Realfoodology - Stem Cells, Regenerative Medicine & How To Age Healthier with Joy Kong, MD

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

86: Todays guest is a triple board certified physician who specializes in anti aging and stem cells.  Joy Kong MD is the CEO of Uplyft and the founder of THEA Center for Regenerative Medicine.  She focuses her efforts on the prevention of aging as well as chronic and degenerative conditions.  She believes that complete healing can only come from looking at the whole person, mind body and soul.  In this episode we talk about regenerative medicine, what stem cells are, stem cell therapy, aging, disease and so much more. Check Out Dr. Joy: https://www.instagram.com/joykongmd/ https://www.uplyftcenter.com/  Stem cell regenerative cream Check Out Courtney: Courtney's Instagram: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Further Listening: Identifying Underlying Issues & Advocating for Yourself with Dr. Motley "Dopesick" on Hulu "The Bleeding Edge" on Netflix

On today's episode of the Real Foodology podcast, how many lives will have to be lost before we, you know, we come to a place that we are going to embrace the new form of medicine. A lot of life will be lost. Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I am your host, Courtney Swan. If you're new here, I am the creator of Real Foodology, which started out as a food blog almost 11 years ago. When I was getting my master's in nutrition, I just needed an outlet to speak about everything

that I was learning about nutrition and health. And I was posting recipes. It morphed into my Instagram page. And now of course it is this podcast. I'm also expanding the real foodology family and I'm really releasing an immunity supplement is liposomal and it's deep immune boosting it is basically a combination of everything that I wish that I had in one supplement over the last couple of years it's just really really deep immune boosting and it's liposomal which means that it is more bioavailable for the body. It works a lot quicker. You don't have to take as much because it's liposomal. Um, as of right now, when I'm recording this, um, one, I don't know when this episode will actually be released. And I don't know the exact date of when my supplement is going to be released, but it is with the brand two by four. I'm doing a collaboration with them and it is called real

defense. I worked really hard on this. It is, um, all of the ingredients are approved by me. I worked really hard with them specifically on making sure that it was a really high quality and, um, super immune boosting supplements. I'm really excited for that supplement to birth. I will keep you guys updated. Like I said, by the time this airs, it could already be out, uh, because I don't have a date yet, but it should be out sometime in March. So stay tuned for updates. It is called real defense. And I'm so excited to get this into you guys' hands. Something that I've been talking about a lot recently on not only the podcast, but also on my Instagram is just, um, the quality of your environment and your water

and to the ways that I ensure that my environment is really clean is by making sure that I have really clean filtered water and also that I have a great air purifier. So I use a HEPA air filter and it's from Air Doctor. It's an air purifier. I believe that it is the best on the market from what I have found. And a lot of health experts that I really trust and love, actually one of them is Dr. Tyler Jean of Functional Foods. He was a guest recently. He is a huge fan of Air Doctor as well. They have a bit of a sale going on.

So if you want to click on the link in the show notes for the Air Doctor, also for the AquaTrue, if you click on either of those links, you're going to get a bit of a discount. I just wanted to share those with you guys because I know we've been talking a lot lately about making sure that your environment is clean and that you're drinking clean water. You can also go to ewg.org and type in your zip code and see how dirty your tap water is. You would probably be very shocked. They update their tap water database and show exactly what is in your tap water. Just to give you a little heads up, it's things like heavy metals, pesticides, birth control, other pharmaceutical drugs. It's really important to have a good,

high quality water filter. And I use AquaTrue. So make sure you guys go and check out the links in the show notes. And let's start getting into today's episode. Today's guest is a UCLA trained triple board certified physician. She's an anti-aging and stem cell specialist, educator, and CEO of her company, which is called Uplift. As the founder of Thea Center for Regenerative Medicine in California, she focuses her efforts on the prevention of aging as well as chronic and degenerative conditions that no one else has been able to heal. She believes that complete healing can only come from looking at the whole person, mind, body, and soul.

Her name is Dr. Joy Kong, and her story is really cool. She actually grew up in Beijing, but then she came to America 30 years ago, I believe she said, and she was trained at UCLA as a doctor. So she has both viewpoints of Chinese medicine and Western medicine and has found a way to meld them together in her regenerative integrative practice. We talk about regenerative medicine, which is what she practices. We also go into depth about stem cell therapy, which is something that is pretty new to me. We talk all about aging, why you want to prevent what's causing the disease, because what's causing the disease is also what's causing

your aging. You know, the way we treat aging and allopathic medicine, and really just the way our society approaches it in general, is that we have just no control over it. And we just kind of have to throw our hands up and say, well, you know, that's just age for you. You just start living in pain and there's nothing you can do about it. And while obviously of course, aging is inevitable, but there's a lot of things that we can do and that we do have control over and we don't have to resort to just living in pain for the rest of our life. So we talk about this. We talk about the role that diet and exercise and lifestyle plays in this. We also talk about stem cell therapy and how this can play a huge role in aging. She talks about the improvement that she has seen in patients with doing this stem cell

therapy and injections. She also talks about what you want to look out for and what kind of doctor and what kind of treatment you want to seek out because and what kind of doctor and what kind of treatment you want to seek out because they are not all equal. This was a super informative podcast. As always, I learn alongside you guys. I really didn't know a lot about stem cell therapy. And so it was really cool and interesting to hear her story. And yeah, I feel like let's just get to the episode. I don't really have much other to say. It kind of speaks for itself.

So I hope you guys enjoy it. This is really exciting. Organifi now has kid stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called Protect.

It's a delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid but without any sugar. This is really exciting and if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients,

probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids' growing bodies without fillers, additives, or junk. It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch similar to Kool-Aid is called Protect and it is to support your child's daily immune health with food derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids.

So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste and it's low sugar and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants, astragalus, elderberry and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health. If you want to try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to Organifi.com slash Real Foodology and use code Real foodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash real foodology. Imagine having a metabolic coach

in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. I have so many podcast episodes about metabolic flexibility and why it is so incredibly important for your overall health and longevity. And now thanks to Lumen, you can actually see in real time, your body's ability to efficiently switch between using different fuel sources like carbs and fats. There's preferred times to use each and how well you can switch places between burning carbs versus

burning fats will tell you a lot about what is going on in your metabolism and where you are in the metabolic flexibility spectrum. All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or carbs, then lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day. Based on your measurements, you can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals. So you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time. And lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Why is this so important? Your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going.

Because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Now, this is a really cool feature, too. It can actually track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts. So if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me and use real foodology to get $100 off your lumen. That is l-u-m-e-n dot m-e and use real

foodology at checkout for a hundred dollars off. Thank you so much to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. So speaking of passions, can you tell everyone a little bit about your background and what you do? Yeah. So I, you know, the background came all the way back from, from China. I mean, it is relevant because of a holistic approach to, you know, to what I view the human body as, and what I think, you know, how things should work together. So I've always, you know, growing, I spent my first 20 years in China. So I actually wrote a memoir called Tiger of Beijing. So I spent my first 20 years in Beijing. So I was getting this education, both very rich in science, because I love science, but

also, you know, you couldn't escape being part of, you know, being a Chinese. The Chinese medicine is everywhere. So at home, we always have Chinese medicine and Western medicine. It depends on what the condition is, how acute it is, and just what the origin is. My mom would pull out either Chinese medicine or Western medicine. There's no discrimination. So that's how I was. And I always knew that there's different ways of helping the body.

So I came here. I studied at UCLA Medical School, so very traditional medical education. But I always felt that there should be a way of integrating the two. And there was an elective called East-West Integration. But I wasn't so happy with the way things were integrated because Dr. Hui was wonderful. He has a center for East-West medicine on Santa Monica. But it's looking at the person and getting a Chinese diagnosis, and then looking at a person and giving a Western diagnosis. And then you're doing both at the same time and see how the two can work together. But to me, that's not true integration.

