Sick of Chronic Issues? Here Is How Stem Cells Can Help You | Dr. Joy Kong & Melissa McAllister

So bone marrow. For a long time people thought the only place our body have stem cells is the bone marrow. That's the reservoir, that's the source. And then they realize, you know, after decades, oh, I guess they're everywhere, but they're different kinds.

I want to ask you what inspired you to actually go into the type of medicine that you do, the stem cell therapy and the anti aging. What was the, was there anything in particular that made you go this is, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to focus on?

Yeah. So initially my eyes were wide open. I could go into any branch of medicine in medical school. I mean they're all fascinating. But I love the brain. I love the understanding of thoughts, emotions and, and just human's perception of the world. So I went into psychiatry. But during psychiatry, you know, work, because I counting residency, I really worked in psychiatry for 11 years. During time I kept wanting to incorporate the kind of holistic approach to health that Chinese medicine has. But the problem is that Chinese medicine speaks in poetry and western medicine speak in science and the two languages are so hard to integrate. So I was, I kept, I knew the body's connected and you know, by different organs are connected. But then I don't have the language to quite, you know, work that into my diagnosis or my, my analysis of patients, just the two separ systems. And then I got, got a hold of functional medicine or integrative medicine or anti aging medicine. These are all offshoots of the same philosophy which is looking at underlying causes of all the functions of the body.

Right.

It could be a single vitamin that's connecting, you know, ten different organs together. It could be a hormone, right. That again affecting all these different body parts. So you don't separate them out, you don't just. I, I want to just study your brain or I just want to start study your muscular skeletal system as if everything is not connected. Right? That's just wrong and naive. And that's got to change. Medicine's got to change because it's so primitive. If you're separate, separating out different organs, you are being a kindergarten. You know kid, you're not really thinking, you know, in wisdom and in really true understanding. So after coming across functional medicine, anti aging medicine, these branches of medicine are more forward thinking because they're dealing with concepts that have not been incorporated into conventional medicine yet. So they're really open at looking at what's the new research. What about, you know, studying this amino acid, what about the peptide? Like they are embracing new things and Stem cell therapy is one thing that they do educate people on and embrace. So the moment is I. I call it being touched by light, because I believe the intelligence within the cells, I mean, that is emanating tremendous energy and light. And so it's like I'm touched by this kind of intelligence, understanding that we can harness these primitive cells that have all these capacities either in our own body, or we can borrowing. Borrow it from a young newborn's, you know, waste product. That's umbilical cord and placenta, that we can borrow those cells and let that light speak in. In the body. It's like being touched by light. And. And that was it. I said, this is magical. It sounds magical, right? If you look at the signs. Whoa. It actually does that. It actually works. The cells actually know where to go and what to do. Well, this is miracle. Well, we are miracles, so never mind that. We are simply walking miracles. So that's the time when I went from a psychiatrist to a stem cell specialist. Basically, I didn't know I was going to become a stem cell specialist. I just thought it was just the coolest thing, because as a person that was not trained in orthopedic surgery, of course I went through rotations, but, you know, we. I was a novice as far as the depths of knowledge of different surgeries and all, or depth of knowledge when it comes to different specialties. But I started to treat patients with all kinds of problems that belong to different specialties. Right? People with musculoskeletal problems usually go to orthopedic surgeons, people with autoimmune condition that usually go to a rheumatologist, people with lung problems that usually go to a pulmonologist or anywhere, you know, endocrine. I started treating people with all kinds of problems that the specialists have no answer for. So then I was feeling like I felt like a hero. Like, I felt like, oh, my God, this is so fun. I can't believe I just did that. I can't believe I just made this person feel so much better after struggling for 20 years and seeing 10 specialists. So that is an incredible feeling and very addictive. And I'm trying to spread this happy addiction to everybody, to all the doctors. Come on, look at this. We have a way to help all these people. This is a fundamental. This is not some esoteric, some fancy stuff. This is a fundamental. This is called the secret of life that we can tap into. So that's what I want to share, because it really, whatever you do, you can still have your specialty and your specialized knowledge about the different organs that you want to utilize this fundamental drive, driving force for thriving of life. So that's why I consider stem cells the engine of health and of our body, of life, because really, without it, you're just going slower and slower. Slower. And you're just not running very well if you think of your body as a vehicle, because as we age, the number of stem cells drops down like a cliff. Literally is coming down like a cliff. Because when you are a teenager, the number of stem cells in your body is one tenth of what you had when you were first born. And then when you reach your 40s is a quarter of what you had when you were a teenager. And when you reach your 80s is 1/5 what you had when you were in your 40s. So literally, you are just running out of this powerful engine. So. Yeah, so I was touched by the power of this engine and. And that I can't stop ever since.

I almost feel like maybe you didn't choose this practice, it chose you.

Probably. Probably. Yeah. It's like there's no choice because it's so powerful. It just. Yeah, the. The. It's like being carried by the energy.

Yeah, for sure. So for our listeners, can you kind of explain for people who maybe this is the first time they're actually even hearing the term stem cell therapy, can explain the basic principles of stem cell therapy?

