Stem Cell Therapy: What It Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It | Dr. Joy Kong & Wade Lightheart

Stem cell therapy is going to be as common as antibiotics. It's going to be something that if you get sick, we're going to give it to you, or if you trying to do an operation, we give it to you so we can prevent infections and we can help you heal better. So one day it's just going to be part of medicine. So now it's been suppressed. So I just have that sense, you know, let's just wait. You know, I think growing up in China, where both kinds of medicine coexist, the Chinese medicine, thousands of years, Western medicine, a few hundred years, but very powerful. So the Chinese culture appreciates both, you know, maybe different sets, population are different. But I grew up on the university campus, so my dad is professor, very science driven. So I love science, Love, love, love science. But I also know the Chinese medicine works. You know, that's, that's the bottom line. It works. It has worked for thousands of years. And it works based on these very interesting principles of looking the body as a little universe and using a language that describes almost like different rivers and different galaxies, things all coming together. But you have a holistic whole. So it's a poetic way of looking at the body. Whereas the Western science is very linear, very designated from A to B, and it's very precise. And then that's very appealing. But by focusing on the precision, you're losing some of the complexity of the system. So I think at very young age I realized that there's strength in both systems and it would be the most powerful thing when you can bring the two together. I think in China, a lot of people know that, yes, the combination of the east and west is going to make the most powerful culture or the most powerful force for human development. So for example, at home will have a medicine drawer and you have Chinese medicine, Western medicine, they're all mixed together, right? You just pick one up and say, well, is this Chinese medicine or Western medicine? But my mom would ask, okay, tell me about your symptoms. So I was like, oh, stomach ache, this and that. She said, okay, I think I know what to get you. And she would either pull out Chinese medicine or a Western medicine. Really depends on the situation, right? If there's acute, there's chronic, what's really causing the problem? So I grew up with this understanding that both work, but they all have their own merits. So I didn't have a prejudice when I came here studying medicine. When I went to ucla, I just was very open. I was always hoping I can bring the Chinese medicine into what I'm doing what I've learned with Western medicine. The problem was that the Chinese medicine is very poetic. It has a language that you can't quite integrate with western medicine. So I was having a really hard time trying to integrate the two. If you go to like an east west medicine clinic, which there is one in Santa Monica, it's like a parallel system. One side you have Chinese medicine, you would diagnose a person according to Chinese medicine principles. And then you have western medicine diagnosis side by side. They, they help inform each other, but it's not true integration. So intellectually I wasn't satisfied. I was like, well that's not, you know, it doesn't feel like they're integrating. And what happened was that I ended up encountering functional medicine, integrative medicine, right. So all these are very holistic approach in medicine. And what they're doing is they can borrow principles from things like Eastern medicine or other traditional forms of medicine and then they will try to understand in western medicine language how these therapies could work. So in a way they're giving scientific language to ancient therapies. And all of a sudden I could talk about, you know, let's say one vitamin, one particular, you know, let's say that vitamin D have this multitude of benefits and it has, you know, can be involved in hundreds of biological biochemical reactions in the body. So all of a sudden one substance, you have a web like effect which is not talked about in western medicine really and nutrition is barely talked about. So all of a sudden one substance and really any food we eat can have a multitude effect on us. All of a sudden we have a system approach. So this is the first time doing through functional medicine I'm able to look at, you know, bring in the wisdom of eastern medicine and then, you know, and combine it with western medicine. We're still, you know, in the beginning I think there's still so much mystery and so much to incorporate from eastern medicine. You know, something as simple as acupuncture, you know, what's going on there. Or even people practicing qigong which have healed, you know, a lot of people get healing from it and that is just by manipulating energy channels in the body. So all that is, you know, is sort of we're beginning to bring in energy medicine into what we're doing in this country.

But funny you should say that, one of my mentors, Dr. David Hawkins, who worked with Dr. Abram Hofer and two time Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling, developed orthomolecular psychiatry which was treating Advanced states of, you know, cognitive impairments and disease states with high dosages of vitamins and minerals and things like that. And they wrote a book in 72 about orthomolecular psychiatry, and they were leveraging all these things. And Dr. Hawkins recounts a story that he was part of the very first acupuncture study in. It was in Washington. So he was going from his practice in New York, which was the, I think, the largest psychiatric practice in America at the time, and this is in the 70s, and he was engaged in this. And he had an intractable dual denal ulcer that was threatening his life. And he had tried all Western medications. He goes and sees this Chinese acupuncturist who looks at him, sees his arm, goes, oh, ho, ho, you know, oh, you have big ulcer, right? And kind of like this funny thing, right? And he goes, what are you talking about? And then he sticks a needle in his arm and says, I thought I was shot by a gun. It was so intense. And literally 20 minutes later, his ulcer is. The pain that he's coming from, his ulcer is like virtually gone. He has another treatment shortly after, and it's thing. And he's like, okay, here's a hardcore scientific double blind. He's on 50 different boards, nobody can fix him. And one guy with a funny accident and a thing says, hey, you know what, I got a solution here. And so I think if we look at why does someone get into the industry, right? And it is essentially to make a difference in other people's lives, to help people, to heal people, to whatever. Coming from both backgrounds, which is unique, you've probably brushed up against both sides of the equation, which have become very restrictive. I know there's people on the holistic side of the thing that are just anti Western medicine. There's really hardcore. And then there's people in the other institutions who are totally against any holistic ideas. What are some of the things that you've had to come up against in that journey? Dealing with as a practitioner, as a woman, as an immigrant from another country with a different culture and a different background, yet you've been able to knock it out of the park throughout your career. So I think for people who are listening, that may have those struggles. What are some of the things that you learned along that way?

I'll tell you a story of what happened to me in medical school.

Yeah.

So at UCLA pharmacology class, you know, we're learning about all these drugs, and I. I saw that most of the drugs when you actually nail to the bottom line, how does the drug work? Mechanism of action, it says unknown. So what's interesting was in the meantime, I was having conversation with some medical students. This guy happened to be MD, PhD, super smart. And I just mentioned acupuncture, you know, being really helpful to people. And he was like, acupuncture, you know, there's still no evidence that it works, right? I just, I said, okay, do you know that there's reams and reams of paper published about acupuncture? Just because it's in Chinese doesn't mean the evidence does not exist. And it's, I mean, it was so dismissive. And then. And he said, well, but they don't know how it works. And that's when I realized in my pharmacology class, you don't know how it works either. But just because you have some studies showing there's some results, all of a sudden it's okay. Mechanism unknown is accepted as part of the regimen. All of a sudden everyone respects it. So the hypocrisy was really upsetting to me. And so I became disillusioned. Even though I was going through western medicine education, I didn't like the whole arrogance.

