People are now stacking their GLP-1 as
their insulin sensitivity tool, their
growth hormone or their GHR
>> and their androin modulation therapies
as this trinity stack
>> trinity stuff
>> to get very fit, very healthy quickly.
So a lot of these transformations you
see in CEOs and celebrities and stuff is
using a combination of those three
things. You know your TRT plus teptide
or retride whatever it may be and then
using a growth hormone modulation
whether if you can afford growth hormone
or testimon. And you're seeing people
lose a lot of fat gain a lot of muscle
in short amounts of time. Is that
healthy? We'll find out. But that is
like the celebrity protocol. Welcome to
the Huberman Lab podcast where we
discuss science and science-based tools
for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. My guest
today is Dr. Abu Bakri, an internal
medicine physician who is also extremely
knowledgeable on the science and use of
peptides. When I say peptides, I mean
both FDA approved peptides such as the
GLP agonist. You probably know these as
things like Ompic, Monaro, and
Retatrutide, as well as peptides such as
body protection compound 157 or BPC57,
which as you'll learn today has a very
long history of being used in humans for
gut health and tissue repair, and many
interesting studies in animals
supporting its potential use in humans,
but a minimum of formal studies in
humans, meaning one. We discuss BPC-157,
what it does and how, as well as things
like growth hormone secrets like
tessamarellin, MK677 and others. And we
talk about things like GHK copper, which
nowadays many people are using to
promote collagen synthesis and repair
for aesthetic reasons like improving
skin, hair, and so on. We also talk
about peptides that have been studied
for the purpose of DNA repair and
longevity like epithelen and pinealin
which also have been touted to improve
REM sleep and for improving cognitive
function. You'll also learn what is
known and what is not known about these
peptides both in terms of function and
safety. During today's episode, you will
come to appreciate that Dr. Bachri has
truly encyclopedic knowledge about these
peptides. He is also formerly trained as
a physician and as a consequence you
will learn how to think about peptides
based on whether or not they have known
receptors or not. That turns out to be
very important and what their real
safety profiles are as well as what
particular concerns you ought to have if
you are considering using peptides of
any kind. As a formerly trained
board-certified physician, he comes at
this topic through the lens of a
physician, but also somebody who is very
interested in the current status and
future of peptide medicine. Today's
discussion, thanks to Dr. Bacher, is a
true masterclass on peptides. By the end
of today's discussion, I promise you,
again, thanks to him, that you will be
among the most informed, doctor or
otherwise, about peptides from the GLPS
to BPC57 and all the others that I
mentioned, including some that I didn't
mention here in the introduction. So, it
is a real gift and honor to have this
knowledge presented to all of us. So,
buckle up. You're about to learn a lot
about peptides. Before we begin, I'd
like to emphasize that this podcast is
separate from my teaching and research
roles at Stanford. It is however part of
my desire and effort to bring zero cost
to consumer information about science
and science related tools to the general
public. In keeping with that theme,
today's episode does include sponsors.
And now for my discussion with Dr. Abu
Bakri. Dr. Abu Bakri, welcome. Good to
be here. Peptides, huge topic and huge
category of biology and medicine. So, we
should start off by breaking this into
categories so that people can wrap their
minds around it because that word
peptides has come to mean stuff people
buy and take and maybe should or
shouldn't buy and take. But there's a
lot of important and quite simple
biology to understand before anyone
should even be thinking about any of
that. So if I just push the word
peptides towards you, how do you carve
that up in terms of thinking about it as
an MD as a clinician and maybe also put
yourself into the mind of a interested
let's call it a peptide curious person
out there. So scientifically I would say
it's one of the languages of the human
body right so the body likes these
different languages to communicate
between cells going from DNA to RNA to
proteins which are can be broken down as
polyeptides and peptides and peptides
are one of these languages steroid
hormones are another language and then
peptides can be broken down further into
subcategories whether or not they have
receptors or they have no receptor
>> and that kind of changes the clinical
effects we'll see like the GLP1's which
have a very strong clinical effect
compared to these obscure peptides like
BBC57, TB500, TB4 that don't have a
clear target.
>> They have receptors but they just have
many of them or they don't even have
receptors.
>> We don't have a receptor identified for
BBC57 or TB4. Just stopping you right
there. There's a very interesting
distinction. I don't think anyone else
has described peptides this way.
>> Let's take BPC57 for the moment. We're
going to talk a lot about it today. If
it doesn't have a receptor, what are
some ways that it could impact cells and
organs and so forth? Or is it that there
are receptors, we just don't know what
they are?
>> It could be that the latter that maybe
the the receptor is still elusive or it
could be that it's modifying certain
proteins that already exist or linking
different pepi uh proteins together in a
more favorable fashion for gene
transcription. The Russian peptides are
all epigenetic modifiers that they bind
to the groove of the DNA in certain
spots that either open up or close the
chromatin to certain areas of genetic
expression. And they've modeled this out
>> like a steroid hormone. So steroid
hormones bind like they bind to a like
the andro receptor binds DHT or
testosterone goes into the nucleus turns
on all the androgenic genes.
>> Yeah. Like puberty is a good example of
that.
>> Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So like pinealon
that we've talked about uh shuttles uh
heat shock proteins with androen
receptors.
>> Got it. So if I just pause us for a
second, we should think about this word
peptides in two major categories at
least. Yep.
>> One is has known receptors
>> plural like the GLPS. Y
>> the other category would be does not
have known receptors might have
receptors but can definitely impact
biology in interesting ways or so say
the animal data.
>> Yep.
>> Okay.
>> A lot of animal data.
>> All right. I know a lot of people are
interested in GLPs and I want to go
there. But because I know most people
are probably listening to this foremost
because they want to hear about the
other stuff. Let's start with BPC57.
What is it? What do we know about it?
We'll explore safety and what is your
stance on it from the perspective of a
consumer and a clinician. So first of
all, what is BPC57?
>> The best way to look at it is, you know,
as humans, we've been looking for
medicines in plants for thousands of
years. And in the last, let's say 150
years, we've been looking for medicines
in cells. So animal derived versus plant
plant derived medicines is the way to
think about it. You think about aspirin,
you think about metformin, the statins,
those were all discovered in you know
plant tissues. um stats more so fungi
but you get the point. Now we've been
looking into animal tissues to find
cures, medicines, treatments. So a group
in Croatia in the '90s looks out for
this peptide called BPC that they they
and eventually named BPC. It's a $40,000
dolton giant peptide called BPC. BBC7 is
15 amino acids from that giant peptide.
We don't naturally make BPC157. That's
what you'll commonly hear online. We
make BBC the big uh protein. Did this
group go looking for body protection
compound? For those that aren't familiar
in the laboratory, you can take a
tissue, grind it up. You can do what's
called fractionation. You can start
separating basically cells and tissues
and liquids according to the size of
different proteins. Like different
filters will bring let just like certain
filters will let sand through or pebbles
through or boulders through. That's kind
of what you do. And then you figure out
what the sequences are and then you
throw them on cells or put them into
animals and you try and figure out what
they do. Why were they motivated to look
for what eventually became BPC? So
Pavlov, the famous uh scientist that
would do the dog the experiments on the
dogs with the bell and and making the
dogs salivate. The other work he did was
on gastric juices of dogs. What he'd do
is he'd put a hole in the dogs stomachs.
He would um feed them food and then get
the gastric juices and sell that as a
medicine.
>> That's how he made his money.
>> Yeah, that was part of his business.
>> So he got a Nobel Prize. He was also
kind of like what did he have a like a
um a call code? It was like like enter
pavlova for for discount at checkout.
Yeah. Amazing.
>> So this is BBC before BBC57 exists.
There's probably other peptides and
compounds in there, but they they found
that gastric juices had positive effects
on healing on people that had, you know,
gird and these kind of
>> Wait, so people were taking BPC in the
time of Pavlov?
>> They didn't know what BBC was. They were
taking gastric juices from dogs
>> for what?
>> GI distress, GI discomfort. Uh some
people were trying for wound healing.
There was a big push in this era for
like finding animal tissues and putting
them into humans. That science fizzled
out. At the same time, there's a
scientist Hansely that's coming up with
uh the stress adaptation theory and he
notices that animals are stressed out.
