Healthspan vs Lifespan: How to Stay Well for Longer | Dr Yi Song

Living longer doesn’t mean much if the final decades are spent exhausted, inflamed, medicated, and disconnected from life.

In this episode of The Midlife Rebel Podcast, I’m joined by Dr Yi Song for a fascinating conversation about longevity, healthspan, Traditional Chinese Medicine, stem cell therapy, and what it actually means to age well.

We explore the difference between lifespan and healthspan — not simply how long you live, but how well you live — and why prevention, balance, and listening to the body matter far more than many of us have been taught.

Dr Yi Song bridges Eastern and Western approaches to health, drawing from Traditional Chinese Medicine alongside modern science and regenerative medicine. We talk about yin and yang balance, stress, nervous system overload, seasonal living, grounding, sleep, and why so many people feel “off” long before anything appears on medical tests.

We also dive into stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine, including what stem cells actually are, the myths surrounding them, ethical sourcing, and why they’re not a magic shortcut to health.

In this episode we discuss:

• Healthspan vs lifespan
• Traditional Chinese Medicine and holistic health
• Yin yang balance and chronic stress
• Preventative healthcare and early warning signs
• Grounding, nature, sleep, and nervous system regulation
• Stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine
• Immune health and inflammation
• Longevity strategies for midlife health and vitality

If you’re interested in ageing well, preventative health, natural approaches to wellbeing, and combining ancient wisdom with modern science, this conversation is packed with insight.

Visit our website to find out more about this week's guest.

All of our guests, including this one, are included in our Guest Directory so that you can find out more about them and the work that they do.

https://midliferebelpodcast.com/guest-directory

If you'd like to support the show you can buy me a coffee!

https://buymeacoffee.com/midliferebelpodcast

Transcript

Lifespan Vs Quality Of Life

SPEAKER_03 0:00

But basically, you know, the modern medicine does extend the lifespan right now, but it doesn't really improve the quality of life in your later years in the lifespan. So the longevity, I believe, everybody has their own maximum lifespan, how long they can live. That's also somewhat predetermined in your genetic composition, but we don't fully understand that yet. So we cannot calculate something. Oh, you can live to 90, but we cannot live beyond 95 or something.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

Welcome to the Midlife Rebel Podcast. It's time to rewrite the midlife story for women who refuse to be put in a box. Because maybe midlife isn't a crisis. Maybe it's an awakening. So I'd love to start with a little bit about, I guess, your history, like your background and your history, and and and then we'll sort of talk about

A Life Between East And West

SPEAKER_04 1:05

how you bring those two worlds together. Sure. Do you want to kick us off with that?

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Yes. Great. Okay, so I grew up in China, so I was very influenced by my family with 17 generations practicing Chinese medicine. So I was always very curious about the philosophy and foundation of Chinese medicine. And I really fully immersed in it, even when I was a teenager, and I really liked the idea about how to look at the universe, how to look at the human body in the Taoist philosophy. And then your body needs to be in harmony to the nature to your environment to have the optimal health. So then I, but at the same time, I was also very interested in modern science. So I was studying biology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics. I liked all those subjects. And then I eventually came to the United States to study pathology. But then I realized, you know, this is really not going to solve the fundamental problem why people get sick, why people uh age with degenerative conditions. So then that's why I started to go back to the traditional Chinese medicine and also the Taoist philosophy. And I feel the principles uh talked about in those practices back 6,000 years ago, even today, still have great value. And we still, as today, we even though we have all these modern technologies, we still do not practice all those things for our health and longevity preached 6,000 years ago. So that's why I started my clinic in Boston doing Chinese medicine, holistic therapies, trying to help people get healthier and better instead of just relying on the symptom-oriented, disease-oriented Western medicine approaches to treat the conditions when you already have symptoms very bad, severe, and then you just take medication that doesn't really solve the root cause of the problem. It's just masking the symptoms. And then sometimes it doesn't even work for the symptoms, then it gives you some other problems while on the medication. So basically, I um so then after 20 years of doing that, I also wanted to have a nice environment where the weather is mild all year round so that I don't have to worry about cold, cold winter, uh, and also very hot summer.

