This sample of our weekly journal club is posted as an example of part of the benefits our joining our provider groups. We do these meetings weekly...every week and feature physicians and their amazing research from around the world.
Topics Discussed Include the Following…
*Documenting the Penis *Documenting the Penis by text (in a private way) *How long to wait after the O-Shot® before getting a Vaginal Laser treatment? *Treating the Bell’s Palsy with the Vampire Facelift® *Where to park your podcast
*Emsella
Video/Recording of CMA Journal Club, Pearl Exchange, & Marketing Tips
Transcript
Documenting the Penis
Charles Runels: Welcome everybody. Looks like we have a great turnout today. Let’s start with this question just it’s about where to find the questionnaire for men. It’s a good reminder that we should be doing something to document an objective measure of what’s happening. Moving to the O-Shot® and the Priapus Shot®, so I’ll show you where to find it for both. When you log into the Priapus Shot® membership site, and you click on the how to do procedure button, and then you scroll down. There’s an erectile scale, so it’s objective measurement of erectile function. It’s commonly used by the urologist and there it is right there. Erectile dysfunction intensity scale.
Then when you open that, it gives you a scale of from one to five, for five questions. So the lowest you can get is one on every one– times five, the most you could get is 25, so that’s where you would download that. Now, if you don’t want to, well let me take this back.
Online, Text, Documenting the Penis
If you want to continue to survey them, old school way would be to do this the day you visit with them, and then on follow up visits, but if you wanted to have it done automatically, then you’d go back over here and we have, so you go back to the dashboard and then you click on patient survey.
We will administer that for you. I recommend you do both. Do something on paper the day you visit them, and do the procedure and then follow up, but then also all you have to do is put in their name and cell phone number, and then they’re surveyed in a HIPAA compliant way with some open ended questions, also you can see we have a drop down menu so we look to see which kit you used, and other things like are they on testosterone. If someone put something really strange in here, then we have a way I can use birthdays, and the day they saw you, and you could reconstruct it and contact them, but the good thing is I can give you your data. What your patients are doing, and this will help us design future studies.
Even though it’s not double-blind placebo, there’s a fair number of data points being collected, so we can publish this in a prospective survey kind of thing, and that same erectile dysfunction scale was part of this, so questions one through five questions where they’re graded one through five. That’s where you find it, on the how to do page, and then scroll to the bottom and you can download it. Then on the same thing for the female side, there’s female sexual distress and female sexual function index, which takes a few minutes. Female sexual distress is the quickest. Female sexual function index probably takes, if they’re thoughtful about it, five minutes or so, but we can administer those also by survey. Then give you that data. So that was a good question.
How long to wait after the O-Shot® before getting a Vaginal Laser treatment?
Let’s see. This was a good, oh, well I’ll come back to that. Let’s go ahead and do this question. How long does a patient need to wait after the O shot for getting a Mona Lisa vaginal laser treatment for vaginal atrophy? By the way, you guys, you can type into the question box if you want to contribute, you can just raise your hand and I’ll unmute your mic, or you can type into the question box if you have a question or a comment, and I’ll either read it or unmute you so you can talk. This is a great question. As part of the answer to this, someone asked me for a detailed video recording that they could show their patients after they had a procedure done.
The O-Shot® procedure, so I’ll show you where I put it and I’ll recommend that you guys do your version of it. I’ll show you where it lives. Right here. If you go to the O-Shot webpage, the main site, and then recent posts, I put a podcast blog right there. So you can just click on it there, and actually the transcription is done, I’ll have that posted by tomorrow morning, but I recommend you take my transcript, and read it, and do it your own video or your own podcast, and put it on your website, and modify it based on your observations and philosophies. You’ll see I go into what to expect whether you’re doing it for like necrosis, and I go into some of the ideas about using other methods like radio frequency, the Emsella with the electromagnetic contraction of the pelvic floor.
If you are interested in Emsella, send message to the company to get a discount for being a member of the O-Shot® provider group…
if you purchase, then let us know and we will put an icon by your name on the O-Shot® directory so that women know that you offer a combination therapy of the O-Shot® procedure combined with the Emsella treatment… here’s where to let us know… Support@CellularMedicineAssociation.org
So back to this question, if you do the O-Shot® the day of the procedure, you could do the O-Shot® immediately after any sort of inner treatment, so you do vaginal laser, or radio frequency, and the same visit, same day, immediately afterwards you could use PRP. Same thing if you were an Olympic athlete, you’d use PRP to help recover the muscle function immediately afterwards. If you go to PubMed and just read about PRP, one time it was outlawed by the Olympic committee because it does seem to help recovery with muscle function, but then they decided to allow it.
You could make the argument that it may even help the day of using an Emsella or the electromagnetic treatment, but if you do the PRP first, then the energy’s going to denature the amino acid proteins, just like if you took insulin and shook it, or you cooked it, you denature the amino acid chain and uncode that chain so it no longer, it just becomes another protein. It no longer is a chemical messenger like the amino acid peptide or hormones like growth hormone and insulin are, which is of course why you cannot take them by mouth because the digestive system, as you guys know, breaks amino acids apart so now it just becomes like you ate a hamburger, so you can’t take insulin as a pill or growth hormone as a pill because it denatures or scrambles the message.
In the same way, if you did an O-Shot®, so the question is how long does a patient need to wait after the O-Shot® before you do the Mona Lisa, but what you can assume is whenever you do the Mona Lisa, you’re going to undo first of all the amino acid messenger chain, that are the small peptides, that are released from the platelets. Then second of all, of course the laser is going to cause damage, which is the intention of fractal sort of puncture wound as if it were doing a laser version of micro-needling. And then you have recovery or healing of that. So if you’re doing heat and you have pluripotent stem cells that have migrated there because of your plasma it appears to me that you would probably undo that as well, that growth.
I would say you would do the Mona Lisa whenever you thought the effects of the O-Shot had taken place. If you flip the order, you go Mona Lisa and O-Shot immediately afterwards on the first day, but if you do Mona Lisa first I would want to wait at least six weeks, preferably eight weeks so that you have most of the benefit of the O-Shot before you did the laser. If you look at the wound care studies that Sclafani did with PRP most of the effects were there at eight weeks with full effect at 12 weeks post treatment with PRP. I would want to give it eight weeks or else I’m attenuating the results of the O-Shot.
Using the Vampire Facelift® help Bell’s Palsy
Okay so, we covered this one with the short vagina last meeting, let’s see if anybody has, nobody has a question yet. There was a really interesting question someone had about, yeah. So Catherine Stone (check her out here) is one of our [amazing] providers in New Zealand and she also keeps an office in London, one of our teachers, she teaches a beautiful class there in New Zealand.
Dr. Catherine Stone
She teaches along with Dr. Kirshni Appanna.
Dr. Kirshni Appanna
She says, if you, well she talks about Botox [as a treatment for Bell’s Palsy], but she comes up to Bell’s Palsy, “I treat a lot of residual Bell Palsy and facial asymmetry patients this way using Botox. Once their Palsy is established how about PRP for Bell’s Palsy? Would you only use it the first six months or you think is long term?”
Where to inject, so this is a great question. One of us needs to publish this because so far three people have told me that they saw benefit years after the Bell’s Palsy.
I’ll pull this up just so you can see. The only reference I saw to it in the literature was someone who put this out where they used mononuclear cells and platelet plasma which there’s two variables–after 26 YEARS of being plagued with this condition.
But, we’ve had three different people tell me, and I’ve actually seen this as well, a Bell’s Palsy improved years afterwards. One of the people works in my office as a matter of fact had, not a Bell’s Palsy but facial surgery that left her with numbness that’d been done over ten years before she came to work for me.
I did the Vampire Facelift® for a cosmetic result and then anecdotally she noticed that the sensation had returned to her face. So, I don’t know when the time limit is for this to happen, but it appears to be that it can happen after, not just the acute phase, but months or years after the Bell’s Palsy has occurred. If you actually just look at the research, what’s been published, there’s a fair number of studies showing plate rich plasma helping regenerate nerve tissue. I think it’s because we know it’s affect on attenuating all the immune response, it’d be nice to get to these people immediately when the Bell’s Palsy occurs and see what would happen and someone needs to do that study.
There’s so much research that needs to be done based on our observations but there’s no downside and a huge upside so I would say try it and of course it’s in the distribution of the facial nerve, I would just, but there’s no downside of just putting it everywhere. I would just put subdermally everywhere. We actually used to do this eight years ago when I first started doing the Vampire and using PRP cosmetically. I would use more of it, I’d basically tried to fill every part of the face subdermally but most people found that, or some people found it a little much so I became more selective and strategic about where I place it.
But I think in the case where you’re trying to regenerate nerve, I would just consider it, putting it everywhere. Or, if you want to be more specific you put it in the distribution of the facial nerve. Okay, let’s see, we didn’t have as many questions this time, i think that pretty much covered the questions that showed up on the website. See if anybody else has any questions. We may shut this down early. The, let’s see I don’t see any other questions.
I’d like to cover when we do these journal clubs, I like to cover research that we’ve done and hopefully somebody will build on that and something about marketing. As far as marketing goes this time, I think that there was one question that came up about building out a link to sell the Altar or whatever you might want to sell, creating a link that goes on your website. I actually covered that a few workshops or journal clubs ago, it might help if I just show you how easy it is to find things that are actually on one of our pages. If you go, I’ll go in and I’ll show you. There’s a search box and if you just type that, whatever it is you’re looking for, so let’s say that we’re on this page, and by the way our Altar shipped this week so hopefully you guys are seeing that.
Where to park your podcast<–
Get to the page. Yeah. There, so whenever you’re here, you just put in the search box whatever it is you’re looking for so it’ll pull it up on any of the posts. We have many pages on these websites. Let’s see if there’s any other questions. Not many questions this week so we may just shut this down. Okay so I think that’s it. My big marketing tip, well big but I don’t know about that, but the marketing tip I have for you this time is record an aftercare, either podcast or video. For podcast I use Libsyn.com L-i-b-s-y-n.com. You can record a podcast or a video for the actor here. What to expect before your procedures, you can put that on your websites because a lot of people look at that before they have a procedure done and you’ll find that people come to you and have the procedure done because they saw your aftercare instructions. So tonight was a quick one, I don’t see any other questions so we’ll just shut this down. You guys have a wonderful week.
Dr. Marco Pelosi III: Our next speaker is probably best described as the Michael Jordan of platelet rich plasma, Dr. Charles Runels from Alabama, that pioneered the O-Shot® [Orgasm Shot®], the Vampire [Face]lift®, the P-Shot® [Priapus Shot®], and he’s taken all the abuse and he’s given the world some very, very useful procedures for everyone. He’s going to talk about the studies he did and the studies done in platelet rich plasma in regards to sexual function. Dr. Runels, it’s a pleasure to have you here.
I’m going to go through a whirlwind look at research that’s been done where people have used PRP to help with sex. Much of the research has been done by the people in our group, and I’ve described many of them in this room who have done this research. It’s a for-profit organization, but we pay for research, we pay for education, we pay for marketing for our providers. Just to echo what you just heard, sex is much more than about just having fun. Rainer Maria Rilke said it’s just so correlated to the creative experience that it’s affecting how we do our work, how you do your presentation, and how – of course – relationships and families.
I want to echo that sentiment, and remind us that back in 1980, if you look in ‘Urology’ – this was ‘Urology’ 1980 – the most common cause for erectile dysfunction was thought to be 85% psychogenic. Here’s a quote from ‘Urology’ where urologists were encouraged to become counselors, because most of erectile dysfunction was thought to be psychogenic. Of course, I’m echoing the penis stuff because if you take a penis and shrink it and unzip it, that becomes a clitoris. I’m thinking most of the research will eventually apply to that. Certainly, our attitude is applying because we’re back in the … We’re not, I’m preaching to the choir, but many of our colleagues are back in the 1980’s and saying the main thing we have for sexuality for women is counseling.
My thinking that perhaps, as you guys do, some of the pathology that applies to the penis may apply to the clitoris, and maybe some of these women are suffering from actual genital histopathology, not just psychogenic problems. We have this one FDA approved drug now for female sexual dysfunction that’s a psych drug, flibanserin. It’s a useful drug, but obviously, we need much more and maybe we should think in terms of systems, like we do for the rest of the body.
Platelet Rich Plasma.
Obviously, this is not a new idea. This is from, this month, over 9,000 papers indexed in PubMed about platelet rich plasma. Our orthopedic colleagues, our dentist, our facial plastic surgeons have worked with this, and all we have to do is take their ideas and then hopefully people in this room will extend what I’m about to show you and just take those ideas and adapt them to the genital space. Here’s some of the growth factors we know about. There are many more. They have these effects. These are good things for the genitalia. Down-regulating autoimmune response, proliferation of fibroblasts, new angiogenesis, the adipocytes enlarge and multiply – think labia majora, collagen production, neurogenesis and maybe some glandular function.
There’s never, in all those 9,000 papers, I still cannot find one serious side effect. No granulomas, no serious infection. PRP is what your body makes to heal when you do your surgeries and help prevent infection. Obviously, there are always certain things that can happen, bruising and such, but if you have a serious life-threatening complication from PRP, you will have the first recorded in all of that 9,000 plus papers. That’s a nice thing.
We have commercially available methods for preparing it, within 5 or 10 minutes of the bedside, and the devices are FDA approved. So you guys don’t get confused, obviously the FDA does not approve your procedures. That’s a doctor business. They don’t approve blood that belongs to you, just like your spit and your saliva and your skin. They tried, at one time, to control eggs and the gynecologists said, “Hell no.” So they don’t control eggs and they don’t control blood, but you should use an FDA approved device if you do this [approved for preparation of PRP to go back into the body].
Autoimmune Disease
Here’s some of the ideas about down-regulating autoimmune response. We have split-scalp studies showing that PRP helps alopecia areata better than triamcinolone. More hair growth that comes in thicker. Here’s rat studies looking at rheumatoid arthritis. What do we have in the genital space? We have lichens sclerosus. We did some before and after pictures where you use stem cells mixed with PRP, and before and after pictures show improvement. Of course, that’s two variables because you have stem cells and you have the PRP.
We took the same idea and just used PRP. Andrew Goldstein worked with me on this, and we had two blinded dermatopathologists. The protocol was biopsy, PRP, wait six weeks later, another PRP injection, and then six weeks after that, another biopsy. Two blinded dermatopathologists out of George Washington University did not know the before or the after. We showed statistical improvement in both the histology and symptomatology. Here’s our histology. You can see obviously, that’s the same magnification and we’re showing decreased hyperkeratosis. That’s obviously healthier tissue. A layperson could tell that’s better. Of course if you look at the gross pictures, lady on the left as you guys know, she has pain wearing her blue jeans. The lady on the right is back to making love to her husband. They’ve invited me into their close Facebook groups and I saw a post a few months ago. Quote says, “I was sitting next to my husband, whom I love, last night. I was afraid to hold his hand because I was afraid he would become aroused and I’m bleeding and hurting today.” That’s what you guys are helping.
We published that in ‘Lower Genital Tract Disease’. We extended it because it worked. We published this past January in the journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. You have some science to go do this now.
One of our providers, Kathleen Posey, who’s a gynecologist out of New Orleans, took this idea and then she said, “Let’s do some dissection in the office”, and she presented this in Argentina, published it in the same journal ‘Lower Genital Tract Disease’. Here’s one of her patients, where you can introduce [inaudible 00:06:44]. It had been 12 years since she had had sexual intercourse, penis and vagina intercourse, with her loving husband … 12 years. She was being followed by a dermatologist on high dose clobetasol. Kathleen dissected it out in the office and then injected PRP … 8 weeks later, she’s having comfortable sex with her husband. She’s now 3 years out. She’s had to be treated with PRP, not repeat surgery … PRP now, 2 other times a year apart to maintain that result. She now has a series of 60 or so patients that she’s now going to publish with similar results, where she’s dissecting out – as you guys know how to do – treating the [inaudible 00:07:27], but then following that with PRP injections to help the healing and decease the autoimmune response.
That same doctor, Casabona, repeated his study with lichen sclerosus in men [BXO], and showed with just PRP alone … This study of 45 men with repeat treatments … It is cumulative, 2 to 10 treatments, the same thing. All of them stopped their steroids. None of them started back. Only one went on to have circumcision.
Peyronie’s
Peyronie’s disease, another autoimmune disease … This came out this month out of Wake Forest, where they took men and they followed their results with Peyronie’s disease. Not only did their Peyronie’s improve statistically, but they also improved their erectile dysfunction by 5 on that scale of 5 to 25 that the urologists use. For some reason, thankfully, they threw in one woman just for good measure, and showed that it helped her incontinence. They just tucked that in as an aftermath.
Ronald Virag, as you guys know as the legendary vascular surgeon who was first to present the idea of intracavernosal injections for erectile dysfunction, out of Paris. His big thing now is PRP for Peyronie’s. He just published a study where he showed that this is comparing PRP with Xiapex, which is a $50,000 series of injections, FDA approved version of collagenase. He showed that PRP works better with few side effects. There’s a risk of about 1 in 30, that actually go from a bent pencil to a fractured pencil and a limp noodle. You don’t see that with PRP. You see the side effect is the erectile function improves. He showed the same thing, actually, in his studies that erectile dysfunction improves by an average of about 7 on that 5 to 25 point scale.
Wound Healing/Scar Resolution
Let’s think about the [inaudible 00:09:29] literature. Look at this, there’s so much of this out there. This is looking at post-operative adhesions, lots of studies looking at scarring with microneedling and PRP. This is a split-face study comparing PRP with microneedling verus PRP … Excuse me, microneedling with saline or Vitamin C serum and split-faced studies in PRP wins. Dr. Sclafani did some studies in the cosmetic space looking at increased collagen production and fibroblast activity, and never a neoplasia documented. People worry about that. This is not indiscriminate blindness blind growth. You don’t worry about carcinogenesis when you do surgery and it’s the same PRP that’s causing healing. There’s actually some helpful immune processes that go on, that you could argue actually might help prevent cancer. I’m not going to make that argument but it might need to be made one day.
If you look further, here’s a wound healing study looking at reepithelialized exposed bone and tendon of the foot and ankle. When I took that and applied, this is a hypertrophic scar that was a year old from cortisone, and then using PRP and Juvederm or HA filler, this is a few days later, a month later, and that’s a year later. Now, take that and think, “How could I use that in the genitourinary space?” Doing that anecdotally, we have many of the members of our group are seeing help with episiotomy scars or dyspareunia, pelvic foreplay instead of injecting that pelvic floor tenderness with triamcinolone. Physiatrist for the past ten years has been using PRP, your sports medicine doctors. Now, when you palpate it, consider injecting with PRP instead. Dyspareunia from mesh and that unknown dyspareunia, we’re seeing this is where we need you guys to help extend the research. The science is there that it should help and it seems to be helping. Not 100%, but about 80% in people with dyspareunia.
Mesh Pain
Here is a look at a gentleman who did … He took the mesh out and then he patched the hole with a gel form of PRP and showed benefit. We’re finding anecdotally – no one’s done this study yet, here’s another one for you to pick up … I’m giving you low hanging fruit. We’re seeing anecdotally that if you inject in the distribution of the pudendal nerve, which seems to be inflamed in some women with mesh pain, that their pain will frequently go from 9 out of 10 down to 1 or 2 out of 10, without even taking the mesh out. Just another place where we need some research done.
Interstitial Cystitis
Here, we have rat studies looking at inflammation. Let’s think about this one. Here’s a rat study where they modeled cystitis and we are seeing in chronic interstitial cystitis without even infiltrating the bladder, just infiltrating in the periurethral space, some of our women are getting better. I’ve had two separate urologists call me and say, “Charles, I can’t believe it. I was doing this and expecting not this to happen. I have these patients now who have had chronic interstitial cystitis pain for years, and it’s gone.” Not 1005 but finding out who’s going to respond and who’s not and why, there’s a lot of variables that need to be thought about that you guys will hopefully do the research.
Penis Growth
Here’s a study that came out in the ‘Journal of Sexual Medicine’, where a guy took … the [inaudible 00:12:51] men who have an erection of 3 inches or less and then he treated them with PRP, combined with a pump, and showed that if you repeated it every time you did it, it grew by about 7 millimeters. I’ve always thought if I could give you a guarantee half an inch to an inch with anything, I’d get my picture on a postage stamp. I don’t have that yet, but I can tell you that we’re seeing about 60% of the time we do this procedure, men will see some sort of growth.
If you look at the neovascular space, there was a study out of Southern California that was published in the ‘Journal of Sexual Medicine’ where they transferred adipocyte stem cells to the penis of diabetic rats. They showed new endothelial cell growth and increased nitric oxide activity in the dorsal nerve. Would that be helpful in the clitoris? Probably, but the interesting thing is the adipocyte-derived stem cells were attacked and they died. The postulate was the improvement was from the growth factors.
Penile Rehabilitation and Erectile Dysfunction
I have seen what [inaudible 00:13:52] have seen in that when you inject this in the penis, erectile function goes up on the average of about 5 to 7 per injection. Think about nerve repair. We have rat studies modeling prostrate surgery, showing that the nerves improved with PRP and so we have, again, another clear place where we need studies if you add this now to the usual protocol for rehabilitating the penis post-prostate surgery … would you see benefit? We have seen that in some of our patients who are a year or two out who failed the rehabilitation part of that. Would that help your patients who have, say, numbness and decreased function from riding their bikes too much, or trauma? I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about and publishing research about.
In thinking about where to put this, where we do our O-Shot, when we do PRP to the anterior vaginal wall, we’re putting it as distal from the bladder as possible. We found that it works better. We’re essentially making a liquid sling. Think infiltrating and getting ready to put in the mesh. That’s what we’re doing. Very simple, only we’re using a material that has never caused a granuloma ever. Doing that, frequently our patients will have their incontinence go away that day from the actual liquid and as it’s replaced with new tissue, it never recurs. Usually, you’ll have to repeat the procedure at a year or two out depending on the etiology. Sometimes it lasts longer.
The interesting idea is what might be happening with those [inaudible 00:15:21]. They become more active, and does that help with sexual function? The other place we put it is in the actual corpus cavernosum of the clitoris. We use [inaudible 00:15:29] ultrasound visualization and see it flow down into the body of the clitoris by the pubic ramus and the wave form goes to what you see in a flaccid penis to what you see in an erect penis.
