#173 - The Truth About Stem Cells: Sources, Safety, and Real Results

0:00fertilized egg is the first stem cell. When it starts to divide to form this incredible structure, the embryo. Until the embryo is able to form the first organ, you know, all about the beating heart, that means the heart is working, that means heart muscle cells are working cells. They actually formed an organ that has a function. So you can imagine there are thousands shades of gray of stem cells until it becomes a working cell. Stem cell therapy, we can intercept anywhere along that line, we can take one of those cells knowing that this one cell has the ability to trigger or to even become the cells of the end organ cells. And all of a sudden certain conditions will get better, and I say they have a brain condition, they can get better, they have a muscle tear that can get better. Having a tiny, tiny little bit of DNA from another human being, you decide for yourself. Welcome to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. This is where I have a chance to share with you some of the latest developments in the space of holistic health, longevity, and wellness. I have always honored intellectual curiosity and scientific rigor, combined with real-world

1:05practicality. My goal is that what you learn here will help you live longer and live better. Hope you enjoy the journey with me. Hello everybody, welcome back. Today we have a little change of pace because I was the one being interviewed by Samantha Peters, who is a top 1% podcast host, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and the founder of Light Up Your Life, which is a brand dedicated to inspiring personal transformation and empowerment. So we covered a lot of ground in this interview, and I talked about things I've never talked about before. So if you're interested in finding out more about me, this is good chance. So I really hope you enjoy and cheers to life. Welcome back to the Light Up Your Life podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Peters, and today's guest is Dr. Joy Kong. She is a UCLA-trained triple board certified physician, stem cell specialist, educator, and CEO. She's the founder of Chara Health, and she's a leader and regenerative medicine. She's known for prioritizing scientific

2:08data over myths, and she has a powerful journey growing up in China's cultural revolution, and starting over in America, and now she's named the stem cell doctor of the decade. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you as a guest. Thank you so much, Samantha. Yeah, I'm excited for our conversation. So I like to go back in time, and I know you had a really difficult childhood. You know, I mentioned that you grew up in China's cultural revolution. How do you think that season of your life shaped you into the woman you are today and the work that you're doing? Okay, so I mean, I was born during the cultural revolution, but I wouldn't say I grabbed and I had a little taste of it, but cultural revolution is 1965 to I mean, a 66 to 76. I was born in 71. I got a little taste of what the ideology was because my last name is the same as Confucius last name, but the Communist Party do not like Confucius because they felt that he was one of the thought leaders, the forces that kept China in the in the past and

3:13that were too complacent. So there was a you know, like when I was a kid and all these kids put me on a little platform and they were running around the platform is a little bomb shelter thing, and you know, made up concrete and they were yelling downfall Confucius downfall Confucius. I mean, that's really about the only trauma I had after the cultural revolution, you know, for China was extremely poor, and it's actually mind blowing how far it has come. 1976 is when cultural revolution was done. 1978 was when China opened its door to the world. So I was growing up in my formative years. I went to elementary school when China opened its door, right? So gradually, the first time I heard a pop song probably was 1983 when I first got into junior high. I never heard a pop song ever until I was 12 years old, and it was just a school song singing about feeling bored and looking at the birds outside and to us, you know, that was extraordinary, right?

4:17You're talking about being bored, you know, instead of loving your country and, you know, being excited about doing good things in the world. So that's kind of how I grew up, you know, a not much material access, and, you know, I may have one piece of new clothes per year, so that's about what I would expect. So emphasis emphasis is on learning, on just, you know, becoming a useful person in society, but it was a really good upbringing. I grew up on the university campus, so people surrounding me were all professors or college students. So in a very civil environment, a lot of learning, even when I was 13 years old, I started to have the idea that I wanted to go abroad. I wanted to explore something else. There's something that's really exciting about America, partially because that's a place that everyone go to from all around the world is a melting pot and it's a new type of country because you can come together and form a

5:20new government and it's for the people. So all these ideological, this idealism about what America represented was very, very exciting to me, and I really wanted to go there and experience it and have an adventure. So that's kind of my little journey, and then when I was 20 years old, that's when I was getting close. When I was 18, I actually really, really put my head down, studied English, studied really hard. I talked about that in my memoir, Tiger of Beijing, you know, what happened, you know, I went a deviated from my original plan because of the political atmosphere at the time, so I'm having to rush my journey to America and I did get accepted by a university in Massachusetts, but my visa was rejected. So my book started with my visa rejection. It was a bit of heart-wrenching for a young girl who has worked so hard and I believed in it. I believed I would be there. Even though everybody, all my friends thought I was a little crazy because it's just about next

6:22to impossible. So like, why would you people go? They reject most visas and they almost give no scholarships. So how can you do it? But I just believed. I called on the universe because if you have a thought, a desire, if you want it bad enough, the universe will come and help you. So I thought, come, come help me. But it was still rejected. So that's when the journey, the adventure started, that resulted in all this three years of really interesting time of my life that I wrote the memoir on. Yeah, so that's kind of my early beginnings. Wow, that's amazing. So how long did it take you to actually get your visa? And I feel like it just makes your story better, right? You got rejected, but then you didn't give up. You had so much faith and belief that it was all going to work out for you. Yeah, wasn't that interesting? I got rejected in August. So I was upset for a few days and then I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to quit school. I was studying architecture for two years.