Yeah, I'm laughing because I just. Your kitty is so beautiful. It's so cute. Anyhow, what a happy thing to see. So, yeah, stem cell therapy is utilizing these primitive cells that we still have in our body, whether or not it's from our own body. Of course, the older you are, the less there are and the lower the quality they have. Or you can get it from different other sources. In the US you can get it from the umbilical cord, placental source, and that's absolutely legal. But if you go, there are fetal stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Those are not legal to use unless you are enrolled in a clinical study. So this is one reason that those therapies can exist maybe in some other countries that have looser regulations. But stem cells are these primitive cells that our body started with. So just think of yourself as a fertilized egg. Right. You were once a single cell. And that cell can start to divide and migrate and form different structures. And in that process, they start to differentiate, which means they're gaining function. They start to become more specialized, little bit by little bit. But each step of the way, the moment they gain some Function, then they lose some potential. So initially they can become anything, right? Any part of your body. But then gradually they lose that potential. But then they gain a. You know, they're becoming more specialized, right? Kind of doctor going to medical school, you get more and more and more specialized, but then you're gaining the. You're losing the potential to become everything. So you have the original younger cells that's higher up in the hierarchy that have all these potentials. And then you had the lower hierarchy. Stem cells differentiate and form cells of a particular tissue, you know, going in that direction. So you can intercept anywhere along the way. You can borrow the stem cells from anywhere. The commonly used one in the world right now is called the mesenchymal stem cells. So these are really coming from a particular germ layer because there are different. Three different germ layers when embryo is forming. So this came from the mesoderm. And they are these cells that somehow that got everywhere in your body. So anywhere you have blood circulation, you have blood vessels. These cells are right there. They're holding onto your blood vessels, and they're sensing what's going through your blood. They're also sensing what's going around in the neighborhood. So they're like. They're the conductor of the symphony, right? So they're sensing the signals in the blood. If there's something wrong that they're sensing that they can squeeze themselves right into the blood vessels and start to swim upstream to find where the problem is. And they can also travel right outside of blood vessels, and then they can start secreting signals to talk with local cells. They can send signals to the immune system, of course, but they can also send signals to local cells, including local stem cells, and telling the local stem cells to come on, you know, it's time to work. It's time to, to. To. To. To be activated and not just sit around. Because a lot of times in inflammation, things are stagnating. They're just sitting around, they're not doing anything. But really, it's time for them to. To make new, fresh, healthy cells. But you have to remove the toxic component, right? You have to make room. So if everything is stuck with disease and sick cells and then it just sits there, so the stem cells can go and literally help the immune system to recognize these bad elements and gobble them up, digest them, and take them away. Now you've got room. And then the stem cells at the local tissue, specific stem cells are getting the signals now. They can start to divide and replenish the tissue. So that's the hallmark of stem cells is that their ability to differentiate. Right. Become more specialized and to make more copies, self renew so they can make copies of a cell that's more specialized and a copy of itself. So it can always retain its own population. But of course, it doesn't retain forever. Otherwise we will have the same amount of stem cells as we were born. But that's not the case. But so there's still an attrition rate. And then. So their function is to replenish and help the tissue to eventually regenerate and making fresh, new tissue. So we're new and whole again. Yeah. So that's the general concept of stem cells, the original blueprint that make. Make life fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating. Just, you know, coming from the nutrition world, there are misconceptions of everything, and there's always the huge proponent. And if there's somebody who's super excited about it, there's going to be somebody who thinks it's not so good. You just can't escape it. What misconceptions about stem cell therapy are there out there and that you can kind of debunk?

