Rewriting Fertility: Ovarian Rejuvenation & the Future of Reproduction with Dr. Samuel Wood

Samuel Wood

I’ll tell you about something today that will blow you away. The interesting new thing is related to a company that I have called St. Stem Magen. What happened with Stim Magen is that I had an incision made in my upper arm and they took skin cells out and then they were able to take the skin cells and they were able to turn them into an embryo and eventually stem cells. So in the old days, you could look on Google and say, people who have been cloned and I was the only name for a while. But what’s interesting now is that at the University of Oregon, what they’ve done is they’ve taken skin cells. These are from mice, and have been able to create eggs from them. And this is huge because there’s so many women that are unable to create eggs. Maybe they had chemotherapy or maybe they’re reproductively older and they just simply can’t make eggs or can’t make high quality eggs. And so this will be something that can be done for them. But here’s what’s really fascinating. Let’s say you have a gay couple. One of them can donate skin cells and create an egg, and the other guy, he donates sperm. And so then you create an embryo that’s directly related to both guys. Unbelievable.

Lorne Brown 

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Today I have returning Dr. Samuel Wood. Now, if you haven’t listened to his podcast, episode number 69, please check that out after listening to this one. That one was recorded, I don’t know, a few years ago, and it was on PRP and ovarian rejuvenation for egg quality. We’re going to talk about PRP again, but the focus is going to be on ovarian rejuvenation. And I’d like to share a little bit about Dr. Wood. So he’s a fertility specialist and an expert in reproductive genetics with over 30 years of clinical experience. Dr. Wood’s academic background includes a master degree in psychology. He has a doctorate degree in biochemistry and molecular biophysics and a Master of Business administration, so he knows how to run a clinic. He has done a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, go Guitar Hills, and he’s also completed a fellowship and reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the University of California San Diego. That’s where he practices now also at Gen five, he’s broad certifying obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive endocrinology and infertility. That’s an REI. And as I mentioned, he does a lot of work around ovarian rejuvenation. I recently got to look at one of his papers on one of those drugs on Ozempic, on semaglutide, and we’re going to talk about that, this rapid weight loss. We’re going to talk about some of the things he’s involved in with stem cell research. We got a lot to talk about today. Dr. Wood, welcome back.

Samuel Wood 

Well, thank you. I’m very happy to be here.

Lorne Brown 

I thought, I didn’t even know where to start. So I’m just going to start with the idea of is there anything new that we need to talk about today since we spoke about ovarian rejuvenation? And then I’d like to get into PRP and the things that you are seeing currently that you like and don’t like and what’s coming down the pipeline.

Samuel Wood 

That sounds perfect. Yeah, energy, we believe to be one of the primary causes of infertility and women, particularly over the age of 42. And so we give supplements to try to enhance mitochondrial activity because mitochondria are the little organelles within a cell that give the cell energy. But one of the things that we found is that simply giving supplements does not really seem to give us the answer, does not allow us to succeed. 80% of the fertility centers in the world don’t have a single live birth over the age of 42. And that’s very sad. Now we have many, many deliveries over that age, 48, 47, 46. We recently had a 50-year-old become pregnant, and what we do is a different kind of ovarian rejuvenation. What we do is actually draw blood from the woman and we isolate the platelets and then we activate those platelets using calcium.

And when you activate platelets, platelets release growth factors. And those growth factors are very important in terms of doing several things, increasing the blood supply to the area. But I think the most important thing they do is that they stimulate the stem cells that are already present within the ovary. And likely many people have heard of injecting stem cells into the body. And in fact, that’s being done in two major places in the world. One of ’em is Panama and the other is Venezuela. However, it does not seem to work, and I’ve seen many patients that have gone to either one or both of those places in an attempt to improve their fertility and been unable to. There are also potential risks involved in doing that, but anytime you take a stem cell and you put it in the body and you expect that stem cell to know where to go and what to do, you’re going to run into trouble.

So stem cells have a lot of promise in the future, but the difficulty is turning the stem cell into the right kind of cell in making sure it’s in the right place so that it responds as it should. And so that’s the main difficulty. So the last time we talked, I think we spent a good deal of time on ovarian rejuvenation and the results that we’ve seen. What’s happened since then is I think we’re doing everything much better now and we’re being much more precise about where we place the material that comes from the activated platelets. And we’re also being very careful not to put in too little or too much. And that’s the tricky part. There are now other people that are doing PRP and we can discuss that in a minute. When they inject it into the ovaries, they’re actually having a negative effect on ovarian function because they’re putting too much in.

So if you put this material in and you see a lake forming, you’re actually going to harm the egg. So it’s very, very important not to put too much in. On the other hand, you want to put in as much as you can without having that effect. So we’ve developed methods now of injecting that material and watching care if making sure we get no lakes. We’re also doing better with putting it in exactly the right location. And we’ve seen much better results over the last, let’s say six months, something like that, doing those techniques. And I’ll tell you one other thing and then any question jab. Recently we’ve had, I think in the last two months, we’ve had three women who became pregnant spontaneously after doing ovarian rejuvenation. Now that’s not typical. Usually you do ovarian rejuvenation and then you do IVF and we get an egg out.

