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Kraken
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PRP DIY Guide
PRP stands for Platelet Rich Plasma, and it is used for:
-Improved recovery and maybe performance of microneedling sessions.
-Hair loss treatment.
-Treatment for dry eye.
-Etc.
What do you need to prepare PRP?
- Butterfly needles to draw your own blood: BD Vacutainer Butterfly, 21G 3/4". You want them 20-21G because they are thin enough to not cause much trauma, which could create anomalies in the blood sample but also not too thin, as this would also cause anomalies. G stands for gauge, the higher the number the smaller the needle radius.
-Vacutainer tubes with sodium citrate or ACDA. I use sodium citrate tubes with a special concentration for PRP: 4,5 ml 13x75 mm. Sodium Citrate 0,5 ml 0,129 M.
-Vacutainer tubes with nothing in them or sterile centrifuge tubes to store and spin the plasma. Vacutainer tubes are better to keep sterile conditions, i use centrifuge tubes nevertheless, since they are usually bigger and hold more plasma.
-1ml syringes to store and inject PRP.
-5ml syringes to move plasma around and store it.
-Mesotherapy needles to inject PRP into your scalp 30G. 0,3x4 mm
-Long and short needles to move plasma around and cap syringes. Sterican 19G x 2", 1,10 x 50 mm and 0,9 mm x 25 mm. 19G.
-Alcohol and pads.
-Fast tourniquet.
-Centrifuge. Model 800-1 for 45-70€ on Amazon or China.
The total cost is around 150-175€, and you get 16 PRP sessions from it, after that you would just need to spend around 50€ for another 16 sessions. If you want it even cheaper, you can also buy a sodium citrate vial and use a big syringe to draw the blood, then use smaller syringes as centrifuge tubes, but drawing blood on your own using a syringe is hard.
1- Clean the room.
Clean the dust and close windows/doors before you start, to avoid air flows that could introduce particles into your blood samples, wear a mask so you don't breathe into samples. Keep the temperature of the room stable, 20ºC or whatever works for you, not extremes.
I clean the surface of the table that im using with bleach/alcohol and clean every single thing im putting on it with alcohol too, be it syringe boxes or anything else.
Prepare all you will need and put it on the table.
Place the centrifuge on the floor and clean it too.
2- Draw your own blood into vacutainer tubes.
We are using 6 x 4,5 ml tubes to fill the 6 slots of the centrifuge. You can get around 2-2,5ml of PRP from this and around 10ml of PPP (platelet poor plasma that you can use as eyedrops for example).
You should learn how to do this yourself by checking as many youtube videos as you need to feel comfortable before doing it:
Search for "how to do a venipuncture."
If it's the first time you are drawing your own blood i suggest you do a simulacrum 1 day beforehand, on the other arm you were planning to draw blood from, with a butterfly needle and a vacutainer tube or just a thin needle attached to a syringe (harder to do), and draw some blood.
Tips:
To find the veins you can use a tourniquet and alternate between clenching and opening your fist with your arm pointing towards the floor. You can draw the contours of the vein with a pen, so you insert the needle perfectly in line later on.
Use the vein that pops out the most, for me is the accessory cephalic vein:
Clean the area with alcohol and wait 30 seconds before sticking the needle in.
Tight the tourniquet 5-10cm above punction site, tight enough to show veins but it shouldn't hurt. Don't keep it on for more than 1 minute, dislodge it after 1 minute even if you are not done filling the tubes, this will avoid blood abnormalities. Set an alarm on your phone.
Fist clenched at all times (unless you are using the hand) and stop clenching before removing the needle.
Insert the needle (bevel facing up) with a 15-25º inclination and stop pushing once resistance drops, you don't need to dig it in more than 1cm or so usually.
