Stem Cells Reverse Aging: What Doctors Aren't Telling You | #182

Why do we die? Your cells are getting older and your body's just not keeping up. We're looking at what can we do to prevent that. Those stem cells is one of the tricks. Almost all stem cell therapy can have benefits, so I've compared everything and there was no question in my mind the birth tissue source is superior. One of the biggest, the most talked about benefit is anti-inflammatory effects, and the other thing is they have huge immune modulatory effects, and then it has these angiogenic properties, so helping forming new blood vessels. The entire medical education is about waiting for the patient to get sick, but what if you catch the little smoldering things before the smoke comes out? That's the philosophy of anti-aging medicine—prevent what's causing the disease.

For those, somewhere on my Facebook page you can see the stem cell procedure that we did at Joy Kong's office. So that was there, but I'm curious how you gravitated as a doctor toward the anti-aging medicine and all of the regenerative stuff and the cutting-edge kind of medicine technology that you're into.

Yeah, maybe I'll just give you a quick overview of my journey. So I actually grew up in China at first. My first 20 years was in Beijing. And so growing up in the Chinese system, there's always a sense that you could use Chinese medicine when necessary, and you can use Western medicine when necessary. Each are good for certain things. Nothing is perfect for everything. So there's already a sense that, that you utilize whatever that works. So that's kind of my background. And when I came here, eventually deciding to go into medicine, well, I decided to go into psychiatry because I was fascinated by the brain. And then I, you know, I got board certified in psychiatry and later on addiction medicine. But, you know, I've tried to be integrative in my approach in treating patients, but I saw the limitation in the system in what, what was done. And I was trying very hard to integrate, you know, what I've learned from Chinese medicine with the Western psychiatric approach. But those two are such vastly different languages, and I had trouble really truly integrate them. And when I encountered what's called anti-aging medicine, which is really an offshoot of functional medicine or integrative medicine, there are many names for it, but basically these, the whole new branch of medicine, their essence is about looking at the body as a whole. So the whole body has many, many, many things working together, including various nutrition, how that affects your body, how hormones are affecting your body. What about toxicity? That's, you know, how is that interacting? What about, you know, the different organs, how they affect other organs? So everything becomes a system approach. And this whole branch of medicine not only is looking at things holistically like Chinese medicine, but it's using modern scientific language to explain how different systems may be connected. So all of a sudden in my mind, all the dots are getting connected. So I could use a holistic approach looking at the body as a whole, but with scientific language to integrate this, this, you know, how I can look at the disease and how the therapeutic, you know, treatments can come together. And that's when I just, you know, had a hot moment. You know, this is what I need to do. You know, the beauty of anti-aging medicine, it's It's a beautiful concept because it's about looking at aging as a prequel to disease. Let's say a body is like a house, and you, when you are diagnosed with disease or you show symptoms, that's like the house is caught on fire. But guess what? Before the smokes are coming out, the fire got caught on, things are happening, things are smoldering, and that's what has not been picked up by our Western medicine approach. They're only waiting for you to get sick. You know, I went to a great school, UCLA, and they're, you know, fairly forward thinking, but still the entire medical education is about waiting for the patient to get sick. And then we throw drugs, you know, give them drugs or do surgery. That's the entire approach. But what if you catch the little smoldering things before the smoke comes out? And that's the philosophy of anti-aging medicine. You prevent the, the what's causing the disease. Because what's causing the disease is also what's causing aging. It's— they're hand in hand. When we are older, we get sicker, and they just come together because your cells are getting older, getting dysfunctional. It can't recognize cancer very well. It can't fight diseases very well. Your tissues are fibrosed and it's not being replaced by new tissue sufficiently. That's why everything starts to break down. So if you prevent the breakdown, then you can prevent disease. So what a beautiful model to help people live healthy, a healthy life, right? It's not about, oh, we're fighting aging. No, we're making people living a vibrant life and prevent them from getting sick. But eventually, one problem with life is that we are all going to die, right? Why do we— we— why do we have to die? Maybe one day we're going to prevent that. But right now, uh, we know that people run out of stem cells. So just look at if we are degenerating, degenerating, you know, things are running, you know, running low on fuel, and then you're not replacing, not replacing any of these damaged cells, then guess what? You just, you know, wrinkles start to show, you know, hair start to gray, and then, you know, all the functions you can't see in the inside of the body, your organs are also, you know, are also degenerating. You just don't see it. All you see is the outside. And you think, oh, I'm aging. But guess what? You're aging everywhere. So one reason you're aging like that is because your body cannot replace the damaged cells. So all your cells are getting older and your body's just not keeping up. Why do we die? Well, if you run out of stem cells to replace all the damaged cells, you know, all the cells that are not functioning very well, then your organs, you know, just start to not functioning very well. You know, eventually everything shuts down. So stem cells is one of the tricks. If we can replace those messages.

