The Berman Method
The Berman Method
Episode #181: Protein Supplements and PRP Injections
Dr. Jake and PA-C Jenni Berman take on the corporate medical system that values profit over patient outcomes in this eye-opening episode. They boldly state that pharmaceutical companies and insurance providers often prioritize "client retention over curation" — a disturbing reality when you realize "if we cure a patient, that's a customer lost."
Through personal stories about their three children's health challenges, the Bermans demonstrate how even medical professionals can find themselves giving their eight-week-old multiple medications before recognizing the cascade of problems this creates. Walker's reflux medication led to severe constipation, while their daughter Vera's painful constipation resolved simply with proper hydration rather than the recommended daily Miralax. These experiences perfectly illustrate their philosophy: treat the problem, not the symptom.
The episode also tackles common questions about protein powder versus collagen supplements and the truth about PRP (Platelet-Rich Plasma) treatments. While collagen offers tremendous benefits for hair, skin, joints, and more, it shouldn't constitute more than 20% of your daily protein intake. And despite the popularity and high cost of PRP injections for joint problems, the Bermans explain why they rarely work without addressing the underlying biomechanical issues — with one remarkable exception that's producing "night and day" results for knee replacement patients.
If you're tired of band-aid solutions that create more problems than they solve, subscribe to the Berman Method podcast. Visit bermanpt.com or bermanpt.com/wellness for more information and free resources to begin your journey toward true healing rather than symptom management.
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This is the Berman Method podcast, featuring Dr Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenny Berman. We are here to treat problems and not symptoms. Disclaimer this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and not to treat anyone or to give medical advice. If you are interested in any information that we are giving and would like to use this for yourself, we recommend that you contact your primary care physician or reach out to us and ask us questions about yourself specifically. Enjoy.
Speaker 2:Here we go with the Berman Method Podcast. Dr Jake Berman here with my beautiful co-host, jenny Berman, physician assistant with my beautiful co-host, Jenny Berman, physician assistant Without Walker this morning. He's downstairs snoozing and we didn't want to risk waking the baby.
Speaker 1:He's just taking a little nap. We can still be there in a hop, a skip and a jump if he cries.
Speaker 2:He is cracking me up. These past couple of days he went from no facial expressions to every once in a while you might get a half a smile, to now he is the smiling baby smilest baby I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:We kept hearing yesterday he smiles with his whole face, like his whole entire face smiles. When he smiles, it's really, it's really cute. Yeah, he is. He's becoming more of a happy, happy baby. Yes, and it's really cute. Yeah, he is. He's becoming more of a happy, happy baby yes, and it's been a lot of fun. He's getting a little personality on him now he's rolling from his tummy to his back consistently yeah, a lot of rolling going on.
Speaker 2:Took him offshore for his first trip offshore what, what?
Speaker 1:40 miles out offshore? Yep, took him 40 miles offshore out of 40 miles out offshore.
Speaker 2:Yep Took them 40 miles offshore, out of the East Coast, out of Port Canaveral, and the weatherman lied it was not three-foot seas with six-foot intervals. Any of you fishermen out there know that that's a pretty doable.
Speaker 1:Six-second intervals. Six-second, yeah.
Speaker 2:Three-foot seas with six-second intervals, that's a pretty doable fishing condition, especially we're on a 42 foot yellowfin, so it's not like we're on a small boat. We get halfway out there and the wind was not coming out of the direction it was supposed to and it was fighting the Gulf Stream and it got snotty fast.
Speaker 1:It was wet, a lot of water in the boat, windy rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe five to seven foot waves.
Speaker 2:That's what I like to exaggerate. I don't know that it was quite seven. It was every bit of five though.
Speaker 1:Every bit of five for sure.
Speaker 2:Every bit of five.
Speaker 1:And it was like a washing machine. The waves weren't all going in the same direction, they were smashing into each other, which is, I think, why we were so wet.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a washing machine, it was just the wind and the waves were fighting each other. So the waves were going one direction, the wind was going the other, which made it very, very wet.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Anyways, he survived his first trip offshore. He didn't quite beat his older sister, the middle one, vera. We had her 60 miles offshore at six weeks old. So Walker was 12 weeks. 12 weeks at 40 miles, yeah, but either neither here nor there he's been Christian.
Speaker 1:And on one of the toughest days at sea. So it's just gonna be a breeze from here on out yeah, the rest are gonna be easy from here on out needless to say, we took quite a long nap, him and I on the boat, lying supine, waited for the seas to calm down a little bit so it was good and we caught a fish we didn't get skunked.
