stem cells

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr Trevor cates. Welcome to the spa doctor podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re talking about regenerative therapies for skin, hair and sexual function, specifically stem cell and platelet rich plasma injection therapies. Don’t worry. We’re going to explain what those are. I’ve had this guest on before, but it’s been a few years, so I wanted to have her back on to share the latest and these procedures. I often recommend these procedures for my patients to help with things like acne scarring and for improvements in skin, texture and tone, so I wanted to be sure you’re aware of these as well. My guest today is Dr Amy Killen, who is board certified in emergency medicine and fellowship trained in anti aging and regenerative medicine. Dr Killen works closely with Dr Harry Adelson at Docere Clinics in park city offering patients cutting edge stem cell regenerative treatments for skin, hair and sexual optimization, and you’ve probably seen Dr. Harry Adelson. He’s been on my podcast before talking about about prp and stem cells for pain management. Dr Killen is also the medical director. I’m an integrative medicine clinic and Salt Lake City. She has spoken internationally about regenerative treatment options. She teaches physician training courses and is recognized as a leader in the fields of regenerative aesthetics and region or sexual medicine. In today’s interview, Dr Killen explains PRP and stem cell treatments for skin, hair and sexual dysfunction, what they are, how they work, what the procedures are like, and the benefits that she sees in her patients. And she also shares some of the latest in the technologies that, that she’s using, the things that help enhance the results of these procedures. I’m actually going in to see Dr Killen tomorrow at Docere Clinic and we will talk about my upcoming procedure as well. So please enjoy this interview. Amy. It’s so great to have you back on my podcast.

Dr. Killen: It’s great to be here. Thank you. It’s been three years since before. I can’t believe it’s been that long.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And so I know there are people listening, watching that have never seen you before. And then there are some people like, oh, I remember her. So let’s get started though with a little bit of, um, a recap of, um, you know, kind of who you are. How you got into this and then we’ll, we’ll do a little bit more review as you do and then talk about the new stuff because a lot’s happened in three years. And um, so you were an ER doctor and then made a change into this field. So tell everybody how that worked.

Dr. Killen: Yeah, I did, er for about 10. Um, and I worked at a very busy ER in Austin, um, saw lots of cool, good, good cases. But towards the end of that I started becoming kind of more down myself, you know, just not sleeping, eating garbage, drinking tons of diet cokes and energy drinks and such. So I was kind of getting, um, I was getting really worn out. And then the same time I was seeing all these patients who would come in over and over again for sort of these chronic medical problems who we didn’t have time to really educate them or give them information and they just kept coming back. So I kind of decided that I needed to, to figure out a different, different fields so I could teach my patients how to be healthier and to prevent illnesses. And also to kind of get myself healthier because I was not doing a good job. So I started doing preventative medicine, integrative medicine, and that eventually transitioned into also doing this regenerative medicine, which is kind of using your own body’s healing powers, own stem cells and things like that.

Dr. Cates: Great. Great. Awesome. So let’s talk about these a little bit. These regenerative type of medicine. We’ve got stem cells and PRP and then we get you guys something new to. That’s an addition from what you’ve talked about before. And your specialty is really skin and sex, right? So, um, well first of all, why those two areas?

Dr. Killen: Yeah. Well it’s interesting, you know, they seem very different, right? They seem like things that you would never do together. Um, but I find that they’re very similar to a lot of ways. First of all, there’s a lot people don’t talk about problems that they have in both of these areas in skin and hair and sex as well. Um, they become embarrassed. There’s kind of a stigma associated with some people and talking about problems they’re having. Um, so I think that’s one thing. The other thing is when people have problems with skin, hair or sexual problems, it really creates a confidence problem. They, they, they kind of don’t have the competence they did before they go out, you know, kind of go out in the world and they see things differently. And I find that if we could make changes, even small changes in some of these areas, we see big changes in their self esteem and their competence. And then the other thing is, you know, a lot of the things that we do from a preventative standpoint for our skin are also beneficial for our sexual organs and also for our hair and like, you know, sort of the sort of the lifestyle stuff that we do. It benefits your whole body and there’s some overlap in that as well as some of the treatments.

