Let’s talk about sex! Improving Sexual Performance and Health for Women and Men with Dr. Amy Killen on Shades of Health Podcast

One of my good friends, Dr. Amy Killen, is my latest guest on Shades of Health. If you’re interested in having a healthy sex life and want to know the latest on regenerative sexual medicine – this episode is for you! Amy is the medical director of BioRestoration Medical in Draper, Utah as well as an anti-aging physician at Docere Medical in Park City, Utah. She is fellowship trained in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine through the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine with extensive training in the areas of aesthetics, platelet rich plasma (PRP), stem cells, hair restoration, bio-identical hormones, nutrition, fitness, and sexual health.

 

In this episode we explore:

  • Correlation between sexual health and healthspan (3:27)
  • Causes of sexual dysfunction (8:53)
  • Types of orgasms for women and masterbation therapy (13:30) 
  • Rebuilding the structure inside the penis to support full erections (23:10)
  • Nocturnal erections and penis pumps (26:10)
  • Female “G Spot” injections to support urinary incontinence (50:52)
  • Which biologics to use for genital regeneration (53:03)
  • And more!

Connect with Dr. Killen:

Website: https://dramykillen.com/

Clinics where you can find Amy: https://www.biorestoration.com/

https://www.doceremedical.com/

Instagram: @dr.amybkillen

SHOWNOTES

:22 Introduction of Dr. Amy Killen

1:07 Dr. Killen’s career evolution from ER doctor to integrative & regenerative medicine doctor

3:27 Correlation between sexual health and healthspan. The definition of a healthy sex life and how regular sexual activity supports longevity

7:00 Components of good sexual health: hormones, circulatory, mental health, and blood sugar regulation. Not always adding things in but thinking about what needs to be remedied or cleared like toxins, traumas, psycho-emotional elements

8:53 40% of men and women over the age of 40 are having some form of sexual dysfunction; mostly erectile dysfunction (ED) for men and for women it can be a number of things including lack of arousal, low libido, pain, and orgasmic issues 

12:15 Masturbation as therapy for women

13:30 Types of orgasms for women and how the nervous system supports orgasmic activity

16:30 Elevating libido using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for women, especially testosterone. Healthy lab ranges for testosterone

19:04 Sources of erectile dysfunction (ED)

  • Porn and desensitization 
  • Smooth muscle cells losing elasticity
  • Vascular/blood flow issues (venous leaking)

23:10 Supporting full erections: Rebuilding the structure inside the penis with stem cells and exosomes. Using PDE5 inhibitors (i.e. Viagra)

24:30 Are there benefits to long term use of PDE5’s?

26:10 The importance of nocturnal erections

28:20 Penis pumps

30:28 Circulation/arterial blood flow issues and ED. Reducing plaque formation and inflammation. Lifestyle tips like AMPK activation and autophagy to support circulation

33:33 Nitric oxide to open blood vessels 

36:04 How certain mouthwashes and poor gut health can affect nitric oxide levels

38:44 Testosterone and estrogen imbalances in men and how they influence sexual performance

42:50 Regenerative medicine for sexual health. “You’re not a biohacker until you’ve put a needle in your penis”

43:44 ‘P’-shot injection story from Dr. Killen

44:46 Women’s injections = ‘O’ Shot

46:26 ‘P’ Shot 101 – injection sites and details

49:41 Effects of putting growth factors into genitals 

50:52 Female “G Spot” injections to support urinary incontinence (pelvic floor reinforcement)

53:03 Which biologics to use: Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP), stem cells, exosomes, amniotic fluid tissue

57:30 Benefits of GAINSWave post injection for ED

1:00:23 Whole body regeneration – Dr. Killen’s “full body stem cell makeover” and how to find her. A Taoist tie-in for regeneration

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Chris Shade:
Hello, welcome to the Shades of Health Podcast. And this is podcast number three, the big three like we’ve done so many of these, but we’ll give you the best people. And here I have one of my good friends, Dr. Amy Killen and Dr. Amy Killen specializes in sexual health and regenerative sexual health, and also skin as her secondary focus. And Amy started this life as a young child and went from being a young child into an ER doc over the course of 30 years, I guess. And was a highly stressed ER doc with three kids and a husband working off state. And had to reassess her life and start getting into functional regenerative, integrative medicine, however you want to call it. So picking up from there, how did you get your start into this field?

Dr. Amy Killen:
First of all, I just love you doing my intro and my life synopsis, that one little ball of truth, a little nugget of truth. So when I started thinking about leaving the emergency department, I was looking at, what would I do because I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I’m certified in it, et cetera. I became interested in this idea of trying to live longer and focused on integrative medicine and longevity medicine. So I actually went down a number of different educational paths through multiple different organizations. Over the course of the next couple of years, eventually went through AMMG’s program and I went through A4M’s program and I went through [inaudible 00:01:53]. I literally went through like four different programs for like several years because I liked little pieces of each one, but I didn’t feel like any of them were perfect.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Oh, totally. You’ve got Thierry Hertoghe’s approach to it. You got the AMMG guys, [inaudible 00:02:10] approach. I really like to blanket it all and take from all of them and then internalize it until you’ve got the Amy Killen show.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Exactly. I felt like I understood bits and pieces of what made sense and different things and I put it all together. So I did that over the course of a couple of years while I was still working in the ER, raising my little children. And then eventually I finally left the ER and just walked out one day. And it’s funny because my medical director was a good friend of mine and I’d already given notice to leave the job two prior times. And I’d come back. I said, “I quit.” And then two days later I was like, “No, I don’t quit. I actually don’t quit.” And then finally, the third time I finally quit and he was like, “Amy, I’ll see you in two days when you come back because you know you’re not quitting.” And I was like, [crosstalk 00:02:57]. But I did quit and I walked away completely, cold turkey finally. And that’s when I started doing more integrative medicine and such. And that time I wasn’t doing any stem cells or any of that yet, but I was doing hormones and that kind of stuff.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Right. So you started with hormones and the anti-ageing stuff that was going on. Was this like five years ago, five to 10?

Dr. Amy Killen:
This was eight-ish. I want to say seven or eight years ago.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. So stem cells, regenerative were just coming on the scene. Exosomes and peptides were nowhere to be seen yet. So you were just hopping into this. Now, one of the things that you’ll hear Amy say on various podcasts is that increasing sexual health increases overall wellness and health span, has aspects of it that lead to longevity. So I imagine that there’s correlations between sexual health and markers of aging?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, absolutely. So we know that sexual health is important in a number of different things, from physical health to mental, emotional health. We know that people who have an active, healthy sex life, which is usually defined as having sex one to two times a week, depending on what study you’re looking and what age you are. But we know those people tend to have less anxiety and depression. So the mental and emotional benefits are really important, better self-confidence. The cognitive benefits are actually being looked at the last couple of years. The older people who are having sex regularly have less cognitive decline than those who are not. Their hippocampuses are actually healthier and more robust, which I think is so fascinating.