As we get into the stem cell thing, how does the process of getting stem cells from umbilical cords during the birth process happen?

The way that these birth tissue are collected is when a mother is about to give birth, they're asked, do you want to save the tissue and, you know, have it processed and stored for future use for your baby?

So they could get it encapsulated or something like that? No, no. So how does it work if they want to save it? How does it—

So usually they save the blood. They can process it, which means that they will, you know, separate out the, the, the red blood cells from the, the more premature cells. So the stem cell portion, you know, the premature, you know, very young premature cells, or, or, uh, so those cells are kept and then they are cryopreserved and saved, you know, basically put in liquid nitrogen. So then they can be used, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 years later.

So it's basically— by the same person. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So, so one could have a baby, elect to have them preserved in that way, and then when the baby's 17 years old and gets in a soccer accident and busts his ass— Exactly. Yeah. Or his own stem cells back in. Yeah.

Or have a traumatic brain injury, you know, all of a sudden they, they can't walk and you can inject the cells and, and restore their function. Or the person could be diagnosed with some other, you know, terrible illness or, or, you know, God forbid leukemia, you know, things like that. Then you can use the same cells. To repopulate the body, the same healthy ones. So, so it used to be people were only preserving cord blood cells, and then they realized that cord tissue have, you know, tremendous amount of mesenchymal stem cells, which is really kind of the engine cells for regeneration. So then people started to process cells and store cells from the cord tissue. So then umbilical cord, you can either get the blood out or you can dissect the tissue and get get the cells mostly from Orton's jelly, you know, free the cells up and then store them. So, but it costs a lot of money and a lot of, you know, families may not be willing to do that. And then they're asked, if you're not going to preserve it, would you like to donate it? So once they say they are willing, they have to fill out this very, very extensive questionnaire. So they look at everything. And one thing about donation of these tissue is a true donation. You cannot be compensated in any way. The reason you can't give them anything is because it is illegal to sell human tissue. It has to be a donation. After they fill out the form and they fulfill the criteria, so different companies may have different criteria. Our company, we have one of the most stringent criteria. So anything that's suspicious, you know, the cells are not going to be accepted. And the delivery actually has to be cesarean section and not It has to be elective cesarean section. The reason they do that is not to allow the baby to go through the vaginal canal, which is dirty, which has a lot of bacteria. Things can easily get contaminated. Whereas if you do cesarean section, you're opening the person up, everything is sterile, and then you take the tissue, right? You take the baby out and then you, you know, cut the cord and there's the placenta, and then you can save this birth tissue, right? When these people are willing to donate and they meet the criteria, then the procurement company would put the tissue, you know, carefully in a sterile bag, you know, put on ice, and then send it over overnight to labs, whichever lab that's going to process this. And so the lab, once they accept the tissue, they receive the tissue, they have to do testing to check lots of— basically they go through the same stringent testing that an organ transplant donation is going through. And, you know, our company actually go above and beyond, test even more, including Lyme disease and Chagas and prion disease and all that stuff. So once you test everything, you can process the cells, you can, you know, start processing. But if the test comes positive for any conditions, then that has to be tossed. You're, you know, that's not to be used. So, but if everything looks good and you, you process the cells and you have a finished product, and then the finished product is sent out to an outside lab to test for sterility, and that would take a couple weeks to come back. And so when that comes back negative, then this product can be used to, for human use. You can actually give to people. Unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous companies, which I would not name, who did not wait. Until the final result comes back. And they are so eager to sell the product, they just sold it. And then result came back showing that there are bacteria contamination. And then what? And then they scramble, right? But some people already hurt. Wow. Damn.