Finding Colombia And A New Path

SPEAKER_03 3:58

So that's how I discovered Colombia. It's not because I really was looking for something like that. It's just I was traveling all over places, including Australia, New Zealand, um, Myanmar, uh, Thailand. Um, so then I stumbled upon Colombia because some people was organizing some trip to do investment in agriculture. And then I went to five different places in Colombia. So the place where I fell in love with, because it has an elevation of 7,000 feet or 2,500 meters, so it's not very hot and it's now very cold. So it's about 70 Fahrenheit or 20 Celsius all year round. So that's perfect. So that's why I actually purchased a property in 2018 to develop a retreat. But then two years later, around 2020, I was introduced into this stem cell lab in Colombia. And at that time, before I was introduced to them, I really did not know a lot about stem cells or what they can be used to treat conditions because you know I learned about stem cells in my maybe in college or in my pathology classes. They talked about it, but nobody really talked about you can use stem cells to treat anything. So when I was after I was introduced to the lab, I went to the lab three times and then watched how they grew the stem cells from umbilical cord. And then I did more research, reading a lot of research papers that have been done mostly all over the world, but mostly outside of the US and European Unions, um, mostly in China, in Iran, Turkey. So I guess it's like where these countries they have more relaxed rules about doing these types of research in human. So after reading all these things, it really makes sense to me. Plus, it also connects to the original principles I wanted to teach people that are, you know, came from originated from 6,000 years ago in Taoist practice in traditional Chinese medicine. So then I thought, wow, that was really great because I always wanted to do something margin east and west. And also, it also tells me, like, you know, even like you just do only do practices in ancient practice, it may not be enough either, because you don't have the modern technology. But if you only do the modern technology without the principle, the foundation from the Eastern practices, then you're mostly losing the sight of the whole forest because most modern technologies are derived from traditional conventional Western medicine ideas. So it's based on molecules or cells, and they don't really look at the whole body. So when you combine them together, that's the best way because each one has their own limitation, has its own advantage. And then if you can combine them in the right way, then you really get the benefit from both of them. So that's how I started.

SPEAKER_04 7:16

I love that. And I'd love to get more into the um into stem cell science. I have had another guest on that's um spoken about it, but I'd love to hear your perspective, especially as you do use those two different what do we call them? Um treatments. Modalities. Modalities, yeah, modalities together. So you're really and I'd love and I really want to hear all of the things about your Chinese medicine, because I've used Chinese Chinese medicine in my um health journey as well. Um but oh what was I gonna say? Anyway. I'd yeah, I've I'm really keen to hear about the philosophies and principles behind Chinese medicine.

What Chinese Medicine Encompasses

SPEAKER_04 8:04

Um like what is Chinese medicine to start with? Is it acupuncture? Is it herbs? Is it is there anything else that that goes with it? Like how what does it encompass?

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Okay, so Chinese medicine is not just acupuncture or herb, but it's majority of the Chinese medicine practice involves using acupuncture, herbal medicine, meditation, qigong. But the foundation of Chinese medicine actually is based on yin yang's theory. So everything is yin and yang, and everything needs to be in yin yang balance. So, how do you achieve that? And then the human body is actually reflection of the universal energy, and the human is between the earth and the universe. So you need to have the human body also in harmony with the earth's energy and also the universe energy to have the body have the optimal function because we are not just isolated. Um, but of course, the human body has its beginning and end. So that's why I never believe that anybody can achieve immortality, even though now there are all these biohikers who want to live to 180 or even forever. Uh, I just don't think it's possible, and anything against nature is not gonna happen. Um so the Chinese medicine practice actually is based on the idea that you want to keep your body in the balance with everything around you and including internally. So when your body is in balance, then you have the optimal health and you have the longevity. And people who developed Chinese medicine 6,000 years ago, they actually were also looking for immortality. So looking for immortality was part of human history. Uh everybody, you know, even maybe if you believe in Adam and Eve, remember they ate the forbidden food because they wanted to be immortal too, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

So basically, in any culture, any as long as the human history exists, then people are always looking for immortality.

SPEAKER_04 10:28

And so that's that's actually what you know when I forgot what I was gonna say just now? It was about longevity and what your perspective on that was, like what it means, and whether the the Chinese philosophy did originally stem from that, and you answered it without me having to ask. So that's so that's good.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

But I think what it means in uh the longevity in Chinese medicine

Yin Yang Balance And Longevity

SPEAKER_03 10:50

point of view, uh, or even now Chinese medicine, or what we think longevity should be, let's not just talk about immortality because I really don't believe in that. So longevity should be that we live to the maximum human lifespan, which is 120 years old. Wow, and this number was already given in the Yellow Emperor's book 6,000 years ago. And because I'm now Christian and I never really read the Bible carefully, but I've been talking to some people who are very Christian, and then they told me in the Bible, it also says the maximum human lifespan is 120 years old. So it doesn't matter what kind of religion, what kind of culture you're in. Um, and then the new scientific evidence nowadays within the past 10 years, they also showed based on the calculation and based on some kind of you know uh the study from the human body or whatever, they also concluded that the maximum human lifespan is 120 years old, which proved that even like 6,000 years ago or whenever the Bible was developed, it was already written down somewhere, or it's already predetermined that human lifespan is 120 years old. So basically, we need to optimize our 120 years. Of course, right now our average lifespan is only like maybe 70 something, right? Depending on the country or something. I don't, I haven't seen average lifespan to 90 or anything. Of course, we have more people living up to 90 years old now. However, the average lifespan is still around 70 something. So basically, we haven't even, we're only like 60% of the maximum lifespan right now, the average lifespan. So, but on the other hand, when you have a full lifespan, say 90 years old, maybe the last 10 years, most people are really just hanging on in the wheelchairs, um, on 100 medications, um, uh breathing machine, going to a hospital uh every month, uh, going to have doctor's appointment every day. I've seen a lot of seniors, like even my friends who are in their 70s now, they are saying, oh, you know, when you reach 70, everything is going downhill and your life is just going to doctor's appointment every day.

