The Truth About the Latest Stem Cell Therapy Advancements (2024)

There's just so much misconception out there. Even today, somebody asked me, are you using embryonic stem cells? No. Nobody is using embryonic stem cells in the United States. It's not legal. Nobody's using it. Are you using fetal stem cells? No. Nobody's using fetal stem cells in the U.S. unless they're breaking the law. We use live, healthy birth. When the baby's born, the cord is cut and the birth tissue, which is the cord and the placenta usually is tossed. But now we know that there's so much good stuff. Hello. Welcome back to my channel. This is Dr. Joy Kang again. And you know, I am passionate about stem cells and of course, also about all things that's going to enhance our lives, slow down the aging process, and just make us more vibrant and happier living beings. So everything started eight years ago, and that's when I first heard about stem cells and actually tried it on myself and then started treating with it. As far as today, this is very special because I'm sitting in the same chair where I recorded my first video on stem cell therapy six years ago. So that was my first video on YouTube about stem cells. And that video was, what is a stem cell? So that actually was very relevant at that time because most people did not know what a stem cell was. So I was asked that question a lot. And I needed to explain to people exactly what. Nowadays when people come to me, they don't ask me that question anymore, and they ask me, hey, I know stem cells work. I know they're great. But I have this condition. Can stem cells help me? So you can see the conversation has changed and evolved, which is a good sign. Which means the science has spread the knowledge and the understanding and the therapy has spread. People are getting help from it. The curiosity and doubt the has been replaced by hopefulness and wonder. So I want to, you know, just say that I'm excited to be part of this movement. I consider stem cell therapy a grassroot movement. This is not something that doctors are looking for. I can tell you maybe 20% of the doctors doing stem cell therapy, maybe 20, 30% actually did it because they were seeking out stem cell therapy to bring to majority of them found out about it, had heard about it, and patients were asking them about it, and that's when they felt, okay, okay, maybe I'm falling behind. Maybe science is moving forward and people are already investigating it and maybe I should educate myself on this and maybe I should bring it into my practice. So the people are the ones that are bringing this Wave together and are pushing it forward. Because people are the denominator, they're the one that was suffering. Right? People were suffering and they were looking for solutions. And conventional medicine a lot of times had no good solutions, especially for long term chronic illnesses. Then they were looking for other ways of healing the body. This is the case with anti aging medicine. So you can call it anti aging or functional medicine, integrated medicines, all very similar. These are a branch of medicine that is looking at the body holistically, looking at various organs that can interact with each other and can be affected by similar denominators. So one thing can affect many things. Instead of just segregating the body into a particular organ, particular cells and, you know, neurotransmitters and different hormones, you're actually looking at microbiome, look at toxins, look at different hormones, looking at the effect of energy field to the body. I mean, all these are coming together in this new field of medicine. So the doctors who are in training academies like American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine, when they are MDs or DOs, they were not educated on anything of such. Right. Any holistic approaches. Maybe they took an elective on acupuncture or on preventative medicine. Very limited, very limited in scope. Just to be honest. When I was at ucla, our nutritional lectures, I think half an hour, that's pretty fair. That's how much education we got on nutrition. Which means if you go to a doctor and ask advice about nutrition, guess how much they know, how much they can advise you. Not very much unless they took a personal interest on nutrition and really educated themselves. But majority of them, that's not how we were made. We were made in the medical schools by connecting illnesses with drugs. That is the whole point. Yes, we have understanding of how different organs work. So we know the physiology of the organs. But very, very quickly we start to talk about symptoms and test results, all with the purpose of identifying a disease. So we were trained to quickly find a label. What does a label do? The label will lead you to a drug. Because the FDA indications are all indicating for a particular illness. Right. Everyone's talking about, oh, is there FDA indication for this? FDA indication? Well, that's what it is, the indicating for a particular illness. So illness and drug, we're the matchmakers, we're matching these two. So the whole purpose is to give people drugs. If you're educated in that way and you go to your continuing education seminars or conferences, all these are hosted by drug companies and sponsored by drug companies. So guess what? You will know then you will always be in this particular bubble that you will have a necessity of stepping out to see what other ways of looking at the body could be. So that's what's happening with most of these doctors. So when I was at this anti aging conference, seeing all these MDs and DOs, you know, trained the same way as I was. So I asked them, why are you in this conference? Why are you interested in anti aging medicine? And to look at the body in such a drastically different way than how we were trained in medical school. I would say probably about 75% of them, 70, 75% of them will have a personal story. Either they themselves or one of their family members had suffered from some kind of chronic illness, a difficult condition that conventional medicine just didn't have a whole lot to offer. They tried, they saw all kinds of specialists, you know, did everything that they were supposed to do with the way they were trained. They thought, okay, I'm seeing the best, I should have a solution. They but they did not get better, not until they saw something completely different. They were doing things that were non conventional eastern medicine, acupuncture or you know, particular way of testing the body that's not taught in medical school, looking at toxins, etc. All of a sudden then they get better or their family members get better, then the light bulb goes off. They are wondering what has been missing in their medical education. The other 20, 25% doctors, 25, 30% of doctors are naturally curious that, you know, at these conferences. Kind of like me, you know, naturally curious, very open minded, wants to know what else is out there. Because I'm vitally interested in enhancing health, not just to not be sick, right? So I want to be healthy and vibrant myself and I can bring that knowledge to my patients. So that's why I'm really excited about anti aging medicine. And anti aging medicine embraces a lot of new therapies because on average, whatever new therapeutic modalities comes out, by the time the whole medical community accepts it and adopts the therapy, it takes about 20 years. So what about during all those 20 years, people who are sick, they're just going to continue to be sick and not trying new things. But there are doctors who are going to try new things, who are going to adopt the new technology right away. And so, well, I'm one of those. So are most of the anti aging doctors, holistic practitioners and integrative doctors. So we're looking at what is new, what has not percolated into the medical education in a medical school. These are you know, just my thoughts on the evolution of medicine, on how as a profession, I think we have been evolving, but right under the nose of conventional medicine. And they don't even know what's coming because they're still stuck in the old ways. I heard from somebody who manages a lot of people like Kaiser, and she was saying how these doctors are coming up to her, saying, well, I don't know. I feel like I'm not keeping up. Patients are asking me questions I don't have the answers to. Yes, because people are looking, people are searching for solutions. So if you are not in that search, you're not actively searching and looking, then you are confined to what you were taught. Whereas the people who are looking for solutions actually are. Are pushing this wave of new therapies and new solutions. So that's where stem cell therapy comes in. I can't think of anything that's more holistic than the intelligence that created life itself. It's so beautiful and so elegant. Till this day, nobody knows how a human being is formed. Guess what? It formed from a single stem cell. So from that one stem cell, somehow it knows how to divide into all these other cells, and all these other cells can form a ball, and then they start to convolute and twist and turn and making different layers, and all of a sudden you got organs, and then you have a full human. I mean, that is miraculous. So what is embedded in these cells that knows how to make life? If it can make life, can it repair life? Because if you have the blueprint to make life, you should also have the blueprint to repair life. So it sounds all great in theory, but it's not until that you see evidence, then you can believe this therapy can actually be useful. And that's when I delved into all these articles and research from around the world, and it started to look pretty convincing. So I know stem cell therapy is still controversial to some people, not to a lot of people, but definitely to a lot of other people. And there's still objections. And I see it. I just saw it on YouTube today. There are videos debunking or talking about the dangers and risks of stem cell therapy, completely ignoring the mountain of evidence of its safety and efficacy, only picking at a few bad treatments, bad examples of people having. Maybe the doctor wasn't doing things right, which happens with every. Every medical treatment. If the doctor is not doing it right, then things are not going to go well. Should you blame the therapy? Let's say surgery, you got a bad surgeon is not conducting the Surgery correctly and the patient died or is severely injured, do you ban that surgery? Do you say that this surgery should no longer be performed because it's dangerous? No, you stop the doctor and get that doctor trained to redo to do the surgery correctly. That's how we should approach. So this sensationalism saying, oh, because there are few bad treatment outcomes, then this therapy is dangerous. It's ludicrous. So there's no other way to put it. So when the controversy comes, you wonder where that comes from. Right. So there's so many competing areas that people may not want this therapy to be out there. If we can prevent a lot of people from ever getting on medications or getting off all the medications, did we just reduce the profit margin of certain companies? Yes, we did. You know, that's not very welcome by some people, but what's the point? You know, why are we here? Should we be here to elevate the human experience, or are we here just to make a buck? So that's something to really think about. Unfortunately, a lot of people, their priorities are not aligned with really, I think, the right way of being, you know, on earth. But that's a whole other subject. When it comes back to stem cells. The beauty is that we are using this innate intelligence to help the body heal. And the stem cell therapy field has evolved over time. I can tell you, in 2016, when I first got into it, only 20% of the stem cell therapy were conducted using the birth tissue stem cells. So coming from amniotic fluid. Well, there are not much in the amniotic fluid, but coming from the birth tissue. So placenta, umbilical cord, only 20%, 80% are autologous, which means using your own body's cells. So using your own cells. So that was 2080 split. But by 2018, 44% of all STEM cell therapy were conducted using birth tissue. I knew it when I got into the field in 2016, when I started to delve into the differences between different cell types, I knew that this is going to be the trend. The trajectory by 2019 is that 65% of all STEM cell therapy is going to be done using the birth tissue cells. So younger cells, and only 35% is using a person's own. So that's the trend. And why is there such a trend? Because the younger cells are more effective, they are just more potent and they're also safer. So I talked about the comparison in one of my videos called Are Omics Created Equal? They're not created equal. So by the time you're aging and your body has declined in the number and quality of stem cells. When you use those cells as a therapeutic base, you're not going to get as good of a result. And there's also risks involved because your own cells have lost their intelligence, the intelligence of detecting cancer. For example, because a study have shown side by side study fat derived stem cells versus umbilical cord derived stem cells in both cases. So they, they put the cells, these stem cells next to cancer cells, in this case glioblastoma. So they put it next to cancer cells both in a petri dish and on live animal's body and watch what it does to tumor to the cancer cells. In both cases, when fat derived stem cells is next to the cancer cells, it makes the cancer grow. But if you use birth tissue derived umbilical cord stem cells, they actually make the tumor shrink and go away. That's how different they are. So for me to give a therapy to a patient, I want to maximize the benefit and minimize the side effects. So it's only responsible for me to actually use something that I know will give them better benefit and less side effect. Are there cases that using a person's own, you know, may be a good option? I think when a person's younger, you know, it could be, you know, I know people are doing well, even older people, yes, they have seen results, but if they had used younger cells, I do believe they were going to get better results with less risks. So I'm not taking away from doctors who are doing autologous stem cells. I know they're doing great work and it can help a lot of people. But for me to get into a field, the path was wide open. I could learn fat extraction, I could learn bone marrow extraction, or I can work with the birth tissue stem cells that were manufactured in the tissue bank, you know, extracted from the birth tissue, and that's cryopreserved from a tissue bank. So I was faced with different options. I wanted to give people the treatment that will give them the best results. There's the trend of more and more birth tissue derived stem cells. And there's just so much misconception out there. Even today, somebody asked me, you know, somebody in the medical field, are you using embryonic stem cells? No. Nobody is using embryonic, embryonic stem cells in the United States. Okay. It's not legal. Nobody's using it. And you know, are you using fetal stem cells? No. Nobody's using fetal stem cells in the U.S. unless they're breaking the law. I don't know Anybody that's using fetal stem cells, we don't use aborted fetuses, we don't touch fetuses. So we use life, healthy birth. When the baby's born, the cord is cut and the birth tissue, which is the cord and the placenta usually is tossed in the biological waste basket. But now we know that there's so much good stuff in this so called biological waste in the past that now we can take that and extract, can take out the cells carefully and then give it to people to help them heal. So there's no ethical concerns. We're not hurting anybody. I think the way we obtain our tissue, we're actually optimizing the mother's health. Because do you know how much the mother, what they're doing can affect the baby? Right. Why do you think they advise mothers not to drink alcohol? Because it immediately affect the baby. But what about those seed oils? What about all the junk that you are putting your body, toxins, preservatives that you're ingesting? How is that going to affect the baby? You know, what about emotional health, hormonal balances? How is that going to affect the baby? The product I use, we optimize the mothers so that they can have the best pregnancy, the most healthy baby, and also the most healthy birth tissue. So we want to maximize the regenerative potential of what we're giving patients. And we're also not accepting any Covid vaccinated patients because of the uncertainties of what these vaccines can do, how it causes genetic modification and is a risk of that I'm not willing to take. So from that day to today, there has been all these changes and a lot more doctors are getting in the space. And it's funny, somebody said, oh yeah, there's so many stem cell clinics that the FDA is having trouble keeping track of. Why do you think there are so many stem cell clinics? It's because it works. Sometimes even providers who are, who don't have enough knowledge, who are not very good at it, can achieve some good results because the cells do the work. The cells are incredible. If you put in the body, the cells have the intelligence to get to the places where they're needed because all the inflammation and injuries are sending out signals that attract the cells so the cells can do the work. When I first started doing the treatment, I thought, wow, this is amazing. I don't feel qualified to be treating orthopedic conditions or, you know, people with lung issues. That's not my specialty. But I'm doing better than the Orthopedic surgeons or the pulmonologists, you know, the. It's incredible. It's very powerful for a doctor to think that you have the tool to create healing, to actually fundamentally repair somebody's dysfunction. Right. So that is really an exciting way to exist. So I don't know if, you know, there is significant burnout in doctors, and I can imagine if, day in and day out, not only insurance companies make you see a patient in a short amount of time. For example, I heard about Cedars Sinai. Cedars, very well known, very respected hospital. I was told that they had asked doctors to see a patient every seven minutes. I don't know how you can truly be there for a patient and heal a patient in seven minutes. And a lot of doctors just decided, you know what? I'm not doing medicine anymore. I'm done. You know, this is not how I want to live. I'm not really helping the patients heal. Everybody is on a whole, you know, bag or regimen of medications, and people are still not well. So I throw them one drug, and then I maybe give them another drug to combat the side effects of the previous drug, and we're staying busy. But are people better? And so a lot of these doctors and the reimbursement rate gets lower and lower. I can't help but think of these doctors almost like so slave laborers. I mean, I feel really bad for them, and I hope they wake up to a whole new way of doing medicine, because now they can actually have the tools of addressing why the patient is sick in the first place. And instead of just giving them drugs, that's in the books, that's saying that this drug is for this disease. So I hope more doctors are going to come on board, and I know they are, because, you know, if they open up their mind and they get a taste of how exciting it is to actually help people heal, I think they will really, really enjoy this new way of being a doctor. So that's all I have today. I hope this has been interesting for you. I probably will talk about some other subjects next time, like PRP versus exosomes versus stem cells, just to give you a little bit more understanding. And there's so many topics when it comes to health. And I hope you follow my podcast where I interview different experts in different arenas of health. So, actually, let me mention one thing about the evolution of stem cell therapy, Even just for myself. I don't do the same kind of stem cell therapy as I did eight years ago or six years ago, because I was just doing Stem cells. I was giving people stem cells. That's it. I was giving them some lab tests. I wanted to optimize certain, certain parameters like hormone balancing or nutritional supplementation. So I was doing that. But now in my therapy, I've added so much more. This has become, you know, a growing package which is really fun because I'm reflecting my evolution as a physician, but also the evolution of the field. I'm always on the outlook for really effective, really game changing additions. So now in my clinic, when I give people stem cell therapy, I add ozone therapy just before stem cells. I also add a particular group of supplements I think are particularly relevant to achieve better results. I add different peptides that can target different aspects of health, different organs. And I add laser treatments that can have profound effects on different organ systems. And I can help direct the cells in a way to particular areas. So all this has become really fun. We've seen some incredible results. The more things I add on, the more cells can function even at a higher level. Right. I can allow the cell therapy to, to be much more effective. And it just becomes more fun because I'm seeing more drastic improvements. And you know, I'm making a lot of people happy, which makes me incredibly happy. I mean it's all makes it worth it, why we're here. You know, at least I'm here because I want to, I want the world to be a happier place. I like there to be more joy. So that's why, you know, I founded the company Chara Biologics. Chara is the Greek word for joy. So I want to spread joy in the world. And Chara Biologics offers these stem cell products which are formulated by me because I believe in a very integrative approach to even cells. So cells are powerful, but there's so many kinds of cells. The cells is like this thousand gradations of variations because you can have one stem cell that will form all these different primitive cells. And all these different primitive cells will continue to evolve and gradually gain more function capabilities, but also lose potentials to become more cell types. But you have all these variations of cells. How do you tap into these variations? So the product I take designed is tapping into the best of all that birth tissue has to offer. So birth tissue, I prefer the umbilical cord because all the cells are from the baby, the placenta, some are from the baby, some are from the mother. So if you look at the umbilical cord, there's cord blood, there's the cord tissue which wraps around the cord, the blood vessels. And then there's amniotic membrane that wraps the cord. So in all three compartments, there are incredible stem cells. Very valuable, but different. So what if I put them all together and tap into the potential of each compartment? Because each compartment, the cells from each compartment, there are all these research done from all around the world showing benefits. The core blood has a lot of research behind it. The core tissue, MSCs, mesenchymal stem cells has a lot of studies behind it. And also, also amniotic membrane, MSCs, mesenchymal stem cells are great. So I'm the one that put them all together. I think partially from my Chinese background. I like integration. I like, you know, making herbal concoction, right? If one thing helps, what if I put two things together and what if I put three? And sometimes there are emerging properties because they can help each other, right? All of a sudden, one plus one is not two anymore. It may be. So that's a philosophy I'm bringing in, and that's probably one reason we're seeing such amazing results and why we have such loyal patients that only want the cells from Chara. So, anyhow, I'm really proud that I can bring that philosophy into stem cell therapy. So ancient wisdom into a modern technology. How cool is that? I love science, but science needs to evolve. Science has become quite linear until we hit quantum physics, right? We realize things are not linear. So why don't we start a system approach? So that's where the holistic approach comes into play. Everything is coming into the whole soup, right? The human body is a soup. It's a universe. So why don't you respect that we are this complex, and then we are using a system approach to help you heal. So anyhow, happy healing and enjoy vibrant health. And I'll be there always bring you the latest and, you know, all the great things that I uncover and share with you, because I want all of us to elevate together and to live a good life, joyful life together. So, okay, if you like the video and you think somebody may benefit from listening to this, please share it with them and go to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast and listen to some of my other interviews. But this is really fun. I probably will do more of this. It's kind of like a fire fireside chat that, you know, I just. I just talk to you and I will just share my thoughts and hopefully you enjoy it and leave a comment. I always read a comment and. And I'm happy to answer your questions. Okay? So until next time, thank you for listening.