Stem Cell Therapy: How to Use for Best Results

What's interesting is that when there's acute injury, the environment is very toxic. It's actually not the best time for you to inject stem cells. Just like when you have other types of injury, for example heart attack, that's an acute injury of your heart. The local environment is quite inflammatory and toxic. There's a lot of cellular cascade going on that's triggering apoptosis. And when you put cells there, it could damage cells and just the signals are not really getting through. And that's not the best time to give stem cells. Hi, this is Dr. Joy Kong. I'm so happy to be back with you and today I'm going to tell you a story about myself and that's going to help you understand my treatment approach. When it comes to stem cell therapy, there are a few factors that are really important to successful stem cell treatment. One is what kind of cells you're using, right? That the basics. If you don't have the right cells that are potent and safe, then all bets are off. So I talked about using your own cells versus using somebody else's. And you can do bone marrow transplant that's using somebody else. Or you can use early cell source like the birth tissue stem cells. So I talked and nausea about, about this subject, but today I want to talk a little bit about the route of administration. So where do you put it? And that is the art of medicine, right? How do you actually administer? So there are different routes. A common route is intravenous, right? You can put cells in the veins and that will get pumped throughout your body. Or you can put it locally. You can put in a joint. You can put in directly in soft tissue muscles near the tendon. You can put it right in the face, you know, dermis or scalp. You can put in vagina pen. And there are other ways that are less common. You can inject into the spinal canal to access the brain better, or you can inject directly into the internal organs. So I don't do those two routes. There are more risks and I don't think it's necessary. But let me just get to you the story. Get, get that out of the way so you understand a little bit. This comes from my own injury that happened about four years ago. So I went hiking. I didn't realize that there were all these water, you know, runoffs that look like paths. So I followed the wrong path and I got lost. So I climbed onto some rocks and on top of this huge rock, I looked down. There was the path that could get me back to where I was and get back to my car. So I thought then the best thing is for me to jump. And the rock was pretty tall. It was at least six feet, maybe taller. And I did not realize I wasn't looking carefully. On the bottom where I would land, there were small rocks. So I ended up landing my left foot on this rounded rock that immediately my foot shifted or you know, both from the impact and the shift, I was in excruciating pain. And that foot was useless. It could not touch anything. So I just sat on my butt on the bottom of this huge rock. Fortunately, I brought my cell phone. So I called my staff because I wasn't really too far from my clinic. So they came to rescue. I actually went back to the clinic first. So I injected some stem cells right into my foot because I was scared. I wanted things to heal fast. So. But what's interesting is that when there's acute injury, the environment is very toxic. Is actually not the best time for you to inject stem cells. Just like when you have other types of injury. For example, heart attack, that's an acute injury of your heart. You know, most of the time is ischemic injury. Semi stroke, right. It could be hemorrhagic or it could be ischemic stroke. In the brain. And those situations, the cells, I mean the. The local environment is quite inflammatory and toxic. There's a lot of cellular cascade going on that's triggering apoptosis. And it just. It's like a quite a chaotic soup in the environment. And when you put cells there, it could damage the cells. And just the signals are not really getting through very well when it comes to repair and regeneration. It's. It's almost like your, your body, the tissue is going through a spasm and that's not the best time to give stem cells. So let's say somebody has stroke or heart attack. Probably not the best thing to put the cells there within the first 24 or 48 hours. So that's not very beneficial. But anyhow, I put the cells there because I was scared I was not going to take chances. I'm going to put these very regenerative elements right into the tissue. And then I did everything else I could. So with all the tools I know, of course there's red light. Right? Highly therapeutic healing. And there's. I also use ultrasound. Therapeutic ultrasound using sound waves to help with local tissue healing. I use different supplements. There's infrared sauna. I went to hyperbaric oxygen chamber to get more oxygenation, maybe mobilize more Stem cells. I did everything I could and I was making some progress. Every morning I test my progress by flexing my foot. So, so the, the foot flexion, I was able to gain about one degree every morning. So, so I thought, okay, that's, that's good. I'm able to bend my foot, you know, one extra degree. So I'm making progress. But after about two weeks, I was getting impatient. It was too slow, the progress was too slow. So what I did was I decided to do an IV infusion. I wanted to accelerate the progress. So I use the same dose calculations as what I do for all the patients based on body weight, age and problems, you know, health issues. So I gave myself an IV infusion. And what's interesting was next morning my foot was gaining 2 to 3 degrees of flexion. So from 1 degree to 2 to 3. Right. So it's at least twice as much progress, maybe two to three times. So my recovery was accelerated. So that was really fascinating. And of course I was thrilled. But that gives me, that gave me some kind of understanding of what will be the best thing to do when somebody's hurt, is trying to recover. If you think about it, our immune system is what's keeping us from getting sick and what's helping us to get over illnesses. Whether or not it's infection or injury or some cancer, you know, other type of, you know, any other kind of condition, your immune system is going to be evolved, involved. And just like we say, the aging of the immune system is really the driving force for the aging of your entire body. So the immune system is very important. And where is the immune system? Everywhere in your body. Right. But the main organs are the spleen and also your peripheral lymphoid system. When I inject cells just into a local area, I am not really talking with your entire immune system very well. Right. I'm not really accessing them that much. I'm focusing on the local area. But if you can bring your immune system on board and activating all these immune cells and the immune intelligence. We talk about how intelligent the immune system is. It's so complex. If you ever, you know, Del, you know, try to look into immunology is very complex system. It's kind of mind boggling actually. So if you can tap into this other intelligence, then you can heal so much faster. I'll give you an example. When people have a stroke and have a splenectomy at the same time, taking out the spleen, I mean, this is. Sounds strange, but it can happen. This is actually A study. So when the person has stroke and got spleen taken out at the same time within a short amount of time, I think this is the first month or so, the