SPEAKER_04 13:36

Well, at least it's gone to 70 because it used to be about 40 when people said that life was starting to go downhill. So it's kind of we've moved the we've moved the needle.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

But basically, you know, the modern medicine does extend the lifespan right now, but it doesn't really improve the quality of life in your later years in the lifespan. So the longevity, I believe, everybody has their own maximum lifespan, how long they can live. That's also somewhat predetermined in your genetic composition, but we don't fully understand that yet. So we cannot calculate something. Oh, you can live to 90, but we cannot live beyond 95 or something. I don't know how that is calculated. But I believe everybody's different. So, like one of the principles in Chinese medicine is about everybody's unique. Yeah. Uh, you need to recognize each person's unique body to address their problems. You cannot use one size fits all. So basically, we want to live to each person's individual maximum lifespan with the maximum health span so that we don't suffer the degenerate conditions when we are in our last 10 or 20 years of our lifespan. So that's what longevity should be. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

I heard a um story or something a while ago about like I think indigenous cultures and how they had a health span. So they basically they got to the end of their life and they knew that it that that death was imminent, and they would just go and sit under a tree and go to sleep, and that was it. And that's kind of like the outcome that we want. But we've come to expect that the last few years of our lives are going to be potentially painful, ridden with illness, immobility. And and so what you're trying to educate people on is that actually that isn't the truth, um, and that we can live a long, healthy, abundant life without all of those ailments if we adopt the correct practices.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

Yes, we need to adopt the correct practices early as well. So the second principle is early prevention. And I feel most people, even though I try to even talk about early prevention about 25 years ago, I feel most people, maybe I would say 90% of people, they're not addressing their problems early enough. Because if you address any of your health issues even before any symptoms arise,

Healthspan Over A Longer Lifespan

SPEAKER_03 16:21

you will be much better off because you don't get the damage from the symptoms that have already developed. Because if you already show symptoms, if you already have cancer growing somewhere, that's already later in the stage, right?

SPEAKER_04 16:36

Like it has been developing over a while, a decade.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

And then once that shows up, it actually starts doing damage to your body, right? So sometimes the damage may not be reversible, just like if you have a heart attack, then your heart is partially damaged, and that is not going to be reversible unless you have a heart transplant.

SPEAKER_04 17:00

Okay. So I was going to ask you about that because obviously we want people to adopt practices before they get sick. So that's health and lifestyle, and obviously the Chinese medicine, which we'll talk about. But I was wondering about when you have someone come to you who has already um got some of those uh degenerative illnesses, then you have to go from a place of like trying to reverse that. Can you reverse it or heal it in order to get them back into balance? And then there's a process of maintenance, no doubt. Is that where the stem cells can come in?

SPEAKER_03 17:43

Yes. So, like I said, like I've been trying to teach people early prevention for the past maybe even 30 years. But of course, I probably realized this around 30 years ago myself. Um, because before that, even though I was studying all these things, I really didn't have the complete comprehension. So um, but most people because they are immersed in the culture in Western medicine or our modern-day Western medicine. I don't know about say before uh 150 years ago in Western countries, what kind of concept they had. Um, so the modern Western medicine was set up by John D. Rockefeller around 1910.

Early Prevention Before Symptoms

SPEAKER_03 18:34

So the whole system is basically disease-oriented, symptom-oriented, and now talking about early prevention because they only treat the symptoms. If you don't have symptoms, like even nowadays, if you feel something's now right with you, you go to your doctor, they do all the tests, they don't find anything wrong, then they just tell you, oh, you don't have anything wrong, just go home. So they don't really look into you know what causes you feeling now right, right? It's not like we have all the knowledge and tests to make out any every single disease in the world because there are so many diseases in the world that we don't even know, and we cannot even explain it. We just call it idiopathic. So even today, I talked to a guy who called me about his son. His son is 20 years old and has been having some kind of weird pain condition for the past two years, and they've gone to so many advanced clinics, uh, doctors, nobody could figure out what was wrong with him. So, you know, so that's why, of course, you know, let's say this person, he started having all these symptoms two years ago. Maybe before that, he didn't have a lot of symptoms. So, and plus he was young, he was only 18 when he developed the symptoms. Then when this thing starts coming up, he starts getting this pain after playing hockey or doing sports because he was a very good athlete. But now he's so debilitating he couldn't do anything because even though he gets some treat, some alternative treatments and gets better, then once he starts wanting to work out to do sports again, then the symptoms come back. So we have to figure out what's the root cause. So because Western medicine, the modern Western medicine are not built upon trying to address the root cause of the condition and trying to even recognize your body has imbalance before any symptoms. So then we need to address the imbalance before it can even develop into any condition. So that in that way, we're not gonna develop into that condition because we already prevented it if we address the imbalance.