Many of these women have not made any eggs or rarely make eggs, but when you get the egg out, there’s a reasonable chance depending on the patient’s age that that egg will be genetically normal and they’ll be able to have a baby. But two of these women actually sent us pictures of their babies and it was really amazing to me. Both of them had no regular ovulation, had been trying for many years, and then after doing ovarian rejuvenation, they got pregnant on their own. And so we’ve given us a great deal of thought and we’re now even more than we did before, recommending that certain women attempt to become pregnant on their own before they go to IVF. And I think we’ve, by looking back at our data, we’ve been able to determine what types of patients are likely to do well when you do that. And I think that’s very important. I would love patients to be able to get pregnant on their own and not have to do

Lorne Brown 

IVF. So lots of questions around that and thanks for sharing an update as you’re talking. There’s an expression in Chinese medicine too. Little is too little, too much is too much, right, exactly. And in the west we have a habit of taking something that’s good and then if we give it more, I think it’ll make it better. But that’s when too much becomes too much. I’ve had an opportunity to view a few physicians that are doing PRP and I want to revisit your PRP talk that we did back in episode number 69. I’ve heard that even the needle gauge makes a difference. You make a big hole versus a tiny hole that could impact the results of PRP. Are you in agreement of that as

Samuel Wood 

Well? I don’t know if that’s true. If you think about it, IVF is very similar to doing ovarian rejuvenation by IVF. I’m referring to the egg retrieval and different size needles are used for egg retrievals and they can be considerably different. Now, the way we do ovarian rejuvenation, we use a very small needle because we’re not trying to get eggs out. The reason you use larger needles when you’re doing an egg retrieval is you don’t want to damage the egg. But when you’re doing an infusion of the materials that are used for ovarian rejuvenation, a very small needle will work. I don’t know if it has any negative effects. Studies that have looked at the effects of different needles in IVF have not really seen any difference long term in terms of responsiveness. Now, you might think that using a large needle would be better. You might because you might think that would stimulate those areas to respond better. That’s something that’s done. Polycystic ovary syndrome for example. But I doubt that the size of the needle is really very important, but we pick the smallest needle, the highest quality needle that we possibly can. I want patients to receive the best treatment possible.

Lorne Brown 

So size and needle you don’t think makes a difference. I’ve heard some say that they definitely prefer a smaller needle that the needle size gauge could impact that. So again, the way you’re doing it, you don’t notice the difference, but you’re using the smaller gauge needle like the other physicians I’ve talked to.

Samuel Wood 

Yes,

Lorne Brown 

They also shared that timing. So I was wondering if they’re going to go, their goal is a baby, obviously how to. Everybody wants to conceive naturally. Who would want to go through IVF? But if he can get you the baby, we’ll do the IVF. I don’t own an IVF center, so I’m not invested in IVF. I prefer my patients to get pregnant naturally. My goal always is a healthy baby and healthy mom or healthy parent or parents. So do you agree then that you have a window to benefit from that PRP? Because a few physicians I’ve talked to since we chatted said that there’s kind of a period of time after the PRP that you’d want to try to conceive naturally or do IVF because after three to four months you’ve lost that benefit. So that’s my first part of the question. Just from strategy, it’s great that people are going to have an opportunity to conceive naturally like you shared the spontaneous pregnancies, but the strategies to have a baby, would you still recommend that if they can afford and they’re able to do IVF to do the IVF shortly after the PRP to maximize the chance of a take home baby?

Because of the PRP,

Samuel Wood

We have different generations of ovarian rejuvenation that lasts for varying periods of time. So generation one is PRP and in my opinion, we have data, published data on this. PRP just simply doesn’t work for age-related infertility. I know people are doing

Lorne Brown

It. So let’s emphasize that. This was in episode 69. You stated this very clearly, and we’re going to talk about different ovarian rejuvenation. So there’s PRP, straight PRP and what I recall is that was for the 30-year-old that’s having issues but not for the advanced maternal age women that you saw in the late thirties or forties.

Samuel Wood 

Yeah. So we see many women that have had PRP. There’s an entity in New York that does a lot of PRP even for age related infertility. And apparently it doesn’t go well. I’ve seen so many of them and in fact they tell me, they say they don’t over promise in any way. They say, we’re going to try this, we’re studying it, we’re going to see if it works. I think you have to do things that work and if there’s no data to support what you do, I like them being honest with the patient about it, but it does not work. And we’ve seen this over and over again and published on it. Now when you go to generation two, we call that mpl And MPL lasts three to four months. That’s exactly right.

Lorne Brown 

And that’s different because PRP, you take the blood, spin it, put back the platelets. What is generation two that you’re discussing where it lasts three to four months? How is that different from straight PRP?

Samuel Wood 

So with PRP, you take the platelets out, you activate them and you immediately inject them into the ovaries. That’s what the calcium I think you said. Yeah, calcium is a part of all of this. There are other ways to activate, but the key is that you put it back immediately and once you put it back into the ovary, then the amount of release, continued release of the growth factors is reduced. So what I love about generation two is you activate the platelets but then you incubate them for a couple of hours and then what you actually isolate are growth factors that have been released from the platelets. In fact, you don’t actually inject the platelets, you only inject the growth factors. And we showed some time ago that the growth factor concentrations are as much as 10 times greater when you do generation two as opposed to generation one. And I think that’s why it worked so much

Lorne Brown 

Better.