It's side by side, not really integrating. So I was trying to do something like that when I went into psychiatry because I was very interested in the brain so I thought let me try to see if I can integrate a two doing psychiatry and it was just very difficult because the two speak such different languages it's like trying to to to integrate poetry with this you know scientific formula I was like, they're not coming together. And so I wasn't happy with how, how, how, you know, the intellectually it wasn't satisfying. And it was until, wasn't until I went to a conference, you know, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, so A4M. So that was kind of my gateway into this whole field of integrated medicine, functional medicine, anti-aging medicine. And that's when I realized that

these new disciplines in medicine actually wanted to borrow wisdom from these traditional approaches, but they want to figure out how these traditional approaches worked, whether or not it's from the side of energy or side of different chemical molecules or side of hormones. How do you interpret what may have happened, why these Chinese medicine or other traditional types of medicine that might have worked? So you're trying to figure out using a scientific language, and then you bring that in to optimize the human body. So all of a sudden you can bring something in from the old wisdom, but giving it the language that can be supported and studied and, and, you know, and, and, and can be basically explained to patients using modern language. So that's kind of my journey.

I did psychiatry for 11 years and I was also addiction medicine specialist. I worked at rehab centers in Malibu. So that was interesting experience. You know, it was a little bit helpless, you know, being a medical director of these, you know, you know, big rehab centers, but realizing that we were at the mercy of insurance companies. So I may be checking out nutritional status, hormonal status, and trying to optimize a person so their brain can be more optimized. So their toxicity can, can some can leave their body and their body can have the right constitution to start regenerating. even though I have these tools. By the time I want them to take certain supplements to help them recover, I would say 75% of the patients said, well, doctor, my insurance company, my insurance doesn't cover supplements. Can you just give me a medicine, please? Just give me a medication. And that was very, you know, disheartening,

you know, after all this work, after realizing what this person might have needed, if I can just give their body the tools, and now I'm cornered into throwing drugs at them again. So that's kind of my journey. And I've switched from that to just doing integrated medicine and anti-aging medicine. I focus on stem cells, and now I've also brought in ketamine, which helps with the recovery of the mind. So now I'm doing something that's both for the body and for the mind and they're one anyhow. So they're all connected. I always tell people that, you know, in psychiatry is as if these, you know, doctors think that the, that the head is just floating in air. Maybe there's a little thyroid that's hanging off the head,

but that's all we are. No, we're not. You know, everything flows through each other. You know, the toxins, the microbiome, what they're secret, and they travel all over the place. I mean, it's so complex. We're a little universe. You don't just treat the head. So now I can do something in a way where I'm incorporating all this knowledge from both sides, from the functional medicine, of course, the Western medicine, and coming together and address the body and the mind. past trauma with severe depression and anxiety, PTSD. But you also can optimize your body by not only anti-aging, you know, hormone replacement, you know, gut optimization, but also stem cell therapy, which I believe is the driving force of the body. You know, there's, there's no question we came from one cell and here we are, right? So how can you borrow that intelligence to help the body to heal? So now it's coming full circle.

Now my work is enjoyable. That is amazing. You know, and I love your story. It's, it's similar to a lot of doctors that get into this, you know, the more alternative medicine, functional medicine, a lot of them have the same story where they, they come out of this allopathic traditional medical complex system really frustrated because they feel like they can't, like you, like you basically what you described is you felt like your hands were tied because you want to help these patients and you see the problem, you see the issue and you see the path forward, but these insurance companies are getting in the way. This is what's so frustrating for me. And what I, I have a lot of hope for the future that as more people start to really understand that preventative medicine and this regenerative and in more of an

integrative of like Western and like Chinese medicine and alternative holistic, like I think as we start to really understand the importance of this, I'm hoping that insurance companies will follow suit because I think right now we're in this interesting time, right? Where a lot of people are waking up, but then a lot of people can't afford to go to these other, you know, a functional medicine doctor or whatever, because their insurance doesn't cover it. Or like you said, your patients can't afford all these supplements. So they want just a pill because their insurance covers it. And this is like, I'm curious to know what your view is on this and kind of maybe how you feel about the traditional health care system. And if you have hope that we're going to get to a place where insurance companies start

recognizing preventative medicine. I definitely have a lot of hope, you know, as much as so many therapies are suppressed. But the truth always comes out. The sad part is that a lot of people will be casualty. So they would not be able to get the treatment they need, as I've seen in even people close to me fighting cancer and been so overwhelmed by having to deal with insurance company all day long just to get the chemotherapy and do what they need to do, which ended up giving them horrible, miserable 18 months or two years of their lives, you know, losing all their hair, vomiting every day, feeling just, you know, like there's no quality of life. And they don't have time to even seek the therapy that I'm recommending, which are using Chinese medicine, coming here for maybe

some ozone therapy, some stem cell treatment, because I would, this is, I'm talking about somebody I love dearly, you know, one of the nurses that was working for me, and he was like, well, you know, you don't understand, you know, just dealing with insurance company is like a 24-hour job, and then that's, it just, so she's a casualty. She's a casualty of the system. She's an amazingly beautiful person. And how many lives will have to be lost before we, you know, we come to a place that we are going to embrace the new form of medicine.

A lot of life will be lost. And that just, it's just a human condition. But eventually it's going to be accepted because I do know that this is a grassroots movement. Things have already changed so much since I came to this country. I do know that this is a grassroots movement. Things have already changed so much since I came to this country. I came to this country, that's 30 years ago, 1992. And I remember at the time, I realized I probably shouldn't talk about acupuncture with people. I shouldn't mention it because they're going to think I'm a little weird. And this is in San

Francisco, right? The hippie town. So I knew that if I were smart, probably I shouldn't talk about it. Yeah, it's not going to go well. From that to now, oh, of course, acupuncture. Everyone's going to acupuncture. It's covered by insurance, for God's sake. So the transformation in 30 years, because it works, because people are getting benefits. And and eventually it cannot be denied anymore. So people are pushing for it. So same thing with stem cell therapy, same thing with all these, you know, nutritional, other alternative forms of therapy, ozone therapy, everything is all going to be part of the regular medical practice. It may take 10, 15, you know, 30 years, but we're going to be there. Amazing. Well, that gives me a lot of hope because, yeah, I mean, I think this is the way forward. And this is how people truly find healing. Because I mean, my the biggest thing for me is I'm like,

at what point are we going to stop like as a society and recognize what we're doing right now is not working. You know, it's like you go, it's just this vicious cycle. It's like the doctor may see a little something on your blood work, but they ignore, they ignore, they ignore until it's gone to a place where now you have to intervene with surgery or drugs or, you know, these really, um, to me that I find like crazy interventions. Whereas if you had taken a step back earlier in the process and said like, hey, maybe there's some like diet changes we could tweak here. Maybe there's some supplements we could throw in. Maybe there's some lifestyle choices that we can tweak there before it gets to this place where you have to get to surgery or something that I deem is like really extreme.

Whereas funny, it's funny to me because a lot of people say that they think that like changing your diet, your lifestyle is really extreme. But I'm like, I find surgery and pills like way more extreme, you know? Yeah. And I, I think, you know, you know, it's funny. I was just listening, looking at YouTube videos. And, uh, of course I listened to a lot of, you know, experts in different nutritional, you know, arenas or other, you know, medical, you know, uh, functional medicine areas. And then there pops an ad of, of this doctor says, you know, stop this functional medicine madness. He's telling the public to stop. He thinks that this fake medicines, Matt, I was like, wow, there's some real oppositions out there. So, you know, but what's funny is that this doctor who's

saying something like this, wait until he's really sick or his family, somebody he loves that's really sick. And that if it's a chronic condition, it's traditional medical approach is so single-minded. It has such linear thinking. It can't look at the body as a web as a whole, then you're just not going to get great results. So show me somebody has cured diabetes. You know, all these medications, I worked at the VA for four years. Every veteran, because they all get the same medical treatment, Western medical treatment, everyone has at least five medications, if not 35. Everyone comes in with a big bag of medications. Are they any better? No, they just keep adding to their diagnosis.

