Lorne Brown 

Welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Today I have Dr. Aimee, the Egg Whisperer on again, if you haven’t listened to our episode we had earlier, check it out. It’s on PRP and just full transparency, we’re doing a double header. So Aimee and I just sat down and I was interviewed on her podcast, the Egg Whisperer, about Conscious Fertility. So check out her podcast because she’s got amazing episodes and now she’s on my podcast for me to interview her. So this is how we have similarities. We love to learn, and I just want to share a little bit about Aimee if some of you’re new to her. And if you are new to her, do check out her website and check out her podcast. It is amazing. So she believes in getting personal when it comes to our fertility, whether it’s helping you outline what your fertility options are for the future or guiding you through a specific treatment today, it always starts with understanding you.

And this is not just her saying this, this is patients saying this, and I know this because I’ve had multiple patients that have gone to see Aimee and they always feel that she has all the time in the world for her. They feel so seen when they meet Aimee and work with Aimee and she returns emails. So she’s also a little Craig Cray like me sometimes, where if you look at the timestamp, you’re like, what are we in the same time zone? So she’s great and she does take this IVF approach, this high tech approach and makes it a high touch and highly personal approach for fertility. And I think that’s what makes her internationally recognized as a visionary in fertility medicine as well. She offers hope when all hope feels lost. And again, people constantly tell me that’s what they feel after they talk to you, Aimee. And the good news is thousands have had babies as a testament to her loving and positive approach that blankets the cutting edge of reproductive technology that she uses in her practice. Dr. Aimee, welcome back to the Conscious Fertility Podcast.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh

Lorne, I am so happy to be here. I think you’re the absolute best and I learned so much from you. So I’m just so looking forward to our conversation.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you. And the feelings are mutual. The last time we were on, we talked about optimizing a quality and we touched on or we went deep into, we’ll touch on it today, the tushy method, the balls method, PRP method. So I kind of want to review that, but just so our listeners know, my emphasis today is I want to talk about this drug called rapamycin. And I don’t even know if you know this, but in our interview before, we had a good five minute spiel on rapamycin, but I edited out of that version because I was like, oh, people are going to run and want this drug and we need more time to discuss it. So that’s what I want to do today is I want to discuss another medal or tool or opportunity that may help women. That’s my intention for wanting to get you back on to do a deeper dive. I find that you’re special and unique as a reproductive endocrinologist who has invested in knowing about acupuncture and low level laser therapy, MINDBODY work, just anything that’s available out there that you’ve done that and that’s kind of unique for an REI. So thank you for doing that. And I would like you to share a little bit about your tushy method and balls method so people kind of are aware of what’s available to them to help them on their journey to grow their families.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Absolutely. So one of my many sayings is that unexplained fertility is truly untested and every single person has a diagnosis. It just hasn’t been explained to you. So even if you’ve done the Toshi method or you’ve done the balls method, and I’ll kind of go through it here in a second, everything comes back normal. That means that there are still other explanations that should be explained to you that are just not part of those methods. So I’ll just give you an example. Thethi method, check your tubes, rule out a tubal blockage, look at your uterus, that’s the U. Look at the sperm. There’s no such thing as the sperm is great, it’s just really low. That’s just not a thing. I hear sperm sugarcoating all the time. I’m like, let’s just stop sugar coating. Then there’s hormones and it’s not just one snapshot in time.

If you had a hormone check done a year ago and here we are a year later, check it again. And hormones include the AMH test, a cycle day three, FSH, estradiol. We like to check other things like thyroid, vitamin D, prolactin, and then the Y is your genetics chromosome analysis, and carrier screening. And I wish we could do whole genome screening looking at all the fertility genes because when it comes to the unexplained, that is almost always in our genes. So for example, if you’re, let’s say 32 years old, you’re doing IVF and you’re not growing embryos, but everything is quite normal. It’s usually due to a gene that we’re just not able to test you for unfortunately. But I think the day will come where we’ll be able to do these kinds of tests. The day is just not today, but we’re getting there.