Improved Orgasm & Libido in Women
That’s my time, almost done. Just 30 more seconds. Here’s a pilot study we did where we showed that in women with female sexual distress, that it dropped by an average of 10 and female sexual function went up by 5 when you do what I just showed you. Here’s a study that Dr. Neto, who may be here, published where he looked at incontinence and sexual function down in Brazil and showed that 94% of the people loved it. The question here is how would you combine it with your energy source? It works great in the face if you do laser and follow it with PRP … better results, faster healing. Is it going to … We need people to help us work out the algorithms. Not everybody has laxity, but when you have something, when do you use which treatment and when do you combine it with PRP? We need those answers, because I don’t have them yet. This is possible helps.
I am done. Thank you very much for having me. I put all these references at that website, if you want to go download them. Thank you. You guys have a wonderful conference.
Dr. Marco Pelosi III: Thank you Charles. Beautiful
The following is a video and transcript of the weekly “Round Table Journal Club” of the Cellular Medicine Association.
Transcript….
Charles Runels: We’ll start with some research that I think is worth paying attention to and then we’ll answer what questions might have appeared in the past week or so and then a quick marketing tip about how to use our poster. So that’s what I have planned for today but as always, we’ll take any questions that you guys have on the call.
If you’re not a subscriber to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, oh, by the way, we also have some really crazy good press that came out this month on the current Men’s Health magazine.
The one that is on the stands now. It’s the issue that has Mark Wahlberg on the cover. So it’s in every Wal-Mart, every bookstore right now and we have an article in there. It’s titled, “New Year,” excuse my French but that’s the title of it. “New Year, New Dick,” that’s the name of the title and the guy talks about our priapus shot.
As often happens, he doesn’t get the legal part right and he spells Priapus incorrectly, but he puts shot with a lower case “s” and leaves off the registered mark (®) so there really is some pretty sloppy journalism going on (since a little research shows that Priapus Shot® is intellectual property intended to mean a particular way of using PRP injections in the penis and post op and pre op protocols).
But, Andy Warhol said, “I don’t read the reviews, I just measure them in inches.” But this is a really good time to talk about the Priapus Shot®. I’ll send out an email to the group to let people know, but the Priapus Shot® porcedure is really in the news. To put an ad in that magazine costs you quarter million dollars and we have an eight page article now about the Priapus Shot® procedure in Men’s Health, so it’s a good time to talk about that.
This is the issue that has the article titled “New Year, New Dick”
So back to this research, it’s pretty easy to summarize and this has been out for a few months and I’ve been wanting to bring it up. It talks about this thing that we all know that women who are put on Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors often have a drop in their sex drive.
But what isn’t talked about a lot is that even after you stop the medication, often times they keep the low sex drive. So I have a little formula that I use before there was an “O” shot that I’m happy to share with you and then I think combining it with the “O” shot, we should get even better results. But I wouldn’t pretend like only rejuvenating the tissue of the vagina could take care of all the problems that might be going on metabolically in the brain secondary to months on an SSRI.
What I have found works the best is this. I make sure that, I’ll just bring this up where I can kind of type it out. I’m going to put this where I can make it where you can see it. This would be my of handling this and I’ve found that just one thing often doesn’t work. The first thing I put on is I like Depo-testosterone, Depo-testosterone. This is one of those drugs unlike some, where generic is fine, I don’t or I’ll compound it, can even be better in some cases. I don’t like to start a woman with creams because she may forget them, she may sweat them off down here in the south where it gets hot. Lots of things can happen.
Maybe she’s not absorbing it well and if a month later, her libido isn’t up, I have to do blood tests to know whether or not she’s even using it or absorbing it properly. But if I start off with Depo-testosterone 50 mg IM every 21 days, which is a pretty whopping dose and so you have to obviously, you don’t just put her on that and forget her. You have to bring her back about a week to two weeks after the second dose at the latest and you redo blood tests and see how she’s doing. They’ll often say their libido pops up towards the end of that 21 days and then pops back down and then comes up after the second shot and stays there. Then I’ll adjust it and then swap her over to creams or pellets after you get her libido back. But otherwise I’ve found I fiddled too long where that I know it’s in there and I know if testosterone’s going to help, that dose will help her.
1. Depo-testosterone 50mg im every 21 days.2. Wellbutrin 3. O-Shot®4. Family &/or Sex Therapy
Then if she needs an antidepressant, which often times she will not after you have her on testosterone, but I like Wellbutrin. It seems to, I’m spelling that wrong Wellbutrin. Anyway, you guys know what I’m trying to write, Wellbutrin. The slow release at 150 mg somewhere in that range. That will help the depression and also help with sex drive. Then of course, the “O” shot can go in that formula now and I like to make sure of course, that someone’s thinking about whatever else might be going on at home socially, or emotionally with the woman. It’s just sexuality and orgasm is such a complicated thing. I have done some of this, talking and counseling and trying to get husbands and wives in. But, it’s time consuming and I don’t attempt it anymore. A marriage counselor or a sex therapist or both. And that combination I think, well I know, that combination has pulled without even using the “O” shot before there was an “O” shot, has pulled my people out of that.
But the reason I wanted to bring up this research, is that most people realize there’s an SSRI syndrome that causes decreased libido, but it’s not often talked about that it persists in many women for unclear causes, even after you drop the off the medicines. I’ll copy this link into the chat box so it you guys want to check that out, you’ll know where to find it.
Okay, so that’s the research for the day and let’s get to some of the questions. If you guys have any questions, just type them in there and while I’m getting to this other research, if you want to contribute to that cause I see some gynecologists on the call, just let me know and I’ll unmute your mike because I know that many of you have experience with this and may want to add to what we just said. And I would love to hear from you. So, there should be a little thing to raise your hand if you have your mike. Some of you don’t even have a mike turned on, but if you do and you want to contribute your ideas to that, let me know because I’d love to hear from you. Let me pull up the next question.
How long can you wait after phlebotomy before doing preparation of the PRP?
So this is a good question I think. It says, “What’s the longest we can wait after drawing the blood and before spinning and injecting? We’re performing “O” shots intraoperatively at the end of the case, who have a longer case. We like to draw blood prior to surgery. Any thoughts?” In the thoracic suite where people are doing heart bypass surgery, this is one of the places where this has been used PRP, to help healing of the sternal wound postop. The number I’ve been quoted is up to six hours, even after you centrifuge it, it can sit there. I think it’s certainly okay to let it sit there for three to four hours as you’ve indicated here in this question and then throw it in the centrifuge and inject it. That’s the answer to that question.
Now of course, after you push it through the needle or you add calcium chloride to it, all bets are off and I like it to begin the person’s body, preferably in less than a minute or two and I’m always trying to put it once I activate it with calcium. Which I hope you’re doing if you’re doing the “O” shot, activating it either with thrombin, which some of the kits have, calcium chloride or calcium gluconate. After that activation happens, it should be in the person’s body in less than three minutes.
I see Kathleen, if you don’t mind I’m going to have you pull up this next question, talk about how you deal with the ladies in your practice who have been on SSRI’s. Are you there Kathleen?
Kathleen Posey: Yeah, can you hear me?
Charles Runels: So for those of you who don’t know, Dr. Posey has seen thousands of women in her practice, is a gynecologist down in the New Orleans area. So talk to me about how you deal with the women either who are on SSRI’s or who have been on SSRI’s while I pull up the next questions. If you don’t mind.
Kathleen Posey: Very similar to you, that’s why I didn’t say anything except I agree. I mean if they come in on an SSRI and they have diminished orgasm ability, which most of them do I don’t stop their SSRI right away, I just add Wellbutrin and usually the combo is fine. Before I do the O-shot though, I really want the O-shot to work and I really try to ween them off the SSRI on to the Wellbutrin and a lot of the times I’ll do the same thing, I’ll give a shot of testosterone in it at the same time I’m doing a pellet, or I’ll give a shot of testosterone when I’m doing the O-shot because I just want them to get started and pretty much do the same, I use the pellets more than I do the injection but that’s just my preference.
Charles Runels: Okay so when you do, let me catch up with you. So when you do, someone comes in and they’re on an SSRI, you might start Wellbutrin and give them a testosterone injection or a pellet and then either do that O-shot then or bring them back and do the O-shot later is that correct?
Kathleen Posey: Yes but I keep them on SSRI because a lot of times, you know most of them have been on the SSRI so long I find if you just stop it and then just try to get them to go to a [inaudible 00:11:18] it doesn’t work that well. Wellbutrin makes them a little bit more nervous, it’s not as sedating and if you just give it, that’s why even the therapeutic does at 150 the therapeutic dose is 300. So if you just give them 150 it seems to work with the SSRI and then I’ll let them go a month or two talking about the O-shot, talking about testosterone and I usually try to ween them, eventually [inaudible 00:11:56].
Charles Runels: Okay. Alright.
Kathleen Posey: I know a lot of the psychiatrists do it that way too, they’ll just add …
Where do you get your supplies?
Charles Runels: Add the Wellbutrin, okay beautiful. Alright so here’s another question, it says where do you get your 30 gauge needles and your 1/16th syringes? So if you go on to the, hopefully it’s on here, if it’s not I need to fix it. If you go on to our website what I’ve tried to do is on the how to do page, so you’ll be coming from a different direction but … There should be a link to everything. Maybe there’s not. Nope. I’ll just put, I know it’s on the O-shot so let me pull it up there and I’ll add it to the vampire facelift. If you go to … by the way I just added to, let me pull this up, [inaudible 00:13:08].info … okay.
So in all the others, which I haven’t done yet on the facelift but I need to, all the others there’s a dashboard and when you go to the dashboard there’s a place where it says supplies and sources, also on the how-to-do procedure and when you click on that I just didn’t realize it didn’t have it there, maybe I overlooked it. But I know where it is on this one and right there is where I get most of my stuff from McGuff pharmacy. They have lure lock connectors, they’ve got the needles, they have the 1/16th syringes with the lure lock connection to it and I buy these by the box full for not much, there’s the part number and I’ll put this link in the little chat box and add it to the webpage where we put the answer to these questions.
So actually most of the questions this week were on the vampire facial website and if you guys aren’t yet doing micro needling or offering it for postpartum stretch marks it’s something to think about because I’m hearing more and more that, that’s working. Sign them up for two to three treatments and it’s really working well from what I here, I haven’t treated enough to tell you first hand but I have people in the group who have treated a lot of people with that. So, but there were quite a few questions in the vampire facial and then after these questions I’ll give you guys some marketing tips on how to use those posters. Oh by the way so here, before I get to these four good questions here I just added a new dashboard and a lot of extra content to the facial. So if you go to the vampire facial dashboard I uploaded some new videos, taken from our workshops and so this is the new facial dashboard and if you go to the how to do page you’ll see some really detailed videos where some of the stars in our group, like this one. Of course Dr. Bowen’s published some stuff about this, there’s some really nice videos, especially this one where some people who do a lot of micro needling talk about it.
Vampire Hair Growth™
So, let’s see back to our questions on this page and then we’ll talk about the posters. Four good questions here. Okay first one, where’s the quiz. I’m not sure why that’s not showing up but I’ll put that, make sure it says well there’s a little quiz there to take from some people but if you’ve already had a hands on course then it’s not going to show up. You’re not doing the hands on course you’re certified. But if you’re learning this as part of an online course then there should be a quiz that shows up. Let’s see this one, good morning I have a patient who’s [inaudible 00:16:44] hair PRP after a transplant, he’s been using Minoxidil, it’s on a low dose Finasteride. The hair is now thinning considerably, what about using the PRP after a hair transplant, any noticeable difference back on Finasteride or not?
So I’m going to approve this so it’ll show up and see if some of our hair people will help answer it but what I know is some of the people have told me that they are using PRP. Of course we know it’s being used as part of the hair transplant procedure with improved results, so most of the hair transplant surgeons are doing that now but the idea of repeating the PRP every six months or so is also becoming a thing that’s done standardly to help maintain it. So the short answer to that is yes, there’s evidence that it will help as far as putting people back on Finasteride it makes sense that it would help. There’s this talk of the occasional person who gets depressed from that and I don’t have an answer for that part of it but I know repeating the PRP every six months or so has been talked about among our group as being something that’s helping. Let’s see so how many treatments are recommended for the hair restoration?
So this again there’s not one standard, I will tell you from the things I’ve seen at the meetings, what I’ve seen that’s been published and there’s been a growing number of papers published and some of this there is not a known this is the answer but I’ll tell you what I think is the consensus for now. So how many treatments? Most people go three treatments at four to six weeks apart. How long until they’re visible? It can be up to six months, they have to be patient. But most of us are stopping if we don’t see any results a month after the second treatment, which would be two to three months in and results, as in documenting with photographs, if you see new hair growth and you keep going, most of us are stopping if you’re not seeing anything after the second month. But to be actually happy with what they’re seeing it can take six months to a year.
How long until the peek effect? Just answered that. How long do the effects last? Most people are redoing it every six months or so, just one treatment not the whole serious of three. What’s the recommended fee for each treatment? Anytime I spin blood it should be at least $600 because you have cost of good and your time. Most people are charging and that’s really almost losing money because you have to pay, not only the cost of good for these kits, which can be expensive but your time, the office time, there’s this engine running every minute in your office, you should calculate what that’s costing you by the time all the people are getting paid and the lights and the taxes and everything. Every minute that engine turn cost you money. So to really come out on this, really most people are charging a series of three for somewhere between 2500 to three grand and obviously that’s worth it if you get good results and we’re not keeping the money if we don’t get results. What type of anesthesia do you use? I put on the facelift … I need to put it on the facial side. That’s why this guys probably hasn’t seen it. But on the facelift side, I just put up a new video about hair. Actually, two new videos. So, here’s one of them. 20 minutes from one of our providers up in Canada. And then, this one. This Dr. Mario is been doing hair for a long time. I think it was 20-plus years he’s been doing hair. We filmed his technique for both doing hair, and blocking the scalp. I was somewhere down in Florida when we filmed this. So, those are two new videos that I recommend you watch to answer both the blocking part, and the technique part.
When do you add in the Botox when using PRP?
Okay. So, I think that answered all those questions. Next questions, if a patient has Botox recently, how long do you recommend waiting before scheduling a Vampire Facial? So if you think about it, the Botox binds to the nerve blocker about … it takes about four hours, so we tell our people, if you get treated with Botox, wait four hours before you lie down, stand on your head, all that stuff, so that it doesn’t migrate and cause atosis. Now, if you reversed it, and you did the Vampire Facial, you could immediately do Botox. If you did the facial first though … excuse me.
So if you did the facial, you could immediately do the Botox same visit. No big deal. If you did Botox, you could do the facial and probably get away with it anywhere other than the more exacting spots, like the lower face or the corner of the eye, where migration would cause a problem. If you were microneedling under the eye or the forehead, it wouldn’t really matter. Ideally it’s either same visit, go facial then Botox immediately afterwards, and I do that quite a bit with the facial and the facelift. Or, if they’ve had the facial, just give it four hours, so it could be the next day, or later that day if you just forgot and did one in the wrong orders, if you did the Botox first. And I think that’s all the questions on this.
Dana Kirk just put in something that is interesting. Okay. So she says, “At the last International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery … ” You know what? I may just unmute you if that’s okay, Dana, and let you tell us what you … sounds like you were at a cool meeting recently. Let you educate us. Hold on a second. If you’d rather not, that’s okay, but I’d rather you just tell them instead of me having to rehash what you said. Are you there, Dana?
Dana Kirk: Well, it’s every other year, and it’s internationally, so they talk about the different protocols. And PRP, probably six years ago, was something that they kind of dismissed as being a standard protocol, and now it’s part of the mainstream.
Charles Runels: Beautiful.
Dana Kirk: Yeah. The recommendation is to … In the perfect scenario, you’re doing two treatments one month apart before the actual transplantation.
Charles Runels: Okay. Beautiful.
Dana Kirk: The jury’s still out as to if they do any A cell or anything during the transplant itself, but during the procedure part, they will go ahead and inject PRP at the same time.
Charles Runels: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Dana Kirk: We do not discontinue the Finasteride. That’s continued at one milligram, and that just stays constant.
Charles Runels: Okay.
Dana Kirk: The Minoxidil is just temporarily for about two weeks, withheld.
Charles Runels: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Dana Kirk: And then, you resume every six to nine months with the maintenance, so that they don’t lose the remaining hair. These treatments won’t affect the transplanted hair, but it’s in preservation of the existing hair.
Charles Runels: Beautiful. Very smart. Thank you for adding that. And then, you mentioned something in your note to me just a moment ago, about low-level laser. Have they started making that part of their standard protocol?
Dana Kirk: Yes.
Charles Runels: Interesting.
Dana Kirk: Yeah.
Charles Runels: Do they have a particular brand that they are mostly recommending, or is it pretty much whatever you round up?
Dana Kirk: I mean, it’s across the board. It’s more about the diodes or the [diudes 00:24:45], depending on what part of the country you’re from how you say it.
Charles Runels: Yeah.
Dana Kirk: How many basic lasers are within that. But for the most part, the device needs to have a minimum of 30, and they need to wear the device anywhere from two to three times a week.
Charles Runels: Beautiful. You got this down. Thank you for all the help. So, stay on the line and have … you and Kathleen both have your mics unmuted right now. There’s another question here from … let’s see. Who’s this? It’s from David. I’m gonna unmute you, David, so you can ask us your question. Hold on a second.
When do you repeat the O-Shot® (Orgasm Shot®) procedure?
Okay. So maybe the mic’s not working. So David asked, “What’s your current protocol for the O-Shot? One? Or plan on repetitive series?” So, here’s the deal with that. When I survey our patients and when I survey our providers and I ask, “What happens first and second and third shot?” What I hear is that the first time around, across the board, the hard cases and the easy cases, this isn’t merely incontinence where we get closer to 90% or more depending on whose hand it’s in with one treatment for stress urinary incontinence. Not for that, but just averaging them all together. So, this is including hard cases. A woman who’s never had an orgasm in her life and she’s trying to learn how to have an … you know, trying to get her body to respond.
We have 65% of women are delighted after the first treatment. It jumps to 85 after the second one. And so, I had the idea of maybe just making it standard protocol that everybody gets two treatments, sort of like we do with the hair. You know, you sign up, you get two to three treatments everybody. But to me, that somehow didn’t feel fair to those women, which is more than half, who are perfectly happy after the first. Now the other thing is, a lot of people are happy after the first, but if you repeat it at eight weeks, they then love it. So, after the first treatment, her pain went away, Dyspareunia resolved. But after the second treatment, she was unchained, was the word she used. Whatever that means.
So, it does seem to be additive in some people. But again, I didn’t want to make it necessary if it isn’t necessary. So the short of it is, [inaudible 00:27:20] are happy, and they seem to be still wanting to cooperate with you as a patient, do it again about eight weeks later. I wouldn’t do it any sooner, because otherwise you don’t know the results of the first one. So, do it again. And then, if they don’t respond after the second treatment by eight weeks, now you’re into 16 weeks. Eight weeks after the first one, you can repeat it. Eight weeks after that one, you can repeat it again. Then, I would give them their money back. So, that’s kinda how I go by it. If they come back after the first one and they are better, but they still haven’t seen all the results they want, most people want to pay you again. But, if they just saw zero results, I’ll usually repeat the second one without charging them, and then give them back their money if they’re not better after the second one. So, I think that’s probably the answer to that question.
Anybody else have a question?
David: Can you hear me now?
Charles Runels: Now I can. Yes. Now I can. Beautiful.
David: All right. Sorry.
Charles Runels: Any follow-up question to that? It’s good?
David: Okay. The reason I asked that, and I think I asked it once before about three or four weeks ago, is that, you know, I did an O-Shot on Diane. She had absolutely incredible results on her bladder concerns for about 10 days.
Charles Runels: Okay.
David: She was just exquisitely pleased.
Charles Runels: Yeah.
David: And then, she saw that start wearing off, as I’ve said in past conferences. Now, I’ve teamed up with someone. You know Debra Parker, I presume?
Charles Runels: Uh-huh (affirmative).
David: She’s an RN. She said that she has found that some of the practitioners she works with … she’s an RN in Tennessee or Kentucky. I can’t remember. She has said that the protocol that they’ve used in the clinics that she’s working with now, it’s pretty much go to standard three injections and charge $2100 bucks for a combination of three, and that their success has been 95-plus.
Charles Runels: Yeah. I couldn’t argue with that. You know, you may find that some people are well after the first one or two, and are not really wanting to go further, but I couldn’t argue with that at all. It’s what we do with them. Any other PRP procedures, you know, the Vampire Facial’s a series of three. So, absolutely. I think it’s worth considering.
David: Right.
Charles Runels: I wouldn’t consider it bad medicine considering it’s a fairly safe thing to do. In everything we’ve seen, it seems to be cumulative. The other thing that helps if you have … ’cause some people, it doesn’t wear off until a year out, and so do you really? That’s the question I have, do you really want to have everybody go through a series of three if maybe whatever percentage of them would have been fine with just one? I don’t know the answer to that. I could argue with making it a series of three and having a higher success rate. I’m just kind of deciding on a case by case, after each shot, deciding if they need another one.
The other thing that would add to it I think is combining it with some sort of energy source. So when I talk to the people who do energy followed by PRP whether it’s laser or ThermiVa, they do energy then PRP same visit. Their success rate of the first round seems higher and it seems to hold maybe a little longer. Again, do you want to make it the standard for everybody? It’s probably not needed since many people get better with just one O-Shot®, that’s it, that’s all it takes.
But when I talk … and we don’t have the numbers, that’s part, I want to just put in another plug for this. If you go and do our patient survey, which hopefully you guys are still putting people in, we’re trying to get a feel for that because part of the questionnaire asks people, it’s sent to them by text message, all HIPPA compliant, costs you guys nothing, I can give your data back to you. But the person who puts the person in the study puts in, did you do a laser device? Did you do a radio frequency device? Then we can follow survey data about why they were treated and maybe get an idea if it’s truly what I’m hearing, which is close to 100% if you do energy followed by O-Shot® on the same visit first time around.
David: That’s interesting. Okay, well that, thanks for that. I just want to give you an upgrade and to the point …
Charles Runels: Thank you.
David: … Diana said she wants to go ahead and repeat it once or twice, because she had such good results, she wants to have a repeat …
Charles Runels: Beautiful.
David: … and she’d have no problem in doing so.
Charles Runels: Beautiful. Well, thank you for the feedback.
Hey, just hang on the line, let’s see if you have anybody … no other questions. Any other feedback that anybody has, raise your hands, otherwise, I’m just gonna do a quick like five minute, “How to Use our Poster to Get Patients,” tips.
How to use an office O-Shot® or P-Shot® poster to help patients who need you to find you…
Okay, don’t see any other hands.
While you’re on the line David, have you used our poster to recruit patients? If so, how have you used it?
David: I haven’t really, because I deal with someone who has an existing cosmetic practice, who just has some concerns about artwork and style and things like that, so I don’t want to push it.
