Dr. Joy Kong shares her background and journey into stem cell therapy. She explains that stem cells can be used to treat a wide range of conditions, including autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, organ damage, and even sports injuries.

Finding a properly trained doctor who uses native stem cells rather than expanded cells is very important and we discuss the best ways to find a qualified provider. Dr. Kong also discusses the challenges and resistance faced by stem cell therapy due to the current healthcare system and the influence of pharmaceutical companies. She encourages patients to be cautious when seeking treatment overseas and highlights the advancements and potential of stem cell therapy in the United States.

Find Dr. Kong on her website and podcast. Her training for physicians is AAICT.org and you can buy her book here. Stem cell skincare, save 10 percent with code HealNourishGrow.

Takeaways:

• 
  
• Stem cell therapy can be used to treat a wide range of conditions, including autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, organ damage, and sports injuries.
  
• It is important to find a properly trained doctor who uses native stem cells rather than expanded cells.
  
• Stem cell therapy faces challenges and resistance due to the current healthcare system and the influence of pharmaceutical companies.
  
• Patients should be cautious when seeking treatment overseas and consider the advancements and potential of stem cell therapy in the United States.
  

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Transcript:

Cheryl McColgan (00:01.023)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal and Nourish Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Joy Kong and she has a really interesting background, kind of this escape from China kind of story. And then now she’s doing all this amazing work in stem cells. And I’ve just got so many questions about all that, but Dr. Kong, I would love it if you could share a little bit of your background first, because I think that that will…

enable people to kind of understand where you’re coming from and to get to know like why you’re so passionate about your work now, what you had to do to get here.

Joy Kong, MD (00:34.158)
Right. Yeah. So I definitely have an interesting story. You know, up to age 20, I am one of the I don’t know, half a billion Chinese women. I was just a Chinese girl with no money, no connections, not like my family had, you know, any high officials or any money. But I had a dream I wanted to come to this country because there’s something that’s really exciting and inspiring about the kind of freedom, the kind of accomplishment that you know, you can pursue.

I don’t know, it just sounds so exciting. So I decided no matter what, I’m gonna be there, I need to be there. So I was studying architecture and I decided to come to this country. I switched to biology because that’s the only field that you could get a scholarship in, but I have diverse interests. So a lot of things interest me, which is probably why when I ended up finally going to medical school at UCLA, I specialized in psychiatry because the brain is so interesting, right?

when you go into medicine is not a typical specialty that you think about psychiatry. We’re kind of the, a bit of a in the medical community. We are all just a little weird, a little strange, a little something different. So, but my interest in medicine in the whole human body is still the same. I’m a passionate about human health, but the brain is fascinating. But if you just keep pounding on the brain looking

at all the receptors and neurotransmitters and thinking that everything is related to brain structure, then you’re missing the boat because you’re not looking at your whole body. So when I was doing psychiatry while prescribing all these medications and doing some psychotherapy, I was trying to also improve my own health. I appreciate the body I was given and I want to do justice and want to do everything I can to nourish the body.

and medical school gave me no tools, really very little tools because what medicine, the traditional medical education, what it does is to teach you what to do when a person is sick. It doesn’t do much except for, yeah, exercise, eat healthy and sleep a little bit more. I mean, it’s like a mantra, right? Every doctor just say those three things and then you’re covered. We have no detailed knowledge of exactly how to enhance health. We just know.

Joy Kong, MD (02:58.304)
exercise, eat right and sleep better. And yeah, then that’s my counsel. That’s my medical advice in that regard. But everything else will be related to when you get sick. If you get sick, now I feel useful. Now I know what diagnostic tools to run. know what kind of symptoms to look for. can put you in a category. So we’re like catarizers. We’re looking at symptoms.

and test results and we put people in a category and we throw drugs. So category, the whole purpose of categories is so that we can match a drug to it. So in my pursuit of looking for enhancement of my own health, that model certainly doesn’t work. So I had to go outside. Outside means looking at what’s called integrated medicine or functional medicine. I I’ve never even heard of the word functional medicine.

