The Truth About Stem Cells: Sources, Safety, and Real Results

Fertilized egg is the first stem cell. When it starts to divide to form this incredible structure, the embryo, until the embryo is able to form the first organ, we know all about the beating heart. That means the heart is working. That means heart muscle cells are working cells. They actually formed an organ that has a function. So you can imagine there are a thousand shades of gray of stem cells until it becomes a working cell. Stem cell therapy, we can intercept anywhere along that line. We can take one of those cells knowing that this one cell has the ability to trigger or to even become the cells of the end organ cells. And all of a sudden, certain conditions will get better. Let's say they have a brain condition, they can get better. They have a muscle tear that can get better. Having a tiny, tiny little bit of DNA from another human being, you decide for yourself. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Today we have a little change of pace because I was the one being interviewed. By Samantha Peters, who is a top 1% podcast host, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and the founder of Light Up Your Life, which is a brand dedicated to inspiring personal transformation and empowerment. So we covered a lot of ground in this interview, and I talked about things I've never talked about before. So if you're interested in finding out more about me, this is a good chance. So I really hope you enjoy and cheers to life.

Welcome back to the Light Up Your Life podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Peters, and today's guest is Dr. Joy Kong. She is a UCLA-trained, triple board-certified physician, stem cell specialist, educator, and CEO. She's the founder of Chara Health and she's a leader in regenerative medicine. She's known for prioritizing scientific data over myths, and she has a powerful journey growing up in China's Cultural Revolution and Starting Over in America, and now she's named the Stem Cell Doctor of the Decade. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you as a guest.

Thank you so much, Samantha. Yeah, I'm excited for our conversation.

So I like to go back in time, and I know you had a really difficult childhood. You know, I mentioned that you grew up in China's Cultural Revolution. How do you think that season of your life shaped you into the woman you are today and the work that you're doing?

Okay, so I, I mean, I was born during the Cultural Revolution, but I wouldn't say I, I grew up in— I had a little taste of it. But, uh, Cultural Revolution is 1965 to— I mean, '66 to '76. I was born in '71. I got a little taste, um, of what the ideology was because my last name is the same as Confucius' last name, uh, but the Communist Party did not like Confucius because they felt that he was one of the thought leaders, uh, the forces that kept China in the, in the past, and that we were too replacement. So there was a, you know, like when I was a little kid and all these kids put me on a little platform and they were running around, uh, the platform is a little bomb shelter thing and, you know, made of concrete, and they were yelling, 'Downfall Confucius! Downfall Confucius!' I mean, that's really about the only trauma I had. After the Cultural Revolution, you know, China was extremely poor, and it's, it's absolutely mind-blowing how far it has come. 1976 is when Cultural Revolution was done, 1978 was when China opened its door to the world. So I was growing up in my formative years. I went to elementary school when China opened its door, right? So gradually, the first time I heard a pop song probably was 1983 when I first got into junior high. I never heard a pop song ever until I was 12 years old. And it was just a school song singing about feeling bored and looking at the birds outside. And, but to, to us, you know, that was extraordinary, right? You're, you're talking about being bored, you know, instead of loving your country and, you know, being excited about doing good things in the world. So that's kind of how I grew up, you know, a lot of fun, you know, not much material access. And, you know, I may have one piece of new clothes per year, so that's about what I would expect. So the emphasis, emphasis is on learning on just, you know, becoming a useful person in society. But it was a, it was a really good upbringing. I grew up on a university campus, so people surrounding me were all professors or college students. So in a very civil environment, a lot of learning. Even when I was 13 years old, I started to have the idea that I wanted to go abroad. I wanted to explore something else. There's something that's really exciting about America, partially because that's a place that everyone go to from all around the world. It's a melting pot and it's a new type of country because you can come together and form a new government and it's for the people. So all these ideological, this idealism about what America represented was very, very exciting to me. And I really wanted to go there and experience it and have an adventure. So that's kind of my, my little journey. And then when I was 20 years old, that's when I was getting close. When I was 18, I actually really, really put my head down, studied English, studied really hard. I talked about that in my memoir, Tiger of Beijing, you know, what happened. You know, I went, I deviated from my original plan because of the political atmosphere at the time. So I ended up having to rush my journey to America and I did get accepted by a university in Massachusetts, and— but my visa was rejected. So my book started with my visa rejection. It was a bit heart-wrenching for a young girl who has worked so hard, and that's only— I believed in it. I believed I would be there, even though everybody, all my friends, thought I was a little crazy because it's just about next to impossible. So like, why, why would you be able to go? They reject most visas, and They almost give no scholarships. So how can you do it? But I just believed I, I called on the universe because if you have a thought, a desire, if you want it bad enough, the universe will come and help you. So I thought, come, come help me. And, but it was still rejected. So that's when the journey, the adventure started that resulted in all this 3 years of really interesting time of my life that I wrote the memoir on. Yeah, so that's kind of my early beginnings.

Wow, that's amazing. So how long did it take you to actually get your visa? And I feel like it just makes your story better, right? You got rejected, but then you didn't give up. You had so much faith and belief that it was all going to work out for you.

Yeah, wasn't that interesting? I got rejected in August, so I, I, I was upset for a few days and then I was like, you know what, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm just gonna quit school. I was studying architecture for 2 years. So I took a year of leave of absence. I decided to just see what I can do. And then the next year, April, so that's about 8 months later, I was in San Francisco. Yeah, so it took me 8 months.