Samuel Wood 

But three to four months you have then. Now if you do generation three or four, then what we found is you get six to seven months and most people do generations three or four because especially if you’ve been trying a long time and you don’t have much in the way of eggs, most people are not that confident that they’re going to succeed within three or four months. We’ve had many succeed in that length of time, but many don’t too. The majority of people do generation three or four and that’s six to seven months. So that gives you more time to try on your own before you do IVF. And so I like that you got to make the sperm is good and everything else is good in order to do that, but it makes some sense

Lorne Brown 

And that what we call that preconception of follicular genesis a hundred day period. It’s nice they’ve done the PRP and again that integrative, we talked last time about everything for ovarian rejuvenation. We’re looking at diet and lifestyle, we’re doing acupuncture. There’s Chinese herbal medicine that’s shown to help with a TP production, low level laser therapy. There’s lots of things to do at the entry level in that window while trying to conceive naturally. And it sounds like though there’s still a line in the sand that if you’re not pregnant by three months or four months of trying to conceive naturally in that seven month window period, then maybe move into that IVF during that window.

Samuel Wood 

I think the real key here, and I think we’ve just come to fully understand this relatively recently, is does the patient ovulate and how often does she ovulate? If you’re going to try naturally, you have to ovulate. Yes, you’re going to be releasing an egg. If you’re not releasing an egg, you’ve got no chance. So the women we’ve seen that got pregnant on their own we’re having a period each month. They were ovulating each month.

Lorne Brown 

I got to share a little story with you on this, a tangent, and then I want to ask a little bit more about gen three and gen four just to differentiate. But a woman came to me and she was 39 elevated FSH, and she went to a clinic saying that we’re going to take her on as a patient. And this was even before the PRP days were so public, so we’re recommending donor eggs, you can’t do your own eggs in their facility. And so she came to me to see if I could help lower her FSH so she could go to another clinic. So they would accept her with her own eggs and we do a holistic approach, but the long and short of it, she wasn’t ovulating regularly. And so I said, well, I don’t know if your FSH will get lower, but we’re going to do what we can to optimize your egg quality.

And often that would lower your FSH if we can do that in theory. And also our goal in Chinese medicine, which I think we were good at with metabolic disorders, PCOS and just women that aren’t obviously ovulating regularly, the acupuncture herbal, what I’ve seen anecdotally clinically we can often help these women. And so in her case, let’s see if we can get you cycling. So her goal was to do IVF. We worked with her for six months. In that six month period, the last three months she started to ovulate, ovulation 1, 2, 3 months in a row and she had a consult with the IVF clinic, but she got pregnant naturally before that appointment and had her baby. I agree with you that you’re talking about PRP and that is, hey, if you’re going to try naturally, you have to be cycling. And so there’s two ways here.

If you’re not cycling, I’m hearing you’re going to go into IVF sooner than later because you’re not going to get pregnant if you don’t ovulate. And I’m saying that also just to let you guys know that acupuncture is another avenue that may be able to help you get those regular ovulations. Can you tell us the difference between gen three and four? So there’s straight PRP, put back the platelets. Gen two is you actually don’t put back the platelets, you take back the growth factors and inject that. And gen one, it’s like a three month window. Gen two, was that up to seven months?

Samuel Wood 

Well, gen one, yeah, it works for three to four months, but only if you’re under the age of 35. We couple mental benefit,

Lorne Brown 

You don’t see that very often. There’s not too many. So gen two, so tell me a little, what’s the difference between gen three and gen four then and the timing that they have to either try to conceive naturally or use it in an IVF setting?

Samuel Wood 

A lot of this was experimental and what we do with gen three is we do gen two plus gen one. And it’s really interesting that when you do that, you see a much longer level of effectiveness. In fact, we have some women that are two years out and they continue to show a reduced FSH and improvement in AMH. They’ve gotten pregnant, some of ’em are trying for a second baby. I mean it’s really quite impressive. We didn’t know if that was going to work, but we tried it. So we published on that gen four. I always want to do things better. I never believe that what I’m doing is the best. I don’t think anything I’m doing now is going to be the be all and end all. And so we said what if we inject something else into the ovary, not just the growth factors.

And we tried a wide variety of things. We tried FSH, we tried lh, we tried growth hormone, several things, nothing worked, nothing improved outcomes. And then we tried NAD, which is kind of an anti very popular anti-aging medication. And this was based on work in mice that showed a true rejuvenation for mice that were close to menopause and it returned them to an earlier stage and restored their fertility. And when we did that, we really saw impressive results. Not everybody but impressive results. Many more eggs, much higher pregnancy rates. I’m a big fan of gen four. We’re planning on publishing something on it soon that again seems to last six to seven months, something like that. If a woman does ovulate as we talked about or they go to you and you help them ovulate, then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to try to become pregnant on your own for two to three months. And some women ovulate consistently. The reason they’re doing ovarian rejuvenation is that the number of follicles that they have when they do an ultrasound is reduced. Unfortunately fertility specialists, many of them are not pro-patient.