7:26So I took a year of leave of absence. I decided to just to see what I can do. And then the next year April. So that's about eight months later. I was in San Francisco. Yeah. So it took me eight months. Gosh, that's incredible. You're here. And I think that's a really big testament to anyone listening to this. You have to have faith. Even if it's small as a mustard seed, I find in my life so many things I wanted it took a long time. And I believe that everything happens to you in perfect timing. So I'm sure looking back, you realized why it had to happen that way. But when you're going through it, it's definitely always challenging. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah. That's not the only challenge in life, for sure. Agreed. Yes. I know we hear the phrase a lot. Trauma lives in the body. And so what does that actually mean on a cellular level? I know I'm a psychiatrist. I don't know if we know where the trauma lives.

8:27Is possible. It lives in some deep unconscious, some kind of neural network. I mean, I went into psychiatry because I wanted to understand the human psyche, the brain, and just how everything works. So there's a big part that we don't understand very much is subconscious. I think there's a fabric beneath where we're able to comprehend. It could be the energy fabric. I mean, now I'm speaking completely and on a different plane as what usual psychiatrists will talk about, right? But I think there's an energy fabric of the world. We're manifesting with a physicality. So the physical world can hold on to things through proteins, membranes, different structures, and different neural networks, and receptors, and yeah, all these signaling molecules that's darting back and forth. So that's one layer of existence. But I think underneath there's an energy fabric. And it's very possible that there's a made a dent in the energy world that's always permeating coming through into the physical manifestation. But in the body, even just physically, I mean, there are some thoughts that may be living our fascia that's withholding a lot of memories.

9:34There's certain release, fascial release that can actually release some of the pain, psychic pain, but exactly where is it? You know, the Chinese believe in energy channels. It believes in stuck energy within meridians. So are they in these energy channels? Like I don't say we know for sure. Yeah, energy is still or even thought. We can't, we can validate thought that we don't, there's not much physical basis to thought. We may see some brain waves, but we can't say that it's exactly that's a thought. I think there are things that are on the ethereal level. Yeah, people don't believe in energy or something ethereal. Just, just do you think, you know, do you have a thought? That's energy. So there's so much we don't know. Yeah, so the trauma, the psyche, we don't have the measurement, the language, enough language for it. But I think one day if we use different forms of measurement, not the existing tools we have,

10:38which is not very helpful right now in dissecting the spiritual and energetic world. But one day maybe we'll get, we'll get advanced enough that we can detect that realm. Yeah, I think that's an, that's an interesting response because one of my mentors talks about how your thoughts create your reality and based on your thoughts and what you're putting out there, it has vibrational frequency. It's either on beta, brain wave, it's on theta. And then when it's on a higher frequency, a higher brain wave, you're attracting that into your life. And so I've seen it in my own life, right? I went through so much trauma and I used to think in such a victim hood mindset way, and I would be attracting all of these problems into my life, but knowing and rewriting my thoughts and my beliefs and the way that I speak my thoughts into the universe. Now I'm attracting a completely different life. So I am a firm believer that our thoughts, the words we speak, carry vibrational frequency. And you're right, it's ethereal. A lot of people don't realize that.

11:40And it's just like having Wi-Fi in your phone, you can't really see it, but it's there, it's working. I think that's really interesting to just get the different perspective. I also want to talk about fighter flight. So what helped you move out of survival mode into truly thriving in your life? Okay. Did I fully move out of the survival mode? I think it's been a journey. It's in a journey. I'm getting better and better. I think we all have our own set of traumas. Last thing I want is to appear like a victim. That's one thing I don't like. I don't like being a victim. I feel like I have control over a lot of things, but it's true that sometimes when we are victims, we are victims, that we didn't really do anything and things happened upon us. But I always like taking responsibility for my actions and I don't like to feel like

12:42circumstances determine what happened to me. So that's kind of my struggle a little bit. You know, some people may think that I'm not fully accepting trauma. So I'm getting to a point where I do see that certain experiences, for example, when I was growing up and you know, I wasn't at some point. I refused to eat because my mom wasn't there. And she was left five o'clock in the morning. We didn't come back home until seven because of work. And then I refused to eat. And my grandma was not feeding me. It was not comforting me. So so I can see like a little baby that's still just a few months old, how devastating it will be that her daughter's mother went away. And then no one's comforting her. So she's left there. Is she going to die? Like, what's going to happen, right? So that probably left an imprint. And also when I was growing up, plenty of families do hit their children. So I have always been very bellies and very independent and minded. And I like doing things the way I want to do it. So that clashed with my mom's

13:44desire for control. And she wanted things her way. So we were both very strong-willed. The clashes often resulted in her basically inflicting physical pain on me. What is that doing? You know, a fight or flight. I'm sure I had fight or flight. When I was a kid, I was a tough kid. I was fighting with all the boys. Everyone was afraid of me. But then when I was in elementary school, people always say, oh, you're so much softer, nicer than when you're a kindergarten. Because that was a tough girl. And then when I went to high school, you know, people who know me all along said, oh, you're so much nicer and more feminine than you were in your in elementary school. And so it kept growing. So I became more and more feminine. Not like I was just trying or desiring to be that way. It just happened naturally that I became who I am. I think I became closer to my nature. And some of the hard shells

