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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Understanding Stem Cells with Dr. Joy Kong: What Are They & Should We Use Them?
Can a single type of cell revolutionize your entire approach to health and aging? Join us for an engaging conversation with Dr. Joy Kong as she recounts her incredible transformation from an architecture student in China to a pioneering medical doctor in stem cell therapy. Initially drawn to psychiatry, Dr. Kong discovered the limitations of conventional medicine and shifted her focus to a more holistic, integrative approach. She passionately discusses how mental health is deeply connected to the body's overall wellness, emphasizing the roles of the microbiome, hormones, and nutrients in shaping our mental state.
Get ready to unlock the mysteries of stem cell therapy with Dr. Kong, who breaks down the science behind mesenchymal stem cells and their remarkable healing capabilities. Learn how these intelligent cells can mitigate inflammation, balance the immune system, regenerate tissues, and even combat cancer and microbes. Dr. Kong also tackles common concerns about stem cell treatments, such as rejection and adverse reactions, offering insights into why some therapies are safer and more effective. This chapter provides a fascinating look at the potential of stem cells to revolutionize medical treatment and improve health outcomes.
Discover the profound anti-aging benefits of stem cell therapy beyond mere cosmetic enhancements. Dr. Kong shares personal anecdotes and compares the regenerative power of stem cells to the benefits of exercise. She highlights the decline of stem cell numbers with age and the importance of personalized dosages tailored to individual health needs. Additionally, Dr. Kong's entrepreneurial spirit shines as she talks about her natural skin cream, authored book, and her stem cell clinic and training academy. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the leading experts in the field and explore the future of health and wellness.
Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Mett, and we have another great episode for all of you. I didn't even speak that English word properly. Today we have a great episode, so hopefully you're all excited. So, without further ado, welcome to the show, dr Joy Kong. Dr Joy, it's a pleasure to have you today.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad to be on here, anthony, you must be just so excited.
Speaker 1:I'm thrilled. All we did in the previous pre-show was laugh, so I don't know where this episode is going. So I'm really just excited for that. I'm really just excited for that. So before we get started, just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the medical world and talking about what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:I really think I'm not your conventional doctors. First of all, I did not grow up in this country. I spent my first 20 years getting a full Chinese education. I was groomed to be a actually a Chinese architect, but I decided to come to this country and then ended up pursuing medicine because I love life and biology and the mystery of understanding what life is all about. So initially, after finishing UCLA medical school, I decided to go into psychiatry because I was fascinated by the brain.
Speaker 2:And then I realized that psychiatry was practiced wrong because it was not addressing the full body. They conceptualize the brain as a floating object on top of the body, barely connected to the body. So it's all these brain receptors going on the body. I mean literally. That's how psychiatry is practiced. So it's not. I'm not trying to bash psychiatry, that's how I was trained. So we only think about the brain, about the receptors in the brain, and we throw these drugs at the brain. And but you're forgetting your brain is just one of the organs of the body. So everything that goes on in the body, including your microbiome, the toxicity, your hormones and all the nutrients and peptides, everything floating around in your body, is affecting your brain. So that's what led me to I need to chime in.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. I have a repetitive thought going in my head right now to talk about what you said and I'm just cracking up that people treat the brain differently, not like it's part of the body. In the fitness world, that's abs. Oh really, everyone has this idea that the abs are a different muscle group and they can be worked differently. So yeah, 48 hours of rest between muscle groups, but your abs you can do every day.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's such an interesting analogy. I love it. Yeah, that's like that. So people just don't know.
Speaker 1:it's a muscle. It works the same thing that works in your bicep. Anyway, keep going. Sorry, I love that.
Speaker 2:I love that. Yes, so well. Of course, I'm also interested in helping myself to be healthier. Right, I always want to be more effective, feel better, feel happier, be more energetic. So what can I do to optimize myself?