Did you feel at that moment? I want to sort of interrupt, but I gotta capture that because I think I got into the education system and university system and I called out the hypocrisy and ended my university career for the same thing. I saw blatant hypocrisy in my field about assumptions without accurate conclusions. And then purporting that, oh, we've got this, you know, it's like, no, you don't. What did that feel like for you? And then how did you not just like, sweep it under the carpet or leave universe or like, how did you navigate that? Like, there's the emotional kind of like, abrasiveness of it and there's that kind of like, how do I deal with this? Like what? Like, what happened for you there I.

Saw I was dealing with ignorance and arrogance and that is going to be prevalent in medicine. So that gave me a flavor. But that's not going to stop me. I know what the truth is. So that's not going to stop. One day it's going to change. Actually, things change pretty fast. I think within five, 10 years, all of a sudden, acupuncture was covered by insurance. So things are changing rapidly. So obviously the insurance is covering because, you know, the FDA says it's okay. There must be. I don't, I Don't know intricacies. But yeah, I just knew just like how I feel now about stem cell therapy. It's been suppressed and a lot of doctors are saying, well, we, you know, there's still no evidence it works. And that's the thing, you know, when, when we said patients, yeah, talk to your primary care doctor. And then they say, well, my doctor said there's no evidence it works. You know, like you still, you know, very immature stage. I said, okay, have they looked at, have they looked for any evidence? If they haven't looked for it, how do they know it's not there? Because I can show you these 300 articles published from all around world and I can show you all these disease categories, all these organ systems, how in so many conditions there are very, very powerful studies. So the ignorance is like, okay, so that exists. But just mark my word, in 10, 15 years, stem cell therapy is going to be as common as antibiotics. It's going to be something that if you get sick, we're going to give it to you, or if you trying to do an operation and give it to you so we can prevent, you know, infections and we can help you heal better. So one day it's just going to be part of medicine. So now it's been suppressed. So I, I just have that sense, you know, just let's, let's just wait.

You know, did you kind of have a sense of like, was it when you came up with that level of institutionalized ignorance that what I call reaffirmed biases, because there's so many people who are intellectually gifted and they are motivated to go through that standpoint and they've been reaffirmed that they're the smartest and the best and the brightest and the conclusions that they are coming to. And a general case from a general group of people are usually accurate. And ideally they're put into positions where the bulk of their time is dealing with someone who doesn't know anything and is trusting them absolutely in their determinations. And yet when you come up against that, did you say, I'll show them or they'll be proven? Did you use that as a little bit of motivation?

I think there's always a little bit of chuckle inside, just like how I have a little bit of chuckle about where stem cells are going, right. And you know, doesn't matter what the oppositions are. You know, people want it because it's for real, because it works. So, and I've seen that in, you know, just like acupuncture got accepted stem Cell therapy. Six years ago, when I got into it, people were asking me questions of, hey, doctor, what is the stem cell? Like what, What? Can you explain that to me? But now the questions have changed. Now they say, well, doctor, I know stem cell therapy is really great, but I have this problem. Do you think stem cell thera. So I see the landscape changing. But anyhow, I want to come back to that story about when I was in medical school. So after that, I got so upset with western medicine. I went the other day, I'll show you.

I'll go there.

So what happened was I got really sick. You know, everybody's studying in the library, all these medical students. A lot of people caught cold. So I got it really bad. So I had a severe cold. And I was like, no antibiotics for me. Because I, you know, they're such hypocrites and, you know, that I don't. I don't believe. I don't really believe in what they do. So I was, well, and a virus.

Is not treatable by an antibiotic, even though oftentimes I give people antibiotics for viral infection.

Yeah, you can coexist. So. So I got really sick, you know, fever, you know, body ache, and I just have trouble getting out of bed and. And I was trying to do, you know, steam bath and all these herbs and all these, you know, Chinese medicine. And I wasn't getting better. So I. So I called my mom, who was in Beijing, and I was like, mom, I'm really sick. She was like, take some antibiotics. So I was like, okay, fine. So I took some antibiotic, as are getting better and better. So that was, you know, the universe is teaching me a little lesson. Don't. Don't go extreme. You got to appreciate and respect all fields, right?

Funny, I just had surgery recently. I just had a plastic surgeon who uses their products to accelerate recovery here out of Beverly Hills. And we were talking about that because the question came up, while you've done the surgery, you should have antibiotics, which I took the course, which is the first antibiotics I've taken in almost 30 years.

Wow.

But for me, it was like, I've had an incision in my body. You know, I've now broken through that layer. I'm now in there, and they recommend antibiotics. I'm going to take the antibiotics now. I didn't need the narcotics for painkillers. I didn't need the stool softeners that they suggested, which is for the general public. But I took the antibiotics, took the course, and now I'm back tripling down on my probiotics to rebuild my microbiome. So I am the same way. I feel that there's benefits in both sides. I want to talk a little bit about before we get into the stem cells, which is going to be the meat and potatoes of all this, Because I know you guys are wondering about stem cells. Everybody's on stem cells nowadays, but you're in psychiatry and somehow you went from psychiatry to stem cells. Now I want to qualify this, that there was a fellow by the name of Dr. Charles Poliquin who coached Olympic gold medalists in 27 different sports. And he was actually one of the inspirations for our product, magnesium breakthrough, because he had found out that Olympic athletes need higher levels of magnesium to help recover from the super high stress levels and they needed different types of magnesium. And so he was kind of a gel of a lot of different things. But what was the unique things about Charles was he was the first person to connect western and eastern medicine. And he said the Chinese model correlated with neuro chemical dominance. As someone who has a background in psychiatry, how did you did. Was there any aspects of neurochemistry or pathologies or whatever that led you to stem cells? Or was that just because you got on a whole other trip like, like how that, like it's a big jump?

I know, I know it's really big because I've always tried to optimize my patients health because, because of this holistic approach, you know, everything affects them. Right. So your thyroid, which is the only thing that psychiatrists check, but all your nutrition, all your hormones and toxicity, everything is going to affect that brain.

Yes.

