Get The MOST Out of Stem Cells By Stacking Ozone, Peptides, Exosomes, Lasers & More With Dr. Joy Kong

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, the side effect of doing stem cell therapy on a regular basis is that my appearance started to be more and more rejuvenated. I didn't really think about that. I just wanted to feel good. I just wanted to feel good, right? I wanted to feel really good for a very long time. I wasn't thinking about how it's gonna— what it's gonna do for how to— how I look, because I can show people pictures of when I was 43 and I look a lot younger than that time.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, hacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Hi, this is Erin Ryan, Ben Greenfield's producer. I wanted to take a second to let you know that things might look slightly different next week. Ben is updating the name of the podcast to better reflect what you, our audience, has been asking for. More energy, better sleep, clear direction, less pain, more time, more confidence, higher productivity, a good body, better brain, a longer life, and so on. So Ben is changing the podcast name to Boundless Life to reflect his passion for helping you unlock more energy for everything you want in life. Ben will still deliver the fringe and innovative health content he always has, but now through the lens of helping you to become truly boundless. The research has been very active, especially for common conditions, right? When it's not as common, it takes a lot of money to do research, then it may not be done. But there's so many common chronic conditions. Yeah, from head to toe, you know, right? You know, from congestive heart failure, right, heart attack or stroke, or all kinds of autoimmune conditions, and even infertility, um, you know, all kinds of brain conditions very tough to treat. All the brain conditions, very difficult to treat. And of course, musculoskeletal. So tremendous amount of research. And, you know, liver, heart, lungs, so kidneys, a lot of research to back up what we're doing. So I can't claim it, but what I can offer people is these research results. So don't trust my word for it. See what scientists from around the world have found out.

Right. We kind of just jumped right in talking when you pulled this laser robot out on me. Are you comfortable to to just like keep on going and have this be the lead into our podcast. Yeah, you know, folks are listening right now, we just jumped right in. But you guys, this is Joy, Joy Kong. Joy, um, how do you describe yourself to people? Are you a regenerative medicine physician? Or like, if I'm sitting next to you on an airplane, how do you introduce yourself?

Like an ex-psychiatrist turned into anti-aging doctor specializing in stem cell therapy. So, um, I'm board certified in 3 specialties: psychiatry, addiction medicine, and anti-aging regenerative medicine. But ever since I got introduced to stem cell therapy. That was like, it's like someone opened up a whole new world for you. I was just blown away by the potentials of these cells.

And you were a psychiatrist when that happened?

Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. How did that happen? Well, I love the brain. So, you know, I didn't go into medical school thinking I was gonna become a psychiatrist. That was the farthest from, you know, what I was thinking. Really? I thought I was gonna be, uh, I thought I was gonna be either OB-GYN or a, uh, uh, like urologist. I don't know, because those are things that I, I touch upon. I did some rotations— or not rotations, volunteer work in those two specialties. So I was just gonna, you know, just one of those specialties. I was just gonna pick one. But never had I thought about psychiatry. Just, it didn't cross my mind. I didn't think that was part of medicine. But when I actually did rotations in the third year of medical school, we get the taste of every specialty. And when I was doing psychiatry, that was when I was the most excited. I was willing to stay late for work, and I was just fascinated by the disease process in the brain and of all these behaviors that people could exhibit just from, from a mental health illness. So. And then I also saw medications really helping. So, helping way more than neurology. I love the brain and I actually did brain research at the Mayo Clinic before I went to medical school. But I realized how futile it seemed for neurologists when they treat patients. They're very effective at diagnosing where the location of the defect is and that was pretty much the end of the story. And then people are left with—

You mean they could tell, like a neurologist could tell you've got, I don't know, like neurofibrillary tangles or pre-Alzheimer's, or like they could tell you the anatomical or physical location, but they couldn't fix it?

Exactly. And that's a very depressing position to be in. So when urologists diagnose a particular brain condition, I mean, there's, there's almost nothing they could offer, frankly. And that's why I, I thought I couldn't go into it. You know, you can be a great detective, but then you're not really helping people. So, but psychiatry actually can. Those medications actually take people out of psychosis, take them out of mania or depression.

Are you talking about like SSRIs, like antidepressants?

SSRI, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers. They're powerful. Yeah. They're powerful.

They've all gotten a bad reputation, it seems like. In many cases.

Um, yes, because I— there are heavy-duty medications with a lot of side effects. Yeah. And I think they're great in emergency situations when a person is about to kill themselves, hurt somebody else, or completely, you know, doing things that are very destructive to their lives.

Yes. Yeah. Well, well, I, I heard, um, uh, Tim Ferriss was talking about how he uses, uh, and, and forgive me, Tim, if I get this wrong, Trazodone regularly for sleep. Yeah, it's very common Tried some. I felt horrible. I felt like— didn't feel like myself at all. I felt like a zombie the next day. My mood was all over the place. Tried it again the next night to see if that was actually what did it. And again, felt horrible.

Yeah.

Like, just not myself.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There are probably much better ways of helping sleep.

Yeah. I was more just curious. But yeah.

No, never again. Yeah. I have written so many prescriptions of Trazodone. I can't even count. But those are my— are two box. So, I wasn't satisfied with the toolbox because we were not addressing the fundamental root causes of people.

With the medications.

Why people, yeah, why people, why do you have bipolar disorder? Why do you have schizophrenia? Why are you depressed? So, are we addressing everything in the body before just starting, start to bombard the receptors? Because everything they talk about from this medication is receptor, receptor, receptor. We're increasing the number of neurotransmitters, we're trying to hit receptors. So, they're very, in a sense myopic, I hate to use the negative word, but it is very limited in their thinking because they think the brain is this soup of chemical or, yeah, molecular drugs.

Who thinks that? Like just modern psychiatry?

Yeah, modern psychiatry, the way they discover these drugs that they think that all this, it's true, certain receptors, neurotransmitters will produce certain effects, but why are you lacking in certain neurotransmitters? Yeah. Why is your receptor not responding? What is underlying that? Are you addressing those? It could be nutritional problem.

You could feel more about it in psychiatry, the underlying stuff, or was it all just, just throw medications at it? Yeah, the whole— not that I want you to throw your entire former profession under the bus, but the whole point—

we probably can, um, get, um, what is that going into my— yeah, so we're hydrating you right now.

