These Stem Cell Stories Will Change How You See Medicine

It's my job to enlighten people, to let them see possibilities, show them the light so that their suffering is optional. If they choose to suffer, that's fine. But that's also my quest. I'm passionate for enlightening people to allow them to know that you can have a better life. And of course, I see that in my clinic every day that we're drastically changing people's life and so they are able to function and contribute and enjoy. Welcome to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. This is where I have a chance to share with you some of the latest developments in the space of holistic health, longevity and wellness. I have always honored intellectual curiosity and scientific rigor combined with real world practicality. My goal is that what you learn here will help you live longer and live better. Hope you enjoy the journey with me.

Yeah, I will tell you, you know, Janet and I have been practicing more of a functional medicine approach for two decades, over two decades now. And you are correct, it is very rewarding. When we were in the traditional system, the conventional medicine, as you called it, our patients just never got better. And now it's really cool to see our patients get better.

Exactly, exactly. And the tools are there. I think people are just beginning to wake up. Instead of treating doctors as gods, but look at doctors as limited human beings with their own biases and limitations and how some may not be ready to embrace newer and possibly more powerful therapies. So patients are taking things into their own hands. If you are a patient that's sick from a chronic illness and you've gone through a dozen of doctors and seen the best specialists and been to the Mayo Clinic and you're still not getting better, what are you going to do? Do you want to surrender that this is it for the rest of your life, or are you going to do everything you can? And the life force within us is what drives so many people to seek anything possible. And that's why this whole other way of doing medic thriving is getting hold because it actually works and actually really help people. So that's what I see in, in the shift in medicine. Just like going to a 4am American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine, how it's become bigger and bigger, it's grown because the doctors realize that what whatever tools they they were given are very limited. And either from them being open minded about what they can do to help patients, or from themselves getting sick or their family members and seeing firsthand what it feels like on the receiving end when what was offered was very limited and now they if they go outside of the box, they get to see how much better they can become and that opens up their mind and that's why these doctors are so passionate. So anyhow, there's this whole shift in medicine.

Awesome.

I love it.

Janet, what questions you have for joy?

Well, this is super exciting because we're here hearing from md saying, hey, we want to heal people, not just keep stuff in that mold of, well, you have this, so therefore you're this, which is very disempowering. So give us some examples of, you know, exciting things that you've been able to do for people because I think that's empowering people. Like, you know, the last thing in the world we want to know is, hey, I'm this or I'm that and we're labeled and we're stuck with it. Because I agree with you. There's, there's so much out there now that people can heal their body with if they have the right inputs.

Yeah, yeah. So to be Honest, so many MDs, I was there, right? In medical school. I was with all of them. They, many of them came with an open mind, open heart, and they really want to do something good for the world and want to help. But because of the system that's funneling them into a particular direction, by the time they finish the four years, they're locked in to this mold. So, so they're, they're put in this box where it's all about diagnoses and drug prescription. So unfortunately, that's the system's fault, but I think a lot of them really have their heart in the right place and they just need to be shown that there are other ways of doing things. So coming back to your question about what I've seen, let's talk about the very first patient I saw and that's what hooked me. And then it keep hooking me, right just when I, when I saw maybe. And then people surprised me with our healing. So the very first patient was a 69 year old man who had arthritis in his, in his knees, osteoarthritis to the point where there was a lot of pain. And two different orthopedic surgeons told him that you absolutely need bilateral knee replacement. That's it. There's no other way to go around. This is bone on bone. This is done. The joints are done. So he said, I really don't want to have to replace my knees. I don't want to go through the prolonged recovery time. So let's try the stem cell therapy. He is in the Holistic space. He's, he has a probiotic company. So I said okay, let's do it. So I gave him an IV infusion which I can talk about later. The approach of where to put the cells. So IV infusion is going to elevate your body's ability to repair from the standpoint of boosting your immune system. So you need your immune system to come on board to help you heal any place in your body. And then I inject it into his knee joint. So you want the cells to be in the knee joint because the knee, the, the within the capsule, the exchange between the synovial fluid and the blood is very, very slow. So whatever you put in the blood, there's very little that are going to get into your knees. Even though the outer one third of the cartilage is nourished by blood supply. But you get to the, into the joint capsule, it's very slow. So the best approach is attack from both end. And that was my very first case. So I, the next day I said, how are you doing? Well, I don't know. I slept through the night. I feel fine, but I slept through the night. And I haven't slept through the night for the last 40 years because every time when I shift my body, the sharp pain, my shoulder will wake me up. He had a shoulder injury when he was a teenager. He was in a car that rolled over so that damaged his rotator cuff. So literally I fixed his shoulder so that that has sustained the fact that he was sleeping through the night. That shoulder no longer bothered him. And this is almost 10 years later. So what's funny was that I didn't know about his shoulder problem, right? I didn't touch the shoulder. I wasn't even aware of it. I just put cells in the IV fluid hoping that they will help his knees recover. And of course they helped his knees to the point where he was walking four miles almost every day, barely is aware of his knees. Like he just doesn't think about it because it, there's, you know, it doesn't bother him. But his shoulder problem was also resolved. So that's the first case. And it's such a powerful case because one, the cells went to the places where it's needed the most. The shoulder was obviously screaming for help, so it fixed that. Two, the so called bone on bone, you know, end stage osteoarthritis. He was fully functional, he had no need for surgery. And I'm not an orthopedic surgeon and how come I could do things that his surgeons have no way of doing. And these people are specializing and in muscular scholarship system. And I was not right because of psychiatry. I had no business fixing people's bones and joints. So it's remarkable. So that was my very first case. And then from there on it just, you know, another one early case, lupus patient, young, 34 years old, struggled with lupus for years, lost a lot of her hair, was breaking out on heavy dose medications and we started doing stem cells. She was able to get off all her medications. Her lupus markers went back to normal within months. So with two stem cell sessions and, and of course she, her hair grew back and she, you know, her had her full vitality returning. And then I had another patient, chronic pain, severe chronic pain. Nine out of 10, like in probably more than a dozen places in her, in his body, unremitting. So he did stem cell therapy. Within one session the pain was almost gone. I mean that, that just big. Why, why does patient have unrelenting chronic pain? There's issue with your immune system. You have inflammation throughout your body that's not being calmed down. Why does the stem cells, why do they work so fast? They're hugely anti inflammatory. All of a sudden the inflammation level just dropped to, to, you know, to a level where is normal. All of a sudden all these aches and pains were going away. And I have multiple cases, chronic pain, you know, that's, that's a really terrible way to live. And then again, very. These are all my very early cases. My first group of cases, I had a liver cirrhosis patient in deathbed. He was in hospice care, probably only had one to whatever a few months to live. It was last resort. His brother paid for his therapy. I gave him one treatment at the time. He was supposed to come back in two weeks and he did it. And I couldn't reach him. So I didn't know what happened. And then within two months, I was on a radio show. And his brother was invited to be on the radio show because the host actually was the one that introduced the brother to me. So it was a surprise. And the radio show host said, okay, I have so and so on the line. And his brother was treated by you. I thought, oh my God, that's great. I've been trying to reach your brother. So how is he doing? So I had no idea what to expect. He said, he's doing amazing. So literally on the way back from Los Angeles to Sacramento, where they live, on the drive back, the swelling, his abdomen was decreased by half. So that's just within hours. And he said within weeks, his brother was walking around in the yard, talking on the phone as if he was a full, you know, really, really a strong person like he was. Has his vitality. Back when he was at my clinic, I could barely hear him. His voice was really, really faint. And he didn't have much strength at all with, of course, big swelling his abdomen. And then he went back to his doctor. Liver specialist checked his liver. The liver function were normal. And so literally on the radio show, I said, really? I was still early in my career in stem cell therapy, and I just did not expect that. I couldn't believe, believe that can happen. But it went back to normal. So that, I mean, these are just my early cases. Right. So very, very inspiring for any physician. And I, I, I've established an academy called American Academy of Integrated Cell Therapy. We do certification, trainings for doctors. And I tell them, you're going to have so much fun when you start using stem cell therapy. And I see that because they text me, they're like, I just saw this patient, like one of my recent doctors, he has stroke and, and we treated him with stem cells. Within days, he was able to. The clenched arm, right, the flex arm, spastic. Now he's able to extend it fully, and he couldn't believe it. So this doctor is like, I just, I. This is so exciting. If you're trained in conventional medicine, there are certain things you're told are almost impossible that you just don't improve that fast. You just can't have that kind of degree of a recovery. And he saw in his own eyes, it completely contradicted what, what he was told as possible. So this is why it's so fun, right, because we have possibilities now. Yeah.

Those are all great stories. Thank you for sharing those. So your background psychiatry, is that correct?

Yes, that's when I was trained in and I, I practiced psychiatry for 11 years. Awesome.

I, I love how you went into more of a functional medicine approach, being from psychiatry. And you mentioned early on in our podcast today that physical health and mental health really are interconnected. Can you, can you talk, can you talk more about that?

Yeah. So everything that's in our body, we can talk about. Hormones, vitamins, minerals, everything that's floating around. Peptides had profound effects in multiple organs, multiple systems. Something as simple as, you know, vitamin D. Right. It helps your bones. Zinc, magnesium, all these minerals, profound effects, or thyroid or estrogen. Everything has the effect on the brain. And so if you just isolate the brain, as if that is floating above your neck. And I always think it's funny because psychiatry, all we were told is that you've got to check the thyroid hormone. So that was the only thing physical that we accept as having anything to do with the brain. So we checked the thyroid. Unfortunately, we checked it in a way that's really inadequate. We checked the tsh. A TSH is notorious for being insensitive, really, as a barometer of how your thyroid function is. But that's the only thing psychiatrists would check if it's, you know, under whatever. You know, the range, right? The range is pretty broad, unfortunately. And they say, oh, your thyroid is fine. So now let's start throwing drugs at you, because now we're going to need to bombard those receptors. They forgot that if you could reduce insulin sensitivity, if you can calm the inflammation throughout your body and your brain, and you start. You can start walking, so much of your depression is going to go away. But, no, we were not taught that. We're not taught to have patients walk, do some regular exercise before you go into getting hit by pharmaceuticals. We were not taught that. I've known on rare occasion, or, I mean, I only know one doctor that did that said to a patient, you walk for 30 minutes every day and then come back in a month and see me again. If you're still not getting better, then I'm going to give you medication. And almost everybody no longer needed the medication. So we have forgotten just how movement, right. Even something as simple as that, of course, that activates lots of genes, so activates gene expressions, your body. And that can have profound effects, you know, for your hormones and for. For, you know, even peptide production, and it changes how your body is repairing itself. So, yeah, those are just some simple examples. If you don't have, you know, if you don't have proper amino acids, how are you going to build proteins? How are you going to make neurotransmitters? How are you going to have enough peptides for proper brain function? So all these are interconnected?

Well, we talk often, you know, to our patients and on our podcast that there is no better antidepressant ever invented than exercise or movement, ever. There is nothing ever that is better. And another thing we talk about is we're kind of hitting on it now is that, you know, we have all these specialists, you know, whether it be a orthopedic surgeon, you talked about a psychiatrist, or you talk about a liver specialist, and we com. We compartmentalize our bodies, and our bodies are just not. They're not compartmentalized I mean, everything affects everything. It's like you discussed. So it's like we should call, instead of calling doctors specialists, we should call them partialists because they don't look at the whole body. And, you know, I mean, just like your example of depression, I mean, that's a. It's a whole body thing. It's not just. It's not a thing of the brain and just thyroid. So many other things are involved.

Yeah, I think we can still have specialists, but everybody has to go through functional medicine training. Right. They all have to pass the basic criteria. To be a functional medicine doctor, I think you need to have a fundamental understanding of how the body is working as a whole, and then you can specialize. You don't just have barely any understanding of nutrition, of how different hormones affecting your body and how the body works as a whole, and then you just go straight into focusing on one organ. I think that is severely limiting their effectiveness.

The amazing thing is, Dr. Kong, is most doctors, as you know, going through med school, you got that in basic anatomy, physiology, you got that in basic biochemistry. You got a lot of that stuff in. In the basics. And then it's later on in the career when, you know, you start to specialize. And I agree with you. I think we need specialists, but we need to get. They need to get back to their roots about, you know, what caused some of these issues. I don't know if you've heard of Dr. Sean Baker, orthopedic surgeon, author of the Carnivore Diet. You know, he talked about it on our podcast over five years ago that 70% of orthopedic surgeries are unnecessary if somebody changed their lifestyle. Why can't surgeons, you know, talk about that?

Because that's not how they were trained. They were trained to do surgery. And unfortunately. And one of my best friend is an orthopedic surgeon, and he doesn't do that. And so he's one of the few that have been awakened to the possibility of doing something that's a lot less invasive and really work with the body first before you start cutting the body. So I think there's a movement in becoming more enlightened as a doctor. So you are really respecting what the body can do instead of just relegating the body to something that, oh, it's broken. Now we need to come in and fix it to really respect the body has its own innate healing mechanism and give the body the chance. So, yeah, we need to learn to give the body a chance.

Well, I think we need to Give the body the right input. Because many times, I mean, at least for Sean and I in our field of pharmacy, we were looking for something outside, you know, that's not natural to our body. But when you're talking stem cells. Our body has stem cells. Right. If you're talking how our body makes neurotransmitters or how our body heals, we should be looking for the inputs or the things that our body needs on a, on a functional level to be able to heal rather than adding something in that's not. And you know, I realized too, I mean, you know, we, we had a son that had a compound fracture and thank God there's an orthopedic that can fix that. Right. Like there's times and there's a place for it. However, I think chronically we've overlooked the inputs that our body needs. Like you talked about vitamin D, hormone, nutrition, sleep, all these things that we naturally need as an organism or as, as a mammal to, to become a healed individual versus throwing something foreign.

I mean, a good example is, you know, depression is not caused by a Prozac deficiency.

You know.

It can be caused by what other things were not in your bodies.

Yeah, like even I've put in. Yeah, yeah. Myself, I struggled with depression in medical school. Why I wasn't getting proper rest. I was probably, there's inflammation going on. And of course, nutritionally, probably I wasn't optimized and I didn't have all the tools, so I, half my class actually were taking antidepressant. And it's so funny, we didn't know, but it's a high pressure system. So when I went up and up to, to the maximum dose of Prozac, so what do you do? You know, this is it. So if you are not addressing all these factors, what do you add? Another medication? A lot of people do. So your body also get used to the medication to some extent. But after I started functional medicine, anti aging medicine, stem cell therapy, I haven't taken, you know, any medication for the last five years. I don't need it. You are repairing your brain, right? Of course. Psychology is important too. You want to work on your past trauma, you want to work on your coping skills. But, but the thing is that we do not need it if we can really address everything the body needs so it can thrive in the body and, you know, in your brain.

Absolutely. So about, let's talk some details about stem cells. I know very little about it, but I've talked to some other practitioners that have done it before. Even Thought about doing stem cells myself when I had a shoulder injury. So talk about using someone's own self, own stem cells or getting them from another source. Will you explain that, please?

Yeah, so this is a really important point. First of all, I do know that doctors are creating, are bringing a tremendous results even using a person's own stem cells. And of course, that's how it started using bone marrow. And people didn't know the first bone marrow transplant was actually stem cell therapy. And that was in, you know, late 50s, early 60s. So that was where stem cell therapy started, is using a person's own. And they found out, oh, we have stem cells in the bone marrow. That's where they thought were the only place that stem cells were in. And then they found out, oh, it's in other tissues too. Oh, it's in fat. So they were able to get stem cells from fat tissue. It's only later on that the cells from the umbilical cord was used. Of course, embryonic stem cell therapy has always been kind of in the picture. There's so many different kinds of stem cells. So that's where part of the confusion come from. When I first came to the field nine years ago, I really wanted to know what works the best. So if I'm going to devote all my energy into using stem cell therapy, I want to pick something that's the most effective and the safest. So in my search to compare these different sources so I know which one to use, that came about, my first lecture is called R o M s Cs created equal. Because that question was not answered. I mean, there may be researchers who are studying it here and there, but no one ever put them together and started presenting to physicians. And really to find out what may work the best for patients. So when I compared cells from the bone marrow of a person's own, or a person's own fat, or an umbilical cord source, because that's a source. Why am I picking umbilical cord? Because if you are getting cells from another person, if the source is very young, there's almost no chance of rejection. So your body adapts to younger cells much better or the, the younger cells adapt to the new host a lot better. So the umbilical cord source, of course, is also free of ethical controversy because no baby was harmed. These are life healthy births and usually the umbilical cord and the placenta will be tossed into the biological waste basket. So now we can actually harvest them and use that therapeutically. So these are the three main sources when I compared, utilizing existing studies from around the world. When I compared their anti inflammatory capabilities, their immune modulatory properties, their ability to differentiate into different kinds of cells and or their toxic buildup, their senescent markers, their ability to secrete different types of growth factors, the variety, and also how young they maintain themselves, how long their telomeres are. So all these are different parameters that were compared and everything you look at the umbilical core stem cells come a shoulder above the person's own fat or bone marrow derived. Why? Because those are older. I don't care if you're 20 years old, your stem cells are not nearly as powerful as the cells from the umbilical cord. Because the umbilical cord stem cells actually are more powerful than the baby's stem cells. Because the baby has kept developing. Right in the womb, the umbilical cord were kind of started to, to just. It got trapped in the core tissue and maintained its primitive properties. So the baby kept evolving and going down the pathways, the cells will keep developing. What do I mean by developing? That means they're gaining properties, gaining abilities, working potentials, but then losing their differentiation potential. So they lose this overall ability to become anything they want.

Right.

Broader range of abilities to become different types of cells because they're becoming more and more specialized. So the baby stem cells are more specialized comparing to the cells of the umbilical cord. Of course there, there are vast varieties of stem cells. If we're just talking about mesenchymal stem cells, MSCs. So we think that all MSCs are the same? No, they're vastly different. So MSCs from a baby, depending on what tissue you get it from, is more, as less primitive than umbilical cord mscs. And if you're looking at mscs, bone marrow or the fat of an adult is way less potent. So not only is less potent of these adult sources, but they're also less safe. What do I mean by that? I'm specifically talking about cancer. So one of the prevailing concern about stem cell therapy is that it can exacerbate cancer. People saying, oh, you've used stem cells, if you have cancer, you can't use it. Okay, that's what I thought as well. So when I first got into stem cell therapy, I said, okay, if you have cancer within the last five years or you have a strong family history of cancer, maybe we shouldn't do stem cell therapy. Because at the time, what we knew were studies about stem cells isolated and expanded and then looking at what they do in the body. So yes, they Have a tendency to tell including cancer cells. But if you are actually looking at younger cell sources from the umbilical cord, the overwhelming evidence is that they are anti cancer. Not only they don't make cancer grow, they're actually actively killing cancer. They secrete what's called a trail ligand that tells the cancer cells to go on programmed cell death. So direct comparisons of umbilical cord derived MSCs versus fat derived MSC, they put it next to virulent brain cancer. So glioblastoma cells, the tumor, the fat derived MSCs make the tumor grow bigger and bigger, Whereas the umbilical cord by the mscs make the cancer shrink and go away. So that's how different they could be. So I no longer tell people I cannot help them if they had recent history of cancer. Because from the research, if I'm using umbilical core stem cells, I believe that there's tremendous anti cancer properties. So I wouldn't want them to not be able to benefit from stem cell therapy. Of course proper consent is important, you know, in this very litigious country. But the science backing what I'm doing is the numerous research studies about treating cancer with stem cells, with mesenchymal stem cells and, and, and with the strong evidence of how these stem cells are anti cancer, you know, especially when they're from the younger sources. So that's kind of, you know, how I derived at my conclusion of needing to use younger sources for my patients because not that a person's own stem cells don't work. And this is why a lot of doctors swear by, by it. A lot of patients swear by it. They use our fat derived stem cells. They did great. And they used bone marrow drives themselves. They did great. However, if I have, if I'm facing choices between different therapies, One is giving people 50% of the improvement, another one's giving them 70% with less side effects. I just, as a, as a doctor, it's my obligation to give people something that works better with less risks. So that's why I, I'm still, you know, till this day, insist that giving people younger sources is a better way to go.

Awesome. That was a great explanation. I just learned a lot, so thank you so much.

You're welcome.

And as we wrap this podcast up, tell us what you have a passion for.

Oh, passion. I have a passion to alleviate suffering. So just really bucks my soul to see people suffer when I know they don't have to suffer. And unfortunately that's happening so much so I think it's my job to enlighten people, to let them see possibilities, right? Show them the light so that their suffering is optional. If they choose to suffer, that's fine, but they don't have to if they don't want to. So that's my role, I feel, in this world is to show people there's a way. And then, of course, how do you do it? How do you do it with excellence? That's also my quest. So I'm passionate for enlightening people, to allow them to know that you can have a better life. And of course, I see that in my clinic every day, that we're drastically changing people's life and so they are able to function and contribute and enjoy, and then we want to do it proficiently. I do see doctors who are excited about stem cell therapy they think is a great opportunity. A lot of them see them as a business. I understand that, you know, everyone has to make a living. However, you are a healer. You're here. Your foremost responsibility is to really be effective and really, really do your best for your patients. So the right protocol, the right skills is really important. That's why I started the academy. I'm training all these doctors because I can't stand people doing the wrong way. So a lot of it's like, I can't stand suffering and I can't stand mediocrity. So I want people to do the best they can. Thank you for listening to this episode. Hope you enjoy the content and if so, please rate and follow this podcast. To reach me, you can contact Uplift Longevity center, that is Uplift with a Y. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel, JoyKong MD. See you next time.