They’re pro themselves. Like the center you mentioned that wouldn’t take her, said you need an egg donor. I just saw a patient like this. She said, I went to the center and they said we’re not going to work. She was 39. They said, we’re not going to work with you unless you use an egg donor because you have no chance of becoming pregnant. And she said, I don’t want to use an egg donor. Two months later she got pregnant on her own and delivered a healthy baby. So a lot of things are being said that are not actually true, but they’re doing it because they’re afraid that patients will fail and that will make them look bad. But I don’t think you do anything like that. I don’t do anything like that. You help patients the way they are. You help them with what they want to accomplish. You don’t have ’em come in and say, no Uhuh, no not going to do what you want. You’re going to do what I want. And so everything that you do and I do is about helping patients where they are. Do some of them end up failing and needing to use an egg donor? Some do, but you do everything you can to help people where they are.

Lorne Brown 

Absolutely. And the difference in IVF versus say the Chinese medicine conscious work is we’re looking, if you do an IVF and it doesn’t work, you don’t say 19 or 15,000, hey, I’m still happy. I feel better. You usually don’t gain a few pounds around the waist in it. When you do the integration of Chinese medicine, often your migraines go away, you don’t have diarrhea or constipation, your headaches go away, your back pain goes away, your PMS goes. So at least because we’re creating health to create fertility, and so that’s where I like the integration is IVF will often override the body in order to get that baby right at least one egg a cycle. Now we’re getting multiple eggs. And so the integration is great. The other thing I’ll say though, for the centers, because I’ve gotten to work with many centers over the years and work with one in particular in Vancouver, I would say that they don’t want to take advantage of the patient also as in if they don’t think it’s going to work because statistically they haven’t helped somebody over 45 get pregnant.

They don’t want to inject them with hormones or take their money and they’re not going to get pregnant. So they don’t believe it’s going to help. And I do think sometimes they’ll tell them that and then say, “We’ll work with you, but you need to know what you’re up against because they don’t want. So I do think every country’s different. Every center’s different. But I would say with some of the centers I’ve gotten to work with, I know years ago, some of them I think it was because they were rejecting people, you would hurt their statistics. I’ve been doing this for over 25 years. The docs I meet, I think the majority of them are like, they don’t think they can help you. They’re not using PRP here in Canada, so you have other options. So they’re saying you shouldn’t do donor eggs because it’s going to cost a lot of money.

There are some. This isn’t beneficial to your health. So if you want a parent, donate eggs. What you’re sharing though is if you know these stats, and this is still experimental PRP, because when I do the open meta links and all that, they still say it’s experimental. They don’t recommend it yet. They’re saying the evidence is not there. I know you have published data, other people have published data, but when you look at the collective data, we’re not there yet. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, it just means we don’t have the data to confirm that this should be standard of care. That’s my understanding. And you’re one of those pioneers where in five, 10 years they’ll say you’re right. But right now they can’t say you’re right because there’s not enough centers doing what you’re doing is my understanding.

Samuel Wood 

It takes a long time to move away from the experimental status ICSI, which involves taking a single sperm and injecting it into an egg was experimental despite hundreds of thousands of babies. And then eventually they said it’s not experimental anymore. So it’s not really clear what’s experimental and what’s not.

Lorne Brown 

And I always say that research doesn’t make it work. It’s always working. Research just confirms it now works, right? People like So you’re seeing in your clinic some changes here. So I want to go to Jen three then and four, you’re talking about the NAD and I’ll let our listeners know, I’m asking to see if anything’s changed. We did a deep dive into this in episode 69, so I don’t want to do deep dive. I want to talk about those GLP-1 drugs and I want to talk about the stem cell, but in the NAD, are you doing NAD into the eggs or is it intravenous NAD that somebody’s having NAD therapy? 

Samuel Wood

Well they do an IV infusion and then we inject the NAD directly into the ovary when we’re also injecting the growth factors.

Lorne Brown 

So you’re doing both because a lot of people are getting NAD infusions, but you’re also putting it into the ovary and that’s where you say six to seven months. And is that a different population that benefits from that? Because gen one, it sounds like if you’re under 35, go for it. Gen two is a common one, but three and four, when are you choosing to use that one?

Samuel Wood 

I believe that the key to caring for patients is to just tell ’em the truth, tell ’em the truth about everything and let them decide. Now I’m not going to do something that has almost no chance of working if they’re doing it solely for financial reasons, for example. So I agree with that. On the other hand, once you explain things to patients, they decide, some people choose generation two and we actually have many babies from generation two types of therapies. We don’t have a particular bias. We certainly don’t for generation four, in our mind, that still is experimental because until we publish it, until it’s approved in a peer review journal, that’s my definition of experimental. So patients decide, but I would say probably half of patients choose gen four. Many of them, many patients we see know a friend who did gen four and succeeded and that’s the most compelling evidence anybody can have a friend that’s been trying for years and they become pregnant and then they refer you to us. So your preference

Lorne Brown

Would be gen four. If you could recommend to the people ovarian reserve issues or egg quality in their late thirties or forties that currently I don’t really believe in pushing people to do this or that it’s their life. Let’s just say everything’s free. You live in New York, everything’s free. Now what would you recommend? And I’ll give you a tangent when you know better, do better. So I use a Vibroacoustic sound table for my acupuncture treatment. It uses sound to stimulate the vagus nerve. People with the aura rings, we’re seeing their sleep, people that have very serious sleep issues, fibromyalgia, we’re seeing deep sleep after using the sound table, it relaxes them. I agree with this. And another doc I talked to once said, when you get parasympathetic, you heal. So anything you can do to put people to parasympathetic, please do it. So we have a fee for using the table and people, because of money, we don’t charge a lot for it.