14:44were gradually lost. Just like a lot of resentment I had against my parents. Or, you know, I decided to let go, you know, my anger toward them. And realizing that they actually fundamentally loved me despite what they did, you know, when they were hitting me and all that. So I think part of his understanding and growth, then accepting love, because I actually took me a while to accept that my parents actually loved me. But, you know, that that helps soften things when I realize that they do. And then later on, reading books, for example, the book I do recommend for anybody who's struggling with maybe just past trauma or relationship with their their mother. And this book called Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, a Swiss psychologist, just really powerful. And it talked about the baggage from mothers to their own children. Far from this holy image of motherhood that can do no wrong is all giving and loving. And they can actually pass down a lot of toxic stuff and cause a lot of maladaptive behavior in their

15:50children. So when I read that, at first, I cried for myself because I realized so much suffering of my life could have been avoided. If my mom was just a healthier mother, if she could just be a little more reasonable and then a little bit more empathetic. And but after I cried and cried for myself, I realized and I thought about her, you know, what about her? How did she grow up? How do her parents treat her? Why is she the way she is? And I realized that there must be pain in her. So I started crying for her. And that was the beginning of forgiveness for her, right? And then you can have healing. So that's kind of the journey. It's a journey, right? Little by little that you're becoming who you are because you're growing as a person. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's really hard going through a toxic upbringing. I experienced it in my life. My father was very abusive. My mother was very passive and growing up. I wasn't avoidant attachment style because I didn't have love in that nurturing growing up either. But you're right. It does take a lot to be able to forgive. But ultimately it's for yourself

16:56because you're carrying on that pain and the hurt and the trauma like we talked about. And I do believe it gets stored in the body. But it helped me very similar to what you just described going back to looking at my parents as young children and all of the trauma that they went through. And hurt people hurt people. If you don't stop and break the cycle, then you're going to continue it. It seems like you're the one in your family that was taking on that responsibility to be able to heal for generations to come. So it's a huge undertaking. It really is. Doing the deep inner work, reading, understanding why you create these patterns. I definitely applaud you for doing that because it's not easy at all. No. No. Yeah. It's not easy dealing with any pain. But but pain is a teacher. Yeah. Yeah. It only makes you stronger. And I find pain helps you step into the person that you're meant to be and your pain becomes your purpose in life. I now want to dive

17:57deep into stem cell therapy because I know that's something that you're incredible at. And it's everywhere right now. And I know we talked a little bit before the show, but I was introduced to it when I read Tony Robbins book Life Force. So what do you think people are getting wrong about stem cells and then for anyone who might not even know what stem cell therapy is? Can you explain it? Yeah. Just think of the kind of intelligence that is in you. Like you probably don't remember, but you were once a fertilized egg. And so you don't remember when you were that tiny and that powerless, right? But you were full of incredible miraculous power within you in that one cell. So it's that kind of intelligence that is in that fertilized egg that have the ability to manifest into you. So stem cells, that the fertilized egg is the first stem cell, the quintessential stem cell. And everywhere when it starts to divide, it can divide into all kinds of further differentiated

18:59cells with more properties, with more abilities and more function and moving around and start to form this incredible structure, the embryo. So until the embryo is able to form the first organ, right? The first, you know, we know all about the beating heart. That means the heart is working. That means those muscle heart muscle cells are working cells. So they're actually they actually formed an organ that has a function. So when it's a working cell, that cell is no longer a stem cell. That's a working cell. But anywhere before that, it's a long journey to get to that working cell, they're all stem cells. So you can imagine there are thousands shades of gray of stem cells until it becomes a working cell. So as stem cell therapy, we can intercept anywhere along that line, we can take one of those cells knowing that this one cell has ability to trigger or to even become the cells of the end organ cells, right? Because it's along the lineage. So we can actually

20:03borrow anywhere along the way. We can nowadays, one of the most borrowed step is it's called mesenchymal stem cell. And that is a particular type of cell that has just gained tremendous popularity because you can give it from one person to another that's very little rejection risk. And they're very adaptable immunologically into the new person. Of course, you can give it to yourself as well, but we can talk about the problems with that. But these cells have incredible properties. They can call them inflammation. They can shift your immune system to a more helpful state. They can break down scar tissue. They can help you regenerate blood vessels to give you blood supply. They can rescue damaged tissue. So sometimes our damaged tissue end up dying. And sometimes they don't have to die. There's a chemical cascade that can be reversed. These cells can do that. They can also help you fight cancer cells. They can also elevate your cell energy to give you new mitochondria, but they can also trigger your own local stem cells to start divide and make

21:03new tissue to make that end stage working cell. So it can do all this. That's a mesenchymal stem. And that's why they're so popular. If you talk about stem cell therapy, I'll bet you the 90% of the time that people are giving you mesenchymal stem cells. But there are all kinds of other stem cell types. And there are still so many different kinds of stem cells. They all work. In my clinic, we actually use a combination, which will give you the best results, but we use really young sources. You can get stem cells from very young sources like the umbilical cord or placenta. You can get it from your own body, like your bone marrow or fat. These three are the most common types of where people get stem cells from. But you can get from menstrual blood. You can get from dental pulp. You can anywhere you have, right? There are a lot of places that you can get stem cells from because every tissue, every organ, but before it becomes the working cell, there's a resident stem cell. All it can become is that working cell. So they're just sitting

