Dr. Craig Koniver: Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.720 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.380 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.520 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.520 | My guest today is Dr. Craig Conover.

00:00:18.060 | Dr. Craig Conover is a medical doctor

00:00:19.980 | who did his training at Brown University

00:00:22.040 | and Thomas Jefferson University.

00:00:24.200 | He is a world expert in what he refers to

00:00:26.280 | as performance medicine,

00:00:28.280 | which involves the use of peptides and other therapies

00:00:30.760 | for improving mental health,

00:00:32.000 | physical health, and performance.

00:00:34.160 | Now, many of you have perhaps heard of peptide therapies.

00:00:37.080 | Perhaps some of you have not.

00:00:38.520 | A peptide is simply a small protein,

00:00:40.600 | so insulin is a peptide.

00:00:42.400 | We have many different thousands of peptides

00:00:44.800 | in our brain and body,

00:00:45.920 | and they perform a variety of different roles.

00:00:49.180 | Dr. Conover's expertise is in the use of exogenous,

00:00:52.260 | that is, peptides that one takes,

00:00:54.480 | exogenous peptides for activating multiple pathways

00:00:58.220 | in the brain and body to augment health.

00:01:00.360 | Now, of course, peptides such as insulin

00:01:02.080 | have been used for many years now

00:01:03.840 | to treat things like diabetes,

00:01:05.600 | but today we talk about novel peptides, including GLP-1.

00:01:09.800 | So these are glucagon-like peptide analogs,

00:01:12.640 | things like Ozempic and Munjaro,

00:01:14.300 | which I realize are a bit controversial.

00:01:16.400 | However, today we talk about the microdosing

00:01:18.920 | of those peptides.

00:01:19.760 | We talk about those peptides combined with other peptides,

00:01:22.200 | as well as behavioral practices

00:01:23.860 | to offset the muscle loss associated with them.

00:01:26.360 | And then we dive into some lesser-known peptides,

00:01:28.420 | but ones that are growing in use.

00:01:30.820 | For instance, BPC-157, or body protection compound 157,

00:01:35.820 | which is used to treat inflammation,

00:01:38.060 | to accelerate wound healing, and a variety of other things.

00:01:41.620 | Then we discuss the use of peptides

00:01:43.180 | specifically to increase growth hormone secretion

00:01:46.020 | during sleep, as well as some peptides

00:01:48.420 | that can actually increase rapid eye movement

00:01:50.660 | sleep dramatically.

00:01:52.220 | Today, we also discuss testosterone therapies,

00:01:54.480 | not just for men, but for women.

00:01:56.300 | These are growing increasingly popular,

00:01:58.340 | as well as things like NAD, as well as specific supplements.

00:02:02.260 | Dr. Conover, as he will soon tell you,

00:02:04.420 | is not a huge proponent of supplements,

00:02:06.780 | but he does mention several that he feels

00:02:08.740 | are of particular use, including things like coenzyme Q10,

00:02:11.740 | and some of the methylated B vitamins,

00:02:13.620 | and he explains why he takes that stance.

00:02:16.020 | So today's discussion is really for anybody interested

00:02:18.600 | in mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:02:20.940 | And the reason I say that

00:02:22.500 | is that even if you aren't considering taking peptides

00:02:24.900 | or are already taking peptides,

00:02:26.780 | peptides and some of these other compounds I've mentioned

00:02:29.200 | sit somewhere between doing nothing except diet and exercise,

00:02:34.200 | supplements, which I sort of see as the next step

00:02:37.100 | up the ladder in terms of augmenting your health approaches.

00:02:40.300 | And then of course, there are a number of prescription drugs

00:02:42.940 | including hormone therapies,

00:02:44.560 | such as growth hormone therapies, testosterone therapies,

00:02:47.040 | and a number of other things that,

00:02:49.500 | yes, can modify those hormone pathways,

00:02:51.860 | they are in fact hormones,

00:02:53.180 | but they actually can shut down one's natural production

00:02:56.640 | of those hormone pathways.

00:02:58.420 | Peptide therapy sits somewhere between

00:03:00.680 | doing nothing and supplementation

00:03:02.300 | and those more advanced hormone therapies.

00:03:04.400 | And that's why peptide therapies, I believe,

00:03:06.660 | are growing in popularity.

00:03:08.100 | They can augment specific hormone pathways.

00:03:10.840 | They can augment specific, in fact, multiple processes

00:03:13.960 | within the brain and body to augment health,

00:03:16.220 | but they don't tend to operate

00:03:18.080 | in that negative feedback cycle

00:03:19.700 | by shutting down one's own endogenous production.

00:03:22.580 | Now, that doesn't mean that they aren't

00:03:23.980 | without some safety concerns.

00:03:25.500 | And today we, of course, discuss the potential side effects

00:03:28.340 | and safety concerns of peptides,

00:03:29.980 | as well as the critical issue of sourcing clean peptides

00:03:33.740 | and working with a board certified physician

00:03:36.180 | if one is going to pursue peptide use.

00:03:38.820 | So by the end of today's discussion,

00:03:40.380 | you will be right there on the cutting edge

00:03:42.180 | of what's happening and where things are going with peptides.

00:03:44.860 | And in keeping with that,

00:03:46.240 | you'll notice that during today's discussion,

00:03:48.140 | we talk a fair amount about what the FDA currently allows

00:03:52.100 | in terms of prescription peptides,

00:03:54.260 | what the FDA has recently removed from the market

00:03:57.240 | in terms of peptides.

00:03:58.580 | And as a very recent update,

00:04:00.500 | just prior to the release of this episode,

00:04:02.660 | I learned that three peptides, CJC1295, ipamiralin,

00:04:07.220 | both of which are in the growth hormone secretogog family,

00:04:10.060 | meaning they promote the release of growth hormone,

00:04:12.900 | as well as thymosin beta-alpha,

00:04:14.440 | which is in the sort of anti-inflammatory

00:04:16.500 | and tissue repair pathway,

00:04:18.300 | those three are now re-allowed

00:04:20.940 | for prescription in the United States.

00:04:23.200 | So at the time of recording this episode,

00:04:25.380 | we discussed some of those as being recently banned

00:04:27.980 | by the FDA.

00:04:28.820 | They are now approved again for use in humans by the FDA.

00:04:33.660 | So there's a brief and very recent update.

00:04:36.500 | So just to summarize this admittedly long introduction,

00:04:40.180 | today you're going to learn about this incredible area

00:04:43.260 | of science called peptide biology

00:04:45.280 | and how it can augment mental health, physical health,

00:04:47.740 | and performance, and you're going to do so

00:04:49.740 | from one of the world's leading clinical experts.

00:04:52.540 | Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize

00:04:54.360 | that this podcast is separate from my teaching

00:04:56.300 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:04:57.900 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:05:00.060 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:05:01.980 | about science and science-related tools

00:05:03.960 | to the general public.

00:05:05.300 | In keeping with that theme,

00:05:06.400 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:05:08.940 | Our first sponsor is Juve.

00:05:10.900 | Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices.

00:05:14.180 | Now, if there's one thing

00:05:15.020 | that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast,

00:05:17.580 | it is the incredible impact

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00:05:21.080 | Now, in addition to sunlight,

00:05:22.320 | red light and near infrared light sources

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00:05:52.920 | Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel

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00:06:19.180 | Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

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00:06:27.080 | Therapy is an extremely important component

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00:07:37.240 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Craig Conover.

00:07:40.460 | Dr. Craig Conover, welcome.

00:07:42.940 | - Thank you, Andrew.

00:07:43.780 | I appreciate the invitation to be here.

00:07:46.060 | - I'm thrilled that you're here.

00:07:47.300 | We are going to launch ourselves

00:07:49.540 | into the space that is called peptides.

00:07:53.260 | And it's an interesting space.

00:07:55.420 | - For sure.

00:07:56.260 | - Because I think most people

00:07:58.380 | probably don't know what a peptide is.

00:08:00.260 | They should feel no guilt or shame about that.

00:08:02.780 | I'm sure you'll tell us.

00:08:04.620 | But this area of medicine

00:08:07.760 | that people broadly refer to as peptides

00:08:10.360 | is picking up a lot of momentum,

00:08:12.480 | even though it's been around for a long time.

00:08:14.920 | And I find it particularly interesting

00:08:16.960 | because there are many people using peptides

00:08:20.600 | for very specific purposes,

00:08:22.840 | but most people haven't really heard

00:08:26.800 | of the various peptides that are out there.

00:08:29.200 | And if anything, we can be sure that in the years to come,

00:08:34.820 | peptides are going to be increasingly popular.

00:08:37.940 | - I totally agree.

00:08:38.780 | - And there's, of course,

00:08:39.600 | the incredibly popular peptide of GLP-1 agonists.

00:08:44.600 | - For sure, taking over.

00:08:46.880 | - So to drop into this

00:08:49.020 | and make sure everyone's on the same page,

00:08:52.700 | what is a peptide?

00:08:53.620 | - Yeah, I mean, just from a very elementary level,

00:08:57.140 | peptides are just chains of amino acids.

00:08:59.340 | So amino acids, all naturally occurring molecules.

00:09:02.180 | We call it a peptide if it's 40 amino acids or less,

00:09:05.320 | call it a protein if it's 41 amino acids or more.

00:09:08.600 | The body makes, I think last I read, 300,000 peptides.

00:09:12.920 | So it's a massive number.

00:09:15.200 | We probably therapeutically are using

00:09:17.280 | closer to 150 over the years,

00:09:19.840 | which is obviously tiny compared to that.

00:09:22.100 | So to your point, this is blossoming.

00:09:24.560 | We've been using peptides for about eight years,

00:09:26.480 | a long time, but still very early

00:09:30.120 | in our understanding of how best to use peptides

00:09:33.680 | and how clinically we're gonna get the most out of them.

00:09:35.800 | So it's exciting.

00:09:36.920 | - Maybe just to orient ourselves,

00:09:39.120 | we should talk about GLP-1 first,

00:09:43.200 | not because it's necessarily the category of peptides

00:09:47.520 | that I think people would want to consider for themselves,

00:09:52.520 | but because most people have probably heard

00:09:55.040 | of semi-glutide and Munjaro and things like that.

00:09:59.760 | - Sure.

00:10:00.600 | - So how long ago was it that humans started injecting

00:10:04.520 | GLP-1 agonists in order to lose weight?

00:10:08.000 | - I think the weight loss aspect

00:10:09.840 | has only been a couple of years.

00:10:11.080 | I mean, it's been tremendous how it's accelerated

00:10:14.000 | to literally becoming the number one prescribed in America.

00:10:17.460 | Semi-glutide ozempic was approved longer than that

00:10:22.620 | for four type two diabetics, helping with glucose control

00:10:27.120 | and helping with glucose utilization.

00:10:29.960 | And what they found as a side effect

00:10:32.360 | was that these people were losing weight.

00:10:34.440 | And then that word caught on.

00:10:36.720 | And what's interesting,

00:10:37.960 | and I don't think most people understand this,

00:10:39.240 | most of the medicines prescribed, particularly in America,

00:10:42.040 | are prescribed off-label,

00:10:43.360 | meaning they've never, ever been approved

00:10:45.220 | for what they're used.

00:10:46.060 | - Is that right?

00:10:47.040 | - Yeah, the vast majority, yeah, are never approved.

00:10:50.840 | So as a physician, I'm allowed to prescribe any drug

00:10:55.100 | for any reason I want,

00:10:56.400 | as long as it's been approved for something, right?

00:10:58.360 | As long as we're safe, right?

00:10:59.960 | We don't wanna be cavalier about this

00:11:01.200 | and renegade and do all these things

00:11:02.920 | that are out of bounds.

00:11:05.420 | But that is the truth.

00:11:06.480 | So semi-glutide's a great example

00:11:09.120 | being used for helping people,

00:11:11.560 | diabetics, type two diabetics, lower their blood sugar.

00:11:14.680 | And then it got to,

00:11:15.520 | well, now let's help diabetics lose weight, right?

00:11:17.960 | Because diabetics struggle with weight,

00:11:20.280 | the insulin resistance.

00:11:21.760 | And then it became, well, even if you're not a diabetic,

00:11:24.760 | could you benefit from losing weight?

00:11:26.920 | Well, heck yeah, right?

00:11:28.360 | I mean, look at the amount of obesity

00:11:30.440 | in people who are overweight

00:11:31.280 | and having trouble maintaining a healthy weight.

00:11:33.080 | It's exorbitant in this country and certainly worldwide.

00:11:36.560 | So then it spread.

00:11:38.020 | It did eventually get FDA approval

00:11:41.020 | specifically for weight loss.

00:11:43.420 | But at first, no, it's been just for type two diabetics

00:11:47.280 | to help with glucose utilization.

00:11:49.740 | And we've been using primarily terzepatide,

00:11:53.400 | which is like semi-glutide version 2.0,

00:11:56.040 | mostly for the past two years,

00:11:58.600 | have learned a tremendous amount.

00:12:00.720 | And my opinion's actually changed from working with people.

00:12:04.200 | - Yeah, what is your opinion?

00:12:05.080 | My understanding is that,

00:12:06.320 | well, there's sort of two camps on this, it seems.

00:12:09.840 | At least two camps.

00:12:10.960 | One camp seems really bullish on this.

00:12:13.480 | They seem very excited about this drug.

00:12:15.600 | The other camp seems to point to the fact

00:12:18.360 | that one may be creating a drug dependency,

00:12:22.320 | that it's very expensive.

00:12:24.000 | And they point to the also potency of lifestyle factors

00:12:28.920 | like exercise and caloric restriction,

00:12:32.120 | eating mostly non-processed foods, et cetera,

00:12:34.360 | as a "better alternative."

00:12:36.520 | I'm not necessarily saying that.

00:12:37.800 | I think they both have their place.

00:12:40.000 | To me, it seems very contextual.

00:12:41.520 | But as a clinician, I'm curious what you think.

00:12:43.480 | - Yeah, I agree.

00:12:44.320 | Both have their place.

00:12:45.560 | My philosophy is I want everyone to have access

00:12:48.960 | to things that are, number one, safe,

00:12:51.520 | that propel them to look, feel, and perform their best.

00:12:54.960 | And if that means, right, if it was just about,

00:12:57.920 | if I can exercise my way out of this,

00:12:59.720 | eat my way out of this, meaning lose weight,

00:13:02.480 | change my body composition,

00:13:04.120 | why do we have an epidemic of so many people

00:13:07.600 | who struggle with that?

00:13:09.200 | 'Cause it's really hard, right?

00:13:10.560 | And we don't totally understand it.

00:13:12.160 | I'm not saying that, yeah,

00:13:13.400 | the processed food thing's a massive problem.

00:13:16.120 | I mean, I know that's come to light recently

00:13:18.440 | with people pushing for us to take a look

00:13:20.720 | at food companies and the quality of our food,

00:13:23.320 | which is amazing.

00:13:25.140 | But if people aren't interested

00:13:26.800 | in doing better for themselves,

00:13:28.400 | and this may not make sense, but I think it does,

00:13:32.320 | the analogy I use is I like to help people

00:13:34.240 | win the race first, which then helps them motivate

00:13:37.400 | to train for the next race, right?

00:13:39.200 | And this kind of goes against the grain

00:13:41.000 | of conventional medicine, which is,

00:13:42.840 | if you wanna train for the race,

00:13:43.860 | you have to run a certain number of miles,

00:13:46.000 | you have to sleep a certain way,

00:13:46.840 | you have to eat a certain way,

00:13:47.880 | you have to do all the things, struggle to get there, right?

00:13:51.140 | And losing weight is a struggle.

00:13:53.400 | And the way I look at it,

00:13:54.400 | if I can help people lose weight first,

00:13:56.120 | literally by using something like terzapotide,

00:13:58.360 | semaglutide, and I've seen this, they're now excited.

00:14:01.780 | I mean, I met with a client yesterday here in Los Angeles,

00:14:04.920 | and she literally looked at me and said,

00:14:06.120 | "You've changed my life."

00:14:07.640 | She goes, "I am a super successful woman in my company,

00:14:10.400 | "with my family, with my kids.

00:14:12.300 | "Everything's great, but now I love my life.

00:14:15.560 | "My workouts are better, I look better,

00:14:17.460 | "my clothes fit better.

00:14:18.320 | "I am super excited about waking up every morning."

00:14:21.360 | Like, she is there, and that is what it's about, right?

00:14:25.640 | And so for people,

00:14:26.480 | if you can help them achieve their goal first,

00:14:29.080 | then they're gonna be motivated.

00:14:30.000 | The light bulb turns on, they're gonna be like,

00:14:31.480 | "Wow, I want more of this."

00:14:32.960 | And that's the aha moment that I love helping people with.

00:14:36.400 | So at first, I was like,

00:14:37.960 | "Oh, we gotta be really cautious with this."

00:14:39.480 | Same thinking, like,

00:14:40.440 | I don't want people to lose too much weight.

00:14:42.320 | Like, this is a problem.

00:14:43.160 | Are they gonna be dependent?

00:14:44.040 | I'm like the notion that you have to take something

00:14:45.840 | the rest of your life.

00:14:47.380 | And I'm not saying it has to be the rest of your life,

00:14:49.760 | but when something works,

00:14:51.240 | and as far as I can tell, it's very safe,

00:14:54.680 | I think it's worth discussing.

00:14:56.320 | And I like people having those options, at least.

00:14:58.960 | - Yeah, it sounds like from the story you just told us,

00:15:01.920 | that it's not just about an aesthetic change

00:15:05.120 | that motivates people to lean into other aspects

00:15:07.680 | of their health and life when they lose some weight,

00:15:10.120 | that it's also just the sheer, literal weight,

00:15:14.120 | and also that adipose tissue, fat tissue,

00:15:17.080 | produces a lot of hormones that we know impact the brain

00:15:20.100 | and brain function, which is not to say

00:15:22.620 | that there aren't people out there

00:15:23.980 | with a lot of adipose tissues

00:15:25.260 | who aren't extremely bright and motivated, et cetera,

00:15:28.680 | but many people who are carrying excess body fat

00:15:31.420 | don't feel good, they report brain fog, et cetera.

00:15:34.580 | And I think now, thanks to Chris Palmer,

00:15:36.580 | and actually at Stanford,

00:15:37.420 | there's also a program in metabolic psychiatry,

00:15:39.380 | we're starting to see, or understand and appreciate

00:15:43.180 | the link between adipose tissue and brain health,

00:15:46.180 | or lack of brain health in most cases.

00:15:48.080 | - Sure.

00:15:48.920 | - So in the case of GLP-1,

00:15:51.600 | people have criticized it,

00:15:55.040 | saying that a fair percentage of the weight that's lost

00:15:58.560 | is lean body mass, muscle loss.

00:16:01.520 | But it seems to me that can be remedied pretty easily

00:16:03.440 | if people just do some resistance training.

00:16:05.480 | - I think part of that, yeah, resistance training.

00:16:07.800 | The other thing I would say is from what we've seen

00:16:10.420 | is when people are using the conventional dosages,

00:16:14.360 | they're losing weight too quickly.

00:16:16.400 | And so what we do is we get both semi-glutide,

00:16:20.000 | mostly terzapatide compounded,

00:16:21.960 | and that allows us to use basically micro dosages,

00:16:25.400 | and start very low in terms of dosage

00:16:28.440 | and go slowly with people.

00:16:29.760 | And what we found is as long as people are losing

00:16:31.840 | less two pounds or less a week,

00:16:34.880 | they're not losing the muscle mass.

00:16:37.120 | We certainly encourage adequate protein intake,

00:16:40.760 | resistance training, but that micro dosing

00:16:43.240 | has been a game-changer, literally a game-changer,

00:16:45.980 | because then people don't feel like,

00:16:48.180 | and I've seen it where when we started,

00:16:49.740 | people were losing 15 pounds in three weeks.

00:16:52.900 | - Goodness.

00:16:53.740 | - And then they're excited, but then they're not,

00:16:56.260 | 'cause then they come off of it

00:16:57.100 | and they just gain it right back.

00:16:58.420 | Or they lose a lot of weight

00:16:59.340 | and they lose that fat in their face,

00:17:00.740 | and they look like skeletons.

00:17:01.780 | We've seen those called ozempic faces.

00:17:03.300 | We don't like the way that looks,

00:17:05.180 | and that fat takes a while to come back.

00:17:06.900 | So if we just go slowly with this,

00:17:08.920 | and we can really dial it in and nuance it,

00:17:11.940 | that has had a tremendous impact.

00:17:13.720 | And now, beyond the weight loss,

00:17:16.760 | we're seeing cognitive benefits.

00:17:18.680 | We're seeing inflammation benefits.

00:17:20.520 | A lot of people with autoimmune disease,

00:17:22.400 | who their inflammation markers are coming down,

00:17:24.600 | and that's the only thing we can think is working.

00:17:27.240 | - Is that a direct effect of ozempic on the immune system

00:17:32.240 | and pathways related to inflammation,

00:17:35.940 | or is it indirect through the loss of adipose tissue,

00:17:39.560 | body fat, which then lowers inflammation?

00:17:42.620 | - Great question.

00:17:43.460 | Or I could say, is it the positive thoughts

00:17:46.100 | that come from looking at yourself in the mirror

00:17:47.540 | and feeling good, right?

00:17:49.020 | Which transcends to feeling better about yourself,

00:17:51.540 | and that feeds forward to the momentum

00:17:53.180 | that you put forth in the world.

00:17:54.740 | All of those things.

00:17:55.580 | I think it's all of the above.

00:17:57.080 | You know, I think that's gonna be hard to dissect,

00:17:58.900 | but it's real.

00:17:59.740 | I mean, I have a patient, she's 50.

00:18:02.460 | She has Hashimoto's thyroiditis,

00:18:04.540 | meaning she attacks her thyroid.

00:18:06.020 | She doesn't make enough thyroid hormones,

00:18:07.940 | so she takes thyroid hormone.

00:18:09.060 | Well, one of the challenges with that

00:18:10.380 | is they make a lot of thyroid antibodies,

00:18:12.220 | this antibody called thyroid peroxidase antibody.

00:18:14.580 | And when you have an elevated thyroid peroxidase antibody,

00:18:16.940 | you don't feel good.

00:18:17.760 | You feel inflamed, your joints hurt, you get rashes.

00:18:20.380 | Life is just not easy.

00:18:22.520 | And it's a challenge to get that number down.

00:18:24.580 | I mean, it's certainly a challenge for me.

00:18:26.140 | You know, we traditionally use probiotics,

00:18:28.420 | a lot of things to help bolster the immune system.

00:18:31.060 | Well, now we're starting to use the GLP-1s,

00:18:33.500 | and we're seeing that those antibody levels come down.

00:18:36.500 | And I don't have a great way of explaining it,

00:18:39.020 | but there's something going on that's very positive.

00:18:41.440 | - Very interesting.

00:18:42.940 | Well, I suppose moving from most widely known,

00:18:47.620 | peptides are still fairly unknown to most people,

00:18:51.140 | even the concept, but that's why you're here.

00:18:53.600 | You're changing that right now.

00:18:55.740 | But moving from things like GLP-1

00:18:58.340 | to what I would probably call

00:19:01.780 | the second most popular peptide,

00:19:03.780 | the one that we're hearing more and more about all the time,

00:19:07.740 | and that's BPC-157, body protection compound 157,

00:19:11.560 | which to my understanding, there are a lot of animal data,

00:19:17.260 | very few, if any, clinical studies on humans,

00:19:20.100 | but a lot of people now taking BPC in various forms.

00:19:23.180 | What are some known uses for BPC,

00:19:28.880 | let's just say within your clinic,

00:19:30.900 | and then we'll get around to the fact that BPC has,

00:19:34.580 | let's hope temporarily been taken off market,

00:19:37.420 | and what some of the alternatives are,

00:19:39.040 | but what is BPC?

00:19:42.100 | What instances or people have you found it useful for?

00:19:45.740 | - So many.

00:19:46.580 | So I think with BPC, for me,

00:19:48.980 | kind of the most utilized peptide that we've used.

00:19:51.500 | So we'd like to use BPC almost with every patient.

00:19:55.420 | It is very anti-inflammatory, right?

00:19:57.860 | And so just from a very general perspective,

00:20:01.100 | most people walking around who are adults,

00:20:03.900 | they're stiff, they're sores, they get older, they work out.

00:20:06.700 | We work with athletes of all levels.

00:20:08.820 | There's that element of inflammation.

00:20:11.080 | Maybe they have some chronic disease,

00:20:12.660 | diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease.

00:20:14.680 | Inflammation is paramount, we understand that.

00:20:17.140 | And BPC, I observe with so many patients,

00:20:21.060 | we're talking thousands upon thousands of patients,

00:20:23.340 | where their inflammation comes down, so they feel better.

00:20:25.640 | They're not as stiff, they're not as sore,

00:20:26.940 | their knee doesn't hurt as much, their shoulder's improved.

00:20:29.940 | So we've learned that we start with a dose

00:20:34.260 | based upon these, like you said, animal studies,

00:20:37.320 | which is conservative, make sure it's safe.

00:20:39.420 | And then we've seen over time that we can get

00:20:42.220 | to higher and higher dosages

00:20:43.820 | and have even more of an impact, you know?

00:20:45.780 | And I think, so for people understanding using BPC,

00:20:49.020 | we started with a dose of like 500 micrograms a day.

00:20:52.220 | We got up to 5,000 micrograms a day, you know?

00:20:55.140 | And we'd like a protocol five days on, two days off.

00:20:57.780 | And that's been very helpful for a variety of things

00:21:00.480 | from post-viral, you know, with the pandemic.

00:21:02.900 | We've had a lot of success with BPC, to again, you name it.

00:21:06.780 | Honestly, almost everyone I could think of,

00:21:09.420 | particularly as people are engaging

00:21:10.780 | more fitness-related lives, they're working out more.