SPEAKER_04 21:19

You lose trust in your intuition and your intuitive knowing that something's not right. Because I think that we do know often, don't we? Um I've had experience in in the past in my early 20s where I my menstrual cycle was all over the place. And so I actually went, I don't know what inspired me to do it, but I went to a Chinese doctor to to have treatment. I didn't go to a regular GP. Um but yeah, that the there's something intuitive that we aren't taught to trust.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Would you yeah, because um yeah, so the thing is about Chinese medicine because it was developed so long ago, so back then, people who ever developed the whole system they were not influenced by any um social media or any distractions, yeah, they were purely focusing on trying to obtain immortality or longevity, so they were doing meditation and they could envision the flow inside the body,

Root Causes And Limits Of Testing

SPEAKER_03 22:35

and because we're part of the animal kingdom, so basically every single animal on earth, they also have their own intuition. And because they are not influenced by so many things in our modern society, so most animals they just follow their intuition. But then we human beings, because we developed the civilization and we developed the modern technology, then we basically lost our intuition, how to listen to our body, how to understand how our body works, and how to feel the connection between our body to the universe energy, like we talked about earlier, like human actually needs to be connected to the earth and the universal energy to function well. So we lost all of those things, and then we purely focused on what we know, which is only 0.00001% of the whole universe and uh about human body. And then, so basically, all those tests didn't show anything wrong, but that doesn't mean we don't have anything wrong or imbalance in our body causing the symptoms.

SPEAKER_04 23:49

Can you talk more about the this idea of universal energy being connected into the universe and nature like being grounded as well? Um, yeah, can you share a bit about well, a lot about that? I love love the philosophy behind it.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

Yeah, like uh nowadays a lot of people talk about grounding. Yes. Um, you know, uh it's more about you really need to, because we're always every day we're inside the building, working, or inside our house. We rarely have any connection to the natural environment. That's actually part of the reason why I love Colombia so much, because the place I have every time I come here, I can see the green trees, I can have the birds singing around me, and then I can hear the creek. I have creek on both sides of my property, so you can hear the creek running, and then you can see the mountain in the far, um, you know, right in front of me where I'm sitting at the desk. And then you can sometimes you can see the clouds, you can see the rainbow after the rain. So that's the kind of connection if we live in, say, New York City or Sydney, all these places, all the concrete buildings, and then you're inside the building all day, and then you just get into the car or get into the subway and go home, and then you're again inside your house. So basically, you lose the connection to all these things.

SPEAKER_04 25:22

I was interested uh about a month ago, we went to Sydney because I told you um right at the beginning of our conversation, we moved from the city to the countryside about seven years ago. And I was the more often I go back, or the yeah, the more times I go back over the last seven years, the more I realize how much impact it has on my nervous system and just on my openness. I felt like because there's exposure to so much information in the city, you know, so many people, you there's just stuff going on all the time. I felt this internal kind of shield go up to protect myself. It's like, okay, I have to like go into my own little space and like yeah, literally fortify myself against all of this input that's around me. Right. Whereas when you're in this country side, you can open up to all of that.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

And also it's more like um the human body is really the reflection of the universe. And uh, I formally believe that the whole universe we're in is a holographic system.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

So basically, like, you know, if you only talk about human body, your hand, this just this side of the hand can reflect your whole torso, from the head all the way to the back. So that's why in Chinese medicine, it's also everything is holographic. You know, you can use this alone to treat a lot of problems from your head all the way to the back, lower back, because it's reflects your whole body. So the same thing with the universe, you know, like the earth is in the solar system, and then the planetary uh positions, the planets are surrounding the sun. Don't you think that also looks very similar to atom and the electrons in say a molecule, you know, uh it's the same concept, it's just in size-wise, the planet, planetary system is huge, and then we're even our planetary, the solar system is only a very, very, very small part of the whole cosmos, and then the whole cosmos, you know, the uh whatever the cosmo, the uh galaxy

Intuition, Grounding, And Nature

SPEAKER_03 27:57

constellations of millions of light years away from us, they're always the structure is the same, right? It's like something rotating around. So basically, everything is holographic. So that's why for human body, because we're holographic, then we are also reflecting the universal energy and the earth. So that's why we have to connect to that. Because if we lose the connection, then basically we lose that kind of holographic reflection.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

So would you say, like, what would you say when someone is not well, if they do have um physical ailments in their body, how is that a ref what would you say is going on like and how does that affect our reflection of that holographic universe? Like what what's the what would it look like?

SPEAKER_03 28:49

Is it does it make it murky or let's say if if somebody has a lot of digestive system issues, uh bloating, poor digestion, acid reflux, then the problem of digestive system is actually the earth part, the earth element in five elements in Chinese medicine. So then the earth element in Chinese medicine also can be related to either Mars or, you know, I'm not really fooning this kind of correlation, but but it does have correlation to other planets in the solar system, or even have uh connection to the season, because some people maybe they tend to have more digestive system problems in the um from spring to the summer time, because that's the earth's time in of the year. And also it depends on when each person is born. That again goes to the each person's uniqueness, because even like say two different people, they have exactly the same date of birth, but they may have very different connections to the universal energy because they may be born at different times on that day. So all these things can determine what kind of uniqueness your body has.