Dr. Cates: Right? And as a physician, I really believe and really supporting the body’s innate ability to heal using a lot of the lifestyle, healthy lifestyle and natural medicine. And, but there’s still some times where we want to do somewhat what, you know, I call minimally invasive and I think that this is what prp and stem cell therapy, this regenerative therapies, I think it’s a great addition with, especially as we’re getting older and changes are happening with our bodies and to help kind of give it a boost without turning to really invasive things like plastic surgery or some of these harmful actually procedures that people are doing and it is supporting the body and um, and, and using technology in a way to enhance it. So let’s talk about first let’s talk about prp and what that is a kind of review of that.

Dr. Killen: So prp stands for platelet rich plasma and it’s been around for 30 or more years, is commonly used in all different fields. And what it is, is we take the patient’s own blood, we centrifuge it, we spin it, and we isolated the platelets. So we get these concentrated platelets in the serum and those platelets house a ton of different growth factors. So you know, you can think of it as normally when you, when you cut yourself, cut your skin or something, the platelets are one of the first things they come in. They cause clotting, right? People know about that with platelets, but they cause clotting and then they also sort of began this healing cascade by sending out growth factors that tells the body, hey, we need some more blood vessels over here. We use some more Collagen, we need some more cartilage, whatever is injured. So the platelets have all these growth factors in them so we can use those growth factors to kind of trick the body into regenerating itself and rejuvenating the skin. So that’s how we use it with the skin.
Dr. Cates: Okay. So then the procedure, which by the way, I’m coming into your office tomorrow to have a PRP facial. They’re also called vampire facials, I don’t know what i think about that term, but I guess the idea is that you’re talking about blood and vampires.

Dr. Killen: I don’t know whatever why it’s called that, but I’ve been aware of facial. It’s kind of one of the, the terms people use for it, but PRP, visual, same thing.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And I’ve been in to see you once before, so I ought to get this done and so I kind of know what to expect, but for everybody else, walk us through the procedure.

Dr. Killen: So we’ll put some numbing cream on first and second lidacain cream. So it, so it’s not painful at all. Um, and then after about 20, 30 minutes, wash the cream off, and for the vampire facial or the PRP facial, uh, we’ll be doing micro needling with it with the PRP. So I’ll collect some blood from you. We’ll centrifuges spin it while you’re numbing. And then as soon as you’re done numbing, I will apply the prp all over the face and I’ll do the microneedling, which is like a little device that has these 10 little bitty needles and just go up and down really quickly. And they create these little tiny micro channels. They go about two millimeters down into your skin, so it goes into the dermis layer, of their skin. Um, so we’ll do the microneedling all over your face and then we’ll keep applying layers of prp so we can get the prp into those details, activity and Collagen production just because of mechanical force at the microneedling. So we’ll do all of that in probably an hour and it’s totally painless and then we also have the ability if you want to also do some injections of PRP, which can hurt a little bit and kind of staying, but you know, in areas like around my eyes and around the nose and you know here like areas where you have some volume loss, not you, but people in general we can inject PRP and over time it kind of kind of help increase collagen production a little deeper in the skin as well.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. And do you also do any other areas?

Dr. Killen: Yeah, I do the neck quite a bit with the neck. I’m usually just doing the microneedling I can, you can’t inject it, certainly. Um, but the neck area really works great because the neck is fairly thin for a lot of people. We can do hands, we can do, I mean you can literally do this anywhere on your body. It just becomes. Yeah, hair, we do a lot of hair, so hair for hair loss or just I have a lot of patients who just want to have sort of healthier hair, like they haven’t even lost hair and we’ll do prp injections in the scalp and they’ll see improvements in uh, in the health of hair as well as people who’ve lost hair. So we do it on the hair and then the sexual stuff as well. So prp is so safe because it’s just your own blood serum that I’m just putting right back in you in special places.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So what the hair, do you do the microneedling or do the injection? So I’m sorry, do you do both?

