 Dr. C, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. No problem. So if, uh, if you don't mind introducing yourself a little bit to the audience is kind of letting people know your background a little bit, uh, before we get into the topic, which are peptides. Sure. Um, well, I guess first and foremost, I like to say I'm a, I'm an awesome father, got three boys that I raised that, um, you know, it's all about raising your kids and then hanging out with them the rest of your life. And I think I've done a good job with that. And, um, and then I'm a physician. I'm an orthopedic surgeon, sports train, joint train, but my real expertise is cellular medicine and, um, specifically to, you know, what makes up the biochemistry, molecular biology, quantum physics of the cell and how do you optimize it? How do you keep it in check? And how can I utilize all that knowledge to help my patients and help myself to keep up with my kids? So it, it just kind of circles around all of that and optimizing what I can do, um, for people that have issues, you know, metabolic issues, immune issues, cancer, um, and optimizing performance. So it all kind of circles around knowledge of the cell. And I've just been fortunate to been doing that for 40 years. And, uh, I'm 61, um, and I walk to talk, uh, I'm all about training and optimizing cellular health. Excellent. Okay. So, um, talk to us a little bit about peptides. I'd say over the last, I don't know, probably came on our radar over the last 10 years, but really over the last five years, we've heard a lot about peptides and their benefits and, and, uh, how they're being used more recently, um, we've been using some peptides and have noticed some pretty amazing benefits. And of course we're being monitored, uh, by a doctor, which I think is probably what you would recommend as well. But what are peptides and how do they fit in the, I guess in the medical market? Um, because I know you, some people can get them online without necessarily having to go through a doctor. Like let's start with peptides in general. What are they, and then let's get into, I guess, uh, how they're available and what they do. Sure. Um, so peptides are, are basically, um, amino acids that are, are combined from it. It's a combination of amino acids that are either connected in straight lines, helixes, circles, whatever you want to call, you know, the, the amino acid sequence, it's basically a signaling agent that is in this context of what we're referring to and what we're, what, how this all started is the context of these are signaling agents that the body's familiar with. It's how cells communicate. It's how, um, communication between organs. Um, it's basically the understanding of how cells talk to each other to optimize or adapt to the environment. And so peptides really, um, I was, I actually, so, so I introduced peptides about eight years ago in, in the context of teaching, uh, to physicians to understand really, we just, I brought peptides out as just the basis of understanding molecular pathways because they were familiar to people. We had some of them that we were utilizing in, in treatments and modalities and then it just exploded. Um, and so I, I think, I think now it's just amazing to see where it's gone. Um, when basically the whole context of starting the discussion of peptides was to really teach people about molecular pathways and cells and how they communicate. It just seemed like the logical step to take, uh, to understand that peptides are just naturalist signaling agents that the body's familiar with and thereby having less side effects, less issues with tolerance or, um, resistance to the receptors. Uh, it, it just made sense to start with that and, uh, go from there to, to start teaching about the utilization of these signaling agents. What's up, everybody? It's launch week for the new maps, anabolic advanced program. It's a brand new program, brand new program. People are super excited about it. I'm going to give one away for free. Here's how you can win free access. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If we think you should win, we'll let you know in the comment section, Elliot, free access to the brand new program that everybody's talking about maps, anabolic advanced. Now everybody else, it's launch week, so it's on sale. It'll normally be priced at $157, but you can get it right now for $97 plus we'll throw in two free ebooks, each one valued at $47 each. The first ebook is advanced training techniques. The second one is the carb cycling diet. So $97 gets you the brand new maps, anabolic advanced program, plus those two free ebooks. This launch season ends February 26th. If you're interested, go to anabolicadvanced.com and use the coupon code AA60 for the discount plus the free ebooks. All right, here comes the show. What were some of the original peptides that hit the market and when they did, did you kind of see the writing on the wall? Did you know that it was going to explode like it has? Was it was it obvious the direction it was going? Oh, absolutely. I mean, so what people don't know is when I first started lecturing eight years ago, I'd ask the audience, physicians, I'd say, so how many of you are using peptides? Nobody raised their hand and I said, well, does anybody use insulin? Insulin's a peptide. It's, it's one of the first incredible signaling agents that we've ever, it changed life. It changed life as we know it and that just using that starting point to indicate the the significance of the signaling agents was, was, it was a great way to capture at least my audience at the beginning. And, and so, I mean, so we've had, you know, insulin, oxytocin, vasopressin, we've had all of these peptides around for 80 years. They've just been progressing in knowledge of synthesizing some of these peptides that we have and then being able to utilize them, study them and look at the, you know, clinical significance and it's, you know, it's exploded into hundreds, if not thousands of peptides that we're familiar with right now that have clinical relevance. You said something really interesting that that caught my attention. You said that they are signaling agents that the body's already familiar with. In other words, peptides are based off of signaling compounds that we already have in the body. Is this what makes them different than drugs? Like what's the difference between a drug that let's say agonizes a receptor or antagonizes a receptor versus a peptide? Well, yeah. So in this context, so we can make any peptide, a peptide can be any combination of amino acids. So we can make anything. The library is infinite. But if we look in the body, the human body and we look at how cells communicate, how does a mitochondria communicate with the nucleus? How does a nucleus communicate with the mitochondria, the peroxazone, the Golgi bodies, that all the things that make up proteins, well, they do it through peptides. And peptides are basically they're they're in and out of the body pretty quickly. They're signaling agents that could be there for seconds, they