So. And that's not addressed by 99% of psychiatrists. Correct. So that, that was a disservice to me. So I was always trying to do more for my patients. So in the process, of course, I'm educating myself on all this holistic approach. Right. All these aspects of health, which ended up to be what functional medicine is addressing and are superb at. So when I found this discipline called functional medicine, that's when I dived in. And anti aging medicine, it's kind of an offshoot of functional medicine. It's optimizing the body so you slow down aging. So stem cell therapy was kind of part of, you know, of what anti aging doctors really love and that's talked about in their academy, but really came from the first doctor I met who was doing anti aging medicine. I didn't even know the discipline existed, but I was studying for my addiction medicine board and I met him and he Said, hey, you know, I just treated this little kid with autism using umbilical cord product. And look at what the teachers have noticed. So the teacher has sent these, you know, this write up of all these things that have changed in these little kids. And there were like 40 things. Improvements, you know, eye contact, ability to, you know, socialize, you know, not procrastinating, you know, the attention span, you know, all these aspects. And it was astounding to look at that list because as a psychiatrist. Well, there was a reason I did not go into child psychiatry because I knew how ineffective the therapies are for kids like autism and adhd. I was not happy with how they were doing and just how they were treated. And there was really, the prevailing therapies are there to sedate the kids.

Right.

To calm them down so they don't cause any problems for parents. And I have never seen any kid with these kind of improvements that this teacher was listing from a simple stem cell treatment.

So the stem cells were helping them have better outcomes than all the traditional treatments have been practiced probably for decades, and yet so few people in that industry are implementing as simple as one infusion. One infusion was able to change outcomes from years of.

Yeah. So you may not always be able to get one infusion to have that many results, but for this kid, it did.

Wow.

And so. So that, to me, right. Is mind boggling because when he told me, I'm doing stem cell therapy, I said, you can do that? I thought, it's still in research. So this is just shows you how most doctors have no idea. So here I was into functional medicine, you know, integrated medicine, but I didn't know about stem cells. Right. It's a whole blinder. So there's a whole other side of the world. So I'm just focusing on all this. And someone says, stem cells. What people are using stem cells. That's what happens to most doctors. What stem cells? They don't know anything about it. So I had to be educated and I had to catch up on what's going on. This whole stem cell world.

Wow. So just as a sidebar for listeners that may have children that are being treated in those conditions, where would they look for medical doctors that might be able to do those type of things? In psychiatry, is there any research?

Psychiatry.

Yeah. Or is there any. Is it expanding out of that?

There are very few psychiatrists. I mean, I have my friends who I thought was. Were open minded and I've been telling them about, you know, stem cell therapy. I think it can really Help their patients. I haven't been able to convince anyone, any psychiatrist to take on stem cells.

Thus, now we get to. I had. I had an inkling that that might be the case, that people might be resistant to that. Although, again, some of the better outcomes I've. I refer people out to orthomolecular psychiatry. They seem to be a little bit more open and a little bit more expansive in ideas. So if you have a situation like that, go for it.

But.

But you ran into. Obviously there was all these roadblocks again. Here we go. I know better. This doesn't work. We don't know. Whatever the compartmentalization of intellectual capabilities which precludes alternative options or a plethora or holistic approach. But we're going to try a lot of different things. So you make the jump to stem cells. Is that what happened? You're like, I'm out of here. I'm getting into stem cells.

I was like, this is so interesting. This is intellectually very stimulating. So you're telling me these very young cells that has the capability to form many cells in the organ, right? They carry this very early intelligence I can put in the body, and they can do their thing to heal. Like they know what to do. I mean, this is too good to be true. And it actually happens. It actually is for real. So for me, as a doctor, as a healer, this is incredible, right? How empowering it is to be a doctor that can do that. And I've seen how disempowered physicians are in. You know, I was educated, the VA system, and just seeing how every veteran comes in with a bag of medications, at least five or six, if not 20, 30 medications. Right? Everyone has a bag, and no one is getting better. They're just managed. So they just have. They still have their conditions. No one has gotten rid of any conditions. They just add one more condition. Oh, now I have this now. Now I have. Oh, the gerd. Now I have, you know, per neuropathy. So they just keep adding and no one is getting better. But guess what? The pharmaceutical companies are making. Making out like a. Like. Like a champ.

I want to. You know, it's so interesting that you came from that. From an intellectual attractiveness. In other words, your IQ was kind of stimulated, if you will, and your passion there. You know, I grew up in a very rural setting where we had to cultivate practical solutions to complex situations. The tractor broke. Something you need to fix something you need to jimmy things together. So you would always be looking for options outside of take it to the mechanic, that wasn't an option. So you had to come up with a bunch of choices. And I, My intention when I first went to university and studied exercise physiology was to go into sports medicine. I was always attracted to sports. And I can remember citing a paper I was doing a research paper in nutrition, I think it was, and it was the aceticoenzyme shuttle dealing with mitochondrial function and medium chain triglycerides, which was a new topic back then. And I was citing some paperwork out of the New England Journal of Medicine. But then I happened to look at the front of the New England Journal of Medicine. It said, we do not prevent or cure diseases we treat the symptoms of. And I remember thinking, I'm like. And I asked my professor, I'm like, well, you mean doctors aren't actually curing things, they're treating the symptoms. Like, what does that mean? What does treat versus cure? What's the difference here? What's the languaging around it? And the professor couldn't really answer the question. And I thought, I'm not getting into a field that ambiguous. And I leaned more into my sports and athletic and sports science because it's very clear there's a winner and a loser. There's a time or an outcome or a way. Like sports are very. It's very clear what the outcomes are. And they're not, of course, they're not nearly as complex as advanced medical conditions or things like that. But it was something I was more comfortable with. But I never forgot that specifically, that I was in conversations. And of course, everybody wants people on the recurring revenue. So if you look at the growth of tech companies, for example, it's recurring revenue. And then how we can use that as a lobbyist component and pharmaceutical agency, can we get recurring revenue? The cable company, the water company, government institutions, through taxation, all of these models, as they get bigger, they need to have guaranteed revenue in order to support the organism. And they need to, if they want to continue to grow. That's the driving factor. Many of what I would say, the doctors that I have come to respect or bring on the podcast or get very interested in their work are people who have recognized or become disenfranchised that they're put in these, either regulatory boxes, these funding boxes, because you know you're going to get funded by the nih. You have to prove the outcomes which are in supporter of FDA guidelines, which are controlled by lobbyist groups which are run by pharmaceuticals. And all of that has influenced maybe something that's really exciting. Stem cells seems to be a wide open field, Would you say that's true?

It is wide open and we're still just starting, so.

So is that why there's so much interest in it? Is it because of the efficacy of it? And maybe you could start with what is a stem cell for people? What are the variances? What does it do? How does it, how does it work based on the understanding that you have. Okay, as an expert in your field.