Speaker 2:And in that pursuit I realized the medical school that I went to wasn't of much help. So they didn't teach me how to be a better version of myself, they just taught me what to do when I'm sick. So that's not been helpful. So I had to search because I came from China, so I had this holistic orientation regarding health already kind of in my just consciousness. It's just part of how we exist. You know all the food we eat. We always talk about how that's going to enhance. You know different grains, different vegetables. You know different herbs, how that's going to enhance. You know different grains, different vegetables. You know different herbs, how that's going to change. You know different systems and different organs. So that's always part of it.
Speaker 2:So I delve into the different ways that health can be enhanced, which led me to this whole branch of medicine. You can call it holistic medicine or integr integrative medicine or alternative medicine, and then later on the name anti aging medicine or functional medicine. They're all the same thing. They are looking at the body as a complex whole. So when I was looking into that, that's when I got into stem cell therapy.
Speaker 2:So stem cells you can't really get more holistic than that, because that is the intelligence that's directing all the development, everything that's going on in the body. So if you want something that is a system approach that's controlling everything all at once, you've got to respect what stem cells are, because that's what's making us, that's what made us you and I were both started from a single stem cell. Us, that's what made us you and I were both started from a single stem cell. So that kind of intelligence from that one cell, that's fertilized egg that created us. So what I'm doing now is using stem cell therapies. That's my main focus and I'm incorporating all these other holistic treatments too. But stem cells is what is driving all the healing and the repair and rejuvenation. So I basically had a career change. Right, I had a career change from architecture to biology and then from medicine well, to psychiatry, from psychiatry to stem cell therapy. So all these are. You didn't change your career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why not Right? No, you didn't.
Speaker 1:Think about this. Hold on, okay. You went from designing buildings and figuring out how a building functions and the different things that's needed inside a building to make it work properly and efficiently, to moving on to the brain, to learning how to design the brain to make that move and work functionally, then going into stem cells to take a whole body approach, because the body is a house, if you think about it that way where the nerves are, the electricity and the plumbing is our GI tracts, so it's the foundation, is our bones and our skin, is the outer layer of the home, so it's the same exact thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's just a different approach to designing the body instead of designing homes. But yeah, I'm going to ask you a really basic question because I like to start with basics, for those that do not know. Just for you to describe what is a stem cell A stem cell is a cell that's full of potential.
Speaker 2:It can become different types of types of functional cells in the body. Let's let's think about bodies. You know every kind of immune cells, heart cells, muscle cells. Every different cells have a different function. But if you're a stem cell you don't have a particular function yet you can't go ahead and carry out. You know, be the worker bee, you are full of the potential to be one. So. But there are different stem cells.
Speaker 2:You know when you were first formed, the fertilized egg, so that was the first big bang. And from that cell then you are dividing into many, many, many different kinds of stem cells as the embryo start forming and you start to make new structures, new cells, and these are newer stem cells but of lower potentials. So you know they're gaining certain functions but then losing certain potentials. A fertilized egg has the most potential the initial stem cells, the embryonic stem cells, which is only day five to seven during embryogenesis. So those are very early cells. But as the cells keep dividing you get more and more functions. So these cells have more, you know, more orientations. Let's say you're forming a bloodline, so you're getting closer and closer to the final blood cells like red blood cell, white blood cell, but but before you become a white blood cell or red blood cell, they are all stem cells. So that's you know. So we have, you know, I don't even know how many kinds, thousands of different kinds of stem cells. That's just human categorization, right? We say, oh, at this point it becomes this type of stem cell, and then after divide, divide and making yourself, and then say, okay, at this point it's another stem cell. You know, it's very arbitrary.
