The Truth About Egg Quality, IVF, and Ovarian Rejuvenation with Dr. Zaher Merhi

Zaher Merhi 

People think that women in menopause have no more eggs. That’s not true. There are 1,000 eggs left in the ovaries of every menopausal woman. There are facts and studies and basic science level showing that a high dose of medication is bad for equality. Look, let me explain to you why.

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.

I have Dr. Zaher Merhi. He is a reproductive endocrinologist. He is really doing a lot of work around ovarian rejuvenation. So I’m hoping we’re going to get to talk about PRP today, ozone therapy, low level laser therapy, everything under the sun to help support age and embryo quality. Now, I have to share a little story. I’m going to give you guys his bio, but I got to share a little story about Dr. Merhi today, how he kind of connected. He is doing a study using the giga laser, which we have in Vancouver. I think we’re the only clinic in Canada that has it. He’s doing a study using it for egg quality, embryo quality. And Maya from the giga laser paramedics said, “You guys should connect because he’s doing a study. You should tell him what you’ve been doing in your clinic as he designs the study.” I said, “All right.” So I text the good doctor and we’re connecting, saying we’re going to meet and chat.

And I happened to be in Quebec at the time and at a conference, the CFAS conference for Fertility Andrology Society. And I said jokingly, because he’s in New York and this is a Canadian conference. And my Canadian listeners know that a lot of Americans don’t know about us over in Canada, our conferences at least. So I said, “You wouldn’t happen to be coming to the CFAS conference in Quebec, the fertility conference, would you? Because I’m here. It would be funny if you were here, we could connect.” And he says, “I’m actually speaking on PRP at this conference.” I go, “Are you kidding me? ” And he goes, “I’m at the bar over at the Hilton.” So I walked across the street. And I had drinks and talked, right?

Zaher Merhi 

It’s meant sometimes, honestly, just coincidences happened so easily and we connected. We spoke for hours at the bar. It was really nice, really nice.

Lorne Brown 

I think you just stuck around for the conversation because the beer was good, not so much the conversation. All right, so we’re going to chat here. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Zaher Merhi. And then I’m going to ask some questions that I think my listeners want to hear about. So as I mentioned, he’s in the New York area. He’s the founder and the medical director of Rejuvenating Fertility Center, RFC. He’s an internationally recognized fertility doctor, lecturer, editor, and grant reviewer. His training and faculty appointments included Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Medical Center, New York, NYU School of Medicine, and the University of Vermont. He was a professor at Sunny Downstate Health Science University and the director of the Reproductive Endocrinology and Fertility Fellowship Program. He is currently a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Mimodomies Medical Center in New York.

He has three American board certifications in OBGYN, reproductive endocrinology and infertility and high complexity laboratory director. Also, interesting enough, he’s also one of the few reproductive immunologists in the States and is an active researcher with an interest in women older than 40 with low variant reserves. So we’re talking here, low AMH or high FSH. Stem cell. Yeah, we should talk about that. Stem cell variant rejuvenation, gentle stimulation, IVF. I think they call that sometimes mini IVF. We’ll find out what that means for you. Natural IVF and IVF with even injectables. And he was named one of the top 2% scientists in the world. Your IVF without injectables reminds me of a colleague out here. He’s a doctor that does scalpless ulussectomies.

So it’s the same thing with you, no injectable IVF. So we got lots to talk about. In the reproductive world, the evidence isn’t strong yet on LLT, ozone, PRP, even stem cell. Now, when I say strong as in, when I go into the website, open evidence, it just says there’s data, but it’s not robust yet. But there’s always leaders in the field, or I would say just because the study, the research is in there doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, just means we don’t have the data to support what we’re seeing in the clinic yet. So I would like to hear what science is and what your clinical experience is. So in your practice, you’re doing a lot of ovarian rejuvenation. Can you just start off with what does that mean and how many pathways are there to this ovarian rejuvenation? Because I’m sure there’s not just one process.

Zaher Merhi 

Sure. Well, first of all, thank you very much, Dr. Brown. And honored to have met you and be on your podcast, really. I started following you. I’m actually listening to a lot of them these days. Very interesting. And like you said, I am not just the founder. I’m co-founder of RFC because I have three co-founders with me, Dr. Marco, Marjorie Beutel and Jessica Haroun, our RN. So they’re my co-founders and partners as well. So I want to give them the credit. Second is our mission here at RFC or Rejuvenating Fertility Center is really to push the boundaries of fertility in as much as ethical and legal and conscious ways because we do know based on evidence-based medicine, there’s a lot of studies, a lot of data. PRP, if you go to PubMed and look at PRP and ovaries, Lorne, you’ll find over 150 peer-reviewed articles. I think people push data or they look at data selectively, and I’m not talking about anybody in person.

I’m talking about the business world of fertility. For instance, genetic testing, PGT or genetic testing on embryos, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine set, it’s not recommended for everybody, but yet there’s a lot of clinics here. They only do PGT on everybody. So there are a lot of complex things and really people pick and choose what data they want. But the reality is there is plenty of data on ovarian rejuvenation. Yes, it is experimental, but yeah, a lot of things were experimental. Egg freezing was experimental for decades until the ASRM said it’s not. So we really need to start looking objectively at what’s going on. And we know a lot of things work that are less chemicals, less costly, and in a more holistic way. Now you asked me about the PRP. The PRP is in summary, splitlet rich plasma. It’s platelets in a patient’s blood.