up to 10 years ago. So I finished medical school in 2004. So that’s, that’s 20 years ago, but for 10 years of being in practice and I’d never heard of functional medicine. didn’t know existed. So that’s how we were all like, you know, in our bubble, but functional medicine is looking at how can we enhance the functions of the body, not just, you know, wait until you’re sick, but looking at all these details of how different systems can affect each other. So that’s when I got excited about

this holistic way of looking at medicine. And that quickly led me to stem cells, because that’s, those are the kind of doctors that are actually starting to do stem cells, because stem cells are not FDA approved yet. And only the pioneering, more open minded, more adventurous doctors are willing to do it because most doctors, want to stay exactly what FDA says, because it’s safe, right? I can give you the most terrible drugs,

because I’ve told you all the potential side effects, including death, right? So if something terrible happened to you, I’m completely protected. Nothing will happen to me because here I give you the consent and these are the list of side effects. Everybody’s safe. there’s no, unless you’re flagrant medical mistake, right? You’re safe. So that’s the whole difference. But it takes a doctor who is brave, who believes in what may be the best for patients to take

Joy Kong, MD (05:24.352)
a therapy that’s not FDA approved. So I’m just that kind of doctor. I wanna do what I think is right. I’m willing to take risks. Actually, a lot of us are taking our risks and some actually have lost our lives. I’ve heard plenty of doctors who had mysterious deaths. It’s unfortunate, it’s scary, but it is not…

you know, out of the realm of possibility that, you know, there are forces really against doctors who are trying to do this. So that’s a long way of telling you about my story, which is that it takes courage to get out of China because it was not easy. So I wrote a memoir, Tiger of Beijing. People can find it on Amazon. It’s about how I got out. So that part was not easy. So that’s battle one. Battle two is to, you know, really become a doctor.

and educate yourself. And the battle three is actually going into a regenerative medicine and a whole new specialty that doesn’t have the FDA approval yet. And the entire establishment doesn’t quite know how to regulate the industry. So there’s a lot of confusion. There are a lot of myths in the field. The public’s confused and it’s controversial. So that’s what I’m in. That’s what I got myself into.

What drives me is my patients, is what I’ve seen as far as the transformation for their lives. As far as people who had previously no hope, and all of a sudden they have hope, then they start to see improvements. So that, and they come to me, right? If I don’t do this, then where do they go? So I have to do this. So that’s kind of the story about how I got to where I

Cheryl McColgan (07:18.291)
Yeah, that’s amazing. And your passion is obviously very clear. It comes right through, I think, whether people are watching this on YouTube or listening it, that they can hear the passion in your voice. fighting the American health care, really the American health sick system, is not an easy task. So I think it’s really wonderful that there are doctors like you out there that are willing to challenge the status quo and kind of bring these new ideas about

know, keeping people healthy or, you know, using things that aren’t just drugs to make us feel better. So you mentioned your patients and I think probably a good place to start. Some people have probably heard of stem cells. I remember even way back it used to be a controversy because they used to only be able to get them, I believe, from umbilical cords or something. This is before they learned that adult stem cells could still kind of be used in certain scenarios.

But maybe you could just tell us a little bit of the history of that kind of where stem cells are coming from now and then how you’re starting to use them to help your patients.

Joy Kong, MD (08:26.412)
Yeah, I think the sequence is a little bit in reverse. It’s actually, we started to, we first found out that when we transplant bone marrow, we were actually transplanting stem cells. So they realized that there are certain cells in the body that can replicate a cell, a renew a cell, and then can differentiate to become new tissue, more functional, more specific type of cells.

And then they thought the only stem cells in the body were in the bone marrow. that’s, they were, you know, kind of backward in, in, know, they didn’t just didn’t know. They didn’t know that actually stem cells are all over the body. Am I frozen? No. No, I’m good.

Cheryl McColgan (09:11.529)
Now I think, and I’ll mark this so I can cut a little clip out. I was seeing your video being pixelated, but part of this riverside thing is that it records both sides natively. So if there’s any internet trouble in the end, parses it together and makes it look perfect again, basically.

Joy Kong, MD (09:30.838)
Okay, so let me rewind, let me go back. So when they first discovered stem cells, they found stem cells in the bone marrow. And that was the place that they thought that was the only place stem cells were. And then they found out stem cells were all over the human body. Anywhere you have any vasculature, you will have these cells called mesenchymal stem cells. There are all kinds of other stem cells too. But so they started doing bone marrow transplantations. And later on, they found out that fat

you can get stem cells out of that. It’s not from the fat itself. It’s from the blood vessels that are supplying the fat tissue. And then they found, there are a lot of stem cells in the umbilical cord. So that’s when they started utilizing the umbilical cord. So that was, I think it’s back in 88, that’s when they first actually got cells from that umbilical cord. So it, but the bone marrow transplant was, you know, that was started in the sixties. So, yeah.