They just get more and more diagnosis. take medication. Something else goes wrong. Their gut goes wrong. Okay. Now we've got another diagnosis. So it just keeps adding up. And once you've got a diagnosis, you get a new medication. That's how they get 35 medications. Well, think about it. The bar has been really, the bar is basically on the floor now, because was thinking as you were saying that, so everyone, we just keep adding more pills, more pills. And no one stops to actually take in like, wait, am I getting better or am I just like adding more pills? And yeah, the irony of it is that then at some point people don't even understand why they're even on all these pills anymore. And they're taking pills to counteract the side effects of the other pills. And it's just like this vicious cycle, but it kind of seems like, yeah, there's no,

there's no like checkpoint of like, okay, wait, but have we made any improvement here? Or are we just kind of now subsiding on these drugs? And you know, what's really sad to me is that person that's probably speaking out about this quote unquote fake medicine, functional medicine. My first thought is, is he making a lot of money off the pharmaceutical drugs that he's prescribing, you know, and that's a sad reality of the way that our system is set up right now. And that's part of what we need to unravel right now. And we need to, um, we need to basically like in, I mean, there's no other way to put it, but incentivize doctors to want to actually provide healing for their patients instead of

just like throwing band-aids on them. Cause right now they're being incentivized to throw band-aids on a patient instead of being incentivized to actually help the patient find true healing yeah now it's basically up to the patient so if you want real healing that's like when doctor or when patients ask me oh is this covered by insurance is it covered by insurance it's almost like anything that really really really helps you repair, it's probably not covered. You want to check your nutritional status. You want to ramp up nutrition.

If you want to see an integrated medicine doctor, you really want hormone replacement. Unless you're getting on some pharmaceutical patch, if you want to do other more balanced form of bioidentical hormone, it's probably not covered. So anything that's really worthwhile, you just have to pay out of pocket. And plenty of people do pay out of pocket. But guess what, it stops a lot of other people. Yeah. Well, and I mean, with insurance, I feel like I'm paying out of pocket regardless. Like I feel like I have so many times when I mean, I rarely have to see a

doctor, thank God right now. But, um, when I do, I feel like oftentimes I'm like, I get the bill later. And I think, why, why do I have insurance? Because I basically just paid almost out of pocket for this because my insurance company barely covered it. Uh, yeah, I just feel like it's such a mess right now and we need to fix it. I know, I know. Oh, so crazy. Now everyone's left to fight their own battle, basically. But you can see how many people are following all these, you know, these educators online, right? Because there's such a, you know, hunger for information like this. Well, because I think the public right now is fed up with it as well, you know, because I think at this point in our society, either someone knows someone that has gone through an experience where, you know, they had a horrible experience with the medical system or they themselves have.

That's what I found is there's kind of this common thread of everyone's really frustrated and they're seeking alternatives because what's happening right now is clearly not providing healing for people. And so we're looking for alternatives and everyone's like, you know, and it sucks because there's not really one right path. Like everyone's kind of trying to figure it out. And thank God for doctors like you that are starting to pave a new path and providing actual real healing for their patients. Yeah. So my philosophy is that we need to look at the body almost like, let's say the body is like this sophisticated machine. This, you know, if you want to use analogy, you know, like this car, this intelligent, you know, brilliant car. What does the car need to go forward to drive? It's the engine, right? First of all, if you have no engine, the car is not going anywhere. And stem cells are the engine for the cars.

Is the intelligence behind this whole machine, because we all came from that single stem cell and God knows how that single cell knows how to, you know, start make, you know, this formations and in space and create this complex structure and then eventually become us. So that kind of intelligence, that's driving everything. So in different tissues, the cells may change in certain ways. So they're a little bit different. They're not original embryonic stem cell, not the first fertilized egg, but they have a different set of information that they can utilize. So how can we enhance and tell them, hey, it's time to come out alive, you know, stop hibernating and start using your intelligence, which is embedded in the DNA. And the DNA is the

most energy dense substance in the universe. So it's packed with energy. I used to tell my patients, I mean, still tell them, I said, you know, this is the most energy dense substance in the universe. So I'm not just giving you a stem cell therapy, I'm giving you energy therapy. So I'm infusing energy, right? So the engine, in order to run the car, the car still needs fuel. And everything else we're doing is the fuel, you know, including the sunlight, your water, proper nutrition, the hormones, the proper, you know, critters, you know, including the sunlight, your water, proper nutrition, the hormones, the proper, you know, critters, you know, all the microbiome that's in our body. So everything that's helping the engine run, I consider them fuel. So you can't, the engine can run without the fuel. Do you want to hear the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging? Of course you do, because all of us are concerned about aging. There is a class of ingredients called senolytics that were discovered less than 10 years ago, and they are being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime.

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fuel, but you've got really, really decrepit old engine, it's not going to drive very well either. You can't have the most pristine fuel. And that's what I'm afraid that what's, you know, what some people are focusing on, they're focusing on so much of the fuel that they're forgetting the engine. The engine degrades as we get older. There's just no way around it. There's less and less of them. So less and less horsepower. And then each engine has less and less ability to utilize its intelligence. So how can you upgrade the engine? And that's where stem cell therapy comes in. So it's not that stem cell therapy is going to help it at all. I the first time I ever heard about stem cell therapy was actually through Dave Asprey. So I'm sure all my biohackers that are listening right now are like, Oh, yeah, we know about stem cell therapy. But for people that really have no idea, let's start with the very basics. What exactly are stem cells? And what is

stem cell therapy? Okay, so stem cells, you know, like I said, the first, uh, fertilized egg, that's the first stem cell. And from that stem cell, you, um, there's a ball that can form, um, there are still early cells. So that little, you know, that, so between day five and seven, that's when I can get a cell from the embryo and that's what's called embryonic stem cells. So that has all kinds of potential, you know, of forming a whole, whole organism, any tissue, and plus the, the, the reproductive cells. So the, the spermic, so it has full potential. So the, as they start to divide, you know, this ball, you know, past day five, seven, they start to, you know, form, seven they start to you know form form their their different structures they lose certain capabilities and they become more specialized and they're all still stem cells

until they have real tissues and have tissue cells that's end stage cell but in each tissue they're also tissue specific stem cells for example liver we have liver stem cells heart we have heart stem cells so those stem cells are end stage stem cells so there are still stem cells. For example, liver, we have liver stem cells, heart, we have heart stem cells. So those stem cells are end stage stem cells. So there are still stem cells, but their potential is limited. Their only job is from being a heart stem cell to be a heart muscle cell. That's all they do. That's one lineage instead of earlier ones. So where do we get the cells is important. You know, that's why the general term of stem cell is so broad. You know, what kind of stem cells? There are a thousand variations.

So one of the most popular form is mesenchymal stem cell. In the past, people only thought the stem cells were existing in bone marrow. They thought that's only stem cell that were still left in the human body. You know, that's when they even realized there were stem cells. So when people first started doing bone marrow transplant, they didn't know they were doing stem cell transplantation. You know, they just didn't know. And then they realized, oh, there were stem cells in there. Those are stem cells that tend to form new, all the cells in the blood circulation, white blood cells, red blood cells, and, you know, so all the circulating blood cells. But in all of our body, there are all kinds of stem cells, right?

Like I said, but there's one class that's really, really interesting and different. It's called mesenchymal stem cells. And Dr. Kaplan, who discovered them, actually wanted them to be renamed medicinal signaling cells because he believes that's what they do. And that is what they do in the body, because where are they? They're all over our body. Wherever you have blood vessels, there are these MSCs, mesenchymal stem cells. So they're like, I always think of them almost like a gecko. They're holding on to this blood vessel. They're just hanging on to it. But they also have tentacles that kind of are keeping track of what's going on locally, you know, squeeze themselves into through the vessel wall into the blood supply and swim upstream to where they're needed. And then once they're in the area,

you know, where the signal is like blaring, then they can come, you know, get out of blood vessels and get to that tissue that needs repair and start to coordinate repair. So they can talk to the immune system to get more cells over there, to break down scar tissue, to remove dead tissue. And then they can talk to local stem cells to tell the stem cells, Hey, you know, it's time for you to divide and to produce new tissue. So they have this coordination, you know, capabilities. There are a lot of, they have a lot of characteristics, but, but that's one of the major things they do. So this is why often people, if they have like a knee injury or something like that, they'll get an injection of stem cells in the knee because it will help regenerate that tissue, right?