You take that blood, you spin the platelets and plasma, and this PRP, Lord, has been used for dentistry, joint injury, hair to grow hair loss, face. And the Greek people who always give them credit because they’re very smart people, they injected the PRP in women who are in menopause 10 years ago, and a lot of these women started to ovulate and have babies. Well, people think that women in menopause have no more eggs. That’s not true. There are 1,000 eggs left in the ovaries of every menopausal woman. Those eggs can survive and can give healthy babies. So the Greek are what woke them up by PRP and they reported a lot of people getting pregnant. And this is when we started it here and we did a lot of trials and studies and we’ve published a lot of studies and we showed how PRP could improve not just the quantity of eggs, but also quality.

We care about quality more than quantity, and we’ve helped a lot of people, hundreds of babies with PRP. Women were told you never have a baby with your own eggs.

Lorne Brown 

Right, right. Now with the PRP, because in Canada at the time of our recording, they’re not doing it in the ovaries. They do it in the uterus. And at the CFS, not the one you and IRAP, but the one a year before, the research in Canada showed that the evidence wasn’t robust. They didn’t see a different outcome. So at that time they were saying that it’s experimental, so don’t charge for it in Canada if you’re going to do it in the ovaries. Then I’ll share that. I talked to Dr. Amy, the egg whisperer who trained under you, right? You taught her your PRP style. I did. Yeah. And then I talked to Dr. Sam Wood. And here’s what I’m learning. And again, I think it’s because it’s still in the early stages. The sense I got was there’s more than just doing PRP. Wood puts in other growth factors to help rejuvenate the ovaries and the follicles.

And his experience was that the POI type of patients, so the premature ovarian sufficiency patient, those in the 30s, he’s found clinically, and I may be quoting wrong, I’ll have to relisten to our podcast, but what I remember, he quoted that these women in the 30s responded well to general PRP. And then the older women, he had to add other things in order to get that. Circle to you from our conversation that we had at the conference, I’m understanding that the type of needle makes a difference, maybe how often or when you’re doing the PRP makes a difference when you’re … Because some say, wait three months, then do IVF. Some say do IVF right away and you have the next three months.

Lorne Brown 

So the point I’m saying is PRP is not just PRP. Just like when somebody says, I did acupuncture, well, how often and what points did you use?

Zaher Merhi 

Exactly.

Lorne Brown 

So different frequency of treatment during the week over months and the different points, you may get a totally different outcome even though you did acupuncture. So I’m getting that PRP is a very general term, but we haven’t come to a, this is how you should do it for these types of women. There is an ART to it still and it hasn’t come to how to do it. So I wanted to learn what you’re seeing in your clinic. Can you tell us about the needle matter? Does when you do it matter, are you adding anything? Is it just straightforward PRP?

Zaher Merhi 

So I don’t add anything. And by the way, I have great respect for Dr. Woods, a very, very smart person and he’s pushing the boundaries as well. And I like his stimulation of IVF, so kudos to him. Look, like you said, PRP, people say it’s that PRP is first of all, the process of PRP varies from clinic to clinic. And I’m going to tell you, if you look at the trials or the studies or whatever it is, they put PRP, some of them in the middle of the ovary where there are no eggs there. You need to feed the eggs. They’re on the surface of the ovary. So where you put the PRP is very important. How much you put in is very important. What type of needle? The ovary is small. If I take big needle and I inject it and I take out the needle, it’s going to ooze out because now I made a big hole in the ovary.

But if it’s a tiny hole, it’s unlikely to use out and it stays. So you really need to have the needle at the outside of the periphery. That’s one. But look, nothing-

Lorne Brown 

Just so you know, that’s acupuncture, right? It’s not a big needle. Thin needle that creates a healing response, big needle creates trauma and damage. So I get it. I get it.

Zaher Merhi 

And it makes a big difference because a lot of clinics, they use … It’s not going to work. But look, PRP or whatever rejuvenation you do is not magic. What you do afterwards is very important. And this is what drives me crazy about the trials or studies that showed, oh, no difference. They do PRP and then they pump them with a high dose of shots. You basically wiped out the whole effect of PRP. You can’t pump those. Why

Lorne Brown 

Is that? When you say shots, you’re saying the injectables, the FSH- Yes,

Zaher Merhi 

The IVF drugs, correct. But those people have high FSH already and you give them FSH and we know plenty of studies. I’m not sure how many times I need to let these people know about it. Shots are bad for air quality, especially women with low variant reserve. You can’t give them a high dose of those shots. It’s not going to work. You’re not going to find the difference. So what you do afterwards, that’s why, Lorne, I have patients like, “I want to do PRP with you and do IVF.” I’m fine. I don’t care, but just please tell them not to pump you with a lot of shots because quality is more important than quantity. And there’s this misconception that shots create eggs. It doesn’t. Shots are food for follicles someone has. If you have a lot of eggs, give them a lot of food because each one will have to eat.

If there are less eggs, give them just a little bit enough for them to eat. If you overfeed them, they’re going to vomit. And I’m happy to talk about mechanisms, but there’s plenty of studies. So we need to be very, very careful not to ruin the effect of the PRP by high dose. So that’s my answer to you.

Lorne Brown 

Okay. And I’ll just, because after talking to a few of the docs that do the mini IVF, would be one, I think it was Chong also in San Diego. I have to remember that I didn’t review beforehand.

Zaher Merhi 

Dr. Chong is amazing. I love him.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah, so it is him, right? When I talked to some of the local clinics, they said the science isn’t there, that high dose FSH won’t damage the eggs. Because in our conversation, I thought, hey, those that are doing acupuncture, low level laser therapy, anti-inflammatory diet, CoQ10, all these supplements, do you think that it’s giving the eggs some support lowering the antioxidants so there’s some resilience? So when you give the ovaries a lot of drugs, they’re not being negatively impacted as much because they have the resilience. He says, “Oh, that’s an interesting theory possible.” When I was brought up to the local clinics, they’re saying high FSH isn’t damaged in the eggs, but you say there’s some data and science on that.

