Side Effects of Stem Cell Therapy You Should Know

Let's just say that the doctors are using the best products, not expanded. These are native cells with high amount of MSCs. They're not contaminated, comes from a good laboratory. All the T's are crossed and I's are dotted. So now we got good product, and then the doctor is highly competent, is doing everything right. So are there potential side effects? Yes, there is. So what are the ones I've seen? Are there side effects to stem cell therapy? The short answer is yes, but there are a lot of nuances to it. So I'm going to break it down for you. Hi, I'm Dr. Joy Kong. I'm a stem cell specialist, and I have been teaching physicians and the public alike in the last seven years. And I really want to break it down because there's so much information surrounding stem cell therapy, and that's going to determine whether or not there are side effects. So I always say there are only two things that matter in stem cell therapy. The cells and where to put it. So let's look at cells. Where the cells come from make a huge difference. Are we obtaining it from your own body or are we getting it from somebody else's? The most common source would be umbilical cord source. So just so I clear the air, stem cell therapy is legal in the United States. So definitely nowhere says is illegal. Under certain parameters, you can conduct stem cell therapy. You just can't make claims unless there's an FDA approval. And of course, you have to fulfill certain criteria as far as providing medical treatment. Right. There are certain parameters, such as how you're obtaining the tissue, and that's important. So let's look at using your own. So using your own cells, whether or not it's from fat or bone marrow, those cells will be your own age. So that comes with certain caveats, right? So you have gone through your life, accumulated a lot of genetic changes, a lot of oxidative damages. There could be toxins accumulating, there could be infections. So everything is affecting your own system. And when you get cells out of your body and use that as a source for healing, those cells are also accumulating these genetic changes. And we've seen that through scientific studies, so this is no longer a debate. So besides, your own cells are actually less potent and accumulate more changes and they lose their differentiation potential. So they have less ability to become certain kinds of cells. But also they are not as safe in a sense. Specifically, I'm talking about cancer. When you put these cells from your own body back into your body, there is a Chance of promoting existing cancer. So this is a very important point when we're talking about because I do not see that when it comes to umbilical cord derived stem cells as far as cancer promoting properties. But there has been reports of cancer promoting properties when you use your own cells, right? So then that's a risk because we all know as we live our lives, cancer cells is a normal physiological occurrence, is part of life. But your immune system should be so strong that it will just gobble them up, take them out as soon as they occur. But when you're aging and when your immune system is less and less vigilant or effective, that's when we see higher and higher rate of cancer. That's why aging is the most predictive factor of cancer. So there's a risk of exacerbating existing cancer. You have some kind of, you know, a few cells floating around or even a small tumor that your own system should help you get rid of. And now you've got this extra dose of growth promoting cells and they're promoting growth for everything in your body, including cancer. So that's a potential issue. And not to mention, so that you know that risk side when you conduct therapy using your own cells. So you have to get the cells out somehow, right? So if it's from your fat, we've got to do liposuction. If you're from your bone marrow, we have to drill into the bones. You can't get it out until you forcefully drill in, right. So then there are potential side effects. You drill into your, your, your pelvis. That's where most of the, the bone marrow is obtained. You could destabilize the joint. You're causing damages. People are having a lot of pain, a lot of discomfort because it takes, bone takes a long time to heal. And if you do liposuction, has anyone seen liposuction is not mellow, is. It's, this is very vigorous, right? You're really disrupting the matrix and disrupting the, the structures. So then you are taking out the cells. So that causes again tissue destruction, pain, swelling, and so all the side effects that comes with those procedures. So that's using your own cells. So but I really want to focus on umbilical cord stem cells because that is, at least right now, I believe, is where the future is at. You know, we can always come up with new discoveries and new technologies, but what we have right now, I think umbilical cord stem cells is the superior source of cells. And so we're going to focus on that, so if you just look at umbilical cord stem cells, are there side effects of getting stem cell therapy? So again, it comes down to the cells and where to put the cells. So if we're talking about cells, if the cells are not processed correctly. Right. If the donor is not a good donor, that's an issue there. So in the US the donors go through very strict screening because they all have to go through regular prenatal care. And a lot of the infectious diseases are screened for and the mother's health is closely monitored. And so there's a safe safety, you know, guard right there and overseas that's a lot less predictable and controlled. And so if you go through proper channels, proper products that's processed in tissue banks, that's