Three things happens to them. Their
adrenals get really big so they make
more cortisol. Their gastric lining gets
destroyed and then their thymus gland
and their lymphatics shrink down. And he
he has this published paper where you
have clear adrenal from a stressed
animal versus a non-stressed animal. A
thymus from an animal that's stressed
versus not. So this group is looking and
thinking hey Pavlov had this gastric
juice. Hansely said that there was
damage when during stress there must be
some kind of cytorotective or
organoprotective compound in the gut.
The stomach is a very rich endocrine uh
tissue. It makes ghrelin all these other
hormones. So they're like there must be
something else in the gut juice that
protects the gut lining from further
damage.
>> Were people drinking the gastric juices
of dogs? Were they injecting them?
>> Drinking was mo mostly what they did.
And it was supposed to be a medical
elixir presumably. It had many many
things in it, many peptides. Not
>> this pepsia and like upset stomach and
this kind of stuff is what people were
thinking.
>> Do the reports point to the fact that it
might have worked independent of what
was sold on uh Dr. Pavlov's non-existent
website.
>> This was in like the early 1900s. And
then uh Soia was what 1930s
>> I think. So yeah, 100 years ago.
>> Someone will correct us if we're wrong.
And this other group in Croatia
>> was 91.
>> 91. Okay,
>> their first paper talks about this like,
hey, there must be some kind of
compound. They they identified the big
40 Dalton protein BPC. And then they
they were like, what's what's causing
the actual biological effects? They
identified BPC57, the 15 amino acid
peptide that's causing all these
effects. There's actually more peptides
in gastric juices that some other
scientists may or may not have already
identified. This field of peptides going
to be very interesting because almost
every organ has a signature of peptides.
Like if you think back Dr. Vladimir
Vulvich in 1850s 1880s finds carnosine
and carnitine in muscle of cattle. So
you can think that the first peptides
that are found are carnosine and then
carnitine is the amino acid that's that
have positive effects on strength
training and performance and different
effects there. But that was the whole
idea is like hey there's muscle peptides
that may have muscle effects, right? Gut
peptides might have gut effects.
>> So this Croatian group um isolates this
15 amino acid kind of mini segment Yep.
of BPC. They and others start injecting
into mice inducing injuries to nerve to
tendon. Maybe describe a few of those
effects. I' I'm familiar with that
literature, but I can tell that you are
far more familiar with it. So, what are
some of the impressive effects that they
observed that led to where we are today?
So, they did all kinds of horrible
things to these mice. They would, you
know, sever tendons and then give them
BPC through oral or injectable
intraparitinal uh administrations and
they'd have faster healing times. They
would sever ACL of the mice. they would
uh do burn wounds. So when a patient has
a burn wound in like the ICU, they end
up having crazy gastric ulcers, but if
they were able to put BBC on topically
for the mouse, they would have no
gastric ulcers. They name it as this
anti-stress compound is how they they
they look at it. Now, when they do that
Achilles paper on the mice, that's what
explodes the bodybuilder interest and
leads us to today where we are like, oh,
MSK injuries must be BPC, tendons and
and and and muscle injuries. But the
original idea of BBC was to use it as a
gastric treatment, not to use it as a
muscoskeleletal.
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>> Let me pause you here. People are
probably saying, should I take it or
should I? Just hang in there, folks,
because this is really, really
important. What is so striking to me
about BPC and by the way that's not an
endorsement for BPC. Just what's so
striking to me because my lab worked for
a long time on optic nerve repair and
neural regeneration. Nerves don't like
to regenerate in the central nervous
system. Peripheral nervous system they
do it they do it slowly but they do it.
>> Yep.
>> Not in the central nervous system. Ask
anyone who's had a stroke or an optic
nerve injury. It's a tough road at best.
There are data that I've seen with my
own eyes that show that, you know, you
can accelerate
healing of tendon, of ligament, of nerve
pathways
>> in animals. Yes.
>> In animals. Yes. Thank you. And that it
just generally promotes quote unquote
repair.
>> Yep.
>> That's kind of weird.
>> It is weird,
>> right? Because I could spend the next 10
hours or more telling you about all the
ways that people have tried to get
nerves to regenerate and couldn't. And
as you point out, this thing doesn't
really have one specific at least known
receptor.
>> So the data on the gut make a lot of
sense. This is after all a gut peptide.
It makes sense that that gut peptide
could get lots of places in the body,
right?
>> But what is it doing mechanistically if
we know to support regeneration or
replenishment of all these different
tissue types? Because a neuron is a very
different cell type than, you know, a
fiberblast or one of the bits of
collagen that make up different
connective tissues. It's modulating a
lot of these growth and healing pathways
like in the models of damaging the
endothelial layer or the epithelial
layer of different tissues. You'll get
more veg f signaling. So that's the the
vascular endothelial growth factor. So
get more blood vessels andises being
formed which creates a lot of the
controversy around BBC safety. You'll
get cell migration especially when
coupled with TB500 and TB4. you'll get,
you know, more access of the healing
factors to the area through androgenic
pathways. On top of that, you'll get an
anti-stress effect. So, the other big
thing that they did was they'd give
corticosteroids with BPC57 to these
mice. And usually when you have a wound
and you you give corticosteroids, the
corticosteroids will slow or even stop
the wound healing from happening. When
BPC was administered, the the the
healing was either the same or even
better.
>> Is BPC considered anti-inflammatory?
Because based on what you just said, it
almost seems like it helps maintain some
of the pro-inflammatory response. Some
people might be thinking, why would you
want inflammation? What Dr. Bockery just
said is if you block inflammation with
cortosteroids,
>> you aren't going to call in the signals
to repair tissues. So lowering
inflammation is a dicey thing that maybe
we set aside for later in the
conversation if we have time. But is it
thought that BPC is lowering
inflammation or is just somehow hitting
the gas pedal on all these regenerative
restorative biological processes?
>> It's more putting the gas pedal on these
processes to bring in the immune system,
the healing factors. For example, in one
tendon model, they noticed that it
increased the amount of growth hormone
receptors on the tendon. So
theoretically, this would allow more
growth hormone to dock in and cause the
outgrowth of the tendon and the and the
regrowth of it. So there's that theory
there. downstream it'll modulate uh
nitric oxide synthesis. So that's a big
thing when it comes to wound healing
because you need to to dilate the blood
vessels, you need to call in different
cells. So it's really changing the way
cells behave at that level, but that's
only for like the tendon side of it.
They also did weird things on the
neurological side like they would make
these mice drunk, okay? And they would
then give them BBC and they'd get less
drunk and when they go through mazes.
>> Oh boy.
>> Okay.
>> We did not just recommend you take BBC
with alcohol. want to be very clear. Um,
but people are going, you know, we'll do
their own interpretation. So, I'm being
semi facicious, but very interesting.
>> And then also, they would give them get
the mice drunk and then have them
withdraw from alcohol and like
withdrawal is deadly. If we have a
patient in the hospital that
withdrawals, they could die during that
withdrawal if they're not given
benzoasipines. They got BPC and they
didn't have the withdrawal symptoms. I'm
like, what's going on here? This is a
very interesting compound. I think it
gets it gets all the hype for the MSK
stuff, but I think the neurological
neuroscychiatric, let's say, and then
gastric effects are way more interesting
when it comes to that because it's
modulating the gut brain access in an
interesting way. We'll have people come
to us and they're like, "My aderall is
not working since I've been taking oral
BPC." Are they happy with that effect?
>> No, they're not happy. They're very mad
because like it seems like it's blunting
their aderall.
>> So, it's doing something from dopanergic
signaling both on both sides, both
withdrawal uh when it comes to like the
gapurgic side, but also the the peak of
signaling. So if you like peruse Reddit,
which you should never do, um you'll
find all these anhidonia discussions
about BBC, people feel like depressed
and low energy.
>> Incredible seems to be
>> in terms of effects in animals and
anecdotal reports in humans because I
think both your and my excitement about
this might be occupying a substantial
amount of the force field here. Let's do
something that normally I would do in a
few minutes. I'm going to ask you some
very direct questions about this and you
and I don't hold you responsible as
being like BPC uh you know spokesperson
but here you are. Um that's Pavlov's
job. Um and he's dead.