I refer my patients to Megan Doyle from DNAIDE, D-N-A-I-D-E.com and she can do these kinds of tests in patients in Canada. She’s actually in Canada and she’s amazing. So the boss method is the guy side of things. So it’s looking at background genetics and the two tests that I do are sperm, DNA fragmentation, and then there’s also a DNA methylation test, not quite a genetic test. And we also look at why chromosome microdeletion in guys chromosome testing and carrier screening as well. We look at the anatomy, don’t Google image varicocele, you’re just going to see a bunch of saggy balls. I like to be funny too at the same time, Lorne,

Lorne Brown 

You are funny. Comedy’s your side gig.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

I made the mistake of Googling varicocele, not saggy balls, and I was like, oh my God, I cannot unsee that. I’m just warning everybody. So a good reproductive urologist can check that out. Looking at labs like testosterone is important for guys thinking about lifestyle and how much bad food you’re eating, processed foods, how much you’re drinking, how much weight you’ve gained, and then talk about sex and supplements. That’s kind of all part of my process when it comes to looking at people who want to become parents and what I can do to fix things so that they don’t need my help. So that’s always my goal. It sounds weird. It’s like what aren’t you an IVF doctor? I’m like, no, I really want you to get pregnant without my help. That’s really my goal at the end of the day. And if I can fix things that are outside my office and when you come in, maybe my job will be a little bit easier.

Lorne Brown 

Can we talk a bit about the semen? You said something. So often people come in and they’ll say the semen analysis was normal. So what’s your take on that? I think I heard you say something that’s not the complete answer.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Yeah, well, you know the saying you can’t judge a book by its cover. Just because the sperm are swimming doesn’t mean they’re amazing. So we do some extra tests. So sperm, DNA fragmentation and methyl methylation, tell us a little bit more about whether you have the ability to conceive naturally or every pregnancy is natural in my world, but at home for example, versus you really need IVF to help with fertilization and embryo growth and development. So that’s how I use those tests. Let’s say someone has a normal semen analysis, they’ve done six IUIs, but I can’t figure out what’s going on. Well, one of these tests will tell us if it makes sense to move on from IUI and go right into IVF

Lorne Brown 

Follow-up question on this. If somebody has DNA fragmentation issues, often they would do IVF and they’ll say IVF will bypass that so you can get pregnant. The question I have is if it’s a DNA frag issue, then IVF in my head shouldn’t work either. So I’m always thinking that something must be walking alongside the D fragmentation, that it’s preventing people from getting pregnant naturally or with IUI needing to do icsi.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Exactly. So we ask why is the sperm DNA fragmentation high? What can we do to fix it so we can make it better? So again, you can get pregnant without my health, and if we still need to do IVF with icsi, we’re going to have a better chance of pregnancy. Totally the same page. So the Y could be a varicocele, low testosterone lifestyle need for extra supplements and then fixing whatever the Y is could improve our chances of having a healthy blast assist. You don’t want to do a cycle, have crappy embryos, and then have someone say, well next time let’s check the testosterone and see if we can improve it with arimidex and next time we’re going to have better embryos. For me, every time I have the opportunity to help somebody and I’m doing an IVF cycle for them, what I’m saying to myself, I only get this one chance to help you. That’s it. I know not everyone’s journey is just a one cycle journey, but that’s how I think about it so that if it doesn’t work, we’re not going to go back and play this game of what else could we have done differently to improve our chances. I want to do that now upfront.

Lorne Brown 

I like your strategy because many clinics will do less and then only if we have issues, we’ll go back and test. And it’s just this month a few patients have come in. When I asked ’em, why are you here? They said, what you just said, I love it. They said, well, my doctor said if it doesn’t work next time, then we’re going to do something else. And she says, I want it to work the next time, so I’m here for you to see if you can help going back to the guy. So if there’s some issues with the guy, because I always say, and it’s just clinical experience, this is not the research understanding guy physiology and clinical experience. I say guys are easy to treat. Most cases diet, lifestyle supplements, they just don’t show up. So that’s what makes them hard to treat.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Yeah, and frequent ejaculation decreases sperm, DNA fermentation. So guys have a hard job, pun intended. On my IVF calendars, I literally write ejaculate every other day starting 30 days before the agri chewable what they’re like, I thought I was supposed to save up. I’m like, no, no saving up. And I just literally have T-shirts made, baseball caps, frequent ejaculation equals lower sperm DNA fragmentation and better quality embryos. So just do the work. So that’s part of my process to prepare sperm for an egg retrieval.

