Are we managing symptoms, or are we actually restoring health?

In this powerful episode, we dive deep into the world of regenerative medicine with triple board-certified physician and stem cell specialist, Dr. Joy Kong.

Rather than merely masking disease symptoms, Dr. Kong advocates for a total paradigm shift in modern healthcare—redirecting our focus toward reinstating the body’s intrinsic, god-given ability to heal, regenerate, and thrive.

💡 Key Takeaways:

• True Restoration Over Symptom Management: Why regenerative medicine offers a profound shift from traditional remedies to actual vitality.
• A New Medical Frontier: How stem cell therapy is redefining conventional healthcare paradigms.
• Ethics & Innovation: Navigating the moral considerations, boundaries, and miraculous potential of stem cell research.
• Science Meets Faith: Exploring the intersection of spirituality, human flourishing, and holistic health.

It’s time to reconsider everything you know about healthcare and vitality. Are stem cell advancements a miraculous leap forward or a moral complex to navigate? Tune in to find out!

Links referenced in this episode:

• joykongmd.com
• charabiologics.com
• tigerofbeijing.com
• drjoykongpodcast.com

What if the key to healing the body isn't just managing disease, but regenerating life itself? Today on trailblazers and Titans, we sit down with a pioneer who is reshaping medicine as we know it.

Stem cells, ethics, innovation and the future of human healing. Is this regenerative medicine a miracle or a moral crossroad? Stay tuned.

This conversation could change how you think about healthcare and humanity itself. Welcome to trailblazers and Titans, the podcast where we connect faith, innovation, humanity, and I AM your host, Reverend Dr. Keith Haney.

Today we're going to dive into one of the most fascinating and debated frontiers of modern medicine, regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy. My guest today is Reverend Dr. Joy Kong, a UCLA trained triple board certified anti aging physician, stem cell specialist, educator and CEO. Yes.

She's the founder of CHARA Health and CHARA Biologists and the visionary behind the American Academy of Intergenerational Cell Therapy. Through her work, she's not only advancing cutting edge treatments, but also educating physicians worldwide on science based regenerative medicine.

Dr. Kang, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Keith. I'm so happy to be here.

It's good to have you on. I'm looking forward to this conversation. You'll be able to dispel all of our misconceptions, so we're looking forward to you clearing up.

I love dispelling misconceptions and they just keep coming and then some are very, very stubborn. So let's happy to dig into them.

Great. I'm going to begin with my favorite question. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Gosh, that's. That's a hard one. But probably, you know, don't take things personally. Not everything's about you. Yeah. Why does it matter? Right?

Especially like, like, why do what other people think about you matter? So that it really. Yeah, it's really how you know yourself and your center that's the most important thing.

I love that. And that's so true.

Especially, I'm guessing, as a doctor, you have to keep that in mind as you're dealing with patients and people are coming in with all kinds of issues and things you're trying to help them resolve.

Yeah. And as a person becomes more public, definitely people love throwing some dirt, some sarcasms, some insults your way.

So you just have to let it, you know, roll off your back.

That's so true. So let's get into a little bit of what you do for listeners who are new to this field. How would you explain regenerative Medicine in simple terms.

Yeah. So just like what you said, you know, how about we just make things new again?

Because the traditional way of dealing with medicine, I kind of call it like hanging on medicine.

You're hanging on by the nails sometimes, you know, on the cliff that the doctors are giving you medications so that your symptoms are not too bad, but it's not really fixing anything. So temporarily making you feel better possibly is affecting things a little bit, but it's not solving the problem fundamentally.

So this is how you come to the phenomenon of what you see in most medical clinics. A typical example of what I dealt a lot with is the VA hospital, right. The Veterans affairs, so all these veterans.

And actually the VA has pretty good health care. Unfortunately, they are a, you know, kind of a slice of what the medical system is that everybody comes in with a bag of medications.

It's between seven or eight to 30 medications. So everyone has a bag. I mean, wouldn't be the best if you don't need medications, but the.

The list of the medications just gets bigger and bigger the older you are. That's not really solving the problem, but somehow we're accepting. Oh, we're getting old. So I need this medication, that medication, no.