Those of you who want to watch the video version, it's going to be at bengreenfieldlife.com/joykong. If you're just listening to the audio, we got all cool, juicy videos here going on. So that's just hydration going into me right now.

Yeah. And then now we're gonna bleed you. We're gonna take blood out of you. Yes. So that we can, uh, mix it with ozone gas. So we want to incorporate these therapies because we're going to give you better results when it comes to the effect of the stem cells. Ozone therapy So, ozone is O3. And when we pass this 100% oxygen through the ozone machine, that's O2 transforming to O3.

But it's only about— You need like an ozonator to do that. Yeah.

Like take oxygen machine through machine. Right. And it only probably, we're gonna get about 2% of the entire mixture that's actually ozone molecule. The rest is oxygen. So, when we mix it with your blood, it's super oxygenating the blood. But then the 2% ozone, depending on our concentration, but the little bit of ozone gas will quickly break down back into oxygen. And in the meantime, produce all these ozonides, these little molecules that have profound immune-boosting properties.

So the O3 converts back into O2, but when it does that, it releases immune-enhancing properties. Exactly. Into the blood. I've heard ozone is, it also has like, antiviral or antibacterial properties.

Oh, that is one of the most powerful antiviral, antibacterial, the entire, you know, any microbe.

Yeah.

And then cancer. So powerful. Basically these—

Yeah, I've heard that people will combine it with chemo to increase the cytotoxicity of the chemo or something like that. Right.

Because they can handle the oxidative stress. Whereas normal cells can handle it. So we're killing them very effectively. And I've seen even the beginning of, the COVID pandemic. There's one doctor who sent me a video of a person that just came down with COVID and went through a 10-pass ozone treatment with him. And he showed, he had this testimonial. With each pass, the person had reduction of symptoms. So by the end of 10 passes, the symptoms were gone. Well, she came in with raging headache and was, yeah. So it's very, it can be very powerful. So where we can kill the microbes, um, in the process, but also it super oxygenates your blood and it activates the antioxidant system in your own body. So not just giving you antioxidants, which have its own drawbacks, but activating your own antioxidant system, that's very powerful.

So is it, is it almost the idea that, that oxygen or ozone is a pro-oxidant and the response in my cells is to increase their production of antioxidants?

Um, that could be— that, that could be one of the mechanisms. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, uh, it also makes the red blood cells more pliable, so they're more flexible, so they can squeeze through blood vessels and deliver oxygen more effectively.

Okay.

So yeah, there are a lot of benefits that we are, um, utilizing.

And, um, would anybody ever say that, that ozone is dangerous or harmful? Do you get that sometimes? Because I And there's some people, all they know about ozone is the ozone layer or something like that, or we're not supposed to breathe ozone.

Yeah, that's, you know, when the debris, you know, that, yeah, that's not the kind of ozone that we're using. So people don't know our antibodies in the body, right? The proteins that's made to attack bacteria, virus, you know, all the pathogens actually can secrete ozone. They can make ozone. So your body actually have the capability of generating—

Antibodies in your own body can produce O3? Yes. Interesting.

Yeah. So it's a naturally occurring substance. So we're just utilizing, again, this is part of regenerative medicine because we're utilizing what's in nature. What can come out of our body to heal our body. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. So you do the hydration and then you took out my blood and you're gonna ozonate the blood that you took out of me.

Yeah.

And then put that back in. Yeah. Okay. And you do all of this before you do any type of stem cell procedure. Is that because it enhances the efficacy of the stem cells, or is this just stuff you do besides the stem cells to help the body feel better?

Well, just by the fact that it super oxygenates your body and, you know, and of course its antioxidant capabilities, it helps your body's overall health and helps your immune system to be more active. Active, not in a sense of overstimulating, but boosting it, you know, when it's lowered. So, right, um, it's basically another way of enhancing your body's reparative mechanism.

Okay.

Yeah. So I want to— the reason I'm adding all these components is I always say, let's say I can give you stem cell treatment that can produce an effect at 70%. Of what the maximal possible recovery is. But if I can add ozone therapy, that gives you 5 extra percent of, of benefit, and I can add the laser therapy that can give you an extra 10%, right? All of a sudden the benefit is much higher.

You're stacking. And are you primarily treating— because you mentioned, you know, someone in coma, you mentioned cancer— are you mostly treating people who want to go from good to great, or do you work more with, with sick people?

I would say 90% of the people who come to us are very sick with all kinds of problems that they have gone through their providers, you know, tried everything else. And so this is because it's not an inexpensive treatment. So they usually try other things first, whatever that's covered by insurance, whatever they can do on their own. But then things were not getting better.

When I walked in here, there was a guy named Eddie. He's still standing in the room right now, but he's on the camera. You probably can't see him. He said he couldn't walk. When he came in to see you. But now he obviously can because he's standing there. What'd you do?

Um, so, so Eddie was given stem cells. Um, maybe we can just ask him to, uh, get in here.

Eddie, you're gonna be on the podcast. Um, yeah, essentially, um, I had an injury and, uh, basically just smashed the bottom of my feet, uh, crushed them up, and I ended up having, um, I thought that I would, you know, just like an athlete you are, I think we're about the same age too. And I ended up just walking on them for a few days. Then I went to the hospital and they said, oh, you're clear, you got misdiagnosed. And then, and then I thought, okay, well, I'm just gonna be in pain for the rest of my life. I thought that for 9 months until I got the stem cells and got them from Joy's Source. And that's how we met. And then she ended up, 2 months later, I was able to go like from 9 months of not being able to think I'd be able to go hike or anything like that. I was able to go dancing and walking or I guess whatever the Burning Man across the whole entire playa. So that was, you know, a mile and a half, 3 miles or something like that in a day. And it was so neat to know that something that was not available when we were kids growing up is now available. And yeah, cutting edge. Yeah. And kind of being the tip of the spear with this sort of thing. And my hope is that other people, the masses can have it. Like my family members will be able to have it when it's available with insurance. Okay, got it. Yeah, I have a few more questions about stem cells, but before that, you're talking about your story and how you were in psychiatry, and then you started to learn that there were things that went beyond medication. So where'd you go from that to stem cells?

Uh, so first of all, I wanted to do something to enhance my own health, right? I always paid attention to my health, that this is our most important asset Um, am I now?