Lorne Brown 

I’m just thinking those that have been married a few years are like, yes, those have been married for seven or more years. Are like, what?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Seriously? And sex is safe. Sex, literally safe during this process, the spiritual journey, as you and I both know and when you’re hopped up on drugs, especially IVF medications, sometimes you want to get a little frisky and it’s okay.

Lorne Brown 

And do you like antioxidant therapy for guys then? Is that part of your 

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

I do. I do. So I have a bunch of things I recommend. I’m not brand, I don’t have any brand allegiance, but I usually recommend fish oil, vitamin D, coq 10 Conception XR, and Tru Niagen for guys.

Lorne Brown 

Perfect. And then let’s talk a little bit about it, because it’s not common that all fertility clinics are using PRP, but you are. So can you just share a little bit about what that is and what you’re seeing in your practice and then we’ll go into the rapamycin and why you’re taking it?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Definitely. So PRP is my way of giving your ovaries a facial. If you’ve gotten a facial, sometimes you leave and you’re like, oh, that was amazing. I look so good. Doesn’t happen to everybody. For some people they get a facial and they’re like, eh, I didn’t really see a difference. And that’s kind of what we see with PRP. It’s basically like an egg retrieval procedure. Needle goes through the wall of vagina into the ovary, except instead of withdrawing fluid from the follicles and sorting out the fluid and finding eggs, what I’m doing is I’m taking platelet rich plasma, which is basically your spun processed blood taking growth factors and injecting it into each ovary. And then hoping that I’ve basically rejuvenated your ovaries, increasing the follow count, maybe increasing the A MH, maybe decreasing the FSH, maybe if you’re perimenopausal, potentially reversing menopause or your perimenopause symptoms for a very short period of time, about three months, increasing the blast rate, increasing the euploid embryo rate. So I just had a call last night with the patient. She did two cycles of IVF, not a single euploid blast, she’s over 40. She did ovarian PRP with me for the next cycle. I was crying, she was crying. We were phone hugging, two euploid high quality grade one embryos, mic drop, mic drop, bam, whatever. Clearly I’m not hip and cool. I work too much. I don’t know what young kids are doing these days. So look,

Lorne Brown

We put this on YouTube. For those that are listening, if you want to see Aimee’s dab, you have to go watch.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Yeah, it’s

Lorne Brown 

Terrible. It’s available on YouTube. It’s

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Terrible. But yeah, my point is it doesn’t work for everybody. And when it works, it’s amazing. And if it doesn’t work, at least you tried. So my thing is that every woman should be offered PRP before egg donation. And it’s up to you if you want to try it or not, and you have to go to the right person. So if a doctor says, I don’t think it works, guess what? They don’t do it. They haven’t seen it work. How can you rely on their advice? So I have now had countless patients, my first PRP patient, all thanks to you, 41 years old, IUI first ovulation after PRP, pregnant live birth your patient. So I feel very blessed to have had these experiences. I feel so lucky that the universe has brought me women who’ve had tough journeys. Of course, those journeys aren’t gifts. Those are opportunities for them to make a change and do something different. And they believed in this technology when maybe their doctor did not and they made a change. They saw me and we saw a difference. But again, I have to be very careful. I don’t have a magic wand. I don’t. I’m a fertility fortune teller. Fortune tellers suck. We don’t get it right a lot of the time, and that’s just the nature of human biology. But if someone wants a chance at PRP, I do think it’s something worth exploring.