By the way, it’s a couple extra bucks to use the table in a treatment, but people were starting to like, oh, I bet want to use it. So I decided it drove me crazy, having it off while somebody’s on the table, I know how much it can help. So it’s just included in the fee. Now I changed my fees and you don’t get a choice if you don’t want it on, you’re still paying for it. Now they have an option. In my clinic, we have multiple associates. They can go see one of my associates if they don’t want to pay for a sound table. But I can’t sit and treat somebody though and I have something right there and I can’t use it when you know better do better. So I want to ask you on your side then take money aside. What is gen four then? Because gen three is then and what’s gen four? And if money wasn’t an issue, I don’t want you to manage people’s money one-on-one. This is a general podcast here. Just what’s about gen four that you would like and which one would you recommend for somebody who’s 39 to 40 something based on what you think it can do or hope he can do?

Samuel Wood 

Yeah, if someone just said, what would you do? I would definitely do gen four.

Lorne Brown 

And what is gen? Remind me. Gen four’s because gen three is the NAD with the blood?

Samuel Wood 

Oh, that’s gen four. Gen four.

Lorne Brown 

Oh, gen four is NAD. Okay, good. Alright, so now I got it.

Samuel Wood 

We’ve seen so many positive results with it and we’ve had no side effects, no problems at all. I would never push anybody to do it, but if they ask me that, some patients do ask me that, that’s what I would recommend. And our patients that have done gen four are very happy. So I’m very pleased with it. But I don’t like until it’s published, until it’s peer reviewed, it’s still experimental for us. The experiment does seem to work very well.

Lorne Brown

Thank you. I need clarification. I forgot Gen one, straight PRP, put the platelets in. Gen two is your injecting the growth factor. Gen three is the blood and growth factors. Gen four with NAD? Correct. Alright. Now you have a recent paper and I’m just going to pull up my other computer here. I don’t remember the exact title. Well you can remind me of the title here, but it’s using the drug ozempic, it’s the GLP-1s. I would like you to share a little bit about this paper and is there any caution because literature out there about being overweight can impact your fertility. Can you tell us why? And I’m thinking inflammatory marker cytokines, when you lose weight it can be beneficial. Also, rapid weight loss seems to not be good for fertility. So there are patients coming into our practice and starting to use these kinds of drugs for weight loss and potentially for fertility. What are the pros or cons and what have you learned? You did publish a paper in 2025 on this.

Samuel Wood 

It’s really interesting. These medications have almost become miracle drugs. Now there are papers saying it reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s, that it reduces heart disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure, cancer now of ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer. I mean it’s just amazing what they’re said to do. And in the end we’ll find out how much of that is true. But wait,

Lorne Brown 

Let’s ask a question. It’s not that the drug does this, it’s because obesity puts the body into disarray, which leads to these diseases and by losing the weight, the body then gets to repair. I always say depression is not a Prozac deficiency, right? There’s something else going on. Prozac is trying to deal with that. I just wanted to clarify that and sorry for interrupting, but because people get really excited about these drugs, but there’s other ways to lose weight. And can you also clarify to me, because my understanding with these drugs that we’re talking with GLP-1s, you do lose a lot of muscle mass, which is so important for your health infertility that if you don’t work with your diet and do the right exercise, you will probably not benefit. And when you stop the drug, you’re going to have a massive rebound because you haven’t made the lifestyle changes of diet and exercise. Well, you’re a hundred

Samuel Wood 

Percent right. See, the question really is, is it about weight loss? Now, obviously there are many women who are overweight who have no trouble having babies. And so weight itself probably has a negative effect on fertility. There are papers that say it does or are papers that say it doesn’t. But what’s been interesting to us, and we mentioned this in the paper, is that we’ve looked at women who ovulate perfectly. Normally we document that they ovulate, we look at progesterone levels and they’re ovulating well, and yet they don’t become pregnant. And then when they start taking one of these medications, they’re able to become pregnant. So I’m not sure exactly what it is about these medications that leads to the so-called ozempic babies. I’m not sure. Obviously a woman who is overweight and is not ovulating as a result, you would think that the primary way it would help them is by helping them reduce weight.