And there are a lot of different types, right? We don’t do embryonic stem cells in this country. That’s not legal unless you’re doing it under a clinical study. You can’t do any fetal stem cells because, you know, in this country, you know, we’re not going to destroy any fetuses. But in some other countries like Ukraine, you know, that has been, you know, a popular form of therapy. So, so anyhow, but in the U .S., the main forms are bone marrow derived, fat derived.

or umbilical cord derives themselves.

Cheryl McColgan (11:00.873)
And what, when people, I imagine it’s things that people have a long chronic history with, or maybe an acute injury that is not amenable to surgery, or there’s some reason why they might seek out an alternative type of therapy like this. What are the types of things that people come to you for when they’re looking for stem cell therapy?

Joy Kong, MD (11:24.364)
Yeah, it really is wide ranging. It pretty much covers, you know, all the chronic conditions or acute injuries. But, you know, I always want to go start from research, how much evidence there is as far as research studies. But just remember, when the disease is a little bit more obscure, so not as many people suffer from it, then there’s going to be less research about it. So but what we know in general, one of the

The most perfect type of conditions for stem cells is autoimmune conditions because they are a dysregulation of the immune system with over activation of the inflammation, you know, kind of a type of reaction from the immune system. you, the stem cells we’re using these days, the one that’s the most utilized is called mesenchymal stem cells, MSCs.

and those are powerfully anti -inflammatory. And they’re also very balancing for the immune system. They can help you shift your immune, you know, the whole angle of your immune system. So, you know, autoimmune diseases are 122 known different kinds. And of course we all know, you know, about rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, there’s psoriasis, there’s, you know, gut diseases like Crohn’s or osteoarthritis, and

scleroderma, there’s even multiple sclerosis for the brain. So there’s wide range of conditions, thyroid, thyroiditis. So yeah, wide ranging conditions that medicine really doesn’t have a whole lot of solution for except for prednisone, except for steroids, which have significant drawbacks, a lot of side effects, including bone necrosis, really causing death of the bone.

plenty of other issues. So other conditions that have been studied are things of cardiovascular nature, like atherosclerosis. Research has shown that stem cells can help arteries to literally clean up, to become healthier with less plaques, less aggregation of those inflammatory cells, with heart diseases, heart repair, kidney function improvements.

Joy Kong, MD (13:49.998)
liver cirrhosis and liver problems, lung diseases, including lung fibrosis, which is one of the hardest things. So COPD really our medicine doesn’t have a whole lot to offer stem cells. It’s I’ve seen incredible things and it just it’s so fun to treat people, you know, like that because they you can see drastic changes and they but you know, they’re dragging oxygen tanks around and on all these medications. And for me to do

some simple treatment that they can ditch oxygen and ditch almost all medications. mean, that those are kind of the things I’ve seen, which is really, really, you know, exciting for a doctor and, and brain conditions. So, you know, the brain is not easy. You know, I don’t want people to, think that, yeah, we’ve got a cure for all brain conditions. I that’ll be nice, but no, we’re not there, but we can offer more hope than anything out

I love the brain, but there’s a reason I did not become a neurologist, even though I had wanted to become a neurologist. But there’s not much option for therapy when you diagnose somebody with traumatic brain injury, with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, ALS, there’s just not much therapy that are helpful.

But stem cells has been shown to potentially be beneficial in all these conditions. And I’ve seen improvement in my patients, or post stroke victims. then, so really all these internal organs, so many of them can receive benefits, especially if it’s chronic and there’s an inflammation as a driving force and immune dysregulation.

or tissue damage. If the tissue is damaged, the cells have the capability of sending signals to trigger this repair mechanism. So I would say to people, yeah, if you have inflammation, you have immune dysregulation, if you had tissue damage, then stem cells can be a powerful way of helping you. And of course, these MSEs are anti -fibrotic. So if you have scar tissue, it can help you break it down. And then it can also help you fight

Joy Kong, MD (16:08.638)
infections. So these stem cells have direct anti microbial properties. So they can actually see create anti microbial peptides, not to mention it’s going to help you enhance your immune function. So it will help you fight these infections better. And it has direct anti cancer properties. So it has been used for cancer treatments. It can help protect tissue and accelerate healing. One thing I’ve done quite a bit

to use it for pre or post operations, pre and post -op, to help people become way faster. What I’ve seen is twice, three times as fast as far as recovery, drastic, shocking the surgeons, because they haven’t seen people recovering that fast. So it’s really exciting. So sports injuries, that’s the most common. That’s like the bread and butter of stem cell therapy, any joint damage, tendons, soft tissue.

