Can a Broken Orthopedic Surgery Care System Fix Itself with Interventional Orthopedics?

For many reasons of perverse incentives, the American healthcare system is the world’s most expensive way ever devised to deliver healthcare. One of the biggest line items in any health plan is elective orthopedic surgery costs. Hence, reducing that cost saves any employer big bucks. One of the ways to bend that spending curve down…
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Naturopaths and Regenerative Medicine: The Utah Example

One of the more interesting phenomena in the wild west of regenerative medicine is the fact that there are many alternative-health practitioners in this space. Why? There is a razor-thin argument that their practice acts allow the injection of “natural” substances. Utah has one of the more bizarre practice acts out there which when combined…
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Do I Need Neck Surgery? Probably Not…

A common question I hear day in and day out is, “Do I need neck surgery?” As a physician, my answer to that question has steadily changed over the years. A few years ago, when I saw nerves on the patient’s neck MRI that were severely compressed, my answer was always, “Yes.” However, now the…
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Why We Throw Away Trillions of Exosomes Each Month…

I’ve just returned from our licensed Cayman Island advanced-practice site, where we can culture expand to get many more stem cells. At the Cayman site, it’s likely that trillions or hundreds of trillions of exosomes are produced each month by the cells in culture. However, we throw them all away. Why? Let’s explore that and in…
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Your Body Is a Stem Cell Machine: Another Reserve Stem Cell Population

One of the big myths going around right now, started by clinics using dead umbilical cord and amniotic tissue, is that you’re too old to have useful stem cells. All of that is, of course, completely false. If you’re alive, your body has huge populations of stem cells helping you stay that way. This morning,…
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Should I Have Artificial Disc Replacement?

If you read this blog, you know that I often write about what I experience on a day-to-day basis. Yesterday, I spoke to a patient from New York who had already had an artificial disc implanted in his back that failed and was contemplating another in his neck. Given that my neck on MRI was far…
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Liveyon PURE: More Expensive than Gold, but No Mesenchymal Stem Cells?

The entire “birth tissue in a vial” industry is based off one simple concept. As a doctor, you’re not buying a bottle of amniotic fluid or cord blood; you’re buying a vial of large numbers of young stem cells. This is why 1 cc of this stuff sells for $1,000–$2,000, much more than the current…
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Losing Weight May Slow the Progression of Knee Arthritis

If being overweight can cause arthritis, does losing weight help? Turns out that carrying extra pounds causes more than just more force on the knees. It also impacts a variety of other arthritis-causing mechanisms. The Close Relationship Between Obesity and Knee Arthritis Obesity and knee arthritis seem to go hand in hand. While there are…
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