From Existential Crisis to Elite Longevity | Dr. Joy Kong's Pathway to Peak Performance

He got so mad he actually slammed the table, stood up saying, "She's the best student we have." Isn't that amazing to have a champion to say, "This is what I believe and this is what I think is the right thing to do." Very grateful. Changed her life. It did. Yeah.

Chronic medical treatment in Western medicine is a cliffhanging thing because you keep people hanging in there without really getting them to recover and heal. You know, now intellectually I'm happy because I can be a holistic practitioner, that I can address some root causes that previously we were not taught. You never give up even in worst times. I think I'm able to pivot. If life is trying to beat me down, I'm going to try to make a party out of it.

Hey, we want to thank our sponsor Ketone Aid. And if you're interested in ketones and how you can fuel your brain with them, go ahead and go to ketone.com/jock and receive free shipping. Now, back to the show.

Dr. Joy Kong, welcome to the Pathway to Peak Performance. It's so great to have you in. Thank you for coming up from Los Angeles to see us.

Yes. Yes. I'm so excited to be in this beautiful town. It's so nice to be back to where I first landed when I came to America.

Isn't it amazing that here you are? Yes. Yeah. And you went over the Golden Gate Bridge and magical.

Yeah. That's a special place. Special place. And where you are is a special place, too. The weather's a lot better down there than it is here.

It's true. At least I can wear shorts. I counted—there were five days I could wear shorts in San Francisco in a year.

I still wear shorts all the time, but I'm just used to it and one of those weird things. Okay. Now, we spoke and your charity is, and it's Tiger Creek Animal Sanctuary in Tyler, Texas.

Yes.

That's interesting. That's—it's Saving Big Cats.

Yeah. Interesting place. Tyler, Texas. Been there. And I still need to visit them. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's a good place to go. And when you go, there's a great barbecue place there called Stanley's. It's sort of famous in—yeah, it's so good. And they have live music and it's a ton of fun and yeah, it's a great place to go visit. All right, let's take it all the way back because you have such an interesting history. You start out your life in Beijing, China, and you grew up on the campus of a university that was started by missionaries. Tell us more about this.

That's when China was weak in the 1800s and there was an unfair treaty. I think China lost a war. You know, they couldn't fight off the modern military powers. So then they ended up giving up a lot of its silver and Americans were kind enough to use that silver to build the university, Tsinghua University. I think it was built 1919. I think that's when it was started.

But it was based on the American system: the auditorium, the study halls, everything was Western architecture, and they built it on the old imperial palace. It was not a palace garden; it's probably the biggest garden in the world built over 100 years. Unfortunately, there's another sad story. So, this all kind of ties in with the history of China.

In the 1800s, I forgot exactly which year—I think probably 1860s—there was an alliance of armies. I think it was the English and French who invaded. Again, there was some kind of bullying going on because we didn't do what they wanted them to do in China. So they came, and this garden that was called the Garden of All Gardens, because it was built over a hundred years by quite a few emperors, they were taking some of the most spectacular architecture from all around the world, and they reduced it to a third of the scale, and they built this incredible garden that had architecture from everywhere and it was full of treasures. So this army came over. First they looted everything they could take, and then they burned it down. So the fire was on for 3 days and three nights.

So that was—so I think a lot of times people don't understand why China is the way it is today. Why do people want to protect themselves? Why was there a sense that they need a sense of security, right? Why would they build up their military? Not to hurt other people, but to protect themselves from ever being denigrated and slaughtered. So anyhow, so that garden was burned three days and nights. A lot of things just went to become just wildland. But it was on that premise that this university was built. So there's a lot of history to where, you know, I started my life.

Yeah, it's a rich history, and China has such an incredible culture. And it, you know, often having grown up here in San Francisco, you know, you have the benefit of having friends from all over, and they're all friends from all over different parts of China, too, you know. So you have Canton friends and Pekinese people that speak Mandarin, and all the, you know, and all these different dialects, and it makes you realize just how big China is and how diverse it is. And it's a phenomenal—I mean, if you've grown up here in San Francisco, you have a deep appreciation for the Chinese culture and Chinese people.

It's very different, though. It is very different here compared to Los Angeles because the immigration population is very different. Because the first group of Chinese immigrants, of course, were the people who were brought over to build the railroads, and those were from Canton mostly, and maybe a few other neighboring provinces. But they were very remote, and those were a very poorly educated area. So those were not intellectuals; these were laborers. So they came over, and they brought their tradition with them and their dialect. But it's very different from the rest of China.

I mean, China is so big. There are, I think, 33 provinces with each province containing just also regional diversity. So it's like many kingdoms merged into one, really. So Canton has their own tradition, and that's the first group of immigrants. It was not easy. So people talk about the hardships of different people, different groups of immigrants, and the Chinese weren't treated that much better than slaves, to be honest. Rough, but it did what it had to do, right? To survive, build the railroads. A lot of people died, and they did laundry and restaurants—that's what they were known for. So that's the first group of immigrants.

And so when I first came here, on the first day when I was here, I was taken to Chinatown and I was so excited because I thought in America people say hi to each other, like people were very friendly. So when I was walking in Chinatown, I was like, "Hi, hi!" All these Chinese people, they were like—they were all looking away and I was like, "What? I'm in America, people, you know, are supposed to be really friendly." So the culture—that's a Chinese culture in America. So it's very interesting.

But in Los Angeles, there is an older Chinatown which was, you know, it came from the Canton population, but there were a lot of newer immigrants from Taiwan first, and then from mainland China, and these would speak Mandarin. So in LA, Mandarin is more prevalent. So yeah, very, very different, and these usually are people who came here for school—so either the Taiwanese students or people from the mainland. So it's a very, very different population.