Yeah, there are a lot which is very interesting. You wouldn't think so, but I guess because there's such a. There's a long history of how the stem cells came to be. So there were different camps of different types of cells. People are into how the research were and how some people want to stick with the research protocols. So that conflicts what's being used in real life. So I'll just go into detail a little bit. So 1960s, that's when the bone marrow transplantation was started. That was the first stem cell transplant, and that was using a person's bone marrow. So bone marrow. For a long time, people thought the only place that our body have stem cells is the bone marrow. That's the reservoir, that's the source. And then they realize, you know, after decades, oh, I guess they're everywhere, but they're different kinds. So in the bone marrow, majority of them are very primitive immune cells. There's what's called hematopoietic progenitor cells. These are the cell original young cells that can make all the cells of the blood. So white blood cells, red blood cells, so they regenerate your blood system. And then they found out, okay, there are stem cells everywhere. Oh, my God. In fact, actually, it's not the fat that contains stem cells. It's the blood vessels that are supplying the fat that have these mesenchymal stem cells. I was talking about that's hugging the blood vessels, right? So you're getting stem cells from along the blood vessels. So then you can get cells that way. But you can get cells from the dental pulp, from menstrual blood or even from blood. You can get it from a lot foreskin. I mean there, there are all kinds of places where you can get stem cells, but the most commonly used would be bone marrow, the fat or the umbilical cord. So one misconception is that, oh, you gotta use your own cells, otherwise there's gonna be a rejection. In theory, that's possible, but in practicality that's not the case because the idea of that you have to use a person's own cells and comes from the misconception that the way the cells work is by becoming new tissue. So I give you cells. Let's say you have muscle injury, I put the cells in your muscles and the cells all of a sudden is going to start to divide and form new muscle cells. Well, that's the old way of thinking how the stem cells work. Now we realize we don't have to do that because if we put the cells in the body, the cells, the stem cells can activate your body's ability to regenerate and tell local muscle specific stem cel it. I'm telling you to do it. I'm, I, I'm much, I'm better than that, right? I can do a lot more than becoming, you know, a muscle cell. I, you know, I, I have other jobs to do. But I'm telling you, you do this right? It's like a CEO, you do it. So we don't need. Because research has been proven over and over and over and over. It's like ad nauseam when they were trying to figure out, okay, we give the stem cells and the tissue regenerated. So are these the cells? Are these the progeny of the cells we gave? So it's new tissue, but guess what? Not it's not is actually from the person's own cells. So nothing to do with the donor cells you just put in the body because they can tag those cells so they can see, you know, whether or not these are the offspring's cells from the original cells you injected. And it's not, you know, 99% of the time is not. So that means the cells function. And as a director of this regeneration is telling your cells to do this job. So that's one misconception that you think that you need to your own cells to divide and make new tissue. Because in that case, if you are making new tissue, then you are expressing the surface markers of the cell, which means if it's not identical to your body, there's a chance of rejection. Right. When they start to express themselves when they were young stem cells, there's no surface markers that mark them as foreign. They're just the kind of like blank. Blank slate. Right. They don't. Your body can't recognize that this is not myself. This is. It looks like. Yeah, that. That looks just fine. Nothing, nothing different about it. But once it starts to differentiate and gain function. What's gaining function? Gaining function is expressing different proteins, sending out proteins, and putting new surface markers. So all these things are the manifestation of the evolution of a cell. So when they start to express themselves, then you can express the genetic coding, which result in different sequences of the protein, and that result in different shapes of the protein, and that can trigger an immune interaction. Right. So your immune system may say, oh, what kind of protein is this? This is completely different from me. So I need to get rid of this cell. This is a foreign cell. It doesn't belong here. But now we know majority of the time, these cells, even if it's donated from somebody else, the job is not to become local cells. It doesn't quite express itself. Vast, I would say over 90% of the chance. These cells are just conducting the symphony. They're not becoming your worker bees. So your body doesn't really have a chance to reject because the new tissue is formed by your own cells. So that's the first misconception. The second misconception that comes from this diverse history is that people think that you have to use a lot of cells in order to achieve a result, the more it's better. And I've actually, because I teach a course, it's called the Fundamentals Stem Cell Practice through American Academy of Integrated Cell Therapy. We specifically talked about dosing, and I analyzed these research articles who actually were looking at how much to give people. Do we give? You know, a little bit, medium dose, high dose. And guess what, there's a Goldilocks zone. It's not like the more you give, the better. Sometimes the more you give, the less the result. And also there's so much variation. It's not just about how many cells you're giving, it's about what kind of cells you're giving. If you're giving cells. First of all, if you're using your own cells, the chances are your own cells will not be as potent as the umbilical cord stem cells, because your own cells have gone through your life with you, everything you've ever done, every breath you've ever taken, that have pollution in there, every food you ever had, an alcohol drink you have had. All that is affecting your cells. So there's degradation of your blueprint. Not only the cell itself, but the blueprint is damaged in certain ways. So using your own cells would not be as effective and potent. I have a whole lecture on YouTube. It's called Are Omics Created Equal? Where I go into depth of analyzing the comparisons between a person's own stem cells, whether or not it's from bone marrow or fat. Compare that with the umbilical cord cells. So there's no question that umbilical cord cells, because they're younger, they are more potent. So they're not just people think, oh, they're the same age as the newborn. No, no, no, no newborn. Because when the baby was forming, when there was this tiny little embryo, the cord was already formed and all these cells were trapped in the umbilical cord and they just stayed the way they were. So they contain a lot of the earlier characteristics that have disappeared in the stem cells in the baby's body. Right. It's. It's kept evolving and no longer had those early embryonic markers. But then these early cells trapped in the umbilical core still carry those characteristics, so they're more potent. So the. Not just, you know, the number, but also the number it depends on what did you do to the cells? Let's say we are giving umbilical cord cells and there are companies which are just about every company overseas. I know you are in Mexico, so Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Bahamas, like all these places, they use cells that are expanded. When we say expanded, which means they get the cells from. Extracted from the umbilical cord, and then they put them in a culture medium and stick them in a incubator and let them grow and grow and grow. Guess what? Because that's what early researchers were doing. They were growing the cells. They thought that we need more cells to exert certain kind of effect. So we need to grow them to large numbers and then we take a portion and we use it on the, the patient or the test subject. So the recommendation is 1 million per kilo of body weight. That is very common. That's, you know, somewhere around There, you know, 0.5 to 2 million per kilo is kind of the range. But 1 million per kilo is, is the, the general, you know, what you see a lot. So people think, oh, gosh, you know, if I'm you know, 70 kilo. I need at least 70 million cells. So that's how the number got there. And of course, research. There are research showing 100 million, 200 million. So they think, okay, we gotta reach that number. So people think that they need to reach a certain amount of cells in order to exert benefit. But the problem is that when you are growing the cells in a culture, it's not like these cells just gonna keep dividing into identical copies of itself is gonna. The tendency is to divide into a daughter cell, which is more differentiated and a copy of itself. Because that's what they do. That's how they. Especially in a stressful environment. Oh my God, it's time to go to work. I need to specialize. I need to have some function. I can't just be a happy blank cell that have no capabilities, right. I have to be able to have a certain ability, you know, to, to, to do certain things. So they start to differentiate. The moment they differentiate, then they're also losing potentials and losing certain capabilities. And so they're no longer a original stem cell. And also when they are under that kind of stress, they can start to express different proteins and start to express inflammatory molecules. So those molecules, the cells under stress, these inflammatory molecules can cause side effects. Not to mention, if they start to express themselves, they're going to express all kinds of proteins on the surface, right. So those proteins can also cause rejection in the recipient. This is why when people go overseas, to lovely Mexico or Colombia, they get these massive number of cells. Pretty commonly I hear that a lot people are getting side effects. Even Tony Robbins, he's the one that was, made me realize, oh, I guess this is a big issue. He's like, oh yeah, you're going to get cytokine storm. That's part of the, you know, that's kind of the part where you expect, you know, yeah, I felt miserable, but. But that's okay. It's a good thing because this is just part what you get.

Yeah.

