(upbeat music) - I'm Lea Woodford,
founder and CEO of Smartfem Magazine.
I'm on a quest to meet some of the most influential
people in today's world, I'll be talking to women
and companies that understand the fierce brand loyalty
of the female consumer, we'll get a behind the scenes look
at some of the risks, challenges and successes of today's
most influential people. (intense music)
Health care's big business but are we putting profits
before people, hi, this is Lea Woodford of Smartfem TV.
And today we're in Pora Penosco, Mexico talking to a
revolutionary medical clinic that's putting people
and health first, with me now is Hans Truesdell,
CEO of RCT, hi Hans, thanks for being here.
- Hi Lea, thank you, how are you?
- What makes RCT different from other clinics?
- RCT is using individualized medicine so we're treating
the patient and not the disease so we don't have a set
protocol for a patient just because they're, for instance,
let's say they have rheumatoid arthritis, the molecules
that we're using and the concentration change based on
that individual's needs on a cellular level.
- Dr Carmen, you're the chief medical officer here at RCT.
What makes it so special and why do you like
it more than traditional medicine?
- I like this question, I love the time I get to
spend with my patient, they mean everything to me.
- So Dawn, tell me, what kind of arthritis do you have?
- I have Socratic arthritis which attacks the joints.
- How long have you had that diagnosis?
- I was diagnosed about four years ago
but I was on a quest of trying to figure out what was
wrong with me for about six years prior to that.
I'd gone to many different doctors and quite a process
but no body could seem to figure out what was going on
with me, I went through a phase where I thought I had
cancer, I just didn't know what was going on.
I was getting really scared because none of the doctors
seemed to know what was going on.
- And you were showing me all these medications.
Can you tell me a little bit about the medications
that they had you on? - I was on steroids
for quite a long time, I was on Methotrexait, Humera,
Sela, something or another, I'm not sure of the technical
name of it but I was on about six to eight different
drugs, Ambien for sleeping 'cause I couldn't sleep
and pain killers for my pain, Tremadol was one of 'em,
Vicadin and Percasett. - Oh my goodness.
I can't even imagine what the side effects were from
all these different medications.
- Oh, you have no idea, the side effects.
I would've rather, looking in retrospect,
I would've rather dealt with the pain than had
to deal with the side effects that I had to go through.
It was unbelievable what I went through.
- How is RCT different, tell me about your experience here.
- Okay, the experience here is they're very patient centered
care, I don't feel like I got that in the States.
I felt like I was just being shuffled around from doctor
to doctor, I didn't feel like any of them really cared
about trying to find out what was wrong with me.
I just felt like I was being shuffled around.
And here, instantly when I came in, I felt like they
really cared and to me, that means a lot.
Coming to a clinic where you feel like they really
have your best interest at heart and not the financial
aspect of it but really trying to get to the depth
of what's going on with you instead of just
trying to sell you a bunch of drugs.
- So Mary, what made you choose RCT?
- I have rheumatoid arthritis which means I have
an auto immune condition, I see a lot of people these
days going out and using stem cells to fix joints
that need help but that's not really a good answer,
I don't think for auto immune disease.
You need a bigger answer, you need to get down to the
cellular level, you need to feel the body.
You need to reset the immune system and the peptides that
they use at RCT can do that and I felt that that was a much
more whole and complete answer.
- RCT uses peptides, what are they
and how are they effective?
- So peptides are chains of ammino acids and these
particular peptides we're using are carrying coded
information that the cells are able to use to repair
themselves so if you think as cells as software,
this is the equivalent of a software update
so the cells can actually fix their function.
- What kind of illnesses do you see the greatest
responses from here at RCT?
- RCT's treatments have the potential to be the most
effective in the area of rheumatology,
enology and neurological conditions.
- So Brice, what brought you to RCT?
- The fact that I had a debilitating affliction
called rheumatoid arthritis.
I didn't know what it was before it struck me
but it was taking me down and I went to three different
doctors in Texas and I got the same diagnosis, you have RA
but then they'd give me the same prescription.
And I just didn't like what I read about that medicine
to treat RA so I started looking for alternatives
and RCT came up and I started researching it,
reading about it, talking to Hans
and I decided to give it my best shot.
- Now what was your life like prior to your treatment?
- For about the year and a half before I had treatment,
my life was a living hell, you, it's 24/7 of pain
an inflammation and joints that are hurting
and you want to sleep but when you wake up
you feel just as bad as when you went to sleep
so it's just been a matter of my lifestyle just
going away in a hurry, I knew that.
I knew I was gonna have to do something out of the ordinary.
I'm okay with that 'cause I looked at my alternatives
and this seemed to be my best shot.
And as it turned out, it gave me my life back.
- So Linda, you were married to Brice while he was
a bicycler, I understand, what was it like seeing
him go from bicycling to this disease?
Explain to me what happened.
- It was very, very sad and very traumatic for him
and for me and so I saw him go through all the stages
of that the first time we came here for his treatment,
he could hardly walk down the steps to go to the beach.
He was in such pain so to see him just recover slowly
from that crippling arthritis and it's been so joyful
and happy to see him just normal again and enjoying his
life and his activities that he does.