Charles Runels: Okay.
David: I have no problem. I have not done it, I have no problem with it, she does, so I’ve kind of backed off.
Charles Runels: Yeah, interesting. She doesn’t think it matches the office, that’s okay.
David: Yeah. I’ve used the brochures and she has no problem with handing the brochures. She has no problem with my talking about it on Facebook Live, etc., etc. I don’t know, I haven’t revisited since the first time I tried, so I’ll do it again.
Charles Runels: It does bring up a good point in that some people … and I’ll meet you here in a second Kathleen, ’cause I know Kathleen’s used her poster some. But it does bring up a huge point in that some people are embarrassed to have it, because they realize you now have a sign in your office that’s talking about sex. It could be that’s she’s saying it doesn’t match with the décor, but what she’s really saying is I don’t want a sex sign in the office and that’s okay. It’s her office, she can decide whatever she wants. Then you’ll go to an office and you’ll see, they got a Cosmo on the table and the front cover is about 16 ways to give a freakin blow job.
David: Yup.
Charles Runels: Here’s my thing about offices, my number one rule is, if you’re not taking control of the environment of your office, in my opinion, you’re losing one of the main effects of an office. I have had people occasionally come to my office and I’ll come out to bring them back to the exam room and they are sobbing because they’ll say, “I feel like this is a healing place.” What they’re feeling is that I have taken control of their environment, there is not poison in the air, there’s no TV blaring, if somebody donates magazines to my office, they go in the garbage can, because everything that you can see, read or hear in my office is good for you. I’m controlling it and if a magazine comes in, I’m gonna be advertising Botox and they’ve got an add for some stupid cream that’s supposed to work like Botox in Cosmo, so all that stuff goes out the door.
Then as far as what we put in there, everything that I’ve done, I’m trying to take the John Grisham approach. John Grisham has a rule that he never writes a book that he would be embarrassed that his mother read it. If you look at our stuff, I try to keep that in mind. These posters by the way, sit in India, they sit in Maine, one of my providers sits within a short drive of the LL Bean store, places where … I’m in Alabama in the Bible Belt, so it could be that, and I’ve heard people say, “Oh, I can’t put a poster, because it has about sex.” Again, I don’t know the situation in your office, it may not even relate to what I’m saying, but your comment triggered some stuff that probably needs to be said, which is most people find that they’re patients are so needing something to break the ice. They’re so needing anything to break the ice, because they’re afraid and they’re embarrassed to bring up the subject. Anything that you can do to break the ice, they love it.
They also have on the O-Shot® website a little five questionnaire that says something like, “Do you have pain? Are you able to have arousal?” The last question is, “Do you want to the doctor?” Adding that to the intake form gives you an icebreaker to let you know if they want talk or not.
Having said that, I’m gonna open your mic Kathleen and then I’m gonna give my steps on how to use the poster.
Okay, let’s see, you’re on mute.
Kathleen?
Kathleen Posey: Okay.
Charles Runels: Are you using poster?
Kathleen Posey: Yes. I’ve used my poster for years, it fits in my waiting room along with the books that are in the waiting room. All my books are in all my exam rooms.
You’re talking about the patients are saying it’s easier to talk about sex. They’ll come in and say to me, “I can’t believe that you’re gonna let me talk about sex now?” What’s also interesting in what you were just talking, what I’ve also realized, I’ve gotten a lot easier to talk about sex.
Charles Runels: Interesting.
Kathleen Posey: I’ve been doing this goin on five years now and I would probably say six years ago, I either didn’t have the time, I wasn’t comfortable or I didn’t know really how to help them to say, “You know, do you have orgasms?” Now, I have no trouble asking a person about their sex life.
Charles Runels: Interesting.
Kathleen Posey: Six years ago I did and I think most gynecologists do even though we are who we are. My poster has helped, because I’m just a routine gynecologist, it’s helped my practice knowing that I’m doing something different, and if they don’t an email or whatever and having the books. A lot of times the books disappear, but I could care less, because if they disappeared in the waiting room or the exam room, they’re reading it or they’re going to give it to somebody else. I actually give out a lot of books. If they’re a hairdresser and I find out they’re a hairdresser and they an O-Shot®, I give them about 10 books, because they’re talking to everybody.
Charles Runels: Beautiful.
Kathleen Posey: The posters really help me get more comfortable about talking about sex and it’s also, I think, gotten the patients more comfortable that they can ask me.
Charles Runels: Beautiful.
Kathleen Posey: When I was doing surgery, I’d just wanted, you want to put that hand on the door when they start asking about sex, you want to run through it, I don’t feel that way anymore.
Charles Runels: Beautiful. Well, you bring up several good tips. One of them is, which before a lot of things that have happened over that last few years, not just with the O-Shot®, but other things. Why bring up the subject if you don’t have lots of options or at least some number of good options as a solution? You don’t want to bring up world hunger in part of your visit, you can’t fix it. Obviously sex isn’t world hunger, but we didn’t have as many options even five – 10 yeas ago. Now that we do, it’s more easy to bring it up. By the way, I think …
David: Charles.
Charles Runels: Yes sir.
David: Charles.
Charles Runels: Yes.
David: Dave again.
Charles Runels: Oh, yeah.
David: One of the things I’ve used as a … I don’t have as many stories as you do, so I use your stories.
Charles Runels: I mean good.
David: I strongly suggest people do until they have their own. I had a woman in the office today who came to me for orthopedic issues. As you know I’m an orthopedic surgeon and I do a lot of orthopedic BLP and stem cells and peptides and whatever. In the process there of, she said, well you know she knew my associate very well, said, “I’ve known her forever, she’s done all my facial stuff and everything else. What else do you guys do?” Man that was just a perfect opening to be able to discuss. I didn’t have a poster in the room, but I turned on my verbal poster and I started telling Charles stories about your urologist friend and taking off the market by the FDA of the product for urinary incontinence, how horrible slings were except in the cases that had to have them and it when on to the girlfriend and the banker and to this that and the Sunday afternoon when you tried it on yourself. She was just like, “Oh my God, this is incredible. I had no idea that this existed.”
I encourage people to use you until they have their own stories.
Charles Runels: Beautiful and that also brings up another thing, the people that have done well with us, like super well, like Kathleen where they’ve had really really good results as far as the marketing piece, they are out there telling stories. They’ll do a YouTube video, they’ll interview a patient, patients tell their story. Stories are the best way, that’s really how a lot of people learn.
This is where the shot lives, if someone wants to pick one up and I’ll try to expand it where you can see it a little better. That didn’t expand it, just made me try to order one. But anyway, it’s written in a … Here’s the quick way to how to use it and we’ll shut down the call.
If you guys don’t mind I’m gonna mute this a little bit, I’m gonna mute some of the microphones, but I’m happy to unmute them if somebody needs that done.
Here’s my quick version of how to use the poster.
You have it sitting at a place they will be staring at it if there’s any moments waiting in your office. Not just this poster, any poster, something you want to you sell. If you notice, the bottom of the poster has a website on it. You would like for them to go to that website on their iPhone or their iPad while their waiting and find out something about it. If they ask you what the O-Shot® is and they haven’t done that, it’s a very difficult thing to explain in the office. Especially for your staff, whose phones ringing and they’re busy, they don’t want to explain it. They’ll tell them just enough to scare them off.
When they inquire about it, the best thing to do is do what you heard Dr. Posey do, which is hand them a book or a brochure. Something that they’ll have with them physical to look and think about so that they teach themselves about it. I wouldn’t even really try to push it to a conclusion while they’re in the office, it’s too much for them to figure out what PRP is and whether they want something. You just let them know that it’s available. You don’t want to push it on someone who hasn’t thought about it and is pretty certain that’s what they want anyway. You hand them a book or brochure. I have mine in a little stack, with a little not by it that says, “Free, take two or three.” Otherwise, they feel guilty about taking one.
I have a standing challenge, so far no one’s ever called me out on it. If they do I’m happy to keep my promise, which is that if you give away 10 O-Shot® books in your office, I don’t mean throwing them out like at one of our Mardi Gras parades or stacking them up at the gym, but I mean someone taking it from your office or you handing to someone and saying, “Here, this tells you more about what’s on the poster.” Or, “Here, I think this may help you.” If you don’t get at least one patient for those 10 books, I will send you 10 more books. That’s a standing invitation, because if you don’t get one after 10 or 20 books, then I need to talk with you more about how you’re talking about it. You should be having at least one or two, often times you’ll get two or three people for those 10 books. You’re not just obviously doing a procedure, you’re changing their life. You’re changing their relationship many times.
That’s the quick version of how to use these posters. You don’t want it in the hallway where they’re passing it. One of our providers actually has it in the bathroom, so when they’re urinating, they’re staring at the poster. It could be anywhere where they have to sit for more than a couple of minutes.
I see Kathleen’s hand back up. Let me undo your mic and then I think we’re gonna call it a day.
Kathleen, you’re back live.
Kathleen Posey: Actually, that was an old. My hand was …
Charles Runels: Oh alright.
Kathleen Posey: … a while ago.
Charles Runels: Okay, so you guys have a wonderful week.
Kathleen Posey: I was actually gonna ask you a question about …
Charles Runels: Okay, go for it, I’m in no hurry. Go.
What’s the best way to measure and adjust testosterone levels in women?
Kathleen Posey: It was back with the testosterone. Before I give testosterone or pellets or even an O-Shot®, just personally, I get their pre and total testosterone levels.
Charles Runels: Yes.
Kathleen Posey: What do you think the normal levels in a female should be? What is the limit of high that you will let it go to? I do the thing because again, it’s so conservative I want it for the boards to show that it was frankly non-existent and that’s why I gave them the testosterone. What do you do?
Charles Runels: Okay, so …
Kathleen Posey: What do you think?
Charles Runels: We’ve sat through these lectures before, as you know listening to Erwin Goldstein speak who edited the Journal of Sexual Medicine for seven years. He’s high on this website, which I’m gonna through into, post into here, which is using pre and total testosterone and sex finding globulin to calculate the pre testosterone level. If they’re having symptoms, then I like for … this is showing you all the calculations that computer’s doing for you … I like for their pre-testosterone level to be in the upper 25% of normal, that’s what I calculate for. If it’s in the lower 50th percentile, then I’ll add to it. If check it and if it’s high, and it’s above what’s normal for free, I will drop the level. I think if you don’t do that then you are sort of opening yourselves up for problems. If you’re looking at problems, not I don’t think medically, but politically it’s interesting how testosterone because of the athletes abusing it, it’s become a target for all the things with three letters, the DEA and all that.
Even though there’s lots of evidence and I know there are physicians and women out there who feel better with the pre-testosterone that’s higher than what’s normal for a female, and I don’t think there’s anything medically wrong with it if you’re following them clinically. I’ll tell you one scenario. I had a poor little lady in her 80s who fell and broke her humerus and was teetering ongoing to a nursing home. I make no apologies, she was still bright minded and just a beautiful hearted woman who lived down the street from me. I put her on a man dose of testosterone, sent her to my favorite physical therapist and we got almost 10 more years of her living independent at home. She got a little hair on her lip, but we’d go have tea every day and she loved me and she was independent for another almost 10 years. Was that bad medicine? I don’t think so. I’m not giving her prostate cancer, she didn’t care about the facial hair so much and we had a good time. But, as far as politically goes, I think pre-testosterone that’s what you follow and there’s the calculator for it, which I’m told is more accurate than letting the lab calculate it for you using those two. You get a sex hormone bonding globulin along with the testosterone level and that’s how you get it.
Again, I start them on that 50mg IM and they get the feeling of it and they kind of blast them off and then I can drop it if I need to.
Okay, you guys have a lot of good information. A crazy good call and happy with all the participation.
Something else?
Okay, I think that’s it. You guys have a great day. Good-bye.
Of the female sexual dysfunctions, dyspareunia will most disturb a woman’s relationships. A woman can accommodate a decreased libido and anorgasmia, but she will often completely avoid any contact when she suffers from dyspareunia. But, when it comes to treating the various female sexual dysfunctions, anorgasmia offers the biggest challenge to cure. Testosterone helps … CONTINUE READING
When a Patient Isn’t Pleased With Their Results
As far as I know, anyone who was unhappy with a procedure that I did (going all the way back to 2003 when I first went to an all–cash practice) was refunded every penny that they gave me. That feels good to me. It’s better than if I still had their money. … CONTINUE READING
How to Allow Your Patients to Participate in Our Surveys
Transcript
Charles Runels: So let’s talk about how to put people, your patients into our surveys. First of all, why would you want to do this? Well, if we intend to advance the science, obviously we need to do more clinical trials. We have two under way, but it will help us design those future trials if we have a lot of survey data. And this is not [double n 00:01:34] placebo controlled study for sure, but there’s nothing to sneeze at when you have, if we have thousands of data points which we could easily do and it’s prospective data.
This could be very helpful in designing our next clinical trials that are double n placebo controlled, so that we’re more likely to get a positive and helpful result or, rule out what’s not helpful. You’ll see our surveys include questions about which PRP kit did you use? We’ll know which specialties we’re doing, how long they’ve been doing it, and open ended questions that might help us discover things we’re not currently aware of.
Also, of course, the fact that you’re participating in the survey indicates to your patients what you are, which is a concerned and thoughtful and science-minded provider, so putting them into the survey, or asking to put them into the survey lets them know that you’re participating in a scientific endeavor. This is again, not double n placebo, but it’s prospective survey data which we can do.
By doing this, we’ll also put an icon by your name. I’ll show you what that would look like so if you go to for example, let’s see, we’ll go to oshot.info and if you click on “find provider,” find certified providers, so when you click on that you’ll see that there’s an icon, a little ribbon that indicates that you are helping us with our research. People who are looking for a provider and they see that, and you can see, this is the legend that indicates to patients what these different things mean. This means you have radio frequency, this means you have laser in your office, this means you want to treat lichen sclerosus and if you want one of these icons by your name, just send us an email and see.
So by putting this little ribbon thing by your name, it indicates that you were putting people in our survey and you can see most of our providers are not. So it would give you a way of distinguishing your practice.
Okay, so hopefully everybody will help us with that. I thought about making it mandatory that everyone help us with that, but I’m hoping that we’ll just voluntarily do this. When you put five people in the survey, then we put that by your name.
So why would you not want to do this? There’s some concern about privacy. I want to show that we use Survey Monkey and Survey Monkey is a very respectable software that allows us to do this double password protected and HIPAA compliant. And then even to put someone in and the other thing is we don’t ask people for their name and we don’t, but we do ask for their initials, the provider’s name and the day they saw that provider.
The provider could backtrack it and figure out who the person was should there be something interesting either positive or negative, the provider could contact that person. But we don’t intend to share that data unless there’s a need. So the person gets a text message and the way you make that legal is, I’ll show you. So here’s how you put people in the survey. You go to, for O-Shot, you go to oshot.info/members and then you log in. Now your log in page will look different than this. I’m coming through the back side, but when you log in, you’ll see … I’ll show you. You’ll be on our directory. And when you get to the dashboard, this is what you should see after you log in.
By the way, pay attention to this, because lots of good information we post updates to everything over here. This is how to do the procedure which most of you have seen. If you have questions, here and here are good places to go post them. But go here for the patient survey. Then, and you could literally give someone on your staff if you wanted, access to this, but try to make it one person so not too many people are logging in. And you have control and accountability of who that person is.
So the other reason you may not want to do this, one is privacy which I’m showing you, to put someone in you have to be able to log in, so when you get here you put this is a little ten minute explanation for how to do it. How to enter people into the survey. Here’s some nice questions that one of our gynecologists had that I thought were thoughtful, so I put a recording of that. And then, this is what you would want, preferably the patient, to enter themselves into your iPhone, with your iPad, so then putting their cell phone number here is what gives you legal permission to text them.
Now, if we put the email in here, that’s helpful for us to contact them, but that email often gets grabbed by spam filters, so we found the best way to survey them is by text message. Then, here’s where we get the up front demographic data that helps us figure out who’s doing best and that sort of thing. You put the provider’s name, how long the provider’s been doing the procedure. It’s all drop down menus. Which PRP kit did you use and did you activate it and with what? And so it’s very quick, less than five minutes. But that’s the other thing. I know five minutes is an eternity when you have people stacked on top of each other waiting to see you and the phone’s ringing with six lines. Understand this can be a nuisance.
Try to set yourself a physical reminder, something that reminds you of the survey in your exam room and, or on the chart, then whenever someone does an O-Shot, fill this out or have your staff fill it out, it’s very quick. Then you’re done.
Then we will collect the survey and I’ll show you what it looks like on the Priapus Shot website in a second. For some reason we’re getting a lot more surveys with O-Shot than for Priapus Shot. But once you do that, then we send them a personal text message and they still don’t fill it out. Their data is not stored on my website, it’s not stored on their phone, it’s not stored on your website, because we don’t want anything being hacked. Their name is not stored anywhere. So to figure out who they are, they would have to crack the code if someone actually somehow managed to crack into this HIPAA compliant website, where it’s stored on Survey Monkey, they still wouldn’t be able to figure out who the person was without cracking their medical records because it’s only listed by initials and date of birth, and date of visit.
So they would have to crack into your medical records, even if they cracked into our survey data to be able to figure out who this person is. So it’s triple-protected, because they have to go through two password-protected websites to get the information and then crack into your medical records to figure out who that person was. So this is very, very triple HIPAA compliant survey.
They get a text message and then that takes them to the female sexual distress scale and open ended questions on the female side and erectile dysfunction scale and open ended questions on the male side. So here’s what it looks like on the Priapus Shot side. So when you log in, you’ll be looking at this, you go to patient survey and then there’s the instructions. Again you have the patient fill this out, have them put their own cell phone number into your iPhone, your iPad or whoever you’re collecting that data and then that tells them you’ll be sending them a text message. Make sure they know that their data, how privately it’s protected, then again did they sign a consent form? And some basic demographic data which PRP kit did you use?
This is the only thing that might take a little time, put what medications they’re on, from testosterone are they seeing a sex therapist, things that will help us determine what variables might make our shot, because sometimes this procedure is crazy, crazy, crazy effective and sometime it isn’t. So, part of the challenge is to decide how to make the procedure better and another part of the challenge is to decide how to better choose the people for whom this procedure will help and those it will not.
I hope you’ll participate. Again, if you do this, we put that little icon by your name so that people can identify you as someone participating in our research and try to reward you with more phone calls. I hope this is helpful. Please contact us if we can help you further.
Charles Runels: I’m doing this broadcast from Las Vegas today. There’s an [A4M 00:00:12] meeting and I was trying to make sure I’m up to date on a few things. I bumped into one of the authors of this textbook.
I’ll try to let you guys know what I’m doing to try to keep up with our area of interest. I found … One of the authors who’s a Pharm D [Angela Pressman, PhD], wrote a chapter of this book and she alerted me to it. I haven’t read it yet, but I bought it and I’ll let you know, but it looks like it could be relevant to what we do.
Charles Runels: Yeah, so I just want to brag on you a little bit. I know this … I’m getting a lot of inquiries about lichen and some of it, non-surgeons are qualified to treat and some you refer instances like this. Maybe you can address what to look for, and how to take care of people, and not get into trouble. Your latest … I know that where you’ve been working for this protocol now for … Of course, you working on the surgical side and me taking notes on the PRP side, and doing the … Well, we published two papers with Andrew Goldstein and we published this so you talk about what you’re seeing and what your latest thoughts are of treating lichen if you don’t mind.
Kathleen: Okay, what I see a lot or hear a lot is the patients come in and tell me they are having painful intercourse, and they either bleed, or they tear, and or their ability to have an orgasm has really decreased. Usually, by that time, they have pretty advanced lichen. I do my exam, but they haven’t had a biopsy. I do biopsy everybody. Then I give them the offer. I offer them the option of doing the O-shot along with other PRP after I release the adhesion at the …
The main adhesions that are stopping them from having intercourse are down at the [inaudible 00:03:27]. It’s a band that forms there and there’s a lot of hesions between the vagina and the rectum. The clit, the formosis of the clitoris, I find, decreases the sensitivity and some have pain, but some have no pain. It’s more that they want to look normal and feel like a woman again, and they think their clitoris has gone away, which, of course, it hasn’t. It’s just covered over by scar tissue.
With these patients, I start off releasing the various adhesions. Especially like this lady in the picture, you couldn’t even get … You couldn’t even do an O-shot right from the start because her vagina’s about the size of a pinball and you can get in there, and you can’t really get too much by her clitoris. I will release all the adhesions. By the time she left, I was able to do an O-shot, but where I also put the PRP is anywhere I’ve done surgery. Then I really infiltrate about 3 cc’s down to the post [inaudible 00:04:29]. I’ve also taken a 15 blade knife many times and gone up and down making slits and then spreading it so that they’re wider in the posterior part of the vagina, and the put the PRP on top of that.
About half the time it takes two applications. The second one I do six or eight weeks later. I’ve been doing this now for four years. This lady’s pretty bad, but I saw her about a month ago and she’s got more adhesions about the clitoris. I just … At first, this one, she couldn’t even urinate correctly. I had to release some more … She’s still able to have intercourse not hurting and not … I treat her about once a year, now, that lady. There are some ladies … Go to the last picture.
Charles Runels: This one?
Kathleen: No, go to the last picture. Keep going. Another one.
Charles Runels: That one?
Chapter 15 (O-Shot®) Chapters 16 & 17 about radiofrequency and laser
Kathleen: Okay, this one. Yeah. Okay, that is the same one. This lady is not so complicated, but it still is hard. That clitoris is really bound down. When I first saw this lady, I was really afraid I’m going to have to take her to surgery, I’m not going to be able to do this, but this lady, I was able to unroof her [inaudible 00:06:04] and then you see what I’m talking about in the post [inaudible 00:06:08] is that band there?
Charles Runels: Yes.
Kathleen: You see that, Charles? That band?
Charles Runels: Yes.
Kathleen: You’ve got to release the band. Show that previous picture. Yeah, no the next picture where she’s treated. Where she looks normal, that’s it. See, she’s pretty … She came back … Can’t remember this, but I’m thinking one of the worse … I think it was six months later, I only treated her one time. Yeah, it was treated one time and she said, “I just put a white … Walk around where my index finger is, will you please retreat me?” She was having no pain, you’re unable to have intercourse where that first picture she was having a lot of pain.
I think that I’d be willing to train anybody who has some surgical procedure. This one, probably anybody that could do surgery, some surgery, can do. Those other ones, I don’t know. I think you’d probably have to be a gynecologist or urologist to really feel comfortable because you can get into some bleeding.
Then there’s the other patients that really … I had patients that have no scarring about the clitoris and just have that little band. I think you could treat that too. This lady-
Charles Runels: Yeah.