SPEAKER_04 30:23

I love that because I've just um recently finished an astrology certification. So I was studying astrology for the last 12 months. And when I yeah, when I hear you talk about how astrology is that can actually impact our health and the way our body bodies work, I was like, whoa, that is so cool.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Like so, did you study astrology to be able to predict something or to um sort of self-improve, you know, for self-improvement, better self-understanding.

SPEAKER_04 30:56

Um, you can follow the transits. And I think that you you probably can use transits as well for someone's health, like where the planets are positioned and how they relate to the planets when you were born can um well, with the astrology that I learned, which is um evolutionary astrology, it's about like um yeah, becoming becoming the best version of yourself, um and like how the evolution of the planets as they move around your chart can bring up circumstances, but it's much it's I guess it's a kind of psychological, you know, deep sort of self-improvement from that more inner world perspective.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Yeah, a lot of people they don't they don't believe in this, you know, they think it's right. But actually, you know, it has a lot of scientific uh information in it. But again, a lot of it we really don't fully understand because our knowledge is very limited. Um, so but again, if we don't understand, fully understand it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just like tea

The Body As A Holographic System

SPEAKER_03 32:05

or energy, all these things they exist, we just don't know how to measure it. And we haven't developed the method. So uh, you know, I really want I like talking about this kind of stuff, but I also realize, you know, depending on the audience, sometimes people don't like that. Right. Okay. But but people should really understand that's another principle. The fifth principle I talked about in the book. I okay, I have six principles. So we already talked about three already. Uh, the recognize your body and early prevention, treat the root cause. And then the fourth one actually is tend your body like a garden. So then the fifth one is you need to follow the natural rhythm. So you can now go against nature because human body, human beings are not God, they cannot have superpower above whatever that superpower in the universe is. You can call it God, you can call it different, but you can call it Buddha, whatever. So um, so human being has to obey to that energy flow determined by the superpower in the universe, and then the planetary position, the different um things happening in the nature at different times of the year, it all affects what your body would be like and how the body responds to different times of the season. Uh the so that's why when so everybody's natural rhythm has ebbs and flows. It's not like everybody always goes uphill, it always has peak and then has choke. So you have to recognize that too. So that's why when your energy level, determined by your data birth, determined by the current time, um, is in the lower chill, then you can now try to push too hard. You have to adjust. And because Western culture, they don't talk about that. So a lot of people they don't follow that. So that when that happens, a lot of people they still keep pushing. They say, you know, why this year? I try so hard, I cannot achieve my goal. And you know, our culture is like everything has to keep going up, like including stock market, the company profit, cannot go down. It has to keep going up. It doesn't, the natural rhythm is not like that. It always has up and down, right? So so when it's done, if you push too hard and you don't get to the result, that's when your body becomes out of balance. Because if you push too hard at the wrong time, you're like swimming against the current, then basically you're exhausting your energy, right?

SPEAKER_04 35:06

It's very difficult in Western culture to take those times of more sort of rest and rejuvenation because there's judgment on people who you know you may be seen as lazy or um not pulling your weight if you you know pull back and you don't do as many things as society says that you should be doing, you should always be achieving, always moving on to the next goal. Um exactly.

SPEAKER_03 35:37

So that's actually not the healthy mentality for the optimal health, right? And even like when you're doing training, because you're a personal trainer, so you know sometimes you just feel this day. I just can't now do those things. Correct. And then someday you feel you are like a superhuman, you can do these things so easily. Yeah, so it's because your body is at a different day on different time, is affected by the other energy in the universe. And then certain days you just can do really well, and certain days you can now then just stop, take it easy.

SPEAKER_04 36:12

I was thinking about those natural rhythms as well, not just um, you know, those ebbs and flows that we feel personally, but some of the things that we have started to work against, I guess, by you know, having all different foods available at any time of the year, where in reality there would be a certain, you know, orange here, oranges and citrus fruit grow in the winter. You you know, so you have your stock, you might have a stockpile of all of those things for a period of time, but when it runs out, it runs out when it when nature, you know, which nature determines it. And the same with any kinds of foods, you know, root vegetables grow in the winter, there's other things that grow better in the summer, but we have availability

Following Natural Rhythms And Seasons

SPEAKER_04 36:55

to all of those things all of the time. Um, another thing where we go against nature is our sleep, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Where yeah, where naturally we should go to bed when the sun goes down. That's like how our ancestor was doing.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah, but then we have all those lights and we uh we don't go to bed, and some people they don't even go to bed at all at night, they go to bed it during the day, they're which is right totally opposite.

SPEAKER_03 37:21

But then there are also people who have to work at night, right? So they have to work night shift, there's no choice for them, then it's totally damaging to the body, too.

SPEAKER_04 37:30

Yeah, if you uh um you've talked about some of the principles that are in your book and the philosophies behind those principles, and I'm just kind of wondering like you obviously have a physical practice that you're working with people um in your in your actual work. If we take if we took your book, would we need to sort of outsource? So, for example, if I had your book and I was following the principles and I wanted to get my body back into balance or just prevent it from being out of balance rather than it being, you know, necessarily I'm in a bad position. Do we need to outsource? So, would I need to find uh an acupuncturist, a Chinese medicine doctor to assist with that? Or do you think that the principles in your book stand alone as uh um a way of us improving our daily rhythms?

