In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Maribelle Verdiales, a pioneer in regenerative and integrative fertility medicine. We dive into groundbreaking therapies like intraovarian stem cell infusions, exosomes, and ovarian PRP, and how they can support fertility, especially for women over 40.
Dr. Verdiales shares her personal journey from being a traditional OB/GYN to becoming a holistic healer, and she explains the science, safety, and logistics behind these emerging treatments. We also talk about the inspiration behind her work, what’s possible in fertility care today, and why she’s so passionate about empowering women to take charge of their reproductive health.
In this episode, we cover:
- What stem cells, exosomes, and PRP are, and how they might support fertility
- Why some regenerative treatments are offered in Mexico and what patients should know
- Real-life stories of hope from Dr. Verdiales’ patients
- How regenerative therapies are helping women over 40 reclaim fertility
- What’s next in the future of holistic and regenerative fertility care
Resources
Follow Dr. Maribelle Verdiales on Instagram
Find Dr. Aimee’s Fertility Essentials & Supplements
Transcript:
Dr. Aimee: Welcome to the Egg Whisper Show. Today we’re going to talk about unlocking fertility potential, how regenerative medicine is changing the game. Imagine a future where cutting edge science helps restore fertility and rejuvenate reproductive health. Dr. Maribelle Verdiales is at the forefront of this transformation, and she’s coming on today to talk to us about all things related to that. We’re going to talk about using umbilical cord stem cells, exosomes and ovarian PRP to give hope to women over 40. In this conversation, she shares how these groundbreaking treatments work, who they can help, and what the future of regenerative fertility medicine looks like.
Dr. Maribelle Verdiales believes that optimal health comes from a balance of body, mind, and soul. Originally from Puerto Rico, she earned her medical degree in 2001 before completing a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in New York City, where she developed a keen interest in reproductive endocrinology, minimally invasive surgery, and pelvic reconstructive procedures. In 2009, she moved to Georgia to start a private practice, gradually embracing a more holistic approach to healthcare. Seeking to expand her expertise, she earned a Doctor of Naturopathy degree in 2017, integrating natural wellness practices with cutting-edge medical technology. A pioneer in regenerative and anti-aging medicine, she incorporated stem cell and other cell therapies into her practice in 2023. Dedicated to finding personalized solutions for her patients, she believes no question should go unasked as she helps individuals achieve their fullest potential.
Dr. Aimee: Welcome to the show, Dr. V.
Dr. Verdiales: Thank you so much, Dr. Aimee and Wow. With such an introduction, I think I like myself even a little more right now.
Dr. Aimee: So your journey in medicine has evolved from traditional obstetrics and gynecology to a more regenerative approach.
What inspired you to focus on treatments like umbilical cord stem cell therapy, exosomes and ovarian PRP?
Dr. Verdiales: So the beginning of my transformation as a human being and as a doctor actually started in 2009 where I found myself dealing with a critical scenario. There’s nothing like when bad news hits home. So at the time, I was married and pregnant with my fifth child.
And the father of my unborn child was diagnosed with advanced three c rectal cancer. And that took me for a loop because you think in your thirties, 20s and 30s, you’re invincible. Nothing can touch you. I was starting my career. I had finished my boards, had some experience, I was ready to start my first practice and we got hit with this.
And that started the journey of trying to find alternatives on how to keep him alive, because he was given a diagnosis, and only six months of life as a prognosis. I was not ready for that. I was like, “Oh my God! So I’m going to be a widow and I’m going to be left with small children and a newborn.” So my personality is that of a warrior and a fighter.
I was like, “We’re going to find everything and anything that’s out there.”
And so from becoming almost an expert on chemotherapy and all the research on which one works the best, to radiation, to pros and cons, to diet, to the anti-cancer diet, to herbs…once you start going down a rabbit hole, then it starts spreading out.
The more questions you get, the more answers come out, and then more questions happen. It’s a limitless journey of understanding, learning and exploration through that experience. Instead of six months, he actually stayed with us four years, and that was in part through my experimentation.