To help them repair. Yeah. It's going to send a signal that that's usually not there or is dampened so much because inflammation was so high. So when they get into the stem cells, get into that area, anti-inflammatory effect is one of the, the, you know, the biggest effect that they exert. So they will calm the inflammation and they will tell the immune system to come in and take away the dead cells. And then they will tell the local, let's say cartilage damage. They would tell the cartilage stem cells to, Hey, divide, make some more cartilage. And that's how the, you know, the whole turnover can start. But when you're stuck in inflammation, that's why people can be inflamed for decades, right? Everything is stagnant. There's not enough signal to tell the body to, to shut off

inflammation so we can repair. So that's why that's where the intelligence come from, right? You give the intelligence, you speak the body in its own language. And, and that's, that's something that can only really do by what's produced the body in the first place, that, that intelligence that I don't even know where it came from. Like provide it. And so this is kind of the, so this is, so stem cell therapy is considered to be like anti-aging medicine as well, right? Like a lot of people take this to kind of help with regenerating their overall health in general. So when you're doing that, um, well, where do you get the stem cells from? So the one I use, um, is umbilical cord

sourced. So there, there are different types, different types floating around, you know, in different clinics. You know, I've done this lecture in multiple conferences and breaking down the different stem cell sources because the oldest one is from bone marrow because that's where things got started. And then the next kid, major kid on the block is fat derived stem cells, because within the fat tissue, there are a lot of blood vessels and within the, you know, around the blood vessel walls are all these MSEs. There's some other things too, but, but that lot of MSEs. So they start harvesting that and saying, oh, this is great. We've got all these stem cells. And then the newest kid on the block is the umbilical cord or birth tissue derived stem cells. And when I first got into this field over five years ago, I was faced with, okay, which one is the best source? So this is a pretty expensive therapy and I need, you know,

I want to help people the most effective way. I need to choose my direction carefully. I need to figure out which one I'm going to use for my patients because I know stem cells is really fascinating, but I need to know. So that's where I set out. I started doing research on all these different articles, you know, looking at different cell sources, you know, whether or not, so we're talking about MSCs in a lot of these companies doing whatever cell therapy, they talk about MSCs a lot, mesenchymal stem cells. So when you compare directly the MSCs from the bone marrow, from the fat, or from a local cord, or other, you know, birth tissue, you know, including placenta, you compare these sources.

So almost everything I looked at, whether or not is how powerful their anti-inflammatory abilities are, how much they're able to modulate immune system, how many generations they have left to work, and how vibrant their mitochondria is. And also how anti-cancer they are, which means how safe are they? Are they promoting cancer or anti-cancer? Across the board, the winner is birth tissue-derived stem cells. So it's not really my opinion because my opinion doesn't really matter because we're trying to see what can help the patients the best. So when I realized, okay, there are all these research out there, but no one have put it together and presenting it, showing, hey, doctors, you're the patient facing one, right? You're the final deciding factor of what patients are going to get.

So look at what you're giving patients and look at whether or not you're giving people the best possible treatment. So because of what I saw from numerous research I presented is actually on YouTube. It's called R-O-M-S-E's created equal. So I have that particular lecture that I just put it out because I just want people to know the science is out there. And then once I decided that a core source is the best, and that's when, you know, I have to find the best tissue bank that can produce the right product, right? First of all, I want them to be sourced from mothers that were giving birth in the U.S. So U.S. mothers who have gone through the OBGYN, you know, regular checkup, been just that one simple fact, that simple criteria, so many tissue bank labs are not doing it right. They were getting it from other countries, you know, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and where the standards, it's just, it's shoddy. And so you have a lot more, a lot less control on what you're, you know, the tissue you're starting with. Yeah, so you have a lot more, a lot less control on what you're, you know, the tissue

starting with. Yeah. So you just start with good, healthy tissue. So our lab only accept, um, uh, mothers who are going through cesarean section, uh, elective cesarean section, not emergency ones, elective, everything's planned. That's what they want to do. And where, when when they you know do a surgical procedure to to get the baby out everything is sterile so nothing has come in

contact with any pathogens and then is sent to labs you know for all kinds of disease screening so it's basically as strict if not more strict than organ transplantation screening. So they're screening for all kinds of infectious agents. And then they process the cells without adding any chemicals or enzymes and without growing them to huge numbers. So you're not altering the cells in any way, which makes a true tissue transplant product. So it's not a drug because it's pure tissue transplants, pure tissue. Um, yeah, so, so that's, that's what we use in the clinic. So I'm curious because I recently had a, uh, a doula on my podcast and this was in a different context, but I'm curious to hear what

you have to say about this because she gave the mother's advice to not let them clamp the placenta too soon because you want all the stem cells to go to your baby because apparently, um, a lot of times what happens is they'll clamp it too early because they want to save the stem cells. Either the mom wants that to bank them to save it for later, which I know a lot of moms don't do because apparently it's really expensive to bank those stem cells every year. But I know a lot of moms do that because they want the ability to later if their kid was to get injured or get cancer or something like that, then they can utilize it. But what she was saying is she was like, don't let them clamp it too soon because your baby actually needs those stem cells because then they can have those in their body for later

if they are, you know, fighting cancer or whatever it is. So how is there a way that you guys allow the baby to get the ample amount of stem cells through the placenta while not like, you know, fighting cancer or whatever it is. So how is there a way that you guys allow the baby to get the ample amount of stem cells through the placenta while not like, you know, cutting the baby off too soon from it? I don't know how long you can keep that cord and placenta dragged around with a baby. You know, I don't know. And I don't know. She wasn't saying like hours, she was saying like, just don't let them, you know, the second the baby comes out, just clamp it. She was like, give it a second, let it all go through, you know, like a couple minutes kind of thing. Cause she said, I guess, standard procedures, they try to

just clamp it right away. And she was like, you got to let it go out. And I'm just curious. Cause I was like, wait, but then how do they, yeah. How does that happen? And then you also collect. Sounds like it makes sense, but I don't know how much difference it makes. I mean, it's hard to, to really figure out how much difference it makes. and may help a little bit, but I'm really not sure. But if you want to save the cells, the problem with saving the cells and I've seen, you know, I think it's, I mean, it sounds great, but the problem is that what tissue banks are you using and how are they processing it? And some patients, you know, some parents save the tissue so they could use for themselves, but that kind of beats the purpose,

right? So, but when they're trying to get the cells to use for themselves, they have to ask for permission, you know, are they going to get it? I mean, that's a whole other question. You know, you have to get the tissue bank to release it to you. I mean, it just becomes really interesting. And I just think you have so much less control. We have patients who say, oh, I've you know, my son has stem cells and I want to use that. You know, I'm a little hesitant because I don't know how it's processed. I know how our products processed, you know, according to certain high standard and, and, but I don't know about your product from your tissue bank. I feel like I'm assuming risks and then I don't even know the quality. So, so that, yeah. So I, it's

interesting. You say that actually, because I have a girlfriend who's pregnant right now, and she looked into banking it and I can't remember the exact details of it. But she ended up not doing it because of something similar like that they had told her that the company that she was going to do it through, they didn't trust that they would, that it would be a quality stem cell that she could use later. And so she just decided not to do it all together. I can't remember all the details. But it was something like like that where I was like, Oh, I had never even thought about that as being an issue. Yeah. So, so what, uh, actually I, I'm curious about this. So is there, cause obviously we know that there's potential for,

um, DNA to be mutated. Is there a way that you could, or is there a world in which you would receive mutated DNA or is there any way that this would, the stem cells would cause mutations after it's been injected? Is that a risk or is that not even a thing? I wouldn't say mutation. I mean, that, that sounds like you're creating like drastic changes in, in, in, in a existing DNA. You are getting a group of DNA that's different from yours. So I actually have a video about this subject because that's an important subject because a lot of objections was, oh, I don't want other people's DNA in my body. So I have sections that are called other people's DNA in my body. That's on YouTube what a lot of people don't know that DNA

exchange between humans is actually a very, very common phenomenon. They realize that they, so this is, you know, I can't remember how old the study is, maybe 15 years back, they, it's a Harvard study where they dissected women's brain, you know, in the autopsy and looking for Y chromosomes. And they had a lot of women who have Y chromosomes in their brain. And these are women who have given birth to male children. And they realized also there's some correlation between lower Alzheimer's risk and, you know, the presence of these, these Y chromosomes, these foreign cells, but, but they, they thought the number was too low to make, you know, conclusions. And then a later study was looking at how many women have Y chromosomes in their body.

And they realized 60% of us women have Y chromosomes in our body. So it's not, obviously it's not just from giving birth to male children. It's not from having a male, you know, twin that had died, you know, when you were in the womb with the twin and it's not, you know, so they were looking at all these possible ways. And so the only way they could explain this high percentage is through male and female intercourse. So if you're afraid of other people's DNA in you, maybe you should not have sex. Well, there you go. That's it, folks.

It's settled. Either you're celibate or you're going to have other genetic material in your body. Yeah. So that's fascinating though. We are a walking universe. Just like we have, how many, you're the one that knows the numbers. How many trillion bacteria, right? Oh God, I actually don't even know.