Dr. Killen: Yeah, you can do both. So it depends on what’s going on. But uh, usually I’ll do injections for most people first and then if it’s someone who has really short hair and I can get to the scout pretty easily, then I’ll do the microneedling on top of the injections.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And so do you ever have contra indications for, for these procedures, for both the scalp as well as, you know, the, the rest of the body

Dr. Killen: Pregnancy and breastfeeding is always a contra indication just because it’s just not been studied. So we don’t do any of these things on, on women who are pregnant. Um, any active infections in the treatment area, as you know, we wouldn’t do a procedure or put needles through like an active skin infection or, or active acne. We wouldn’t go right into the acne. Um, if you have an active cancer, we don’t generally do these procedures, but for the most part they’re safe on anyone including anyone with all different types of skin, skin colors and skin tones, which is unusual because a lot of the laser treatments and things, you know, it can become problematic. And women who have women and men who have darker skin tones, but these procedures, the PRP, microneedling and such, we can do them for anyone, which is great.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that, that is great. And um, and so what should people expect? I mean, like I’ve referred people to you, um, for the PRP facials for anti aging benefits as well as acne scarring. And like you said, you, I always tell people, wait until your acne is cleared up before you go and address acne scarring. But what are those, the most common things? What do people usually expect to see once they have this procedure?

Dr. Killen: So anything. So what would the, what this does is it actually activates the fibroblasts, which are the skin cells to create more collagen and Elastin and hyaluronic acid. Those are the three of the sort of building blocks of skin that as you get older, and by older, I mean, after like age 25, you start to decrease production of all of those parts of your skin. So what these things, what PRP does and stem cells and exosomes and all of that is it increases your skin’s production of those components of the skin so that you have better skin structure bounced back in your skin, um, and, and more hydration in your skin. So we see things that go along with that. So it’s things like improved texture of your skin tone, color, uh, people who have like fine lines can be helped with it as well. Acne scarring or other scarring can be helped pigment. So like hyperpigmentation or dark spots can sometimes be helped with this as well. And just kind of keeps your skin like a glow that it’s hard to even describe. Sometimes I think it’s the blood flow probably, but just your skin is just like brighter and that looks more healthy.

Dr. Cates: How many, how many of these procedures? So people need to have to see these results.

Dr. Killen: You can see the results after one. But I do tell people if, if possible to come in with the prp alone, especially to come in and do you know, maybe one every two or three months for a couple of times, two or three times. Um, I, that’s also oftentimes hard to do with schedules so you know. But even just one treatment is, is great. I try to do it on myself a couple of times a year. If I can just get a couple of days off, I’m not off. I still work with my face looking red, but you know, like off of interviews or things like that. So I think it’s a really good maintenance kind of thing for your skin.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And I think as your office knows, I had to kind of reschedule my day the following day. So that I didn’t have a bunch of video interviews and I think it probably people would have understood if I’d explained what the procedure was, but still, you know, I don’t think that I need to do that. So it’s good to take a day off because I understand for like a day or two there’s some redness from what I recall from that last one I had.

Dr. Killen: You’re very red the first day, like you leave and you’re like very red and then by the next morning usually it’s like a, it’s kind of a pinkish, almost like a sunscreen. There’s some sunburn look, but some people are a little bit more red for a few days and then you can have some healing that happens at like three or four days. But it’s, it’s like a sunburn feels. It’s not anything crazy. Um, and you can wear makeup and sunscreen and all of that after the first day. So this is a pretty minimal as far as downtime goes for most people. It’s not a big deal at all to go back to work the next day.
Dr. Cates: Okay. All right, great. I might have to do some pictures. I’ll do it, we’ll do some before and after pictures and maybe so people can, can kind of see it because I, yeah, I don’t remember it being anything, you know, like, especially being in Park City, Utah people probably just gonna Think, oh, she’s been out skiing a lot.