Speaker 2:Life is is fluid. If there's a gradient, right, you don't, you don't just have a step. You know, it's not like you become one cell and then another type. Stuff is the gradual evolution. So that's how life is evolved. So we have all these stem cells and then we form the end organ cells. Your heart muscle is a particular cell and that came from the heart muscle stem cells. So those are the cells that can't carry all the functions of a heart muscle cell, but they have the genetic imprint, they have the ability to become one. So that's so. All these are stem cells. We can tap into anywhere in this whole ladder, using one of the stem cells to help the body heal, depending on what we need. So we're still at the infancy of stem cell therapy. We don't know. You know, there's so much we don't know. We can tap into any of these pathways and grab a cell and then use that to heal the body, but we're not there yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, it's a lot, and obviously you know it's a controversial topic. So definitely something depending on what country you're in, etc. Etc. Listen, some some countries don't allow research on it. Some countries do, some countries limited Everywhere. I actually don't know the US regulation, so I'm going to ask you.
Speaker 2:US regulation. So the FDA basically said in 2017, okay, we understand this is emerging field and what we're going to do is that if you don't manipulate the cells and you don't use chemicals and enzymes to change it and you don't start to grow them in a culture and grow them into huge numbers or you don't do any of those things, then you are just getting tissue, getting cells out of one person and then put it in another person. Right, it's no different than blood transfusion or an organ transplantation. Right, you can take a kidney from one person and give it to another person. You don't need the FDA to allow you to do that. There's no FDA indication for tissue to kidney transplant because that's a medical practice that is controlled by the board you know, in different state medical board of different states. So that's called the practice of medicine. So, basically, the FDA says, okay, if you want to practice medicine by transplanting tissue, we wipe our hands off this. You know we're not going to deal with it. But if you start to manipulate the cells and you're making, you're bringing the cells of one that's doing one thing in the body and put it in this in the body. That's where they're supposed to be doing something else or where the functions are going to change. You know, I know they have an interesting rationale, but but that's what they call homologous purposes. So if the cells were in the body that was doing one thing, and then when you transplant it has to be doing the same thing. And then the FDA says, okay, you haven't changed the cells, the cells is doing the same thing from one person to another. Then you're just doing medical practice, so you're not being making a drug, so you don't have to go through the FDA studies.
Speaker 2:Why do overseas companies expand the cells and not providing the treatment in the US? Because you can't. Because if you want to do provide the treatments with these expanded cells, the FDA already said you're making a drug, so why don't you go through drug studies? And that costs millions and millions and millions of dollars. I don't know if you people know it costs on average about $2.1 billion to bring one drug into the market. So you can imagine who has that kind of money to bring stem cells, if that's a drug, to have that kind of money to bring that into the market. Bring stem cells, if that's a drug, to have that kind of money to bring that into the market right. So a lot of people are like well, okay, we're going to change the cells, but the FDA thinks it's a drug and they require me to do a study. But if I do it overseas, in Panama or Colombia or Costa Rica or the Bahamas, I don't have to do the studies. So then I'll just set up shop over there. So that's what's going on, so they can do that overseas not. That, I think, is a better approach, because In some sense I agree with the FDA that if you start to expand the cells, there are a lot of things that are unforeseen because you can trigger the cells.
Speaker 2:One to be stressed they are not in the body, they're in a strange environment. You're putting them in some kind of a container and putting some kind of nourishment that you think they need, which is not the perfect environment that the human body has created. So you're guessing what the cells need. So you're putting them in an incubator and let them grow and grow and grow. In the process they're stressed, they can secrete inflammatory molecules that can cause this inflammatory response and they will start to differentiate.
Speaker 2:If you talk to any stem cell scientists, you will know when the stem cells try to divide. Unless it's perfect condition, they're not going to divide into one stem cell, into two identical stem cells. They divide into one stem cell. You know, one stem cell. They divide into one of identical copy of itself and the other one is just a little different. It's called the daughter cell. It's further differentiated and so, if you can imagine, one become two, right, only one is identical to itself, another one is daughter cell, and then those two will start to divide and that one stem cell will divide into one copy of itself, one daughter cell. The daughter cell is going to be divided into daughter cell, daughter cell. So by the time you have a whole pool of divided cells and this proliferated cells only a small fraction is actually the original stem cells and then you're scooping up like a portion of this whole pool and then you are part, you know, kind of partitioning it out and give it to each person for treatment. It sounds great. I can give you 100, 200, 300 million cells. It's a huge amount, but guess what, it doesn't cost very much because I just grew in the culture, you know, into these huge amounts. I'll give you a little portion. You know I have so much I can treat 100 people with. You know this culture I grew so you know that's the part that they're not talking about. So when you take that little portion, part of it is not stem cells anymore.