We have a new way of helping the body, which is to restore its harmony and its health. So you don't need medications at all. So that is the holy grail that if we can make the body function really well. So it's back to homeostasis.

It's back to how it was when it was young. I mean, wouldn't that be the, you know, really the holy grail of what we all want, who wants to hang on just to, you know, with medications?

And then they have all kinds of. Still suffer from all kinds of problems. No one who's on all these medications are saying, I'm feeling fantastic. I'm great.

Now they are having problems here and there. So the doctors keep throwing different drugs to address the problems here and there. I don't think that's a good way to exist. There's a better way.

And regenerative medicine comes in, actually give the body the signals that it should have had when it's not sick, should have received the body. The cells should have been providing that signal to.

But because we are more toxic and our cellular function has declined, we, one, don't get the signals. Two, we don't hear the signals. So the body is stuck.

And if we can unstuck the body, if we can give the signals to the body and allow the body to have A better ability to hear the signals. Now we're talking. Now we can actually go back to the high functioning state that we were born with. Right. So let's get back to how we were.

And that's the whole, the beauty and the inspiration that's within this new field, which is true regeneration is to make us new again.

Oh, I love it. I'm convinced. Where do I sign up?

No, I'm convinced too. The last 10 years, they didn't teach us that in medical school. I mean, they taught, they told us there are stem cells, but that's about it.

And they're doing research on it. So that's pretty much all I got out of medical education when it comes to stem cells. So when I ran into it 10 years ago, I thought, are you serious?

People are actually using this? We can actually use these primordial cells to help the body repair.

And then once I saw the results that people were getting when they got stem cells injected into them, I just couldn't believe it because it was repairing every system, every organ, and the results were often rapid and often unimaginable when it compares to conventional medicine. They just couldn't bring about that kind of change. So, yeah, so I, you know, I was hooked.

You know, I have a saying, I have a saying that I want to make medicine fun again. You know, is, you know, why are we doing things? Why am I a doctor if I'm not even enjoying myself and I'm not making a difference?

I'm not feeling good and inspired. That's not how medicine should be. I want to have a skill like an electrician, right?

You have a problem with your house, I come in, I turn the light on, right? I get things fixed. I'm a plumber. I, you know, get your toilet flushing. That's very satisfying, right?

But if I'm a doctor and I can't fix things and I'm barely just, you know, things are sort of, you know, the body is, is still going on, but, but people are still suffering or people have to take all kinds of medications with all kinds of side effects and still the diseases are there and they just keep adding diseases. So when we, you know, at ucla, that's where we, I got trained these hospitals, people come in with 10 different problems.

I'm sorry, I think there's some, something fundamental that you were not fixing. So then you start to manifest in these so called diseases. One person doesn't need to have all these diseases.

There's something that's underneath it all that you have not addressed but no, medicine became a very fragmented discipline that we only are looking at. You know, there's a story about the blind people trying to describe what the elephant looked like, right?

So when they touch the trunk, they think the elephant looks like a pillar. When they touch the tail, they think it's a rope. So medicine became like that. So different disciplines are not talking to each other.

None of them are seeing the full picture. None of them until, well, either one. A very pioneering doctor who are looking at different factors, and those are very few.

Um, until the newer medicine. Well, maybe internal medicine doctor, I have a little bit bigger view. But still, it's disease, disease, disease.

They're not looking at the underlying causes that can unite them. And when we come to functional medicine and that this is a new field of medicine that actually is making a difference.

Because now we can look at a single nutrient that can control the function of 10 different organs. We can, you know, have toxicity, like one toxic element that can cause 10 different diseases.

So if you're just focusing on one disease, you're not looking about looking at a cause, a root cause. Then you're just chasing your tails and you're throwing medications. You're not solving the real problem.

So I think functional medicine brought this new way of looking at things together. And I gravitated toward functional medicine partially because that was the closest thing to Chinese medicine. I mean, it sounds strange.

I grew up in a society. I spent my first 20 years in China.

So I was in the environment where both Chinese medicine and Western medicine are respected, and they coexist in the same big hospital.

I can go to a hospital, and sometimes some issues, I may go to a Chinese doctor, some Chinese medicine doctor, or I would go to a Western medicine doctor. So in the pharmacy, there's a Chinese pharmacy, and then there's a Western pharmacy in the same hospital.

So the Chinese medicine is known for looking at things very globally, because you're even just a simple concept as the meridians, these energy channels running through your body, running through all these organ systems with this one energy. So this is why, you know, we're talking about how the liver and the eyes are connected.

There a lot of different organs, you know, end up being connected. So if you address the energy flow and of this one line, you can address multiple organ problems that Western medicine call different diseases.

But if you just help with the energy flow, all of a sudden, all these diseases can go away. So functional medicine is trying to uncover the causes of, you know, the connections between everything.

So, you know, like a fundamental nutrients Something, you know, like magnesium. It can affect so many organs. So back to regenerative medicine I think is an is.

It's probably one of the most holistic branch of medicine you can imagine. I mean after all we are using the language of God. Rev. We're using language of creation. So the code is in the cells, all the information is there.

So can we bring that information out, you know, make it seen again? That's really what regenerative medicine, that, that's why it's so revolutionary.

Because this is the first time in human history that as a healer I can put into the human body intelligence. What's intelligence? It's information. It's probably more than information. We're going to have a big, long discussion.

But intelligence is, really contains the blueprint, the, the information and the, the, the whole design. So, so that's what's really exciting about regenerative medicine is that we're using the original design to fix little things here and there.

I love it.

Yes.

What, what are stem cells for? Those who aren't quite sure and why are they so powerful in healing the body?

I always go back to the beginning. When you and I were conceived, the fertilized egg. That was the first stem cell. So all of us, you may think stem cells mysterious.

We were all at one point, one single stem cell.

And that one single stem cell will start to divide and morph and start to gain some more protein expressions and self surface markers and start to self direct and to form interesting clusters and structures and they migrate eventually going toward a direction of forming different organs. How do cells know that? We don't know. That's still the magic, right?

There's some, something powerful in directing how the cells are communicating, are manifesting themselves.

So until these cells, you know, forming, migrating, until they become an end organ cell, like the first organ is the heart, until they become a heart muscle cell pumping blood, they were all stem cells.

So the end functioning the, the very, the, the, the lowest, I guess on the totem pole, the, the last presentation, the last manifestation of these cells will be the final working cell. And that working cell is not a stem cell anymore, but anywhere before it becomes the final working cell, a stem cell. Why?

Because stem cell by definition has potentials. It can become more than one thing. It's not final, it's not done yet. So the, another definition is that it can replicate.

And, and while it replicates, it make different copies of itself. One is identical to itself, the other one is gaining function.

So what that does is that it preserves a copy of itself and then create something that has more function, it can do more work.

So when, when you look at, from the very first fertilized egg all the way to a, A human, a fully functioning organ, and then human, there were probably thousands of grades, shades of gray. There's just lots and lots of variations. I don't think we can even count how many variations they are. And they're all stem cells.

So until you become a working cell, you are a stem cell.

That's very helpful, thank you. You emphasize, you know, scientific data over myths in your work. What are some of the conditions you've seen that's most promising?

Results from stem cell therapy.

Yeah. So one thing about this country is that there's a very strict regulatory guidelines about not making claims.

So this comes from our big pharma tradition of this country. And that of course, has permeated all around the world. So what happens is that if you.

I start to talk about diseases and I say stem cells can help this disease. And, and now I'm really. I can put myself in hot water.

Sure.

Because like any supplements. Right. You can't talk about disease the moment and make it sound like you're treating something.

You better have conducted a clinical study and paid the money to the fda. Um, and it costs. A few years back, that was like eight, nine years back. It costs about $2.1 billion.

Oh my.

To bring a drug into the market.

So you can imagine it takes deep pockets to do these studies, but that effectively shut up a lot of people who may have thoughts about, or even some evidence that certain therapies can help different conditions, actually sometimes numerous evidence. But if you haven't done the study and haven't gone through the process to get the FDA approval, you better not link anything to the condition.

So that as a, As a disclaimer. Yes. So I'm not going to make any. I don't make any claims. What I always treat is the patient. I don't treat diseases because I apparently, I cannot.

If, if there's no FDA approval, FDA has approved certain conditions to be used to use stem cell therapy for. So what's approved is for when people have a cancer or autoimmune diseases, when they, the medical treatment is to wipe out.

Wipe out their immune system. And then we can transplant, bone marrow transplant or cord blood transplantation, mesenchymal stem cell transplant. We replenish their.

Their whole blood system. So that is an FDA approved treatment. Another one was very specific graft versus host dis in pediatric cases. So that's a more recent approval.

They're very, so they're, they're very specific indications. But everything else, I guess you can consider it that off label use.

There are plenty of research all around the world and this is why I founded the academy, the American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy, specifically to teach doctors that we're not just talking in theory. We actually are basing our treatments on numerous research from all around the world. And that ranges just about every organ system.

Some are more obscure, some obscure disease no one wants to study. Because you have to have funding to study a condition. Right. If there's not very prevalent, then there's, it's not worth it to spend the money.

No one's going to give you the grant.

But, but for many, many diseases from autoimmune to brain disorders to heart, lung, you know, liver, kidneys, I mean musculoskeletal, numerous, numerous conditions, even some infectious diseases. So there has been incredible evidence that helps.

So I can speak from research standpoint and, and also from just my clinical experience of treating people with diverse diseases. We've had incredible success helping patients with things like Parkinson's. Right.

We have some success with ALS and when conventional medicine has nothing to offer people with Alzheimer's, you know, other traumatic brain injury. And I talk about the brain because that's, you know, well, one, I was trained as a psychiatrist and vitally interested in the brain.

But two, it's a very depressing field. That's why I did not go into neurology because neurologists were great at diagnosis and they don't have a way of fixing the problem.

So, but not until stem cells. So I hope all the neurologists can look into this powerful way of helping patients instead of just shock their shoulders.

Basically it's, you know, that's just not a good way of being a doctor. And then we have lots of evidence to help with musculoskeletal issues.

So it could be joint tendon, you know, problems and, and muscle issues, um, it could be, you know, back problems, disc degeneration and then we have you know, various organs with you know, my clinic, we've seen people, I've helping people with history of heart attack, you know, helping their heart to function at a higher, much higher level which was, you know, evidenced by the, the, the ejection fraction improvements and then you know, and, and subjective, higher, better endurance, et cetera and lung disease. We've brought a 9, 11 responders, severe lung disease.

Treated him, him to the point where all his lesions pretty much went away on his CT scan that his pulmonologist said, yeah, we can say that you're free from lung disease. I mean, it's. And he thought he was dying because half of his colleagues have died from the New York elite police force.

And these were people of top shape, but they were in the pit for months. And in, in their 40s, he said half of his colleagues dropped dead. So that's how severe it is. But we're able to help that.

And I've helped people with end stage liver disease that were. This one patient on his deathbed, he was in hospice care with not many months live.

And within two months after just single treatment, his liver function went back to normal, which was really shocking. It's, you know, this is one of the.

Sometimes you encounter miracle cases almost that the result is, you know, far exceeds the doctor's anticipation and sometimes it may take longer. So some patients, it may take quite a few sessions to achieve certain results. So everyone is different. But some are just astounding.

And those cases just, it's absolutely, it's really rewarding.

And we've helped like kidney disease patients who stay away from dialysis or there's one patient even getting off dialysis and then help women with their fertility.

So improved ovarian reserve and getting pregnant easily, even though the person was trying for years and couldn't, couldn't keep pregnancy always ended up in miscarriage. So, yeah, wide, wide range. We also help patients with autism. That has been a, you know, big, big area. But we, we also help a lot of little kids. Yeah.

Just about every organ system and help save testicle, you know, from repeated infections and nodules. And he already lost one. His neurologist, his urologist was, wanted to cut off the other one.

Oh, my goodness.

And that, that was the only solution because they were like, we don't know what to do. You keep getting, you know, swollen all these nodules and all these infections. He didn't have any quality of life. He said he didn't have a life.

You know, he just, it's pain, infection. Can, you know, can you imagine? And when he came to me, he didn't really. He asked me, can I help him?

I said, I can't say one way or another because no one has studied this. So I can't speak from research, but what I can help him analyze is the origin of his problem. Are there immune dysregulation going on?

The stem cells can target that because stem cells really good at immune modulation, helping boost your immune system when it's not adequate. And help calm down the immune system when it's overactive. And is there inflammation going on? Uncommed inflammation, raging inflammation.

Stem cells are really good at calming inflammation. What about all those scarring and stem cells, especially mesenchymal stem cells are anti fibrotic so they can break down scar tissue.

And that's what, what happened to this guy. All his marble sized nodules went away. Within two months they're gone.

So I analyze how the cells work to see if that happens to, you know, dovetail into a situation. Stem cells, especially mesenchymal stem cells have antimicrobial properties.

They actually can send antimicrobial peptides and directly killing the microbes. So amazing, right? And they also can help angiogenesis.

So help open up or helping you grow more blood vessels, helping to supply tissue that you're trying to fix. Then of course it can trigger local stem cells to come and replenish the damaged tissue. So new cells, right? Making it new, they can form new tissue.

And there are also anti cancer properties. And so there's a whole list of what they can do. Improving cellular energy by improving mitochondria function. So, so with all these, right.

This person with a testicle problem, I said, you know, looking at what the cells can do and what possible mechanisms may be going on in your body that's causing this condition, I think there's a chance that this could work. And it worked. So that's, it's possibly the first ever case of stem cell therapy for someone with that kind of condition.

But that's why we're pioneers. No one has done what we've done and, but people are desperate.

What if it were you that were having this problem, you know, about to lose the last testicle, right. You will go to the end of earth to try to save it. And you're open to new things.

And that's how we break new ground and bring in new evidence that this can, can really help.

So let's clarify some things because there are different types of stem cell. They're adult umbilical cord. Tell us a little bit about the ethical differences between those options.

Yeah. So there are all kinds of stem cells. In every tissue you have, there are stem cells. So you can get stem cells from all these different tissues.

However, if all your tissues have stem cells, how come sometimes the tissue is damaged and it's not fixed? Well, sometimes it's the environment that's not very good for the stem cells. And, and the stem cells are stuck.

Are either not hearing the signals or Are, you know, are. Can't move, can't respond. So one problem, one reason it cannot respond, sometimes it's sluggish is because it's old.

So the older we get, the, the more, the more deaf it becomes. So I call it cellular senescence or cellular dementia. So cells get older and they start to fall behind in how they really should be functioning.

So that's one of the problems with adult stem cells, which are the cells in your body. People get, commonly get cells from the bone marrow or fat. Unfortunately they, these cells have been with you all your life.

Every alcoholic drink a person has had, every smoke or every, you know, kind of toxic exposure, you know, whether or not it's from the air or from food are going to make an impact. And there's no way around it. They are not as vibrant.

And that shows up in studies head by head studies comparing earlier cells like from the umbilical cord to using a person's own source.

So in everything you look at, from the ability to secrete anti inflammatory signals to how they're able to protect your, your brain, to how, how much toxic waste is accumulated, to how long, how many generations they have left to be alive, everything shows that these cells are just not as good as the, as the younger cells. They also have less ability to differentiate into different things, even though they're all called MSCs, right. Mesenchymal stem cells.

The mesenchymal stem cells from a person's own fat or bone marrow is not nearly as diverse in its abilities when it comes to becoming different types of cells compared to the umbilical cord source because they, they just have lost a lot of the, the capabilities as you go down the evolutionary pathway along with, you know, the person and you're living with a person. And there are certain changes happening to the cells that, that make them less flexible. Just like us when we get older, we're more set in our ways.

So same for the cells, they're just, they're more set. They don't want to become everything. They don't want to be adventurous.

But the younger cells from the umbilical cord still has wide range of potentials, including to be able to become neurons or liver cells. And all these potentials have, have been lost if you get it from your own body, from, from your fat or bone marrow.

Not only that, these cells also have lost some of the abilities to detect cancer and kill cancer. And that is one concern. So not only they're not as potent, but they're also less safe.

Especially when you look at this particular situation, that's the only, about the only thing people are afraid of when it comes to stem cell therapy. Oh, is that going to exacerbate cancer?

Because there has been some research showing that stem cells, when put, putting it next to cancer cells, can make them grow. Well, what's interesting was that there was a head, head to head study comparing fat derived stem cells to umbilical core derived stem cells.

And they put both of these type of cells, you know, separately next to cancer cells and they put them either in on the petri dish or on a live animal's body. And the cancer cell is a glioblastoma, very, very aggressive form of brain cancer.

So in both the petri dish and on a live animal's body, the fat derived MSCs, mesenchymal stem cells make the cancer grow, whereas the umbilical cord derived stem cells actually make the cancer shrink and go away. So that's how drastically different they can be.

So when people think about stem cells, it's not, no one stem cell is not the same as another stem cell. They, they are all stem cells. But first of all, what lineage are they are they in?

Because as I mentioned, until you become the end organ cell working cell, you're a stem cell. So there can be so many variations. So what, what pathway is this cell on? And also where is it from? Is it from an adult person?

Is it from a young, you know, young newborn?

So this, the umbilical core stem cells don't get confused, get it confused with the baby's stem cells because it's way younger than the baby stem cells. What happened when the embryo was forming?

The umbilical cord also was formed, the placenta and the cord and a lot of cells get trapped, got trapped in the umbilical cord and they're very, very young. That's, that's early stage, right.

When the cord is forming and they retained their characteristics, they did not evolve, so they were much more primitive. So that's what we're tapping into.

That's the form I use in the clinic, because that's the youngest ethical source we have at this point is, is, you know, we don't harm any babies.

It's always when the baby's born and live and healthy and when we cut the cord and placenta, we use those birth tissues for extraction of these powerful cells. So that's the youngest source that's ethical, you know, free from ethical concerns and also extraordinarily powerful. They're, and they're also safer.

I know a lot of people are interested in embryonic stem cells. And that's of course controversial because that does involve destruction of the embryo.

Embryonic stem cells also has this major problem, which is the potential of causing new cancer or new tumor, because it can go haywire. This embryonic stem cells is so powerful and potent, can become anything.

Sometimes it just become everything all at once and form this horrendous cluster of tissue, you know, become a big tumor that's disorganized. It's not forming a human, it's forming a, you know, crazy monster. So, um, the umbilical core stem cells do not have that potential.

It is so down the line. It doesn't go crazy like that anymore. So it has the. It's the best of both worlds, basically.

Thank you for clearing that up because I think a lot of people get those confused.

So I appreciate you taking the time to explain that and, and dealing with the, the ethical concerns that people would have who may be interested in, you know, delving more into this science. Yeah, I do wonder because I'm sure you get this in the work that you're doing because it's so new.

And so for most of us hearing it for the first time, going, this is really interesting. How do you safeguard against those people who say that you're playing God in medicine with the work that you're doing?

Don't we all want to channel God? Why are people praying? Why the hell are you praying? Excuse my language. Why are you praying? Right. You're trying to channel God.

So why can't we do that in healing? We are trying to borrow the intelligence that that's been lost and we're trying to prevent suffering.

So if you can bring back the intelligence that's already in us and reduce suffering. So I'm all about reducing suffering.

Yeah, Life is hard enough, But I really think that this tool can just bring so much vitality and joy to the world. Yeah, I think if we can channel what God has manifested, has basically given to us, you know, it's a gift. And we just borrowed this gift.

I think he or she, you know, the God, whatever, whoever is up there, is going to be smiling. It's like, ah, you figured out that's pretty smart. I made you. Well, so that's, that's how I look at it.

I like that. So let's, let's take this on a positive note.

How would you say scientists, ethicists and spiritual leaders could collaborate more intentionally to advance the work that you're doing?

I think scientists and doctors, I'm hoping are becoming more spiritual. I think spirituality was almost like prohibited words like, like taboo in medical communities when I was in medical school.

Oh, we were not going to talk about spirituality. I mean, we're going to respect all spiritual disciplines, you know, because we want it to be politically correct. We respect everybody.

But no, we do not bring spirituality into medicine because that's not objective. I think that is beginning to change. I think a lot of people realize that there's so much we don't know.

And by simply ignoring a part of life which is miraculous and mysterious, if you don't accept that there's such miracle in our existence, then you are actually being pretty arrogant. And I call it ir. Yeah, it's ignorance. So you don't know and you think, you know, that's arrogance.

And the worst combination in human life is ignorance compounded by arrogance. So I think a lot of doctors are waking up, you know, myself included. I was not a, let's just put it that way.

I was groomed to be an atheist when I was growing up and the entire Chinese population is pretty much was atheist. But of course, spirituality comes in many forms.

You don't necessarily have to believe in a God, but you can believe in a superior force, in something that's greater than us, that's way more intelligent than us. And if we can learn to, we can understand how that side of intelligence work. I think that is going to solve so many problems for us.

Not just health issues, but also humanity as a whole. How we treat each other, how we can live better together. It's all together.

You know, how good is it to be super healthy in a toxic, you know, combative world where we hurt each other? Right. Everything has to come together. The peace, the vibrancy, not just of the body, but of our consciousness. And that is going to save humanity.

So I do hope everyone come together and realizing the profoundness of our existence and, and, and tap into something much greater than us.

I love that. So tell us about what inspired you to create your, your American Academy.

Because everybody, the doctors I meet keep asking me so many questions and I realize, well, seems like I'm teaching all the time.

Maybe I should just really formalize this and, and start a course and really teach them from the beginning to end, because there are a lot to go through.

I put the course online and then doctors really wanted more, more than just the science and clinical evidence. They want to know a lot more about hands on, how to deliver the care, how to do the iv, do the joint injections and other forms of delivery.

And so that's how I started the certification course where I wanted to go more in depth so that doctors are not only equipped with the knowledge, but with the know how so they can go into real world and actually know exactly how to help every patient. Yeah. So that's academy. Yeah, we're, we're growing steadily and got a lot of very happy doctors who, who really, you know, it really empowered them.

So I'm here in Iowa. Where can I find a doctor who knows some of the great things you're doing?

The Academy, if people are interested, it's on the. So on the website aai.org so that's American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy.

So aict.org on there their list of doctors who have been trained by the academy and they're listed so they've caught, they have gone through the certification training course and yeah, so find a doctor who really, really have, have had done their homework.

Because that's another reason I put together the academy was it's, it's painful to watch so many of my colleagues, these doctors, they haven't learned the basics and they started doing stem cell therapy and they were giving the wrong information. They were, it just, you know, they weren't speaking as a, a person of science.

They're speaking a hype and then they are taking directions from the stem cell company reps and, and that's not how you, you know, behave as a doctor. You're the, the guide, you're the one that's, that's the expert. You don't take instructions from an untrained salesperson.

So that's what I saw that rapidly was happening in the field because it's such a, it's so powerful. Everyone wants it because it really helps. So people are jumping into it without proper training.

So that's why I wanted to, to make sure that we are living up to, you know, the respect that people give us, that we are the leaders and we can guide them, you know, adequately.

Yeah, that's good. I'm going to ask you my other favorite question. What do you want your legacy to be?

Probably to inside inspire people to, To be courageous. I think that has always been me since I was a kid, being brave, overcome. So you know, looking at my life.

And I wrote a memoir, Tiger of Beijing, because that's the spirit that I want to manifest. Tiger is ferocious, is persistent, is powerful and that's what I want.

I think everybody has a tiger inside of them, but they may have muted their own tiger. They didn't let it manifest. It's all in us. So. And I think I've done a good job in letting the tiger come out. It's not easy. I mean, it's not easy.

Now I have so many things I want to do. Is getting a little too much. It was easier when I didn't want to do so many things.

But it's like the more I do, the more I want to do it gets a little much. But the tiger spirit is what keep me pushing forward from. You know, I've gone through different disciplines.

When I was in China I studied architecture. When I first came to the U.S. i studied journal photojournalism. But quickly I went into science, biology and then went to medical school.

But even in medical school, my first, after medical school, my first specialty was psychiatry and then I went into addiction medicine and then finally in anti aging and regenerative medicine. So I never stopped pushing myself. And, and then I went from a doctor.

So after treating patients, know numerous patients and you know, I went from being a doctor and a healer to an educator because I'm training all these doctors.

And from that I became an entrepreneur because I wanted to produce the best products to provide for doctors who are being trained by me and or just provide to anybody. I want the best products not only for everybody and for all the patients, but also for myself.

You know, I want to make sure that I'm bringing the best things into the world. And then from that, you know, I'm now I have a cosmetic company, I'm about to set up other companies.

So I want to become a more of an entrepreneur because I do believe the beauty of being an entrepreneur which is to bring about large scale changes.

So unless you are, you have a system where you can reach more people, then your impact is limited because I recognize if I'm, you know, I can be the best doctor. But I can only see so many people. That's why I teach and that's why I have, you know, I have these companies. So just keep pushing.

But yeah, but you still need to make sure that you are taken care of because you need to love yourself, love yourself in spiritually. So take care of your own, your own psychology and your own spirit and at the same time your own body. So this is our responsibility.

So that balancing act is not easy.

No, it's not.

But, yeah, that's great. Yeah. But none of us is perfect, so all we can do is to keep trying.

That's right. No one's perfect. So we have one other surprise thing on the show, and that's a surprise question.

Pick a number between one and ten for your surprise question.

Eight.

Eight. No one picks eight. All right, here we go. What book belongs on everybody's bookshelf? I don't know. Tiger of Beijing. No,.

That's a fun one. Yeah. But I. I don't have, as you know, that much hubris to think that my book, certainly a great, really great story.

What book?

I don't know. I think, yeah, there are different books that made huge impact on me.

But, you know, I always think of health and healing requires three pronged approaches. One is that you need to be physically well.

Two is that you need to be psychologically well, psycho psych psychology means that you need to understand how you deal with the world, why you react the way you are, and how you became the way you are. Like, what's, what are your triggers and, and why. Why are you dealing with people the way you are? And then the last one is spiritual development.

But psychologically, I think it's still very important because a lot of things get stuck on a psychological level. And for me, when one book that made the biggest difference for me was Drama of the Gifted Child.

And Alice Miller is a Swiss psychologist, and she really dissected how we can become the way we are because of our parents. That had a profound impact on me because I realized so much of my suffering were not. Wouldn't have been necessary.

I mean, would have been avoided if my parents were a little bit more perfect, but they were not. So, so that's, that's my, my journey. But you need to understand why we're the way we are.

And, and, and to me, that's very liberating because you realize a lot of garbage you're carrying is not yours. And then you can free yourself. When you free yourself and you become a better person, and then you.

You make the world a better place when you're a better person. So I think that's a, you know, understand who you are. It's.

That's good.

Yeah. If anyone's struggling at all with just. With self esteem, with disharmony in your world, then really. Yeah, that. That could be very helpful.

Well, thank you for that. So where can people find you, Dr. Joy, and connect with you on social media?

My website is very easy place, just joycon md.com or Dr. Joycon.com that basically lead you to all these different things I'm doing, including my clinic in Los Angeles, my stem cell company Chara biologics, my academy aict.org and my memoir, Tiger Beijing, and my cosmetic company, Chara Omni. And then on Instagram, that's probably the best place to reach me, which is at Dr._ joy_ Kong.

But one of the best places is to get on YouTube and watch my videos because I have numerous videos on there educating everybody about stem cell therapy or other other things, but mostly stem cell therapy. And yeah, so that, that's my, my gift. And then I have a podcast, the Dr. Joy Kong Podcast.

So people if they want to listen to me talking about different things and also listen to me interviewing very interesting guests, that's a good place.

Well, thank you so much. What a powerful and enlightening conversation.

Dr. Joy is truly in the forefront of medical revolution and bringing science, integrity and compassion together in a way that challenges us to think deeply about healing, ethics and the future to our listeners. If today's episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you new insight, we encourage you to share it.

These are the kinds of conversations that help us trailblazers in our own community.

Be sure to subscribe to Trailblazers and Titans, leave a review and share this episode with someone who would benefit and follow Dr. Kong's work and on her podcast and the links that will be listed in the show notes below. Until next time, keep blazing trails together. Thank you so much, Dr. Kahn.

Thank you so much, Keith.