Well, yeah. I'm glad to hear this now after you gave me an IV of these stem cells yesterday. I mean, I looked on your website and you sent me that really comprehensive PDF ahead of time. And you know, I had my questions and all of that. But I felt confident, and my gut check on it was like, this girl's legit. She's not messing around. You seem, you know, very integrous about what you do. So that's why I was comfortable with that. But still, there is— it's a little uneasy for some reason, still just putting something from another person's body, you know, a mother or baby's body in your body. And I was afterward, like, did have a couple of thoughts, like, I don't know, what if their DNA was mutated? Or, you know, if I got, like, remnants of a mutant vaccine that they had, or, you know, just weird thoughts. Like that. And I thought, well, people get blood transfusions all the time. Like, I go donate blood, you know, every few months, um, to be a good person and to get iron out of my body. And, um, so someone is walking around with my blood in them, probably walking around LA, a bunch of people.

Well, your blood and, you know, your red blood cells do not have DNA in it, but it's the million-dollar question of how much of the cells actually stay in my body, right? Because a lot of times to fix certain tissue, we want the cells to stay and make new cells. But that's really— initially, that's what people thought stem cells are functioning. They thought stem cell therapy is by giving the stem cells to the body so the stem cells can divide and form the new tissue. It's really the cells that are sending out signals, and most of them don't stay in the body, but the benefit is there. So it's really about these cells giving out signals, the right signal, the right information. It's like a disseminating information. So— Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So I want to kind of give you also, uh, you know, uh, allay some of the fears or the concerns that you might have, other people have. For example, I've done IV transplantation on myself every 3 months, right? So I have lots of people's DNA in me. And what I want people to realize is that what's called— actually, there's a name for it called microchimerisms. And one typical example is what's happening in a woman's body. So first they found out from a Harvard study, they did an autopsy on these old women and then they were dissecting their brain and they're looking at the DNA in the brain. And the easiest way to find out if there's any foreign DNA is by testing the Y chromosome. There should be no reason that there's Y chromosome in a female body, right? And guess what? They found out all these women who have given birth to male children have Y chromosomes in their brain. So that's the first thing. And incidentally, they actually found out that the Y chromosomes, the presence of that actually was protective against Alzheimer's. But that was, you know, maybe the number of subjects were not sufficient to draw that conclusion. But that was interesting, right? Because we all know when a woman that has these autoimmune conditions, often their conditions gets better when they're pregnant. Could it be? That they're getting a mini stem cell transfusion from the baby because we know there's exchange of communication, right? This communication and even cellular material. So even when you have, you know, given birth to females as a woman doesn't mean that there's no exchange. We just, we're able to tell really easily whether or not the males has gotten into the female's body because later on what they found out is, is the, the cells, the Y chromosomes are not just in the brain, It's in the breast. It's basically in all the tissue everywhere. So, so that already happens in nature. And then there's a follow-up study, which is fascinating because they found out that 60% of women actually have Y chromosomes in them. So they were adding all these potential factors to see if they could count for the 60% of Y chromosomes in women's body. They couldn't. So the only conclusion, you know, the author was saying, well, I think the only way we could explain it is through male and female intercourse. Really? Yes. Wow. So, so isn't that enlightening?

Why didn't my mind go there? I was waiting for the, the, the, the answer to the riddle and I'm like, that's so obvious, you know, but. Yeah.

So, so it already happens in nature all the time because a baby and the mother, their DNA is only 50% identical. But when the cells are so young and you put in that person's body, it actually adapts. It, it speaks a different language.

