Dr. Joy Kong (stem cell specialist) responds to Tony Robbins' book Life Force, agreeing that many traditional doctors lack education about stem cell research. She emphasizes that both the quantity and quality of a person's stem cells decline with age (claiming roughly 20% of newborn levels by the 40s and much less by age 80). She highlights the advantages of birth-tissue sources (placenta, umbilical cord) which contain pluripotent stem cells and can protect the fetus, and she disputes a claim that cord-blood (hematopoietic) cells are limited to forming only blood cells, noting recent science shows greater developmental flexibility.
Chapters
You. Hi, this is Dr. Joy Kong. As you know, I love stem cells. And I want to continue to tell you about my thoughts on Tony Robbins book Life Force, where he talked quite a bit about stem cells. And I want to express my agreement with him that a lot of traditional doctors are not very positive when it comes to stem cells. Not because they know so much about stem cell science, because. And research is because they don't know. And there's very little that's taught to doctors about stem cells. So if you don't look for it, then you won't know that there are countless research all around the world on this subject. So it's also true that our stem cell supply decline as we age. So there's no way around it. Just by being alive. The number of stem cells decline. The quality also declines to a drastic degree. Maybe by the time you're in your 40s, you only have about 20% of what you had when you were first born. And by the time you were 80, then it's even a lot less. It's about a quarter of what you had in your 40s. So the other thing that the book got it really right is that there's power in the birth tissue source, because when you were born or before you were born, as you were forming, there are these, your placenta and your umbilical cord is supplying nutrients to you. And the placenta did serve as a defense for the fetus. So very few mothers, you know, if they ever had cancer, ever pass cancer down to the baby. The placenta could very much protect the baby from all kinds of infections or even diseases. So in the placenta, there are cells, pluripotent stem cells. But one thing that the book in that chapter mentioned, that blood cells as compared to cord blood stem cells, as compared to placental stem cells, have limitations because they can only develop into blood cells. And. And that is not correct, because even if cells are from the cord blood, even hematopoietic progenitor cells that you think only can develop into blood cells, they can actually develop into much wider variety of stem cells of cells. So the science keeps evolving, and we now know that these cells have a lot more flexibility. So that's all I want to share at this point, and then I'll continue with my feedback on the book and I'll see you next time. Sam.
