Lisa: Hi everyone, and welcome to this week at Pushing the Limits. Today I have a fantastic doctor to guest, Dr Joy Kong, MD, and she is the founder of Chara Biologics. She's an anti-ageing and regenerative medicine specialist and the president of the THEA Center for Regenerative Medicine in Los Angeles, California. She's also the founder and president of the American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy.

Lisa: Dr Kong has just such a broad range of expertise, and as someone who has really delved deep into stem cell research — and this is what we're going to be talking about today — I'm very, very excited for this anti-ageing and regenerative field of stem cells. Dr Kong graduated as a valedictorian from San Francisco State University and completed her medical training at UCLA School of Medicine. She's triple board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, the American Board of Addiction Medicine and the American Board of Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine. She's from China, she originally came from Beijing and immigrated to the States at the age of 20, and has gone on to have such an illustrious career. I do hope that you enjoy this episode today with Dr Kong. She's fantastic.

Lisa: Before we head over to the show, just a reminder to check out what we do at lisatamati.com. It's my main website. We have our epigenetics programme where we help people understand what their genes are all about, the DNA, and how to optimise their lifestyle, their food, their fitness programmes, their mood and behaviour, understand their hormones — all of these aspects that go into making up a healthy lifestyle. So if you're interested in that, make sure you head over to lisatamati.com. We also do everything anti-ageing and longevity. That's my specialty, that's what I am interested in and have been studying for a number of years. So everything from the keto diet right through to stem cell therapy, right through to hyperbaric oxygen therapy — we cover it all in the show on Pushing the Limits, and I hope you enjoy it. We also have lots of health consulting programmes, our epigenetics and anti-ageing supplement range, as well as our run coaching, fitness training, all of that sort of good stuff. So head over to lisatamati.com and check out our programmes. Now over to the show with Dr Joy Kong.

Lisa: Well, hey everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today I have a fantastic guest for you. Now, this lady is absolutely mind-blowing, and I've already given you her biology and the intro, so I won't go through all that again. But Dr Joy Kong, welcome to the show. It's fantastic to have the honour to have you on today. So really excited.

Dr Joy Kong: Thank you so much, Lisa. I'm so happy to be here with you.

Lisa: Oh, it's just fascinating. Joy, can you give us a little bit of background about your story, because it's quite interesting. You have an unusual background of how you came to be where you are in Los Angeles now, but you weren't born in America, right?

Dr Joy Kong: I was born in China, so I grew up in Beijing. The first 20 years I spent in Beijing, and actually wrote a memoir about how I came to the US called Tiger of Beijing. So you can get a little flavour of the punchiness of the story. But it's a very fascinating journey of how I even made it to the US, because my first visa was rejected, and that's where my book started. It talked about how I actually ended up getting to America through a fairly unconventional route, and then after I got to America, how things became difficult and how I survived the first two years. So just a three-year journey. It's an interesting story.

Dr Joy Kong: But basically you have a different cultural background, right, growing up in China on a university campus, very science driven. But Chinese medicine is everywhere, right? It's part of life and it's been around for thousands of years. But we're also a very science-driven family. My dad, this engineer, my mom, a chemist. So we love science, we believe in science. So in our family medicine drawer, there will be Chinese medicine, there would be Western medicine, they're all mixed together. You can't tell. My mom would just go in and grab and find whatever that works for that particular condition. So there's no prejudice. It's just all about, okay, for this, this Chinese medicine worked much better, and for this problem, okay, let's do this Western medicine, that works much better than the Chinese medicine.

Dr Joy Kong: So that was the way it was, knowing that sometimes Chinese medicine works really well, and then also beginning to understand — I actually read the book called The Web That Has No Weaver. Really interesting. It was the journalist who went with Nixon to China on the first trip, where he witnessed that — either him, I can't remember if it's him or a colleague — got appendicitis, and the Chinese doctors were able to do the operation under acupuncture, not anaesthesia. So he was like, how is this possible? What's going on in this country? So he started to dig into Chinese medicine, and then he realised this medicine is a web approach. You're looking at the human body as a complex web, and with no weaver — probably the weaver's God, we don't know who the weaver is.

Lisa: Yeah, this is an incredible mystery, incredible web.

Dr Joy Kong: The Chinese medicine or Ayurveda, these traditional medicines, they were able to look at it from a system view, so they look a little step higher. So they're able to see how the web, and one part of the web may affect another part of the web — just think about all the knots on the web. So they're able to look at it from a system view, and that's what's lacking in Western medicine. So when I was in medical school, it's great at looking at linear relationships from A to B. But if you have C, D, F, G and then the whole alphabet, then you get crazy because you don't know how everything's affecting each other. So the Western medicine doesn't yet have a system to understand how you put all these relationships together. That's where it's lacking, and that's where I wanted to borrow some of the wisdom from Eastern medicine, where you can look at the body from a system point of view.

Dr Joy Kong: But when I was trying to incorporate Chinese medicine with Western medicine, I also ran into the problem of the two systems speaking completely different languages. So one is equations and formulas and the scientific, the linear explanation. The other one is speaking poetry. So it's cloud, dampness. I was like, how am I going to put the two together?