Oh, okay. So it's really fascinating. So the stem cells are not differentiated yet. They're just a blank palette and they they have not expressed as, yeah, whatever they're going to be, tissue, yeah, whatever. So from talking to the other day, uh, briefly, and we did a little pre-interview, but for those that don't see that, I'll go ahead and kind of recap it now. I was expressing that I had had stem cell treatment a few years back out with Dr. Harry Adelson and Dr. Amy Killen in Park City, um, Docere Clinics. And for that procedure, which by the way, for anyone watching, is on YouTube, it's extremely gory because it was a— it's a legit surgery, but I think it was a net positive experience, and I'm glad I did it. But it was pretty invasive. I mean, you're, you know, you're kind of laid up for a couple days, and, you know, you got to take pain meds, and it was definitely not an easy experience. Uh, but I think for someone who has a serious long-standing injury, there's a lot of evidence to support that either of those methods can be useful. But when I talked to you, you had some different opinions about that, which is why you're doing it in the way you do it with the umbilical stem cells. So Can you break down at least your perspective on the adipose-derived and bone marrow-derived, the endogenous versions of that, kind of break that down for people that are, okay, you know, somewhat aware that there are kind of 3 different types of stem cells that you can put in yourself, right?

So the— those are the 3 most common types: obtaining stem cells from your bone marrow, your fat, or using someone else's, which most likely is from the birth tissue. So when I first got into, you know, got super excited stem cells, I definitely looked into all of them, and because I was determined to give people the best. So by reading a ton of articles and looking at research that's been done from all around the world, and there was no question in my mind that the birth tissue source is superior. I mean, that's not my conclusion, is the conclusion of many, many, many scientists from all around the world. Umbilical cord source came as the younger kid on the block. So initially it was bone marrow because we were doing bone marrow transplants to help with leukemia before we knew about stem cell therapy. That was really the first stem cell therapy. So that was bone marrow. And then they realized, oh, bone marrow, if you break the bone when you're, you know, doing orthopedic surgery and you put some marrow, you know, there and it actually helps it heal. So, so, so then that's how the bone marrow started to, to become kind of like the gold standard for stem cell therapy. And then the fat. Derived source came onto the block. And then they realized, oh, there are actually a lot of stem cells in the fat tissue. So it's not in the fat, it's really along the blood vessels that's nourishing the fat. So it's— there are all these mesenchymal stem cells that are kind of, you know, huddling around the blood vessels. So they're separating out those cells and they found that they're very therapeutic. And then, you know, the birth tissue came to be and then they realized, oh, so these are— they're just full of stem cells in this birth tissue. And that's really the engine that the placenta and umbilical cord, they were the engine of forming a human being, right? So then they look at the stem cell composition. So the umbilical cord blood has a very similar composition as the bone marrow and the umbilical cord tissue, the MSCs, because it's full of MSCs, that's similar to kind of, you know, the fat-derived product, which is full of MSCs. You know, what I believe the best way is combine these two sources, right? If you can get what the best from the bone marrow and the best from the fat, um, but, but with the birth tissue, you could do that. So the cells are younger, there's less potential for processing contamination, but, but that, that aside, it actually has less tumor-promoting potentials if you have any existing precancerous changes, you know, or a little, little tumor that may be there. And your own stem cells are not very smart anymore. It's not as smart as birth tissue stem cells. They've done direct comparisons. They, they did it both in a Petri dish and, and on the live animal. They put the tumor and then they put stem cells next to it. So if you use an adult human fat-derived stem cells, you put next to the tumor, the tumor grows. But if you put umbilical cord-derived stem cells next to this tumor, guess what? The tumor shrink and disappear. Wow, damn, that's interesting. They have the extra intelligence that's still intact, is able to recognize, uh-oh, you are not supposed to be there, you don't belong, you're— you are pathological. So what it does, at least one of the mechanisms, is secreting what's called the, uh, TRAIL ligand. So this particular ligand actually causes, uh, apoptosis. Of the cancer cells.

Cell death, is that what that is?

Yeah. Okay. Programmed cell death. It tells the tumor cells, you know what, get on this path and die. So they still have that intelligence. That's why it's safer in that sense. There's less potential to actually exacerbate your own tumor or cancer. Wow. So that not only is more effective, is more potent, but it's also safer.

So why, and God bless all the, the doctors out there that are using stem cells derived in the way that I described. But why is anyone doing that still? Like, what's, what's the argument on the other side in the stem cell world that we're— where people are still doing the, the bone marrow?

And some people are really, really going to dislike me and attack me, possibly even make comments under your, your post.

That's all right, it wouldn't be the first time.