Kathleen: That to that, to that.
Charles Runels: Let me catch up with you in a bit. Let me just come in on a couple things that you say. I have seen now probably a half a dozen women and some of them in the classes I was teaching had a complaint was decreased ability to orgasm. No one had diagnosed the fact that you couldn’t get to their clitoris. They weren’t this to this degree, or just basically all scar tissue, but still there was enough phimosis … It couldn’t really get to the clitoris.
I saw a study presented at one of the meeting where someone actually documented … We say it doesn’t effect the clitoris, but there’s actually a study documenting that, that with lichen sclerosis it effects the hood and the clitoris is spared so as you said, I think the clitoris is gone if they’re lucky enough to be diagnosed which they often are not. If you have someone who complains of decreased ability to orgasm and you cannot expose the clitoris, even if it’s not lichen they probably should see someone whose … There are other causes for that and someone should look at them.
I think … Because you said, I think probably most people could learn to lis that, but they don’t want to because there’s something wrong. In my opinion, you would be a … You would have trouble explaining yourself unless you’re in some sort of surgical specialty. I think it’s better sent to one of our people.
The other thing I wanted to emphasize about what you said was that … As far as the biopsy goes, I don’t think that everyone in our group needs to be doing a biopsy, but not, like I said, difficult, but they may not want to do it. They just need to make sure someone’s had it done recently and actually treating the person. They should be sent back for follow up with whoever’s doing the biopsy. There’s a 10% chance [inaudible 00:09:36] carcinoma. We think …
Andrew Goldstein, I talked about this recently. We’re hopeful that because we’re showing decreased inflammation, that the chance of cancer is being decreased, but, which it is not using clobetasol. The cancer rate does not go down, but we’re hoping that our PRP decreases that rate.
Charles Runels: Anyway, I just wanted to kind of emphasize those things. Any other pearls about lichen? You’re bringing them back at six weeks and retreating, right? Is that what you’re still doing?
Kathleen: Most of the time, the last patient it’s about 50 50. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
Charles Runels: Yes.
Kathleen: Charles?
Charles Runels: I can. I can hear you.
Kathleen: The last patient, yeah I had only treated once and I thought that was a six month later picture. They’re running about 50 50. Let me go, there’s another picture, a couple other pictures in a camera of the one more.
Kathleen: Yeah, there are some people that don’t need a retreatment or they don’t need a retreatment at six weeks. They may need another one at six to 12 months. They’ll call you and say, “I’m having itching.” I’m from out of town. She’ll call up I’m having itching. When I went there, she had found a loner. You just got to exam and look and see what’s going on.
Charles Runels: Yeah. Okay.
Kathleen: There’s another picture, a previous picture.
Charles Runels: This one? This one?
Kathleen: No. No. Yes. It was that. No, you passed it. The one that had all the white on it.
Charles Runels: This one?
Kathleen: Yes. Yes. Can you hear me?
Charles Runels: What point do you want to make about this one?
Kathleen: What I wanted to say about this one is this lady, with a friend of mine had actually had a [inaudible 00:12:03], had posterior [inaudible 00:12:05] removed, painful intercourse. This is what I want to keep pointing out, that the pain is there. It didn’t help it. She comes in, and I was able to unroof her clit in the second picture, do the O-Shot, do PRP and got her. Then, three weeks later she had pain free intercourse. That after picture is three weeks later.
Charles Runels: Yeah, I think we should emphasize because we haven’t said it already, this lady had seven years without sexual intercourse, seven years since her husband had been able to have a penis and vagina intercourse when you treated her.
Kathleen: 12.
Charles Runels: Oh was it 12 years. Yeah, even though she was being seen by a dermatologist. These are extremely dramatic, life changing things that are going on in your office. I think part of the take home message is just knowing what to look for, whether you’re going to treat it or not, and if you see [inaudible 00:13:16] like this, to send it to one of the gynecologists in our group who knows how to do this, and I want to reshow everybody what you can do to let people know that you’re treating, willing to look at people with lichen because they’re eager to be treated.
If you click on buyer and provider, I have icons set up and so there’s a legend at the top, and there’s an icon for if you’re using radio frequency. There’s an icon for laser, an icon for if you treat lichen, and an icon for if you’re participating in our research. I’m not sure why it’s so slow to load. Hospital, excuse me, I’m on this hotel internet, so it’s moving kind of slow. Anyway, if you want to treat lichen, then please send me an email or just call our office and let us know, and we’ll put that little icon by your name. Let’s see what else.
Kathleen: Charles, I’d like to-
Charles Runels: The other thing while I was on the subject. Go ahead.
Kathleen: Oh okay. I’d like to add one thing. I see a lot of people from out of town, and I’m having a lady, I can’t remember where she’s coming from. I think she’s somewhere in Florida, but I would like to treat her the first time and get rid of all her Adhesions, treat her, and then probably send her to somebody closer to home that can do it. I know I’ve seen her pictures. I know she’s going to have to be treated at six and eight weeks, six or eight weeks, and then if I find the people that are interested, I’ll send those people back to people that can handle them after the Adhesions have been taken care of.
Charles Runels: Yeah, that’s a good thought. I hadn’t thought about how it goes both ways. Yes, there’s actually one of our providers, I think in Oklahoma that sent some one down to New Orleans to see you. She was bragging about how much better she got but then the provider in Oklahoma was following it with a repeat treatment.
Here’s the little legend I have. We put this cartoon of a red labia and so if you want that by your name, just let me know so there it is. Any client, there’s yours. People are looking for that. Let us know and I’ll stick that by your name.
Easy Vs. Difficult Cases to Treat with the O-Shot® Procedure
I wanted to just list out while I’m at it and talking about the O-Shot, what I would consider to be the easy things that we treat versus the more difficult. I get a lot of questions about follow up and when do you retreat or not retreat and that sort of thing, so just wanted to recover that. Here’s our easy one. Nothing is 100% but these are the ones I think where over 80% of the time either after the first shot or the second one, you’re going to have an extremely happy patient. Maybe over 90% of the time in some cases, would be [inaudible 00:16:47], decrease orgasm, and someone who’s already able to have an orgasm. This would be the lady, she can have one but it’s not like what it used to be. Decreased orgasm but can have orgasm.
Then, it would be urinary incontinence and someone where things are intact, where bladder’s not falling out into the room. Even urgent continence, we’re seeing some great results. It’s usually a mixed bag for both, but then [inaudible 00:17:43]. I know that’s a basket diagnosis, but I mean even in the ones where it’s uncertain ideology, that doesn’t mean we don’t try to work it up. The person who’s had a work up and no one’s really sure what’s causing it and they’re still hurting, that for some reason that person seems to do well with us often. The one with pelvic floor tenderness, trying [inaudible 00:18:19] injection, you inject a trigger point with PRP so pelvic floor tenderness for mesh pain. I know you’ve got some ideas about that. I’ll let you talk about that in a second.
Mesh pain and the more difficult ones, the ones where if you’re new, I wouldn’t even try these people for the first two or three months, you don’t get discouraged, I treat these people but I think in these cases our success rate is maybe closer to 50% and maybe even less, 40% depending on the person’s age and other factors. It would be never had an orgasm in their life. I think those ladies are a little more difficult to treat. A person who wants to have penis and vagina orgasm. They can have one from a vibrator, but they can’t have one with sexual intercourse. Of course, we don’t have control of the penis of that equation. Both of these two ladies, we have successes, quite a few successes, but I think that our success rate on these ladies is probably less than 80%.
Can you comment some on this mesh pain? Are you still there Kathleen?
Kathleen: Just, yeah I’m still here. Can you hear me? Hello?
Charles Runels: Yes, very well. I can hear you.
Kathleen: I’ve done it when they had perianal pain from the nerve endings around the rectum, and I’ve just injected it all around the rectum. I’ve just injected it all around the rectum and it seems to work real well. Isn’t the doctor in Europe – [crosstalk 00:20:12] yeah, isn’t she putting PRP around the pudendal nerve to ultra sound for mesh people. The lady from Spain.
Charles Runels: I heard a couple people talking about doing an old school pudendal nerve block. There was one study where the mesh was taken out and then infiltrated the field with PRP, but no one has done the study yet, showing our procedure helps it. Although, we’re seeing that even injecting the anterior vaginal wall where the mesh is. You’ve has some experience with how the mesh becomes wrapped around the pudendal nerve or something; can you talk about that? [crosstalk 00:21:00] Or something you read in –
Kathleen: One of my patients is a general surgeon at [inaudible 00:21:13] and there was an autopsy on a mesh patient, and the mesh was all entrapped with the pudendal nerve when they did the autopsy. But, even taking it out, it just has to come out in pieces. It’s so difficult. From my understanding, from that pain, injecting PRP around the … I wouldn’t do it. There are some people, that I think, do it. In Europe.
Charles Runels: [crosstalk 00:21:45] When you do it, is there some worry about injecting?
Kathleen: Yeah, just the anatomy. There’s too much you can screw up. I just don’t have the experience with ultrasound and looking around the vessels where the pudendal nerve is there.
Charles Runels: When we do pudendal nerve blocks … We did those in labor and delivery years ago. I’m hearing that just that will calm it down. Is there something about that that makes you nervous? I would have thought that was a pretty safe thing to do.
Kathleen: I think that’s safe. I’ve just done most of my deliveries with epidurals and not pudendal nerve blocks. No, I think that would be safe.
Charles Runels: Okay.
Kathleen: I would like to see what they’re doing [crosstalk 00:22:40].
Charles Runels: While I’m at it, I’ll make the list for the P-Shot® … What? I’m sorry what did you say?
Kathleen: I didn’t say anything. Nothing. I didn’t say anything.
Charles Runels: Oh, okay.
Easy vs. Difficult Problems to Treat with the P-Shot® Procedure
So, while I’m at it, I thought I’d do a list to the easy wins for the P-Shot®. So that would be decreased erection … And a reason for making this list, again, is all of us want to take care of people and not just take their money and make them well. When I don’t get someone well I give them their money back. I try to mostly take care of people I think I can get well. If you’re mostly taking care of the hard cases, I’m losing money. I recommend that you mostly take care of the easy wins, especially in the beginning, so that you don’t become discouraged.
I’ve seen a couple of our providers, just right out of the box, try the really hard cases. If the first two O-Shot®s you do are in women who’ve never had an orgasm in their life, and they don’t work, you lose confidence in the procedure. So stick to the ones that we know have a high percentage of success.
For the Priapus shot, we have decreased erection, but can still get an erection. In other words, on that erection scale from 5 to 25, they’re above 10, at least somewhere in that neighborhood. They’ll bump up about seven on that scale from your shot.
Peyronie’s disease. The interesting thing is, our easy win is most other physician’s hard win, so you still can be a hero and do wonderful things for people if you stick to the easy stuff.
[inaudible 00:24:35] Closed prostate surgery to help with recovery, but it’s in the person who could get an erection prior to surgery, of course. You do the whole protocol, and that’s on our Priapus shot website. Where you include both for Peyronie’s and the prostate surgery, including the pump and maybe even low dose Cialis as part of the protocol.
Again, lichen, we’re going to get lichen too. Lichen sclerosus, not planus … Although, I think you treated some lichen planus didn’t you? Kathleen?
Kathleen: Yes. Yes.
Charles Runels: [crosstalk 00:25:26] We had that anecdotal initially; I should put this up here. I treated a woman with extremely severe scleroderma, and they can have horrible problems with intercourse. It was a life changing thing for her with one procedure. Lichen sclerosis in men is an easy win.
The hard wins for men, I think, if their main reason for getting the shot is for penis growth … Although, sometimes that can be very rewarding. It can be frustrating, often times, in the men who has the most urgency about growing. So the men who has the three inch erection responds, in my experience, less dramatically than the guy with the six or seven inch erection or a five inch erection.
It’s a percentage of growth than the absolute. So if there is 10% growth on the smaller penis, it’s less noticeable results. Then the person who has long standing diabetes or whatever cause of erectile dysfunction, basically he has no response at all. [inaudible 00:26:55] There’s no response at all to Viagra or TriMix, and that person who probably has some vascular disease proximal to the penis is not likely to get well.
Those are my easy wins and hard wins for the Priapus shot and want to stick to these easy wins in the beginning.
Anything you’d add to that, Kathleen?
Kathleen: Nope. I think you got it.
Charles Runels: Okay.
How to do your own webinars to educate your patients…
I always like to cover something with marketing too. Let’s see if I have any new questions from the [inaudible 00:27:32]. There weren’t that many on the websites on this time around. Let’s see. I don’t see any coming through.
I think there is something meant to be noticed about, as far as the marketing goes, what I’m doing right now. This is a wonderful way to create interest before I was part of this amazing group of physicians. I would do webinars, just like this, for patients.
Back in the day, before I started doing the internet, it wasn’t webinars. It was a conference call. I would record the call and put that on the website. So, if you, as a marketing idea, the best marketing is to teach people how to be well. If you put out an email to your patient, whatever it is you want to talk about … Maybe it is dyspareunia or erectile dysfunction, or urinary incontinence, or something that we’re not even talking about here; maybe it’s something to do with the way you do Botox. If you want to do a webinar like this, the software is very simple to do both setting this up, as well as recording it. Then you have something that can go on your website and play, and play, and play.
I thought I would show you guys where I do this. I know you have to log in to go webinar.com to get here. This is the software … GoToMeeting.com or GoToWebinar.com and they have plans that are not that expensive. Then, you send out an email to your people, you schedule it … and what you’ll find is, that even if just one person shows up, that the content you deliver is on a different level than if you sat down and just said “okay, I’m just going to record an audio or a video about urinary incontinence.”
Then when you’re done, you have the video and you can tell your webmaster to put that on your webpage somewhere. It looks like this. Most of you guys have seen this, but when I do these webinars, I put the recording either on the membership site or I put on our Cellular Medicine Association website. It just sits there to play.
This is probably the best advice I can give you about marketing to your patients. If you teach people about the disease and how to get well, then they will trust you to take care of their disease. If you go through the trouble to teach them how to be well, then they’re much more likely to trust you to take care of them.
So, the short version: teach people about the disease and they will trust you to take care of their disease.
It’s really an amazing time that we live in that we can just, almost no money, wherever you are on the planet, you can just sit down and have a conversation like this with your patients. Then when you’re done, you have a video that you can play for them perpetually on your website.
I think that’s all I have for today, unless you guys have other questions. I’ll put the transcript for this up within the next 24-hours and a link to the book that I recommended, and I’m always honored that you’re here.
Thank you for the help, Kathleen.
Kathleen: Thank you too.
Charles Runels: Alright, you guys have a good day. Bye.
Charles Runels: I thought it may be helpful to start offering suggestions about what I’m reading, and what others in the group are reading and writing, so that our weekly meetings become not just sharing our procedures but approach being something like a journal club or a reading club, book club. That’s why you see what’s here on the screen now. I just got this in the mail. I bought it before it was published. It just came today, so I’m extremely pleased with this. The reason I’m so interested in centrofacial rejuvenation is something if you know, if you’ve attended my class. That is the most important part to improving … It’s the number one place to improve the appearance of going back in time in appearing younger. It’s the eye to the mid-cheek.
Some of the procedures in here are surgical. Chapter eight has some beautiful diagrams offering midface volumization with fillers. It talks about the anatomy, and highly recommend this book. I’m putting a link to it in the chat box, and I’ll put a link to it on the page where I put the recording, but very well done. Other chapters are helpful in [inaudible 00:01:53] videos. Part of what brought this up is I had a question today. I had some cosmetic questions. Let me pull those up. Then I’ll field questions from you guys. I copied this out of a email that came to me. Number one, “Why use none activated platelet-rich plasma on the face? Can we use activated prp and when?” Again I’m going to put it here and recommend that you guys check it out. This question, I’ll cover it again because it’s helpful.
Finding the Answer to Questions
If you go to Cellular Medicine, actually I want to just show you where a lot of these questions live. I’m happy to go over it, but if you have a way to search and find it very quickly without waiting for me to answer, then that would be a better thing. Some of you guys don’t know how easy it is. If you go to CellularMedicineAssociation.org, and you just put in the search box right here, so you can say activation. Hopefully, I’ve got that in there somewhere. There you go, so it’s like an index. I don’t have something that says index but it will pull up … Because I’m having all these transcribed, it will pull up any transcription that has that word in there, and so that’s a good way to search for things.
You could also go to the membership sites, so if you went to VampireFacelift.com into the member section, and this is the backside so you wouldn’t see this. You would land on, I’ll show you. You would land on the dashboard, so it would look like this right here. Then see where it says, “Post,” you could just click and you post. There should be a search box. I guess there’s not. I need to put one on this one. Most of the membership sites have the search box, so my bad. I’ll put one there. You could also go through here and look at just there’s the titles, recent comments, and there’s key words. This one needs a search box. Anyway, that’s the two places to look on our main website, the Cellular Medicine Association.
Looking at recent posts, and you’ll get the most recent stuff, but on the membership sites, the other place to look, it’s just look under the directory. I mean go to the dashboard, and then look under webinars. There’s the dashboard. No, not taking you back. Anyway, that first dashboard where we were at, it’s a directory, workshops, forums, and then there’s a page for webinars. Then at the bottom of every page there’s a question and answer session. You can see there’s a place to post it, so go in there. The good thing about doing that is you get answers from other people, not just from meif you do that. There’s one about calcium chloride. “Does it help? When do I use it?” Then you can see well, here’s the answer and it takes you to a recording from one of our webinars.
Activation or Not Activation of PRP?
I like doing it that way because it makes sure, it give everybody a chance to contribute, so it quits being about Charles. I’ve been fortunate enough to play around with plasma for eight or nine years, but newer people in our group are also doing that and have different expertise so it’s helpful. Here’s the answer to the question of why use nonactivated platelet-rich plasma. The reason for not activating it is the calcium makes it hurt more. Calcium chloride just hurts. The other reason to not use it as in activate the plasma is that you do get around 65% activation without activating it because when you put the plasma, inject it into the tissue, the exposure of the platelets to the collagen of the tissue itself activates it as it would in a normal [inaudible 00:06:47] if you had an injury and the platelets come outside the body, it activates the [Thorman 00:06:51] cascade, exactly the same thing.
You get 65% activation if you just take the inactive platelets in the syringe and inject it subdermally or intramally, and it doesn’t hurt as much. It seems to work well enough for the hair and the face. Most people are not activating. The reason we changed that and activate with the [Priapus 00:07:16] Shot, and with the O-Shot, and with when we’re trying to regrow nerve as with decreased sensation in the areola of the nipple, is because we’re thinking that because it’s more therapeutic type effect, and because we’re trying to maintain the material in a smaller space. Geographically we want it to stay close to the urethro so in a very small area the calcium makes it activate more quickly and more thoroughly. That’s the reason. No one can fault you for activating it with the face as well. It’s just a cop out to make it not hurt as much.
Can you “use prp in the vaginal lining?”
Number two, “Can you use prp in the vaginal lining?” I have used it everywhere, and I see one of our gynecologists is on the call, so I may get Kathleen Posey to comment on this too. Can you use prp in the vaginal lining? You can pretty much use it everywhere as best I can tell. I can’t find any ill effects except in one case where it was injected into the eyeball trying to do something with the retina, so don’t give anybody a shot in the eyeball. Otherwise, I have injected circumferentially. I’ve injected in the labia minora, the labia majora, posteriorly. Anecdotally, we’ve had two people in our group see help with rectal incontinence in a severe postpartum tear. That was years out and still saw some improvement in rectal incontinence. We’re using it all over.
The only reason I quit putting it completely around the vagina circumferentially is that in the beginning it was so costly I was trying to avoid injecting more places than needed because it cost us so much to make the plasma. I found, so 80/20 rule, I could get actually all the results I needed by just injecting around the clitoris and along the anterior vaginal wall thinking that’s where a lot of the sensation is as in Grafenberg, not just the spot but the whole urethra being sensitive, the Skene’s glands, that’s where a lot of the sensation takes place. It’s also up there near the inner part of the clitoris and all the nerves [inaudible 00:09:45], just a lot of magic happens there.
Not so much the anterior vaginal wall, there’s not that much lining there. I mean, excuse me, there’s not that much sensation there. Having said that, I’m going to see what Dr. Posey has to add to that. Then we’ll get back to the face, the best way to treat nasolabial …
Charles R.: … that and then we’ll get back to the face, the best way to treat nasolabial folds. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to unmute you, Kathleen, and see because I know you’ve done a lot of these. Are you able to talk, Kathleen? Are you there? You may not have a-
Kathleen P.: Yes. Hi. Hi.
Charles R.: Good to hear from you.
Kathleen P.: Hi. You too. I have injected it there not a lot [inaudible 00:10:26] end up with some left over, I’ll inject it in the labia minora, the labia majora. And it just depends, if they’re having pain in that area, I’ve definitely used it a fair amount and it does help decrease the pain.
Charles R.: In the lateral vaginal wall, you mean?
Kathleen P.: I have a little-
Charles R.: He didn’t really say vaginal. He just says vaginal lining, doesn’t he? I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Kathleen P.: Yes some … Yeah. I’m more doing it in the posterior vagina. I don’t know if it hurts sticking it in lateral because the vessels and stuff. I worry about hematoma. I wouldn’t go too deep if I were to inject it there.
Where to go to create an “interview video” for your website
Charles R.: Okay. You know what? While it’s on my mind, if you will do this, Kathleen. And I’m going to put it here so others may want to. If you go … so far I’ve only done this with three, excuse me, two of our providers, but I’ve never made it public. I’m trying to make it … I’ll show you what I’m doing. If you go to the O-Shot® website and you on the … over here on the recent posts, you can see I’ve talked to Dr. Goodman about some of his surgical techniques and how he thinks about orgasm and how the different procedures he’s using and I’ve just recorded it and put it there for patients and doctors to learn from. There’s nothing … becomes a very good explanation of the surgeries for potential patients as well.
So back to … oh, you can’t see it. [inaudible 00:12:04] where you can see what I’m talking about. There. So this is a post on the O-Shot® website and it just comes in recent posts and I’ve done that … I’ve set it up to do with [inaudible 00:12:21] and we had some … we weren’t able to record it well and I’ve done it with another one of our providers, but I’m going to put here … it’s so hard. Everybody’s schedule is so busy, but any physician who has … who wants to be interviewed, I see it as a great way to … cellular … let’s see … it’s a great way to get the word out about what we’re able to do and, just as importantly, what we cannot do and how we’re thinking about the science. And here’s where to set that up…
So I’ll show you what happens when you set that up and where to go. So if you take that and put it into … and I’m hoping you’ll set this up, Kathleen, so I can interview you because you got so … I’ll pick your brain a little bit at a time when we do these webinars, but you got so much information about lichen and the other stuff.
