Ep11: What Stem Cells Actually Do for Your Body

Stem Cells, Root Cause, and the Six Principles of Natural Longevity: Dr. Yi Song on Aging Well

Most people wait for the alarm to go off. High blood pressure, a diagnosis, a joint that finally gives out. By then the imbalance has often been building quietly for twenty years. Dr. Yi Song builds her medicine around the opposite instinct: read the body early, treat the cause instead of the symptom, and give the body what it needs to repair itself.

Raised in a 17-generation Chinese medical family and trained in pathology at Brown University, Dr. Song blends traditional Chinese medicine with modern regenerative science. This conversation moves from her six principles for natural longevity to the moment umbilical cord stem cells changed how she treats aging. And a warning she repeats often: stem cells are a jump start, not a magic bullet.

From Western Medicine to Ancient Wisdom

Dr. Song did not start as a believer in traditional medicine. As a child she assumed Western science, only a century old, had to be more advanced than theories developed over thousands of years. Then she watched her grandmother live and die with type 2 diabetes, surrounded by the best treatments the modern system could offer.

That loss reframed the question for her. If the most advanced tools available could not ease decades of suffering, maybe the tools were pointed at the wrong target.

“I witnessed my grandmother, who had type 2 diabetes for the last 40 years of her life. She suffered a lot, with all the advanced Western medicine treatments, and they did not help her. That is when I started thinking there may be something else we need to look into to address aging and aging-related conditions.”

The Six Principles of Natural Longevity

Her framework is not a supplement stack or a single protocol. It is a way of reading a body. The first principle sets up everything after it: no two bodies are the same, so no single fix fits all of them. High blood pressure in one person traces back to something a generation of drugs will never address in another.

Recognize the constitution first. Then prevention, root cause, and holistic care each have somewhere to stand.

“Number one is that we need to recognize our body’s constitution, because every body is different. You cannot use one size fits all for any condition. Once you recognize your body’s constitution, you can address each person uniquely and design a customized approach to your whole health and longevity.”

Why Root-Cause Care Beats Chasing Symptoms

Genetics load the gun; they rarely pull the trigger. A BRCA gene raises the odds of breast cancer without guaranteeing it. A family history of diabetes is a predisposition, not a sentence. That gap is where root-cause care lives.

Dr. Song’s clearest proof is her own mother, who carries the same diabetic family history that took her grandmother. Addressed early, through diet, lifestyle, and herbal formulas, that predisposition never became the disease.

“My mom is now 81 years old, and she does not have diabetes and she is not on any medication. She does not need blood pressure medication or cholesterol medication. But in her 50s, she actually did have high cholesterol.”

Treating the Body Like a Garden

Western medicine tends to see a machine. Break an elbow, fix the elbow. Wear out a knee, swap in a titanium joint. Useful for a broken part, blind to the system around it. A garden behaves differently. When one plant fails, the cause is often a clogged irrigation line far from where the symptom shows.

Treat the whole system, follow its natural rhythm, and stop forcing outcomes the body is not ready for. That is the shift from repair to cultivation.

“In Western medicine, we look at the human body as a machine. If you have a knee problem, let’s just replace it with a titanium joint. But the human body is actually an intricate, interconnected system. So tend the body like a garden: sometimes the problem is the irrigation system, clogged far away from the area where the symptoms show up.”

How Stem Cells Entered the Practice

Stem cells were not the plan. Dr. Song knew nothing about them until around 2020, when a lab near her retreat in Colombia introduced her to umbilical cord mesenchymal cells. Her pathology background let her scrutinize their protocols up close, and the science pulled her in.

The test case was personal. Her mother had developed lipodermatosclerosis, a painful, chronically inflamed leg condition that, left unchecked, can end in ulceration and amputation. Acupuncture and herbs had not touched it.

“This kind of condition, no matter what caused it, is really chronic inflammation in the lower leg. Stem cells are very good at reducing inflammation. So we tried the stem cells on her, and within a month, her pain in the leg was gone.”