Speaker 2:They can still be helpful but they can also cause problems. They, because they're more differentiated, they grow surface receptors that you know what happens when cells start to express themselves. Stem cells are considered fairly blank, blank, so they don't really have the receptors showing that. Oh, I'm joe and you know I'm jack. You know they. They're not different. On the surface they look the same unless you start to let them to express different proteins, as they, you know, gain function. So the more they gain function, the more proteins they express and the more chance that the genetic imprint is going to show, you know, genetic gain function. So the more they gain function, the more proteins they express and the more chance that the genetic imprint is going to show. You know, genetic blueprint is going to start to to show up into different structures of the protein and that can cause rejection.
Speaker 2:So people can end up having rejection type of reaction and or the inflammatory molecules and causing a cytokine storm. And that's why you know Tony Robbins was talking about oh yeah, you're going to get a cytokine storm when you get stem cell treatment? No, you don't have to. I've never seen cytokine storm in patients I've treated because we don't give people cells that have been expanded and that doesn't trigger that kind of response. So you know that's. That's a part of the picture that that's not discussed, that people are not understanding. That's why I have patients who've gone overseas and gotten extreme fatigue, gotten bad reactions, and then coming into our clinic getting stem cell treatment with no problem. Actually, you know the opposite. You know gaining. You know the opposite. You know gaining. You know significant benefit very early on and you know heightened energy rather than extreme fatigue and various side effects.
Speaker 1:How do you know how that stem cell is going to react? So, like a good question would be let's say I need it for depression, I don't know, just some chemical imbalance in the brain and I'm going to use stem cells. How do I know that neutral, blank stem cell is going to branch to start gaining the function of helping with serotonin or helping with?
Speaker 2:So now we come to the question of how do stem cells work?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, that's the question Like you get taking something blank. How do you know it's going to turn into the right thing?
Speaker 2:So, first of all, how did your parents, the fertilized egg, know how to make you right?
Speaker 1:I don't want to know that. Would you like to ask?
Speaker 2:the fertilized egg. How did you know? Okay, so the cells have innate intelligence, right, that's called innate intelligence Powerful, profound, like mysterious. We don't know, we don't understand how the hell it knows. But so, but when it comes to stem cell therapy, we have some clue. We have some clues from lots of research studies.
Speaker 2:How do stem cells work? They're highly anti-inflammatory, so they can calm down all this inflamming, inflammation that's going on in the aging process or in disease process. It can modulate your immune system, make your immune system more balanced. It can break down your scar tissue. It can help you to regenerate and form more new blood vessels to nourish the tissue. It can fight cancer off, giving signals to cancer to die off. It can kill microbes, actually secreting antimicrobial peptides directly killing off microbes. And it can actually protect damaged tissue, preventing them from dying. So salvage, you know, like a rescue, and then they can provide new mitochondria. So all these are mechanisms of how the cells work.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about specifically mesenchymal stem cells, because that's the most popular type, that's the most talked about type. Like I said, we're still early in stem cell therapy. This is not end, all be all. We are just scratching the surface, but it's already powerful. I've seen it in my clinic is already helped so many people. So this may be the best thing we have right now, but doesn't mean that we're not going to have much more powerful therapies. So right now we have mesenchymal stem cells. This is how they work. So they have all these effects, right?
Speaker 2:So when they get to your body, they also have homing mechanism. They have they're attracted to inflammation and injury because those places will start sending out different molecules that will, you know, basically trigger a response in these cells and then they will seek places of higher gradient right that the more concentrated signals. So it's like a salmon going upstream. They're seeking, you know, where's the signal strongest and they will get there. Once they get there, because they swim upstream in the blood vessels, right, they're floating, they're, you know, like basically traveling in all this vasculature and once it finds the area, it's like oh, this is the strongest signal, let me get out, let me get out of the blood vessel. So then it can squeeze itself out of the blood vessels and start talking with the local cells and also start sending signals back into the blood. So it does this coordination. You know, I call it the conductor in the symphony of regeneration. They are conducting this, you know, like this battle to get the person to heal. So how do they know? That depends on where the signal is the strongest.
