0:00 Intro: Why Stem Cells?

Dr. Yi: My mom has some kind of conditions that we’ve already tried to resolve for her for a long time. She eventually had to have an amputation for her condition. I thought why not try it because what to lose? Let’s just try this. See how good the stem cells qualities are and then how well it will work for her.

After 1 month that condition actually improved, I would say 60%. So most people would experience continuous improvement progressively over the next 6 months or even to a year and even beyond that.

0:36 What Motivated Dr. Yi to Use Stem Cells

Zander: Hi Dr. Yi, thank you for being here today.

Dr. Yi: It’s my pleasure.

Zander: I’m curious to know like how long have you been involved with stem cells? Like how did that all start?

Dr. Yi: Uh for stem cells actually I’ve been only doing it for the past four years. Started in 2021. Um before that I really had very little knowledge about the stem cell therapy. Uh but 20 years ago I was working in labs um studying pathology. So I had the background of doing cell culture u molecular biology. So that’s why I know I understand the concept of stem cells.

1:20 Her Mother’s Chronic Illness and First Treatment

Zander: And was there a particular experience or moment that motivated you to wanting to get involved in learning stem cells yourself and then providing it to individuals?

Dr. Yi: I would say the particular moment is because I was introduced to stem cell therapy and of course like anything new I didn’t know too much about it. So um but at the same time my mom has some kind of conditions that we’ve already tried to resolve for her for a long time. Um and I thought based on the concept I studied and also I read some articles I think uh you know why not try it because what to lose there there are nothing more uh we can do for her condition except just uh going through the traditional route and I’ve known people with exactly the same condition she had in her 80s and then she eventually had to have a amputation for her condition.

So that’s not the way we wanted my mom to go, right? That’s why I thought, you know, let’s just try this, see how good the stem cells qualities are and how well it will work for her.

Zander: How was it after like your first one, two? Is this kind like multiple sessions that your mom went through?

Dr. Yi: Okay, so she had her first session in October 2021 and after one month that condition actually improved I would say 60%. Then we did another session in December 2021 and after that that particular leg with the condition basically just slowly healed over time because for stem cell therapy it’s like you can see the result most for most people within the month.

3:12 How Stem Cell Therapy Progresses Over Time

Dr. Yi: Because the stem cells keep working inside your body so it would have a progressively um it would be progressively getting better over time. It’s not like when you feel it’s better and then the effect is done and then starts deteriorating again or something like that, right? So most people would experience continuous improvement progressively over the next six months or even to a year and even beyond that.

Zander: Wow. So is your mom like completely good with that leg?

3:50 Treating Both Legs with Consistent Results

Dr. Yi: So that the leg we did is in her right legs and then um she started having similar condition developing in early 2024 last year uh in her left leg. So because we already know what it is so we started doing the same procedure with stem cell again and we did it twice in January and in June. So now it’s uh the inflammation is gone.

Zander: Wow. That’s fantastic to hear. I’m really really like happy for you and like for your mom too as well. Was your mom like the first person you kind of like worked with?

Dr. Yi: Yes. So many people would say my mom is a guinea pig.

4:33 Common Fears Around Stem Cell Therapy

Dr. Yi: But again, you know what’s to lose? I mean uh for a lot of people they have fear about stem cell therapy because they think oh is it going to uh do uh damage to me or is it going to do harm to me instead of doing um good things. But I would say um for most people’s really conditions that cannot be they’ve already tried everything in traditional western medicine or even they tried other alternative treatments and it didn’t work for them.

Then um they you know the most fear people have is either the cells are not from themselves would they um cause any rejection or if they don’t have any um uh would the cells cause tumor down the road. So uh and also there are people they think you know would it actually if it doesn’t work would it actually make my condition worse but I think in most cases the worst scenario is like it doesn’t work for you and that’s it like no no side effects.

Zander: Kind of thing like you try it out yeah it doesn’t work kind of thing but how do you get stem cells for example I mean there’s there’s multiple ways to get stem cells but like for you how do you get stem cells and then yeah what does that look like?

5:51 Where Stem Cells Come From: Medical Sourcing Explained

Dr. Yi: You mean uh how do I obtain the stem cells? Okay. So the stem cells we use come from the umbilical cord. It’s the uh from the Wharton’s jelly in the umbilical cord. So when babies are born the umbilical cord and placenta they are actually medical waste. Um but nowadays there are more people who want to preserve their baby’s umbilical cord for future use in case the baby uh say when they grow into adults or teenage years they get some kind of condition uh then they can actually retrieve their own umbilical cord to be used for treatment.

