At six years old, I was beaten for refusing to say I was wrong. I did not know it then, but that moment would shape almost everything that came after, including the woman who would eventually found Chara Health.

I am a triple board-certified physician, founder of Chara Health, and an expert in stem cell therapy, regenerative medicine, and anti-aging treatment. This episode marks the first time I share my personal history on my own podcast: childhood abuse in China, a decade practicing psychiatry before shifting to anti-aging medicine, the ego collapse I experienced in medical school, and my decision to leave China in the early 1990s with no money, no connections, and a rejected visa. I also describe my mother's multiple myeloma diagnosis at age 43, a prognosis of only a few years, and a 32-year remission she achieved through Chinese medicine and daily aerobics after leaving chemotherapy. The episode closes with my reflection on what I believe humanity most needs to heal from.

This is a more personal side of my story than I usually share here, including how I found faith after growing up an atheist in Communist China, and the identity I had to let go of in order to become who I am today.

If any part of my story helps you see your own a little differently, then sharing it was worth it.

I talk about:

00:00 The Beating That Built Me

05:00 Why My Success Felt Empty

08:00 Med School Shattered My Ego

11:00 Discovering My True Purpose

13:00 I Said There's No God

18:00 My Memoir, Tiger Of Beijing

23:00 Mom Called Me Social Garbage

27:00 I Married The Process

30:00 My Mother Survived Cancer Naturally

32:00 What We Need Healing From

Additional Resources

Visit My Clinic: Chara Health

🌐 https://chara-health.com

📍 9568 Topanga Canyon Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 91311

📲 Call (818) 356-8232 or email info@chara-health.com to make an appointment or go to https://www.joykongmd.com and fill out a contact form.

✨ Listen to The Space Between, hosted by Sean McClellan: https://open.spotify.com/show/1F74r3TpbqrFfOQxYUMkXf

✨ Learn more about Sean's coaching: https://seanmcclellan.com/

✨ Learn more about our training academy for medical professionals: https://aaict.org

✨ Learn more about how to live a long and pain-free life: https://joykongmd.com/

✨ Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stemcelldrjoy/

✨ Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_joy_kong/

About Dr. Joy Kong

Dr. Joy Kong is a regenerative medicine and anti-aging expert. Her podcast is part of her mission to reduce suffering and elevate happiness. Join us every week for the latest holistic health insights that will help you live a long and pain-free life.

A parasite cleanse gone wrong once left Elizabeth Aylor bleeding seventeen times a day, and it took her thirty years to build the gut healing framework she now teaches thousands of women. The holistic nutritionist, GAPS practitioner, and functional diagnostic nutrition specialist joins me to break down why so many gut protocols make people sicker instead of better.

Elizabeth Aylor is a holistic nutritionist, GAPS practitioner, and certified functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner who has worked with over 3,000 women on chronic gut issues. She explains why generic probiotics and greens powders can worsen SIBO and histamine issues, and why she relies on GI-MAP stool testing and full thyroid panels instead of guessing. She describes how biofilms shield parasites, yeast, and bacteria like H. pylori and Klebsiella from treatment, and why aggressive kill protocols without addressing nutrition and the nervous system can cause serious harm. She also covers why elimination diets like carnivore and low FODMAP should not extend past six to eight weeks, why GLP-1 medications often lead to weight regain without strength training and proper nutrition, and how she uses DUTCH testing to address insulin resistance and perimenopausal weight loss resistance.

Elizabeth also shares her own thirty-year health history, from childhood eczema and asthma to an eating disorder that dropped her to ninety pounds, and the extreme fruitarian and carnivore diets that nearly destroyed her gut before she built her own ninety-day recovery protocol.

If you've ever done everything right and still can't fix your gut or lose the weight, this conversation walks through what most protocols miss, and what actually works instead.