00:21:13.620 | I would argue that anyone who's working out

00:21:15.740 | on a regular basis, BPC is gonna benefit.

00:21:18.540 | It's gonna help, you know, improve the inflammatory status,

00:21:21.820 | but also help with recovery.

00:21:23.260 | And it doesn't seem to be one of these agents

00:21:26.140 | that's gonna be detrimental.

00:21:27.340 | Like we were talking earlier, Rob and I, for the starter,

00:21:30.620 | like, you know, they found that people

00:21:32.520 | are working out hard taking antioxidants,

00:21:34.260 | that there seems to be a negative consequence to that

00:21:36.580 | because you don't allow the body to kind of repair itself.

00:21:39.400 | I don't think that's happening with BPC.

00:21:41.240 | - That's interesting because my understanding

00:21:43.100 | is also that part of the specific and general adaptation

00:21:48.060 | of exercise is triggered by inflammation.

00:21:50.540 | This is why indeed it is true that doing ice bath

00:21:54.380 | or really cold water immersion, cold shower seems fine,

00:21:57.580 | but cold water immersion in the, you know,

00:21:59.940 | four to eight hours after resistance training

00:22:02.060 | can limit some of the hypertrophy and strength gains

00:22:04.300 | from resistance training, because what you're inducing

00:22:07.060 | when you actually go into the gym

00:22:08.220 | is that leads to the hypertrophy and strength training

00:22:10.780 | is an inflammation response

00:22:12.300 | that triggers the compensation or the hyper compensation.

00:22:15.940 | So it's interesting, you're saying that BPC,

00:22:19.120 | by the way, I must say this because then,

00:22:22.540 | forgive the editorial, but that is not to say

00:22:24.500 | that cold plunges and cold immersion is bad.

00:22:27.140 | It's just in the hours following resistance training,

00:22:30.020 | specifically for hypertrophy and strength training.

00:22:32.100 | If those are your goals,

00:22:33.540 | probably best to do it outside of that window.

00:22:35.820 | Other times it has some tremendous benefits.

00:22:38.780 | Be safe, but there.

00:22:40.300 | Okay, back to the topic again, forgive me,

00:22:42.560 | but this can set off a complicated storm of sorts

00:22:47.560 | if I'm not ultra clear about the details.

00:22:50.500 | BPC-157, strongly anti-inflammatory.

00:22:54.300 | My understanding is it also may up-regulate

00:22:56.220 | growth hormone receptors.

00:22:57.460 | - It does, right, and so it works well

00:22:59.020 | if you're, you know, we'll get into taking

00:23:01.420 | a growth hormone-releasing peptide.

00:23:03.140 | It pairs very well with that,

00:23:04.380 | 'cause then you're working both sides of the equation,

00:23:05.940 | meaning if you're using a growth hormone-releasing peptide

00:23:08.460 | like semirelin or ipermirelin, GHRP6, whatever,

00:23:11.740 | you're helping your pituitary put out more growth hormone.

00:23:14.620 | Well, if you combine it with BPC,

00:23:15.940 | which up-regulates the growth hormone receptor,

00:23:17.780 | you make the process of growth hormone binding

00:23:20.820 | more efficient, so you get more out of it.

00:23:22.620 | Then you can use less of the growth hormone-releasing peptide

00:23:25.800 | with the same result.

00:23:27.220 | - Got it.

00:23:28.180 | BPC-157 comes in many different forms,

00:23:31.660 | or it used to when it was FDA not disallowed.

00:23:36.660 | So I could imagine how the oral forms

00:23:40.180 | would allow for a just general anti-inflammatory response.

00:23:45.180 | It's a gut peptide, so we don't have to worry

00:23:48.100 | about it being destroyed by the gut.

00:23:49.460 | Most peptides that go into the gut are broken down.

00:23:51.620 | - Correct.

00:23:52.460 | - But this peptide, when it's naturally occurring,

00:23:55.100 | occurs in the gut, so it survives in the gut.

00:23:57.700 | So if somebody is taking BPC-157 orally

00:24:00.800 | through a capsule or tablet form,

00:24:02.740 | my guess is that has a general anti-inflammation response.

00:24:08.100 | - I think it can.

00:24:09.260 | What we've observed is it's more limited to the gut.

00:24:11.580 | So people with any sort of gastrointestinal issue,

00:24:14.580 | whether that's inflammatory bowel disease

00:24:16.100 | like Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel,

00:24:19.480 | you name it, leaky gut,

00:24:20.660 | I think oral BPC is more effective there.

00:24:23.740 | - Has it been shown to be effective for those conditions

00:24:26.220 | or have you observed that clinically?

00:24:27.980 | - I've certainly observed that clinically,

00:24:29.780 | but interestingly, I've observed a better clinical response

00:24:32.980 | when people inject it,

00:24:34.400 | even for gastrointestinal related things.

00:24:36.840 | So I think injecting, and then,

00:24:38.380 | so people injecting Sub-Q, which is right under the skin,

00:24:40.660 | we use the tiniest of needles, like an insulin needle,

00:24:43.300 | 30 or 31 gauge, we're talking super small.

00:24:46.100 | And so I know a lot of people are like,

00:24:47.520 | "I'm never injecting one of these."

00:24:48.360 | - Yeah, this is less painful than a Texas mosquito bite.

00:24:51.860 | - There you go.

00:24:52.700 | It's super easy, once you do it once or twice,

00:24:53.900 | it's really easy, and we walk people how to do that.

00:24:56.980 | But interestingly, we started thinking,

00:24:59.020 | okay, if you've got something going on in your gut,

00:25:00.460 | you should take oral BPC

00:25:01.540 | 'cause it's gonna target it right then.

00:25:02.780 | And I found, you know, if we're injecting,

00:25:04.480 | it actually works better than the oral.

00:25:06.480 | And then that came up,

00:25:08.340 | well, what if I've got an elbow injury,

00:25:10.020 | should I inject it in my elbow?

00:25:11.060 | And we found, actually, don't,

00:25:12.300 | it's gonna work systemically.

00:25:13.420 | You can inject it in your abdomen or your rear end,

00:25:15.380 | you're still gonna get benefit in your elbow,

00:25:17.900 | but now you're gonna get benefit in all your joints,

00:25:20.220 | all over your body, systemically.

00:25:22.260 | - How do you think that's working?

00:25:23.340 | And my understanding is BPC-157

00:25:25.620 | can initiate fibroblast migration,

00:25:27.620 | some of the cells that make up

00:25:28.860 | the various connective tissues that when injured or sore,

00:25:33.860 | other things can make us injured or sore, of course,

00:25:35.760 | but when injured or sore, those need repair.

00:25:39.540 | So it always was perplexing to me

00:25:42.340 | why one could put BPC-157 in such a small volume

00:25:46.060 | under the skin, you know,

00:25:47.140 | just a few centimeters off the belly button,

00:25:50.000 | and it would somehow seek out the injury site

00:25:55.000 | in an elbow or an Achilles.

00:25:56.860 | And there are all these wild anecdotal tales of,

00:25:59.480 | you know, lore of, let's just say,

00:26:01.820 | there was this Olympic athlete, not this last Olympics,

00:26:04.400 | but the previous summer Olympics,

00:26:05.600 | that had a torn Achilles who came back a few weeks later

00:26:08.720 | and everyone was, and meddled.

00:26:10.520 | People were talking about, you know, took podium, that is,

00:26:14.240 | and people were talking about BPC-157.

00:26:16.120 | There was kind of this, you know,

00:26:17.440 | and who knows, that's just a chatter and fog, as they say,

00:26:21.120 | but kind of wild,

00:26:23.200 | the idea that you could just inject something systemically,

00:26:26.160 | put into the systemic circulation, into the bloodstream,

00:26:28.760 | and it would ferret out the location

00:26:31.280 | in which the injury took place

00:26:32.520 | and initiate a recovery response.

00:26:34.620 | - But we've seen it with, not to get off topic,

00:26:36.520 | but we've seen it with stem cells.

00:26:38.280 | So they've taken stem cells,

00:26:40.840 | they've tagged them radiographically so you can see them.

00:26:44.360 | And the study I read, which I can find for you,

00:26:47.000 | someone had a wrist, broken wrist,

00:26:50.240 | and they gave them intravenous stem cells.

00:26:53.920 | And 24 hours later, when they visualized radiographically,

00:26:56.920 | those stem cells had aggregated

00:26:58.880 | at the site of the fracture.

00:27:00.840 | So there's a lot, you know, about our bodies.

00:27:03.520 | Obviously, we don't know that there's a kind of innate

00:27:06.320 | human-like design and intelligence, which I believe in.

00:27:10.600 | I see it 'cause we've done a lot of IV therapy

00:27:13.360 | over the years, and you, you know,

00:27:16.440 | it's interesting when you give something intravenously,

00:27:19.320 | you're getting in the bloodstream,

00:27:20.720 | and you can feel some of these different compounds,

00:27:23.680 | we're just talking about vitamins, working within seconds.

00:27:26.160 | And it shows you how quickly things circulate.

00:27:28.640 | People don't understand like how quickly

00:27:30.480 | we move our circulation.

00:27:32.160 | It's massively fast.

00:27:34.720 | - One has ever gone into the hospital for a surgery

00:27:37.160 | and got a cold saline infusion.

00:27:39.840 | - Yeah.

00:27:40.680 | - You realize how quickly it hits your toes.

00:27:42.440 | You know, they're putting it in at your elbow.

00:27:43.840 | - It's almost instantaneous.

00:27:44.680 | - Yeah, within a few seconds.

00:27:45.640 | It also makes one appreciate how we're all generally

00:27:49.000 | a little bit dehydrated.

00:27:50.040 | When you start getting a real proper saline infusion,

00:27:52.160 | all of a sudden you feel yourself come to life in a way

00:27:54.040 | that, oh, this is what it feels like to have

00:27:56.080 | just the right amount of salt in my bloodstream.

00:27:58.600 | - Exactly.

00:27:59.440 | So going back to BPC, where I think it shines

00:28:01.900 | is in these ligaments and tendons, right?

00:28:04.240 | I think this is where most of these injuries happen

00:28:06.400 | is where muscle is connecting to the bone.

00:28:09.720 | You know, and there's, you know, people, you know,

00:28:11.640 | grow their muscle, but we don't stretch the tendons

00:28:14.240 | and ligaments well, and that's where we get pull,

00:28:16.480 | sometimes strain, sprain, and tearing.

00:28:18.680 | And I think that's where BPC shine.

00:28:20.040 | That's certainly where it's been studied in animal studies.

00:28:22.120 | And I know that because we can inject it directly

00:28:24.240 | into tendons, which is unlike steroids.

00:28:25.900 | We would never inject steroids into a tendon.

00:28:27.760 | You damage the tendon.

00:28:29.280 | BPC, we mix with things like PRP, PRF,

00:28:31.640 | which is platelet-rich fiber

00:28:32.760 | and a little bit different than PRP,

00:28:34.680 | and you'll get healing within days.

00:28:37.480 | Like, it's awesome.

00:28:38.840 | - Wow.

00:28:39.680 | - Super safe, and it's amazing for people.

00:28:42.760 | - BPC is definitely shorthand for BPC-157, that is,

00:28:46.920 | is certainly in widespread use.

00:28:49.800 | I have been concerned, just personally,

00:28:52.960 | about gray market sources that contain contaminants

00:28:57.240 | and the fact that many people are obtaining BPC-157,

00:29:01.480 | not from a physician, not from a compounded pharmacy,

00:29:04.600 | but just kind of on, quote unquote, on the internet.

00:29:07.360 | - Sure.

00:29:08.200 | - You're a physician.

00:29:09.920 | I'm guessing that until the recent ban by the FDA,

00:29:13.680 | you were able to prescribe clean BPC, as it were.

00:29:17.080 | - Yeah.

00:29:17.920 | - What's the story with BPC now?

00:29:19.360 | And maybe we could talk about gray market.

00:29:21.120 | - Sure.

00:29:21.960 | - Versus-

00:29:22.780 | - I think it's a great question.

00:29:23.620 | - You know, versus prescribed

00:29:25.360 | and made it a compounding pharmacy

00:29:27.320 | versus a pharmaceutical company, pharmaceuticals.

00:29:30.680 | So, and then of course there's black market,

00:29:33.080 | but let's just leave that out.

00:29:34.320 | - Sure.

00:29:35.160 | - You know, there are people that are going to tell you,

00:29:37.040 | hey, this is BPC and sell it to you.

00:29:38.640 | That's obviously bad and dangerous.

00:29:40.640 | - Well, we see that with the anabolic steroids, right?

00:29:42.120 | Like, so anabolic steroids are in the black market.

00:29:44.360 | You can't really, I mean, there's one anabolic steroid,

00:29:47.000 | which is Nandrolone, which is Deca,

00:29:49.280 | which can be officially prescribed.

00:29:51.320 | We use it, you can combine it with testosterone,

00:29:53.560 | all in the up and up, totally above table.

00:29:56.560 | The rest, things like Trenbolone, others,

00:29:58.600 | you can't get them from a physician.

00:30:00.880 | In fact, it's very hard to get them

00:30:02.200 | from a reputable website in the United States.

00:30:05.080 | - So as long as we're here,

00:30:06.080 | my understanding is Decaderobalin

00:30:08.120 | and Testosterone Cipionate can be prescribed,

00:30:11.760 | or Testosterone Enanthate,

00:30:13.040 | things like that by physicians.

00:30:15.280 | That's because it's been FDA approved

00:30:17.480 | for the treatment of various things.

00:30:18.560 | Hypokonadal syndrome,

00:30:20.400 | Testosterone Replacement Therapy

00:30:21.720 | in both men and women, et cetera.

00:30:23.540 | So those categories of testosterone-like compounds,

00:30:28.540 | Cipionate, Enanthate, et cetera,

00:30:31.680 | and Decaderobalin, which is basically like,

00:30:34.960 | is it similar to DHT?

00:30:36.700 | Is it, go ahead.

00:30:38.080 | - A little bit, yeah.

00:30:39.400 | I mean, it's, the generic name is Nandrolone.

00:30:42.840 | Yeah, I mean, it has the flavor of helping with joints.

00:30:46.320 | I think it works synergistically

00:30:48.240 | with things like testosterone,

00:30:49.480 | different, you know, whether it's testosterone,

00:30:50.960 | Cipionate, Enanthate.

00:30:52.000 | And I like it for people who,

00:30:55.600 | particularly people who've been on testosterone,

00:30:57.560 | men who've been on testosterone replacement for a long time,

00:31:00.080 | which is many men,

00:31:02.040 | they tend to get less out of testosterone,

00:31:03.880 | it becomes less potent, like anything, right?

00:31:05.320 | If you use something for a long time,

00:31:06.620 | you're gonna get less out of it over time.

00:31:07.920 | Anything you expose yourself to continually

00:31:10.240 | doesn't work as well.

00:31:11.880 | And so, you know, like to make this really real,

00:31:14.720 | I had a patient who was in the Marines

00:31:19.400 | and served at Secret Service for several White Houses,

00:31:23.160 | and he had a lot of, you know, osteoporosis,

00:31:25.760 | osteopenia, you know, bone loss.

00:31:28.300 | And, you know, this is where I learned

00:31:29.920 | about using something like Nandrolone,

00:31:31.360 | 'cause we combined Nandrolone with testosterone,

00:31:33.080 | it changed his life.

00:31:34.200 | You know, this guy in his 80s,

00:31:36.240 | who had to use a cane, who came back to life,

00:31:39.280 | who started, you know, becoming super mobile

00:31:41.400 | and working out again.

00:31:43.160 | And synergistically, I think it works really well,

00:31:45.280 | not to get too far off topic, but.

00:31:46.880 | - No, it's interesting.

00:31:47.840 | And I think another sort of brief editorial for me,

00:31:50.480 | if I may, you mentioned this patient was in their 80s.

00:31:53.840 | I think nowadays, unfortunately,

00:31:56.320 | a lot of younger males in particular,

00:31:58.760 | guys in their, gosh, even teens,

00:32:00.680 | but 20s and 30s, even early 40s,

00:32:03.280 | think that they need to look to synthetic testosterones

00:32:07.200 | in order to look a certain way,

00:32:10.780 | perform a certain way in the gym, libido, et cetera.

00:32:13.880 | And I'll go on record again and again and again,

00:32:16.320 | saying that it's absolutely not necessary

00:32:19.080 | for most people of those ages,

00:32:21.640 | provided that they are taking good care

00:32:24.680 | to sleep well, eat well, take care.

00:32:26.520 | Now, but I realized that there are

00:32:29.120 | a growing number of use cases where people,

00:32:31.880 | for whatever reason, aren't able to recover from exercise,

00:32:34.840 | they're struggling.

00:32:35.800 | This is a little bit like the ozempic conversation, right?

00:32:38.440 | Where there are things that can help move the needle

00:32:40.680 | in the right direction, pun intended.

00:32:43.540 | But here with testosterones,

00:32:46.240 | synthetic testosterones and DECA,

00:32:48.320 | there's a real concern about loss of fertility.

00:32:50.240 | - Totally. - Right?

00:32:51.120 | - I think it brings up a larger point, which is,

00:32:54.080 | and obviously I'm biased,

00:32:55.680 | but I think it's super helpful for people

00:32:57.800 | to have a physician help them in this course,

00:33:00.320 | particularly with testosterone.

00:33:01.940 | It is just known that people get it from their trainers,

00:33:04.800 | their bros from the gym, right?

00:33:06.480 | Who are saying, "Oh, you gotta use this."

00:33:07.960 | I mean, I have so many patients

00:33:09.240 | who started using testosterone in their late teens,

00:33:11.280 | early 20s. - Goodness.

00:33:12.680 | - Yeah. - I mean, not goodness,

00:33:14.160 | meaning badness.

00:33:15.060 | That does not seem like a good idea.

00:33:15.900 | - And it's still very common.

00:33:17.000 | - Goodness gracious. - It's still very common.

00:33:19.160 | And, you know, one in particular,

00:33:20.640 | this is probably 10 years ago,

00:33:21.760 | came to see me, he's 25, he got married.

00:33:24.240 | And to your point, he said, "I'm ready to have kids.

00:33:28.500 | "I have zero sperm left," right?

00:33:30.760 | And that's a real thing.

00:33:31.600 | And so he had been using, and I would say abusing,

00:33:34.420 | both testosterone and growth hormone for years.

00:33:36.560 | Now, what he told me was, and I get it, he was Superman.

00:33:40.280 | He could wake up, do a hard workout, you know, crush it,

00:33:44.620 | wake up the next morning, was not sore, crush it again,

00:33:47.520 | and just kept going, kept going, was super fit,

00:33:50.200 | super happy in that regard in how he looked,

00:33:52.380 | how he felt, how he performed.

00:33:54.200 | But then he got to a point where he was a little bit wiser,

00:33:55.720 | mature, and he was like, "Oh my goodness,

00:33:57.800 | "now there's a repercussion for this."

00:33:59.080 | And I've seen that time and time again.

00:34:01.040 | And the repercussion is big.

00:34:02.200 | You're not making any sperm,

00:34:03.200 | and the sperm quality is super poor.

00:34:05.540 | Now, what do you do?

00:34:06.380 | Well, now you gotta come off the testosterone,

00:34:07.480 | you gotta rebuild your system, which we can do.

00:34:09.640 | You know, we can use things like clomiphene,

00:34:11.240 | menclomiphene, HCG, lots of different agents

00:34:13.880 | to help in that regard, even certain peptides.

00:34:16.320 | But I think it brings up the large point,

00:34:17.920 | even getting into peptides,

00:34:19.520 | which is having a physician who's knowledgeable,

00:34:22.200 | to me, is super helpful.

00:34:24.400 | The challenge for people is they don't know

00:34:25.560 | where to get the right information, right?

00:34:27.040 | And they're getting it from websites,

00:34:28.360 | and they're getting it from people saying,

00:34:29.260 | "Oh, just try this peptide."

00:34:31.640 | And I've had lots of people talking about the, you know,

00:34:34.840 | websites or whatever, not to name any names,

00:34:36.640 | who have had anaphylactic reactions

00:34:38.180 | to research-type peptides,

00:34:40.080 | which are not for human consumption.

00:34:41.720 | And I'm not saying that they're bad companies or whatever.

00:34:44.720 | You just gotta be careful.

00:34:45.880 | You gotta be selective, at least.

00:34:47.680 | - Right, well, what brought us on

00:34:48.760 | to the conversation about testosterone

00:34:51.200 | was this black market issue.

00:34:52.560 | There's also what I would call

00:34:54.020 | this dark, dark gray market issue,

00:34:57.480 | which is that there are a number of companies

00:34:59.240 | that will sell all sorts of things,

00:35:01.200 | but peptides in particular,

00:35:02.840 | and listed on their website,

00:35:04.000 | it'll say not for human or animal consumption,

00:35:06.400 | for research purposes only.

00:35:08.720 | And one of the major issues is that

00:35:11.320 | the potency and cleanliness, so to speak,

00:35:15.520 | of purity of those compounds is not established.

00:35:21.120 | And many of them have LPS, lipopolysaccharide in them,

00:35:24.120 | which is inflammatory.

00:35:25.560 | And earlier, before we started recording,

00:35:27.280 | you mentioned that you have heard of

00:35:31.000 | or interacted with, not your patients,

00:35:32.940 | but people who have come to you

00:35:33.960 | saying that they had like really serious,

00:35:36.520 | life-threatening consequences

00:35:38.680 | for using these black market, certainly,

00:35:40.900 | but dark gray market peptides.

00:35:44.400 | - Yeah, and so to tell the story further

00:35:46.960 | is back in October of 2023,

00:35:49.080 | the FDA put many peptides, BPC,

00:35:52.880 | and we can name them out,

00:35:54.120 | on what's called a category two list,

00:35:56.240 | meaning they are no longer allowed to be compounded, right?

00:35:59.840 | Now, that excludes then research companies

00:36:02.200 | who are not under the purview of the FDA,

00:36:04.560 | but these compounding pharmacies,

00:36:06.080 | it's been a huge blow because they've been told

00:36:08.640 | they cannot use these agents.

00:36:10.180 | - And the compounding pharmacies

00:36:12.040 | are distinct from these other black and dark gray sources

00:36:17.760 | in that they actually can establish purity,

00:36:20.640 | they are designed to be injected into humans.

00:36:22.760 | - And they have a totally different standard, right?

00:36:24.840 | So they, and I think it's confusing

00:36:26.240 | for people when they hear compounding pharmacy,

00:36:27.640 | they thought fringe, they're not fringe,

00:36:29.320 | they're FDA regulated,

00:36:30.360 | they're Board of Pharmacy regulated in every state.

00:36:32.520 | They are monitored, they are inspected all the time.

00:36:35.200 | I've worked with compounding pharmacies my whole career,

00:36:37.740 | which is going on close to 25 years now.

00:36:40.920 | Just like anything,

00:36:41.760 | there's some amazing compounding pharmacies

00:36:43.640 | and there's some not so amazing compounding pharmacies,

00:36:46.000 | which cut corners.

00:36:46.840 | The ones we work with don't cut any corners.

00:36:48.920 | And I know that 'cause they're inspected all the time, right?

00:36:51.800 | And it's a big deal to them.

00:36:53.440 | And they wanna do it right with purity, with processing,

00:36:56.160 | and making sure that anything they make,

00:36:58.560 | especially a sterile compound,

00:37:00.040 | which is gonna be anything injected,

00:37:01.760 | you know, eye drops, things you inject in yourself,

00:37:03.720 | whether it's IV, sub-Q, or intramuscular,

00:37:06.000 | they're considered sterile.

00:37:08.360 | They have to then be tested by an outside lab

00:37:11.460 | to make sure purity,

00:37:13.000 | make sure that there's no endotoxins, things like that.

00:37:15.720 | It's highly regulated and it's a big deal for them.

00:37:19.320 | And it's a big deal for the physicians

00:37:20.720 | who prescribe with them,

00:37:22.600 | which I appreciate because the advantage

00:37:24.480 | of a compounding pharmacy is we can tweak the dosage.

00:37:26.560 | We don't have to use a standard set dosage.

00:37:28.760 | We can combine things synergistically

00:37:31.740 | to get one plus one doesn't equal two now, it equals four.

00:37:35.040 | And that, to me, is a huge advantage,

00:37:36.840 | just like we were talking about with the GLP-1,

00:37:38.200 | semi-glutide in terms of epitides.

00:37:39.360 | We get those compounded so that we have a,

00:37:43.040 | the compounding pharmacy we're using now,

00:37:45.100 | we're making a unique combination

00:37:47.100 | of terzepatide and semirelin, right?

00:37:49.880 | Which will address some of this muscle loss

00:37:52.440 | that people are getting.

00:37:53.360 | So we can combine them.

00:37:54.200 | - So semirelin to stimulate growth hormone release,

00:37:56.360 | offset some of the muscle loss from--

00:37:58.000 | - Exactly. - Terepazide.

00:37:59.520 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:38:00.460 | - And so you can do things like that

00:38:01.640 | with a compounding pharmacy.

00:38:02.480 | But again, just to make sure people understand,

00:38:04.160 | compounding pharmacies are highly regulated,

00:38:06.720 | highly regulated.

00:38:08.040 | Again, there's always gonna be bad apples.

00:38:10.580 | But physicians who know how to work

00:38:12.600 | with compounding pharmacies,

00:38:13.480 | I think provide access to things

00:38:15.740 | that these conventional, both pharmaceuticals

00:38:18.020 | and conventional pharmacies can't.

00:38:20.900 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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00:38:39.300 | when my budget for supplements was really limited.