Yeah, it was always interesting to me. If you really want to get a good sense of what it was like to be, you know, a Chinese immigrant in California in the 1800s, you know, you should go to the California History Museum in Oakland because it really shows the incredible hardships that those people endured. And then there was also an area over here in Marin County called China Camp, where those Chinese immigrants were first sequestered and there was a lot of shrimp farming and that sort of thing happening there. And really tough. They really endured incredibly difficult circumstances. So it really shows the will of those people.

It's a very resilient culture, very hardworking. The kind of work ethic—because I've been back on a regular basis, and of course China today is very different from the China when I left 33 years ago, but the work ethic is the same and they work long hours. They're not even—a lot of times they're not asking for overtime. That just was expected. That's what they're going to do. That's how they can build a hospital in days, right? Build a whole train track or a whole highway in days. I mean, it's unbelievable speed. But that kind of dedication is mind-boggling, actually.

It is very impressive. Yeah, it is super impressive actually when you think about it, and you think about sort of like from a Chinese cultural standpoint, the innovation that's taken place there. We think about like mobile phones, right? And, you know, Huawei and what's happened with electric cars in China.

It's—my brother took me to a mall on this one floor, there must be like 15 manufacturers all with unique, interesting, gorgeous cars. They're all electric. And I was like, there's so many brands. What an incredible blossom of creativity.

And they're considerably less expensive—

Oh, yeah.

—than many of the other electric cars. And so the world is heating up in terms of competition, and China is putting the pressure on for sure.

Mhm. And of course, I couldn't believe—I think out of the top whatever 25 universities in the world, China had like 80% of them. The number one now university in the world is not Harvard, it is Zhejiang University, and I didn't even think that was a top university in China. I don't know what happened. So, this university just blossomed.

So, I'm curious for you as a Chinese immigrant to the United States, but you go back regularly and you have family there. Um, how does that make you feel to see that transformation take place?

I am so impressed that any group of people can make that happen. Like how it was a dream when I was leaving. We knew that China—we were still poor. So 1992, that's when I left, we were a third world country for sure. We were poor, but we also remember the history. We remember that we were once the most powerful nation in the world with the most advanced technology. I think it was a few hundred years before Columbus was setting sail, we already had ships that had six times the power of his ship. But we never thought about going around to conquer other islands and other countries. It was not in the Chinese blood.

Guess what we did? We went around and traded like, "Hey, we have this and you have that. We want that and you want ours." And they just traded everywhere. So that's—that's a Chinese—that's in Chinese blood, that they want to have a good time. You know, we want what you have because it's cool and you may want what we have. But anyhow, that's the Chinese culture and it's prominent. It's very, very successful, but it's not an aggressive culture.

But then it fell behind because it got complacent. Because the society was reaching an equilibrium, because every 300 years there was a change of dynasty. But between technology and art and a good time, the people can, you know, enjoy life. So everything was reaching a very steady state until some other people are not content with what they have, right, and they want to come and get what you have, but through force or through something that can hurt you.

So that's when everything shifted, and that's when China realized, "Whoops. When we were so content, thinking that we don't need anything from the outside because we're self-contained, we're happy, but now they're cracking open our door with cannons, and we can't defend ourselves." So, and so it remembers how it fell from the most powerful nation to someone that can be bullied at will, basically be slaughtered. So it wanted to regain its self-respect. It did that through catching up. So, what do they know that we don't know? Science. Okay, let's learn. Let's catch up. So it started to gain momentum.

But it was still behind. But I think as a nation, it had a confidence that one day we're going to soar. So there are a lot of experts—China experts either in the West or people in China—who said, "We are a dragon and we're going to rise up. We're going to become a dragon again." So I think deep down there's that sense that we will rise up.

But no one is certain. We were, you know, not very respected because we didn't have the money, we didn't have the technology, you know, we just—we were not very advanced.

It's interesting, you know, at Fort Mason, which you're familiar with, there was an exhibition, and it was all the Chinese technology and it looked like it was from the '50s. This is in 1982, okay. So, 1982, like 50-something years, right? Wow. To go from being, you know, something where it's like you're that far behind in that short period of time—which really, if you really think about it, it's not that long—to producing the technology that's being produced now in China is incredible.

Yeah. And it stalled for 10 years, right? That's the 10 years my mom was upset about because from 1966 to '76, it was the Cultural Revolution. Literally nothing was done. Everybody was fighting with each other trying to claim that they were the most revolutionary. So everybody was having these meetings—they call it struggle meetings—where they were struggling, fighting against the capitalists and the imperialists. So it was meetings—imagine 10 years of this political ideology and meeting after meeting with no productivity, and people go to college but really we're not taught anything. It's just a craziness.

My mom had just come out of university and she had an ambition to become the second Madame Curie because she studied chemistry. But she was assigned to a tiny little biochemical factory in Beijing where she was the only college grad, and there was really nothing to do, no experiments. It was just, you know, pots and pans, really sad chemicals. So she couldn't do anything, and for 10 years she felt that her best 10 years were wasted. So there was always anger inside of her feeling that she could have been more.

But from that—so 1978, that's when Deng Xiaoping opened up China, and from that, it's like gaining momentum. And now it's like going—it's hard for other people to catch up because it has gained so much of a foundation. That's why manufacturing—it's very hard for people to catch up.

You don't have the infrastructure that has shifted in a way where it's like—it's not when people say, "Oh, it's going to come back." It's—it's not coming back. It's—it's almost impossible and there's too much infrastructure there. It's too—it's too, too advanced. It's too dialed-in, everything, and the cost is down. You want to compete with that kind of interlocking structure. That's—

Yeah. I had a friend who is an inventor, and he basically put together a product, and you talk about that sort of industrious nature to make something happen so quickly. They were talking about, "I want to do this prototype and send it over," and they'd have it the next day. The next day. Yes. Like literally like that's how quickly they would turn something around.