registered with FDA that follows the American association of Tissue Banks guidelines, then they would have screened for all the genetic diseases and, and the major infections, everything that's required for tissue transplantation, all the screening for infectious agents for tissue transplantation. Right. Let's say organ, any organ transplantation will have to follow those guidelines. So there's no difference with umbilical cord derived stem cells because they are processed in tissue banks. So they have to follow the same criteria, then they should be properly screened for. So those are a must. You know, that's, you know, any reputable tissue banks would have done that. There's something else that could be a glitch. And that's what we've seen in prior incident. Specifically I'm talking about 2018 when there were people who were hospitalized after receiving stem cell treatment using products from this particular company, Livyon. So unfortunately more than 20 people were very ill. And I think what I read was at least 19 people were hospitalized from E. Coli and other bacterial infections. So that's because the company cut corners. They do not go through the right kind of screening after the product is made. So they're screening before the cells were processed. Right. Screening for the donors. But when you are making the product, you could be introducing different infectious agents. Right. If you're not using proper sterile techniques and your, your, your space is not properly set up, the clean rooms, et cetera, you know, the, the techniques from the technicians. So anywhere along the line there could be introduction of infectious agents like some kind of bacteria. Unfortunately, this, this laboratory ended up not having a clean product and did not go through the required, the sterility test. So that's when you have to send your products, your finished product to a third party and to see if there's any bacteria growing or any, any Endotoxins produced from these products. So unfortunately, in this case, the cells were, were contaminated. So then all bets are off, right? So, but that's an isolated incident, like, kind of like any medication, right? If you're producing a medication and one manufacturer did something really bad, then you can't say that you can't use this medication. You just, you have to be careful. You recall the product from that one manufacturer, right? So that's. And then you make sure that everyone is doing the right thing. So that is a potential source of problems. And then one point is, if you do go overseas, there's going to be less stringent, um, of all these screening aspects. So that's, you know, one source of concern. So the cells, the contamination definitely is one potential problem. The other potential issue is cell expansion. So I've talked about this quite a bit, but when you expand the cells, I have a video specifically about this subject about cell expansion even at generation one. So at the first passage, there are genetic changes. So immediately when you put the cells in a tissue culture, right, In a medium and you put it into the incubator, there's already stress for these cells. So there could be changes happening already in their genetic expression. And also is stressful. You just put the cells into this, into this new environment, and the cells have a tendency to react and they have a tendency to secrete inflammatory factors and differentiate. So it's not a perfect division that one cell would divide into two identical copies. They actually tend to have a asymmetrical division. That's actually how stem cells divide. They divide asymmetrically. Then when you keep growing them, then you can have a large quantity of cells that have been differentiated, and those can cause rejection. Why? Because they have expressed the surface markers of the donor. The donor is not the same as the recipient. Right. We have a lot of genetic differences. And those surface markers, you know, the rejection can cause this severe reaction that people get. Fevers, chills, malaise, you know, sniffling. And that's. Some people mislabel it, calling it the cytokine storm. I guess cytokine is involved, but it's not exactly what the typical cytokine storm that we're talking about. This is generated by tissue rejection, by immune rejection. So what Tony Robbins was talking about, everybody would get, you know, you should expect some kind of cytokine storm. That's part of the treatment. I'm sorry, that should not be part of what you expect. Because none of my patients coming to my clinic are experiencing cytokine storm. But when you start to expand the cells. Now you're introducing potential of rejection and also inflammatory molecules being secreted and they could cause these reactions in the body. So that's the. The cells, right? The other aspect about cells is that if you don't have enough mesenchymal stem cells. So MSCs, MSCs are very much the gold standard these days because they're so versatile. They secrete massive amount of signals to tell your body to regenerate. And they also are very immune modulating and immune calming. So calming that they can be used in organ transplantation to prevent organ rejection. So they calm the system. But if you don't have enough mesenchymal stem cells, such as pure core blood products, then you have a higher chance of getting some kind of reaction that your immune system is not quite adapting or accepting these other cell types. Core blood is mostly mononuclear, cel and hematopoietic progenitor cells, et cetera. So these cells are not as immune calming as mscs. That's why when people do cord blood transplant, transplantation treatments, they often use steroid to calm the immune system. So if you don't, you don't, you