22:04there waiting to become that working cell. That's the last stage of stem cell. So that stem cell can be activated by mesenchymal stem cells, by the signals, the secret. So as you can see, it's a complex hole, right? There are a lot of different different variations and different places that you can enter to try to intercept. But what you're after really is the power released by these stem cells because how are they able to form a whole human? That's the kind of intelligence that we are unleashing when we borrow these cells. Is that bit of information that blasts of signals that's creating all these downstream effects on the neighboring cells and on your system? That's kind of stem cell therapy in a quick overview. I think of stem cell therapy as intelligence therapy. It's really a form of energy therapy because what I'm giving to the body is not just one molecule, you know, a group of molecules like herbs. I'm giving you the DNA. DNA is the most energy

23:06dense substance in the universe is packed with information. And that's what I'm releasing into your body is information, is clarity. So that's stem cell therapy. Wow. You did such a great job being able to take a really highly conceptual topic and break it down into bite-sized pieces for people to understand. So I loved your response for that. I have so many questions. So when someone goes into your clinic, do you do like a whole body assessment or do they come with a specific objective that they want? Well, we are a specialty clinic. We focus on stem cell therapy. So we are an anti-aging clinic. We could do more foundational and we do try to do as much as we can. But people come to us for stem cells. That's what we're known for. We want to be as comprehensive as possible. But ideally, our ideal patient would have had all kinds of holistic evaluations. I consider holistic medicine. I'm just going to call it new medicine. You don't

24:10have to give a name. It's not a branch. It's the new way that you should be doing things. So the old way is focused more on individual organs and looking at particular tissue, cells, receptors, and drugs to interact with those tissue. So it's very, very tailored towards all small amount of tissue and cells in your body. But the new medicine is something that's overarching. It does involve everything. Stem cells is probably the most holistic way that you can give the body signals. But there's even vitamins. That's holistic. One vitamin, one magnesium ion can interact with, can assist and be part of over 400 physiological actions. You don't think that's holistic. That's everywhere in every organ. So it's involved in everything. Same is true for a lot of other very important minerals. And there are peptides that's involved with everything, hormones that involved with everything. So you're looking at a holistically

25:12what can affect you? Even microbes in our body can affect everything. So they secrete all kinds of things and help us with different metabolism. So they're there to help us. You need to take all of those into account. What we do is that we use stem cell therapy to give the body a blast of information. This is a high intelligence that we just inserted into you. Now your body can see, can hear, can feel and can't actually make changes. But before that, or even during the process, don't you think you need certain minerals? Don't you think you need certain antioxidants to help you? Don't you think you need peptides to care the information? We need a lot of things to make sure that everything is going in the direction that we want them to go, which is health. So we do address those factors by doing laboratory tests and just evaluating their symptoms or doing some kind of imaging. But all focus definitely is stem cells. And they can

26:13do all those holistic evaluations, either with us or with our own holistic doctors. So yeah, so the process is if a person is interested, then we do a very thorough evaluation. I actually just heard this from my staff because they hear this from patients who come to us. People come to us were really impressed that our doctors spent so much time with them trying to understand their problems, their condition. And they said, we were talking with other stem cell clinics and all they want is to sell us. They barely spend much time with them. They don't really know what we have. They don't go over our history and they just start selling us. And that's not how we do this. We're doctors. We're here to understand exactly what's going on with the patient, so we can really explain whether or not the kind of therapies we have is meant for them. It's going to really tailor to their issues. And why? We need to explain why. Why do you think if I've rumored to our side is why do you think stem cells are going to help you? Well, there's a bunch of reasons. And we need to list them and really explain it to people. If they're research

27:18in that area, we tell people that, you know, because I have an academy. I teach a lot of doctors on stem cell therapy. And I give them hundreds of articles so they can keep them ready when a patient comes in with a particular condition. Now they actually can go into deeper science to explain whether or not the stem cell therapy can help. So we explain the science and we truly understand if this is appropriate treatment for a patient and what kind of, you know, how much cells are going to need? Like any medical treatments, we need to know the dose, right? Any medications are dose and there's frequency. We need to know how much do I need to give you? How often do I need to give it to you? And so that's tailored toward each person's health issue. And where are we going to put it? Should we put an IV? Should we put in your joint? Should you want to do a hair restoration? We can inject into the scalp or we can, you know, do some other things with the scalp or facial rejuvenation or sexual wellness or you want to target the brain. We can do intranasal

28:20access for for these either stem cells or exosomes to get to your brain. So there are a lot of nuances that we design a good protocol for our patient. So when everything is set, that's when they make an appointment, when they come in, where do you know, this is a plan, this is, you know, all these places we're going to put the cells in to make sure we get a maximum benefit. I love that. And you must have been reading my mind because I was going to ask you if you did IV. Remember meeting a doctor at secret knock and he was telling me how he would do stem cell therapies with younger kids who had autism. And he said it was reversing the autism and the different symptoms. So I'm curious to know what has been one or two incredible stories that have come out of you doing stuff. Incredible stories. But autism actually have a lecture on YouTube is a lecture I gave in Brazil at a large autism conference. But I went over the signs of why stem cells may be able to

