Do IV Stem Cells Really Get Trapped in the Lungs?

When we give stem cells through the IV route, they are not trapped in the lungs. That's an old story that needs to not be told anymore because the cells do disperse throughout the body and find areas where they're needed and fight your battle. And that has been proven by new evidence. Hi, this is Dr. Joy Kong. Welcome back. So I answer many questions in the arena of stem cell therapy. So today there is an important question to answer because people ask a lot. Okay. Doctor, when we give stem cells through the IV route, don't they get trapped in the lungs? So this lung trapping concept has been stuck for some time. Sometimes old concept die hard. So, yes, initially there's some research showing that cells tend to be trapped in the lungs. But later on, there's some other studies that actually showed when you give cells through the IV route, where within three days is not detectable. It's actually not detectable anywhere. Not in the lungs, not in any other places. Guess what? Because they're so diffused, we know when cells are given through the IV route because we've shown that with animal models over and over again that the cells actually show up in tissues, in the organs that they're trying to repair. So we know the cells are there, they travel to places. But just because you can't detect it through your method of fluorescence tagging, et cetera, doesn't mean that they're not there. So the rationale or the, you know, the. The concept behind what I'm saying is when cells are circulating your body, if you have a pathology somewhere, they're going to attract the cells. Same thing goes for the lungs. So, yes, when we give stem cells through the intravenous route, it will go back to the heart first, and then it gets pumped into the lungs, gets oxygenated, put back in the heart, and then pumped throughout the body. Right. So that's a circulation. So if the first place that the cells go to are the lungs, if you have lung problems, you have lung pathology, then there's inflammation and problems in that area. Yes, the cells are going to be trapped. They're going to want to stay there to do their work. But if there's no problem, they're going to go back into the circulation. They're going to go to places they're needed. And studies have shown again and again that they go everywhere, they find places where they need to work. What's interesting is I want to share a study. It was actually a 2019 study coming out of Korea, and they were looking at what happens to wound healing when you Inject the cells either through the intravenous route or through the intramuscular route or subcutaneously. So what happens to the wound healing? And they realized it doesn't matter which route you go, the healing happens to very similar degrees. So that just shows to. Shows you that when cells are put in the body, that they are going to find their way to where the healing needs to occur. So if you put the cell locally, yes, you can promote healing right there. Right. You get a high concentration of cells. But if you put cells in an intravenous route, depending on how much problem is going on elsewhere, right. If you have a lot of fires that the cells need to put out, then the cells are going to be dispersed, be divided. Right. An army is going to be divided to fight separate battles. So that's why a lot of times when I give stem cell treatments, I will. Depending on the issue, sometimes we may want to put the cells in the local area, But a lot of times the just putting the cells in the intravenous route, the cells can get to the places where they're needed. So just like the. My very first patient, I never touched this patient's rotator cuff, his shoulder. I didn't even know about his shoulder problems. We're focusing on his knees. And then we put the cells into the IV location. Right. And then we put the cells into both of his knees. So never touched his shoulder. But the rotator cuff injury was healed pretty rapidly. We later on that got healed, decades of problems and pain every night, and that dissipated because of IV stem cells. So, you know, when people say it's going to be trapped in lungs, then you are basing decisions on some very old science that's just not true, not real. Because we see that the cells go everywhere every day and get to places where they're needed. Not to mention, when you give stem cells iv, they get to talk to your immune system. So they will talk to your spleen, your peripheral lymphoid organs, and they're going to mount this attack on the problems. So they're going to come together, send out different white blood cells and get to the area where they're needed. They can help haul away or calm the inflammation. They can, first thing. And then they can haul away damaged tissue and things that don't belong there. They can, you know, macrophages can eat them up and take. And then they can promote this regenerative signals, so they can help the body repair. We all know aging is closely related to immune decline, immune system decline, Right. So if you boost your immune function. Not only you repairing faster, and you're also aging slower. So that's. It's all tied in together. So the aging process is not that different from the disease process. It's just a slower, more mellow kind of process. Diseases are a little bit more aggressive, but eventually, if you keep aging and declining, then the diseases are going to come in. That's why the chronic illnesses, the closest indicator will be age. Right. For example, cancer. The biggest predictor for cancer is your age. So that's closely related to the aging process. So I hope this video is helpful in helping you understand that when we give stem cells through the IV routes, they are not trapped in the lungs. That's an old story that needs to not be told anymore, because the cells do disperse throughout the body and find areas where they're needed and fight your battle. And that has been proven by new evidence. Yeah. So as far as locations, you know, where you put the cells, that's an art of its own. Right. So you want to make sure that there's. There are enough cells to get to the places you want it to. To get to. So if you do have a lot of injuries and inflammation throughout your body and yes, then it's going to be hard for the doctor to direct the cells to exactly to the place that you want healing for. Because I've had patients where they came in for one problem and that one problem was not recovered very much, but another problem disappeared. So sometimes it's hard to control. Although in my clinic, I do use laser therapy to help focus and direct the cells to a particular organ, to a particular area to help them to aggregate. So we're talk talking about internal organs, the brain and where the liver, heart, and those are places that I would not inject. But I can direct the cells, I can help guide them into those areas. There are other places that are more accessible, such as joints, soft tissue, penis, vagina, face, scalp. Right. So those places I can easily inject the stem cells right into that area. Of course, the benefit is that I'm sure that the cells are there. Not only are there, but in bigger quantities, as much quantity as I want. Right. I can really have control over how many cells are delivered. So especially for larger joints like the, the knee or the hip or the shoulders, you need to inject into, if we know the pathology is within the joint itself, because those areas are so poorly perfused, so they don't have very much blood and supply into the area. The exchange between the synovial fluid and the blood is very, very slow. Takes a couple months for things to equilibrate. So in those cases, you want to put some cells right there, right. To accelerate the speed of healing. And for some other areas, you know, of course, the penis, vagina for sexual wellness and the facial rejuvenation, then you have control. We're putting more cells right there. So let's get them go to work. And same thing for hair restoration, for scalp injection. So that's kind of the. The. The basic concept. And I really want to help dispel this myth about IV stem cells being trapped in the lungs. So this not only has clouded the judgment of providers, but also confused a lot of patients who are seeking therapy. So they hurt that somewhere and then that got stuck in their head. So I want to make sure that we are getting this clear, that IV delivered stem cells can get to where they're needed. But of course, there are all kinds of considerations that I just talked about, so I hope you find this helpful and we. I'll see you next time for another subject. Okay. Thank you for watching.