And then it can be used for rejuvenation, right? Facial rejuvenation, hair restoration, really beautiful benefits, or sexual organ. So all these are very accessible, right? You can inject into the penis, the vagina, these are easy to access. But when it comes to internal organs, it can be helpful, but it may be a little more difficult to access, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t access it

tapping into the ability of the cells to get into a particular region because they’re attracted to areas of injury and inflammation. So let’s say we do an IV infusion for a patient and the cells will be attracted to wherever tissue, know, wherever the, the scream is the loudest. So, and they tend to go there and start fixing that problem.

in that region. know, one example is my first stem cell patient who had, who was 69 years old and was told that he absolutely needed bilateral knee replacement because he would just, know, osteoarthritis degenerative and he definitely needed knee replacement. Yeah. Two orthopedic surgeons said for, you know, in no uncertain terms and he’s extremely active, you know, go to all these trade shows all the time, like every month. And so

Cheryl McColgan (18:14.925)
Okay.

Joy Kong, MD (18:27.214)
he wanted to avoid surgery. So what I did was that I gave him knee injections, know, directly into knee joint, but also an IV infusion because the outer one third of the cartilage in the knee is nourished by the blood supply. The inner two thirds is nourished by the synovial fluid. So the exchange between the blood and the synovial fluid in the joint is very slow. So if you attack from both angles, then you can actually send signals

the cartilage on both sides. So that’s why I gave him an IV infusion. And then what’s interesting was the next day, he told me, he said, you know, I slept through the night. I haven’t slept through the night for decades because when my car rolled over when I was a teenager, I damaged my shoulder. So my rotator cuff injury never fully healed. Every time he would shift in the bed, he would wake himself up. But guess what? He was not woken up that night.

And he still is fine. His shoulder is fine. It’s fixed. Now is eight years later, right? This is beautiful. I didn’t know about his shoulder issues. I never touched the shoulder. So that just goes to show that the cells have intelligence. They can find places where they’re needed. So, yeah, so which means that we can utilize that kind of capability to target even deeper tissues. So in our clinic, we actually use

laser light. We use light to help attract more cells in a particular organ because research have shown that light can activate mobility of cells and can help the cells adhere to certain tissues. So that’s fascinating, right? All of a sudden we can help direct the cells. yeah, this is kind of a, you know, like a broad range. autism is one of the things that has been shown to be beneficial.

and yeah, reproductive, even for, you know, there’s some good research, well, animal studies showing that stem cell infusion of younger cells, when you are giving it to aging rats, paramedic, posal rats actually increase the number of follicles in ovaries, the size of the ovaries, and you know, that improve their hormone levels, you know, closer to the younger state, and then they have more pregnancies.

Joy Kong, MD (20:53.146)
And then clinically in my clinic, I did see people becoming pregnant more easily. So there’s just a wide range of possibilities.

Cheryl McColgan (21:02.293)
Well, I’m sure people are hearing this and thinking, my God, this sounds amazing. You just inject me with something. It goes where to the place that needs to be fixed and fixes it. And I don’t have to take drugs and I don’t to do anything. So the big question, I know. So the big question I think in people’s minds are why isn’t this being more widely used? And second, and I think I have

Joy Kong, MD (21:13.058)
Why do you think I’m so excited about stem cells? Yes.