Yeah. And so it's really mind-boggling when you asked me, you know, how it feels. Everyone was thinking, "We can do it. I think we can do it." But humility is also part of the Chinese culture. We don't presume; we don't presume we're the greatest in the world. We don't presume that we're going to—if we go to war with somebody, we're going to win. We don't presume that we are going to one day be leading the world. We just think it's a possibility, but we really have to work hard. We really have to dial in all these things.

So there's always this caution that—I think we can do it, but boy, do not presume. And then when it actually happened, now when I go back in the last couple years, I'm just—I am blown away with what they've done. And yeah, I'm—I'm proud because these are the people, this is the culture I grew up in, and they have that such incredible creativity and drive, and also the ability to govern and grow together, right?

It takes—it takes a tremendous amount of planning. You think that a country of, I don't know, 1.4 billion people, huge, and to make everybody move together. And people don't realize Chinese people are not easy to govern. The Chinese are very, very individualistic compared to the Koreans and the Japanese. So there's a saying that everyone in China is a dragon, but when you put them all together, it becomes a plate of loose sand. It's hard to make it cohesive. So imagine this empire that's at least 2,500 years old that has been one single country. I mean, that's incredible, the ability to bring them together. But the Chinese are very—they are not easy, right? Where you see this conformity within Japan where everyone's trying to conform to this groupthink, yeah, that's not the Chinese.

Yeah, it's not the way they think. And really interesting. So, you come to San Francisco, you go to San Francisco State University, and what's your first impression?

You're—33 years ago, San Francisco State University was different. It was—yeah, it was—it was beautiful. It was a nice campus, not exactly what I thought because, you know, my first—this book, the first chapter started with my visa rejection. I was accepted by Clark University in Massachusetts. So my mind had been on these Northeastern schools, right? The typical Ivy League, you know, with all these buildings, the architecture, and lots of grass, green, and big campus, rolling hills. That—that's kind of what I envisioned. So San Francisco State was—was—was nice, but it's not—it's a little different, right? This is a West Coast school, so not the same kind of romantic feeling. We don't have fall foliage, you know.

But it's—it's a beautiful place. It's not exactly what I wanted because I had wanted to go to Berkeley. So, I also talked about it in the book, because I wanted to go to a school that's more prestigious. But this man I was with, who was my financial source, said that Berkeley is $2,000 tuition, but San Francisco State was $1,000. "So I want you to go to San Francisco State." That's where I was at, right? And what could I do? So I went to San Francisco State.

But it all turned out beautifully because I ended up graduating as valedictorian from San Francisco State. And the school had—was very, very good to me. It gave me scholarships and the kind of support it gave me, despite that I was Chinese—because as a Chinese, I actually didn't qualify for their scholarships. The scholarships, it's called the MARC program. So, it's for minorities in science. There is a qualification: I do not count as the kind of minorities that they want to help because you have to be disadvantaged, which means that you have to be a Pacific Islander, or Hispanic, or African American, or Native American. So, I didn't fit. East Asians didn't count.

Never mind, I had no money, I'm nothing, and I needed help. But because I was in a group that had been doing well academically, so I did not get, you know, that—technically I shouldn't be getting any help. But I was eyeing those scholarships because I didn't have any money. So I went to this program—there's a, you know, for minority advancement, I guess there's an office in San Francisco State. I said, "I want to apply for this scholarship, but I don't fit in this category—these categories."

The lady who works there, she said, "Technically, we can't tell you that you cannot apply. You know, we cannot tell you that. So, you can go ahead and apply." So, okay, I will apply. And I couldn't believe that I got it.

But Dr. Beeson, who was in charge of the program, I really have to thank him. He got in trouble at NIH because he gave me the scholarship. And he didn't tell me this, but another professor told me that he defended me to the point where, when other people were questioning, "Why did you give a scholarship to this person that's Chinese?" he got so mad he actually slammed the table, stood up saying, "She's the best student we have, and I have the constitution behind me, so do what you want."

Is that amazing to have a champion who feels that level of conviction to stand up for what they believe is right in that moment, regardless of the consequences? To say, "This is what I believe and this is what I think is the right thing to do." Very grateful. Changed your life.

It did. Yeah. I don't know because the problem was I didn't even qualify for loans, student loans, because of—you know, I talk about that I ended up marrying somebody who was manipulative and controlling, who used financial economics to control me. And when I left him, I couldn't even get—I didn't have money to even get the divorce. So because technically on paper I was still married to this person, I would never qualify for any financial assistance. So I was absolutely stuck.

Yeah, it's a really tough place to be when you find yourself in that situation. And you're—you're trying to balance all of that as a student and all of the other things. I can only imagine—I didn't have to deal with that personally, but I can only imagine that that must have been extremely challenging. But the reality is you persevered.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, even in worst times, I think I'm able to pivot. I can find the good in whatever that's happening. I think that's one of my greatest strengths is that if life is trying to beat me down, I'm gonna try to make a party out of it.

That's a great way to look at it, right? Hey, keep—keep the attitude up.

Yeah. If you don't want me to do stem cell therapy in America, I'm going to have a grand time somewhere else. You're not going to stop me.

Yeah. Yeah. So, in this trek now to medical school at UCLA—and let's face it, that's not an easy—UCLA's a huge, huge school. It's highly competitive. So take us through the process.

Yeah, it was definitely not easy, and I wanted to write a second book really about the journey, not of clawing my way out of China and surviving the first few years, but actually dealing with the aftermath of how I was brought up and the traumatic experiences, you know, just in life, right? So I always say that you can win some battles in life, but it doesn't mean that you don't go around carrying battle scars. So you can—you can win a war, and then you go away with a limp, and you're alive, but you've got this limp that you have to deal with. So can you heal that wound and can you be whole again?

