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]} 

And when they looked at the saline group, they also improved, just not as much as the other two. That’s important to remember when designing our studies.

And you probably get tired of hearing it, but when you undergo hydrodissection, that is a form of dissection, and it triggers regenerative processes. Multiple studies have shown that it’s not a placebo, but a treatment arm.

Okay, I have three more to show you.

For some reason, I couldn’t download it, so I’ll show it to you online instead. Actually, I’ll put the link to it in the chat box. 

Sometimes the sales button will not work. It’s worth checking our own sales buttons occasionally; I tried so hard to give them money for at least 10 minutes, but I never could get their link to work.

Vampire Facial® Beats Microneedling with Vitamin C for Scars

This article is helpful because it once again demonstrates that when microneedling is combined with vitamin C, rather than platelet-rich plasma (PRP), PRP is more effective in reducing scars.^[10] It talks about a cleft lip scar, but of course, we have all sorts of scars that come into our office, e.g., thyroidectomy scars, C-section scars, and acne scars, to name a few.

One of my favorite questions when I see someone as a new patient, especially during a cosmetic consultation, is to ask them to show me all the scars on their face. I’ll then proceed to address the other scars, but especially those on the face.

And then I ask the person, “Does this scar bother you? Does this scar bother you? Which one of these scars, if at all, bothers you?”

Sometimes they’ll say, “Ah, it doesn’t matter.”

Especially guys, many of us take pride in our scars.

I was talking with a friend recently, and we were saying we would be embarrassed if we were a man and didn’t have a facial scar by the time we finished high school. Most of us have two or three by the time we graduate from high school. It’s a wonder anybody with testicles survives past the age of 20. However, we’re not usually bothered by them, but sometimes.

However, we also have other scars, especially if we have multiple acne scars, affecting both men and women. However, you will often lose the chance to make someone very happy if you forget to ask that question.

So an email could be, “Hey, do you have any scars that bother you? Here’s more research showing that we have a way to treat it with our Vampire Facial® procedure. So come see us because we have other techniques we use along with that idea.”

Membership Sites Now Include AI to Answer Your Questions

Many people are still unaware that our membership sites now incorporate AI. All the membership sites have it. So, not just searching a topic, but you can ask the question, and you have a version of AI living in the membership site to help you with the question.

So I’ll show it to you.

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If you go here (see video), it’ll simply bring up all the places where we mentioned the topic. However, if you want to learn how to treat something, that’s where the AI comes in. I should make it more straightforward that this is AI, not just a search function. So if I said to treat, let’s say, dyspareunia, secondary to pelvic floor pain. Just making that up, I have no idea what it’s going to tell me. So it’s thinking.

Remember, we have millions of words and over 900 videos on our membership sites now, so it’s searching not the internet but our websites to you get our standardized protocols now in use for over a decade.

So there you go (see video). And then it provides resources on our website to guide you through the procedure. If you click on those resources, you will find additional information here, here, and elsewhere. So it’s a good way to get answers.

Of course, I will have an open mic at the end of this call and be happy to provide a more detailed answer if you have any questions. Additionally, I’m available to discuss our procedures with our members over the phone if needed. But a lot of times, what you’re looking for is right there.

I have a couple of more papers, and then I’ll give you your marketing kit for the week. I decided to quit just telling you how to write emails and at least give you two or three that you could copy, paste, and modify. Just shoot them out to your people.

Adding Psyodermatology to the Vampire Facial for Active Acne

Love this paper. Integrating Psychodermatology and Platelet-Rich Plasma: A Narrative Review.^[11] Isn’t that interesting? I’ve never seen a paper like this.

First, they provide strong research on why our procedures work and the benefits of platelet-rich plasma. Isn’t that beautiful? All the different ways it works.

However, they then introduce the concept of psychodermatology, which is huge. Hair loss, yeah, it depends, especially it’s huge for women. I still think that Will Smith, who went up on stage and slapped the guy for insulting his bald wife, should have done that. The man insulted Will’s wife. Will Smith is a big man (6’2”, 200 pounds); he didn’t try to hurt him. He slapped him. He did that to humiliate him (he did not even knock him down), because he had just humiliated his wife.

There was a lot of emotion because he knew his wife’s pain, especially for a woman losing her hair, and there’s a lot of emotion to facial disfigurement, which I experienced with horrible cystic acne as a teenager.