Cheryl McColgan (21:26.505)
you know, we talked about the sick care system. This would put a lot of surgeons out of business if we use this and it would get rid of a lot of drugs that people are taking. there’s, you know, follow the money, I think is one of the big answers. But I guess the second question is, you know, people would also wonder what sounds too good to be true. There must be some risk here. Is there a risk that the stem cells will migrate somewhere in the body and have a negative effect? Like people kind of, I think picture.

cells proliferating like they do in cancer or something like that, for example. And they made me wondering, like, is there a kind of thing like that that can happen with this? So I would love to hear your thoughts around all of

Joy Kong, MD (22:03.936)
Okay, let’s let’s address your second question first. Yeah. So when you look at side effects, you have to look at what kind of tissue is used. So cells from an adult person versus cells from a book or court have drastically different properties. So let’s say you use cells from your own body, your stem cell is the age of you. So your stem cells, even though is in somewhat quiescent state, right, it’s kind of hibernating a little bit, but still they accumulate genetic changes.

just like you do. And they also decrease, they decrease in number as time goes on, because even the environment of where the cells are, are less conducive to their health. So they start to degenerate. So if you get those cells out, not only don’t have a whole lot, but they also have lost the potency and also they can have changes as far as neoplastic changes, right? Cancerous possibilities. And they also have lost certain intelligence.

when they should detect cancer and kill cancer, now they forgot that they need to tell cancer cells to die, because there’s so much of what they do is to tell everything to grow, then they start to secrete all these growth factors telling everything to grow. And that’s why there has been a report of cancer promoting properties from stem cells is overwhelmingly from these adult stem cells who have lost certain capabilities. But when you use younger sources,

they retain that intelligence. So they tell the cancer cells to die. If you look around, look at research, you know, statistics of safety, I mean, the safety has been extraordinary. There’s so few potential issues. Of course, if you use embryonic stem cells or induce pluripotent stem cells, like I said, we’re not using that in this country, you have a potential of causing teratoma.

So that’s uncontrolled growth of all kinds of tissue into like one lump. You know, this is a tumor. So there has been reports in certain countries when they inject stem cells, embryonic stem cells, that’s from early embryo. When they destroy an embryo and then get some cells from the inner, you know, inner ball of the embryo, they could cause this uncontrolled growth, but that potential is not there anymore.

Joy Kong, MD (24:26.242)
when it comes to unblockable quartz stem cells, because these are much further down the road as far as development of the cells go. So they lost that wild potential. But what they can do is that they can tell all cells to grow. So theoretically, there’s a possibility that they can tell cancer cells to grow as well. However, if the cells maintain a lot of his intelligence, then it should be able to tell cancer cells to die. How do they know? I don’t know.

You know, that’s, that’s a whole other discussion. It probably involves metaphysics. So I don’t know how the cells know, but they know some cells don’t belong just like certain things, you know, can kill off bad bacteria, but preserve the probe probiotics. You know, it’s interesting. How do they know? I don’t know. So, but the cells have the intelligence to tell that, certain cancer cells don’t belong.

So as far as side effects, I think any medical procedure there can be problems, right? If the doctor doesn’t know what he’s doing, then you can cause potential problems. For example, this clinic that got shut down in Miami, they were injecting stem cells into people’s eyeballs and they ended up blinding three people. So they were shut down. So how you’re providing the therapy, how safe the route is make a big difference.

If you inject stem cells IV and you don’t use proper filter, the cells have a tendency to aggregate. So I would say maybe 95 % of doctors who are using stem cells, who are doing stem cells IV are not using proper filters. I mean, that’s unfortunate. That’s why I found it in the Academy. I’m trying to educate doctors. If you’re going to do that, then you need to do it safely. You need proper IV filters to break up cell aggregates. So if

don’t do that, there is a chance, it’s a small chance, but still that’s a chance that I’m not willing to take for my patients, right? It can cause embolism for your lungs and for other tissues. And then if you inject cells in particular area, you can always cause swelling and pain and a lot of times temporary inflammation, but that usually correlates, lot of times, let’s say in a joint, you inject into a joint and the patient is like, my God, my knee is stiff, I can’t move and it hurts.

Joy Kong, MD (26:44.18)
Usually within a few days that will get better and they actually have pretty good results because your immune system just got mobilized and they all these cells came. So the knee joint is like, my God, what are all these? You know, it’s just, it’s a lot of cells, a lot of volume of fluid. So those are very common problems, but I think unsafe administration from the doctors is the majority of the problems like anything, right? Like any surgery, you go into surgery.

Are you saying it’s surgery safe or not? It depends on the surgeon, right? So you can’t say, some surgery went bad. So we’re going to ban the surgery from now on, you know, no one is going to do the surgery anymore, just because some doctor didn’t do it right. So, you know, okay, you know, let’s look at logically. So that’s kind of where things

Cheryl McColgan (27:20.896)
right.