Yeah, I know that's a rude question.

No, it's absolutely not, because I, I advertise it everywhere because I'm very proud of it.

I'm 53, and you look like you're like 40 maybe, tops.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah.

So I'm not just blowing smoke. People are watching the video. I mean, you look incredible. Thank you. And, and you're— are you using a lot of these things that, that you've discovered?

Everything I'm giving you, I'm using it myself.

Okay.

And as far as stem cells, I've been Putting it in my body every 3 months for the last 8 years.

So 3 months for the last 8 years? I do both. Your own stem cells or—

Okay, the stem cells I'm getting.

And I want to talk about that later on, why you use the type of stem cells you use. But so, so you just wanted to address your own issues initially?

I didn't really have many issues to address. What I wanted to— Okay, first of all, I heard from this girl who received treatment. She had rheumatoid arthritis, and she was telling me how anti-inflammatory it was. Even during the time she was getting infusion, the swelling was going down, and she was able, able to wear the ring that she hadn't been able to wear for 2 years. And not only that, she had this increasing energy and sex drive. So I thought, you know, give me some of that.

Yeah, she was doing stem cells.

Yes. So I thought, well, you know, that sounds amazing because she felt amazing. I just wanted to feel good, right? I wanted to feel really good for a very long time. I wasn't thinking about how I was going what is it going to do for how to— how I look. I didn't really think about that. I just wanted to feel good. And the side effect of doing stem cell therapy on a regular basis is that my appearance started to be more and more rejuvenated. Because I can show people pictures of when I was 43, that was 10 years ago, and I look a lot younger than that time.

And how long ago did you start all of this, from psychiatry to stem cells?

Um, 8 years.

Okay, so you've been using stem cells regularly for 8 years?

8 Yeah. So I did it based on, I guess, faith in science. Because I've seen the research of what happens when animals were given regular IV stem cells. Basically, they have shown in multiple studies that the lifespan of animals are extended by 30%. And not just lifespan, it's the health span. These animals are, they have shinier fur, their spine is straighter, they're running around, you know, it's locomotion.

And this is with like a blood infusion of stem cells. Exactly.

But put in the animal's tail vein, which is like an IV infusion with animals.

And, um, I don't have a tail, by the way. So, do you have to find somewhere else?

Well, that's your tail today.

My arm. Yeah, my arm tail.

And also, the animals are having better cognition. They can run around the maze better. Um, and then, this is a more definitive evidence of the anti-aging benefits. They actually sacrificed some of the animals. They looked at, so, their muscles, they dissected their brain. In both cases, the amount of growth factors secreted by the cells, the neurotransmitter level that they're able to produce, and senescent markers or toxic waste, everything was back to the younger state. So, that was a level that they know is going to change over time, right? It should have either increased or decreased depending on the marker, but everything was back to the level when the animals were younger. So, that's definitive evidence that physiologically, these animals were reverted to the younger state.

Wow. So, you find all this out. When did you hang up the hat on psychiatry and just decide you're going to go full-on in the stem cell field?

Once I started doing stem cells, it was just— It's so much fun. My first patient was actually a 69-year-old gentleman who had bilateral, I guess, a lot of knee problems. And he was told in no uncertain terms that he needed bilateral knee replacement by orthopedic surgeons. So he came to me. He didn't really want the operation. He's very active. He's an owner of a probiotic company who goes to a lot of trade shows. He's very active. So I gave him an IV infusion and I injected 1 cc into each knee. And the fun part was the next day he told me, oh, you know, I slept through the night. I haven't slept through the night for decades because he had a rotator cuff injury that he never told me about. Every night when he would turn, he would wake up from the sharp pain.

So, you know, you didn't inject the rotator cuff. I didn't know about that. So systemic infusion affected a bum joint.

That's right. That is a joint that bothered him for decades and I fixed unintentionally. So, and then of course, his knees did great because he was walking about 4 miles every day. This is 8 years ago. Wow. And he barely feels that he has knees. He said, you know, this is just amazing. And he still goes to more trade shows than I know. He's 77 years old now. Absolutely amazing. So that hooked me. Because imagine—

10 and 0 for you.

Yeah. Imagine I was a psychiatrist, right? We were told not even touch patients because that's not, you know, it's not proper. And for me to put an IV into somebody's body and then inject into the knee, and then the cells kind of did its own thing. And then I was able to fix things that his orthopedic surgeons could not. And I was not trained in orthopedic surgery.. And then I have other, all kinds of other patients, chronic pain patients, a lady with lupus. I got her after the treatment, his lupus markers was basically shows that she has no lupus. So, and I'm not a rheumatologist and I was treating people like MS, right? I'm not a neurologist, but I can give the person IV infusion and the person goes MS remission. Going back to work. So all kinds of examples. So many applications here. I— it's empowering because it makes medicine really fun again. So that's what I want to show doctors, that this can be fun again. It's not depressing anymore.

Yeah, but we're in LA, where we're a little bit— what's the name of this town? It's above Malibu.

Yeah, this is a— this is, uh, in San Fernando Valley.

San Fernando Valley. Okay, so a lot of people go overseas, they'll like go to Cabo or Tijuana or Dubai or wherever to do stem cells, but you do them here. Yeah. And what a lot of people will say is, well, you can only get like the good stuff out of the country or you can only get expanded stem cells with a higher stem cell count if you're outside the U.S. Why is it that you would set up shop here and not do something like expanded stem cells?

Yeah, only if those statements are actually true. So first of all, the dose calculation is based on research, and research were using expanded cells, and they thought that you have to have certain amount to exert certain—

We should probably define what it means to expand a cell.

Expand means to put cells in the, you know, some kind of container with certain nutrients and then put them in an incubator to allow them to multiply so they can grow into huge numbers. So you can imagine if there's a small amount of stem cells and then you grow them to huge numbers and you take a little portion to give to patients. So, you know, you— well, the cost is cut down dramatically. The problem is that when you multiply these cells, the common understanding is by 4th generation, there's a lot of deterioration. You really don't want to give people—

You multiply a cell by 4? 4 generations or something.

The 4 passages, right? Passages when they change containers. Okay. But even with one passage, there's evidence that there are genetic changes and there probably is some kind of degradation.