Are there any known adverse events of
from people taking BPC known and
documented? Okay. adverse events where
it's unrelated to uh contamination or
something of that sort.
>> In the literature, when it comes to um
the animal data, they've injected
animals with, you know, a thousand times
the dose of BPC with no real adverse
effects. So there's we don't even know
the LD50 of BPC, which makes it hard for
it to become an FDA approved.
>> Maybe define LD50.
>> LD50 is is the dose of which would kill
50% of the animals if it was
administered to them. So we don't even
know what that is. And that's actually
an important number as as you know
barbaric as it sounds to determine for
any drug. What's the LD50 for caffeine?
What's the LD50 for aspirin? What's the
L? This is every drug you take folks on
or off the counter you know prescription
or non-prescription has gone through
LD50 testing in animals.
>> To be a clinician to prescribe this, we
need to know what that is which which
limits us. Now there was two very small
phase one and phase 2 trials on rectal
BPC enemas um in the early 2000s from
that same coration group. So that's the
big concern of BBC. all the data comes
from one group. So people can be
skeptical. There's a couple of Chinese
groups that have also replicated some of
their work. But uh those groups wanted
to try to treat ulcerative colitis. It's
a very you know miserable condition of
where the immune system attacks the
lining of the gut in multiple spots. Uh
and they use enemas of BPC up to like 80
milligrams which is much more than than
people would take.
>> Most people are injecting microgram.
Yes. 100 or 200 micrograms per day or
something. Maybe more but you're talking
about 80 milligrams.
>> Yeah. erectile enemas. They did a phase
one and phase two trial.
>> They're doing this daily or they do it
once.
>> They did it for a few weeks. Um and then
they reme-measured. They had it was
placebo controlled. The data is not
available. The abstracts are only
available. So that that's what also
gives us some pause when we're going to
you know push that forward especially
when the legal discussions are happening
here in the next few months uh on BPC. U
the first the phase one trial showed no
adverse effects. U they and they didn't
even have BPC in the systemic system
too. That's that's a key point to know
that orally administered or rectally
administered BPC doesn't seem to go
systemic. maybe define that a little bit
more specifically.
>> If you take aspirin and then you measure
blood aspirin levels, you'll notice the
levels go up. When they measured BBC
levels, BBC157 levels in these uh
individuals, they didn't find it in the
blood. So, either it was broken down
very quickly or it stayed locally to the
lining of the the gastric tissues.
>> That raises a question for me. Let's say
somebody doesn't quote unquote take any
BPC57 by enema or otherwise. If I were
to just draw your blood right now, uh
there's BPC57 in there in the bigger
protein,
>> the bigger the bigger BPC protein. I
don't you wouldn't find
>> is it circulating or is it or is it
contain or is it restricted to the gut?
>> We don't have that data.
>> Well, that's incredible, right? Because
we're talking about these effects all
over the body. We don't even know if it
leaves the gut.
>> No, but in well, the injectable is going
to go systemic.
>> And most people are going to take if
they're decide to do this, they're going
to take an oral or an injectable.
They're either going to inject local to
the injury if they can
>> or an interparitinial.
They found fragments of the 15. Like
there's there's a paper in 2024 that
looked at this and they could figure out
if somebody had BPC administered for
doping reasons cuz it's on the water
list now. So they could figure out if
someone had taken BPC.
>> Got it.
>> But there we don't know like we don't we
need to know the dynamics. We don't know
where it goes, how it goes,
>> and we don't know the results in terms
of what those 80 mgram enemas of BPC
did for the colitis.
>> In the phase one trial, it was just a
safety uh there was no adverse effects.
in the phase two trial was very small
like 40 patients there was at least a
positive signal on on the ulcer colitis
>> and this was done in the United States
or this was in Croatia okay so to be
quite direct on the one hand you have
groups um who I think are mostly
well-intentioned saying hey 80 millig of
BPC by way of enema did not cause any
adverse events and that's the phase one
that you described
>> if we believe their data is right
>> on the opposite side many people
especially in the United States and you
know in Northern Europe where the
regulations tend to be similarish right
as compared to elsewhere in the world
would say well yeah but that study was
in Croatia now I have many Croatian
friends that's not a knock on Croatia
why would it be that the clinical trials
in Croatia would hold less weight this
is this is a dicey area but I think it's
important because you'll hear this oh
those are Chinese peptides those are
Russian studies
Yeah. And you know, I mean to me, you
know, the question is,
>> was it good science? Was it done
carefully? Would it pass muster for a
phase one in the United States?
>> That's a good question. The groups seem
to be very robust and they do really
good randomized control, double blind
placebo control trials. I think we're
very uh United Statescentric. We view
ourselves as the premier science and we
are the premier science. So people kind
of trust that more and there may be you
know perverse incentives when it comes
to different government bodies and like
you know Soviet era research that might
be you know pro fabrication when it
comes to certain compounds that makes
people hesitant because there's a lot of
like these Soviet era compounds that are
not peptides or some of them are
peptides they're fantastic they sound
they sound amazing but when they get
tested maybe they're not as potent as
the Soviet data would suggest. I always
thought that the Russian stuff was like
the really potent stuff that they didn't
want anyone else to know about that kind
of way goes the other way, right?
>> It could go both ways. I mean, but they
were they were more interested in
performance. They wanted better
astronauts, better Olympians, better
soldiers. We care more about, you know,
a profit drug model that gets people on
a subscription for with the monthly
drug, unfortunately.
>> Sometimes it heals people, but
>> So nowadays, is BPC57 legal in the
United States? Like if if I wanted to go
online and buy BPC7, I can do it, right?
legal legally for research purposes
only.
>> I thought now under the new regulations
uh recently passed that you can get it
from a compounding pharmacy or
>> technically not just yet.
>> Okay.
>> And it depends on on medical boards to
to break it down. BBC157 never got FDA
approved, right? So it gets into these
compounding pharmacy lists. There's a
category 1, two, and three. Category one
means the FDA thinks like, hey, this is
not an approved drug, but we're okay
with you compounding this and you're
okay to to push that forward. Category
2, it's like do not compound. In late
2024, BPC57 and and like 20 other
peptides got moved to this category 2
list. Since about 2017 to 2024, people
have been prescribing BPC and these
alternative medicine anti-aging
practices. It gets removed from that
list. Of course, you know,
compoundingies reabel it as PDA, pedeka
peptide arginate,
>> but it's the same thing.
>> It's the same exact thing.
>> Really?
>> Yes. One of them will be an acetate, one
of them will be an arginate, but the PDA
is is BBC57. Because there are many many
people selling compounded
pentadcaeptide.
>> Pentecate.
That's the
>> arginate. Okay. I think the acetate one
is the one that's on the the phase the
category 2 list. Now just in April of
this year it got removed from the
category 2 list and it's not yet on the
category 1 list which would allow
physicians to prescribe it
>> through compoundingies. Now but they can
prescribe the PDA version.
>> People are prescribing PDA. Yes.
>> Now, now state medical boards view that
very differently.
>> Like I got a letter from one of the
licensed in many states. One of these
states reached out to me. It's like you
cannot prescribe not me directly to the
general public of of people in that
state you cannot prescribe non-FDA
approved peptides no matter what.
>> So there's controversy there. Even if
the FDA says okay we're okay with you
prescribing it. Is your medical board in
that state going to be okay with it? So
it's state by state by state laws.
>> What about with tellahalth? So,
somebody's on the east coast in a state
that um allows them to write a script
for let's just call it BBC cuz it's
effectively what it is or this other
thing where they kind of wriggle through
the regulation. Can they send that to
California or to Wisconsin or or
someplace else if the patient is there?
>> The tele health laws go into effect
where the patient is.
>> So, if let's say in California it's not
allowed to have BPC according to the
state board of pharmacy or whoever uh
bans that. Even if you're a New York
doctor that's licensed in California
that would be against the California
Medical Board and they would ask you if
they found out to stand in front of
them. Now, are boards cracking down on
this? Not really. There's a couple
states that are cracking down on people
and people know to avoid those states,
but it's going to be very dicey over the
next few years.