Zaher Merhi 

Dawn, I’m sorry to interrupt you. It’s not a question anymore. I’m sorry. There are facts and studies and basic science level showing that a high dose of medication is bad for equality. There’s a study in endocrinology. If you go on my website or tell anybody, the references, medical references, everything I say is there. Look, let me explain to you why. I’m going to explain to you why. FSH, the egg has a receptor, which is a mouth. Now, we know if there are a lot of hormones, a lot of on the receptor, they get downregulated and they hide. It’s Biology 101. When you give a high dose, those receptors go inside. They don’t want to anymore. Actually, the follicles die. Go, ask a lot of people. They start with 10 follicles at baseline. They end up with one or two eggs all the time. But I’m going to give you other examples.

I’m going to give you three

Lorne Brown 

Examples to convince you. Not to convince them, but I want more examples. But I want to highlight for our listeners because there are people that I know in my city that are traveling to different places for PRP. And so what I’m hearing from you is after you do the PRP, you don’t just go and do a general IVF. So because I’m trying to tease out, you do the PRP, but it’s not like you would not hit them aggressively with IVF drugs. They would get mini IVF or low stim. I don’t know what terminology you call, but I would love to know a little bit about what that looks like. But tell me more. Pretend you’re convincing me because I want to hear more. I will. But I was just thinking about the list. I’m thinking about the people that are spending money doing all these things, thinking they’re doing the right thing with PRP, and then they go and do an IVF and they don’t get the response.

And maybe it’s not that the PRP didn’t work, maybe it’s what they did after the PRP didn’t take them to the goal of a healthy embryo and live birth. So that’s what I really want to get out for my listeners.

Zaher Merhi

No problem. Now I’m going to convince you if you’re a patient or a doctor or anybody, and I’m happy to have the conversation with anybody, I’m going to give you three examples demonstrating that high dose is the IVF drugs are bad for air quality, but before I start-

Lorne Brown 

And just for our listeners, he’s an IVF doctor, not an acupuncturist, so he’s allowed to say these things. Just to make sure I’m the acupuncturist, he’s the IVF doctor.

Zaher Merhi 

Listen, look, first of all, most women, before I start with the three examples, I’m not getting there yet. I’m going to tell you, what drives me crazy is most women who do PRP, they have low ovarian reserve and high FSH. Let’s stop there. Women with high FSH have high FSH in the urine and LH. And menopure, meno is menopause irin. Menopur is medication coming from the urine of women with high FSH from postmenopausal. Let me ask you one thing. If someone has high FSH and they can produce menopure in their urine, why do I need to give them someone else’s urine and put it in their body? It’s already high. If this makes sense to anybody, please convince me. A lot of those people, they actually need suppression because the FSH is coming high from the brain. But let’s go to the three examples so I can convince you.

Lorne Brown 

Okay.

Zaher Merhi 

Then you’re going to assign me chocolate.

Lorne Brown 

Yes.

Zaher Merhi 

The first example is this. A lot of people have miscarriages, they go to fertility clinics and they say, “You’re having miscarriages. You need IVF so we can test the embryo genetically because the miscarriages are from chromosomaline abnormal embryos.” They do IVF. Now they cannot make any embryos to even get tested. I see this all the time. But let me ask you one thing. If someone naturally was getting pregnant and having a miscarriage, this means that woman is releasing one egg that’s fertilized by the sperm, they made a blastocyst, which is a fully developed embryo, they made it to the uterus and stuck. Now they can’t even reach stage three in IVF. That’s example number one to show you that the IVF drugs hurt the air quality. Example

Lorne Brown 

Number two. All right. I want to summarize, make sure I heard it. Example one, he’s saying they’re having natural conception. They’re actually having egg and sperm meat and there’s even an implantation and then they have that chemical pregnancy miscarried. So they’re actually getting to blast a cyst and beyond because they got the chemical pregnancy test. But you’re saying then you take this woman and put her through an IVF cycle and they don’t even get to the blasted stage to test for chromosomal screening. Okay, I’m with you.

Zaher Merhi 

So I stopped the patient. I’m like, “You did better naturally than with the IVF somewhere else.” And they’re like, “That’s true.” I see this every other patient, by the way. Okay. That’s an example. So if this doesn’t convince you, I’m going to give you the second example. Two, a lot of couples are doing gender selection.

Lorne Brown

In the States. Can’t do it in Canada, but it is. That’s true.

Zaher Merhi

That’s true.

They’re doing gender selection. There are four girls that want a boy, fair? The people get pregnant in a RP, they make guns. They go to do IVF somewhere else before they come to me. They come, I see the record. They haven’t made one embryo to even get tested. Was that their problem? No. They can’t make a plasticist now to even get tested. That tells you that the IVF drug actually is back for air quality.

Lorne Brown 

All right. Let me unpack example number two. This person does not have infertility. This person does not have problems getting pregnant or going to live birth. They’ve come to the clinic because they’re doing gender selection. They want to have a different sex because they already have three of one. They want a different one. So they go and do the IVF and this time they don’t get blasticist. And you’re saying because you’re giving them such heavy dose medications, they’re not able to make embryos. And you’re saying it’s because of the IVF drugs.

Zaher Merhi 

Okay?

Lorne Brown

And example number three. This is great.

Zaher Merhi 

Am I close to getting chocolate from you? I’m going to give you example number three, then I’m going to ask you a question and then you’re going to say yes, sir. But look, number three is this. Women and their studies, two studies, one from Harvard, one from NYU, they looked at all people who have frozen eggs in the past. Those women froze them. Then they come later on to use them to make babies. Is that why people freeze eggs? Yeah.