Dr. Amy Killen:
And then of course there are a number of different cardiovascular benefits, lower blood pressure, less cardiovascular mortality. Even longer telomeres, at least in women seem to be associated with an active sex life at least associated. Maybe not caused by, but there’s some association.

Dr. Chris Shade:
There’s a lot of bi-directional activity there. If we just take a high blood pressure, high blood pressure, once it gets high, it’s going to give you erectile dysfunction. And how did you get high blood pressure? During the middle of COVID, I was on hormones, but I couldn’t see my doctors, everything was wrong and I ran out of aromatase inhibitor. And something was going on that I had real high estrogen. Now, high estrogen is going to bring one thing down, but it brought my blood pressure really, really high. And as soon as I got on some Anastrozole boom, it came right back down. So there’s a lot of bi-directional stuff. And is it the brain feeding the organs and then you want to have sex? Is it the organs feeding back to the brain? Or are they hitting from both directions?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. I think we don’t know for sure, because these studies, a lot of them are just association studies. But the biggest ones I know of are some of the cardiovascular studies that went on for 10 years or so. And they studied 1,000s of men, mostly in those, I think the ones I’ve seen. But all they did was do questionnaires every so often. Like how often are you having sex? And then they correlated that to cardiovascular disease and overall mortality. But in that 10-year period, the men who were having regular amounts of sex, they had 50% mortality compared to those who were not. But again, you’re totally right. The ones who were not having sex, why weren’t they? Were they not physically fit enough? Were they in a bad relationship, which is also going to feed back into affect longevity as well. Did they have no social support? There are so many things that go into this that we can’t necessarily say, “Go out and have a lot of sex, you’re going to live forever.” It really isn’t.

Dr. Chris Shade:
You could try, the doctor said.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Well, you could certainly give it a shot, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. But as we go through this whole discussion, we’ll see this whole context for being able to have a really strong sex life that’s really good for you. And the context has hormonal aspects. It’s going to have circulatory aspects. It’s going to have blood sugar control aspects. And it’s going to have a big cycle of emotional and regenerative. And we tend to think about these things that we can put in, the testosterone and the stem cells. But we don’t often think, “I’m a proponent of what you’re going to take away.” So you’ve got to take away toxins. And you and I have been working on programs for before stem cells and after stem cells. And we know there’s things you got to take away. And a lot of them are psycho-emotional things that you have to take away or that you have to come to terms with. So because we have a biohackery performance following, there’s two sections to this.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Getting you to the normal, quote healthy sexual activity, the one to two times a week. And then the more advanced sexual into the three to 10, where you’re a little bit more go on the whole thing. And the biohackers, they want to get everything up to that level. And I heard you say in one of your podcasts that about 50% of the guys that come to you are preventative and optimizers. I know Ben Greenfield’s been up there. I know a lot of the main people, the functional and biohacker people have been up to see you. So a lot of that is to optimize. So when we talk about these things, there’s getting it back to working and then there’s getting it up to the top.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yes, that’s exactly right.

Dr. Chris Shade:
There we go. So one of the things I also heard you say is 40% of men and women over the age of 40 are having some degree of sexual dysfunction. So it’s a erectile dysfunction in men and in women, it’s a combination of things, some of which are actually erectile. Can you speak to that?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. And the women, the sexual dysfunction can be… Obviously in men can be several things too, but it’s almost always ED. In women, it can be anything from low libido, lack of interest in sex. It can also be lack of arousal so difficulty becoming aroused. It can be pain, or it can be an orgasmic problem, or it can become any combination of those things. But those are the four main categories that we think about with sexual dysfunction in women.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. So let’s talk about those. And then we’ll go to men because when we talk about erectile dysfunction, how did they get their erectile dysfunction? And let’s go through the main sources and how we mitigate those things. But in women, a lot of it is what I call psycho-emotional, that their head space isn’t right.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. I always tell female patients that it’s almost more important how your partner treated you at breakfast that day. Whether the trash was taken out that morning and the bed was made that morning than it is. That’s almost the most important thing as far as if you’re ready for sex later in the day. There’s this long lead time for women as far as what’s going on in their head and how they’re feeling. And that really does affect whether they’re going to want to have sex later in a way that I don’t see as much in men. Certainly stress and things are important in men, but it’s not the same as women.

Dr. Amy Killen:
And obviously there’s all kinds of things that play into it, self-image and body image issues, I think are huge for women. There’s such expectation of perfection that we see, I think more in women than in men that I think also plays a huge role in that as well.

Dr. Chris Shade:
And then there can be a lot of guilt issues and in the guilt issues, I’ll make two bits. So this religious, cultural guilt, like only for procreation. And then there’s guilt issues around previous traumas, where if you like it now, you might’ve liked it then. And a lot of people don’t even know that, that is playing in the background.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of sexual trauma. And I’m not a sex therapist or a psychologist or a psychiatrist, so I don’t deal with that specifically. But we talk about it a little bit certainly. And the sexual trauma is really important and I think it’s not talked about enough. But I do see a lot of the religious trauma, if you will. I live in Utah, I was raised-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Oh, talk about religious trauma.

Dr. Amy Killen:
I was raised in a really conservative small town in Texas, very, very Christian, more Baptist churches than restaurants kind of thing. So I’m familiar with the religious trauma that can go into that as well.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So in both of those, it seems that there’s a reclaiming of your right to your sexuality. How much do you get into that? Or how much do you help them a little bit with that?

Dr. Amy Killen:
I at least will start to ask questions. I’ve had women in their 50s that have come to see me who come in thinking that they want a procedure, for instance. They’re having some sexual problem, can you give me a shot and help me? And I’ll ask them basic questions. And I remember one patient I was talking to her and it turns out she wasn’t having orgasms. And we started going through a basic history and it turns out that she has never masturbated. She’s never looked at herself. She’s never done any self-exploration because she was told it was bad. And because of that, she has this really bad sex life with her… Her husband’s not happy, she’s not happy. But she also never questioned the idea that it was something that she should be doing.

Dr. Amy Killen:
And I had a pretty open discussion with her and I said, “Listen, you don’t need a shot. You need to go home and you need to start exploring and you need to convince yourself that it’s good for you and good for your marriage. And that if you don’t do these things, then you may not ever have an orgasm.”