I don't, do we actually know the number? I mean, it's trillions. I don't know the exact number. I know we have a hundred times more genetic material that are microbes rather than humans, right, in our body. So the genetic, huge amount of genetic information so we are walking universe you know if we're carrying all these other organisms in us you know who says it's not okay to carry a few human you know cells and so i don't think it's

going to cause you know it's not so micro chimerism, that's actually the word they used for another person's DNA, staying in the new person's body, and just kind of living together. So chimera is the animal with, you know, the different animals, you know, as body parts, right? So these are micro chimeras. So just means a human person with a little bit of foreign you know other other in them so microchimerism and um um so that do exist so if i'm giving somebody stem cell therapy um no one can give me the exact number i've talked to some of the most prominent scientists from around the world but the consensus is probably no more than 2% that actually end up staying. So very small percentage that will actually survive. Because as somebody else cells, eventually, so the stem cells will do its work, right?

It will communicate with your immune system, will coordinate regeneration, and will fight your inflammation. But in the process of fighting your inflammation, it can also die because inflammation is very toxic. It's toxic to your own cells and it's toxic to stem cells. So they can die. So there's a nutrition rate to the stem cells I'm giving people. And also, they themselves don't live forever anyhow.

All cells, once it's activated, there's a finite lifespan. And your immune system, once if they decide, oh, I'm going to, you know, maybe differentiate a little bit. And when they start to express surface markers that are different from your own bodies, a lot of times your immune system will come to attack. So then they're gone. So basically within about three months, that's when all the stem cells are gone from your body. But hey, did they do a lot of good work during those three months? So, you know, I wouldn't worry too much about that tiny, tiny one to 2% that possibly are staying in the body. You know, the chances is likely that, you know, very

few actually are staying. But even if it did, just remember, as part of the human story, you know, that's who we are. That's really cool. So what are some of the common conditions that you treat people with stem cell therapy? I can never say that. So that just one thing, let's get it out of the way. We can't treat any conditions, you know, we obviously cannot use the word. I can help people improve their body's function, help them to do better. They may happen to have different conditions. The only FDA approved condition is blood disorders. So using stem cells to help reconstitute the blood. So that's the only FDA indication. So nothing else, I can't make any claims, but I can tell you what kind of patients come through my door and who did great after I treated them with many things,

because I try to be integrated, but stem cells, again, is the engine is going to really help, you know, kind of turn everything up as far as your regeneration. I can give you one story. There's one very well known doctor, he has Lyme disease himself. So he's a integrated medicine doctor, struggled with Lyme for decades. And to the point where he could barely function, you know, writing a few emails a day was, you know, big accomplishment. So, you know, gained a lot of weight because he couldn't exercise. He tried everything. He's also a peptide expert. He tried everything under the sun and still not up to the place where he needs to be. And then he used a blocochord derived stem cells and drastic, drastic changes. His cholesterol went down 300s back to normal and his energy level was

just accelerated all of a sudden he has energy to build a gym start working out and he lost you know a lot of weight he's feeling amazing it gave him his life back this is an expert that has all these tools under his belt but guess what he was an expert of all the fuels. And until he gets to upgrade his engine, those fuels just couldn't do the work that they, you know, the fuels that they thought it could do. Because it's put into a, a old and, you know, a, a, you know, not very functional engine. So just so that people listening can understand, and I guess for me as well. So when you're treating with stem cells, you're helping to regenerate your cells that may not be functioning at optimal, they may not be optimally functioning anymore. And so this is kind of going in and helping. Maybe this is time I should, you know, I'll answer briefly of what kind of things I've seen benefit in is time i should you know i'll answer briefly of what kind of things i've seen benefit in and then i'll tell you about the three stages of healing

in stem cell therapy yeah so i've i've had people with um copd it just does wonders it was amazing getting people off oxygen going out singing his band again and um getting off all the medications. I've seen people who had liver cirrhosis and stage in hospice and getting liver enzyme to become normal. And it was pretty, pretty astounding. Traumatic brain injury, drastic improvement in ability to, you know, move the body, you know, just overall the balance of the body and also cognition. I have helped people with all kinds of muscular skeletal issues, of course, you know, from plantar fasciitis to all kinds of osteoarthritis, tendon injuries. And there are people with all kinds of autoimmune conditions. So like lupus, rheumumatoid arthritis psoriasis so these are are

you know stem cells very powerful because modulate the immune system so people see this shift all of a sudden from massive inflammation to to actually to the healing healing stage and um um you know i've treated a lot of autism kids and really helped improve their functioning. And, you know, from the point of being nonverbal to being verbal, to not from not being continent to continent. Right. Those are huge improvements. Being more social, you know, being more responsive, you know, working with other kids, you know, cooperating with teachers. And what else? So musculoskeletal. So these are some of the major categories, you know, brain conditions like ALS, MS, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's. So dementia, very helpful. So all these are tough conditions that

traditional medicine really has very little to offer. And that's why even though it's expensive, even though it's not covered by insurance and is not really considered mainstream, so many people come in because that's their last resort to having a decent life. So anyhow, so these are some examples. And when we look at how the stem cells work and we have to think about the breadth of changes they can bring in. And that, you know, is really good for people to think about stem cell therapy as a three-stage kind of regeneration.

Because it does happen in these stages, you know, they all blend together. But having that idea will help people understand, oh, what do I expect now? Should I notice benefit already? How fast should it work? How many sessions do I need? So the first stage is the anti-inflammatory stage, because when the body, so many injuries, so many chronic conditions, your body is so inflamed that there's no regeneration can happen. It's almost like these two dichotomies. If this side is so strong, the other side just can't start working. So you calm the inflammation and that acute anti-inflammatory action can cause drastic rapid changes. Like I've seen people who

were in chronic severe pain. By the time the person get off my examination table after an IV stem cell treatment, the pain is 50% gone. And after one night, I was told, hey, the pain is 80% gone. And that's the rapid anti-inflammatory effect because the cells can secrete a lot of cytokines. So all of a sudden, it's changing the environment of your body. And so instead of everything is screaming, you know, inflammation and pain is calming down. So that's the initial stage. And then you have the stage of tissue rebuilding. First of all, you have to remove bad tissue. So first of all, the initial stage can happen within hours to, you know, to days or a week or so. So that's the very initial stage, quick anti-inflammatory

effect. And the second stage of the tissue rebuilding is going to take between days to weeks or even longer. But that's the general timeframe because first of all, you have to remove the tissue that are damaged, that are not functioning and the scar, break down the scar. So all that immune system has to be brought in and to start chopping everything up and digest it and moving them away. And then your local stem cells has to be stimulated, right? Given the right signal so that it knows that it's time for them to work, to divide, so you can replace this damaged tissue with healthy tissue. And all that takes time. It's like building a building, right?

So it takes time. It doesn't just happen. You know, cells just don't boom, boom, boom, you know, shows up. You know, it's not a video game. So it takes time to build. And that would take days to weeks. And the last stage is really interesting. It's actually, it's kind of like genetic repair stage. You can call it genetic

remodeling. So where these cells, one of the ways they work is to secrete these exosomes. So these are nanoparticles. Within the little particle contains all these growth factors, all these signals, and also microRNA. And these microRNA actually has the ability to cross the nucleus membrane. So it gets into the cell nucleus and starts working on the DNA. It can change the methylation patterns. So we all know about epigenetics, right? How the DNA doesn't determine your destiny is what happens to the DNA, you know, just through the diet environment, these epigenetics, what's on top of the genes that's causing the problems. So these microRNA has the ability to change these expressions, change the epigenetics, so it can rejuvenate,

repair the DNA. And that creates long-term benefits from, you know, from months to, you know, yeah, probably from a month to six, nine months down the road. So this is long-term rejuvenation. Of course, if you keep allowing toxic things to come to you, I always tell people, you know, how long the benefit lasts depends on whether or not you're addressing why you're getting the disease in the first place. So if you're removing a lot of the factors that's causing the disease and we repaired it, hey, you're done, except for the aging process, right, where we're all heading to death, that process is still there. So if you want to do it for anti-aging, yes, you can do it every six months or so for anti-aging purposes. But for the condition itself, if you don't exacerbate it, then you're good. So that's kind of the general outline of what to expect. Okay. So when you're treating people with the stem cell therapy, do you inject it in the site of where the pain is or where you are looking to address, or do you just do a general IV and then they just know what to do