Dr Joy Kong: And what happened was that I encountered functional medicine or anti-ageing medicine. It's just a name. It's really about this new branch of medicine that was trying to look at the body as a system, and they're trying to look at a lot of new therapies. So instead of being stuck in the medication route, they're looking at, is the body toxic? Is it a hormone imbalance? What about all these hormones, how are they interacting with each other? What about nutrition? What about all these vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, how are they going to interact with everything? So they were looking at all these angles, and that I thought was a perfect approach to bring the two systems together, because we can investigate why Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine, why those herbs work, by using Western language, but we can look at it from — again, so it gets complex.

Dr Joy Kong: So I think at one point, maybe we'll bring in artificial intelligence, we'll bring in something that again simulates that level of complexity, because right now medicine is not handling it very well. That's why people are so sick. People spend the end of their life being miserable, sick. So what people were saying was that we're not extending — it's just lifespan, it's like a healthspan, right? So we're extending the time that people are sick and spend all their money on medications and hospitals, and then you die in a hospital and you spend another huge fortune. So it's great for the medical system, the hospitals, the drug companies. They're doing great, they're making a ton of money in your last 20 years alive. But is that how we want to live?

Dr Joy Kong: So that's when I know this new form of medicine is going to take over. I think just like how we look at medicine 150 years ago, we're like, how could the doctors do that? That is so barbaric. Fifty years from now, they're going to look at what we're doing now, what the doctors are doing now, they're going to be pulling their hair out and saying, how could doctors do that? That is the dumbest thing, that is so counterproductive. So we're going to get to that point, but we're just in that transition point where the old establishment is not going to go easy.

Lisa: Yeah, that's the way we've been doing things, we are the smart ones. Who are you to tell us that you have a better way? So yeah, there's a clashing. But the statistics aren't lying. I mean, we have the worst statistics. America has got the biggest outlay per capita on healthcare and is one of the worst countries as far as the health data goes, right? And obesity is rampant, chronic diseases are rampant.

Lisa: I think Western medicine is so brilliant when it comes to broken bones and surgeries and hip replacements and all of those sorts of things. They do really, really brilliantly. But when it comes to chronic disease or health — and this is what this whole show is about, it's about health optimisation and being in the preventative space — when I go to a doctor here, unless they're a functional medicine doctor, they have a different approach, as you just said. But when I'm working with clients and I do DNA testing and epigenetics in my practice, and I said, can you get these bloods done with your doctor, right, because I can't order bloods, I'm not a doctor — very often they'll go and they'll go, what do you want those for? Do you have a problem in that area or this area? But I want to know what's under the hood so that I don't get those problems.

Lisa: This approach, and what's coming down the line with the technology — and this is what we're going to dive into today in your specialty area — there is just so much cool stuff happening, and I'm just chomping at the bit to get some of the technology down here, and get the wearables and get the CGMs and all the stuff that's going to give us this feedback so that we have an insight into our own bodies and what's actually happening, and a better look. I'm excited for this change, but it is coming difficult, and it's still very much — having a personal experience with my own family of fighting against the system pretty much for the last six, seven years with both my parents and their journeys, this is not a crusade against doctors, this is just like, the system is not quite right here. We need to be looking and being in that preventative space.

Lisa: And I love the idea of marrying the traditional medicine with the — bringing, instead of this arrogant attitude that the Western medicine has had to date: Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, rubbish, because it was in that poetic language. And now they started to go, hang on a minute, they've got something which is cool. Things have changed a lot, actually. Even just acupuncture has been, from when —

Dr Joy Kong: I first came to the US 30 years ago — if I talked about acupuncture, even though I was in San Francisco, and you'd think it's a very progressive place, but people still looked at you sideways and they thought that you're just a little weird. But now, I mean, it's been probably 15, 20 years that it's covered by insurance. So now all of a sudden everybody talks about acupuncture. "Yeah, I see acupuncture, yeah, it helps me." It's no big deal anymore. So you can see the progression in the changes in our consciousness.

Dr Joy Kong: And the same thing happened with stem cells. When I got into anti-ageing medicine, quickly stem cells was part of the anti-ageing strategy, because it's such a powerful discipline and these are powerful treatments. And so when I saw how it actually helped people and how well it worked, and then when I saw all the evidence that's out there, all these studies across the globe, that's what's really, really exciting. So that's when I went really deep.

Dr Joy Kong: But what's funny was, when I first got into it about six years ago, people would come to me and they would ask me, "Hey, doctor, tell me about stem cells. What exactly is a stem cell? What are they exactly?" But now people will come to me — no one asks that anymore. They know, "I know this is incredible, but hey, doctor, I have this condition, do you think stem cells can help me?" So you can see even just within five, six years, huge change.

Lisa: And this is part of what you're doing now. So let's go and do a deep dive into stem cells and the regenerative and anti-ageing stuff that you do. You are the founder of the American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy, you teach other physicians about stem cell therapies, you are an absolute expert, and there is a lot of clinical research that you have been a part of. In New Zealand it is just beginning, I think. There are a couple of doctors from what I can research — there may be more — that are starting to get into it, but we're probably a few years behind. Can you explain what is stem cell therapy, how it works, and why does it have such a massive range of diseases and ailments that it can help?

