Stem Cells Reverse Aging. Here's What Doctors Won't Tell You | #182

Another thing stem cells do, which is really cool, is called mitochondria transfer, which I love. As we get older, our mitochondria also decline, decline, decline. But when you give these fresh new stem cells, the stem cells actually give your, your body mitochondria. So they establish this microtubule bridge between the new cells and then your old cells. These mitochondria actually walk across the bridge to get into the new cell, then your own cells.

Really?

So giving you a fresh supply of mitochondria.

That is badass. You're getting a mitochondrial upgrade.

That's why I've had people who have done all kinds of therapeutic modalities and they say the stem cell treatment is a game changer because it gives you the final— the engine, all the information. What if you put intelligence?

We kind of went almost backwards in describing all what stem cells are and the different ways that you can get them. What do they do? What are some of the things that you use it for? What are the studies saying? What have you had the best results with? Um, you mentioned, I think, TBIs?

So we have to be very careful. I wanna just, before I say anything, that we're not making any claims about treating any conditions because that, yes, that will be inviting lots of trouble. And I never make claims, you know, when it comes to how stem cells work. You know, one of the biggest, the most talked about benefit is anti-inflammatory effects. So it has huge calming effects on inflammation. Most of the chronic illnesses have inflammation as underlying issue. So when you don't calm the inflammation, then repair cannot really happen. Even if if you're in perfect health, if they found out that the inflammatory markers gets more and more and more elevated. So, you're just having an elevated level of inflammation as you age. You just, you're just getting more and more inflamed. So, if you can have an anti-inflammatory effect, then you're calming this underlying driving force of disease and degeneration. And the other thing is, when we talk about stem cells, a lot of times we're talking about mesenchymal stem cells because that's really, you know, what we found to be kind of the engine of regeneration. I call, I call them the masters of regeneration. So MSCs, mesenchymal stem cells, they have huge immune modulatory effects. Basically, if your immune system, you know, is not active enough, then it's making it, you know, heighten it up to be more effective. If it's overactive, then it calms it down. So immune modulation, that's another one. And then it's anti-fibrotic. So the mesenchymal stem cells actually can help break down scar tissue. And this is why I've had success when I given stem cells for people with COPD, right? Very tough condition. And the drastic, the rapid recovery of these people on oxygen, on steroid, drastic improvements because it has ability to break down scar tissue and including liver cirrhosis, right? The cirrhosis means really the scarring, the fibrosis of, of the liver. So how actually breaking that down, right?

Oh, wow.

When you break the scar down, then you can have health tissue to, to replace it. So, so the anti-fibrotic is really interesting and then it's also has antimicrobial properties. Not only helps your immune system to fight infection, mesenchymal stem cells themselves can actually secrete antimicrobial peptides. So it directly fight against infection. And then it has these angiogenic properties, so helping forming new blood vessels. So actually is helping your blood to form new blood supply. So it's, it's angiogenic. So if you had heart attack, right, you have stroke, so the angiogenesis can help you form new blood vessels to actually supply the new tissue. And another one is what's called paracrine effect. Paracrine just means in a small vicinity of where the cells are at. So the stem cells are able to secrete, you know, growth factors, different signals just for the local environment. This is why we don't need the stem cells to become your local tissue, because your local tissue have stem cells. They're tissue-specific stem cells. And so you want to talk with the local stem cells. When you give them the right signal, then these cells will come to be and they will replace the tissue. You don't need the, the injected stem cells to become your local tissue. So they talk to your local stem cells to actually become—

So this is why I shouldn't be bummed that only 2 to 5% of those cells are going to remain in because they come in, flood your system, and do all of that communication.