But you see it even when they ovulate. So it’s really, really interesting to us. And so we’re doing a study where we actually do not have women stop these medications, whichever one they’re taking through the egg retrieval. And then we’re taking follicular fluid and we’re analyzing the follicular fluid because our idea, I’m sorry, the follicular fluid is where the eggs are. So when you draw an egg out, there’s also follicular fluid. So you get both. Our feeling is that it’s actually improving the environment that the eggs grow in and that’s how it improves pregnancy rate. And it’s not just about losing weight, but we’ll see what this study shows. But because it’s being used for everything else, now it makes sense that it would also be used for fertility and hopefully it’ll have a positive effect. And one of the questions to ask is what should you do then? Should a patient continue these medications during pregnancy? So that’s an unknown fact right now

Lorne Brown 

You talk about the follicular fluid and the weight, it’s the cascade of events. So I don’t know, we’re having coffee talk here because so many conditions seem to be diseases including infertility due to chronic systemic inflammation. These cytokines, we see it in cancers, we’ve seen in cardiovascular, we see in dementia, dementia is often known as type three diabetes because of the inflammation. So when we have this inflammation and oxidative stress, we age quicker, we have pain, we see all these diseases, and when the inflammatory markers are reduced and oxidative stress is reduced, the body rejuvenates including fertility. So the excess weight, like you said, is it the weight? Well, the weight is part of the issue, but you can have thin people with systemic chronic systemic inflammation. So what I’m thinking about is ozempic type drugs, it will help you lose weight. But if you were abnormal weight and you’re taking these drugs, would it also change these markers? Does it have another benefit regardless of weight? And

Samuel Wood 

We see a lot of patients that are really not overweight that are taking these medications because it’s almost like here in California you’re not cool if you’re not. I was going to say that’s what in California’s why the data? They’re not overweight. We’re going to be very interested in looking at the effect of weight as well. Obviously these medications are thought to reduce inflammation apart from weight. So it’s going to be really interesting. There are measures of information that we can look at and we’ll see what happens. Because one of the things you mentioned earlier is when you stop taking it, you see a rebound and you really want to have somebody take these medications through the egg retrieval and then you say stop the medication, then you do a transfer. And generally that’s done, let’s say four to six weeks later. By then they’ve already gained some weight and then they continue to gain weight during the pregnancy and that has an effect on the pregnancy.

So right now, no one’s recommending taking these medications during pregnancy, but many women have, they got pregnant spontaneously and they kept right on taking it. And so studies are being done to look at those babies that came from these women who took it throughout. Pregnancy is not a great study. Of course there’s no control group or anything like that, but I think soon we’ll have a much better idea of whether or not it’s a good idea to continue to take it. And some women are saying, I’m not going to gain 60 pounds during my pregnancy. I’m going to keep right on taking it. So we’ll have some answers

Lorne Brown 

Soon on that. And I will share again about the inflammation. There’s multiple ways to address inflammation besides taking GLP-1. Medications like Ozempic, you got a psychology background, that’s part of your training. So chronic stress, stress is not so bad. It’s your perception of the stress and it’s chronic can lead to systemic inflammation. Your diet can change that. So again, an anti-inflammatory diet. A shout out on the accu balance website, there is a free diet with recipes that is an anti-inflammatory, low-glycemic index diet. So please check that out. Acupuncture has been shown to help with inflammation, low level laser therapy helps regulate inflammation. That’s why I thought the earlier studies I was seeing were benefiting, not just because of blood flow, but I thought because of its ability to regulate inflammation. Some of the later research I’ve looked at even helps impact insulin, right?

So all these markers are important and now we’re learning that we have these drugs that we can use. So again, everything is about can we lower oxidative stress, can we regulate inflammation because we need inflammation to heal, we need inflammation to ovulate, we need inflammation for implantation. But when we have too much inflammation, it seems like we have a disease process and we cause more fertility decline. So this is interesting. So we’re going to go to stem cells, but if there’s anything else to add on the ozempic drug. So you guys are doing, you’re using this, there’s some studies on this currently they’re not on the ozempic when they’re doing the transfer, but they can be on these drugs up to retrieval. Did I understand that correctly? That’s the current protocol. That’s exactly right. And we talked about energy of the cell, the mitochondria you were talking about earlier, that over restricted or rapid weight loss in your paper can cause energy stress in the ovary and then cause a demise in some of these energy productions that we want activation.

So you don’t want in general, general, you don’t want rapid weight loss or restriction. That’s exactly true. Okay. Alright. Patients on our fertility diet, I have patients that we don’t count calories on our diet, but the diet, when people start to eat an anti-inflammatory diet that’s low in glycemic index, they will naturally lose weight without having to restrict calories. They get kind of full easier with lots of fiber and we’ve seen people, so rather than forcing the weight loss you eat move your body and it’s neat how the weight kind of can come off fairly easily. And yes, when your partner, if he’s male does it with you, he often will lose his weight quicker, which often upsets the female of that relationship. I don’t know, it’s just something that we’ll often notice. Anything you wanted to add about the GLP-1 in your paper before we go to stem cells that you think is important for the listeners?

Samuel Wood 

I think one of the fascinating things about GLP-1 is how it works to the patient and what they say is, I just don’t want to eat. I don’t want to eat. I have four or five bites and I’m done. Of course it’s now being used for gambling for marijuana, for many other things because people just kind of lose interest in whatever it is that they’re doing. It’s not just the food, it’s almost everything. And so when I see the patients that are on it, they to me just do not respond as they used to. Maybe before they would be very concerned about this or that and bring it up. They’re just much calmer and it’s really interesting. We’ll see how this works out because psychological studies are being done on patients that are taking these medications as well. It’s always interesting when there’s a new medication, no one really knows exactly how it works, how it gets in the brain, how it affects the brain? And there’s a lot more to be known about this and I believe that we’re going to find this is an important factor in fertility as well.