once they're in there? Yeah, the cells do have the ability to track down where the inflammation injury is. So if you imagine, you know, giving somebody IV, you know, it goes right back to the heart, the heart, you know, pump into the lungs. And so it all gets oxygenated and flows back to the heart and the heart pumps it all over your bodies to every tissue. So that is a very effective way of delivering the cells, although it will be diluted, you know, for sure. But the

counterpart of being diluted, the fact it's been diluted is that it's also having this great access to your immune system. So it goes, yeah, it's pumped into you. A lot of them are going to be your heart, your lungs, you know, where they're really well-perfused, right? Lots of blood supply, your heart, your lungs, your liver, your spleen, there's a high amount. But in that process, it's not just because, oh, there's so much blood and we're all trapped here. It's working. It's not a blind trapping. In the spleen, it's talking to the spleen. It's really important. The spleen is an extremely important immune organ and all the peripheral lymphoid system. So your whole body is trying to protect you, not just against microbes, but against all kinds of chronic

conditions, helping your whole body repair. So by talking with your immune system, then in strengthening your immune system, balancing it, the modulation effect of the stem cells means that your immune system is overactive. It can calm it down. If it's underactive, it's going to bring it up. It's going to boost this activity. So it has this capability of finding the right balance. So when I utilize that capability, telling the immune system, hey, you know, help us repair. And then also some will travel to the site where it's needed, but maybe not as much will travel to the site. Because let's say you, you know, you cut your finger, you know, or you had a tear somewhere, you know, your tendons your tendons, some of the cells will be going to be attracted. So the more inflammation you have, the more problems you have, the more cells are

going to be diverted to other places. And in some cases, it may be helpful to inject something right in that area. I definitely inject locally when I know I'm dealing with a large joint, because these large joints like the knee and shoulder, so these larger joints are not very well perfused by blood because the joint is encapsulated. So within the joint is, you know, there's synovial fluid, which doesn't exchange with the blood very, very rapidly. So the exchange rate is very small. I can put something in the blood, but it would take forever to get to the joint space. So if I want something to be right there, it's best to just inject right into the spot, which is why I'm getting such a, I think, good results when I combine the two.

So I'm, I'm calling on the immune system, but I'm also, when I do blood infusions, you know, through IV, I'm also perfusing the outer one-third of the cartilage. You know, if we have joint issues, the outer one-third of large joints nourished by the blood supply, the inner two-thirds is nourished by the synovial fluid. So when you attack both ants, then you really, really speeding up the regeneration. So it really depends on where we're doing this. I do, you know, like hair restoration, I can inject right, you know, into the scalp and, or facial rejuvenation right into, you know, the, you know, just, you know, very surface layer of the skin.

So, and I've, I've done vaginal penile injections to help enhance sexual functions. So you can inject into a lot of places. It really depends on what you're doing, but in general, what you're treating. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's so cool. Cause I basically envisioned, so they kind of seem like their stem cells are little scavengers for inflammation and they kind of like scour the body looking for what needs to be repaired essentially. Is that true? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's what we're counting on. And what I love about that is that, you know, there could be some sort of inflammation in your body that you're not even aware of that maybe you like the doctor hasn't caught, and then you're able to just tackle it with those stem cells. And also, I'm wondering, too, this is what I love is that you are coming from a integrative approach. So I'm assuming that you also help your patients with preventing what's actually causing

the disease, because I want to talk just a little bit about like how disease is actually what is causing aging as well. So if we can kind of tackle it from all angles, which is what I love, it kind of sounds like what you're doing, where you can get to the root of what's causing the disease, but then also treating it with stem cells. So that again, like what you said is that you can treat it with the stem cells and kind of regenerate that and then make sure that moving forward, we don't bring that disease back by doing the same sort of diet and lifestyle that we were doing before that. Yeah. And that's what I practice in my own life. You know, I was like, you know, I know stem cells are powerful, but I will be a fool to only rely on stem cells to keep me young and healthy. So, you know, I'm doing hormone replacement. I'm eating a very healthy diet. I really watch what I put in my body. I do

infra-a-sauna, you know, I try to detox and I exercise every day. I'm trying to do everything right. All these components all have their own contribution. You know, they're all part of the, you know, building up this super clean fuel. Yeah. Well, and I think this is part of the conversation that doesn't really get talked about as much because, you know, everyone knows that diet and lifestyle, I feel like a lot of it comes from a place of, um, people are so focused on their diet because they're concerned about maintaining their weight or, you know, it, it kind of seems like people don't really think about the aging aspect as much. And I try to talk about this a lot because what you eat is also going to be part of what's contributing to your aging. Because

if you're in a chronic state of inflammation, you're going to age a lot quicker. And I find this super empowering because I find that in general, especially when you're dealing with the more like allopathic conventional medicine, uh, route, they kind of just like throw up their hands and like, well, you're just getting older. You know, this is just part of getting older. But what I like about what you're doing is you're saying like, okay, wait, wait, wait. But like this, we don't have to just throw up our hands and be like, well, I guess we're just going to be sick for the rest of our lives. There are things that you can do, right? Like you can exercise and eat better and you can do

this stem cell therapy if it's available to you, hopefully, which is actually another thing I want to talk about. But yeah, that's what I love about this kind of all encompassing approach is like, we don't have to just be like, well, I guess I'm just old now and there's nothing I can do. There's a lot, there's actually a lot that we have control over. Yeah, no, don't give up. Fight for your vitality, you know, and I've seen it working so well, you know, so many of my patients, they are very healthy, but they're coming in for stem cell treatments because they know how much more vitality it's giving them and how it's, you know, it's actually dialing back the clock. And I've seen that on myself. When I first doing started doing stem cell therapy, I really wasn't thinking about trying to get younger. That wasn't really the purpose. You know, I thought I was young. I thought I was young enough. I was 45. And now I'm 50. But now when I look at my picture, 50, I'm sorry. I know everyone listening can't see you, but that's insane. I would, I thought you were like 40. Oh, thank you. God. Or like 30, like 38. You look amazing. Sorry to interrupt you, but I'm blown away.

Oh, I also developed a skin cream by the way. So, which is probably the best screen skin cream. There is a stem cell skin cream. Yeah. It's called chara omni. So I've been using that every, every day for probably two years, but I give myself IV stem cell skin cream yeah called chara omni so i've been using that every every day for probably two years but i give myself iv stem cell injection every three months so so there was a report you know i i realized you know i i sort of found a reason why i'm getting younger um after i saw that report showing that women who have been pregnant and given birth to a child compared to their counterpart, you know, same age, but haven't given birth, you know, not no pregnancy, the pregnant women, their brain was five months younger. So they have a, their brain is younger.

Five month advantage. I was like, oh my God, is that why I'm getting younger? Because every three months I'm making myself five months younger because I just gave myself a, you know, kind of a immediate pregnancy because pregnancy, what happens is that there's DNA exchange for sure that there's exchange between the mother and the baby. And that's how the Y chromosomes got everywhere. Right. So it's from, you know, a lot of times it's from the baby, you know, basically, you know, giving this fresh stem cells to the mother. So that's what I saw off, you know, getting younger and younger, you know, kind of me as an experiment. So I, you know, in a lot of patients, and what's funny is I have more male patients who are really open to stem cell therapy as a way of doing anti-aging, you know, I was like, I don't understand, you know, I thought women, you know, you know, men has had been surprising me of how much they care about their body and how much they want to keep their vitalities. It's just so interesting.

I think women, we focus way too much on the face. Yeah. The Botox. We're forgetting about the full body rejuvenation. I always tell people, oh, it's great. Yeah, sure. You can do some, you know, facial microneedling. You can do this. I love, you know, I've done, you know, microneedling a few times too. It's great. It helped promote collagen production, but you can make your skin totally beautiful and smooth and wrinkle-free. But guess what? Everything underneath, all the muscles that's holding up your skin and all the fat layers, the tendons, everything is losing. It's getting more and less.