Cheryl McColgan (27:38.699)
And so, I mean, hearing that, I’m sure people think, okay, like you said, that there’s like such an amazing technology and amazing therapy for people that may not be able to get relief any other way. And in the same token, it’s still kind of a little bit in the wild west. It’s not regulated. There are people that are doing it maybe improperly or just doing it for profit and don’t have their patient’s best interest in mind. So if somebody wanted to seek this out,

Is there any way that you can recommend that they, you know, how they can best find a doctor that does know what they’re doing, that puts these filters in place that you mentioned that has, you know, more experience? How would people go about, you know, getting somebody with the right credentials?

Joy Kong, MD (28:22.07)
Yeah, that’s one thing I’m trying to do. So I founded American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy. Actually, just last weekend, we did our certification training. So it’s a two day course, you know, with lots of information and hands on, you know, kind of instructions, just on how to do this well and do it safely. So that’s one.

One way is to see if the doctor actually received proper training. So if anyone is interested, they can go on the Academy website is aact .org. So that’s American Academy of Integrated Cell Therapy. There are some research articles. There’s actually some case studies. A lot of them actually are cases, are patients I’ve treated, but it’s, you know, of diverse disease conditions. I think people will find that very interesting. But yeah, for a doctor to be properly trained, unfortunately,

you know, doctors are kind of humans just like anybody else in any other business. They do tend to want to help. That’s why they went into medicine, but some went into medicine to make money. I, you know, make no mistake of that. You know, some people just want to make a living. So there are different kinds of doctors, you know, I, the doctor who actually come to our training are the ones who actually are willing to invest in their skills and in their competence so they can do the best thing for their patients. So that’s a different.

kind of crop of doctors who really are doing everything they can. So I would encourage people to make sure that these doctors have actually sought out training and not just receiving instructions from reps. I’ve seen so many doctors who are purchasing stem cell products from a company that produce these products and they just get instructions from the rep. I mean, that’s no way to practice medicine. You don’t get instructions from somebody that has no medical training.

that just telling you, do this, do that, and then you’ll be fine. yeah, check out what kind of training doctors

Cheryl McColgan (30:21.215)
Yeah, and I think that’s a good caution because I think people also have this, you know, authority figure thing where they probably feel nervous to question their, like they see that’s up on their website or wherever that says, I’m a stem cell specialist. And they think, I found one. This is great. I can go do this. But unless they, you know, ask a lot of questions or check with your organization to see if they’ve had some of this additional training. I mean, I think that is one.

beauty of the traditional medical system is you do have your board certification process that kind of shows that you’ve gone through a specific training and you can prove it. have sort of the training, the background, the certificate to say it all went together, but it sounds like in stem cells that that is not really there yet, but something that you’re working towards with your organization and your training so that someday people will be able to see like, okay, this doctor is certified in stem cell therapy or something like that. Yeah.

Joy Kong, MD (31:13.676)
Mm hmm. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, there’s just not much out there. I mean, I had to train myself. There was no textbook, there’s nothing. So I just accumulated articles. I mean, that’s that’s the way you educate yourself is by reading articles, because the articles, the studies, they will give you the background and the science. So then really, that that becomes the beginning of a textbook textbook. So that’s what I put together in the course material to, you know, just

Cheryl McColgan (31:17.599)
Yeah, that’s really cool that you’re doing that.

Joy Kong, MD (31:43.096)
kind of coalescing all this information into a format where doctors can have this linear thought of what this is and how the cells work and why you have to do things certain

Cheryl McColgan (31:56.777)
Yeah, that’s really cool. So finally, to kind of and I want to be respectful of your time. But is there anything that we haven’t touched on yet that you’d like to share with people will have your organization in the show notes. So definitely, if you’re thinking about doing this, either go see Dr. Kong or look into the doctor. Don’t be afraid of the white coat. Ask questions, find out about their training and their their knowledge in this area before you go down this road. But is there anything we haven’t touched on yet or

Joy Kong, MD (32:17.678)
was more than

Joy Kong, MD (32:23.34)
Yeah, I think, know, to, you know, I, yeah, I didn’t even answer your other question about why it’s not widely spread, you know, why it’s not, or fully accepted. I mean, we are interrupting the entire cashflow of the current medical model, right? We are not. I don’t think we’re really welcome at this point, you know, unless we are part of the, the, the, the, mechanism of generating huge amount of money for the establishment. So because we’re interrupting

Cheryl McColgan (32:26.901)
Sorry.