Like a mutation?

Yeah. Yeah. And also not just mutation, but also expression of surface markers because cells, the definition of stem cells is that they are capable of making copies, multiplying by making a copy of itself, and another copy is the more differentiated version because they want to replenish the tissue they're occupying, right? So, they don't want to just stay being a blank cell.

Right.

They want to own something else. So, but by doing that, when you multiply them in some kind of container, then their tendency is to reproduce into a copy of themselves and something that's more differentiated. That may no longer be a stem cell or have a more downstream kind of development of markers that is consistent with the donor.

Right.

So now you're expressing surface proteins of the donor instead of being a blank cell that doesn't evoke an immune response. Now you're expressing proteins that can trigger an immune response. This is probably the most important reason why when people go overseas, they can have so much side effects. Okay. Because these expanded cells, like Tony Robbins was talking about the cytokine storm, that you should expect cytokine storm. Um, I always say I've never seen cytokine storm in this clinic.

I've had expanded stem cells before, and I have had times when I felt like crap from getting that. The, the, the issue though about it being partially caused by a donor stem cell Couldn't you skirt that by taking somebody's own stem cells, like some people do from fat or bone, and then expanding those? Or would they still mutate or something like that?

They would still mutate. But the problem is your own cells is your own age and carry the same burdens that any other cell has been exposed to. So because stem cells stays with you for your entire life, right? They've been with you since you were born.

Right.

So they've collected all the damage.

So theoretically, unless you had parents who were thinking way ahead and they harvested your stem cells stem cells when you were a baby. Exactly. And then you got those expanded and infused, then you run a lower risk of an immune response.

Yeah, when I first got into the stem cell field, I thought, oh my God, there are all these different sources, which one should I use? Because I want to give people the best. Whichever is the best, that's what I'm going to do. I'm happy to learn about bone marrow extraction or fat extraction, but I just need to know which one is the best. So I started to dig into scientific literature to find out what people have found as far as the differences between these sources. And that's how my— the lecture, it's called "Are All MSCs Created Equal?" How that came about, because I was giving direct evidence to show people what the differences are. And really, when you look at across the board, let's say we take stem cells from your fat or bone marrow versus from the umbilical cord. In every aspect, whether or not you're looking at anti-inflammatory actions or neuroprotective effects or how many generations the cells have left and how wide their differentiation potentials are and also just how long their telomeres are. They've looked at all these parameters. In every parameter, it shows that umbilical cord stem cells are way superior than the other stem cells.

And this— you're using umbilical stem cells. Yeah. When you use umbilical stem cells, this issue with something like donor compatibility is not an issue because umbilical cells are kind of neutral. Exactly. And you don't get any of, like, mom's DNA or anything like that in the umbilical cells?

Not from the umbilical cord. If you use placental, the placental tissue is a combination of mother's cells and the baby's cells. But if you use umbilical cord cells, it's only from the baby. So that is another reason that I prefer that. But using— so some people will, you know, will say, well, you know, cells from the fat is highly protected, they're hibernating, so there's no effect on, on their viability or as far as toxic damage. And if you just use common sense, you can understand that that's probably not true because I want you to think about your own sperm or someone's egg, right? Sperm and egg decline as we age, right? Those should be the most protected, the most precious resource in the human's body.

Which is why it could be riskier to say, like, have a child when you're later in life.

Exactly. So if your sperm and egg decline as you age, why wouldn't every other stem cell in your body decline, right? Nature would have done its very best to protect the sperm and egg, and it couldn't because the toxic damage is everywhere to all your cells, including your stem cells. So as we age, our own stem cells number decline like falling off a cliff. When you were born, every 1 in 10,000 cells is MSC. So that's mesenchymal stem cell. That's the hottest stem cell right now. But when you reach your teenage years, it's already become 1 in 100,000. So 1/10. And when you reach your 40s, that's 1 in 400,000. And when you reach your 80s, it's 1 in 2 million. So you can see the cliff, how that falls off. Yeah. And that's why people— there's an acceleration of aging, right? In your 20s, you know, you can't quite tell that you're aging. 30s, okay, I can see the signs. 40s, all of a sudden. 50s, right? You're dropping off a cliff. You look a lot different. And, you know, everything is declining rapidly. You have fast accumulation of chronic illnesses because the decline the inflammation has come to a point where all these diseases is— that's time for them to flourish, right? That's how they come on board. So, you really want to prevent that kind of inflammatory and immune dysregulated state. And that's why stem cells can be so powerful at extending youth.

So, when you're extending youth and you're doing these infusions every 3 months, you're literally just doing an umbilical stem cell infusion on an IV? How long does it take?

Um, the whole process, if we add the ozone therapy, probably about an hour and a half. Wow.

Yeah, interesting. What do you think about all these new, like, sexy forms of stem cells people are talking about? Like, um, I heard Dr. John Laurent down in Florida, he was talking about X-cells. Uh, Dr. Adeel Khan, who I've had on my podcast, he talks about these Muse cells, which he says have low, uh, low issues as far as, like, their the rejection or the immune response or the histocompatibility of them? Like, why is it that all these different forms of stem cells pop up that people seem to like latch on to and, and go with as the next new thing?

Yeah, I'm not too familiar with Mu cells, but I'm sure everyone is trying to find an edge to see what's most effective. What I can say is there's definitely the tendency of decline when you use a person's own cells.

So even— When you use a person's own cells. Yeah.

Even if you use—

Like you take their cells out and you store them, they'll decline.

Yes. Yeah. So that's been living with you throughout your lifetime.

Right.

Even with what people call V-cells, right? That's another popular form.

Yeah. V-cells.

Yeah. People start to know even that would decline with age. So as a person gets older, that treatment become less and less effective.

Okay. Got it.

Yeah.

How do you know 'Cause a lot of people get nervous about this, like whether if you go to a practitioner, whatever they're using, even if it's umbilical, are pure. Like that they don't have, you know, crap in them or, you know, toxins or anything like that. Is there some kind of purification process?