Most of these clinics freeze eggs, they shampop them with shots and get eggs. Only one third of women who had frozen eggs in the past come to use them now in the future, only one third, they make babies. First of all, those clinics don’t tell patients your chest is one third before they freeze the eggs. That’s one. Two is, let’s say you froze 20 eggs in 2018. Now you have baby number one, baby number two. You want baby number three, or you met a new partner. Now, 2025, you come to use the eggs that are the youngest. You saw them. Two thirds don’t make babies, but guess what? They made babies naturally in between and with older eggs. If this doesn’t tell you that IVF drugs that created those eggs are bad for equality, I’m not sure it is. But I’m going to ask you one last question.

Those are the three examples. Would you like to recapulate, recap number three before I start asking you a question?

Lorne Brown 

There was just that they froze their eggs when they were younger and they met their partner and they had babies as they got older. And then later in life, they went to use the frozen eggs, which were much younger, thawed them to create embryos, but only a third of those became babies. But even in a natural pregnancy, what is it on average when they’re young? 20% every month turns into a baby. So we wouldn’t expect 70 or 80 or 100% of those frozen eggs to turn into live births, would we?

Zaher Merhi 

That’s not accurate. I agree with you naturally, because naturally there is one egg.

But when you add the 20% for each egg that’s 20 eggs, most clinics would say you need one for one egg, for one baby, 10 eggs to 15 maximum will guarantee one baby at least. We shouldn’t be saying that. We should be saying that 66% would not have babies. And there’s plenty of articles why actually … Look, again, I’m challenging the status quo here and I hope I’m not offending anybody, but I’m not saying anything that’s wrong. You can Google it. Those three examples will give you this. Now I’m going to ask you a question and there’s no answer for it. Everyone I know and you know someone who did IVF, took $10,000 off shots and developed one follicle and the cycle was canceled. If you don’t know anybody like this, correct me. Let me ask you one thing. Those people develop one follicle naturally.

So what did the drugs do? Nothing. Right. I am against … People think IVF has less eggs. That’s not true. With mini IVF, it’s an art. No offense. I see some protocols. I laugh. You need to give the body the dose that it needs to grow the follicles without giving them more of it. We’re going to talk about mechanisms, but did I convince you a little bit?

Lorne Brown 

I’m convinced today. And by the way, everybody-

Zaher Merhi 

You’re so sarcastic. I love you.

Lorne Brown 

You put 10 IREIs in a room and you’ll get 10 different protocols and answers. Same thing with acupuncturists. I get them here. Same thing with Lord. That’s what we all do. But from the patient’s perspective, what I wanted to highlight is we’re going to go into what you can do to support egg quality, what’s going on, what’s out there. And to me, the takeaway, and you didn’t need convincing because I’ve always thought … I like the mouth analogy of overeating. Drink from a hose versus a fire hose, two different results will come from that. So you’re suggesting for these women with low variant reserve, less eggs, they already have high FSH, that there’s other IVF protocols that you can do where you’re not going after quantity, you’re going after quality. And so the high dose of drugs from the ideas that you just gave suggest that we’re seeing it clinically that it’s not necessarily the protocol you would use.

And I want to hear some of the ideas of what you would do then, because again, a lot of the listeners we have are those that are in a place with lower variant reserve or repeated IVF failure or high FSH or all the above. And I’d like to let them know what other resources are available and what you’re doing so they can look into it because our patients have to advocate for themselves. And there is not a fan of a one size fits all. The other thing is you did say you hope you don’t want to offend everybody. It’s 2025, so you’re definitely offending somebody. So don’t worry about that. Just tell us what you think, because that’s what I want to know. What do you think?

Zaher Merhi 

Look, yes, I’m thinking and patient … I’m happy again to sit with 10 REIs and I’m happy to sit with them. But look, first of all, and call me crazy, which I’m borderline, 40% of women doing IVF in the United States, I’m not sure about Canada. I don’t want to afraid Canadian because I love Canadian people. 40% of women undergoing IVF do not need IVF. Let me repeat that. They measure the AMH. Oh, your egg, your age. All along the problem is implantation. If I tell you that every day I do restartoscopy and I cut some scars or septum from a patient who all along her issue was implantation did not need IVF. They pump them with drugs. They can’t make eggs. Then they say you have bad egg whites, you need a donor egg. They do donor eggs. They’re not pregnant. Why? Because the problem all along is implantation.

That’s why people do donor eggs. It doesn’t work a lot of time. It’s not 100%. It’s what? 65, 70%. So a lot of those people, and I tell my patient, I just today, I did hysteroscopies onto a patient. I said, try naturally for three months. If you don’t get pregnant, call me because we fix the uterus. Your tubes are open and there’s sperm. Why do you need IVF? IVF is not always the answer, Lorne. I’m telling you the truth. Yeah, I lose a lot of money by telling people this, but I’m proud of it. Why do

Lorne Brown 

You help my clinic because we’re acupunctures here, low level laser. We don’t do IVF. No.

Zaher Merhi 

I know. I’m terrible at business, but listen, that’s the truth. They don’t need IVF.

Lorne Brown 

Yes. And there’s always going to be somebody that can benefit and needs it. So there’s enough people that you’re allowed to do this and share this kind of information to help these people. There’s other ways because I know joking aside, there’s enough people that will benefit and need IVF. And what you’re sharing is a lot of these people though that are going through IVF didn’t need to go through IVF.

Zaher Merhi 

No.