I was taught you never ridicule someone for something they cannot change.

This idea of combining a dermatologist with a psychologist is beautiful, creating a psychodermatology clinic. That’s beautiful. So, if you have a friend or colleague who is a therapist, and some of you’re lucky enough to have one in your office, I think this could be the beginning of cross-referring.

But even if you do not have a therapist you want to work with, a link to this article would be beautiful, because it would be very good if you sent this out to your patient saying something like, “I understand there’s a lot of distress with skin disease and we’re going to handle both sides of it, help you deal with the social stress of it and use the latest techniques, like our Vampire Facial® to make this go away.”

The Hidden Population in Every Town (Including Yours)

The Psychological Impact of Chronic Skin Conditions in Adolescents. I experienced that personally. I’m grateful for it because it pulled me out of many parties and such. I had four jobs and finished high school with a 4.0 because I didn’t have many parties to attend. Being alone made me feel comfortable, and it was beneficial to me in many ways.

I made up for lost time later, but it made me thoughtful. I think it made me a better physician because knowing what it feels like to want to hide your face made me understand people who are morbidly obese or have any other sort of disease or disfigurement that makes them not want to go to Walmart in the middle of the day. I call them the “hidden population,” the people who go shopping at 2:00 AM back when Walmart was open 24/7. Now they use DoorDash.

And you’ll never see them.

They hide.

But adolescents can’t hide. They must go to school, right, but they hide when they’re not at school.

People want someone to treat them who they think understands their pain. So, even if they don’t utilize any of the psychological aspects, communication that conveys understanding of their pain, embarrassment, and loneliness will bring them to your office. Even if they don’t want to talk to the psychologist, they’ll want to see you because you understand the psychiatric part of it. And, of course, it also applies to psoriasis and eczema.

Okay, so you have that in your handout section. One last one, and then I’ll give you your marketing kit for the week, and we’ll call it a night.

The PRP Research Ecosystem & Your CMA Procedures

Although it’s written for the orthopedic surgeon, this one is helpful for all our procedures.^[12] 

And the first few sentences are funny because you think they’re about to have broader views, and then it turns out that they don’t.

They say, “Over the past two decades, PRP has been expanding beyond its early applications in sports injuries and orthopedic surgery…”

And you think maybe they’re about to say, “And now we’re using it in urogynecology.”

But no, they said, “But more recently it’s used beyond joints in the spinal cord and in the disc.”

So their broader views were not exceptionally broad. However, their article provides a beautiful overview of the entire process of platelet-rich plasma, from its initial consideration to its current research, and it’s worth reading.

This broader aspect (it’s not just about platelets) is becoming increasingly discussed. If you visit the US Patent and Trademark Office and read the initial trademarks I submitted over a decade ago, I referred to them as “blood-derived growth factors.” It was already clear, even over a decade ago, that it’s not just about platelets. There are many other components. Exosomes are all the rage now, but next year it’ll be something else.

There are so many… Look at that, over 200 molecules in the plasma fraction alone. Coagulation factors, albumin, fibrinogen, and other transport proteins, as well as any additional claims made by the salespeople, are used to suggest that they have something better than simply using the person’s blood or platelet-rich plasma. It’s coming. I guarantee there’ll be something every year or two. Exosomes will be blase in two years, and it’ll be something else, one of those other 200 things.

But 200 of them are in the plasma!

I like going back to the idea that when your child scrapes her knee falling off her bicycle, you don’t have to know anything about it. The child’s platelets and their blood know what to do. I know it’s old school, but I still… It’s become old school. It was revolutionary 15 years ago, but instead of having something from a laboratory, I like PRP because it contains all these benefits. It’s not coming out of a tube. It’s got everything in it, even the things I think maybe I don’t know about but the body needs.

I once met a child who would occasionally come to the ER when I was an ER doctor. Tragically, he had eaten Cascade as a child. I don’t think you realize it, maybe most people don’t, but it’s one of those weird facts that ER doctors know. If you eat that, it can destroy your esophagus. So he had been fed, since he was a young child, through a feeding tube because he had no esophagus. And even though they were feeding him supposedly complete meal replacements, he did not develop normally. There was nothing else wrong with them, just the esophagus. The idea that we know all the vitamins, essential vitamins, and nutrients, and could put them in a pill became popular in the 60s.