Okay so if I put that in there, it takes you here and then if you go to 30 minute phone meeting, book that, and we may actually be on the phone longer than that but just … and you can see you can just click that and pick a day and that fits your schedule and then I’ll record it. You don’t have to have PowerPoint slides. You can if you want, but any doctor in our group who feels like they have a message they want to deliver that would be helpful to doctors and/or patients. I like the interview format because it gives me a way to showcase our physicians and, because I’m seeing a lot of the questions that come by email and such, it gives me a way to get a more balanced answer to these questions rather than me doing all the talking, which is just not the way it should be. Okay, let me get back to these questions. So if … I’m going to put that in the chat box too and, hopefully, you’ll set that up, Kathleen. So anybody else can call because you got so much … how many years have you been doing this now? Three? Four?
Kathleen P.: About four.
Charles R.: I know no one … I don’t know anyone who’s inject … who’s treated more people with lichen sclerosus [using the O-Shot®] and you’ve got a strong surgical background too, as strong as it comes so let’s set that up. I’m overdue to do that. Okay, so back on topic. I’m just going to leave your mic unmuted there, Kathleen, and get back to finishing these questions. Let’s see. Go back to here.
What’s the best way to treat nasolabial folds–PRP, fillers, or threads?
Okay. So now for a face question. What’s the best way to treat nasolabial folds? With therapy or threading or with filler? I think this one is … let me pull up a picture. Let’s see if I … I think a picture would answer it better. Let me find a picture I have permission to use. Because this is definitely a case a picture’s worth way more than me babbling on and on.
Okay, here. So if this is the problem that you’re trying to make go away, the question was: is it better to use fillers or plasma or some sort of thread lift or surgery? There’s lots of different things. What can you do for that? So the main principal I follow is that this cheek area is more important than whether there’s a line present here or not. You’ll see nasolabial folds in children, but this is not necessarily an age line. It become a sign of age, when relative to the rest of the face, when you see that this … let’s see if I can draw on this. Let’s see what I can draw. Good. Okay. So when there’s a stripe, there’s a heavy strip, you can see it kind of goes like that there, with this being flat over here. And when you see that, it’s not the line that’s making people look older and you can kind of see the appreciation of a line right there, but not so much visible there sort of like a dash line. There’s definitely a line there under the eyes and then there’s this line and then this looks relatively flat. When you see that, that’s a person for whom either fillers or platelet-rich plasma is going to help.
If I’m trying to decide which will be appropriate, then I go by how much volume loss is there. If there’s quite a bit of volume loss here, the chances that I will maintain … the shape will look beautiful if I just fill it up with plasma, but the chances that I can maintain that shape become less good than if there’s a lot of volume loss here. If it’s someone who’s never had anything done and they’re … if you’re looking for numbers, if they’ve never had anything done and they’re 40 and up, then they’re probably going to need some fillers there, especially if they have a thin face. If they’ve got a full face and they’re younger or even if they’re over 40 or 50 and they have a full face, sometimes you can get by with the plasma alone. But the bottom line is that adding volume here is going to pull this up and round it out so there’s not a heavy stripe here. And then even if you have a line here, it’s going to be less distracting and not really age causing.
And so that’s kind of how I judge it. So I either use plasma plus prp if they can afford it and they have a fair amount of volume loss or if they’re … if I use prp alone, it’s usually in someone where the volume’s pretty close to where it needs to be and they kind of just want to be fluffed up and usually that’s … they’re 35 or under or they’ve had some work done already or their face is already full just because of their body weight. So most of the time, I’m using both. As far as the threads go, if you do the threads, I would still consider doing this because now you’re doing something similar to a surgical “facelift” but relative to the bone, even though you’re pulling this fold out, you’re pulling the tissue close.
Charles Runels: Even though you’re pulling this fold out, you’re pulling the tissue closer to the bone. You’re really collapsing the face relative to the bone and though the line looks better, you have some risk of causing skeletization and not that round, full feeling look that’s in a younger face.
In the end, all three, the answer to that question is, they all three work. That’s the way I decide. I would seldom use a thread without using fillers or most of the facial plastic surgeons now, almost all of them, even if they do a surgery and pull the skin back, they’ll do it in culmination with fillers to maintain the shape so you’re not just chasing a line. You’re creating a younger shape. I think that answers that question.
I think there’s another one here. Anybody want to add to that, just click the button and I’ll unmute your mic for you. Let’s see. Let’s get back to that question. I think I answered it, just to be sure I did all that. Yeah. That answers that question.
There’s one in here that some of our callers. That’s a good question. Why do you not have a dashboard similar to the others with supplies and videos with a facelift like the other procedures? It’s just simply because I’m the one that’s doing it. I apologize. I just haven’t done it yet.
What they’re referring to is if you’re on the facelift, the dashboard is not as organized with O-shot and P-shot. It’s all still there, but you just have to look around for it more. I’m actually trying to recruit someone who can help me with the websites. I’m still doing them all myself. I started doing websites in 1998 and I can’t find …
So far, I haven’t found anyone that suits me. They’re either over-qualified because they’re actually writing code, which is what I need or they’re under-qualified and they can’t write it. If anybody knows a good web design person that wants to move to Fairhope, then send them this way.
Treating Bell’s Palsy with the Vampire Facelift®
Let’s see. Any other questions? There was one that popped up on the Vampire website from Dana. Let me pull that one up because I answered it. Here it is. I went ahead and answered it, but let’s cover it here because it was a good question.
Dana says she had a beautiful 56-year-old patient who had general aesthetic questions. This is really important because I’ve never covered this in a webinar, by the way, so I’m so grateful for this question. She said, “She’s not new to injectables, but has not received any kind of treatment for the last six months because she has left-sided Bell’s Palsy.”
“Previous management for her palsy’s included prednisone, anti-virals, acupuncture. Her friends think she’s showing improvement. Although this wasn’t the reason for seeing me, I’m wondering if PRP might help with the Bell’s Palsy. When you search on ClubMed, it appears not only to be safe, but possibly helpful.”
Yes, is the answer to that. I haven’t counted, but I know at least two people, maybe three, that have told me that dramatic improvements. As you know, Bell’s Palsy can come-and-go, so maybe it was just luck of the draw treating a lot of diseases that wax-and-wane, who knows?
I would get a really good consent form because obviously if you’re not treating Bell’s Palsy, if you just gave her a Tootsie roll, it could get better or worse and has nothing to do with your Tootsie roll. In the same way, there’s always a chance it may worsen even though the science indicates it should get better.
I’d get a good consent form, which we have on the websites now that we’ve even enhanced our consent forms. If you haven’t downloaded them lately, download one. We’ve also made an Amnion version. There’s a Vampire facelift and there’s a facelift with Amnion. There’s an O-shot and O-shot with Amnion for those of you who are considering adding that to your procedure.
Should you stop anti-coagulants before doing the P-Shot® or the O-Shot®?
Let’s see if there’s any other. Here’s another question. Any reason to stop anti [inaudible 00:25:46] prior to P-Shot® or O-Shot®? Here, I’d treat this like an injection, not like a surgery. Most people who are on anti-coagulants are on them for serious reasons.
I had an internist mentor who always said, “The most dangerous medicine an internist ever prescribes is Coumadin.” You can make the case with just a baby aspirin itself. The last time I looked, something like 35,000 people per year bleed to death from gastric hemorrhages from aspirin.
They’re dangerous drugs. People are not going to be on them for frivolous reasons. Therefore, I usually just don’t even get into it. I just hold pressure longer. Tell them they have more bruising. The bruising is also PRP. It could enhance the effects. We’re just going to hold pressure and I do all procedures as I normally would.
The only thing with aspirin, if it’s possible for you to stop. I know that’s not the question, it’s anti-coagulants, but if it’s possible to stop aspirin or non-steroidal a week or two before, that’s better because it’s going to interfere with your platelet function.
Platelets have a longer half life than a week, so I wonder sometimes about that time frame, but that seems to be the standard recommendation is to stop for a week before and to stop steroids, if you can. I do the procedures and I hold pressure.
I was going to, if there’s not any other questions. Let’s see.
Kathleen Posey: Actually, Charles, I have a question.
Charles Runels: Go for it.
Kathleen Posey: I wanted to say, I did do one Bell’s Palsy patient. She had tremendous improvement, even after a year. But, my question has to do with …
Charles Runels: Wait a sec. You got beeped out for some reason on the sound. You said she had tremendous improvement and then what came after that?
Kathleen Posey: Even after a year. She had the Bell's Palsy for a year and still had some residual left. It was able to take away the residual palsy, which to me, was amazing.
Charles Runels: Beautiful. I’m glad that Dana asked that question. Thanks for throwing that in. Go ahead. You had a question too?
Treating Interstitial Cystitis with the O-Shot® Procedure
Kathleen Posey: I have a question about interstitial cystitis. What’s been the group’s treatment plan on that and how successful do you think that is? I mean, I’ve done a few, but I’m running about 50/50. I was just wondering. I mean, just do a regular O-shot? I mean, that’s what I’ve been doing.
Then, also, the same patient had an urethral caruncle. I put PRP in there. I actually think it grew, but anyway. I told her to go ahead and have it surgically removed, which the urologist was refusing to do but the pain was so related to that caruncle. I just think it needs to come out. Just wanted to know if you knew anybody else that had experience on the line with UC?
Charles Runels: I think what I’ll do. I’ll tell you what I’ve heard, but I think what I will do after this call, is I, as usual, I will send out an email to let people know the recording is there. I’ll ask for more comments from our urologists and gynecologists who are treating UC.
To tell you what I’m hearing is, I’ve had now three separate … Well, two urologists and one uro-gynecologist call me excitedly to tell me about multiple patients in all three practices, not just one, but multiple patients, who became completely well after many years of suffering with pain.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that everyone they’re treating is getting well. I don’t think the placebo effect on someone who’s tried everything under the sun and can’t get better and finally they get well with your one thing. My guess about it is that it’s multi-factorial and what’s working with us, is those that have …
Charles Runels: … the factorial and what’s working with us is those who have some sort of chronic inflammatory/infectious process going on with the Skene’s glands but I’m completely guessing with that. The others may have something that has to do with the bladder itself that we’re not reaching with our procedure. How we dissect out the subset that responds versus that don’t I don’t know but I keep offering to finance a study and if you want to do that and try to … Let’s try to work up a protocol and get it approved, someone in our group needs to do that study. I’d like it to come from a gynecologist or urogynecologist, which I’m not, so that it’s paid more attention to. To help you with it, I’ll post it and try to drum up more interest and let’s talk to each other about it so I appreciate you bringing that up.
Let’s see what else we got. I think that’s all the questions.
How to Get on Your Local TV News
I always like to do a little marketing tip or two. We’ve had a few people lately … Let’s see, I’m not sure what you guys were looking at, let me get you back looking at the web page. Just one minute. We’ve had people on the news, quite a few lately actually, and along with that one was on a radio show. It’s not always TV news, one was on a radio show yesterday and so two really nice luncheons lately. I thought I would pull them out and tell you guys both how to make this happen in your own town and the advice I give people when they call me and say, “Okay, give me tips about what to say on the news.” Then if you just know it’s here the next time I’m still always happy to talk with you. If you know it’s here the next time you get that call you can go refer to this.
I’ll fix it where you can see what I’m looking at. Here’s one of our doctors, she’s a gynecologist, Dr. Singer, and she’s doing the O-Shot and you can see she’s come out of sometimes with the laser treatment. Now, first I’ll start with how you get on the news itself and maybe I’ll just tie it kind of step-by-step what to do. First I would get the name of the person, just your local news channel. You want to call the news and say, “I’m a local physician and I just want to be available for comments or help any time you’re doing a health story that involves whatever you do.” For Kathleen it would be women’s health. If you’re an anti-aging doctor you could say anything that has to do with aging in men and women, whatever you want to be known for.
Then you say, “May I speak with your health reporter?” Here’s the thing. You would think, well they would laugh at you and say we’re too busy. The truth is it’s very, very hard to come up with news and I can prove it to you. Just watch the news and see how many times one news reporter is interviewing another news reporter, it’s very often. How does that make news if they’re interviewing each other? They are really hard up. How many times do you see one … They call it breaking the story. One news channels breaks a story and then all of them talk about it for the next week. It’s hard to come up with something new and interesting every day. Then when they do a lot of times they need an expert to comment. If they have someone on speed dial, and this is what you tell them.
Get to Know your Local Health Reporter
First you ask to speak to this person and you say you want to make yourself available if she ever has a story and needs a comment on or off the record. You tell her or him that you always answer the phone and then you give them your cell phone number and you tell your staff, “If you ever get a call from this news you want to be told immediately.” They are not to take a message, they are to get you to the phone immediately because if you don’t take the call they’re usually on a really tight schedule and they will call someone else and you’ll miss the chance for … I literally have millions of dollars of free publicity just because. They’ll tell me, “You know, I was going to call so and so.” I just ask them and they’ll say, “Yeah, I was going … My deadline, I’ve got an hour to get this done and if I hadn’t answered I would have just been out of the story.”
Tell Your Staff to be ready
You tell your staff … Make sure they have your short list, you probably have that already. “These are the people you’re to never take a message.” My short list is my children, my parents, my sisters, my attorney, and anything with three letters; the IRS, the FBI, the DEA, anything that has three letters get me to the phone. That includes CBS, ABC, NBC, and any news reporter of any kind, doesn’t matter how big or small, bring me to the phone. Then after you get the news reporter on the phone you just tell them that, make yourself available. Now, if you want to make news, if you want to be on the news for free you try to tie it to the national press and I put … If you go here, I think I’ve got it on here, let’s see.
Tie to National News
If you go to the marketing part of this … Anyway, it’s somewhere on here. There’s a webinar about how to take advantage of the national press and marketing … Let’s see, what is it? Insurance practices, avatar, anyway somewhere on here. You’re right, it’s easier to find the O-Shot but the thing is if they have … Let’s say that the press does a story on some new treatment for incontinence, it could be any treatment. Well, you call them up and you offer to comment on it, on your local station about that treatment. Of course, you’re going to talk about your O-Shot too. I actually changed the Health Department policy in my county after someone had an injury in Atlanta, the swimming pool. They had no Health Department inspection here back in the 90s and I said, “Let’s do a story,” and we did a story about how there was no Health Department inspection. It would not have been a story had there not been a recent death in Atlanta from their dirty swimming pool.
You watch the national news and when something happens nationwide that relates to what you’re doing you call your local channel and you offer to do a story about it. That can include national press about our stuff. When this hit the news recently, this one. This is a local station but we have clearer … When we hit the national press I will send out an email. When the email comes out and says … Let’s see. Back in October we made a Real Magazine Website and plugged in others about the Vampire breast lift. When that happened you could have called your local TV station and say, “Hey, the Vampire breast lift was just on [inaudible 00:37:53] website or Allure,” whichever one you want to mention or both, “And if you want to do a story about that I do that procedure here in our city.” Then they will interview you often because you have a local comment about a national matter so that’s how you get in.
Getting Ready to be on the News
Now when it’s time to talk how do you get ready to actually be on the news? Here’s some quick tips and you’ll know where this is. It also applies if you’re just going to be, say, giving us a talking somewhere, and it helps you plan the talk. Here’s the tips on that and I think I’ll type them out for you. Let me pull this up because it’s simple but it’s really helpful. I’ve been on the news more than I like to think about in different countries, in Serbia and London and New York. Anyway, the bottom line is this is the process I go through before I’m going to be interviewed.
I first think about … I imagine not everybody in TV land, not everyone. I imagine one person that I love and I pretend that person is watching and I forget everybody else. If it has to do with men’s health I imagine my son’s watching. If it has to do with women’s health I imagine my mother or a woman that I love and I pretend like that’s the only person and that person is on the other side of the television. That couch is my language so that I don’t sound salesy, I don’t sound anything except sincere and engaged and eager to communicate what the message is. That gets the frame … That is so important and I’m not just saying this. This isn’t something I’m just talking about, I literally do that every time I’m in front of a camera or a microphone if you’re being interviewed by the radio. I was interviewed on Shade 45, which is, it’s a rapper station.
That’s the only time I’ve ever been interviewed where I was the most conservative person in the room. They were talking to me about orgasm and it was a call in station and so it was pretty interesting. It didn’t matter, I was still imagining not talking to everybody out there, being interviewed by radio stations in South America where they have a translator or in Columbia, Mexico. Every time I just think of one person that I love and it’s the only person that matters. Then how do you, what about the content, what do you have in front of you? I think about the problem that my thing is going to solve and I imagine that person with the problem.
Let’s say I do a talk about the O-Shot, then I’m thinking about incontinence or orgasm or whatever it is that is to be the expected topic. Then, and quit speaking about me trying to be pretty or smart or say all the right things, it just becomes about me trying to communicate to that one person I love on the other side of the camera. I know this is all a mind game but it works and it’s the reason you’re there or you just go home. We’re here to solve problems for people and so, not to try to be pretty, they got movie stars that do a lot better job of that than I do, be funny or entertaining. I’m a physician, I’m there to teach people how to solve health problems so that’s the mind frame you get and I forget about the rest of it.
Then I think, and this one’s key I think. I think of key words and phrases that I think would be helpful. Let’s say that … And I write this down and then look at them before I go on camera. Let’s say if it were O-Shot I might think, I would think of the words O-Shot, I might think of the words relationship, relationships healed. I might say psychological pain, you get the point? I would make a list of all the friend … I would day provider group, that’s protected, be careful about seeing someone outside the group. Two and three word phrases that I would want to try and weave into my conversation and realize, no matter what they ask. Ask me about the weather. You say, “Well, is it hot outside?” I would say, “You know, it’s unusually cool down in Florida today, which is exactly what happens to relationships when sex doesn’t work.”
Ask me what color my car is. It’s black. “You know, that’s exactly the mentality people have. They have a black, depressed mood when they don’t get sexual relationship fulfillments in their marriage.” My point is, no matter what they ask you you can weave these phrases into the conversation if you have them in your head before you go on. Then I always thank the person, usually I’ll thank them up front for … It’s not a long thank you, it’s a … Because people get bored by, “Thank you so much for having me.” Nobody wants to hear that crap. What I would say is, “Thank you for being brave enough to talk about sexuality on your show because many people are afraid of that and we know how important this is for relationships.”
You throw little kudos to the host for being brave enough to talk about uncomfortable things and they always like it obviously because they can’t brag on themselves. Then it sets the tone and they know their viewers are looking up to them with a little more respect because of something you said. That’s kind of my, that’s my … Then oh, last thing is you want to invite them to do something; contact you, you want to make sure you have the website because here’s the other thing, here’s the bad, I’ll show you the bad news. Here’s the bad news. If you don’t do … This will go away in about 24-48 hours unless you post the recording. Anyone [inaudible 00:44:51] her TV show. It was good for a boost, it lasted less than a week.
The doctor show will last less than two days. A good news report, and I’m watching the traffic on a website. A good news channel … Actually, sometimes the doctor show you can’t even see the blip because a lot of people aren’t watching daytime TV but a good, very populated website will last two, three days and then it’s gone away so why be on the news if it only gives you traffic for 2-3 days? Once you have it then you take these videos like this and you post them on your website. You see where it says … Oh, I had a link copy. Anyway, there’s a way to actually embed this onto your website and hopefully Dr. Singer has that.
Now, every time a patient on the website that says, “Oh, this lady is [inaudible 00:45:47] enough to be on the news,” and then they hear her explain it in an engaging way with her news interview and it just sits there and educates patients day after day, year after year. Then, that’s when you get some traction and that’s really when you go on the news. It’s not you get a little grip. If that was all you got, honestly, I don’t know if I’d waste my time. That footprint that stays out there and gets showed by all of us on the website, that goes … Oh, are you all seeing what I’m seeing? This can be shared and embedded so that that sits on her website and that is what keeps owning on educating people.
I think that’s it unless somebody has more questions. I think we’re going to stop it there, see if there’s any other questions. The take home do for this one, for today’s thing is that we’re going to try to drum up some more talk about the chronic interstitial cystitis because we’re at least three years overdue for doing that study. If you want to get on the news, at least let yourself be known, make introductions to the health reporter in your town. Then when something happens nationwide you can call, they already know who you are, he or she does, and they know to call you if they have a need for a comment. Then there’s the book that I recommended if you’re doing faces for, that’s newly published about the mid-face because I really like the way he talks about that.
Let’s see if there’s any other questions. Thank you guys, it’s always an honor to have when you spark people interested in what we’re talking about. I’ll post a recording if that’s helpful. Goodbye.
Charles Runels: All right. So we had quite a few interesting questions over the past few weeks so let’s just jump right into it. The first one, Dave Harshfield sent me some guidelines that he keeps up with. He’s the head of an orthopedic groups that does a lot of regenerative medicine and he and others have [inaudible 00:00:22] to me these latest updates that came up by the FDA. So I thought I should show them to you because they should be very reassuring to you about what we do.
So here’s the question. If you haven’t gotten this question [inaudible 00:00:35], you will get it. Like I said, we’re going to cover about the FDA, we will cover a couple of marketing things, and then I’m going to go over a receipt that you can you when you give back to people who may not be happy. Everyone’s not going to love what we do and I have a receipt that makes people happy, it keeps you legally clean that I’ll show you. Then we’ll go over some resource that has to do with Platelet Rich Plasma scaring. Plus a few other questions. So let’s see. There are quite a few of you on the call and hopefully some of you can participate with helping answering some of these questions.
Is the O-Shot® FDA Approved?
But first, let’s talk about the FDA and how to answer this question about “Is the O-Shot FDA approved? Is the Platelet shot FDA approved? Is the Vampire Facelift FDA approved?” So the beginning of the answer to that question is that the FDA does not control your body fluids. Doesn’t control your hair, your [inaudible 00:01:42], your saliva. That belongs to you. Your fingers, your toes. The FDA is the food, drug, and device administration. However, if you [inaudible 00:01:52] enough to the material that it quits being your body and becomes a drug, then the FDA does have jurisdiction and the FDA has jurisdiction over the devices you might use to prepare the blood.
So, the analogy I use and some of you have heard me say this in my classes is that if you have suture material that you’re going to use to suit your surgical wound with, you couldn’t just buy material at the sewing machine store. You’d have to use material that was approved for use in the human body. But once you have that device for suture material in your hand that’s now approved by the FDA for using in the body how the wound is sutured is determined by the surgeon who’s sewing the wound. It’s not the jurisdiction of the FDA. They do not govern medical procedures and they do not govern body parts.