Speaker 2:We did not get skunked, so shout out to our captain john, thanks for not allowing us to get skunked that's right, that's right so here we are.
Speaker 2:We are david, going against goliath, going goliath being the corporate medical system, health insurances, pharmaceutical companies. They don't have your best interests in minds. They are choosing profits over patient outcomes every single time. It's a business, you have to generate profit and you have to fill the pockets of your investors. And it's a shame because we're talking about the lives of Americans, the lives of your family members, your friends, and they're choosing patient longevity or client retention over curation. How are we going to retain this client? Well, we can't cure them. If we cure a patient, that's a customer lost. I mean, think about that, really think about that. There's some deep things going on here. If you literally cure somebody of their chronic condition versus saying you have to chronically take this medication for the rest of your life, you lose a customer Right.
Speaker 1:We actually just went through this on a personal basis. You know we're very much let's treat the problem and not just the symptom. However, all three of our children have had awful reflux when they're born and I I credit credit is probably not the right word I put a lot of that towards the fact that they were all C-section babies. C-section babies naturally don't have the best gut microbiome because they don't go through the vaginal vault of the mother so naturally their microbiomes take a little bit longer to develop and to normalize. So all three of our babies had horrible, horrible reflux and we did medicate them because it was medicate them and make us all a little happier or make us all crazy by just listening to them cry, considering I am already 1000% gluten-free, dairy-free in my diet. So they were already on a very naturally anti-inflammatory diet through my breast milk, with being totally gluten-free, dairy-free. So we did start them on medication and we just went through this with Walker where he ended up.
Speaker 1:He was on famotidine, which is an H2 blocker for his reflux and maybe a month into taking the medicine got severely constipated, to the point that we were having to give him a suppository every seven to 10 days because he wasn't having a bowel movement at all in 10 days. And so finally, I said you know what? We got to do something different, and I truly felt that the constipation was a result of taking this H2 blocker. So here we are treating his reflux with a medication and now I'm having to give him another medication to help with his constipation until we just said you know what? We're going to stop it. We're going to wean him off of it and make some transitions. If I have to give up egg, peanut and soy for the next couple months to get his reflux under control, it's what we have to do, but thankfully I didn't have to. His reflux has been much better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're talking eight weeks old. We've already got an eight-week-old human being baby on two pharmaceutical medications. Like this is nuts, and we don't even think about it because it's just three milliliters of this medication, or what was it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 0.25.
Speaker 2:Yeah not even a whole milliliteriliter, 0.25 milliliters of this little tiny pharmaceutical medication that was made up in a chemistry lab somewhere right you just have to give it to him every day twice a day.
Speaker 2:Twice a day oh yeah, six weeks later he's not pooping for 10 days. So now take this other chemically composed medication and stick it up his ass. It's like are you freaking, kidding me? Right, right. And then how long does that go if you don't know what the problem is? How long do people just continue doing that Because they don't know any better? Their doctor doesn't know any better.
Speaker 1:Well, there's tons of kids that we've seen and helped families with who have chronic constipation and their doctor just tells them oh it's fine, Just use Miralax every day, it's no big deal, Just use Miralax. We went through that with Vera. She was constipated before we potty trained her and they were just recommending to use Miralax. I'm like no, there's something here. Again, she's totally gluten-free, dairy-free. But a lot of times for kids the constipation is coming from a dairy sensitivity, an egg sensitivity, a nut sensitivity of some kind Doesn't mean they're allergic, but actually sensitivity causing this constipation, or just simply they're not drinking enough water.
Speaker 2:Which was Vera's case. As soon as you started putting a little bit of flavoring, a little electrolytes, into the water, she started chugging water and the craziest thing resulted.
Speaker 1:She was no longer constipated. No longer constipated.
Speaker 2:Believe you and me, she is the opposite of constipated.
Speaker 1:But not diarrhea. She just is very normal now. I mean a couple, one or two a day, very normal, like pretty bowel movements. It's kind of weird to say about somebody, but it just came down to she needed a little bit of electrolytes and she significantly increased the amount of water that she was drinking with utilizing this very clean product and this is a two-year-old that drinks more water a day than most adults.
Speaker 2:Correct, yes, and she's got the best bowel movements ever. Now she's happy. Yeah, think about that one. She used to scream, literally scream and cry when she had to go poop, and she wouldn't do it. She would stand and just clench her butt, cheeks together and just scream and cry. There was nothing we could do to make her feel better or stop crying. She hated it. It was excruciating to her.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:And we battled this for how many weeks before we said, okay, something's got to change.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, for sure. And of course I'm like, do I really give her Miralax? Like it just seems so crazy at two years old. There has to be something else that's going on. And again I went down the rabbit hole with her, like should I be cutting out peanut or almond or egg? And I was like you know what? Let's just increase a little fluid, just like I tell my patients if you're constipated, you're probably not drinking enough, you probably have an electrolyte imbalance, You're probably low in magnesium, and that's the route we went.