The truth is, I've never seen cytokine storm because we don't use cells that have been expanded. We use original cells that are carefully dissect, dissected out of the umbilical cord. And the way they were is the way that they are when I'm giving it to patients. So, so when you do not change the cells in any way, they retain a lot of the power and potential. And it's not just, I mean, conceptually that seems to be the case, that you're retaining the power. But I'm always speaking from evidence because research have compared, okay, let's compare what happens when we give people a lot of cells but they're expanded. Let's see what happens. So there's one research showed that when you give 10 times the number of cells, let's say I give 10 million to reach certain effect. And if I give a hundred million, but these are expanded cells, the effect not only is not more, is actually less. So you end up damaging your ability to promote healing. Right. So you're reducing your own efficacy. And that's why I'm not a big proponent, because I'm not sure that these cells actually are as capable. And then from what I've seen is that people are having a lot of side effects, high prevalence of side effects, and. But then they don't have to go through all that, right? Why, why decrease potency and cause more problems when you don't have to? So it's kind of ironic because in the US because of the FDA regulation saying that you cannot manipulate the cells, which when you grow the cells in a culture medium, that's manipulation. So the FDA says, oh, the moment you're growing the cells, that means you're making a drug. So that's what they say, right? So if you're making a drug, then you better go through drug studies. And those are very expensive, very cumbersome. You know, it takes a lot of energy and time. So all these companies decided to just go overseas. So because of that restriction, all these companies are producing cells that have not been manipulated. So they just get the cells out of the culture, I mean, out of the umbilical cord, and then bio preserve them and give it to doctors and doctors thaw them out and put in the human body. And because of this, we now realize, oh my God, we can produce results just as good, if not better than people who are going overseas and using massive amount of cells. So this is, you know, almost out of, because of the restriction, because the research was stuck in this high number of cells. You know, this rhetoric. But in clinical practice, because what we're doing as doctors in this country, when we use stem cells, we're not using them as a drug, we're using them as a tissue transplant. We're, we're supplementing the tissue. Right? So that's part of the practice medicine that's under the purview of different medical boards. So it's not, the FDA is not under the, the FDA regulation, they're not allowed to regulate how medicines practice. They're allowed to regulate How a drug is produced and whether or not it's safe. Right. We're not making a drug. We're. We're. We're giving people something that's from nature. That's part of how we do medicine. Right. I can. I can transplant one liver from one person to another person. I'm not going to apply for FDA approval because that's not. It's not their business. That's not, that's not what I do. Right. But you have to fulfill certain regulations. Regulations, and that's under the regulation of American association of Tissue Banks. So they have certain standards. You have to screen for all these infectious diseases. These are the parameters that you have to adhere to, and then you can transplant it. So it's a different realm and different governing body. So all the doctors who are doing stem cell therapy, who are doing these unexpanded original cells, they are operating under the. Basically, they are transplanting tissue. So they're not giving stem cells as. Because of these restrictions, in a sense that now we have massive amount of data showing how these original forms of cells are incredibly powerful. But the myth seems to persist. People seem to still think that, oh, I have to go overseas. Oh, stem cells, not legal in the U.S. oh, my goodness. I've been doing it for eight years. The number of clinics to do stem cells have quadrupled in the last five years. How is it not legal in California? All we have to do as a doctor is when we do stem cell therapy, we have to put a plaque on our door saying that this is. You're about to receive a therapy that's not FDA approved. Stem cell therapy is not FDA approved, considered experimental, and you have consulted with your primary care doctor. So that's. That's all the doctors have to do is to just let people know that this is not something that's FDA approved approved. But when we're using it as a tissue transplant, it doesn't really require FDA approval. But you know, that. That's a whole different. Another point. But that's why in the US Doctors can give stem cell therapy legally, because they're giving them as tissue transplantation. And the results has been pretty inspiring. Yeah.

Oh, I bet. Can you share with the audience maybe where you in particular, where you're using stem cell therapy? Like, is it more for. And who's a candidate? Like, is it more for people that have injury? More for people that have, you know, a degenerative disease? What's the most common places that this therapy is used in?

Yeah, so stem cell therapy of Course, you know, first started with bone marrow transplantation. So that still to this day is the only FDA indication. So FDA says you can transplant bone marrow or core blood into another person either for replenishing the blood system. After a person have blood cancer, right, they wipe, wipe out their bone marrow and then they can transplant this. Or for autoimmune conditions, they can also wipe out their immune system and then transplant this. So that's the first indication. But now that is a minority, definitely a minority of how the stem cells are used. The next one that came on board is the musculoskeletal use. So the orthopedic surgeons have been using bone marrow for a long time because you are already there, right? You're fixing the bone, the bone's broken, the bone marrow is out. They realize, oh, if I put some bone marrow in certain locations, the bones heal so much faster. You know, thin tissue do so much better. So that's how that had been entrenched as a tradition, as a typical way of how stem cells are used is for muscular, skeletal problem, bone, muscles and tendons and et cetera. And then we realize, oh, we found these mesenchymal stem cells that seems to have this broad range of action that do everything. How do we utilize them? And research just have been blossoming all around the world. There's so much research in all kinds of different conditions. So in our clinic, I would say almost 90% of people who come to see me have a severe health issue. So they can. It ranges from, you know, anything wrong with, with the brain, with their, of course, musculoskeletal. But it could be autoimmune, could be heart, lung, liver, kidneys, it could be, you know, other organs, wide range of issues. So some have more research backing it, some have not been researched as much. So in a sense, I'm gathering data, right? So when people come to me, my first thing is, okay, what is your condition? Do we have research on it? So a lot of times we do for a lot of conditions. Autoimmune is a typical, quintessential kind of type of condition that stem cells are very good at. Because why do stem cells, why are they so tailored toward autoimmune conditions? Because the mechanism of action, they're highly anti inflammatory and they regulate the immune system, they modulate the immune system. So if you're too weak in your immune response, then it can enhance it. If you're too overactive, it can dampen it down and make it more adaptable. So autoimmune condition is A huge sector that has a lot of research evidence, but there's some great evidence when it comes to heart, the lungs, liver, the brain. So there, there's a lot of evidence, but sometimes no one has researched a condition. You know, there are all kinds of obscure conditions. The doctors sometimes can't even give a diagnosis for that they don't know. Then we go into understanding what the mechanism behind the condition is. So everybody wants help. Everybody. You know, there's a sense of desperation by the time they come to me. So then let's look at what is causing your condition in the first place. Is there inflammation involved, chronic inflammation? Is there immune dysregulation involved? Is there tissue damage involved? If we touch upon any of these three points, then voila, yes, I think stem cell therapy has a chance because that's how they work. They reduce inflammation, they modulate your immune response, and then they signal the local environment not to only break down scar tissue, supply new blood, but also regenerate new cells. So then, you know, even for genetic, genetic problems, we can't change the genes by stem cell therapy, not at this point. But a lot of genetic problems don't manifest until somebody's a teenager, you know, older in life. That's because of all these metabolic waste and all this accumulated miscommunication, cellular problems over time that resulted in end organ damage. So then all of a sudden, oh, my organ is not functioning as well. Right. Either it's a heart or muscles. Then there's dysfunction. But we can start addressing the dysfunction because the cells can help repair damaged tissue. So just looking at these three broad categories of potentials, all of a sudden there's a lot of hope for a lot of conditions, right? Yeah, yeah. Because we're, we're covering a lot of ground. Not for everything, but, but that's a lot of ground.