Massive and powerful information. That's why I have had people who have done all kinds of therapeutic modalities, and they say the stem cell treatment is a game changer because it gives you the final— the engine, all the information. We can do different modalities, but what, what if you put intelligence? That is holistic. Not that all the other things are not important, but you need the powerful engine to actually drive it. This is why your shoulder's not healing, because despite all these things you're doing right, it doesn't have enough signals to do the final repair. Another thing is anti-apoptotic. So, so, so on one hand, it has anti-cancer properties, right? It can kill cancer, not just cancer, but also what's called senescent cells. So that means old and dysfunctional cells. So old cells sitting in your body, as you get older, you get more and more of these senescent cells. So not just being old and not doing their job, they are actually toxic to your body. They secrete different things that are bad for your body and bad for neighboring environment. So you need to remove them to regenerate. So when you put these new signals and then you can actually get these cells, basically kill them off. Once you kill them off, then the new— and then you give the new cells signals to replace, you know, what has been killed, then you have regeneration. So I'll give you an example. They've done this experiment on this rat that has a condition very similar to the human condition called progeria, which is premature aging. They're young mice, but they look like old mice. And then what they did is that they give them NK cell infusion. So, so these natural killer cells all of a sudden kills off all these old and degenerate cells. And guess what happens to the mice? They start to look young again. They start to, to, you know, walk and their fur comes back, their cognition comes back. It's because you're removing what's not functioning. So the stem cells can stimulate your immune system to amplify the natural killer cells, right? But it can also directly kill these, kill off these senescent cells. But I want to go back to the mechanisms of how stem cells work because there's still a couple more. So I was telling you to induce apoptosis for cancer, right? But it is also anti-apoptotic in certain circumstances. For example, you just— radiation injury, right, or chemical, you know, burn, um, what ha— or, or stroke, you know, you have ischemia where the blood is shut off and then, you know, one particular area died. The problem with stroke is that not just the area that dies, the area that dies sends out all these signals, sends out all this information, leak out toxic material to the environment so that start to killing off the bordering cells. So cells that didn't have to die will end up dying. And guess what these stem cells can do? It can prevent those signals from actually activating these cells to go on programmed cell death. So you're preserving healthy tissue.

That's wild.

Right?

God, it's so fascinating. They do so much.

Yeah. And then another thing stem cells do, which is really cool, is completely different. It's about— it's called mitochondria transfer, which I love because, you know, We all know mitochondria is really crucial for health, right? As we get older, our mitochondria also decline, decline, decline. But when you give these fresh new stem cells, the stem cells actually give your, your body mitochondria. So they establish this microtubule bridge. They've caught it on electron microscopy. So between the new cells and then your old cells, these mitochondria actually walk across the bridge.

No way.

To get into the new cell, your own cells.

Really?

So giving you a fresh supply of mitochondria.

Are you serious?

I am serious.

So the stem cells, of course, because they're cells, have their own mitochondria, even when they're being built. Yeah, they're new and fresh.

Yeah.

Wow, that is so badass. You're getting a mitochondrial upgrade.