don't have to. If you don't, there is a bigger chance that a person will experience side effects. Actually, when I first started in the stem cell field, I was using a core blood product and definitely there's a higher chance of side effects. The most common side effects would be malaise, fevers, chills, sniffling, you know, shortness of breath and just feeling, you know, very tired. And that usually lasts for a few days. But, you know, if you're short of MSCs, then that's a problem. That's why in what I do in a clinic, I make sure that we have a high amount, high percentage of MSCs. But the other cells are important too. They're very helpful. So you don't want to give them up if you bring them all together now, you have the best of both worlds. So that's the aspect of cells and then where to put it. Of course, you know, doctors, we are humans and we can make mistakes. So we may put in wrong place, we may, you know, damage the tissue when we inject. So all these are possibilities, you know, in injecting, just not in a place that causes disruption. Or even if you inject tissue, inject tissue products that contain a lot of matrix and a lot of maybe higher, bigger size material like the matrix material from the Wharton jelly, for example. If you don't, you're not Careful. You put in blood vessels, tiny blood vessels, you can occlude the small blood vessels and cause a little embolism. Right. And that can cause necrosis, so death of the tissue. So if you block blood vessels, you can block the nutrient delivery of the oxygen, delivery of the, you know, for the entire region that the blood vessel is supplying. So yes, that can be a problem if the doctor is not doing it correctly. And injecting things that have larger particles that probably is not appropriate for injecting in a particular area. So what you're injecting what areas is very important. So when I do injections with more matrix material, I only restrict that to the joint space. So that's a large space. And you want the matrix to help you form more cartilage. Right. Form more connective tissue. So that give you scaffolding. So that's really important. But if you, you know, you're not careful, you put cells in. Yeah. In a particular kind of tissue that you cause the matrix disruption. That that's a problem or blood vessel blockage. And also if you put cells in places where there's high risk, such as putting it into the spinal canal, which I don't do in our clinic because I don't believe it's necessary. However, there are not very many doctors who do that in the U.S. but some do. They inject directly into the spinal canal is called intrathecal injection. The problem is that yes, they're going to be higher chance of side effects. So like a spinal tap. Right. You draw some fluid out of the spinal canal and so now you have a chance for, you know, rupture of the dura, headaches. They're just more potential of causing a leakage of the cerebral spinal fluid. So I don't think is a risk worth taking, at least from what I know about how the cells work. So but that's a potential and. Or if you inject into a knee that's very, very inflammatory, the cells could bring all these anti inflammatory actions and draw a lot of fluid in. And now, you know, knee is going to blow up, it's going to blow up a little bit more. That could cause a lot of pain, tightness and just swelling. So that could be one way to avoid that, is to do some other treatments first, like exosomes that could calm the inflammation first. But a lot of the knee problems these days are from the degenerative condition. So it's not so much highly inflamed with lots of pain and swelling. So it depends on what kind of Knee we're dealing with, then, you know, we look at what our approach is. So, so that's the, the issue of where we inject. So let's just say that the doctors are using the best products with, you know, not expanded. These are native cells with high amount of MSCs. They're not contaminated. Comes from a good laboratory. Everything, you know, all the T's are caused and I's are dotted. So now we got good product and then the doctor's highly competent, is doing it the exact, the right way. Right. It's not doing it in a way that's, that's, you know, one non sterile, two poor techniques. Right. It's doing everything right. So are there potential side effects? Yes, there is. So what are the ones I've seen? Well, first of all, I've definitely seen, it's very, very rare. But when a person has underlying infections, I've seen people having more tendency to get fevers and chills. And that's pretty interesting. And it's almost like, think of yourself like when you're having a cold, right? Sometimes or flu. Your body's having the fevers and chill. Why? Because your body's mounting this new immune reaction to try to fight off these, these microbes. So this is a good thing, the raising of a temperature is a good thing, that your body's mounting an attack. So I have done many IV stem cells because I've been very public about it, that I do IV stem cell therapy on myself every three months for the last now it's almost nine years. So that's about the only thing that I'm consistent with besides my stem cell cream. So, and so that's my anti aging trick. So that nine years, right. Four times a year, that's over 35 times of stem cell treatment. So almost every time it's like, well, I don't notice anything. But I know, I know the science. I know it's doing something is rejuvenating and regenerating from the inside. But I, most of the time I don't notice anything. However, there's only one time I got severe fever. Well, low grade, but chills that was lasted for a few hours. And that happened to be right after I did this dental procedure. I don't know if you guys know about