You may need to use both hands to handle vacutainer tubes, keep them near. When filling them up, insert them with the label facing down so you see how much blood goes in, this way you ensure they get completely filled. As soon as you fill the tube with blood, you must gently turn it upside down around 10 times to ensure the blood mixes with the anticoagulant, else it may clot and this is bad news. To sum it up: Fill the tube, place it in a rack, insert another tube in the drawing device, and while it is filling with blood, you turn the first one upside down 10 times, place it in the tube rack, and repeat for the remaining tubes.
Once all the tubes are filled, stop clenching your fist, remove the needle and apply pressure with an alcohol pad for 5 minutes, don't bend the arm.
If something goes wrong, like blood stops flowing, just remove the needle and use the other arm. If this happens again, use another vein.
Store all the needles in a bag and throw them in the needle trash can.
3- Spin the tubes filled with blood in the centrifuge.
There are many protocols for centrifuge speed/force and time. I use a double spin to ensure higher platelet concentration and a low speed method to ensure that platelet morphology doesn't change and that they are easy to resuspend in the plasma, but you can try other protocols if you fancy.
1st spin 130g (130 RCF) 15mins.
2nd spin 250g 15 mins.
After the first spin the tubes should look like this:
Once the first spin finishes, you have to suck the PPP and buffy coat (which contains platelets and White Blood Cells) with a syringe, and put it into centrifuge tubes, you don't want RBC (red blood cells). There are 2 ways to do this, you completely avoid RBCs and leave a lot of the buffy coat there, or you take some RBCs and take most of the buffy coat. You use one or the other option depending on the application, i suggest you avoid taking RBCs and don't aspirate all the buffy coat.
Do not disturb the tubes once you have centrifuged them, pick them up gently from the cetrifugue with some clean pliers, place them in the tube rack in which they came packaged or you can buy a tube rack for this purpose. You can whipe with an alcohol pad the cap of the tubes at this or any other point to ensure sterility.
This is how the remnants of a buffy coat look like once you have sucked the plasma and part of the buffy coat, its the whitish layer on top of the RBC :
To aspirate the plasma and the buffy coat, you insert 2 needles into the vacutainer tube cap, one to allow airflow and the other to suck the plasma out.
Once you transfer all the plasma and part of the buffy coat into 2 centrifuge tubes, you centrifuge them again with the 2nd spin protocol. Place the tubes on opposing sides in the centrifuge and make sure they measure the same amount of milliliters so they balance each other out.
After the second spin it should look like this:
You can see a lot of red blood cells at the bottom since i took most of the buffy coat and got too many RBC with it and the platelets and WBC sitting on top. The liquid part is PPP.
Now suck almost all the PPP but leave 1ml at the bottom of the tube with the platelets, use several 5ml syringes for this. The remaining 1ml with the platelets is the PRP. You have to resuspend the platelets into the plasma, you can do this by sucking some plasma into a 1ml syringe and quickly pushing it back into the tube, you want to resuspend all the platelets with the minimal shock possible. You can also use a vibrating device, etc.
Once the platelets are resuspended in the plasma, store the PRP in a 1ml syringe and keep it for later use.
4- Use the PRP.
I use PRP within an hour of drawing blood, unless im using it for eye drops, in that case i keep it in the fridge/freezer, the longer you wait the worse.
If you are going to use it for a dermaneedling session, you just spread it on the face, check youtube videos on how they do it in beauty clinics. I do a shallow rolling with 0,5mm needles, then spread some, then do a 1,5mm stamping while adding more prp, and some more right after im done needling.
If you are injecting it in your hairline, you can use 4 mm mesotherapy needles. You just stab it at 90º or less if you have a thin skin, and inject 0,1mm per square cm, or just divide your hairline in 10 sections and do 10 shots per ml, and so on. Once you inject a lump will grow, i have seen many doctors massage it so it goes away, i forgot to massage them the first time and nothing bad happened, they dissolve on their own.
If you are using it for eye drops you can store it in the fridge/freezer, check the guidelines for plasma, platelet, etc, storage and what freezing temperature is your freezer capable of. A good rule of thumb is to freeze anything you wont be using within a week, and only keep plasma in the fridge for a week then discard it. Don't freeze things for longer than a month. You can also do autologous serum drops by using a slightly different method that involves not using anticoagulant and letting the platelets clot, etc. you can search it yourself.