Yeah. So just throwing these two out there, I don't know why these two came to mind, but listening to you talk about how maybe people will come to you because they're, they've got, they just don't feel well. Can stem cells help with things like asthma? Or are, are, is it way more specific than that? So if somebody just is, you know, miserable because they just can't seem to get their asthma under control, or they have severe allergies, or is there, can stem cells help in that area as well? Or is it not the more common ailments that people can't relieve from?

So for asthma, I think a lot of times things are lumped into one category without addressing what the underlying causes are. So, you know, different people have, they all have asthma, but they may all have different underlying causes. So airway over activation and inflammation. Right. Sensitivity. So did I have asthma? I think I did because I was on inhalers and I was, you know, almost. Yeah, I think I was taking a kind of low dose steroid because I was too reactive to my kitties, to my cats. And then I huff and puff, you know, when I exert, because, you know, over activation, responding to the environment. That's your immune, that's dysregulation. Immune system is not functioning perfectly. It's attacking things that are benign. So guess what? After I started doing stem cells, I'm off inhalers, I'm off all these medications. I don't need it. I'm not huffing and puffing anymore. I'm doing pretty great. So because your immune system regulated, we have people who have severe chemical sensitivity that can't even go to a public area, can't stand any kind of fume or perfume. Just things in life that they have trouble dealing with. And after stem cell therapy, they can go to all these places that they couldn't go to before. They don't break out anymore. So that's calming the immune system. So we're addressing some of the underlying causes.

I love that, I love that. So it sounds incredibly promising. And which is what, you know, from my perspective, that's stem cell therapy. I hear a lot of wonderful things about it. Are you using stem cell for just general anti aging as well? You are 25. I would tell you, you look good for a 25 year old. You look.

Thank you.

Incredible. So you, you walk the talk. Do you use stem cell or exosomes for anti aging? For the, the aging woman? He's doing everything right.

But you know, like I, I embrace aging. I embrace the fact that we're getting older, which means that we're accumulating years on earth. Right. We've lived our life. And that part I embrace. Right. Experiences and wisdom. The part I'm not embracing is the decline and sickness. Right. I'm not embracing that. I'm sorry, why, why would I embrace that? If I can embrace vibrancy and health and youthfulness, I'm gonna embrace that. But stem cell therapy is a powerful way of retaining that kind of the regenerative power to keep you useful and preventing you from getting sick and preventing you from declining. So I do use it for myself. Not quite by design, a little bit by accident. And I, you know, I, I got a stem Cell treatment. I thought, oh no, this is amazing because my friend who did it and she had this heightened energy and focus and sex drive and I just thought that this is fantastic, I have got to try this. And then I had a patient who ended up, you know, we canceled the treatment. So I got the cell. So that was three months later. So I thought, you know what, I'm definitely not going to waste this cell, you know, I'm going to put in me. So, so then, then I thought, yeah, as far as anti aging goes, we know the cells live in the body for about one to three months and their effect will last for another one to three months. From the exosomes they secrete and all the signals they secrete, of course they can actually have much longer ranging effect. But in general that's what we say, either you have the cells present to do the work and secrete all these signals or the signal itself can last for that long, another three months. That's why anti aging protocol, we say getting a stem cell therapy every three to six months. So for me at a three month mark, you know, I put some more cells in me. I thought, you know what, I'm just going to be more proactive, I'm just going to do it every three months. And yeah, so the result has been just fantastic, amazing. Because people keep telling me, hey, you look younger and younger. I still have people telling me like I haven't seen somebody for six months and he saw me, you're looking younger again. So it's, it's really amazing. It's so much fun. But we are actually here. We have the capability to do that. I always say, count yourself lucky you are here right now that you're living in this day and age. Because if had been 50 years earlier, there's absolutely no chance of this. You could be the biggest big shot on the planet. You could be the king or queen and still look at all those kings and queens in history, everybody, a lot of them were sending out emissaries to look for the fountain of youth. Nobody found it. And they all decline and age and die, right? But now you can be, you don't have to be, you know, a huge shot, a big shot. You can be just a regular person willing to put some resources into your own longevity and your own youthfulness. You can get it. So it's very fun. So about 10, 15% of my patients really don't have anything wrong per se, but we all have something wrong. I, you know, been in the medical field for this long and my just Observation with being around humans that nobody has a perfect body, right? Nobody's in perfect health. We all have imperfections, we can all tweak it. So there's a constant optimization. And you can utilize these cells, these blueprints, this light that's emanating from the intelligence from the cells to bring you back to a youthful state. And that is one of the most powerful tools that we have to date. And we have research backing it up. It's not just, we say it's going to make you live longer. It's very hard to test for longevity in humans because, because that's a very long study. But we can test it on young animals or just animals who live for a shorter amount of time, like mice or rats. They only live for about 20 months, so it's not difficult to see what happens to their lifespan. So consistently different studies were looking at giving these middle aged animals, younger animals stem cells and their lifespan extension extended by about 30%. And that's consistent. And even if you're older, they give stem cells to older rats who are at the human equivalent age of 75 years of age because half their peers have died. And then they start to give it, give them young stem cells. So comparing between the animals that got versus not getting the stem cells, the one that got the stem cells from the time of experiment until the time they died is three times as long as the animals that did not get the stem cells. So they live, the amount of time on earth they have is three times as long, not only longer, but they look better, they look younger, they're moving, you know, like a better locomotion and their ability to run mazes, their cognition is better. So not just all around, their quality of life has been extended. So their youthful existence had been extended. And then there's another experiment they ended up dissecting, you know, sacrificing the animals. And they were looking at the brain and the muscles and checking all these parameters for aging, including the neurotransmitter, amount of neurotransmitters, the amount of growth factors these cells can secrete, the toxic waste built up the senescent markers. So everything they were looking at, because when it comes to aging, they know at what age, what the numbers should be, right? There's a level, the senescent markers, it's going to be getting more and more and more. The growth factors will be less and less and less. But then when they check the markers, check these levels, all of these animals that got stem cells had their levels reverted back to the younger state, they were producing all these growth factor neurotransmitter at the level that they produced when they were younger. So you have evidence that you actually are reverting the cells to the younger state on the cellular level.