SPEAKER_03 38:35

Uh, I think the number one um principle about talking, uh talking about recognizing your body's constitution, the uniqueness, that one you do need some help. Yeah. Because it's very difficult for somebody who doesn't understand the whole thing to recognize, oh, this is what my problem is. So that's why that part, you do need to seek somebody who understands this whole body system to explain to you. But once you know it, most people they have their uniqueness, your body's weakness strength inherited from your parents when you're born. Uh, I'm not even talking about genetic disease because that's a very rare group of people. So we're only talking about, you know, regular, normal, healthy people who have normal lifespan, uh, don't have a lot of childhood disease, those types of things. So um, so then each person has their own weakness and strengths from birth, and they also have weakness and strengths from how they live their postnatal life. So somebody who keeps staying up all night without going to bed at the right time, they also affect their postnatal energy. That can also cause certain weakness that maybe you were not even born with, but because you did long-term damage to your body by doing certain wrong practice and lifestyle that affected your body's balance and make it become some kind of sort of permanent imbalance or weakness, then that you know, you also need to recognize that. So most of that would be right um uh would be formulated or concluded from doing the health intake, um, doing the tongue diagnosis, pulse diagnosis, and even talking or looking at your facial expression or understanding your background in your family, in your social circle, because that a lot of emotional stress and emotional issues can affect people's physical balance over a long period of time. And that goes again to telling you that a lot of disease, including

Constitutions, Stress, And Autoimmune Patterns

SPEAKER_03 41:10

cancer or degenerate conditions, or mostly autoimmune, because we were talking about follow the nature's natural rhythm. So a lot of people developing autoimmune conditions, most of them I've seen they're pushing their body over the limit. Okay. That's how they develop that. And then there was also a theory from somebody else I heard about a few years ago. I say most people having autoimmune conditions is because they have energetic debt for a long period of time. And how do you get the energetic debt? It's because you're pushing your body over your own limit. You know, it's like some again that goes to people's uniqueness. So some people can run the marathon, no problem. And your body is not built to run the marathon, and then you still want to do the marathon, then you're damaging your body, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

So then you're creating energetic death because your body cannot keep up with that.

SPEAKER_04 42:11

What are some of the um can you sort of give us the name of some autoimmune disease?

SPEAKER_03 42:17

Like there's obviously things that people um uh you know, sugar's lupus. I've seen a lot of I've seen maybe quite a few lupus patients in the past 25 years.

SPEAKER_04 42:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

Um, and every single one of them, maybe not all of I I would say most of them, they would have some kind of stress either from their family life or from their own pushing their body too hard to achieve things beyond their capability for a long period of time. If you just do it for a week or something, it may not do enough thanks to your body. But if you keep doing that for say 20 years, 30 years, yes. And then some people there mainly because they are in a family situation that creates a lot of stress and unhappiness. So even though they're not really trying to push their body so hard, but they're in that kind of situation, they just cannot get out of that. And then that emotional stress, and then to deal with all those stress that they cannot get out, that also drains their body. Basically, uh requires more energy in your body than your body can handle.

SPEAKER_04 43:40

Yeah, right. So when you treat uh patients yourself, do you, if you had someone with an autoimmune condition, do you you go through all of the sort of the the practices of Chinese medicine to find out where they're at, what their constitution is, and that sort of thing and then you treat them with the Chinese medicine but also with stem cells or does stem cell treatment is that for everyone when you are in your practice and we we we're getting close to the end of our conversation so I've probably opened up a massive can of worms at the wrong time.

SPEAKER_03 44:20

I started doing stem cells only five years ago. Right. But I realized stem cells really have this powerful healing potential that even Chinese medicine practices cannot match.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

So the reason for that is because using umbilical cord of placenta is actually a practice that was already in Chinese medicine long, long time ago. Okay. But back then they didn't have the technology to isolate that particular type of stem cells