the cavitation after teeth are pulled out or root canals, et cetera. There could be an area of bone not fully formed, forming a pocket of basically a space. And that space, unfortunately is a, like a, like a fester pool that a lot of the infectious Agents or toxins can accumulate and that can be a source of constant stress for the body. So what I did was that I had a procedure where all four of these cavitations that were shown on CT scan or drained and materials were put in to help promote the healing of the bone. So my body had a higher load of these toxic agents. So that was the only time that I got this severe fever and chill. But I've seen in isolated patients where I know that they actually have underlying infection. And that's when we also heard about this fever and chill. So that's one thing, right? That's of no fault to the cells or the doctors, but it's a potential side effect you have if you have underlying infection. Another thing is that if you have a tendency to break out with a rash. So that's like one of the only other semi significant side effect is the emergence of some kind of skin rash for. And I've only seen that in people who have a tendency for eczema for severe allergies, just histamine reaction. Generally they react to a lot of things in the environment. Easy to be allergic to different kinds of food that you and I, most of us can tolerate. People who are allergic to the environment, chemicals. So these are the patients who have a tendency to overreact and they could break out with a rash. And I, you know, I've seen that in every maybe 2, 300 patients. So it's still very rare, but it can happen. That's why I screen patients for history of these histamine over activity, these hypersensitivity. And then if I do, then I'll give them an H1 H2 blocker before the patient gets the cells so that we can dampen that overreaction. And that could be reacting either to the cells. Sometimes we don't know why. Right. People's body react and some people react to testosterone, Some people react to some kind of, you know, other peptides. And these are supposed to be natural elements. So there could be a lot of these reactions that we don't really understand why. But people will have a tendency for sensitivity. Then we treat them with extra care. Then we want to dampen that kind of excessive reaction. These will help reduce the chance of that happening. And we usually give these treatments about half an hour before the cells come in. So it could be reacting to cells, it could be reacting to the cryopreservative. So we do, we want to preserve the cells to make sure they're still alive by the time we thaw them. Out there has to be cryopreservative that prevents crystal formation during the freezing process. Right. Once the crystal forms and they puncture the salt wall, that's it for the cells. So there are cryopreservatives to prevent that. And sometimes a patient may react to the cryopreservative. So that's another one. The other side effect I've seen will be some kind of fatigue and sleepiness. Sometimes a patient feels like really almost calm, too calm and just really relaxed and just wanting to rest and want to, want to sleep. So that I've seen not too common. Maybe a few percentage of patients feel that way. Most of them feel quite normal. But once in a while someone may feel a little bit more fatigued. It could be a result of some kind of shift in their immune system or even calming down of this amped, maybe sympathetic reaction. So now they're calm, calmer, and they, they feel a little tired and want to sleep. And the only other thing that I've seen once in a while is maybe some kind of vasovagal reaction during the treatment. Some type of. Just like a person may, may have that. Some people have that reaction when they see blood, right? There's some kind of reaction in the body. They may get pale, sweaty a little bit, maybe palpitations and just feeling a little lightheaded. And if that happens, which is rare, maybe one in a hundred patients at most, we will slow the drip down as far as iv. We slow it down or even stop it to make sure the patient is, you know, let's get back to our normal. And usually within a few minutes, people recover the most, 10, 15 minutes, and then we resume at a much slower rate. And I've never had a case where we can't finish the treatment. So at much slower rate, people tolerate it just fine, they recover, and then they get the food treatment and they're fine. So that's kind of the breakdown of the side effects. I hope that really give people an understanding of how many things, how many aspects are going into the consideration of side effects and what to expect. And I enjoyed breaking it down for you. And I hope, I really hope more and more people are going to experience just incredible potentials for, from these cells. Really think about it. We all came from these cells and the blueprint within these cells is just, it contains incredible intelligence. The reason I'm so passionate about these cells is because I am injecting intelligence into the human body to help us heal. So I really hope that that helped inspire you and the bottom line is stem cell therapy actually is extraordinarily safe. I met patients who were looking for cases and reports, so. So he can. He can back out of treatment because he was so worried, you know, am I doing the right thing? What's going to happen? In the end, he's like, you know, I looked everywhere, and it's just hard to find anything bad. It's because it's extraordinarily safe, especially if you're using the right sources and you're putting the cells in the right places. It's one of the safest therapies that we have at our hands. So thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time.