Three Stages of Healing from Stem Cell Therapy Explained

Hi, this is Dr. Joy Kong again. So today I actually want to talk about what's called the three stages of healing from stem cell therapy. The reason I want to talk about this was because I've been asked so many times by patients after they get stem cell therapy and they're watching their progress, they want to know, you know, where should I be, how far should I progress and how long is the effect gonna last? How soon do I need another treatment? So all these questions pop up. I think in order to answer these questions we need to understand how stem cell therapy work, right? So I have a whole video on how do stem cell, how do stem cells work? You know, how do they help your body heal? So knowing that and then bring that kind of into a specific case of healing then is then, you know, we really need to break down into, you know, so there are multitude of mechanisms, actions, but when it comes to a timeline, then you want to look at there's immediate timeline and intermediate timeline and there's a long term timeline. So the very immediate is, the most prominent is the anti inflammatory actions. So the stem cells can promote this very anti inflammatory kind of direction at your body. So it can modulate your immune system very rapidly. It can change it from a inflammatory to an anti inflammatory kind of orientation. So as long as your body is inflamed, which is important for healing, but if it keeps staying inflamed, the healing cannot really occur. So you need the inflammation and then the anti inflammation to come in. Inflammation will gravitate, will bring in, you know, will re recruit all these cells to help make changes happen. But you can't stay in that stage. You've got to calm down inflammation so the tissues can rebuild. So the anti inflammatory reaction is to calm down that raging inflammation that sometimes is counterproductive, right? As we get older, we get this incessant inflammation. That's what's causing osteoarthritis, you know, a lot of chronic diseases and triggering cancers and all that. But when the stem cells get into the body, there's a calming of the inflammation either locally or systemically, because these cells have a systemic effect. And they can also travel to particular sites where they're needed and then exert local effects, including anti inflammatory effects. So when you look at the anti inflammation, then effect can happen really fast. I have patients who by the time they get off the examination table after the treatment, they said, Well I feel 50% better. Or you know, some, you know, doctors told me a patient with Parkinson's, after the treatment, the tremor is gone. So it can happen very rapidly. I treated another Alzheimer's patient. She had not been eating for not feeding herself, had not been feeding herself for two months. So food would be just in front of her and she would just stare at it and she won't pick up the knife and fork. She won't feed herself. But the day after the stem cell treatment, to her husband's amazement, was that in the morning they again put the plate of food in front of her and she just picked up the knife and fork and just fed herself. And her husband was looking at her in amazement. And then she kind of like looked up and you know, basically, you know, what's your problem? So, I mean, that happened really fast. So that probably is a result of this very fast anti inflammatory action on the brain. So same thing with joint pains. So sometimes the pain can go away very fast or chronic, you know, whole body pain, it can go very fast. So the anti inflammatory effect can take place within hours, within days, within a week or so. And then it comes to the next stage, which is the tissue rebuilding, right? So you calm the inflammation and then it's going to take time to rebuild the damaged tissue. So whatever it is, your lungs, your liver, your tendon, any tissue that has been damaged that's been causing your problem will need rebuilding. And ROME is not built in one day. It takes time for the cells to divide and to become and to have the correct network so that the tissue can be formed correctly and can be functioning. So that usually take, you know, we'll start probably between, you know, days after the treatment to two months. So if someone wants to pin me down for, you know, the night, I'm just gonna, you know, this is a little bit more of a guess, you know, educated guess, but it will probably, let's say between, you know, three, between three days to about two months. You know, that will be the bulk of the tissue. Rebuilding for certain tissues will take longer, the brain takes longer, bones take longer. So things like tendon and lungs, you know, those things are going to be built a little faster. So that's a second stage and that that is happening because these stem cells have the ability to recruit local stem cells. So the kind of stem cell therapy I do focuses a lot on mesenchymal stem cells. And they've been proposed to be renamed medicinal signaling cells because of how they produce these signals that have medicinal properties. So they basically are sending out all these molecules to, through multiple mechanisms. And one of them is through exosomes, and they're sending out all this information so that the body can come in and can start produce the right response, either through the immune system or through the local environment by talking with the local cells. One important conversation between the mesenchymal stem cells and the local cells is talking with the local stem cells. So in all your tissues there are local stem cells. So in your liver, there's liver stem cells. In your muscle, there's muscle stem cells. In cartilage, there's cartilage stem cells. So when these mesenchymal stem cells start sending the signals to these local stem cells, they are the ones that's regenerating your tissue. And that takes time. So that takes days, weeks, months to rebuild. So that's the second stage and then the last stage, which is really cool and really exciting. There are multitudes, right? But one of them I want to talk about, for example, the mitochondria transfer, the infused stem cells, the injected stem cells have fresh new mitochondria, especially if you get it from a umbilical cord birth tissue source where these cells are very young and they're very vibrant and have these fresh new mitochondria, not your autologous source, you know, then it's just your own mitochondria. So these fresh, new, potent, healthy mitochondria can be transferred into a person's own body, right? So you're getting a new mitochondria transfer. So you get these healthy mitochondria that can help your body rejuvenate. So you got a new population of mitochondria and that effect can last much longer. Another thing that's really exciting is the gene modification stage. What's really awesome and exciting from the stem cell therapy is that the stem cells will send out. A lot of signals, are conducted through exosomes. There are other ways of doing it, but exosomes are one of the main ways. These exosomes are these nano sized particles, tiny, tiny sized particles that's lipid membrane boundaries, but contains lots, lots of growth factors and micrornas and cytokines. So it's full of information. And when these microrna is, when they come, because what these lipid bilayer nanoparticles, when they come to a cell, the lipid bilayer can fuse with the cells and all the contents can be delivered to the cells. And what's interesting about these microrna, little tiny little pieces of RNA which, what they can do is that they can cross the nucleus membrane. So the nucleus is enclosed in another membrane, right? So these micrornas can cross the nucleus Membrane and actually start talking with your chromosome, your DNA, and make modifications so they have the ability to change methylation patterns. That's your, you know, that would help change your gene expression. So in a sense, they're helping repair your gene. So when, you know, methylation, you know, that's been talked about in functional medicine a lot. You know, our genes don't fully determine our destiny. I mean, it has something to do with our destiny, but it's not the full picture. The epigenetics, what comes after the gene is formed, how the genes are actually expressed, has profound effects on the person's health. So the methylation patterns as part of that epigenetic expression, monitoring the expression and these new micro RNAs coming into the cell nucleus can change the gene expression, can help repair the genes. So that effect can be much longer lasting. That could be months to years. Right. So, you know, again, the benefit of stem cells, people always ask me, how long is it going to last? And when do I need another treatment? Is this forever? Well, what I say is, why do you have the disease in the first place? Right. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, why do you have it? Well, how come other people don't have it? You know, are, is there, is there toxicity involved? Is there genetic driving forces? Is your hormone out of balance? What are all the causes? If you're not going to address those causes and you just rely on stem cells. Yes. Then there's a finite, you know, lifespan of how much the cells can do. It's like a train that's driving forward. And if you don't try to slow it down, it's just going to keep going forward. Right. So stem cells can only do so much. And if you still the engines at full blast is driving down the disease state or the aging state, then at some point you're going to need another stem cell infusion. Right. To bring it back. So generally the cells will live in your body for about three months. So that's a scientific consensus. And their effect generally on average lasts for another three months. So we say on average, you know, it will be about six months. Effect will last for about six months. For some people, it will last, you know, nine months, 12 months, depending on how well you're taking care of yourself. If you started detoxification, you started balancing your hormones and you started, you know, the doing nutritional, you know, modifications and fasting, that's all going to propel you forward and you're going to safeguard your investment and you probably don't need another treatment. For much longer time. So this is kind of the general background of, you know, on healing because, you know, some people are saying, well, it's been three weeks, you know, you know, what kind of changes should I have? And, you know, my labs, you know, you know, I might. It's not showing because they're experimenting, expecting miracles, right? So not everyone was expecting miracles, but they were hoping for miracles. But. But the thing is that miracles do happen. We are all miracles. We're all walking miracles. Miracles do happen with healing, but it may take certain amount of time. So you, you know, by knowing, by understanding the different stages, then you know what to expect, right? In the immediate portion, if that's gone, doesn't mean that the second wave is not at work, even if you are not feeling it sometimes. I often find patients not realizing how much improvements they've made because they start getting used to it. Every day a little better. Every day a little better. By the time they come to me a month or two later, I start, you know, I start asking all these symptoms that they used to have when they first came to see me, and they're like, well, no, I don't have that anymore, or, no, I haven't had that, you know, for a long time. So they start to, you know, they forgot what they. What problems they have. So be patient. So that's my advice, and I hope you found this. Find this helpful, and I look forward to seeing you next time.