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. And the reality is what she’s got to do is go and find the nerve bundles and stimulate them till the nervous system does the orgasm. And that gets to another aspect of the trauma is, I’m not having the right orgasm. So there’s this lost discussion about types of orgasm, which I count three majors. The cervical being the one that everybody thinks of, penile entrance and then boom, that’s how it happens. And most guys don’t give you a lot of time to find that one. But then the G-spot and the clitoris and you may have larger innervation to any one of those different areas, more capacity to have orgasm in one versus the other area or two out of the three. And people are stuck thinking that there’s one. So do you encourage them to go and find their own way?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of women believe that they’re supposed to be having orgasms just with regular old penetrative sex and nothing else. And that’s because the porn industry has not helped us in that regard. And neither did Freud either, by the way, who told us that the vaginal orgasms were the more mature orgasms. And that clitoral orgasms were immature and essentially that’s what kids have.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So the clits are for kids.

Dr. Amy Killen:
So Freud was not helping us at all.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Freud did not a lot of things.

Dr. Amy Killen:
But 75% of women, depending on what the numbers you look at, don’t have orgasms just with regular penetrative sex. (silence) The G-spot may or may not be a separate spot. It may just be the back of the clitoris. But just telling people like, “It’s okay if you have one kind, as long as it feels good or you could have all kinds.” It doesn’t really matter.

Dr. Chris Shade:
And really once you get one of them going, it’ll bleed into the rest because the nervous system will start connecting. Anybody who’s doing work on neuropathy or trying to get nervous skeletal stuff lined up. If you’re using muscle stimulation on a muscle, the more the nerves connect up to the brain and the brain’s able to come back and bring that all together. So there’s an entrance to the polyorgasmia that’s just finding where’s the point that really works for you and being really happy with that.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, exactly. And I feel like there shouldn’t be an expectation that you have to do it a certain way. You do it the way it feels good for you to do it and teach your partner what that is. And you can always expand your horizons and learn new things, but there’s no have to, or should and it’s really about what works best for you.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So then in any of these cases, say we’re talking about a trauma or we’re talking about, “Oh, I always felt bad because I wasn’t having the right orgasm.” There’s a bar to get over, and it seems that we can lower the bar with elevating the hormones. And the one that elevates the libido the most is testosterone. And I’ve seen women use pretty elevated doses of testosterone, at least twice what they would normally get. To lower their barriers and increase their libido to which that trauma goes into the background. The threshold hit the nerve bundles, lowers and everything turns on. And all of a sudden they reclaim their sexuality. Do you use hormone replacement that way?

Dr. Amy Killen:
I absolutely use hormone replacement and I agree testosterone in women is really important. And I also agree that generally women’s testosterone levels, the effective dose in women is going to be higher than you’d think. And I use the actual lab reference range for measuring all hormones. However, with women, usually if they’re on testosterone, we’re going to have numbers in the lab reference rates for testosterone that are going to be two times or so normal. Which is different than with… With men, I try to keep them pretty close in the range just towards the top.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Absolutely. You don’t go to 2,000 with men, but with women, say I look at Access and maybe it goes to 80 or 90. But if you’re trying to really wake them up, there’s no problem running them at 200.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. So that’s true. And with women I certainly look at the numbers, but I look more at symptoms. If you’re on testosterone, are you having a lot of acne? Are you having clitoromegaly? Are you having any aggression? Anything like that obviously we’ll turn it back and dose it down. But if you’re not and you feel good, then having testosterone that is twice normal is okay if you’re taking it for a replacement purpose. And that’s been shown in studies to be the truth as well. It’s not just me wielding a random-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. I’ve definitely seen it in practice and sometimes keeping them up pretty high to reset everything. And then they can come down a little bit and have all of the benefits that they had before, but at a lower level now. They may not have those symptoms, but getting over these psycho-emotional issues, that can really put you over the top. Now you may go and beat your husband in the process, but once you get over that, you’re golden. So let’s talk about men and sources of erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Okay. So in men, there are a couple different sources, a couple meaning four or five. Certainly there is the psychological, psychosomatic ED which I see more in younger men than I do in older men. Obviously there’s always a psychological component, that always plays into it. But if it’s purely psychological, that tends to be in younger men.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah, where you’re comparing yourself against others. You’re worrying about how you stack up in size or performance or endurance and freaking out a little bit about it.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Or if you’re watching too much porn and there are just needs… I do see younger men who are, whether there’s an addiction or not, there’s a lot of questions about whether you can be able to do it, but it doesn’t really matter. If you’re watching it too much and you become desensitized, then that actually can cause ED as well in younger men.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Is that a threshold thing now, your threshold to get excited is you’re used to seeing five women naked right in front of you. Okay. All right. So that’s a desensitization thing.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. It’s just a dopamine thing. It’s just like with cocaine, you need more and more and more cocaine to get the same response, same thing with the sexual stimuli. So if you’re watching women and donkeys or something-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Well, I wasn’t going to go there, but when you need beastiality, you’ve probably gone too far.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Well, I’ll draw a picture of when you’ve gone too far. That’s the level.

Dr. Chris Shade:
It’s the Rorchach test. Well, that’s definitely a donkey and a woman.

Dr. Amy Killen:
But yeah, that could definitely cause ED. But as far as non-psychological problem, the most common one by far is vascular. So it’s a blood flow problem. And that can either be, there’s not enough blood coming in or there’s too much blood going out. So there’s actually two different things going on there. The most common actually is the too much blood coming out. So that’s called venous leak or CVOD, which is the other name for it.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Oh, whereas people usually talk about PDE5 inhibitors sildenafil, vardenafil, tadalafil and that’s to increase blood going in.

Dr. Amy Killen:
It is, but it also affects blood going out. So those affect both ways.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Talk more about the venous leak.

Dr. Amy Killen:
It’s actually super interesting. So I wish I could draw you a picture because it’s so interesting. So you have the penis and on the outside of the penis, but under the skin, you have the veins. And the veins are where the blood is going to be coming out of. So when you have an erection, you have these smooth muscle cells inside the corpus cavernosum. So the tubes that fill with blood, there’s all these smooth muscle cells in there.

Dr. Chris Shade:
And that’s where the blood’s coming in?

Dr. Amy Killen:
The blood comes in the arteries and when the blood gets there, the cells fill up with blood and they expand. And you get this expansion. That expansion puts pressure on the veins that are on the outside of the penis, because they’re up against this wall.

Dr. Chris Shade:
That squeezes them down so they don’t squeeze so much.

Dr. Amy Killen:
So the veins squeeze down because you’ve got this erection now and the veins squeeze down and that’s what keeps the erection there for a while. Because-

Dr. Chris Shade:
So the harder you get the harder you stay?

