When people hear "stem cells," they tend to picture something futuristic or unproven. On this episode, Mark Anthony sat down with Dr. Eric Codner, DC, a chiropractor at Columbus Physical Medicine Center in Columbus, Georgia, whose integrated practice — he works alongside a medical doctor and a nurse practitioner — has spent roughly a decade using umbilical cord-derived stem cell allograft injections as a non-surgical option for chronic joint, tendon, and nerve pain. Codner was careful, more than once, to separate healing from curing: "I don't even believe in a cure," he said; what he described the treatment offering is a way to give an already-injured body better raw material and a better shot at healing itself.
Codner's own introduction to the treatment was personal, not clinical. He badly injured his neck surfing in Southern California — landing head-first in shallow water at full speed. An MRI showed multiple ruptured discs, and a surgeon he consulted recommended spinal fusion — a rough proposition, he noted, for a chiropractor. Physical therapy, chiropractic adjustments, and basic injections hadn't helped. So Codner became, in his words, "patient zero" at his own clinic, starting with an allograft injection in his neck around 2015. It took roughly a month before he noticed the numbness and tingling in his hands clear up, and about three months before he was back lifting weights and functioning normally.
Key Takeaways
- Columbus Physical Medicine Center uses umbilical cord-derived stem cell allograft injections — a non-surgical tissue product containing stem cells, collagen fibers, and growth factors, sourced from ethically-donated tissue after full-term, healthy C-section births.
- Knees are the most common body part patients come in for, Codner said. Shoulders, by his account, respond best of all — only two shoulder cases out of "dozens and dozens" didn't reach an outcome the patient considered optimal.
- Hips are the hardest case: the clinic now rarely accepts hip patients, since most arrive after cartilage loss is already advanced — damage Codner said prior corticosteroid injections can accelerate.
- The allograft product was approved for Medicare reimbursement and paid out for roughly two and a half years, according to Codner, before payments abruptly stopped and a letter later arrived demanding repayment he said totaled over a million dollars — a pattern he says affected clinics nationally.
- Beyond the allograft itself, Codner described layering in nutritional IV therapy (including glutathione) and PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field) therapy as part of a broader, whole-body approach rather than joint-by-joint treatment alone.
What an Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Allograft Actually Is
An allograft, Codner explained, is a tissue transplant — not a drug and not surgery. The tissue is sourced from a woman who has a full-term, healthy C-section birth; a lab processes the umbilical cord tissue into an injectable product that, per Codner, contains stem cells along with collagen fibers and growth factors. It's delivered with a needle, no scalpel involved. Patients come in with bad knees, bad shoulders, bad backs, plantar fasciitis, and other issues touching muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, or cartilage. Codner drew a clear line between this and standard pain management: "You're not talking about treating pain with a steroid or with some kind of dangerous pill or opioid," he said — the aim, in his framing, is to help correct the underlying issue rather than mask it, which is also why it isn't a fast-acting "pain shot" the way a cortisone injection can be; in his own case, it took weeks to months to feel the full effect.
"It's not rocket science, really — we know how the body heals. It's just that no one's doing anything about it. They're throwing chemicals at it instead of using tissues that actually work with the body to heal."
— Dr. Eric Codner, DCWhich Joints Respond Best, and Where It Has Limits
Knees are the most frequent request, Codner said — patients want to get back to walking, golf, or pickleball, and some are also motivated by avoiding a visible surgical scar. Shoulders, he said, are the joint that responds best of all: out of "dozens and dozens" of rotator cuff, arthritis, and impingement cases, only two didn't reach what he called an optimum outcome — and he was clear that it's the patient's own assessment that counts, not the provider's. The clinic also treats the low back and neck, feet, wrists, and elbows.
Hips are a different story. Codner said the clinic now rarely accepts hip cases, because by the time most patients arrive there's often little cartilage left and the bone has begun to deform. He pointed to corticosteroid injections — a common earlier step for hip pain — as part of the problem: in his description, steroids thin cartilage and temporarily cut off blood flow to the joint, accelerating the damage for the sake of short-term relief. One case he described in detail: a patient with drop foot, a nerve injury severe enough that he couldn't lift his foot off the ground, had already tried chiropractic care, steroid injections, and decompression therapy without success. By Codner's account, the patient regained use of his foot before leaving the building after the allograft injection — though Codner was careful to add he doesn't promise every patient a result like that; he's simply seen it happen.
Codner also noted the field has grown around him. When his clinic started offering the treatment in 2016, he said it was the only one in Columbus, Georgia doing regenerative medicine; today he counts about four clinics in a city of roughly 250,000. He said he doesn't see that as competition — more clinics offering it, in his view, lends the approach credibility.
Medicare Paid for Two and a Half Years, Then Demanded a Refund
The allograft product Codner uses made it onto Medicare's approved reimbursement schedule — a process he said one of the manufacturing labs spent millions of dollars pursuing. Once approved, his clinic billed Medicare and was paid, in his words, "like clockwork." After about two and a half years, the payments stopped without warning: no request for records, no phone call. Then, he said, a letter arrived demanding the money back — a total he described as over a million dollars. He retained legal counsel and found a law firm already suing Medicare on behalf of one of the labs behind the product, over the same issue. He said he personally knows dozens of doctors in the same situation, and that he understands the pattern to have affected clinics across the US. Among the doctors he's spoken with, he said, not one has had a patient report a side effect from the treatment.
Codner argued the scrutiny falls unevenly — asserting, by his own account, that prescription and over-the-counter drugs are "the fourth leading cause of death in the United States," while he says insurers rarely claw back payments for drug- or surgery-based care even when outcomes are poor. At the time of the April 2025 recording, he said he was cautiously hopeful attitudes could shift, citing new federal health leadership — he mentioned Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s focus on nutrition policy and said he'd heard, though hadn't confirmed, that Dr. Oz might take on a Medicare-related role. This section reflects Codner's own account and views as of that recording; Medicare's coverage policy for these products may well have changed since then.
Who This Conversation Is For
If you're weighing surgery for a chronic joint or tendon problem, currently managing pain with a growing list of prescriptions, or simply curious what a stem cell allograft injection actually involves, this episode is a plain-language walkthrough from a practitioner who tried the treatment on himself before offering it to patients. Codner said the clinic sees patients from the Columbus, Georgia area as well as parts of Alabama and other nearby Georgia communities.