>> Okay. Couple of questions. anecdata. We
don't want to place too much on it, but
the big kind of rumor out there that
pricked up my years a few years ago was
when I heard that some athlete before
the summer Olympics, this was two summer
Olympics ago, um, from Eastern Europe,
had a complete Achilles transsection.
Not just a tear or a pull, but when we
think about nerves and tendons, we think
like complete cut the whole way through.
And the rumor was they took BPC-157
locally injected
>> for a few months and they podiummed in
the Olympics. Yep. They still got a
medal.
>> Familiar with that story.
>> That was the that was the story that
kind of got out there that I feel
>> kind of catalyzed this movement of BPC
out of these niche communities and in
started it toward the the public
awareness that leads to you sitting here
today among other things. We also you
have a lot of other knowledge but we're
restricting to BPC now. So
>> do we have verification of that story?
>> No. No, I I think that story was uh
hearsay. I don't think they wanted to
reveal what they actually did. I don't
think they only did BPC57. They'd be
stupid if they did. They should have,
you know, all the best and latest
greatest treatments, whether exome, stem
cells, other peptides, anything that
wasn't banned. And by the way, I should
say BPC57 was not on the banned
substances list at that time. It was so
unknown. Just like there are compounds
right now that athletes
>> are using and not just in the enhanced
games in preparation for the Olympics.
I'm not saying they're all doping, but
there it's it's a common practice that
athletes will forage into things that
can help them that are not yet on the
band substances list.
>> And I mean, good luck proving that BBC
was injected, you know, a week ago
>> because by the time the peptides already
gone out of your system. So, or at least
we think based on the phmicamics that we
understand now.
>> U that story was run with from the
research community. They use it as a
marketing tool to sell more BPC157
because what what happened in the in the
field is the GOP ones come online, you
know, late 2021 and 2022 with Ozek and
WGO V, they get the FDA approval for
weight loss. There's not enough of a
supply from the traditional
pharmaceutical versions of the GLP1s.
So, people start looking elsewhere to
get their weight loss drugs. I know
people that would drive down to Mexico
to pick up pens because a pharmacy in
the United States would cost, you know,
$1,500 for an Osmic pen. Pharmacy in
Mexico, 1 hour drive.
>> Same drug.
>> Same exact drug. How much relative cost?
>> 150 versus 1500.
>> Wow.
>> So 10x.
>> And this is the thing that Trump has
been, you know, very vocal about like
that we that we're getting overcharged
for drugs here.
>> We we definitely are. And the Trump RX
has lowered a lot of these prices, by
the way, for for a lot of these drugs.
Now, that time there was a shortage of
semiglutide and then eventually
zepatide. So the compound pharmacy game
shifted into making these drugs,
compounded versions. So they're not the
FDA approved versions, but when there's
a shortage of a medication, the
compounders are allowed to make these
drugs to meet the shortage. And in fact,
the FDA was reaching out to these people
telling them to do it. Like Brigham was
talking to him last week at the Hands
Games. He's like, "Yeah, the FDA told us
to make this stuff and then they're
getting us in trouble."
>> This is Brigham Beller who runs ways to
Well, and
>> he ran a pharmacy for a long time,
right? Compounding pharmacy. Yeah. We've
never actually met in person. One of the
best ones.
>> It's not an ad fories. We have no I have
no business relationship to bring.
>> So if there's a shortage, compounding
can jump in the game.
>> Yes. And they did and they jumped in
very hard
>> on the GLPs.
>> Yes. And they made a lot of money off
the GLP ones. Like this was, you know,
billions of dollars being made.
>> Were they selling them for less than
standard pharma was selling?
>> They were less than the ozic pens.
Unfortunately, what would happen is the
provider had the discretion on the
price. So all these providers also were
making a lot of money.
>> Who's the quote unquote provider? The
physician.
>> The physician or the NP or the PA.
>> Uh
>> who takes the difference?
>> The clinician, which is I don't think is
legal in most states.
>> Wait a second. Maybe not even federal.
>> Wait a second. So, let's say I wanted to
take a Wiggoi. Yes.
>> And there's a shortage. I can't get it
from who's the the big manufacturer.
Nova Norris doesn't have enough.
>> My doctor says, "Listen, you need this."
Yes.
>> And I say, "How much is it?" And they
say, "Well, 1,500 um $1,500, but it
turns out the compounding pharmacy
>> through a different doctor, a more
benevolent doctor.
>> There you go.
>> Could have prescribed it to me for I
could get for maybe $300. In the case
where I'm paying 1,500, it's going to my
physician unbeknownst to me. I don't
it's I'm cloaked from the process.
>> If you're getting the the Nova Nordisk
pen, the physician is not involved.
>> No, I'm talking about if I'm if I'm
drifted towards a a compounded version.
So the the most of the times when it
comes to compoundies, which I don't
think is is a is a good practice, the
clinician gets a price from the
pharmacy. So the pharmacy will tell you,
hey, a vial of semiglutide costs 150
bucks.
>> This clinician can now sell that vial to
the patient sell. It's really they're
charging an administrative fee, right?
Right? It's not a sale cuz technically
you can't sell medications like that.
They will sell it to you for $200 or
$800. Okay. If I want to ask my
physician,
>> how much are you getting the drug for
from because I know which pharmacy it's
going to come from. It's going to come
in a vile says like Upstate or Tailor
Made or what's Brigham's pharmacy?
>> Revive.
>> Revive. It's coming from Revive. What
are you paying for this from Revive?
>> Yep.
>> And then what are you going to charge
me? And I can assume the difference is
going to my clinician.
>> It's going to the clinician all.
>> All right. Sorry clinicians, the game is
up. Patients are now going to ask and
you have every right to ask as far as
I'm concerned.
>> Yeah, cuz what's going to happen with
the BBC and all these other peptides
moving is there's going to be teleahalth
platforms on every on every corner now
that are going to be like, "Hey, BBC
199, BBC 299," and they're going to like
check out and there's going to be a
doctor somewhere in a room that's going
to stamp the prescription, but it's just
a, you know, e-commerce. It supplements
with a with a stamp of a doctor, which
is not good medical care at all.
>> Okay. To balance this a bit, the route
that many people have gone for about a
decade now, but primarily in the last
three to five years, was to go to these
for research purposes only, what we
would call gray market. Let's just name
names because they're out of business
now anyway. They've shuttered
themselves. Peptide sciences till a few
years ago, you could go on there, you
could buy pretty much any peptide. It
would say for research purposes only,
not for animal or human use.
>> Yes. And you sign that many times. And
when you paid them, you would have to
Venmo them.
>> Yeah.
>> Or you could do it through zel. Yes.
>> But they would ask that you not send it
to a Peptide Sciences account. It was
like some random name and the names kept
changing. So everyone knew they were in
on something like this. By the way, I I
I want to be very clear. I ended up
getting these things, right? I was too
frightened to take them later. I have
taken BPC. I've tried it. I don't take
it currently, but I've I've tried it
through a compounding pharmacy. So I
just want to be very clear what that
experience was about.
>> So eventually they actually got payment
processors like the this this market
evolved with the desire. Okay, there's
maybe I'd say 5 to10 billion dollars on
gray market peptides being spent in the
United States in 2025 and that's going
to grow this year.
>> So here's my question. Standard pharma
we know goes through of all the things
we're talking about the most stringent
process. You may hate pharma folks or
whatever. That's you're right. But the
the stuff that you get that's
non-generic from Novanoris, from Eli
Liy, you can be certain based on the
product packaging that it's as clean as
it gets, as pure as it gets.
>> That's right.
>> Compoundingies are a mix. It depends on
the compounding pharmacy.
>> Do we know that gray market peptides had
problems? Because there are people out
there right now who are certainly not
physicians. people like Robert Breedlove
who's best known for like his work in
crypto who's also now like very open
about the fact that he's taken all these
peptides and anabolics and things and I
heard him online the other day saying
literally that he's tested the gray
market for research purposes only
peptides and compared them to the
compounding pharmacy versions and
they're identical. Now he's not a
physician and I don't think he's lying
but many people are taking that sort of
evidence and saying oh I'll just get it
from gray market sources. As a
physician,
what is your stance on this?