Lorne Brown

Let’s talk about embryo quality. When you talked about the uterus, I mean, the implantation, get it, that issue. I always think sometimes when we’re having the embryo not implant, I always wonder about the sperm, because it takes two to make a baby. So I’m always thinking maybe there’s something we’re not aware of. Now with PGTA and not seeing those implants, then it makes me think more about what’s going on in the uterus.

Or one day we’re going to learn to measure one more thing in the embryo like, ah, this was missing. And so we’ll evolve and we’ll find out maybe why those didn’t implant. But I’m curious, we talked about PRP. So I got some specific questions because these are questions that patients ask me when they’re traveling around looking for PRP. So you’re sharing that the type of needle is important. So a big needle, like you take a pen, like a pen you’re right with and poke it in the ovary, you’re going to create a hole. It’s trauma to the ovary, probably not going to increase quality. If you take a very thin needle, and I think of it like acupuncture, because when we do acupuncture, it’s a thin needle that creates a healing response. And there’s all these mechanisms we understand when we do this. It’s not that bad of a trauma.

It’s a good thing. I can totally get using a thin smaller needle that would give you a different result. So needle matters. What about, is it like a one and done thing? Because I’m not at the place where I give one acupuncture treatment and their fertility is corrected or one low level laser therapy treatment and their fertility is corrected. I need to treat them over a hundred days. So it’s a two-part question. Is it just one PRP or will people need a series of PRP? And then I’ve heard two different responses of when to try and conceive whether naturally or IVF to give the PRP a chance. One school of thought I heard is to wait three months and the other school thought is to start right away. And I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on this.

Zaher Merhi 

Okay. So look, first of all, based on studies we’ve done and based on our experience, the PRP has an acute effect and long-term effect. The acuity effect, which 90% of people benefit from lasts for three months. After three months, it’s gone. The long-term effect is that PRP induces ovarian stem cells to become new younger eggs because the ovaries actually have stem cells, called ovarian stem cells. When you put PRP, you activate those OSC or ovarian stem cells to become new younger eggs. That’s the long-term effect. That’s why you see people who did PRP and then after a year they have baili or after nine months. The PRP is literally gone. People think, yes, oh, you need three months to make new eggs. True, but you can actually improve the egg quality of that particular month in two weeks. I’m going to tell you how. I like to give this example, the egg.

I like food. I’m Lebanese, we love food. The egg of a woman is yolk, which is a DNA. It doesn’t change. I And the white, which has mitochondria, the way I describe it is the egg, when someone has her period before she ovulates, the egg is still full chromosomes, 46, full threat. But we only need a half because we need the half from the father, the sperm. So the egg, the white is the knife that cuts the yolk. Now, as the egg grows around day eight of her cycle, day nine, when it’s 12 millimeters, the white is what cuts the yolk into half to 23, 23. Now the error as women get older or they have issues, it’s not the yolk that’s a problem, it’s the white. The white is weak. It’s like a nut sharp knife that’s cutting the yolk unequally instead of 23, 23, 24, 22.

24 plus 23 sperm, this is 47 an extra chromosome. So putting PRP, vitamins, acupuncture, human growth hormone, human growth hormone omnithrope is given for two months or NUC benefit, PRP. All those act directly on the white in that particular month to sharpen that knife and the mitochondria to cut the yolk equating. So it doesn’t need three months. So within three months usually. So I hope I answered the question.

Lorne Brown

Yeah.

Zaher Merhi 

Back to the high dose of medication. When you are stimulating someone and today it’s day one or three of their cycle, and again, the white, the yolk is 46 chromosomes. Like we said, once it becomes 12 millimeters, this is one split. The high dose of medication, Lorne, you’re pushing the follicle to grow faster to 12 millimeters. You’re rushing that white to cut the yolk. It’s more likely to make mistakes and cut unequally, if I’m making sense. That’s why there are studies showing. The high dose of shots causes more genetically abnormal embryos. Why? Because you grew this follicle and you rushed it to cut unequally. Did that make sense?

Lorne Brown 

You do. And actually, it’s the theory I’ve had, but I’ve never have confirmed it, but you’re stating there’s some data on this and your metaphor is aligned with this. So I’m going to share what my thoughts are as we talk about the aging ovary that we get. What is it? Is this mitosis or myosis that we’re talking about?

Zaher Merhi 

Miosis.

Lorne Brown 

Miosis, right? So we got miosis happening here where it’s got to separate. And I like your analogy of the white part being like a sharp knife. And if it’s not sharp, it doesn’t cut properly and you get less or too many chromosomes when it splits. I always thought that it’s getting naturally dulled, these sharpening dolls with age. And you’re saying the high dose of drugs even makes it more dull, right?

Zaher Merhi 

Of course.

Lorne Brown 

And I’ve been sharing that. We always say this 100 days to a preconception during that follicular genesis, to use your metaphor, we’re sharpening the knife with acupuncture by increasing blood flow, improving mitochondrial function, lowering inflammation, oxidative stress with low level laser therapy, same thing, improving mitochondria function, blood flow, inflammation, oxidative stress with herbs, with supplements. And I know you’ve used ozone in your practice. Hopefully we’ll get to talk about stem cells. So it goes back to at the very beginning where I shared with you that I think a lot of these holistic approaches are giving the egg resilience so they can conceive naturally or handle the high dose of drugs better. Now what I’m coming away with from our conversation is, yes, we’re doing that, but I’m trying to sharpen the knife. Don’t let somebody else dull the knife. Exactly. So continue doing all these things to sharpen it and then use an IVF approach that does not go against the sharpening.

Zaher Merhi

Thank you. You got it

Lorne Brown

Thank you.