Dr. Killen: Yeah. People in my office are so used to meet and experimenting on myself and coming in with crazy faces, you know, bruises here and there that they’re just always like, all right, what’d you do this time?

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, minimal downtime, which is great because a lot of procedures are, you know, people are in a lot of pain or they’re just feel uncomfortable being out in public. So, so that’s good. Um, and so what is the ideal age bracket for the anti aging benefits? I mean, because there’s got to be a some point where maybe it’s not as beneficial right. And then at some point, like, before 25, right?

Dr. Killen: Yeah. Here before 25 you said that lots of good collagen and you know, really anywhere. Most of my patients are probably between about 30 and 60, 65. It’s a pretty broad range though as long as you have good platelets, which most people continue to have good platelets. The things that sometimes if you have a chronic medical problem like diabetes or you’re a smoker, they can affect the quality of your platelets and so that they may not have as much benefit, but even in those patients, the microneedling part of it just a mechanical sort of trauma of the device will still activate some collagen production. You can still see benefit. So, uh, there’s, there’s no one that I won’t do it on. I mean, no adults. But I do think probably 30 to 65 or so is the, is the most common patients that I see.

Dr. Cates: Okay. Yeah. Because I guess your platelets at over time too, are not quite as… They don’t work quite as well, right. And, uh, and we’ll talk about stem cells in a moment because that’s, that’s another thing that people can consider. Um, but how do you know if someone has good platelets because you just mentioned if you have good platelets,

Dr. Killen: You don’t really know. I would say most people have to platelets and I do tell people if they’re smoking, if they’re actively smoking, that, that just to come back when they, when they quit smoking, um, I think it’s a waste of money and their time to be doing at least the PRP part in people who are smoking because they’re just not, they’re not good quality a healing, you know, you’re not healing as well and it’s something that can stop, you know, I know it’s super hard to do, but you can. So that’s a population that I recommend that they try to stop smoking at least a few weeks before doing the procedure. Um, we also don’t do it in People who are actively on steroids like prednisone or any kind of immune suppressive steroids because we want to have some of that inflammation that’s part of the healing cascade. So if people are on chronic doses of that, we have them get off of those things before we do these procedures, um, and limit things that can cause blood thinning to decrease bruising. So things like fish oil, high dose fish oil, um, Ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin, medications that can, can affect your platelet function. We have the people stop those a week or so beforehand. So there’s some things like that that we do to try to make your platelets nice and strong before you do the procedure.

Dr. Cates: I imagine living a healthy lifestyle and general is going to keep your platelets in better shape. Right?

Dr. Killen: just, I mean it helps with healing, you know, it helps obviously eat a good healthy diet and an exercise and you know, even sort of mind body stuff, all of that’s going to help just with general healing in the way that these procedures work for patients.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. So now you mentioned that it’s good for hyperpigmentation. I think there’s some people that would be concerned if they tend to have hyperpigmentation that it could make it worse because I’m injections or um, any needle therapy really is, can make a hyperpigmentation worse. Right.

Dr. Killen: It doesn’t tend to. The only thing I will say this is there’s the potential in patients who have darker skin or who are or who are prone to hyperpigmentation too, if they get out in the sun too early after microneedling to have problems with a sort of post-inflammatory have issues with patients where they get the darker spots. So I always tell patients is important to wear sunblock or sunscreen or big hats or just stay out of the sun for at least about a month after these procedures, just to give your skin the best chance of not developing a worsening hyperpigmentation for afterwards.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. And I mentioned that and that, that’s partly why I wait until the wintertime.

Dr. Killen: You were like, I want to ski. How am I going to scale?

