Charles Runels, MD is the medical director of the Cellular Medicine Association. His innovative approach to sexual health made him a sought-after practitioner and lecturer in the fields of regenerative medicine, anti-aging, aesthetics, and sexual wellness. Dr. Runels is the inventor of the medical procedures known as the Orgasm Shot® (O-Shot®), the Priapus Shot® (P-Shot®), Vampire Facial®, Vampire Facelift®, Vampire Breast Lift®, and Vampire Hair Regrowth®.
Aside from having his own practice, Dr. Runels has a background as a research chemist as well as 12 years working in the ER as a board-certified Internal Medicine physician. Over the past 30 years, he has trained numerous physicians worldwide in the field of regenerative medicine and continues his mission to help patients experience the healing benefits of PRP therapy through the many passionate doctors and nurses who are certified providers of his procedures.
Education & Professional Experience
Charles Edward Runels was born on April 20, 1960 in Birmingham, Alabama. There, he attended Fultondale High School and was nicknamed “The Professor” by his peers for his love of knowledge.
At Birmingham-Southern College he obtained a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry and went on to work for three years as a research chemist at the Southern Research Institute, going on to complete his medical school and residency at the University of Alabama School of Medicine. As a research chemist he worked with the military to design devices that are still being used today.
He became board certified in internal medicine in 1993 and practiced as an emergency room physician for 9 years in Mobile Infirmary in Mobile, AL, and Thomas Hospital Urgent Care in Daphne, AL, learning about wound care, skin grafting, and tissue repair.
- Founder – Runels Centre for Lifelong Health
- Founder – American Cosmetic Cellular Medicine Association (ACCMA)
- Founder and Chairman – Institute for Lichen Sclerosis & Vulval Health.
- Founder – LifeStream Medical Inc. a medical research organization
- Member – Association of Clinical Research Professionals
- Member – Academy of Pharmaceutical Physicians and Investigators Physicians
- Member – International Association of Aesthetic Gynaecology and Sexual Wellbeing
The Story of How Dr. Runels Invented the O-Shot®, P-Shot®, & Vampire Procedures
With his familiarity in emergency room medicine, aesthetics, wound care/tissue health, and medical technology, “The Professor” was in a unique position to apply the culmination of his many experiences to the breakthrough idea to use platelet rich plasma (PRP) in aesthetics and sexual health. Below is the story of how Dr. Runels came to invent the O-Shot®, P-Shot®, & Vampire Procedures.
After 12 years in the emergency room, Dr. Runels transitioned his professional career to focus on taking care of women through hormone therapy. With his background in research and an intense desire to make women well, he dug deeply into growth hormone research back in 2000 before it became widely popularized.
As he treated many of his female patient’s, Dr. Runels’ experienced a recurring pattern. It broke Dr. Runels’ heart to have his female patients visiting his office, literally sobbing and telling him: “I love my husband, and so I don’t want to tell him that sex is no good and that I don’t desire him. I don’t know why I don’t desire him, I love him and I’m afraid to hurt his feelings.”
Dr. Runels did the best he knew how and treated their low-libido with testosterone and thyroid hormone. Oftentimes, the husband wasn’t able to keep up with his wife’s libido while on hormone therapy. With the women getting such great results, Dr. Runels also wanted to find a way to help the men keep up.
At the time in early 2000, it was taught that the main cause of erectile dysfunction was psychological. Essentially, urologists were told that they should become counsellors in order to treat their male patients suffering from ED. Then of course, as new medicines were made available everyone realized that erectile dyfunction’s cause was primarily neurovascular.
Dr. Runels Used Injectables to Restore Women’s Confidence
An avid walker, averaging 25 miles a week, Dr. Runels advocated to his patients the benefits of a healthy diet and exercise. One of the primary focuses of his private practice was to help men and women lose weight.
As his female patients lost weight, many were disappointed at the effect it had as they saw the fat going out of their cheeks. As the adipocyte cells left, the wrinkles would appear and Dr. Runels’ patients ended up feeling older even though they were healthier and skinnier. To counteract the loss of facial volume, Charles learned to perform filler injections using Juvederm to add back the volume they were losing.
At this point in his career, Dr. Runels had ample experience in aesthetics, hormone therapy, weight loss, and injectables. He was also tuned into sexuality. Not necessarily because he set out to do that but it often came to the forefront when treating women who would complain to him about their low libido levels.
All the while, Dr. Runels’ background as a research chemist coupled with his experience in wound care and tissue healing set the stage leading up to his discovery of Platelet-Rich-Plasma (PRP) Therapy.