6:05 Wharton’s Jelly and Umbilical Cord Stem Cells

Dr. Yi: So but for most still even now there are more people doing that still the majority of people’s umbilical cord after birth are just uh discarded as medical waste.

Zander: Like mine. So your parents it’s somewhere lost in the land of Alaska.

Dr. Yi: Okay. All right. So um so then if you retrieve the umbilical cord well after the baby was born then you um isolate the part that’s the Wharton’s jelly that has the most concentrated mesenchymal stem cells and then you uh start growing them in the lab but this part can only be done outside of the US right now. You can grow them in the lab in the US but you cannot use these cells to be applied in clinical applications unless you’re applying for some kind of clinical trials.

7:28 Why the US Limits Stem Cell Use

Zander: Is that kind of the reason why for example you um you provide stem cell therapy here in Colombia then because you’re not able to do it in the US?

Dr. Yi: Yeah, it’s just because you have to apply to get approval from FDA for uh treatment that you say you’re doing clinical trials and I believe the approval process is very lengthy and uh costly. So then you can not per and then for clinical trials you can only do so many people.

8:04 Limits of Clinical Trials vs. Personalized Care

Dr. Yi: You cannot like really say okay I’m going to treat 100 200 people or you know just people whoever have the condition because for clinical trial you have like a criteria to screen people so it’s not like everybody can do the clinical trials so it’s limited access.

Zander: Limited access you a very long time period just to clear that.

Dr. Yi: And also for clinical trial you cannot like do treatment based on each person’s condition because a clinical trial you have to do very specific protocol. Uh so say everybody in the control group can receive actually placebo and then the other group of people receive only say this amount of stem cells and then only for like twice or three times or something. But you cannot like go beyond that. You cannot like say okay this person condition probably they need four or five treatment or they need more cells. You don’t have that flexibility.

8:58 Step-by-Step Patient Care Process

Zander: Right. Okay. Will you walk me through the steps what it what it looks like for when you’re treating somebody for stem cells like from the time they arrive in front of you until the treatment’s finished? Like what does that look like the process?

Dr. Yi: So before people even come in for treatment, we have to do a uh detailed consultation in person or uh over zoom or uh you know uh online. So we have to understand the health history of the particular person seeking stem cell treatment to see whether they are the candidate for it because not every single condition uh is suitable for stem cell treatment.

9:39 Which Conditions Qualify for Stem Cell Therapy

Dr. Yi: Right? And then after the consultation, we can also determine if the person is eligible and then stem cell treatment can help them uh how many cells we’re going to use in the treatment and like how many times they need to do it depending on the condition.

9:55 How Often Patients Need Treatment

Dr. Yi: Because uh for some condition they only need one single treatment then they don’t need it uh until say their condition returns again. But there are many people for joint condition they do one treatment and then they’re good for like years. So they don’t need to do it again. But then there are also conditions like autoimmune condition or um uh Parkinson’s Alzheimer’s they pro or diabetes they probably need to repeat two or three times within the 6 months to one year period of time for it to be effective.

10:35 Link Between Stem Cells and Chinese Medicine

Zander: Gee, so I understand you come from like a lineage of 17 generations of Eastern medicine, Chinese medicine. Um, and now it seems like you’re bridging the gap between Eastern medicine, Western medicine, but filling in that gap where stem cell would be able to assist. Can you kind of just share a little more about that?

Dr. Yi: Okay. So, uh, a lot of people when I tell them about stem cells, they usually say, stem cells, are they really related to Chinese medicine? Um, so here’s a link between them because I started doing Chinese medicine because I was drawn to the philosophy of Chinese medicine developed 5,000 years ago.

11:07 Treating Root Causes vs. Symptoms

Dr. Yi: It’s about early prevention uh treating the root cause of conditions rather than the symptoms which is the approach taken by western medicine in most of their treatments because they only treat the symptoms and they only wait until the symptoms are already developed to start treating because they don’t recognize the underlying uh imbalance in your body that eventually build up over time to cause the symptoms. So um the stem cell treatment actually also treats your root cause of aging and aging related degenerative conditions instead of just treating the symptoms.

12:02 Chronic Inflammation and Aging Explained

Dr. Yi: For example, if you have osteoarthritis of the knee, the root cause is because your cartilage is worn out and then the cartilage worn out is causing the inflammation. That’s why you have pain and because you have pain that you cannot move because once you move you have more friction between the joints and then it’s calling causing more inflammation. So as long wherever you have pain in your body it’s because the circulation in the area is affected due to the inflammation.

And when we age we actually have more inflammation going on inside our body. It’s just aging related uh symptoms. It’s one of the hallmarks of aging is chronic inflammation and everybody when you age you actually tend to have more inflammation. So um stem cell treatment actually addresses the chronic inflammation. It reduces chronic inflammation especially using the umbilical core stem cells and also stem cell treatment addresses the root cause of stem cell exhaustion in uh aging. So that’s why it helps uh many aging related conditions.

12:27 What Is Stem Cell Exhaustion?

Zander: Tell me what is stem cell exhaustion?

Dr. Yi: Okay. So when we age uh the stem cells inside our body reduces in the numbers and in their ability to divide because the stem cells are responsible for regenerating cells, tissues and organs inside our body. Our body is in constant equilibrium of regeneration and cell death because we need to keep having the renew renewed cell regeneration to replenish the uh damaged or uh diseased cells and our body is constantly getting rid of the dead cells. So um so we need stem cells to keep regenerating but when we age the number of stem cells in our body reduce significantly.

13:36 How Aging Reduces Regeneration Ability

Dr. Yi: So when we are born there’s one in um 10,000 cells is a stem cell. But by the time we’re age 60 only one in 400,000 cells is a stem cell. So that’s 40 time reduction. And then one cell when we are born, one stem cell can divide into one billion cells in 30 days. But when we reach age 60, one stem cell can only divide into 40,000 cells in 30 days. So that’s a huge difference.

So because of that, the regeneration cannot keep up with the cell death. Uh then you have this deficit. That’s when your body starts wearing out because the regeneration cannot keep up to regenerate the tissue that’s being damaged from wear and tear. So that’s why we have cartilage issue in the joints and leading to osteoarthritis. We have uh issues in the brain that the cells are not replenished enough then we would have neurological conditions.

15:27 Zander’s Shoulder Injury and Stem Cell Options

Zander: You know you so talking about longevity it’s got me thinking. So, I used to do a lot of CrossFit and particularly last year it was like some particular movement I did really bugged up my shoulder and ever since then I really struggled to do like heavy weightlifting or just weightlifting in general. Um, what would you suggest for somebody like my age, 31, um, start thinking about like would it be a good idea to even like consider doing stem cells from a longevity standpoint? Not just to like um, uh, fix my shoulder, but also assist with my my longevity and my overall quality of health.

Dr. Yi: So, are you doing anything to help your shoulders so that you can do CrossFit again?

Zander: I’ve done like physical therapy like stretching, body weight exercises. Um, I go see like a sports masseuse too as well, but it seems like it it never gets rid of the full pain like it’s always there.

Dr. Yi: Okay. So, because of that, you already stopped doing CrossFit.

Zander: Yes. Yeah. Like over a year.

16:24 Why Early Prevention Matters

Dr. Yi: So if that’s the case, actually stem cell treatment for your shoulder will help tremendously and you can get back to your CrossFit training or your other weightlifting that you haven’t been able to do even though you’re only 31 years old. Um because you have some injury inside the shoulder that prevented you from being able to do things you would like to do.

16:51 Scar Tissue, Inflammation, and Healing Potential

Dr. Yi: And the injury you had in the past from doing whatever things you did uh created scar tissue inside and stem cells are very good at reducing scar uh scar tissue both externally and internally and once you have the scar tissue reduced then you won’t have the kind of friction caused when you do certain movements because once you have the friction from the scar tissue it causes inflammation that’s why you have pain.

17:18 Why Shoulder Pain Often Starts Around Age 50

Dr. Yi: Um, and even though you’re only 31 years old, uh, your body is already starting declining slowly, even though maybe you haven’t noticed it. Yeah. Um, so that’s the concept about early prevention. Um, you want to start doing things early and you don’t want to have this problem lingering on until you’re in your 40s and 50s. Then it can create even more problem down the road if you start fixing it now and then you can still enjoy doing a lot of activity you’re able to do and then when you reach your 40s and 50s maybe if you started having some minor issues again then you use the stem cell treatment or other treatment to improve the circulation because shoulder is one of the joint that will first show the aging condition once you reach age 45.

That’s why a lot of people would start having shoulder pain or rotator cuff injury out of nowhere when they’re in their 45, 50. Uh so there’s a saying in Chinese medicine that they call rotator cuff syndrome uh when people in their 50s call 50s shoulder. So there’s a reason for that because when you reach age 50, the channel that surrounds the shoulder joint declines. That’s the first channel showing the decline significantly with aging. So that’s why the shoulder joint is very difficult to heal once you age.

18:52 Common Areas Treated with Stem Cells

Zander: Right. What’s like the the main areas you normally work with with with your clients? Was it short?

Dr. Yi: Uh shoulder, knees, ankle, wrist, back, neck, just everything. Yeah. Brain.

19:10 Working with Athletes and Younger Patients

Zander: Do you do you um have you work with a lot of athletes like professional athletes?

Dr. Yi: Yes. So I actually also worked with with So that’s why I mean when you’re in your 30s it’s not even say you’re too young to do stem cells because I worked with um athletes in their 20s and because they have intensive training so their joints actually wear out uh sooner than they would be. And then it’s again for anybody even when you are young it’s difficult to regenerate cartilage tendon ligaments because they don’t have a lot of blood supply. So even though your stem cells are still relatively young if you keep doing intensive training to wear them out it’s still very difficult for the regeneration to keep up to repair.

Okay. So, but if you use the stem cell therapy to give your joint a boost to um speed up its recovery, then you can do maybe more intensive training than you could do without the stem cell treatment. And then you won’t have the pain and inflammation caused from too much training.

20:22 Why Some Stem Cell Clinics Fail to Deliver Results

Zander: That makes sense. I’ve heard from a lot of like friends or family members too, let’s just say like in the US um that are not very positive about stem cell. Um what would be like um some things you would say to an individual that that’s heard like negative negative negative things about stem cells?

Dr. Yi: So just like anything there are good apples and bad apples. Um so because stem cell is a very new concept and also it has um restrictions in the US. So due to that um some clinics maybe they only want to uh seek financial profits from doing that. So they may not use very good quality stem cells um because really good quality stem cells right now are not available in the US for clinical application.

20:21 How to Know You’re Getting Quality Stem Cells

Dr. Yi: Uh so some people in the US they may advertise saying they are giving you stem cell treatment uh from the umbilical cord but because of the availability of the quantity of the stem cells and quality of stem cell available in the US um they may give you the quality of the stem cell that only 50% of them or even lower are dead cells uh are live cells. So that means like you know the viability of the cells is very low. So that means it won’t give you the good results and if the quantity is low as well and a lot of times you don’t even know how many they’re giving you and they’re not showing you before the application. So that’s the difference between uh us and the other clinics that you heard bad things about.

Zander: What do you mean by counting stem cells?

22:13 How Stem Cells Are Counted and Measured

Dr. Yi: So any kind of cells you can count them because just like you go to uh have blood test to count your white blood cells or red blood cells. So there’s there are machines that can count them and then you can also count them manually under microscope. So we can do both. That’s why we have the microscope right behind me. And uh we have uh the machine that can automatically count so that it’s not subjective, it’s objective.

So it’s not like I try to show you something because for most people if you show them the microscope picture of the cells, they don’t know what it means. They don’t know what is a dead cell, what is the live cell. So the automatic contractor can show you immediately like within a few seconds this sample. We take directly from the sample we’re going to apply to your treatment how many cells are in there and the percentage of the viability.

Zander: And what’s a good number?

23:19 How Many Cells Are Used Per Treatment

Dr. Yi: So the good number would be above 80%. And then uh the number of stem cells we use in treatment depends on the condition. But for somebody like uh your age, young athletes, and then you have some joint minor joint issues that prevent you from doing certain things, we usually use 5 million to 50 million cells per joint injection. Uh and then if you are older, uh we recommend using 50 million cells to give you the best results. And then also important that when you do the joint injection with say 50 million stem cells at least 80 to 90% of viability. If it’s below 80 then that means you are only getting uh 25 or 30 million cells instead of 50 million cells.

24:04 Getting Started with Dr. Yi: What to Expect

Zander: This has been tremendously enlightening for me. Like I’m sold like how do I get started now? Like I I want to you know want to get this going now. What does that look like?

Dr. Yi: Okay. So, you can um I can you can contact me and then uh we will go through the um forms you need to fill out for your health history. Then we have a in-person or online consultation to going through your whole health history and not just your shoulder but also other aspects like your digestion, your sleep, everything. Um because the whole body is everything is connected. So sometimes your shoulder problem may also have some other um parts of your body that’s causing it u not healing sufficiently.

Um then I will tell you what I think the best treatment protocol is for you. Then we can set up the time to do the treatment. And for anybody interested in doing that or if you know your friends who are interested in doing that then you can also give them my website uh stem cell therapyexperts.com and then they can contact me.

Zander: Fantastic. I’m looking forward to sharing with my parents too as well and yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. I really appreciate your time.

Dr. Yi: Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for uh being here today.