I am just going to speak the truth. Almost all stem cell therapy can have benefits, right? So a lot of the Doctors who have used the treatment swear, you know, that has helped their patients, which I believe wholeheartedly. And if they're not willing to look at newcomers, right, of new therapeutic modalities that possibly could be a step above, then they just want to use their own particular mold. The other reason is economic, economical concerns. There's an investment involved. To have your own setup, right? Either bone marrow derived or fat derived. You've got, you need surgical apparatus. You have to go through particular training. You're paying a lot of money for the training and you've got all your, your staff, everybody's trained, you know, you're set up to do this, right? To switch gear means what about this? I just invested all this money. Well, you know, what am I gonna do with that? You know, I'm getting good results. So I'm not gonna switch gear. It makes no sense. You know, I'm good. So that's another factor that's preventing people from progressing. To me, I feel an obligation to give people the very best.

But what's interesting is it seems that the cost to the patient is about the same. I mean, you know, you're talking what, $10,000, $15,000 range for a single treatment? Yes. And it seems about the same. So I don't know, it's like after hearing this, we might piss off some of the other doctors that are doing it the other way, because if, if you are the patient and you have that kind of cash Well, I can tell you—

and you're incentivized. I can tell you once everything is set up, it doesn't cost very much to do the procedure anymore. I mean, you have to pay the OR, you pay the nurse, you pay for your own time, but it's not expensive to keep doing it anymore. But if you're buying it from a source, from a laboratory, then the cells are fairly expensive. So you have to pay for the product. So That's another reason. Maybe they're like, well, I'm recouping my investment and whatever I do from now on, I'm making great profit. So why spend the money to buy an expensive— Ah, interesting.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hmm. That is very interesting.

But I really respect the doctors who have done everything. They've done the bone marrow, they've done the fat, and then they are so open and they realize, oh my God, I didn't know that this birth tissue could be a better source for my patients. Not only that, nobody— you cannot be doing the anti-aging treatments that I'm doing on myself with your own tissue. First of all, you're depleting your stem cell source. And so you take it out of hibernation and you activate them and you put them in your body and they only live for about 3 months and then they're gone, right? So then you just depleted your own stem cell source. So, but when utilizing a source from a healthy newborn that has potent effects, potent therapeutic benefits, and you put in your body and in 3 months it's pretty much gone. But you're not jeopardizing any of your own source. You're just ramping up this regeneration and then, and then it's done, right? And then you can choose to do another one, you know, 6 months later or 3 months later, whatever you choose to keep up this level of regeneration of this youthful, you know, upkeeping. So, so, that makes that possible when you can get it from a standardized source. Thank you for watching and hope you're enjoying this episode. And if you do, please subscribe. And if you're into biohacking and want to supercharge your health routine, please contact us at Chara Health. We do provide telemedicine service, so we're here to guide you from anywhere.

We, 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? You mentioned, I think, TBIs.

So we have to be very careful. I want to 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 a huge calming effect 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 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, your immune system is, you know, is, is, 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 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 it's helping your blood to form new blood supply. So 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, the, 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, 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 inflammation.

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 is 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 it induces 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— or, or stroke. You know, you have ischemia where the blood is shut off, and, 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 I 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— 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, you know, the pain that you're noticing that's decreased, That's definitely part of the anti-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 the 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 wanna grow the cells to a big number and then give it to people, 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 wanna 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 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 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 right now in the US, then you're allowed to provide the cells 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 massive numbers, then, 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. 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, 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, right? 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.

All right, cool. All right, good. I'm glad we covered that. Okay. So with the remaining time we have here, I would be remiss to not cover one of the other modalities that you do in your clinic. The clinic's called Thea, right? Right. Thea. Yeah. Um, in Chatsworth. Is that where you work? Yeah. When you were giving me the tour, you were really excited about the things you're doing with ketamine therapy, and you showed me around, and you're proud. You're doing some remodeling stuff, and then you had like your ketamine rooms, and one of them had an inversion table, and then one of them had the, you know, like a PEMF mat, and then a red light device that hangs over you while you're on the mat. And then there was another room with another red light dome that goes on your head. And so you're doing some pretty cool stuff. And then you indicated you're not just doing it with patients that you see, but that you've also done a lot of journeys yourself and have indicated that it really has opened you up spiritually. Yes. And so I'm, I'm curious kind of how you got into it and then, and then maybe what ketamine does to the brain and what are some of those unique stacking of different modalities that you're using with it?