We were all a single stem cell at one point, right? So that's who we were. This is what we are now. But we're still counting on that intelligence in that first very single cell. We all carry the same genes. All our cells carry the same genetic material as that first stem cell. So we are made by stem cells. And what is in that stem cell? What's in that DNA that has the ability to form an entire organism that knows how to orchestrate this whole, you know, three dimensional structure and function? Right? To me, it's miracle.

It is.

So that kind of intelligence is what we're tapping into that stem cell. That first stem cell would start to divide into many, many stem cells until it forms a ball. And then you can get cells from the inner, you know, it's called inner cell mass. From that ball, you can get one of the cells out. And that's called embryonic stem cell. That's what they use in embryonic stem cell research. But those cells will keep dividing and dividing until they form different structures, and they were all stem cells until they form the end organization. So let's say that the cells are trying to form a liver. So when you actually have liver cells and all the structures that's lining the liver and everything, so those cells are functional cells, they're tissue cells. So they're not stem cells anymore. But before they became tissue cells, they were all stem cells.

What? So this is the question that I've been super excited to ask. I can't wait to get the answer to this. What is the trigger for the differentiation between the stem cell to a functional cell like a liver, a heart, a brain, or whatever?

And now for a bioptimizer's fixed digestion tip. Rapid cheat meal relief. Research shows that cheat meals can actually be an effective way to boost your metabolism. One key weight loss hormone leptin can be increased by up to 30% following a cheat meal. The challenge with the cheat meals is that all those extra calories and lower food quality can be hard to digest. Which means you could be totally sidelined with a food coma after big cheat Meals. The solution is to take strong digestive enzymes like masszymes, which will help rapidly digest and break down the extra food. 3 to 5 capsules before or right after your cheat meal can make a huge difference in how you feel following the cheat meal. If it's a cheat day with multiple large meals, you might want to go up to 10 capsules or higher to.

Help you power through all that food.

To save 10% on Masimes, go to Massimes.com that's M A S S Z Y M E S.com and enter the code CHEAT10 at checkout.

Okay, you want to ask the person.

Upstairs, does anyone know, like, what. What triggers that event?

We probably have certain sense, but it's the same kind of trigger as how the first stem cell is forming. All these cells. Right. They all somehow know what to do, where to go, and the timeline. Yes. They all, you know, exact. Very exact. Right. We can predict.

Does anyone know the answer to that question?

I think we can know part of the story, but not the full story, I think. I don't know if signs will never signs as we know it. I don't know if we'll ever fully understand because I don't know if there's something else beyond what we're able to perceive and test.

Right. Which you're. You're dealing with the, the limits of the Newtonian paradigm versus quantum potentiality. Is there a source outside of our measuring capabilities as opposed to the coming forth of potential into activation like in the Dirac physics equations? Or is it A goes to B that the billiard. And this is kind of where the, this is kind of where the rubber meets the road, the advanced engine.

We can know partial part of the story. That's why they were able to, let's say, get your skin cell and somehow put it back into the embryonic state. We can manipulate things.

We can do that.

Yes. Or we can get a stem cell and we can say, okay, we want you to form a neuron. So let me give you these particular, you know, factors or molecules to trigger you to go in that direction. So we are able to direct in certain ways, but it's not a full story. The rest of what they do, you know, the cells do, you put in a body, maybe you give it a particular push. But how they do it, exactly, that's up to them. Right. That kind of intelligence, I think it's. It's really hard for us to describe exactly how they do it or where.

It'S going to go.

So.

So let's Talk about. And before we get into it, I want to kind of qualify a couple of things that I've heard about that maybe you know about. Before we get too deep into the stem cell conversation, how would you differentiate stem cells, embryonic stem cells versus other stem cells, exosomes and V cells? Because those are other two emerging areas. Can you kind of designate and clarify for our listeners what that.

Yeah, so stem cells, embryonic stem cells, of course, were obtained in from day five to seven after fertilization. So that's a very specific time where each of the cell that you take out from the, from the ball, that embryonic, you know, the original embryo can form an entire human body. You know, can form, can form any cells in your body. So, so that's embryonic stem cells. And then you can start to have other cells at the pluripotent stem cells. So totalipotent is completely, you know, they can form anything. So pluripotent can form many, many things. So they're very powerful pluripotent stem cell. I see, so. So they can form many things. That's why it's so, you know, it's been recognized.

It's one of the agents that are influencing it's.

It's very ability in your body. But they're very tiny amounts and they have to have the right environment, correct work.

Yeah.

And that will be determined by many things. And one thing that can help them work better is something called mesenchymal stem cells, which is what kind of the gold standard right now. And these are specific cells that are lining your blood vessels. Anywhere you have blood supply, they're there. They are, you know, they look like a gecko or, you know, like, like this blob that's sitting on the blood vessels with all these tentacles. So they're sensing what's going through the blood and they're also sensing what's going around in the environment. And they're able to provide this, you know, kind of a conductor in the symphony, you know, okay, the, you know, there's signals in the, in the blood and some place have some trouble. So either they can go in, they can just, you know, squeeze themselves into the bloodstream and swim upstream to find the location of problem. Or they can, they can say, okay, so that's, there's problem over there. And then I have these cells and how can I coordinate, you know, what kind of signals do I need to send? So I don't know how they do it exactly, but the innate intelligence of how they're going to coordinate this and if local tissue has injuries and then they can secrete certain molecules and send into the bloodstream. So your immune system will come and start to work on this, on this issue, right? To either remove the, you know, kill off things that don't belong, remove them and then help rebuilding. So these are kind of intermediate cells and they're very, very important. So they don't quite belong in the typical stem cell category, but they are a form of stem cells because they can differentiate into, you know, bone, cartilage, fat. But we found out the earlier mesenchymal stem cells, in short, MSCs, they could actually differentiate into, you know, liver cells, into neurons. You know, they're, they have more wide range differentiation. But cells from our body, the mesenchymal stem cells, they've lost a lot of those potential. So even as we age, even though they're all mesenchymal stem cells, they start to lose potential as we get older, they're getting more sluggish, their telomeres are.

Shorter, less replications, more fuzz in the record. You know, it's kind of, I love the photocopy idea.

Another dangerous thing, I call it cellular dementia, is that as the cells get older, they accumulate all these genetic damages and they start to lose certain potency and certain intelligence. So let's say I get fat from your cells, from you, and then I extract the stem cells. They've done research putting fat derived stem cells next to this brain tumor cell, glioblastoma multiforme. So they will put it next to the brain tumor cells both in a petri dish and on a live animal body to see what happens to the tumor. So when they put fat derived tumor MSCs next to these tumor cells, the tumor kept growing and expanding. But if you put umbilical cord derived mesenchymal stem cells next to tumor, the tumor was shrinking and going away. So even though they're all called MSCs, the younger cells have a lot more potency and I think it's a lot safer because that's what the research have shown.