It was not so much the chemotherapy and the radiation and the 32 surgeries he underwent, but I saw miracles. I saw miracles. You cannot unlearn what you’ve learned, or “un-experience” what you’ve experienced, so it was a massive transformation. It’s almost like I took the pill from the matrix and I woke up.
I was awoken never to be asleep again, and I realized that the box that I was trained within as a traditional MD was not the box that limited me. It was that there was a world out there of possibilities, endless possibilities, because the current understanding of how our bodies and the biology and our universe works is really, really limited. We would need several lifetimes to understand maybe 1% of how the world really works.
So that’s how I started learning a little bit more about other modalities, cutting-edge, experimental stuff, including, clinical nutrition, herbal medicine, Chinese medicine, acupuncture. There was endless, endless information that I just kept going over through the years.
Finally, after his passing, I had a little bit more time because I had been his primary caretaker during that time. I dove in head first, and finished my degree in naturopathy, because I wanted to have more structured learning and be exposed to multiple teachers and views, because that’s how you eventually create your own views. So that’s how my journey started.
Through that process, I did come across PRP in multiple areas, because the first people that started doing PRP were orthopedics. So I was exposed to that.
Pain management and cosmetics, you know, everybody knows about the Vampire Facelift, and cosmetic and anti-aging kind of goes hand in hand whether you want to feel younger and biologically be younger or you want to look younger, the techniques are very, very similar, if not the same. So I started doing more cosmetics and learning the science behind the process. And once I understood the concept, then it clicked something just went, “Okay, well if I’m trying to cause reversing of aging and restructuring of your elastin collagen in skin, then that could be used somewhere else, and that’s why it works in orthopedics.”
So I started researching other areas in medicine and found the papers on Intra-Ovarian PRP, that came out of Greece with Dr. Pantos and I was like, “Woo! I found the Holy Grail!”
At that time I was doing functional medicine, so women’s health from A to Z, doing primary care and all sorts of alternative protocols. I incorporated some of that with my patients because I was dedicated to pelvic reconstruction and incontinence.
My population has always been kind of 35 plus, for most of my career, that’s the group that I’ve served. So I started getting into the practice, that same age group wanting to be pregnant, you know, second marriage or whatever.I started incorporating some of those techniques in my practice and at first I would do it, intraoperatively through laparoscopy, because those were some of the papers that I saw at the beginning.
And then finally, I developed other techniques on how to get there without being so invasive. And just one thing led to the other. Eventually I did join CNY fertility as part of their team, and brought PRP into CNY fertility because that was when I started doing PRP was around 2013.
I was a weird person among my peers. They would stop at me in the hospital and ask, “Are you okay? We’re losing her. Yeah. I think her husband’s cancer is getting to her.”
So I would go to the seminars and then I was the only MD and they, everybody would come to me and go, “You’re here. Why are you here? It’s a seminar on herbal medicine.”
It was because I wanted to learn. You want to learn, right? So, fast forward and I joined CNY fertility, and then fertility just pretty much sucked me in. I still save some time in my schedule for my functional medicine non-fertility patients because I love the diversity. But, as that kept growing, then I found, (and that’s something that probably in your practice), that PRP takes you so far and there’s a group of patients especially, when their ovarian reserve is really low, it’s hard just with PRP to get enough oomph, enough healing to get it going.
So then I started researching what else, what else? The buzz word of stem cells was coming around, but there was no information in the US. So I flew down to Mexico, to a seminar on regenerative medicine and stem cells. And that was full of synchronicities, or God, or call it whatever.
I walked into this seminar on stem cells, focusing on sports medicine and critical care. And the critical care presenter mentioned that he was the medical director of a stem cell lab and that part of his own introduction was that he had experience with stem cells. So I talked to him at the end of the conference.
We ended up spending a few hours together, and he answered all my questions. And then eventually I traveled and visited the lab. I’m very picky. I wanted to see how it works. And he’s like, “Do you want to try it?” And I was like, “Hell yeah! Right here. Go on.”
So I tried it myself, I wanted to see what it was like. And then I started just sharing it with my friends. They were like, “What? What are doing in Guadalajara?”
I was like, “Well, I’m going to go see this doctor and he’s going to give me some stem cells to try.”