So how the FDA delineated what they will govern is with a phrase called “minimal manipulation.” They just came out with these policies. You see that’s stated for immediate release November the 16th. So just last week, they came out with this and this is important news and it’s, I think should be encouraging news for most of us.
So comprehensive regenerative medicine policy framework. Now this gives a pathway for those of us who do skin cells to move forward. But the thing’s most [inaudible 00:03:32] procedures [inaudible 00:03:34] involve the Platelet Rich Plasma and we want to know what’s the FDA doing about this. Now they put on [inaudible 00:03:45] medicalassociation.org, which is our umbrella organization, and look in the recent post, you’ll see FDA physicians for Platelet Rich Plasma stem cells. So here, I have a video and some papers have already been out for quite a while about the FDA. Some of the research articles are up in [inaudible 00:04:04] journal talking about the difference. But I remember one time, the FDA considered regulating eggs so [inaudible 00:04:14] an egg was [inaudible 00:04:16] to be more than minimal manipulation and thankfully the gynecologist said and [inaudible 00:04:20] specialist said no, that’s not right. You shouldn’t be regulating eggs. So the point I’m making here is there’s a blurry line between what’s minimum manipulation and what isn’t.
Here is where I put a link to the most recent position paper. So when you click on that, you will land on this page and you can read the [inaudible 00:04:41]. But if you slide down to this page and click on this one right in your final guidelines for … Let me make sure I get this right. The same surgery procedure, exception, questions and answers regarding [inaudible 00:04:57], if you click on that, it takes you to this. This is where they talk about Platelet Rich Plasma. If you slide down, the exception I’m talking about is how do you decide what is an exception to the minimal manipulation. What do you have to do to it before it becomes a drug? If you slide down to number 13, they tell here “Platelet Rick Plasma and other blood products are not considered even in the ball game … ” You don’t even have to think about an exception because that’s your blood and so blood products, the FDA should, in my opinion be regulating some things. They should definitely be regulating the devices, in my opinion, that we use.
If you’re going to do something with blood and then put it back into someone’s person, that should be carefully regulated by the FDA. Those who might somehow want to make a homemade version of that without understanding what they’re doing or realize that you can spend a lot of money and have a laboratory that takes it to a higher level that most physicians have. But if just somehow you’re going to modify a laboratory kit and do things with mechanisms that were made to analyze blood and somehow just decide you’re going to do that and use it to put blood back into someone’s body, it’s just not good medicine. But assuming you’re using a FDA approved kit to prepare the Platelet Rich Plasma, here it is in black and white. Okay, the FDA considers that to be blood products and they are all hands off about that. So hopefully that answers that question.
Now a real quick marketing thing that you guys … Some of you’ve done and others have not. I’m going to type it into the chat box. If you go to [inaudible 00:07:03].com/cellmed, this is probably the best marketing tip I can give you. If you click on that link, it takes you here. [inaudible 00:07:17].com/cellmed.
By the way, this is really, I think, nice software that anybody can set up on their own that allows you to schedule your appointments for your office even if they’re paid in advance. It allows you to schedule appointments before you even get paid and will integrate with your personal calendar so that’s your software tip for the day. If you put something on there, it looks on that before it decides if you’re free and you can set up all sorts of rules like if you’re going to be off on Wednesdays at three or whatever. So we can use this software to schedule with the [inaudible 00:07:55].
And right here, [inaudible 00:07:58] orientation, the people who fall out of our group and tell us that they are not seeing the phone calls, without exception, there are people who have not done this free [inaudible 00:08:12] where we spend an hour on the phone with you and your marketing person or your marketing person alone and we will do this as many times as you need to until you’re seeing results. It’s free. It’s part of being in the group.
No extra charge for it. We want to see you successful and we’ll give you a tour of the website. A lot of times, there’s tools on there. It goes marketing tools, pre-written notes and providers just can’t see it all. They get overwhelmed of all the emails I send them and just get confused.
So we have three full time people with business degrees in our office that have all been with me at least a year and they are not just experts at this business but they’re experts at how our providers are doing those and they’re just waiting and eager to help you because they know [inaudible 00:09:12]. We have more money for research, we have more money for supporting you guys, not just [inaudible 00:09:23] with marketing and supposed to help you educate your patient. So we’ll put in a plug for that.
Does PRP Cause Scarring?
Let’s go to some science real quick. So these are the questions that I’ve received a few times in the past week. Some of these comes in waves and this past week, I had a wave of questions about Platelet Rich Plasma causing scaring. I think sometimes things get out there on the internet and [inaudible 00:09:55] something on the blog or something, I don’t know what happens. I would think you would just to go pub med and search for scarring. I’ve done this multiple times over the years just to make sure that I’m not telling people wrong. I just put the link to that in the chat box. But obviously our first rule is “do no harm.” The truth is that we all hurt people and we don’t mean to but I had two people crash their car just driving to my office. People can’t get out the [inaudible 00:10:31] without getting hurt. They sure can’t go to the doctor’s office and the best of physicians hurt … We hurt people sometimes. But we want to as much as possible, of course, round down at night and know that we have not hurt people.
So part of the beauty of Platelet Rich Plasma is [inaudible 00:10:50] and I’ve tried to keep up with this, if you hurt someone with Platelet Rich Plasma, if you do with Rich Plasma, you actually have an incredible case as the first case in medical history as best I can tell. So when it comes to scars, for some reason, occasionally laypeople worry that somehow the Platelet Rich Plasma’s going to cause scarring. This is a general thing to worry about because it causing tissue growth. So you might wonder as a physician even or weaker physician or a specialist, you might wonder will this cause scarring. I think it’s [inaudible 00:11:32] for you to see here and if you can quickly [inaudible 00:11:36] through, this is 50 papers that have been published. You can scan through these papers and what you’ll find is Platelet Rich Plasma treats scarring. You’ll see that it being used to be keloid and split face studies use to treat scarring from acne scars, pox scars, surgical scars. It remodels the [inaudible 00:11:55] to make it become more normal.
To a layperson, you could describe scarring as basically tissue that’s healed together, but it’s healed the way that the tissue no longer has a configuration. All of these studies, this is the first page. I think it’s three pages. So it goes on for three pages worth. All of these studies are demonstrating an improvement. There’s burn scars, laser treatment, adhesion scars. You can see that there are also improvement. You can’t prove [inaudible 00:12:37]. It’s easy to put the positive and the negative. What it can do is show you 50 papers that show that PRP help scarring. I’ll find one that shows that it causes scarring. So if someone finds it, show it to me.
But how does this relate to what we do? If you do a procedure, let’s say you do a O-Shot and someone says their pain is worse, what do you do with that? For example, one of our providers is actually on the call, and I’m going to unmute her mic later, told me she had a patient who had back pain after an O-Shot. But when she got the asking, the woman had after the O-Shot, she was so excited about it, she and her husband had [inaudible 00:13:25] sex and she had injured her back. So the point I’m making is that if you see a magic trick, if you see a [inaudible 00:13:33] or a magic show [inaudible 00:13:36] appears so what you know is that something you’re not something about that situation.
So when someone tells you that their pain worsened with Platelet Rich Plasma or their erection got worse, it means that there’s something happening that we’re not seeing because Platelet Rich Plasma does not damage tissue. So the case of the erection getting worse, as far as I know, the cases about resolved when the person quit using the pump. So it wasn’t the PRP. I was the overuse of the pump. If you hear that complaint after a [inaudible 00:14:15], have them to stop the pump for a couple of weeks and them maybe start it back every other day or half the pressure.
For the O-Shot, I occasionally hear that people’s orgasms go down. I wish we had more data though so my guess is probably one in 500 something but I do occasionally hear someone’s orgasms seem worse. I only know of one where it never occurred and I don’t have an explanation for that. But you can make an easy case for why it might happen in the beginning because we’re vaguely created artificial hematoma. What happens if you have a hematoma on your arm, the sensation is not as great in the beginning. So why do some people have hypersexuality and more sensation and others have less? I don’t have a good explanation. But that’s my best guess at what’s going on and why it usually revolves [inaudible 00:15:14] it resolves and then they recover, get it back to baseline, or most of the time better than baseline.
So we have a consent form. We actually recently updated the consent forms. Our consent form’s always been strong but they used to always be more organized, more strengthened, and now we read part of this procedure. So you’ll see things listed that you’ve never seen. A long list of complaints and things that we’ve seen, we’ve added to the long list of complaints and we still include a line that says, “This is not a FDA procedure,” because some people still thinks the FDA approves procedures. So in the consent form, we say that it’s not. I’ll show the consent form list. So if you go into oshot.info and sign in … So when you get there, it’s going to look like this. I’m going to just pull it up really quickly. Then we’ll answer several more questions and then we have a [inaudible 00:16:25] promised to show you.
So you log in. This is the back side but when you log in, you’ll see something that looks like this. This is where I’m really begging you guys. The more the survey data we get, the more we’ll understand, I think, how often some of these things happen and what’s the [inaudible 00:16:44]. Once again here, you’ll see the legal when you go to legal. Our new consent form is there and this is me describing the routine, which I’ll get into now and how to use it. So there’s the consent form and we’ll just finish this out now as far as the scarring goes. As far as I know, saying that you damaged something with Platelet Rich Plasma is similar to saying that you have suffocated from oxygen because logically, it’s hard to understand since Platelet Rich Plasma remodels things back into a normal [inaudible 00:17:22].
But here’s the consent form and I’ll put up … You see it’s pretty straight forward and you can see there’s as long line of things. Basically, it just listed everything we could think of that a person complain of because do we say that PRP doesn’t cause fatigue. We haven’t done 10,000 people with a [inaudible 00:17:45]. But we do have almost 10,000 papers. Let me just pull this up again for you guys to realize. If you got to pub med and put in Platelet Rich Plasma, I think it’s interesting to see the body of knowledge. When I started doing this eight years ago, this used to be 5,000 personnel [inaudible 00:18:08] and just [inaudible 00:18:10] exploding.
So back to the video. There. So you can see we put the pen and we also put that we don’t really know. Something can happen we’re not anticipating. I can conservatively say that if you look at the number of people we have, the number of procedures we’re doing, we’re at 2,000 procedures by now easily, just O-Shots alone. The region company alone says [inaudible 00:18:44] PRP kits for a year so the number of procedures that PRP is phenomenal. Millions of procedures done yearly. Yet when you look at pub med, you cannot side one serious side effect. Not one serious thing that’s happened except recently when they had something bad happen in the eye. I can find the [inaudible 00:19:08] report [inaudible 00:19:09] mixed something weird with PRP [inaudible 00:19:13] and it got an infection. But you can’t blame it on the PRP. It sounds like some sort of home [inaudible 00:19:19] or something.
As far as the PRP procedure, [inaudible 00:19:24]. So when I show people this consent form, of course I sit with them and I tell them that these are things to go wrong and we don’t really know. We’ve done thousands of procedures and so [inaudible 00:19:38] at all. There it is. So that’s the consent form. Now back to this [inaudible 00:19:45]. Let’s say that someone does not get … David just put something here. Let’s see what he says.
Okay, so, here is me at one of our workshops talking about why I’ve given money back. As far as I know, anybody that I’ve ever seen since I went to cash procedures in 2003, I gave … [inaudible 00:20:22] PMD stats, so 15 years ago … You know as far as I know, anyone who was unhappy with a procedure that I did, I returned every penny that they gave me.
People get nervous when I say that, but, most people are not dishonest. Yeah, people have stolen from me, people steal from me [inaudible 00:20:40] sure. I run my life … Although I don’t make it easy for people to steal from me, if I base my whole life on keeping people from stealing from me, it would not be a pleasant experience, and I would not be able to freely give as much, or offer as much. If people are mostly not … If they were mostly dishonest … If most people were dishonest, Walmart would be out of business in one week, because they have … Since opening, they had that 100% money back guarantee for anything you return.
Why I Give All Money Back ANYTIME ANYONE is not happy with the results…
Even when I did weight loss, and I would have 3 weight loss classes [inaudible 00:21:18] did a lot of weight loss there at one time. I had a guarantee that you could have every penny back you had [inaudible 00:21:28] doctor fees up to 365 days from starting the program. And once or twice a year someone would want all their money back, but, having that made me more careful about who I took care of. I didn’t want to take the reverse side of that equation, I was careful not to take money from people I didn’t think I could get well, but I would take money from some, and still do take money from people occasionally.
Here’s the interesting, other flip side of it, or aspect of it is that if you are ethical, and as far as I know everyone in my group is ethical, or I would have asked them to leave the group … But, I feel like we have a very ethical group, and if you are ethical, then you will sometimes hesitate to take care of people if you’re afraid it won’t work. But, if you have in your heart of hearts that you know you’re not going to keep their money if it doesn’t work, and your cost of goods is relatively small, so that you’re going to make your money back on the next procedure, then what happens is you are actually more willing to take care of the harder cases.
Just make sure you don’t care of all hard cases. Just mix it up so that you mostly take care of the easy cases that you know you can get well, and occasionally take care of people for free, as we all do, or take care of the hard cases when you know your likelihood of getting them well is less than 50%, but you have enough mark up on your cost of goods that you’ll still be profitable in the next procedure.
So, you can hear me talk more about that there if you just log in and go to Legal, and here’s the receipt that we use. And, again you can get your … This is sort of my disclaimer, so you should … My attorney requires me to say to you, I’m not your attorney and you should have your attorney look at this. But this is what we use in our office, and it’s very simple, just two lines.
So, when someone has an outcome that’s not what they wanted, then I tell them come in and Let’s talk about it. And I’m very sincere about that, and I try to see what else might help them. If it’s not something that I have to offer that would help them, then I say “I’m sorry that this didn’t work for you, and there’s no way I want to keep your money if you’re not happy with what happened here. So here, let me write you a cheque.”. And I write them a cheque for a full refund, every penny of it, and then I have them sign this. So it says “I’ve had no adverse consequences from the … Whatever procedure … On this date. Because I’m not realizing the benefit, subjective benefit, I’ve been offered and accepted a full refund of this many dollars on this date.”
They sign it, and my nurse signs it, and we’re done. And then everybody’s happy, they don’t feel like I ripped them off, and I’m not just giving them a receipt, as you can see, I’m making it so that we’re legally also clean from each other. And, I very ethically, put my full brain, and all of my volition into helping them find another alternative, because they would have not given me this money if they didn’t have legitimate [pain 00:24:45] that’s bothering them.
And by doing this, some people have this idea erroneously that if you return money it’s making you subjective to a lawsuit. Not so, again I’m not your attorney, but all the attorneys that specialize in med spas and medical care that I’ve spoken to say not so.
Any time you are doing your best to not harm people, whether it’s medically or monetarily, you are making yourself less likely to have litigation. I get a dirty letter or an email from someone who’s angry about one of our providers, in every case it will be that the provider … Not only did the person not have the outcome they wanted, it’s that they didn’t get their money back, and they feel like they were ripped off.
So make use of the receipt, it sits right here on the Legal page to be downloaded. And make sure that you do mostly a high likelihood of success procedures, which are listed on these recent post on the CMA, and our How To Do web pages.
So that’s the receipt. What else am I needing to cover. I think that’s the main things from [inaudible 00:26:09] the things [inaudible 00:26:11] by email. I have a few more questions, but let me handle some from you guys for a second. Let’s see. Actually, David let me … let me get to that in a second, because I have another question here that I want to cover.
So this one has to do with hair. I’ll just let you look at it. The question that was sent to me. So it says “Hi Charles, I’d like to pose the question for [open mic 00:26:43] discussion.”. By the way, this is a … If you cannot make one of the [open mic 00:26:46] discussions, this is the way … This is a nice way to send it. Just email it, I’ll cover it when we do the webinar, and then it gets recorded and transcribed. So “I’d like to pose a question, what’s the latest on adjuncts for treatment of hair loss with PRP?”
Treatment of Hair Loss
A couple years ago we were using [ACell 00:27:03], vitamin D, and vitamin B, and still this is the recommendation. So, the .. Of course, [Dr. Harrison 00:27:12] reads the research, you guys read the research. The question is am I hearing anything from the grapevine because I’m in the nice of position of being able to get email from all you guys, that are brilliant and out there working, and so it makes me switchboard, and I’m always taking notes.
What I can tell you is I am not hearing any great new recipes. Most people have dropped the [ACell 00:27:35] out of their recipe. Now if you go to our [inaudible 00:27:39] website, on the How To Do page, we have a recipe if you want to use it, from some of providers [inaudible 00:27:45] where they mix vitamin D, and B complex, and other things.
But the [ACell 00:27:51] bothers me because it’s an animal product. You know, it’s a pig bladder matrix. And I was in a research protocol where there was cross immunity to a small pox vaccine that was grown on cow … Cow pox, and we were testing a genetic [recombinate 00:28:10] version, and I had someone who showed up with a myocarditis from that cross-reactivity. And they eventually stopped the study, so who knows how many of us got myocarditis back in the day, when that was the way to vaccinate for small pox.
The point is that, I can tell you that there’s [inaudible 00:28:28] paper showing no side effects from using PRP. I can’t tell you that about [ACell 00:28:33]. I don’t like what it does to the possibility of something going wrong, and, I just don’t use it anymore.
So, I did pull up a couple of papers here, and I’ll just let you see some of them, to let you see … What’s … These are, I think, representative of many more. So, if you look at this … The word is out, is what I’m getting to, is that it does work, and people are mostly using it as a [inaudible 00:29:10]. The … As far as [inaudible 00:29:15]. They mix … They’re doing it in combination with laser for the hair, you know the laser caps. They’re doing it in combination with … With Minoxidil, or Finasteride, as you can see here.
But in this study, these are people who failed topical Minoxidil and Finasteride, and then they gave them PRP, and they had a response. So, in this group, they went 3 monthly sessions followed by 3 [inaudible 00:29:43] monthly sessions, and that’s what I usually see. Some … Once a month [inaudible 00:29:49] 3, and then every other month, then once every 6 months. It gets a little bit more variable after those first 3 treatments.
Here’s another paper. And again, so in micro … so instead of injecting, they’re doing micro-needling with PRP versus topical Minoxidil. So I get that question a lot. Should you micro-needle it or should you inject it subdermally, or what do you do with it? And I just do everything. I’d goes … I block it by doing a little ring block, which is on our website. And then I do subdermal and then micro-needle [inaudible 00:30:28] to play with the core on top. That’s how I do it. And when I see the people who come from the hair clinics [inaudible 00:30:32], that’s what I’m seeing them doing.
Now those who are hair transplant surgeon, I heard lecture at one of the venues, said women are very responsive. He just treats them once and tells them to be patient. So I haven’t seen this study yet, that says that one treatment, the patients needs to wait six months to a year. I haven’t seen the study that shows one treatment and then wait a year versus a treatment … [inaudible 00:30:57] a lot of times three and wait a year.
So who knows who can do that. We’re over treating the need to do the next two. We just need to do one treatment, wait in women. But the common thing with women, that seems to work best that I’m seeing it do … subdermal injections, micro-needle on top, PRP on top of it, put them on 2% Rogaine, tell them to be patient. And yes, most people are doing that, followed by another treatment in [inaudible 00:31:26]another treatment after that. That’s what I’m hearing is the protocol and I don’t see any other magic mixtures. It’s still out there [inaudible 00:31:36]scalp studies and they’re showing nice results even for alopecia [inaudible 00:31:40] it works better than trying Tryptizol alone, so that’s for hair.Let’s see … Some of the websites had some questions too so let me get back to those.
So this one says, “Is it okay to use a laser light for treatment on patients who had a P-shot or hair restoration?”. I think that a topical laser light to help hair growth is of course something you could do starting immediately and that has been shown to help as a stand alone, and so, I haven’t seen it with PRP, with laser cap versus no laser cap but it will make sense that if either one of them works alone it might work better combined because this is not a heat treatment. It will be different if it were [inaudible 00:32:36]sort of laser like[inaudible 00:32:39]laser or pixel laser where you’re actually [inaudible 00:32:44] tissue like a [inaudible 00:32:45] with vagina, in that case you want the heat to go first followed by the PRP immediately and I would give at least four weeks before I do another PRP treatment or another laser treatment because you have to give … I think the pluripotent stem cells time to develop, and the soft tissue studies I see they seem to max out at about twelve weeks with most of the time eight weeks.
[inaudible 00:33:16]obviously studies that demonstrated that [inaudible 00:33:21]where with orthopedic procedures it’s a much longer time to maximal benefit with soft tissue I think you’ve achieve most of the benefit in eight weeks. Four weeks is the minimum amount of time that I would wait before I re-treated with laser because I think that’s undoing the progression of the benefit of PRP. So that’s that question. Let’s see what else we got.
Is Platelet Rich Plasma as Good as Platelet Rich Fibrin Matrix?
Got some more questions here.Okay, here is some. So this is a interesting question that I [inaudible 00:34:14] let’s do this one now. The question is ” Is there an advantage of platelet rich plasma over Platelet-rich fibrin matrix?”. And this to me a play on words or [inaudible 00:34:30] because everybody’s PRP turns into Platelet-rich fibrin matrix when it’s injected. Platelet-rich fibrin matrix is just the PRP growth factors con jelled into plasma and [inaudible 00:34:48] peptide chains that are in the[inaudible 00:34:53] are causing this [inaudible 00:34:53] to cause this matrix formation and that’s what causes the wound healing. But then some document out there that somehow that needs to be made in the syringe before it’s injected and the truth is that if [inaudible 00:35:07]in the tissue the inject PRP is exposed to collagen. The way I describe it to patients that’s the [inaudible 00:35:13]around the scab when you scrapped your knee, that’s what’s holding the tissue together when you’re healing a wound. Some people who sell kits that [inaudible 00:35:26] that matrix in the syringe seem to indicate that maybe that’s what needs to happen, I’m not so sure that’s the case.
The question then becomes, do you get adequate activation if you let it activate after you’ve injected and the platelets are exposed to collagen and then put in the matrix or do you leave it exposed to PRP and the collagen in the syringe and then inject it.[inaudible 00:35:55] has cure that comes with Calcium, so you’re activating the PRP before you [inaudible 00:35:58][inaudible 00:36:00]has cure that comes with HA that we can’t use here but it’s available in other places where there’s no FDA, where it comes with an HA which activates the PRP so you’re making the matrix before you inject it. Here we add calcium by the cals [inaudible 00:36:18] before we inject it and the ratio is .05[inaudible 00:36:23] 10 percent calcium chloride to [inaudible 00:36:28] of PRP or in other words divide the volume of PRP by [inaudible 00:36:32] and that [inaudible 00:36:32]volume of calcium chloride ten percent you should add.[inaudible 00:36:37] I do think you should[inaudible 00:36:43] you’ll get about, when you[inaudible 00:36:48] and you get closer to 100 percent activation if you add calcium chloride before you inject.So we’re activating [inaudible 00:36:55]substitution everything else we’re putting at 65 percent activation[inaudible 00:37:00] to that question is we are all making platelet-rich fibrin matrix anytime you use[inaudible 00:37:07] it’s just how you make it[inaudible 00:37:10].