>> So, the API for all these active
pharmaceutical ingredients comes from
China. There are no such thing as
Americanmade peptides. It gets finished
here. So, the API,
>> they're all from China.
>> Everything's from China. the raw
materials
>> the raw materials like the semiglutide
you're getting from a compounding
pharmacy or a research pep peptide
website ratide included comes from China
and then gets either the the raw
material gets you know packaged here
>> raw materials or or synthesized compound
because there's a big difference between
getting like the raw materials for
something and getting the thing
>> the synthesized semiglutide
>> gets made in China it'd be very
expensive to make it here there are
people starting to look at that cuz
that's that's the next you know thing in
the in the arms race to make American
peptides, right?
>> So, they're all Chinese peptides.
>> Everything's Chinese peptides.
>> There's no uh Guatemalan peptides.
There's no
>> China is the best at it at doing it.
Now, the compoundingies
vary in grading. Some of them are really
good. They do all the testing,
sterility. They have very good quality
control. So, you get a good product, but
they usually have to compound it with
something else to get by the regulations
like they'll add in a B12 or a B6 to say
like the patient had nausea from the
traditional semiglutide. we can compound
them with B12 or B6 to get around the
nausea and that's that that's meets the
patient rule because there's two ways to
get compounded medications. Either a
shortage or there's a unique need that
the patient has.
>> Do we know that compounding with
something else actually deals with the
nausea or is that just it slight? It
might help some people.
>> Got it.
>> Anecdotally, people will say that they
respond better to the pens like the
actual pharma pens than to the compared
to the compounded stuff. The research
stuff is all over the place. Like some
of it could be better than compounded
stuff. It could be the wrong substance.
Like there's a there's a guy went viral
on Twitter a few weeks ago. He got rid
of two tide started getting darker. He's
like, I don't think I'm injecting reat.
Got it.
>> Yes. He was melan. He was injecting
melan too.
>> And folks, I realize that we're we're
going places that not even I predicted
we would go, but this is super
informative. So all of the raw materials
are coming from the same source. Yes.
Then they're getting filtered into these
different let's just call them
>> stringency bins. Standard pharma, quote
unquote big pharma being the most
stringent.
>> Yeah, some of the raw materials are
overseas, like I think Lily's opening
some China factories. Some of it's here.
>> Okay. Some are going into compoundingies
and compoundingies, I think it's fair to
say, have varying levels of stringency.
Some are going to be excellent, some are
good, some are going to be lousy.
>> That's right.
>> Fair. Okay. the quoteunquote gray market
peptides, the ones where it's
quoteunquote for research purposes only,
but I made the joke on X a few weeks
ago, like how many of you are running
experiments in your home, not on
animals. Were you doing cell culture at
home? Like, come on.
I know what's involved in doing cell
culture. You're not. No one's doing this
at home.
>> So, those presumably also come in
anywhere from excellent to dreadful.
>> Yes.
>> Um, but we don't know which are which.
Nope.
>> We don't know that.
>> And batch to batch. That's the big
problem.
>> Gotcha. Okay. So, it is risky to get re
for research purposes. I mean, like
that's the majority of way people are
consuming peptides. Unfortunately, we
should just because of the the the move
in 2024 to get these from the category
one to the category 2 list and make them
banned quote unquote. That opened up
this gray market zone. Like the gray
market existed for the last 15, 20
years. Bodybuilders would, you know,
have anecdotes about BPC157. They'd
inject it post, you know, post squats
for different injuries. Nobody really
cared about it. It was with the GLP-1s
and then the banning of the peptides
plus this, you know, anti- medicine kick
that's been happening over the last five
years
>> since the pandemic.
>> Yes. Since the pandemic that people are
like, you know what, I want to inject
this because it gives them a sense of
autonomy or they feel like their bro
recommended it. Like I said, the best
job in 2025 was to be a peptide
affiliate. Like people made my yearly
salary in in a month selling peptides
illegally on TikTok.
>> And I will say because for people that
think it's just bro science, it's also
gal science. I will tell you, I don't
even know this a term. Um, someone needs
to come up with a better term. Um, my
understanding and not from Reddit is
that more than half of the peptide
market is female.
>> Oh, that's right.
>> You know, there's this perception that
it's like, you know, only guys who like
to lift weights and want to be jacked
and, you know, jacked and tan or
whatever, they say, you know, no. No.
Especially when we start getting into
things like GHKU copper and we start
talking about things for collagen and
skin rejuvenation. There's a big peptide
market in towards women. I actually
think in the long run it's going to
exceed at least financially peptide
market in men.
>> I think it already has because like
soccer moms have become like affiliates
like like you know Amway and Herbal Life
was the big thing 20 years ago. Now
soccer moms just do peptide affiliation.
>> Where are they getting their peptides?
>> Research research grade websites. The
>> gray market. Okay. We already know that
they're not uh recommended, but what
what about black market? What what what
would be considered black market?
>> Black market is like if you bought it
directly from China like like it's very
cheap. Like a vial of BPC costs five
bucks to make. Like now someone will
sell it to you for $1.99 plus depending
on where. But black market is either
like you know your friend in China on
WhatsApp sent you a vial of BPC. Do not
do this or someone synthesize claims
they synthesize it in their bathtub.
Like just like the underground gear like
all the steroids that were in the '9s
and the 2000s. It's like, who knows what
that is.
>> What's so interesting to me is with
steroids, it went from bodybuilding
community to eventually hormone
replacement. It was like TRT or what I
call TRT plus cuz a lot of guys are
taking a lot more than that. Some are
taking less, some are most are taking
more, some are taking what they're
prescribed. And then HRT be has become
very popular in women. So now HRT is
kind of like a thing that it's not like,
oh my goodness, like so and so is taking
estrogen replacement or testo. It's not
not a big deal. Peptides is different
because it came, you know, the big
explosion in this came through the GLPs.
And I would argue, I'd love your opinion
on this, why so many people are now
peptide curious is because people
because of the GLPs are now also very
comfortable
>> injecting themselves. Like like 5 years
ago, if you're like, you're going to
inject yourself, people like, oh my god.
Then they realize it's like this little
tiny pin. It hurts less than a, you
know, Texan mosquikito bite. People are
doing it on their skin and like, you
know, and somebody's, you know, your
girlfriend or wife is doing it as if
it's nothing. And, you know, like heroin
addicts or diabetics,
>> right? You're not going introvenous. So,
that changed everything that
dstigmatized it. Now,
>> to be fair, I I want to touch on
>> the the question about adverse events.
Again,
>> y
>> we're going to spend a couple minutes
talking about some incredible things
that we've seen and heard about BPC57 in
terms of its positive effects.
>> Y
>> the concern I've always had was the
angioenesis, the growth of vasculature.
If somebody happens to have a little
tumor or what will eventually become a
tumor sitting on their liver or in their
gut or in their pancreas, in theory, it
could vascularize that tumor and cause
it to grow more quickly. Is there any
evidence that that's actually happened?
I want to be very clear. I'm not loading
this question because it sounds like I'm
kind of like leading the witness when I
say that. I want to know. Y
>> I'm not currently taking BPC57. I'm
fortunately I don't have an injury at
the moment. So that would be the only
condition which I'd take it unless you
told me there are other reasons. But I
don't want to give myself that risk
>> that risk. And I think most people don't
want to give themselves that risk. So
what is the the realistic risk based on
observations in humans or animals? Have
we ever seen tumors grow more quickly?
>> No. Like for example, most compounds if
they're, you know, carcinogenic, we will
see that signature in the animals like
you know with cardarine GW uh was a drug
that was very was very promising because
it had you know diabetic implications
for metabolism and now it's a
bodybuilder drug that they use for more
cardio. What is this?
>> Cardarine GW. Mhm. Uh you might have
seen on on the Reddits and those forums,
but people use it for I stay out of
Reddit.