29:24help autism and then some real world cases of our own patients from my clinic. But gosh, you know, so autistic kids, we've had kids start from from nonverbal and from being incontinent to being able to tell parents with potty and and start interacting with, you know, eye contact and saying, thank you. I mean, all these are just monumental milestones after stem cell therapy. But we've had just yesterday, we had an 18 year old kid who came to us when he was 17. He was on liver transplant he has the colanditis and he's, you know, his eyes were yellow and he was with the white of his eyes. And then he, yeah, his life was in the balance. So we were able to give him two stem cell treatments and he was off the liver transplant list to the point where he graduated from high school. Now he's going to go on two year mission away from family completely, right? It's unthinkable

30:26before this. But now he's got a full life ahead of him and we had, you know, COPD patient, dragging oxygen around and really can't do very much in life anymore. And after I give him one stem cell treatment, he ditched his oxygen and got off of almost all COPD medications and went out to swim with his band, you know, he got his life back. We had a Parkinson's pain, we have several Parkinson's patients, but one of them, yeah, was wheelchair bound for over a year. And now his wife was foaming him, racing his son on the beach and posted on Instagram, right? It's incredible, incredible things. Yeah, Alzheimer's patient, you know, being from not recognizing family, being in continent, to being able to actually go use a bathroom and with return of his personality. And we have a, we, we, we really reversed a long disease, long condition from the first 9-11, the first, we're the first clinic to reverse a long condition from a 9-11 victim.

31:30This one happens to be in New York, the elite police force, a New York police officer, that a lot of his colleagues have died. And we were able to reverse it, not just symptomatically, now he's sprinting before he could barely walk up and down the stairs at his home. He's sprinting. And also, he's imaging. He's all the terrible lesions and the opacity have gone away. I mean, for the, because he asked his pharmacologist, can I say I'm free of this long disease? The pharmacologist say, yes, you can say that. So, I mean, we have so many stories. I had a, you know, surgical tech who had rheumatoid arthritis couldn't work because she couldn't use her hands. In the middle of an IV infusion, she closed her fist and started crying. She said, I have not been able to do this for two months. And she went back to work. Her livelihood was saved. I mean, numerous people, MS patients couldn't work. And one treatment was able to, to go back to work.

32:33Not everybody is just one treatment is going to do it. And because I would actually often recommend three sessions for chronic conditions, because we need different waves of regeneration to push the body to get to a good state, because when you are chronic, have a chronic condition, that means the tissue and organ are damaged to our, you know, a more severe degree. And it's not something that, you know, they say in medicine, usually how long it takes you to get sick is how long it's going to take you to get better. So it's going to take some time for the repair to happen. But we've seen, you know, people with, you know, serious immunitary liver cirrhosis, people with kidney diseases and keeping them away from dialysis, right? Keeping their life more normal. And there's one doctor I train, I worked with actually got somebody off dialysis. We have, we have so many stories. That is so fascinating. I'm curious to know for anti-aging, how much does it reverse the

33:36aging in your, in your face if you have wrinkles or anything like that? Hello, my loyal listeners. I want to interrupt this podcast, but just a second, because I want to let you know that if you're looking to help solve a major health issue, or you're looking for health optimization and just for longevity purposes, you can find us at our health. We are considered the leader in the regenerative medicine and longevity space. We utilize modalities like stem cell therapy, peptide therapy, plasma freezes, ozone treatments, laser therapy, all to create a beautiful symphony to get you to where you want to be. You can find us at www.chara-health.com. That's CH-A-R-A. One fun story was when I started doing stem cell treatments, I remember my neighbor, so I was 45 when I started, so I'm 54. So even the further word, you definitely don't look at all. Thank you. I'm trying to show people that, you know, anti-aging is possible, you know, we're here.

34:40But when I was 45, right, I started doing IB stem cells, and then my neighbor of eight years actually asked me, like, what do you be doing? So a year after I started, she said, you'd be looking younger and younger, and I've seen that over the last year, because this is a person that I've been talking with for eight years, right? So if I was 45, then, you know, we were, you know, kind of spending time together a little bit since I was 37. She noticed a difference, and when I was about to thank her for being, you know, so kind and, you know, complimentary, she said, no, no, I'm not trying to give you a compliment. I'm actually telling you what I'm seeing, and it's not just me that's seeing this. My daughter told me separately that she's seeing that in you. My mother-in-law told me that you're looking younger and younger, what have you been doing? So there's definitely anti-aging component, and if you do, and I have some of my people who follow me on social media or YouTube,

35:41they go all the way back to my older videos, and they're the one that told me. They're like, Dr. Kong, yeah, you're right, you know, we went back to your older videos, and you do look younger. Yeah, as a people, people are checking it. It does happen. What I say is that your face and your skin is a reflection of your internal organ. The skin happens to be the largest organ in the body, and it happens to be right in your face. So, but just because you can't see what's inside of you, doesn't mean that they're not aging along with your skin. So when people see, oh, I'm getting older, you know, I'm gosh, you know, my face, that look like I'm aging, what you're not seeing, and you're not worried about. Most people are not worried about, because if they're feeling okay, they don't see that all their organs are wrinkling and and and and and and sagging just like their face. So there's a decline in function in the ability to repair. That's why your face has wrinkles, is because is ability to repair has drastically declined. When you're a little kid,

36:44your skin is so plum and beautiful and flawless is because everything is fixed up right away. Doesn't matter what how much damage you're causing, it just repaired flawlessly. So that's that when people, even just a short study, like a six month study, have shown that there's anti-aging benefits in people's energy level, their sex drive, and their skin hair and nail. So, yeah, so there's there's evidence that these stem cell treatment can have immediate anti-aging benefits. Not to mention long-term studies in animals looking at longevity, because it's really hard to study longevity in humans, right? You have to wait for a hundred years to get the results back. But with animals who only live for about 20 months, you can see what happens to their lifespan and is being consistent. If you give an older animal, younger animals stem cells, or even human stem cells, it can extend their lifespan by about 30%. And it's not just lifespan.