Dr. Runels’ Introduction to Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP)
The critical moment in 2010 which really kickstarted Dr. Runels’ innovation was when a surgeon friend gifted Charles a centrifuge device, and after placing it into his hands said, “This has been FDA approved for preparing Platelet Rich Plasma and it’s been shown to cause new tissue growth, new blood flow, new volume. You should try it in the face.”.
His friend explained that this type of centrifuge was being used by orthopedic surgeons to prepare PRP to be used for the joints, knee’s and by dentists for oral wound care. Elite athletes (pro-NFL and pro-NBA players) created a demand for the procedure in the world of orthopedics. It was easier to receive a shot of one’s own platelet-rich blood than it was to undergo knee surgery, for example.
“If you want to know what works, look at what the NFL does to keep their athletes going. If someone’s making 10 million dollars a year and they miss a day of work that’s sort of expensive. Why shouldn’t everyday women and men enjoy the same rejuvenating benefits that help an elite athlete get to help them develop a healthier body?” – Dr. Runels
Immediately, because Dr. Runels was already tuned into the sexual problems that men and women experienced, concluded that if it works in the face and does all those things such as increases blood flow and regenerates tissue, then it should also help the genitalia. Following the work and research of many great urologists about injecting around the urethra, Dr. Runels began to think about how PRP may be able to be used in those areas for both men and women.
Being cautiously optimistic, Dr. Runels decided to use PRP in the face first to observe, document, and learn from his experience. So Dr. Runels started reading through the literature that he could find on Platelet Rich Plasma.
Fun Fact: When The Professor started researching, only 5,000 papers were written on PRP. Fast forward a few decades, now in March 2021, a search for “PRP” in PubMed yields 18,000 results.
As he began experiencing great success with PRP for the face, he ran into a dilemma. There was one critical observation about the aesthetics market that deeply bothered Dr. Charles Runels. The fact that there was no way to determine the quality of a medical practitioner’s skill in offering an elective procedure like fillers. When you go to the urologist or an ophthalmologist, the procedures and standards they adhere to are governed by a medical board. Aesthetics were like the wild-west where one doctor may give you duck lips with an injectable while the other knew how to analyze and sculpt facial structure to help a woman look both naturally beautiful and younger. The problem that Dr. Runels observed was if you saw a doctor advertising Juvederm, there was no way to know what you were going to get.
The Brain Child of Charles Runels: The Vampire Facelift® Was Born
Segway Into the Field of Sexual Wellness: The O-Shot® & P-Shot®
As he saw the Vampire Facelift® grow in both popularity and patient satisfaction, he knew it was time to explore PRP for sexual wellness. He also knew he would follow the same model of trademarking the name as well as having providers follow a standardized protocol to make sure nothing stupid gets done to women’s vaginas and men’s penises.
To this day, women still don’t have many options or solutions for female sexual dysfunction. The one they do prescribe, flibanserin, is a psych drug which is the very same thing we used to say to men back before we had PDE5 inhibitors to help. Essentially, we’re still telling women that it’s all in their head.
He concluded that since anatomically the clitoris is just like a small penis, if you can have circulation problems in the penis then you can have the same neurovascular issues that affect the clitoris.
“On the evening of April first, 2011, I drove through Fairhope, Alabama to pick up my girlfriend from her house to take her to dinner for her birthday. As we were preparing to leave her house to go to dinner, she said, ‘I want PRP injected into my vagina!’ For the past year, Laura had watched me inject people and rejuvenate the face and the breasts. She actually had the procedure done more than once and saw her face improve in color, texture, and shape with a procedure I invented, the Vampire Facelift®. She had delivered 3 children and wanted to see if PRP would make her vagina feel tighter.” – Dr. Runels
“In July 2014, the first ever academic paper on the use of PRP for female sexual dysfunction was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. This keystone study brought to light the effectiveness of the O-Shot® procedure.” – The Technology of Platelet Rich Plasma (pages 43, 44).As he began to get feedback from the practitioners in his group, they told him, “Charles, this thing really works!”.
Continued R&D to Increase Patient Reach & Procedure Reputation
So the Cellular Medicine Association started investing in research. So far every study the ACCMA has done has been positive both with men with Peyronie’s disease, showing new nerve growth, and many others for women.
Although Dr. Runels preferred to stay behind the scenes, at this point with all the press in the news the procedures were getting, there were people popping up, pretending as if they were a part of this group when they were not.
Because of that, Dr. Runels had to come out of the shadows to ensure only those who were properly trained, could utilize the trademarks. In fact, the few times where he did receive a patient complaint it turned out that the practitioner who performed a procedure on them wasn’t ever trained or certified by Dr. Charles Runels.
So, here Dr. Runels is, fulfilling his childhood dream to make an impact in the world of medicine and help men and women get well.
