Why do kids almost never get osteoarthritis, despite putting their joints through far more than any adult does? I joined entrepreneur Mike Cormier on his show to unpack that question, along with stem cells for addiction, brain trauma, and hair loss with no clear treatment path.

I explain how mesenchymal stem cells, sourced from fat, bone marrow, or umbilical cord tissue, travel through the bloodstream to support tissue repair and immune function when delivered by IV. Osteoarthritis reflects a decline in the body's regenerative capacity, not simple wear and tear. I cover an animal study showing a 70 to 80% reduction in relapse behavior among alcohol dependent rats treated with stem cells, and an ongoing clinical study using SPECT imaging to evaluate traumatic brain injury. I also detail my personal peptide protocol: BPC-157, Tesamorelin, Ipamorelin, CJC-1295, Epitalon, microdosed GLP-1, and GHK-Cu for skin structure.

Mike traces his hair loss to years of business related stress, describing patches spreading across his scalp and eyebrows and the recovery protocol he built himself: PRP, BPC-157, red light therapy, and microneedling. I share a parallel case from my clinic, where IV stem cells regrew a physician's hair after a service related infection.

It's a wide ranging look at how regenerative medicine adapts to what the body actually needs, whether that's a joint, a damaged brain, or hair that wouldn't grow back.

Key Takeaways:

00:47 From psychiatry to stem cells

04:04 How stem cells build organs

06:06 Mesenchymal stem cells and sources

10:22 IV infusion versus local injection

13:41 Why Dr. Joy built skincare

22:32 Stem cells cut alcohol relapse

24:21 Reversing brain damage from addiction

26:00 Favorite peptides for muscle gain

29:41 Cycling peptides and testing NAD

34:52 What stem cell skincare involves

37:58 Healing alopecia through gut health

55:10 Extending human lifespan twenty years

Additional Resources

✨ Follow Mike Cormier on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikecormieronair/

✨ Follow The Inner Circle Studio on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theinnercirclestudio/

✨ Subscribe to The Inner Circle On Air on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheInnerCircleOnAir

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.

Two orthopedic surgeons told a 69 year old patient there was no other option left for his knees. He tried something else first, and ten years later he's still walking four miles a day.

Dr. Joy Kong is a triple board certified physician specializing in regenerative and anti-aging medicine, and the founder of Chara Health in Los Angeles. In this live audience Q&A, she explains why she uses non-expanded, umbilical cord derived mesenchymal stem cells instead of autologous or bone marrow sources, how IV delivery interacts with the immune system through the spleen, and why exosome products claiming trillions of particles per dose are not biologically realistic. She walks through real patient outcomes, including a 69 year old who avoided bilateral knee replacement, a patient whose hemoglobin A1C improved after years of failed interventions, and a peripheral neuropathy patient who regained the ability to write after three treatment sessions.

She also gets into the questions people ask most: how many sessions it actually takes to see results, what she's seen go wrong in over 40 treatments on herself, and how to spot inflated claims from clinics that don't test their products the way she does.

If you've ever wondered whether a second opinion is worth chasing down, or what actually happens inside your body after a stem cell infusion, this one covers more ground than most.

Dr. Joy talks about:

00:00 Why some patients feel change in days

05:19 The three pillars of stem cell therapy

08:31 Why the FDA restricts stem cell language

13:31 The five Ps of regenerative medicine

14:23 Why umbilical cord cells beat your own

20:54 Why expanded cells trigger FDA drug rules

22:11 How delivery route decides where cells go

26:53 The peptides in every stem cell protocol

31:24 What peptides are and how many exist

40:19 The ten-year knee replacement study

57:33 The real risks of stem cell therapy

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.

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

✨ Discover CharaOmni, my skincare line built on the same regenerative science as my clinical work: https://charaomni.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.

If you're holding off on stem cell therapy because you're waiting for FDA approval to bring the price down, this is the reality check you need.

Dr. Joy Kong, a triple board certified physician and stem cell specialist at Chara Health, breaks down what FDA approved stem cell products actually cost. Cord blood transplants like Omidacel and AlloCord run $450,000 to $1.2 million. Ryoncil, used for pediatric graft versus host disease, totals $1.55 million. By comparison, current stem cell therapy provided as a legal tissue transplant, the same model used in organ transplants, costs $7,000 to $25,000 per infusion.

Dr. Joy explains why that gap exists, and what it means if you're counting on insurance to make this treatment affordable.

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

Dr. Joy talks about:

0:21 Why FDA Approval Doesn't Lower Cost

2:26 Cost Of FDA-Approved Stem Cell Products

3:40 Why Legal Stem Cell Therapy Is Cheaper

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.

✨ 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.

Why does eating sugar sometimes leave you more exhausted than before you ate it? Metabolic health researcher Chris Mearns sits down to explain the science behind fructose, cellular energy, and the compound that changed his own relationship with cravings.

Chris Mearns is a metabolic health researcher and founder of LIV3 Health, focused on how fructose metabolism affects cellular energy production. He explains how the enzyme fructokinase converts dietary fructose into uric acid, degrading ATP and shifting cells into a defensive, energy-conserving state linked to fatigue, fat storage, and chronic cravings. The conversation covers how this same mechanism connects to gout, a disease historically limited to those with access to sugar and alcohol, and why calorie restriction or GLP-1 medications often fail to address the underlying signal. Chris also discusses luteolin, a flavonoid identified as a fructokinase inhibitor, the personal experiment that led him to develop it into a supplement called Sugar Shield, and emerging research linking fructokinase inhibition to cognitive decline prevention.