Lorne Brown 

And we have a full episode with Dr. Aimee on the Conscious Fertility Podcast on her PRP. So check that out. And then obviously her website has even more and more information on that. I know we want to talk about rapamycin, but before I go there, I’m sorry everybody keeps delaying, but whenever I have somebody like Aimee on, she says something and then I have questions. This is how I learned. So I have a question for you because you remind me of the patient that I had referred to you and did the PRP. And by the way, she had done multiple IVF cycles and couldn’t even get to the retrieval, and she did the acu laser before she did as part of the integration with you and some conscious work as well. The question I have is some of the reis recently, and not everybody shares this so that they like to do minimal stems for these women in their forties because they say that all these women in their forties, they don’t have a lot, but there’s going to be a good egg there. And they think that the high drugs, the high FSH derivative drugs are taking good eggs and making them damaged. And so they like to use minimal stems. So they’re not going for quantity, they’re going for quality. I’m just curious, do you subscribe to that for this population that you’re doing PRP with that are advanced control age, maybe have quality issues?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Hey, now don’t call us old mothers. I call it advanced mitochondrial age now. Okay. Yeah. So the way I dose medications is based on the follicle count and of course body size and age. And so if someone has a follicle count of let’s say three, well it makes sense to only use a low dose of medications. I don’t need to use a high dose to get three eggs to grow. If someone has 10 follicles, well, I might need a higher dose to get all 10 to grow, but I don’t try to get three. If someone has 10, I always try to get with the cohort, whatever that cohort number is, that starting number in the cohort, whatever that number is, I really want to go after that. So that’s always my goal. So I don’t think less is more when you have more, but I do think less is more when you have less when it comes to meds. I hope that riddle makes sense. It made sense in my mind for about half a second.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you. And maybe because I know you like to learn as do I, that’s the thing I’m curious about. When I talk to some of the local clinics, they’re not totally vested in the idea that the high medications are damaging these good eggs.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Yeah, I mean I think the only thing they’re vested in is maybe there’s some sort of relationship between them and the pharmacies.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah, possibly. I’m sure there’s some profit component, but I think they really don’t see the data there yet. Here’s my thinking. And thinking doesn’t mean no, no means we’ve done research and we can show it. Thinking is based on mechanism and just experience. So I was thinking that when you do the PRP, when you’re doing acupuncture and low level laser therapy, when you’re doing the NAD supplement, you like, I think we’re supporting this egg. So it has resilience. So when you pound it with these drugs, it has a better chance of surviving and staying good quality. So I always like people to do preconception work, and the reason I bring this point up is one of the docs said there’s going to be a good egg in there, so we just have to do this until we get that good egg. So then I said, then why do the NAD?

Why do acupuncture? Why do the laser? Why not just keep doing an IVF until we get that good egg? And then we discussed, well, you want to help the resilience of the egg so it has less chance of being damaged. There’s a good egg in there, but we may damage it when we give it drugs when we poke at it and pull it out when we inseminate. So you still want to help support blood flow, nutrition, inflammation, oxidative stress, so it has the resilience to deal with what we’re going to do in an IVF setting. And then he went on to say that he thinks the higher levels of hormones with women in their forties probably is taking good eggs and damaging them. But I haven’t seen research on that. He just said that was his clinical experience. So I wanted to check with you. You’re another REI.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Yeah, I mean, I don’t think the high doses help at all. I don’t know about damaging them, but I certainly don’t think it helps.

Lorne Brown 

Now why I wanted to chat with you again. So rapamycin, I want to know what it is. Why are you excited about it? Why are you taking it? And just to remind our listeners, we talked about this last time, but I took it out of the recording and now I’m ready for you to go as long as you want to talk about this.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Well, real quick, you have to potentially do a side by side. And I’m not kidding of how I looked on our last podcast recording compared to now. And joking aside. So it sounds like rat poison, right? Rapamycin, it’s like the worst name ever. But I swear when I say I feel like I have no wrinkles, my skin is smooth. I don’t have a single gray hair. I’m 48 years old. My cycles are regular. I think that has to do with rapamycin. I’ve been taking it now for probably 17 months. It was May of 2023 when I started. And I track all my cycles with my aura ring and I track my hormone levels as well, both with blood tests, FSH, estradiol and a MH. I don’t want to share my hormone levels because I don’t want it to feel like I’m bragging at all. But I will say they’re better than my sisters

And she’s 14 months younger than I am and looks way older. She doesn’t watch anything that I say and do. She thinks I’m super annoying. They’re like, I can say that openly and she won’t be mad. Yeah, she already knows. I look younger. There are two side effects with it. Cystic acne. I actually have a cyst, I’m going to show it to everybody. It’s right here. And they come and they go and it’s annoying. And when it comes, I use it as an opportunity to be grateful for the gift of this medication to help me live longer. So when I get a big cyst like that, I just say, I am so grateful that this medication exists and potentially it’ll delay my menopause and I can maybe even at 48 have a pregnancy. I might be ovulating tonight. Don’t tell my husband. So that is one thing.

