Joy Kong, MDRegenerative Medicine Physician, Educator, and Entrepreneur

How Aging Affects Our Stem Cells

3 Dec 2024 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:45

YouTube video (creator: Joy Kong, MD) explaining that mesenchymal stem cell numbers decline drastically with age in an approximately exponential pattern. Speaker gives concrete frequency examples: at birth ~1 in 10,000 cells, teenage years ~1 in 100,000, 40s ~1 in 400,000, and 80s ~1 in 2,000,000, arguing this decline could lead to running out of stem cells over time.

Questions this video answers

1 in 10,000 cells.

1 in 100,000 cells.

1 in 400,000 cells.

1 in 2,000,000 cells.

Chapters

What happens when you grow up and age. First of all, the number of stem cells in your body drastically decline. It goes like this, exponentially. So when you were born, the most important type of stem cells, they're called mesenchymal stem cells. One in 10,000 cells is a mesenchymal stem cell. But when you reach your teenage years, it already has become 1 in 100,000. So you got 10 fold decrease. When you reach your 40s, it becomes 1 in 400,000. And when you reach your 80s, becomes 1 in 2 million. So you can see how it declined so drastically that you are going to begin to run out of stem cells as you age further and further.