37:48It's our health span. It's our youth span, because these animals are looking better. They're talking about how their fur was shinier, and their spine is straighter, and their local motion is better, right? They run much faster and smoothly, and then they're able to run the maze. They remember, you know, they got their marbles still. So, so it's about extending the time that you have youthful vitality. So that's been proven in the animal model. You know, to be honest, we're not that different from the animals. If we use stem cells, animals are made of stem cells too. And, you know, initially there were, you know, these mammals, they were all fertilized eggs. So when they can form a fully functional animal, and then you give a younger type of stem cells to an older animal, and that can produce that kind of benefit, but I'm pretty sure the same is going to happen to humans. Of course, you know, it's just going to time to prove that. But do you want to wait until a hundred years later when that's proven to humans, or do you want to try to jump on it now? Yeah, exactly. I definitely want to jump on it soon. I've been curious to ask

38:51this question. So there's an idea that stem cells carry information from multiple generation. When someone receives stem cells from another person, does that actually change anything about their own DNA or their genetic makeup, or what's really happening in the body at a cellular level? I actually have a video specifically on the subject. It's called other people's DNA in me because people worry about other people's DNA. So first of all, just know, let's say we try to extract stem cells from your body, and we're going to do some liposuction. We're going to extract some fat, and then we're getting stem cells really from the blood vessels that are supplying your fat, and along those blood vessels are full of mesenchymal stem cells. So we can do this spinning process where we can get all those stem cells from the blood vessels. So we get those from you. And then we want to put it back into your body to promote certain regeneration. This is all from you. You back to you, same genetic material. There's no chance of rejection from another person.

39:54Most of cells would die. They will work for you for a while, and then they would die. Why? Because the cells have a lifespan. You just activated them. You put them to work, not only when they come to a place where there's a lot of inflammation because that's what they're attracted to. Their job is to find the inflammation and injury and fix it. So in those environments is often toxic. Like the soldier in a battlefield, they fight for you and they are sacrificed. So most of them, a lot of them die while trying to help you. But even if they don't die from a toxic environment, they have a natural lifespan. They don't just, no cell is just going to, oh, I'm just going to keep living on forever. Just like why the number of stem cells decline almost like falling off a cliff as we grow older because there's an attrition rate. They don't stay with you forever. They're supposed to stay with you forever. But when you are a teenager, the number of stem cells in your body is only one tenth of what you had when you were born. And when you are in your 40s is one quarter

40:55of what you had when you're a teenager. And when you are in your 80s, it's one fifth of what you had when you were in your 40s. So you can see is just wow. Yeah. Yeah. So you're losing. This is why our skin is wrinkling. That's why you get a cut on your skin. It's taking takes so much longer to repair when you're older. It's because your body doesn't have enough of what it takes. The stem cells are going to have quite there. We need the signals. We need the work for horse, right? We need the the horse power to get things done when we're running out of them. So when you put those back in the hope that is going to trigger some some kind of benefit, a lot of people can get stem cells from the bone marrow or fat and put it back into the body in the systemic circulation and all of a sudden certain conditions will get better, right? Their brain, I say they have a brain condition, they can get better. They have a muscle tear that can get better. But those are the cells that you mobilize freed up from your tissue and you put it back into your body, body so they can circulate and find their way to a place. But you activated

41:56those cells and they don't they won't live forever. They were in hibernation. They were quietly, they were just holding on and hanging out and then you woke them up and they only live for so long. So majority of them would die, even if they're from yourself. So why did I talk about this whole thing? You know, this long, long-winded description of what what happens to the cells is because when extract it from somebody else like from the unbuckle cord and I give it to your body, it's the same thing. Majority of them, vast majority of them is going to go do the work for you and then they have a finite lifespan. They're going to die. So there's only a small fraction that I actually going to stay in the body and there probably is a small fraction because we do know from research these cells do live in the body and sometimes can live with a person for rest of their lives. But they're so minuscule. We have 37 trillion cells in our body, approximately. And even if I give you a 500 million, I mean, do the calculation and see what it's a drop of

42:56water in the ocean. So it's such a minuscule amount and there are two fates, two type of fates with these cells. Okay, so they're there. There's still a lot of majority of the cells that came with them have died. So they're still there. Okay, I'm in this new body. So either I try to differentiate, you know, I gain some function. I become, you know, a little bit more than who I am. And the moment you start to do that, you may express surface markers that's consistent with the donor. Right, the donor's DNA is going to encode different protein. So we all know protein, different kinds of proteins is what triggers immune rejection. So your immune receptors will recognize this is a different protein. So the moment these cells start to express these different markers, then they can be attacked by the recipients immune system. And they could be killed. And sometimes they are. So there you go. You don't have to worry about anymore. The cell is gone. Or another fate is that