Can you imagine?
And so I have doctor friends, and they asked, “Can we go with you?”
Long story short, next thing you know, I have like six people traveling with me, mostly nurses, NPS, and doctors and they were like, you know, “I’ve been trying to get pregnant and I mean, I am totally willing for you to inject me anywhere and everywhere.”
And I said, “wow…” When I started doing this, there was zero data.
And so I had an injection and I’m fine.
The data on other organs (and that’s something that I discussed with Dr. Nario), there’s data on injection to other organs to cause localized healing. And there was no adverse reaction.
So I said, “Well, if they’re injecting livers and other organs and joints with this stuff, why not inject the ovaries? It’s an organ.”
So that’s where the experimentation exploration began, in January of 2023. And since then, it’s been just this crazy journey of tweaking the protocol and going back and forth and seeing what works best. And so we do have some preliminary data that I’m very excited about, in the even more subgroups for whom it works better and so forth.
Dr. Aimee: Well, who? Well, I want to hear all about that. So who does it work better for?
Dr. Verdiales: I would say it helps 90% of the people. Because of the way the placental stem cells and cell therapy works, it works extremely well when there is inflammation and injury. Those two things have been extensively proven to work. So for example, on a younger woman that suffered from an injury because she had chemotherapy, or she had injury to the ovaries, those tend to bounce back a lot better.
Once you’re dealing with physiologic menopause that gets a little more blurry.
I had a doctor friend, she was one of my pioneer crazies. She is a beautiful cardiovascular surgeon and she said, “You know what, I want to do this because I’ve heard great things… and for cardiology. I want to try it on myself.”
And she was going through menopause: FSH: high, AMH: low, skipping periods. And by the time that she headed down with me, she had had no periods in four months. And she’s like, “I’m not ready to do donor eggs or IVF, you know, but I really don’t want to go through menopause right now.” She had found love later in life.
Her menopause was completely reversed, full parameters: her AMH doubled FSH dropped. All her symptoms were gone, and she started having periods every month, with documented ovulations. She did not get pregnant. She was 50 and she’s 51 now.
She actually started having [menopause] symptoms again and she’s like, “I need more stem cells!”
Dr. Aimee: So how long did, how long did her menopausal symptoms go away for?
Dr. Verdiales: A whole year.
Dr. Aimee: Wow, that’s impressive.
Dr. Verdiales: Right, a whole year. I haven’t had anybody get spontaneously pregnant past age 48. I would say the bulk of the patients have been 43 to 50. I’ve seen a decrease of ovarian reserve due to fragile X or genetic permutations, those have had very minimal response.
I think that once you get into something like that, there’s so many factors involved that even though they felt better, the bounce back was much shorter. We did have one of our fragile X premutation patients who had two spontaneous ovulations and then she reversed back to menopause.
Dr. Aimee: I see.
Dr. Verdiales: We’ve had five spontaneous pregnancies, just natural pregnancies and three live births. With menopausal symptoms gone, you do feel better. So it’s effective even for anti-aging. We had another patient, for example, who had low ovarian reserve, in her late thirties, but with ulcerative colitis (autoimmune type of stuff).
And she had two rounds of stem cells, two months apart. Unfortunately her fertility did not improve, but she did go for a colonoscopy, and the doctor was like, “What did you do? I mean, your colon is spotless. I’ve never seen your colon this good. I mean, what, what did you do? You’re not taking meds right now.”
And she replied, “Well, I went for two rounds of stem cells.”
I’ve had another patient, she’s 48, she’s a nurse and her eyesight was restored.
Dr. Aimee: Wow.
Dr. Verdiales: She had two rounds of stem cells, too. Her AMH went from 0.03 with an FSH of a hundred to 0.08. Even though it’s not perfect, it’s doubled.
Her FSH is down to 22. Her eyesight is back to normal. She said, “The craziest thing is I suddenly realized I was reading without my glasses.” And so we get responses like that.
Dr. Aimee: What’s the experience like for a patient? For someone who’s interested in working with you, what’s the first step they take and what can they expect from there? Where do they go in Mexico?
Walk us through that: they go to the building, they get an IV? Take me through the steps.