So for patients who are very conscious about how they appear, it might be really annoying to deal with cystic acne. I would say about one out of 10 patients develops it. When I first started, it was terrible and then it slowly went away, but I still get cysts of acne cyst here and there. Second side effect is stomatitis. So those are sores in your mouth. It’s not like herpes, it’s not on the of your mouth, but there’s sores on the inside. In the beginning you might start to feel some tingling in your tongue and then you might get sores all around. I’ve only had one patient, but the sores were so bad that she decided to stop it. But I would say probably around one in 30 patients will experience the sores that I experience as well. So I’m probably, I would say probably of all the patients I’ve prescribed it to, there are two patients who got both lucky them, cystic acne and stomatitis, and I was one of them.

I don’t get the sores anymore. So I think that’s important for people to know. I’ve had two patients develop a body rash and one patient that got the body rash actually wanted to continue to take it. She did not want to stop it. So what we did is we dropped her dose. So it’s 2.5 milligrams once a week. If your insurance covers it, it’s very cheap. It’s like $10 because it’s generic. If insurance does not cover it, it’s on average around $90 a month. I prescribe it through Alto pharmacy, Amazon mail, pharmacy. You can even get it at Costco and retail pharmacies. The thing with retail pharmacies though is they don’t stock it in the store. They have to bring it in. So it takes time for them to order it to get it for you. And it can be a little bit more expensive. I can keep going. 

Lorne Brown 

I have some questions. Go for it. What motivated you to take it then? What did you learn about this? Also because you’re not looking to grow your family. So what motivated you to take it and then what motivated you from what you learned about the current research on it to want to recommend it to your fertility patients?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh

Well, I mean I think that for me it’s longevity. I love what I do and I don’t want to die. I want to do this until the day I die. And I feel like I’ve been given this opportunity in life, this gift to make everyone that I meet, I try to with everything that I have, feel special and worth it. And they deserve to be a parent if that’s what they want. And I feel like the older I’m getting, the less I’m seeing that in other doctors and it pains me physically. So literally it’s me. I want to live longer. So that’s number one. Number two, the way to do that is also to delay menopause. So 48 years old, regular cycles, normal enough. FSH levels normal enough, A MH levels, that’s insane. Number three, I wanted the experience for me to experience the side effects so that I can then tell patients about my experience and how it makes them feel.

And then once I got to that point, then I felt comfortable prescribing to a patient who let’s aero menopausal. I’ve seen patients who are completely menopausal start ovulating again, and then now prescribe it to patients who are not menopausal but going through treatment and haven’t had good results yet. And now I’ve also been giving it to patients who are trying naturally and also who are going through IVF. So now there’s enough research out there that I feel comfortable prescribing it to people going through IVF. A year ago, I was prescribing it to menopausal women to see if it could reverse their menopause and they can start ovulating again. But I was telling all of them not to try to get pregnant because I didn’t know enough at the time. And I don’t want anyone to listen to anything that I’m saying right now. And to, for one second, think that this is medical advice because it is so important for you to talk to your own physician about whether this drug is appropriate for you or not before taking it.

But that’s kind of my rapamycin journey. And also I want to marry a younger man, so I do not give it to my husband. And he’s older, I start to look younger and he buys first. We have a really good insurance policy out on each other. I’m kidding. No, my husband and I both started taking it at the same time. We both take Tru Nigen as well. So that’s nicotinamide. And we both, we joke, we love each other. It’s kind of sick and gross, how much we adore each other. It’s nauseating. But I don’t literally, I don’t want to die. I want to die with him. I can’t imagine living without him. So we’re trying to just do as much as we can as human beings, just be here for our family, our children, our community. And the other thing that I do is I’m alcohol free.