infarct size was actually smaller when they don't have a spleen. So, okay, let's just talk about what happens in a stroke. The blood supply is cut off at a particular brain region. All the cells that were supplied by that vessel, their blood supply is cut off. Right. No more oxygen, no more nutrients, and all toxic waste are stuck. So you would think that only those cells will die. But no, the stroke is of much larger area. Why? Because the immune system comes, comes in. And also because the dying cells secrete all these signals that tell the neighbor cells, neighboring cells to go on programmed cell death. So apoptosis, all of a sudden you, you get a much larger area of death. And the immune system actually doesn't help very much in those situations because all these white blood cells come in and they can make things a lot worse. So when you don't have the spleen, when, which means the spleen can't send in all these white blood cells as soldiers, which make things worse, then all of a sudden your infarct size is actually smaller. However, what's interesting was that the study goes on, they were testing what happened six months later between the people who had a spleen versus people who didn't have a spleen. And all of them of course had stroke. What's interesting was at the end, there's no difference. So whether or not you had a spleen or didn't have a spleen, six months later, the infarct size is the same. Why? Because your spleen is still important in helping you recover. So if you don't have a spleen, even though in the short amount of time you have less injury, less damage, but in the long run it's. You need the spleen to help your body actually repair and recover. So this is a very interesting example of how your immune system is involved in a local injury. Right. Local destruction and local problem. But what's going on, whether or not you have a spleen has something to do with what the outcome is, short term or long term. So that just gives you an illustration why systemic approach is important. This is why no matter what a person has, I want to improve the function of their entire body and bring their immune system on board so they can heal better. If somebody's very young and just had a local injury, yes, maybe I won't do an IV treatment. We just focus on local area. Although IV treatment will have a whole bunch of other benefits, such as anti aging benefits that will help a person to revert, right? In a lot of ways, revert to a younger state because studies have shown that it can change all the, the markers of aging back to a younger state. Whether or not it's growth factors, neurotransmitters, senescent markers or, or other toxic waste buildup, everything will be reverted to the younger state when you infuse this, these young, powerful stem cells. So that's, you know, that's one thing aside. So no matter what, you are going to gain that kind of anti aging benefits. But if we're just trying to solve a local problem, and if it's an acute injury, yes, we can just target locally. But would the person do a lot better if we also do IV infusion the same time? Yes, that's what I believe. And you know, there's good evidence to kind of, you know, corroborate that, that perspective. But for most people that come to see me, they are adults over the age 35, 40, so especially if they're over 50, 60, their own regenerative potential has declined a lot and their immune system has also senesced. This is why we're doing senolytics, right? We're trying to get rid of bad cells that your body is having trouble getting rid of. Your immune system is not quite functioning as potently as before. So when we deal with local issues, even if it's a joint problem like osteoarthritis, a lot of people think that's a local issue. It's not, you know, it's not a wear and tear disease. I talked about this before because when we were little kids, we were wearing and tearing our joints to, you know, much greater extent than what we're doing when we're 50, 60. We're not wearing, tearing it. What happened was that there's accumulated lack of ability to repair. So all these years you may wear a little bit and tear a little bit, but because your body cannot keep up with the repair now you've got this chronic aching condition that's preventing you from really utilizing your, you know, your joints and, and, and live a full, you know, much, much, much more vibrant kind of life. So you want to address the whole body because what happens in your entire body, that's why you're not healing locally. So you want to address the cause. Right? If your entire body's lacking the potential to help you repair, then we want to address the entire body to give you that potential back. So that's the systemic versus local injection kind of philosophy behind why and how I do what I do. And of course, there are many different organs. We're looking at joints is one thing. Local injury is one thing. And then there's, you know, I talked about stroke, heart attack, internal organs, it really almost everything you want to get your full body on board because your immune system is probably involved in everything that you're doing in your life, you know, sustaining this life form. So I hope this is helpful. And if you think that this is helpful for somebody who's considering stem cell therapy, wants to understand a little bit more, please share with your friends and family and hope this, you know, understanding will. Will give people better perspective so they can make better decisions when they do want to pursue stem cell therapy. So also, I know I've never mentioned it, but some people don't even know that I do stem cell therapy at my own clinic here in Los Angeles. So I make sure this time I mentioned that. So if anybody is interested in getting stem cell therapy, of course I make sure that the kind of cells we're using is the most potent and the most comprehensive because I believe not just. I believe there's research studies showing a combination of different cell types is more beneficial than just one cell type. So comprehensive cell types and the vibrancy of the cells are important. Of course, we do not expand the cells and. And we also use all kinds of modalities to enhance the benefits of stem cells. So it's not just the cells. The cells do not function in a vacuum. So this is. This is like a d universe. It's the universe of your body. How do we make the dance happen? How do we make it the most effective and with the least potential problems? Because if you don't do it right, there could be problems. You use the wrong, you know, kind of cells, Especially when people expand the cells to huge numbers. I just had a episode talking about expanded cells. So there's. There's a lot that goes into it. It sounds simple. It is very simple, actually, because all I do is just put the cells in the body, and the cells seem to know where to do, where to go. And what to do. But. But then it's not that simple, right? As, you know, the more I do this, the more I try to explain things that I realize, okay, this is not that simple. There's so many aspects. So anyhow, if anybody's interested, you know, we. We do things in a very comprehensive manner, and we also use laser light to help direct the cells to a particular area. This is why I don't believe we have to inject locally, which cause more potential side effects. So, anyhow, I'm going to stop here and I look forward to talking to you next time. And there are so many subjects, so we'll continue. All right, thank you very much. Until next time.