43:57it adapts the body. And we have seen that in animal studies as well when we do biopsies. And all of a sudden the animals got human cells living right there with and among the animal tissue. And is there it just part of it integrated even between human and animals. There's a chance of integration. So you can imagine between human and human. There's definitely a chance of integration. Do you know that 60% of women have Y chromosomes in their body. So people are so afraid of other people's DNA in their body, then please stop having sex and stop kissing each other, right? Because you are engaging in DNA exchange. So if you're so afraid of that, then don't do any of that. But 60% of women have Y chromosomes in their body and is everywhere. They're breast in their brain. So it goes everywhere. And why? Majority of the time is because of sexual intercourse. There's a smaller proportion that could be from miscarriages. You know, we had had male pregnancy and the baby

45:02cells traveled in the mother's body, which happens all the time. So mothers do carry their baby cells in their body, which is only 50% identical to them. So mothers already do that. But even beyond that, women get DNA from other people. I assume men will get female DNA too. It would be interesting to, you know, I don't know if any studies checked, you know, the excess cells among the male cell population. But the Y is a little easier to uncover, I guess, because you know, since men also have X, it's a little harder, I think, scientifically. It's easy trick to find out if there are Y chromosomes because women are not schools at any. So if you already have DNA exchange among human beings as part of the human experience, then really how much should you be afraid of having a tiny, tiny little bit of DNA from another human being? Yeah, you decide for

46:03yourself. Yeah, no, that was a great explanation. Thank you. It's definitely very, very insightful because I'm thinking about getting a treatment. So that's good information to know. I had won over 40 stenzel treatments. Wow. So I, you know, I love it. I'm like a little universe. I carry probably lots of people's DNA from them. It's like, come on, join the party. You know, I love it. Yeah. I'm like, I'm a little universe. That's great. So before someone, before someone jumps into an advanced treatment, what do you think are the non-negotiables that everyone should be doing for their health? Eating a healthy diet, because otherwise you're just feeding your body with toxins, and that's really not acceptable. In this day and age, we should all know what's good food, what's bad food. You want to eat things with nutrients and be free of toxins. It can be a little hard, but you can, you can do your best. So instead of actively poisoning

47:06yourself and then being upset that when your health goes down, then do something now and put something that's responsible into your body. So eating an anti-inflammatory diet, avoid a lot of highly processed food, avoid fried food, and, and a lot of the, you know, the pesticides and the bad seed oils and probably limit just sugar intake. So you're not, you know, kind of browning your body in a sense that you're slowly roasting your body through this sugar glycation process. That's a huge aging process. So if you can do those, that's one of the huge things you can do. Another thing everyone's dresses is sleep, and I have not done a good job on it. I haven't been resting, you know, a lot. I do have a lot of energy, but I also know my body need a lot of rest and I, it's, that has been a struggle because I want to do so many things and yeah, so that's, it's no excuse because I know other busy people still prioritize their sleep.

48:08So I could do better. Another one is moving your body. So you need to move, do regular exercise, you should move your body every day. That activates all kinds of genes that actually help you stay youthful as they healthy. And so besides not putting toxin in your body, you can do gentle detox. And my favorite way is just infrasana to just wet it out, you can sweat out a lot of toxins. So yeah, so these are some of the good things that don't put toxin in your body. Do some kind of a little bit of detox and yeah, sleep and move your body. Great points. I love that. Before I wrap this up, I always like to do a clip this or that challenge. So whatever comes to mind first, are you ready? Okay. Okay, so first one is biohacking or back to basic health. You should always do back to basics. Yeah, without back to basics, the, the biohacking, that's not, not going to do that much good. Love it. Next one, cold plunge or sauna.

49:11If you ask personally, I'm always going to go for sauna, but there's, these two are a tie. I think maybe personal preference. Ideally, you do both, but the cold plunge has tremendous benefit. If I do sauna. Yeah, I can lie. So, but the only time I do cold plunge is when I go to a spa where they have sauna and cold plunge, a sauna in this where they say they have a hot soak, right? Really hot mineral soak. And then I'm just really, really hot and ready to jump into something cold. That's the only time that I feel like I actually would like to do it. But otherwise, I seriously reject. Yes. I'm the same way. Podcasts or books, what do you prefer? I do love podcasts because I love the conversational nature and the breadth of subject and the accessibility because I can type in one subject. Something I'm dealing with, I want some help with. I can type it in and then I can get somebody, you know, sometimes this is a new person I've never

50:17heard of. And then I realize, oh, wow, this is a smart person. There's a lot of good insight. So it's very immediate. But of course, a book is a meditation. It's something that you spend time with and you really, you know, really soak everything in. It's still very, very nice, but I love the flexibility of podcasts and just be able to still be busy going to classes and learning at the same time. Yeah, I would like to say it makes my drive time a live time because every time I'm driving, I always put on a podcast to learn something new. Would you rather have a structured schedule or go with the flow days? Structures, I like it. Yeah, I like to know what what I'm doing. Yeah, go with the flow. I don't know. I'm afraid I'm going to drift away and not be efficient. I don't know. It's not very nice, but it certainly is I rarely have to go with the flow days and those will be the ones that that's a big breather. That's a that's a time to reset to really take time ideally with yourself and in nature. I think that's a good way to recharge. But on a work day,

51:22yeah, I want to have a schedule. Of course, yes. City life or in nature reset? I grew up in a city, although I grew up on the university campus. So it's like a big garden. So in a sense, I grew up with something that's very nature focused. Yeah, and which did me a lot of good. I used to just go reset in nature. So I think having nature is lovely. But I like the city. I like restaurants and shops and I like that human energy as well. So I think it would be good to have a blend. Yeah, both. Last one. So big vision planning or daily micro habits. What's the first one vision planning? Big vision planning. So having a big vision for your future. Oh, okay. I think I'm pretty good at like a long term, just kind of an idea of what I want in life. And not very specific. For example, when I wanted to come to America, I mean, that's a goal.