Okay let’s see, we’re answered that one last time. Some of the videos [inaudible 00:37:23]behind the camera. Yeah that’s true, I’m sorry about that.[inaudible 00:37:29]I think if you look at the videos [inaudible 00:37:30] you can see everything by putting the videos together [inaudible 00:37:34]there’re sections of the videos[inaudible 00:37:40]and the truth is the people who come to our hands are [inaudible 00:37:43] do take it a different level. There’s something in particular you’re trying to see that aren’t available please let me know [inaudible 00:37:53]everything that’s build to be known by how to do it is there so if there’s something you’re not seeing tell me and I will shoot another video to take the place of the one the spot that you’re not seeing.Even though every second’s not visible every part is important about to do it should be visible. Okay so I think that’s all the questions on that one.
Let’s see, we may about to wind this down.We went through that one last time.We answered that one last time. Okay, I think that’s it let’s go through and see if you guys have question then we’ll shut this down. Let’s see Doctor [inaudible 00:38:33]has some prior questions.[inaudible 00:38:40]I’ll just let you have at it. Are you there?
An Orthopedist Talks About PRP
David: I’m here.
Charles Runels: Beautiful so, thank you for[inaudible 00:38:54]the interesting questions, tell us what you’re thinking and let’s just[inaudible 00:38:59] what is on your mind if that’s okay.
David: [inaudible 00:39:06]I wanted to tell you that[inaudible 00:39:18] my son with whom I’ve done PRP, came home with[inaudible 00:39:23]surgery for twelve years longer going through more [inaudible 00:39:29]
Charles Runels: Hey David, I’m hearing some really interesting stuff just breaking up a little bit and it sounds like a lot of experience to share with us,there anyway you can get closer to the mic or fix it where we can hear you a little better because it sounds like [crosstalk 00:39:49] this could be very valuable.
David: Let me open the[inaudible 00:39:52]in my computer and maybe that’s better. Can you hear me now-
Charles Runels: That’s better, whatever you just did made it way better. Maybe you could start over if you don’t mind.
David: Yes I had replaced my laptop so was using my other screen.So as I said, I’ve used my son and my wife as guinea pigs for PRP and stem cells recently, but I’ve had 12 years of orthopedic experience. Is that coming through over the email?
Charles Runels: It’s perfect now, and it’s very valuable. We’re interested in those 12 years of experience.
David: So I’ve got 12 years of experience of using bone marrow concentrate amniotic material, PRP in all forms and fashion from every vendor, and as you know, I recently converted from being a cutting surgeon to being a non-cutting surgeon and moved into the alternative realm. I recently got back to Tucson from the AMG meeting, so we kind of focused a lot on the cosmetic side as well as peptides.
Results of my son’s tennis elbow, he’s had five years of tennis elbow after Hurricane Rita and using a chain saw to cut down two trees in his backyard, and came to me and said, “Dad, can’t you possibly un-retire enough to operate on my elbows?” I said, “No [inaudible 00:41:09].” I said to Austin, “I’m gonna inject ya in my clinic with this new PRP I’ve got. We’ll see what happens.” Well, in five months, he called me, and I won’t use the profanity, but he says, “You got a blanking cure for this. You need to advertise it. [inaudible 00:41:22].” I used your technique and just used it on his elbows.
One thing he did tell me, he says, “That hurt like hell.” He said, “I can’t recommend it to anybody unless you find a way to make it not hurt so bad.” We’re looking into nitrous oxide, we’re looking into topicals a little bit more, and whatever. I just don’t want to interfere with the [inaudible 00:41:45] of the platelets, so any suggestion you might have on that, that you can publish for us it can help us be humane would be good, his orthopedist worked on a [inaudible 00:41:55] and we don’t care too much, but I think it’s better for the cosmetic world for us not to hurt people.
Charles Runels: Yeah, sure. Well that’s a lot of … keeping going because in 12 years you’ve got more to share than that, keep going.
David: I don’t want to burn up the hour, but the …
Charles Runels: No, no it’s good. I’m through with all the questions, I want to learn from you.
David: Well, I also reported on my wife’s recent O-Shot and that she did unbelievably well for ten days and no leakage whatsoever, we’re married 46 years, two kids, a 45-year-old, a 34-year-old and we’re physiologically young, but she’s had some incompetence, she’s got a [inaudible 00:42:36] some other things, that I said, “Look we need to try this, this isn’t so much for orgasm and libido, it’s for your … whatever, I wanna find out what happens.
She was dry for ten days, with no problem with jogging and trampoline and everything else, which was a big change. And then she kind of had a regression back. She says, “You know I think I may be actually leaking more now after ten days.” So I kind of just [inaudible 00:43:03], sometime I don’t much, whenever I get it back a little bit, just wait. And I ask her finally and I said, “So are you still leaking?” And she says, “You know I’m not.” And so I think as you said before you got to look other places for problems sometimes [inaudible 00:43:24] we’re so used to in medicine, the most critical people around for our own selves.
Charles Runels: Let me see if I can explain, again we need the ultrasound studies to prove this. We have two … excuse me, we have three now [inaudible 00:43:38] radiologists in our group and hopefully they’ll do these studies for us, but here’s what I think you just described. So if you think about it when you do the procedure, you obviously, there’s no time for cell growth you get those [inaudible 00:43:56] and all that. My best explantation for what I have … resolution of confidence immediately, which doesn’t happen to everybody, but happens a lot is that we are forming that [inaudible 00:44:10] matrix and it’s acting like liquid sling and stopping the [inaudible 00:44:15] immediately.
Of course, that’s like what happens to the scab on someones knee, this is what I explain to patients, you know it could go away immediately but it may not, which is making the hematoma, and [inaudible 00:44:28] resolves though, the actual tissue growth doesn’t really start until at least when you’re doing cosmetic work, you can’t see that much until around the third week with like at 12 week.
So what could’ve been is that the matrix was there, stopped it, which is great and I love when that happens even though it sometimes [inaudible 00:44:48] it tells you, you put it in the right place. But then it could go away and when it came back that’s the true cell growth. Now the other thing that just to add to your story and again, I’m making this up, I think this is probably the right thing based on what I’m seeing and about the science of it, I could be wrong and I’m the last person to say everything I’m telling you is right. We need to do the research to figure it out, but your story you just told is very common.
The other thing that’s common is that sometimes it will go away, but sometimes it’s just better, but it’s not all the way gone in that [inaudible 00:45:27] and when that happens just repeat it, it’s so common for it to be better after the second shot even the sex part, sometimes the urine gets better and the sex isn’t better after shot two or three. It’s so common I’ve even thought about just making it a standard protocol that everybody gets two shots because, that to me seems unfair since many women would be improved or as well as they need to be and are, most of them actually around 60 percent last time I surveyed, 60 to 70, depending on the problem.
And then it jumps to 80 to 90 plus after the second one. So it kind of seems unfair those people, the 60 to 70 percent to require a second shot or make them pay for a second shot and may not need it. So having said all that I think that’s my best bet about what happened with your wife, I just wanted to throw it in, but keep going with your experience … we want you to teach us, because here’s the thing the [inaudible 00:46:23] were ahead of us with the PRP and if you’ve been doing it that long you have other things to teach us, so go for it.
David: Well I can tell ya I probably started doing these alternative methods with [inaudible 00:46:33] this and I still … up till February last year [inaudible 00:46:37] this trauma. I mainly, sports, but a lot of trauma. I never had another non union [inaudible 00:46:46] fracture after putting PRP or [inaudible 00:46:49] or bone marrow concentrate in those fractures. It was very, very helpful also with skin cut bridge [inaudible 00:47:00] skin loss and muscle loss, that helped tremendously. What got me to that comment was if you do, do a second one, do you fully or do you charge a reduced price? Or do you give it to them, how do you handle it?
Charles Runels: Okay, so that’s a good business question. I don’t like to tell people, well this is the standard thing that everyone should do, because you’re the one looking at your patients. But I’ll tell you what works for me with most of my patients, if they have a nice result, their [inaudible 00:47:41] is mostly gone and they’re happy with it, but they think, I think it would, I may want another one, most of those people want to pay you again, they realize that it worked, they just want to see if it works better. They want to pay you and so they should, let them. If you want more, you should pay me again. But, I would insist on it if they’re attitude or their, if my feeling about them, their communication to me … it’s not [inaudible 00:48:16] that they feel like they go their value for their money, then I’ll do the next one for free.
[inaudible 00:48:24] it’s not a four hour procedure, it’s fairly quick and our cost of goods are reasonable enough that you’re still profitable, so that’s where I am on a case by case basis. [crosstalk 00:48:38]
Don’t make that decision until it’s been at least eight weeks. And really chances are that they may get better at 12 to 16 weeks if they’re not better at eight, still kind of pushing it. To me it feels kinds of, maybe not so far to them to make, 16 weeks that four months. So do I really want to make them wait for a third of a year before I decide if I’m going to retreat it when they’re leaking down their leg, knowing if I retreat it, it may go away and so it’s sort of judgment call, but one things for sure I would make them wait at least eight weeks because I might need to subject them to another procedure or draw their blood and all the things that go with it and whether their paying me or not there’s some cost of goods and some time involved, break times valuable too. So I would tend to wait at least eight weeks before [inaudible 00:49:34] did work.
David: Excellent, with respect to, to my bias coming from orthopedics and coming from PRP and moving into bone marrow and [inaudible 00:49:44] back into [inaudible 00:49:46] and PRP I think I consider I can say pretty … opinionated that stem cells in some form of fashion, I call it stem cell signaling, just so we don’t get [inaudible 00:50:04] with our big brother but the signaling factors and growth factors that come out of stem cell in my opinion are probably big brother and PRP his little brother and we know that there could be 600 drug factors in the stem cells, PRP or bone marrow and there’s probably 300 drug factors in PRP so maybe it’s not that big of deal, pretty even. In somebody that’s a little bit more aggressive, for example my wife had Hallus Rigidus, which is loss of the cartilage in the metatarsophalangeal above the big toes and ready for either fusion osteotomy to remove the cartilage around or arthoplasty and she was on the surgery this time last year, I chose to go forward [inaudible 00:50:55] as a guinea pig my first case after getting back to California and studying lipogenic stem cells and I injected both of her big toes.
The chronology of that is that four and a half months of bated breath she got me and says, “I think my right toe is better, and if I’m not.” She says, “My right toe is definitely better and my left toe is better.” I know exactly when I did this, because I did it a week before the election a year ago and she is now admittedly, somewhere around 75 to 85 percent better in the bad toe and 95 percent better in the good toe and she is extremely happy, I don’t have any claims about regrowing cartilage or anything like that. All I know is symptomatically she can wear high heels and boots and she can jog the hills in Austin, Texas and she can go into yoga where as she could not pull forward, she was putting [inaudible 00:51:52] and everything else on her big toe four times a day and she was miserable. She grabbed me by the throat she said, “Look you’re supposed to be smart, do something.”[crosstalk 00:52:01]
Charles Runels: Obviously that’s anecdotal, but it’s traumatic. It’s not just anecdotal, because you know better than I having been in the ortho world. There’s hundreds of papers, probably thousands of papers in the orthopedic literature backing up exactly what you just said, so it’s not like you’re just pulling that one out of your hat.
David: [crosstalk 00:52:31]It’s really about [inaudible 00:52:32] fractures.
Charles Runels: Along those same lines, I know that most of the people on this call, many of them do treat orthopedic cases, most do not but what you’re saying is very relevant because it all has to do with tissue healing and thinking [inaudible 00:52:47] timeframes and what’s possible and what isn’t and that’s why I’m bringing up this picture that many of you guys have seen before. This from that, which is fairly extensive hypertrophic scar from Cortisone that had been there for a year to this a year later and it still looks like that seven years later, this was six years later, I did this in 2011.
This Juvederm with PRP with no stem cell transfer just recruitment of stem cells from PRP, from the Juvederm as a matrix on which to build the new growth. So if this is going on when we do O-Shots and P-Shots and faces then obviously … and it should be. There’s some intelligence about the process that’s beyond our skillset as far as what we’re actually doing with that needle.
And the other thing you brought up about the malunion … horrific thing that happens sometimes. I had to cases that came to me when I used to do clinical trials with [inaudible 00:53:58] from one woman who had been operated on six times they were considering an amputation, operate six times on her shoulder. They just couldn’t get her humerus to heal and she had an IGF-1 that was less than 60, it was almost in the dirt. She literally out of desperation, because someone told her to come see me and then I had another case with a woman who had an external fixator that had been operated on three times and in the process of doing that research [inaudible 00:54:38] stem testing for growth hormone deficiency, which you know is measured by a [inaudible 00:54:43] which is one of the well factors in PRP. That’s released by the [inaudible 00:54:48]. In both of those cases I put them on six weeks of growth hormone replacement, got their [inaudible 00:54:56] back to normal sent them back to the surgeon. And it’s anecdotal, but in both of these cases the next surgery went well.
David: That’s awesome. My last little caveat and then we’ll stop, which has to do with the recent, it’s recent in the U.S. but not recent worldwide is peptides and we’re dealing with peptides in our PRP and in our stem cells but there are peptides now that can be used in conjunction with what we’re doing to target specific formalities that we’re treating generically with our PRP, which is good but there might even be better results we can send a messenger, via a 15 amino acid of peptide that’s in conjunction with some of these cells and [inaudible 00:55:49], because I am pursuing this like a mad dog right now academically to learn more about it. I’ve got about 25 or 30 years between my masters degree and all that stuff is old and there’s a big gap in my knowledge. But I’m gathering as much as I can, as quickly as I can so I can see where this fits.
Charles Runels: Let me add to that as well because when you [inaudible 00:56:13] it other people think that, not the people on this call, but the people we speak to, our patients think, oh peptides this sounds like something you put in their cream. Well insulins a peptide, [inaudible 00:56:25] a peptide, it’s why we have to have an injection, we can’t take it by mouth, because we would digest it. Where we can take estrogen by mouth, because it’s a [inaudible 00:56:35] hormone and it’s not broken apart by the acid in the stomach. Of course everybody on this call knows that, I just want to point out as you did. There are hundreds of peptide proteins made by the pituitary glands, so when we say peptides it’s not some second rate little “hokie” thing. We’re talking about powerful, hormone like messengers that attach to cells and tell them to do remarkable things and the idea that you can have that [inaudible 00:57:05] already there, packaged up for you in the perfect combination in those platelets is pretty remarkable. We don’t have, it’d be nice to know, which ones do what and understand it the way we do things like growth hormone and [inaudible 00:57:24] and insulin, but if we can make it work why are we trying to figure out which ones are doing what.
I just want to put in my hooray for peptides and we emphasize this is not second rate stuff, this is powerful stuff and it’s what we’re doing when we’re using PRP. The hours up, thank you very much Dr. [inaudible 00:57:48] I’m gonna see if anyone else has a question, if not we’re going to shut this down. I don’t see anything else, so. Thank you guys for showing up, I’ll post this video with a transcript, it will be up in a couple of days, well may be Monday with the Thanksgiving holiday. Thank you for [inaudible 00:58:05] and I think we’re really doing some good things for the planet. You guys have a Happy Thanksgiving.
I’m just back from an ISSWSH meeting, which I highly recommend that you guys do if you haven’t been yet. Here’s their website for the Fall course. Maybe once every year or two I recommend. You can see the content is pretty amazing. These are the handouts that they had. I thought I would just run through some of the highlights of the lecture that Andrew Goldstein gave on dyspareunia.
Dyspareunia
Dyspareunia, as you guys know, to a gynecologist, it’s like saying back pain to a orthopedic surgeon or an internist—the etiologies are so numerous that it’s almost the name of a symptom not a diagnosis. Although there was an article, an editorial, in the Green Journal Obstetrics and Gynecology about three years ago now where the editor said, “We’re not treating it as well as we can, and often times it really does go undiagnosed.” But even with that being the case, it’s worth looking at in more detail, the different diagnoses/etiologies
I’m going to unmute your mic, Kathleen, because I know you’ve been to this meeting (ISSWSH). You are going to have things to say about it. It would be very helpful to talk about it, I think. I don’t know if you’re able to talk. Can you hear me, Kathleen?
Kathleen Posey: Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Charles Runels: Yep. We’re recording this because even though not so many compared to speaking, not a huge percentage of our people make it to the call, usually it’s in the neighborhood of 20 or 30 people out of over 1,000 people, I think it’s really worth thinking about pain/dyspareunia.
The good news is that often times when we have pain and it’s not easily diagnosed, our O-Shot® procedure seems to be working. Whether it’s healing damaged tissue or if it’s causing a decrease in inflammation like it does with lichen, I don’t know. But I thought we’d run through these known causes. I don’t pretend to be giving this presentation the way Andrew Goldstein gives it, but I’ll hit the headlights, the highlights. Hopefully, you guys can hear the lecture for yourself sometime in the next year or so.
This is the textbook that he helped edit about dyspareunia, which I highly recommend that you go through this. Eventually, I think there will be a chapter about an O-Shot. You can find this on Amazon.
This is the one, the version that he wrote for patients.
These are the known causes [see video]. Talk about this for a second, Kathleen. What on here do you see us helping with? Obviously, we wouldn’t try to treat fibroids with an O-Shot, but talk about this list for a second, and just the diagnosis of dyspareunia in general. Can you see it?
Kathleen Posey: Yeah, I can see it. I basically put PRP wherever the pain is. I map it out. I rule out the things like yeast infections, chlamydia, endometriosis, PID. I treat them just like we would treat those, but usually when there’s no reason, I just get out that Q-tip or just my index finger and say, “Where’s the pain? Does it hurt here?” Then I put the PRP.
Actually, a case I talked about a couple weeks ago was a anal cancer in a 40 year old that had radiation and complained of menopause and decreased lubrication. She went to a plastic surgeon who did Thermi-va on her, which only made her small vagina smaller. But mainly the pain was a posterior fourchette. I did put the PRP and did an O-Shot® because I do both. About two to three weeks later, her pain got better. That’s my method.
You can look at all these diagnoses. We know how to treat most of these things, but it’s the unknown ideology of the pain that I think the PRP helps. It doesn’t always. I had a classic vulvodynia around Hart’s line that was real painful, and she really didn’t respond that well, but that’s just one out of the many that I’ve treated. I’ll still try it on another patient like that, too. I wouldn’t limit it to that.
Charles Runels: Beautiful. Let me add to what you just said.
First of all, I agree. Most of the people, by the time they get to us for an O-Shot®, the patient’s already, before they are willing to pay cash, they’ve already been to other physicians and had lots of tests done. The good is that most of these things, if they were there, have already been treated.
The other thing I would add, which I know you do this, Kathleen. I know you treat some people for free, as do I, and that we’re both careful not to keep money if people don’t get well. I highly, highly recommend that everyone do that. If you’re treating pain and someone doesn’t get well and you keep their money, they feel like we stole from them. Even though we’re not used to giving back copays or whatever, insurance doesn’t refund money if we don’t … Obviously, we know we can’t get everyone well, highly recommend that if you treat someone for pain, and they don’t get well, either repeat it or refund their money.
By the way, the reason I’m talking to Dr. Posey for those of you that don’t know, you’ve been involved with the group right now for quite a few years. She’s been teaching it to other gynecologists. She’s a gynecologist, board certified, out of the New Orleans area, who has recently presented some research where she treated lichen sclerosis with a combination of surgical procedures and PRP, and teaches that method. A lot of experience seeing many thousands of women over the years as gynecologist and very well-trained, busy surgeon in the day. Back in the day, I know you were a high … Anyway, lots of experience.
Back to this list. Back to the list. The endometriosis, obviously, you wouldn’t treat it. The psychological, that hopefully is going to be teased out with your conversation. I wouldn’t try to treat psychological, obviously, with PRP. But let’s get to some of these pictures, though, because I think a lot of our providers don’t really know what to look for. I know that you’ve seen quite a few people who are being followed by a gynecologist-
Charles Runels: Some of these women, saw gynecologists who never diagnosed the pathology the gyn just went for the pap smear and never stopped to look at what was going on.
You just mentioned … This, by the way, is his algorithm for pain. I don’t show this, obviously, expecting anybody to memorize this whole thing from my overview here, but I just want people to realize there’s some thought that goes into figuring out pain. They’re not just willy-nilly treating someone without making sure that someone, if they’re not a gynecologist or a dermatologist, that someone hasn’t thought through a differential diagnosis … If there’s a rash for example, it should be biopsied. Someone should be thinking about that.
This first one is a big one. There is a pain disorder that’s associated with low testosterone. This is stressed over and over when I talk to people who treat a lot of vaginal and vulvar pain. The vagina and the vulva needs testosterone to stay healthy, and there’s a actual syndrome associated with pain and birth control pills, which almost always drops testosterone levels. Some women are susceptible to that, and some are not, but that’s something to think about.
This vestibulodynia of different ideologies is a whole subject in itself, but interestingly, I did meet a woman at this last ISSWSH meeting who had a woman with long standing vestibulodynia that was of this [neuroproliperative 00:09:01] type that responded to our PRP. Somehow it decreased that inflammatory whatever makes things go on here. This is a whole area for research that we need to take up, talk about. But obviously this is not a healthy looking vestibule. When you have this erythema around Hart’s line, then it’s worth thinking about testosterone creams. I think it’s worth trying our PRP as a way to modulate that.
Again, I’m just skimming through this just so you can see this should be thought about. This is that Hart’s line that you just heard Dr. Posey talk about that one. That’s inflamed, and this responded to using testosterone and estrogen creams.
Our O-Shot® is not the cure all, end all, be all, but I think it’s an extra tool that can be used in the thoughtful treatment of these problems, so I just-
I just wanted people to get a look at what some of this neuroproliferative. Vestibulodynia is a horrible problem. Basically, someone stays inflamed to the point that then if the inflammatory agent is removed they still stay inflamed.
A lot of times, they’re treated with creams that have some sort of propylene glycol or paraben in it that causes the inflammation. You’ve got inflammation, you treat it with a cream that actually causes a chronic inflammation to the point that when it stops, sometimes they’re left with a continued process that turns into this.
I think that was the main thing. The other thing to think about is here’s the pelvic floor muscles. Normally, these have been treated historically by palpating, as you heard Dr. Posey talk about, palpating and finding the place where a person’s tender, just like you would look for trigger points in a tender back and in the same way that physiatrists are now injecting PRP to treat this.