5- Should you bother with PRP?
Since PRP is not done with a standarized method and studies are often contradictory, the only medical consensus seems to be that it helps to accelerate healing, so this is the most you should expect from it. Don't invest into PRP if you aren't content with it just speeding your recovery from needling sessions and being able to produce your own PRP/autologous serum drops for eyes, because it may not do anything else for you (you can also measure your hematocrit though). On the hair loss context some people say it did nothing for them, others say it worked. Nevertheless most complaint that it is too expensive for whatever improvements it gives, but it is not expensive if you DIY.
There is a lot of variance in terms of frequency of injections for hair loss, so choose one protocol that fits you and stick to it, i do it every 4-6 weeks, usually when i deep dermaneedle, and will do 3-4 shots per year or more.
Since i wasn't convinced about PRP for hair loss the first session i injected it just on the right side of my hairline around my temple, and that region regrew forward a few mms more than the other side, the irregularity is very noticeable if i trim my hair short. Since PRP is the only asymmetric treatment i was using at the time, it could be the reason. Nevertheless it could be a cohencidence and my hairline could be irregular for other reasons, so if you are using PRP i suggest you do the same and inject into one side of your hairline only (for the first time), far from the midline, and see if it is doing anything for you, take pictures and report.
I didn't regrew hair just with PRP, and it is normally not used as standalone treatment, i was needling once a month and taking, stemox, alfatradiol, essential oil copes, shiseido adenoside shampoo and nizoral. The regrowth showed within 1-2 months, got a much denser hairline too.
Im uploading my PRP folder so you can check few studies if you fancy:
mega.nz
The DoctorJew is on suicide watch, this is what he wanted to charge you for spinning your own blood:
Some videos of the procedure, you can find many more:
I could understand nothing of what he said, but the video is good:
PRP stands for Platelet Rich Plasma, and it is used for:
-Improved recovery and maybe performance of microneedling sessions.
-Hair loss treatment.
-Treatment for dry eye.
-Etc.
What do you need to prepare PRP?
- Butterfly needles to draw your own blood: BD Vacutainer Butterfly, 21G 3/4". You want them 20-21G because they are thin enough to not cause much trauma, which could create anomalies in the blood sample but also not too thin, as this would also cause anomalies. G stands for gauge, the higher the number the smaller the needle radius.
-Vacutainer tubes with sodium citrate or ACDA. I use sodium citrate tubes with a special concentration for PRP: 4,5 ml 13x75 mm. Sodium Citrate 0,5 ml 0,129 M.
-Vacutainer tubes with nothing in them or sterile centrifuge tubes to store and spin the plasma. Vacutainer tubes are better to keep sterile conditions, i use centrifuge tubes nevertheless, since they are usually bigger and hold more plasma.
-1ml syringes to store and inject PRP.
-5ml syringes to move plasma around and store it.
-Mesotherapy needles to inject PRP into your scalp 30G. 0,3x4 mm
-Long and short needles to move plasma around and cap syringes. Sterican 19G x 2", 1,10 x 50 mm and 0,9 mm x 25 mm. 19G.
-Alcohol and pads.
-Fast tourniquet.
-Centrifuge. Model 800-1 for 45-70€ on Amazon or China.
The total cost is around 150-175€, and you get 16 PRP sessions from it, after that you would just need to spend around 50€ for another 16 sessions. If you want it even cheaper, you can also buy a sodium citrate vial and use a big syringe to draw the blood, then use smaller syringes as centrifuge tubes, but drawing blood on your own using a syringe is hard.
1- Clean the room.
Clean the dust and close windows/doors before you start, to avoid air flows that could introduce particles into your blood samples, wear a mask so you don't breathe into samples. Keep the temperature of the room stable, 20ºC or whatever works for you, not extremes.
