Unlocking Healing: Stem Cells, Exosomes, & Functional Medicine with Dr. Stephanie Warner

Dr. Stephanie Warner is an incredibly passionate Naturopathic Doctor and Classically Trained Licensed Acupuncturist! She firmly believes in uncovering the root of symptoms and working harmoniously with the body's physiology to achieve sustainable health. She has been working in healthcare for the past 18 years. 

Her personal health journey began at just 17 years old when she experienced digestive symptoms that were identified through a food allergy testing completed by a Naturopathic Doctor. Through dietary changes and homeopathic treatments, she was inspired experience ignited her passion for the medical field, leading her to earn a Bachelor's degree in Nursing from the University of Lethbridge in 2008. 

With years of experience as a Registered Nurse in Internal Medicine, Respiratory Medicine, and in Urgent Neurology, Dr. Warner realized her true calling was in outpatient care, where Naturopathic and Chinese could shine in preventing and treating the chronic diseases she witnessed in the hospital setting. 

Her fascination with Chinese blossomed during her studies, as she loved the instant insights gained from assessing a patient's tongue, pulse, and acupuncture channels. 

In her downtime, Dr. Warner enjoys soaking up quality time with friends and family, practicing yoga, diving into inspirational books, golfing, and relaxing at the beach!

www.elixirandwellness.com

Instagram: @ElixirandWellness

Facebook: @Elixir+Wellness

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi, this is Pamela Worth with the Hello Health podcast. And today I have Dr. Stephanie Warner. She has been in healthcare for the past 18 years, and she is now an incredibly passionate naturopathic doctor and classically trained licensed acupuncturist. And she believes in uncovering the root of symptoms and working harmoniously with the body's physiology to achieve sustainable health. So welcome, Doctor. Thank you so much for being on. Hi Pamela. Thanks so much for having me. So you started first in in Western medicine, is that right? Kind of talked to us a little bit about how you got into healthcare and and kind of your path and led you here to become a naturopathic doctor, but you're not just an N D. You also have this holistic way of taking a look at the entire body and really looking at root cause. So I'll let you kind of start with your journey.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah, of course. Well, I guess what first introduced me to naturopathic medicine, I never heard of it at all up until I was in high school. And my mom uh started to be unwell. And so it to my delight of ordering more takeout in and certain stuff like that as a teenager, um, my mom was unfortunately like suffering with intense fatigue, you know, just simple activities of doing laundry or going up the stairs was really difficult for her. And it wasn't until her friend said, Well, why don't you go see a naturopathic doctor? And my mom was like, What? And so sure enough, she got a referral and saw a naturopathic doctor. And through this different, unique approach assessment, um, it was uncovered that she had heavy metals in her teeth, which is actually pretty common amongst individuals, you know, 50 to the age of 70, because that's usually what they did for dental fillings. Um, so meanwhile, before all this happened, she went through a cycle of frequent antibiotic use through conventional medicine. And then it wasn't until, you know, she got her mercury fillings removed that she, you know, I got my mom back from that. Um, so that was kind of my first introduction to naturopathic medicine. And then sure enough, in high school, probably from all of my bad things that I would eat, I would get stomach aches. And so eventually my my mom funneled me to go see him. And um, I went on a food sensitivity elimination protocol um and you know, conquered some of the symptoms that I was experiencing at the time. So that was my first introduction, and I was really fascinated by it. You know, he would he had this fancy machine, it's called a Mora machine, it's got this fancy magnetic necklace and these little um electrical probes. And he put some on your fingers and toes. It's a machine from Germany and um acupuncture points, and he would guess things about what was going on with my body, like, oh, do you wake up with a runny nose in the morning? I was like, yes, you know, and I was pretty blown away. I was like, you're a mind reader, I can't believe this. Um, so, anyways, it it truly did fascinate me. And I did go forward um considering to work in medicine um in college. Um and then I my grandmother was got sick, and I decided to go down the nursing trajectory. Um, life led me there. And so I became a registered nurse. I first started working in internal medicine. Um, and internal medicine, it's like, you know, if you have three health diagnoses like diabetes, you know, COPD, or, you know, just a lot of health stuff going on on five to ten medications kind of deal. Um uh you end up there. And so I loved it. I