Lorne Brown 

Have you noticed anything with your PRP? It’s not really PRP that you’re doing, like you said, that’s gen one. So over your ovarian rejuvenation, is there anything you’re seeing with the GLP-1 drugs, how people respond differently to the ovarian rejuvenation? Do you see changes in AMH? Do you see changes in hormonal feedback loops like when you’re measuring the hormones or in the IVF cycle? Different responses.

Samuel Wood 

We just don’t have enough patients that are doing both. I’m absolutely fascinated by that and we’re keeping track of every detail of everybody we see in both of these situations, but obviously they’re choosing to do the OV rejuvenation, but you don’t want to have a study where someone feels like they’re forced to go on to GLP-1 for fertility purposes since it’s not known that it has any beneficial effect at this point on that. But we’re watching and I think it’s a great question and I think the answer to that question will be very important in the future.

Lorne Brown 

Alright, off camera, let’s repeat what we kind of did off camera. You are involved with a company that’s doing some stem cell work. You were sharing how you’ve been cloned. So tell us what you mean by that and how two men, one can contribute an egg and one contribute a sperm. So you’re sounding a little bit like Jurassic Park here, that didn’t end well by the way. So I do have some questions for you around that, but can you just kind of, this was the first I’ve heard of this, so there’s probably a lot of people just telling us about this company. Tell us what’s happening now and what you think potential is for the future, including that you’ve been cloned.

Samuel Wood 

Well, I have a company called stemi and for many years people have been trying to clone a human, and I don’t mean to clone them reproductively, but to clone them therapeutically so that if someone needed a new liver, they could use their own cells to create a liver. And no one had been able to do it for many years. And I worked with this guy from Melbourne, Australia, he’s brilliant and we were able to do it in humans, but the problem was no one else could do it. And whenever you do something and no one else can do it, people are skeptical that you did it. You need to replicate anything you do. You need replication to show that you were right. And so I was thrilled. It was years later, but I was thrilled when the University of Oregon replicated what we did, thrilled. And so the study we’re about to talk about is one that they did. So they were able to do it in humans as well. And this is a mouse study, but it’s incredible to me. What they did is they take skin cells and then they create an embryo from the skin cells and then they create an egg. Wait, wait, embryo, then egg or

Lorne Brown 

Egg, then embryo.

Samuel Wood 

It all goes together. You

First do one and then there’s a technique you can use to take it from 46 chromosomes in a human down to 23. This was all done in rots. And so they were able to create eggs that worked. And that is such an amazing thing because so many women either can’t make eggs because of chemotherapy, their ovaries are removed. They were born with a genetic disorder that didn’t allow them to create eggs. There are many circumstances under which an egg is so critically important. One of the most important is being older reproductively. And the idea here is if you could take skin cells from a woman that cannot make a good quality egg because she’s over 45, let’s say, and you could create a good quality egg, you would give her a chance to become pregnant. So now that this has been done, and I congratulate them for doing this work, I think it really points the way in the future, and I think this will be done a lot.

The problem is concern about how healthy those eggs are going to be, how healthy the resulting embryos are going to be, the resulting babies. So there’s a lot of work to be done before it can be done in humans. But the thing we mentioned earlier, and I love this, I absolutely love this. We work with a lot of same sex male patients and what’s very sad to them is that one of ’em is going to create the sperm and you got to get eggs from somewhere else and it’s a very difficult decision for them on where to get those eggs. And some try to get them from a sister, for example. There are ways to try to get a genetic component into that baby. But what’s amazing about this is imagine you’re a male, someone can take skin cells and they can create an egg from you. So one partner provides the egg, the other partner provides the sperm, and you create this baby that comes from both of them. And I think that’s fascinating. And if this works out, it’s going to be an incredible advance in the field and a most difficult area.

Lorne Brown

I have a question then. What about two same-sex women? One, can you take the skin well and make sperm from one of the women then if a man can make an egg from his skin?

Samuel Wood

So that’s been done, that’s been done in animals, it’s been done. You can create sperm as well. So the same thing could happen there.

Lorne Brown 

So basically people can have their own genetic material as their babies in

Samuel Wood 

The future,

Lorne Brown 

In the future, but in the future. So now for those that are listening at the time of this recording, one day this will exist. But for now, just like ICSI didn’t exist 25 plus years ago when I was practicing vitrification, the things, chromosomal screening, there’s things that change. But for now, Dr. Wood offers ovarian rejuvenation right up to gen four. Now he has, and remember he has episode 69 on PRP and ovarian rejuvenation. We did a little review of it here. He’s talked about the GLP-1 drugs, ozempic. What’s coming around with that? What’s coming down the pipeline with that? That’s current now. It’s still somewhat experimental. My understanding is from the fertility aspect of it and then reminding people, there’s diet, there’s lifestyle, there’s mind body tools, acupuncture, low, low level laser therapy, herbal medicine as another form of ovarian rejuvenation. So that’s what we have today everybody.