And I'm so happy for him so when we found out about
the preventative for cancer and Alzheimer's, he
asked me if I wanted to do and because of seeing what
happened to him and his recovery and his success with
his treatment, that really encouraged me to say okay,
I'll do that and so I'm looking forward to maybe just
helping in the years to come to not have cancer
or Alzheimer's, hopefully it will help.
- And improving your quality of life.
Well, you guys are pretty much newlyweds anyway, right?
- Now we've been married six years.
- So yeah, you're still newlyweds.
You got a lot of life together.
- Yeah so we do and I'd like for those to be happy, healthy
years and this can help in any way,
we're willing to give that a chance.
- So this went on for years, how did that effect your
business and your family? - Oh my goodness.
I was so bad at one point in the September to December of
2015, I'm a very high energy person and so I'm always go,
go, go and I can multi task 15 different things at a time
and during that phase of my process, I would go to work
and I couldn't focus, the side effects were so bad that
I would look at my desk and just be instantly overwhelmed.
I felt like I had ping pong balls going off in my head.
I couldn't focus, it had a tremendous effect on my
marriage with my husband, I'm surprised he's still with
me because the steroids alone, I was on steroids quite
a long time, several years and from what I understand now,
that's meant to be more a short term drug.
But the steroids with my high intensity personality
and then adding steroids on top of it, I would just
get into a rage for no reason at all and God bless
my husband because, he went through a lot with my process.
And I'm sorry. - No, no.
- And my family, my kids, my daughter was just so
worried about me and I had to do something.
So when I came to RCT, the first thing my daughter
said was you're getting stabbed, don't go, don't do it.
And I was like baby, I'm on my last rope.
I don't know what else to do and I have to do something.
I have to get my life back.
- You have a real estate company too, don't you?
- I do, I own a real estate office so I'm very, very
busy with that and that was really suffering because
I went through a phase where I was like literally
having to sneak out of the office in the day
and take a three hour nap and that's not me.
I am like high octane all the time, go, go, go.
And for me to have to sneak away, first of all,
it was humiliating for me because I'm a power person.
I'm no someone who goes home and takes a nap.
And so for me to have to do that, it was,
my business suffered because of it.
My family suffered because of it.
I started shutting myself off from my friends
because I didn't want them to see me the way I was.
So it was very, very challenging to go through all that.
Sorry. - No, no.
So you've got your life back. - I have my life back.
I do, this place has saved my life.
It literally has saved my life and the side effects
that I was on from all those drugs, to be off of them
all now and what they do here is all natural and it just
changed, literally changed my life.
Within a month, I was off all of my medication,
all of my state prescribed medication, I was off of
within a month and on a daily basis before, even
with the medication I was on an anywhere from a six to
a 10 pain scale and within a month, my pain levels started
coming down, within six months, they were cut in half.
Now I'm pain free, I have no pain, I'm on no medicine.
And I have my life back and it's crazy.
It's crazy to see where I was and where I am now
and I just love this place, everybody here is so awesome
and they're so caring and they really truly are patient
centered, they're not profit centered, they're patient
centered and that's what I really loved about it.
- It's been a pleasure meeting you Dawn.
Thank you for sharing your story.
- You're so welcome, I'm just pleased that I can.
I hope that I can change someone else's life
by doing this because to live through what I've lived
through and be where I'm at now is a miracle, it really is.
- So Annie, I know that you are a cancer patient advocate.
But I also understand that you're going through this
yourself right now, can you tell me about why you're here?
- I met RCT a few years ago when they were doing peptides
and came and looked at the clinic, fell in love with it
and then when they decided to go into integrated care for
cancer and chronic disease, I came down with another couple
people and helped them set up a program and so I'm here
to evaluate it as a cancer patient.
- Wow, so how are you feeling going through the treatments?
What's different? - Oh, wow.
It's so easy and you feel so good.
And you don't feel like you have cancer.
You're not that picture that's walking about sick and bald.
- No body ever says they feel good after chemo.
- No, well they shouldn't, it's poison so you don't.
But this different, this is the therapies that they
use here respect the body, respect the immune system.
They're actually renourishing and rebuilding the bodily
functions, the peptides do it from the cellular level up.
So this is not peptides but it's very similar in that it
is addressing the body system, renourishing 'em,
rebuilding them, revitalizing them.
So you actually do feel like this little flower
that's getting stronger and healthier and more unfurled.
- So Annie, tell me how this is different
from traditional cancer treatment?
- Okay so traditional cancer treatment doesn't have a way
to target the cancer, it can only treat the whole body.
So they take your body weight and fill your body with
chemo or they take radiation and they.
- Kill everything. - Yeah.
And so what the therapies they do here do is they target
just the cancer cells and not the person.
So they're not only rebuilding the body and the immune
system, they are targeting the cancer with only the cancer
with the things the cancer can't eat, can't use so in other
words, they're starving the cancer.
- Starving the cancer. - Yeah.
Ketogenic diet starves the cancer, all the oxygenated
therapy starve the cancer and you
of course, feel nothing but good.