could be there for a couple of minutes and some longer. And that's where science has gone to where we can keep them around longer. That's why they're more relevant now, because we can make them hang around to do their job when we introduce them exogenously, meaning by pill form, nasal form, injectable form, transdermal form, whatever. But the the significance is that the cell is familiar with the signaling agent. So it doesn't see it as a foreign as some kind of foreign process of where we're forcing a cell to do something it does not want to do. These are all agents that allow a cell to use its intelligence, which is incredible and will never have an intelligence. It lets the cell have its own ability to utilize the signaling agents than to make decisions, you know, as far as adaption, you know, like you guys are you guys are all about exercise and so forth. So what is exercise and what are you trying to do? You're always trying to have the muscle adapt to the environment of what you're presenting. And these peptides just help that signaling and communication between cells become more efficient and at the same time utilize substrates like glucose, fatty acids, proteins in a more flexible pattern so we can optimize glycolysis or oxidative phosphorylation or fat oxidation when it's needed. So we're not forcing a cell to make a decision with a drug. We're giving the cell its intelligence to make amazing decisions when they need to be made. So you get so with something like this, is it safe to say that you would you would see less of a potential negative feedback loop or a tolerance or receptor down regulation or, you know, some of the ways that the body adapts to drugs where you tend to build a tolerance or you tend to your body almost adapts and it starts to become, you know, you need more to get the same effect. You end up with more side effects. Do peptides do less of that? You will. Well, so what you've indicated is basically when you get something that is is hanging around too long or something that's there that is not physiological, OK, that you're introducing something that's non physiologic. Typically with all of these peptides we're introducing signaling that's physiologic to get a physiologic response, not a super physiologic response. So so we're we're introducing something that will not cause inceptor involution, will not cause immune reactions, will not cause tolerance, will not cause it's again, it's if you use these correctly and you understand how to use them and, you know, the signaling of the cell. It's it's pretty straightforward with just letting again the cell make the decision on really how is it going to utilize a substrate and how is it going to make ATP and NAD and it really comes down to that into energy. So that's really it. And that's what's so phenomenal about now and the craze of where we're going, especially pharmaceutical companies now their focus is on peptides because they're natural. They're they don't have to do all they don't have to find the mechanisms because we already know them. It's now let's synthesize them. That's where this is going. So this is why it's exploding and less money has to be spent, less research, less and then less side effects, side effects is the big deal with this because again, body familiar with signaling. Now, in terms of so the hormone space and exogenous hormones, the potential for peptides in terms of being able to signal the body to produce this balance and get your hormones kind of up to together naturally is that their potential there in terms of less side effects, less dependency on, you know, exogenous hormones and like kind of being able to pursue that instead. OK, that's a loaded question. But it's a great question. It's a great question because there's so much there that we could talk to you about five hours straight about. So let's just jump in and say, OK, hormone hormone supplementation tends to always be super physiologic. So I don't care what anybody tells you. I don't care what anybody says out there. It's it is a fact and it's difficult to monitor and keep. If you are supplementing with some type of androgen or hormone, it's very hard to to number one, to keep it in a physiologic range for the most part, because the patient or the person always wants more, right, especially in muscle building and so for it. But I'll tell you and and let me back up and say that peptides, depending on what you're trying to help the cell work with, and that is typically efficiencies. Efficiencies are in mitochondria, nucleus, DNA, transcription, all these things that we do to make a cell smarter and better. Well, that leads to improved testosterone production, improved growth hormone production, improved IGF-1 production, all the things that are important in particular in what you're potentially interested in in muscle building and recovery and restoration of function after training. It's it comes down to really efficiencies of the cell so I can see people that have come in and say, hey, Doc, I've got low T. I mean, I hear that all the time and they could be their their mid 30s, they could be 40s, 50s, but you there's so many things that can be leading to that. Low testosterone that may not even be even low testosterone may not be an indicator that they're having these problems with fatigue and recovery and all the things that go along with that open ended subject that's tremendous, right? That's huge. What I'm trying to say is you got to you got to look at this from a from a really broad perspective of, look, you can take numbers and if you're dealing with a number, then you're done. I don't you're not going to get anywhere making yourself more efficient or or making improving the efficiencies of the cell. It's all based on multiple pathways of working to get to a place that has to do with improving acid based metabolism of cell has to do with improving the microbiome of the body has to do with the circadian rhythms of your sleep. I mean, there's so many of these factors. I'm sure you guys are all aware of it. They come into play with recovery and restoration of function. They have everything to do with the diurnal patterns of testosterone production, estrogen, progesterone, prolactin. I mean, all of these and and the master hormone growth hormone. And and that tends to be if we're on the peptide side of things, that tends to be one of the areas that we really focus on first because of so much of the knowledge of what happens to endogenous growth hormone production. Endogenous, meaning the anterior pituitary producing your growth hormone and it cycles it anywhere from three to nine times a day. It's interval pulses are three hours apart. It's all about how can I influence that master hormone potentially in being an influencer on other things like downstream IGF one on testosterone production on other hormones? And, you know, that has to do with age. It has to do with environmental factors. It has to do with stress, all kinds of things. So so those are approaches that are that can be taken and more specifically in elderly individuals, you know, when