Elizabeth talks about:

4:00 Childhood Eczema, Asthma, and Anxiety

6:00 Eating Disorder and Fruitarian Dieting

9:00 150 Colonics, a Parasite Diagnosis

10:00 Her Own 90-Day Gut Protocol

12:00 Mold Toxicity, Thyroid Misdiagnosis

18:00 Why Probiotics and Greens Powders Backfire

22:00 A $10K Protocol, Near-Bedridden Bleeding

23:00 Interpreting Complex Stool Test Results

26:00 Why Elimination Diets Stop Working

31:00 Biofilms and Failed Parasite Protocols

38:00 DUTCH Testing and Insulin Resistance

41:00 Why GLP-1s Don't Fix Metabolism

✨ Learn more about how to live a long and pain-free life: https://joykongmd.com/

Additional Resources

✨ Follow Elizabeth Aylor on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethaylorfitness/?hl=en

✨ Follow Elizabeth Aylor on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@elizabethaylorfitness

Visit My Clinic: Chara Health

🌐 https://chara-health.com

📍 9568 Topanga Canyon Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 91311

📲 Call (818) 356-8232 or email info@chara-health.com to make an appointment or go to https://www.joykongmd.com and fill out a contact form.

✨ Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stemcelldrjoy/

✨ Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_joy_kong/

About Dr. Joy Kong

Dr. Joy Kong is a regenerative medicine and anti-aging expert. Her podcast is part of her mission to reduce suffering and elevate happiness. Join us every week for the latest holistic health insights that will help you live a long and pain-free life.

Stem cell clinics around the world are charging anywhere from $3,000 to $50,000 for a single IV treatment, and the price tag tells you almost nothing about whether it actually works.

Dr. Joy Kong, a triple board-certified physician and founder of Chara Health and the American Academy of Integrative Cell Therapy, breaks down the regulatory and clinical reality behind IV stem cell therapy. She covers FDA homologous-use rules, the narrow scope of current FDA approval for pediatric graft-versus-host disease, and why most clinical use is legal off-label practice. She explains the difference between mesenchymal stem cells and other cell lineages, why dead or non-viable cells can still deliver benefits through exosomes and growth factors, and the contamination risks tied to improper handling, including a real FDA recall linked to E. coli infections. She also outlines documented rejuvenation effects in patients, including improvements in hair, skin, energy, and libido, and a notable animal study in which stem cell treatment reversed aging markers in brain and muscle tissue.

Known in the field as the Stem Cell Queen, she also tackles the questions patients are afraid to ask: why doctors are often skeptical even when evidence exists, what separates a budget clinic from a fully regulated one, and how price actually correlates, or doesn't, with safety.

If you've ever wondered whether stem cell therapy is worth the cost, or whether your doctor's hesitation is really about the science, this episode lays out exactly where the evidence stands today.

Dr. Joy talks about:

01:49 Stem cell therapy's shift to mainstream longevity medicine

02:29 The longevity boom and today's biohacking tools

03:46 The different types of stem cells and what they do

05:03 What's FDA approved in stem cell therapy

06:58 Why doctors dismiss the stem cell evidence

07:49 Anti-inflammatory effects of IV mesenchymal stem cells

08:49 Reversed aging in animal studies

13:04 The real cost of IV stem cell therapy

13:56 Contamination, dead cells, and rejection risks

21:37 Why IV delivery powers the immune system

Additional Resources:

✨ Check out my stem cell skincare line, CharaOmni: https://www.charaomni.com/

Visit My Clinic: Chara Health

🌐 https://chara-health.com

📍 9568 Topanga Canyon Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 91311

📲 Call (818) 356-8232 or email info@chara-health.com to make an appointment or go to https://www.joykongmd.com and fill out a contact form.

✨ Learn more about how to live a long and pain-free life: https://joykongmd.com/

✨ Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stemcelldrjoy/

✨ Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_joy_kong/

About Dr. Joy Kong:

Dr. Joy Kong is a regenerative medicine and anti-aging expert. Her podcast is part of her mission to reduce suffering and elevate happiness. Join us every week for the latest holistic health insights that will help you live a long and pain-free life.