- Well you look amazing. - Thank you, I feel amazing.
- Now how can RCT's rheumatology treatments, how can they
improve the life of a patient?
- So the treatments have the potential to modulate
the immune system so the immune system is no longer
attacking the patient's body and also regenerate the joints.
So the cells that we're targeting in rheumatology are
typically ligaments, muscles, bones and tendons.
- So for neurological treatments like Alzheimer's
or early signs of dementia, how effective is RCT?
- We know these molecules have the potential to be
extremely effective because we're targeting the neurons.
And some of the molecules we're using can actually create
new neurons, they have the potential to create new neuro
transmitters and improve synapto genesis which is basically
the electrical communication between the neurons.
- This is really exciting stuff.
- Absolutely. - What kind of changes
have you seen since you started your treatment?
- I'm still in the early stages but I have noticed a slow
and gradual improvement in my ability to walk.
It's my knees that are mostly effected.
When I first started treatment, I was lucky when playing
golf if I could finish all 18 holes.
In fact, most of the time, I couldn't.
My knees, about the 15th hole would say
you really don't need to do those last three or four holes.
Why don't you just sit it out in the cart and I would.
And now my knees aren't even talking to me by the end
of the 18th, not running marathons but I am seeing a slow
and gradual improvement which makes sense to me
because my body did not get into this condition overnight
and it's not gonna get itself out of it overnight.
I think it takes a while for healing to happen
and I'm seeing that happen.
- Now how long have you been getting treatment?
- It's been about five months and it will be a year
when the treatment is concluded.
- So you're already seeing a significant improvement
in just five months then.
- I can't tell you that the actual physical improvement
is the most important part of it for me.
It's the peace of mind, the knowing that I can fix this
and not just a temporary band aid fix but I can fix this
down at the root level, this is a fix that's going to not
only help me today and tomorrow but this is going to be a
fix that still helps me 10 and 20 and 30 years from now.
Because we fixed the auto immune
condition that's driving the problem.
- What is it about RCT and their
approach that's so different?
- What I like is they've got a big tool box.
They have a lot of different options so you can
find the one that's going to work for you.
In my case, it may be a combination of different things
that are available here and the use of the peptides
is an unusual tool to find and in my case with
auto immune condition, rheumatoid arthritis,
that's a really valuable tool to find and to use
because it gets to the root of the problem
and it's like pressing a reset button in your body
that's been in the wrong place for probably decades
and now finally you'll be able to get the body to
change it's operating system, so to speak and get back
to a normal, natural way of operating.
- Like a software reboot. - Yeah, exactly.
- So how is traditional medicine, when you were going
through the traditional treatment, what was that like?
- The traditional options were much more limited.
And they were more a band aid approach but with a lot
of side effects, when I was first given Prednisone,
a pain killing steroid, yes, it diminished the pain
considerably but I was not able to sleep.
I had insomnia, I had watermelon face.
I had all the typical side effects that you have
with a high does of Prednisone
and it's not a permanent answer.
In fact, the next thing that I graduated to was to try
and treat this as a symptom of leaky gut 'cause I had
learned that a lot of rheumatoid arthritis really
starts with leaky gut and so we started to take certain
foods and whatnot out of my diet and that diminished my
pain more than I think it was
50 milligrams of Prednisone had done.
- Now I understand you're trying another treatment.
Can you tell us about that? - Well yes.
I've had so much success with this.
I started the treatment for RA in October of 2011
and here I am, leading a normal life.
And I just felt like I'm 69 and I felt like that
I feel so much concern about not length of life
but your health. - Quality.
- The quality and I just felt like with the success of
this treatment and the other things that they're
researching and knowing Dr Carmen and getting to know
the folks here, I felt like it might be a good idea
to do some preventative treatment such as cancer,
Alzheimer's, things that we'd probably be looking at
in our life right now so I felt like if we went ahead
and were proactive and took this treatment, that we would
have a great shot at having some good years ahead.
- Thanks for sharing your story, Brice.
- You're welcome, thank you for asking.
- So Hans, what's on the horizon for RCT?
- So this year the clinic is gonna be certified for
mononuclear stem cells for a few different diseases
that are extremely effective for aerosis or basically
when the joints have just worn out.
So far we've seen about an 80% advocacy rate where
somebody comes in with a knee bone on bone and will
have a normal space within 30 to 60 days.
We're very excited about that because it's a fairly
economic solution and obviously you don't have all the
down time that you have when you're going under the knife.
- So knees and hip replacement without surgery?
- Absolutely, really any joint has been successful.
We also are gonna use mononuclear stem cells for
diabetic foot and it's also roughly at 80% success rate.
And also in order to regenerate the skin so we think
it's gonna become very popular to use mononuclear stem
cells to actually regenerate the face as an alternative
option instead of going through plastic surgery or Botox
or other things like that. - So this could replace
surgery and Botox and fillers?
- It certainly has the potential to do that, yes.
- Oh, that's really exciting. - Absolutely.
- Thank you Hans, for being here on the show.
This has been Lea Woodford for Smartfem TV.
Thanks for watching. (techno music)