People I have met: ten years of stem cell stories, including the ones that didn’t go to plan

I’ve spent ten years around people who have had stem cells. I talk to most of them before they get on a plane, I sit with them on the days they come in, and a lot of them keep writing to me after they’ve gone home. Some come back year after year. Almost none of them found me through an advert. Somebody told them. That’s how this has always worked, so this page is just that — one person telling another — written down.

A few things about how I’ve written it. Nobody here has a name, a nationality or an exact age, because whether a story carries a name is that person’s decision, not mine. For every story on this page there are more I can’t tell, because the details that make them remarkable are the same details that would tell you who they are. Where somebody gave me a number — eighty percent, three weeks, day seventeen — I’ve kept it, because the number was theirs.

Please read this first. Everything on this page is what one person told me happened to them, in their own words. It is not a promise of any result. Outcomes differ from person to person, some people notice little or nothing, and every treatment carries risks and possible side effects. Where a condition is named, it is the condition that person told me they had — not a claim that stem cells treat it. A doctor has to assess you before anything is decided.

How I meet them

Before. Messages on WhatsApp, video calls, sometimes the whole family on one call. One daughter put her brother and her mother on a four-way call from the other side of the world, because her mother was the one who’d be flying and everybody wanted to hear it directly. Some people write for weeks. One man flew in for a consultation, flew home to think about it, and came back a week later.

During. I’m there. I sit with people between drips, and I meet the sons, daughters, husbands and wives who brought them.

After. They write. Some at a week. Some at five weeks with an itemised list. One man sends scans and health updates from overseas, months later. Some write a year on, with blood results.

Again. A good number come back. One man came first for his knee and came back for the IV. Another came back a month after a small first treatment because he said he could feel the difference in his stamina and strength. One man has been having stem cells for nine years, in various places, and knew more about it than most people I talk to.

My part in all of that is simple. Our job is to give you everything we know — what it is, where the cells come from, what might move and what might not — and then you decide. I don’t make that decision for anyone, and I don’t answer “should I?”. I have told people to go home and think about it. One woman wrote afterwards that what she remembered most was being told to take her time.

What I say before anyone books

Two things, every time.

Which parts probably won’t move. One man came with a shoulder that had been bad for years after a strain, steroid injections that hadn’t done much, and a list of other aches. I told him which ones I thought had a chance and which probably didn’t. Eight months later he wrote that the shoulder was 80 to 90 percent back to normal and he was swimming again — and he mentioned, without my asking, that he’d been told in advance about the others. There are no guarantees, he wrote. He’s right.

The more unwell you are, the more you tend to notice. People in good shape often feel less, and that isn’t a failure. One man who lived very clean — plant-based, yoga, training every day — told me honestly he didn’t get the dramatic result of the man he’d met in the lounge, who arrived with a long list of problems. What he noticed was clearer thinking, and energy that was already high going higher. That’s a normal answer for a healthy person. I was one of them — my own first time is on the main stem cells page.

The one with the scar

This is the story I tell most often.

A man came in for NAD and a vitamin drip. He had no plan to have stem cells. Over a few visits he met people who’d had them and kept coming back for other things, and he decided to do it as prevention — something for later, not for now. He was fit. He dived deep and rowed long distances most days. He’d also had a very bad accident years earlier: many operations on one ankle, and a thick scar that had never settled — tight, dry, discoloured, sensitive to the cold. And he’d spent time in hospital with a serious lung infection, with pneumonia and bronchitis a few times since.

He says the scar had started to change colour the morning after. Within three days it was thinner and closer to the texture of normal skin; he sent me photos from day one and day five. He said the skin all over his body felt so soft he kept touching his own arms. He felt his breathing change during the drip itself, woke up breathing deeper the next day, and noticed it when he trained. The mental side, he said, was quieter — better concentration, no afternoon slump. He wrote that at three weeks, and said himself that six months is the real time frame.

He told me he’d heard me talk about things like this and assumed it was somebody else’s luck. That is exactly what I’d assumed before my own lungs and nose came back. And I say the same thing every time I tell his story: nobody can order that result. Not him, not me.