Dr. Cates: I’m going to be wearing my face mask up here and everything. That’s good. That’s perfect. Yeah. Great. Um, and so with, with hair, I know hair loss is a big thing for both men and women, so this can be a great, how effective is this in helping, uh, men and women grow their hair back?

Dr. Killen: So in the studies that had been done, there are a decent number of studies if you do three prp treatments spaced about a month apart, so three total, uh, you’ll see an increase in hairs per centimeter squared of about 18 to 33 hairs, so per centimeter squared on your scalp, 18 to 33 hairs and that’s, and that’s mostly studied in men, although we do have some studies with women as well, most commonly has been looked at for male pattern baldness. Um, but we do know it also can be effective for other things like, um, some of the alopecia that are autoimmune disorders and things like that that are more common in Women.

Dr. Cates: is it, is there anybody, its contra indicated for, for the hair loss and alopecia considerations?

Dr. Killen: No, the only thing that I tell patients with hair, it’s, it’s important that, you know, it’s not usually a one and done kind of things like oftentimes they want to know, first of all what’s causing your hair loss, you know, if it’s your thyroid or your low iron or you’re super stressed out life or your hormonal birth control pills or whatever is causing it, then you have to address that also. Otherwise you’ll keep having the hair loss. Um, but if we know it’s, you know, we know what’s causing it. We’re working on that. And then pretty much anyone can get the PRP treatments. Most commonly I’m treating men with male pattern baldness or women who just have some kind of general defused hair loss, which is often also at hormonal. I’m kind of cause.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So what I usually recommend is as people get that under those root causes under control and then go and get the prp treatments because it’s, you know, it’s gonna work a lot better and not be frustrating for them. And I’m losing money from going to have these underlying causes that our contraindications. So that’s great. Um, alright. So let’s talk about stem cell, unless there’s anything else about prp that you wanted to talk about as far as what you do with your, um, you want to talk about, um, the stem cells and how you use those and how that’s different.

Dr. Killen: So stem cells. Yeah. So it’s a little bit different. I’m still. One of the ways that PRP works when we use it is it goes into your body and it kind of talks to your, to your stem cells and tells them, hey, it’s time to get back to work. We need you to start making more of this or making more of that. So it’s kind of like a communication device for stem cells. So we also can give patients actual stem cells. So that’s sort of another step up. Most commonly we’re using the patients stem cells, so getting stem cells from their fats. So we’ll do like a little, like a little mini liposuction where we get some fat and then we can concentrate it and get the stem cells from the fat. And then I can add that. I usually still do the PRP also, but I can add those stem cells to the PRP and do the facial injections, a facial microneedling to the hair, like all the things that I do a, I can do it with the actual stem cells from the patient. There’s also the opportunity to use stem cells from other people like umbilical cord stem cells, which we would just. We just buy from the lab that has them that are sort of fresh, healthy umbilical cells. Most of the time in my procedures I do that, I do these procedures with stem cells. Often Times I do it in conjunction with my colleague Harry Adelson who’s doing sort of combined injections, back injections, neck injections, so we can get the stem cells one time and then we can inject them in the face and the hair and the neck, the back, the knees, and kind of cover a large area because it’s a little bit invasive to have to go in and get the stem cells from the patient’s fat.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. I know I asked you, should I be doing stem cells as part of this and you’re probably don’t really need that. Why didn’t you wait until if and when you need it for other things and then add that on. So that makes a lot of sense. So yeah. Um, and as you said, um, your, your work with Dr Harry Adelson and Dr Harry Adelson has been on the podcast. Um, and so it’s talked about how he uses prp and stem cell for pain management. So you’re in the practice within, in his clinic with him some addressing of the aesthetic stuff because he, he wants to specialize in the pain part and you specialize and more of the aesthetics, the skin, the sexual health function, um, hair, those sorts of things. And so a lot of people now are coming into contact for the whole, the whole thing. And they’re getting a whole makeover right.