So it would make sense then today, if you are having children, to get the umbilical cord frozen. I think that's one of the things that's, that's now you can get stored in nitrogen facilities, your stem cells or that baby teeth, when they come out, I guess there's, they're rich in stem cells. I think for 150 bucks a month, they'll store nitrogen for your kids that could, you know, later on down the road be organs regenerate it from their own stem cells if they need, like an accident or a disease or something like that. Do you see that as something that parents should probably invest in for the future of their children?

I think for the short term, it may be very helpful in case the child has a significant injury, some terrible disease. I think it can be very helpful. But I think hopefully in 20, 30 years, that's all a moot point, that they're going to be able to take a cell from your skin and revert it to the pluripotent state and use that to help heal. But we're not there yet because right now when we induce your cells to become pluripotent and we try to use them, we can't control how they work and we can't control what's called teratoma formation. So this uncontrolled tumor growth where these cells just go haywire. I can make teeth, I can make hair, I can make skin. So you have a ball of different tissue. So that is this wildness that we can't harness yet. But we're going to figure out. We're going to figure out.

So I come in, wanted to look younger, and I grew a beard. So I guess where are we in the journey of stem cells as a therapy? And what can you say? You're able to produce positive outcomes in using stem cells that you're very confident saying, hey, we know that we can do xyz, and here's some areas that are kind of okay, and here's some areas that we're not able to address.

Yeah. So first of all, the only FDA approved therapy using stem cells is. Is using umbilical cord stem cells to help with hemoreconstitution, so regenerating the whole blood circulation system, you know, all the blood cells. So either from cancer situations or some other, you know, you know, damages. But that's the only FDA allowed therapy. So everything else is still considered experimental, but there's very active research. So I think the most prevalent, you know, is that mesenchymal stem cells. Right now, hematopoietic progenitor cells in the cord blood and the bone marrow are very helpful as well.

Taken out of the individual themselves, you could.

Yeah. But they do decline in quality and quantity as you age. But the mesenchymal stem cells probably right now is the most researched, and we're counting on their ability to create this medicinal environment. Dr. Kaplan, who discovered mesenchymal stem cells, wanted to rename it medicinal signaling cells because that's what they were doing. In the body is that there's like this, you know, this pharmacy, you know, it's like intelligent pharmacy all over your body trying to help you, you know, diagnose and treat. You know, these cells are doing it on their own. So but that's what we're counting on is their, the way they work is they're hugely anti inflammatory. They can modulate your immune system. So if it's too weak, they can boost it up. If it's too overactive, they can calm it down. And they have anti fibrotic properties so they can help break down scar tissue. I've seen that in copd, liver cirrhosis. That's just my own patients. And they can help with tissue regeneration because they talk with the local stem cells to tell them to start dividing and replenish tissue. They have angiogenic potentials growing new blood vessels and supplying tissue with blood supply. And they have apoptotic, so a pro apoptotic. That means if it's cancer cells, they're going to tell the cancer cells to die, program cell death. They also have anti apoptotic properties because let's say you have radiation damage or just crush injury or even stroke. The cells that got blood supply, they may die, but the neighboring cells ended up dying also because of the calcium or the cascade, the signaling. But these stem cells are able to rescue those cells and prevent them from dying. So there are all these properties. They also have antimicrobial properties directly, they can secrete antimicrobial peptides. So these are the range of mechanisms that they can help the body heal. So, so that's what we're counting on because a lot of people still think, oh yeah, you give me stem cells, is that going to go into the place where I, you know, I have injury and then make new cells. And that was the old hypothesis of how the stem cells is helping you to heal. Now especially, you know, we're focusing so much on mesenchymal stem cells. That's what they're doing is to tell your body, give your body the exact signal to, so your body knows how to heal. Because when you're stuck in an inflammatory stage, you're not really healing, you're just inflamed. And when you are damaged and things are kind of quiescent because they are in this state of damage, if you don't give the body the right signals, then they're stuck there. So it's almost like just speaking the language to the body. That's how the cells work. But I Think eventually, even nowadays they do have some clinical studies where they can induce the cells to go into certain directions. But in FDA's eyes, then you're making a drug, which is true that you are changing things. Because what I use in my clinic is considered tissue transplant. So I don't change the cells in any way. We get it out the umbilical cord, it's carefully separated mechanically, and then they're frozen carefully. Then when they're thawed out, they're put in the body. So there's no change to the cells themselves. But if you start to expand them, growing them to big numbers, or you start to induce them to go into certain directions, then you're creating a drug. Then you have to conduct drug studies. This is why a lot of these therapies are overseas, because they don't have to go through the same kind of scrutiny and apply for the clinical studies.

Right. We see that emerging and emerging medical markets because the agencies are curtailing growth and development under these guidelines. So let's talk about your clinic in specific. So share the name of the clinic and what it is that you do at the clinic.

Uplift Longevity Centers. Uplift with a. Yep.

So how long ago did you start that?

Well, I started pretty much. We changed the name, but, you know, I've been doing the stem cell therapy for about six years.

What kind of things do people come to your clinic to get treated for?

That's really how I accumulated my knowledge in the field is because people come to me with all kinds of issues. So of course, a lot of people with autoimmune conditions, Lyme disease, you know, people with. So autoimmune is wide range, right? Lupus, you know, even ms, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis. So a lot of autoimmune issues. And which stem cells have great evidence for it probably has the most evidence for autoimmune conditions. But people come to me for like copd, in which it's really fun to treat because they respond so well, and liver cirrhosis. I had somebody who was in hospice that with one treatment, he, within two months his liver function came back to normal, which to me was just mind boggling. And people with, you know, different musculoskeletal issues, you know, all kinds of injuries, joint problems, plantar fasciitis, or they have neurological issues, Parkinson's, you know, als, dementia and kidney disease, cardiac issues, diabetes, erectile dysfunction. So these are kind of the. Basically I even have. Actually have a lot of autism patients coming to see me because the word Kind of got out that I was getting really good results. So. Yeah. So broad range, you know, from 5 years old to 82 years old.

So walk us through. Someone comes into your clinic and says, joy, getting old, just had surgery. My brain isn't working, my gear isn't working. What is it? How does that go? How many things can you treat? What does the process go through? Whatever.