Dr. Verdiales: I like to create a relationship with the patient ahead of time, see where they are, where they’ve been and then give them realistic expectations based on their age, history, medical history, et cetera. Because then we have enough data to guide them through the process a little better.
I believe in a whole person approach, right? There’s no magic pill. So we talk about diet, we talk about spirituality, and emotional stuff. I ask them what brought them here and about their goals. We talk about supplements.
I do the kitchen sink approach.
Once they decide to go to Mexico, they travel to the Cancun Airport. They can take a taxi (they’re safe) or we do have a tourism company that helps us. There’s transportation, and there’s hotels nearby. The clinic is in Play De Carmen.
Through the years I’ve developed a two day program. And there’s some logic to the madness: they get an infusion one day, and then they get the intro-ovarian PRP with stem cells and exosomes the next day.
The reasoning behind it is that because of the research. At first I was doing it all together, and then I thought, “Well, there’s so much that you can absorb at once. And too much of a good thing is a bad thing.”
And we know from all the research, and all the documentation and stem cells in other areas of medicine that 60% of the stem cells utilized are going to go to vital organs.
There is wear and tear. Ovaries and uteri, as organs, are non-essential for survival. Therefore, if your ovaries are shutting down, it’s because your body is diverting energy and food to other organs first. So you have to nourish the whole body before there is anything leftover or enough food for the ovaries and the uterus.
You have to have some sort of systemic approach, and that’s what I try to do first. I try to address the whole person.
If there are old injuries or any lung problems, liver problems, we’ll take care of that first, because that’s going to happen regardless. That’s because stem cells are smart, they say they have a homing device. They will migrate from where you put them to where they’re needed.
So even if I were to inject them into the ovaries, the body may decide to do something else, almost like it’s saying, “Hey, I mean the ovaries are great, whatever, but you know what? This person has been exposed to black mold for six months. Let’s go fix the lungs first.”
So we take care of the person first and then go take care of the ovaries.
Dr. Aimee: And then as far as the stem cells, where do you get them from?
Dr. Verdiales: I get them from a lab that’s based in Guadalajara. It’s called CBCells. And the reason that I chose the lab (because you know, outside of the US you don’t know what you don’t know) is because the doctor that I was at that conference. I got to meet him, create a relationship with him and to get to know him more. I went to the lab, and I saw the quality control measures.
The lab is not only fully certified nationally, but internationally by the International Association of Cell Therapy and the European Association of Cell Therapy. They have published research on their cells; they have documented data.
They also have third party quality control. It’s a very serious lab.I felt comfortable enough that on the first trip, myself, my husband and my family got [stem cells] and I believe that if I don’t feel comfortable doing it to my children, it would be unethical to tell somebody else to do it.
So that’s how I practice medicine. And that’s why I use them.
Dr. Aimee: And so the stem cells are coming from banked cord blood from a public bank?
Dr. Verdiales: Correct.The stem cells are coming from donated placenta and cords of young women that ended in healthy pregnancies. The mothers are fully tested for all the STDs, and all the testing. They even have pre-Covid stem cells, if anybody wants them. So non-vaccinated women prior to covid, there are some stem cells from them in the lab bank.
You have the choice of doing placenta or Wharton’s Jelly.
Wharton’s Jelly is a little more expensive because there’s less material per placenta, so it takes a little bit more to get the same concentration of cells. But from the discussion with Dr. Nario, he feels that yes, Wharton’s Jelly might be a little better, but the expense doesn’t necessarily outweigh the outcomes.
A question that I personally had when I went to talk to him is like, “Isn’t there a host / versus graft reaction? I mean, it’s like a foreign cell running around in my body. Isn’t it going to make my immune system go crazy?”
And the answer is no. If you think about the physiology of the placenta, it’s a natural buffer between the fetus (which is a foreign object) and the mother, so the fetus doesn’t get rejected. So it naturally does not elicit any signature proteins on the cell membrane that could be interpreted as foreign. So it bypasses the mom’s immune system. Otherwise, we would all be aborted.
Dr. Aimee: Right.
Dr. Verdiales: So that’s how stem cells can work around our own immune system.