Everything works as a symphony together. So yeah, the mechanical issue, especially for musculoskeletal issues, is really crucial. You know, as far as the pain that you're noticing that's decreased, that's definitely part of the inflammatory effect. I talk about the, the stages of healing with stem cell therapy. You know, the first stage is this rapid anti-inflammatory effect, you know, stopping the toxic environment now so that can calm the inflammation and then remove debris, the bad cells, you know, get them out of there. So that's the first stage, and that could happen, you know, fairly quick. The second stage is the tissue rebuilding. So that's when, you know, you talk with the local stem cells that started dividing and making new tissue, the immune cells, you know, they all work together to create a new environment, you know, new tissue growth. That takes more time, right? Weeks. And then the last stage is the genetic kind of enhancement, helping the DNA to be more healthy because the, the microRNA that's secreted by the stem cells through exosomes, the microRNA actually has ability to go across the cell nucleus and actually repair the DNA in a certain sense by, by changing the methylation patterns. So in that sense, it can rejuvenate the DNA so you can repair and make the DNA healthier. I think you mentioned another thing about differences, you know, between what we do here and what people do overseas. So what happens with, you know, what people can do overseas, it's not that we cannot do it in the US, is that if you want to do it in the US, if you want to grow the cells to a big number and then give it to people, approval, it has to be under this clinical study. It's called IND, Investigational New Drug, and that's a very involved process. You have to go through animal testing. You have to do, you know, a lot of things. There are a lot of things that you have to overcome in order to obtain approval of that clinical study. So, so that effectively is putting a stop to a lot of people who want to do this. Even if you grow your own cells, you can get 10 times as many cells from the same tissue. But the problem is the FDA says, well, if you use collagenase, there's a potential that you're altering the cells, which is true because not only do they digest the connective tissue, but they can also digest surface receptors of your cells. So they are changing your cells in a certain way. I do agree with the FDA, you know, then you need to more investigation, you know, you're changing the cells. So what we use from the birth tissue is completely unaltered, right? For whatever that's from the placenta, from the umbilical cord, you carefully mechanically dissect the cells out. You, you you know, you don't use any chemicals, any enzymes, and you don't grow them in any way. You just cryopreserve them and then wait until you need them, and then you put in the body. So, so that's what's called minimal manipulation. So as long as you're doing that, um, right now in the US, then you're allowed to provide the cells, um, um, for homologous use. So whatever the cells was doing in the body before, it has to be doing something that's very similar. When you start to grow cells in, in massive numbers, Then, um, you know, the, the— you have to go through the clinical trial. That's why all these companies decide to go overseas, which— where they don't have the same kind of restrictions. Um, so what they do is that they will take the cells, whatever source it is, could be from fat, from bone marrow, from umbilical cord, and then they separate the cells out and they put them in the incubator and grow the cells to huge numbers, and then they can divide them up, right, and give to patients. So, there— it's a very cost-saving method. So, when I give a small number of cells, what happens is that when it's in the body, it will grow to massive numbers. But when you put them in the culture and you put them in incubator, they do grow to this massive numbers. But what happens is that when you try to grow cells artificially like that, the way the stem cells divide, often divide as one daughter cell, which which means the cells is further differentiated, and one stem cell. So there's one identical stem cell and then one daughter cell. That's different from the original cell. So they've gained new function. So then if every time you— let's say you have 10 cells, and each time the cells divide, they have one daughter cell and one original cell, right? And then you divide again, that original cell can only make one of itself, right? And then you have one daughter cell, and the daughter cells also divide, right? By the end, you have way more daughter cells than the original stem cells, and then they divide those up and give it to people. So what you're receiving, yes, the daughter cells may still be premature, um, you know, they're still, you know, immature cells, but they're more differentiated, which means that they express more surface receptors and there's more potential to cause adverse reaction because the more surface receptors they have, the more they can express individuality. That means, you know, if it's John's cells, you know, put into Susan, then John's cells start to become more of John, you know, with John characters, and Susan's body may not recognize it, may not like it. This is one reason that there's more side effects. So this is why I'm not a big fan of it. Unless you can control the condition perfectly, you can show that these cells are absolutely still original mesenchymal stem cells, but there's only so many generations you can do without the cell degrading. After a few generations, they will start to decline in the quality of their progenies.

And you were saying the other day that more is not necessarily better, and that would be the reason then, right? Because you're, you're not getting those, like, real original undifferentiated stem cells.

Exactly.

So you might think, well, I could go get a million stem cells in one IV instead of 100,000 or whatever. But exactly how many?

But they don't realize that 100,000 can grow into a billion inside the body when it's the perfect incubator. You know, there's no better incubator, you know, than a human body, the human environment for a human cell. Thank you for watching and listening. If you enjoyed this kind of content, please subscribe and turn on your notification bell so you don't miss any of my future content. And if you want to learn more about regenerative medicine or other modalities in anti-aging medicine, please go to my YouTube channel, Joy Kong, MD, and there are all kinds of videos to help you keep learning.