Zaher Merhi 

See? I convinced you

Lorne Brown 

I’m so glad. I’ll send you chocolate. If people don’t know, just so you know, after my interviews, I send my guests Nanaimo bars that are apparently invented in Nanaimo British Columbia, they’re chocolate. So I send, so now I’m going to get lots of requests to be on the podcast while they get their chocolate.

Zaher Merhi 

Oh, we’re having another session, right? Just kidding. Yeah, exactly. But this is back to the mitochondria.That’s what drives me crazy about fertility doctors telling patients or diet or vitamins you can’t improve equality. It’s bullshit. There is 6,500 articles on how diet improve fertility. There is hundreds of studies on how CoQ10 at the mitochondrial level is improving the function of mitochondria and helping myosis get better. Those things are super important and we should not treat patient as an egg. It’s a human being.

Lorne Brown 

Now you’re talking like a Chinese medicine doctor. Don’t treat the condition, treat the individual.

Zaher Merhi 

Right. But that’s true.

Lorne Brown 

So yeah, you just don’t realize it’d be you’re inherently a Chinese medicine doctor. Dressed up as an REI. I sent my DNA. Stressed us off as an REI.

Zaher Merhi

Listen, I was impressed by China. I went to Shanghai. Let me tell you, I had a headache. I swear to God, Lorne. I went to the pharmacy. I said, I need Tymotrin. She looked at me. No, she gave me herbs. I’m like, what is this? I ate it. In 20 minutes, my headache was gone. And my headaches, my migraine headaches sometimes are really bad because of the jet lag. So why do we take all this if herbs that come from nature can treat my headaches. So that’s why I’m impressed by Chinese.

Lorne Brown 

She probably gave you White Willowbart, which is aspirin. Probably. I don’t know. Hey, I want to ask, you’re doing research on low level laser therapy. So this just started. So a little background, because I want to hear about what you do to sharpen the knife to support ag quality. You’re doing all the holistic approach. And people can reach out to you. We talked about this mini IVF. I can hear my patient saying, “But what’s the protocol? I need to tell my doctor.” Can people reach out to you and discuss your IVF process, people around the world, you see people from around the world?

Zaher Merhi 

Yes. Okay. First of all, 60% of our patients are outside the New York area. By the way, I held a lot of patients in Canada. I just had a patient who came for a second adipose PRP. We posted the video today for a second baby naturally at 47 years old. But we also manage patients. For example, I have a lot of patients in Dubai, Australia. We manage their IVF cycle. We tell them what to take and then their doctor does the retrieval. But you need doctors who are open-minded because-

Lorne Brown 

We have those. We have those in Canada. We have those that aren’t, but we definitely have those that do. And I can help direct our patients here in the Vancouver area anyhow with the Canadian doctors to work with. But I just want to know that they can reach out to you and in the show notes, we’ll put all your contact information. I want to talk about low-level laser therapy. It’s one of the things I used to do … We’re using our new metaphor now to sharpen the knife, as in to allow the chromosomes to separate in myosis so we don’t have those errors, because that’s what happens when we have aging, oxidative stress, toxins, all the poor blood flow, we start to get errors and we’re trying to reverse the risk of that. So low-level laser therapy, there’s the mechanism behind it, which people are excited about, but we don’t have a lot of fertility data yet, but it increases blood flow and angiogenesis, regulates inflammation, and regulates.

So it doesn’t shut down inflammation, downregulates the inflammation we don’t want. It upregulates inflammation for health and healing. Improves the mitochondrial function, which is important when we think about egg quality. It supports the gut microbiome, and there’s so many more things that we’re learning about low level laser therapy. The giga laser, the reason that’s gotten a lot of press and literally pressed and people are interested in it is Emory Jensen started just reporting case studies and her reports are pretty impressive and she’s reported more recently. She’s on my episode somewhere in the Conscious Chili Podcast. And it’s not research. She’s just having women do this and just following up with them six months later, just finding out how they do. And in her, the gigalaser is a big laser 500 centimeters squared. So it covers the gut microbiome, lymph nodes, ovaries. It’s over the whole lower abdomen.

It’s got some powerful lasers, both LED and laser diodes that do both red and infrared, and it’s a 23-minute treatment. And she would do it three times a week in the follicular. So people get six treatments, on average, three to four cycles. So that’s 18 plus treatments they got. Now you have this low level laser therapy. What was your interest and how are you doing this study? What are you looking to measure or understand in this? I don’t know, is it a big study or a pilot study? Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re up to and why you’re interested in this?

Zaher Merhi 

Sure. So first of all, we have an ad on Instagram. This is the Giga laser. This is Jessica sitting and this is the machine. We have a trial. If you can apply

Lorne Brown 

Can you put the picture up? I just want to let people know one thing because when we put things up on Instagram, it’s not always real life. It can’t go through close. So she would have to have her belly exposed and her ovaries and all that stuff. I show this because people will totally mimic a picture, but you got to get it. The skin has to be exposed.

Zaher Merhi 

Yeah. Yeah. Just for the picture, we didn’t want to. Yeah, I get it. Absolutely right. Now, first of all, there is a study from Japan. A very basic study showed that LLT helps women with low veterinary reserve get pregnant and outcome.

Lorne Brown 

That was Dr. Oshiro from Japan, that one?

Zaher Merhi 

I think so. Yeah.

Lorne Brown 

Okay.

Zaher Merhi 

That’s the only study we do. Now, what we did, and I’m very interested in stuff like this because again, not everything is … I really think we need to do something different than just IVF drugs and to improve egg quality. Now, we’re doing a trial. We got an IRB approval. IRB is an institutional review board. This is an ethical approval from a company that reviewed the application and we have consent and well designed. We have a full-time coordinator. If someone is interested, please apply. But what we’re doing is we’re doing patients, we’re looking at blood ultrasound AMH at baseline. Then patients are doing sessions of laser therapy, and then we’re following up those ovarian reserved markers over time. That’s one.

Lorne Brown 

Can you share what are the other markers? You said blood, but what are you measuring in blood?

Zaher Merhi 

AMH or antimalarial hormone, FSH, estradiol, LAH progesterone. We’re also doing an ultrasound to measure the number of follicles.

Lorne Brown 

Okay.

Zaher Merhi 

Now, a trial has multiple phases. Phase one is to look at the ovarian reserve markers over time before and after. Two is what we are going to look at … But that doesn’t tell you the quality because ovarian reserve markers are great, but doesn’t tell you the quality because there’s no test for egg quality. Then we’re going to look at another cohort of patients who are trying naturally. We’re going to do that for them and then we’re going to see if they get pregnant naturally. And finally, we’re going to see patients who did IVF and laser then did IVF to compare the quality of eggs before and after. Like you said, back to the egg and the mitochondria, the LLT works through mitochondria and activates the mitochondria, and then putting it on the ovary could help the egg to sharpen the knife better to cut it. By the way, there’s a study published in human reproduction.

What they did, they did egg collection. They sucked those eggs, those eggs. Remember at an earlier stage, the immature one, the 46 chromosome ones, and they split them in half, half control and half. They put laser on the egg, not only ovaries

For one minute. And they’ve shown that the eggs exposed made more embryos and better quality. So those are the things how it works. So we’re trying to find out if it is clinically significant or not? I don’t know the answer right now. It’s a trial in progress. And if you’re happy to qualify, but you need to be in the office to come to us, it’s in Manhattan.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. We should try and do a multicenter because we have a giga laser.

Zaher Merhi 

I would love that.

Lorne Brown 

I would want that. What are your different groups? A group that’s doing the giga laser, low level laser therapy. By the way, people are searching, also known as photobiomodulation. And in the public red light therapy, but just giving people the terminology, they’re doing it and trying naturally over a series of cycles. Is that a group? And there’s a group that you’re doing it with that are also going to go through IVF. I know when we looked at doing a study, you don’t necessarily for the early pilot studies need a control group because your control group is all your data of people that never done LLT that you put through IVF and stuff.

Zaher Merhi 

Well, we do. Exactly. So we’re going to match patients. We have patients who are irregular periods or very low reserves or no period at all. And we’re doing this. By the way, full disclosure, I want to thank Egalaser, but also we have a group who’s doing the Firefly LLT. It’s another machine that works differently. You have to hold it. And I want to thank Anisa, our manager, for helping us with that study. We’re looking at that as well. So I want to make sure I’m thanking both companies.

Lorne Brown 

What’s the frequency of treatment that you’re going to … Because we try to replicate, Amari did it three times a week for those two weeks for the follicular phase, not in the luteal phase in case they’re trying to conceive that cycle. So do you have it that they have to do it so many times? Is it just twice, once, three? What is your protocol going to be?

Zaher Merhi 

So for people who have a regular period, like you said, and three times in the follicular phase, then after ovulation, nothing. For patients who don’t have periods, we’re doing it twice a week continuously.

Lorne Brown 

Continuously. Gotcha. Okay.

Zaher Merhi 

Now the data laser is between 660 and 800 nano, the wavelength. The fire flies between 850 to 9450, something like that.

Lorne Brown 

What is it? The FiFly?

Zaher Merhi 

The Fifly is between 850 and 940.

Lorne Brown 

Okay. So it’s infrared. And the giga, it has the eight, 10 laser diodes infrared, and then it has the, it’s either 60 or 660 red LED. So it has both. That’s how you’re getting both in the giga. When you have it on, it’s doing program six. It’s 810 lasers and 660 LEDs at the same time. That’s what’s coming up.

Zaher Merhi 

Well, you’re the expert on those things. I’m not going to pretend like

Lorne Brown 

Now. I played around with it a little bit. Yeah. I played around with it. And I’d have to re-look at the … Because I have multiple systems as well. I could be totally wrong because I’m going by memory, but those are good. You’re in the wavelength that we know so far is good. It would be interesting when you’re collecting your data, collecting the weight of the woman, like the girth and BMI, because I would assume, because I don’t know, because nobody’s done the study, but if you’re overweight, it would be less photons making it to the ovaries if it’s the ovaries. And then skin color, very dark black to somebody very pale Irish. The skin, different amounts of photons get absorbed also based on that. So I think knowing the ethnicity, color of skin and body mass probably is important because we may find that thin people may need a lower dose, heavier people may need a higher dose.

Because again, just like everything, it becomes … You know this from your drugs, from the doctor, dose dependent, right? True. And then one day we’ll probably find out certain wavelengths for certain people, but we’re at the beginning of all this. So it’s really interesting that you’re doing the laser study. We’ll stay in touch. And I’m serious about if you need multiple-

Zaher Merhi 

I’m serious too. We will do that. But thank you so much. See, I learned a lot from you, honestly. These are the things that we need to tweak because studies, like you said, the color of skin, all that may play an important draw and

Lorne Brown 

It’s important

Zaher Merhi 

To look at different things.