We are old enough to remember that back in the time of the astronauts in the ’60s and ’70s, when they were developing food for astronauts, people thought we would have a tablet that could contain everything.

However, we now know that people are healthier when they actually eat food.

Your risk of cancer goes down if you eat five fruits and vegetables per day. There’s not a vitamin pill that replaces those five fruits and vegetables. Similarly, although that may not be entirely relevant, I appreciate the idea of platelet-rich plasma because it contains additional components that I may not be aware of.

And yeah, eventually we’ll figure out some other isolates that might work better than PRP. So far, I haven’t seen any research that shows me something works better than just eating a vegetable. I don’t have a pill or a vitamin that I can get at Walmart that works better than that. And I haven’t seen a study that convinces me that exosomes work better than platelet-rich plasma.

So it’s a nice historical overview about where we’ve been and where we’re headed, and there’s a way to tie that to what we’re doing.^[13] So this last little thing is worth the whole article. And again, you have it. So here’s the… I’ll just read these last little tips and then we’ll go to my marketing present I made for you.

Most consistent in younger and middle-aged patients, and advanced disease is limited. I would disagree with that. What’s most consistent is that it’s in healthy patients. If it’s a middle-aged patient who’s smoking and drinking, then it’s not so good. If they’re 75, and like one of my patients who’s still active and doesn’t smoke, they get great results. And I’ve done O-Shots® in women in their 80s who did great. But health matters for sure. Generally, most young people are healthier than most older individuals. But I still like to think, how healthy is this person, how well could they recover from surgery? And that’s my guide.

So this idea of worrying about if it has white cells and what kind of white cells, I haven’t found it very helpful. There’s a lot of research in orthopedic literature about it. But as far as our procedures, like it says there, it’s not as big a deal. This is true. Many of our providers will tell you that they only sell three O-Shots® or three P-Shots® to each person.

There will be many who get well with just one, but three seems to be the magic number. And frequently I’ve had… Maybe most of the time I’ll see women whose incontinence gets better after the first one, and then their sex gets better after the second one.

This, you have heard me talk about over and over again. This is not a pharmacological effect where you inject it and then something happens immediately that is noticed by the patients. Patients, and I think many doctors, don’t understand that this is triggering growth, and until new proteins, new neovascularization, neurogenesis, and collagenases occur, you’ve just created a hematoma that might cause symptoms. There might be some local vasodilation that may cause symptoms, good or bad. But really what you’re looking for starts at around three weeks and peaks out at eight to twelve weeks. As our recent research shows, the results actually improve up to six months and remain fairly stable for a year with our O-Shot® procedure. And then this, we’ve talked about this over and over again, steroids give you quick relief, but PRP attenuates joint destruction or destruction in general.

Get back to erectile dysfunction, PDE5 inhibitors, of course, penile implants, and trimix injections; none of those things slow down or reverse the etiology. However, our P-Shot has the potential to do so. And then this, of course, we all know that patient selection, expectations, and follow-up are critical.

So the conclusions are pretty much what we’ve talked about all the time, but it’s nice to have a overview and historical perspective about where we’ve been for the past decade and a half.^[14]

Marketing Kit for the Week

Here’s a marketing kit for this week: It includes three emails that you could copy and paste and send to your patients. Please only use the emails that correspond to the procedures for which you have studied and are listed in the directory because you’ve passed our test.

These emails will work much better if you add your own stories, your own antidote, and your own pictures, at least of your face. Feel free to edit them to sound like your own speech. However, you could send them as they are. Most of us have found it easier to edit something to start with a blank piece of paper, so I hope you find this helpful.

All right. I hope you liked the new format, which includes the marketing kit. I’m going to start bringing you more than just suggestions and give you some easy-to-copy-and-paste content that ties into our research. So we’re stressing the news part of it. I

I’m always blown away by gratitude and amazed that the research continues to back up what we’re doing as well as it does, and intelligent people keep showing up.

So, thank you for being here. I’ll see you next week.

=> Apply for Online Training for Multiple PRP Procedures <=

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References

Andia, Isabel, Alain Silvestre, Cristina Del Amo, Florent Eymard, and Hervé Bard. “The Platelet-Rich Plasma Research Ecosystem: From Mechanistic Insights to Precision Treatment in Knee Osteoarthritis.” Regenerative Therapy 30 (December 2025): 1036–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reth.2025.10.017.