So that's what I was dealing with. I think growing up in the culture, as beautiful as it is, it's not perfect. Chinese culture, because of the nature of high competitiveness, because we have so many freaking Chinese—there's so many of us and there are only a few top spots, right? And Chinese are very studious. Everybody's studious and everybody's driven, and there are only a few spots on top. So, you're working your damnedest to get to places. And how do you get to places? Someone is going to compare you against another person, right? So you're going to compare yourself against another person because you want to see, "Can I get there?"

So then it becomes a culture of comparisons, and that is not good for the soul because you want to feel that you're flourishing, but every step of the way you're just comparing yourself to somebody else. And when you compare, sometimes you're better, sometimes you're worse. What happens when you're not as good in some areas? Then you beat yourself up. You don't feel so good. So it's a culture that keeps going and going without celebration of who you are. So that's me and most Chinese.

So my mom was judgmental because that's how she grew up. The entire culture is judgmental. I'm judged even like the first time when I went back to China—that was 1993 and it was getting to become fall. So it was October and it was cold. So, I put on a little down vest, and my mom's friend saw me on the street. She said, "Oh my god, you're wearing that already?" Like, it's—I'm not—it's not a norm. Nobody's wearing it yet. You don't want to be the first person that's wearing a freaking down jacket.

And this is how crazy we are in the summer. We always remember we don't want to be the first one that's wearing a skirt because that's showing off. So, you wait until someone has worn a skirt before you wear a skirt. And this is serious. I don't know if people understand that. It's a big thing. You don't want to be the first one. So, the judgment—I mean, that's so pervasive in the culture. So me comparing myself against everybody else, that's a way—a way of life.

So I'm pretty smart, and you know, among my students who are all brilliant, you know, I was still doing pretty good. Although there are some kids who are so next level that these are people who win like the math Olympics, physics Olympics. So these are just, you know, kind of almost unhumanly intelligent. So then, of course, I feel dumb, you know, when I see these kids. So there's always a little tinge of, "Maybe I'm not that good, maybe I'm not good enough."

That got amplified when I went to UCLA. When I was in San Francisco State, I was still good because the level of competition was not very high, right? So, I was the valedictorian and so it was all good. You know, I feel like I can do very well, and I actually did very good on exams. I got 99th percentile on biology, GRE, all that stuff. So I was like feeling pretty good.

And then I went to UCLA, and this is like—the level, the amount of talent that we have is no less than Harvard, right? This is either you want to go to the East Coast, you go to a top school like Harvard, or you come to the West Coast, you go to a top school like UCLA or UCSF—these are the top, with Stanford. So these are the top medical schools. So some people want to come to UCLA.

So we got Olympians, we got people who already have Master's degrees in all kinds of stuff, people who are experts in different things. So then me, having been brought up to compare myself to others—boy, did I have a field day because I was looking at everybody's strength against my possible weaknesses, right? Like my roommate spoke beautiful Spanish—she's a white girl—because she lived in Argentina for a year. So I was like, look at this person. She could just do so much. And I, you know, I'm not able to. So I feel like I'm just, you know, just a little less about myself. Somebody else, incredible dancer, studied dancing. I said, "Oh my god, you know, I can't dance like that." And, you know, somebody else is, you know, whatever, very eloquent because she had a Master's in religious studies. I said, "Oh my god, she knows so much."

So, I ended up feeling so bad about who I was that I felt I was nothing. I mean, to the point where I wasn't sure if I was who I thought I was, because I thought I was this great person with incredible abilities. And now I know that I'm lacking in all these areas. So, who am I really? And if I'm really not as great as I thought I was, then why am I here? Do I really need to be here? Should I even be here?

So, I had an existential crisis of justifying why I needed to continue to be alive. So, I remember cutting anatomy classes to go to church, or go to a temple to meditate, or just go to—I went to bookstores a lot at the time, there's, you know, Barnes & Noble and stuff. So I would just read books, a lot of self-help books, a lot of spirituality books, because I wanted to understand my existence. So that was probably the darkest time of my soul, is not knowing why I was there and why I should continue.

But little by little, I think I was getting more and more understanding, getting out of my little ego and starting to expand my awareness of greater, greater things beyond. So I was really going in from the spiritual angle to help heal myself first. So everyone heals themselves in different ways. I went the spirituality route first, and then I felt, "I think I understand why I'm here. I think there's something that's much grander, more powerful than what I can see." So there's a sense of anchoring that there's something beyond, that this may not be all there is, that existence could be possibly eternal, and so there's a sense of liberation.

But even with that, there are still other problems of psychological issues—still a sense of inadequacy, a sense of just like, I don't know, you know, I'm just not. So it creeps back in. Do you feel the sense of liberation, you know, in your spirit, and then day-to-day living you're pulled back into, "Oh, I'm not good enough"? And then I didn't feel good to the point where I was still seeking answers. I don't know why I'm still not feeling good. You know, I kind of understand my purpose now, like, you know, I want to be here, but I just—I don't feel good, so why?

So I ended up seeing a psychologist, who was a beautiful man, Dr. Cotton in Santa Monica. And I remember going to him, we had this series of, I think, multiple sessions. It literally was me arguing against him. He's telling me that I'm good enough, and I was telling him, "Absolutely, you're wrong. I'm not good enough." He said, "No, you are good enough." I said, "No, I am not good enough. You know, don't try to fool me. I know I'm not that great." So we're arguing back and forth. He said, "Tell me the statistics. Tell me why you think that way." So, we're like battling it out, me trying to convince him.