Gosh, that's incredible. You're here, and I think that's a really big testament to anyone listening to this. You have to have faith, even if it's small as a mustard seed. I find in my life so many things that I wanted, it took a long time, and I believe that everything happens to you in perfect time. So I'm sure looking back, you realize why it had to happen that way, but when you're going through it, it's definitely always challenging.

It was. Yeah. Yeah. That's not the only challenge in life, for sure.

Agreed. Yes. I know we hear the phrase a lot, trauma lives in the body. And so what does that actually mean on a cellular level?

I know I'm a psychiatrist. I don't know if we know where the trauma lives It's, it's possible it lives in some deep unconscious, some kind of neural network. I mean, I went into psychiatry because I wanted to understand the human psyche, the brain, and just how everything works. So there's a big part that we don't understand very much, the subconscious. I think there's a fabric beneath what we are able to comprehend. It could be the energy fabric. I mean, now I'm speaking completely and on a different plane as what usual psychiatrists will talk about, right? But I think there's an energy fabric of the world. We're manifesting with a physicality. So the physical world can hold onto things through proteins, membranes, different structures and different neural networks and receptors and yeah, all these signaling molecules that's darting back and forth. So that's one layer of existence. But I think underneath there's an energy fabric and it's very possible that there's a, made a dent in the energy world that's always permeating coming through into the physical manifestation. So, but in the body, even just physically, I mean, there are some thoughts that maybe living in our fascia, that's withholding a lot of memories. There's certain release, fascial release that can actually release some of the pain, psychic pain. But exactly where, where is it? You know, it's the Chinese believe in energy channels. It believes in stuck energy, energy within meridians. So are they in these energy channels? I don't think we know for sure. Yeah, energy is still, or even thought. We can't validate thought. There's not much physical basis to thought. We may see some brain waves, but we can't say that's exactly, that's a thought. I think there are things that are on the ethereal level. Yeah, people don't believe in energy or something ethereal. Just do you think? You know, do you have a thought? That's energy. So, there's so much we don't know. So the trauma, the psyche, we don't have the measurement, the language, enough language for it. But I think one day, if we use different forms of measurement, not the existing tools we have, which is not very helpful right now in dissecting the spiritual and energetic world. But one day, maybe we'll get, we'll get advanced enough that we can detect that wrong.

I think that's an, that's an interesting response because one of my mentors talks about how your thoughts create your reality and based on your thoughts and what you're putting out there, it has vibrational frequency. It's either on beta brainwave, it's on theta. And then when it's on a higher frequency, a higher brainwave, you're attracting that into your life. And so I've seen it in my own life, right? I went through so much trauma and I used to think in such a victimhood mindset way, and I would be attracting all of these problems into my life. But knowing and rewriting my thoughts and my beliefs and the way that I speak my thoughts into the universe, now I'm attracting a completely different life. So I am a firm believer that our thoughts, the words we speak, carry vibrational frequency. And you're right, it's ethereal. A lot of people don't realize that, and it's just like having Wi-Fi in your phone, you can't really see it, but it's there, it's working. I think that's really interesting to just get the different perspective. I also want to talk about fight or flight. So what helped you move out of survival mode and to truly thriving in your life?

Okay. Did I fully move out of the survival mode? I think it's been a journey. It's been a journey. I'm getting better and better. I think, you know, we all have our own set of traumas. You know, one last thing I want is to, you know, appear like a victim. That's one thing I don't like. I don't like being a victim. I feel like I have control over a lot of things, but it's true that sometimes when we are victims, we are victims, that we didn't really do anything and things happened upon us. So, but I, I, I always like taking responsibility for, for my actions and I don't like to feel like circumstances determine what happened to me. So that's kind of my struggle a little bit. You know, some people may think that I'm not fully accepting trauma. So I'm getting to a point where I do see that certain experiences, for example, when I was growing up and, you know, I wasn't, at some point I refused to eat because my mom wasn't there and she was, she left 5 o'clock in the morning, didn't come back home until 7 because of work. And then I refused to eat and my grandma was not feeding me, was not comforting me. So, so I can see like a little baby that's still just a few months old, how devastating it will be that her comfort and mother went away and then no one's comforting her. So she's left there. Is she going to die? Like what's going to happen? Right. So that probably left an imprint. And also when I was growing up. Up, plenty of families do hit their children. So I am, have always been very rebellious and very independent-minded. And I like doing things the way I wanna do it. So that clashed with my mom's desire for control and she wanted things her way. So we were both very strong-willed. The clashes often resulted in, in her basically inflicting physical pain on me. What, what is that doing? You know, fight or flight, I'm sure. I had fight or flight. When I was a kid, I was a tough kid. I was fighting with all the boys. Everyone was afraid of me. But then when I was in the, in, in, in elementary school, people always say, oh, you're so much softer, nicer than when you were in kindergarten, because I was a tough girl. And then when I went to high school, you know, people who know me all along say, oh, you were so much nicer and more feminine than you were in your, in elementary school. And so it kept growing. So I became more and more feminine, not like I was just trying or desiring to be that way. It just happened naturally that I became who I am. I think I became closer to my nature and some of the hard shells were gradually lost, just like a lot of resentment I had against my parents, or, you know, I decided to let go, you know, my anger toward them and realizing that they actually fundamentally loved me despite what they did, you know, when they were hitting me and all that. So I think part of this understanding and growth and accepting love, because I actually took me a while to accept that my parents actually loved me, but you know, that, that helps soften things when I realized that they do. And then later on reading books, for example, the book I do recommend for anybody who's struggling with Maybe just past trauma or relationship with their, their mother. This book called Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, a Swiss psychologist, is just really powerful. And it talked about the baggage from mothers to their own children. Far from this holy image of motherhood that can do no wrong, it's all giving and loving, and they can actually pass down a lot of toxic stuff. And cause a lot of maladaptive behavior in their children. So when I read that, at first I cried for myself because I realized so much suffering of my life could have been avoided if my mom was just a healthier mother, if she could just be a little more reasonable and then a little bit more empathetic. And but after I cried and cried for myself, I realized and I thought about her, you know, what about her? How did she grow up? How did her parents treat her? And why is she the way she is? And I realized that there must be pain in her. So I started crying for her. And that was the beginning of forgiveness for her, right? And then you can have healing. So that's kind of the journey. It's a journey, right? Little by little that you're becoming who you are because you're growing as a person.

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. It's really hard going through a toxic upbringing. I mean, I experienced it in my life. My father was very abusive. My mother was very passive. And growing up, I was an avoidant attachment style because I didn't have love and that nurturing growing up either. But you're right, it does take a lot to be able to forgive, but ultimately it's for yourself because you're carrying on that pain and the hurt and the trauma like we talked about. And I do believe it gets stored in the body, but it helped me very similar to what you just described, going back to looking at my parents as young children and all of the trauma that they went through. And hurt people hurt people. If you don't stop and break the cycle, then you're going to continue it. It seems like you're the one in your family that was taking on that responsibility to be able to heal for generations to come. So it's a huge undertaking. It really is doing the deep inner work, reading, understanding why you create these patterns. I definitely applaud you for doing that because it's not easy at all.

No, no. Yeah. It's not easy dealing with it with any pain, but, but pain is a teacher. Yeah.

Yeah. It only makes you stronger. And I find pain helps you step into the person that you're meant to be and your pain becomes your purpose in life. I now want to dive deep into stem cell therapy because I know that's something that you're incredible at and it's everywhere right now. And I know we talked a little bit before the show, but I was introduced to it when I read Tony Robbins' book. Life Force. So what do you think people are getting wrong about stem cells? And then for anyone who might not even know what stem cell therapy is, can you explain it?

Yeah, just think of, um, the kind of intelligence that is in you. Like, you probably don't remember, but you were once a fertilized egg. And so you don't remember when you were that tiny and that powerless, right? But you were full of incredible miraculous power within you in that one cell. So it's that kind of intelligence that is in that fertilized egg that have the ability to manifest into you. So stem cells that the fertilized egg is the first stem cell, the quintessential stem cell. And everywhere when it starts to divide, it can divide into all kinds of further differentiated cells with more properties, with more abilities and more function and moving around and start to form this incredible structure the embryo. So until the embryo is able to form the first organ, right, the first, you know, we know all about the beating heart. That means the heart is working. That means those muscle, heart muscle cells are working cells. So they're actually, they actually formed an organ that has a function. So when it's a working cell, that cell is no longer a stem cell. That's a working cell. But anywhere before that, it's a long journey. To get to that working cell. They're all stem cells. So you can imagine there are 1,000 shades of gray of stem cells until it becomes a working cell. So as stem cell therapy, we can intercept anywhere along that line. We can take one of those cells knowing that this one cell has ability to trigger or to even become the cells of the, the end organ cells, right? Because it's along the lineage. So we can actually borrow anywhere along the way. You can nowadays, one of the most borrowed step is, is called mesenchymal stem cell. And that is a particular type of cell that has just gained tremendous popularity because you can give it from one person to another. There's very little rejection risk, and they're very adaptable immunologically into the new person. Of course, you can give it to yourself as well, but we can talk about the problems with that. But these cells, have incredible properties. They can calm inflammation. They can shift your immune system to a more helpful state. They can break down scar tissue. They can help you regenerate blood vessels to, to give you blood supply. They can rescue damaged tissue. So sometimes our damaged tissue end up dying, and sometimes they don't have to die. There's a chemical cascade that can be reversed. So these cells can do that. They can also help you fight cancer cells. They can also elevate your cellular energy. To give you new, new mitochondria, but they can also trigger your own local stem cells to start divide and make new tissue to make that end-stage working cell. So, so it can do all this. That's the mesenchymal stem cells. That's why they're so popular. If you talk about stem cell therapy, would, uh, I'll bet you that 90% of the time that people are gonna, are giving you mesenchymal stem cells, but there are all kinds of other stem cell types. And there are still so many different kinds of stem cells. They all work. In my clinic, we actually use a combination which will give you the, the best results, but we use really young sources. You can get stem cells from very young sources like the umbilical cord or placenta. You can get it from your own body, like your bone marrow or fat. These three are the most common types of where people get stem cells from, but you can get from menstrual blood, you can get from dental pulp, you can anywhere you have Right? There are a lot of places that you can get stem cells from because every tissue, every organ, before it becomes the working cell, there's a resident stem cell. All it can become is that working cell. So they're just sitting there waiting to become that working cell. That's the last stage of stem cell. So that stem cell can be activated by mesenchymal stem cells by the signals they secrete. So as you can see, it's a complex hole, right? There are a lot of different, different variations and different places that you can enter to try to intercept. But what you're after really is the power released by these stem cells. Because how are you— how were they able to form a whole human? That's the kind of intelligence that we are unleashing when we borrow these cells, is that bit of information, that blast of signals that's creating all these downstream effects on the neighboring cells and on your system. That's kind of stem cell therapy in, in a quick overview. I think of stem cell therapy as intelligence therapy. It's, it's really a form of energy therapy because what I'm giving to the body is not just one molecule, you know, a group of molecules like herbs. I'm giving you the DNA. DNA is the most energy-dense substance in the universe. It's packed with information. And that's what I'm releasing into your body is information, is clarity. So that's stem cell therapy.

Wow. You did such a great job being able to take a really highly conceptual topic and break it down into bite-sized pieces for people to understand. So I loved your response for that. I have so many questions. So when someone goes into your clinic, do you do like a whole body assessment or do they come with a specific objective that they want?

Well, we are a specialty clinic. We focus on stem cell therapy. So, we are an anti-aging clinic. We could do, you know, more foundational, and we do try to do as much as we can. But, people come to us for stem cells. That's what we're known for. We want to be as comprehensive as possible. But ideally, you know, our ideal patient would have had all kinds of holistic evaluations, right? I consider holistic medicine, I'm just going to call it new medicine. It's just not, you don't have to give a name. It's not, you know, it's not a branch. It's the new way that you should be doing things. So the old way is focused more on individual organs and looking at particular tissue cells, receptors, and drugs to interact with those tissue. So it's very, very tailored toward small amount of tissue and cells in your body. But the new medicine is something that's overarching. It does— involves everything. Stem cells is probably the most holistic way that you can give the body signals. But there's even vitamins. That's holistic. One vitamin, one magnesium ion can interact with, can assist and be part of over 400 physiological actions. You don't think that's holistic? That's everywhere in every organ. So it's involved in everything. Same is true for a lot of other very important minerals. And there are peptides that's involved with everything, hormones that involved with everything. So you're looking at holistically what can affect you. Even microbes in our body can affect everything. So they secrete all kinds of things and help us with different metabolism. So they're there to help us. You need to take all of those into account. What we do is that we use stem cell therapy to give the body a blast. Of information, right? This is a high intelligence that we just inserted into you. Now your body can see, can hear, can feel, and can actually make changes. But before that, you know, or even during the process, don't you think you need certain minerals? Don't you think you need certain antioxidants to help you? Don't you think you need peptides to carry the information? We need a lot of things to make sure that everything is going in the direction that we want them to go, which is health. So we do address those factors. By doing laboratory tests and, and just, you know, evaluating their symptoms or doing some kind of imaging. But, but our focus definitely is stem cells and, you know, they can do all those holistic evaluations either with us or with our own holistic doctors. So, yeah. So the process is if a person's interested, then we do a very thorough evaluation. And I actually just heard this from my staff, cuz they hear this from patients who come to us. People come to us, we're like really impressed that our doctors spend so much time with them trying to understand their problems, their, their, their condition. And they said, we were talking with other stem cell clinics and all they want is to sell us. They barely spend much time with them. They don't really know what we have. They don't go over our history and they just start, start selling us. And that's not how we, we do this. We are doctors. We're here to understand exactly what's going on with the patient so we can really explain whether or not this kind of therapies we have is made— is meant for them. It's gonna really tailor to their issues. And why? We need to explain why. Why do you think you have rheumatoid arthritis? Why do you think stem cells are gonna help you? Well, there's a bunch of reasons and we, we need to list them and, and, and really explain it to people. If there's research in that area, we tell people that, you know, 'cause I, I have an academy. I teach a lot of doctors on stem cell therapy and I give them hundreds of articles so they can keep them ready. When a patient comes in with a particular condition, now they actually can go into deeper science to explain whether or not the stem cell therapy can help. So we explain the science and we truly understand if this is appropriate treatment for a patient and what kind of, you know, how much cells they're going to need. Like any medical treatments, we need to know the dose, right? For any medications, there's dose and there's frequency. We need to know How much do I need to give you? How often do I need to give it to you? And so, that's tailored toward each person's health issue. And where are we going to put it? Should we put an IV? Should we put in your joint? Should— do you want to do a hair restoration? We can inject into the scalp or we can, you know, do some other things with the scalp. Or facial rejuvenation or sexual wellness, or you want to target the brain, we can do intranasal access. For, for these either stem cells or exosomes to get to your brain. So there are a lot of nuances that we design a good protocol for our patient. So when everything's set, that's when they make an appointment. When they come in, we already know this is a plan. This is, you know, all these places we're gonna put the cells in to make sure we get a maximum benefit.

I love that. And I, you must have been reading my mind because I was gonna ask you if you did IV. Remember meeting a doctor at Secret Knock, and he was telling me how he would do stem cell therapies with younger kids who had autism. And he said it was reversing the autism and the different symptoms. So I'm curious to know what has been one or two incredible stories that have come out of you doing stem cell therapy.

So many incredible stories. Incredible stories. But autism, I actually have a lecture on YouTube. Is a lecture I gave in Brazil at a large autism conference, but I went over the science of why stem cells may be able to help autism and then some real-world cases of our own patients from my clinic. But gosh, you know, so autistic kids, we've had kids start talking from, from nonverbal and from being incontinent to being able to tell parents potty and, and start interacting with, you know, eye contact and, and saying thank you. I mean, all these are just monumental milestones after stem cell therapy. But we've had, just yesterday, we had an 18-year-old kid who came to us when he was 17. He was on liver transplant list. He has the cholangitis and, um, he's, you know, his eyes were, were yellow and he was, the white of his eyes, then he Yeah, he was, his life was in, in, in, in the, in the balance. So we were able to give him 2 stem cell treatments and he was off the liver transplant list to the point where he graduated from high school. Now he's going to go on a 2-year mission away from family completely, right? It's unthinkable before this, but now he's got a full life ahead of him. And we had, you know, a COPD patient dragging oxygen around and really can't do very much in life anymore. And after I give him one stem cell treatment, he ditched his oxygen and got off almost all COPD medications and went out to sing with his band. You know, he got his life back. We had a Parkinson's patient, we had several Parkinson's patients, but one of them, yeah, was wheelchair-bound for over a year. And now his wife was filming him racing his son on the beach and posted on Instagram, right? It's incredible, incredible thing. Yeah. Alzheimer's patient, you know, being from not recognizing family, being incontinent, to being able to actually go use the bathroom and with the return of his personality. And we have a— we really reversed a lung disease, lung condition from the first 9/11. At the first, we're the first clinic to reverse a lung condition from a 9/11 victim. This one happens to be a New York the elite police force, New York police officer, that a lot of his colleagues have died. And we were able to reverse it, not just symptomatically. Now he's sprinting. Before, he could barely walk up and down the stairs at his home. He's sprinting. And also, his imaging is— all the terrible lesions and the opacity have gone away. I mean, for the— because he asked his pulmonologist, can I say I'm free of this? Lung disease, the pulmonologist say, yes, you can say that. So, I mean, we, we have so many stories. I had a, you know, a surgical tech who had rheumatoid arthritis, couldn't work because she couldn't use her hands. In the middle of an IV infusion, she closed her fist and started crying. She said, I have not been able to do this for 2 months. And she went back to work. Her livelihood was saved. I mean, numerous people, MS patients, couldn't work and one treatment was able to, to go back to work. Not everybody is just one treatment is gonna do it. And because I, we actually often recommend 3 sessions for chronic conditions because we need different waves of regeneration to push the body to get to a good state. Because when you are chronic, have a chronic condition, that means the tissue and organ are damaged. To our, you know, a more severe degree. And it's not something that, you know, they say in medicine, usually how long it takes you to get sick is how long it's gonna take you to get better. So it's gonna take some time for the repair to happen. But we've seen, you know, people with, you know, serious— I mean, I've treated liver cirrhosis, people with kidney diseases and keeping them away from dialysis, right? Keeping their life more normal. There's one doctor I trained— I worked with actually got somebody off dialysis. We have, we have so many stories.

That is so fascinating. I'm curious to know for anti-aging, how much does it reverse the aging in your, in your face if you have wrinkles or anything like that?

Hello, my loyal listeners. I want to interrupt this podcast for just a second because I want to let you know that if you're looking to help solve a major health issue, or are you looking for health optimization and just for longevity purposes, you can find us at Chara Health. We are considered the leader in the regenerative medicine and longevity space, and we utilize modalities like stem cell therapy, peptide therapy, plasmapheresis, ozone treatments, laser therapy, all to create a beautiful symphony to get you to where you want to be. You can find us at www.chara-health.com. That's C-H-A-R-A. One fun story was when I started doing stem cell treatments, I remember my neighbor. So I was 45 when I started. So now I'm 54. So even the first—

you definitely don't look it at all.

Thank you. I'm trying to show people that, you know, anti-aging is possible. You know, we're, we're here. But when I was 45, right, I started doing IV stem cells. And, um, and then my neighbor of 8 years actually asked me, like, what, what, what have you been doing? So a year after I started, she said, you, you've been looking younger and younger. And, and I've seen that as over the last year. Because, uh, this is a person that I've been talking with for 8 years, right? So if I was 45, then, you know, we were you know, kind of spending time together a little bit since I was 37. She noticed a difference. And when I was about to thank her for being, you know, so kind and, you know, complimentary, she said, no, no, no, I'm not trying to give you a compliment. I'm actually telling you what I'm seeing. And it's not just me that's seeing this. My daughter told me separately that she's seeing that in you. My mother-in-law told me that you're looking younger and younger. What have you been doing? So there's definitely anti-aging component. And if you do, and I have some of my people who follow me on social media or YouTube, they go all the way back to my older videos. And they're the one that told me, they're like, Dr. Kong, yeah, you're right. You know, we went back to your older videos and you do look younger. Yeah. So people are checking it. It does happen. What I say is that your face and your skin is a reflection of your internal organ. The skin happens to be the largest organ in the body, and it happens to be right in your face. So, but just because you can't see what's inside of you doesn't mean that they're not aging along with your skin. So when people see, oh, I'm getting older, you know, I'm— gosh, you know, my face, I look like I'm aging. What you're not seeing and you're not worried about, you know, most people are not worried about because they— if they're feeling okay, they don't see that All their organs are wrinkling and sagging just like their face. So there's a decline in function, inability to repair. That's why your face has wrinkles is because its ability to repair has drastically declined. When you're a little kid, your skin is so plump and beautiful and flawless is because everything is fixed up right away. It doesn't matter what, how much damage you're causing. It just repaired flawlessly. So that's, that when people, even just a short study, like a 6-month study, have shown that there's anti-aging benefits in people's energy level, their sex drive, and their skin, hair, and nail. So yeah. So there's, there's evidence that these stem cell treatment can have immediate anti-aging benefits, not to mention long-term studies in animals. Looking at longevity, 'cause it's really hard to study longevity in humans, right? You have to wait for 100 years to get the results back. But with animals who only live for about 20 months, you can see what happens to their lifespan. And it's been consistent. If you give an older animal younger animal's stem cells or even human stem cells, it can extend their lifespan by about 30%. And it's not just lifespan. Is our healthspan, is our youthspan. Because these animals are looking better. They were talking about how their fur was shinier and their spine is straighter and their locomotion is better, right? They run much faster and smoothly. And then, they're able to run the maze. They remember. You know, they got their marbles still. So, it's about extending the time that you have youthful vitality. So, that's been proven in the animal model. You know, to be honest, we're not that different from the animals. If we use stem cell, animals are made of stem cells too. And, you know, initially they were, you know, these mammals, they were all fertilized eggs. So when they can form a fully functional animal and then you give a younger type of stem cells to an older animal and that can produce that kind of benefit, I'm pretty sure the same is gonna happen to humans. Of course, you know, it's just not time to prove that. But do you wanna wait until 100 years later when that's proven in humans? Or do you want to try to jump on it now?

Yeah, exactly. I definitely want to jump on it soon. I've always been curious to ask this question. So there's an idea that stem cells carry information from multiple generations. When someone receives stem cells from another person, does that actually change anything about their own DNA or their genetic makeup or what's really happening in the body at a cellular level?

I actually have a video specifically on the subject. It's called Other People's DNA in Me, because people worry about other people's DNA. So first of all, just know, let's say we try to extract stem cells from your body and we're gonna do some liposuction and we're gonna extract some fat, and then we're getting stem cells really from the blood vessels that are supplying your fat. And along that, those blood vessels are full of mesenchymal stem cells. So we can do this spinning process where we can get all those stem cells from the blood vessels. So we get those from you and then we wanna put it back into your body to promote certain regeneration, right? This is all from you, you back to you, right? Same genetic material. There's no chance of rejection from them, another person. Most of the cells would die. They will work for you for a while and then they would die. Why? Because the cells have a lifespan. You just activated them, you put them to work, not only when they come to a place where there's a lot of inflammation because that's what they're attracted to. And their job is to find the inflammation and injury and fix it. So, in those environments is often toxic. Like a good soldier on a— in a battlefield, they fight for you and they are sacrificed. So, most of them, a lot of them die while trying to help you. But even if they don't die from a toxic environment, they have a natural lifespan. They don't just— no cell just gonna, oh, we're just gonna keep living on forever. Just like why the number of stem cells decline almost like falling off a cliff as we grow older, because there's a nutrition rate. They don't stay with you forever. They're supposed to stay with you forever. But, um, when you are a teenager, then the number of stem cells in your body is only 1/10 of what you had when you were born. And when you are in your 40s, it's 1/4 of what you had when you were a teenager. And when you are in your 80s, it's 1/5 of what you had when you were in your 40s. So you can see it's just—

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're losing— this is why our skin is wrinkling. That's why you get a cut on your skin. This thing takes so much longer to repair when you're older. It's because your body doesn't have enough of what it takes. The stem cells are not quite there. We need the signals. We need the workforce. Horse, right? We need the, the horsepower to, to get things done when we're running out of them. So when you put those back in the hope that it's gonna trigger some, some kind of benefit, a lot of people can get stem cells from the bone marrow or fat and put back into the body in the systemic circulation, and all of a sudden certain conditions will get better, right? Their brain, let's say they have a brain condition, they can get better. They have a muscle tear that can get better. But those are the cells that you mobilized, freed up from your tissue. And you put it back into your body so they can circulate and find their way to a place. But you activated those cells and they don't, they won't live forever. They were in hibernation. They were quietly, they were just holding on and hanging out. And then you woke them up and they only live for so long. So majority of them will die even if they're from yourself. So why did I talk about this whole thing? You know, this long, long-winded description of what happens to the cells. Is because when I extract it from somebody else, like from the umbilical cord, and I give it to your body, it's the same thing. Majority of them, vast majority of them is gonna go do the work for you, and then they have a finite lifespan. They're gonna die. So there's only a small fraction that are actually gonna stay in the body. And there probably is a small fraction because we do know from research these cells do live in the body and sometimes can live with a person for the rest of their lives, but they're so minuscule. We have 37 trillion cells in our body approximately. And even if I give you 500 million, I mean, do the calculation and see what— it's a drop of water in the ocean. So it's a, it's such a minuscule amount. And there are two fates, two type of fates with these cells. Okay. So they're there, they're still alive. Majority of the, the cells that came with them have died. So, so they're still there. Okay, I'm in this new body. So either I try to differentiate, you know, I gain some function, I become, you know, a little bit more than who I am. And the moment you start to do that, you may express surface markers that's consistent with the donor, right? The donor's DNA is gonna encode different protein. So we all know protein, different kinds of proteins is what triggers immune rejection. So your, your immune receptors will recognize this is a different protein. So the moment these cells start to express these different markers, then they can be attacked by the recipient's immune system and they could be killed, and sometimes they are. So there you go. You don't have to worry about anymore. The cell is gone. Or another fate is that it adapts to the body. And we have seen that in animal studies as well when we do biopsies and all of a sudden the animals got human cells living right there. Within, among the animal tissue, and it's there. It just part of it. It, it integrated. Even between human and animals, there's a chance of integration. So you can imagine between human and human, there's definitely a chance of integration. Do you know that 60% of women have Y chromosomes in their body? So if people are so afraid of other people's DNA in your body, then please stop having sex and stop kissing each other. Right? Because you are engaging in DNA exchange. So if you are so afraid of that, then don't do any of that. But 60% of women have Y chromosomes in their body and is everywhere, in their breast, in their brain. So it goes everywhere. And why majority of the time is because of sexual intercourse. There's a small, smaller proportion that could be from miscarriages. You know, they had had a male pregnancy. And the, the baby cells traveled in the mother's body, which happens all the time. So mothers do carry their baby cells in their body, which is only 50% identical to them. So mothers already do that. But even beyond that, women get DNA from other people. I assume men will get female DNA too. It would be interesting to, you know, know. I don't know if any studies checked, uh, you know, you know, the excess X cells among the male cell population. But the Y is a little easier to uncover, I guess, because, you know, since men also have X, it's a little harder. I think scientifically it's an easy trick to find out if there are Y chromosomes because women really are not supposed to have any. So if you already have DNA exchange among human beings as part of the human experience, then really how much should you be afraid of having a tiny, tiny little bit of DNA from another human being? Yeah. You decide for yourself.

Yeah, no, that was a great explanation. Thank you. It's definitely very, very insightful because I'm thinking about getting a treatment. So that's good information to know.

I have done over 40 stem cell treatments, IV treatments on myself. So I I, you know, I love it. I'm like a little universe. I, I carry probably lots of people's DNA and I welcome them. It's like, come on, join the party, you know? Oh, I love it. I love that.

You're like, I'm a little universe. That's great. So before someone, before someone jumps into an advanced treatment, what do you think are the non-negotiables that everyone should be doing for their health?

Eating a healthy diet. Because otherwise you're just feeding your body with toxins, and that's really not acceptable in this day and age. We should all know what's good food, what's bad food. You want to eat things with nutrients and be free of toxins. It can be a little hard, but you can, you can do your best. So instead of actively poisoning yourself and then being upset that when your health goes down, then do something now and put something that's responsible into your body. So eating an anti-inflammatory diet, avoid a lot of highly processed food, avoid fried food, and, and a lot of the, you know, the pesticides and bad seed oils, and probably limit just sugar intake. So you're not, you know, kind of browning your body in a sense that you are slowly roasting your body through this sugar glycation process. That, that's a huge aging process. So if you can do those, that's one of the huge things you can do. Another thing everyone stresses is sleep, and I have not done a good job on it. I haven't been resting, you know, a lot. I do have a lot of energy, but I also know my body needs a lot of rest and I, it's, that has been a struggle because I want to do so many things and yeah, so that's no excuse because I know other busy people still prioritize their sleep. So I, I could do better. Another one is moving your body. So you need to move, do regular exercise. You should move your body every day. That activates all kinds of genes that actually help you stay youthful and stay healthy. And so besides not putting toxin in your body, you can do gentle detox. And my favorite way is just infrared sauna to sweat it out. You can sweat out a lot of toxins. So yeah, so these are some of the good things that don't put toxin in your body, do some kind of a little bit of detox. And yeah, sleep and move your body.

Great points. I love that. Before I wrap this up, I always like to do a quick this or that challenge. So whatever comes to mind first, are you ready?

Okay.

Okay. So first one is biohacking or back to basic health.

You should always do back to basics. Yeah. Without back to basics, the, the biohacking, that's not, not gonna do you that much good.

Love it. Next one, cold plunge or sauna?

If you ask personally, I'm always gonna go for sauna, but there's, I, these two are a tie. I think maybe personal preference. Ideally you do both, but the cold plunge has tremendous benefit. It's a really good— sauna as well. Yeah. Can't lie. So, but the only time I do cold plunges is when I go to a, a spa where they have sauna and cold plunge. A sauna, let's say they have a hot soak. Right. Really hot mineral soak. And then I'm just really, really hot and ready to jump into something cold. That's about the only time that I feel like I'm— I actually would like to do it, but otherwise I seriously reject.

Yes, I'm the same way. Podcasts or books? What do you prefer?

I do love podcasts because I love the conversational nature. And the breadth of subject and the accessibility because I can type in one subject, something I'm dealing with, I want some help with. I can type it, type it in and then I can get somebody, you know, sometimes it's a new person I've never heard of. And then I realize, oh wow, this is a smart person with a lot of good insight. So it's very immediate. But of course a book is a meditation. It's something that you spend time with and you really, you know, really soak everything in. It's still very, very nice, but I love the flexibility of podcasts and just be able to still be busy going to places and learning at the same time.

Yeah. I always like to say it makes my drive time a live time because every time I'm driving, I always put on a podcast to learn something new. Would you rather have a structured schedule or go with the flow days?

Structures. I like it. Yeah. I like to know what I'm doing. Yeah. Go with the flow. Oh no. I'm afraid I'm going to. Drift away and not be efficient. I don't know. Exactly. It's nice, but it certainly is. I rarely have go with the flow days and those will be the ones that, that's a big breather. That's a, that's a time to reset, to really take time ideally with yourself and in nature. I think that's a good way to recharge, but on a workday, yeah, I want to have a schedule.

Of course. Yes. Uh, city life or nature reset?

I grew up in a city, although I grew up on the university campus, so it's like a big garden. So in a sense, I grew up with something that's very nature-focused. Yeah. And which did me a lot of good. I used to just go reset in nature. So I think having nature is lovely, but I like the city. I like restaurants and shops and, you know, I like that human energy as well. So I think, you know, it would be good to have a blend.

Yeah, both. Last one. So big vision planning or daily micro habits?

What's the first one? Vision planning?

Big vision planning. So having a big vision for your future.

Oh, okay. Um, I think I'm pretty good at, um, like a long-term, just kind of an idea of what I want in life. Um, where I, but I'm not very specific. For example, when I wanted to come to America, I mean, that's a goal, come to America. As far as what and how and that, I'm leaving it up to, to adventure. Because all I know is that I'm willing to go to that country with no money. So I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I do know I want to be there. But once I get there, I heard a lot of people go to Chinese restaurants, starting with washing dishes. So if that's what it takes, I'll go wash dishes. That's as far as I planned.

I love that. Yeah. And you, it's just trust within God or whatever you believe in. I actually just moved from Connecticut to Tampa. I just made a decision. I'm like, I don't know how it's going to work out, but everything worked out better than I could imagine.

So yeah, it's such a cool, isn't it fun? Right. It's an adventure.

Exactly. Yeah. And you have to have joy within the journey, right? You can get so stressed out not knowing how everything's going to work out, but when you relinquish the how, And you know your why behind it. It makes life so magical. It's like you're living in the unknown every day.

I know. I know. Congratulations. That's, uh, yeah. Well, you haven't hit summer yet.

You're right. I have not. It's 72 here, which is nice and sunny, but yeah, I've heard it's really humid. I mean, I visited in the summer here quite a bit, but I've actually never lived here for extended period of time. So I guess I'm going to find out.

Yeah. I hope you love it.

Thank you. Well, it was so incredible having you on the show today. You gave so many nuggets of gold and just really incredible information that anyone could use to help change their life. And I love the work that you're doing, and I can tell you're so passionate about it. For anyone listening to this who wants to learn more about you, maybe they wanna get a stem cell therapy session, they wanna fly to California, where can they find you?

Yeah, so my clinic's in Los Angeles, so anyone can find us. Um, you know, our clinic website is, uh, chara so chara-health.com. But they can always find out about what I do, everything I do on my personal website, which is joykongmd.com. So I, of course, have my memoir on there. I have my clinic information on there. The stem cell company I established is also on there, and the academy that I founded where I'm very actively training, you know, hundreds of physicians. And, and the cream I developed is called Chara Omni, which is a phenomenal skin cream. So I use to kind of poo-poo, you know, like skincare a little bit, except that I wanted to have a good product, but I didn't think of that as real medicine because I wanted— I was going to heal people, right? Who cared? You know, like skin, people want less wrinkles. Yeah, big deal. But then now I'm recognizing that, you know, skin is a very important organ. And if I can give something to people's skin and to make sure that it's the healthiest, right? Number one, don't put toxins in your body. So I developed a cream that has no synthetic ingredients, that is all nature-based, and it has stem cells and peptides and antioxidants, a lot of amazing things. Yeah, it's called Chara Omni, C-H-A-R-A Omni. So that cream is— but that's just the beginning because I'm developing a face serum and a hair serum. So for hair regrowth. So that's very exciting. And that's just beginning. So this whole cosmetic line is all going to be natural as a theme, and then utilizing cutting-edge technology, right? Like stem cells and peptides. That's the mission. Yeah. And I have a podcast, the Dr. Joy Kong Podcast. But if people want to learn a lot about stem cells, the— one of the best resources, which is free, is my YouTube channel. So just go on YouTube, put in Joy Kong, MD. I have more videos on stem cell therapy than anyone that I have encountered. Any questions you want to ask, like today I answer your questions about other people's DNA in my body. In my body. What does that mean? I have a, you know, one on stem cells and cancer. You know, what does that mean? It's going to make cancer worse. What about stem cells versus exosomes? What does that mean? How long does it take to work? And what if it doesn't work? And how many sessions do I need? How soon can I see effect? And how much should I use? All these, I have a video to educate. Really, all these videos came from a need because people are asking these questions constantly. So it's good to have a good explanation. So that's if people want to really dig deeper. Just go and, and take a, take a deep dive. And a lot of my patients actually have watched all my videos. So we don't even need to, to educate them very much on stem cells anymore because they already got all the answers. So that's pretty cool. So just YouTube. And then if you want to follow me on Instagram, I put in some fun videos and clips. And lately I'm on the, on the train of peptides. I've talked a lot about different peptides. So they're kind of fun. But, you know, I show you where I go. Like I went to India for an incredible health retreat and, I show some of the footage there. Yeah, it's just fun. So it's just Dr_Joy_Kong, K-O-N-G, and you can follow me there. 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.