Speaker 2:Orcham's razor. When you're trying to solve a problem, always start off with the simplest solution first, and most of the time that is the right one.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:Let's just give Vera a little more water and see what happens.
Speaker 1:That was it. So we wanted to really get in today on the podcast. We put up on our social media about asking topics for the podcast, getting topic suggestions for the podcast. I didn't know that we were going to talk for 15 minutes to get started, so we have several questions that came through. We had planned to go over three of them today and then do some more next week. However, we may not have time for all three now, but the first one we're going to start out with is talking about the difference between protein powder and collagen powder. That was a question that I got on my somebody asked.
Speaker 1:So there's several different types of protein powders. There's good ones, there's horrible ones and then there's some in the middle, of course, but we typically will have our pea protein options, which is a plant-based protein option. There's hemp protein. There's whey and casein protein. There's bone broth protein, egg white protein, collagen protein. So there's tons of different protein powder options out there and majority of them are complete sources of protein, meaning they give you all the essential amino acids nine essential amino acids and would be classified as a complete protein that can be a meal replacement, and this is going to be your pea protein, the egg white protein, the bone broth protein, whey and casein proteins. The hemp protein would not be considered a complete source of protein, though it is more complete than collagen powder. So collagen powder is not a complete source of protein but is a great added source of protein.
Speaker 1:Collagen is so important for the hair, the skin, the nails, the eyesight, the brain, our joints. It's really, really an important product that we should be getting. But it is not a complete source of protein, meaning it cannot be used as your sole source of protein in your day or as a meal replacement. It's going to be more of an added source as a snack or something to boost up the total content of your protein at your meals. So, for instance, we'll have clients who will put collagen powder in their coffee or in their tea in the morning to supplement the protein that they're also getting at their breakfast or sometimes mid-morning. If I don't have time to stop and eat a snack at work because I'm back-to-back with clients, I will simply put some collagen powder into my coffee mid-morning or into the Rye's mushroom coffee as my mid-morning snack, because the collagen is providing some protein. But I know I'm getting more full, whole sources of protein at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Speaker 2:Okay, so why would I consume it if it's not a complete source of protein?
Speaker 1:It's an easy added source of protein. Many times collagen powder is unflavored, although they do make flavored ones. But the unflavored is nice because it's not changing the taste of your water or your coffee. And again you're getting that extra boost, that extra 10 or 20 grams of protein to add to your meals or snacks. And again, like we said, the benefits of collagen helping the hair, skin, nails, joints, brain. It's really a beneficial source that the body needs.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if we do a simple math, just for simplicity's sake, we consume 100 grams of protein a day. What is the maximum amount that should be collagen.
Speaker 1:I would say 20% or less should be collagen.
Speaker 2:Okay. Is okay not should be. Is okay to be collagen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 20% or less is okay to be collagen. I would not count on more than 20% of your total daily protein intake to be collagen-based. So again, the other 80% of your protein needs to come from whole sources. It doesn't mean that has to be animal-based, but it should come from whole food-based sources.
Speaker 2:So not protein bars, not protein shakes, actual food that you're ingesting.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I think it's okay to have a whole source of protein powder on another occasion. So, for instance, if you did a protein shake for breakfast with whole food protein, so that's going to be your pea protein, your whey as a snack, and then doing whole foods so not packaged, not protein powders at your lunch, your afternoon snack and your dinner, I think would be fine.
Speaker 2:Okay, got it.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, with collagen powder, there is marine-based collagen, which is coming from fish, and then there's bovine-based collagen, which obviously is animal-based protein, vine-based collagen, which obviously is animal-based protein. Well, they both are, but one is beef, one is fish and neither one are complete sources of protein. So it doesn't really matter which one you used. Okay, good, depends on your preference. So second question was asking about PRP.
Speaker 2:Ooh, prp, I love this. So let me just be explicitly clear. I have no research, no official research at all whatsoever with what I'm about to say. This is 100% from the experiences that I've seen personally in my office. This is not research-based. This is not what you're going to find on the internet. This is not what you're going to find on the internet. This is not what you're going to hear from your damn sure. Not words You're going to hear from your doctors or your orthopedic surgeons. This is solely what I've experienced in my clinic for the past 10 years. Prp is so popular right now because it's being promoted as this thing that can go in there and heal the tissue.