The conversation also covers why fruit affects the body differently than refined sugar, and what a realistic timeline looks like once the underlying signal is actually addressed.

It's a practical look at why willpower alone rarely fixes chronic cravings, and what the research says might work instead.

✨ Get Sugar Shield (use code DRJOY for 15% off your first purchase): https://liv3health.com/joykong

Chris talks about:

02:29 Why every disease shares one root cause

05:44 Mitochondria: your body's real engine

08:12 Reframing fructose as a signaling molecule

10:32 How fructokinase turns ATP into uric acid

13:03 Bears, torpor, and ancient fructose survival

19:12 The organs fructose hits hardest

20:03 Fructose, uric acid, and gout

23:54 Why GLP-1s don't fix the engine

26:17 Pharma's race for fructokinase inhibitors

34:56 Lutein: a natural fructokinase inhibitor

43:23 Fructose and the Alzheimer's connection

46:01 First steps to reset your metabolism

Additional Resources

✨ Visit LIV3 Health: https://liv3health.com

✨ Follow LIV3 Health on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tryliv3/

✨ Follow Chris Mearns on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chris_liv3/

✨ Subscribe to Chris Mearns' YouTube channel, The Fructose Model: https://www.youtube.com/@thefructosemodel

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/

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.

What if a single urine sample could screen for 50 diseases before you ever felt sick? Dejan Nenov, co-founder of AI diagnostics company Luventix, joins Dr. Joy Kong to explain how.

Dejan Nenov has spent nearly a decade navigating FDA processes and clinical trials, and also founded Panaton, a healthcare IT company connecting hospitals, labs, and clinics across the US. Luventix uses machine learning to analyze 38,250 raw chemical data points in a single urine sample, identifying disease patterns without isolating a specific biomarker first. Its ongoing IRB-approved study covers roughly 1,250 patients across colorectal cancer, Crohn's, celiac disease, and SIBO. The same model can predict which patients will respond to a given treatment, a tool called companion diagnostics, and could eventually screen for dozens to hundreds of conditions from one low-cost sample. Dejan and Dr. Joy also cover the regulatory pathway for AI diagnostics, including the FDA's Lab Developed Test framework, and how genetics and metabolomics offer two different, complementary pictures of health.

The conversation also covers a personal case: a close friend's daughter whose rare condition took years and specialists across ten states to diagnose, and why Dejan believes AI could have caught it sooner.

Dr. Joy and Dejan close with what a fully AI-run hospital already looks like in China, and Dejan's vision for an at-home test, like a pregnancy test, that catches disease three to eighteen months before symptoms start.

Dejan talks about:

00:00 How a dog's nose inspired Luventix

03:58 A dog's nose as a gas chromatograph

04:22 Training AI to classify disease

05:25 The 450-patient GI cancer trial

06:54 Urine reflects the body's metabolic state

08:07 Skipping biomarkers, reading raw data patterns

11:00 38,250 data points per urine sample

13:22 Metabolomics plus genetics, a fuller picture

16:44 The single 50-disease urine panel

18:51 FDA pathways: PMA vs. lab-developed tests

22:20 Regulating AI models that keep improving

36:11 Catching disease 18 months early

Additional Resources

✨ Learn more about Luventix: https://www.luventix.com/

✨ Read more about how AI offers an alternative to genetic testing: https://www.luventix.com/blog/ai-offers-alternatives-to-genetic-testing-to-make-disease-detection-more-accessible

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.

Anti-aging protocols usually come from a doctor's office. This one comes from a self-made entrepreneur who swears by weekly NAD and Sermorelin injections instead.

Mara Dorne is a self-made entrepreneur who built her sales organization from scratch after losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis, eventually becoming the second person in her company's history to surpass a billion dollars in career sales. She describes the realization that turned her first year in sales from six months of no income into six figures, her approach to leading over 1,500 agents through servant leadership, and her biohacking routine, which includes weekly NAD injections for mental clarity, Sermorelin paired with resistance training, glutathione, microneedling, and cryotherapy. She also discusses treating anxiety as a functional trait rather than a limitation, and her view that actively working against aging is a legitimate choice, not vanity.

She and Dr. Joy Kong, the Stem Cell Queen, also get into diversifying a male-dominated industry and staying steady when gossip and criticism show up.

It's a conversation about resilience, biology, and refusing to accept defaults, in your bank account, your industry, or your own aging.

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

Mara talks about:

00:44 Self-made millionaire and BILF Pod host

01:12 From $92K a year to $1B in sales

04:02 Losing everything in the 2008 crash

08:28 The self-accountability moment that changed everything

11:12 Building a team, banned from LA Fitness

19:42 Why work-life balance is a myth

26:12 Anxiety as a lifelong superpower

30:26 Her non-negotiable 4:30am gym routine

32:36 Why she calls herself a biohacker

34:10 Peptides, microneedling, and cold therapy

35:20 NAD, glutathione, and semaglutide injections

40:36 Legacy, stagnation, and refusing to slow down

Additional Resources

✨ Follow Mara Dorne on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maradorne/

✨ Listen to BILF Pod on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hly3iu1MXsNguaNgW9MuK

✨ Subscribe to BILF Pod on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bilfpod

✨ Follow Mara Dorne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maradorne/

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.

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.