learned a lot about emergency medicine and, you know, just different health and disease processes that I learned in textbooks. Um, but you know, over time I kind of felt like I was a hamster in this chaos hamster wheel, you know, it was a very chaotic work environment. And you eventually, you know, the learning curve kind of plateaus, and you kind of see like, you know, repeat conditions and and no discussion of prevention. And I'd look at my day, and you know, sometimes I'd spend a full hour of my work day passing out pills, and I would see, you know, you get this one, oh, you get this side effect. Let's throw this one on. And, you know, I just saw this whole thing, and I would see the patients get mac and cheese and tater tots for meals. And I was just like, you know, this just isn't the healing environment that I thought I signed up for. And so what I did was at that time I went back to school and I I um I'm originally from Calgary, Canada. And so at that time I moved to Portland, Oregon and studied the naturopathic physician program there. Um, and it was it was a rather intense program to start, you know, long days. And sure enough, as I started this program, I started to get health, health symptoms, you know, like I guess just feeling tired and headaches and different things. And so I went to to my my clinic, um, the naturopathic clinic, and and I somehow found my way into doing this group acupuncture shift. It was really inexpensive. And, you know, all through all 10 of us would sit in a in a room and we're all faced in a circle. And, you know, we'd meet with the student and the teacher would say, okay, do this, this, this, and they'd talk about crazy things like water and fire and wood and metal. And and I was so confused. But they would, yeah, take my pulse, you know, and put needles in, and I'd walk out of there, and the headache, you know, that I was experiencing for like three hours would just be gone. And I was like, wow, this is just too good of a thing to pass up on. And so I studied, um, I have a master's of Chinese medicine as well in herbalism. So um that kind of has has brought me um to where I am. And and um previously I was practicing in Canada, and I've just recently, in the last couple of years, relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona, which has kind of connected you and I on this path here in Scottsdale.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah, it's it's super what what what you're doing. So so many questions. When you are working with someone and and they are interested in acupuncture, how do you assess sort of how to help treat them or what does that really mean? And some of the maybe describe some of the energy and and how that can help people. And um, I mean, I meet so many people with with migraines and with headaches. I think that's super interesting too.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Um, gosh, what do I want to say about that? So typically, the way that I kind of run my clinic down here in Arizona is I I typically do prefer to meet people in my clinic as a naturopathic appointment first. And I it's probably, you know, my RN and ND preference just to try to understand the labs and different things. But, you know, of course, some people do come in straight for acupuncture, and that's totally fine too. Um, but yeah, so in Chinese medicine, there's a whole, gosh, there's so many diagnosis platforms. So, you know, we're we're assessing your skin tone, we're assessing the sound of your voice. I kind of have this uh singing voice where, you know, it sounds sometimes like I sing a song. Um, maybe you can think of other people that uh I was just at a conference over the weekend, and it sounds like the speaker, this physician in this conference is crying, you know. So it's even in the tonality of your voice. It's um there's some practitioners out there, I don't do this, but some practitioners do a facial diagnosis, um, tongue diagnosis is a is a common one and and pulse. Um, and you know, actually, even for me, because my teachers would tell me, you know, in school, you know, if if you really want to learn acupuncture and you really want to do a good treatment, like you need to meditate. And I took that challenge pretty seriously. And so for, you know, the couple years in my Chinese medicine program, I started meditating 20 minutes a day. And and I feel that that kind of opens up some of our sense organs, um, sensory organs, um, and heightens our perception. So, since that whole process, I mean, I can uh my smell and my taste is extremely heightened. And even sometimes I, not all the time, but definitely on the person's openness, I'll I'll feel where their energy and stuckness and maybe pathology is when I'm just physically in their presence. So I I use all of those keys, but honestly, when I'm in somebody's presence and I feel that within my body, uh that kind of goes to the top of the list over what's going on with the tongue because it's like their body is screaming at me like, hey, this is what needs to be addressed here.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