Why Stem Cells Can Help

SPEAKER_03 44:58

from the umbilical cord. So now we have this technology we can get that isolated from the umbilical cord and then they can actually exert a lot of things that we don't fully understand what they do in our body but we understand partly a very small amount that they can actually modulate our immune system. And they can also transfer a lot of mitochondria or even gross hormone cell signaling molecules to our aging stem cells inside our body so that's something unless you can really do meditation to very highest level most people cannot achieve that kind of energetic transfer. So when you use the envelope stem cells it's more like you're giving your body a boost and of course you know stem cell is not the magic fix. So we talked about autoimmune conditions and a lot of people with certain really they have been sick for so long in their mind they still think the stem cell treatment is like a magic they're looking for magic fix but it is not because you have to use that boost and at the same time you have to create the right environment in your body for the stem cells to work. And you still have to address say if somebody's root cause is because of this long-term stress if you don't address the long-term stress maybe stem cells can give you body a little bit boost make it a symptoms a little bit less severe but if you don't address the root cause then basically it's going to go back to where it was and even worse over time. So that's what stem cell comes in it's really it's uh a method that we could not achieve before without this technology. And now with this technology and if we we combine it with a lot of other ancient practices that we already know but we are now practicing and then we combine all these things together in the right proportion which is the sixth principle in the book then we can actually achieve the maximum health and longevity. Yeah because that's how because I actually even had people who are really advanced practitioners of Chinese medicine or even Qigong they contacted me recently because they could not resolve some of their problems themselves. So basically everything has its limitation everything has its advantages or um what do you call that the um yeah everything has its advantage so we have to take the good part from different practices and then combine it together in the right proportion then we absorb all the good energy from different practices and then make our body having the most harmony um balance do stem cells run out like if you have a a stem cell treatment does your body take on that permanently or is it something that you have to okay cool. Yeah so stem cells when you get the umbilical core stem cells that's from the donor that's not even from yourself. Yeah once they are inside their butt your body they're not going to grow into say cartilage or uh heart they are actually stimulating your own body stem cells to do the repair and grow the tissue and then after about three months all of those cells you put in your body from the donors actually are dead. And also because our body is in constant regeneration. We have cells you know dying and then new cells regenerating to replace replenish the aging cells or dying cells but the problem with aging is because one of the hallmarks of aging is stem cell exhaustion because when we age our own body stem cells ability to renew our tissue to regenerate to repair declines significantly so a 60 year old person's stem cell has 4000 times less capability to divide so that's why we age because our body cannot keep up with our daily damage um you know repair needs or just general

Stem Cells Are Not Magic

SPEAKER_03 49:55

regeneration because if you don't have this regeneration equilibrium then you have the deficit. So you have more cells dying being damaged than you can regenerate then that's when the problem starts accumulating. So the idea of anti-aging or longevity is to use methods that can stimulate our body's regeneration capability and stimulate our own body stem cells to do the repair it themselves it's not like the whatever you do will replace your own body stem cells.

SPEAKER_04 50:31

No it never happens again do you as part of your practice do you treat people with stem cells if they're going for so okay in your own practice with yourself do you do you use um stem cells as part of that process to help you live life I actually since I started doing stem cells five years ago I myself I probably have treated myself with the stem cells I use from this lab in Colombia more than

Anti-Ageing Practices Need Consistency

SPEAKER_04 51:08

30 times.

SPEAKER_03 51:08

Oh wow what so what have you noticed what what differences have you noticed how I feel like 70 I'm 50 okay I'm 50 so I feel it has anti-aging effects. Yeah so I'm basically experimenting myself so I told some other people when they were asking me I said maybe by the time I'm 90 years old uh and uh people look at me then they say oh really so what you've been doing for the past 40 years really worked I think that's a lesson is like you have to be committed without me reaching 90 years old um I can tell you my mom who has a lot of deficiencies from birth and she didn't do a lot of practice right practice in her 30s 40s or even 50s to address a lot of her own body's problem uh of course she didn't have the at that time in China we didn't have a lot of um you know access stuff to address all these things so she she basically just ignored it and then by the time she was 50 she started having all kinds of problems of course at that time I started learning about these things so I started telling her to do different things so even that but she really had a lot of deficiencies from birth so now she's 81 and I feel that stem cells really can help her it cannot really reverse all the damage or you know the deficiencies from birth because of lack of food of my grandmother when she was pregnant all these kinds of things that cannot be reversed. But it can make the quality of her life better in her 80s or if she can live another 10 years in her 90s. So we'll see. But I do feel without introducing stem cells to her five years ago she would have been in much worse condition now than what she is able to do now. So even though she doesn't look like she's that super healthy for 81 years old but at least she's not taking any medication yeah she doesn't need any uh she's not bedridden she can move herself uh she never breaks her bone even though she has been having osteoporosis since 40 years ago uh and she was actually born with low bone density so there's no way you can replenish that but it really from what I see with her I think it really helped her quality of life so that she doesn't have amputation from her leg from some kind of condition that's with the original what we use stem cell to treat her for. And then she doesn't have a lot of knee pain. But now she has a little bit hip pain so I think she's actually right now in Colombia right now. So we're gonna treat her the day after tomorrow. Okay. Great so yeah so I just feel but I myself besides doing stem cells I also do a lot of other things yeah I also do read lights therapy and I'm looking into doing hyperbaric chamber like we talked about earlier before we even started talking.

SPEAKER_04 54:44

Is that a great longevity practice for the hyperbaric chamber?

SPEAKER_03 54:50

I think it they say when you do the hyperbaric chamber consistently everything has to be consistent. Yes exactly that's another thing most people they just follow trends and then they do something for a month then they forget yeah then they do something different so if you find the right proportion of practices good for your body you have to keep doing it. Yeah yeah um so I based on what I learned that hyperbaric chamber actually can stimulate stimulate your own body to release more stem cells into your bloodstream. Okay and also accelerates the repair yeah when you have damage so a lot of athletes because they do high intensity workout uh then they need to repair their damaged muscle fiber or tend to quickly so that they don't get they don't get injured you know so they do do that and looks like it's really helping them for the performance plus it's not like a drug so they don't have to worry about the drug test or those type of things.

SPEAKER_04 55:57

Wow yeah it's I I think that's a really great great um reminder is that we do have to be intentional and practice to get the outcomes that we desire that it's not just like you said a magic pill that you go to your doctor or your your Chinese doctor to to um have the treatment and that's that's it it's a regular reg regular intentional practice. Just as we close I'd love to hear your thoughts on stem cells just in terms of like whenever I mention stem cells to anyone and I don't even know what they're I've heard people say that they can be available in Australia for injury but um I don't know beyond that you know not maybe not sort of let's say recreational use for longevity purposes. I don't know I don't know what the what but when I do talk to people

Ethics, Safety, And Stem Cell Scams

SPEAKER_04 56:58

about stem cells or you know I say I've I'm having a guest onto the show to talk about stem cell therapy and they're like ooh there's this kind of controversial they think that it's that babies are getting killed basically to to um create this stem cell therapy. Can you talk to us a little bit about where they actually come from and like the safety of them.

SPEAKER_03 57:23

Yeah so the stem cells actually don't kill the baby and it's from healthy birth yeah and it's not even from the baby themselves it's from the umbilical cord. So that's why it doesn't have the immune rejection when you use RZ people because imagine when the baby is growing in the mother's womb the mother and the baby they're not the 100% match. So that's why these type of stem cells in the umbilical cord they modulate the immune system and they don't trigger any immune response when they enter either mother's body or the baby's body because they are immune privileged. So most umbilical cords after the baby is born they are medical waste they don't really do anything with that. But of course nowadays there are more people saving their baby's umbilical cords hoping that it will help their baby in the future when the child grows and has certain medical conditions. So besides those small percentage of people most people's umbilical cords are medical waste so when we collect the umbilical cord we actually only need one or two donors for four or five years because I've been using this um lab in Colombia for five years. So far they've only used two donors really so because you're do yeah because they grow the cells so basically after you get the umbilical cord you expand it in the lab. So that's a part I think mostly not allowed in US in uh Europe so most likely in Australia the same thing because they somehow they don't want you to manipulate that umbilical cord stem cells and then use it clinically whatever the reason is I really don't know what's the real reason behind that because these umbilical cord misochal stem cells they are not even pluripotent so they they're not able to grow into another human being right they only grow into certain amount of tissues like bone cartilage muscle um skin some neuron that type of thing so their main function is now to grow into another embryo or something like that. So it's totally ethical is because we only need one or two donors we actually screen the donors strictly with no uh genetic conditions. So when in these other countries like US, Europe or even Australia or many most of the countries in the world, if they don't allow you to use lab expanded umbilical core stem cells clinically without being registered for any clinical trials then basically nowadays a lot of people they actually just obtain the cells from the umbilical cord without expansion. So that gives you very limited amount of cells. That's why you have to obtain a hundred umbilical cords to produce certain amounts of cells you need to create the clinical effects because it's proven by many research papers that generally if you want to treat somebody's condition or even people who have no severe medical condition, you just want to help their longevity and aging better, you need to use at least 100 million cells in the intravenous infusion because human body has certain weight and you need to give certain amount of cells based on each kilogram of body weight. But if you only get the umbilical cord stem cells without expansion from one umbilical cord you can get only maximum of 25 million cells. So then that means if you want to get 100 million cell treatment you have to get four different donors then when that happens you don't have a lot of stringent tests on the donors. So that's when it becomes controversial and also because there are all these people who want to make money right out of people's ignorance or people don't understand it, then they just try to sell you something it's everywhere. It's not just stem cell it's like supplements all these things a lot of them they don't have really good ingredients or maybe they have some scientific base for the ingredients they use but they sell it for a hundred times a thousand times of the cost of producing them because they do the good marketing they put very nice packaging so you're not really buying the effect and effectiveness of the content you're paying for the marketing it happens to all different things not to stem cells yeah yeah thank you because stem cells is very uh new idea and then also again like what you said people think it's unethical is you're killing baby or you know a lot of Western doctors they will say it's not proven they can cause you cancer la la la la la la so that's why and then there are a lot of grifters in the industry trying to profit from people and then having very bad effects on people causing them having infections almost dying all these different things so that's what cause all these controversies yes fair enough and I anything that's new there's gonna people are gonna question it and wonder um yeah whether it's the right thing or you know we we can be adverse to change can't we but it sounds very promising and um yeah I've loved listening to to you share all about the work you do.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:41

And you as we mentioned during the conversation you've got your book The Regeneration Effect that can help people to sort of get on the right path when it comes to prevention and and get on the rule cards treating the root cause. We're going to share all of your details in the guest directory um so that people can find you easily and um that will include information about the book and obviously your website and the work that you do. Thank you so much for taking the time to to share your wisdom with us today. I really appreciate

Book, Links, And Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_04 1:04:18

it and I've loved loved our conversation. And also for your listeners if they want to get one free download of one of the principles the fourth principle tend your body like a garden you can go to giftegenerating hey there rebel thank you for listening to this episode of the Midlife Rebel Podcast if you'd like to support the show you can buy me a coffee by going to buyme a coffee forward slash midlife podcast thanks for listening