I clean the surface of the table that im using with bleach/alcohol and clean every single thing im putting on it with alcohol too, be it syringe boxes or anything else.
Prepare all you will need and put it on the table.
Place the centrifuge on the floor and clean it too.
2- Draw your own blood into vacutainer tubes.
We are using 6 x 4,5 ml tubes to fill the 6 slots of the centrifuge. You can get around 2-2,5ml of PRP from this and around 10ml of PPP (platelet poor plasma that you can use as eyedrops for example).
You should learn how to do this yourself by checking as many youtube videos as you need to feel comfortable before doing it:
Search for "how to do a venipuncture."
If it's the first time you are drawing your own blood i suggest you do a simulacrum 1 day beforehand, on the other arm you were planning to draw blood from, with a butterfly needle and a vacutainer tube or just a thin needle attached to a syringe (harder to do), and draw some blood.
Tips:
To find the veins you can use a tourniquet and alternate between clenching and opening your fist with your arm pointing towards the floor. You can draw the contours of the vein with a pen, so you insert the needle perfectly in line later on.
Use the vein that pops out the most, for me is the accessory cephalic vein:
Clean the area with alcohol and wait 30 seconds before sticking the needle in.
Tight the tourniquet 5-10cm above punction site, tight enough to show veins but it shouldn't hurt. Don't keep it on for more than 1 minute, dislodge it after 1 minute even if you are not done filling the tubes, this will avoid blood abnormalities. Set an alarm on your phone.
Fist clenched at all times (unless you are using the hand) and stop clenching before removing the needle.
Insert the needle (bevel facing up) with a 15-25º inclination and stop pushing once resistance drops, you don't need to dig it in more than 1cm or so usually.
You may need to use both hands to handle vacutainer tubes, keep them near. When filling them up, insert them with the label facing down so you see how much blood goes in, this way you ensure they get completely filled. As soon as you fill the tube with blood, you must gently turn it upside down around 10 times to ensure the blood mixes with the anticoagulant, else it may clot and this is bad news. To sum it up: Fill the tube, place it in a rack, insert another tube in the drawing device, and while it is filling with blood, you turn the first one upside down 10 times, place it in the tube rack, and repeat for the remaining tubes.
Once all the tubes are filled, stop clenching your fist, remove the needle and apply pressure with an alcohol pad for 5 minutes, don't bend the arm.
If something goes wrong, like blood stops flowing, just remove the needle and use the other arm. If this happens again, use another vein.
Store all the needles in a bag and throw them in the needle trash can.
3- Spin the tubes filled with blood in the centrifuge.
There are many protocols for centrifuge speed/force and time. I use a double spin to ensure higher platelet concentration and a low speed method to ensure that platelet morphology doesn't change and that they are easy to resuspend in the plasma, but you can try other protocols if you fancy.
1st spin 130g (130 RCF) 15mins.
2nd spin 250g 15 mins.
After the first spin the tubes should look like this:
Once the first spin finishes, you have to suck the PPP and buffy coat (which contains platelets and White Blood Cells) with a syringe, and put it into centrifuge tubes, you don't want RBC (red blood cells). There are 2 ways to do this, you completely avoid RBCs and leave a lot of the buffy coat there, or you take some RBCs and take most of the buffy coat. You use one or the other option depending on the application, i suggest you avoid taking RBCs and don't aspirate all the buffy coat.
Do not disturb the tubes once you have centrifuged them, pick them up gently from the cetrifugue with some clean pliers, place them in the tube rack in which they came packaged or you can buy a tube rack for this purpose. You can whipe with an alcohol pad the cap of the tubes at this or any other point to ensure sterility.
This is how the remnants of a buffy coat look like once you have sucked the plasma and part of the buffy coat, its the whitish layer on top of the RBC :
To aspirate the plasma and the buffy coat, you insert 2 needles into the vacutainer tube cap, one to allow airflow and the other to suck the plasma out.