When you find that tenderness, you can now inject PRP. That will usually hurt worse for about a week and then it goes away. You have anything to add to these pelvic floor injections?
Kathleen: Not really. I’ve never really done them. I refer to pelvic floor PT, but I will say that even of the lichen sclerosus patients I’ve seen, a lot of them have pelvic floor dysfunction. You just touch them and their levator ani muscle just almost goes into spasm. It’s interesting, a lot of women when they’re touched, they wanna squeeze that butt together and I’m telling them, “Look, put your butt down into the table.” There’s a lot of comorbidity there with vulvar pain and then these muscles getting involved is what I see.
Charles Runels: Just to add to that, we do have people in our group who work with the pelvic floor therapists. I know you have them in New Orleans. Our little town doesn’t have one. But that’s a good referral source. One of our people actually had a pelvic floor therapist put a satellite office in their office actually they had a good working relationship [inaudible 00:12:30]. His O-Shot helps her therapy work better. That’s worth looking into.
The way that he established that relationship is he just had her bring one of her patients over and he treated the patient with the therapist in the room so she could see what was involved. Then she went back and did this therapy as she normally would and had a nice result. It’s a way both to help their therapies work better and to help everybody’s business. Let’s see.
Kathleen: At the conference in Boston, they talked about putting Valium in the vagina.
Charles Runels: They did.
Kathleen: Did they talk about that at all?
Charles Runels: They did. It didn’t seem to be as helpful, at least the feeling I got from the lectures, as using Botox. That was something that was talked about.
We don’t have the research showing that our PRP works with pelvic floor trigger points, but it should apply, since that research has been done in the physiatry literature with back pain.
They did talk at ISSWAH about trigger point injections of Botox and they mention diazepam and suppositories, but Botox seemed to be the first choice on the menu (before diazepam).
100 units is what they talked about using, which would be one bottle of cosmetic Botox. Some are doing it under anesthesia. I know Andrew Goldstein was saying he likes to use it without general anesthesia so he can tell better about where to put it.
Let’s see. I think that was the main thing I wanted people to see was just that. Oh, yeah. He does a vulvar vestibulectomy but he says he does a whole lot less of these than he did in the beginning of his career when people were not using testosterone creams.
It was really talked about a lot, especially in someone who’s on birth control and how common it is that that gets dropped in people who develop these pain syndromes, not just this vestibulitis pain syndrome. But this is a last resort, obviously, but it’s something that’s done just to know what’s out there. It can be done if somebody develops this pain that just won’t go away.
I think that we’ll find that there’ll at least be a subset of these people that get better with our O-Shot. We’ll see. I think that was the main thing I wanted to show. I don’t feel like it’s my place to just put all this stuff out since it’s their intellectual property, but I just wanted people to see that there’s a lot of stuff out there and it’s worth, I think, attending one of their meetings. It’s called ISSWSH, International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health. Maybe go there once every couple of years and get a good update.
Amnion with the Priapus Shot® Procedure
Okay. We didn’t have as many questions this week as we normally do. We had one question that showed up on the Priapus shot website about has anyone used PRP combined with amnion with the Priapus shot. Some of us have, but I don’t think I have enough experience yet to tell you that it’s working better. I think it would be worth trying if someone didn’t respond and you were treated Peyronie’s disease especially if you’re trying to heal scar tissue, or someone just wanted to get the best that you knew to do.
Again, amnion is not stem cells, it’s where you’re harvesting the proteins from the amniotic membrane and then they gamma-radiate it. There’s nothing living in there. You just have the cellular proteins, the amino acid peptide chains that code for wound healing. That research has been done. I think just as a general help, I always like to add in a couple things that have to do with marketing and something to do with business.
Press. Men’s Health
We got a really big hit that’s worth talking about when it comes to the Priapus Shot® procedure. If any of you guys are doing this, it’s worth talking about. Dr. Gaines is in our group and he popularized the Gains Wave™, which is combining the Priapus Shot® with shockwave therapy.
You can see the guy in the Men’s Health article talks about the Priapus Shot® itself, or the P-Shot®, and it’s a very complimentary article, somewhat sensational, but he’s an entertainer. This is “Men’s Health,” this is not “The New England Journal.”
Obviously, we don’t make claims we can’t fulfill and you want to have a consent form and make sure that your explanation is not the same as “Men’s Health” magazine, but Lord knows we get huge amounts of negative press that’s absolutely uninformed and factually wrong. Someone wants to make this a little bit entertaining by talking about his penis he claims was 10 inches when he put it in the pump, I don’t know, maybe it was 10 inches. Who knows? But I’m not one to dispute him.
It’s a nice article that at least can start the conversation and maybe lead to you helping some people who need your help for their erectile dysfunction. That article’s there if you just Google “Priapus shot in Men’s Health.” Some of us are combining the shockwave therapy when people want it. Just so you know, if you look on our director, PriapusShot.com/members/directory, I added a logo so that if you’re using shockwave therapy people can find you.
Also, I know Dr. Posey uses the- That right there, that’s our shockwave logo.
Our Directory and Helping People Find You
If you are doing shockwave therapy and want the logo by your name, let me know and I’ll add it.
If you go to the O-Shot® directory, we have a logo now if you’re doing radio frequency. I think what’s gonna happen is as the research becomes more available, as we do more research, then people are going to want different flavors of our procedure based on their problem. I know there are some things that one of these machines, like Dr. Posey just mentioned, someone who had dyspareunia had a small, constricted introitus, that’s not the place to use your radio frequency device.
But you can see I added this. This is what I added, Kathleen, to indicate you’re doing radio frequency. If you want one of those by your name, just send it to support. I’m gonna put it in here…
I just put it in the chat box. You just send that and let us know and we’ll put the little thing. This means you’re treating lichen, this means you’ve put five people in our research project or a survey, this means that you’re using radio frequency device, and we have one for laser’s too. I need to update.
This is the legend so that whomever’s using this directory knows what these little symbols mean. I just added this last week, so I need to add that to the legend so that people know that means you have Thermi-O or radio frequency device.
So, let’s see Dr. Desmond Ebanks just put something in the chat box. So, the automatic pump he uses, I don’t, the guy talks about this pump like it’s the bomb. Who knows if that’s part of his journalistic license, but he talks about this pump as being a pretty intelligent thing, so I’ll ask Dr. Gains what brand of pump they’re using.
Let’s see whats the other question…
which shockwave device do you recommend? As far as the shockwave device, what I have right now is the E-Vive. There are others out there, I think they’re all made by, or most of the main brands are made by the same company. They’re kinda re-branded, depending on who’s selling it. So I think a lot of it comes down to who you want to work with. And who’s having a good deal, and good support. But right now, I have the E-Vive, which is the one Eclipse sells, in my office.
Treating Acne
Let’s see, Dana Kirk just said here, okay, so here’s the question from Dana. She says, “Often the Vampire Facial®’s being administered for acne scarring often have some leftovers. Anyone injecting into the larger pock marks? If so, is it worth activating?”
Ok, so this is a good question about acne. When I treat acne, I use micro-needling. But two tips on that….
First of all, if it’s in their budget to do Juvederm. If you think about what happens to the divet, or say the divets in say a basketball, if you put more air in it? The divets become more shallow, just from expanding the ball. So even before you treat the pocks marks, or treat the acne scars, if you’ll use some Juvederm, if they can tolerate it, as in, do they have any room for some improvement in the cheeks, and if it’s a female, almost always they do, unless they’re obese, they’ll have some. You can add to their cheeks and things look better. And the acne scars are already smaller (before you actually treat them). At least the ones in the cheek area.
Then, micro-needle with PRP (Vampire Facial®), but also go intra-dermal and sub-dermal with your PRP, subsize/undermine the scar, just like you would if you were treating acne scars before we had the Vampire Facial®, so taking the bevel of your needle and sub-sizing the scar releases it some. I
Inject a little PRP sub-dermally, inject some intra-dermally, and then micro-needle on top of it. Intra-dermally as in blanching the skin.
And all those combined will get a really nice result. Usually I treat them every six weeks for three treatments, and they love it.
As far as activating it for the face, I usually don’t (I used to do so). Because I don’t think it adds to it enough to warrant the extra pain. In the face. But I do activate the PRP in the O-Shot®, the P-Shot®, and for loss of sensation in the breast.
The Order to Do Shock Wave, Radiofrequency, & O-Shot® or P-Shot®
So Sherry, I don’t see your question, it just says … maybe you can type it again. Okay, wait, here it is… “Does it matter which order you do the p shot, the shockwave therapy, and did the p shot … okay….”
So, the way I think about the energy, whether it’s shockwave, laser, or radio frequency, the way I’m thinking about it is, if you’ve ever used, say, insulin or growth hormone, if you just take, if you buy Omnitrope or a growth hormone, or Genitropin, whatever brand. These are small amino acid or peptide chains. It will tell you not to shake, to gently stir when you put the water in. Just shaking the vial, it mechanically shears the amino acid protein chains, so it’s like taking the words of the sentence and just chopping them up and turning them into letters. And now that amino acid chain no longer acts as a small peptide signal. Right? So these amino acid chains act as signals that plug in to receptors on the cell, and that’s how growth hormone, that’s how insulin, it’s how all those amino acid chains work.
Over 200 made by the pituitary gland that we know about. Peptide chain signals. So, imagine if you did that, I have no research to back this up, but imagine if you injected a peptide chain, and then now you hit it with shockwaves. In the same way, imagine what happens to an egg when you put it in a skillet and fry it. Obviously those peptides or those proteins are being changed.
So the bottom line is, I like to use the energy, whether it’s shockwaves, lasers, radio frequency, whatever it is. Use that on the tissue first. And then immediately afterwards, same visit, then apply your PRP. Now if you want to, if you did the shockwave yesterday, or last week, or three weeks ago, or a month ago, and you wanted to do PRP after that, that’s fine, you’re not hurting anything. And if you want to, if you did the PRP three weeks ago and now you want to add the energy, you can. But in my opinion, as soon as you add the energy, you are probably shutting down whatever growth was taking place, from the PRP that you put. So it’s like you’re stopping, it’d be like you just watered a seed, the stem cells are [inaudible 00:25:26] stem cells that you just put there. And now if you’re trying to generate more growth by damaging tissue, now you’re crushing the little sprout or whatever tissue is growing. You’re crushing it or injuring it, in my opinion, if you didn’t do the shockwave therapy before it has a chance to mature.
So I would try to do them back-to-back on the same visit. And not do anything else mechanical to disturb the growth of the pluripotent stem cells until at least six weeks out, maybe even eight. To give what you did a chance to work.
So if you did the P-Shot® three weeks ago, yeah, you could do the shockwave now, but you’d probably be stopping whatever further benefit might have occurred from that original P-Shot®. It might be better to give it at least another three weeks before you did the shockwave therapy.
How Your Losing the Chance to Take Care of at Least 30% of the People who Visit Your Website…
Okay. Let me give you guys, I don’t see any other questions that are up. I want to give you guys one quick marketing tip, and then unless somebody has another question, we’ll shut it down.
This one has to do with when people get to your website. It is something you can ask your web designer for. This is my old internal medicine website. And this is just a form and here’s the scenario that will happen. And this is why this form is so important. You don’t have to make it, I just want you to know it exists, and this is a ten minute job for your marketing person. And if you don’t have one of these, you’re losing about at least 30 to 40% of the traffic that you could be getting to call your office.
So let’s say that you’re in, let’s say that you’re, you do an o shot, or you do a vampire, or you just do a pap smear on someone. And they go back home, and they go to Thanksgiving dinner. And they tell their mother, sister, friend, cousin, whatever, how wonderful you are. And they say, oh, what’s their name. And they say, oh, it’s Dr. Posey.
So now they take out their cell phone, or they remember the name and tomorrow, day after Thanksgiving, they google you. And they wind up on your website. If all you have is stuff for them to read, they read it and they go away. And there’s very good chance that a week from now, they’re not thinking about you. It’s all done. They will never become your patient.
If you put something on here that they can have for free, that costs you nothing, not a free consult, it’s gotta be something that costs you nothing. If you put something on here that they can have for free, and we’ve all done this before, that’s worth something to them, but costs you nothing, somewhere between ten and 30 percent of the people who land there will do that.
And then, now you have their email address. They start getting your newsletter, and a certain percentage of those will eventually become your patients. So it gives you a chance- this is not the main way you get your patients. Most of your patients are gonna be word of mouth, or someone googling you. But this plugs the hole, and it will increase the number of people you have by about 20 to 30 percent, that come in through your website, by capturing those people who would have never called you, had you not created this form.
And the way you ask for it, is you decide something you’re going to give away, first of all. It could be, and I, it should be a podcast or an email, or downloadable book. It doesn’t even have to be your podcast. What I’m giving away here is a podcast where I’ve just recorded for an hour the benefits of walking. So it says, number one weight loss melt secret, free immediate download. So that takes them, you ask them for the first name and email address, and when they give you that, now they’re on your email list, every time you send out an email, they get it. And as soon as they do that, and you can sign up for this so you can see how it works, as soon as they enter that data, they’re taken to the place to download that.
So, it could be an email, excuse me, it could be a podcast or a video that you made. I know Dr. Posey made one on incontinence. So it could be free video on the treatment of incontinence. In exchange for first name and email. And so you tell your, here’s what you say to your web person, if you want to do this, you should write this down. And this works for Constant Contact, A-webber, Ontraport (what I use most), Mail Chimp, all those different places.
All those different places, it all works the same. And you can go online and figure how to do this yourself, but it’s a 30-minute job at most for whoever does your websites for you. You say you want a form and you want it to be in the right upper-hand corner of your website. On the homepage at least, maybe on all your pages, but at least on your homepage. And it should offer the thing that you’re giving away. And it should only ask for their first name and their email address, that’s it. If you ask for last name, you’ll lose about half of them. So first name and email address.
And then you let them know that you’re putting out a new health lessons every two weeks. Don’t call your newsletter a newsletter. Nobody really cares about your news. Give them a name that implies some sort of benefit. So I call this Health Lessons. You can call yours whatever. And then tell your person to put that on the form.
If you supply them the link to the thing you want to give away … You realize also on Amazon, there’s a lot of books for free. You could literally find a book that you can read on Kindle for free and give that away. But I recommend you find something either audible of a podcast or a video. Preferably something that you did. And that’s it. That one thing is gonna increase the production of new patients by your website by 20 to 30 percent. Now we talk more about this sort of thing in my workshop where I teach marketing, but there’s your freebie right there that is just some of the best stuff.
Okay. Let’s see if there’s any other questions and then we’ll shut this down. We didn’t have a lot of questions on the websites. Okay. I think that’s it. You want to add anything? And thank you for helping us, Dr. Posey. I know you’ve had a lot of … I think more experience with treating lichen with PRP than anybody.
Do you still treat the clitoris even if the woman is there for urinary incontinence?
By the way, the way I think about this, it’s all the freaking O-Shot, it’s just we’re varying the way we do it. Just like you do a hysterectomy and you vary the method based on who you’re taking care of. It’s all the same thing. But Dr. Posey made a good point and this is worth remembering, because some people asked me if they’re there for incontinence, do you still treat the clitoris? Or if they’re there for sex, do you still treat the anterior vaginal wall? Or if they’re there for lichen, do you still do the rest of the O-Shot? Or for pain, do you still do the rest of the O-Shot?
There’s two reasons why you treat all of it. One is people lie about sex. Everybody does. And so if someone says they’re there for incontinence, maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re just too embarrassed to tell you. Or maybe they’re living alone, single and they don’t want to tell you they have a lover. Whatever reason. Maybe they just decided it’s not your business. And of course, you would want to treat the clitoris if you’re treating for sex, but you would also want to treat it for incontinence because if you look at the anatomy, the clitoral tissue actually comes around and forms some of the structure for urinary incontinence.
Also, it could be that those nerves of micturition that come down through that area are helped and our clitoris is acting like the wick to help rejuvenate those nerves of micturition. We do know that we have people with urgent incontinence that are getting better as well. And we’re not sure exactly why.
So I always treat the clitoris even if it’s for incontinence. And of course, if you read Grafenberg, the urethra is very erotic in women and you would definitely want to treat (even if there for sex). Also, you have the female prostate gland or the Skene’s glands, so you would definitely want to treat the anterior vaginal wall, not just the clitoris if you were treating for sex because the urethra is such a sexual organ as well.
And if you’re treating lichen and you’re hopeful that it’s going to get better, and you’re down there anyway, why wouldn’t you go ahead and treat the structures that have to do with sex so that that can be recovering at the same time you’re treating the lichen itself?
One big plug though, if they have sclerosis or phimosis, where you cannot pull that clitoral hood back, which many of them do, then you can go ahead and treat them, but make sure that you don’t stop there and you refer them to Dr. Posey or someone else in our group who knows how … If you don’t know how, someone else who knows how to free up that clitoral phimosis. So if you can’t retract the clitoral hood all the way back to see the shaft, if all you can see is the tip of the glans or if you can’t even see the glans, then they need a surgical consult from one of the people in our group so that that can be exposed and be more responsive. It’s hard to have good sex if you can’t get to the clitoris.
Okay. I think that’s enough rambling. Anybody else have any questions? If not, I’m gonna shut it down. Thank you for your help, Dr. Posey. Thank you guys for being here. I’ll put a recording up by the end of the day.
What can you measure with a ruler that gives a clue about a woman’s ability to have an orgasm?
Kathleen: I just wanna say something that I hear … I mean it’s going off on a little bit of a tangent. But to me, a lot of times, they want the O-Shot because they want that penis and vagina orgasm. And yes, it does help that somewhat, but I’m really … I look at a lot of vaginas, and I’m really paying attention to that distance between the clit and the vagina and/or urethra. And it really … You oughta start looking at it, Charles, because it varies with women. Some of them, it is like five to seven inches.
Charles: Yeah, it’s huge.
Kathleen: When I talk to those people, they have never had a penis and vagina orgasm. It might be something to really examine the person before. And if you really talk to them about why they really want the O-Shot, I’m seeing 70 percent of them really want that penis and vagina. And it’s being advertised or said it’s gonna make them have that. Just be careful because if that distance is a long way, yeah, the orgasm will get better. But to bring you to surgery, in my opinion.
Charles: Let me add to that. First of all, what you said is backed up by research. And that research I think is actually on our O-Shot website. But there was MRI studies showing that the further the clitoris is from the vagina, the harder … It was a correlation between … It was done about two years ago. You know this research, so you’re seeing it actually in your patients.
Now, and I’ll also say that of the things that we treat, trying to help a woman achieve penis and vagina orgasm, who is able to have it with a vibrator, is one of our more difficult problems. I think our success is probably in the 30 to 40 percent range in that group. Where if you’re treating incontinence in a younger woman, stress incontinence is probably closer to 80 to 90 percent.
So I agree that something ... And it brings up another point in that I recommend, especially in the beginning, that people stick to the problems that we have the high success rate, so the provider doesn't become discouraged. I know you were very motivated and trusting it. But way back, years ago, when we didn't have so many people doing this and we had less research to back it up. But anybody, even with our current researcher who is just starting out, they should probably avoid treating, I think, until they have some success under their belt, the people who never had an orgasm because those are the people who are more difficult and probably they're always gonna need testosterone on top of what we're doing, I think.And the people who we just mentioned trying to have an orgasm with penis and vagina sex, they're more difficult. Stick to the stress incontinence, the dyspareunia, the lichen sclerosis, the women who can have an orgasm and wants to be stronger, those are our more easier cases. And in all cases, always, always, always, in my opinion, if they don't get well by the end of 12 weeks, then either offer them another treatment or give them their money back because we can make a profit and take good care of people without having to have people feel like we ripped them off.
Anything else, Kathleen?
Kathleen: I didn’t mean to say it wouldn’t help because I do think it helps and I do think you can even … I think the O-Shot, by putting it in the vagina, does shorten the distance a little bit. And maybe millimeters like what the P-Shot is doing. And it can get better, it just can’t … When you really see a big long distance, I would ask them and then I would just say, “Your orgasm is probably gonna get stronger, easier to obtain, but it may not help that.” I don’t know, it’s hard to give them a negative … I wouldn’t give them a negative embedded command. Just watch it if they’re there for penis and vagina orgasm.
Charles: I’ll tell you what I tell everybody. It’s good advice. And what I tell everyone when I’m leaving the room is I’ll say, “You just spent whatever amount of money it is. And for that much money, you have to love it. And if you don’t love it, I want to know about it.” Because of course, I’m gonna be following up with them. But what I found when I follow up with some of the people … So when people contact me and they tell me they’re not happy, I refer them to the doctor who took care of them because I’m not their doctor. So I don’t need to be involved. But it’s helpful for me to know who took care of them. Then I call the doctor and talk to them and see if I can offer help.
But back to this thing about satisfaction and setting expectations. I think that what I’ve seen happen sometimes when people are not happy is they never let their doctor know. Because maybe they’re afraid they’re gonna hurt their feelings or there’s gonna be some sort of conflict or something. I think it’s helpful to actually tell your patient, “I want to know. I want to know if you don’t love it because I want to take care of you, and I don’t want you to feel like that our energy and time and your money has been wasted.” And that really helps a lot, both with you getting them well and helps prevent them sliding away disgruntled without you ever knowing about it.
And in the process, you can say what you just mentioned, Kathleen, that if it’s a more difficult case, it’s worth telling them, “This is something that a percentage of,” if you’re dealing with someone who’s trying to have an orgasm with penis and vagina sex, “This is something that doesn’t work as well. We have a much higher percentage with treating stress incontinence, but we do have successes that by our surveys, are in the 30 to 40 percent range. If you want to try it, we’ll do it. But I want you to love it. And if you don’t, let me know. And we’ll either repeat it or we’ll figure out something else, including, I won’t keep your money.”
And in the end, although you give back money occasionally, you wind up making many more people happy and making more money and you sleep better at night.
Okay, I think that’s it. Thank you guys for your attention ’cause this thing … What we’re doing here, I think, is really changing medicine and I’m the facilitator between all you guys thinking about it and all the feedback and all the good research. So keep it coming and I’ll try to keep pouring our money back into it.
We have two double-blind placebo studies going on now. We’re having a little trouble filling the orgasm study (click to help), so I’m gonna put out a link to that again. So if you guys know people who live in the Washington D.C. area … Bottom line though is we’re investing into the research. We’re investing into supporting our group. And I think you’re gonna see medicine change a lot in the next five years from what we’re doing. Okay, you guys have a good day. Thank you, Dr. Posey.
Chapter 15 Covers the O-Shot® Procedure
Chapter 15 (O-Shot®) Chapters 16 & 17 about radiofrequency and laser