I think ketamine, you know, as an incredible therapeutic modality, um, it's very unique. It's in the dissociative category of medications, uh, and it's being used as anesthetic for, you know, decades. So it's one of the safest anesthetic agents and is on the WHO's list of essential medications. So it's a really crucial medication, um, and what it does is that it works on the level consciousness, right? Dissociative. So it works on your consciousness. So in, in that sense, it's groundbreaking, um, because It works on so many different levels. One thing I want to talk about is that I think medicine needs to move beyond chemistry and into physics. That's very limiting because you're not talking about what about the other level. How about we utilize knowledge in quantum physics? So we've got to stop just being pure chemists. We've got to learn to become physicists if you want to be truly effective and you go want to go to the next level of healing. Most doctors are not talking about how ketamine can help a person. It says not talking about anything more than just receptors, different receptors. Yes, it works on receptor levels, but it also changes brain waves. So one of the really powerful brain waves that, that is hard to get to is the gamma wave. So we have, you know, 4 levels of other brain waves, but the gamma wave is associated with this incredible sustained focus and expanded consciousness. So there's a level of consciousness expansion that, that can help things in a, from a completely different level. So we all know how good meditation is, and meditation can generate that high-level brainwave, and ketamine can do that too.

Yes. So that is badass. So anyway, um, totally understand. And for those listening, we're not Let's make it clear, we're not talking about like going to a rave and going into a k-hole and like partying.

And no, ketamine, I think, um, the getting directly into the bloodstream and a sustained experience is extremely therapeutic because what we have with ketamine is something that we have not had before, which is the helping the rewiring of the brain. So it changes your neural network and, and it does it Yeah, it does, you know, secrete, you know, enhance the secretion of brain-derived neurotrophic factors. So, it can help enhance the synapse formation. So, your brain actually can establish, you know, a different kind of network or repair old dysfunctional ones. But, the effect can be so rapid because a person could be suicidal and within a session, it's not suicidal. I mean, if you take medications, it would take weeks to work. And this can take an hour or even less to work. And that kind of relief of suffering, I think it's so profound and so beautiful because I can't think of anything that's more painful than psychological suffering. And I do believe ketamine And stem cells can work, can help each other, right? The brain, one can help you rewire the faulty network. The other one can help the tissue to be less inflammatory and can help with the growth of the new network. Wow. So cool.

In your subjective experience, um, being a doctor on yourself with ketamine, what, uh, what have been some of the net benefits in terms of your consciousness and your, you know, peace of mind or quality of life?

Well, one of the big thing is that it pretty much shattered my ego. So I had a pretty healthy ego growing up, like a little too robust, and it got, you know, more and more subdued as I became more and more mature. I started to, you know, really, you know, put myself in other people's shoes and, you know, the empathy and, you know, be more loving, more open. Once you start to understand more of who you really are, then that I is not— doesn't matter very much because you can never see things clearly if you are at this level. You can only see things more clearly when you're standing above it. I mean, the picture cannot form clearly, right, when you are right in it. So you have to get above it and then you can see the picture. So that gave me a perspective, understanding of what I really am. And I feel by expanding your consciousness, by looking at things from a certain height, then you're able to understand why you're here, what's out there, how that's related. And you know what, then if you understand your purpose and then you understand the source of certain greatness, then you may be able to enjoy something that there's a sense of, you know, you know, joy and bliss that you just cannot either grab or sustain.

Yeah, that sense of expanded awareness and objectivity, right? Where you in the ketamine journeys and meditation and whatever experience brings you there. What I find is, is I get better at being in that observer witness perspective during the experience, but with practice, you can actually be sitting here having a conversation and still be the witness observing the personality Luke and the personality Joy having this interaction. Right. And I think things like ketamine, as you describe, and when you look at the function it has on the brain, I mean, how long would you have to meditate to get into high gamma? You know what I mean? Like, you can go get a shot in your butt and go into gamma.