Once you transfer all the plasma and part of the buffy coat into 2 centrifuge tubes, you centrifuge them again with the 2nd spin protocol. Place the tubes on opposing sides in the centrifuge and make sure they measure the same amount of milliliters so they balance each other out.
After the second spin it should look like this:
You can see a lot of red blood cells at the bottom since i took most of the buffy coat and got too many RBC with it and the platelets and WBC sitting on top. The liquid part is PPP.
Now suck almost all the PPP but leave 1ml at the bottom of the tube with the platelets, use several 5ml syringes for this. The remaining 1ml with the platelets is the PRP. You have to resuspend the platelets into the plasma, you can do this by sucking some plasma into a 1ml syringe and quickly pushing it back into the tube, you want to resuspend all the platelets with the minimal shock possible. You can also use a vibrating device, etc.
Once the platelets are resuspended in the plasma, store the PRP in a 1ml syringe and keep it for later use.
4- Use the PRP.
I use PRP within an hour of drawing blood, unless im using it for eye drops, in that case i keep it in the fridge/freezer, the longer you wait the worse.
If you are going to use it for a dermaneedling session, you just spread it on the face, check youtube videos on how they do it in beauty clinics. I do a shallow rolling with 0,5mm needles, then spread some, then do a 1,5mm stamping while adding more prp, and some more right after im done needling.
If you are injecting it in your hairline, you can use 4 mm mesotherapy needles. You just stab it at 90º or less if you have a thin skin, and inject 0,1mm per square cm, or just divide your hairline in 10 sections and do 10 shots per ml, and so on. Once you inject a lump will grow, i have seen many doctors massage it so it goes away, i forgot to massage them the first time and nothing bad happened, they dissolve on their own.
If you are using it for eye drops you can store it in the fridge/freezer, check the guidelines for plasma, platelet, etc, storage and what freezing temperature is your freezer capable of. A good rule of thumb is to freeze anything you wont be using within a week, and only keep plasma in the fridge for a week then discard it. Don't freeze things for longer than a month. You can also do autologous serum drops by using a slightly different method that involves not using anticoagulant and letting the platelets clot, etc. you can search it yourself.
5- Should you bother with PRP?
Since PRP is not done with a standarized method and studies are often contradictory, the only medical consensus seems to be that it helps to accelerate healing, so this is the most you should expect from it. Don't invest into PRP if you aren't content with it just speeding your recovery from needling sessions and being able to produce your own PRP/autologous serum drops for eyes, because it may not do anything else for you (you can also measure your hematocrit though). On the hair loss context some people say it did nothing for them, others say it worked. Nevertheless most complaint that it is too expensive for whatever improvements it gives, but it is not expensive if you DIY.
There is a lot of variance in terms of frequency of injections for hair loss, so choose one protocol that fits you and stick to it, i do it every 4-6 weeks, usually when i deep dermaneedle, and will do 3-4 shots per year or more.
Since i wasn't convinced about PRP for hair loss the first session i injected it just on the right side of my hairline around my temple, and that region regrew forward a few mms more than the other side, the irregularity is very noticeable if i trim my hair short. Since PRP is the only asymmetric treatment i was using at the time, it could be the reason. Nevertheless it could be a cohencidence and my hairline could be irregular for other reasons, so if you are using PRP i suggest you do the same and inject into one side of your hairline only (for the first time), far from the midline, and see if it is doing anything for you, take pictures and report.
I didn't regrew hair just with PRP, and it is normally not used as standalone treatment, i was needling once a month and taking, stemox, alfatradiol, essential oil copes, shiseido adenoside shampoo and nizoral. The regrowth showed within 1-2 months, got a much denser hairline too.
Im uploading my PRP folder so you can check few studies if you fancy:
164.36 MB file on MEGA
The DoctorJew is on suicide watch, this is what he wanted to charge you for spinning your own blood:
Some videos of the procedure, you can find many more:
I could understand nothing of what he said, but the video is good:
Last edited:
