By: Dr. Howard Liebowitz
We are always striving to bring our patients the latest, most up to date , cutting edge medical information and technology in health promotion, disease prevention and anti-aging medicine.
We are very excited at The Hall Center to announce a new affiliation with a national Stem Cell Collection corporation called Neostem. We are designated as their only collection center in the Los Angeles area.
We now have the ability to collect and store our patients' adult stem cells!
Most of us think of stem cells in conjunction with fetal, or neonatal stem cells. Parents of children being born these days are offered the opportunity to have their neonatal stem cells collected at birth from the umbilical cord and stored in a cryo bank for the potential use in the future should the child develop a serious disease like leukemia. The child could then receive back its own cells instead of getting a foreign transfusion. This dramatically increases the likelihood of success for treatments such as bone marrow transplants. Unfortunately, this is only feasible up until the child is about 10 years old. After that time the child will typically be too big to have enough cells stored. We also hear about moral controversies over destroying embryos and whether this a valid way to obtain stem cells for research purposes.
What most people do not realize is that stem cells circulate in the body throughout our life and can be safely and easily collected from adults. The purpose of our stem cells is to circulate through our body and seek out damaged tissue that needs to be repaired. These cells are “undifferentiated” meaning they can become any body cell they attach to ,that needs to be repaired As you sit here reading, your bone marrow is making stem cells which flow out into the circulation and replace broken down skin cells, liver cells, heart cells,or brain cells! We are always making new cells to replenish cells that are aging and becoming dysfunctional.
As we get older, we have fewer and fewer of these circulating stem cells, and the stem cells we have are not as good at evolving into other replacement cells. For example, as we age we don’t replace skin cells as rapidly as when we are young. The skin cells don’t make as much collagen and the skin begins to sag.
We now have the ability to take the stem cells that are circulating in our body when we are young and healthy, freeze them in a cryo bank at extremely low temperatures so that they do not deteriorate and can be thawed out and reinfused into our bodies decades later, when and if we develop some ailment. Wouldn't that be a wonderful insurance policy to have young vibrant stem cells when we needed them for some serious problem in later life ?
Neostem, a national publicly traded company, has asked me to be the first physician in LA to use their patented technique to collect and store my patients' adult stem cells. I am happy to report that I have already collected mine in a relaxing easy procedure right here in my office. The earlier in life we do this, and the healthier we are, the larger the number of circulating stem cells and the more effective they are at transforming into other cells.
Stem cell therapies have actually been around for over 10 years at Sloan Kettering ,USC, UCLA and many other medical centers. Stem cell therapy has been used as an effective treatment for many cancers including leukemias and myeloma. In cancer therapy it is like having a “self “ bone marrow transplant.
Recently, business and news publications have published many articles pointing out the potential future health implications of adult stem cells. Stem cells may be used to grow heart cells after a heart attack, repair brain tissue after a stroke, cartilage cells for injured knee cartilage, and for hundreds of other applications. Many of these therapies are being performed in humans in other countries where there are fewer legal restrictions. There are currently over 2000 clinical trials going on in our country to satisfy the requirements of the FDA for approval of treatments here. There are already experimental programs to treat autoimmune conditions like Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes, and possibly even spinal cord injuries. There are websites which list all of the clinical trials involving stem cells trials in humans. They are being used more freely in animals such as pets and race horses to achieve miraculous cures of previously hopeless medical conditions.
We are also contemplating using stem cells as the ultimate anti-aging treatment. This would work where the stem cells would be collected at a young age and then reinfused back into the body every few years to keep yourself perpetually youthful as you would receive the benefit of much younger stem cells.
I now have the collection center up and running. It is a very safe and simple procedure to collect the cells. The individual would remain hooked up to a machine similar to a dialysis machine for about three hours watching TV,sleeping or reading, while the cells are being collected. People of all ages can tolerate it well.
Call the office now at 310 458-7979 to sign up for an appointment to have your stem cells collected or to set up a brief consultation with me by phone or in person to discuss the process and cost in more detail. This is the ultimate in Regenerative Medicine and Bio-Insurance . You will be glad to have this level of Peace of Mind.