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00:38:57.640 | micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

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00:39:22.580 | given the relationship between the gut microbiome

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00:39:50.820 | - So is it fair to say that if one is interested

00:39:52.960 | in exploring the use of peptides

00:39:55.100 | for what you refer to as performance medicine,

00:39:57.440 | mental, physical health, and performance,

00:40:01.280 | falls underneath that,

00:40:02.600 | to essentially only put peptides into their body,

00:40:09.420 | maybe even on their body surface

00:40:11.100 | that they're obtaining from a physician

00:40:13.140 | who's obtained the peptides from a compounding pharmacy?

00:40:15.660 | - Yeah, and who's developing a relationship.

00:40:17.700 | So we, for any peptide that we use,

00:40:20.460 | we meet with the patient.

00:40:22.900 | We make sure they're a good fit.

00:40:24.060 | We make sure that there's no contraindications.

00:40:26.100 | We also can recommend

00:40:27.220 | and specifically dial it up or down, whatever it is,

00:40:29.840 | come up with, this is what we think you should use

00:40:31.980 | based upon your life experience,

00:40:34.020 | the medicines you're taking or not taking,

00:40:35.780 | the conditions you're treating or not treating, right?

00:40:38.100 | I think that's really important.

00:40:39.060 | Again, I'm biased being a physician.

00:40:41.100 | My whole goal is to get to know patients.

00:40:43.060 | That's why I'm here is to kind of walk that walk

00:40:45.180 | and help people in that regard.

00:40:47.340 | And if someone's out there on the internet

00:40:50.020 | doing it themselves,

00:40:51.820 | they're walking in kind of on their own.

00:40:55.300 | And so not to make it like everything bad is gonna happen,

00:40:58.740 | but when you have the help of someone who has experience,

00:41:01.460 | that goes a long way,

00:41:02.580 | I think particularly with something like this.

00:41:04.460 | - Yeah, I agree.

00:41:05.500 | And it worries me very much

00:41:07.420 | that people are buying PPC from dark gray market

00:41:11.740 | or black market sources.

00:41:14.260 | I mean, anything that says on it,

00:41:15.540 | not for animal or human use for research purposes only,

00:41:18.980 | you can pretty much guarantee the endotoxin,

00:41:22.900 | the lipopolysaccharide at least has not been removed.

00:41:26.420 | And that could be really problematic,

00:41:27.660 | especially since my understanding

00:41:28.980 | is that it can be cumulative over time.

00:41:30.520 | It's not that one injection

00:41:32.100 | causes somebody to go into anaphylactic shock.

00:41:33.920 | It's that some of this LPS

00:41:35.100 | can build up an inflammatory response over time.

00:41:38.020 | And then you don't know where the tipping point is.

00:41:40.380 | And then somebody can have a really terrible reaction.

00:41:42.820 | - Well, and then taking a step further,

00:41:45.420 | getting away from just peptides.

00:41:46.620 | But I remember this was, I don't know, 15 years ago,

00:41:50.060 | someone was taking advice from a very famous doctor on TV

00:41:54.580 | about taking an oral compound to lose weight.

00:41:57.020 | And they called me up and they said,

00:41:58.580 | "I'm having terrible headaches, terrible headaches for days."

00:42:01.220 | They came in, their blood pressure was through the roof.

00:42:04.580 | I don't remember the specific numbers,

00:42:05.700 | but let's just say 220 over 140.

00:42:07.700 | And normally it's 120 over 80.

00:42:09.900 | Well, did you take anything different?

00:42:11.380 | Oh yeah, this doctor recommended

00:42:13.020 | I take this weight loss compound, right?

00:42:15.420 | So the problem is people have access to all this information

00:42:19.540 | but if they're not under the guidance of a doctor

00:42:22.340 | to help clean up the mess and we clean up the mess,

00:42:25.140 | not that there's always mess,

00:42:26.820 | but this is what we enjoy doing, you know,

00:42:28.620 | is as a physician, like we've seen the darkest of dark,

00:42:31.500 | you know, we're able to help people

00:42:34.140 | when things don't go perfectly planned.

00:42:36.540 | And I think that's a big deal, you know,

00:42:38.540 | particularly when there's lots of these tools

00:42:41.180 | and they're exciting tools and they're great tools.

00:42:43.500 | And fortunately for me,

00:42:45.260 | I've been in this space longer than most

00:42:46.900 | that I've just, you know,

00:42:47.860 | built up a large repertoire of experience

00:42:50.340 | of observing people and working with people

00:42:52.060 | and seeing we got to tweak this, we got to nuance this,

00:42:54.300 | or sometimes we don't ever want to use this again.

00:42:57.060 | You know, this is not for most people.

00:42:59.820 | - So given that BPC-157

00:43:02.140 | has been effectively removed from the legitimate market,

00:43:07.140 | what are people's alternatives?

00:43:09.540 | Again, working with the caveat

00:43:13.020 | that people should work with a physician,

00:43:16.940 | where can physicians get something similar enough

00:43:19.220 | to BPC-157?

00:43:20.660 | - So there's a new compound, newer peptide called,

00:43:24.220 | the shortened for PDA, pentadecaarginate.

00:43:27.420 | It's basically the same molecular structure as BPC,

00:43:31.300 | except they've swapped out an acetate for arginate.

00:43:34.860 | - One amino acid substitution.

00:43:36.740 | - One amino acid substitution.

00:43:38.860 | And so we're using that and having really good results.

00:43:42.580 | I certainly, it's early in the game of using PDA,

00:43:47.100 | but it seems very close to BPC

00:43:49.140 | in the clinical responses we're getting from our patients

00:43:52.140 | who are reporting back decrease in inflammation,

00:43:55.260 | all these wonderful things that we used to see with BPC.

00:43:57.860 | So, and I think I surmise that this is going,

00:44:01.760 | how it's going to be with all of these peptides, right?

00:44:04.500 | Because again, peptides are just chains of amino acids.

00:44:07.700 | You know, certainly a lot of people smarter than me

00:44:09.700 | trying to figure out how do we then create

00:44:11.860 | other types of amino acid combinations, you know,

00:44:14.700 | i.e. peptides that do similar actions to BPC,

00:44:17.940 | to thymosin alpha, to ipamerone, to TB500,

00:44:21.060 | on and on and on.

00:44:22.340 | So I'm hopeful in that regard.

00:44:24.060 | And I also, you know, some of my patients work

00:44:26.700 | at the very highest level of the U.S. government.

00:44:29.460 | They are well aware of this and who have assured me

00:44:31.700 | they're going to look at this, that this is serious,

00:44:33.780 | you know, because they've been using peptides

00:44:36.620 | and they're concerned that, oh my goodness,

00:44:38.420 | the FDA came in and changed the game.

00:44:41.060 | Very, it's been a huge setback for all of us.

00:44:44.500 | - I definitely want to circle back

00:44:46.260 | as to what the motivation was by the FDA for doing that

00:44:49.820 | at some point.

00:44:51.740 | I think in the meantime, however,

00:44:54.180 | I think there's a lot of interest in BPC-157,

00:44:57.620 | a lot of use of BPC-157.

00:44:59.820 | The sources of BPC-157 are now drying up.

00:45:03.660 | And that's why I'm personally concerned

00:45:06.620 | that people are going to start going

00:45:07.460 | to the dark gray market and black market.

00:45:09.780 | I'm excited about the pentadeca arginate.

00:45:13.700 | So let's put that on people's ear map, brain map.

00:45:17.820 | Pentadeca arginate may be a good physician

00:45:21.500 | prescribed substitution for people

00:45:23.260 | that can benefit from BPC-157.

00:45:25.020 | - And a good starting dose,

00:45:25.860 | so to make it really clear for people and helpful,

00:45:27.460 | 250 micrograms to 500 micrograms.

00:45:29.740 | We're using 500 micrograms injected daily.

00:45:32.500 | Again, we like Monday through Friday, take the weekends off.

00:45:35.460 | That's a good dosing schedule.

00:45:37.300 | We'll see how that goes.

00:45:38.860 | We probably can use larger dosages, that's conservative,

00:45:42.180 | but that's a good starting point for people.

00:45:43.980 | - And thus far, you haven't mentioned any side effects

00:45:47.060 | of BPC-157 or pentadeca arginate.

00:45:50.420 | That's kind of remarkable.

00:45:51.860 | - It's been tremendous.

00:45:53.340 | Yeah, and we were using BPC intravenously as well.

00:45:57.020 | Patients would come in and, oh, tweak my knee,

00:46:00.420 | tore my ACL, tore my meniscus, whatever.

00:46:04.380 | You can give them BPC essentially

00:46:06.460 | as a bolus intravenously.

00:46:08.780 | My goodness, that made a difference.

00:46:10.100 | Now, using something intravenously

00:46:12.020 | from the pharmacokinetic standpoint,

00:46:13.820 | it's not going to last in the system very much.

00:46:15.220 | It's more of a spark,

00:46:16.420 | whereas if you use an agent subcutaneously,

00:46:18.580 | you're going to get more of a long-lasting,

00:46:20.900 | again, not terribly long-lasting with peptides,

00:46:23.260 | but longer than using something intravenously.

00:46:25.840 | Kind of the sweet spot was certainly using both.

00:46:28.020 | You could use something as a spark

00:46:29.460 | to initiate that anti-inflammatory cascade,

00:46:31.780 | then follow up with a subcutaneous dose, yeah.

00:46:34.860 | - And even though earlier we were talking a little bit

00:46:36.980 | about some hormone replacement therapies,

00:46:40.980 | before that, off-microphone,

00:46:43.420 | you mentioned that you prefer peptides

00:46:46.100 | to direct hormone manipulations in most cases.

00:46:49.180 | So I think while peptides can be hormones,

00:46:52.300 | there are things like oxytocin

00:46:55.900 | is sometimes called a peptide hormone.

00:46:58.220 | In general, when people think about hormone therapies,

00:47:00.660 | they're thinking testosterone, estrogen, pregnalone,

00:47:03.260 | you know, thyroid, et cetera.

00:47:06.540 | It sounds to me like much of your practice

00:47:09.620 | is built up around the notion

00:47:11.620 | that there are things that one can use,

00:47:13.220 | peptides to kind of push and pull on these various systems

00:47:17.140 | without getting into them directly.

00:47:18.820 | My understanding is the advantage of that

00:47:20.740 | is you don't get the negative feedback.

00:47:22.060 | You don't get in the shutting down of natural production.

00:47:24.260 | - Yeah, you know, and testosterone is a great example

00:47:27.460 | because like we were saying,

00:47:29.020 | I don't ever want to manipulate hormones.

00:47:31.640 | You know, growth hormone's another example.

00:47:33.500 | I don't ever want to manipulate that,

00:47:35.140 | meaning, you know, providing it to people

00:47:37.540 | more than they would get in nature.

00:47:39.260 | This is why I actually don't, a little bit off topic,

00:47:41.080 | like when people use testosterone pellets

00:47:43.260 | or any sort of pellet therapy

00:47:44.860 | because you're exposing people

00:47:46.100 | to a concentration of hormones

00:47:47.580 | we would never ever see in nature.

00:47:49.860 | I would prefer people inject it

00:47:51.660 | where you're gonna get some variation in dose

00:47:54.020 | on a day-to-day basis, which we're humans,

00:47:55.940 | so we do get some day-to-day variation

00:47:57.900 | or topically or under the tongue or something.

00:48:01.040 | Peptides, same thing.

00:48:01.880 | I don't want to manipulate the hormones, right?

00:48:03.960 | I want to just stick within kind of the highways

00:48:06.460 | or the lanes, swim lanes for how they should operate

00:48:09.140 | and then take advantage of that.

00:48:10.900 | And that's been a safe way to do it,

00:48:13.100 | as opposed to, and I've seen it,

00:48:15.060 | you know, talking about another peptide,

00:48:16.380 | which is ipramerolin, a growth hormone-releasing peptide.

00:48:20.020 | Ipramerolin, you inject under the skin,

00:48:21.860 | travels up to the pituitary, the posterior pituitary

00:48:25.060 | in the brain, which is responsible

00:48:27.020 | for putting out growth hormone.

00:48:28.260 | That growth hormone then leaves the pituitary,

00:48:30.620 | enters the bloodstream, travels to the liver,

00:48:32.780 | where we make insulin-like growth factor one,

00:48:34.340 | which then enters the circulation.

00:48:36.020 | It's very anabolic, meaning growth, healing, mending.

00:48:39.620 | You know, as we get older, we make less growth hormone.

00:48:42.820 | As we get older, we wear down, obviously.

00:48:45.220 | We get, you know, degenerative conditions.

00:48:47.240 | Part of that, I don't know what part,

00:48:49.580 | if for everyone it's a little bit different,

00:48:50.900 | is because of our hormonal decline.

00:48:53.540 | And so when you can give something like ipramerolin,

00:48:55.900 | and we can talk about others,

00:48:57.180 | you're actually helping not only push out

00:48:59.300 | a little bit of growth hormone for people,

00:49:00.940 | but you're directing when you push it out, right?

00:49:02.900 | We think, that's why it's important for people

00:49:05.160 | to be asleep by 10 p.m., between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.,

00:49:07.740 | 'cause we think that's the largest pulse of growth hormone

00:49:10.620 | during the 24-hour period.

00:49:12.000 | - Is that right?

00:49:12.840 | So I've long wondered whether or not

00:49:14.900 | the tale I was told when I was growing up,

00:49:18.260 | which is that every hour before midnight

00:49:19.860 | is worth two hours of sleep, post-midnight.

00:49:22.820 | - That may be true. - That feels true to me.

00:49:25.100 | Then again, feels true is often misleading,

00:49:27.180 | but feels true to me, but it makes perfect sense

00:49:30.420 | if the largest pulse in growth hormone

00:49:32.420 | is occurring in the couple of hours before midnight.

00:49:35.460 | - Yeah, I mean, that's how I learned it.

00:49:37.780 | I agree with you, it feels true to me as well.

00:49:40.100 | But taking advantage then of injecting something

00:49:43.540 | like ipramerolin at bedtime,

00:49:46.140 | then you're gonna, within a few minutes,

00:49:48.300 | and with ipramerolin, it's interesting,

00:49:49.540 | 'cause people will get a little flushing,

00:49:51.500 | tingling at times, and what I've seen,

00:49:55.260 | with the point I'm making, is there are some physicians

00:49:58.260 | and some pharmacies which, the dosage of ipramerolin

00:50:01.020 | in most of these growth hormone-releasing peptides

00:50:02.460 | should be 100 micrograms.

00:50:03.700 | That's the max dose to bind the receptor.

00:50:08.180 | And what I've seen is, with ipramerolin, rare,

00:50:11.860 | but some people do get anaphylaxis, and it's happened.

00:50:15.860 | And I think that happens when people are pushing it

00:50:18.020 | and giving more than they should, and I've heard of that,

00:50:20.260 | and they're giving 200, 300, 400 micrograms at a time,

00:50:22.900 | which is a big dose.

00:50:24.340 | Now, what they're getting is the client, the patient,

00:50:26.180 | is like, "Oh my gosh, I feel this amazing flushing.

00:50:28.300 | "It must be working."

00:50:30.380 | But then you could spiral into, "Oh my goodness,

00:50:32.640 | "I don't feel so good,"

00:50:33.820 | and your circulation system collapsing.

00:50:36.220 | - Yeah, using side effects as a indicator

00:50:39.420 | of whether or not something's working

00:50:40.660 | just seems like a terrible idea, but--

00:50:43.500 | - But it's very common, yeah.

00:50:46.340 | - I tend to be very conservative about these things.

00:50:48.460 | And by the way, I've tried various peptides

00:50:51.300 | for short periods of time,

00:50:52.580 | 'cause I like to experiment very safely.

00:50:55.400 | And some things, like sermorelin,

00:50:57.980 | and we'll talk about other growth hormones, secretogogs,

00:51:00.500 | for me, for whatever reason, gave me great sleep,

00:51:05.100 | but only in the first part of the night.

00:51:06.960 | It nuked my rapid eye movement sleep

00:51:08.620 | in the second half of the night.

00:51:09.700 | It spiked my prostate-specific antigen.

00:51:12.580 | It was a very consistent effect.

00:51:13.780 | I came off it and it went back down,

00:51:15.500 | and it went back on, it went back up.

00:51:16.740 | And so I just found I couldn't take it.

00:51:18.860 | And it didn't take me very long to figure that out,

00:51:21.380 | but I know that there are some people who love sermorelin

00:51:23.860 | and don't see any of the same issues.

00:51:25.440 | So it seems like it can be very individual.

00:51:27.180 | - I agree with that.

00:51:28.020 | I agree with that.

00:51:28.860 | And that's why I think it's, again,

00:51:30.540 | helpful to work with a physician who has experience,

00:51:33.700 | who can kind of, you know,

00:51:34.620 | I think of these peptides as having flavors,

00:51:36.460 | particularly the growth hormone-releasing peptides.

00:51:38.740 | Ipromerolin, very clean.

00:51:41.000 | You know, as long as you stay within 100 micrograms or less,

00:51:43.380 | people are gonna lean out a little bit,

00:51:44.580 | sleep a little bit better.

00:51:45.900 | There's no real side effects.

00:51:47.660 | - They take it pre-sleep.

00:51:49.020 | - Pre-sleep at bedtime.

00:51:50.020 | - Without carbohydrates ingested

00:51:51.660 | in the previous two hours, correct?

00:51:53.060 | - Yeah, or 45 minutes, technically.

00:51:54.660 | Yeah, but that's right.

00:51:55.840 | And then they're saying like growth hormone-releasing

00:51:57.520 | peptide six, GHRP6, which is also going to bind.

00:52:00.740 | So I think of Ipromerolin being the most specific

00:52:03.020 | for the growth hormone receptor, but the weakest.

00:52:05.740 | So when you inject it,

00:52:06.900 | you will get growth hormone to come out

00:52:08.940 | and only growth hormone,

00:52:09.980 | but it's not gonna be a big burst of growth hormone.

00:52:12.180 | You inject GHRP6, now you may bind some prolactin.

00:52:15.820 | Now you may bind some ACTH,

00:52:17.260 | which is gonna have your adrenals put out cortisol.

00:52:19.280 | Now you're gonna get a hunger response, right?

00:52:21.420 | - And maybe even have trouble sleeping.

00:52:22.740 | - You may have trouble sleeping,

00:52:24.680 | but where that's beneficial for us,

00:52:26.860 | if you're looking to put on mass or get strong,

00:52:29.860 | GHRP6 is your go-to, right?

00:52:32.260 | Because you will increase your appetite.

00:52:34.220 | And if you're smart, you'll eat a lot more protein.

00:52:37.120 | You know, and the building of muscle

00:52:39.040 | is not necessarily complicated, right?

00:52:40.800 | It's resistance training, sufficient protein,

00:52:43.460 | which is where I think most people fall off.

00:52:44.940 | And then having some anabolic kind of hormone

00:52:47.580 | in the background, like growth hormone,

00:52:49.340 | or testosterone or both helps that process.

00:52:52.060 | That's where GHRP6 can shine.

00:52:53.580 | I mean, within weeks, people will get big and strong,

00:52:55.980 | increase their bench press, whatever.

00:52:57.400 | Stuff flat out works, but you gotta know how to use it

00:53:00.900 | and understand the flavors.

00:53:02.420 | The point I'm making is,

00:53:03.260 | these different peptides have different flavors.

00:53:05.540 | And to your point, there's individual responses.

00:53:07.940 | That can be a good thing.

00:53:09.460 | - I think for most of our audience,

00:53:11.260 | the interest in growth hormone secretogogs

00:53:13.220 | probably relates to the better sleep

00:53:15.460 | and the overall feelings of vitality.

00:53:17.940 | And probably most people are seeking

00:53:20.220 | to not spike their appetite or put on muscle, really.

00:53:23.620 | These days, we're hearing more and more from people,

00:53:26.140 | both men and women, who want to be strong without being big.

00:53:30.180 | And they prefer to be lean as opposed to not lean,

00:53:32.520 | which I think is a great goal.

00:53:34.340 | Frankly, that's my goal at this stage of life.

00:53:36.420 | I just turned 49 yesterday and I-

00:53:38.260 | - Happy birthday.

00:53:39.100 | - Oh, thank you.

00:53:39.940 | Thank you.

00:53:40.760 | Yeah, thanks for coming out to the birthday mini bash

00:53:44.260 | the other day.

00:53:45.080 | It was a lot of fun.

00:53:47.240 | You know, I, yeah, I want to be strong and capable.

00:53:50.520 | I also want to be able to run

00:53:51.640 | and have cardiovascular fitness,

00:53:52.940 | but I don't want to be large.

00:53:53.800 | I don't want to take up a lot of space.

00:53:55.120 | I'm not interested in taking up a lot of space.

00:53:58.160 | And I think most people fall into that category.

00:54:00.560 | - I agree.

00:54:01.400 | - So if GHRP6 can spike appetite,

00:54:04.240 | which for a subset of people might be useful,

00:54:07.280 | but probably most people will want to avoid it.

00:54:09.240 | Ipamorellin, I've always been calling it Ipamorellin,

00:54:11.600 | but Ipamorellin at a hundred micrograms dosage

00:54:15.240 | or less per night sounds like it's an interesting tool.

00:54:17.600 | What are some of the other growth hormone secretogogs?

00:54:20.080 | And I should just brief,

00:54:21.280 | I'll take the liberty of defining it.

00:54:23.240 | These are peptides that stimulate the release

00:54:25.880 | of your own endogenous growth hormone.

00:54:27.840 | This is not taking growth hormone.

00:54:29.360 | - Right.

00:54:30.200 | Yeah.

00:54:31.440 | Two other main ones that we use.

00:54:33.020 | One would be tesamorellin,

00:54:34.540 | which is similar to semirellin

00:54:38.680 | and that it also is going to work

00:54:41.120 | on the growth hormone releasing hormone aspect

00:54:43.400 | a little bit higher up in the chain

00:54:46.400 | of how these hormones are released.

00:54:48.640 | So both semirellin and tesamorellin,

00:54:51.420 | you don't necessarily need to add anything else to it.

00:54:54.460 | Classically with Ipamorellin, Hexarellin, GHRP6,

00:54:57.160 | we would add this other compound, CJC1295,

00:55:00.520 | which is going to work on the GHRH,

00:55:02.760 | which allows the peptide and then the growth hormone

00:55:05.280 | to stay in your system a little bit longer.

00:55:06.800 | - The growth hormone releasing hormone.

00:55:08.360 | - Correct.

00:55:09.200 | - Yeah, but we can almost set aside CJC now

00:55:11.760 | because CJC1295, the FDA just came in

00:55:14.960 | and let's just say one acronym took out another.

00:55:17.840 | - There you go.

00:55:18.680 | - The FDA took out CJC.

00:55:19.960 | - That's right, and BPC.

00:55:21.360 | - Yeah, and BPC.

00:55:23.120 | People are probably getting a little dizzy

00:55:24.480 | with these acronyms,

00:55:25.320 | but I think we're doing a good job of guiding people along.

00:55:29.480 | So semirellin and tesamorellin are similar enough.

00:55:34.440 | - Similar in that regard.

00:55:35.880 | Tesamorellin, again, talking about flavors,

00:55:37.720 | tesamorellin works on visceral fat reduction,

00:55:40.400 | so fat around the organs.

00:55:41.640 | And it's been FDA approved for that purpose.

00:55:43.840 | - Yeah, with HIV patients having this lipodystrophy,

00:55:46.760 | which is abnormal accumulation of fat

00:55:50.520 | in particular visceral fat around organs.

00:55:52.760 | So tesamorellin works well for that.

00:55:54.920 | My observation from using it for lots and lots of people,

00:55:57.760 | seems to work better in females than males.

00:55:59.480 | - Or does it lead to this feeling

00:56:01.480 | of enhanced sleep as well?

00:56:03.440 | - Yeah, so I think any of the growth hormone

00:56:05.120 | releasing peptides,

00:56:05.960 | anytime you're going to make growth hormone

00:56:07.280 | more active in your world,

00:56:08.600 | that's how I think about it,

00:56:09.920 | better sleep, better skin tone, texture, right?

00:56:12.800 | You're more resilient.

00:56:13.720 | I think growth hormone is a resiliency hormone, durability.

00:56:16.920 | People find that, oh, I do a hard workout,

00:56:19.040 | but it takes me days to recover.

00:56:20.200 | I sprain my ankle, it takes me a week to recover.

00:56:21.920 | I cut my skin, it takes me forever to heal.

00:56:24.680 | They've got a durability issue.

00:56:26.400 | And that's how I think about where growth hormone can shine.

00:56:28.960 | Not that you got to go all the way to growth hormone,

00:56:30.920 | but these peptides can be a really nice push.

00:56:33.160 | - And this is taken before sleep,

00:56:34.800 | no food within 45 minutes of the injection.

00:56:37.920 | - And then the kind of the magic in what we do

00:56:40.760 | is when we first started about eight years ago,

00:56:42.820 | we'd use one peptide at a time.

00:56:44.840 | And then what we learned is let's combine these peptides,

00:56:47.520 | let's stack peptides.

00:56:48.520 | And that's how we do it.

00:56:49.360 | - At lower dosages?

00:56:50.720 | - Sometimes lower dosages.

00:56:52.660 | But for example, we had a great combination,

00:56:56.000 | BPC, ipramerone, and tesomerone all together,

00:56:59.760 | taken at bedtime.

00:57:01.080 | And you're going to get subcutaneous fat reduction

00:57:03.880 | from the ipramerone,

00:57:04.860 | visceral fat reduction from the tesomerone,

00:57:07.040 | upregulation of the growth hormone receptor from the BPC.

00:57:09.960 | It was a wonderful peptide.

00:57:11.200 | We kind of labeled it as a fat loss peptide,

00:57:13.360 | but people would put on lean muscle mass,

00:57:14.760 | they'd sleep better, their skin would be better,

00:57:16.080 | they'd be more durable,

00:57:17.440 | their thought process would be better.

00:57:20.000 | Awesome stuff.

00:57:20.840 | And that's where I think,

00:57:21.720 | that's where we enjoy it is stacking these peptides together.

00:57:25.000 | So it's not, again, just one peptide at a time,

00:57:27.800 | but able to do it.

00:57:28.640 | And that's why, again, working with a compounding pharmacy,

00:57:30.960 | we can put these together.

00:57:31.980 | So you're only doing one shot a day.

00:57:33.160 | You may be doing three to seven peptides,

00:57:34.920 | but it's still one shot.

00:57:36.580 | - Got it.

00:57:37.420 | And if one is combining a tesomerone or seromerone,

00:57:42.400 | ipramerone and, well, not BPC anymore,

00:57:47.280 | but pentadeca arginate instead,

00:57:49.680 | 'cause you can't get BPC-157 compounded,

00:57:52.000 | is that done every night, five days a week,

00:57:56.640 | three days a week?

00:57:57.880 | What's the rationale of this five days on, two days off?

00:58:00.200 | - Five days on, two days off,

00:58:01.640 | I came up with because of how we would dose growth hormone.

00:58:05.120 | So the traditional growth hormone dosing cycle

00:58:07.880 | would be five days on, two days off, taken at bedtime.

00:58:11.600 | Yeah, and that's where it came up.

00:58:13.440 | And then I personally, with patients and myself,

00:58:16.160 | I like to take breaks.

00:58:17.640 | So even with supplements,

00:58:19.080 | I won't take them on the weekends, right?

00:58:21.200 | Because I think, again, anything you expose yourself to

00:58:24.080 | on a regular basis is gonna decrease the potency.

00:58:26.560 | We see that with exercise, we see that with food.

00:58:28.280 | If you're eating the same food every day,

00:58:29.360 | it seems to become less valuable for you, right?

00:58:31.640 | Like, change it up.

00:58:32.720 | Like, we have to throw on the crazy switch

00:58:35.440 | every now and then, but change it up.

00:58:37.520 | And so then you're gonna make it more potent for you.

00:58:39.760 | I do the same thing with supplements.

00:58:41.000 | So that just resonates with me, with people,

00:58:43.640 | to take a break from stuff.

00:58:45.600 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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01:01:54.080 | Before we started recording,

01:01:56.200 | you mentioned that you're actually not a huge fan

01:01:59.000 | of taking massive amounts of supplements,

01:02:00.840 | that you are a big fan of taking CoQ10,

01:02:03.680 | coenzyme Q10, 200 milligrams per day in the morning.

01:02:06.920 | I also take CoQ10.

01:02:09.000 | I think I started taking it

01:02:10.480 | for "general mitochondrial health."

01:02:13.040 | I don't know that I thought very carefully

01:02:14.760 | about exactly what I was trying to accomplish with it,

01:02:17.400 | but what is the rationale of taking CoQ10?

01:02:21.780 | - So if I can break it down, try to keep it simple,

01:02:23.760 | if people are familiar with the mitochondria,

01:02:25.600 | it's the battery of the cell,

01:02:26.680 | these little organelles inside each cell,

01:02:29.300 | and they're responsible for doing many things,

01:02:32.120 | but primarily making ATP, chemical energy.

01:02:35.300 | And so how do we make energy?

01:02:37.200 | Well, there's three main ways the body uses it, right,

01:02:39.580 | or makes it.

01:02:40.420 | First is glycolysis.

01:02:41.440 | We take glucose, which is a six-carbon molecule.

01:02:44.480 | We break it in half to make two pyruvates, right?

01:02:48.620 | When we do that, we make a little bit of ATP.

01:02:52.860 | That pyruvate then is converted

01:02:54.280 | to something called acetyl-CoA.

01:02:56.060 | We run that through the Krebs cycle,

01:02:58.940 | where we're also making ATP,

01:03:00.360 | but then we're making these intermediate products.

01:03:02.640 | One of those intermediate products,

01:03:03.880 | and the main one is something called NADH.

01:03:06.080 | That NADH is then shuttled to the mitochondrial membrane.

01:03:09.440 | This is the magic where we make the most ATP,

01:03:13.000 | and there's five different hubs, or we call cytochromes,

01:03:16.120 | right, and this is how I think about it,

01:03:17.320 | 'cause I just like to simplify.

01:03:18.520 | Cytochrome 1 is where we use NAD,

01:03:22.040 | and what the different hubs are doing

01:03:25.500 | is we're exchanging electrons for protons,

01:03:28.160 | and that's kind of an electrical process.

01:03:30.180 | We're exchanging electrons for protons,

01:03:32.000 | going down an assembly line to eventually turn this wheel,

01:03:34.720 | the ATPase wheel, to make ATP.

01:03:37.600 | The way I understand it is the five different hubs,

01:03:40.440 | different nutrients hit them, so cytochrome 1 is NAD.

01:03:43.640 | Cytochrome 2 is riboflavin, vitamin B2, and succinic acid.

01:03:47.880 | Cytochrome 3 is CoQ10, vitamin K2.

01:03:51.680 | Cytochrome 4 is methylene blue, which we can talk about,

01:03:54.220 | and then cytochrome 5

01:03:55.200 | are things like magnesium, vitamin A, and copper.

01:03:57.840 | So if you're thinking about mitochondrial health,

01:03:59.600 | if you include any or better all of those,

01:04:02.760 | you're gonna maximize how your mitochondria can work

01:04:05.400 | and make energy.

01:04:06.720 | It's the strongest way to do it,

01:04:08.000 | and it's, again, not necessarily complicated.

01:04:10.840 | So when I think of CoQ10, and again,

01:04:13.640 | we use a lot of NAD, which we can talk about,

01:04:16.360 | where I think most people,

01:04:17.680 | the traffic congestion happens on cytochrome 1, right,

01:04:20.880 | and so when we give people or up-regulate

01:04:23.040 | their NAD production, it's essentially we're allowing

01:04:25.760 | for more electron flow at cytochrome 1,

01:04:28.120 | which has a downstream effect on the other cytochromes,

01:04:30.720 | so the traffic jam opens up,

01:04:32.560 | and now you can move electrons to exchange for protons

01:04:35.160 | and make way more ATP.

01:04:36.480 | But that's not true for everyone,

01:04:38.840 | and so some people, it could be at cytochrome 3

01:04:40.800 | with CoQ10, it could be at cytochrome 2.

01:04:43.440 | A lot of people at cytochrome 4, which is, again,

01:04:45.080 | cytochrome, we call it cytochrome C oxidase,

01:04:46.920 | which is where methylene blue binds,

01:04:48.720 | but that's just a simplistic view.

01:04:50.360 | People, we run into traffic jams, right?

01:04:52.400 | These electron flow gets stuck.

01:04:54.280 | We're just trying to open up the traffic jam.

01:04:56.200 | - So 200 milligrams a day of coenzyme Q10

01:04:58.680 | can facilitate some of that flow.

01:05:01.800 | - Cytochrome 3, for sure.

01:05:03.400 | And CoQ10's been studied very safe,

01:05:05.080 | up to 2,400 milligrams a day, no harmful,

01:05:07.520 | yep, no harmful effects.

01:05:08.800 | Sometimes I'll take more, like I was telling you earlier,

01:05:10.920 | it's been dramatic for me with migraine headaches

01:05:13.560 | and basically reducing them to zero.

01:05:16.000 | - You know, as people are hearing this,

01:05:17.120 | they're probably thinking, okay, well, these are just,

01:05:19.280 | you know, this is what I call anecdote or whatever.

01:05:21.240 | I, you know, I don't have to remind people

01:05:23.360 | that you're a board certified physician.

01:05:25.160 | I think that what was still ringing in the back of my mind

01:05:28.360 | this entire conversation,

01:05:29.600 | even though I'm paying very careful attention,

01:05:31.800 | is that most of the drugs that are prescribed

01:05:33.600 | in this country are off label.

01:05:35.360 | I think that just like, I don't think I've ever heard

01:05:37.240 | that stated out loud.

01:05:38.440 | - Yeah.

01:05:39.480 | - It's wild.

01:05:40.480 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:05:41.320 | - So the idea that people would take something

01:05:43.240 | that wasn't shown in a clinical trial

01:05:46.600 | to be effective for purpose A,

01:05:49.240 | that they would, but it gets approved for purpose A,

01:05:52.840 | but then can be prescribed by doctors

01:05:54.840 | for purpose B, C, D, or E.

01:05:56.600 | - Right.

01:05:57.440 | - I mean, you're not telling me this is commonplace.

01:05:58.960 | You're telling me this is the majority

01:06:01.040 | of prescription drugs.

01:06:02.240 | - But it makes sense if you think about it, right?

01:06:03.480 | So if you took an antibiotic, right?

01:06:04.840 | Like we can just, and antibiotics can be very specific

01:06:07.520 | what it gets approved for in terms of like working

01:06:09.880 | against a specific bacteria.

01:06:12.240 | But then through clinical use and just experience,

01:06:15.240 | you know, we learned that, oh, I can use doxycycline

01:06:18.920 | or a Z-Pak, azithromycin, or whatever it is

01:06:21.840 | for a variety of bacterial infections

01:06:24.040 | that extend well beyond just what it's approved for.

01:06:26.320 | Well, that makes sense.

01:06:27.280 | - And does that ever cycle back to the clinical trials

01:06:31.240 | or no, this just becomes physician understanding and lore?

01:06:34.000 | Like, hey, yeah, you know, I've got patients that,

01:06:36.320 | you know, they get on azithromycin

01:06:38.200 | and their acne clears up.

01:06:39.840 | By the way, I'm not saying that, folks.

01:06:41.040 | I'm not a physician, but for instance.

01:06:43.880 | - Exactly what happened with semiglutidinozempic, right?

01:06:47.040 | Approved for helping glucose utilization

01:06:49.960 | or lowering, you know, blood glucose in patients

01:06:52.080 | with type two diabetes.

01:06:53.320 | And they found through use only, people were losing weight.

01:06:57.880 | And now it's become a blockbuster and it's,

01:06:59.400 | and we see it with, you know, things like, you know,

01:07:01.960 | repurposing drugs for cancer, right?

01:07:04.000 | There's a lot of that going on, a lot of the repurposing.

01:07:07.080 | So, you know, doxycycline is a very common one

01:07:09.520 | that's used in cancer therapies,

01:07:12.320 | I think by sophisticated oncologists.

01:07:14.480 | I don't treat cancer, but by sophisticated oncologists

01:07:16.640 | who use things like doxycycline, Metformin,

01:07:19.000 | Mabendazole, which is an antiparasitic drug, right?

01:07:22.520 | To help with cancer.

01:07:24.440 | So that's amazing.

01:07:25.280 | - So interesting, it is amazing.

01:07:27.080 | I think also, you know, I'm reminded that,

01:07:30.960 | you know, medicine, as beautiful a field as it is,

01:07:37.600 | I have tremendous respect for it, of course,

01:07:41.640 | is a field of fairly siloed training.

01:07:45.880 | And I love the idea that now,

01:07:48.040 | thanks to public education efforts like this one

01:07:50.800 | that you're providing us,

01:07:52.720 | that physicians learn from each other in a much broader way

01:07:55.840 | and can potentially hear about

01:07:57.400 | what drugs can be useful for this or that.

01:07:59.460 | The other thing, and this is not editorial,

01:08:01.320 | this is a real observation.

01:08:05.280 | Pharmaceutical companies are very interested

01:08:07.240 | in the other uses of already approved drugs.

01:08:10.480 | The research and development process for a drug,

01:08:13.080 | the safety evaluation is incredibly expensive.

01:08:17.040 | So they want nothing more than to take a drug

01:08:19.440 | that's already been approved for one purpose

01:08:21.620 | and to take that already safety approved drug

01:08:24.560 | and find other uses.

01:08:26.040 | How are they not circling back to the off-label use

01:08:29.920 | and understanding of these compounds

01:08:31.800 | and then essentially marketing them

01:08:35.440 | for these other purposes?

01:08:36.840 | Or I guess with Ozempic, that's exactly what happened.

01:08:39.040 | - That's what happened with Ozempic.

01:08:41.000 | Again, I write prescriptions.

01:08:43.720 | I think there's a time and place.

01:08:46.000 | I think it's challenging for me, though, right?

01:08:47.760 | And I think for a lot of physicians,

01:08:49.160 | it's become challenging operating in a paradigm

01:08:53.800 | where we talk about chronic disease,

01:08:57.200 | which is essentially failing.

01:08:58.560 | I mean, and we all know this statistically,

01:09:00.440 | we're not making huge dents in heart disease, cancer,

01:09:03.080 | autoimmune disease, neurodegenerative disease.

01:09:04.780 | We're not at all,

01:09:06.040 | but we're spending exorbitant amounts of money, right?

01:09:09.240 | And this is something that I had to learn over time.

01:09:13.240 | And I don't know how I got into it,

01:09:15.320 | but when I started my practice back in 2006,

01:09:18.600 | I started, it was a traditional family medicine practice,

01:09:21.000 | but I started using these nutritional IVs.

01:09:23.160 | And this is before hangover IVs,

01:09:25.000 | this is before it was popular.

01:09:26.700 | This is 20 years ago.

01:09:28.320 | And what I learned was that these nutritional IVs

01:09:31.920 | help people feel better quickly.

01:09:34.280 | And I developed this model for my patients,

01:09:36.920 | which I think is a better model,

01:09:38.360 | which is, I wanna help people feel better first,

01:09:40.840 | like we were talking about earlier in this podcast.

01:09:42.760 | 'Cause if I can get people to feel better,

01:09:45.280 | what we learned through COVID,

01:09:46.760 | and honestly, what I wanna say to you, Andrew,

01:09:48.440 | which is really true,

01:09:49.960 | your podcast and what you do has been so successful

01:09:52.800 | at a time during the pandemic

01:09:55.160 | when people lost so much trust in people like me, right?

01:09:58.880 | People lost that trust of, what do I do?

01:10:02.880 | You know, this is a scary time.

01:10:05.160 | I don't know what's going on.

01:10:06.440 | And you guys come along,

01:10:08.160 | you in particular providing this very stable,

01:10:11.040 | vetted information that people can trust

01:10:13.760 | and have a starting point and be like,

01:10:15.320 | this is what I wanna do.

01:10:16.240 | Because health, one of the gifts of COVID

01:10:18.520 | was it put our health on the forefront

01:10:21.000 | of most people's mind and life.

01:10:24.040 | And so what you're doing is tremendous work.

01:10:26.860 | And I can tell you personally- - Thank you.

01:10:28.520 | - No, literally, like as a physician,

01:10:30.720 | I am just, it's such an honor to be here

01:10:33.440 | and to talk to you because every day,

01:10:37.580 | every day my patients come to me and said,

01:10:40.280 | I heard this on the Huberman Lab Podcast.

01:10:43.920 | What do you think of it?

01:10:45.120 | And I am not joking.

01:10:46.400 | And I love that.

01:10:48.560 | I think it is awesome because people,

01:10:50.480 | one, taking their health seriously,

01:10:52.360 | but two, they have a stable resource that they can trust.

01:10:55.720 | The problem with physicians,

01:10:57.680 | and I'll tie this back in is,

01:11:00.000 | physicians are hard to trust, right?

01:11:01.960 | And it's this paternalistic model, which is,

01:11:04.760 | and that's how I was trained,

01:11:06.440 | which is, you're gonna do this

01:11:08.460 | 'cause I'm gonna tell you to do it, right?

01:11:10.500 | And I remember being in medical school,

01:11:12.460 | which was in the '90s.

01:11:14.140 | And I can't remember the exact specifics of the study,

01:11:16.560 | but they would go, they did a study

01:11:18.380 | where they collected the trash

01:11:20.340 | outside of physicians' offices,

01:11:22.220 | found that greater than 30% of prescriptions

01:11:24.540 | written that day were thrown away.

01:11:26.520 | Greater than 30%, wow.

01:11:28.320 | And I remember learning that,

01:11:30.740 | and I was like, what is going on?

01:11:32.060 | - By the patients. - Correct.

01:11:34.100 | Like, you came to the doctor

01:11:35.760 | because you wanted a prescription, right?

01:11:38.240 | No, you came to the doctor 'cause you weren't feeling good.

01:11:41.960 | You came to the doctor 'cause you wanted to be listened to.

01:11:43.840 | You came to the doctor 'cause you wanted to be validated.

01:11:46.400 | And most of the time, and this still happens to today,

01:11:49.120 | the vast majority of doctors

01:11:50.600 | will just write you a prescription,

01:11:52.320 | or they'll write you two prescriptions.

01:11:53.920 | And that's not what most people want.

01:11:56.080 | Sometimes it is, and I do it, and sometimes it is,

01:11:59.160 | but there are so many other tools that we can use.

01:12:02.400 | And so, when I help people feel better first,

01:12:05.780 | why I've been successful,

01:12:07.740 | and I work with the peak people on this planet,

01:12:12.300 | whether they're athletes, the best athletes,

01:12:14.580 | celebrities, the royal family, you name it,

01:12:16.860 | I'm so privileged, it's because they trust me.

01:12:21.140 | And that trust is really important,

01:12:22.700 | and I take that really seriously.

01:12:24.260 | You know what I mean?

01:12:25.100 | And so, tying it back in is,

01:12:28.260 | we've lost a lot of that with the pandemic.

01:12:30.020 | It's actually come to the forefront.

01:12:31.300 | And so, that's why I wanna help people feel better first.

01:12:33.800 | You know, the traditional model of medicine is just,

01:12:35.800 | get a diagnosis, write a prescription.

01:12:38.160 | If that prescription doesn't work,

01:12:39.280 | write another prescription.

01:12:40.440 | And so, yes, there's a time and place for that,

01:12:44.200 | but there's also a time and place for just helping people.

01:12:46.520 | It only works when people value themselves enough.

01:12:50.080 | Like, I can tie this back to weight loss, right?

01:12:52.320 | Why do people have such trouble losing weight?

01:12:55.600 | I would argue that most people

01:12:57.480 | don't value themselves enough

01:12:59.500 | to actually care enough

01:13:00.580 | to make the hard disciplinary choices in their life,

01:13:04.420 | to get away from emotionally eating.

01:13:06.620 | You know what I mean?

01:13:07.460 | To do the right things that they actually,

01:13:09.060 | it's gonna be a struggle

01:13:09.980 | to get the right food for themselves,

01:13:11.460 | get away from processed foods,

01:13:12.700 | to be disciplined, to go to the gym on a regular basis.

01:13:16.180 | They don't have the right people that they trust.

01:13:18.100 | This is where you've been such a gift, tremendous gift.

01:13:21.500 | - Well, thank you for the kind words.

01:13:22.780 | I mean, the birth of the podcast

01:13:26.060 | did take place during the pandemic,

01:13:27.800 | and in large part, because I saw everybody

01:13:32.220 | getting very anxious, their circadian rhythms disrupted,

01:13:34.940 | and those were focuses of my laboratory.

01:13:37.700 | And frankly, when I was a postdoc and graduate student,

01:13:41.180 | but especially as I got a little older in my years,

01:13:43.960 | I couldn't believe that, you know,

01:13:46.540 | I was reading these papers

01:13:47.580 | about how important morning sunlight is

01:13:49.560 | and all these things,

01:13:50.400 | but then my colleagues were all getting sick

01:13:51.900 | and dying around me

01:13:52.820 | or getting what we call the tenured look,

01:13:54.780 | where they show up, you know, start their job,

01:13:56.500 | and five years later,

01:13:57.340 | they look like they've aged 25 years.

01:13:59.300 | And I realized that I wanted to avoid that.

01:14:01.660 | So I've always just enjoyed learning

01:14:03.940 | and sharing science and health tools.

01:14:05.980 | And so thank you for the kind words.

01:14:08.460 | I've certainly been kind of both astonished

01:14:13.460 | and positively amazed in the ways

01:14:17.940 | that the pandemic and the post-pandemic years,

01:14:20.920 | I like to think we're in the post-pandemic years.

01:14:22.820 | I think we can safely say that now,

01:14:26.340 | how they've drawn people's attention

01:14:28.340 | to this idea that they need to take agency

01:14:30.220 | into their own healthcare,

01:14:31.420 | that no one, no pill, potion, injection, et cetera,

01:14:35.420 | can replace good behaviors.

01:14:37.800 | Pills, potions, and injections

01:14:39.500 | can potentially augment those good behaviors

01:14:42.100 | and get people going down the right path,

01:14:44.340 | which is what we're talking about today,

01:14:45.820 | but that it's really a personal responsibility.

01:14:48.720 | I mean, no one can give us a calmer mind.

01:14:51.420 | No one can give us a healthier body.

01:14:54.040 | No one can do that, right?

01:14:55.580 | You can, it's interesting that some

01:14:56.980 | of the wealthiest people in the world,

01:14:59.300 | the new thing isn't for people to boast

01:15:01.380 | about their yachts or their properties.

01:15:03.980 | It's about their health.

01:15:05.900 | It's about their vitality, their longevity,

01:15:08.140 | because that's the thing that I suppose

01:15:10.380 | in some sense money can start to buy,

01:15:12.140 | but it doesn't require a ton of funds

01:15:14.900 | to take great care of one's body and mind.

01:15:17.820 | - It doesn't, and what I've learned,

01:15:19.140 | and I've had to learn this over time,

01:15:20.740 | and I think the wisdom is,

01:15:23.140 | and this is why it's even more challenging,

01:15:25.660 | 'cause I think people go on social media

01:15:27.860 | and they listen to podcasts and they listen to influencers,

01:15:30.540 | and a lot of the messages is additive, right?

01:15:33.140 | If you're not doing a high-intensity workout every day

01:15:35.500 | and then doing sauna for X amount of time

01:15:37.220 | and then cold plunge and all this kind of dieting,

01:15:39.260 | you're not doing it well.

01:15:41.280 | I know that stress of that is cumulative to people, right?

01:15:46.280 | And so what I've learned, and I have a really good friend,

01:15:49.820 | probably the most affluent, successful,

01:15:52.740 | but also the most generous and smartest person I know

01:15:55.180 | who lives on the big island,

01:15:56.100 | and he says to me, which is worth repeating here,

01:15:58.660 | "I look for every opportunity to surrender."

01:16:02.060 | And it is that surrender to people who you can trust

01:16:05.420 | to guide you, right?

01:16:07.360 | So you don't have to be the quarterback of everything,

01:16:09.660 | right, and that takes off the pressure.

01:16:11.420 | And I think finding, it's not always about adding,

01:16:14.100 | it's actually creating space for us

01:16:16.540 | to just be in that flow, right?

01:16:18.180 | Like it's to be in like,

01:16:19.020 | and I know you've talked about this a lot,

01:16:20.500 | that kind of active rest place

01:16:22.660 | where it's not about being super focused

01:16:24.700 | and it's not about just going to sleep,

01:16:26.500 | but almost the best parts of our day

01:16:28.180 | is when we're in that flow state where things just click.

01:16:30.260 | And to me, helping people with those types of times

01:16:34.460 | and figuring that out is the most valuable.

01:16:37.740 | And I don't think people talk about that enough,

01:16:39.500 | so I appreciate that you do a lot.

01:16:40.980 | - Yeah, well, and I appreciate that you're bringing up

01:16:43.820 | this notion that just stacking more and more behaviors,

01:16:46.760 | like you got to crush a workout and do sauna,

01:16:48.380 | and that is not the message.

01:16:50.180 | Sometimes we get teased

01:16:51.800 | and there's some good comedy takes on me

01:16:54.700 | that make me chuckle now and again about that,

01:16:59.340 | but that's not the approach.

01:17:00.580 | These are tools that people can, it's a buffet.

01:17:04.700 | And I think most everyone agrees that sleep is key.

01:17:07.860 | Most everyone agrees that exercise is key,

01:17:09.620 | nutrition is key, great social connection is key.

01:17:12.500 | When it comes to,

01:17:13.700 | because I want to make sure that we circle back to this,

01:17:17.940 | when it comes to the peptides,

01:17:20.260 | it seems that one of your approaches, if I may,

01:17:23.500 | is to kind of raise the tide

01:17:25.740 | so that the boat can get out to sea.

01:17:29.380 | And we were talking

01:17:30.220 | about these growth hormone secretogogs.

01:17:31.860 | We covered GHRP6,

01:17:36.260 | which is the one that stimulates appetite.

01:17:37.740 | That's probably going to be a niche case condition

01:17:40.200 | that people would want to use that.

01:17:41.740 | Ipromiralin, tesomeralin, seromeralin.

01:17:44.100 | I get a lot of questions about, is it MK677?

01:17:47.540 | - What in the world is MK677?

01:17:49.740 | It sounds like a weapon.

01:17:50.720 | - It does.

01:17:51.560 | I think of it just like GHRP6.

01:17:54.380 | However, it's absorbed well orally.

01:17:58.180 | So it's basically the same.

01:17:59.280 | I see it working this very similarly.

01:18:01.580 | - To GHRP6, so it stimulates appetite.

01:18:04.380 | - It does.

01:18:05.220 | - It can stimulate cortisol prolactin.

01:18:07.100 | It sounds like a not good situation for most people.

01:18:09.660 | - Not for most people.

01:18:10.500 | Although, let me give you an example where it is.

01:18:12.900 | I have a client, very successful guy,

01:18:15.800 | and he's been on testosterone.

01:18:18.080 | He's doing all the things, right?

01:18:19.420 | He's in his early 60s.

01:18:20.820 | He's working out well.

01:18:22.220 | He eats well, super well, all these things.

01:18:26.060 | He can't put on muscle mass well, right?

01:18:28.820 | And actually, as people get older,

01:18:30.540 | that does become an issue for a lot of people

01:18:32.340 | is maintaining healthy muscle mass.

01:18:34.100 | MK677, before it was taken off the compound list by the FDA,

01:18:38.980 | it's another one that was included.

01:18:40.180 | - Oh, another acronym take it out by the FDA acronym, okay.

01:18:44.020 | - But you can take it orally,

01:18:45.300 | which again, removes the stigma

01:18:47.100 | or burden of having to do a shot,

01:18:48.420 | and you will increase your appetite.

01:18:50.340 | And that actually is a very useful agent,

01:18:53.300 | metabolically for people as they get older.

01:18:55.960 | And I know this, my kind of approach with this,

01:18:58.420 | and both personally and professionally,

01:19:00.220 | I try everything I can.

01:19:02.180 | And I remember MK677, I took it bedtime.

01:19:06.260 | And it was an hour later, I was in a dead sleep,

01:19:10.080 | and I woke up and I had to go eat.

01:19:12.860 | - It sounds like puberty.

01:19:13.940 | - It was, I was like, what is going on?

01:19:15.700 | 'Cause I didn't totally understand.

01:19:17.140 | I was like, what?

01:19:17.980 | Oh, I took that cap.

01:19:19.140 | Oh my gosh, I should never have taken it right before bed.

01:19:22.060 | And I had to go up and eat

01:19:23.140 | and destroyed my sleep that night.

01:19:24.960 | But I learned and I'll always learn,

01:19:26.380 | and I'm grateful for it,

01:19:27.380 | but don't take that one at bedtime.

01:19:29.540 | But it absolutely will stimulate your appetite.

01:19:32.300 | - Which are the growth hormone secretogogs

01:19:34.620 | that your more typical patients

01:19:37.780 | who don't want to stimulate appetite,

01:19:39.860 | both male and female patients prefer?

01:19:43.180 | What are you compounding for them?

01:19:45.460 | - I test amarylline.

01:19:46.720 | I don't see any appetite stimulation from that.

01:19:49.100 | Hexamarylline, we haven't talked about that.

01:19:50.640 | I don't really see it.

01:19:51.480 | - Tell us about hexamarylline.

01:19:52.380 | - Yeah, hexamarylline.

01:19:53.220 | - Hexamarylline.

01:19:54.040 | - Yeah, sure.

01:19:54.880 | Hexamarylline, I think of as more,

01:19:55.940 | again, if we talk about the flavor of these peptides,

01:19:58.180 | how I kind of look at it in my head,

01:20:00.200 | is more of the energy endurance

01:20:02.580 | growth hormone-releasing peptides.

01:20:03.900 | I like it for people to use it in the morning.

01:20:06.020 | They get a nice burst of energy.

01:20:08.060 | They feel it's a clean energy.

01:20:09.460 | It's not a caffeinated energy

01:20:10.900 | or jittery or anything like that.

01:20:12.540 | And it's good for more endurance type.

01:20:15.220 | You know, athletics are working out.

01:20:16.700 | So people in that field of competition or whatever,

01:20:20.500 | I think hexamarylline is a great choice.

01:20:22.220 | - Does not spike appetite.

01:20:23.500 | - I have not seen that.

01:20:24.540 | - So this is taken first thing in the morning.

01:20:26.180 | You get an additional growth hormone release.

01:20:28.460 | - Yes, you do.

01:20:29.420 | Yeah, you do in the early mornings when you're waking up.

01:20:32.460 | - And you used to compound it with CJC-1295

01:20:35.420 | to get the other pathways involved that can help.

01:20:37.820 | But now CJC has been taken out by the FDA.

01:20:41.180 | - Right, but hexamarylline still exists.

01:20:43.020 | That can be compounded.

01:20:44.020 | - What's the dosage on hexamarylline

01:20:45.340 | that you typically prescribe?

01:20:46.300 | - 100 micrograms.

01:20:47.780 | It's the same as these other,

01:20:48.900 | like Ipramerone GHRP-6, 100 micrograms.

01:20:52.220 | The two that are different would be Tessamerone.

01:20:55.140 | Ideal dose is two milligrams per dose,

01:20:58.020 | which is 2,000 micrograms, so quite different.

01:21:00.100 | And then Semmeron has actually a very broad dosing range,

01:21:03.860 | anywhere from 200 micrograms.

01:21:05.540 | I've used it up to 3,000 micrograms,

01:21:07.820 | depending on, you know, your goals.

01:21:09.840 | - We were talking about coenzyme Q10 and the Krebs cycle,

01:21:14.840 | and I forgot to close the hatch on supplements more broadly.

01:21:20.460 | Again, doesn't sound like you're a big fan

01:21:24.300 | of taking lots of pills and capsules.

01:21:26.180 | I think some people will take that as a relief.

01:21:28.020 | I think a lot of people get tired of taking a lot of pills.

01:21:30.740 | Some people don't like to do that.

01:21:32.640 | What are some of the other things that you do take

01:21:35.700 | besides coenzyme Q10?

01:21:37.940 | Earlier, we were talking about methylated vitamins

01:21:41.120 | of different kinds. - Methylated B vitamins.

01:21:42.440 | - Yeah, this is becoming increasingly popular.

01:21:44.400 | We're starting to hear more about methylation

01:21:47.280 | and methylated compounds.

01:21:49.160 | Could you educate us on methylated B vitamins?

01:21:51.680 | - Yeah, and I think people are familiar with it.

01:21:54.360 | You know, some people were talking on podcasts

01:21:55.800 | about the MTHFR SNP.

01:21:58.040 | - We've not talked about that on this podcast,

01:22:00.040 | so it'd be nice to- - Sure, so a SNP

01:22:02.280 | is a single nucleotide polymorphism,

01:22:04.600 | meaning that genetically things don't flow as easily.

01:22:07.980 | Again, that's an oversimplification.

01:22:10.060 | And you know, you could be homozygous for that,

01:22:12.520 | meaning you have both genes making you,

01:22:15.900 | you know, influencing you more.

01:22:17.580 | You could be heterozygous, meaning it's just one gene.

01:22:20.260 | - One copy from one parent, or a homozygous copy

01:22:23.300 | from each parent.

01:22:24.140 | - You say it way better than I do.

01:22:25.600 | And so what that means is, and where we see that reflected,

01:22:29.260 | homocysteine is a marker we use, a lab marker we use.

01:22:33.420 | It's an emerging marker for looking

01:22:35.240 | at one's cardiovascular risk profile.

01:22:37.580 | And so if one's got an elevated homocysteine,

01:22:40.840 | and elevated by some labs is gonna be greater than seven,

01:22:43.580 | by most labs greater than nine,

01:22:45.700 | means you're at an increased risk.

01:22:47.300 | And what that is, I don't remember,

01:22:48.700 | but you're at an increased risk

01:22:49.540 | of having a cardiovascular event,

01:22:50.760 | which would mean a heart attack or stroke.

01:22:52.660 | And so we wanna lower that number.

01:22:54.920 | And the best way to lower that number

01:22:56.780 | is taking ample methylated B vitamins.

01:22:59.600 | Methylated means you're adding a methyl group.

01:23:02.560 | So methyl B12, methylfolate, trimethylglycine, methionine.

01:23:07.560 | These are all methylation donors,

01:23:11.740 | which just metabolically

01:23:13.060 | and through your detoxification pathways in your liver,

01:23:15.780 | is going to help you lower that homocysteine.

01:23:19.000 | I'm sure it's more complicated than that,

01:23:21.300 | but that's, most people, if you're gonna take a B vitamin,

01:23:24.060 | take a methylated B vitamin, because then you overcome,

01:23:27.660 | again, we've done a lot of MTHFR testing.

01:23:30.640 | I don't think it's as profound

01:23:31.720 | as some people make it out to be,

01:23:32.860 | like it's gonna change their life.

01:23:34.300 | I've never seen that.

01:23:35.500 | Can it help you?

01:23:36.500 | Sure, but you're gonna overcome it

01:23:38.540 | by taking sufficient methylated B vitamins anyway.

01:23:40.780 | - And again, those methylated B vitamins are methylated B12.

01:23:44.580 | - B12, folate, there's a methylated B6.

01:23:49.020 | There's, and then trimethylglycine, TMG,

01:23:52.940 | is a good compound.

01:23:54.100 | Methionine is a good methyl donor, it's an amino acid.

01:23:56.980 | - Are these taken in the morning or in the afternoon?

01:23:58.740 | - I like taking them in the morning,

01:23:59.580 | although I think for people to play around with,

01:24:02.300 | 'cause I've certainly seen it,

01:24:03.380 | people get that 3 p.m. kind of slumber,

01:24:06.420 | as opposed to reaching for the coffee or the donut,

01:24:08.980 | take some more methylated B vitamins and see what happens.

01:24:11.260 | - Or just the coffee.

01:24:12.300 | - No, sorry, you're not supposed to drink caffeine

01:24:14.460 | too late in the day.

01:24:15.420 | Lately, what I've, I don't know,

01:24:16.940 | this is wrong to bring up on this podcast,

01:24:18.560 | but I can't help myself.

01:24:19.760 | I love your remate in the morning and afternoon.

01:24:24.560 | Coffee in the morning now makes me feel nauseous.

01:24:27.140 | I don't know if I'm pregnant or something,

01:24:28.620 | but it makes me feel nauseous.

01:24:30.300 | But I love the taste of coffee in the afternoon.

01:24:32.740 | This is like a midlife thing.

01:24:35.020 | I don't know what it is.

01:24:36.260 | So now in the afternoon, like around one or 2 p.m.,

01:24:38.620 | even just the smallest amount of coffee,

01:24:40.180 | it's like the most delicious thing I've ever tasted.

01:24:43.140 | - Yeah, I love coffee.

01:24:45.020 | - It can mess with your sleep too late in the day,

01:24:46.720 | but that's a perfect segue to talk about sleep.

01:24:51.060 | Because one thing that I know you've done a lot of work on

01:24:54.660 | and with are these peptides that can improve sleep,

01:24:58.340 | not just by virtue of enhancing growth hormone release,

01:25:00.980 | but I'll just be very direct.

01:25:03.860 | I, for the last, gosh, like four to six months,

01:25:08.020 | I've had the opportunity to try pinellan,

01:25:11.220 | and injectable pinellan combined with glycine.

01:25:17.940 | Goodness gracious, in the positive sense

01:25:22.100 | of the goodness gracious, you're from the South.

01:25:24.060 | So I don't know where people have the,

01:25:27.380 | never before have I found something that can improve

01:25:30.620 | the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that I get,

01:25:33.460 | besides rapid eye movement, sleep deprivation.

01:25:35.380 | You know, sleep deprivation,

01:25:36.380 | the next night you'll get a compensatory effect.

01:25:37.940 | That's not the way to increase your REM sleep, folks.

01:25:40.380 | You know, there are a lot of things

01:25:41.540 | like high-intensity exercise

01:25:44.340 | that improve my slow-wave deep sleep.

01:25:46.460 | Cold plunge early in the day improves slow-wave deep sleep.

01:25:49.900 | There have been a few other things.

01:25:51.540 | But with pinellan, and by the way,

01:25:54.580 | I'm not doing this every night.

01:25:55.740 | I do this occasionally, I ran a little experiment,

01:25:58.180 | and I track my sleep using the sleep tracker

01:26:00.040 | that's in Eight Sleep.

01:26:01.140 | And it's doubling the amount of rapid eye movement sleep

01:26:04.820 | that I'm getting, doubling.

01:26:06.820 | Which is, so like from an hour to two hours,

01:26:09.340 | or from an hour and 30, it's like nearly three hours.

01:26:13.820 | Even, I posted a picture of a sleep score

01:26:16.420 | with some rapid eye movement sleep.

01:26:17.500 | It's not something I typically do.

01:26:19.060 | But even the most competitive of biohackers,

01:26:25.100 | Brian Johnson, was like, "Oh, nice sleep score."

01:26:27.420 | - Yeah, sure.

01:26:28.300 | - Now he touts a sleep score

01:26:29.460 | that's perfect every night for every night.

01:26:32.620 | But, and I'm kind of poking at Brian,

01:26:34.420 | 'cause we like to poke back and forth.

01:26:35.620 | We're friendly with one another.

01:26:37.220 | So the point being that pinellan is a remarkable way

01:26:43.260 | to increase rapid eye movement sleep.

01:26:46.220 | I have very little knowledge about it,

01:26:48.440 | except that my understanding is that it might stimulate

01:26:50.820 | some regeneration or stimulation

01:26:53.340 | of the pinellocytes of the pineal.

01:26:54.900 | - That's exactly it.

01:26:56.180 | You've nailed it.

01:26:57.020 | Yeah, I remember when you messaged me after starting it,

01:26:59.540 | and you were like, "This is amazing."

01:27:02.260 | - It's amazing.

01:27:03.100 | - Yeah, you were saying amazing.

01:27:04.340 | - I hope the FDA doesn't nuke it

01:27:05.580 | as a consequence of this conversation.

01:27:06.420 | - It's still available, yeah, yeah.

01:27:08.100 | I hope so too.

01:27:08.940 | No, but I mean, your response is what we see

01:27:10.460 | with our other patients, who are loving.

01:27:12.660 | And I think that combination with glycine,

01:27:14.140 | I'm a big fan of glycine,

01:27:15.500 | and injecting it seems to work really well.

01:27:18.380 | But back to your question about pinellon.

01:27:20.380 | Yeah, I mean, it's a bit one of the smallest peptides,

01:27:23.640 | but I think it's one of the most profound.

01:27:24.860 | We used to combine it with epitalin,

01:27:26.740 | the Russian peptide that was used for circadian rhythm.

01:27:29.860 | - And for my understanding, epitalin also,

01:27:33.660 | it's involved in DNA repair,

01:27:34.860 | and has been explored in animal studies

01:27:37.300 | for trying to offset vision loss

01:27:41.060 | and some retinal degenerative conditions.

01:27:43.300 | - Yeah, again, put on the do not compound list

01:27:46.700 | with all the others, so that's gone.

01:27:49.460 | But pinellon stays and remains,

01:27:51.540 | and yeah, your response to it,

01:27:54.180 | and experience with it, has been very commonplace

01:27:56.900 | for working with patients and seeing that.

01:27:59.940 | I think there's a sort of circadian rhythm aspect

01:28:03.020 | with it as well, and helping with melatonin production.

01:28:05.900 | Obviously, that comes from the pineal gland.

01:28:08.620 | I, this is just, I'm postulating,

01:28:10.960 | I think there's more to the pineal gland than we understand.

01:28:13.100 | - Oh yeah, yeah, it makes things other than melatonin,

01:28:15.500 | that's for sure.

01:28:16.340 | - Yeah, and I think it's kind of elusive,

01:28:17.740 | but I think there's something to it.

01:28:18.880 | And I say that, having used a lot of pinellon

01:28:21.580 | with people over the years,

01:28:22.900 | and having very similar responses, which is awesome.

01:28:26.640 | Like everyone knows, like you said,

01:28:29.640 | when you sleep better, your entire day is better.

01:28:31.940 | When you sleep better, your life is better,

01:28:33.920 | like exponentially better.

01:28:35.760 | - I think of the millions of people

01:28:38.780 | that suffer from lack of rapid eye movement sleep,

01:28:42.200 | the lack of neuroplasticity

01:28:45.120 | that can be the consequence of that,

01:28:47.020 | the lack of healthy removal of emotional labels

01:28:52.300 | on previous day memories,

01:28:54.420 | that is the consequence of REM deprivation,

01:28:56.660 | the enormous impact on depression rates,

01:29:00.500 | the enormous impact on pretty much every mental health issue

01:29:03.480 | is made worse by lack of REM sleep.

01:29:05.300 | So I say, or I raise this conversation about pinellon

01:29:09.460 | with a little bit of trepidation,

01:29:11.060 | because I do worry that on the one hand,

01:29:13.320 | people will see it as a miracle drug.

01:29:14.740 | That's not what we're talking about.

01:29:15.980 | It has this effect, but at the same time, I,

01:29:19.460 | okay, I'll just say that, you know,

01:29:20.660 | there's another drug that was released recently.

01:29:23.060 | This is a FDA approved drug

01:29:26.140 | in the category of sleep drugs called the Doras.

01:29:28.720 | So it works a little differently.

01:29:29.860 | It doesn't push on the sleepiness system, so to speak.

01:29:33.100 | It suppresses the wakefulness system.

01:29:36.820 | And the idea is that it's supposed to increase REM sleep.

01:29:39.500 | It was by name Quivivic and things like that.

01:29:42.620 | I tried it, it was a total disaster for me.

01:29:45.620 | I fell asleep, woke up three hours later,

01:29:48.060 | couldn't fall back asleep.

01:29:49.460 | I tried it, it was lower dosage.

01:29:50.900 | It's extremely expensive as well.

01:29:53.060 | So I'm going to piss off whoever makes Quivivic.

01:29:54.940 | I forget who makes it.

01:29:55.780 | It was a complete disaster for me.

01:29:57.460 | Pinellin has been incredible.

01:30:00.960 | And here's, what's really interesting about it to me

01:30:03.060 | is that it seems to improve my sleep on the nights

01:30:06.800 | when I don't take it, which makes total sense

01:30:10.300 | if it indeed is providing some regeneration

01:30:12.540 | of the pinellicites that make melatonin and other-

01:30:15.520 | - That makes sense to me.

01:30:16.360 | - Yeah, so here we're talking about something

01:30:17.740 | that one could potentially pulse with now and again

01:30:20.860 | and get improvement in sleep every night.

01:30:23.260 | - Yes.

01:30:24.100 | - Yeah, wild.

01:30:24.920 | - Yeah, and it's, I mean, I think it's worth noting

01:30:28.220 | that you also take care of your health

01:30:30.220 | on many other aspects.

01:30:31.260 | And that's probably why you are sensitive to it,

01:30:33.540 | but it worked really well for you, right?

01:30:35.460 | And some other people, it's going to take longer,

01:30:37.220 | you know, if they're having to work on their diet

01:30:40.140 | and having to work on their exercise

01:30:41.140 | and having to work on their thought patterns, right?

01:30:42.660 | We don't talk about that enough, having positive thoughts.

01:30:46.700 | But yeah, it's been, it's so safe.

01:30:48.920 | We've never, ever seen, I mean,

01:30:50.400 | I never, ever have seen a side effect

01:30:52.500 | or negative side effect from pinellon.

01:30:54.380 | It's, and your response has been uniform.

01:30:57.540 | You know, people don't always get there as quickly,

01:31:00.460 | but people get there with their sleep.

01:31:02.620 | - Love it.

01:31:03.460 | And you compound it with glycine.

01:31:04.960 | - Yeah.

01:31:05.800 | - What's the rationale there?

01:31:06.840 | - I really like glycine as an inhibitory neurotransmitter.

01:31:10.560 | It's calming to the nervous system over the years.

01:31:13.680 | I tend to start with that when people are having trouble

01:31:16.340 | settling down at night,

01:31:17.700 | not that it's going to sedate people,

01:31:19.900 | but just transitioning from, you know, being active,

01:31:22.820 | you know, 8 p.m., 9 p.m., wanting to settle down.

01:31:25.140 | Glycine in pretty large dosages,

01:31:27.500 | at least most people think they're starting

01:31:29.100 | with 3,000 or 5,000 milligrams orally,

01:31:31.800 | kind of tones down the nervous system.

01:31:35.500 | People relax a little bit

01:31:36.860 | and then they tend to sleep better from it.

01:31:38.460 | And then you can dial it up.

01:31:39.660 | I mean, I've used very large dosages for it.

01:31:42.020 | The other advantage of glycine

01:31:43.820 | is it works on phase two liver detoxification,

01:31:46.620 | which is amino acid conjugation.

01:31:48.300 | So you're helping your liver work better.

01:31:50.580 | And in a world where we're being exposed

01:31:52.820 | with all of these toxic things

01:31:54.340 | from glyphosate to heavy metals,

01:31:56.500 | we all need to do some sort of, you know,

01:31:58.380 | liver mitigation strategies.

01:32:00.860 | Glycine's one of the best.

01:32:02.460 | - Wow.

01:32:03.360 | Interesting.

01:32:04.200 | We haven't done an episode of this podcast yet

01:32:05.960 | on heavy metals,

01:32:06.800 | but I'm very interested in this

01:32:09.660 | 'cause many people write to me

01:32:12.100 | asking about metal toxicity and about mold toxicity.

01:32:16.700 | - Molds become super big.

01:32:18.500 | Yeah, big.

01:32:20.220 | Yeah, I mean, it's very prevalent.

01:32:21.780 | And it seems the more we talk about it,

01:32:23.020 | I mean, we've seen it for years and years and years.

01:32:24.740 | It makes sense, right?

01:32:25.560 | Like if you think about the amount of airplanes

01:32:27.420 | flying above us every day,

01:32:28.900 | pouring down heavy metals.

01:32:30.280 | I mean, it's massive.

01:32:31.540 | It's in the air, it's in the water, it's in the soil.

01:32:33.900 | You talk about glyphosate or Roundup, same exact thing.

01:32:37.020 | So many chemicals and it's challenging for us as humans.

01:32:40.580 | The way I break it down, not to get too far off topic,

01:32:42.820 | is we're water-soluble organisms

01:32:44.920 | living in a fat-soluble world.

01:32:46.140 | It's the job of our liver,

01:32:47.700 | essentially, to take the fat-soluble stuff,

01:32:50.660 | make it water-soluble so we can excrete it, right?

01:32:53.380 | And that takes place in the liver in two phases.

01:32:55.260 | Phase one, we're using the P450 enzyme.

01:32:57.500 | It's like taking the trash,

01:32:59.020 | putting the trash in the trash can,

01:33:00.060 | putting it out on the side of the road.

01:33:01.380 | And you have phase two, amino acid conjugation.

01:33:03.180 | The trash truck comes and picks up the trash.

01:33:05.860 | Very few things in nature

01:33:07.540 | induce phase two independent of phase one,

01:33:09.860 | meaning most of us have trash

01:33:11.700 | piled up on the side of our road.

01:33:13.460 | Those things are the polyphenols, right?

01:33:15.540 | And so things like the blues, the reds, the pigments,

01:33:18.420 | that's why it's important to eat

01:33:19.340 | a wide variety of colors in your diet.

01:33:21.740 | Matcha tea has a very strong inducing effect

01:33:25.260 | on phase two liver activity.

01:33:26.740 | - Is that right? - Yep.

01:33:27.580 | - I need to develop a taste for matcha.

01:33:29.060 | - Yeah. - I feel like

01:33:29.900 | it's kind of grainy.

01:33:30.860 | - It is and it's bitter,

01:33:32.540 | but bitter things tend to be, again,

01:33:34.100 | helping that phase two.

01:33:35.380 | Glutathione helps phase two.

01:33:37.700 | We do a lot of that intravenously.

01:33:38.860 | And then glycine is a wonderful agent

01:33:41.020 | for inducing phase two independent of phase one.

01:33:43.540 | And the trouble is I don't think people realize,

01:33:46.180 | you know, people are told well, you know,

01:33:47.540 | most pharmaceuticals induce a P450 enzyme.

01:33:51.540 | And a misconception is well,

01:33:53.340 | if I'm just inducing one, I'm good.

01:33:55.140 | If you induce one, you induce them all.

01:33:57.380 | So if you take any pharmaceutical,

01:33:58.620 | you're inducing your entire P450 system.

01:34:01.340 | You're speeding it up,

01:34:02.300 | meaning you're putting more trash out

01:34:03.740 | on the side of the road.

01:34:04.940 | And if you look at the amount of things

01:34:07.460 | we're being exposed to outside of pharmaceuticals,

01:34:09.500 | it's mounting.

01:34:10.740 | - When you say on the side of the road,

01:34:12.380 | you mean in the liver.

01:34:13.780 | - Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

01:34:14.620 | I'm just using that as a metaphor.

01:34:16.100 | Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:34:16.940 | - You're not talking about excreting it in the,

01:34:19.220 | you're talking about building up of debris,

01:34:22.100 | cellular debris with it,

01:34:23.060 | or excuse me, metabolic debris within your body.

01:34:25.980 | - Right, the trash, again, very oversimplification.

01:34:29.980 | You need to speed up phase two

01:34:31.180 | to get the trash trucks come to pick up the trash

01:34:33.940 | so that you can then take that compound

01:34:35.900 | and excrete it in your stool,

01:34:37.500 | in your urine, your sweat, your breath.

01:34:39.500 | Right, I mean, it's the only way it works.

01:34:40.700 | It's not complicated per se,

01:34:42.060 | but I think there's a lot of misconceptions about it.

01:34:44.620 | - So when people take a peptide

01:34:47.180 | that's injectable pineal and glycine,

01:34:49.580 | they're getting glycine obviously,

01:34:50.740 | but for, let's say somebody doesn't have access

01:34:53.140 | to you or to, for whatever reason,

01:34:55.180 | there's a barrier to getting ahold of those peptides.

01:34:59.460 | Can people take glycine orally?

01:35:01.180 | - They can.

01:35:02.020 | Yeah, glycine's absorbed well orally.

01:35:04.020 | It has a really sweet taste.

01:35:05.580 | It's actually the smallest amino acid.

01:35:07.540 | Huge fan of it.

01:35:08.380 | We've been using it a long time.

01:35:09.700 | You can take big dosages of it.

01:35:11.260 | - So true. - Very sick.

01:35:12.420 | Again, my starting dose is usually

01:35:13.980 | three to five grams at bedtime.

01:35:16.140 | - Wow.

01:35:16.980 | - And then I tell, the way I do this,

01:35:19.020 | recommended is try that for a few nights in a row.

01:35:21.580 | Not noticing a thing, double the dose.

01:35:23.300 | Go to 10 grams, literally.

01:35:24.560 | Most people at 10 grams of glycine will notice it.

01:35:26.820 | And again, it's not gonna necessarily make you drowsy.

01:35:28.860 | You're not gonna be sedated,

01:35:30.180 | but your nervous system's gonna be toned down a little bit.

01:35:32.740 | It's gonna help you fall asleep a little bit better.

01:35:34.380 | And then while you sleep,

01:35:35.900 | where a lot of this detoxification process starts working,

01:35:39.140 | you're gonna be more efficient in how your liver works.

01:35:42.420 | Everything ties together.

01:35:43.540 | - Right.

01:35:44.380 | I'm still a big fan of things like magnesium three and eight,

01:35:48.060 | apigenin, which is a chamomile derivative.

01:35:50.260 | And I'll try glycine.

01:35:52.460 | I think a few years back,

01:35:53.420 | I was using a little bit of glycine,

01:35:55.140 | but it was more like 1,000 milligrams.

01:35:57.800 | But now that it's in the injectable peptide,

01:36:00.260 | the pineolin, I don't take it.

01:36:03.380 | Is there an oral form of pineolin that works?

01:36:05.800 | - There's these bioregulator peptides,

01:36:11.560 | which were developed by this Russian scientist,

01:36:14.880 | last name Corbinson, I think.

01:36:16.620 | Done a lot of research, actually.

01:36:17.820 | There's published research about it.

01:36:19.220 | I think pineolin's one of the ones

01:36:21.260 | that they say will survive the stomach acid

01:36:25.300 | and get through the gut and be absorbed.

01:36:27.920 | So I think that's true.

01:36:29.580 | We've always used it as injectable.

01:36:31.300 | And I tend to like injectable things

01:36:33.460 | for the bioavailability.

01:36:34.660 | So yeah, but to your point, I think people can.

01:36:37.460 | Those are going to be harder and harder to find, actually.

01:36:39.300 | It's probably easier to find an injectable pineolin

01:36:41.640 | than an oral one.

01:36:42.480 | - Yeah, and as we're talking about this,

01:36:44.300 | I'm realizing, unfortunately,

01:36:46.380 | just the way the internet works,

01:36:47.580 | that people are going to start selling,

01:36:49.960 | likely as a consequence of this conversation,

01:36:52.820 | we'll start selling pineolin,

01:36:54.060 | but you need to know that you're actually getting pineolin.

01:36:56.060 | I mean, it's very easy for somebody

01:36:57.700 | to just pop something up on Amazon and sell it.

01:37:00.460 | And maybe they just throw some melatonin in there

01:37:03.340 | and call it pineolin.

01:37:04.620 | There's a lot of BS stuff out there.

01:37:07.040 | So this is why the compounding pharmacy component

01:37:10.420 | and working with a physician is so key.

01:37:12.880 | - And researching, right?

01:37:13.820 | Making sure that what you're taking is legit.

01:37:16.820 | Lot of illegitimacy out there.

01:37:19.140 | - Do you think the pharmaceutical companies

01:37:21.160 | are going to move into these other peptides?

01:37:23.300 | I mean, certainly epimoralin

01:37:25.940 | for the reduction in visceral body fat,

01:37:27.980 | that's an FDA approved drug.

01:37:30.180 | So is somerolin, FDA approved drug,

01:37:33.280 | the GLP-1 agonists, FDA approved drugs.

01:37:39.020 | So the FDA is unlikely to pull those,

01:37:41.060 | but they're a blockbuster, especially GLP-1.

01:37:44.220 | I mean, they're making not even a small fortune,

01:37:47.460 | but a large fortune.

01:37:48.560 | - Big money.

01:37:49.400 | The concerning part about the GLP-1s is, to me,

01:37:51.900 | is what we're starting to see.

01:37:53.800 | They've been able to be compounded

01:37:55.060 | because there was a shortage.

01:37:57.940 | And the way it works with compounding pharmacies

01:37:59.500 | because those are brand name drugs

01:38:01.780 | and they're not patented for the peptide, right?

01:38:04.180 | They're patented for the delivery system, which is the pen,

01:38:07.780 | which most people don't realize.

01:38:09.300 | And they've been able to be compounded

01:38:11.320 | and then way more affordable because they're compounded.

01:38:14.920 | And there is rumors that the pharmaceutical companies

01:38:19.100 | now have supply back.

01:38:20.060 | They'll come back and they will, you know,

01:38:22.240 | remove the ability to allow these peptides to be compounded,

01:38:26.140 | which means we'll have to stick to traditional dosages.

01:38:28.860 | And people will lose access

01:38:30.600 | because they're going to be way more expensive.

01:38:32.540 | I mean, they are, if your insurance doesn't cover it,

01:38:35.300 | 1,500 a month for most people, very expensive.

01:38:39.900 | - That's a lot.

01:38:40.740 | - Yeah.

01:38:41.560 | - For a lot of people, that's rent and more.

01:38:43.180 | - So I'm hopeful that doesn't happen,

01:38:46.020 | but that's in the works.

01:38:48.740 | That's in the works.

01:38:49.580 | And that would be a huge shame.

01:38:51.300 | And again, I'm not a pessimist by any means.

01:38:53.980 | I'm a perpetual optimist.

01:38:55.040 | So we'll just make sure it stays this way.

01:38:58.320 | But, you know, again, if it does happen,

01:38:59.980 | we'll get creative and go other routes as well.

01:39:02.320 | - Earlier, you mentioned stem cell therapies.

01:39:05.900 | Those are not FDA approved in this country.

01:39:08.060 | - They are actually.

01:39:08.900 | You can use-

01:39:10.020 | - Sorry, my mistake.

01:39:11.260 | - So I think that using the term stem cell is a problem.

01:39:15.940 | If we use the term autologous cell, which would be PRP,

01:39:20.940 | it's basically the same thing.

01:39:22.100 | - Platelet rich plasma.

01:39:23.060 | - Right.

01:39:23.900 | - They take your blood, they spin it down,

01:39:24.720 | they take the-

01:39:25.560 | - Right, and so the ruling is I understand it.

01:39:27.540 | As long as you're taking a cell from you

01:39:31.500 | and you give it back within four hours,

01:39:34.260 | then that is allowed under the FDA guidelines.

01:39:38.100 | - Interesting.

01:39:38.940 | There was this clinic in Florida a few years ago

01:39:42.380 | was touting stem cell therapies for macular degeneration,

01:39:47.380 | injected some stem cells into these patients' eyes

01:39:51.820 | and they went blind really quickly

01:39:53.660 | and they were not blind prior to the injections.

01:39:56.540 | That, to my understanding,

01:39:58.140 | caused a severe setback to the whole field.

01:40:01.360 | I'm old enough to remember when gene therapy

01:40:04.860 | was set back by about 10 years

01:40:06.660 | because a patient received gene therapy,

01:40:09.380 | which is now pretty common for certain diseases,

01:40:13.040 | and the patient died.

01:40:14.300 | It's unclear exactly why they died,

01:40:17.320 | but that delayed the field of gene therapy

01:40:22.180 | by at least a decade.

01:40:23.580 | I mean, this country is very conservative

01:40:25.780 | when it comes to the approval of new therapeutics.

01:40:28.540 | - Sure.

01:40:29.540 | Yeah, no, and I think, like anything,

01:40:31.740 | there's gonna be people who get too aggressive.

01:40:33.940 | I've heard of doctors injecting stem cells

01:40:36.340 | into people's discs and then they get discitis,

01:40:39.700 | an infection, and that can just spiral very quickly.

01:40:43.860 | I think it's, you gotta be reasonable

01:40:45.660 | in what you're trying to accomplish.

01:40:48.100 | I'm excited about stem cells and exosome therapy

01:40:51.020 | and PRP and PRF and using them as kind of biologics

01:40:54.460 | and because I think there's a lot to learn.

01:40:56.540 | I think we only know very little

01:40:59.060 | from what we've seen from working with our patients.

01:41:01.100 | It's been tremendous from a rejuvenation standpoint.

01:41:03.620 | I mean, we're, as long as, you know,

01:41:05.460 | I think it's taking from your own, you know,

01:41:07.620 | and then giving back your own within how the FDA outlines it,

01:41:10.660 | I think that's a great way to do it.

01:41:12.460 | - Well, certainly you have the clinical data

01:41:16.820 | to back those statements.

01:41:18.060 | Thymosin alpha-1, what is this peptide?

01:41:21.940 | But maybe before we discuss it,

01:41:23.300 | did the FDA nuke thymosin alpha-1?

01:41:24.780 | - They sure did.

01:41:25.620 | - Whoa, okay, they're coming through with a howitzer

01:41:28.620 | and taking out all these peptides.

01:41:30.980 | Okay, well then let's keep this relatively brief.

01:41:34.020 | What was thymosin alpha-1 being used for previously?

01:41:38.740 | - Yeah, I think it was, from my observation,

01:41:41.300 | the best peptide for immune modulation.

01:41:44.420 | So we would use it if you had an overactive immune system,

01:41:47.460 | like autoimmune disease by definition.

01:41:49.220 | If someone has an autoimmune disease,

01:41:51.140 | their immune system is attacking their own self, right?

01:41:53.580 | That's classically lupus, rheumatoid arthritis,

01:41:55.660 | things like that, celiac disease, type 1 diabetes,

01:41:58.060 | those are all, you know, autoimmune diseases.

01:42:00.060 | We could use thymosin alpha-1

01:42:01.380 | and we tone down the immune response.

01:42:04.140 | We'd also use it a lot in post-COVID

01:42:07.380 | where you have an abnormal immune response

01:42:09.700 | or the immune system hasn't caught back up

01:42:11.460 | and you can kind of dial it up using thymosin alpha-1

01:42:14.260 | in a very safe way.

01:42:15.100 | We use it a lot with long COVID

01:42:17.780 | and we were using 5,000 micrograms a day,

01:42:20.940 | sometimes intravenously, getting great results, very safe,

01:42:23.820 | had no issues with it,

01:42:25.260 | but unfortunately it's off the table.

01:42:28.860 | - I hear a lot of complaints about brain fog

01:42:32.300 | with long COVID and brain fog generally.

01:42:36.480 | Cerebral lysine is a very interesting compound.

01:42:40.480 | My understanding is that cerebral lysine

01:42:44.220 | is available in Europe more broadly than it is in the U.S.

01:42:47.700 | Is it still? - It's available here.

01:42:48.820 | - Did the FDA, is it taken out?

01:42:50.200 | - No, it's still available.

01:42:51.040 | - Okay, all right, cerebral lysine made the cut.

01:42:52.900 | - Yeah, it made the cut.

01:42:53.740 | - We'll see what happens after this podcast.

01:42:55.380 | - That's right.

01:42:56.460 | We've used a lot of cerebral lysine.

01:42:58.700 | I actually have a clinic that's open in London.

01:43:00.420 | We actually did use it.

01:43:01.780 | We've used it a lot more over there than over here.

01:43:04.180 | - So you have a U.S. clinic and a U.K. clinic?

01:43:06.300 | - We have one based in London and one in Charleston, yeah.

01:43:10.100 | And I think, you know,

01:43:12.080 | cerebral lysine has been used for decades

01:43:13.860 | in the setting of, you know, post-stroke,

01:43:16.940 | post-traumatic brain injury.

01:43:18.540 | The trouble with it, again, I've observed with people,

01:43:21.660 | they get cerebral lysine, we're talking about IV,

01:43:23.780 | you can also use it sub-Q,

01:43:25.260 | is they will have a day or two

01:43:27.060 | where they feel really down and out.

01:43:29.640 | Like it's, like their mood shifts to like this dark place.

01:43:33.920 | - That's scary.

01:43:36.260 | - Yeah, and they come out of it.

01:43:38.420 | But most people don't like that feeling.

01:43:39.900 | And so we just, we stopped using it mostly.

01:43:42.940 | Yeah, for that reason.

01:43:45.540 | - My understanding is that cerebral lysine

01:43:47.160 | is a kind of a cocktail of brain-derived nootrophic factor,

01:43:50.260 | ciliary nootrophic factor, like some other things.

01:43:53.180 | It's not one thing.

01:43:54.500 | - Yeah, and I think, right,

01:43:55.700 | I think collectively it increases BDNF levels, right?

01:43:59.260 | Like there was dihexa too,

01:44:00.900 | I don't know if you're familiar with dihexa,

01:44:02.220 | that's another one that was removed by the FDA.

01:44:05.420 | Supposedly the most potent way to increase, you know,

01:44:08.820 | brain-derived nootrophic factor,

01:44:10.300 | kind of the juice the neurons live in,

01:44:11.560 | again, oversimplification.

01:44:13.380 | That's gone, but I think cerebral lysine did the same thing.

01:44:15.940 | - Interesting.

01:44:17.440 | So as long as we're talking about maintaining

01:44:20.580 | or boosting cognitive function,

01:44:22.660 | here's one I've never tried,

01:44:24.460 | but you and I have talked a little bit about.

01:44:25.940 | And it's still seen as kind of renegade,

01:44:29.280 | but it's becoming more commonplace.

01:44:31.260 | And that's methylene blue.

01:44:33.660 | And I always make the joke

01:44:35.540 | that I used to use methylene blue to clean my fish tanks.

01:44:39.140 | 'Cause I'm a big fish tank aficionado.

01:44:42.140 | At least I was when I was a kid.

01:44:43.260 | Right now I don't have a tank, but it's empty.

01:44:46.120 | No pun intended.

01:44:49.120 | What is methylene blue and what are people using it for?

01:44:55.100 | And does it turn your tongue blue?

01:44:57.020 | - It does, for sure.

01:44:58.640 | - Not permanently.

01:44:59.480 | - Not permanently.

01:45:00.380 | It's actually the first pharmaceutical

01:45:03.300 | ever prescribed in this country in the late 1800s

01:45:05.260 | was methylene blue.

01:45:06.100 | - Goodness, here.

01:45:06.920 | So it sounds like really renegade, but it's-

01:45:08.660 | - It's not. - Got it.

01:45:09.660 | - Yep, but it's gained favor in the last five years.

01:45:13.980 | That's certainly when we learned about it,

01:45:15.380 | particularly, I learned about it through this doctor

01:45:18.140 | who was telling me with COVID patients,

01:45:20.340 | he was getting immediate, like within a day

01:45:23.280 | of stopping of COVID symptoms from using methylene blue.

01:45:26.820 | That's what like piqued my interest.

01:45:28.260 | Like, wow, that's incredible.

01:45:29.980 | And then he went on to say that then COVID tests

01:45:32.540 | were turning negative within a matter of like two days,

01:45:35.140 | which was unheard of.

01:45:35.980 | - I've seen that with something else,

01:45:37.260 | but I'll get back to that.

01:45:38.780 | And so that's when I was like, oh, this is,

01:45:40.660 | then it started to be talked about and learned about it.

01:45:43.300 | So methylene blue, when we talk about the mitochondria

01:45:45.300 | using that mitochondrial membrane

01:45:46.700 | binds to cytochrome C oxidase.

01:45:48.540 | And I think of it, traditionally it's used

01:45:50.260 | when people have carbon monoxide poisoning.

01:45:52.060 | They'll still use it.

01:45:52.880 | You go in the emergency room,

01:45:53.720 | you have carbon monoxide poisoning,

01:45:54.820 | it'll give you methylene blue.

01:45:56.260 | And it helps your red blood cells

01:45:57.540 | displace the carbon monoxide and put oxygen there.

01:46:00.660 | And so it's an oxygenator.

01:46:02.620 | That's how I think of it.

01:46:03.700 | - Is it used as a performance enhancing drug

01:46:05.860 | in endurance sports?

01:46:07.740 | 'Cause this sounds like the kind of thing

01:46:08.860 | that cyclists would really want to use.

01:46:11.980 | Check with your local governing body.

01:46:13.740 | There's always a question I get.

01:46:14.820 | People are like,

01:46:15.660 | or they hear something on a podcast and they go,

01:46:16.900 | can I take it or am I going to get disqualified?

01:46:19.380 | And I always say, I have no idea if you'll get disqualified.

01:46:22.340 | - I don't believe it's on the water list.

01:46:23.860 | - Okay.

01:46:24.700 | - I don't believe we-

01:46:25.660 | - We'll just look for the people with the blue tongues.

01:46:27.260 | - Yeah.

01:46:28.100 | - Yeah, easy test.

01:46:28.940 | - So methylene blue, very well absorbed, very well orally.

01:46:32.540 | You know, I think of it like NAD, the molecule NAD,

01:46:35.380 | because it works on those cytochromes.

01:46:39.100 | Different than NAD though, because NAD is not,

01:46:41.140 | if you're taking NAD by itself,

01:46:42.140 | not absorbed orally well at all.

01:46:44.340 | It's one of the trouble with it.

01:46:45.700 | Methylene blue is.

01:46:46.620 | And actually you can take way bigger dosages

01:46:49.100 | orally than intravenously.

01:46:50.260 | We've given it intravenously a lot,

01:46:52.140 | but we're limited in using it intravenously

01:46:54.580 | just 'cause it'll start to cause some spasm of the vein.

01:46:57.640 | The arm starts hurting if you're giving too much

01:46:59.980 | methylene blue, either too much or too quickly.

01:47:02.460 | And so we can give it orally.

01:47:04.380 | You can get a capsule of it.

01:47:05.420 | That's how we are.

01:47:06.260 | - What dosages?

01:47:07.220 | - So I think a good dose is no more than 10 milligrams.

01:47:10.660 | - 10 milligrams.

01:47:11.480 | - Yeah.

01:47:12.320 | - Taken when?

01:47:13.540 | - In the morning.

01:47:14.380 | It is, you know, it's a cognitive stimulant for sure.

01:47:17.540 | I mean, I've had more people over the last five years

01:47:19.940 | 'cause we make methylene blue.

01:47:21.620 | We combine it with some other agents,

01:47:23.100 | a little bit of caffeine, some B vitamins.

01:47:24.860 | And people say, this is the best thing for, you know,

01:47:26.980 | my brain function, recall, memory.

01:47:28.380 | - Kind of quote, unquote, nootropic.

01:47:29.820 | A term I don't really like because.

01:47:31.640 | - Yeah.

01:47:32.480 | - You know, there aren't circuits for being smart.

01:47:33.680 | There's circuits for task switching.

01:47:35.620 | - I get it.

01:47:36.460 | - But yeah, so it's 10 milligrams of methylene blue

01:47:38.620 | combined with, and you've got some other things

01:47:40.000 | in the cocktail version that you make.

01:47:41.300 | Take it in the morning on an empty stomach.

01:47:42.940 | - Yeah, you could take it with food though.

01:47:44.300 | Again, it's going to be well absorbed.

01:47:46.660 | It will, interesting to people,

01:47:48.180 | I need to say it will turn your urine green or blue.

01:47:50.800 | - For how long?

01:47:52.140 | - About 24 hours, depending.

01:47:53.520 | And.

01:47:54.360 | - That can be kind of fun.

01:47:55.180 | - Yeah, well, and a good caveat is if it doesn't,

01:47:57.900 | and I've had patients,

01:47:58.980 | then that's interesting to me as a clinician

01:48:01.460 | because it means that your mitochondria

01:48:03.560 | is not working well, right?

01:48:05.080 | The way I see this is you should get spillover.

01:48:07.580 | You shouldn't kind of use it all.

01:48:09.240 | And if you're not, there's something wrong there

01:48:11.240 | that you're using all of it

01:48:13.000 | and you're getting no spillover back into your bloodstream,

01:48:15.860 | which gets filtered into your bladder, your urine,

01:48:18.320 | which you urinate out.

01:48:19.920 | And that's happened with a couple of patients.

01:48:21.040 | So it's like, oh, wow, you had no green or blue urine.

01:48:24.860 | There's a problem with your mitochondria.

01:48:26.440 | - So it's putting more oxygen onto the blood cells?

01:48:31.120 | - Correct.

01:48:31.960 | Like your hemoglobin is able to pick up more oxygen.

01:48:35.100 | That's exactly right.

01:48:36.820 | But then there's the, you know, a mild MAOI inhibitor,

01:48:40.300 | which is gonna--

01:48:41.140 | - Monoamine oxidase inhibitor.

01:48:41.960 | - Yeah, which is gonna allow things like serotonin

01:48:44.500 | to work a little bit longer in that synaptic cleft.

01:48:47.880 | You know, and you've expounded way better than I can

01:48:51.780 | about serotonin and dopamine and how those work.

01:48:53.940 | But there is a cognitive enhancement from it, for sure.

01:48:58.540 | It's very real.

01:48:59.780 | - Interesting.

01:49:00.620 | - And we have a lot of people using it and love it.

01:49:02.580 | It also seems to be an antiviral.

01:49:04.900 | You know, you get this, again,

01:49:06.580 | that's probably through the mitochondria,

01:49:08.580 | making your mitochondria more efficient.

01:49:10.460 | - It's a prescription drug.

01:49:12.020 | - It's a prescription drug, but there's now,

01:49:13.900 | and I don't totally understand it,

01:49:15.580 | there's now strictly over-the-counter

01:49:18.100 | nutraceutical supplement options that are methylene blue.

01:49:20.780 | For sure, anyone can go online and buy it, for sure.

01:49:24.580 | - Well, trust me now that there are gonna be a few.

01:49:27.700 | - And you talked about turning your mouth blue.

01:49:30.380 | If you take a liquid form, right?

01:49:32.940 | And we'll do that sometimes in the office

01:49:35.540 | when we're doing other treatments,

01:49:36.580 | we'll give a big dose of methylene blue

01:49:38.220 | to kind of help fuel, kind of quickly make a lot of ATP,

01:49:41.820 | which we wanna do with some different IV treatments we do.

01:49:45.420 | So we'll give sometimes up to 50,

01:49:46.900 | five, zero milligrams at a time.

01:49:49.180 | Their gums, teeth, lips are blue for about an hour or two.

01:49:53.260 | - And how often can people take methylene blue?

01:49:57.460 | - Again, you could take it every day.

01:49:59.780 | I think it's a little bit longer-acting.

01:50:01.440 | I don't take it every day.

01:50:03.300 | I take it about three times a week.

01:50:04.780 | I think that's about right.

01:50:06.740 | I do have people who need it more

01:50:09.260 | for whatever they're dealing with.

01:50:11.100 | I do think as a nutrient, if we're gonna call it that,

01:50:16.100 | it's a lot of, it's an insurance policy

01:50:18.980 | for your mitochondria.

01:50:20.680 | - So earlier you mentioned a patient,

01:50:23.780 | or maybe it was patients, plural,

01:50:25.780 | that experienced a more rapid transition

01:50:28.560 | out of a COVID infection,

01:50:31.740 | or maybe more recovery from long COVID symptoms, et cetera.

01:50:36.100 | It reminded me of the second time I got COVID,

01:50:40.160 | far less intense than the first time.

01:50:45.300 | But the second time I got COVID,

01:50:46.820 | I had an amazing experience

01:50:48.820 | where my COVID test was very strong band.

01:50:52.260 | It was very clear.

01:50:53.080 | Like I had COVID, there was no question about it.

01:50:56.380 | I didn't feel good.

01:50:57.360 | I was fatigued.

01:50:58.500 | It wasn't super severe.

01:51:00.720 | I would put it kind of on a six out of 10

01:51:03.880 | on the kind of malaise level.

01:51:06.660 | No fever.

01:51:07.540 | Okay, so I stayed in bed and stayed away from people,

01:51:11.220 | this sort of thing.

01:51:12.160 | But I did an NAD infusion.

01:51:17.160 | I, of course, told them I had COVID.

01:51:18.340 | They came over, they gave me an NAD infusion.

01:51:20.860 | And correlation is not causation,

01:51:24.480 | but I think it was 750 milligram NAD infusion

01:51:28.720 | over the course of about 45 minutes.

01:51:31.200 | I had the usual feelings that one gets

01:51:32.940 | when you get an NAD infusion,

01:51:34.200 | if you feel like an elephant is stepping on your legs,

01:51:37.480 | your chest kind of cramps up, you feel,

01:51:39.720 | and then when that stops,

01:51:40.940 | you feel much better than you go into the thing.

01:51:44.080 | The band was absent the next day.

01:51:48.160 | My symptoms were, I went from, I don't want to say gone.

01:51:53.680 | I went from like a five, six out of 10, as I mentioned,

01:51:56.280 | to like a two out of 10.

01:51:58.240 | And within another 48 hours, I was good to go and better.

01:52:03.240 | Now, this is correlation, not causation.

01:52:05.920 | I don't know what was going on.

01:52:06.760 | It could have been the saline bag, right?

01:52:08.400 | It could have been any number of things.

01:52:11.080 | But the shift from a dark band to no band

01:52:15.080 | was so dramatic that I took another test

01:52:18.220 | after the no band.

01:52:19.400 | And then, of course, the next day and the next day,

01:52:21.320 | this kind of thing.

01:52:23.220 | It's interesting.

01:52:25.120 | I don't know what it means,

01:52:27.320 | but one wonders whether or not it's just a global way

01:52:32.320 | of combating inflammation.

01:52:34.740 | You know, I just sort of,

01:52:35.740 | any time I think about a systemic effect,

01:52:38.380 | and the reason I raise this

01:52:39.380 | is that I don't want to give the impression

01:52:40.940 | that I think that like NAD is specifically

01:52:43.100 | in the pathway that was targeted,

01:52:45.500 | but that my brain and body were inflamed.

01:52:48.600 | Clearly, I had an infection.

01:52:49.900 | So you don't, you could have a flu.

01:52:51.180 | You could have a cold, you're inflamed.

01:52:53.140 | What are your thoughts on that anecdote?

01:52:55.820 | Again, it's just anecdote,

01:52:57.220 | but what are your clinical reflections?

01:52:59.500 | - We've seen it so many times.

01:53:01.900 | Yeah, I mean, for the longest time,

01:53:05.460 | and so we've been using NAD longer than most.

01:53:08.300 | I'm fortunate that I was given

01:53:09.940 | the original NAD infusion protocol,

01:53:12.260 | which came from Mexico.

01:53:13.620 | It's kind of a long story.

01:53:14.460 | I don't want to bore you,

01:53:15.300 | but that dosage of 750 milligrams

01:53:17.940 | is actually what we came up with in my office.

01:53:19.740 | And that's what most people adopted

01:53:21.500 | just because we've used it

01:53:22.860 | more than probably anyone else on the planet.

01:53:25.620 | Huge fan of NAD, very biased,

01:53:27.980 | but that's only because I've seen it work

01:53:30.420 | over and over and over in inexplicable scenarios,

01:53:34.120 | just like you're describing,

01:53:35.460 | where it's not just you go from A to B,

01:53:38.860 | but you're going to A to Z very quickly.

01:53:42.220 | And I used to use the word transformational

01:53:45.940 | talking about it.

01:53:47.060 | Not just, okay, going from a sick state to a well state,

01:53:51.380 | but in most people going from a well state

01:53:53.460 | to a super well state really quickly.

01:53:56.620 | And it's super impressive.

01:53:58.220 | So there's a lot more to NAD than we understand, right?

01:54:01.420 | Because just very empirically giving someone

01:54:03.660 | this coenzyme, this vitamin B3 derivative,

01:54:06.660 | how is it dramatically changing symptomatically

01:54:10.660 | how someone feels, but it does.

01:54:12.700 | And I've seen it with thousands upon thousands of people,

01:54:15.600 | certainly in the setting of COVID,

01:54:17.380 | certainly in other bio-infections, you name it.

01:54:20.460 | I have been more impressed with the work of NAD

01:54:23.180 | than probably any other agent we've ever used.

01:54:26.260 | - Amazing.

01:54:27.100 | Yeah, I take sublingual NMN each day.

01:54:30.220 | It makes my hair grow ridiculously fast.

01:54:32.460 | I've done the control experiments.

01:54:34.420 | I'm a scientist, I know how to do control experiments.

01:54:36.260 | It's still just N of one, it's just me.

01:54:38.060 | Makes my nails grow really fast, makes my hair grow fast.

01:54:40.660 | That's the major consequence.

01:54:42.820 | By the way, I want to be clear.

01:54:43.800 | I don't have any stake in any company

01:54:45.260 | that sells NAD or NAD infusion.

01:54:47.580 | So I'm just reporting what I'm reporting.

01:54:49.280 | - No, I think it's great.

01:54:50.820 | - Somebody who's quite expert in the NAD pathway,

01:54:55.460 | Charles Brenner, who I believe has a relationship

01:54:59.740 | to a company that makes NR supplements.

01:55:01.420 | - I think that's great.

01:55:02.260 | - Encouraged me to try NR.

01:55:03.820 | I took these NR supplements.

01:55:05.980 | This is what, it's NAD minus a phosphate group

01:55:09.140 | is my understanding.

01:55:10.140 | And those I took orally, I couldn't tell

01:55:14.060 | if I got the same or different effect

01:55:15.420 | 'cause I was taking them together.

01:55:17.340 | I didn't continue to take them because compared to NMN,

01:55:21.060 | it was very expensive.

01:55:23.100 | And I just stopped taking it.

01:55:27.180 | So that's why I use sublingual NMN.

01:55:29.220 | But in brief discussions with Charles

01:55:33.520 | and how we are forging online,

01:55:34.900 | it seems that there is some literature,

01:55:37.780 | human clinical literature,

01:55:39.180 | showing that NR can reduce inflammation.

01:55:41.780 | Is that right?

01:55:42.600 | - Yeah, for sure.

01:55:43.440 | - So there's less data that NMN can reduce inflammation,

01:55:46.380 | at least lack of human studies.

01:55:47.940 | Okay, so we're still kind of in the,

01:55:49.780 | it's still murky, foggy territory

01:55:52.900 | with respect to the research and clinical.

01:55:56.260 | - The biochemistry.

01:55:57.540 | Yeah, and like, what does the biochemistry do?

01:55:59.540 | And the way I think about it, again,

01:56:01.300 | 'cause we kind of pioneered the infusions, the NAD drips,

01:56:05.220 | which for me, transformational,

01:56:06.840 | just observing lots of people who,

01:56:09.820 | I never saw the same thing with NMN and NR.

01:56:12.500 | You're not having these transformational experiences

01:56:14.600 | within a week.

01:56:15.440 | I tell the story a lot is I had a patient,

01:56:19.240 | he was diagnosed with a chronic Epstein-Barr virus,

01:56:21.680 | which is rare, but it does exist.

01:56:23.960 | He was depressed and on disability

01:56:26.000 | just 'cause he couldn't almost get out of bed.

01:56:28.080 | - This is mono?

01:56:28.920 | - But it was reactivation of Epstein-Barr.

01:56:31.720 | Yeah, yeah.

01:56:32.560 | And so very like fatigued and depressed

01:56:35.520 | and literally on disability, couldn't work.

01:56:37.440 | And he, I said, before we do anything,

01:56:40.480 | the way I operate is I want to get you feeling better

01:56:42.200 | first before we start to tackle some of the bigger things.

01:56:44.220 | We did the loading dose of NAD,

01:56:46.740 | which we came up with five treatments in 10 days.

01:56:49.740 | Came back to my office, his wife was there, she was crying.

01:56:51.560 | She goes, "In a week, my husband is back."

01:56:54.060 | - Wow.

01:56:54.900 | - And I've seen that so many times with NAD

01:56:56.940 | and I can't explain it, right?

01:56:58.320 | And if I just stick to the biochemistry,

01:56:59.900 | it doesn't make sense.

01:57:00.740 | Oh, you're increasing the NAD/NEH ratio,

01:57:03.280 | fueling the mitochondria, which are all over the body,

01:57:05.340 | thousands per cell.

01:57:06.580 | There's something that we just told,

01:57:08.140 | there's gotta be outside the mitochondrial effect of NAD

01:57:11.420 | that's not well understood.

01:57:13.220 | - So in the backdrop of our conversation today,

01:57:15.320 | there've been a number of themes,

01:57:17.980 | but one of the themes that seems to keep coming up

01:57:20.180 | is that there are a lot of things about medicine

01:57:22.320 | that we don't understand.

01:57:23.160 | - Totally.

01:57:24.300 | - And yet there are tools that seem to work

01:57:26.060 | for certain people extremely well.

01:57:28.220 | A few years ago, I went to a meeting.

01:57:31.140 | This is a foundation meeting, a foundation I was a part of,

01:57:35.160 | where you get to see talks

01:57:36.860 | from really the best of the best laboratories.

01:57:40.340 | And they only show unpublished data.

01:57:42.900 | And at the time, I don't know if this paper's published yet,

01:57:45.420 | but at the time they were showing that they took people

01:57:47.700 | that were diagnosed with major depression.

01:57:51.940 | And they started doing a bunch of metabolomics on them.

01:57:54.900 | Now, this sounds pretty standard for social media.

01:57:57.380 | It's actually pretty heretical.

01:57:59.900 | Not a lot of places have done this right.

01:58:03.180 | So a couple thousand patients, blood draws,

01:58:06.340 | they're trying to figure out, ask a simple question,

01:58:09.220 | are there any specific vitamin deficiencies

01:58:12.020 | that are associated with depression?

01:58:14.220 | And as I recall, they identified a few different types

01:58:17.620 | of vitamin deficiencies.

01:58:18.540 | So it's not like one vitamin.

01:58:19.820 | It's not always methylated B6 or something like that,

01:58:22.220 | or excuse me, it's not always B6 or B12.

01:58:25.620 | But they found these clusters of patients

01:58:28.180 | that had major depression that were deficient

01:58:30.900 | in a particular B vitamin.

01:58:32.940 | They supplemented back the B vitamin,

01:58:34.540 | and lo and behold, those patients showed remission

01:58:37.580 | of their depression.

01:58:39.580 | So one could conveniently conclude,

01:58:42.640 | oh, well, all depression is a B vitamin deficiency,

01:58:45.260 | but of course that's not true, right?

01:58:47.140 | More likely depression, like fever,

01:58:49.540 | is just a broad description of symptoms.

01:58:52.380 | But what was so exciting about this talk, to me anyway,

01:58:55.960 | was that people were starting to look

01:58:57.380 | at nutritional deficiencies as a potential source

01:59:00.140 | of mental illness, which now has a bit more traction,

01:59:03.120 | but at the time was like, whoa,

01:59:04.620 | what are we really saying here?

01:59:05.940 | I thought all of depression was a serotonin deficiency,

01:59:08.360 | right, this kind of thing.

01:59:09.560 | So when you talk about NAD having

01:59:11.980 | these transformative effects,

01:59:13.160 | and the fact that NAD can kind of raise the tide

01:59:16.220 | on a number of different biological processes,

01:59:18.220 | to me, it makes perfect sense.

01:59:19.940 | It might've kicked off some mitochondrial pathway

01:59:22.180 | or some cellular pathway that then fills in a blank

01:59:25.900 | that's desperately needed.

01:59:27.020 | Is that one way that we can conceptualize this?

01:59:28.900 | - That makes total sense to me.

01:59:29.940 | - Okay. - I like how

01:59:30.760 | you've described it.

01:59:31.600 | - So how often do you encourage

01:59:33.700 | your already healthy patients to do NAD infusions?

01:59:36.900 | What are the dosages?

01:59:38.060 | I should mention the NAD infusions,

01:59:40.020 | for most people, are a little bit costly.

01:59:41.980 | - They are costly.

01:59:42.820 | - They're like anywhere from $500 to $1,000.

01:59:46.380 | - Or more. - Yeah, or more.

01:59:47.220 | - If you're in Los Angeles, yeah.

01:59:48.060 | - If you're in Los Angeles.

01:59:49.980 | So assuming someone has the means.

01:59:51.900 | - Yeah, so here's what we found.

01:59:53.060 | And again, just found it by treating a lot of people

01:59:54.900 | and learning is we do a loading dose for most people.

01:59:59.000 | We found the sweet spot to be 750 milligrams.

02:00:02.020 | - Intravenous. - Intravenous.

02:00:03.680 | When they were doing NAD in the '90s

02:00:07.760 | and they were doing it for substance abuse,

02:00:09.500 | so alcohol, pain medicine, you know, morphine.

02:00:12.780 | - They used it for that?

02:00:13.700 | - That's where it came from, actually.

02:00:15.380 | It was in the '90s, people traveling to Mexico

02:00:18.060 | for NAD infusions, that protocol was 10 straight days

02:00:21.140 | of intravenous NAD, yeah.

02:00:23.340 | The dose they used was 3,000 milligrams.

02:00:25.440 | - 3,000 milligrams? - Yeah, and that's why

02:00:26.940 | it took six to eight to 10 hours per infusion.

02:00:28.940 | You could not get through it.

02:00:30.260 | - Putting 500 milligrams in over the course of 45 minutes

02:00:33.500 | is gonna be very uncomfortable.

02:00:35.160 | Many people take an anti-nausea med.

02:00:37.260 | - So I'll tell you about that.

02:00:38.100 | So that comes from, so there was a gentleman in the States

02:00:41.000 | in 2006, lived in Louisiana.

02:00:43.240 | He had a pain medicine addiction, went to Mexico,

02:00:47.160 | got the NAD protocol, changed his life.

02:00:49.360 | He then licensed the use of the only injectable NAD product,

02:00:52.800 | which was from a South African company at the time,

02:00:55.600 | brought it to the United States,

02:00:56.960 | opened a clinic in Atlanta.

02:00:58.800 | All he did was addiction.

02:01:00.480 | And I got to know him 'cause I'm in Charleston,

02:01:02.760 | not too far involved in IV work.

02:01:04.940 | He was not a physician.

02:01:06.060 | I don't remember the time, but he came to me and said,

02:01:07.620 | "Hey, I need some help 'cause I'm getting a lot of questions

02:01:09.520 | "about this NAD stuff."

02:01:11.300 | And so he handed me the original protocol.

02:01:13.020 | I mean, I'm super grateful and fortunate,

02:01:16.860 | but what I realized is no one has time

02:01:19.780 | to spend six to eight to 10 hours in someone's office.

02:01:23.120 | They may do that once,

02:01:24.020 | but they're not doing it more than once.

02:01:26.160 | So we started trialing different dosages,

02:01:29.980 | 250, 500, 750,000, on up.

02:01:32.520 | And I just found collectively by watching people

02:01:35.580 | and how they did, 750 milligrams was a sweet spot,

02:01:37.680 | meaning they'd get the benefits, which we can talk about,

02:01:40.260 | but then they could get through it in an hour or two hours.

02:01:42.440 | And that was meaningful.

02:01:43.900 | And then we found that we don't need 10 straight days.

02:01:46.320 | That's too much.

02:01:47.420 | That just is crazy.

02:01:48.940 | We found that five treatments in 10 days,

02:01:50.940 | again, afforded people the ability to have great benefits,

02:01:55.140 | which were uniform.

02:01:56.280 | Probably 95% of people who do a loading disc

02:01:58.420 | will come back and tell you their brain is getting bigger.

02:02:00.500 | They feel more creative.

02:02:01.500 | They have an elevated mood.

02:02:03.180 | They can sleep less, but have more energy.

02:02:05.140 | Colors look brighter.

02:02:06.180 | Languaging is easier.

02:02:07.620 | I mean, this is all very real.

02:02:08.740 | So I think it affects the nervous system first,

02:02:11.020 | just 'cause of the concentration of the mitochondria

02:02:12.700 | for every single neuron in the body.

02:02:14.500 | The physical components, meaning recovery

02:02:17.900 | and helping with physical exercise, those come,

02:02:20.360 | but I think they come later.

02:02:21.580 | And so we settled on 750 milligrams.

02:02:23.540 | We settled on the loading dose.

02:02:25.820 | And then what I noticed is that people were coming back

02:02:27.780 | between three and four weeks saying,

02:02:29.220 | hey, I don't feel as good as I did

02:02:31.500 | after I did that loading dose.

02:02:32.940 | And so we started doing a once a month maintenance dose.

02:02:36.860 | And that is what we still recommend to today.

02:02:39.880 | Some people will do less and some people do more.

02:02:41.620 | I have some people who do it once a week,

02:02:44.060 | but plenty of people do it once a month.

02:02:45.780 | And then some people do it quarterly.

02:02:46.720 | Some people do it whenever they can.

02:02:48.280 | On average, once a month seems to work really well

02:02:51.140 | for people.

02:02:51.980 | Then during the pandemic and realizing this is growing,

02:02:55.300 | 'cause again, we train practices

02:02:57.780 | kind of in the medicine that we practice.

02:02:59.380 | We've trained 300, 350 practices

02:03:02.140 | and kind of give them the playbook, so to speak.

02:03:05.100 | People weren't coming to the office as much with COVID.

02:03:07.140 | So we started doing it subcutaneously.

02:03:09.580 | And actually that's worked out really well.

02:03:11.180 | We'll do a hundred milligrams subcutaneously.

02:03:13.680 | Again, five days on, take two days off.

02:03:15.940 | You get a little bit of that stomach cramping

02:03:17.580 | from a hundred milligram injection.

02:03:19.820 | Like you said, can't really be absorbed well orally,

02:03:22.180 | not gonna really work.

02:03:23.080 | So you're gonna have to inject it or infuse it.

02:03:25.560 | Agree, there's a price point here, right?

02:03:27.780 | It's gonna cost money, but like most things,

02:03:31.120 | to me, if I had to pick one thing for people,

02:03:36.840 | engaging in NAD would be it.

02:03:38.520 | - Really?

02:03:39.360 | - Yeah, yeah, I would.

02:03:40.200 | - Of all the things we've discussed.

02:03:41.020 | - Of all the things.

02:03:41.860 | I've just been so impressed over the years.

02:03:43.320 | Now, peptides are amazing.

02:03:45.000 | Not to knock peptides, peptides.

02:03:47.040 | There's so many peptides and I will get there, right?

02:03:49.360 | Because you can take this peptide for the nervous system,

02:03:51.760 | this peptide for the immune system,

02:03:53.200 | but collectively one agent, one thing,

02:03:56.240 | it's NAD has been the most impactful

02:03:58.320 | from where I sit working with patients.

02:04:01.160 | - Well, that's a significant statement.

02:04:02.760 | So a hundred milligrams injected subcutaneously,

02:04:06.200 | you get a little bit of stomach cramping.

02:04:07.600 | - Yes.

02:04:08.420 | - As compared to the 500 milligrams to 750

02:04:11.000 | or a thousand milligrams that one brings in IV.

02:04:14.440 | The fastest I've ever dripped it in

02:04:16.320 | was I think like 40 minutes.

02:04:19.200 | - I can tell you the record.

02:04:20.240 | - What's the record?

02:04:21.160 | - Three minutes and 26 seconds.

02:04:22.900 | - Is that you?

02:04:23.740 | - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

02:04:25.240 | - What are 500 milligrams?

02:04:26.080 | - 750 milligrams, two separate people did it.

02:04:28.560 | 500 CCs of saline, three minutes, 26 seconds.

02:04:32.360 | - Wow.

02:04:33.200 | - It's insane.

02:04:34.080 | - Yeah, I don't recommend it.

02:04:35.520 | - No, no, we wouldn't allow it to happen.

02:04:37.140 | It's too much.

02:04:37.980 | You got to have a lot of experience with NAD.

02:04:40.360 | - Yeah, I found that because you have to sit there

02:04:43.040 | for a while, you could think, okay, well,

02:04:44.920 | do you organize the plumbing correctly

02:04:47.880 | that you could type or something, but you feel-

02:04:50.040 | - It's hard.

02:04:50.880 | - Nudged enough during the infusion that you get irritable.

02:04:55.200 | It's actually a very interesting window

02:04:58.680 | into empathy for people who have pain.

02:05:01.560 | - Totally.

02:05:02.400 | - You know, when you're in this kind of whole body

02:05:04.360 | kind of systemic pain and discomfort

02:05:06.840 | and you gain that saliva, I'm kind of sensing it now.

02:05:08.960 | I have a distinct memory of this.

02:05:10.560 | Kind of like for people that get seasick,

02:05:11.920 | you think about being on a boat

02:05:12.960 | and walking back and forth, get a little nauseous.

02:05:16.240 | Someone would walk in the room and you're like,

02:05:18.480 | God, why are they walking like that?

02:05:20.160 | - Right.

02:05:21.000 | - You know, and it's your own, it's your sense of pain.

02:05:23.780 | I normally don't have that response to people.

02:05:25.840 | I'm not a moody person in general, but then, you know,

02:05:29.440 | when you remove the infusion, you feel great.

02:05:31.400 | And all of a sudden people seem delightful.

02:05:33.720 | The irritating person, it's a very interesting experiment

02:05:36.760 | in social empathy.

02:05:38.240 | - It is, and this is just what I postulate

02:05:40.960 | is that a lot of people are challenged

02:05:43.240 | because a lot of people are numb to the world they live in.

02:05:47.520 | They don't feel things.

02:05:48.920 | And when you do NAD, there is nothing like that experience

02:05:52.100 | and that feeling.

02:05:53.320 | And so you are going to just psychologically say,

02:05:56.120 | something is changing inside of me.

02:05:58.800 | And it's something powerful 'cause it's,

02:06:00.480 | when I receive it, it's a lot.

02:06:02.200 | And to your point, what we do is we have a kind of an IV room

02:06:05.200 | where we have like eight chairs and we make it social.

02:06:07.960 | Because when you're talking to people

02:06:09.280 | and learning about their experiencing it,

02:06:11.320 | there's actually a lot of healing that occurs

02:06:12.920 | just from that community.

02:06:14.440 | - That's a rebounding experiment.

02:06:15.920 | - It is. - Experiment.

02:06:16.840 | - Yeah.

02:06:18.060 | - For people that can't afford the infusions,

02:06:20.800 | the injections would be the next best bet.

02:06:23.240 | If they can't afford those,

02:06:24.760 | would it be the sublingual NMN or NR?

02:06:26.560 | - I think so.

02:06:27.400 | I think the NMN.

02:06:28.240 | I would choose over NR.

02:06:29.120 | - Yeah, so going from most expensive to least expensive,

02:06:31.960 | most expensive would be IV.

02:06:34.860 | Then it would be subcutaneous.

02:06:37.280 | Then it would be NR.

02:06:39.960 | And then it would be a sublingual NMN.

02:06:42.000 | - Yeah. - Okay.

02:06:42.960 | - That's about right.

02:06:43.780 | I mean, you could do NAD topically.

02:06:45.840 | It's a little bit wildcard doing it topically.

02:06:48.620 | You could do it under your, yeah, patch.

02:06:50.460 | - The antiphretic patches.

02:06:51.900 | Those give me a really terrible--

02:06:53.300 | - The problem is the patch.

02:06:54.500 | - I get this itchy thing. - It's the patch.

02:06:56.140 | It's the adhesive.

02:06:57.460 | It's too strong.

02:06:58.540 | Lots of people get irritated.

02:06:59.820 | Their skin gets irritated.

02:07:01.340 | I think the NAD gets in well,

02:07:02.540 | but the patch itself is a hindrance, obstacle.

02:07:06.540 | - And for those that are listening to this,

02:07:08.460 | and they may recall,

02:07:10.380 | I did an episode of this podcast with Dr. Peter Attia,

02:07:13.780 | where we talked about NAD and NMN and NR.

02:07:16.280 | And that was mainly focused on the research literature.

02:07:19.760 | You're not gonna find much.

02:07:21.160 | So what we're talking about here is clinical experience.

02:07:25.000 | - Yeah, full disclosure.

02:07:26.440 | I'm a clinician through and through.

02:07:27.760 | So my experience is observing people.

02:07:30.120 | - And you're interested in what works.

02:07:32.340 | - Well, but I'm confident about it

02:07:35.880 | because I've done a lot of it.

02:07:37.900 | I've seen a lot of how peptides work

02:07:40.600 | 'cause we've done a lot of it.

02:07:41.800 | This NAD, 'cause we've overseen, again,

02:07:44.140 | a lot of NAD here and in London, all over,

02:07:47.160 | and the providers we work with.

02:07:49.000 | So we get a lot of feedback about what works

02:07:51.360 | and what doesn't work.

02:07:52.460 | - Speaking of clinicians and science and all of this,

02:07:58.680 | there are a couple other peptides

02:08:00.840 | that have received FDA approval

02:08:03.240 | that are commonly in use, things like PT-141,

02:08:07.480 | which is in this melanocyte hormone pathway that's used.

02:08:12.480 | One of its FDA-approved uses is,

02:08:17.320 | I think the brand name is Vilese,

02:08:18.520 | is for female hypolibido.

02:08:22.160 | So it stimulates libido in women.

02:08:23.840 | It's also used to stimulate libido in men.

02:08:25.860 | Is that right?

02:08:26.700 | - It can be, and it can be helpful for,

02:08:28.280 | it's like a neurogenic mechanism for erectile dysfunction.

02:08:32.480 | - So it's not just related to blood flow.

02:08:34.840 | - It's not, actually.

02:08:36.520 | It's not, and PT-141, yeah,

02:08:38.600 | like a fragment or derivative of the peptide melanotan,

02:08:41.860 | which stimulates alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone,

02:08:45.320 | which is becoming more in play, I guess,

02:08:48.920 | in the environment I operate in

02:08:50.200 | just because of mold toxicity.

02:08:51.920 | And we think of mold toxicity being a biotoxin

02:08:54.360 | and hitting MSH being kind of the general

02:08:58.240 | in terms of a lot of these hormonal pathways, actually.

02:09:01.240 | And melanotan can bolster

02:09:03.280 | by putting out more melanocyte stimulating hormone.

02:09:05.440 | It seems to bolster immune response.

02:09:07.620 | I think there's an element with energy, too.

02:09:10.320 | The downside of melanotan is it stimulates melanocytes,

02:09:12.840 | so you're gonna get this tanning.

02:09:15.520 | And it's not like a,

02:09:16.800 | it's like an orange-looking tanning.

02:09:20.080 | - From the inside out.

02:09:21.200 | - Yeah, you see it, you recognize it.

02:09:23.520 | So PT-141, what they found is in rats,

02:09:25.760 | I think it was female rats were copulating more

02:09:29.080 | when they got this compound.

02:09:30.560 | And they're like, "Oh, cool, and let's try it in humans."

02:09:32.640 | And it's led to that.

02:09:34.360 | Our trouble with it is a very small

02:09:36.320 | or narrow therapeutic window.

02:09:38.520 | And if you give too much,

02:09:39.680 | you're gonna get nauseous pretty quickly.

02:09:42.120 | And some people don't like,

02:09:43.440 | particularly women, don't like that tanning look.

02:09:45.840 | It's not a very-

02:09:46.680 | - It can look very unnatural.

02:09:48.120 | - Unnatural is the word.

02:09:49.120 | - Yeah, the medial pituitary,

02:09:50.520 | which at least my understanding is the origin

02:09:53.360 | of these peptides that we're talking about now

02:09:55.240 | is super interesting.

02:09:56.400 | And you mentioned the nausea.

02:09:57.920 | These peptides hit multiple pathways.

02:10:00.440 | When we had Dr. Zachary Knight

02:10:01.880 | from University of California, San Francisco

02:10:03.720 | want to talk about GLP-1 in a lot of detail.

02:10:07.280 | He mentioned that some of the nausea associated

02:10:11.480 | with Ozempic and Menjaro and things like that

02:10:14.160 | relates to the fact that there are receptors

02:10:17.560 | for these things,

02:10:18.400 | not just in one hypothalamic structure,

02:10:20.320 | but also in area postrema and areas of the brain

02:10:24.080 | that are these "primitive areas"

02:10:26.080 | that are associated with generating nausea

02:10:28.160 | when you need to rid yourself of a poison

02:10:30.040 | that nature conveniently engineered us with neurons

02:10:34.080 | that, when they detect chemical changes in the blood,

02:10:36.160 | make us vomit.

02:10:37.200 | - Yeah, and to touch on that is what we found is

02:10:40.160 | if we start with, again, a microdose

02:10:41.880 | and go slowly with the GLP-1s,

02:10:45.080 | the nausea is virtually unheard of.

02:10:47.120 | Not saying it doesn't occur,

02:10:48.560 | but it's super rare if you just take your time with it.

02:10:51.040 | I think when people have most problems,

02:10:52.240 | they're shotgunning the dose, essentially.

02:10:54.960 | You're overwhelming your system.

02:10:57.400 | - So I have two more questions.

02:10:58.560 | The first one is a bit of a controversial one.

02:11:01.320 | Today we've talked about a lot of peptides

02:11:06.800 | that you've observed incredible clinical utility for.

02:11:10.960 | We also talked about a lot of peptides

02:11:13.760 | that the FDA has banned, basically, to be blunt.

02:11:17.840 | We've also talked about peptides

02:11:21.520 | that at one point not too long ago

02:11:23.960 | were considered part of kind of niche culture,

02:11:26.600 | like fitness or bodybuilding culture

02:11:28.480 | that are now approaching

02:11:30.000 | what will probably be trillion dollar industries

02:11:32.280 | over the next 10 years, things like GLP-1 agonists.

02:11:35.560 | So any listener with their neurons firing

02:11:40.120 | will put two and two together and say,

02:11:41.360 | "Okay, what's the deal?"

02:11:42.880 | Obviously the FDA, I like to believe,

02:11:45.040 | has a genuine interest in our safety.

02:11:46.840 | They don't want us taking things that are dangerous for us.

02:11:49.800 | At the same time,

02:11:51.320 | there seems to be a kind of clawing back of what's out there

02:11:54.200 | and then a handing off to pharmaceutical companies

02:11:57.040 | to put out compounds

02:11:58.560 | for which there are tremendous profit margins.

02:12:01.240 | I mean, the profit margins on these are insane.

02:12:04.120 | - We can't comprehend it.

02:12:04.960 | - You can't comprehend it.

02:12:06.320 | So, you know, MK-677, I crossed out, right?

02:12:11.080 | The FDA grabbed that one.

02:12:12.880 | Thymosin Alpha-1, crossed out.

02:12:14.640 | Okay, a bunch of other things that have been,

02:12:18.000 | BPC-157, clawed back.

02:12:22.080 | So how should we frame this in our mind?

02:12:25.440 | In other words, do you think that the FDA

02:12:27.840 | has genuine good intentions

02:12:29.520 | of trying to protect the general public

02:12:30.920 | and that's why they're doing this?

02:12:32.160 | Or is this a plan to kind of make that appear to be the case

02:12:37.160 | so that these can then be sold

02:12:39.800 | at a very, very high profit margin?

02:12:42.280 | And perhaps it could be both, right?

02:12:43.600 | It's not an either or.

02:12:44.560 | And I want to be very clear, you know,

02:12:47.340 | I work at a major medical school,

02:12:49.520 | but I'll speak freely anyway, right?

02:12:51.640 | You know, as would my colleagues.

02:12:53.520 | Like, I like to think that these governing bodies

02:12:55.760 | have some people there at least with very good intentions.

02:12:58.520 | - Sure.

02:12:59.360 | - I don't think it's a bunch of bad people,

02:13:00.440 | like, writhing their hands together

02:13:01.660 | with getting kickbacks on pharma.

02:13:03.000 | I don't believe that.

02:13:04.360 | In fact, I know that not to be the case.

02:13:06.240 | But like, what's really going on here?

02:13:07.720 | Because this is kind of weird.

02:13:08.920 | There's this huge class of compounds we call peptides

02:13:12.320 | that clearly have immensely beneficial uses

02:13:15.800 | in the right dosage, in the right hands,

02:13:17.200 | with the right physicians.

02:13:18.600 | They're being clawed back.

02:13:19.900 | Why?

02:13:21.700 | - It's confusing.

02:13:22.800 | I think it's probably both.

02:13:24.360 | I think, you know, I would say that unfortunately,

02:13:28.640 | a lot of times when the government acts, they overreach.

02:13:31.560 | Right?

02:13:32.380 | Like, I do think they probably have good intentions.

02:13:33.520 | I think there's probably sound reasons

02:13:37.140 | to want to have oversight of things

02:13:40.200 | that seemingly is the wild, wild west, right?

02:13:42.880 | And there's truth to that, right?

02:13:44.900 | Because peptides came on the scene

02:13:47.140 | and people started using them.

02:13:48.760 | They're recommended here and there.

02:13:49.920 | People could get them from, still can, research companies.

02:13:52.960 | And there's not a lot of corralling of understanding,

02:13:55.680 | well, what is going on?

02:13:57.920 | So I'm sure there's an element to like,

02:14:00.160 | hey, let's understand this better.

02:14:02.800 | But on that side, I think they went too far, right?

02:14:05.720 | Because I think if you really look at data

02:14:08.040 | or if you were really interested in that,

02:14:10.240 | there's ways to understand how things work

02:14:13.440 | without removing them from the marketplace.

02:14:17.080 | So the other side of me is like,

02:14:19.520 | just like we're talking about,

02:14:21.440 | Ozempic and Mangiorno, semi-glutide and terzepatide,

02:14:25.400 | are blockbuster drugs.

02:14:27.800 | If you're a pharmaceutical company

02:14:29.680 | and you see that there's 15 to 20 other peptides,

02:14:32.600 | which are really working and really working,

02:14:34.840 | 'cause again, we've just seen the clinical response

02:14:37.240 | over and over and over, it's not a large leap to think,

02:14:42.040 | hey, if we're a pharmaceutical company,

02:14:43.600 | what if we turn that peptide,

02:14:46.720 | which was available to the commoner,

02:14:49.040 | for lack of a better term, into a drug?

02:14:51.380 | - Oh, like Vilesi.

02:14:52.860 | That was done for melanocytes simulating hormone pathways.

02:14:56.160 | - Yeah.

02:14:57.000 | And so I'm sure, I think it's both.

02:15:00.320 | I think, and that's why I go back to,

02:15:02.600 | we have to operate within certain boundaries, right?

02:15:06.520 | Like that's great.

02:15:08.080 | We have to understand those boundaries.

02:15:09.240 | It would be, and I say this sincerely,

02:15:12.600 | I don't, when we're talking about healthcare

02:15:14.680 | and we're talking about people's health,

02:15:15.960 | we're not even close to talking about the truth

02:15:18.820 | for most things, right?

02:15:20.240 | We're not talking about why people get chronic disease.

02:15:22.520 | We're not talking about how our food

02:15:23.680 | is really over-processed

02:15:25.160 | and the availability of high quality nutrients

02:15:27.640 | and what that means.

02:15:28.480 | We're not talking about all the toxicities.

02:15:30.120 | We just look at Roundup, glyphosate and its interference

02:15:33.560 | with so many pathways in the body.

02:15:35.400 | And people say, you know, and Monsanto and whoever

02:15:38.680 | runs that now saying it's so safe and it's just not true.

02:15:41.720 | So I think it's in line with,

02:15:44.280 | and what I support is unfortunately,

02:15:47.120 | and fortunately as an individual,

02:15:49.060 | you have to be your own best advocate.

02:15:50.840 | You can't rely on someone to say,

02:15:53.680 | particularly the government,

02:15:55.580 | that you have permission or not permission to do this.

02:15:57.520 | You think it's best for people to do their own research,

02:16:00.300 | you know, seek out reliable information, right?

02:16:03.120 | Start here.

02:16:04.040 | I mean, you guys vet so much stuff,

02:16:06.120 | very safe place for people to be like,

02:16:07.760 | this is where I want to start.

02:16:09.240 | And then life is, you learn by exploring

02:16:11.760 | and seeing what works for you.

02:16:12.640 | It's like, you start with a recipe to cook, right?

02:16:15.040 | But some people like it saltier.

02:16:16.240 | Some people like it spicier.

02:16:17.580 | You gotta see what works best for you.

02:16:19.520 | And that's why I seek out other people,

02:16:22.480 | people like myself, other physicians,

02:16:24.000 | other people who have experience saying,

02:16:25.520 | hey, we'll help you, guide you in this.

02:16:28.400 | And that's where the magic happens.

02:16:30.360 | But to be honest, we're not being truthful in many levels

02:16:33.360 | when we talk about health.

02:16:34.500 | We're just not, we spend so much money for what?

02:16:38.020 | We're not making a dent in chronic disease.

02:16:40.440 | We're not making an impact.

02:16:41.800 | We're not helping people lead better lives.

02:16:44.320 | You know, medicine is great for life and death things.

02:16:49.100 | It really is.

02:16:49.940 | You know, I, in 2000, in August of 2020,

02:16:51.920 | I had terrible abdominal pain.

02:16:53.920 | I had just come back from visiting our friends in Hawaii.

02:16:56.760 | I kind of tried to treat myself unsuccessfully.

02:16:59.360 | I eventually was on labor day.

02:17:01.080 | I had so much pain the next day.

02:17:02.960 | Called my friend who's a radiologist,

02:17:04.160 | said I need to do a CAT scan.

02:17:06.160 | I did the CAT scan.

02:17:07.640 | He called me on the way back to the office.

02:17:08.940 | I had a blood clot in the vein going to my liver

02:17:12.360 | that had completely cut off.

02:17:13.880 | I almost died.

02:17:14.720 | Like it was really serious.

02:17:15.680 | I had to be hospitalized.

02:17:16.800 | I'm on blood thinners now.

02:17:18.120 | I am forever grateful for pharmaceuticals.

02:17:21.480 | Saved my life, right?

02:17:23.380 | But those same medicines aren't probably gonna

02:17:25.160 | help me lead my best life, right?

02:17:27.120 | And there's, it's challenging.

02:17:29.240 | Having been educated in a very formal,

02:17:31.320 | conventional medical system,

02:17:32.520 | which is dominated by the pharmaceutical industry

02:17:34.840 | is a problem, right?

02:17:36.460 | We go back to the Flexner Report,

02:17:38.760 | which is like 1917, 1915 or something,

02:17:42.580 | where they studied medical education

02:17:44.480 | and basically said if you're a medical school

02:17:46.920 | and you're not promoting pharmaceuticals and inline,

02:17:49.480 | and we're gonna kick out alternative remedies

02:17:52.780 | and modalities like chiropractic

02:17:54.240 | and acupuncture and nutrition,

02:17:56.080 | they don't count anymore.

02:17:57.560 | And that's where we are.

02:17:58.720 | The only thing that matters,

02:17:59.720 | and we see it as a society,

02:18:01.240 | we're deemed healthy by the pills we take, right?

02:18:04.000 | If we're gonna be really honest,

02:18:05.440 | those pills aren't making us healthy.

02:18:07.940 | And by and large, they're not even making us well anymore.

02:18:10.500 | You know what I mean?

02:18:11.340 | And so I think it's time,

02:18:13.140 | and it's wonderful to have this forum

02:18:15.260 | to be able to talk about.

02:18:16.180 | Like, and this is why I support

02:18:17.780 | so many other people talking about it.

02:18:19.040 | Like, we need to make a change in that.

02:18:21.300 | We need to start being honest about what we're doing.

02:18:23.660 | Our health is not gonna be coming from doctors

02:18:26.100 | saying taking this pill or that potion.

02:18:28.280 | It's not, not at this stage.

02:18:29.900 | And it's more likely that people are gonna feel healthy

02:18:32.220 | from seeing their trainer in their gym, right?

02:18:34.220 | These, why do these things go to the gray market

02:18:35.900 | or black market?

02:18:36.740 | 'Cause people actually get results.

02:18:38.460 | You know what I mean?

02:18:39.300 | And it's just sad, but true.

02:18:41.020 | And so to answer your question, I think it's both.

02:18:43.060 | I think the pharmaceutical companies are greedy.

02:18:44.980 | I think they like making money, right?

02:18:47.240 | I think they also like helping people, right?

02:18:50.220 | They want to help people, but it comes with a big cost.

02:18:54.260 | And the government's there to kind of corral that.

02:18:57.460 | But like most things the government does,

02:18:58.860 | they go too far, right?

02:19:00.540 | And I think we need to be honest about those discussions.

02:19:03.680 | And it's not threatening and it's not harmful

02:19:05.700 | just to be saying, hey, how do we make this better?

02:19:08.740 | And how do we even agree to disagree?

02:19:11.260 | Let's just start there.

02:19:12.420 | - I really appreciate your take.

02:19:14.820 | I too rely on prescription drugs now and again.

02:19:18.460 | I don't know, maybe I'll lose some following

02:19:19.860 | for saying this, but like I've had some situations

02:19:23.740 | where it made sense to like take an antibiotic,

02:19:26.780 | like after a surgery or something or like,

02:19:28.860 | I'm not like anti-antibiotics, right?

02:19:31.180 | I also don't take, I also don't eat them like M&Ms.

02:19:34.180 | I also believe that, well, everything you said,

02:19:38.720 | I generally agree with.

02:19:40.560 | I don't have the clinical expertise or the nuance

02:19:42.680 | to really understand these governing bodies.

02:19:44.280 | That's one of the reasons why I'm asking today

02:19:45.840 | and really appreciate you shedding light on this.

02:19:48.560 | I think you're clearly a truth teller.

02:19:52.000 | You're telling us your truth from the clinical perspective,

02:19:54.480 | but it's clear you also have a broad optics here.

02:19:58.400 | We appreciate that.

02:20:00.360 | - Sure.

02:20:01.200 | - Yeah, this podcast has always been about bringing

02:20:03.040 | diverse outlooks on the same things.

02:20:06.640 | And it's been wonderful today to be able to explore

02:20:09.840 | peptides, NAD, and this issue of FDA approval

02:20:13.340 | and FDA removal as the case may be.

02:20:16.840 | You said something earlier a couple of times

02:20:19.280 | that I'd like to finish up on.

02:20:21.620 | Talked about positive thoughts.

02:20:25.200 | You're a physician, not a psychologist,

02:20:28.640 | but you're a physician.

02:20:30.480 | And you're in the business of making people feel better.

02:20:33.560 | And it's clear to me that among your many talents,

02:20:37.080 | you have great powers of observation.

02:20:39.500 | So what is this thing about positive thoughts?

02:20:42.660 | I mean, there are a lot of neuro immunological data

02:20:44.920 | out there showing that stress makes us sick.

02:20:48.780 | If we stress too long, repeatedly for too long,

02:20:52.200 | stress in the short period is actually good for us, right?

02:20:55.000 | There are some data showing that positive thoughts

02:20:58.040 | can enhance immune system function, et cetera.

02:21:00.040 | The data are pretty cool.

02:21:01.300 | Clinically, however, what's your observation

02:21:05.520 | about mindset and health?

02:21:08.040 | - I think we're just scratching the surface.

02:21:09.720 | And I think it is the most profound way

02:21:13.200 | to affect your life, right?

02:21:14.460 | So there's a couple of things I'll say about it.

02:21:16.680 | One, no good has ever come from a negative thought.

02:21:20.220 | Nothing ever good has come from a negative thought.

02:21:23.240 | And because all of us have a choice

02:21:25.940 | about every decision we make,

02:21:29.240 | to me, it's always best to make a,

02:21:32.460 | to slant that decision in a positive frame.

02:21:34.680 | Now it doesn't mean you're fake about it, right?

02:21:37.440 | People really suffer.

02:21:38.840 | People really go, I mean,

02:21:40.400 | it is a very stressful time right now.

02:21:42.680 | Maybe the most stressful time in human history.

02:21:45.080 | And there's no need to gloss over it and saying life is,

02:21:48.240 | you know, peaches and cream

02:21:49.320 | 'cause it's not for a lot of people.

02:21:51.520 | But what I know just personally and professionally

02:21:54.280 | is that when you start pivoting towards positivity,

02:21:57.660 | you get more positivity, right?

02:21:59.620 | And all of us, every single human

02:22:02.100 | has that opportunity to do that.

02:22:04.060 | That some people it's way harder choices.

02:22:07.020 | They are dealt a much more challenging

02:22:09.100 | and difficult hand, lots of people.

02:22:11.040 | But if we think about it,

02:22:12.060 | we didn't get to choose our eye color.

02:22:13.340 | We didn't get to choose our family.

02:22:14.660 | We didn't get to choose where we were born

02:22:16.000 | or how we were brought up.

02:22:17.860 | But we do get to choose how we respond to those things.

02:22:20.900 | And so what I've learned is the more,

02:22:23.160 | there's never enough positivity I can exude.

02:22:25.680 | There's never enough positivity I can be around

02:22:28.780 | ever in my life.

02:22:30.020 | It is just the most amazing thing

02:22:32.140 | and it can never be taken from you, right?

02:22:34.540 | And so when we talk about success

02:22:36.480 | and longevity and healthspan,

02:22:38.840 | to me positivity has to be a part of that

02:22:41.820 | because the mindset of positivity

02:22:44.300 | will override almost everything, literally.

02:22:48.660 | And I can't tell you how that happens

02:22:50.500 | on a biochemical or physiologic basis,

02:22:52.920 | but I know it to be a truth.

02:22:54.780 | I know it in the core of my being

02:22:57.620 | that the more positive I am,

02:22:59.580 | the more I can influence other people

02:23:01.420 | and plant seeds and help people be more positive.

02:23:05.040 | And that is something that I cherish and just love.

02:23:08.540 | And it's not talked about enough.

02:23:09.840 | You know, especially as a physician,

02:23:11.620 | we're talking about the science

02:23:12.740 | and oh, this study and, you know,

02:23:15.100 | putting people on this medicine.

02:23:17.300 | But really the value,

02:23:18.360 | and I made this decision back in 2010

02:23:21.380 | 'cause I had my own practice

02:23:23.440 | and I decided to stop taking insurance.

02:23:26.000 | And it wasn't a money thing.

02:23:27.680 | It wasn't like, oh,

02:23:28.720 | it was because I was no longer valuable

02:23:31.080 | taking five to seven minutes with each person

02:23:33.200 | and seeing 40 patients a day.

02:23:34.580 | And for me, I felt like I'm not fulfilling my purpose here

02:23:38.680 | when I'm just writing prescriptions.

02:23:40.580 | That my purpose will be fulfilled

02:23:41.920 | if I can really have conversations

02:23:44.400 | where I get to know people.

02:23:46.000 | And peptides and NAD tie into that

02:23:47.900 | because they are gateways to build trust with me

02:23:51.440 | so that I can actually help you, an individual,

02:23:54.920 | learn how to be more positive

02:23:56.360 | and to slant yourself and have that posture.

02:23:59.200 | Because ultimately all of us need the energy

02:24:02.080 | and want the energy to find our purpose, right?

02:24:04.400 | And once you find that purpose,

02:24:06.560 | oh my goodness, life gets magical, right?

02:24:08.920 | 'Cause we're all unique.

02:24:09.920 | We all have a different DNA structure.

02:24:12.320 | God gave us that to be unique, to shine our light,

02:24:15.440 | to contribute, to help others.

02:24:18.220 | Most people don't know about that

02:24:19.340 | 'cause they're in pain or they're tired

02:24:21.140 | or whatever, they're suffering.

02:24:23.440 | And if we can help walk people through that

02:24:26.100 | and help them heal that, that's gonna get really good.

02:24:30.240 | And that's just what I enjoy doing.

02:24:32.000 | - Beautifully said and so grateful to you

02:24:36.260 | for doing that within your clinical practice,

02:24:38.500 | for making that decision a few years back

02:24:40.300 | to shift over to being aligned with your purpose

02:24:43.180 | and the way that you've now expanded your practice

02:24:47.560 | to public education.

02:24:49.280 | We'll provide links to your practice

02:24:50.880 | and to your public education efforts.

02:24:53.080 | And for coming here to do this

02:24:55.560 | significant public education effort

02:24:58.640 | about peptides and other compounds and regulatory bodies

02:25:02.400 | and also just the field of medicine.

02:25:04.200 | And also just, I think so often we hear from scientists

02:25:08.460 | or from physicians and we forget the human component

02:25:11.440 | and what's so beautiful about what you do

02:25:16.000 | and the way you do it

02:25:17.080 | is that your humanity really comes through.

02:25:19.360 | - Oh, I appreciate that.

02:25:20.200 | - So it really does, I can tell you really care.

02:25:23.080 | And I know our listeners and viewers can tell as well.

02:25:26.520 | So as this field evolves and advances,

02:25:30.560 | please come back and talk to us again.

02:25:33.240 | Meanwhile, again, we'll provide links

02:25:34.960 | so that people can find you

02:25:36.480 | and some of the resources

02:25:38.240 | that back up what we've discussed today.

02:25:40.720 | And Craig, Dr. Conover, thank you ever so much.

02:25:44.440 | - Well, thank you, Andrew.

02:25:45.280 | No, it's really, I'm so honored to be here.

02:25:47.680 | I respect and love the work you're doing

02:25:49.840 | and the light you're shining and you're helping so many.

02:25:53.120 | You have such a wide audience that trust you

02:25:56.880 | and it's amazing.

02:25:59.520 | Like I said, I see it every day with people coming to me

02:26:02.320 | and bouncing what you do and saying,

02:26:04.920 | "Hey, is this good for me?"

02:26:06.620 | And that is amazing, I love that.

02:26:08.720 | That's how we get better, right?

02:26:10.080 | We help support each other

02:26:11.440 | and I just appreciate what you're doing

02:26:14.300 | and being here is truly an honor,

02:26:16.080 | really a big deal for me, so thank you.

02:26:17.840 | - Thank you, I'll take that in and write back at you.

02:26:19.960 | - Okay. - Come back again.

02:26:21.120 | - I appreciate it.

02:26:21.960 | - I appreciate you.

02:26:22.920 | - Thank you.

02:26:23.800 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:26:25.960 | with Dr. Craig Conover.

02:26:27.460 | To learn more about his work and his clinic,

02:26:29.760 | as well as to find links to some of the things discussed

02:26:31.960 | in today's episode, please see the show note captions.

02:26:34.840 | And if you'd like to learn more about peptides,

02:26:36.700 | including some of the ones that we discussed today,

02:26:38.660 | but also some additional ones,

02:26:40.360 | please see the link to the solo episode

02:26:42.200 | that I did about peptide therapies in the captions.

02:26:45.440 | If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast,

02:26:47.780 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

02:26:49.720 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

02:26:52.040 | In addition, please subscribe to the podcast

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02:26:55.860 | And on both Spotify and Apple,

02:26:57.280 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

02:26:59.660 | Please check out the sponsors mentioned

02:27:01.180 | at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

02:27:03.360 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

02:27:06.000 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast,

02:27:08.640 | or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider

02:27:10.520 | for the Huberman Lab Podcast,

02:27:12.000 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

02:27:14.280 | I do read all the comments.

02:27:16.000 | For those of you that haven't heard,

02:27:17.140 | I have a new book coming out.

02:27:18.340 | It's my very first book.

02:27:19.960 | It's entitled "Protocols,

02:27:21.360 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

02:27:23.520 | This is a book that I've been working on

02:27:24.680 | for more than five years,

02:27:25.840 | and that's based on more than 30 years

02:27:28.160 | of research and experience.

02:27:29.720 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep,

02:27:32.760 | to exercise, to stress control,

02:27:35.260 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

02:27:37.720 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

02:27:41.080 | for the protocols that are included.

02:27:43.160 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

02:27:47.040 | There you can find links to various vendors.

02:27:49.440 | You can pick the one that you like best.

02:27:51.200 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

02:27:52.960 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

02:27:55.560 | If you're not already following me on social media,

02:27:57.520 | I am @hubermanlab on all social media platforms.

02:28:00.520 | So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter,

02:28:03.100 | Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

02:28:04.960 | And on all those platforms,

02:28:06.520 | I discuss science and science-related tools,

02:28:08.640 | some of which overlaps with the content

02:28:10.160 | of the "Huberman Lab" podcast,

02:28:11.600 | but much of which is distinct from the content

02:28:13.480 | on the "Huberman Lab" podcast.

02:28:14.680 | Again, that's @hubermanlab on all social media channels.

02:28:17.740 | If you haven't already subscribed

02:28:18.880 | to our Neural Network Newsletter,

02:28:20.680 | our Neural Network Newsletter

02:28:22.080 | is a zero-cost monthly newsletter

02:28:24.120 | that includes podcast summaries,

02:28:25.680 | as well as protocols in the form of brief

02:28:27.840 | one-to-three-page PDFs.

02:28:29.620 | Those protocol PDFs are on things like

02:28:32.120 | neuroplasticity and learning,

02:28:33.760 | optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep,

02:28:36.360 | deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.

02:28:38.520 | We have a foundational fitness protocol

02:28:40.600 | that describes a template routine

02:28:42.760 | that includes cardiovascular training

02:28:44.280 | and resistance training with sets and reps,

02:28:46.240 | all backed by science,

02:28:47.680 | and all of which, again, is completely zero cost.

02:28:50.080 | To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com,

02:28:52.680 | go to the Menu tab up in the upper right corner,

02:28:55.300 | scroll down to Newsletter, and provide your email.

02:28:57.400 | And I should emphasize that we do not share

02:28:59.080 | your email with anybody.

02:29:00.680 | Thank you once again for joining me

02:29:02.000 | for today's discussion with Dr. Craig Conover.

02:29:04.800 | And last but certainly not least,

02:29:07.080 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:29:09.080 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

02:29:12.440 | you

Dr. Craig Koniver: Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity

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