It's losing volume. And it's coming, coming down, coming down. So how do you preserve that? You have to go from the inside out because the face is a reflection of what's inside your body. So yes, you can do all kinds of things to your face and as if that is not happening inside of your body. But if you do this naturally, then all your organs are going to be rejuvenated, you know,

just like in the face, because, you know, when people say they're getting older, they're looking at their mirror, and they say, Oh, my God, I'm getting older, because, you know, look at those wrinkles. But do you realize that all the wrinkling are happening in your liver, in your lungs, in your heart, in your, you know, in your, I mean, it's wrinkling everywhere. So how do you rejuvenate from inside out? And that's what I want to help people with. Well, and like, you know, the exterior only shows you so much, which is just basically kind of what you just said, but it's similar reminds me of, um, you know, we can't just like, so for me as a

nutritionist, I can't just look at someone and say like, Oh, they have a slim body. They're automatically healthy to me. Like that, that really tells me nothing because there is also this concept called skinny fat where you can actually have, you have slim body. But once I look at your blood work, if you have chronic inflammation or if you have a lot of like abdominal fat that, you know, I can't really see right away, it's not really an indication of where you're at. And this is kind of what you're saying is that, um, you can look fine on the exterior, but what's really happening on the interior, you know, and that's what really matters

because at the end of the day, like, do you have energy? Um, do you have chronic inflammation or your joints painful? Like there, you know, there's so many other things that can ruin your day versus like, you know, if you're just looking at the way that you look, you know, and that's a really important part of it. So you brought up microneedling. How do you feel about PRP? I'm actually doing the PRP injections under my eyes next week. Yeah. PRP is fine. I mean, it's give you extra growth factors. I think it's helpful. You know, we do, we offer PRP services at our clinic too, for microneedling, but I always give people the choice and, you know, here you can do stem cells with PRP. Can you do that under the eyes?

I inject the stem cells everywhere, all over the face. So, you know, we can either, you know, give you stem cells, which is like PRP on steroid, or you can just do PRP, you know, yes, PRP is cheaper, but do you want something with maximum benefits? So every time, every, everybody chooses stem cell facial. So, but the PRP is great. I would say PRP, you know, maybe it takes about six sessions to achieve what stem cells can achieve in three sessions. So that's kind of like an idea of just the potency. But yeah, I definitely like tapping into the intelligence of the cells

and we're still using PRP as well because I use PRP in conjunction with stem cells a lot, especially for local tissue injections or joint injections. I like adding that extra growth factor, which nourishes the cells as well. Okay. That's so cool. Wow. This is fascinating. I also just can't get over the fact that you're 50. I'm like, clearly what you're doing really works. I mean, you are, you're walking proof of it, which is really cool. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Um, yeah, people, you know, are interested in cream. Can I, can I just mention my, it's called chara omni. So C H A R A omni, you know, O M N I. So chara omni, um, it's, it's really a great, um, it's a hundred percent

natural cream. That's what I, I, I went into stem cells, you know, thinking about healing the whole body. And I was being selfish because I just wanted a good cream for my own face. And I couldn't find it because I wanted something that's all natural. And I just couldn't find anything. I thought I bought something all natural. And then when I actually read the ingredients, I saw these artificial ingredients. And then I went, I would go to natural expo to try to get all natural products and they will give me these samples and I leave in the drawer. And then in a month, when I'm ready to try it out, they're all separated into different layers. So I thought,

you know, like, why is this so difficult? And that's when I realized I have access to, to stem cell products, to all these different interesting peptides that can send the skin different signals. And then I can add whatever herbal extract or natural oils I want. So that's what I did. I add a lot of these extracts and then antioxidants and prebiotics. So it's, it's a hundred percent natural. So I'm, I'm just thrilled with the cream. So yeah. Anyhow. Amazing. Yeah. So is this just a cream that you put on after you wash your face at night? Yeah. Every morning and night. I hate complex routine. I thought it was just a way to get money, you know, people's money when they do the toner and then you do the serum and then you do the cream. No, this is all in one. You do not need all that complexity. Just clean your face

and put a cream on. You've got everything you need. Oh, that's amazing. Okay. Well, we will definitely get, I'm going to get the link from you after the show and then we'll put it in the show notes. So if people want to order it. Awesome. I'm fascinated. I definitely want to check it out too. So is there anything that we didn't cover either about regenerative medicine or about stem cell therapy or just anything in general that you feel like people need to know that we didn't talk about? There's one thing I think I really need to address because so many people, they don't think that stem cells are available in the US. They thought it's illegal and that you have to go overseas to get it. So this is, I know there's, you know, you know,

the whole establishment is not friendly to stem cells. But to think that stem cells is illegal is certainly not true because what we use are birth tissue. These are tissue transplant products because they're minimally manipulated. So they've never been changed in any way except from the original tissue. So it's pure tissue transplant. And when you use it to supplement the tissues, you know, local tissues, ability to repair and regenerate, that's completely within the guidelines of the FDA, you know, that's under their own guideline that's published in 2017, that has not changed. So that's what we're doing here. So there are definitely a lot of clinics that are doing it, but less and less, especially under this environment that people got scared. And when people go overseas, I just want people to understand,

just because you're going to a different country and where they can mass produce these cells, because what they do is instead of getting the original cells and put them carefully in a vial and carefully freeze them, They put them in the incubator and let it grow. And they grow to huge amount, to huge numbers. And then they take a little portion of it. And it's a huge number of cells. And they tell people, I'm giving you 200 million cells. I'm giving you 400 million cells. It sounds great, but it's really a tiny, tiny portion of the original cells. And it's not about the fact that it's grown to this large number.

It's about what happens when you are growing these cells to these large numbers, because things change. Especially if you don't do it very carefully, you know, the way you monitor the container, you don't want it to be too crowded. And if you start to have generations that are more than four passages, then the cells change a lot. They change, they start to develop, to have new surface receptors, they start to differentiate. But even without that, even in the beginning, when they started doing it, if you're not doing it, giving it perfect condition, a lot of times when the cells divide, they don't divide into two identical stem cells. They divide like how they do in the body, into a stem cell and a daughter cell. The daughter cell is more differentiated.

So that's how stem cells keep their population right one stem cell divide into stem cell and daughter cell the daughter cell go to work the stem cells stay in place so it's preserved and then stem cells can divide again so that's why these stem cells are with you your whole life but because they're with you your whole life different changes can happen they can degrade and they that's why they're less effective and they're less safe because they have more cancer promoting properties. So when they grow the cells, as they're growing, you're getting lots and lots of these daughter cells. So you may have a little bit more of these stem cells, but then when you pick a little portion of this vast culture, this huge product of produced cells, you end up having only small portion that's

actual stem cells, you get all these differentiated cells. That's why I hear these incidents of people getting really bad side effects, getting rejection, just not doing very well. But it sounds so great. And some people do fine. So there are always people who are doing fine. Obviously, Mal Gibson and his dad probably doing fine. And that's why everybody is going to Panama. But does that make it better? No, because I've treated people who have gone to Panama who are not doing very well and then came to, got our stem cell product

and did really well. And this is not an isolated incident. So I've heard that from other providers because I also train other providers and help them with their practice. So just because you're getting more doesn't make it better. So I just want people, you know, kind of buyer be aware kind of thing. I'm really glad you brought this up. And, you know, again, it's just a good reminder of with any treatment that you do you always want to do research and make sure that you're getting what you're paying for and that

you're getting a high quality product that's really well researched and you have a doctor that's very well researched and knows what's going to be the best thing for you so it's really important and I'm glad that you brought that up because I've never even I would have never thought about that I didn't even know that that was a thing because you know I've heard of people going to like Mexico to get it done and stuff like that. And I have to be honest, that's always freaked me out. You know, it's kind of like, I always tell people, you never want to do like a Botox Groupon. It's like the same kind of thing. Like you do not want to mess with this. You want to get the newer thing is Colombia. Lots of people are doing this in Colombia. They're all pretty much the same mold because they're able to grow the cells. That's called expansion. They can expand the cell population. They get huge number of cells.

And this is what FDA doesn't like because the FDA says, you just change the cells. You just, you know, in this culture, you're growing cells to this huge population. That makes it a drug because you changed, you're potentially changing properties as a cells. So if you want to use it in this country, then it has to be under clinical study. So it's too expensive, too cumbersome, too much hassle. That's why these companies said, forget it.