Dr. Killen: Yeah. Patients, cause we, we sedate them for all of that, which is great because you’re asleep. You just take a little nap and then Dr Adelson will inject all the different joints in the neck, in the back of a, you know, the elbows and the knees and whatever is bothering patients. And then the same time I can do facial injections, hair injections, and then the sexual injections that they want to because we have a lot of patients who are getting kind of all of these injections, they’ll have problems in one area just because we feel like it can sort of help prevent some of the problems later on.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. And so, and, but, and grocery clinic, they’re really doing autologous where you’re your own stem cells, right? They’re not getting other sources of stem cells.

Dr. Killen: Correct. We are using exosomes as well as the patient’s own stem cells. So gentlemen, we’re doing marrow cells from the patient, we’re doing fat cells from the patient that drives himself. And then recently like the last six or eight months, we’ve also been using these exosomes as well, which are sort of another class of these activators of stem cells.

Dr. Cates: Right. So let’s see. Okay. So yeah, so this is something new that we didn’t talk about before and the interview was the exosomes. So explain that a little bit more. I know you’re just sort of a big overview of that, but how does that add, how has that added in? Why did you decide, why did you all decide that you wanted to start adding this in?

Dr. Killen: So exosomes are there. I think of them as these little sort of messenger bubbles is how he described the patient. So you know, you have your stem cells and your stem cells in order to communicate with the cells around them, they send out these little messenger bubbles, little bubbles that come off the stem cells. They have a bunch of information in them and then they float around to other cells and they latch onto those cells and they give the information to those cells. So that’s what exosomes are. They’re just little tiny, tiny little bubbles that have growth factors and proteins and messenger rna which is sort of gives the, the, the blueprints to make proteins and they are what communicate sometimes between stem cells. So we can, we can get these exosomes which are made from healthy umbilical stem cells, isolate the exosomes. And so we just had the exosomes. Um, and then we can use those as well, and they do some of the same types of things that stem cells do and that they’re communicating to the stem cells that are already in your body and telling them, hey, we need more college and we need more this, we, that. Um, what’s great about stem cells for the skin Turgor exosomes to the skin is that they’re little bitty tiny things way smaller than platelets and waist smaller than stem cells, so you can actually even apply them topically and they’ve seen that after like three days, it gets down into the deeper layers of the skin and will start increasing collagen production and things like that. So I love them for the skin and even for the hair because they’re so small, we can kind of get them anywhere we want, um, oftentimes without, without making a big effort.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So now is this safe?

Dr. Killen: It’s super safe as far as we’ve seen. And there’s, there’s hundreds of studies on stem cells from the patient as well as these exosomes. Um, you know, certainly we, we make sure, again, the patient is generally healthy before we do all these procedures on them. They should, make sure they don’t have any active cancers and things like that. Um, but, but aside from that, they’re really safe. They don’t cause an immune reaction in your body. Like if we were to give you someone else’s blood or blood products or things like that, you’d have this immune response and you could, it could be dangerous, but the way that these stem cells and exosomes are they, they come is that they don’t cause an immune reaction. So you don’t, you don’t have that. It’s just, it just functions really, really well.

Dr. Cates: And you mentioned that they’re healthy. So there’s definitely a, a process by which these go through to make sure that there are coming from healthy individuals, right?

Dr. Killen: Yeah, absolutely. They screened the mothers before the course of the initiative. These are donated, um, umbilical cords that no, noone is injured, in the making of these, um, and they’re donated from the moms. The moms are screening then the chords and the blood and the products inside there are also screened for all different communicable diseases. And all the different problems because we don’t want to pass anything along to anyone else. I have not ever heard of the case. Uh, and I’ve been doing this for a little while where someone’s gotten to one of these treatments and has, has gotten some kind of disease or illness from someone else.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then, um, you know, this is all something that people do. This all works together, right? For, for the skin, you can use it in the hair and then also with sexual function too, right?