So I’m completely alcohol free. And I think it’s liberating. It’s a superpower. And I didn’t realize how much of a superpower it was until I actually did it. And I highly recommend it. I used to talk about, I dunno if you’ve, I have patients that are like, yeah, yeah, we know you love tequila. You’re constantly talking about tequila. So that’s kind of what I’m known for is my love for tequila and the nicest tequilas. And then something just snapped and I was like, oh my God, that’s not good for me. I’m doing all this other stuff. Why would I keep drinking? And I think it was hard because I’m such a social person, I’m extroverted. I love my friends and drinking is part of those relationships, but now I’ve learned how to still be a part of those relationships and be alcohol free. And so that’s also something that I hope people will learn from and be able to say. I can do that too and not be ashamed to say it out loud because it’s really funny. What happens when you don’t drink? People think that there’s one thing wrong with you two, that you have an alcohol issue and then they think that you’re not going to have as much fun as they’re having. And so I just am here to tell you, you can have just as much fun being alcohol free with your friends who are drinking and you get to make fun of them and videotape them of the stupid sh*t they say and remind them about it later.

Lorne Brown 

There you go. I just need to pause. I need a drink of my tequila. I’m an infrequent drinker myself. Question about your rapamycin again, then you took it because you didn’t want your husband to have an upgrade. He was looking younger and healthier, so he wanted to compete and stay in the relationship. Yes, that part

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Definitely. Always. I wake up in the morning whispering to him, you’re so lucky to be here every day. First thing,

Lorne Brown 

Can you talk a bit about what happened in my study?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

For sure. As soon as I saw some, I get Google alerts about everything and I got this Google alert about this drug that might reverse menopause. I was like, oh my God, I need that. I need that drug right now. And they’re like, it’s only in animals. I’m like, I don’t care. People are taking it already in the anti-aging world. I’ll just take it. No big deal. And then I started doing a search on Reddit. You can find anything on Reddit. And there were already people, this is over a year ago, there were already people describing their experiences taking it on Reddit for basically delaying menopause. And then I felt more comfortable taking it myself. Because when you think about aging, I like to think about healthy aging. What can I do to promote healthy aging? Aging is a normal part of life, so is menopause.

But typically when you think of aging, you think of people that are old in their eighties. You don’t think of someone who is old who wants to support healthy aging. You don’t think of that person being in their forties. But this age is, I think, the best age to do it. Whether you should take it three months, a year, all year long, no one really knows. And it hasn’t really been around that long for us to know how long it’ll delay menopause for. I don’t know. I mean I’m 48, the average age of menopause is 51. Who knows? Maybe I’ll still go into menopause at 50 51. We won’t really know until we get there. But I already know that my sister we’re very similar, is already perimenopausal and is experiencing hot flashes, all the things. And I haven’t had a single hot flash or missed period.

Lorne Brown 

And in that mouse study they had shared that it delayed how many follicles they were releasing. So that was helping with the ovarian reserve

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

And the menopausal mice started having pups.

Lorne Brown 

That was the other thing. They had pups later in life.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh

Oh my god, I know. And so I was like, my average patient is 42. My practice is aging as society is waiting longer to have a baby like everyone in society. So I predict our kids aren’t going to have kids until they’re 50. And so they’re going to want to use their own DNA and not donor eggs. And I don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to do a skin biopsy and convert that into an egg and sperm. Maybe by the time they’re 50, that’s going to be how people have babies. But until then, I feel like this drug might be something that could really help my patients who are in their forties who still want a chance at their own DNA

Lorne Brown 

And remind everybody, this is not medical advice, this is information. And then you can go talk to your physician about whether it’s the right drug for you,

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Bitter, this is completely anecdotal. And your doctor might say, Dr. Aimee is crazy. And that’s fine. And I accept that as a compliment. I’m crazy about helping people as much as I can, and I’m obsessed with finding new tools and solutions for people that they didn’t think of. So if I’m the first doctor and I am the first doctor in the United States to prescribe rapamycin for their patients, I know other doctors are going to start doing it too. And it’s just going to be like this trend and more people are going to have the experience. They’re going to publish their papers on it and hopefully it’s something that’s going to be accessible to other people very soon.