>> Yeah. Good. Uh increases your cardio um
capacity. Got so banned on on the water
list of course, but it was it had
promise for treating diabetics because
it changed metabolism in the liver. It
had a signal of cancer in animal data.
So that whole thing was scrapped.
>> There's no signal from the animal
literature on BPC57 for for you know
cancers. Now that all that literature
comes from one group. So we have to be
very careful. that one creation group
that tells you that that's it's the
safest thing in the world.
>> All the animal data come from one group.
>> Almost all of it.
>> Interesting.
>> Almost all of it. Very few. Like there's
a couple of Chinese studies on on BBC57.
Now there's starting to become more
interest here. Like I think it's a phase
two trial on hamstrings happening here
in the United States.
>> Really? Yeah. Humans. Yes. Phase two.
>> Yes. Uh we talked to a group, an
orthopedic group somewhere on the East
Coast. They they wanted to do a BBC
trial. So we consulted with them to kind
of Great.
>> Yeah. So it's it's going to happen.
Especially if it moves to this category
one list and people can be prescribed
it. At least we can get like a phase 4
trial where it's being prescribed and we
can see what's happening to the people
as they're getting it
>> and we can, you know, aggregate all this
anecdata into one place ideally and
report on it. So that's something we're
working on in the in the background.
>> Is that something you personally working
on on aggregating all this all this data
together into a anyone nest study to put
it all all together because all the ane
data exists but like put it together
somewhere at least we can see what the
signals are. For example, on Reddit,
you'll find signals of hematomas getting
worse, which makes sense with the with
the VEGF pathway.
>> I've heard this. So, a friend and
physician who is, I would say, peptide
curious/positive
told me that when he takes BPC-157 for,
you know, a shoulder or knee or
whatever, that angiomas on his face, um,
the sort of spiderweb angiomas, not the
formal term, forgive me, derms, but, um,
get worse. That's his his personal
observation. I think a lot of people
don't want that. It makes sense though
if it's promoting angioenesis
>> based on the the mechanism it does make
sense. Now BBC157 is not a uniform
androgenis um upregulator. In some
models it decreases vef in a melanoma
model a cell line.
>> So it might be potentially anti-cancer
but we need to test it.
>> We don't know and which is what's really
unfortunate about this compound. It's
very promising. It has all this cool
literature in animals and we just don't
know when it comes to the one.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and we'd love
to know because like if it does work
like I could see a million use cases in
the ICU that we could use, you know,
BBC157 to really help people out
especially during the critical illness
because like in ICU people get gastric
ulcers. Like if if we knew that it would
work, I would love to give them an
infusion of BBC157 and that's the future
I could see happening. But we need data.
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there going to be a formal randomized
control trial on BPC and who holds the
patent?
>> There's multiple patents on BPC 157
depending on which salt they're in. The
patent has been passed around a couple
of times to through different places.
Unfortunately, the company that had the
patent under the pled got acquired by
TAVA. TA is this generic pharmaceutical
company and they don't they make, you
know, Aderall. So, they they have
they're making tons of money making
Aderal. They don't really care about
PPC157. So, they have one of the
patents. The other patent expires in
like 10 years. I think Cric still has
it. Dr. Crick is is the guy behind
BBC157. He's
>> he's in Croatia.
>> He's in Croatia. Yeah.
>> Would Tava um sell the patent?
>> I'm sure they would if someone made an
offer. The the problem is I don't I
don't see the purpose of even having the
patent because you can add on one chain
to the amino acid. This is the problem
with with peptides. This is what Luli
Eli Liy is coming into when it comes to
making rea is that patent laws for
peptides kind of suck because you can
add on one amino acid. You can modify
one thing on it and suddenly it's a
different compound.
>> This is true for other pharmaceuticals.
Like I'm familiar with some of the
ketamine and ibeane trials and there's a
company that took ibagane and basically
added a magnesium component to it and
you can make that a completely new drug.
I'm not saying that doesn't work. I
think they have a good rationale for
doing that. But so this game of sort of
protecting patents rough and plus
millions of people have already used
BPC157 through research use only
websites. So I think millions is fair.
But now how do you reel that back? Like
it's already the cat's out of the bag.
So like there's no financial incentive
to run the giant study
>> unless like we we crowdfund it as as you
know peptide curious people
>> within the category of um interesting uh
anecdotal data. Y
>> and in your role as a physician, I
realize you're not suggesting these
things, but you you have a different
picture of this stuff at the level of
mechanism and you're a clinician that
works with, you know, truly FDA approved
drugs and you're you're I want you to
share with folks. I said it in the
introduction, but internal medicine
means that you spend your days what
>> I'm on the on the wards of the hospital
admitting patients from the ER to the
floor to the ICU, managing very complex
disease ranging from, you know, a simple
pneumonia to a coronary artery bypass
patient. So, yeah,
>> that whole spectrum.
>> Okay. So that lens applied to this as
much as one can would you say that like
of the the reports that you've heard
directly from people you trust and from
people that who are not incentivized to
say these things like oh you know it
made me happier you know their skin
looked better all the things that one
can find in it with an affiliate code
attached to it of those what do you
think are the most interesting
potentially valid claims
and I asked that because If we were
going to fund a clinical trial, we need
to pick an end point or a couple of end
points. Is it going to be recovery from
injury? If so, what kinds of injuries?
Is it going to be the gastric stuff? Is
it mood interaction with dopamine
receptors? I mean, I've heard so many
different things. If we had a chunk of
money and we're going to we're going to
design a study and have someone else do
it so it's truly independent. Like what
are the top three to five outcomes that
you've heard that you have a good
feeling there's quote unquote something
there?
>> Yep.
>> And then we narrow it down to maybe one
or two for sake of the study. What What
are those five? I would say to complete
the phase one, phase two on the ulcer of
colitis, do that phase three trial on
proven that it has benefits for
ulcerative colitis. And I don't think we
need to use enema. We could probably
have an encapsulated version that
releases deeper into the intestines.
>> So fix the gut, fix the ulcered gut.
>> Yes. In conjunction with that, you could
do a trial on like, you know, gird.
That's a simple condition. A lot of
people have it randomized to BPC157 oral
capsules versus pentopresol.
>> Okay. And you're basing this on the fact
that you've seen and heard that people
who have gird get better, feel better
when they take it. Okay. And it could be
placebo.
>> Yes. I mean, anecdotally, when when I
travel, I I have a bottle of BPC orally.
>> Why is that?
>> I don't get, you know, travelers
diarrhea or or, you know,
>> when I, you know, eat exotic foods on in
random places. My friends all get sick
and I I happen not to. Anecdote, right?
But that's interesting. There seems to
be some kind of gut protective effect.
And that's what they noticed in the the
mice literature. they would have an
offending agent into the gut and they'd
notice that there would be protection
deeper down in the in the gastric tract
from that offending agent because if you
think about it the gut is the most
vulnerable part of the body like it's
open to the outside world it's a tube
that runs through you can eat something
and it could completely destroy you so
you have to have some kind of mechanisms
the prostaglandins uh the you know all
these different hormones that are made
potentially BPC17 is part of this robust
armory that the gut has to protect
itself from further injuries. Mhm. What
are some things outside the gut or
indirect from the gut that are also
compelling?
>> So, I would love to see some
neuroscychiatric um BBC studies when it
comes to um addictions. There's enough
anecdot about people talking about
addictions and and like hey I don't need
to crave insert drug here not
recommending that anyone tries that out
but for alcohol or whatever it may be.
Do you think that is likely due to the
we're speculating but likely due to a um
interference with the reinforcing
properties just like earlier you said
people are getting less drunk so people
are getting less high becomes less
reinforcing or is it somehow touching
the craving mechanisms themselves?
>> It's probably touching the craving
mechanism through the gutb brain access
because I don't think it's going
systemic either. I think it's it's
locally in the gut shutting down the
neurons from from from if you think
about it if BBC is what they claim it is
right and that's a big if that if you
have a noxious agent going into your gut
your body has to have a mechanism to
lock down you know protect your your
vital organs right so is BPC part of
this giant transduction pathway to
protect your vital organs your brain
your heart your kidneys from further
damage we had uh Dr. Diego Borquez, I
can never pronounce his last name,
forgive me, Diego, who's out at Duke,
who's really the world expert on these
neuropod cells in the gut that signal
through the noto's gangling up the Vegas
noto's ganglion to either promote or
suppress release of dopamine to make you
either approach or avoid certain foods.