Yeah. So I always tell them, ideally they are already working with a functional medicine doctor. You know, those are ideal.

So you get a referral.

Yeah. If they're not, I can do certain lab tests. I can. I can work on, you know, some issues, but I probably order 20 of the labs that, you know, like a real functional medicine doctor. That's what they do. But the 20 is going to cover 80 of the problem. Right. So what are the labs.

What are the labs that people typically need?

You know, the basic labs plus the, you know, the cbc, the comprehensive metabolic panel, the lipids, inflammation markers, a very comprehensive thyroid panel. Male hormones, testosterone, female hormones, estrogen, progesterone and the DHEA vitamin D levels. And we can also do nutritional testing to make sure that they have the right nutrients. Yeah. So I think then we can trigger.

Things like Dutch test, Spectracel blood cell.

Spectracel I've used, but Dutch test, I don't know. I don't do it, you know, myself.

Right. Yeah. No, you're just right. We always suggest to people, hey, look, if you're going to go see your doctors, here's a bunch of tests that you might as well just get done now before you come into the expert, because they're going to ask you to do it. And this. And I always believe in setting a history over time, you know, at least minimum every five years, ideally every year, you can do your whole profile and then you can see trends. You know, you might see that your hormones are crashing at a certain point and what's normal for you versus someone else. Yeah, you know, I have clients that have Testosterone levels of 100 and testosterone levels of 1200 at the same age, you know, and there's a very big difference between how those people operate, you know, and some people would run in a range on the lower side of what's often, obviously 100 dysfunctional. 1200 is probably over optimal, but there's a wide range of the middle of the road. But middle of the road is not what we're dealing with. We're trying to get to the optimal. The optimal side of the equation, which is a different model than what we've been given with RDAs and what prevents disease, which is where most of our nutritional recommendations came from. Our company's called Bioptimizers because we're all about biological optimization. Like from an athletic perspective, how do I go, you know, higher, faster, longer, better, you know, perform better. And that kind of bleeds over into perform people who are professional careers, which are required performance parameters. But then all of us begin to experience a decline in our quality of life through degenerative conditions. The loss of these aspects, how, how important is stem cells in kind of expanding healthy outcomes over time. In other words, saying hey, you know what, I'm 40, I'm not as good as.

The presentation I gave at a few conferences is called stem cell therapy as an anti aging tool. So I don't know if you know, the anti aging field was really designed by these doctors who are working with elite athletes.

Tom Brady's of the world, look at that guy.

Yeah, because these people are not sick, right. But how can we make them even better?

Right.

That's how these doctors started. They're like, oh, if we optimize this, oh, there's a notch up in the performance. So that's the whole optimization. And if you optimize then you're preventing decline, you're preventing aging. So that's what, how the anti aging and the whole athletic world is coming together to help everybody to be more optimized so to prevent aging. So when it comes to stem cell therapy for anti aging purposes, they've done research on animals which is easy to study for lifespan. And it's been pretty consistent in mice and rats that extends their lifespan by about 30%. So that's so yeah. So starting from like a middle age, rats, you start giving them regular.

That's, that's the difference between an 80 year old going to 100 year old.

That's right. Yeah.

You're, you know, 104 technically.

Right, yeah. What's fascinating was so after certain months, all the, all the group in the, in the control, you know, the placebo group have died, I think 19.3 months, all the control have died. So they started, I think that when the rat was 10 months old.

So all the control rats don't live that long.

All the controls are dead. But about 60 to 70% of the ones that got stem cells are still alive and they're still doing great and they live for much longer, of course. And it's just not just lifespan is health span. They look great, quality of life, acting like they're agile and they're still smart and they had another study that looked at rats, maybe it's mice, but at human equivalent age of 75 years of age. And then that's when they started giving them either stem cells or control. And to see how they do so from the time they give these animals the stem cells to the time they died, the ones that got stem cells, that time is three times as long as the one that did not get the cells. So even if you were 75 years old, this could triple the time you have left on earth. And what's really fascinating was that they went in further, they dissected the animals, they took their muscles and their brain cells and analyzed what's going on biochemically. So they looked at their growth factor levels and their neurotropic factors, their acetylcholine levels, neurotransmitter level, and they look at biomarkers for degradation. So everything that have declined with age was brought back to the younger state or even better.

Wow. So we're talking about aspects of the body are actually reverse aging because of. Yeah, stem cells. So when should people start taking stem cells and what would they go? How would they go about doing that?

So I started as soon as I found, you know, found out about it. That's when I was 45. So it's been. Well, yeah, it's been. I'm turning 51 in a few days, so it's been six years. But I think people, I have patients who start a lot younger, you know, in their early 40s, but I think anybody who's after age 35, you know, they want to prevent decline. I think they're a great cand for it.

And how frequently do you think, you know, they would, it would be reasonable if you're looking from an anti aging perspective.

So looking at how long the cells live and how long their effect lasts, generally is about six months. So these cells will help you for about six months. That's on average. Of course, if you do everything right, you know, probably the benefit can last longer. So I would say if you want to do it for anti aging purposes, you want to do it every six months. If you want to be more aggressive, you can do it every three months, like what I did. And I have some patients who want to do it every two months or every one month. So you can be really aggressive if you want to. I'll tell you an interesting number. Women who have given birth to children, their brain compared to their counterparts who have not given birth, their brain is five months younger. So that's what the research have shown, which is really fascinating. And what I think is that there's fetal maternal exchange going on.

I see, right.

This is one reason why a lot of women with autoimmune diseases have remission during pregnancy. So what's fun for me was like.

So it's a symbiotic relationship between the development of the baby.

And that's why I'm looking younger. Because if you look at my picture now, comparing to when I was 43, I look a lot younger. Like, it's pretty dramatic change. So it's almost like if I do it every three months. So every three months, I age three months. Right. But I just got a stem cell infusion, so maybe I go back five months.

So every three months I go back. You're playing the math game, right? If we get six months out of them, I'm going to do it every three, and I'm going to start gaining three months at a time.

That's just a way to say so.

Typically, the theory that you're running is the mathematics says, you know, what if I do four courses in the course of the year, I have a potential, a mathematical potential of getting reversing eight months younger? Yes. Would it be eight months or six? Would it be lost of four?

Okay, yeah, six months, Wouldn't it?

Is that right or you're right.

You're probably right. Eight months.