Lorne Brown 

You mentioned how long to stay on it. So are you on it continuously or do you take breaks from it?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

I’m on it continuously, so I haven’t taken any breaks. And I also feel like it helped me. That’s why I brought up the last episode and did a side by side of how I looked then and how I look now. So I feel like body size wise, shape, weight, I started taking it. I started losing weight. I’ve had other patients also say that they’ve lost weight on it and really made few changes with their lifestyle. I mean, I think alcohol free for me was also part of that too, but that’s been more recent compared to when I started rapamycin. And also with rapamycin, I lift weights now to build muscle because one of the side effects is losing muscle mass. So I actually do weights and squats and all that kind of stuff too.

Lorne Brown 

Like ozempic? Yes.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Right, right. I mean you can rapamycin, it’s all part of your antiaging to lose weight. Health, aging, yeah, little metformin in there.

Lorne Brown 

And so the main side effects you have noticed in your patients are the mouth sores and some acne. But I don’t see any acne. You don’t have a sore. 

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

So I have a high DEF camera on. I absolutely do. And I have 10 layers of makeup. I’m actually not joking. So for me, acne is pretty serious. And I’m very sensitive to acne meds like doxycycline, which is something that you can easily take to treat the cystic acne. So I just write it out and just put makeup on. But it is something that can be distressing for somebody who’s not used to having a zit.

Lorne Brown 

Basically. It won’t work its way through as long as you’re on it, they could have those symptoms.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

It’ll get better over time. So the stomatitis, when I first started having it, oh my God, it was so painful to have those sores in my mouth slowly they went away. And now I’ll rarely feel like a tingling in my mouth when I first take my dose for the week. And then the cystic acne, it’s not like it was before full breakout. I mean, I used to have cysts in my face that were so painful, they would throb at night. And I warn people about that because I don’t want you to take it and not realize that that could happen and then get really pissed off that I prescribe something that would cause that for you. So I prepare people well in advance and I basically tell ’em, this is what you could expect. It’s not rare. It’s actually quite a common side effect. And are you okay with that? And if they’re okay with it, then they take it if they’re not okay with it, some people take it and they’re like, well, if it happens, I’m going to stop it. And other people have it and they just write it out.

Lorne Brown 

I got an idea for you, since you like to be your own study of the power of one in Chinese medicine, the signs and symptoms that you’re expressing, the mouth sores and the acne is what we would call like a stomach or heart fire, blood stasis. And we treat it with herbally. So a lot of times people come to us on medications that they need. And so our treatments are working on the constitution and how are they presenting with the drugs or their side effects? It tells us a little bit about their constitution. So we treat it that way. And often they’re still on the drugs, but the side effects go away or minimized. So I know you have a few local acupuncturists you see working with herbally would be a key thing. So if you’re into experimenting, they could treat it with herbal, these mouth sores and acne. Now I’m curious how that would work with you on the meds if you’re open to it. So go check out some of your friends. 

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

I was at a conference and this acupuncturist is like, oh my God, your skin. I’m like, well, you’re so sweet. And like she was telling me, I was like, I’m starting doxycycline next week. And she’s like, oh, I’m horrified. You need to come see me. And you’re not the first one to say that. And she swore up and down that she could fix me without taking an antibiotic. 

Lorne Brown 

That part always makes me, I always miss somebody swears that they can do that, but in theory it’s possible. So just like not everybody gets side effects from the medicine. Some people can be, I mean, part of the acupuncture herbal, when we’re treating people through IVF notice that they have less symptoms on the medications, they feel different. So there’s that idea. And so there’s not a human study, but just anecdotally, people have been doing it in the anti-aging world. So that’s where you’re hearing Or is there some human studies as well with this?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Oh, there are human studies. I mean, it’s FDA approved for something totally different. What is

Lorne Brown 

Is it approved for?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Prevention of fungal infections and kidney transplant patients so far removed from anti-aging. But people have been taking it for a long time in the anti-aging world. It’s not new in that world. Just fairly new in the IVF world with studies now coming out about patients who, they’ve taken a group of patients, they didn’t take the medication, they failed IVF and they put them on the medication and then they did so much better. Again, you have to be careful about what you read because nowadays you can get anything published. So I’m always very careful. And when it comes to looking at a study and then saying, oh, studies show that blah, blah, blah. The reality is there’s some evidence that maybe it’ll help. And now that I’ve been giving it to my IVF patients, I have seen some extremely impressive results. Not everybody, but I’ve had some cases where I’m like, wow, this drug has made a big difference in how they respond to medications, the number of eggs that they grow. And so I would say the jury is still out in terms of how beneficial it could be for IVF patients. But I keep a list of the number of patients that I have on it, and the list is now probably close to around 80 or so.