And eventually, I think we started to look at the sources, like, where are these ideas? Where did they come from? Like, why did you feel this way? You know, because nobody is good at everything. Like, why are you feeling this sense of dismay just because you are just like everybody else, that you're not good at everything? Like, why should you degrade yourself or discount who you are as a person? Maybe you're just, you know, we're all different. So nobody is as good at being you than you, right? You're the best at being you.

And then I started to realize that's true. There are things that I can do that nobody else can do, that there's something really special about me. Well, so is everybody else, but at least I could recognize that there's something really, really special that I'm the best at. So I'm not the best—I was still hooked on being the best—but that's okay. Maybe—maybe it's okay because I have something that I'm the best at.

That's an incredible story, and thank you for being so forthright. Um, not everyone has the constitution to actually open themselves up that way and say, "This is who I was and what was really happening for me." And what's really powerful about that is that somebody right now that's watching this episode is feeling the same way that you felt. And so many people suffer from imposter syndrome, but they're great. They're great in so many ways, but they can only focus in on this—this one aspect or a few aspects that they don't feel meet the standard.

And yet, you really identified that piece that, however you got there—through spirituality or psychology or a combination of all those things—you came to a place where you realized, "Hey, maybe I'm great at this thing, this one piece, and I can build from there." And that's a powerful process. That's an interesting pathway to peak performance because you went on to be a true peak performer after that. So take us to that spot.

Well, thank you for that. Um, yeah, you know, I went through medical school. At one point, I was very disappointed with the whole medical system—so disappointed I thought I'll get my MD, but I'm not going to work as a doctor. Forget this. You know, I was very turned off. Why?

Within the first month of being at UCLA, which is supposed to be pretty open-minded—we're West Coast, you know, we're liberal—so, I met a classmate who was an MD-PhD student. And so, I mentioned, "Yeah, you know, acupuncture has a lot of successes." And his response was, "No, there's no evidence it works." I said, "Are you serious?" I said, "Have you seen even our biomedical library? There are reams and reams of journals of publications showing that it works and works." Of course, a whole book, right, written by Nixon's journalist during the first visit to China—it's called The Web That Has No Weaver—because he witnessed somebody, was it himself or with acute appendicitis, and they did the surgery with only acupuncture, right? What's going on there? So it's—it's very real.

So when he said that, I said, "There is all this evidence. Just because you didn't look at it doesn't mean it doesn't exist." And then the next line of defense, he said, "Well, we don't know how it works, so it can't be real, right?" "We don't know how it works."

You know, it's so funny, I have to mention this to you. So when we were kids, my brother and I—my brother became really ill. So ill that he was gray. He was literally—I mean, like this kid, younger brother, we thought he was going to die. No one—the doctors couldn't figure out what it was. They didn't know, you know, they tested him for all these viruses and there wasn't anything. They couldn't figure out what it was. So in desperation, my mom went over the bridge to Chinatown to a Chinese medicine doctor and herbalist. They did some acupressure—I think they did acupuncture, I think it was using the finger—

Yeah.

—as a way to convey energy, right? And they made this tea. Two days later: fixed, cured. I mean, like running around. And he had been so sick, high fever for a month.

Wow.

And we really thought he was going to die.

Wow.

And so, you know, it's funny when you hear people say, "Oh, we don't know how it works and it's not proven," and all those types of things.

Yeah. Okay, this is the kicker. Then second year we had our pharmacology class, and you would be surprised at how many of these drugs we talk about—how you know the pharmacokinetics, you know how long it stays in the body and what kind of conditions you can deal with and blah blah blah blah blah—and then eventually we're going to talk about how it works, and majority of the time it says "mechanism unknown." So we have no idea how it works, but we know it works. We know how long it sits in the body, we know the toxic dose, so we know all that.

But no one is saying, "Oh, we don't know how it works, so that can't be legit." No one is questioning that. He wasn't questioning it. He was like, "Oh, yeah, you know, because of Big Pharma, because they came up with it, you know, whatever, for 50 years, and you tried it on some people. You don't care that this has been tried and survived 2,500 years because it works? Because you think Chinese people are dumb? If something doesn't work, you think they're going to keep using it?" The hypocrisy.

I was really mad. I was like, "These people are so arrogant. They don't know how it works and they're touting it as the greatest thing that's just Western science, but because you don't know how acupuncture works, you dismiss it as some kind of, you know, low-grade, some kind of trickery." So, I got so turned off.

This is an interesting story. And then when I was studying for a midterm exam—because all the students, we have 150 students in one year and we're all crammed into one small library. So if someone gets sick, a lot of us got sick. So I caught some kind of bug, I got really sick—so sick to the point that I didn't have the strength to go see a doctor, right? I'm just laying in bed, I just couldn't get out. But I was so turned off by this pharmacology, you know, about Western medicine. I was like, "I don't believe in it. Like, these people don't even know how it works and they're such hypocrites."

So, I was doing everything Eastern medicine. So, I was doing a vapor, I was smelling essential oil, I was doing some herbs, some Chinese medicine. I was doing all these things and I wasn't getting better. And I remember calling my mom, saying, "Mom, I'm really sick. I'm not doing well. You know, I have this cold and all that. A lot of people got it." And my mom said, "Are you taking antibiotics?" I said, "No." She said, "Take some antibiotics." I was like, "But I don't want to." She said, "Take some antibiotics. You know, that's what you need." I was like, "Fine." So, I took it. Started to get better and better and better.

So, that was like someone upstairs trying to teach me: "No, no, no, don't go to the other extreme. There's value in both systems. So respect both systems." But the key is don't be arrogant, right? Each one has its merit, so don't dismiss either one.

But still, I was not very happy with how medicine was practiced. You know, people were in the hospital taking so many medications with all these chronic conditions. It was just kind of depressing. It was—it was depressing to keep throwing medications at people, and I wasn't really sure how much fundamental difference I'm making for people. I think it's cliffhanging medicine. You know, chronic medical treatment in Western medicine is a cliffhanging thing because you keep people hanging in there without really getting them to recover and heal, but their symptoms are kind of like at bay, or whatever marker you want to check is at bay.

Never mind their body could be degrading just like diabetes. You focus on the blood sugar, but never mind all these organs are getting damaged and damaged because you're not looking at why they have diabetes in the first place. You're just focused on that little window, the blood sugar. So, it's barking up the wrong tree. So, I was very turned off.

But I was excited about one field, which was psychiatry, because I thought it was fascinating because we were actually able to get people out of psychosis, out of manic episodes, or even getting them out of depression. So it's very powerful.

So I haven't even mentioned the third part of my healing, which is the physical level. So I talk about the spiritual level and the psychological level because you have to understand your psychology as we were growing up. It's not just the spirit world that maybe we need to understand, but it's also how our brain makes up rules and logic and thoughts in reaction to our experiences. So we could be trapped in a loop of thoughts that are not good for our life, how we interact with the world. But that became a maladaptive pattern. That's where psychology comes in. So if you don't understand how these thoughts all come together, oftentimes making your life more difficult, then no matter how spiritual you are, when you come to the real world, you're going to run into those problems. So you need to solve the problem on the psychological level as well.

And then the last level is the physical. And that's something—I think, yes, you can meditate, you can do different things, but there's still a physicality to our existence. So if you don't have the right vitamins, if you have the wrong microbiome that's not giving you the right nutrients, if you are missing hormones, your healing—you never get to the full vibrancy that you can have.

So what happened to me, it was the perfect, perfect storm of being in the third year of medical school where we started doing rotations. One of the rotations I was doing was surgery. So, and it was a—not a very enjoyable surgical rotation. It was a vascular surgery rotation where I couldn't see anything because the doctors, the big surgeons, they're all six feet tall and they were all hovering over some blood vessels. So, I couldn't see anything. And then the surgery was so long because you're dealing with something so intricate, and you know, eight-hour long surgery—that's common.

And then we as medical students weren't even eligible to hold the traction, like we were—we were not utilized at all because we were not very useful. So, purely observer, and it was cold. It was just miserable. And then so I was pissed off because I felt I was learning nothing. I was ditching it, but then it was still long hours, not working out, not eating properly, not sleeping enough. You know, I get home at 10:00, I have to eat something, and then next morning I have to get up at 4:00 so I can make the round at six o'clock. You know, I have to pre-round and get the patient's data. So, it was miserable.

So, that perfect storm of not taking care of myself, right, mentally, physically, and then the pressure of—because they call it pimping. They pimp you, you know, "Oh, this patient has this, this is—what are we going to do?" So, and they don't hesitate to put you down. If you gave the wrong answer, they're going to make you feel really incompetent and like that you just, you know, you're—that you're not very smart. So, that kind of pressure and also physically not being properly nourished, I went into a depression. It was funny, I didn't know that half of my class were depressed.

But what's interesting was, I moved on to a medical rotation, internal medicine, and again depressing. Each person had 10 freaking diagnoses, right? They all carried all these systems, there's something wrong, and it just—intuitively you know that there probably are underlying problems, but Western medicine is segregating them into each organ. This organ has this problem, that organ has this problem. If you go to a Chinese medicine doctor, they give you one diagnosis that covers all the systems because energy—and there's a connection between all these systems. So if you address that, then all of those problems in all these organs are going to go away. So you have to find the root cause.

So anyhow, so I was turned off by that and I was just not motivated. And so the attending who was doing the rounds saw that I was not participating very much. So he pulled me aside at the end of the round. He said, "Joy, can you stay?" So everybody else left. And he said, "Um, are you okay?" I said, "Well, I'm fine. I'm, you know, I just gave myself sleep deprivation treatment because that's a treatment that works really well for depression. It kicks people right out of depression, but it's not sustainable, right? Because you're semi-delirious."

And so I said, "I'm fine." So being—being Chinese, right, being proud and, in a sense, resilient, I guess, but self-reliant and, you know, not wanting to admit anything—that it's all about willpower, right? I should be able to push through. I said, "I'm fine."

And he said, "Uh, no." When he heard what I said, you know, sleep deprivation treatment, he said, "No, no, no, no. We have psychologists and psychiatrists particularly for medical students because they know what happens to these medical students." He said, "You promise me you're going to see somebody." I was like, "No, I'm really fine." He said, "No, no, please promise me." I said, "Okay, fine. Okay, I promise you."

So, I did see this doctor. So, he said, "Okay, so what about your sleep? Your, you know, motivation, sense of self, and like all these things?" He asked all these questions. I gave him the answer. He said, "Clearly you have major depression." I said, "No, no." I said, "Are you sure? Are you sure I'm not just a weak person?" Because I really—you know, I just feel like I should be able to push through.

He said, "Joy, this is no different than there's something wrong—some physical, you know, some kind of error that's going on in the brain. No different than somebody having a kidney stone. So you think the person can will the kidney stone away? No, this is no different. There's something that's now physical that's taking place. So, no, think of it as a kidney stone." I said, "Okay, all right. All right." So he gave me Prozac and said, "Uh, take this and you should, you know, your symptoms should get better within two to three weeks, and that's a timeline."

So I started taking it, and at the same time I went to Spain for my spring break, and of course you don't have a whole lot of pressure. You're just relaxing and it was springtime in Spain—you know, like Sevilla, sunny. I remember I was walking around. So this is like less than—maybe 10 days into taking this medicine, and I just feel like, oh my god, life is so good. Like this, you know, the sun, the leaves—this is beautiful. And I'm feeling like this is so good. And that feeling I had not had for a long time. I was like, how am I—I'm feeling good.

And then spring break finished. I came back to a rotation, also internal medicine. So internal medicine—like really thinking about quitting medicine, really hating it, not even participating, like just not wanting to do this. And I came back from spring break, another internal medicine rotation, also tertiary care in a county hospital, complex cases. I loved it. I excelled. I did so well. The attending said, "Joy, you're really—you're really good. You—you should go into internal medicine." I was like, "What?" And this is from me wanting to quit medicine altogether. So that was an incredible transformation.

And guess what also went away? My eating disorder, because I was struggling with monthly—I think it's related to hormones. It gets a lot worse, exacerbated. Before my period, I would feel cravings, anxiety, and I'll eat, and the eating will get out of control because there's this positive loop. I don't know, it's—it was horrible. And then I'll feel really bad about myself, and I'll gain a little bit of weight, and then I'll starve myself so I can get back to the weight. So my weight never fluctuated that much, but internally I was having these horrific ups and downs.

For years that was the worst thing because I think I transferred all my angst into that one particular problem. Because I used to say everything is fine, my life is great, except for the eating disorder. But really, I just transmuted all my problems into that focal point, that I thought if I just didn't have that, then everything is fine. But I recognized that there was a hormonal component, that there's a physical component to my behavior, and I wanted help.

I was at a Mayo Clinic doing research and I went to a psychiatrist. I mean, I always cry for help. Because I took—I audited their pharmacology class and they were talking about antidepressants. And I was like, "Oh my god, I think I need that. That's really going to help me." So I went to the doctor. I said, "I think I need an antidepressant because I have this cyclical—I think it's physical. There's a physical, you know, component to it."

And he said, "I think you have a body image issue. So I want you to go to a group therapy first before I write any prescriptions for you." And I was not—I was upset with that because, in my mind, there's no way I'm going to let somebody talk me into, "It's okay to be fat," like to be overweight, that it's okay, like, "Accept yourself." No, I don't want to be overweight. I want to be healthy. I want to be at the weight that I want to be at. So sending me—I thought that was an insult, sending me to some group therapy so I can accept myself.

I mean, that's the fallacy, I think, of, you know, the starting wave of that—that you need to love yourself. But I don't want to love myself that way, and I want to love myself the healthier way. So but then that opportunity was missed. I think if that doctor had given me the medication, I would have—I would have a much better medical school experience. Yeah. So that was a missed opportunity.

But what this taught me was that that was the last arm of healing, is the physical arm. That, of course, at that time I didn't know much about integrative medicine. I didn't know that I could check my hormones, check my nutrients. I could do stem cells, like all these things that could help me repair on the physical level. I didn't know. So, I took a band-aid, but still it had some healing properties because it hit certain receptors and then it kind of reconstituted—allowed my brain to go back to a certain level of activity.

But then when stress piles on, then I need more. So, your body adapts to the level of medications, right? There's tolerance. So, I need more and more and more until I was at the highest dose. Next thing I'm looking at is to add another medication. So, I didn't want to do that. So I stayed there, you know, white-knuckling a little bit, not feeling quite perfect, but that's the highest dose I want to go until I ran into integrative medicine. So it's been, I don't know how many years, five, six, seven years that I've been off all medications, right?

So gradually, if you fix the root causes on the physical level—because I already took care of the spiritual and the psychological, you know, not perfectly, it's an ongoing journey, but I dealt with that. But the physical aspect, finally the root causes were addressed. The brain inflammation was calmed down. And now the healing is fairly complete, you know, but I'm going on the journey still. I could—I could be better.

But isn't it—I think everyone, it's sort of one of those things we talk about, the pathway to peak performance, right? And this is a very interesting point in time to talk about that because you definitely have been on this pathway and you've been seeking peak performance or trying to go always to that next level, and there's some part of it that is a sustainable level. Um, and what's really interesting about your story and listening to you is that you are persistent. You never give up.

What's the alternative, death? Like, am I—am I willing to just, you know, lay down my arms and just say, you know, I give up on life? I mean, that's not an option.

But so many people do that. What a waste of a gift.

Yeah. Right.

But with you, you say, "Okay, I'm going to go to the next level." And when you get to integrative medicine, what many people call longevity medicine—in fact, integrative functional medicine, anti-aging medicine, holistic medicine, whatever, alternative medicine, all these names.

Yeah. Yeah. When I started in my career, it was alternative medicine.

I know. Uh, and now—now we're longevity medicine and talking about all these things and getting the body in balance and being able to really figure out, okay, but through labs and all of these things to understand, okay, what do we need in order to really make ourselves perform at the right levels? And that's what's so exciting about what you're doing today.

Yeah. Finally. I feel like this is—actually, when I finished my psychiatry residency, I really wanted to have a practice where I incorporate Eastern medicine and Western medicine. However, I ran into a huge obstacle is that these two systems speak completely different languages, that I have trouble integrating the two. If one is talking about fire and dampness and the other one is talking about, you know, a receptor, how do I integrate these two?

And people have tried. The best effort I've seen, Dr. Hui at UCLA, he set up the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, where I actually did electives and an internship. But what I saw was side-by-side medicine; it's not integrated medicine. It's: okay, by Western medicine you have this diagnosis and this is how we treat it, but Eastern medicine you have this diagnosis, this is how we treat it. So we may use a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Is that true integration? It doesn't feel like it to me.

So intellectually it was not satisfying, side-by-side medicine, and Chinese medicine is also very, very complex. It's a whole language. I mean, people devote years and years, right, to really be proficient. So if I really put all my energy into that, is that really a high yield of, you know, of what I want to accomplish? So I kind of took a little pause on it, even though in my mind I love that holistic approach because all the organs are connected. So I can give you a direction of what I think would be good for the entire body, targeting all these organs all at once. I think that's a beautiful way of dealing with it.

But I didn't have a way of doing it with Western medicine until I ran into this integrative medicine, functional medicine—just a simple vitamin, right? As simple, you know, whatever, any vitamin B1 or magnesium, how many biological functions is it controlling in the body? All of a sudden, one thing is linking all the organs. And what's fascinating is like—I used to show people that chart of one missing element, you know, let's say zinc, there's a wheel of how many things can go wrong. Literally, all these organs have all these problems because of this one deficiency.

Now we can connect, right? We can connect, we can globally—we can be holistic that we're addressing—we found out that one problem that's root, you're magnesium deficient, now we give you that, all those problems go away. I mean, that's beautiful. So now we have a chance, and that's what integrative medicine is doing. It's very embracive of all these different elements that we've been not looking at because now we can look at the trace minerals, the vitamins, the amino acids, the different hormones. We can test all that.

You know, what about—I think energy medicine is the next, it's a little harder to test, but it absolutely is going to be one of the dominant forces of modern medicine. That's why grounding is so powerful, right? That's energy therapy. So when I found that, I realized, okay, now I have a language. I know how to speak magnesium, right? So, so that language I can speak. So, I can give you magnesium now and be holistic. So now it's a way for me to integrate.

And of course, a lot of these disciplines are borrowing elements from traditional medicine like Chinese medicine because they saw, "Well, this Chinese medicine, they're doing this and that works for all these organs. So, what— what are they doing? What did they uncover?" And they borrow that, they try to study that, and that's how, you know, I see the two is becoming, you know, coming together. But I think when we understand more about energy medicine, about the energy flow in the body, then we're going to have more integration going on.

I think, you know, now intellectually I'm—I'm happy because I can be a holistic practitioner, that I can address some root causes that previously we were not taught. And how—how are you going to know anything about nutrition if you are taught for half an hour? You know as much as the next person on the street. So that's a doctor. It's—it's—it's almost crazy to think like people don't really realize how, in this hyper-palatable ultra-processed food that's just, you know, readily available now, and people are just not well.

I think—I think it's changing. I really do believe that people are starting to come around. You're seeing people drink less alcohol and eat less food like that, and like these chain restaurants are dying off. People not wanting to eat that kind of food.

Good.

Which is super positive. I mean, think about it.

Because you don't have to eat junk. You can make a chain of really, really healthy stuff. Why not? You know, right? Why not? It's—it's amazing. You know, I never—it's funny, I will admit there are sometimes when I do eat some fried food. It's very little, right? And what kind of oil?

Well, that's the—you know, that's the one thing. Oftentimes it's probably going to be rice oil, but it's because it's dim sum.

Oh, you're a dim sum lover! That is hard to give up. Yes.

So, most of the time what I'm trying to do is—it's all steamed, right? So, I would say 90% of the entire meal is all steamed, but there are little things along the way that are, you know, you just can't quite pass it up. Um, but I really never eat fried food anymore. Although, there was a period of time I did, and now I think about it and I say to myself, "Oh my gosh, so toxic, so toxic to the body."

One of the things I think that you said that I really love is this notion of once we come into alignment and we're able to take a look at these things, and you can start to really address the root cause. That is the key, isn't it? To be able to address the root cause and understand exactly what does someone need. For instance, you know, you mentioned amino acids. Well, I take my essential aminos every single day, and I take my essential minerals every single day. I do all of the things. I have a pretty advanced, you know, routine and stack that I work with in order to maintain—you know, I want to stay young. I want to live a vibrant life.

And there's only one way to do that, is to be serious about it. Is to really be disciplined and focus in on, "Hey, does that make sense?" Does it make sense to do that? No. Most of the time what we see out there doesn't make sense. And you've really moved into a direction of creating a clinic where people are learning this, and it's such a powerful, interesting time because it's exploding. It's taking off. I can only imagine how successful you are in what you do.

Oh, thank you. What I see, you know, my success are my patients. And I mean, I keep—even just yesterday, you know, I took two screenshots of people's comments without me knowing, because sometimes they comment on my social media or my YouTube video like just unsolicited. You know, someone was saying, "Yeah, I go to Dr. Joy Kong for treatment and I was looking at losing, you know, my knees—I wasn't sure what's going to happen, and then we did treatment. Now it's amazing, now it's—it's perfectly fine and, you know, I can't wait to go back."

It just is seeing something like that, the impact it had on people's lives. I mean, that's—that's why—that's why I'm doing this. This is why, you know, my staff, you know, they're—they're—I think when you have your heart in it, that aligns with, you know, I think with your soul, I think there's a deep sense of contentment when—when you can do that.

Yeah. The sense of satisfaction associated with doing what you believe is the right thing and providing the highest level of care and service to people is—it must be as much as it can. So yeah, and it keeps getting better. It's an exciting time and you've done some amazing things. Um, and your practice continues to grow. You're like prolific on social media. You have an incredible social media presence. Uh, whoever does your social media, they're great.

I try.

Yeah. And you have a podcast and you just won an award—one of the best, I think it was what? Best medical podcast?

Physician Public Education Podcast.

There you go. Yeah. That's a big—that's a big win. And you've had other—other awards. Uh, you've created some products, you've written a book. Um, you—you just keep going. You know, Dr. Kong, it's been so great to have you here today. I've really enjoyed it and I look forward to keeping in touch and learning more about what you're doing as time goes on. I hope we can remain friends.

Absolutely. We definitely got into territories that I have not gone to that kind of depth before. Yeah, the healing journey. I mean, that's a very unique, you know, conversation. But thank you for getting that out of me and I hope that really inspired people.

I think it will. Thank you for coming today.