Very, very interesting. I would be more
than happy to
>> encourage his lab, even if get funds for
his lab, to do something on this. What
are some other categories of interesting
effects that deserve
>> careful study?
>> Yep. So we need to see what BBC does on
the muscular skeletal system. Like
that's what the hype is. That's where
everybody's is is going. So as I look
through like what model I would look
for, you want something that's not very
vascularized but could be improved if
the blood flow was good like a tendon
injury. So perhaps you know a bicep
tricep tendon type of uh postsurgical
outcome. So like you get your bicep
tendon um torn, you get a repair, you
get BBC either inoperatively or
postoperatively and you see if if that
person heals faster because idea is not
to use BBC. It's not going to magically
reattach an ACL that's torn, right? But
can it further accelerate the healing
from an ACL surgery so you come back in
6 months rather than 12 months? That's
the big question
>> and that's what like a lot of athletes
are are using BBC157 for that use.
>> Has ever anyone ever done the one limb
versus opposite limb control experiment?
I mean I know that people take it orally
or inject it systemically like under the
skin or into the muscle goes
systemically in the bloodstream if you
apply it that way. Um if you can get to
the injury site sometimes people will
inject locally
>> but it seems that the challenge is that
let's say you have you know uh you know
tendonitis in one elbow and tendonitis
in the other elbow you could inject into
your left elbow not and not your right
but there's going to be systemic
transfer so it's hard to do that
internal control experiment. Yeah, I
know. I've had I've used BBC for one
injury and I've had results on a
different injury.
>> Positive results.
>> I had positive results. I'm like, "Oh,
interesting that like that that my
shoulder feels better even though I was
doing it from my elbow or whatever it
may be." This would be a good time for
us to, you know, bracket what we're
about to say by saying this is purely
anecdotal, but filtered through I
consider myself a skeptic on many, many
things, especially things I would put
into my body. I'll tell a a story.
What's your favorite personal BPC story
involving you and your body? Yeah,
>> I tore my tricep a few months ago. Tore.
Yeah, tore triceps lifting with people I
should have been lifting with. They're
much stronger than I was. Purple from
here to here.
>> Like the pictures I posted on on X. It's
it's brutal. I'm like, I'm going to have
to have surgery. This sucks. I I don't
have time to have surgery cuz you're
you're in a brace for like 3 months. And
I put BBC in locally. Don't try this at
home. Not medical advice, but locally in
the tissue spot with a couple of other
peptides. And within 3 weeks, my my PT
is like, "What the hell are you doing?
Like, this is healing so fast." Would I
have healed that fast anyways? I don't
know. But that's typically a grade two
tricep tear with with purple arm from
from top to bottom. It wasn't grade
three. Uh cuz I could still extend my my
elbow. That's usually a 3-month
recovery. And to be back in 3 to 4 weeks
was was fantastic for me, which is why
I'm so excited.
>> What dosage were you injecting?
>> Uh a larger dose than people would uh
>> not micrograms. No,
>> you were up in the grams.
>> Yeah. Yeah. A lot higher. I I think um
personally and in some of our our our
people, we've used bigger dosages. I
think that's the problem. the low
dosages even though that translates well
from the mice data for humans I think
the dose is way higher
>> but people just go based on the dosage
that would fit in the pile through a you
know peptide sciences website rather
than what actually we don't know what
what the human dose is for BBC157 so
there's a lot of work to do just to
figure that out like when we spoke to
the to the orthopedic group like yeah
we're going to start with you know 250
micrograms I'm like I don't know if
you're going to see an effect at that
low of a dose you might need to to raise
it up like that that's what people do
online
>> I'm like yeah but that's just because
someone's peptide website says to do
that. There's no data there, but you
know, tricep was back to normal.
>> Amazing.
>> That was a an interesting BPC case. I'
I've seen other injuries where BBC
didn't really help
>> much. I can't match your story. That's
that's a a bigger result. I can just say
that I had a bad trap neck pull where I
couldn't turn my head and I was like,
"Oh, one of those." and you know had
some BPC so it was only I think only 200
micrograms and just pinned it right into
the that's street talk for injected um
right into the kind of like upper
trapish area 2 days later completely
gone of course
>> I don't know what would have happened
had I just waited
>> but it seemed um eerily fast and then I
stopped taking it y
>> so this is a guy that you know and and
by the way that was um not gray market
it was obtained through a doctor's
prescription from a compounding pharmacy
labeled BPC1 57 not PDA PDA okay those
are anecdotes I've also read just to be
fair we should balance this out
certainly on X you know people can say
anything they want people saying oh you
know I didn't feel well I stopped taking
it okay could be due to what it was
dissolved in could be due to their own
unique you know response could be due to
bad sourcing you know contamination so
we don't know but not everyone has a
great result and some people have no
result right but many many people report
what can only be described as pretty
astonishing ing positive results
>> that cannot be directly ascribed to the
BPC because of the placebo effect etc.
And I'm not saying that to protect
myself. I'm saying that so that people
can couch this in that like how we got
here y
>> is because of stories like this.
>> Well, there's two possibilities. Either
BBC is as amazing as we think it is and
it's unfortunate that millions of people
don't have access to it
>> or BBC is actually either ineffective or
harmful to people and millions of people
are injecting it right now by buying it
through online sources. Both cases are
very bad endpoints. one's worse than the
other. You can argue which one, but
that's why we need this data. We need
people to push this forward to figure
this out because we don't want these end
points because if if in 20 years we find
out BPC is as good as, you know, Secrets
Lab says it is, then man, people are
pissed off all the, you know, joint
replacements and injuries didn't heal
and all the athletes that maybe could
have had a longer career, that would be
very unfortunate. But if it's the
opposite and like, you know, every
18-year-old kid in the in the gym will
come up to me and like, I'm going to
inject inject BPC. Like, where do you
get it from?
>> I'm like, dude, you're 18. you have all
the peptides you need in you like the
parabiosis studies that these are young
animals like you actually take your
blood and
>> we had Tony Weiss Corey on the podcast
that was you know young blood is rich
with these things and no we're not
talking about harvesting blood from
babies check out the Tony Weiss Corey
episode we'll provide a link
>> I mean what you just said about young
guys coming up to you in the gym and
saying should I be taking or I'm already
taking BBC is you know we could have a
whole other conversation maybe another
time we will talk about testosterone and
synthetics and things like that I see a
lot of young guys taking everyone.
>> I don't know if it's everyone. I don't
know if it's everyone. I see a lot of
many many people are taking testosterone
exogenously who truly don't need it and
potentially permanently shutting down
their fertility or causing other issues.
>> With the looks maxing trend, too,
>> with the looks maxing trend, you know,
they're walking around with hammers,
sledging on their face, this kind of
thing. You know, I'm sure when I was in
my 20s, you know, people in their 50s
were probably like, "What are these kids
doing?" You know, and it wasn't in
anything like this, but who knows? It
was like baggy pants and like you know
and like there was weird stuff going on
like hacky sacks and stuff. So not me,
not me. But I'm confident that thanks to
you we've framed the history of this
which by the way is fascinating
>> and kind of where we are now very very
well. So thank you. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you.
>> I have two questions. Um well one
comment and one question. The comment is
I think there's a third category of
problematic outcome. One you said is
this thing works spectacularly well for
a number of important problems to solve
important problems and we don't find out
about it because it wasn't looked at
carefully. The other is it's
detrimental. There's the other one which
is we start hearing about adverse events
y
>> and it goes kind of the way of the dodo
or it kind of drifts back into who you
know and is it the good stuff or not the
good stuff because we don't actually
know whether or not the the adverse
outcome was due to BPC itself to misuse
of BPC
>> or to like you know like the factors
that it's it's dissolved in or something
like that and I think that's the most
likely outcome unless we get our arms
around this and that's where you could
say like the hormone replacement therapy
field has actually enjoyed the fact that
if a woman decides she's going to take
progesterone or estrogen replacement
therapy permenopausal or or menopausal
or something for PCOS or whatever that
wouldn't be what to take for PCOS but
you get the idea or a guy decides in his
you know 40s or 50s or whatever it is
okay he's going to go on TRT he can do
it carefully she can do it carefully
>> and knows what adverse outcomes to look
for no one's thinking oh my god the
sesame oil that's dissolved in is
possibly causing these problems
>> well some people will will be very
particular on which oil their
testosterone comes in.