Dr. Amy Killen:
The harder you get the harder you stay. You still have to have the stimulus to keep the blood going in. So essentially you have to have those veins get clamped off by the smooth muscle cells, enlarging in order to maintain the erection. And if you don’t, if you get a partial erection, the cells in the penis don’t fully expand for a lot of reasons, which we could talk about. But if that happens, then the veins never get clamped off. They’re still out here and they’re still open. And the blood just goes back. The blood goes in, the blood goes out. The blood goes in, the blood goes out. So you have the situation where you can’t maintain an erection.

Dr. Chris Shade:
You can’t keep it in. Is that why people use the rings?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. You can use rings for that. So that’s called venous leak. That’s a layman’s term, but it’s not a vein problem. It’s actually a smooth muscle cell problem. The cells in the penis for whatever reason, there’s several different reasons, but they’re not as elastic anymore. So as we get older whether it’s because you have a lot of inflammation or because you have low testosterone over time, which can cause this as well. All of the cells in the penis, those smooth muscle cells, a lot of them can get replaced by either fat or fibrous tissue. So when that happens, even if 15% of their cells get replaced, all of a sudden they’re less expansive and you can’t reach full erection-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Is one of the places where the stem cells and exosomes, the regenerative stuff really works?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yes.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So it’s not just opening up the vasculature in, it’s rebuilding the vasculature restriction cells.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. It’s actually rebuilding the structure inside the penis that you need to have these really elastic cells that you have to have them be elastic. And if they’re not elastic, then you can’t have an erection. So that’s actually the most common cause of ED, is just the smooth muscle cells in the penis are no longer as elastic as they should be. That’s where everything could help with that. The PDE5 actually can also work on the level of those cells and make them more elastic and keep them that way. Which is what-

Dr. Chris Shade:
So long-term use, they can actually do something for you?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. There are some indications that looks like actually that using PDE5s preventatively long-term could be something that’s helpful for ED to try to help prevent ED.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. So that was going to be one of my questions later. Once we get into the hormones, the regenerative stuff, is there still a place for the PDE5 inhibitors? And again, that’s sildenafil, which is Viagra, tadalafil which is maybe Levitra and vardenafil I guess is Cialis. So it’s those main ones. And what I’ve seen over time is this movement away from these, “Hey, here’s the blue pill.” You go half blind and you have priapism. And to these little doses, five milligrams to 10 milligrams a couple of times a week. I have friends of mine who have troches of that and some of that’s related to BHP. But one friend of mine has troches of oxytocin and tadalafil. And small doses every day keep them more loving and more open and more toned.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. There’s early research on it. There’s not a lot on it so far, but we know from lung studies and some of the other studies that there’s probably a role for prevention with the PDE5s in preventing ED. As far as keeping the epithelial cells healthy, the blood vessel cells healthy, keeping the actual smooth muscle cells healthy. So I don’t think that using that in a small dose, like five milligrams of Cialis every day or every other day is a bad idea. If you’re not having reliable, nocturnal erections, think about getting on the Cialis or similar every day. Think about using a penis pump, anything. Because in order to keep those smooth muscle cells healthy, the ones I just talked about. You have to get blood and oxygen to the penis often.

Dr. Amy Killen:
And the penis actually exists in this relatively low blood flow, low oxygen state most of the time. And it’s one of the parts of the body that even if you go for a very brisk jog and you’re lifting weights and you’re doing all these-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Nothing’s happening there.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Nothing’s happening.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Nothing’s going away from it.

Dr. Amy Killen:
A ton of blood flow, but your penis is not. So that’s where nocturnal erections come in. And the whole reason behind them is for your body to be able to get a ton of blood and oxygen into the penis so that it can make those cells, keep those cells healthy.

Dr. Chris Shade:
I remember Nick Delgado saying, “You should have like 15 erections at night.” And I’m like, “That seems crazy.” So I really got myself tuned up and I’m like, “Oh, it wakes you up.” And you’re like, “Oh, there we go.” And it does become this barometer then of, what’s my hormone balance and what’s my cardiovascular health. And that is completely the barometer. And when a guy goes into a knowledgeable functional medicine doctor goes into you, you’re asking, “How many erections do you have?” And they’re just thinking about sex, but you’re thinking about cardiovascular health. You’re thinking about AMPK and blood sugar control. You’re thinking about a whole bunch of different things at once.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, absolutely. So that’s important. And that’s why I tell people, you have to think about how to get the blood in there, whether you’re going to do penis pumping. Whether you’re going to do the PDE5s. If you don’t have the blood coming in frequently, it’s a use it or lose it situation. So if you don’t have the good oxygenation and blood flow, then you are going to kill off or at least modify those cells in there a lot faster. So that prevention is really important.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. And I’m glad you brought up the pumps because that’s like the old school way to do this. And usually I hear you talking about GAINSWave and the shockwave therapy. And I got it here in my questions, what about the old school pump? And when you look at their literature, their literature is all about exercise. You exercise everything else. You’ve got to exercise this. You’ve got to keep the blood coming in. You’ve got to do it a bunch of times a week and that’ll start everything going. But then the higher vacuum poles are going to give you those microtraumas to go along with the exosomes and stem cells, or even if you’re not doing regenerative. So they’ll even work without regenerative, right?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, absolutely. Your pumps can be really helpful with or without other therapies. I think it’s a good starting point. They’re kind of unwieldy, they’re kind of annoying. A lot of people will do it a couple of times, and they can’t really figure it out because there’s a little bit of a learning curve associated with using pumps. But they can be great. I give pumps to everyone after I do procedures on them, for sure. So whether that’s GAINSWave people or people who are getting stem cell injections or whatever. I have them go home and I try to have them pump for the first few months, several days a week, at least to try to keep that blood flow coming in.

Dr. Chris Shade:
It took me by surprise. I went to a place in Columbia with Mitch Abrams where they were doing expanded mesenchymal stem cells. And I did 100 million. I did IV, I did them in my disc. And of course I did a P-Shot because it was my 50th birthday. And was like, “This might sound funny, but do you have a pump?” And I’m like, “Really?” And it wasn’t until I got more into really listening to all the regenerative stuff that I’m like, “Oh, my God, how about that?”

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. It’s easy. It’s low tech and really anyone could do it. You don’t want to buy a super cheap one, but you can get one for $100 to 150 or so that’s pretty good quality.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. So we’re talking about cardiovascular issues, blood flow issues. So we’ll do that then we’ll talk about hormones, because we’re talking about male issues. But circulation is a big, big thing for you. So on one side, I know you talk about diet, nitrate rich stuff. But what about other issues let’s say both of those, the diet for opening it up. But some of the issues that might be related to diet like too much sugar and not getting enough blood flow because of inflammatory issues.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. So the second cause of vascular ED is going to be arterial blood flow issues, like you said. Essentially there’s not enough blood coming in through the arteries because the artery is inflamed, is narrowed. You’ve got atherosclerosis, plaque, et cetera. So anything that’s going to reduce plaque formation first can be something that you want to think about obviously. So things that are going to decrease inflammation include avoiding sugar, avoiding smoking, getting control of your blood pressure, not being super overweight, making sure that you’re active, that you’re exercising. All the things we know about to be healthy that are risk factors for atherosclerosis. We want to think about those as also being risk factors for erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Even things like intermittent fasting. I’m a big AMPK activation fanatic, and it just freaking changed my life. But one of the things I noticed is that when I’m more AMPK activated and AMPK is activated when you carb restrict, when you fast, when you exercise, when you keto diet. I noticed that I have better blood flow and better urinary flow versus sometimes after I do stem cells or exosomes, I’ll go, what’s called mTOR forward. And I’ll take more carbs and I’ll eat more regularly to try to build more muscle mass because at this age, there’s clearing out, there’s building back up. But when I’m in that mTOR forward state I just feel like things get messier.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, I haven’t really looked actually, but I haven’t seen a lot of research specifically looking at AMPK and changing that specifically with ED and such. But it’d be interesting to look at.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Because it is then removing fatty deposits. It’s tightening tissues up, it’s removing some of the plaques and all that deposition of goop goes away. And you regenerate old proteins and bad cells, you have autophagy. So think of some of those cells that you’re talking about that are smooth muscle are turning into fibrotic tissue. It’s AMPK activation and autophagy that’s going to break some of that back down.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. It makes sense. If you can get rid of some of the senolytic cells or you can remove anything that’s causing extra inflammation in there is going to help with ED. So I would think that AMPK activation and senolytics and anything in that realm would be helpful. But I just haven’t seen the study, but I bet it is helpful.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Well, maybe we’ll study it ourselves.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, we should.

Dr. Chris Shade:
We have AMPK activators and you’ve got all the other stuff so let’s do this. What about nitrates?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. So I’m also a big fan of nitric oxide. If you’ve heard any of my podcasts, I talk it about it all the time. But nitric oxide is the main chemical messenger that tells your blood vessels to vasodilate, to open up. It is the signal that tells you to have an erection and to maintain an erection. So as we get older, after our 20s, our nitric oxide levels go down. And by the time you’re 40, they’re about half what they were when you were 20. And then of course, that just gets worse and worse as you get older. And because a lot of nitric oxide is made within your blood vessel walls, within the endothelial tissues. And because those tissues become dysfunctional with age, it can be difficult to make your own nitric oxide as you get older within your blood vessels. It’s not impossible, but it can be a little harder than when you were 20 years old.

Dr. Amy Killen:
So some things to do, obviously exercise, great for everything, including making nitric oxide, sunshine and red light therapy can both be effective for increasing nitric oxide, which is-

Dr. Chris Shade:
The whole body red light therapy. And then if you have a pump red light around that.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. Actually I’ve seen some Chinese pumps with red light, because I was going to invent that. I was like, “I should make a pump with red light-”

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yes, me too [crosstalk 00:34:56].

Dr. Amy Killen:
Because I was like, “Yeah, we’ve got to have the red light and the pumping. I want both.”

Dr. Chris Shade:
Exactly, yeah. So you can take the [inaudible 00:35:08] wrapping around. There’s a bunch of… You can get arrays that are flexible now, so you can wrap them around the pump and then you’ve got both things going on at once.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, exactly. Everyone’s listening at home, taking notes, and making their own red light therapy. Just give us credit, whenever you go out and make a million dollars from it.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. There’s only so many things that I can invent and follow, so I don’t care. Let other people do it.

Dr. Amy Killen:
So that’s one way you can do it. Even things like PEMF or hyperbaric oxygen, all of those things, they can help with that as well. And then of course eating foods that are high in nitrates are going to be helpful. So green leafy vegetables, beets, chocolate, citrus, when eaten in someone who’s avoiding antiseptic mouthwash.

Dr. Chris Shade:
That’s what I was going to say. Why does Listerine give you erectile dysfunction?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, exactly. So as you know, Listerine and anything like that, is going to kill the healthy bacteria in your mouth that are needed to reduce the nitrate into nitrite, which is the first step in making nitric oxide. And we actually can’t make nitric oxide from food without those bacteria. So if you kill them off because of your Listerine habit, then you’re going to have a lot of problems, including ED. But also high blood pressure and everything else that you get when you have higher nitric oxide levels.

Dr. Chris Shade:
When I saw you in London Health Optimisation Summit, you said that there was somebody working on an oral probiotic for nitrate reducers.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. I haven’t talked to him recently, but he was working on that. I’ve heard several people who are working on oral probiotics. I just haven’t seen a lot of them come to market yet.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. So just for clarity, if people have missed this, in the past, there’s healthy bacteria in your mouth called nitrate reducers that take nitrate to nitrite. And then you absorb that and you can turn nitrite into nitric oxide. So there’s papers on cardiovascular dysfunction among people who use too much Listerine and other antiseptic mouthwashes.

Dr. Amy Killen:
But to add to that, and I know you probably know this part too, but the going from nitrite to nitric oxide actually happens in your stomach. And it’s the stomach acid that does that. So in people who are taking proton-pump inhibitors like-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Oh, I forgot about that.

Dr. Amy Killen:
The Omeprazoles and any of those strong PPIs and to a lesser degree, the H2 blockers like Famotidine and such. Those people also can’t make nitric oxide. And in fact, if you remember, there’s been some pretty big reports about PPIs, not causing ED because no one looked at that. But PPIs causing increased cardiovascular disease risk and high blood pressure and all of these things. And I’m sure that someone made the connection, but those people are not able to make their own nitric oxide because essentially you’ve gotten rid of their stomach acid. So the PPIs are bad news. And if you’re on them, talk to your doctor. They’re bad news long-term, they’re fine for short-term.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Will erectile dysfunction proceed larger cardiovascular issues?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Usually it does because the blood vessels that go to the penis are smaller than the ones that go to the heart or the brain or places like that. So usually ED is an early warning sign of other things to come.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So men, hormones, and ED, everybody thinks testosterone, but what else?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Well, testosterone is important for sure. Having levels that are at least in the moderate to high range is going to be important. And low levels of testosterone can cause low interest in sex. Low libido is a very common symptom of low testosterone. Certainly low T can also cause ED acutely. And then as I mentioned before, low testosterone over time actually causes those smooth muscle cells in your penis to become fibrous or fatty. So you are more prone to having chronic ED as well. So that is a problem. But certainly other hormones too.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. Estrogen seems to be the big one and in all the testosterone replacement craze. There was a lot of people feeling good and then crashing and gaining all the weight back and just being miserable because the set points between testing esters are off. So they ended up making a ton of estrogen.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. Too much estrogen or too little estrogen, actually both can cause ED. So you have to be in the sweet spot. And obviously the way that you metabolize estrogen is going to be different for everyone. How much aromatase you have, how much testosterone is being turned into estrogen, how quickly the estrogen is being metabolized. It’s going to vary depending on your genetics so it’s hard to say. Most people don’t need Arimidex and things like that to maintain estrogen levels. But some do, because estrogen goes up and they become symptomatic. They either get ED or they get gynecomastia, breast tissue swelling, or gain weight or things like that. So it’s hard to say it, there’s no blanket number.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. There seems to be a ton of things driving aromatase activation these days. We have an epidemic of mold toxicity once we got… This started really a long time ago once we started putting insulation into all of our houses and being conscious about energy savings, we unfortunately stopped houses from breathing. So you’ve got a lot of mold. So most of the mold people like Jill Carnahan have said mold will way up regulate aromatase, and then there’s all these plastics. And maybe even if your estrogen is okay, you have somebody xenoestrogens that you’re hypersensitive to what your estrogen levels are. And that’s the only thing you can really measure. So you start driving down estrogen to get yourself symptomatically in the right place. Because that’s just one of many things affecting the estrogen receptors.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. That’s a good point. I think that the things that we’re not always measuring or not often measuring is all of these toxins, if you will, that are coming in. But the estrogens that are coming from the plastics or the perfumes or the various things that we just don’t think about because they’ve been a part of our lives for so long. But we know that men, now their testosterone levels on average are significantly lower than they were just 50 years ago. So much so that Labcorp had to adjust their reference range. A few years ago, they had to-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Do you know what the old ranges versus the new ranges are?

Dr. Amy Killen:
I don’t remember off the top of my head, but the low end of the range now, I think it’s in the mid 200s and it was at least mid 300s or 400s or so. But because so many men have so much lower testosterone, they had to move down that normal range so that most of us could still be in that normal range, which is crazy.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. So hormones are a huge issue. All right. So we’re getting our cardiovascular going. We’re making sure we have enough nitrate. We’re getting our brain space in the right place. We’re getting our hormones all dialed in, and that’ll help the younger guys and your 30. All right, I’ve got all that squared away. I’m all good. Now as we get into our upper 40s into the 50s, for sure, and absolutely the 60s, now we might need some regenerative medicine and we might need the needle. Which brings us to really the funnest part of this is the interventional stuff.

Dr. Amy Killen:
It is fun, I think.

Dr. Chris Shade:
I gave you flack in London because you had this picture of this needle that was like a five gauge needle. It was like for injecting juice into a turkey, and you had it next to a cartoon of a penis. And I was just like, “Oh, my God, lady. You’re going to scare everybody away from this.” Before we go into that, there’s the one caveat biohackers like to say, “You’re not a biohacker until you’ve put a needle in your penis.” So that’s just to open up this whole dialogue.

Dr. Amy Killen:
I love that. And before you ask me questions, I have to tell you a really funny story that you’re going to love. So last year I was teaching a group of new doctors how to do a P-Shot injection. So we’re at a big conference center in a hotel. And I’m at the front of the room and I’m holding this large penis prosthetic. And it’s a very real-looking, flesh-colored prosthetic. And I’m holding it in one hand and I have my syringe and my needle on the other hand, and I’m about to do this objection. I’m standing at the front of the room. And then this random person walks in the room from the back corner. This guy, and he looks at me and he looks around the room for a second and stands there for a second. And then he leaves. Well, it turns out he came into the wrong room and he was trying to go into the religious studies group that was happening next door.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Bible study one, it’s like, “They’re injecting penises in here.”

Dr. Amy Killen:
It was amazing, we broke down laughing. Anyway, continue. Am I talking?

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. So let’s talk about the types of injections, where they’re going to go, and then what we’re going to inject in. So there’s the women’s injections, the guy’s injections. Start on either side.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. So for the women, I’m usually injecting into the clitoris itself as well as into the anterior vaginal wall. So the G-spot area or in the area around the G-spot. There’s no real wrong place to inject. Honestly, I can inject the labia. I can inject the posterior vaginal wall. I can inject around the anus. I can inject anywhere because I’m using a very small needle. Topical numbing cream is usually sufficient for that. And then I can put whatever I’m putting in the biologics of various degrees in there.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So what is it called when you do the G-spot versus the clitoris? Don’t those have different names?

Dr. Amy Killen:
The G-spot is called the G-spot and the clitoris is called the clitoris.

Dr. Chris Shade:
No, the injection, like the O-Shot or the G-Shot.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Oh, sorry. So the O-Shot… Do you want me to get you a little picture of it? Classically, the O-Shot, which was made up by Charles Runels, we’re using PRP and that was two injections. One into the clitoris and one into the anterior vaginal wall.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Oh, okay. All right. So the O-Shot covered both?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Correct. Yeah. And that term has become kind of ubiquitous. I’ll use it when I describe my exosome injections, exosome O-Shot or stem cell O-Shot

Dr. Chris Shade:
Right. And then the P-Shot is into the penis.

Dr. Amy Killen:
P-Shot’s into the penis. Classically, the way Dr. Runels did it was four injections. So two on each, on the corpus cavernosum and then one into the corona, which is the base of the crown. However, the corpus cavernosum are the tubes that fill with blood, they actually connect, it’s actually one tube. So there’s actually not a reason why you couldn’t just do one injection if you have build up. So that’s a lot-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Do you usually do like a tourniquet or a ring on there, hold the blood flow in? And then do you do four injections?

Dr. Amy Killen:
So I used to do four injections and I did not use a tourniquet then, because I was thinking that if I’m doing four injections, I’m getting the biologic into all the different areas. It’s getting everywhere just from the injections. And I wasn’t using a tourniquet. But I do now use just a venous tourniquet that I keep on for about 20 minutes. I put it on beforehand. I only really just need to do one injection. And I’ll use a little bit higher volume of fluids so that it really has a chance to wrap around. And just leave it for 20 minutes and then I’ll just take off the tourniquet. And that seems to be at least a simpler way to do it. And less likely to bruise and things like that. But they’re both effective.

Dr. Chris Shade:
In Columbia, they use the ring of a bottom of a latex glove and flipped it around a couple of times. I thought was going to die. I was like, “I got 15 minutes.” I said, “Get that thing off.”

Dr. Amy Killen:
Oh, wow. That’s intense.

Dr. Chris Shade:
It was aggressive.

Dr. Amy Killen:
That’s aggressive, because you don’t want to cut off the arterial blood supply.

Dr. Chris Shade:
And I’m there with this army surgeon and we’re eating lunch and I’m just like, “Ah.” And the guy goes, “If you keep a tourniquet on an arm too long, you lose the arm.” And I’m like, “I’m going back.”

Dr. Amy Killen:
Exactly, that’s what I was thinking. I was like, “You don’t want to lose that thing.”

Dr. Chris Shade:
I was like, “Cut that thing off now.” So I’ve seen it a couple of different ways. But it’s funny because as a guy you’re like, “Oh my God. You’re going to go in with a needle there?” And then it’s like, “Jesus.” And that happens and it’s not so bad. And it’s funny, if you do it yourself, you get in little and then you hit the cavernosum and you pop through. And you’re going through that spongy firm tissue. And you’re like, “Oh, that’s not so bad.” So I would say you’re only really a biohacker when you do the injection yourself.

Dr. Amy Killen:
I’m not going to recommend anyone do their own injections, but you’re right. I do a lot of injections and I’ll do facial injections and scalp injections. I inject a lot of things. But the penis injections are actually the least painful of all the things that I do. I think that-

Dr. Chris Shade:
Exactly. So the guy, the first time it happens, you’re like, “Oh, my God.” Then you’re like, “That wasn’t that bad.”

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. People tend to get nervous, which makes sense. But it’s actually pretty easy. And we have topical numbing cream and a lot of my patients are actually asleep, so it doesn’t even matter. But if they’re awake, we have topical numbing cream that is easy to apply and that makes it really comfortable.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. So in the guys, we get one to four injections, usually two on each side of the corpus cavernosum maybe this crown injection. The women you’ve got the clitoral, you’ve got the G-spot maybe one of the other spaces. Now there’s two things to talk about. What are the biologics we’re putting in? And what’s going to happen inside? And what effects are we looking for and how do we get there? So let’s talk biologics… Well, let’s talk effects first. What’s it going to do? So we’re going to get growth factors, stem cells growth factors in there. What is it going to do?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. So one of the main things that you’re going to see is increase in blood flow and increase in angiogenesis. So increase in new blood vessel formation in both men and women, this is basically using stem cells or PRP or any of the biologics. You’re going to be triggering your own body cells that are already there to become more active in some ways. You’re going to increase the VEGF, which is the one that causes angiogenesis. For instance, in the vaginal tissues, you’re going to increase collagen production because you’re increasing the activity in some of those cells.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So you’re getting more fullness to the area, probably so pressure can translate to the nerves a little more?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. So you can get a little more fullness in the area of the G-spot for instance, which is helpful for pleasure. But it’s also helpful for people who have stress urinary incontinence. Because the urethra is right above, I guess, or anterior to the vaginal wall there. So a lot of women, especially if you’ve had babies will have problems with urine leakage, trampoline jumping, sneezing, coughing, laughing, et cetera.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Okay. So then that’ll help build the sphincter back up in there?

Dr. Amy Killen:
It just builds up the tissue underneath the urethra because you’re actually injecting the space right between the urethra and the vagina. There’s a space there, that’s what you’re actually injecting. So if you can build that space up a little bit and make it a little bit thicker then it helps to be able to keep the urine in better. It’s almost like adding pelvic floor support to your urethra.

Dr. Chris Shade:
That’s the space that fills with fluid [crosstalk 00:51:45]?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. It’s one of them. It’s a space that fills with fluid. It’s not the only thing, you can get fluid from other areas as well. But that space is the one that is important for just keeping that urethra up. So it can serve two functions in that capacity.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Okay. Yeah. My friend Carol Peterson, who’s working with us on the hormone deliveries that we’re developing is into short, high peaks of testosterone to get saturation into different tissues. And she says that the reason for the incontinence is testosterone that really drives the strength of the sphincter there and just the maturity of the whole urethra.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Interesting. I didn’t know that.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Because we’re making like sublinguals, we’re making these nanoemulsions of testosterone and she’s advocating for topical application of it to have a high dose into the urethra area. Because I think it feeds on testosterone because it’s related to the male side of development. I don’t remember the specifics in it.

Dr. Amy Killen:
That’s cool.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. So that was interesting. All right. So we’re going to regrow the vasculature. We’re going to build out some collagen in the women. Now, what are we going to put in there to do that? Generally there’s PRP, stem cells, and exosomes. Are those the three we’re working with?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. Those three and, or some kind of amniotic fluid or amniotic tissue product. The amniotic stuff is a little bit confusing, but essentially the taking of placental either tissue or amniotic fluid. And then that can have in it some amniotic growth factors, it can have in it exosomes or other extracellular vesicles. And it can have in it hyaluronic acid, which can also be helpful in that area. So any or all of those things have been used.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Okay. So how do you feel about relative strengths? Is it like stem’s the strongest than exosomes and PRP? And PRP I hear is used to help get the stems to stick into an area. How do you decide what to use?

Dr. Amy Killen:
So first of all, we don’t really know, that’s the first answer. Especially for women, because no one’s doing this research I shouldn’t say no one. There’s a lot less research in women than there is in men. And even that is not super robust. But I think the exosomes and the stem cells are probably fairly comparable, but we don’t know for sure. Just from the animal studies that I’ve seen with sexual function. At least in the male rat studies that have compared exosomes versus mesenchymal stem cells have found that they’re pretty much the same as far as for treating ED. But that’s-

Dr. Chris Shade:
There are a lot of people who do both. And I think I heard you say that 75% of your group does both. That’s how I did my whole body stuff. I first did wholesale expanded mesenchymal stem cells, and then I’ve been keeping it going with exosomes.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. I tend to with my patients because most people who come to see me are coming to get big procedures. I’ll do these full body stem cell makeovers or some variation of it. But oftentimes we’re already getting their stem cells for joint injections for other things. So I’m oftentimes using the patient’s own stem cells. And then I’m adding to that something like an exosome, an amnio product that’s a combination of that, with or without PRP. I think the PRP is going to be your lowest level on the ring. But I like to use it in a lot of patients because that’s what’s been studied more for some of these things. We have a little bit more data on it. And adding a little PRP in there is pretty easy to do. So a lot of times I’ll use all of those.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Rich plasma is extracted from the person, and then you’re taking external exosomes, maybe external stem cells. And what I was told is that the PRP is more for the local injections, because it helps with the stickiness to keep the stem cells in the area you’ve injected like when you’re doing a joint injection.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. Well, it depends on where you’re injecting, whether you need that or not. Some people will… Yes, it certainly can because once the PRP gets injected, it becomes a little bit more viscous and it’s not quite as liquidy. The platelets open up, they get activated and that actually causes it to become this gelatin stuff. So it makes sense that that would happen. But again, I haven’t seen it studied. It’s all theoretical as far as which one’s better or not. So a lot of times what I’ll do is I’ll just talk to my patient. For some people who are pretty healthy and they just want to come in and they just want to do some preventative stuff or improve performance. Then we’ll just inject some exosomes or we’ll just inject an exosome amniotic combination product. It doesn’t require them to get any other needles anywhere else or get their stem cells harvested. And they can be in and out in 20 minutes. And it can have really good effects.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Some people really want to use their own stem cells, and they’re super excited about stem cells because they’ve been hearing, “Stem cells, stem cells, stem cells. And they’re just like, “Oh, I want to use stem cells.” And those people, we’ll do a whole thing. And obviously I’m tracking results, but so far I haven’t been able to tell the difference as far as that goes, because every patient is so different coming in.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. And you’re getting good results with all the different treatments. And you have almost all of them follow up with either a GAINSWave or a pump.

Dr. Amy Killen:
I do. Yeah. Any man with ED, I try to get them into doing the GAINSWave or similar low-intensity shockwave therapy at least six treatments at home once they go back to see their own providers. I do think that there’s so much good evidence behind shockwave therapy for ED. At this point, I’m not sure why we’re not doing it everywhere all the time. It’s so low-risk. It’s so easy. And it’s really effective. So I love that.

Dr. Chris Shade:
And that’s mostly for creating microtraumas in the vasculature, corpus cavernosum et cetera, then stimulate regrowth.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah. The mechanism of action is actually similar to something like a PRP. You get this triggering of this biologic cascade that your body thinks it’s been injured. And you get this biologic cascade where you get increased VEGF, you get more angiogenesis. You get more blood vessel formation, you get stem cell recruitment. You get nitric oxide released locally with the shockwave therapy. So some of those things are pretty similar to what happens when you inject the PRP by itself. They definitely seem to work together. And there’s been at least one study that I know of that looked at stem cells with shockwave therapy that was by Elliot Lander. And even a single shockwave therapy session with the stem cell injections seemed to be even more beneficial. So I do one shockwave therapy session in the office and then I send them home to do the rest with their own doctor.

Dr. Chris Shade:
This whole creating microtraumas, this is a very, very old technique. The old Dallas sexual techniques and the different tantric ones. The Dallas are really the ones who did all this. They would beat on the… You have Mantak Chia. And he’ll be like, “You put it right there and you beat on it and then you stretch it.” And then you’re like, “Whoa, that’s a little aggressive.” But now it’s really high-tech now you run your GAINSWave over it. Or you do your pump. And that’s all the same thing, creating these little microtraumas. And now, instead of having a bunch of ginseng and [inaudible 00:59:40] now you’ve got stem cells and high-end stuff for the growth. Oh, and what they used to use for the old guys, they would use the ginseng and the deer antler extract. The deer antler expect has IGF-1, it has testosterone. It has all these big growth factors. So that was the old sexual regeneration for the Dallas guys.

Dr. Amy Killen:
That’s interesting. Yeah. We’re just building on what’s already been learned by other people years ago.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Yeah. We just have better tools now. We’ve got all these electronics and stuff. All right. So let’s see. Is there anything else that we have to cover here? I think we went through a lot of different things. But just finish with, if you’re doing a whole body stem regeneration, where are you going to go? What are you going to put in there? What do you do?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, so we have, what’s called the full body stem-cell makeover. Me and my partner, Dr. Harry Adelson, do these together. And we have anesthesia so patient’s asleep, which is very nice for the patient and for us, but especially for them. So Dr. Adelson will do injections, basically at every major joint, all down the neck and back epidurals, shoulders, hips, knees, ankles, all that joints. And using stem cells from the patient, as well as exosomes, amnio and those things. And then I will do scalp injections, facial injections, facial and neck microneedling, with topical application of all the biologics and then the sexual injections. And then the shockwave therapy for men and for women, I do a vaginal laser option as well.

Dr. Chris Shade:
And I like doing all the joints and it sounds, it’s like, “Oh, good. My joints will all feel better.” But back to the Dallas, in the chi gung, the stillness meditation would build what they called jinn, which was essence. And then the light movements were about rotating the balls and the balls were not those, they were the joints. And the rotation of the joints is what turned the jinn into the chee to revitalize the body. So you see in the Tai chi and stuff, you’re getting every joint to rotate. So health of the joints and their mobility was related to longevity.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Interesting. Yeah. I like that. There’s something about, I think treating multiple things at one time that it puts it all, it’s almost like a reset for everything. Everything’s like, “Okay.” Because if you just treat one shoulder, there’s usually something else that’s compromised as well in the area. So we’ve had a lot of the biohacker crowd come in and get treatments. But obviously we also have a lot of like Canadian farmers who are just beat up and they need some treatment too. So it’s been a lot of fun to do it.

Dr. Chris Shade:
So tell me, what are the names, I know you practice with Harry and you practice on your own. What are the two clinics that you practice at? And how do people get in touch with you guys, websites and stuff?

Dr. Amy Killen:
So Docere Medical is my stem cell practice with Harry. That’s the one in Park City and that’s doceremedical.com. And then-

Dr. Chris Shade:
D-O-C-E-R-R-E?

Dr. Amy Killen:
It’s D-O-C-E-R-E, Medical. And then my other practice is mostly hormones and integrated practice. And I have some great physician assistants and nurse practitioners and people there who see a lot of the hormone patients. And I oversee them. And that’s biorestoration.com here in Utah. And I have my own website, that’s just Dr. Amy Killen for people who can’t remember all the websites that I have that are out there.

Dr. Chris Shade:
We’ll list them all on the page for the listeners so that they can find you. And your private practice is down in Salt Lake and with Harry it’s in Park City. Is that true?

Dr. Amy Killen:
Correct. Yeah, that’s right.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. And there’s an airport nearby and you can do like everybody else, fly in and see her. I want to come and have the whole body thing done.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Yeah, you should. It’s super fun. Come hang out in Park City with us. And I’m also by the way, active on Instagram, @dr.amybkillen. And I do a lot of stories and education and things on there as well.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. We’re going to develop some products together and get you going on some protocols for your patients.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Sounds awesome. Well, thank you. This has been super fun.

Dr. Chris Shade:
Thank you so much, Amy, for being with us. Thank you for opening the door to all these interventions and all these potential dysfunctions and refunctions that happen around the sexuality. And just know that a strong, powerful sexuality leads to a happy mind, a long life, and a strong body.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Exactly.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Dr. Amy Killen:
Bye.

Dr. Chris Shade:
All right. Thank you very much for being here for this great in-depth and racy talk with Dr. Amy Killen. You can find more about Amy Killen @dr.amykillen.com. That’s K-I-L-L-E-N. And on Instagram, @dr.amybkillen. If you enjoyed this, please like, and subscribe so you can get more Shades of Health.

 

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