Dr. Killen: Yes, yes. So I do a for both men and women. So for the women I do sort of a, it’s called the O-shot or the orgasm shot. Um, but then I also next prp, then I also will use the exosomes and stem cells with the, kind of boost it even further, but the O-shot is injections into the vagina and clitoris where we’re actually doing the same kind of things were increasing blood flow or increasing some of the tissue in there as well. So people will see things like improved sensitivity and responsiveness and vaginal lubrication, um, tightness, even improvements in stress urinary incontinence, which is when you jump on the trampoline and you kind of leak a little bit of urine as women get older, we can see improvements in that because we’re injecting the space around the urethra so we can do all of that for women. And then for men, we have the p-shot, which is the priapus shot, again, with prp alone or with different stem cells and exosomes where we inject into that the Corpora Cavernosa that the tubes and the penis that fill with blood and we actually can see improvements increase in blood vessel formation and improvements in blood flow over time with that.

Dr. Cates: Right. And how the, how are the results on that? Um, as far as getting feedback from patients because you’ve been doing this for awhile.

Dr. Killen: I have, yeah. I think the feedback is great. I like to still combine these procedures with other things that also work. So for instance, in men, I will oftentimes combined the p-shot with a like shockwave therapy, low intensity shockwave therapy or gainswave, which is basically a way to use sound waves to increase blood vessel formation and nitric oxide in the penis and it’s proven it’s very safe. So oftentimes I’ll use that almost always I’ll use it. I just moved that shockwave therapy with the PRP or stem cells. And then we also talk about healthy lifestyle and hormones and nitric oxide, you know, it all goes together as you know, it’s not, you don’t want to just treat one thing and walk away because you’re not going to have a good as good results as you are if you treat a bunch of different things and educate the patient and then they’ll see really good improvements.

Dr. Cates: Right. And you know, some of these things that you’re addressing can be very debilitating for people. I mean the urinary incontinence for women that have had babies and you know, later on in life and they know nobody wants to wear depends or you know, have that kind of issue and there really isn’t. There’s not a lot of options for people as far as treatment on this here to have a, a procedure like this where you’re end, you’re actually using your own, uh, your own platelets are using your own stem cells and being able to do that, I really think it’s amazing to be able to have that option. And then also for people who want to improve their sexual function. I mean, hey, we, we should all have healthy sex lives well into our seventies and beyond. Why not? We should,

Dr. Killen: if you know that sexual longevity is linked to general longevity, people who are, have a more active sort of healthy sex life, they live longer and they’ve been studied in men and women. Um, and so, you know, certainly it can help with relationships and all kinds of things, but it’s something that I think is not talked about, especially for women. We don’t talk about that as much as we do for men. And I think it’s important to think about, you know, doing some of these simple kinds of things, uh, to help increase blood flow and increase tissue regeneration.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And so how many of these treatments, uh, the O-shot and p-shot do people need to have in order to see the benefits? Is that a one or multiple?

Dr. Killen: Usually what people will see benefits after one. Oftentimes I sometimes have patients that will come back for another treatment because either they had a partial benefit and they want to sort of step it up more or after about a year and a half, two years. Oftentimes the benefits we’ll kind of start to go down a little bit. So people will sometimes come in to just kind of keep that going. Because if you think about it, you’re going to keep aging. So what? Whatever we do, your body’s still going to keep aging unfortunately. Um, so some of these things we have to repeat them because, you know, you continue to age,

Dr. Cates: Right. Absolutely. And do our, um, our. So our stem cells do change with age, right? Um, so is there a point in our lives where our stem cell therapy isn’t going to be particularly helpful?