A Jump Start, Not a Magic Bullet

Here is where Dr. Song pushes back on the hype she helped create. Patients arrive expecting one infusion to erase decades of neglect. It does not work that way. Stem cells give the body a boost, then the rest of the work belongs to how you live.

Her book, Regeneration Effect, is built on that idea. We age because our capacity to regenerate declines. Stem cells can raise that capacity. Sleep, diet, movement, and the six principles decide what the body does with it.

“Stem cells are the jump start, like the jump start for your car, but they are not going to fix everything. You still have to follow a lot of different practices for your health and longevity. The main goal is to stimulate your own body’s stem cells to do the repair and to regenerate better.”

Who Benefits and What the Process Involves

Most people who reach out already have a problem: a frozen shoulder, an arthritic knee, an autoimmune flare. Many were told by their own doctors that stem cells are unproven, and arrive having done their own reading. The work starts with a full consultation, not a needle.

And the cells rarely act alone. Dr. Song layers them with the rest of her toolkit so the body has the best possible environment to repair.

“We combine stem cells with many other therapies we offer, like acupuncture, herbal medicine, red light therapy, radiofrequency therapy, or even NAD injections. We have to combine them together to help reduce the inflammation and help whatever condition they are looking for help with.”

Access to Therapeutic Dosing in Colombia

The Colombia retreat is not a workaround. It is what full therapeutic dosing looks like when it is done properly: fresh, high-viability umbilical cord cells, delivered in a setting where the surrounding protocols can actually be carried out. Patients stay from a week to a month so the treatment and its support can run their course.

One recent guest, a man from Ireland with a chronic autoimmune ear condition, stayed a month for three stem cell treatments wrapped in acupuncture, herbal medicine, red light, and IV therapy. Not a single injection. A complete protocol.

“We need to combine a lot of other treatments together to make the stem cells work better, to have the good environment for the stem cells to do the repair and stimulate your own body’s regeneration. Some people stay here for a week to a month, so they get the whole package during their stay.”

Read the Full Episode Transcript

0:00 Welcome and Guest Introduction

Host: Dr. Yi Song, raised in Beijing in a 17-generation medical family, trained in pathology at Brown University before focusing on regenerative and holistic healing. She has operated a holistic clinic in Boston since 2004 and founded the Xenerchi Retreat in Colombia in 2018, where she offers advanced stem cell therapies. Integrating stem cell therapy, traditional Chinese medicine, and anti-aging treatments, Dr. Song aims to help people live longer, healthier lives. Dr. Song, welcome to the show.

Dr. Yi Song: Thank you very much for the introduction. I am very happy to be here to share the ancient wisdom and the modern technology, and how we can help everybody live healthier and longer.

1:21 Why She Turned to Chinese Medicine

Host: I know my listeners love hearing about the background. You have 17 generations behind you. Was that the driver that got you into traditional Chinese medicine, or was there something more personal that brought you to it?

Dr. Yi Song: When I was around six years old, I was always interested in the mechanism of the human body. At that time I thought Western medicine and Western science were more advanced than traditional Chinese medicine, even though I grew up with a lot of Chinese medicine in my family. Then I witnessed my grandmother, who had type 2 diabetes for the last 40 years of her life. She did not take care of herself properly because she worked very hard, even when she already had severe symptoms, and she developed a lot of complications. When I was born she was almost blind, and she raised me while my parents were away during the Cultural Revolution. She suffered for a long time, and all of it happened with advanced Western medicine treatments that did not help her.

That is when I started thinking there may be something else we need to look into to address aging and aging-related conditions. I was also influenced by my aunt, who was completely devoted to traditional Chinese medicine and introduced many Qigong masters into our family. I even practiced Qigong with them. Eventually, after graduate study, and after solving my own digestive and skin problems through Chinese medicine, I realized these theories, tested over five or six thousand years, look at the body in a completely different and deeper way than only studying molecules and cells under a microscope.

6:58 The Six Principles for Natural Longevity

Host: I want to dive into those six principles, because I think they are the foundation. Six principles for natural longevity. Are you ready to share them with us?

Dr. Yi Song: Sure. It is all natural. We are not just saying, if you have high blood pressure, take this pill, and if that one does not work, switch to another, because many medications cause side effects that give you more problems.

7:37 Recognize Your Body’s Constitution

Dr. Yi Song: Number one is that we need to recognize our body’s constitution, because every body is different. You cannot use one size fits all for any condition. There is generalization, of course. In Chinese medicine terminology, high blood pressure often points back to a certain liver condition, something Western medicine would never connect to the liver. Once you recognize your body’s constitution, you can address each person uniquely and design a customized approach to your whole health and longevity.

8:25 Address Imbalances Early

Dr. Yi Song: The second principle is to address your imbalances as early as possible. This is not communicated well in the Western system, where we wait until symptoms are already severe before we act. But long before you have high blood pressure or diabetes, your body has usually been building those imbalances for twenty years. A predisposition is not a one hundred percent cause. Even with genes like BRCA1 or BRCA2, that only means a higher probability of breast cancer, not a certainty. So we address the early imbalance before the fire starts. In my book I say it is never too early and never too late. The best time to plant the tree was 20 years ago; the next best time is now.

11:16 Treat the Root Cause, Not Symptoms

Dr. Yi Song: The third principle is to treat the root cause instead of the symptoms. Rather than controlling blood sugar with medication once diabetes develops, you look at diet and lifestyle, which change a great deal, even for blood pressure and cholesterol. If you treat the root cause, you can avert a predisposition before it becomes a condition in your 50s or 60s.

A good example is my mom. Her mother, her siblings, her parents all had type 2 diabetes later in life, so my mom has the same predisposition. When she reached her 50s she started having the symptoms that lead toward it. That is when I told her what she needed to do, including some herbal formulas, so we addressed the root cause. My mom is now 81 years old, and she does not have diabetes and she is not on any medication. She does not need blood pressure or cholesterol medication. But in her 50s, she did have high cholesterol.

12:22 How Her Mother Avoided Diabetes at 81

Host: The more we listen to the body and nurture it, the healthier that natural longevity is. It is not just about lifespan, it is about health span.

Dr. Yi Song: That leads to the fourth principle: tend your body like a garden. In Western medicine we look at the human body as a machine. Break an elbow, fix it. Knee osteoarthritis, replace it with a titanium joint. But the human body is an intricate, interconnected system, and it is also connected to the environment and to the universal energy.

14:01 Tend the Body Like a Garden

Dr. Yi Song: If a plant is not growing well in one area of the garden, the problem may be the irrigation system, clogged far away from where the symptom shows up. So you address the blockage in the whole system, not only the spot where the symptom appears.

15:49 Follow the Natural Rhythm and Treat Holistically

Dr. Yi Song: The fifth principle is to follow the natural rhythm. Everything has ebb and flow. When you try to force something to happen at the wrong time, you do damage to your body physically and mentally. The sixth principle is to address everything holistically, combining all the approaches that suit this particular person and their conditions. That changes over time, too. How you care for your health in your 20s is different from your 40s and 50s. We cannot follow one simple procedure or one biohacking trend for everyone. Everybody has to look at their own body.

Host: I love that you said we are the conduit between the earth and the universe. Sometimes we forget that energetic connection.

18:34 Discovering Stem Cell Therapy

Host: You brought stem cell therapy into the traditional Chinese medicine world. How did you get started with it?

Dr. Yi Song: I did not know anything about stem cell therapy until around 2020. Before that I was focused on the six principles. I already had my retreat in Colombia, because I feel my body gets more energy from nature there. By accident I was introduced to a lab in Colombia that grows stem cells from the umbilical cord. Because of my pathology background, I went into their tissue culture room twice and watched how strictly they followed protocol to keep the cells clean and free of contamination. I also read the scientific evidence over time. That is how I started looking into it, because before that I did not know such a thing existed.

21:29 Her Mother’s Leg and Chronic Inflammation

Dr. Yi Song: My mom was actually my first stem cell patient. Around 2020 she developed a condition in one leg called lipodermatosclerosis. By 2021 that leg was very inflamed, and she had pain 24 hours a day. We tried acupuncture and herbal medicine, and nothing worked well. I researched it and found that, untreated, this condition eventually leads to ulcers and amputation. A patient’s mother had a similar condition and ended up with an amputation even after experimental stem cell and stent treatments. I did not want my mother to go that route.

This condition, no matter what caused it, is really chronic inflammation in the lower leg, and stem cells are very good at reducing inflammation. So we tried the stem cells on her, and within a month, her pain in the leg was gone. That is when I realized how powerful they are. Stem cells are not an isolated pharmaceutical ingredient; they are a combination of different subgroups of cells from the umbilical cord, more like a holistic combination. Since 2021 she has had stem cell treatment about twice a year, and even with severe osteoporosis, she can still live independently.

29:15 What the Stem Cell Process Involves

Host: If someone decided to go down this road, what would the process look like?

Dr. Yi Song: Most people looking into stem cells already have a condition, and often they are not at the early stage I would prefer. Even so, with something like osteoarthritis of the knee, stem cells can still help tremendously, and you may not need a knee replacement. More than 80 percent of doctors are still not open to it because they think it is unproven, so most people come to us after doing their own research.

At Stem Cell Therapy Experts we start with a complimentary consultation of about 30 to 45 minutes, because we need to understand your whole body. Even if you only want to treat a frozen shoulder, there may be other things causing chronic inflammation. Then we combine stem cells with many other therapies, like acupuncture, herbal medicine, red light therapy, radiofrequency therapy, or even NAD injections, to reduce inflammation and help whatever condition they are looking for help with.

33:48 Stem Cells for Healthy People and Prevention

Host: What about people who do not have a problem?

Dr. Yi Song: That is another group, people who are into health and longevity and are already very healthy. I do not have many problems myself, other than an ACL tear in my left knee from about 15 years ago that I never repaired. As I approached 50 I felt some pain and instability, so I did three stem cell treatments on that knee. After that year I had no pain and no instability, and I have since hiked Kilimanjaro and Mount Everest.

Since 2021 I get stem cell infusions myself about three to four times a year. I just turned 50, and I still need to maintain my body, because we always develop more chronic inflammation as we age. If you can afford it, even once every year or two, and you do not have severe or autoimmune conditions, you can still benefit. I feel more energy, and I feel the stem cells give my body a jump start that makes my other healthy practices work better.

37:56 A Jump Start, Not a Magic Fix

Dr. Yi Song: My book is called Regeneration Effect because everything is about regeneration, and we age because our regeneration capability declines. After I started doing stem cell treatment, I realized people still think it will be a magic bullet that fixes everything. That is not true. Stem cells are the jump start, like the jump start for your car, but they are not going to fix everything. You still have to follow a lot of different practices for your health and longevity. So I decided to write the book to combine the ancient principles with stem cells and modern technology, to teach people that you have to create the right environment for the treatment to work.

Host: We definitely have to do the work if we want to reverse aging and do more at older ages.

42:17 The Zenerchi Retreat in Colombia

Host: Tell me a little about the Zenerchi retreat in Colombia. How do people get there and what happens?

Dr. Yi Song: Before I started offering stem cells, people came mostly for relaxation, meditation, and connecting to nature. Now most people come for stem cell treatment. After the treatment we combine many other therapies to create a good environment for the stem cells to do the repair and stimulate your own body’s regeneration. Some people stay for a week to a month. Recently a gentleman from Ireland stayed a whole month for a chronic ear problem related to an autoimmune condition. He had three treatments during that month, along with acupuncture, herbal medicine, red light therapy, and IV therapy, so he had the whole package during his stay.

Host: Thank you so much, Dr. Song, for being here and sharing all that wisdom. For those of you watching, thank you for tuning in. Subscribe, give this episode a like, and leave a comment. If you are listening on your favorite podcast host, we appreciate you, and I will see you next time.