The second question that I had, and my question my patients ask all the time is, “Okay, is this DNA from a foreign person going to be incorporated into my body somehow?” And the answer is no. From stem cell research on animals, we know that they last in a body between 7 and 21 days, depending on how they go into the body.
So if it’s an IV infusion, it’s seven days. The longest it lasts is the intraperitoneal infusion, and that’s days, give or take. And so no, it’s not going to be incorporated into your egg.
It works via three mechanisms. One, the stem cell itself will release exosomes as it’s injected into your body. And those are signals for your body to start the healing process. It rescues cells, so instead of going into apoptosis or cell death, they go into regeneration and healing.
Two: it throws some peptides into the blood or into the surrounding area that are anti-inflammatory.
And three, it actually has a cell to cell interaction. So it talks to your cell in a kind of a power-train way, saying, “Hey. You’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. Remember your programming, you know, come back to us. Focus. Focus.” And so it just pushes the body towards healing instead of aging, and then the stem cells die off and your body takes over from there.
PRP which is using your own healing proteins and signals that you’re using and you’re manipulating, you’re pushing the person into that direction of healing and regeneration, and then the body takes over. And that’s why the effect is different from everybody.
Even in my years doing PRP, you can get no response, a little response, or a dramatic response depending on how those signals are received by the body and overall health of the patient.
Dr. Aimee: And what are the risks? Is there any risk of injuring the ovary wrist to any organs around the ovary when you’re doing the procedure? Have you had any complications?
Dr. Verdiales: The risks are like any invasive procedure.
You are poking the ovaries, so there’s risk of bleeding, infection, and damage to adjacent organs, just like any surgery could have. Knock on wood, we haven’t had any major complications.
We’ve had a little bit of bleeding, we did have somebody create a little hematoma, and allergic reactions. I think we’ve had our first allergic reaction in two years, and I don’t think it was the stem cells. It’s hard to pinpoint because of the “kitchen sink” approach. I think from experience, it was more of the placental peptides that caused the reaction, because it was like skin hives that just spread.
I do inject placental peptides into the patient subcutaneously. She’s been dealing with hives and I had to give her prednisone and so forth, but she’s been the first one in two years to have a full allergic reaction to any of the products.
The risks are really, really low.
There is a reaction to the stem cells that can happen, and they call it the cytokine storm because they will flare up your immune system. And I had read about it but I actually experienced it.
On one of my trips to Guadalajara, I told Dr. Nario, “Okay, I want to feel a cancer dose. Give me the cancer dose. What do you give to a cancer patient that you’re trying to rescue?”
And he’s like, “Are you, are you sure, Maribelle?”
I was like, “Yeah, come on. Give it to me. I’m, I’m going to take it.”
So he did. And an hour later, I had a fever and chills. I felt like I had covid. It was like, “okay, whoops.”
He was laughing at me afterwards. It started about 45 minutes to an hour after the IV infusion. And the next morning I was fine, but I have to say it was not pleasant.
So that’s like a dramatic effect, and it’s just your body responding because you are manipulating the immune system. So every time you manipulate, it’s like having a vaccine and getting that flu feeling. So it’s kind of the same thing.
Dr. Aimee: I love this conversation. Thank you for doing what you do, because my approach is to leave no stone unturned, and I feel like every patient who’s exploring donor egg should be given all of these options so they can make the best decision for themselves.
Dr. Verdiales: And we live in a world where bullying is bad and you have to be careful, but women, older women, or I should say more experienced women, (seasoned, sexy mamas) trying to have a baby are bullied. and I’m sure you see it all the time.
It’s like by the time they get to me, they’ve seen three fertility doctors that have told them,”What are you thinking?”
I had a patient that was actually completely turned away [from other doctors]. They said something like, “Go away because you know you already failed.”
They let her do a cycle of IVF and of course the results were not great. They were not horrible. She had three eggs. One embryo did an implant.
And they told her, “Either you do donor eggs with us or we’re not going to treat you. Because of course you know you’re going to damage our stats and we don’t want that.”