Cheryl McColgan (32:37.609)
Bye.

Joy Kong, MD (32:52.526)
you know, it was a great model for the drug companies. was perfect, right? Insurance, the drug companies, everything’s working well together. You’re making lots of money and people are sick. They’re staying sick and they keep taking drugs. They have to take drugs for life and the drugs will create side effects and take another drug. So I worked at the VA, you know, all the veterans have 10, 20, even 30 drugs every time they come in to see a doctor. It’s great. It works great. So, but we’re interrupting all of

I want my patients off medications if possible. And a lot of times I’m able to accomplish that because you don’t, know, the biological system, you know, you don’t have, just like they said, you don’t have a Prozac deficiency, right? You don’t, you know, for your depression, it’s not because you have a deficiency of these drugs, it’s because they’re underlying, you know, mechanisms to trigger your disease. So you need to address all those. So we’re being able to address that. And I can’t think of anything more holistic than stem cells.

which is the source of life, which gives you all these signals from all these different angles, trigger and repair of all these different organ systems. So your entire body is gonna help you repair. So it’s very holistic because it’s an interrupting, because it’s new, because the government agency doesn’t know how to regulate it. And of course we all know how the FDA is funded.

you know, huge percentage of their budget comes from funding from big pharma. I mean, that’s the truth. You know, there’s a saying, this is not just for the, you know, the regulation of this area, the EPA, you know, a lot of government agencies are like that. And they call them captured agencies. The agencies are captured by industry they’re supposed to regulate. So it’s just the way it has evolved. So that’s probably one reason why things have not been easy. So it’s new, also doctors,

are very conservative, a group by nature. They are very skeptical. So when there’s new science coming in, a lot of them are very slow to adapt. They want to stick to what they know. So all these play into a role. And actually stem cell therapy is a patient -driven therapy. I call it a grassroots movement because patients are the ones that are going to the doctors.

Joy Kong, MD (35:15.304)
asking for stem cells, hey, do you do stem cells? And that’s how I got a lot of doctors coming to me saying, Can you teach me how to do it? I’ve got a few people asking me for it. I feel like I need to know how to do it. So so that’s that. Yeah, that aspect. But as far as what I want people to know that I haven’t discussed, I think one of the big glaring question is where do you get a stem cell treatments, because a lot of people are going overseas and they think going overseas are better. Of course, you’ve got big names in the health

area, know, health longevity arena, know, Joe Rogan, Tony Robbins, and Brian Johnson, everybody is going overseas, right? It could be Panama, the Bahamas, Colombia, Mexico. So the issue with going overseas is that you are going to be getting expanded stem cells. So there’s no way around it. If they tell you I’m going to give you 100 million cells, 200, 300 million cells, they’re expanded because it’s going to be way more expensive.

They’re going to charge. Yeah, it’s just, it’s going to be too much if they give you native cells that have not been expanded. The problem with expanding the cells is even though the number sounds good and it goes along with the kind of research, research usually say 1 million per kilo of body weight. So they are going along with the bigger numbers thinking that’s the way that you have to, you know, bring about change. But the research also is based on expanded cells.

The problem with expanded cells is that when you start expanding them, they can start to produce inflammatory molecules and those can cause a reaction. And also they start to differentiate to manifest the proteins that’s consistent with the donor, which can cause rejection in the recipient. So this is why Tony Robbins, he doesn’t know this is why, but he said, you’re going to get cytokine response in this cytokine storm.

that that’s, you know, it’s okay. It’s part of the normal. No, it’s not part of the normal because I have never seen cytokine response in my clinic using the native stem cells that I’m using. I’m producing at least just as good of a results, if not better than what’s going on overseas. So I want people to understand that you don’t have to fly overseas and getting cells from, you know, a of times these countries that their prenatal care is not

Joy Kong, MD (37:38.242)
rigorous as in this country, the screening is not as good. you know, so that’s a risk on its own. And then you start to expand the cells, and you’re causing these inflammatory components to manifest and also causing potential rejection. That’s why I’ve seen people who are getting significant side effects. I’m not saying that there are no people that are getting great benefits, there are people who are getting great benefits, but there’s much higher chance of problems.