Lorne Brown

One of the laser systems where I learned a lot, they trained me a lot. They’re manufacturing a laser, but it’s the Bioflex laser system, and they have it where you can program it based on age and color and all that stuff because they change the power that they’re putting out. Whether you’ve got very dark skin versus very fair skin, they would change the protocol a bit for them. So they’ve done that. And the founder of that was a vascular surgeon, Fred Kahn. He’s passed now. But when I do it in our practice, even with the giga, we have multiple systems, but the giga, but I always use what’s called the Oshiro technique where we do laser around the vertebral artery, carotid vagus nerve and static ganglia, because that’s what is a big part of his protocol to engage the presympathetic. To me, that would be the cool study to do that combined with the giga.

And I only confirm this. We have a few other areas. We go along the T9, T12 to get nerve innervation that goes to the ovaries off the spine and the uterus. We do stuff in the sacrum. We move the laser around a little bit, locations, not just the lower abdomen. And I talked to Dr. Nakamura, he’s in Japan. I had a translator talk to us, just so you guys know I talked to him directly. I had a translator, and this was pre- COVID, but he already had 10 years of data. He’s an acupuncturist working in an IVF center. They had shown that using this approach, using a laser around the abdomen, the sacrum, the OSHIRO technique, they had doubling blastosis rates in their data. So they would show they did three, and he found three to six months is what you kind of needed, how they did it.

As he said, after six months, he just stopped seeing that benefit. We’re not able to correct it. He said, “Of course there are people that come for nine, 10, 11 months. They don’t give up and they do get the baby.” But he says, in general, so there is no general average person, just to let you know, but in general average, he found if we did it diligently over six months, you would see it by then, right? Not necessarily after a month, but within that six-month window, you would see that change. They’re an interesting population because my understanding of Japan is that they won’t do donor eggs over there. I don’t know if that’s changed. So they’re always looking for creative ways to improve egg quality because donor eggs are not an option for them. And so that’s why the acupuncture, the nutrition, the low level laser therapy seems to be, they’re always looking for ways to do it because they don’t have, well, we’ll just do donor eggs.

)
It’s not an option. So now I like to see what they’re doing there. Stem cells. Let’s talk a little about stem cells. I don’t think that’s being done in Canada. Can you guys do that in the States or are you doing that outside of the states?

Zaher Merhi 

So there are multiple types of stem cells. First of all, the body, the stem cells come from the fat, bone marrow, umbilical cord, placenta, all those things. In the United States, we do from the fat of the patient. We do PRP plus adipose and then we put them on. We cannot manipulate them with any enzymes, but the fat has a lot of mesenchymal stem cells. So we do that here. In the Bahamas, we do umbilical cord stem cells and exosomes. The umbilical cord stem cells come from newborn babies, from companies in the United States who remove the cord blood from newborn babies by C-section. They extract the stem cells, purify them, they follow FDA regulations and they sell them to a lot of doctors. We ship them to The Bahamas because they’re not FDA approved yet. There will never be. I don’t know if anybody in the FDA cares, but that’s what we do.

Now some people say, “I don’t want stem cells from newborn babies.” That’s easy. What companies are doing now to solve that problem, they’re extracting the exosomes from those stem cells, which are bubbles within those, released by those stem cells without the DNA. So those are super, super effective and they are the hottest thing now. Also, we offer those. So the exosomes and umbilically cord stem cells we offer in the Bahamas here, and we can do anything there. We can also do the PRP and the added post PRP and we have ethical approval. Here we do PRP and adipose stem cells with a PRP.

Lorne Brown 

This is awesome. So awesome as I’m just learning lots and we got to have you back to discuss more.

Zaher Merhi 

I get chocolate twice.

Lorne Brown 

Well, I usually just do the chocolate once because then it seems too much.People are like, what? Unless you really want the chocolate twice, it’s kind of like, all right, thanks for the thank you, but hey. Somebody sends you a thank you card and then you send them a thank you card back for the thank you card.

Zaher Merhi 

Sometimes- Listen, I’m very greedy

Lorne Brown 

It takes away from the effect. I enjoy doing it. Now it’s not a surprise for you, but I don’t usually tell them. Somebody on my team gets your address and they’re like, “Why?” And then all of a sudden they get a box in the mail saying, “Hey, thanks.” So

Zaher Merhi 

I spoiled my own surprise already.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. So you’ll get it once. If you’re on twice, I’ll have to get creative and think of what we’ll do for a second time. Hey, if you’re on twice, you can send me chocolate. Oh God, that’s a good one. That’s funny. All right. So doctor Merhi, where do they find you? What is your website? Instagram channel Because if people want to ask questions, have consults with you, I’m sure they want to reach out to you after this episode. How do they find you?

Zaher Merhi 

Please don’t find me. I don’t want more patients. Sorry. But if you have any questions, you can go to rejuvenatingfertility.com or you can go to my Instagram. It’s dr_merhi, M-E-R-H-I. So yeah.

Lorne Brown 

We’ll put that in the show notes too. Everybody, that’s in the show notes. You and I will keep in touch on the low-level laser therapy. We probably have a follow-up on ozone and stem cell therapy. It’s really cool to hear more about this PRP. Patients are asking about it a lot. Low level laser therapy. I mean, we see people coming from all over to our clinic to learn about it and experience it. Glad that you’re doing a study on it, so I’m curious how that goes. And I really enjoyed the idea of mini IVF. So I think that’s another conversation. I think I want to go into more detail and learn about this. And I want to go look at some of the research because I haven’t done this just to ask you questions about this or that because as I said, there’s difference opinions out there of other IVF clinics, but you’ve given an interesting argument, I would say, of why you may want to do a low medical, low drug approach.

So thank you for giving me something to think about.

Zaher Merhi

Thank you so much. It really is a pleasure. I enjoyed meeting you as well as a person I love. Yeah.

Lorne Brown 

That was nice. Thank you.

Zaher Merhi

My pleasure.

Speaker 3 

All right. 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.