you reach the 40, 50, 50 years of age, I mean, you're producing at 50 years of age, you're producing almost less than half of the growth hormone you did in your 25 to 30 range. That's a significant amount of growth hormone where the anterior pituitary is is absolutely able to mechanically produce growth hormone into your hundreds. And it's all about understanding what happens during life to influence that production. So so if you can keep physiologic production of some of these. Hormones that peptides influence. So we're talking about hormones now. You know, we can talk about enzymes. We can talk about DNA transcription. We can talk about our natures. We can talk about any of these things of what these peptides can do to manipulate, not manipulate, but influence a cell and how it decides, you know, to produce like in your testicles to produce testosterone. So, you know, they're. I could just keep going. I mean, we you can talk about anadetrope and releasing hormones. You can talk about Kispeptin 54, Kispeptin 10. You can talk about a lot of these signaling systems to our signaling agents to help you depending on where is this person at and what do we think is influencing the, you know, the the possibilities of why they're in your case, you know, why are they? Why are they not recovering well? Why are they fatigued? Why are they tired? Why are they, you know, they're training? They're doing all these things they're supposed to be doing. Why are we not reaching these levels? Why are we not getting the fat loss we want to see? So it's it's really just again, using the the brilliance of molecular pathways to influence those type of things that make a difference in the cell. Let's let's talk a little bit more about the fat loss side and some of the the most common challenges that we see and what peptides are you seeing or benefiting that person? So you got a client who's stalling their progress. We we all know that it could be a whole host of things, right, that could be causing that. But where where are you seeing the, you know, introducing of peptides being most beneficial for that that avatar, that person who's struggling with with fat loss? Yeah, there's one in particular. I'm here a lot about some of glutide. I've been reading and hearing a lot about that one. Like what's what's going on with these? And how are they working? OK. Well, let me let me just back up and just let me see if I can set the the lay the platform that then jump into the GLP one receptor agonist. You're talking about semi-glutide. It is so so fat loss is all about. It really comes down to again, to glucose absorption, the utilization of glucose through glycolysis and through the through the full oxidative respiration, meaning oxidative phosphorylation, Krebs cycle to make ATP and NAD. What is all that mean? It just means that. As we, you know, as we train harder, as we eat poorly, as we environmental factors, whatever they may be, stress, so forth, all these things influence the cell, what was called cell redox and how inflammatory aspects of the cell can then influence the way the cell uses what you put in your body, like fat or proteins or glucose. So what happens is the body loses its flexibility. The cells lose the effects of the flexibility to make those decisions of when do I use this substrate to make energy? And so what happens with fat loss is we tend to lose oxidative phosphorylation, meaning the most efficient way we can make energy is by utilizing fat. That's why, like ketone esters are the hottest thing in sports, because it's it's it's just an immediate NAD ATP production that bypasses everything. And it's just incredible. That's something else we can talk about at some time. But the. Fat oxidation is so important in the maintenance of the cell and how it produces NAD and ATP. That's like people who take all these supplements and stuff. They just wipe out cell respiration. They take to make people take so many of all this bullshit that just ruins the cell redox state to where they can't lose fat. They can they become insular resistant. They can't make muscle gains because they think they're doing things to make the cell better because they're taking an antioxidant where there's this small window of how that works. And, you know, like always a little bit of something is good. Too much is something that's good is bad. And so so fat loss of fat comes down to really just understanding those basics. And then, you know, you know, you're fasting, your exercise program, all these things that can be beneficial, but probably the most, you know, in my line of work, what I do to optimize performance and and take care of immune diseases and cancer and so forth. You know what my biggest problem is? It's the diet. It's seeing this diet that's high in everybody has this low grade metabolic acidosis and a low grade metabolic acidosis is always going to influence sarcopenia, lots of muscle mass. It's going to decrease fat oxidation. So those are some of the basic things that you have to work on first. And and then if we get into the peptides, then it's about optimizing fat oxidation. And so how can we do that in a in a controlled fashion? Well, as I talked about before, endogenous growth hormone is one of the is one of those things that we have a lot of data on and know how we lose it. We know how it's influenced by disease states. In particular, low grade metabolic acidosis or insulin resistance. It lowers the amount of growth hormone release. So we can do things while we're working on a program to influence a better nutrition, a better sleep and exercise, resistance or cardio or high intensity interval training, using those in conjunction with, say, like a GHRH or GHRP type of peptide, we can influence growth hormone endogenously to release like it should to take advantage of what it does. And that's all about body partitioning, improving fat oxidation, using fat as your main source of energy, letting you store glucose and use it a little bit later. And then getting that mechanism of there's this mechanism of how insulin influences this this PIPK, AKT, mTOR pathway of building muscle or building protein, you know, making protein and so forth. So this has an influence if you're improving efficiencies of the cell. You're going to influence mTOR. You're going to influence that process of protein synthesis. So so at the same time you're losing fat, you want to improve protein synthesis because on that side of it, the more muscle mass you have or the more efficient the muscle mass you have, theoretically, and it depends on the type of exercise, you're improving mitochondrial capacity, function, optimization. So you're going to utilize energy even better, right? And so you're going to consume that cells going to want to consume more energy. So all of a sudden you've got this reserve of muscle, you've lost fat and you've improved efficiencies of the of the of muscle to where you're you're thriving now on that fat oxidation. And so so that's in that's the beginning of, you know, trying to help people and losing, you know, at five to 15 pounds of and body partitioning basis, basically of of fat to muscle. And then you can get into so then it's gone into you bring up the GLP one receptor agonist like semi-glutide. So I started lecturing on that about six years ago on these GLP ones. And GLP ones at the time were introduced. We studied these as neurocognitive type of peptides that were involved in we're looking at them in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and all of these ways we could improve executive function, cognition, neuro neuroplasticity. And what we found out is that people were losing weight. And in going through the mechanisms, we understood that it had everything to do with improving insulin and improving beta cell function in the pancreas. And then, OK, right on that big pharma jumped on and said, well, diabetes is the biggest thing in the world, let's go. And so the focus went off the brain and went right into diabetes. And so we had these incredible peptide agents that have been phenomenal in changing how we treat type two diabetes. And in fact, even some type one issues. But what was the side effect of these? The side effect was weight loss because you were improving with GLP one receptor. So GLP one receptors like semi-glutide you brought up. They're all different names, but they're all GLP one receptor agonists. They're made in the stomach. They're made by a particular cell that produces them based on when food comes into your body and you release this. Well, that gets influenced by disease, fat, all kinds of things. And so all we're doing is introducing more of that peptide to do its job in improving, again, fat oxidation. But it has many other pathways. So I haven't talked about what's wonderful about these peptides is it's not just one pathway. They have pleotrophic pathways, meaning many ways to get things done efficiently to make a cell better. And in particular, these GLP one receptor agonists are just phenomenal with their mechanisms of number one, you know, improving insulin production, but improving beta cell function in the pancreas, improving insulin glucose absorption in the muscle, improving. And in decreasing muscle atrophy attributes that are there in the cell of the muscles. So basically, they can stop, like they can decrease the effects of myostatin, they can decrease the effects of these muscle ring finger proteins and these atrogen ones that are like their atrophy type of signaling agents that kind of grow as we get fat or as we get any kind of efficiencies we lose. Those things become more prominent and it's why you lose muscle. So what's amazing with these GLP ones is as you can, as you lose weight, you're not going to lose muscle mass. And that's incredible, you know, that's incredible if you know how to use them appropriately and in efficiently. Do we have pretty good controlled studies where we compare somebody who is utilizing this peptide and then those that are not and like what the muscle, how much muscle one loses versus the other? I mean, do you have, do we have research around that yet to like really to to substantiate that? Yeah, there's massive research. OK, so muscle mass is always like the last thing where if you don't have the dollars for the studies, right? And there's no and there's no end game for the pharmaceutical company. You're going to your studies are going to be limited. That makes sense. But but but. So all of the research in these peptides has been based, has has significant data on cardiovascular improvements. All of the things that we know are relevant in something that can be very healthy for us. So so let me just eliminate all those questions. I mean, kidney, liver, heart. Right now, right now, the your question is great timing because now it's focused on muscle and and the data is just coming out of, you know, where do you start with all the studies? They start in in a single organism, then they go into mice and then they go into humans. And so now we do. Yeah, we do have human data that shows preservation of muscle mass. And it's incredible. It's but we knew this. I mean, we knew this before based on the mechanisms and the pathways because the pathways never lie. The pathways are always right. So we know if you're activating, for instance, it only makes sense that if you're improving insulin sensitivity and that means you're improving what insulin does in protein synthesis by encouraging this BIP2K, AKTP, mTOR pathway, you're you're going to make muscle or you're going to keep muscle. It's just, you know, it goes to as you guys are familiar, it goes to just the significance of the studies done on just stretching and how stretching can keep muscle mass because it releases the signaling agents that influence those atrophy factors or stop myostatin. So but to answer your question, yes, the studies are are there now and they're they're they're they're progressing because of the importance of having a peptide that has such a significance in improving efficiency, but maintaining, you know, biggest problem we have and as you guys probably are really familiar with and what you do is as people are getting older, they want to the best thing you can do is maintain muscle mass. And because lots of muscle mass leads to disease, it leads to lots of bone, it leads to everything. And if we can improve that, we can save billions and billions of dollars in health care. And so it's getting there and it's getting better. And we've got we've just got more amazing data now to to integrate now that last phase of muscle and they've gone back to the brain now. So so the research is going more now again on, you know, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and early cognitive dysfunction issues like that. Interesting, because what's blowing my mind right now is one of the biggest challenges with weight loss is the metabolic adaptation that tends to happen, right? So if you look at studies on cutting calories and increasing activity and less strength training is involved, you tend to see muscle loss along with weight loss because the theory is that the body is trying to match energy intake, right? So what you're saying is through these GLP P1 agonist peptides, it's helping the fat loss process, but also maintaining your metabolism. In other words, it's it's keeping the muscle, helping you body burn body fat just by improving its energy utilization, which is this is remarkable. I've never heard it explained that way. And, you know, as a trainer, I trained people for two decades. One of the most challenging things and this was it, like if I could get a person to lose body fat and either build muscle or keep muscle, like I was winning, like that was it right there. So something like this sounds like a total breakthrough. Is that how it's being received right now? Is this because I'm reading about it like crazy, in particular, the one that I mentioned, semi-glutide. Is it making waves like we would like I would predict or like I would think? Well, I guess it depends on what you're asking. I mean, let me just let me break down what you just said real quickly and just to say that, remember, when with all of these weight loss type of diets, the most important thing you can do that you have to do is you've got to maintain protein intake. I mean, if you're not going to maintain protein intake, you're not going to make muscle or it's going to be very difficult to maintain because muscle mass, muscle needs protein. If you don't, it's not it's not something muscle makes. You've got to put it in your body and and all of a lot of these diets lead into acid-base problems and and actually low again, low-grade metabolic issues that happen. And what happens with that? Well, the body has to compensate and maintain its pH. The way it does it is by taking amino acids from muscle, degrading it to buffer the the the acid, the slight acid change, basically the pH change. So that's why people lose muscle mass over time based on that's why diet is so crucial. And I'm a huge proponent of protein, but but protein, right? Protein that you get in meat or anything like that is basically an acid. So you have to offset those acids with your fruits and vegetables to make sure that you're aligning that diet appropriately, or you have to take things like sodium bicarb or, you know, like alfacilts or gold, things like that to offset that acid-base balance. So so a lot of times when you're in these problems with people with with weight loss and losing muscle, you have to address these pH issues or you're you're not going to go far either. So you put you've changed when you go into these massive, crazy diets. You change metabolism. You're changing things that are are not potentially efficient for the patient. So you got to be very careful. You got to maintain diet. You've got to maintain protein so that they so that they can meet those those goals. There's something that oh, so you said, is this a craze? Well, it's turned out to be for fat loss, but it's done in my opinion. It's nobody really understands if you don't understand the mechanisms and why are you using it and then how to count. So here's something else. This will be great for you guys. So as you focus more on this and you have clients with this that are utilizing it with their docs and so forth, the issue you're going to see with these GLP ones is, OK, they improve fat loss, they help maximize oxidation of fat, but they also work in the brain by reducing appetite. So you've got to consider this when you're approaching a patient and you're telling them, well, we got to get more protein in you while we're working on maintaining muscle or even trying to build muscle and lose fat because what are you fighting? You're fighting that person doesn't want to eat. That person doesn't want that. So you've got to find what are those avenues? Then how do I increase protein and make it easier for that patient? And, you know, I've always found that the easiest way to do that is not through these, you know, way and casein shakes, because what do those do? They fill you up. They make you they make you not want to eat afterwards. It's it's really going to things like egg whites and things that are inexpensive, but you can get massive amount of protein in, you know, in a small amount of liquid or whatever form. So those are just ideas. I mean, I'm just telling you, there's things that you got to you got to put together because you're going to fight that part. You're going to fight that appetite part. And and so those people, even though the the mechanisms say you can't lose muscle with GLP ones, well, I'm going to tell you you can if you're not maintaining your diet appropriately. Excellent. That's such a I'm so glad you brought that up because when I look back at all the clients that I trained with fat loss and to Sal's point that would lose muscle, that is the greatest challenge. Yeah. The one of the number one things I would see with all clients when I would assess their diet, the average American just does not get enough protein and they definitely don't get enough protein to build substantial muscle. And then if you put that same person into a caloric restricted diet, they even eat even less. So you're you're you're doing something that suppresses the appetite that is beneficial for fat loss. But then if you're not eating adequate protein, we're still in the same predicament. So what's funny about this point and what's funny about this is somebody who really has trouble with cravings and appetite, who really wants to lose weight. They're listening to this and like, hey, that doesn't sound like a bad side effect. You know, it's going to make me want to eat less. But it's important. I'm so glad you said what you said because you got to keep that protein and take high to, you know, kind of maximize the muscle preserving effects. Well, and and the things you guys are doing by instituting resistance exercises needs to be done or else they're going to lose muscle. You got to have some exercise. If you're going to do a GLP one, as I tell all our patients, if you're going to do a GLP one, you're going to lose muscle unless you do some type of resistance exercise right to main to just help signal to maintain muscle mass. So but you have to get that protein in the best you can. And so it's a battle, but it's but it can be done. And you can get you can get incredible body partitioning. I mean, incredible if you if you know how to use these things appropriately. And it's really, as you guys know, what works for one person doesn't work for the other person the same way. It's all it's why you have to tailor everything you do to your client, to your patient and in in breaking through plateaus and losing weight, right, and getting stronger, all those things. I really appreciate your balanced approach. Let's talk about you had mentioned these kind of growth hormone releasing peptides or hormones like Ipa Merlin. There's Tessa Merlin as a CJC 1295 is another one. How do these how do these work? And and then what are their effects on the body with fat loss in particular? OK, so you met. So you mentioned. So what we look at these as growth hormone releasing hormone or growth hormone releasing peptide, which mean. GHRHs are like what you refer to as Tessa Merlin or CJC 1295, which is which has been bastardized by the pharmacies and everything. CJC 1295 really is not a real. It's it should be modified one twenty nine, but that doesn't matter. Let's just let me focus on a GHRH is something that's produced by the hypothalamus that stimulates the enterpituitary to start making growth hormone. It's a signal from the hypothalamus that signals enterpituitary. But the enterpituitary does not release growth hormone right away based on that signaling. And actually, the enterpituitary, that's secretogog that's there that that's that we want to produce growth hormone is inhibited by something called somatostatin, which is another peptide. And that somatostatin increases as we age. It increases over stress. It increases with disease. It's it and it starts limiting the amount of growth hormone that could be released. Well, the ipomoralin that you brought up is a second third generation GHRP growth hormone releasing peptide that is made. Typically, they're they're referenced after they're they're they're things that are actually released from the stomach that I can get into later. But that mimic that. And so ipomoralin is something what its job is to influence the enter pituitary by what does it do it inhibits somatostatin. It also increases the release of more growth hormone, releasing hormone from the hypothalamus to the pituitary. So it increases the cure the the the the amount of growth hormone being made. But what it ensures is release of growth hormone within 20 to 30 minutes, which is really you want to control when you release it. So taking a GHRH by itself is not the most efficient way to do anything in if you're really trying to work with cell function. And it gets into more detail. But that's why, like, Semomoralin Semomoralin was one of the first GHRHs and it had good data and it had poor data based, but it was based on the fact that you couldn't control how it released growth hormone. Well, with the addition of a. GHRP, like if more than you can control that release. So that release of that growth hormone will happen within 20 to 30 minutes. And, you know, there's all kinds of things that people, you know, diet still influences when you use these peptides, you have to be aware of after you, you know, when you utilize, let's say you're going to do it. You know, most optimal times are morning and night when you start with these one morning, because it's a beginning of the day, beginning of the circadian clock, beginning of circadian rhythms, beginning of NAD production, which is all about this NMAPT, an enzyme that is necessary to produce and make NAD. So it this is very important when you time these to make the most out of why growth hormone is important in circadian rhythms. So in that being said, the growth hormone release can be influenced by, let's say you did an injection or you took up an oral or whatever. Most of them have to be injectable, though, of the GHRA, GHRP, like CJC and epimoralin together. Well, you got to make sure you don't have, you don't eat anything because if you eat some carbohydrate or fat, that will influence and blunt the response of what you just did. Pure protein is fine, but other things like that you can't do. So you have to understand the nutritional aspects of what influences and how these work. And that's why you get people say, oh, this didn't do anything for me. I did get anything out of this. It's because they don't understand what they're doing or they take too much. They go over the saturation dosing of these things. So it just gets, you know, there's a plethora of information you have to be aware of to really use these effectively. So when you use that, your second question was, how does it help with that? Well, it's improving one of the main and incredible aspects of growth hormone release is its influence. And the fact that these also these GHRHs and GHRPs have receptors that they work on the cell also to influence efficiencies. It improves basically that thing I talked about, about how glucose is better utilized through aerobic respiration, meaning it goes all the way through glycolysis and through mitochondrial respiration. And so you and you're going to use fat. So it influences that. And and then, you know, just depending on the type of peptide you use to do that, which there are others, you can be very effective in working on not just improving fat loss, but by you're improving these mechanisms called AMPK. AMPK is all about improving a topology of a cell, clean the cell up, make things better. Then down the road, you get IGF-1 production and that leads to muscle protein synthesis. So you get part of autophagy, cell cleaning, improved AMPK production, and then you get the mTOR effects down the downstream of protein synthesis and so forth. So really fascinating stuff that makes such a difference in in improving health and and maintaining, giving people the ability to to maintain their youth or maintain their ability to train. I mean, I'm 61 and I train better than I did in my 20s, 30s, 40s or 50s. And I haven't stopped yet. And it's because of optimizing cell function. It's optimizing nutrition. It's optimizing sleep, stress and training, right? It's which is all physics, you know, it all comes down to force, mass acceleration and all those issues. But you guys, that's what you do. It sounds like these peptides by themselves already improve the cells function and have great benefits by themselves added with good diet and training. It just compounds if they're understanding correctly, no matter what, just taking a lot of these peptides have their benefits by themselves. But if added with a diet that's appropriate with them in addition to strength training, it sounds like that's where you see this like kind of mind blowing type of results from it. Yeah, so and that's that's a really good observation. And I'm sorry if I talk expansive in all of this, I really I try to that's a that's a really good message that I can send to you guys to let you know, like in my field of where I work with very severely ill and people, you know, post COVID fatigue, all of these incredibly complicated autoimmune issues, metabolic issues, these peptides are phenomenal because, yes, they help with efficiencies. They help us get to where we can start improving problems that have occurred that may be structural or who knows what in the cell. But when you have when you can take the next step and start improving nutrition and then you're getting healthier and then I get them into an exercise program, which is the end stage, right? Because those people can't do that at the beginning. It's incredible how they all come together to to maximize efficiencies of the cell. So your observation is absolutely correct. And so in healthier people who are just looking to optimize you know, training and that's where this all comes together, you know, nutrition and sleep is just as important, though. And stress release, relief and and exercise and the right type of exercise. You can't if you're not going to do resistance training, I just tell people why are you training? I mean, it's it's you cardiac is great, but you have to have resistance training because resistance training, this is where all the information is going to explode also about how we keep seeing all of these new myokines and extra kinds that are being which are peptides that are produced by muscle by working on resistance type of training. And it only makes sense. You know, it's just wonderful to see where this is all going and to see things like you guys are doing. I mean, these questions you're asking are awesome. This is what people should be. They should be seeking this out and and looking to for the and knowing that there are answers out there to help them optimize their lives. You would really appreciate. Sal wrote a book two years ago, what's been almost three years now called the Resistance Training Revolution, and you're you're highlighting some of the points that he makes in the book. So I think you'd really enjoy that. Now, I'm going to ask you to do something I know is going to be challenging for you, because I know I understand how your mind works. Within all these the all these great peptides that are out there in your experience, you know, if I if I asked you to like, you know, give me the top three to five that you think seem to be the most beneficial for most people. And I know we all know here in this room that there's such a wide individual variance and you could say one's great. But then for that person, it's not the best. But generally speaking, when you look at, you know, all the patients that you've helped as a whole, what seemed to be like the big bangers? So your question is very similar to the questions I get from all my physicians I teach around the world. I feel better about it then. It's like I feel I, you know, it's so funny. You get done after a two day seminar, you've worked your ass off. You just spit out all this information and then you get somebody raises their hands that this was wonderful. But can you tell me? Can you sum it up? You're giving your top three and you're just like, what the fuck? And to make you feel good about it, though, that's I think that's kudos to how well and non-biased you are about explaining the information. I could tell just by the way you communicate it that you're very careful about all the nuances. So and I think that when you probably do these people respect your opinion and they just purely want to hear what is your opinion looking at the general pop? What do you see are like your personal favorites that are helping people? Sure. Well, I appreciate the question and thank you for the observation. So I want to just say I'm respectfully humble of everything. I mean, I make all the mistakes everybody else makes. I'm just I just happen to have a little bit more knowledge on on something than you guys know you can you do your work, you do your research. You can be just as smart as anybody else. And I've just been fortunate that I've been doing this for 40 years. And I just know a little bit more so that that separates me a bit more. But it's all about right, you got to put the effort in. You got to do all these things to make things happen. And so coming back to that question, I'd say the top one's got to be BPC 157 and BPC 157 is just been it's an incredible peptide based on. And I'm going to tell you, you know, there's there's there's multiple pathways that BPC does not have a direct pathway. It has all these indirect pathways and how it works. And it's a it's a synthetic peptide that actually mimics something that's made in the stomach. It's I know we refer to it and say that it's directly made from the stomach, but it really isn't. It's a it's something that synthesize. It's very similar to a peptide that's made by the gut. That's a repair type of peptide. But basically what I love about BPC 157 is is the versatility of how many because it's all about repair and restoration of of tissue. That has to do with so much in disease states. You know, if you think about bad micro biomes and you guys might think of it as, you know, I hate the term, but leaky gut or bad cell integration and leaky brain blood brain barriers and BPC plays such a role in in extra cellular matrix function, which is a whole another topic, a huge topic actually in recovery, repair and hypertrophy and muscle building that that's where if you want to focus on where the research is, it's extra cellular matrix. And that's my big focus is extra cellular matrix of where you all these signaling agents have to go from cell to cell and outside and they follow these actin, myosin, these these filaments and and it's how cells rebuild. They got to follow all these little filaments, these pathways. And BPC has an incredible effect on improving extra cellular matrix. And that's a big thing that goes bad in everybody in pH problems. As you age, it's all about extra cellular matrix. So and BPC increases growth hormone receptors on the cells so it influences those other things we talked about to be better. Improves nitric oxide production. It has has multitudes of pathways of how it works. And it's so you've got it's a it's a multi modality peptide that I just love with I have used it for. Oh, my gosh, since it was first, well, let's say this, I've used for a very long time and I've never seen a side effect with BPC 157. That's a pretty incredible statement to say about a peptide and not see a side effect. And I just think it's got just so much it's just got so many good things. And the most incredible thing about this peptide and I've I've had great discussions with the gentleman who who actually synthesized this peptide and in Croatia, he has the patent on it and developed it. And great, we've shared a lot of science together. But this peptide has basically minimal clinical evidence behind. It's all based on animal studies. And we have very few clinical studies, but we have a few now. We have some that are in in in act, you know, that are active. But you'd think we'd have a lot more on this peptide and its versatility and how it's used in in in different disease states. Again, that has to come down to money and and, you know, where can where can these companies make their money and they can't make it with BPC 157 because it's out there. So that's it. So BPC 157, I like a lot. I love I like selling, which is an nasal, it can be introduced as a nasal. The BPC 157 is typically injectable, but can be P.O. It and that's a whole other discussion about that. But I like selling because of its influence on brain derived neurotropic factor and how it just works on. You know, it seems to be anxiety is one of the biggest problems that we're seeing a lot of in disease states and in in just life. And selling has an it has really a nice place in working on efficiencies, not just the body, but specifically in the brain to improve this brain derived neurotropic factor, which has a tremendous influence on cell neuroplasticity in the brain and cognitive executive function and just dealing with the world, basically, in a way that's manageable for everyone. So I love that. I love selling. I love its immune properties. It's got immune modulation properties, which are tremendous. So I would say that. And then I would say probably the the GHRHs and GHRPs are just they're a platform to build from because everybody, you know, no matter who you are from the time you're 30 and then as life progresses, you're producing less alpha ketoglutarate, you're producing less NAD or mitochondrial functions declining, you're you're you're producing, you're utilizing less fat oxidation, you're increasing glucose tolerance, you're increasing insulin resistance. Is there anything out there that can work on so many levels in influencing the progression of something I've just called aging, which is the number one. You know, it's the number one influencer of any disease, right? The older you get, the more likely you are to have any of these diseases, glaucoma, sarcopenia, diabetes, heart disease, brain disease, you know, anything you want to say. Well, these GHRHs and GHRPs are just, I think, are phenomenal in how you can alter that course of life and efficiencies of the cell. And then. And so that's four. You want five. I would say five. I'd have to say probably Phymolin. It'd be either Phymolin or Epitalon. Phymolin is is just an incredible immune modulator. And it's, you know, what is weight training? What is adaption? What is what is it all about with muscle rebuilding and regeneration? It's all about the immune system. If the immune system is not functioning, if that macrophage isn't there, as there's muscle regeneration or muscle hypertrophy and there are phase changes in the macrophage that have to occur and in the fibrocyte. And in the satellite cell above the sarcolemma, if you don't have these things functioning, right, I don't care, you're not rebuilding shit. And again, it all comes down to efficiencies of how those cells work. And these GOP ones and I'm sorry, these these Phymolins and how they help with immune, you know, keeping an immune cell in the proper phase when it needs to be. Remember what I said, how a cell is naturally intelligent. It just wants the signaling agents to help it make the decision when it needs to. Perfect example. You know, people talk about, well, we got an immune boost. Well, that's total bullshit. Nobody can you you boost the immune system and you're going to you're going to screw up your immune system. It's about immune modulation. It's about keeping it in sync, right? And that's Phymolin allows through many different pathways that activation of these immune cells to communicate appropriately. So I'd say Phymolin is is is probably that would be. What, how many did I give you? That's five, five right there. You did it. You did it. Dr. Seeds, I really appreciate your balanced approach and how you communicate. And this really reminds me of why it's so important that people go through a doctor when they when they're using peptides, because I know you can go online. You can find peptides through kind of some grain market or, you know, kind of area. But I mean, these have real effects on the body. And, you know, I just want to stress probably you definitely want to work with the doctor who knows what they're doing when you're using these these substances and I'm sure you would agree. Well, my gosh, yeah, it's all anything on line is total bullshit. I mean, if you have no idea, they haven't been third party tested. You don't know have they been tested for for infection. You know, are they have they followed all the standards of what we why you spend this money for something? Absolutely not. And and I I've had the I mean, I have gosh, I used to present the data of where I test those online products and show the docs. This is what you're giving your patient. Are you are you crazy? You know, because of the because none of them had maybe if they did, they had 50, 60 percent of what they were really supposed to. But so think about this, here's the best way to think about this. A peptide has to be 99.8 percent or 99.6 percent, which is the low point of what it says it is. OK, it has to be that full peptide because when you take this peptide, what happens is it gets hydrolyzed, it it breaks these the peptide itself to some degree, it stays intact or it breaks up into its biological components. Well, if you have a peptide that's not pure, you have fragments that are breaking off that are peptides that you have no idea what they're doing, they could be toxic, they can be cancerous, they can be they can be anything. And I've shown that in in in looking through the specific testing where you can look at the levels of what's what's in this peptide, it's it's insane and it's dangerous. And that's why you've you got to be really smart. Wow, you just you just said something that's so important in regards to that. You know, like it's very popular for people to go online and buy testosterone on the black market and probably the biggest risk there aside from some of the, you know, really ridiculous things, it's just probably getting it watered down. But you could give somebody who's claiming it's two hundred and fifty milligrams testosterone, one hundred and twenty five milligrams testosterone, and they'll still feel it and it'll still have some positive effects. But what you're saying, if this thing isn't ninety nine point six percent of what it says it is, it's not only probably not working, but the adverse effects. Yeah, you have no idea. It could have all kinds of weird effects. You just you just can't water this shit down and sell it. It doesn't work the same way. Well, well, here it's kind of like what you said. But here's the bigger problem is having 50 percent of that peptide in there and, you know, works and the people feel it and they say, oh, it's working, but it's that other 50 percent that's doing you have no you have no idea what it's doing to your DNA, what it's doing to to create more of what we call cells in essence, which is what's happening. You're causing premature aging. You're doing things that you have no idea are going to screw you up for the rest of your life that we're going to have a very difficult problem fixing down the road. If you if you stay consistent with that type of of care, but the bigger things are what we see with like a path of toxicity and what what happens, they're horrible. It's horrible to see these things that occur. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, Dr. Seed, this was awesome. Yeah, thank you. Super enlightening. Thanks. I have actually I have blast talking to you guys. You guys are I'm going to have to check you out. I'm sure you guys do some. You had all the right questions. I love talking about things that that you I could tell all of you have a passion for what you do. That's that's awesome. We also have something in common. You actually opened up this conversation with your your priorities and ours the same way. So we're all fathers and we talk about fatherhood number one first for us and then all the other stuff falls into order. So we have that in common too. So we're definitely going to try and have you back online. Yeah, we're going to fly you out next time. So I hope you have the time. Get you out in California here. Come in the studio. Yeah, this has been great. Well, let me let me finish with this one thing. You guys will love this then. So all my kids like when my kids want to come find me when we want to have a family discussion, it's the garage is our weight room. And so my kids learn very young, you know, proper technique, all the right things. But they learned that life was handled in the weight room. I love that. I love that. It's awesome. Thanks again, doc. Thank you. It was great meeting you. All right, nice to meet all you guys. Be good. Thank you. Have a good day. Today, we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest when I think of weak points and in areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time. Chest was up there with that was for me. It was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.