Well, that comes to the question, the issue of what I think makes a successful stem cell treatment. There are two aspects. One is the quality of the cells. Two is how you're putting it in the body. So both are very important. So when it comes to cell source, yes, you want— first of all, you want the more— the healthier, younger, more vibrant cells. Two, you want it to be extracted in the right way. And of course, different tissue banks will have different processes. Some are superior to others. You know, some will provide more viability after the cells are frozen and then thawed, and some will preserve more growth factors and, you know, different signals in the solution that the cells are suspended in. And of course, the screening process is important. The mother's health is important because if the mother's health is eating— she's eating all kinds of junk and bad oils, that's going to affect affect the quality of the cord. So each cord is different. Some are big and fat, some are long and skinny. Yeah, I mean, they're all different, but finding somebody that's healthy, that's important, and young. We, we take donations from mothers who are younger than 30, and we also screen their health. And of course, we're screening for a screen for family history, travel history, toxic exposure, and work history, sexual history. So everything that could affect the cord, we screen for. So not company will have the same stringent criteria, right? Some may compromise because they want a cord. But for the company, the lab I work with, there's no compromise.

Okay. So, so you don't get the stem cells yourself as your— you get them from a lab and that lab specializes in getting the right kind of stem cells and purifying them.

Exactly.

And screening.

So from an FDA-registered laboratory that adhered to the standard from the American Association of Tissue Banks. Because the obtaining of tissue—

Well, they're regulated by the FDA.

The FDA wants to regulate it because FDA, their purview is drug regulation. But when you do tissue transplant, that's actually governed by American Association of Tissue Banks. So, but the FDA really, really wants very badly to regulate this industry as drugs. They want to categorize it as drugs.

Categorize stem cells as drugs.

Yes. And I see a recent wave of control and wanting to put this category of therapy as giving drugs. Very obvious example is when I just recently read a warning letter to one of the tissue banks. One of the things that they were objecting to the scientist was that he mentioned in the podcast that he was getting cells from the Wharton's jelly and he was giving it to people to help with cartilage repair. In the joint. So the FDA's letter said the umbilical cord is a conduit. The entire function of the cord is serves as a conduit for the blood, right, for the artery and vein. So unless you're— when you transplant it into another person, unless it's performing the function of a conduit, then it's a drug. So go figure. As far as That's the rationale. But what they think of a tissue transplant is that it has— the cells has to be performing the exact same function from before transplantation to after transplantation. So that means effectively, if you take cells out of the umbilical cord, because we're no longer putting it back into an organ to make it a conduit, right, to help being a conduit, then that makes everything a drug. So the question is, how do they know what the cells are there for? How do they know what the function is? They say it's a conduit. But we know the birth tissue has profound effects on the fetus. When the fetus is forming, the placental tissue and the cord is much bigger than the fetus. Because if it's just a conduit, you would think it would grow proportionally as the fetus grows, right? Right. So the fetus will grow and the placenta grow. No. The placenta is big and the fetus is tiny. So there's a lot of instructions that's going into the fetus. We don't know exactly how it's working. So my question is, how are they— who gave them the authority to decide what these cells do? Because our science hasn't figured out yet.

Why would that even be a problem for it to be classified as a drug? Because you're a doctor and you can prescribe drugs, right?

Oh, we can't. But when they classify something as a drug, that means it has to go through the drug study. So that's where the kicker is. You have to apply for an investigation on a new drug application. You have to go through animal studies, then phase 1, phase 2, phase 3. And it's very costly in general. Just so you know, on average, to take any molecule, any discovery, from discovery to market. That process costs about $2.1 billion, and nobody has that kind of money unless you're a big drug company, just so, so you're aware. And I've heard already of tissue banks going bankrupt trying to do these studies the FDA is requiring. So that, that's where the problem's at.

The FDA has also been cracking down on peptides, everything seems like.

Yeah.

Do you use peptides?

I do.

Yes.

Yeah. And we're actually going to give you some peptides as well.

What do you primarily like peptides for?

I love how it's able to help me to target specific issues. Like we're going to give you BPC-157, TB-500. I love those two in combination with stem cells because they have this multitude of benefits so they can target your brain health. Your immune health, your musculoskeletal repair, um, also cardiovascular health. So all of a sudden we're targeting multiple organs.

So I like to do those as an infusion, or you, you inject them like subcutaneously, like a lot of people.

We give it to you both. So that's what we do for our patients. We do infuse it and then we give you some for a take-home injection.

Are there other peptides that are kind of favorites of yours in your practice?

Yeah, so the growth hormone peptides, the BPC-1, not The CJC-1295 and ipramorelin or tesamorelin, those are great, right? Building muscle mass, reducing fat, and of course, regenerating, repair, and great for brain as well. And T-alpha-1, great for autoimmune conditions, helping with boosting immune system. I also like certain brain peptides like Selink, great for anxiety. There are other ones for depression and cognition. C-Max for cognitive repair.

Are these kind of like one-offs, or like for you, for example, would you just use peptides regularly like you would like a supplement, like a multivitamin?

Yeah, because as we age, the levels decline. So if I can replenish some of the signals— I mean, there are probably— there, there are 300,000 different peptides in the body. We've only discovered 7,000. But if I can, you know, I know some important ones, I can just add those in. It's going to have profound effects. Another favorite of mine is called apigenin, and you probably have taken it. It's great for cardiovascular rejuvenation, but it can also lengthen telomeres. You only need to do it once every 6 months for 15 days at a time. And they actually had a study where people were taking it, uh, 6 rounds, so 15 days, 6 times, so in 3 years. And, and then they followed them for 10 years. At the end of 10 years, that people got the epitylon treatment for those 3 years, their cardiovascular system was 9 years younger than people that never got it. Well, the rate of cardiovascular mortality, death from cardiovascular disease, went from 83% to 40— to 47%. Yeah.

Cardiovascular health. Wow. With the peptides, As far as like the FDA's crackdown or whatever on those, has that affected you? Like, is it more and more difficult to get your hands on them?

It is more difficult. It's a pain in the butt. So, I'm not enjoying how things are more difficult. Yeah. So, it's unfortunate.

What about the peptide bioregulators? Like, you hear about a lot of this Russian research on one. Mm-hmm. Target specific organs or something like that.

I think that's fantastic. But I think one easy way of getting those are just eating organ meat. You know, getting, taking—

I've heard that before. Yeah, that's certain. Like, it's like the like supports like type of thing. Like, if you have liver, it's good for the liver.

Yeah, it's really strange. I used to think it was a superstition because in Chinese culture, they were eating things that they think is going to supplement a particular organ. They were eating those organs. I thought that those were, you know, superstition, but now we have actually scientific support.

Is it like amino acid tracer studies on them or something like that? It's crazy, they actually wind up in the target organ. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Yeah.

And what about, um, exosomes?

Yeah, we like exosomes here for sure, and I use that strategically along with stem cells. I never I almost never use them by themselves. Sometimes, you know, it may be appropriate, like for skin, hair, you know, maybe for joint injections if someone really prefers. But I always like having stem cells on board because I always say the stem cells are the mothers of exosomes because that's what produces the exosomes, right? MSCs produce a lot of exosomes. A lot of companies provide products, exosome products that came from growing the mesenchymal stem cells, MSCs. And they keep spewing out these exosomes. So the issue of putting just exosomes in the body, the benefit is that you have a lot of them and it's very anti-inflammatory. It can go to all your tissues, can produce a lot of benefits, but they're very short-lived. So they don't last very long. Once they're in the body, you know, they dissipate pretty rapidly, but their effect can last for generally between 1 to 3 months. But if you put the cells in the body, the cells can live in your body for 1 to 3 months. And in the meantime, they will travel to where they're needed. They have the ability to sense where they're attracted to, right? All the inflammation and injury. So they will get to those areas. And once they're in those areas, they're going to secrete exosomes that are actually relevant. So it's almost like a smart pharmacy, right? You're sending this intelligent entity into the body, and they find it, and then they give you exactly what you need. So instead of blindly sending out, making all these exosomes, they're giving you exosomes that actually targeted. So I like that.

But you still use the laser to target as well?

Um, the laser is more for directing the cells.

Okay. Yeah. What's the difference between directing the cells and, and targeting them?

Um, first of all, the lasers can make the cells more mobile. And what's fascinating is there's one study looking at, I think it's mice, they induced heart attack. I'm just— I, I don't like those kind of animal studies, but it, it can instruct us on what's going on. So they induce heart attack.

Yeah, I'd rather mice be having a heart attack than humans. So yeah, um, although I wish they could do it on fruit flies, that'd be even better.

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if there are other ways. Maybe they can just, I don't know, they can just do it on humans with heart attack. But anyhow, they can shine light on the, they just shine light on tibia, you know, on their leg. And then what happened was that they, and then later on they sacrificed them. The mice that got light shining on their leg versus the one that didn't get light shine on them, when they look at their heart, the amount of stem cell density in the heart of the mice that got the light, got the real laser, the density is 25 times as much as the one that didn't receive any laser treatment.

And was the laser directed on the heart area?

I think the laser activated these cells and made them more mobile. Okay. So they're a lot more mobile.

So you didn't even have to expose the heart to the laser. You had to expose the cells.

Exactly. So we're activating the intelligence almost, you know, making them you know, either intelligence or just making them more energetic. But there's a whole process of the photobiomodulation I think is more profound than what we think, because a lot of times we talk about mitochondria. I think it does a lot more than that. We just don't understand yet. So light is very powerful. We're going to get into the stage of energy medicine, and we're just at the beginning, but incorporating energy medicine I think is very important. So they can activate the cells. But in the meantime, if I want to target certain organs, we can put the light more concentrated, you know, in a more concentrated manner at different organs while the stem cells are circulating.

So this laser that's like just sitting beside me right now, it's on. Obviously, there's lights. Is this just kind of like doing the thing where it's shining on me and then each time it goes around, it's going through the body? Yeah, there are different settings.

There are different settings to kind of go. So we do a— there's a pre-stem cell setting actually. So we're, you know, there are different wavelengths. Well, wavelengths is the same, but different frequencies. So it's almost like talking to cells. Different organs, different cells respond to different frequencies. So it's almost like programming a language. So there are 4 numbers and we're programming exactly.

This is on my— I'm not getting stem cells right now, am I? So this is on like a pre-stem cell frequency.

That's right.

So go through my, my clothes and everything?

Yes, it can. Um, it's probably that you're going to get more of the light without clothes, but black is actually the, the better ones as far as what you're wearing, um, to allow laser penetration. But, uh, we have other settings. There, there are hundreds of settings. Some are great for brain health, some are great for immune health, for gut repair, for you know, any kind of joint repair. So lots of different settings, talking with different tissues. So all these are based on research and clinical experience of what has been helping. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. So it's like this machine has its own language.

It's crazy. And you also do addiction.

Yeah, I don't do that very much anymore, but we have— the problem— so coming back to the story of why I transitioned from psychiatry to anti-aging and stem cell therapy is because psychiatry is not addressing the root causes. Let's say I'm treating someone with depression, but I'm not evaluating the person— if the person is getting proper nutrition, is the person's hormone really optimized, is the person toxic from some substance, is microbiome balanced. We're not looking at any of those. We just start throwing drugs because that's what we're taught to do. Either in medical school or residency, we are drug-focused. So it's all about drugs. We want to diagnose people very badly because we want to connect them with a drug. Without a diagnosis, we can't justify giving anybody drugs. So the diagnosis will allow us to write a prescription. And that, that was, you know, where our pride is at, right? We can prescribe you medication to alleviate suffering. Unfortunately, those medications almost all of them are not addressing the root cause. Temporarily, they're— I'm not saying they're not useful. I think for emergency use, they can be life-saving and powerful, but that is not the long-term solution. So even for something like addiction, I was a medical director at a few rehab centers in Malibu, so I saw firsthand how things were done. Unfortunately, we are still using the drug model. So, even if I try to be integrative, I try to address the root causes. Let me send you, you know, some labs. You know, I want to test your hormones and your nutrition, and let's see what kind of supplement we can give you to augment, you know, boost your own system or repair your brain. By the time I'm giving them supplements, a lot of these patients in the rehab, people in the rehab were telling me, hey, doc, you know, my insurance is not covering the supplement. 'Can you just write me a drug?' So, that was very disheartening, right? I did all this work.

When they say, 'Just write me a drug,' what kind of drugs are we talking about?

Antidepressants, antipsychotics.

These are the things you would use for addiction.

Yes. Yeah. Those are the bread and butter. So, yeah. The problem is that we're not addressing the root causes. What I believe the future of medicine is, is that everybody is going to be practicing anti-aging medicine. You can call it anti-aging medicine or integrative medicine. Or functional medicine, or even naturopathic medicine, they're all about the same, which is looking at the body as a very complex entity. Everything is affecting each other, and there are common denominators. So nutrients is one of the common denominator that affects everything, multi-organs. The microbiome affects multiple organs, right? Hormones, multiple organs. So you're looking at what can affect all these things and how they're all connected. So that should be taught in all medical schools across the board. Whatever specialty you're going to, you've got to be fluent in this integrative medicine language. So you want to address all of that first, and then you use your specialty knowledge to do things. That's where maybe you have other methods of treating a particular problem. Maybe some people need surgery. Maybe some people need some kind of heavy-duty drugs, you know, maybe. But you want to fix all the, the foundations first, not to mention you're improving the health of all these people. Yeah, overall. And whatever other intervention you're doing in your specialty, people are going to do better because their overall health is elevated.

I've seen NAD used in addiction clinics before. Do you use NAD?

Yeah, we do NAD here. Yeah, but we also use ketamine treatments, which is, um, you know, I, I'm very much a proponent Because I think it's a powerful— Like ketamine infusions? Yeah, IV treatment. So, ketamine is FDA-approved for treatment-resistant depression. And it's pretty powerful as far as lifting people out of depression very rapidly. The only thing that can do something so rapidly is shock, the shock therapy, the ECT.

Okay, electroshock therapy.

Electro— yeah.

How often or how many times does someone need to do a ketamine IV? Be to tackle an addiction problem?

Well, the general recommendation for ketamine therapy to strengthen the new neural rewiring is 6 sessions in the first 2 to 3 weeks. Okay. So that's the first block of treatment. So you get into a new pattern because it increases your brain-derived neurotropic factor so drastically.

And ketamine does. Huh? Ketamine does?

Yeah, it does. Interesting. New synapses is all shown. It's amazing. For PTSD, it's absolutely, you know, powerful. I'm not going to be able to help somebody with PTSD using stem cells. No matter how much stem cells I give them, it's going to be very difficult to change the wiring of the brain. So that requires a whole other way of addressing our health, because I think it taps into something that's way beyond just the chemistry. I think that goes into the whole quantum level and that's a whole other conversation. And yeah, so metaphysics at this point is still kind of a forbidden subject in medicine. That's not considered to be scientific. And it's simply because science doesn't have a language for it. So one day it's gonna be incorporated into the science of—

Quantum healing concepts. The language of science, yeah. God forbid you pray over a patient or send positive energies their way or anything like that.

Oh yeah. That's, uh, um, keep it to yourself.

Yeah, you mentioned nutrition. Knowing what you know, I'm just curious, what kind of diet do you eat?

Um, I try to— everybody's different, of course. Uh, I found out that, um, um, well, first of all, high blood sugar is not good for anybody. Blood sugar spikes is not good for anybody. But me in particular, as I found out later on, from the CGM, right, continuous glucose monitor, is that my blood sugar responds to something like rice or any carbohydrates very drastically and not very good because it's—

You're very sensitive to carbohydrates. Yeah. Okay.

So, I try to eat a low carbohydrate diet. And if I do eat carbohydrates, then it's gonna be more complex carbohydrates. Yeah, in whole grain. Yeah.

Carbs. And are there certain things like certain superfoods or supplements that you think are really good when it comes to especially the longevity or the anti-aging component?

Yeah, there's so many. It's so crazy these days. And it's, yeah, there's some that I think are great like AFA, you know, the blue-green algae. Yeah. I do take. And resveratrol sometimes I take. I'm not very good. Super consistent. But mushrooms, I'm a big fan of different types of mushrooms, very powerful.

Have you heard of Dr. Sandra Kaufmann before? She has this whole book called The Kaufmann Protocol, and she rank prioritizes all these different supplements and nutrients specifically for longevity effects. And she has a whole, like, like a table that shows their ranking. And I recently interviewed her I think she said the top one, I think it might have been astaxanthin, was like, oh, okay, curcumin was way up there. There's one other I hadn't heard of before.

Are you taking all those?

Check her book. Not regularly. I mean, like, I'll take certain cocktails of stuff like you talked about, that Stem Regen, for example. Yeah, I think that's just a cocktail of a bunch of those type of things.

Yeah, I think about 5 different herbs.

And you use that with your patients to prepare their body for stem cell infusions.

Again, if I can give them a little edge with the treatment, because I don't really care that I don't know what's doing what. I just want people to do better. And because I know how these things can enhance the body, and I just want people to get everything so they can get a lot of, you know, the maximum benefits.

There's so many, um, exercise modalities associated with longevity too, you know, the grip strength or VO2 max or lactate tolerance or any of these things, do you prescribe certain exercise protocols or you favor a certain approach to exercise?

I think, you know, I think you need a balance between strength training and cardiovascular training. So, it would be good if a person can do something that incorporates both. You know, I was, you know, at one point, I was only doing Zumba dance. So, that's more cardiovascular. Another point, I was only doing Pilates, you know, which is more resistance and strength training.

Yeah, Zumba's very cardiovascular for me, by the way. Zumba, yeah. I'm not very graceful on the dance floor. Not very inefficient at Zumba.

What's interesting, I think people are of better shape in my Pilates class than people in the Zumba class. So, you see all these women, they were all dancing together, but I see some women So many, most of them are overweight and they're all dancing like crazy. They were all, you know, really sweating and doing the best they can. And they may do it a few times a week. So it's curious, why are they still so overweight? I think one is poor nutrition. They're putting things in their body that's preventing them from actually having an efficient metabolism. The other one, yeah, not enough weight training and strength training. Yeah. Yeah.

So probably a little bit of self-selection there as well. I think probably the demographic that would frequent Pilates might just be generally more aware of fitness, nutrition, instead of the person who signs up for the dance class. Maybe I might be stereotyping.

And it's even better in hot yoga. So now I have incorporated hot yoga, which is a little bit more cardiovascular, more stretching. And so that's— I think, you know, I found a nice balance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard, um, the person who introduced us was actually a former podcast guest of mine, Dave Pascoe. Oh, um, And he told me a few days ago that you wrote a book.

Yes.

Tell me about that.

Oh, okay. Um, can, um, can you grab the book for me? And yeah. Uh, yeah, it's called Tiger of Beijing. So, um, this is, um, it's a memoir, but not the typical memoir what people are thinking about. So, so, so that's the—

Is that you on the COVID That's me. Wow. So, Taya, how long ago did you write this?

Probably about 4 years ago, maybe close to 5. Yeah. So this is only about 3 years of my life.

But this book is 3 years of your life?

Yeah. From age 20 to 22. Yeah.

So this is not about like health and medicine per se?

No, no. I was going to write this book as a novel. Because it's such a good story. Chapter 1, it starts with my visa rejection in Beijing, standing in front of the Beijing American Embassy.

So you were trying to come to America from China and get a visa to do something?

Yeah, I was an architecture student in college, but I wanted to come to America, so I kind of had to switch major in order to get scholarships. And I did everything possible, 18 months of hard work and I got a scholarship to Clark University. I was excited. My parents, you know, we didn't have much clothes, we didn't have a suitcase. We're going to buy everything after I get my visa. And I got rejected because the man behind the counter did not believe the person that was doing the affidavit of support, who was my mom's student, he would actually be willing to help me. So he didn't believe it. But if I had known a real American instead of a Chinese, person, you know, a real person, American, or someone that's actually a relative, then I may have been approved. So it's nothing to do with my merit. It's because they didn't like who was sponsoring—

your affidavit was—

yeah, so sponsor. Yeah, so I was— so the book really, the story started with that rejection and my anger because of that. The anger kind of fueled me to seek a way out of that. And if you just think about it, here's a young girl with no money, no connections, but just a desire to go to another country. Um, the two— two of the most powerful governments in the world are making it very difficult. So the Chinese government did not make it easy, and the Americans just said no. So, so I had to find a way to know an American find somebody to sponsor me. So that's when I went on a little bit of an unconventional adventure to actually know an American person who actually—

you know anybody who's American at the time?

Not really. Wow. Yeah, I had to find a way. So I did something that's very unconventional. I took the Yellow Pages of Beijing.

I just, I just got like the phone book. Yellow Pages? Yeah, the phone book.

Okay, so I just flipped through.

Our young listeners might not know what that is, but— oh, the phone—

oh, that's what I've even thought about that.

You look up phone numbers.

Yeah, so I just— it's like, um, I was shooting in the dark, right? I was shooting darts. And so I was like, I'm just gonna call. I don't know anybody, so how about I just know somebody? So I took the Yellow Pages and I took phone book and flipped to the part of all the big hotels in Beijing, and I just started to call different rooms randomly. So So I talked about, you know, I met some creeps, but then I also ended up, you know, in a very circuitous way, I became a tour guide to Tibet. So there's a huge adventure.

Oh, and that was how you met Americans. Yes.

Oh. And so it was a very interesting story, but that was good that I met Americans, ended up coming to San Francisco.

Yeah.

That's only half the story. And then it turns out that it was a tough situation for me, you know, as a young woman. Trying to navigate all these, you know, basically a relationship that was actually not good. There was a lot of manipulation, a lot of control. It was a difficult thing for a young person or for anybody to navigate, not to mention an inexperienced young person in a relationship. So I ended up having to escape that situation because it got very toxic. So I talked about me ending up literally escaping. So that was the story, but triumphing eventually.

Wow. And I'm assuming after that, that then got into medicine.

Yeah. So after that, I got into— Yeah, the book kind of ended with me giving a valedictorian speech at San Francisco State. So going from me thinking I was going to be homeless on the streets of San Francisco to actually giving a speech to 10,000 people. Wow. Yeah.

Incredible. So, the book again is called "The Tiger of Beijing." Cool. "Tiger of Beijing." I will link to this in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/JoyKong as well as everything else that we talked about. But, Joy, how do people find you? How do people actually try out some of these protocols that that we're doing today or some of these other techniques that you have here?

The best place to find me will be drjoykong.com. So that has everything I'm doing. So not only I have my clinic where we do a lot of, you know, therapies, but we— I also have a stem cell company that we— I developed a formulation of a stem cell product that actually combined different components from the umbilical cord. So instead of almost all companies out there, all tissue banks, they only focus on one segment of the cord, you know, cord blood or cord tissue or amniotic membrane. They're all good. But when you combine them together, it's more powerful because all these cells have different properties, have different differentiation potentials and different growth factor profiles. So I'm— I think I'm the only one in the industry actually developed something that brought all of them together. And so that's the product that we're sending to doctors all around the country. And so that's one sector. And then I also founded the Academy, American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy, where we do physician training. And that's where, you know, we have pioneering spirits. You know, it takes some balls to actually do stem cells because it's not FDA approved. So, so I love the group of people who are willing to take this on. Wow. And, and then I developed a skin cream called Chara Omni.

And Chara Omni? Yeah. What's that?

That's a 100% natural skin cream that contains umbilical cord stem cells. And yeah, like the world's most expensive. Yeah. So, so these are two formulations. One is Mr.

Regular. It has umbilical stem cells in it?

Yes.

They're not alive. Legal? They're not a lot. So that's Wharton's jelly extract. Wow. Amniotic matrix. Geez.

Wow. Yeah. And then a lot of peptides. Yeah. And all kinds of herbal extracts and antioxidants.

Chara peptide blends. These are some of the peptides that are like—

Yeah. So if people are interested, they can always go to charaomni.com. It has all the ingredients.

Wow.

But these— the reason I developed them was because I wanted to have a 100% natural cream for myself. And it's very difficult to find. And the ones that I found ended up not being stable, not being shelf-stable. So it's like, it's too new. And then the people who are doing it are not really able to make a good product. So then I realized I have access to stem cells and to peptides, so I can formulate something that's actually 100% natural. Even the preservatives are natural. So I'm sacrificing some shelf life, half-life for 100%.

So for those of you who have always jumped up putting stem cells on your face, now you've—

this is the only thing I'm willing to put on my face for the last 5 years.

5 years?

Wow.

Yeah. Thank you. So, so I will, uh, see, you said your website is drjoykong.com? Yes, like drjoykong.com or joykongmd.com. Yeah. And if you, if you're listening, you go to the show notes, those are going to be at bengreenfieldlife.com joykong, K-O-N-G. Joy, this is fascinating. Yeah. You're doing very interesting work.

So, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure.

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