Dr. Killen: We have patients who are, uh, who are quite a bit older and by older, you know, seventies, eighties, who will sometimes have used their own stem cells and have good results, but we do tend to see that they’re, they oftentimes those patients are not going to have as good a results as, as someone who’s younger. So in a lot of times in older patients will oftentimes recommend things like the exosomes or even umbilical cells, stem cells or things like that just to give them a better chance of having good results with their procedures.

Dr. Cates: Right? And then also having better results. Procedures are all the things that you’ve talked about that, you know, the healthy lifestyle and um, other therapies that help support. Um, and so what are some of the things that you recommend? So, so when somebody leaves, after they had a procedure, what are the things that are going to really optimize the benefits?

Dr. Killen: So I have a red light therapy, low level light therapy for skin and for hair or there’s some great benefits to that. Like the little hats you wear on your head to laser caps. And you know, all the different, there’s different brands that you wear on your hair for hair restoration. Those are great, super safe. It’s just light. So there’s a lot of different kinds of light therapy that you can use for your face, uh, including for acne prevention, which I think is wonderful for people like, you know, teenagers and things who were having a lot of acne. You don’t want to use the drugs, you can use a blue light therapy that you literally just wear a blue light mask, you know, for a few minutes a day and you can see a huge reduction in, in that. Um, so I like light therapy. Um, certainly diet’s important. Um, intermittent fasting is great for stem cells and increasing your stem cell activity in general. So if you know, whether you’re doing a just overnight kind of and 16 hour fast or several days of fasting, that can be helpful. And we have a lot of patients do that sort of before they’ll come in for stem cell treatments. Um, I liked the nitric oxide boosting supplements and foods, especially for sexual function. Um, and then getting hormones in balance I think is really important. Uh, it’s for hair as well as for skin, um, you know, in addition to sort of normal lifestyle kind of stuff,

Dr. Cates: Right. It’s also important for sexual function to. Right. And that’s all changing as we age. And again, I, you know, I think we’re, we’re living longer. We want to have a healthier, more vibrant life as, as we get older. And I know Dave asprey talks about coming into clinics and getting procedures. I know this is not a secret, this is not a confidentiality thing, but, um, but you know, he talks about wanting to live to be 100 and something right there. I think there are more and more people that we want to have this quality of life, not just living longer, but having the quality of life and as we are, as a society living longer, we want to have a higher quality of life. And I think that the work that you and Dr Adelson are doing is helping people with that. So I, I, um, I think that’s fantastic. So amy, thanks so much for coming on today and sharing all this information. Tell everybody where they can find you and, and you have people travel right to come in to park city into Utah for treament?

Dr. Killen: We have probably most of our patients are from out of town, out of state and country that people travel out. So we’re up in Park City, Utah, which is very close to Salt Lake City for flying and purposes. Um, I, you can reach me on the Docere medical website which is doceremedical and then I also have Dr Amy Killen, website a dot com, which is very easy to find as well and can link to kind of all the different places that I work and the things that I do.

Dr. Cates: Excellent. All right. Thanks again, amy for coming on. Keep us posted. If you got anything new coming up, then we want to want to have ya back on and keep us posted.

Dr. Killen: Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow in the office.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr Amy Killen and I would love to hear your feedback. Have you had procedures like this done? If so, I’d love to know from you what you thought, whether they’re with Dr Killen or with some other practitioner. Please post in the comment section the interview on my website or on Youtube about your experience. I’d love to hear what kind of benefits that you have seen and what the procedures were like for you and if you’d like to learn more about Dr Killen, you can find that information at the Spa Dr. Com below her podcast interview on the website and while you’re visiting, while you’re on the website, I invite you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and if you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you get your customized skin report at theskinquiz.com. You just fill out a quick survey, quick quiz. It’s free and takes just a few moments and you get your own customized skin report telling you what information your skin might be trying to tell you about your health, what you can do to optimize it. Just go to theskinquiz.com. Also, I invite you to join me on social media, facebook, pinterest, twitter, instagram, and Youtube, and join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. podcast.