So, and and you you have a good point about lab tests and kind of assessing the person. When when someone comes in and meets with you, do you have a particular set of tests that you like to make sure that you run or certain things that you really want to look at first?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, great question. Um so usually what I do is, you know, meet with somebody for about 75 minutes and we kind of go through that intake process, you know, from head to toe, what's going on with their body, like headaches all the way down to toe pain, you know, what's what's going on in the interim. And but then we also, you know, what's unique and different is we're recognizing different outside influences, you know, all here, oh, well, I have sinus issues and I have joint pain and I have extreme fatigue. And then I start to like, okay, there's a couple things. Let me ask about mold exposure in this person's house, or, you know, take in these external environmental factors into the intake, as well as sleep and um energy and work, you know, it all matters on who you are and and it all um influences you. So, so usually, yeah, I think you know, the first appointment is that information gathering. And then at the end of the discussion, we'll talk about lab tests. Um one, uh, so we have like conventional tests that, you know, naturopaths orders, uh, DOs, MDs order, MPs, and you know, that's your thyroid test and your vitamin D and your iron and different things like that. So for me, you know, if it's it's pretty common that many of us are tired. And so, you know, we got to look at some of these lab tests. Like we got to look deeper into the thyroid and iron and vitamin D and different things. But then additionally, um, I I will, you know, bring out some of my lab reports and what they are are called functional medicine tests. So these are specialized tests that, you know, individuals like naturopathic doctors or other practitioners that have done additional functional medicine training um look at. And what they do is kind of pick up nuances between uh the blood work and just subtle things. Because what one thing that's very common that I hear is is, you know, for example, somebody with that, you know, a woman will just feel tired, go to the family doctor. The family doctor uh looks at the thyroid, says, hey, you're all good. You know, there's no tests that that prove why you're tired. And so they often come to me and say, you know, I know something's wrong. I feel tired all the time. I never used to feel this way. You know, my doctor says nothing's wrong. What can I do here? And that's really when the beauty of the functional medicine training and tests come in. One thing in regards to the training for functional medicine is we look at the conventional values a little bit differently. For example, thyroid, we have a different tighter reference range that we see people feel best at. Um, and then additionally, for the functional testing, there's a lot of different fun tests out there. You know, it just depends on what's affecting this person. One of my personal favorites is called a Dutch hormone test. It's a urinary hormone test. It measures estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, cortisol. But over a course of 24 hours, rather than just a one value, which is typical on a blood test, um, it looks at gut health and inflammation, melatonin, B vitamins, a whole bunch of different pieces of information. So I do love that test. I do do the work with that one a lot. Um, but yeah, uh food sensitivity tests, what other popular ones? There's a lot of gut health-based tests. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

And when you're and and then back to the herbalism for a second, when do you decide when to introduce herbs and when not to use them? And I I I think that's new for a lot of people. And how is that different than like supplementation or is it similar?

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Mm-hmm. Um, good question. So, yes, I mean, all of us practitioners are different. Um, but the way that yeah, so supplements obviously, you know, are the are the micronutrients, but even some people might even say, you know, herbs are included in supplements. And of course, we have Western herbs and we have eastern herbs, we have like southeastern herbs. So, of course, like from like we have like Ayurvedic medicine from India that, you know, sometimes like I personally have a high blood pressure supplement that's an all Ayurvedic herbs. Um, and then I personally I use a lot of Chinese herbalism. That was kind of my heart and passion. I feel like it you really feel the effects when you take Chinese herbs. Um, and that's why I love them. Like, because many of us, I'm sure, have taken a multivitamin and you take it and you you don't necessarily feel a huge shift, right? And so for me, that's why I truly love like some of the herbs and stuff, because you can feel a little bit more of a shift. But overall, I mean, I think all different types of supplements um are important. And, you know, uh, I one common question I get asked is, you know, like I should be able to, you know, get everything I need through my food and you know, feel good. But, you know, one issue that's kind of happening now to many of us is our food quality has, you know, deteriorated, our soils have deteriorated. There's and then of course there's a lot of chemicals in our food and different things that are kind of disrupting our ability to absorb nutrients. So part of that conversation with people is, you know, do you want to live your life at uh energy at a like a three out of 10 or functionality at a three out of 10 when if you just take a couple things, your your energy and life might change, you know, to an eight out of 10 or 9 out of 10, you know? So I think, yeah, getting getting these things addressed and looking at it um helps with energy and you know, just bring brings you back if you're if you've been kind of suffering with something.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Now, what are some of the other treatments that you do? I know that you you see a variety of people that help with detox, with um getting to the root of some really hard um health challenges that people have.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, you know, the the most interesting thing about my relocation here in Arizona is that it seems so many individuals, even though we're in the middle of a desert and there's not much rain, um, there's so many individuals impacted by mold in their home. And I I presume it, you know, there's sprinkler leaks, we have skylights, we have HVAC systems. So I'm I'm really truly surprised by a lot of individuals that that you know have have mold in their living situation. So that's um a key component. Um additionally, you know, I meet a lot of women, I work with a lot of women, um, and I work with hormone optimization, you know, testing their hormones and potentially like, you know, many women are, you know, having hot flashes or menopausal weight gain or sleep issues. Those are kind of big components. And often in those cases, I'll use the Dutch hormone test to kind of help understand whether it's a cortisol relationship or a low estrogen progesterone type relationship. Um, and then of course, other therapies that I do offer is I've just recently in the last year got into exosomes and stem cells. So I've just completed some additional training and actually last January I was all excited to do PRP facials, and then I stumbled across the exosome world, and I never fully launched PRP vampire facials in my business because I just got so passionate about these exosomes, these nano stem cells that have a profound ability to like restore cellular function and collagen. And um another thing that I've been doing is there's exosomes to restore hair growth. So I've been growing more hair with with clients. Um additionally, you know, the stem cells right now. I'm currently just working um with them for orthopedic injections and joint injections or sore joints, but I'm hoping in the next couple months to kind of launch IV stem cells, which can benefit people with autism, MS, ALS, and and those kind of things. So exciting time to be in medicine.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