And are there other agents that assist? Because going back to the earlier question of things that seem to potentiate the activity of the stem cells, is there any elements that you guys have been able to determine? It's probably maybe too early. Like, is there vitamins, is there nutrients, is there a lifestyle components? Are there. There are other factors that you can control as an individual to increase outcomes. Like some people are going in, you know, they're drinking booze, smoking cigars, and, you know, taking recreational drugs all weekend and, you know, working, you know, 80 hours a week. And then other people are, you know, living a pristine lifestyle. Is there variances in that or is there trends that people can do to get more.

Everything, everything counts. So all the healthy lifestyle is all important. They all work together. So. But I do have patients who are counting on stem cells. So they don't want to do any work. They're like, I don't want to change my diet. Don't tell me to exercise. I have stem cells now and it's great. So just don't make me work harder. So those are the people. Some other people is like, oh, my God, you know, I just spent all this money Doing stem cells. And now I'm going to do everything I can to optimize the results.

And how much does a course of stem cells cost for someone that's going in, you know, three months, six months, whatever that journey is going to be? Typically, there's probably a range.

Yeah. In general, if you do IV stem cells, probably ranges between 7,000 to $15,000. So that's, that's the range it depends on. So I do the dose calculation based on how much the body weight is and the age and the health condition. So then I determine what may be the ideal dose.

What's the range?

Yeah.

So typically you're looking at somewhere, if you're looking at somewhere between 30 and 60 thousand dollars a year, you can reverse aging. I'm making that claim.

I'm not making that claim, but I'm hoping, I'm hoping. That's what I'm trying to work on now is how can we get the cost down for everybody? So right now it's still expensive, but it's still affordable. Because I just heard just how expensive things can be. People go to Panama. Last time I heard was $65,000 for a one week treatment.

There's that whole Mel Gibson episode with Joe Rogan where he's talking about his dad and all that.

Yeah. And then I heard they increased price. I don't even know what. That's what I heard, you know, 40,000, it's just going crazy. So I want to try to make it more affordable, but I wanted to make it even more affordable so more people can get it.

And as the technology develops and as it becomes a more competitive marketplace, in other words, it's offered in more places. So there's a kind of an increased awareness which is increasing demand, and then there's an increase of delivery from practitioners like yourself. So there's two competing pressures to kind of level this out. But how long do you think before this becomes readily active, affordable and utilizable by people, at least in the upper middle class?

I think it's gonna, it's gonna depend on how the, how maybe clinical studies can be conducted. I think there are, you know, there are different ways of doing this, but the way it is right now, unless it's covered by insurance, you know, maybe that would drive the price down. But I do have my suspicions about insurance because if somebody gets approval of these stem cells from the FDA is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and they're going to want to recoup that money. I don't know if You've seen unnatural selection, which is gene therapy. You know, talking about gene therapy, they have a little vial, I think, if I'm not remembering wrong, was $750,000 for that one little vial for treatment. So because it's rare enough, they're going to charge for it. So even if it's not that exorbitant, the price may go up depending on how much we're going the whole pharmaceutical route right now. It's still relatively affordable because it's considered tissue transplant. I think one reason the price is higher is because there's still not many doctors who are doing it. And the people who are doing it are still taking on certain risks.

Right.

And there are less and less doctors doing it, partially because last May there was some kind of letter came out from the fda, scared a lot of doctors, so. But patients are the ones that are driving this movement because I have doctors who come to me saying, hey, you teach me how to do stem cells. Because I've got patients who are asking me about it and I don't know how to do this. So patients are the ones that really want help because they don't have options. If you're suffering and traditional medical approaches are not really giving you relief, you're going to do everything you can to find relief. So I think, yeah, it's hard to say. I'm actively trying to work with people to help bring down the cost and to make this more widely available, but there are a lot of obstacles of what needs to be done. Yeah. So I don't know when this is going to be.

Every day I want to switch gears a little bit before we wrap things up. Your book memoirs, the Tiger of Beijing.

Yeah, Tiger of Beijing.

So what's that book about? And maybe how does it relate to your career right now and where you're going in the future?

Yeah. So the book, really, it's only about three years of my life. I think some people who read it were, you know, saying, oh, I was hoping to find out how you became a regenerative medicine doctor. I mean, I only talked about at the very last chapter because that was just a wrap up, you know, to give readers an understanding of what I'd gone through in those three years and even after going through that, what you can still achieve in life. So that was just kind of a wrap up about what happened to this person. But originally when I was writing the book, I was going to write it as a novel. It was based on my experience, but because it was such dramatic three years starting from My visa rejection in Beijing when I was 20 years old to escaping a relationship in San Francisco and ended up in a shelter. So these three years, very dramatic time. It's about wanting a dream, right? You have a dream, but people say no. And what do you do? Do you give up? Do you just follow the crowd? Or do you do everything you can? So I did everything I could and I made it here and I ran into another life obstacle and I survived. And I, you know, throughout my book, I'm never a victim. You know, I'm never. Because I made a decision at every step on my own accord. Even if I ran into bad situations, I made the decision. So I'm never a victim. I'm always an active participant in life. But then that got me into some tough times. But I could overcome it and be triumphant. And just because you're triumphant in a battle doesn't mean that you have not gotten battle wounds that you have to deal with for the rest of your time. But probably my next book is about healing, about the journey of how to achieve physical, mental, psychological and spiritual wellness. And that is a long journey. So the battle was really fun. I mean, it wasn't fun when I was going through it, but it was certainly interesting. But I think a lot of people can resonate. A lot of people have, and it's actually in the process being made into a movie. So that would be really interesting to.

What do you think the elements for overcoming obstacles? What do you think that you've discovered in that process? Dealt with the challenges of immigration, personal life situations, relationship challenges, institutional blockades, going into what some people would say is unrelated fields and trying to extract value out of opposing cultures, opposing ideas of health optimization, like how has that uniquely positioned you to what you're doing now in the future? And what are those messages that you like to share with people?

I think it's in all of us. I think it's the part of me that respects the life force that's inside of me. It's about respecting that life force that nothing can suppress. It doesn't matter. You know, what I want to, you know where I want to go, what I want to do in life is that fulfillment of who you are and that kind of stubbornness that whatever that's thrown in front of you, you're not going to let that life force die, right? So is that you're going to nurture that flame. So I think that's in all of us. Some people maybe for whatever reason that is not feeling that they don't Feel as powerful as they should, but they could if they're inspired enough.

I love that, that's really great. And what do you see for the future of the fusion of these? What have been for many years diametrically opposed, but the limitations, the proliferation of the Internet, the cross culture pollination that's now happening thanks to global systems like the Internet, like easy travel, the exchange of ideas that we've seen. Where do you see us 5, 10, 15, 20, 100 years into the future?