Asghar, Aneela, Zahid Tahir, Aisha Ghias, Usma Iftikhar, and Tahir Jameel Ahmad. “Efficacy and Safety of Intralesional Normal Saline in Atrophic Acne Scars.” Annals of King Edward Medical University 25, no. 2 (2019): 2. https://doi.org/10.21649/akemu.v25i2.2867.

Bagherani, Nooshin, and Bruce R Smoller. “Introduction of a Novel Therapeutic Option for Atrophic Acne Scars: Saline Injection Therapy.” Global Dermatology 2, no. 6 (2016). https://doi.org/10.15761/GOD.1000159.

Bakhtawar, Ansa, Ayesha Mujeb, Isra Meraj, et al. “Integrating Psychodermatology and Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy in Various Dermatological Conditions: A Narrative Review.” Cureus, ahead of print, October 21, 2025. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.95055.

“Clinical Benefit of Intra-Articular Saline as a Comparator in Clinical Trials of Knee Osteoarthritis Treatments_ A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials | Elsevier Enhanced Reader.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.semarthrit.2016.04.003.

Dawar, Sameera, Manu Gupta, Varun Arya, and Sanjeev Kumar. “Comparative Analysis of Microneedling With PRP Versus Vitamin C Serum in the Management of Post-Operative Cleft Lip Scars.” The Cleft Palate Craniofacial Journal, SAGE Publications, November 21, 2025, 10556656251395554. https://doi.org/10.1177/10556656251395554.

Department of Orthopaedics, M S Ramaiah Medical College, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Adnan Asif, J S R G Saran, Department of Orthopaedics, M S Ramaiah Medical College, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, N K Arun Kumar, and Department of Orthopaedics, MVJ Medical College, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. “Comparison of Pain Relief from Platelet-Rich Plasma, Steroid, and Saline Injections in Chronic Shoulder Impingement Using Visual Analog Scale.” Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports 15, no. 11 (2025): 427–32. https://doi.org/10.13107/jocr.2025.v15.i11.6422.

El-Amawy, Heba Saed, and Sameh Magdy Sarsik. “Saline in Dermatology: A Literature Review.” Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology 20, no. 7 (2021): 2040–51. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocd.13813.

Lin, Tsung-Ko, Stanley King Hei Lam, Mei-Chen Yeh, Lee-Wen Dai, and Daniel Chiung-Jui Su. “Diagnostic Ultrasound Findings and Treatments in Cellists with Performance-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders: A Retrospective Study.” Medical Problems of Performing Artists 40, no. 4 (2025): 135–44. https://doi.org/10.21091/mppa.2025.04017.

Popp, Lothar W. “Improvement in Endoscopic Hernioplasty: Transcutaneous Aquadissection of the Musculofascial Defect and Preperitoneal Endoscopic Patch Repair.” Journal of Laparoendoscopic Surgery 1, no. 2 (1991): 83–90. https://doi.org/10.1089/lps.1991.1.83.

Wang, Yi, Peng Luo, Ping Chen, et al. “Trigger Point Injection: A Therapeutic Propellant for Myofascial Pain Syndromes.” Tissue Engineering Part B: Reviews, September 29, 2025, 19373341251364757. https://doi.org/10.1177/19373341251364757.

Tags

PRP, platelet-rich plasma, carpal tunnel syndrome, musicians health, repetitive use injury, ultrasound-guided PRP, hydrodissection, corticosteroid vs PRP, microneedling, vitamin C microneedling, acne scars, surgical scars, C-section scars, psychodermatology, psychological impact of skin disease, hair loss distress, platelet biology, regenerative medicine, orthopedic PRP, musculoskeletal injuries, O-Shot, P-Shot, Vampire Facial, dermatology, psychology integration, chronic pain treatment, regenerative aesthetics, clinical training, email marketing for physicians, CMA journal club, scar treatment, musculoskeletal PRP procedures, soft tissue injury rehabilitation

Helpful Links

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=> Dr. Runels Online Botulinum Blastoff Course <=

=> The Cellular Medicine Association (who we are) <=

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=> FSFI Online Administrator and Calculator <=

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=> Help with Logging into Membership Websites <=

=> The software I use to send emails: ONTRAPORT (free trial) <=