This is what we’re limited to today, which having been practiced since 2000, it’s a great improvement and sounds like another 20 years or less, there’s going to be even more wild technology to support people, brother down. Pretty amazing. Anything you want to share? Any closing? We’re going to put your links in the show notes, how to find you. You’re out in San Diego, gen five by the way. I’m assuming you still consult people around the world if they want to talk to you because I’ve sent you patients that have been able to talk to you. Are you still doing that?

Samuel Wood 

Yeah, absolutely. We actually have many Canadian patients.

Lorne Brown 

I have to share a story. We haven’t spoken since our episode way back when, but I had a woman that was coming to my practice diminished over in reserve egg quality issues, multiple miscarriages. We were using the giga laser, which got popular out of Denmark with her and acupuncture. She worked with you and you were saying, we’re going to get one good egg from you. That’s our goal and here’s what you got to do. And she came back to me with your protocol and I’m like, I’ve never seen this. This is interesting. I don’t know if it’ll work, but if you’re up for it, go for it. So we did our thing, you did your thing. And then lo and behold, she got some ululation. Lo and behold, you put her through an IVF cycle and lo and behold, she got pregnant and far along last time I spoke to her. So that’s why I wanted to ask, are you still taking consults from around the world? And you do so fantastic. Any closing remarks that you want to share with the listeners?

Samuel Wood 

I don’t want anyone to give up. I want to make sure that everybody binds people that help with whatever they have. And there are many, many different things that can have a negative effect on fertility, but I’m the most positive person you’ve ever met. And I hope that everyone understands that just because some fertility specialist says you need to use an egg donor that they do not believe it. Just because someone says it, you need to look around. You need to find out what’s out there. It’s very similar to having cancer. In fact, a study showed that having cancer has the same psychological effect as having infertility. So if you have cancer and someone says, there’s nothing we can do, you’re going to die in three weeks. You’ve got to look into it. It’s about you, it’s about your life, it’s about your dreams and your goals. And so no one should give up hope without really, really looking into things and finding out what’s available to

Lorne Brown

Them. Thank you. Alright, that’s Dr. Wood. Check out episode 69. Please follow likes, subscribe to the podcast if you do so. Then every time we release a new episode, you’ll get notified on conscious fertility and beyond. Where we talk about fertility, we talk about perimenopause, menopause, and consciousness. Dr. Wood, thank you very much for joining me. Again, I really enjoyed this and I learned a lot when we chatted. Thank you. It was a pleasure. So just going to add on here at the end of my interview with Dr. Samuel Wood. He’s over in San Diego. We have a few episodes on PRP. This would be one by him in episode 69. And then we have at least two more as well. So feel free to contact me through Instagram or through the clinic. And again, I want to remind you that diet, Sarah, a big part of this was how to improve energy of the egg cell.

One thing is how to reduce the accelerated loss of that energy, right? Because it’s going to lose energy with aging. That’s part of it. But you don’t want accelerated biological aging. And so there’s many ways to do this to help with the inflammation, oxidative stress that the body is going through. Because imagine that it has to keep defending itself from toxins and inflammation. That’s going to consume energy as well, right? Accelerates aging. So there’s things to boost it. And there’s things you want to remove from your lifestyle that’s going to accelerate aging. And so diet really is key. You’re going to eat every day. Not that you’re going to eat loss, but you need to eat. So there is the Acubalance fertility diet. That is a fertility diet, that’s an anti-inflammatory, low glycemic index. Grab that for free from the Acubalance website or from my Lorne Brown website.

There are certain supplements, coq 10, there’s certain precursors for NAD and other supplements that can help recycle that. I like to share with you guys as well that you can look into again on our clinical website or contact us. Coq10 is a popular one for improving mitochondrial function. Chinese herbs have been shown to improve TP and mouse studies, certain Chinese herbal formulas and Chinese herbs. So the YANG tonics in particular, low level laser therapy for fertility, low level laser therapy, lots of information on our website on how that can regulate inflammation and improve blood flow and improve mitochondrial function and even blood sugars, acupuncture as well. So there is an integrative approach. And then stress, chronic stress, anxiety, poor sleep. If you’re not sleeping well, if you’re constantly feeling anxious, that’s going to create an inflammatory environment. So you want to do things to help you sleep.

Preferably non-prescription, to really get you in that deep sleep. I talked a little bit about my sound table, but there’s a lot of tools out there to help you sleep. Happy to talk to you about that and the mood, the conscious work around the stress and anxiety, removing some of the chemicals and toxins that are unnecessary that you can actually have control over and remove from your life movement. So lots of things that are available to you. We have quite a few blog posts on that. And again, reach out on my IG or my Lorne Brown website, Acubalance website for more information to support you on this journey. Alright, hopefully this information is helpful. And do check out the download for that fertility diet. I think that is a good place to start.

Speaker 3 

If you’re looking for support to grow your family. Contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance. They help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low-level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to Acubalance ca. That’s acubalance ca.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you. So please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne_Brown_official. That’s Instagram, Lorne_Brown_official, or you can visit my websites, Lornebrown.com and acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.