I think I'm hoping that AI can help us, especially when it comes to systems approach. I think for our puny little human mind trying to figure out how things work. Just like I do ketamine therapy in my clinic. If you look at people talking in conferences, talking about ketamine, you will see a chart with probably four or 500 different chemicals and how they are all interacting with each other. This increases this, that decreases this. It's impossible for a human mind to figure out, okay, I put ketamine here and then what happens? You have this explosion of reactions.

Yeah, we got a circus all of a sudden. I bought a ticket and I'm not.

So you can't do it, you can't get a system out of it. Your brain can't do it anymore. So I think probably, maybe AI one day is going to be able to take the wisdom of the system approach in Chinese medicine, in traditional type of medicine, and seeing the relationships between these different organs. So these are emerging properties. I think it's just really hard for the Western, the linear A to B explanation mind to understand. You have to take a system approach because as you start to have a more complex system, you have emerging properties. The system level property, right? So the organs and the human body and then the microcosm. So each layer has its own way of working.

So to that point, I guess the big debate that's out there, do you feel that the, like the Kurzweil's of the world that says the singularity is inevitable, or the Elon Musk's of the world which is, you know, making warnings for humans about AI running amok, or the anti AI people who are saying that we're disrupting the biological system so severely that we should abandon it altogether. How do we sort those competing narratives in the modern world out?

That's a very, very large question. Of course. I like, like think big.

Why not? Yeah, because these are the kind of things that I sit in my meditation, after meditation and contemplate, you know, our position in the cosmos and what constitutes an independent system versus a non independent system versus intelligence and consciousness. Where are the crossroads between me, the single organism that I call Wade versus how do I fit as a cell within the human body or as a like the human body throughout time seeing humanity and you could expand that to biological organisms throughout time. And does digital technology AI, some people call it artificial intelligence. Is it artificial or is it an aspect of intelligence which is innate because it's in the universe itself? And is it good? Is it. And then you know, we start projecting evil good threat to humans and non threat to humans. And are we booting up the Terminator or are we booting up immortality? What is it?

Oh, I don't know where the humans are going, frankly. Yeah, I'm hoping that we are going.

To fond of 405 nowhere.

I hope, you know we're going to raise our consciousness because this is, you know, some people may disagree with me, but I think this is just one realm that we're living in just temporarily. All these atoms, you know, are coming together, forming us and it's a very temporary form. It's a great experience, it's very interesting. But this is just a little piece of the story. And simultaneously there could be many dimensions superimposed that's happening all at once and we simply don't know is going on. But I think unless we learn and tap into those other realms, and I think we will and I think what happens with ketamine and psychedelic, there's this whole renaissance of psychedelics is that people are tapping into these other realms and that's, that's why people have dramatic healing and we don't know how it works in the other realm. So if humans can as a species raise their level of consciousness, maybe we will have a whole different way of communicating or even healing our body. Maybe we could have immortality. I don't know. I don't really care that we do because I think there are many, many life forms out there. You know, we don't have to be right here for eternity.

One of the things that. Now I've got to ask this question because it's, you know there's science prides itself on evidence based, spirituality prides itself on faith based. And I would call or religion is on faith based and kind of spiritual aspirants are on experiential base. And I believe that we're moving into, that's the fusion between both sides of the equation is to evolve into a more spiritual comprehension of the nature of faith and evidence. So have you. And I think I know the answer. Have you had experience based aspects of your journey on this plane that has led you in both of those areas of faith and evidence?

Well, I think for me personally ketamine therapy has just opened my eyes, kind of blew my world open. You know, they say seeing is believing. What I saw was not something that my brain could conjure up.

Right.

It doesn't have that capacity because the level of complexity and of profoundness of what I've seen is it just, you don't, you don't gain that, you know, just at this level of existence. Because when people say hallucination, I think it's a really, really unfortunate term. If you talk about psychedelic experiences as hallucinations. Some of them may be hallucinations, but some of them are perceptions.

Right? The differentiation between hallucination, I think the difference between hallucinogens and ethnobotanicals is that you can step out of a non hallucinatory experience. For example, if someone's doing ayahuasca, they can open their eyes and communicate with someone on that moment even though they might have a very rich inner experience versus versus a hallucinogen which, you know, you'll see, you know, that the person that's dependent on drugs and may have some psychiatric that is seeing things that they cannot, not like they're uncommunicative. I think the literature came out of that, out of the, I think it was started in the seventies in the ethnobotanical research that was done in South America. Of course a lot of that was, was suppressed and then, then now is reemergent thanks to guys like Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss I think is a big advocate and there's tremendous amounts of money going into these research and, and now we're getting what I call instead of the shamanic practice, we're getting, you know, doctors which are essentially the shamans of evidence based information kind of fusing with like, I don't know how to explain this, I have this biochemical background and this thing. But you know, I just went to, you know, 42 different dimensions and I can't, I can't unkn. And my question I guess is, is that the required component to drive enough faith to get to the answers? We don't know.

I think it opens your mind that at least you know, that exists. So for me I had, you know, a sense that something out there exists, but I had no evidence. So this is called faith.

Right?

But once I saw it with my own eyes and I can't even tell you, I have many, many stories of the complexity of the incredible things I've seen. Which means that when you've gained level of complexity, hallucination is in a sense is distortion and deterioration. So that means you put a drug in the system, it distorted how you feel or disrupted it. And there's always a degradation, degradation of imagery. You don't gain complexity when you gain a level of organization. That's against physics. You have to put energy to gain level of complexity because if you just degrade, then you never gain complexity. So that's what I think. The energy is infused. You are tuned in. I think it's tuning in to other dimensions.

And I think that probably helps you as a doctor and as a practitioner to be able to help people facilitate their own journeys and their own way of healing. I would love to pick up this conversation where we left off for the constraints within the podcast time. Where can people find out more about you, your clinic, your work, your books and everything that you are doing to kind of make the world a better place.

Oh, thank you. So definitely my clinic upliftcenter.com so that's website uplift with a yes. And my book people can get on Amazon Tiger Beijing and there's an audiobook as well. I also encourage people who want to know more about stem cell therapy to go on the Academy site. The academy I founded, it's called American Academy of Integrated Cell therapy. It says AAI c t.org so there are a lot of research excerpts. There are case studies I think be really interesting for people to look at. And my YouTube channel, Joy Kong MD I have some videos there. I try to, you know, if you explain the different aspects of stem cell therapy presentations, doing podcasts and love to have you as a guest. So. So these will be good places.