Speaker 2:Sometimes a person is very sick and has a lot of things going on in different places. They may not all be healed or be repaired at the same time. One place may have gotten it first or have the strongest scream, and then it's attracting the cells first, and that may be may be healed. That's why people can end up experiencing waves of repair. So you know the first wave, you know certain things got better, and then you do another one, although these other things got repaired. So it yeah, the cells have have a mind of their own. So sometimes I don't know where they're going to go, but what I know is how they work and then they're going to find their way to a place where they're going to be useful.
Speaker 1:Very interesting. So you really don't. Another fitness analogy. It's kind of like target fat loss, Right, you can't pick what areas of the body you want to lose fat from. Your body just knows and takes it from it that's right.
Speaker 1:You can't work your abs to lose fat around your stomach. So your stem cells and I'm getting this correctly, you're they're gonna go in and they're gonna pick where they want to go and repair what they want to repair and you really don't have control of it. But ultimately you're going to feel better because they're going to constantly yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:There are times that we'll do local injections, so we'll we'll be like, okay, this is where we're putting the cells, this is where you really need it. So that could be like a joint, a joint space. That's in particular because joint space there's very little exchange with the blood, especially larger joints. So the blood flow the smaller joints is actually pretty well perfused, you know, by the blood. The larger joint, the knee, the hips and shoulder, you know they're just the blood doesn't quite go direct, you know, get in there.
Speaker 2:So whatever you put in the blood, by the time it gets into the larger joints, that take a couple months. So those are the places where I actually inject directly. But there are also places where you want higher concentration of cells. So, for example, wound healing, right right around the wound, you can, you know, inject the cells into the healthy tissue around the wound and then the healthy tissue will start to grow into, you know, the damaged area and fill it up. Or a facial rejuvenation we can do injections into the face, you know, hair restoration, directly onto the scalp.
Speaker 1:I see what you did there.
Speaker 2:Ah, oh, come on, you know not everything is all about you so. And you can also inject into the penis in the vagina. There you go. Are you getting? You know, you know, hints again no, I'm getting hints.
Speaker 1:It's going to start growing and we're good guys.
Speaker 2:If you want to have kids, go get stem cells into your penis and your wife will be happy well, you know that I consider the penis like the canary in the gold mine and the gold mine coal mine canary. Because you know your blood vessels are all over your body but you sometimes you don't know how they're working. You know what your vasculature, the health of your vasculature is, until you start to have erectile issues, because that's the place you can actually see how the blood flow works. So, yeah, so if you want a little bit more concentration of the cells, then we can inject directly into the sexual organs. So yeah, you can inject into lots of places.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask you something. Lethfield, the brain. You talk a lot about psychiatry, Right? So what about mental disorders?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. You said you don't you. Can I? You said you don't edit at all.
Speaker 1:No, none of this. Like they're going to hear this.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, all right, that, that's, that's fine. Okay, can I answer this real? Okay, yikes.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, right, let's just keep going you tell me the brain I'm sorry the brain, injecting into the brain, the brain directly, but more brain.
Speaker 2:We don't need to inject into the brain. We can just open up the blood-brain barrier and using something like mannitol, and we can also do intranasal. What I like doing is exosomes, so you can drip exosomes into your nasal cavity. Yeah, I really have to answer this. Okay, all right, that's fine, I'll just ignore this. Okay, all right, that's fine, I'll just ignore this, all right. Okay, so the brain. So you can drip things into the nose, or you know. I don't advise injecting directly into the brain.
Speaker 1:Of course. I just meant for like mental health. Is that something that you've seen help with, or even like Alzheimer's or dementia, because parts of the brain die off from it? Is that something that can be rejuvenated or that's still too like, not discovered yet?
Speaker 2:No, we've seen benefits in patients even with yeah, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, MS, traumatic brain injury. Yeah, We've seen all those.
Speaker 1:It's very, very interesting field, right, because it's so new and a lot of misunderstood things about stem cells, I feel like, and culture in and of itself and just as a practice of a whole. But it's interesting to see kind of where it's going and I would assume just most people use it for cosmetic reasons, right.
Speaker 2:No, no, Most people use it for for healing yeah.
Speaker 1:For healing purposes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some people aging purposes. I do. I use it for anti-aging purposes. I do IV stem cells on myself every three months for the past eight years, so I can show you pictures of me when I was 43 versus now at 53. I look a lot younger than when I was 43.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you do For those not watching video. She actually does not look her age.
Speaker 1:You told me before I look older Do not follow my skinning device and my anti-aging, you'll look older. I do have some questions related. I don't know if you know the answer to it, but I'm just so curious. So, a lot of the things you talked about with stem cells I've heard. A lot with exercise right, there's a lot shown that exercise can help make you look younger. There's a lot shown with exercise can force blood flow to area to stop, making these heal better. I mean, even look at go back a couple of years. He used to think acute injuries right there. The rice method. You remember that rest, ice compression elevation for those that don't know what that is, that's now been gotten rid of and now it's even showing acute injuries. No ice rest, if only it hurts. And then you go right into physical activity, like obviously not full-out sprinting, but little mild movements like physical therapy have been shown to help heal. Is there a relation or is it just happenstance that they're both very similar?
Speaker 2:I okay, I do not believe just physical exercise itself can replace what stem cells can do. You know you can be, you know exercised, you know very vigorously or optimized, and then you seem healthy. I don't mean replaced, I mean push like help, I mean it then you seem healthy. I don't mean replaced, I mean push like help.
Speaker 1:I mean it does the same thing and I was consumed doing both together. It does seem similar. Yes, would make it even better and help excel more. Would help probably have the right position.
Speaker 2:Still there's a nutrition of stem cells, so these are separate things, right.
Speaker 2:So, yes, exercise can help the health of your stem cells and may help you to have more stem cells. But even if you are super vibrant, healthy, you know fit, you know competition level, 60 year olds, your inflammation marker is still higher. Your stem cell level is still way less than the person in their 30s Way less so much. Ok, this is the statistic when you're born one in 100, one in 10,000, way less so much. Okay, this is the statistic. When you're born, one in 100, one in 10,000 cells is a stem cell. When you reach your teenage years is one in 100,000. When you reach your 40s, in one in 400,000,. When you reach your 80s is one in 2 million.
Speaker 2:So when you're in your 80s, you have one fifth of the amount of stem cells you had when you were in your 40s. So there is a cliff. You're dropping off a cliff, no matter what you do. This is why stem cell therapy is so helpful, because it actually replaces what's missing, which is the driving force, is the engine. Why do people age so fast After 30, right, 35, 40, 50. And then they just. You can see people's face and body change and you know their chronic illness accumulate. They drop off a cliff because they're the number of stem cells that can replenish, repair and keep their immune system stable. It's just, it's plummeting. But now we have a chance to actually replace these cells and keep you function at a state of your prime.
Speaker 1:You function at a state of your prime Interesting. How long do stem cells usually live, or do they constantly replicate and they're always going to be at greater numbers?
Speaker 2:The stem cells in your body has been with you.
Speaker 1:The ones you inject.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the ones you inject only have you know. Yes, it can stay with you for a very long time, but only a fraction and may. No one knows the exact answer at this point, but I think in general, what I've gotten from talking to top stem cell scientists from around the world is between, you know, no more than two to 5%. So a small percentage will stay with you, but majority of them will live for about one to three months, will stay with you, but majority of them will live for about one to three months. So they will go into your body. Start, you know, producing all these benefits and, and you know you know, producing these effects that I talked about anti-inflammatory, immune balancing. And then they're they're going to die, because nothing lives forever. Once you activate cells, there's a lifespan.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So you have like a one to three month, and it's only as soon as as you get older and you have that lower proportion of itself, like at 80. You said, it's what? One in two million, right?
Speaker 2:one in two million yeah, yeah just running out of the engine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you need more stem cells injected at a more regular basis.
Speaker 2:When we calculate, a dosage of what a person needs, we take into account of, of course, their size, their body weight, their age and their health status. So the sicker they are, the more inflammation they have. They tend to need more cells to come on board to help them. Yeah, yeah. So it's always a dose dependent. You can't. It's not one size fits all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very interesting. And then just last question, kind of filter into you Is there anything else that we're missing that you really think is imperative for people to know when it comes to stem cells?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So people need to know. More is not necessarily better, right? When you get stem cells that are expanded overseas, you actually lose potency. Because, I can you know people are interested. They can go on my YouTube channel, just put Joy Kong MD.
Speaker 2:There's actually a lecture I gave and I showed a graph of what happens when you use native cells. You can, you know, the more you use, the more you can exert benefit. But if you start to use expanded cells even if you use 10 times the number of cells that have been grown to large numbers, use 10 times the number, the benefit ended up in less. So by making more doesn't mean that you are or giving getting more doesn't mean that it's better, unless you're using the right type. But even with unexpanded native cells there are different types. So umbilical cord blood have almost no MSCs, have very, very little, maybe less than 1%, so very small amount. Umbilical cord tissue is full of MSCs. But what I'm doing in my clinic is that I've designed a, you know, stem cell product that combines the core blood and the core tissue and the amniotic membrane cells and they have this comprehensive, this wide array of benefits and that can really, you know, kind of target many tissues and many functions all at once.
Speaker 1:I love it and I ask every guest a final questions at the end. I'm going to change yours a little bit for the first one, which is where do you think the potential stem cells has to go Like? Where do you, where do you see this ending up in 10 years from now?
Speaker 2:In 10 years it's going to be no big deal. Everybody's going to want some stem cells to prolong their youthful years I do believe we talked about, you know, stay in your 30s for 50 years. So have a long span of good, healthy, vibrant years and looking good, feeling good. And if you hurt yourself, you need surgery. And and if you hurt yourself, you need surgery If there's any acute stuff going on, you would get some stem cells to help you heal much faster and much more completely. So it just going to be part of life is going to be no, you know mystique about it and that everybody's all stem cells. Of course you can get some stem cells. So that's what's going to happen 10 years. I don't know if 10 years is long enough, but maybe in 20 years we'll see how fast things move. But that's what I see in the future.
Speaker 1:I love it. And then the last question, the easiest one of all how can people find you get ahold of you? I know you told me previously, not related to this podcast, that you wrote a book, so tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Find my book has nothing to do with medicine. You'll be disappointed if you want to know how I got into medicine, what I did with stem cells. No, it is a story about how I came to the US, how I overcame obstacles, how I prevented myself from perishing and I made sure that I that you know, I, you know gain liberty and gain freedom to pursue my dreams. So that's really what what that is about Started with my visa rejection in China and ended up with how I liberated myself in San Francisco. So that's my book. And you can go on just drjoykongcom, and I have, you know, everything I'm into that's in there, including my skin cream, which is 100% natural with stem cells and that's an incredible cream, and my book and my clinic and the stem cell company, the academy I set up where I train doctors, so, um, and my Instagram you can just uh, find me doctor, underscore joy, underscore calm. And, um, yeah, my YouTube channel, which probably will be the the the most informative um, lots of, uh, lots of videos, podcasts, dr Joy Kong podcast yeah.
Speaker 1:Love it. Thank you so much, dr Joy, for coming on. Thank you, guys, for listening to this week's episode of health and fitness redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button and join us next week as we dive deeper into the ever-changing field and remember that this is medicine until next time wonderful, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, outro Music.