The advancements which the procedures have made wouldn’t be possible without the doctors and nurses who have trusted this process and are passionate about taking care of women and men. Those providers understand that the work they are doing is saving marriages, healing relationships, and enhancing their patient’s quality of life.
Family is the social fiber of communities. When relationships are in disrepair, it impacts the children, the workplace, and the neighborhood as a whole.
Dr. Runels is simply an internal medicine physician from Alabama. He’s a simple man on a mission to further the procedures he’s created and impact as many lives as possible with the help of other physicians, nurses, and medical practices across the world.
The American Cosmetic Cellular Medicine Association (ACCMA)
The ACCMA aims to discover, refine, and share the latest in regenerative medical procedures to empower practitioners and their patients in achieving a more healthy and beautiful body.
The organization protects patients by listing approved and certified practitioners in an updated directory while standardizing a standard level of care for each procedure. The organization continues to train its members on updated techniques and new innovation in the field of PRP in addition to the best practices involved in running a successful regenerative medicine clinic.
Dr. Runels and his organization the Cellular Medicine Association are driven by the passion to help patients heal with safe and effective procedures. In many cases, the procedures are changing lives, repairing relationships, and restoring the inner confidence of patients. Dr. Runels is humbled by the interest of medical practices and professionals who are joining to become a part of furthering this mission across the world.
Trademark protection to maintain the hard-earned reputation of the procedures, physicians, and nurses in the provider groups.
The best way to educate patients, is to have a brand name that actually means something. By protecting the reputation of the name brands, patients have grown to expect a certain quality of care from our providers. The procedures maintain their excellent reputation due to the fact that they are only available to be used by people in Dr. Runels’ provider groups. These practitioners must agree to follow the guidelines which have been set such as going through a standardized procedure protocol and using FDA approved devices. Upon completion of training, you will receive a certificate designating you as a licensed provider of the procedures you’ve chosen to offer and have undergone training for.
It isn’t fair for someone who just buys a PRP kit to say they’re providing the O-Shot® without being a part of Dr. Runels’ group. For the hard work and millions of dollars to be invested into research and marketing only to have rouge individuals offering a service which entails who knows what (we’ve seen granulomas from additives being injected along with PRP in the vagina and all sorts of devastating impacts when the protocol isn’t followed by non-certified individuals). This ultimately impacts the reputation, trust, and credibility of Dr. Runels’ brand and procedures which is why thousands of dollars are spent each month to prevent imposters from utilizing the trademarked names without belonging to the group.
Marketing & Increasing Patient Demand for the Providers
Dr. Charles Runels also provides you with marketing materials which you can purchase at a very low cost and is only available to the providers in the group. Dr. Runels has patient education pamphlets, banners, shirts, coffee mugs, and more. You’ll also be listed as a certified provider on Dr. Runels directory for each procedure you’re trained in. Often times, patients will directly search the directories using their zip code to find the closest provider to them. Even if you were to get one patient per year from Dr. Runels’ directory, aside from any other marketing that you may do, it would more than pay for an entire year of being a member.
In addition, Dr. Runels and the ACCMA put continued emphasis and effort towards more studies and research in addition to seeking out press opportunities to keep the names in continued demand. Truthfully, the fact that the procedures work so well has done a great job at increasing the procedure’s popularity but the ACCMA will still do everything they can to spread the word far and wide.
Pricing Power & Profit Margins. Why Dr. Runels set a minimum price for each procedure.
When you join any one of Dr. Runels’ provider groups, there is a minimum price which you can advertise each procedure at. This isn’t to say that you can’t run promotions or make a deal with individual patients, you simply can’t advertise the $299 O-Shot®. By both owning a brand name with a superior reputation as well as upholding the value of those procedures, Dr. Runels is able to help our providers maintain a healthy profit margin from the procedures. Most importantly, these procedures are incredibly valuable and helping men and women experience life changing improvements to their erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence, acne scars, female sexual dysfunction, and more.
Look at what has happened with Botox and filler. It’s become a price competition to the bottom with both the providers business and patient’s quality of service suffering. We don’t believe in pricing yourself out of business but in standing by the value you provide. Cost isn’t the only lever in the value sum equation, your particular expertise and clinic’s reputation plays a far greater long term role in practice growth. So Dr. Runels wanted to maintain a certain price threshold in order to benefit everyone in the group.
Become part of an exciting adventure in medicine with cutting-edge PRP procedures that are helping people across the world.
Once you join the ACCMA as a licensed provider, you’ll receive a link to schedule a sure-start meeting which gets you one-hour consultation with Dr. Runels staff of business advisors who know how to get you rolling and provide advice on what works to market the procedures.
Charles Runels, MD is excited to have you on board whether you decide that learning virtually with online training or spending two days with him is the best way for you to get started.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact Sean via email, phone, or text message.