It really is. So I would imagine many people don't know what exosomes are. Can you speak to that versus stem cells and how they're similar or different?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, so this, I mean, there's it's a broad definition with stem cells. So um, you know, there is antologous uh stem cells which come from yourself. So, you know, you'll either have a uh donate yourself, they'll drill a hole into your bone and take out the stem cells from your bone marrow and then re-inject those back to you. Um the ones that I use are actually from the umbilical cord of the placenta. So mom has baby in the hospital, you know, the providers say, Would you like to donate your placenta or do you want to keep it? And often women say, I'll donate it. Um, and what they do is they bring it down to the lab and they harvest out the stem cells or Warden's jelly that's in the umbilical cords, and then they sell it to us providers. And um, what we often what we do with it is orthopedic injection. So they're just larger cells, they're neutral cells, and so they can become cartilage, they can become bone, they can become muscle, different things like that and restore circulation. Additionally, um, exosomes are included with or derived from the stem cell, but they're almost nano stem cells. They're very micro, micro, and tiny. So they contain a lot of different like growth factors and just very different tiny signaling molecules that just is a little bit different. And so um, the exosomes that I use, there's three different lines that I'm currently using. And so they're they're all three different type products. So one of them is for you know um skin restoration and collagen and wrinkle prevention and anti-aging. This the second one, um, they've kind of manipulated the exosomes or or focused on getting the growth factors um for growing hair and stopping hair loss. And then the third um is for pigmentation issues. So if anybody has um melasma, rosacea, sunspots, or even acne, um, there's a third product that they've kind of um designed to kind of uh change that. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah, no, that's super. And my mom has done the growth factors after she had chemotherapy, and it helped her so much. She's got hair again, and she feels great, she feels pretty, and and and I and I I believe that you've worked with quite a few men with that as well, and you've seen some pretty incredible results.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Did your mother do like IV exosomes or did she do like for like the hair restoration component?

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Restoration where it's almost like the micronatling on your scalp and then they put the Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, that's that's exactly what I do. But but yeah, I'm having really cool and exciting risk results, you know, like young women with, you know, alopecia just in spots and you know, are so uncomfortable with with their hair growth that they're wearing wigs, and you know, to the ability to like grow that hair back is kind of very rewarding. And, you know, of course, um another another observation that um the exosome company didn't even tell me about, but I've been observing in my patients is that some of the hair, especially you know, the older gentleman that might be white hair, some of it's growing back dark gray. So I feel like that's a new potential um component as well to kind of change some of our um our hairs back to our uh normal color.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Yeah, um you know, I've had people ask me this because I've what I you know and it's it's wonderful that this is now available in the states because I had to take my mom down to Mexico for her um initial treatment. And um when when you're buying these, I think a lot of people get concerned like, where did it come from? And is it US based or did it come from, you know, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia? You know, there's a lot of places where this is being done. Can you speak a little bit about uh company that you're working with and and how it's um safe here in the US?