And I, for me as a doctor, I just don’t see I need to risk people in that way. If I can give them products that are safer and are possibly even more effective, then that’s what I’m going to give people. So that’s kind of, you know, you know, the, the, the glaring question that I think people have, because so many want to go overseas because that’s what they heard from all these big names. That’s what they’re doing. But

you know, people don’t know that, America is still the number one country when it comes to stem cell therapy. So you can go overseas, you want it, but we are the most active research and, and it’s actually just, it’s growing like wildfire. Yeah. So, but since we’re not allowed to advertise for stem cell treatments, because some people are still some, some certain private companies still are believing that stem cells

in the same category as miracle cures. I mean, just so silly. Have you looked at research? Have you seen the science behind all this? It’s not miracle cures or it’s science. So, but it’s just funny, you know, this big private companies, corporations have way too much say on everything, including what can, you know, can be regarded as safe and effective therapy and should be allowed. So they will not allow advertising.

of clinics, they won’t even run the ads. So let’s see a doctor are doing the stem cell treatment, but they just can’t shout to the world that they’re doing that. But that did not stop the growth of the stem cell clinics. So that just goes to show is the power of the healing potential that’s generating results. And that’s what’s driving people to seek it. So

Cheryl McColgan (40:02.101)
Yeah, well, I’m glad you brought that up because that has kind of been a little bit in the, and I can’t remember when Rogan did that, but I do remember vaguely hearing about that at some point. you know, whenever he brings something to the forefront, it does definitely make people have more of an interest and more, you know, more questions about it. So I’m glad that you’re out there sharing the real scoop and,

Joy Kong, MD (40:23.18)
Wow.

Cheryl McColgan (40:26.837)
the US, there’s still no better place to be if you do have a serious condition. let’s, mean, I think there’s a lot of issues with our healthcare system, but there’s also a lot of good things about it. And there’s a lot of good people involved with it, such as yourself. So I think it’s always important to take that all into consideration before you just run off to Mexico to get some treatment that you think you can get cheaper or whatever.

Joy Kong, MD (40:46.67)
Yeah, I actually did a podcast with a 911 responder about the subject and he lists he heard Joe Rogan’s podcast and thought you can’t go wrong, right? Joe Rogan is supporting it. So he went over there. So if people want to just look up on YouTube, just put in 911 Joy Kong, you know, they will find the podcast. So I interviewed this, you know, this veteran 911 responder, know, amazing, amazing human who

went to Mexico and received the treatment, did benefit, but he didn’t see benefit until two and a half months after the treatment. But for two months, he experienced extreme fatigue, not only him, because he kept in touch with 20 people that were all at the clinic at the same time and they all exchanged contact. So everybody experienced those side effects. And then he experienced benefits about two and a half months after the treatment. But when he came to our clinic for treatment,

He experienced absolutely no fatigue. He experienced increased energy. And then within three days, he started noticing benefits in his breathing and just in his lung symptoms. So yeah, there can be drastic difference when you don’t elicit that kind of inflammatory response. You can have much better results.

Cheryl McColgan (42:07.684)
Well, Dr. Kong, can you share with everyone this again, this will be in the show notes, but one last time you have a podcast, I don’t know if you’re active on social media, you have your organization website, can you just share kind of all of the places that people can learn more about you and your work?

Joy Kong, MD (42:22.732)
Yeah, people are interested in finding out more about what I do. So drjoycon .com that probably, you know, has everything, you know, I developed a stem cell skin cream and, you know, with Academy, my clinic in Los Angeles, and also my memoir and, the stem cell company I started and then Academy. So everything is on there. They can follow me on Instagram, which is dr underscore joy underscore con and,

They can also follow my podcast, just the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. So all these are great places and I always respond to people’s questions on YouTube, on Instagram. I’m very engaged with people who want to know more. Yeah, so I look forward to chatting with more people.

Cheryl McColgan (43:15.125)
Yeah, awesome. Thank you again for taking the time to join us today. And I really appreciate the information you’ve shared today and all the wonderful work that you’re doing.

Joy Kong, MD (43:23.234)
Thank you, Cheryl. Yeah, it’s been fun.

Cheryl McColgan (43:25.823)
you