We're going overseas where we can do this, you know, with no supervision. Yeah. Well, and I'm sure people can get it for cheaper, but it comes possibly at a price, you know, the basic thing is, is actually more expensive. So really, yeah. So then why do people do it? Our clinic usually ranges between, it starts at $7,000. So it, you know, goes, you know, maybe as high as the most, you know, $12,000 that that's kind of the range. But if you go to places like Panama, 25,000, that's, you know, that's a common, that's a very simple number, you know, up to 30,000. So that that's the, that's the crazy part. That great so then why okay I'm like why because I always thought people went to like Mexico to get it for cheaper which is actually another thing I

did want to ask you that I almost forgot to ask you do you think there's going to be a time that they will be more affordable yes and more accessible for people because I can imagine people you know some people listening being like man that's like really crazy out of my budget. But I'm hoping that as more people talk about this, which is why I wanted to have you on, like, the more people talk about this and are educated on this, and the more people that are wanting it, there's going to be more demand for it. And hopefully we can make it more affordable. There are companies who are actively seeking FDA approval. So but that's that's a long and arduous road to eventually get the approval status. But once it has FDA approval, then insurance companies are going to come in and that can

possibly make it available everywhere. Although I'm not a hundred percent sure, because I just watched this documentary it's called unnatural selection about dna about gene editing and how this one treatment i think for this guy with a muscular yeah a dystrophy where he couldn't move his body pretty much all of the muscles um i think it's for him or for the other kid for the eye condition but it's 750 thousand dollars for one injection so this is going through insurance, right? So, so not necessarily, I guess, depending on how, how the company's structured and how much profit they want to make. So right now, because it's tissue transplant, because it's not a drug, possibly this is a cheaper stage. So I, you know, I, I, you have a great point. Well, I think about, you know, the way that our health care system is right now.

I mean, think about they were calling it Epigate, but with the EpiPen when they were upping the price on the EpiPen, which I mean, they got sued for that. And rightfully so, because I think about these poor, lower income families that have a child that has a life threatening allergy and they're charging like six hundred dollars or something insane for an EpiPen, a life-saving device that a kid needs. And there was an other guy recently, I think it was the, was it the cancer drug? I can't remember exactly the details, but, um, he went and upped his prices on this life-saving drug by like 600% or something crazy, but he just went to court and I believe that they,

they brought the, the, um, charge down or the price for the medicine. But it's, yeah, I mean, it's all, you know, everyone's seeing how much money they can get away with and then they'll just try to like bill it back to the insurance. Yeah. So the monopoly by drug companies, that gives them tremendous leverage. So they may want huge returns for their investors. Right now we have it as a natural therapy, as a tissue transplant, you know, no different from blood transfusion, right? We're getting it from one person, we're giving it back

to another person. So it's not that different. And it's governed by the same entity, American Association of Tissue Banks. They're governing all these tissue banks. So there's not regulated by the FDA, even though the FDA wants to have a lot of say, but it's really regulated by this other entity. Yeah. Well, and as we know, I mean, this could be a whole nother podcast. I should do an episode on this, the corruption of FDA anyways. It's seriously, we should do that because anyone listening, if you've not seen Dope Sick yet, have you seen Dope Sick? No. So it's the, it's, it's a remake of the story of the Sackler family. And they're the ones that are basically the reason that we have this opioid crisis. And they talk all about

I mean, they basically just show the story of how we got opioids approved and on the market. And they basically how they paid off the FDA to, to more, oh my God, you would probably love it. Yeah. Another one that's really good, maybe you have watched, it's called Bleeding Edge. It's about medical devices. I started talking about IUD and what that did to women. And I went through all this drug, basically medical device approval process. You actually walked into the, you basically went into the FDA meeting and how the process was. It's really interesting and it's really not very encouraging. So that's why I like with everything I tell people in this podcast, I'm like, do your research and take everything with a grain of salt because everyone can be

bought and paid for. Unfortunately, you know, money, money can get you very far in this country. I mean, in the world. Yeah, just because you think the news told you one thing, and that is safe, that you're being very naive, you could be you could have been duped. Well, absolutely. I mean, you think about all these news networks are they are trying to appease their investors and the people that are paying for the ads. I mean, there was all this, well, we don't have to go into it, but I mean, there was a clip that was showing brought to you by Pfizer for all of these news segments. And I'm just like, okay, you know, we just, they're trying to appease their investors and the people that are paying for ads on their networks, you know. So we have to take everything with a grain of salt and do our own research.

Yeah, really treat your body as a temple. You want to protect the temple, you don't want to contaminate it. Yes, I love that. Okay, so before we go, I want to ask you ask every one of my guests this question, what are your personal health non negotiables? So these are things that no matter how crazy your day is, you prioritize this for you and your own health. Oh, not that I haven't violated it, but I try to do as much as I can, which is exercise, um, every day. And, um, and I eat very, very healthy, um, you know, you know, basically anti-inflammatory probably I tried to do low carb, but sometimes, you know, carb is enjoyable, but

I try to avoid simple, you know, simple carbs, um, and just eat nutrient rich food. Cause I, you know, a lot of the food that, um, you know, know, I can look at and I just knew is toxin, you know, like a lot of fried food, you know, even at parties, right? These hors d'oeuvres, I mean, it looks great. I was like, that is poison. Do I want to poison my body or not? So usually I say no. Yeah. Same with, you know, the, the packaged foods and, and just so much of it is just you know whenever i realize it's poison so it's a matter of do i want it to pollute my body or not so that's you know that that's kind of a no-brainer but i i think a lot of people don't think in those terms enough

that they you know if you realize it's like you're putting toxins in your body that would really give you pause. They're not benign. They're just, they're, they're pretty, you know, you know, malicious. And, um, um, and that's it. And, and, and try to stay centered, be grateful and, um, yeah, try to do some meditation. So I try, I need to do more, but I know that it's tremendous, you know, for health. Yeah. Well, you know, it's not about being perfect. It's about doing things that are important to you that make you feel good. And it's all about consistency. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do all of these things every single day. You know, no one's perfect.

I always like to remind everyone, I'm like, even me, like I have this podcast and I talk about eating really healthy and I talk about eating real food, but does that mean that I don't ever have like what, I don't know, like junk food and cookies and things that I want to eat? No, no one's perfect. You know, it's a, it's more about, um, consistently showing up on a daily basis and really striving to make those healthier and better choices. And what you just said about people not recognizing these toxins, that's a big part of it. Cause I think what happens for a lot of people is that they don't understand that. Um, they, they just think that, Oh, this wouldn't be allowed to be sold. This wouldn't be on shelves if it was that bad for us. You know, I think a lot of people still have that mentality and you have to understand and recognize that in general, all of this stuff is not as regulated as we have been made out to think. So it really comes back down to the consumer and educating yourself and knowing the choices to make. And especially too, you think about, um, it's not just that one thing that you ate. It's like the combination of, you

know, the fast food and then the toxins in your water and then the toxins that you're getting, you know, in your air every day and the products that you're putting on your face and the candles and all the beauty or all the cleaning products that you're spraying. I mean, it's endless and it feels overwhelming, but you take it day by day and there's just, yeah, there needs to be more thought around it and slowly making those changes. And then eventually, it just becomes like second nature, you know, it's all about reducing suffering, you know, potential, because if you're not careful, you're going to pay for it later. So so if you want, if you're okay with that, I mean, then don't complain when you get sick. Yes. Yep, there we go. So for everyone listening, where can they find you and where can they find

your cream? And then we'll also link it in the show notes so they can easily click on it. Yeah. So, um, our, um, center is actually in the back uplift longevity center. So they can just go to uplift. So with the Y uplift center.com. Um, and then, um, so people are welcome to check out my YouTube video. I do try to educate, you know, the public as much as I can about stem cell therapy and a few other subjects. So it's just under my name, Joy Kong MD. And then the cream it's the website is charaomni.com. So the, yeah, it's, it's, that's, that's my, my baby where I'm going to help a lot of men and women stay young and beautiful. Hey, well, it's clearly working for you.

Like I said, so I'm like, give me whatever you're using. Cause I want to look that great when I'm your age. So I can't wait for you to try. I usually ask people, okay, take a before picture, try it for about three weeks and then take it after same lighting, no tricks, no makeup, you know, just, just be very honest and then look at the changes. So it's really fun. Yeah. Can't wait for you. I definitely want to do that. Cool. Well, thank you so much. This was such an informative conversation. I loved having you on today. Oh, you're so welcome. It's really fun talking with you. Yeah, you too. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the real foodology podcast.

If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called heaven by the amazing singer Georgie spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship.

I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.