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yeah, yeah, great question. Um I think. think that um a lot of what's I there are some uh stem cell centers in Mexico or South America that are um that do have labs and are replicating you know the original cells that I refer to you know from the umbilical cord so there are labs like uh more internationally doing this replication process um and targeting um however it's it's a delicate balance it's it helps the clinics like save a little bit of money if they're able to to have this lab and do it um unfortunately it's not broad spectrum approved to do that kind of thing here um the Food and Drug Administration has been very strict in regards to labs and different things in that regard so many most of us providers here in the US right now um many of us don't have labs um kind of thing and I think that that's one of the key differences and and I do see that um you know it it's all about reputation you know the the leading clinic in Panama um you know they you know there's people lined up out the door for for that therapy and it's just they they have a good reputation I think here in America people are kind of slowly getting used to to to what it looks like here um just because I think that it's had we we need to continue to work to dispel this negative stereotype that's kind of gone on and you know because because I think that's definitely a component to the narrative that you know if you want the best you've got to go international. But it actually turns out that the gentleman that started the most successful clinic in Panama he's actually local he's locally here from Scottsdale Arizona so you you know so yeah it's it's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Can you speak to the difference? Oh and and and a friend of mine had asked this because with one of my kiddos who's a competitive athlete um I had taken him to a doctor that would give him a stem cell injection in one of his joints because he had a small tear um and it healed so much faster than doing PRP can but but in in her mind it was exactly the same but I don't believe it is but I can't technically speak to that.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Could you share a little bit of the difference between like a PRP shot versus a stem cell shot and an orthopedic joint if you've got um an injury yeah great question great question yes um PRP so it stands for platelet rich plasma um and basically how we collect it it's it's kind of free we gotta do the tube and have the centrifuge but um so what we do is capture some blood from the the person that's gonna get the injection um we spin it out and and when we put the blood in a centrifuge there's like a honey coating um kind of at the top at the spin and so that's the plasma that's the the jelly that's kind of a component of the blood and that's what we're injecting into the joint. And then the old and again the difference with stem cells is these are well the ones that I use um are you know from the umbilical cord of the placenta. So so there is a difference in my opinion I think that PRP it's interesting that you mention your son had a different response from the PRP compared to the stem cells um because I think individuals under the age of 30 do better with peer not necessarily do best with PRP injections, but they do significantly better than individuals over the age of 30. It's can be an actual painful injection and the PRP, if you are slightly inflamed if you have diabetes or a health hypothyroidism, if you have a health condition where there's inflammation in your body, you're basically reinjecting the inflammation back into the joint or component of your body with stem cells, they are largely anti-inflammatory. So in my opinion I think a lot of people are are leaning into these different types of orthopedic injections because they are more inflammatory. But that being said, you know if somebody does have inflammation maybe diabetes maybe overweight there they're sometimes not a perfect match in the moment to get stem cells because the full benefit is going to be reduced just because of the inflammation. So just mindful of that.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Yeah when when you're thinking about helping people kind of clean up their act if you will in terms of like eating or things they could or should be doing reducing overall chronic symptoms and um a lot of it I think comes down to food and lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Are there any things that you particularly want to share with them or encourage them or you know what you kind of like to focus on when it comes to food yeah gosh you know um that's the million dollar question there's there's diets in and out and all of this um I would say I mean depending on the person you know if if somebody does have a lot of digestive issues you know that that brings me to my functional test one of my favorite things sometimes to do is a food sensitivity test if if somebody's you know uh has never made a diet change. And it's crazy what we'll find in there. And I think what's beautiful and unique about that is it's kind of puts together a diet unique for the person that we meet. And you know I've had a six year old with stomach aches or headaches and it turned out he had a food sensitivity to peanuts. And so we pulled the peanuts out and he was doing great, you know so it can be funny things that you just don't think of. So that's one example of a of a circumstance where you know we can be really accurate and all of this. Of course I'm a big component of organic fruits and vegetables and eating and grass fed and different things like that. But of course you know that we have like the dirty dozen and clean 10 if if somebody's heard of that or if they haven't heard of that they can um look into that. So for example you know if if if you're where you are you don't have access to a lot of uh organic options or you know maybe the organic option is is much more expensive potentially buying something like a banana that has a peel on it compared to something like a grape which is really porous and holds on to some of the chemicals that are used in our food production. So that's one thing and then of course you know for individuals that are struggling um with maybe like being overweight or or having diabetes or different things like that I do think that you know leaning more towards like a paleo focused diet can be really helpful for people like low um carbohydrates and and different things like that. So and I mean that's kind of how I personally eat as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you want to share other people find out more about you your work yeah yeah um so my website is www dot elixir e l i x ir and wellness dot com and then I'm on Instagram at elixir and wellness and then I'm on Facebook as Elixir plus wellness. So that's kind of the key details there if people are interested and want to learn more. I appreciate you having me on here and I'm excited that I gotta you know ramble about my passion of of natural medicine and I mean I think our body has a beautiful um ability to heal itself so thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Thank you doctors for having me on thanks so much Pamela