Speaker 1:So let's back up real quick. Prp is platelet-rich plasma.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So it stands for platelet-rich plasma, so maybe explain what it is for people who don't know.
Speaker 2:They essentially just draw out some blood, spin it down so that you can separate the platelets Right just draw out some blood, spin it down so that you can separate the platelets Right, and then you're giving a bigger dose or a concentrated dose of platelets to an area, because platelets is where you're going to get healing, healing Right. So that's the fifth grade reading level of how to describe that.
Speaker 2:It just, it's a way to, in theory, have a concentrated dose of platelets to an area which is, in theory, is supposed to help that area heal. Now here's the thing that happens you go and you get a PRP injection into your shoulder and you think that that's going to solve your shoulder pain and you don't do anything else about it. 99% of the time it does nothing. The patient reports no significant input or no significant fix. Maybe a couple of weeks it felt a little bit better, but then three months later you're just as bad or even worse than you were to begin with. Same thing for the knee, same thing for the ankle, same thing for anything.
Speaker 2:If you just get a PRP injection and think that you're solving the problem, that's not going to work. There's a reason why these soft tissues in your shoulder are damaged to begin with. There's a reason why the soft tissues in the knee are damaged to begin with. If you don't do the things to fix the reason why it happened to begin with unloading the joint and making it more efficient with the muscles surrounding the joint the PRP is a waste of time and money. You might as well just drive down the road, roll down the window and throw five grand out the window.
Speaker 2:Because it's not cheap either. It's not covered by insurance. This is a cash-based thing and there's really no scientific. I shouldn't say that. Let me back up Clinically. I've not seen anything clinically that says that there's a significant difference in people who only get PRP versus people that don't.
Speaker 1:Right and, like you said, it's not a cheap thing to do but it's also not very comfortable to have done initially when they're actually doing the procedure. It's not super comfortable either, but it may provide kind of like a steroidal effect. It's not a steroid but it may provide you that couple of days or weeks of decreased inflammation as it's promoting some initial healing to the tissues into the area. But it's not a long-term effect if we're not actually fixing the problem of why we had the inflammation in that joint in the first place.
Speaker 2:Exactly Now. With all of that said, let me go out and say something that has that I have been noticing with significant positive effects over the past six months, maybe even a year now, is if you're having a knee replacement and you have the knee replacement done and before they sew you up, they go in there and they inject you with the PRP, and some people, some surgeons, are even doing stem cells too. Those people are recovering night and day quicker than those that are not getting the PRP injections, those that are not getting the stem cell injections. So this is a perfect example of where they're creating a trauma. They're going in there and they're doing construction. They're sawing bones off, they're ramming rods up your femur and your tibia, down the tibia, and there's actual trauma that's occurring right there. So you take this PRP, these concentrated dose of platelets, and you drop it right where the insult is, the injury is.
Speaker 2:There is significant results from that, where I've got many, many clients over the past six months saying they've had zero pain immediately after having a knee replacement. And that is unheard of, absolutely unheard of. Usually the first week is the worst week, but now people are getting up and they're walking around within days and just saying, yeah, it's a little tight, maybe a little uncomfortable, but I wouldn't call it pain. So that's what I am bullish on is, if you have to have a knee replacement, make sure you find a surgeon that is going to do PRP injections, that would even consider doing stem cell injections too, because it is night and day what I'm seeing with that particular case.
Speaker 1:Perfect. I think that answered the question of would you recommend it or not? Do we have time for one more or should we save the next one?
Speaker 2:Let's save it. We're over 20 minutes now, Okay perfect.
Speaker 1:So that means next week. We have a couple more questions that we want to get through. But again, if you see us on social media and you have a specific question that you'd like us to answer, even if we don't put up a question box asking for your request, let us know.
Speaker 2:Yes, love it. Like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody else that needs to hear it. We appreciate you guys. Love the feedback that we're getting and ciao for now, love the feedback that we're getting.
Speaker 1:And ciao for now. Thank you for subscribing on your social media and podcast platforms to the Berman Method Dr Jake Berman with Berman Physical Therapy and Jenny Berman, physician Assistant, with Berman Health and Wellness. You can find more information on our website wwwbermanptcom for physical therapy. Wwwbermanptcom forward slash wellness for the health and wellness. You can also find us on social media Facebook, instagram and on your podcast platform, so be sure to follow us, like us, subscribe to us and, if you would like any further information, definitely visit our website and reach out to us. You may also find our free reports on the websites as well, where you can download this free information for yourself. Have a great day.