So by the time they get to us, they are almost apologetic. They come in and say things like, “I’m sorry, I know that… you know,” and they just don’t even look at you. “I’m, I’m sorry, but I still feel that I want to give, you know, have a chance…”
I’m like, “Hell yeah. You’re just beginning life. There’s no reason to feel ashamed about this. You know those people out there, they’re not paying your bills.”
Dr. Aimee: I mean, patients are getting bullied every single day in clinics all over this country and world, and they’re made to feel like there’s something wrong with them.
Dr. Verdiales: Or told that they should go somewhere and die and wait for the grandchildren. It’s like, no, no. Life is not over until life is not over until it’s over.
Dr. Aimee: Yeah.
Dr. Verdiales: There’s nothing worse than going to your deathbed with a question that’s unanswered, with a dream that you didn’t try to follow.
Not all of my patients will have a biological child, but I will try as much as I can to help them close that chapter in peace for them. Because I’m a girl and we are in that age group of “sexiness”, so if I wanted to have a baby right now, why should I limit myself?
Dr. Aimee: Right.
Dr. Verdiales: If it doesn’t work and the next step is donor eggs, then it’s okay, because I gave myself a chance. And a lot of these girls, they don’t get a chance. Other doctors are like, “Donor egg. Donor egg, oh, donor eggs or get outta my office.” It’s terrible.
Just like somebody had [to be the first] to run the four minute mile. And then everybody was running the mile in four minutes. We are redefining aging and life expectancy and what’s possible every day.
In my 23 years as a physician, (and I’m sure that you share this), I’ve seen paradigms shift completely. What was thought to be good is bad, then it’s good. Or a medication was great, then it’s awful. The truth is never absolute.
So we’re all pushing the envelope together as we allow the questions to flow and the possibilities to come about a question arises, to find a solution, and then the possibility pops.
Even in my search, I ended up on the other side of the world a few weeks ago in my craziness to find what’s next. And now you can even have a three parent baby and do a pronuclear transplant.
I thought, “This is the next step to what I’m doing. I can take them here and then this team of doctors can push a little further.”
One of my stem cell patients was there and it was not planned. And again, God, synchronicities, whatever, one of my stem cell patients happened to be there transferring her baby, when I was there, which was very exciting.
And now she’s pregnant at 46, with a girl because the way the embryos developed after the transplant, they’re able to do PGT testing on all of them. So we know it’s a girl and it’s biologically hers. Yes, it has somebody else’s mitochondria, but who cares?
Dr. Aimee: right. Where was this, that you did this?
Dr. Verdiales: It’s in Albania with the team of Dr. Uliana and Dr. Berol.
Dr. Aimee: Okay.
Dr. Verdiales: There are really cool things happening all around the world and as physicians and scientists and discoverers, we need to work together to change the ideology and to teach each other new things. You know, Christopher Columbus was told he was crazy
Dr. Aimee: I get that a lot, and I say I’m just crazy about helping you make a baby. And if any doctor wants to say that about me, I take it as a compliment. Thank you very much. So are you going to bring MRT and Pro-Nuclear transfer to Mexico or are you going to be taking a team Albania?
Dr. Verdiales: I’ve created a collaboration with the team right now. Unfortunately it’s not legal in the US. It’s legal in very few countries. They’re not prepared to take that to Mexico just yet. For people living on this side of the world, they would have to travel over there to get that technology. Down the road, I would love to bring that to Mexico. A lot of things need to happen, but I think eventually that’s where it’s heading.
Dr. Aimee: Well, that’s very exciting. You’ve helped so many of my patients since 2023 when you started doing what you’re doing in Mexico. I’m really glad to have this opportunity to talk with you today to have you teach us about your past and your journey. Thank you for coming on.
Thank you for your book. We’ll make sure to include a link to the book in the show notes, and we can’t wait to have you back on to talk more about your experience, so that more people can hear your message and my message of hope: that it never killed anybody.
Dr. Verdiales: I am so honored that we finally were able to connect this way. Because I love to connect with people that are all working parallel and together, we’re going to make this a better place.
Dr. Aimee: Amen to that. Thank you so much.
Dr. Verdiales: Thank you for inviting me.