Lorne Brown 

And when somebody listening to this goes and asks their physician about this drug, you’re not giving them medical advice here. How long would patients be on it before they do an IVF? And I’m thinking of the follicular genesis of average or a hundred days. Do they? Yeah, go ahead.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

So I think on average two months is what I’m telling patients. That’s what I’m seeing. And I actually have my medical license in every state in the country, and so a patient can actually get it through me. I do have a rapamycin program. I not only have a medical license in every state. I also have medical liability insurance, so I can actually prescribe everywhere. It was a long-term project and I finally got it done, not so I can prescribe rapamycin, but just so I could feel like people could just get advice from me in a compliant way and I could feel like I could tell them what to do without feeling like somehow someone was going to say, Aimee, you can’t do that. You’re going to get in trouble. So now whenever, it’s really funny, let’s say when a pharmacist calls me from Hawaii and they say, you can’t order this medication. You don’t have a license in Hawaii. I’m like, actually, look it up. This is my Hawaii license number.

Lorne Brown 

So you pay a lot of dues in malpractice.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

It’s in, I won’t tell you how much it will talk about how much it was

Lorne Brown 

Off camera, but yeah,

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

No, literally it’s insane. I have to renew my license in every state, every one to two years, and it’s over a thousand dollars per state. And so clearly I’m not doing this for the money. Clearly I’m doing this because I want to help as many people as possible. It’s not going to pay off at all.

Lorne Brown 

So we talked a little bit about PRP and the tushy method and balls method and you have a rapamycin method as well or program and people can contact you through your website. Is that the best way to reach you? And how else can they find you?

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Instagram, the Egg Whisperer Show on YouTube, my IVF classes. So I have egg whisper school.com. I do a class one to two a month. And this is a way for patients who cannot see me because of proximity or cost, can’t see me personally as a patient, but they want to learn from me, share their story with me, ask me questions, and a live q and a fashion. This is a super easy way of engaging with me.

Lorne Brown 

Do you have anything else you want to share as this is part two of our conversation? Remind everybody, really check out the episode on PRP on our previous episode and I’ll put that in the show notes and then check out. I mean, you got so much on your website, Egg Whisperer, and we also had a fun chat about laser therapy once upon a time on your show as well. So the end was, and anything else that you’re like, Hey, I want the listeners to hear this,

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

I’m going to actually quote you. Are you ready? Small action leads to massive resolve. Kiss your ovaries, kiss your uterus, set your goal, feel it, believe it, and be present and think of things as happening to you, not happening to you but for you. And so I’m leaving your listeners with things that I’ve learned from you today. You are such a gift.

Lorne Brown 

Well, thank you very much. And the quote that Aimee’s talking about, if you want to know what the hell is that about, you have to go to the Egg Whisperer Show and listen to the episode. She interviewed me where we go into much more detail on that. See, we like to learn from each other and that’s why I enjoy it, you’re a learner. What’s that quote? Live like you’re going to die tomorrow. Learn like you are going to live forever

Aimee Eyvazzadeh

Yeah, Carpe diem man.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. So you’re doing it and you’re playful. When I set the attention, when I do conscious work, it says that this work will be simple, powerful, effective, and playful. So it’s playful. And I like that about you as well because this can be a very challenging journey for people. A lot of stress and trauma, and I know all of the space, but you’re also able to be playful about it as well, which we need. It’s important for the soul to be playful.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

You and I both know we’re here for a very short period of time in this world, so we get to choose how we want to live this life. It’s not for other people, it’s for ourselves. So it’s a lot more fun if you live it in a playful way.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you for being you. Thank you for being the kind of REI that you are and showing up today to share on the Conscious Fertility Podcast One more time, reminding our listeners that check out Aimee’s Egg Whisperer Show and her website and her IG channel. Lots of information there for you. Dr. Aimee, thank you so much.

Aimee Eyvazzadeh 

Thank you, Lorne. You’re the best.