Like, I'll take it. Yeah, I know, I know. I've I tried to meditate since I was 18 years old, and I tried and tried and tried, tried. I just, it was very frustrating. And now I know exactly what they were talking about. This is incredible. I mean, people who have throughout history have had these profound experiences, and I didn't believe them because I couldn't experience them. And now I know, oh my God, it's there. And the cool thing is that now, what's really fun is that now I know who I am. I'm having this separation between me, my essence, like this incredible, incredible thing. And joy, you know, joy is right now, you know, it's this time, but the me is not joy. So I do have to integrate right now. But I think for too many people, it's so integrated, so locked in that there's no separation. They cannot, they don't even know their essence. All they know is you know, me, you know, so they, they can't sense the true essence anymore because they're locked in. And that's what I'm hoping by, you know, the evolution of us as a species, that we can start to really be able to unlock and, and feel who we really are.

What are the 3 or 4 different modalities that you stack in the clinic? There was one that I didn't see you mentioned. You're using putting people under ketamine and then using vibration therapy to work through physical pain and physical traumas and stuff. Explain some of the different things you're doing there. Like, the inversion table on ketamine sounds insane to me.

Well, the reason that came about was because I found out from brain imaging that I have traumatic brain injury, um, probably since I was probably a teenager. I don't even know, maybe I was dropped as a baby. But, um, um, so I was determined to heal my brain, which I did to a great extent. Within 2 months, I did a repeat imaging that showed drastic improvement. You know, many areas of lesions that actually disappeared, and a lot of them have significant improvements. So I was determined to heal my brain, and because I know the capacity of ketamine to rewire the brain and for neurogenesis, so to actually regenerate the neural system, and if I can enhance blood flow and I can use energy therapy, because there's certain energy like red light therapy, that's another thing I incorporate. That can help with the blood flow and it can promote healing. And then, you know, with the neurogenesis, right, with the ketamine rewiring, then I can really just, you know, things can come together. So the inversion table, of course, you know, inversion has been not only is great for your musculoskeletal system, but it's great for brain health and tremendous for brain health. You know, this is poorly perfused and we're always erect like this. So when you invert and throughout history, you know, people have done that, you know, a lot of, um, old monks, you know, that when they do headstands, it's great for their brain and for their mental acuity. Um, so, so that really kind of came about because I, I was determined to heal my brain fast, and, uh, it worked.

Me too. That's so cool. So do you ever do the, the red light helmet wall hanging upside down? I think that's too, that's too complex.

Yeah, I don't know.

You make it complex, and then my brain's like, how could I make it even more Hardcore. Um, and then, and then the other one you had in there was this really nice PEMF mat. Yeah, yeah. It's a light therapy.

So I got near-infrared light, I got PEMF, and there's also, um, you know, some other, um, you know, there's gemstones. And then I have, you know, a face thing that help with, you know, facial rejuvenation. And then so the full body light rejuvenation. So, so you've got all the frequencies, you know, the therapeutic light frequencies that can help you rejuvenate. Um, I, I just, um, so I have done it, you know, myself. It's, it's pretty incredible.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to get in there and try all that stuff next time I come back to LA. And then what about the working with the, um, uh, the body with the vibration therapy and all that?

And so between my shoulder blades I have these massive knots because I've worked with various massage therapists and they're like, well, This is some of the biggest ones I've seen. And so it takes a lot. I don't know if you ever worked on knots. It takes a lot, a lot of repeated work, and then still it's there. And it's not just, you know, they're very difficult to get rid of, you know, it's just your muscles because it's a whole new memory between your muscle and the nervous system and it is clamped down and besides it's scar tissue. So what happens when you're on ketamine is that your muscles will relax to the point that you cannot, do it just when you're fully conscious. You're not there. So then you have a chance of going deeper and breaking down the, you know, scar tissue or the tight knots. You're breaking them down painlessly. And then because of the rewiring of the neural network, the neurons and the muscle, the nerve endings and the muscles, it could reestablish new communication. So within a few weeks, the big knots between my shoulder blades was obliterated. They're gone. The ketamine will allow you to relax to such extent where whoever that's working on you can get much deeper into your tissue.

Wow, I like that. I'm gonna try that, actually.

Yeah, yeah, we monitor your vital signs. First of all, ketamine is extraordinarily safe. Um, it's being used, I mean, for, for, for pediatrics, you know, pediatric use, and, you know, animals. Um, but emergency settings, they've done a study where they did an emergency setting because You know, when the paramedics go pick somebody up that's really, really agitated, they can give them an intramuscular ketamine and they calm down, right, right away. And one time they accidentally gave the person 16 times, the upper limit, and the person was still fine. And it was funny, it was just reported in the literature, but it's extraordinarily safe. Right.

When, you know, to clarify, when practiced with the, you know, a licensed whatever.

Oh yeah, I do not ever, yeah, please do not go out there and just, Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And also, when it's done in a clinically supervised setting, it's not addictive. So when people worry, oh, what if it is addictive? No, it's not addictive. So if you see literature, show me evidence. You know, that is more of a hype. It's not real. You don't get this withdrawal symptom and craving. You don't get that. You may be psychologically dependent on it because you feel, oh, I think I'll do better, or I need to relax. So psychologically, You want to do it, but not because physically that you— that there's this draw.

Something like alcohol, cocaine, opiates, etc. Okay, cool. Good to know. All right, well, that's it, man. This is my last official interview. Oh my God. In the city of Los Angeles. So thank you. The conclusion of a wonderful, wonderful journey. It's been a great 32 years, and a couple more days I'll be out here. By the time this comes out, I'll already have moved. Um, but we'll have to do it through Zoom. Well, no, I'm going to— I'll come back. So thank you for, uh, thank you for coming. And there is one last question I have for you, and that is, who have been 3 teachers or teachings that have influenced your life and your work that you could share with us?

I can't think of anyone, but I mean, there's some philosophy philosophers, you know, I, I think I definitely resonate with, uh, you know, Lao Tzu, the guru that started Taoism, you know, talking about being in tune with nature. And not fighting the force, but, you know, use the flow of nature. And the same thing with Buddha, that I think is very enlightening when he is so willingly— well, he's through his meditation and he realized he is accepting suffering is life, that life is composed of suffering, that just accept it, but it's all empty. He's talking about this void, right? It's all a void. I think the void is that this particular realm, what we're dealing with, really, it's in the end, it's a play. It's a play to help us grow, help our essence to grow. So, so this temporary, no matter how much suffering you see, no matter how heartbreaking it is, just know it's temporary. This is theater for us to grow. And then recently I just, I was looking at Confucius, so funny. So Confucianism Taoism and Buddhism are the three religions or three philosophies that has dominated the Chinese society. That's really, if you ask what's the Chinese, like, what do they believe in? The Chinese religion or philosophy is really composed of, is an integral part of these three. So he decided, you know, there must be a way of living harmoniously together that, and he, he found the way is to resort to our higher self. He talks about that as a superior man, you know, that, that we can be the superior man, you know, instead of just allowing ourselves to be— to run amok with our basic, you know, needs and, you know, our greed and animalistic instinct, that we resort to the higher self. And that is beautiful. That's awesome.

Thank you for those three. Yeah, I don't know much about Confucius, but I am a little familiar with the Dao, so thank you for the recommendations. And where can we find your websites? How can people find your clinic? The Chara Omni cream that I'm obsessed with.

The Chara Omni, you can just get online. It's just charaomni.com. So Chara, C-H-A-R-A-O-M-N-I. So charaomni.com. And Chara is the Greek word for joy, and I think there's joy in healing. And, um, and you can find me from, um, you know, at our clinic. So the clinic is Thea Center for Regenerative Medicine. So the website is just theacrm.com. Our office, if you want to call us, is 818-356-8232. We love helping anybody that wants to experience these cutting-edge treatment modalities.

Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on the show and, uh, Thank you for treating me the other day and giving me the tour of the office. You guys are doing some really cool stuff. So I'm really glad to meet you and to experience, uh, your stem cell treatments, man. I'm excited. Well, thanks for coming on.

You're so welcome. It's been a blast. We covered a lot of grounds. We sure did. Yeah. 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.