So what does that. When you're on the. I can imagine what, you know, you're going, you're coming in for a bum shoulder or you know, bad back, bad knees. I believe my husband has had every surgery done. He's an extreme sport guy and so he's just absolutely wrecked his spine. Spine. I believe, I believe he, yeah, he's done stem cell in his spine. So I understand that because it's, you know, obviously going to help rebuild that. But on the anti aging spectrum when you, you know, saying that you were, you know, using it on yourself, which I totally would do, but what does that look like? Is that, is it the same kind of injections? Is it, is it top.

Yeah, I believe, I believe IV infusions is very powerful because it has, has a, an effect that's throughout your body. So it can go anywhere in your body and repair any damaged tissue. But more importantly, I think because of its ability to communicate with your immune system. So one of the organs that the cells, you know, there are a lot of cells that get into that organ, that organ is the spleen. So that's a major immune organ. And then you also have all these peripheral lymphatic influence systems throughout your body. So it's communicating, is talking with your entire system. And immune senescence is a driving force of our senescence, of our aging process. So your immune system is younger, you're not going to get sick and you're not going to get cancer. Right. Everything's repaired more rapidly, more effectively, then you're going to stay at a younger state. So that's what, you know, I, that's what we do. We use IV route to deliver that kind of impact.

That's really powerful and I love, I hope everybody was listening that you know, your immune system is everything, you know that we being in the health and fitness world, the health and wellness, you know, it's, it's always about the body fat, it's about the, you know, the waist circumference and all that stuff. But what we really need to focus on are things like, you know, a healthy immune system and everything else kind of falls into place. And I love that I was not mistaken in seeing though that you do have, have a cream.

Yeah, it's like a, you know, like a side thought because I of Course, I mean, I'm grateful for the body I'm given, right? So I think taking care of yourself is a sign of respect, respect for the gift that you've been given. So you don't want to, you know, desecrate, right. A temple that you've been given, right. You don't want to write graffiti all over it. So that's how I feel about how I'm treating my body. So your skin is one of the major organs of your body. Your face is exposed to some toxic environment all the time. Typical example, you know, my mom, I remember seeing her like, like in shower because she literally have a line like her, her face is aging so much. Her face and neck is aging so much. But her torso, her skin look fresh and young, this drastic difference. So they age differently because of more damage. So I think your skin needs a little bit of, you know, TLC because it's, it's, it's taking the brunt of a lot of assaults. So having a good nourishing regenerative, some kind of cream and lotion to help the skin is really important. And that I didn't realize was such a challenge to find because I was, oh, I'm going to get a all natural cream that's, you know, not going to do damage to my, not only to my skin and also not to my hormone hormonal system. Because I been educated in the anti aging tradition which look at all the factors that affect your health, including toxicity. So toxicity from our environment is a very important contributor to our decline, our aging process. And then all these household items and cosmetics and they all have these perfume, they have so many hormone disruptors and do so much damage. And the skin is the most absorbent organ of the body. It just sucked these elements right in. So it's floating throughout my body. So I'm certainly not going to slather these toxic elements onto my face, right? So I wanted to find something that's all natural. And that I couldn't believe was such a challenge because I would. I remember buying very expensive Korean products because says it's all natural and then I trust and use it for a while. And then I was like, let me see what's, what are the ingredients anyhow? And then when I looked at the ingredients, there were all these synthetic ingredients, but they call it all natural. I couldn't believe it. So I started going to natural expos where they actually use natural ingredients. But then when I got samples from them, when I left them in my drawer for like a month and before I got to them when I took them out. The layers are separated, right. There's change in the cream which I certainly would not put on my face. Looking at all these different layers, I don't know what had happened to the ingredients. So I thought, for God's sake, you know, why can't I find a decent cream? And then I realized, you know, I understand stem cells. I love peptides and I love all these herbs. How about I put something together that put all of them in one and actually get people a 100% natural cream. So that's what I did. And even the preservative is natural. I'm not compromising. I said it's all natural and it's going to be all natural. So it's got stem cells. The cells are not alive. I always want to stress that, you know, I don't want to misrepresent, but all these beneficial ingredients from the cells, components from the cells are there. And then there are various peptides that have been known and studied for skin regeneration and you know, they've been demonstrated results. And then there are all these herbs I love. So I don't think there are any products out there that hasn't as many herbs as what I have. Some have sun protection, UV protection properties, some have pore cleansing properties, some are, you know, of course anti wrinkle and with nourishing fats. I mean it's just like amazing concoction of natural ingredients. Yeah. And that's the only thing I'm willing to put on my face face for the last five years. Absolutely love the ingredient and love this cream because it's so gentle that you can use it. It's, it's all in one. I love simplicity because I, I always, I was a little suspicious of people selling you a whole bag of things for your skin. Right. You have to put the toner on so things can slip deeper. Yeah. And then you put the serum on. So all these nourishing, you know, you know, molecules can get into your skin. And then you put a cream on. Oh, no, no, no. Your eyes are separate. That's different. That you have to put different thing on your eye and oh, at night it's going to be different. No, your skin, you know, at night has different needs. I do not believe it. Because I think there can be nourishing, perfect components right into one cream. We can make the cream deeply penetrating. That's what we have. We have natural delivery mechanisms to help the, the elements to go deeper. And we have the most potent serum that you can you can imagine which is the extraction from the stem cell solution and we have the peptides and it's so gentle that you can use it right around your eye. It's an eye cream. It's like a giant eye cream bottle, right, that you can put all over your face. And then day and night, it doesn't matter. Yeah, we, I put it at night. It nourishes me all night long during the day. It nurses me all day long and protects me against the sun. I, you know, I don't use sunscreen. I, you know, I'm not giving medical advice. I'm just saying what I do because there are a lot of toxic issues with the sunscreen, so I don't use it. But if you put a lot of antioxidants in your system, then you naturally can fight against UV damage and you can. And you have natural components that can protect you. Honestly, I just, I don't like putting anything that has potential toxicity into, into my skin. And I haven't used sunscreen for the last six years. My skin is just fine. And if you look at aborigines, nobody was using, you know, the, the, the old cultures. Nobody was using sunscreen. How come nobody was having skin cancer? It's not the sun. The sun is not your enemy. It's your poor nutrition that's your enemy. Right. You nutritionist that, you know, that's your job. You know, get this stuff into the body so they can be protected.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah. What is the name of it?