The ones who noticed fast

A man about to turn seventy, with years of pain in his ankle, hip, wrist and shoulder. The day after, no ankle pain. Day two, the rest had gone, and he did 35 push-ups on his kitchen floor to check.
A woman with four years of nerve pain and pain around her kidneys woke the next morning without it — a faint pins-and-needles that faded during the day. For years she’d had to wait for her medication to work before she could make a cup of coffee.
A man with a failed spinal fusion. Within 48 hours he could touch his toes and sleep through the night. At two weeks he said the pain was gone, and so was sciatic numbness he’d had for thirty years.
A woman with multiple sclerosis, back pain and a frozen shoulder. A day after, she no longer needed pain medication or muscle relaxants to get through the day.
A man with a degenerative muscle condition did five days of NAD, stem cells and drips. Within 36 hours, he said, the burning in his muscles and the pain in his knuckles had gone, he was sleeping longer, and his head was clearer.
A woman with CIDP, a nerve condition. A week later she said 90 percent of the neuropathy in her hands and feet had gone, along with the joint inflammation.
A woman in her fifties with five bulging discs and an ankle damaged by a childhood bone infection. Within 72 hours she put it at 60 to 90 percent better — and said herself she was waiting for week twelve, because discs and cartilage take longer.
A scientist who’d lost a kidney, with diabetes, thyroid disease and high blood pressure, spent three months researching before he chose. After 48 hours he said he had no kidney pain.
A man with years of gastritis that no test had explained said it was nearly 80 percent better — and that he caught a cold and flu afterwards, which he hadn’t expected.
A woman with rheumatoid arthritis had an injection into one wrist. A week later she was waking without the usual stiffness; at five weeks that wrist hurt much less than the untreated one, and she thought the hand even looked younger. (Joints has more on the local injections.)
A woman who wanted to avoid surgery — the recovery, the scar tissue, the risk of doing it again — said she felt the cells working within hours, and afterwards that she felt 100 percent.
A man with type 1 diabetes for 27 years and a long list of damage from it — nerves, joints — told me I was “modest” about what I’d said to expect, and that he felt ten times better. He also said it hadn’t cured the diabetes. He was right to say so.
A man who smoked the evening after said his throat didn’t hurt the next morning, his breathing was deeper, and the stiffness in his shoulder had gone.
One man, from his first days: more air, more energy, skin around the eyes and cheeks tighter. Several others simply wrote “36 hours”.

The ones who took their time

A man with degenerative discs and pain running into his hip — eleven out of ten, he said — had been told surgery was next. For two weeks, nothing. On day 17 something shifted, then nothing again. From week six into the third month, a dull warm ache, about a two. Then little to no pain; he now walks close to four miles a day. Before he came, he told me the reviews looked AI-generated. I’m glad he said it.
A former rugby player with back and neck damage from the game and a couple of car accidents. It started within days. At two weeks the back pain was 80 percent gone; at six weeks his back was nearly pain-free, his neck 70 percent better, no more headaches, and he was sleeping eight or nine hours for the first time in twelve years. I’d told him discs take about three months.
A man of 72 with joint pain, vascular problems and several operations behind him. At three weeks his energy was back and he increased his exercise; at ten weeks he’d doubled it. His own doctor noticed the change.
A man a year on: more energy, better stress tolerance, sleeping better than ever, able to drink coffee again — and blood work showing better blood-sugar control and lower LDL than before. As a young man, he said, he’d trusted his body to sort itself out, and over the decades he’d lost that feeling. He says it’s coming back.
A man at three weeks: his lungs cleared (after a lot of mucus first), inflammation down 60 to 70 percent as he put it, stiff muscles softened, cravings for sugar gone, and his sleep score on his ring up from 72 to 90 percent, with deep sleep nearly doubled.
A former serviceman whose own doctor told him his labs didn’t look like they belonged to a man his age.
A man whose cardiologist, he said, told him he had the heart of a 25-year-old — and whose fatty liver no longer showed.
A man a month on: his blood pressure had come down to where it was years ago, and he was waiting for his next routine tests.
A man who’d had high blood pressure for 25 years despite a cocktail of medication told me his readings had improved remarkably.
A man with type 2 diabetes said he’d noticed slow, steady improvement in his lungs, muscle pain and energy, and could manage his diabetes better. He comes back every year.

The ones where not much moved — yet

I’ve put these in because this page would be dishonest without them.

At five weeks one man sent me an itemised report. Mental: fantastic. Lungs clearer. Neuropathy in his feet, maybe 20 percent better. Overall function up about 50 percent. Arthritis in his hands, maybe 10 percent. Lower back: no improvement at all.
Two years after a stroke, one man told me that a month in, nothing much had changed.
A mother in her eighties, with a hip replacement that had gone wrong more than ten years earlier, type 2 diabetes, a numb hand and a sore thumb. She went through a really painful stretch first. At two months the hip pain was gone, her blood sugar lower, the thumb easing — the numb hand hadn’t changed yet.
A man with a 44mm tear in one shoulder and two bad knees said he’d noticed considerable improvement, but that he understood it was a process.
One man’s pain, after years of treatment everywhere else, disappeared the next day and came back weeks later. He came back too. Severe damage sometimes needs more than one round — that’s how he put it, and I agree.

Families

A lot of the people I meet were brought by someone.

A son with his 80-year-old mother, who has lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis — and his own neck stenosis. Within the first week both of them had early signs of better mobility. He gave me three reasons for choosing: the quality of the cells, straight answers to all his questions, and never once a hard sell.
A son who chose by reading reviews for very specific improvements he wanted for his mother. At 24 hours she felt less inflamed; after a couple of days’ rest, stiff areas were moving.
A daughter with her mother, who’d lived for years with the effects of a car accident, anxiety and PTSD — a last attempt after trying everything. On day three her mother was calm. Five days out: no panic symptoms, starting to reduce medication she’d been on for years, osteoarthritis about 25 percent less.
A woman and her 81-year-old father, a lifelong tennis player, who made it an epic trip together.
A man who brought his sister, eight years after a collapsed lung. Within 24 hours she was walking further than she had in years, and the regular nausea had eased.
A husband who brought his wife for severe reflux. A month later, much better.
A woman who brought her mother: her breathing improved.
Couples, more than once. One man says his partner has a glow now and can breathe better than she can remember. Another man came with his parents; the three of them did it together.

What they tell each other

People between drips talk, and some of the best decisions I’ve seen were made in those conversations, not in mine.

A woman on a month of weekly drips for her gut met regulars with long recovery stories, and eventually decided to have stem cells herself. A man with seven years of chronic inflammation met another who said his shoulder pain had eased — and, unexpectedly, his fear of flying. A healthy man made his decision after hearing another man’s changes, which he said he’d watched with his own eyes. One man told me he’d met dozens of patients from every continent; over time they’ve come from more than 30 countries. Several say it feels like visiting friends. One finished a few books on his Kindle in the chair.

What they compared it to

These are their words, not mine.

One man had had stem cells before at a well-known place, where they kept adding treatments to what he wanted. He felt nothing — not from the cells, not from the NAD. Here, he said, he was told a few of the treatments he wanted weren’t necessary. A week later, pain he’d lived with for years had gone and his lungs felt deeper. He said he watched the fresh cells arrive when he sat down, not frozen ones.
Another had contacted many clinics before coming. Some couldn’t answer his questions. One, he found out later, didn’t have a doctor there that day. Several offered him a huge number of cells. His conclusion was that quality matters more than quantity.
A GP researched with his assistant and chose on the documentation — the origin of the cells, the processing, the containment. Another reviewer who said he researched for a year wanted a place that controls the whole process from lab to treatment.
One man explained it to me the way he’d explain it to anyone: frozen cells go through stress when they’re frozen and again when they’re thawed; some places use anti-rejection drugs, which are hard on the body; here the cells are processed fresh, close to the time of infusion, from an ethical, known donor source. He preferred a place that spent its money on the product rather than chandeliers. The cells come from a Lab Class 100 certified lab — the kind of detail people like him ask for on paper.
Some went further than I would. One called it the best in Asia; another, Ferrari-level. I’ll leave those to them.

What I’ve taken from them

You don’t miss what leaves you slowly is my line, but it’s theirs too. Most of the people on this page didn’t know how much had gone until some of it came back — the man who hadn’t slept through the night in twelve years, the woman who had to wait for medication before she could make coffee, the man who’d stopped expecting his body to heal itself.

What I can’t tell you is which of these stories would be yours. Nobody can. That’s the reason I keep telling people what might not move.

The questions I get

Are these real people?

Yes. Every story here is someone I’ve met, told the way they told it, in public reviews or in messages to me. I’ve removed names, countries and ages. I haven’t added anything.

Can I talk to one of them?

I don’t pass on anyone’s details. What I can do is tell you about people whose situation was close to yours — without names.

How soon do people notice something?

It varies more than any other answer on this page. The explanation I was given is that many people feel subtle changes in the first one to two weeks, and bigger changes often show between four and twelve weeks, depending on the problem; most people are back to normal activity within 24 to 48 hours, and after a joint injection the area is rested for two or three days. What to expect on the day has the rest.

Does everyone feel something?

No. Healthy people often feel less, and some people don’t feel much at all. The safety side of this is on Safety questions I get asked, and why people travel here for it is on Why Thailand.

If you’d like to hear about someone whose situation sounds like yours, message me.

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I’m George. Thirty years in business, then ten years trying this whole field on myself before offering it to anyone else.

This is where I write down what I use, what I stopped using, and what I’d never do again. More about me →

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