52:29Come to America as far as what and how and that I'm leaving it up to to a venture. Because all I know is that I'm willing to go to that country with no money. So I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I do know I want to beat there. But once I get there, I heard a lot of people go to Chinese restaurants starting with washing dishes. So if that's what it takes, I'll go wash dishes. That's as far as I planned. I love that. Yeah. And it's just trust within daughter, whatever you believe in. I actually just moved from Connecticut to Tampa. It just made a decision. I'm like, I don't know how it's going to work out, but everything worked out better than I could imagine. So yeah, it's such a cool and fun, right? It's an adventure. Exactly. Yeah. And you have to have joy within the journey, right? You can get so stressed out, not knowing how everything's going to work out. But when you relinquish the how and you know your why behind it, it makes life so magical. It's like you're living in the unknown every day. I know. I know. Congratulations. That's that. Yeah. Well, you haven't his summer yet.

53:36You're right. I have not. It's 72 here, which is nice and sunny. But yeah, I've heard it's really humid. I mean, I'm visited in the summer here quite a bit. But I've actually never lived here for extended period of time. So I guess I'm going to find out. Yeah. I hope you love it. Thank you. Well, it was so incredible having you on this show today. You gave so many nuggets of gold and just really incredible information that anyone could use to help change their life. And I love the work that you're doing. And I can tell you're so passionate about it. For anyone listening to this who wants to learn more about you, maybe they want to get a stem cell therapy session. They want to fly to California. Where can they find you? Yeah. So my clinics in Los Angeles. So anyone can find us, you know, our clinic website is chara. So ch-a-a-health.com. But they can always find out about what I do, everything I do on my personal website, which is joycommd.com. So I of course, I met memoir on there. I have my clinic information on there. The stem cell

54:41company I established is also on there. And the academy that I founded where I'm very actively training, you know, hundreds of physicians. And a cream I developed is called chara on me, which is a phenomenal skin cream. So I used to kind of poo poo, you know, like skincare a little bit, except that I wanted to do good products. But I didn't think of that as real medicine. Because I wanted I was going to heal people right who cared, you know, like skin, people want less wrinkles, yeah, big deal. But then now I'm recognizing that, you know, skin is a very important organ. And if I can give something to people's skin to make sure that is the healthiest, right? Number one, don't put toxins to your body. So I developed a cream that has no synthetic ingredients that is all nature based. And it has stem cells and peptides and antioxidants. A lot of amazing things. Yeah, it's called chara on me, C-H-A-R-A on me. So that cream is, it's, but that's just the

55:42beginning because I'm developing a face serum and a hair serum. So for hair, regrowth. So that's very exciting. And that that's just beginning. So this whole cosmetic line is all going to be natural as a theme and then utilizing cutting edge technology, right? Like stem cells and peptides. That's the mission. Yeah. And that's a podcast. It's Dr. Joy Kong podcast. But people want to learn a lot about stem cells. One of the best resources, which is free, is my YouTube channel. So just going YouTube, putting Joy Kong MD, I have more videos on stem cell therapy than anyone that I haven't encountered. Any questions you want to ask. Like today, I answer your questions about other people's DNA in my body. In my body. What does that mean? I have a, you know, one on stem cells and cancer, you know, what does that mean? It's going to make cancer worse. What about stem cells versus exosomes? What does that mean? How long does it take to work? And what if it doesn't work? And how many sessions do I need? How soon can I see effect? And how much should I use? All these, I have a video to educate. Really, all these videos came from a need because people

56:44are asking these questions constantly. So it's good to have a good explanation. So that's, if people want to really dig deeper, just go and take a deep dive. And a lot of my patients actually have watched all my videos. So we don't even need to educate them very much on stem cells anymore, because they already got all the answers. So that's pretty cool. So just YouTube. And then if you want to follow me on Instagram, I put in some fun videos and clips and lately I'm on the train of peptides. I've talked a lot about different peptides, so they're kind of fun. But you know, I show you where I go, like I went to India for an incredible health retreat. And I show some of the footage there. Yeah, I just fun. So it's just doctor, underscore joy, underscore calm, KO and jeet. And you can follow me there. Amazing. I'll definitely link everything in the show notes to you again. Thank you so much for being on the show and for everyone listening to this. We're sending you so much love and light. Thank you for listening to this episode. Hope you enjoy the content. And if so, please rate and follow this podcast to learn about everything I do,

57:49including my memoir Tiger of Beijing. You can go to www.DrJoyKong.com. And if you like to reach me, simply send in a contact form. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel JoyKong MD. I'll see you next time.