Just. Oh, it's called Chara Omni. So it's a C H A R A. So Chara Omni. Chara is the, is the name of the company I founded that produce stem cell products. And we, we send it to doctors all around the country. Chara is actually a Greek word for joy. And it's a, you know, it's not just regular joy. It's the kind of joy that's very deep and secure coming from the connection with something beyond. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, there's nothing I, lots of things give you confidence, but I don't think there's anything that gives you more confidence than knowing that you're healthy, you know, that you're. Or a healthy individual. I would love to hear from you where you see this medicine going in the next decade. Where, where, where do you see the future of stem?

Well, that partially depends on the political atmosphere. Right. So right now we actually are at this juncture of shift that I can't believe FDA actually banned food Cut. Food coloring. And people have been shouting at them. What about the dye? What about a red dye? What about what you're doing? Oh, oh, now there's, they're going to put into action all of, I don't know how they just woke up all of a sudden. That was, that was a shocking new policy which hallelujah. So there's a shift in the atmosphere of the, the, you know, how medicine is going to be governed and, and which means how suppressed natural forms of medicine or new forms of medicine is going to be that's not pharmaceutical based, not petroleum based. So this other forms of medicine which could be cheaper, you know, getting the, the young cells, you know, the cost. It's a whole other conversation. But you know, the pharmaceutical industry, heavily subsidized. Subsidized. And, and, and you know, the money goes into the pocket of a big pharma insurance company. Just look at, just go check out their, you know, how rich these companies are. Then you realize, realize that there's massive wealth amassed from the mechanism right from pushing the drugs here. Drug, drug, drug insurance company. We cover the drugs, we don't cover this, you know, the supplement. No, we're not going to, you know, allow you to cover vitamins. That's on your own. Right. We're only going to cover drugs. So that's going to shift and I hope, I pray that's going to shift because that is going to enhance people's health so much, that's going to reduce so much suffering. So what I see, if, if the policy allows, if the environment is shifted to be more open and embracing of these natural therapies, then in 10 years stem cell therapy could be a basic fabric of the whole medical practice because on a regular basis people can get stem cells to prevent the aging decline. It can drastically decrease, reduce your chance of chronic illness. Just to give you a little bit of statistic that when you can reverse the biological age by seven years, we've got all these biohackers, right, hacking their biological age to, to make their cells function at a younger level, if you can reverse it by just seven years, you can reduce the rate of chronic illness in the world. If everybody that you know can reduce by seven years in the world by 50%, so you cut down the amount of chronic illness by 50%. That's how powerful staying younger is. This is not for vanity, this is for your well being, for your effectiveness. Effectiveness as a human being, right? Without health, you're not going to be effective. So I believe, and just from the research I'm looking at these mice, you know, how much younger they've become, how much longer they can live. I don't think it's far fetched. If people are starting to get stem cell therapy on a regular basis, you know, every 3, 612 months, they can reverse their biological age by 15 to 20 years. That is not a difficult task. So if we can do that, then we probably can cut down the rate of chronic illness in the world by 75%. And I'm hoping that's where we're going because that will make us a happier species, right? If we're happier and we may be nicer to each other and we will have more wisdom and love to spread around. So that's what I'm hoping. And not just helping people to stay younger, but anytime you get sick, I already have people who, when they're about to get surgery, right? Surgery sometimes is unavoidable. If you break a bone, I'm sorry, sometimes you may need a surgery surgery. If you have to get surgery either for, you know, orthopedic problems or other organ issues, or for cosmetic reasons or dental procedures, if you do stem cells right before, right in the middle or right after, you can enhance your chance of doing well. You can improve your outcome and accelerate your healing. So the acceleration, what I've seen is that it can speed it up by two to three times. So if it takes, usually it takes you three weeks to get back to where you, what you were doing, one week, you can get back to where you know, what were you doing? That's how powerful this form of therapy is, right? Anybody, anywhere, soldiers get shot up. You know, God forbid, I hope there will be no more war. But if somebody got shot up, you know, have, give the person some cells, it's going to heal up so much faster. Or our athletes get some cells, you know, take some cells to the field, right? A person get a concussion, get injured, put some cells in the body. I mean, it could be, you know, part of the fabric of how we, how we look at our health and how we, how we live. Because we should have some cells handy all the time. You got, you got sick, okay, let's get some stem cells into you. Even early stages when China was raging in those COVID infections and people were dying left and right. And so they were like, okay, let's see what stem cells can do, right? All these other things have failed. And I remember early March 2020, I, I, I, you know, I, I did a social media post. There were five clinical studies on stem Cells, all of them. When they give people who are on ventilators stem cells. These are people who are in bad shape on ventilators or give them stem cells. Within five days, all of them left the hospital. That's how powerful it can be. Right. Even in some really severe, dire situations like that.