>> That's in the gym community. Yeah. Yeah.
Totally with you. And where to inject
and so forth. But that aside, my concern
is that it is kind of wild westish.
>> Yes, it is.
>> And I'm not so concerned I'll get in
trouble for this, but whatever.
>> I'm not so concerned that these actual
compounds are necessarily harming
people. I worry that the way they're
arriving to people is harming them, and
we're going to miss out on that first
possibility that these are very useful.
And of course, I don't want anyone
getting hurt.
>> So, here comes the question. As a
physician, I realize that you are more
than peptide curious. You're very
peptide friendly in your own life. You
know, if you have a patient who has, you
know, just their gut is a mess or
they're dealing with, you know,
postsurgical issues and you know that
BPC from the right source is either
going to be benign or could potentially
help them. What kind of position does
that put you in? Yep.
>> As an American board-certified
physician,
>> very uncomfortable position because if
I'm, you know, rounding on a patient in
the wards of a hospital and like, hey,
you should take BPC instead of your
pentopol, I'll probably get my license
revoked. So, not a good idea. Don't do
that.
>> What about in addition to
>> in addition to so like if they come see
me in clinic, that might be a place
where we can have that discussion. We're
going to see very shortly here what the
FDA is going to tell us about BPC and
all these other peptides and the
legality of them. if they get moved to
the category one list and then the
states say like hey the FDA said so
we're not going to look we're not going
to care about this you can do what you
want to do as a physician and you
counsel the patient like you have an
honest discussion with the patient I
think that's what it should be it should
be between the physician and the patient
like hey there's this promising compound
it's not FDA approved we have minimal to
no human data but we have anecdata are
you willing to try this on yourself and
we'll monitor you we'll have clear
endpoints for that should be what this
looks like frank discussion between a
physician and a patient. Now, if that
patient has an adverse effect, they can
go to a medical board and say like,
"Hey, Dr. so and so gave me BP157 and I
had a bad effect and I would be like,
"Hey, you gave them a non-FDA approved
compound." A for injectable. B, the
problem is there's orals that are being
sold as supplements now, like BBC 57 as
an oral available supplement because
it's not a medication. It's never been
uh approved as a medication in the
United States. So, what is BBC's legal
status? Is it dietary available?
Therefore, cuz if you, you know, cut up
an animal and ate its stomach, you'd
probably get some BBC in.
>> Well, I can buy desicated liver t.
>> I'm eating livers.
>> There there's tons of
>> You can go buy liver at the this like
one Michelin star restaurant, not down
this road, but a different road. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, like Dr. Cavson identified
many peptides in livers like ligen
ovagen that you'd find in your
desiccated liver supplement that you're
eat. It's like the the biggest
distributors of peptides have been these
organ meat companies because each organ
has a signature peptide that comes out
of it.
>> Do they get absorbed?
>> Yes.
>> Are they bioavailable active?
>> Dr. Dr. Cavins's work suggests that it
is. Dr. Vladimir McCavson is this
Russian Soviet scientist that gives us
epital and thyolin and pinealon and all
these Russian peptides. Die and
tripeptides can be orally available if
they're the right shape and size.
>> They're not very well uh available, but
they can be available. So, you won't
necessarily get it from the organ uh
isolate or from the or eating the organ
like like if you eat heart probably very
rich in lcarnitine. Can my body make
good use of that? I mean, there's
cardiogen, which is one of the the heart
peptides that that was scantly studied
uh in the late 2000s that may be orally
bioavailable. The problem is no one's
doing the work to figure that out. You
painted this picture where not you
perhaps, but let's just say um another
physician has the awareness that BPC57
might be useful to a patient of theirs
that's dealing with a they had like an
ACL tear. They're not recovering very
quickly. Doctor says, "Listen, you're
doing everything correctly. there's this
new category of stuff. We don't have a
lot of data on it. I'm not aware that
there are any severe risks, but they
they could be there. So, if you're
willing to embrace those unknowns, you
could take x number of micrograms or
milligrams per day for 2 weeks and see
how you feel. Patient says, "Okay, I'm
willing to do that." The physician says,
"Okay, you want to make sure that it's
real and you want to make sure that it's
clean, there's not no contaminants." Y
>> if that physician says, you know, I can
write you a script for it and this
compounding pharmacy will send it to you
and they're making money on it. A lot of
people, well, the moment they hear that,
they think, oh, well, they're totally
incentivized to do this cuz they're
going to get a cut. But if we go back to
the original pharma model, it is a
little bit of a different situation,
right? Because let's say Lily charges
$1,500 for a pen of some sort of GLP.
the physician who prescribes that are
they getting a cut of that 1500?
>> They don't. They don't.
>> But there are kickbacks and, you know,
pharmaceutical incentives and pharma
deals. Those are real.
>> It's flights to Hawaii for a conference.
>> Really? So, there are real incentives
even though they're not getting paid
directly.
>> Yeah. There's there's always incentives
in in any kind of business, especially a
business as big as pharmaceutical.
>> Well, physicians are already getting
paid. So, I'm not saying that. I mean,
these are these are peripheral
incentives. Well, the the farmers also
lobby a lot of the medical schools and
they, you know, got there's a lot.
>> So, there's a relationship there, but
it's not cold hard cash.
>> Sorry, as direct as the compound,
>> but in a compounding pharmacy now, this
physician, hypothetical physician, could
say, "Hey, you know what? You can get it
from this compounding pharmacy and it's
going to be 500 bucks." The patient,
we've now established because they've
heard this podcast, has a right to say,
"What are you paying for it versus what
you're charging me?" They might lie.
They might tell you the truth. Or the
physician could say, "You know what? I'm
not making a dime on this. It's just I
think it might be useful to you." that
physician is protected or not protected
if something negative happens to the
patient. Something happens to they is
somebody suing a compounding pharmacy or
they're suing their physician.
>> They're suing all three. They're suing
the physician, the compounded pharmacy
and and anyone who recommended it. So
>> that's pretty scary.
>> No malpractice provider is going to give
you coverage for peptides, especially
non FDA approved peptides unless
there's, you know, high risk malpractice
providers that that will cover you for
that. Let's say somebody gets hurt
taking uh one of the prescribed pharma
GLPS and they they're pissed and they
and they sue they sue their doctor or
they sue the pharma company depending on
who who had the liability. So if the
doctor didn't warn you that you know
injecting 10 times a dose might cause
pancreatitis and you had pancreatitis
they can claim the doctor is at fault.
If someone has deep pockets they can go
at Lily and say like hey Lily you didn't
disclose this risk. I think now people
thanks to you are armed with enough
information to be able to make really
good decisions about whether or not to
say eh waiting for those clinical trial
results or I'll stick my toe in the pond
or I'm going to continue to learn more
but I'm going to now learn more thanks
to you genuinely with a lot more
understanding about how this stuff flows
from website or from doctor to patient.
>> Let's talk about pinealon.
>> Yeah,
>> pinealon is one that most people
probably haven't heard of. Mhm.
>> I'll just go on record saying I've tried
it a few times or more. I don't take it
regularly, but I tried it before sleep.
Yep.
>> If I take it at the beginning of the
night, it reduces my deep slowwave sleep
and gives me far more REM across the
night. Not a great situation.
>> Y
>> great situation is if I go to sleep, get
my usual ration of deep sleep. If I
happen to wake up in the middle of the
night to use the restroom once or so,
not uncommon, if I do a very small
injection of pinealon at that point, the
one and a half hours of REM that I would
get in the final hours of my sleep, now
I'm getting 3 hours in the same amount
of sleep. It's just a higher fraction of
REM. