A Pediatric Chiropractor’s Honest Take on Stem Cell Therapy
Ask Dr. Tony, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Duration: 28 min
Key Takeaways
- Stem cell therapy for children with autism, hypoxic brain injuries, and seizures gets a “strong yellow light,” not a green light, Dr. Tony Ebel is scientifically intrigued by the potential but says the evidence is still very much out.
- The children who saw the best results from stem cells had completed one to three years of foundational work first: Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, foundational nutrition, and movement-based therapies like neuro-focused PT and OT.
- Stem cells depend on neurological signaling to know where to go and what function to perform. If the nervous system is subluxated, dysregulated, and disconnected, even a massive dose of stem cells lacks the “air traffic control” needed to work.
- Children who had no response or regressed from stem cells often used them as one of their first interventions after leaving conventional medicine, while their nervous systems were in stage three subluxation, completely exhausted and shut down.
- Any intervention has three possible outcomes, improvement, no change, or regression, and sequence matters more than the intervention itself: which intervention, at what time, in what order, for which child.
Should You Consider Stem Cells for a Child With Autism?
Stem cell therapy for children with autism is not yet ready for a green light, but it is not a flat “no” either. Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, gives it what he calls a “strong yellow light”, he is scientifically and philosophically intrigued by the potential, but believes the therapy is too new and the clinical results too inconsistent to recommend broadly today. He does not use stem cells in his clinic and does not currently refer children out for them.
The reason for caution is neurological signaling. Stem cells are essentially a “blank slate” the body can direct to form into a needed tissue or function. But that direction depends on a functioning nervous system acting as the body’s “air traffic controller.” If a child’s vagus nerve, autonomic, and central nervous systems are subluxated and dysregulated, the stem cells have no reliable signal telling them where to go or what job to do.
This is why sequence is everything. In Dr. Tony’s clinical observation, the children who responded best to stem cells had first spent one to three years rebuilding their nervous system through neurologically-focused chiropractic care, foundational nutrition, and movement-based therapies. The children who saw no change, or regressed with worse seizures and sleep, typically used stem cells too early, before their neurological stability was restored.
What Is Dr. Tony’s 30,000-Foot View on Stem Cells? [0:45 – 3:05]
Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: Stem cell therapy for children on the autism spectrum, what do I think? Let me expand the question for a minute. Let’s talk about stem cells for autism, for hypoxic brain injuries, for seizures. Our expertise is the nervous system and neurodevelopmental nervous system disorders. That encompasses what we call the Perfect Storm, a multifactorial, early-life-onset sequence of stressors. There are emotional stressors, physical stressors, and chemical toxic stressors that trigger this neuro-storm within our kids’ brains and bodies. Depending on the type of neurophysiological dysfunction, it kicks out autism, ADHD, sensory issues, or seizures.
In today’s world, a lot of parents are awesomely looking at different solutions and interventions that hopefully can help the body heal from the inside out. So my first response to the stem cell question is this: on the surface, I am extremely intrigued, very excited, and the jury is still very out.
Let me repeat my 30,000-foot answer. I’m very intrigued scientifically, and even, I’ll use the word and then explain it, philosophically. I’m very intrigued and excited by the potential of stem cell therapy. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 12 months, 3 years, or 5 years, I’m coming back on here saying, “Hey, after we get nervous system stability, I think things like stem cells can really help our kids heal.” But I’m not going to give a strong green light at all. I’m going to give a strong yellow light.
“On the surface, I am extremely intrigued, very excited, and also the jury is still very out.”
Why Doesn’t Dr. Tony Use Stem Cells in His Clinic? [3:05 – 6:06]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Big picture, I love the concept. But I don’t send any kids, at any stage of care, out for stem cells yet, because we’ve seen quite a few cases where either the outcome didn’t move the needle, the kiddo didn’t have a response, or they had a negative response.
Let me state some very important things. I don’t use any stem cell therapy of any kind in my clinic. I’ve got no real-life, practical, clinically-based evidence about it. And evidence-based care, whether it’s chiropractic, stem cells, functional medicine, or even medicine, can’t just rely on the research that’s out there. Everybody always wants to say, “Where’s the research?” Research is awesome. We love meta-analysis and randomized clinical trials. I love case studies. If somebody says case studies don’t matter, they’re a drone, they’re AI. Tell the mom and dad of a case study who had a healing, transformative miracle story that their case doesn’t matter. Case studies are scientific, randomized clinical trials are scientific, and everything in between is scientific.
Anytime we put forth an intervention in our clinic, or, if it’s not chiropractic, when we seek out other providers who are best in the world, we work in collaboration on a specific sequence. I haven’t done that with stem cells yet, even though I’ve heard presentations from an incredible doc in Arizona, and I’m connecting with docs in San Diego and Tijuana to learn more. I’m in the “learn more” phase about stem cells.
All of our clinical decisions are first based on clinical observation. We’re not researchers, we’re practitioners. We’re in clinic every day with families, watching results closely, and we’re strongly connected with the top practitioners of every expertise out there. I’m picking their brains, reviewing their case logs, sitting on panels, and talking with other experts all over the world.
“We’re not researchers. We’re practitioners. All of our clinical decisions are first based upon clinical observation.”
How Should Parents Evaluate Any Intervention? [6:06 – 9:34]
Dr. Tony Ebel: When it comes to any intervention possible, here’s the simple decision-making tree you’ve got to run through as a parent, and the one we run through as practitioners deciding whether to do something, or whether to recommend it.
Even if we don’t do it in our clinic, if I’m telling patients to go do something, I need to know that intervention inside and out. I need to know that practitioner inside and out. And I need to be extremely confident it’s going to work, for one reason: the only thing we care about is getting your kids better. Because we care so much, we have to be really clear in our reputation. We don’t go around saying, “Here’s my Amazon code for a supplement my third cousin got me to sell for 10%.” That doesn’t exist in our world.
I love that you vet practitioners and interventions and that you’re skeptical. Dads out there, I am you, but you should meet “dad Tony” with the skepticism. It’s not even skepticism. I just do my homework and need to understand things thoroughly. When somebody comes up to me with a device and says, “Have you heard about this?”, yes, and I have 55 questions. If you can go 55 for 55, then we can work together to help these kids get better.
So there are three potential outcomes for any intervention, stem cells, chiropractic, supplements, diet changes, red light therapy. Outcome one: the kid gets better. Best outcome ever. But just because something worked for one child with an autism diagnosis does not mean it’ll work for the next. Just because stem cells improved one kiddo with a hypoxic brain injury and seizures doesn’t mean it’ll work for the next 10 kids. Every child’s neurophysiological system is so vast and intricate, and how a kid got sick may be similar but different enough that they respond markedly differently to different interventions, especially at a different time or in a different sequence.
“The real magic sauce, it’s not magic sauce, it’s neurophysiology, is which interventions work, when, in what order, and what sequence.”
What Happens When There’s No Change, or Things Get Worse? [9:34 – 13:15]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Outcome number two is no change. We did it and didn’t go backwards or forwards. Clinically, that’s not a negative outcome, it’s a no outcome. But what about financially? Emotionally? What about flying somewhere, investing all the cost, and disrupting your life to get an intervention? I’m very acutely sensitive to “no change,” because none of these happen in a vacuum. As a parent who’s gone through an incredible healing story with my own son, and flown to multiple places with my daughter for one of her health challenges, both now thriving, we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and weeks away from regular life to get these interventions.
The third outcome is that things get worse. Seizures got worse. Sleep got worse. As of this podcast, when it comes to stem cells, I can count on less than one hand the number of kids I’ve seen get a positive benefit. We see a lot of neurologically complex kids, thousands of kids, but not tens of thousands. So take my clinical observations with that math. I’m not hiding anything; this is our observation.
I’ve got more kids in the second group who did stem cells with no change. And I have a fair amount of kiddos who did stem cells, and even more who did lasers, and regressed, with seizures and sleep getting worse. But don’t just take these snippets and miss the whole thing, because it’s not only about the intervention. It’s about which intervention was used, at what time, in which sequence, and with which protocol.
That’s what’s always going to be different about the PX Docs platform and the Experience Miracles podcast. When you send in a question, I’m probably going to add half a dozen questions inside your question that, as a parent, you wouldn’t even know to ask, nor should you. That’s our job, to do alongside you in partnership. Informed choice doesn’t mean reading the headlines and getting the 30,000-foot view. You deserve this granular, thorough an answer.
How Do Stem Cells Actually Work? [13:15 – 18:14]
Dr. Tony Ebel: What I love about being a PX Doc, and how we’ve trained all our PX Docs, is that we not only know how to do our own intervention, neurologically-focused chiropractic care, which restores the foundation and in most cases is the very first thing we need to do. We’re also well-read and well-experienced in how other interventions work, even if we don’t do them in our clinic.
I never did stem cells. Never have. I never did lasers. That doesn’t mean I didn’t refer a child out a couple of weeks ago for a deep dive of laser intervention. And it doesn’t mean I won’t come back down the road with an updated episode as the intervention gets better.
Let me explain why I’m philosophically encouraged. I’m not a stem cell expert, so I’ll give you a neuro-chiro Iowa farm-kid explanation. Stem cells are a blank slate within the body, something God designed and gave us, where the body can say, “Hey, I need you to go over here, form into this function, and provide this function.” That’s different from pumping in glutathione, vitamin C, or magnesium, where you already know what those are supposed to do. It’s markedly different from medication, where the lab says, “We know it does this, so we’ll inject it and expect it to do this.”
Stem cells work completely differently. Through signaling and neuro-communication within what’s called the innate or neuro-intelligence of the brain-body connection, stem cells can be sent into a specific tissue, organ, or glandular system and told to form up and perform a function. That’s why it’s so exciting, a lot of dysfunction exists in the brain and body for a kiddo with seizures, autism, or autoimmune disorders, and we’d like to restore and rebuild function from the inside out. We trust the body’s innate wisdom to do what it’s designed to do, which is to actually be healthy.
“Stem cells are a blank slate within the body where the body could say, ‘Go over here, form into this function, and provide this function.'”
Why Does the Nervous System Determine Whether Stem Cells Work? [18:14 – 21:33]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s where it gets weird, but it’s not weird at all, it’s neurological. There is a master conductor, an air traffic controller within the body that controls all chemistry. Neurology controls chemistry. Neurology controls physiology.
So whether stem cells work great, don’t work at all, or do the third thing, make things more confused within the body, depends on one variable. Is the nervous system hooked up and operating? Is the operating system, the air traffic control, the conductor of physiology, doing its job well? If the vagus nerve, the autonomic and central nervous system, is disconnected, subluxated, and dysregulated, well, that’s the signaling. That’s the harmonics. That’s the air traffic control.
If the nervous system is dysregulated and disconnected, we can generate the most incredible, massive dose of stem cells, get them into the body, even get the body generating more itself, some devices do that, and what are they going to do? How do they know where to go and what job to perform? They don’t. If you don’t have neurological signaling and brain-body communication functioning at least at a basic healthy level, what we call neurological stability, and that doesn’t get rebuilt and restored first with chiropractic adjustments, we can’t expect stem cells to work so great. Same as supplements.
Stem cells, the way I’m answering this, are exactly analogous to supplements. Supplements aren’t a simple “yay good” or “nay bad” either. Neither is detoxification, binders, or working on methylation pathways. Neither are neuro-integrative therapies, or lasers. They can be great and helpful, or, if they show up too soon while the nervous system is still subluxated, dysregulated, and disconnected, they may actually make things worse.
“Neurology controls chemistry. Neurology controls physiology. If the nervous system is dysregulated and disconnected, how do the stem cells know where to go? They don’t.”
Why Does Foundational Work Have to Come First? [21:33 – 28:17]
Dr. Tony Ebel: How do you know whether a certain intervention, stem cells, supplements, detoxes, lasers, hyperbaric oxygen, PT, OT, speech, even chiropractic, is more likely to be net good or not? You have to measure nervous system function first.
Everything I teach comes not just from reading research, but from real-life observation as a busy, engaged clinician and parent. I’m not just a researcher, not just a clinician, not just a parent, it’s all three woven together that help us make the best decisions.
So, to close out stem cells: yes, we’ve seen a few kids get better. Yes, we’ve seen even more kids have no response. And yes, as of today, I’ve seen more kids have challenges with stem cells than with the other two options. Why? The kiddos who saw the best responses did between one to three years of foundational work first.
If you’ve never heard me talk about this, it’ll change your life. Foundational work is repairing the nervous system. When the nervous system is subluxated and dysregulated, it will not do well with good interventions, because it’s so dysregulated it becomes exhausted. When you take an overloaded, exhausted nervous system and ask it to do anything, even good healing interventions, you can make it more exhausted. You’ve heard the phrase “too much of a good thing.” When the nervous system is really unstable, even supplements, diet changes, primitive reflex work, cranial work, stem cells, or lasers introduced too soon can make things worse. That’s just the way healing happens.
The kiddos who had a positive response to stem cells did one to three years of neurologically-focused chiropractic care, foundational nutrition (clean eating with basic, not excessive, supplementation), and foundational movement-based therapies like neuro-focused PT and OT first. Then they layered on stem cells, and they did better with it.
The kiddos who had no response, and especially those who regressed, used stem cells as one of their first interventions after leaving conventional medicine. When we caught up and did our INSiGHT scans to measure actual nervous system function, we found those kids were in stage three of subluxation and nervous system dysregulation, completely exhausted and shut down.
I’ll close with an analogy. Anybody have teenagers? My son Oliver is a rockstar who’ll help anytime, but he’s a cross-country runner. If he just did a 10-mile run, took a bunch of nerd classes, and had a long day, he’s legitimately exhausted. If I ask him to help out a ton then, he’s going to be grumpy and the results won’t be what we want. But if I ask when he’s well-rested with an open schedule, “Hey buddy, come help me clean out the barn”, he comes out, we have a great time, and he’s happy. Think of that with clinical interventions for your kiddo. If their nervous system is exhausted, it’s not going to respond well to stem cells and lasers.
“The kiddos who saw the best responses with stem cells did between one to three years of foundational work first. Foundational work is repairing the nervous system.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Are stem cells a good treatment for autism in children?
According to Dr. Tony Ebel, stem cell therapy for autism is a “strong yellow light,” not a green light. He’s intrigued by the potential but has clinically seen only a handful of children benefit, with more experiencing no change or regression. He believes results depend heavily on restoring nervous system function first, not on the stem cells alone.
Why does the nervous system need to be addressed before stem cells?
Stem cells rely on neurological signaling to know where to travel and what function to perform. Dr. Tony Ebel describes the nervous system as the body’s “air traffic controller.” If a child’s vagus nerve and autonomic system are subluxated and dysregulated, the stem cells lack the signal needed to work effectively, and may even add confusion.
What should families do before considering stem cells for their child?
In Dr. Tony Ebel’s clinical observation, children who responded best to stem cells had first completed one to three years of foundational work: neurologically-focused chiropractic care, clean foundational nutrition with basic supplementation, and movement-based therapies like neuro-focused PT and OT. This rebuilds neurological stability before layering on additional interventions.
Can stem cells make a child’s symptoms worse?
Yes. Dr. Tony Ebel has seen children regress, with worse seizures and sleep, after stem cells, particularly when they were used too early. When a child’s nervous system is in stage three subluxation (exhausted and shut down), even good interventions can overload it further, the same way “too much of a good thing” backfires.
Does Dr. Tony Ebel use stem cells in his clinic?
No. Dr. Tony Ebel does not use stem cell therapy of any kind in his clinic and does not currently refer children out for it. He is in a “learn more” phase, connecting with stem cell practitioners in Arizona, San Diego, and Tijuana, and may revisit his position as the therapy improves over the next one to three years.
How can I find a provider who does Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care?
You can find a trained PX Docs provider through the PX Docs Directory. PX Docs practitioners are trained in Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care and use INSiGHT scans to measure nervous system function, helping determine whether a child’s nervous system is stable enough to benefit from additional interventions.
Resources & Related Content
- Autism & Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, How PX Docs approaches autism through the nervous system
- The Vagus Nerve, The key nerve behind brain-body signaling
- The “Perfect Storm,” Dr. Ebel’s framework for how neurological challenges develop
- Find a PX Docs Office Near You, PX Docs Directory