Dr Joy Kong: I think one of the things that's confusing for people is the stem cell field is complex, because when people say stem cells, it's as if there's some magical cells that are stem cells. But really, there's this gradation of different levels of cells that are powerful and primitive, and they're all stem cells, but there could be a hundred or a thousand different layers of evolution.

Dr Joy Kong: So what happens — if you imagine when you were conceived, a fertilised egg, that is your number one, zero generation, right? So we all came from that. You think of this complex organising from that single cell, and what made that cell so powerful? The DNA within that cell is capable of interpreting the environment, of self-evolving and self-generating. That is the intelligence that's embedded in that DNA.

Dr Joy Kong: From that one cell you get all these other stem cells. They all start to divide and form different structures, and then they start to hollow out, and then the cells on the inside are forming the organism, that's the baby, and the outside is the placenta. So all these tissues contain stem cells. Only until the organs are being formed, then you have specific specialised cells. Those are not stem cells anymore. So bone cells, your skin cells, all these have differentiated into a particular cell of a function — it's called organ tissue-specific cells. So these are not stem cells anymore. But what comes before them, they were all stem cells, but there's a huge variation of what they are. Some are going towards your nervous system, skin; some are going towards your bones and muscles; and some are more internal, GI tract and pancreas. So all these have different specialisation. They may all be stem cells.

Dr Joy Kong: So what do we utilise? Right now the gold standard, what's really popular, is mesenchymal stem cells, because these are something that has a more generalised function. I think the stem cell field probably is going to move into something more specialised at some point, but you can never ignore the general regenerative properties of mesenchymal stem cells, because they modulate the environment that all other stem cells work in.

Dr Joy Kong: So you think of mesenchymal stem cells — just think about your blood vessels all around your body. Everywhere, anywhere you have blood vessels, you will see these mesenchymal stem cells huddling around the blood vessels, and they are sensing what's going through the blood. They're also sensing what's going on in the environment. So they're modulating and they're sending out signals to blood to bring things to your system, to bring in maybe immune cells, maybe other hormone signals. So they're telling your overall system what to do, what to bring, but then they're also talking to the local environment, maybe directing what's going on locally, but also talking with the local tissue-specific stem cells. So those are the cells that can only form cells of that particular tissue. So they're having this coordinating effect.

Lisa: If you would define mesenchymal for someone who has never heard that — that was just a name?

Dr Joy Kong: It came from the mesoderm layer. So when a baby's formed — ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm — they're just different germ layers that the embryo, the cells, start to evolve into. So it's a little bit misleading, even though it came from the mesoderm layer, but these cells have such a vast level of capabilities. And this is why the doctor who discovered mesenchymal stem cells said, "I don't want — it's a misnomer to call them mesenchymal stem cells, it's giving the wrong idea to people, because what these cells do really is to produce signals and coordinate this regeneration." So he wanted to rename it "medicinal signalling cells."

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Joy Kong: So that's a very special category of cells. But you also have other cells — we're not there yet. We can always get cells, let's say embryonic stem cells, or get cells from your own skin or from your other cells, and induce them to go into an embryonic state, and then you use other signals to trick the cells into developing into a particular direction. So then you get tissue-specific — let's say you want neurons, then you can trick the embryonic stem cells, or the induced embryonic-like stem cells, induce them into that direction and help them to replenish cells in that particular organ. But what we're doing right now using mesenchymal stem cells is that we're changing the environment and we're waking up local stem cells. So that's where we're at right now. And just that has been pretty powerful, has been giving people a lot of hope.

Dr Joy Kong: And I think hope is really important. There's so many conditions where traditional doctors just said, "There's no more we can do," and then they come to do stem cells and they get incredible results. So we are transforming people's lives.

Lisa: Absolutely. So if we go into then — these mesenchymal stem cells, are these harvested from umbilical tissue and birth tissue that's no longer required when the baby is born? So from the umbilical cord, from the placenta, and then stored and then processed and do whatever you guys do with it. Is that where most of these mesenchymal stem cells that you're using in therapies come from? Or is this also from — because I know you can get stem cells from fat tissue. So what is the difference there?

Dr Joy Kong: Fat tissue has a lot of mesenchymal stem cells. It's not the fat itself, it's the blood vessels that are supplying the fat, because it's rich in blood vessels. So you're getting the cells out of the blood vessels. Basically when you harvest fat, all the cells that are lining the blood vessels, they get harvested. Bone marrow is another source of stem cells, but they are more of the haematopoietic progenitor cell type. The mesenchymal stem cells are a very, very small quantity — it's about 0.01 to 1% of the cells are actually mesenchymal stem cells. So they're tiny quantities.

Dr Joy Kong: So what I use is birth tissue-derived stem cells, and these are from healthy births. Babies are alive and healthy at the time of birth. They clamp the cord and cut it, and the procurement company are there to collect the tissue that's going to be tossed into the biological waste basket otherwise. And they collect them, put them in the saline bag and then put it on ice to ship to tissue banks to be processed. So that's what I prefer.

Dr Joy Kong: The reason I prefer that — and I have actually a YouTube video where I went pretty detailed into scientific evidence of why I think that's the better source. I really went into researching that with no prejudice whatsoever. I just wanted the best source for patients. I wanted to understand what the differences are between these different tissue sources, because you have bone marrow-derived, fat-derived and birth tissue-derived, and these are three main camps. And I just want people to have the best results and to be the safest.

Lisa: So the YouTube video is called "Are All MSCs Created Equal?"

Dr Joy Kong: Yep. So it turns out they're not. If you're getting it from adult tissue, from the bone marrow, versus from fat, versus from the birth tissue — even within the birth tissue compartments, different compartments, whether or not it's amniotic membrane or Wharton's jelly or placenta or cord blood, all these different compartments will contain different groups of cells. So you want to understand what you're giving people.

Dr Joy Kong: From all the studies I've looked at, when you look at potency of these cells, the umbilical cord, the birth tissue-derived stem cells, are more primitive. They are more active, they have more anti-inflammatory capabilities, they have more ability to shift your immune system, and they have longer telomeres — they have more generations left. They have broader range of directions that they can differentiate. So they're more powerful. And when you look at their surface markers, they're kind of in between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. So adult MSCs have lost a lot of these primitive surface markers that show that they have more potential.

Dr Joy Kong: But the good thing is that when it's umbilical cord or birth tissue-derived stem cells, these cells not only have some of the capabilities of the embryonic stem cells because they're more primitive — because they were trapped when the umbilical cord and placenta were forming, so they're trapped in there and they kept a lot of the primitive characteristics, so they're more potent — but they don't have the kind of potential like the embryonic stem cells that actually can cause tumour formation, can cause a new tumour called teratoma. These are uncontrolled growth of different cell types, of different tissues — hair, teeth, everything clumped together. It's a crazy growth.

Lisa: Yes, everything clumped together.

Dr Joy Kong: So embryonic stem cells, or even induced embryonic-like stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, they all have that potential. We haven't been able to harness them.

Lisa: Right, controlled adequately. It's too dangerous to do that at the moment, because they couldn't even use embryonics. But when you use umbilical cord stem cells, we'll avoid that type of problem.

Dr Joy Kong: So birth tissue stem cells avoid that kind of crazy tumour.

Lisa: Yeah, which could be a bit of trouble.

Dr Joy Kong: Exactly. But they're also safer than adult stem cells, because adult stem cells have lost some of the intelligence of detecting cancer. There's —

Dr Joy Kong: There's a lot of instances of adult stem cells actually promoting existing cancer. They probably won't form new cancer, but if you have existing cancer — because they tell everything to grow, so they end up telling cancer to grow. But the younger stem cells from birth tissue have much better capability of detecting that cancer, so it can tell the cancer to die. It actually gives specific signals to tell the cancer cells to go on programmed cell death.

Dr Joy Kong: They have direct comparisons between fat-derived stem cells versus umbilical cord-derived stem cells. Both are MSCs, mesenchymal stem cells, and drastically different results: the fat-derived stem cells caused the tumour to grow, and the birth tissue, umbilical cord-derived stem cells made the cancer shrink or shrink and go away.

Lisa: Wow, that's really good, because I never understood the difference between the stem cells that are derived from fat and the stem cells that are derived from umbilical cord or from the birth tissue, and why there's such a difference. When you see the telomere length is a lot longer, their ability to reproduce for longer, that makes sense that you would want to get the earlier tissue before it's differentiated.

Lisa: For people trying to understand, a pluripotent stem cell can become anything, it can regenerate into whatever is required by the body. When I hop in that hyperbaric chamber there, hyperbaric has been shown to produce more of your own stem cells. So this is not a stem cell infusion or stem cell therapy, but it just helps produce more of your own stem cells. However, these are older stem cells still, aren't they? They're not, like you say, ones that have come from an early situation where it's actually got more potential to do more therapeutic good. So the safety of the umbilical cord, or the young tissue from birth, is much safer is what you're saying, than using the other stem cells?

Dr Joy Kong: That's the evidence that I've seen, yeah.

Lisa: Fantastic. So how does one get stem cell therapy? Is this an infusion? You also have a skincare range, which I've been blessed to have received some of, and I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but I'm feeling like I'm younger already. How can you use this?

Dr Joy Kong: So you can use this topically. It can actually get through the skin layers. The cells are not alive anymore in the skin cream — it's almost impossible to keep them alive — but they do contain a lot of these signals, and these very young, very vibrant and powerful signals are what's helping with the regeneration of the skin.

Lisa: I'm counting on it. I can't tell you that much yet.

Dr Joy Kong: But as far as how you can utilise these cells, it really depends on what you're trying to do. If you have a young athlete and you've just injured your ligament, tendon, joint, we can inject directly into that site and you may heal very well. But if you are an older person, and this was an older injury, and somehow there's deterioration going on — so what's called osteoarthritis — that's when it's a chronic inflammatory condition, because your body is not able to keep up with repairing. So even if this joint is inflamed, if you put a cartilage construct, a fresh new piece of cartilage, into an arthritic knee, the cartilage just disintegrates anyway.

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr Joy Kong: So it's not that you're wearing it down, it's not wear and tear, it's because you cannot keep up, you cannot maintain tissue. So for those cases, then we need to help the whole body to better be able to regenerate, calm the inflammation, so your body is younger. And I do believe that you need to have a systemic approach. So for those of you who have osteoarthritis, I actually do both IV injection and injecting into the knee itself, and the result has been amazing.

Dr Joy Kong: First of all, when you have large joints like the knee, the hip or shoulders, the outer one-third of the cartilage is nourished by the blood supply and the inner two-thirds is nourished by the synovial fluid. So when you inject into the synovial fluid, that's great, you can get to the inner two-thirds, but the outer one-third you can't reach. Through the blood supply you can actually reach that. But not only that, we know that these cells interact with your immune system, with your spleen, with your lymphoid system, and they actually help change the internal environment of your body. So of course it's going to get to a lot of different places as well, wherever you have inflammation.

Dr Joy Kong: And that's what I've seen in my patients — that's why it's so elegant. It almost doesn't matter what kind of conditions you have. Sure, if you've had a brain disorder I may do something more special, a joint I'd do something different, penile issues I may inject locally, hair restoration I can inject locally, but for the majority of the problems I can just put the cells in your body and the cells will find their way and they will do their work. And this is why it's so fun to be a doctor. This therapy not only is so powerful, but I'm counting on their own intelligence.

Lisa: Yeah, the body does its own repair. I'm so glad that you said this about the inflammatory process. I have a good friend who's a longevity specialist and regenerative — you'd love her actually — Dr Elizabeth Yurth out of Boulder, Colorado, and I've done a lot of courses with her, and she's a regenerative medicine specialist. She says the problem with stem cells is, if the person has not gone and done the regenerative stuff, getting rid of the inflammation first, and if you've got the stem cells just going into the knee joint, for example, without doing the systemic stuff and without addressing the inflammatory disease process that's going on in the body, then you're not going to get the full effect. You'll get some effect, but not the full effect. Is that how it is?

Dr Joy Kong: It's a little bit of a double-edged sword. There has been evidence that high inflammation actually makes the stem cells work better. Basically, the inflammation of the body sends signals, so they make these cells more active. So it's a double-edged sword. That's why I don't say, 'Oh, I can't give you stem cells unless you calm your inflammation.' No, no, no. We're going to treat your inflammation, we're going to help you, we're going to help you regenerate. Your inflammation can get relief from these cells, because your inflammation can actually almost trigger these cells to work harder.

Dr Joy Kong: But at the same time, we do want to address your whole body. It's very important that we reduce the toxicity, we get your nutritional status to the right place, and we use energy therapy to optimise your cells. There's so many things — oxygen, ozone — there's so many things you can do to talk to your body to make sure it's got all the ingredients to work correctly. But you don't have to wait until the inflammation is down in order to get stem cells.

Lisa: And you're doing the cells systemically plus into the actual joint, if we're talking about a joint issue, and helping the body on a systemic level. I suppose it's like with the hyperbaric oxygen — that's also very much a panacea, a thing that can help so many... I shouldn't say panacea, that's probably the wrong word, but it helps so many different ailments because it's hyper-oxygenating the body, it's attacking the inflammation, it's producing more stem cells, and so the body is intelligent enough to go, 'Well, I need a bit of that down here or up there,' or wherever it needs it, and it's working on that systemic level. I'm just putting two and two together on my basic understanding.

Dr Joy Kong: Yeah, you're right, and I've seen that over and over again. I can give people stem cells and all of a sudden their neuropathy symptoms are going away, or some people have liver issues that got resolved, or traumatic brain injury, people with psoriasis and some kind of systemic conditions, and people with even testicular swelling and nodules — the nodules went away and we saved somebody's testicle. So it really... but the treatment is very similar: I put it in the vein. And that's how powerful they are.

Lisa: And so this is an infusion. Do you have to have a whole course of these infusions or injections? Are they injections or infusions that you do?

Dr Joy Kong: Well, a lot of times you can do injections as well. So even if you inject something into the muscle — this is where suddenly everything is systemic, so whatever you put in the body is all going to be systemic. So even if you put it in the muscles, yes, they can live in the muscle for some time, but muscles also have blood supply and they can get into the blood supply and become systemic. So they're going to find their way.

Dr Joy Kong: But this is dose-dependent. If you have a lot of inflammation and you put a little bit of cells in there, it may get to one place with inflammation and then decide to stay there, and there's really not that many cells to go around. If you have flaming inflammation all over your body, then there's only so much that this group of cells can do, and you may need another treatment.

Dr Joy Kong: So what I tell people is that if someone has a fairly significant illness, it doesn't matter which organ, we probably are looking at at least two or three sessions to really see if this is helping. We can't expect just one treatment that's going to fix everything, and if it didn't work then, 'Oh my God, stem cells don't work.' That is not fair, because all the medications, everything has a dose and has a regimen to it, and stem cells are no different. You don't say, 'Oh, just because the stem cells are not medication, we're not going to look at the dose and we're not going to look at a treatment programme.' It's the same thing as medications. You may need three doses over the course of three to six months, which is what I do. But if someone does come to me for anti-ageing purposes, you can do it every one to every three to six months. So you don't have to do a series. But if you have any serious issues, we probably need to do a series and really get that momentum and all that systemic benefit — the wave of repair, it's built upon the previous wave.

Lisa: Okay. And you teach other physicians, you've established the American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy — you're incredible, like you're at the cutting edge of this, and you've only been involved in the space for the last six years. How did you end up being the boss in this space, so to speak?

Dr Joy Kong: You're too kind. No, I'm not the boss. I'm just really driven and really want to understand. I think it's intellectual curiosity and it's passion, because I went into medicine to really make a difference for people's lives. I want to see them actually transform and heal and do better. I was in psychiatry before, and a lot of medications were actually helping patients a lot, but there's nothing like functional medicine, and that's looking at all the root causes. So when I found that, and when I found stem cells, which is probably the

Dr Joy Kong: ...most holistic treatment you can ever seek. This is really addressing the whole web, because the cells are talking to all your systems all at once, all these signals. You can't even imagine how complex it is, because the cells are doing their work using the kind of intelligence that created you. You can't compare — no drugs, no devices compare to the intelligence that created us. It's really because this is so exciting, this is so revolutionary. I tell people this is the first time in history that we are injecting intelligence. We're not injecting a molecule or a group of molecules like in herbs. We're injecting intelligence itself. That's why it's so exciting.

Dr Joy Kong: So I just got everything, I kept studying. I was like, what the hell is going on? This is just so cool. And seeing how I can help all these patients that no other doctors could help. I mean, I had no business doing this. I was doing psychiatry. But I love medicine overall. I chose to study psychiatry — I could have very well gone into neurology, but neurology was giving people no hope. I was like, do I just want to be a depressed neurologist who's diagnosing people left and right and giving them no tools to heal? Well, I don't want to do that. At least in psychiatry I can give people medications and stabilise them and give them a better quality of life. So that's why. But I'm a doctor, so all this is exciting.

Dr Joy Kong: When I see how this one simple treatment — a group of cells with this primitive, young intelligence — I give it to the body, and all of a sudden I can be a rheumatologist, I can be an orthopaedic surgeon, I can be a dermatologist, a urologist. I'm everything. How fun is that? So I'm looking, because I love science, I love medicine, I'm reading articles from all these different disciplines. That's what the academy, my course, actually does — divides the evidence into different organ systems and disease categories. There are like 30 categories, so I get to learn everything. So it's super fun. And then you realise that there are all these common themes between all these organs. That's why the treatment can be so elegant.

Dr Joy Kong: And the cool thing about stem cells is that it's accepted by everybody. Because if you are a New Age or naturopathic person, an integrative doctor, holistic doctor, you're very, very drawn to this, because this is very holistic, very natural, and it taps into your body's own intelligence, treats things at a root cause level. But if you're a traditional or conventional medicine doctor, you're all about science, and that's where stem cell science came from. It came from conventional medicine, so don't knock it. That's how we found that there are stem cells. So embrace it. It's because of modern medicine that we even know that there are stem cells. So this is true integration, and it's both fields.

Lisa: Yeah, it's what you've been searching for your entire life, by the sounds of it. You light up when you talk about this. It's just like, that's right, that's the answer. I've got these two worlds together that I wanted to bring, and there it is. And it is wonderful to find anything that can help in so many different areas, because you're going up the tree, so to speak, with regards to stem cells. I mean, even with things like hyperbaric, or looking at genetics, we're going a little bit further up and looking at where the problems come from, rather than the band-aid at the bottom when you've got the disease.

Lisa: Which is the approach, generally speaking, still, in the traditional — in the conventional, I should say — medicine world. Oh, you've got a headache, take a Nurofen. Oh, you've done this, put that on it, or take this pill, rather than going, how is that interacting with that system? And it's much more complicated to do it, and it takes a lot more time to do that approach, but it is much more — going further up. I like to think of it as a tree, where you want to go back to the root cause, for want of a better description, rather than being the band-aid and just dealing with the symptom, but going to find out why.

Dr Joy Kong: The time will come that functional medicine, this whole new approach to medicine, is going to be the new standard. It just is going to take some time. But it's a grassroots movement, because it's not the doctors who are trying to push this, it's the patients who really want it and need it. And I can't tell you how many people I've heard — functional medicine, a lot of people are realising, they're waking up, that the traditional route is not helping them very much. And a lot of functional medicine doctors actually were the people who either themselves got sick and couldn't get enough relief from conventional medicine, or their family members. So in a sense, they're part of the grassroots, right? They were on the patient side and they're seeking something else, and they realise, oh, these other things actually work.

Dr Joy Kong: Same thing with stem cells. So many doctors actually come to me saying, hey, I think I need to do stem cells, because I've got all these patients asking me, they want to do it, so can you teach me how to do it? So the patients are the ones that are giving them the push.

Lisa: Well, I hope you educate thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of doctors all around the planet, so that we can get this fantastic information out there and do it in a safe environment, and that these tissue banks and things become more available. I'm always frustrated because I live in New Zealand and we seem to be at the edge of the world, and not a great, huge population, and all these cool things we don't necessarily have here. And somebody correct me if I'm wrong, because I would love to know if there's one already in New Zealand.

Lisa: What sort of things can we just go into briefly before we wrap it up? I read on your website there's clinical research around spinal injuries, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, IBS, kidney repair, collagen, diabetes. This is just such broad, broad areas. What are some of the research that you've seen where you would say, yeah, this is — I'm working with people with motor neurone disease at the moment, so very interested in anything you have in that realm. And yeah, what are some of the really interesting clinical research that you've seen recently come out with stem cells that could help different ailments?

Dr Joy Kong: There's so many areas. You mentioned diabetes — so both type 1 and type 2, they actually showed that the beta cells are actually getting regenerated, and now with endogenous, the body producing its own insulin again. It's from head to toe. Neurological conditions, I think, are a little bit more difficult, a little bit slower, but there's research on haemorrhagic stroke, ischaemic stroke, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries. And for Parkinson's, animal models, but unfortunately I think it's still lacking when it comes to human studies.

Dr Joy Kong: But for autoimmune diseases, I think the most research has been done on autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel diseases like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, and psoriasis. And then things like migraines, actually great evidence, tremendous evidence. And lung — COPD, lung injury, end-stage renal disease, liver cirrhosis, and of course musculoskeletal, everything musculoskeletal. And there's research on autism, research on addiction, but addiction is more in the areas of animal research, but it's still very fascinating.

Dr Joy Kong: These alcoholic rats — they couldn't stop drinking, they love it, they are alcoholic. So when you give them stem cells acutely, it quickly decreases their alcohol intake by at least 50 per cent. And then if you put them into like a rehab situation — because you give them free, they give them 73 days of 10 per cent alcohol, and then I think a number of days of 20 per cent, and then they cut them off for 14 days. So it's like a human going to a rehab centre, you're completely cut off. And on day four, they either give them stem cells or give them a control, a placebo. The ones that got stem cells — what happened was that 10 days after they gave them stem cells, so a total of 14 days of abstinence, they allow them free intake of alcohol for one hour and they record how much alcohol they drink. The rats that got stem cells, their drinking was decreased by 80 to 85 per cent.

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Joy Kong: Not as interested. So the suspicion is that it's because it reduces brain inflammation. So that's a really cool one. And then there's research on anti-ageing, on longevity, also in animals. The results have been pretty consistent — it increases lifespan by about 30 per cent. And it's not just lifespan, it's health span. They look younger, act younger. Their brain is younger. And they dissected their muscles and their brains, looking at different neurotransmitters and growth factors, and checked the waste products. So everything was restored to a younger state. So that's anti-ageing. But even things like glaucoma, for the eyes, or even hearing loss, there has been evidence of stem cells being helpful.

Lisa: Wow, mind-blowing. Because it's just basically taking you back to your younger self, before all that stuff hit the fan, so to speak.

Dr Joy Kong: So I don't know how many people know that we are running out of stem cells as we age. There's just no way around it. You don't keep your stem cells forever, the fact that they are with you, and the fact that they're going into battle for you. The more you mobilise them, the less they are, because there are only so many generations they have. And when they fight the battles for you, on your inflammation, there's an attrition rate. So when they come out of hibernation, when they are activated and they go fight your battle, they eventually die. They're not going to live forever.

Dr Joy Kong: So if you get your own stem cells and put them back into your body, it's the same thing — you're activating them, they'll fight your battles and they die. So you could potentially, in that sense, just exhaust your stem cell supply. So that's one reason I think it's a disadvantage. You can't really do anti-ageing with your own stem cells, because you're running out of them anyhow, and then you just activate them and then you just reduce them. So you're temporarily getting better, but you're reducing your stem cell supply.

Lisa: Wow.

Dr Joy Kong: So when we were born, every one in ten thousand cells is an MSC, this major type of signalling stem cell. And when you reach your teenage years, it becomes one in a hundred thousand. So from one in ten thousand to one in a hundred thousand, and this is just getting to teenage years. When you get to your forties, it becomes one in four hundred thousand. When you get to your eighties, it becomes one in two million. So there's like a straight-line decline. That's why we wrinkle up, that's why we get white hair, that's why we get sick easier, we get chronic illnesses, because your body can't keep up with the repair.

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr Joy Kong: If you get injured, as long as you have plenty of stem cells that are vibrant, then you're going to fix it. But if you're running out of stem cells, that's the final source of regeneration. But all the other things are important. I call stem cells the engine for regeneration, and everything else we're doing, like the hyperbaric, like the nutritional therapy, light therapy, all these things are the fuel. Eventually, it fuels the body, but it also fuels the engine. The engine needs all these important factors, but you still need the engine. If you don't have the engine, you're not going anywhere.

Lisa: Oh God, how do I get some of this? Why can't we all just fly over and see you? That would be fantastic. Are you aware, on an international scene — I know you're in America — but are you aware of lots of these sorts of clinics opening up around the world now? Is there hope for us Kiwis?

Dr Joy Kong: In foreign countries that are a little bit more open, countries like Costa Rica, Bahamas, Panama, Mexico, Colombia, they're all over there in the tropical area. But when it comes to places like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, I think they're very regulatory, slow.

Lisa: Is it because of regulation? Damn. Okay, so we're sort of reliant at the moment on just using things like skin for skin care and getting some benefits from it that way. But this is what's coming down the track, and the more people ask for it, the more people are going to be pushing for it, the more we're likely to see it start to happen. I am aware of one clinic up north that does the fat cell stem cell stuff, but not the tissue banks. I'm definitely going to go and find out, where in New Zealand and Australia can we get access to this stuff?

Dr Joy Kong: Let me know if you find one.

Lisa: Oh, absolutely. You need to start a database of who is where, because you've got enough jobs.

Dr Joy Kong: I know.

Lisa: Is this also for parents who are listening to this who maybe are about to have a child — something that they should be thinking about, like for their own future, for their own children's future as well, storing them?

Dr Joy Kong: They certainly can, but this is my sentiment. Yes, you can bank your own child's cells, and if the child has any conditions during childhood, it probably is very helpful to have these cells because they're younger, they're powerful, and it's identical to the baby's, that's great. But it doesn't have to be identical, frankly. That's why we're using other people's cells. Because they are so young, they're primitive, and because they're mesenchymal stem cells, most of them, they are immune evasive, immune privileged. They don't get destroyed by the immune system because they don't have surface markers that mark them as foreign. And then they work and they die, right? Just like we take any cells out of the body, we activate them, we put them back, and they work and they die. So it's the same thing. Very few actually end up living in your body, and even if they do, it's not a problem, because even human cells can live in animals' bodies from this research. I don't know if you know, sixty percent of women — research has shown sixty percent of women actually have Y chromosomes.

Lisa: I listened to one of your lectures on that and I was like, wow, really? And I thought, that's not as frightening. People are so frightened of other people's DNA in me.

Dr Joy Kong: I have done IV stem cells on myself every three months. I don't know how many people's DNA is in me. I welcome them.

Lisa: I was like, yes, become part of me.

Dr Joy Kong: Yeah, it's okay. It's only a few cells. I mean, compared to what I have, trillions. But I welcome it, because they help me heal. I think people's fears are completely blown out of proportion, it's not based on science.

Lisa: They've done it with women, haven't they? They suggested that we have Y chromosomes — in other words, male chromosome cells or whatever you call it — in there. Was it twenty percent of women or sixty percent of women have these? And I thought it was from, if they had borne a male child, that they would have some of the children's DNA in them. But that's not the only thing.

Dr Joy Kong: Yeah, so this study, this research was trying to figure out why sixty percent. They were trying to use the statistics to account for the sixty percent, and they couldn't, because they were thinking, oh, maybe it's from having male children, or having male children who went through a miscarriage that the mother never knew about; maybe it's from a male sibling that got DNA mixed up with the mother, and the male sibling died and no one knew. So they were trying to figure out every potential possibility, and then finally they said, okay, we can't account for all that, so the only explanation is through male-female intercourse. That's how the Y chromosomes actually got into the female body. So it just is part of human experience.

Dr Joy Kong: Anyhow, back to your question about mothers, whether or not they should bank their own babies' cord. First of all, if you're banking them for your own reasons, like for selfish reasons, then it makes no sense. First of all, your baby is fifty percent different from you DNA-wise, but also, good luck in trying to get the cells out for use for yourself, because this belongs to the baby. I've had parents who were trying to get the cells out to use for themselves and they had a hell of a time, because the tissue bank did not want to release it, because this belongs to the child. So that's one thing. But some ten, fifteen years down the line, the stem cell therapy is going to advance so much that you probably don't even need it. Maybe at that point we'll be able to take a cell from your body, bring it back to the embryonic state, and then coax the cells into becoming so many different kinds of cells that we want the cells to be. So I just think, if you want to do it for your children, great, do it if you have the resources, but just know there are a lot of possibilities even if you haven't done that.

Lisa: So you don't need to necessarily bank that for your child's future or whatever. Wow, there's just so much to think about, and the implications of everything as well. Dr Joy, you've been so generous with your time. I want to respect your time. Thank you so much. You're wonderful, your work is amazing. Please keep this going and keep educating those doctors so that more of us get access to these incredible therapies, stem cell therapy. I'm excited. I hope I get to have some before I get too old.

Dr Joy Kong: Come to Los Angeles. I have a lot of people flying from all over the world.

Lisa: All over the world. So people can book in with you, come and see you in Los Angeles if that's within their way possible. That's absolutely fantastic. So we will put all the links down below, but just briefly, where can people find you?

Dr Joy Kong: So my clinic is called Uplyft Longevity Center, Uplyft with a Y. So they can just look me up, uplyftcenter.com. But if they want to listen to my lectures or my educational input, they can go on YouTube. I try to put out some videos and discuss different aspects of stem cell therapy. So my YouTube channel is just Joy Kong MD, just my name. And also, if they want more information, they can go on the academy I founded, the American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy, so aaict.org. They can go on the academy, find some research articles and some case studies. There are a lot of case studies, a lot of them are patients who I've treated, some are patients who are treated by the doctors I've trained. So it's going to be very interesting for people to read those cases.

Lisa: Heck yeah. I'm just so excited for this research. Thank you, Dr Joy. I am so glad to have had you on the show.

Dr Joy Kong: You're so welcome. It's been very, very nice to talk about these wonderful things.

Lisa: Fantastic.