Yeah. So you, I'm, you probably pretty positive you didn't watch this. I just watched it last night and listening to you talk about the, the healing process. I watched. It's a Netflix special and it's. So this is what happened. And he just, he was, he's a famous actor and he had just out of nowhere had a stroke and it was bad. They, it was touch and go for a very long time and he, his recovery was almost a year. And so, you know, I'm just like, man, you should have got some stem cells.

Yeah.

Jamie Foxx. It was Jamie Foxx. They're, they're finally. I don't know if you heard his story, but just, I mean, you know, a, A lot of prayer and, and he, it obviously turned his, his religious perspective around, which was a beautiful thing to listen to, but it was, I mean, you know, the brain and I just, I so listening to you in, on, on all of these, the recovery period, how much longer it is and the fact that he was really serious because his, his vital, his vitals were really high. And so for. It was several days that, that he was very touch and go because his vitals were so high that, you know, I just wonder if he could have had that. The strength of the stem cells because.

Maybe, maybe we can get him to take some. The longer your weight, the lower the chance of doing better. So I really don't advise people to wait for a very long time. I've seen people who are just many years after the stroke. It's just a lot more difficult. Not that we can't make improvements, but the degree of improvement is not going to be as drastic. Yeah.

Yeah. My goodness. This has been so enlightening and obviously something that we need to keep our eyes peeled for, you know, and it's something to consider. So do you. If, say for instance, my mother has a stroke, you know, knock on wood, that doesn't happen. Very healthy lady. But mom, you're my example has a stroke and you know, you're talking with the medical doctors. How do you, how do you advocate for this kind of therapy?

Unfortunately, conventional doctors don't know very much about this therapy. You know, I think of them as being brought up in a cocoon. So I was brought up in that cocoon. I was at ucla. Very conventional. I mean, all of them are because all these medical schools are funded by big Pharma. So. So you are taught to figure out what disease it is, right? Diagnosis. The reason that you need the diagnosis is because all the drugs are tailored toward diagnoses, right? You don't, you don't treat a person. These drugs are treating the disease. So you have to book the person with the disease and the disease will point you at the drug once you get the drug. And that's, you know, that's a circle, right? So there's the conventional system really doesn't give you a reason to jump out of that because you are in this drug prescribing paradigm. So their residency program is the same thing or continue medical education that they're required to take. If you go to these conferences, it's all sponsored by big pharma. So then it's all drug and drug. You're inundated with drug. Not only they're telling you the drugs are amazing and they keep advancing. That's what they say. But also sometimes they are. But they also tell you all these other forms of therapies are quackery, that they're not real, that they don't have enough studies and it is completely biased and they really want to suppress any other forms of therapy from really coming into the medical care system. So then if that's how you were educated and how you are kept in the system, unless you are open minded, you are a seeker, that you really want to find out, how can I make a person better? Because at one point, any doctor will come to a point where, damn it, whatever I'm doing is not helping enough. So what do I do next? So if you don't have that curiosity, you don't have that drive to seek information that's beyond what you're told, then you will stay in your system, right? Or sometimes a person may not be even open minded, but they got sick themselves, right? Doctors are humans too. They can get sick or their families. I hear that all the time. Oh, you know, my, my sister was sick and she tried everything. She went to all these doctors, she did everything possible, top specialists, and no one could help her. And then she took some natural remedy and then that made a big difference. So that's when these doctors are like, all right, I wasn't taught this. I'm not sure what this is, but I've got to look into it. If I have any integrity, any intellectual curiosity, I've got to look into this. Why did this help when all these specialists cannot. So that's. So just be aware. If you try to, let's say somebody got a stroke and go to a doctor. Just be aware. 90, I would say at least 95% of the chance your doctor is saying, oh no, you know, these are unproven therap therapies. So no, stick with what I'm doing. Right. Don't believe in the hype. That's vast majority. That's what would they say? But times are changing. Maybe doctors are more and more open minded. I've seen, I've heard of doctors of my patients who are supportive even though they were brought up in the traditional realm that they're supportive. There's more and more support very slowly. So majority of the chance is that still that they're not going to, you know, really embrace what you, you know, this new form of therapy. Yeah, yeah.

So be your own advocate.

Always.

Stay abreast of what's, you know, what's up and coming and just be and yeah.

And don't believe it. Don't believe the disempowerment. Because when I was in medical school, I couldn't believe they taught me medical ethics that don't treat yourself, never treat yourself and don't treat your family member. And I was like, why? But I grew up in China. My mom was treating me all the time. And we're supposed to understand our body. Who knows my body more than me? Why can't I treat my. I didn't understand. But that's what we were taught, that you cannot be objective, you can't treat yourself. No, that's disempowerment. You absolutely can treat yourself. You should be your own advocate. You know yourself so much better than a doctor. Doctor has some specialized knowledge, but you know so much about yourself. Trust yourself.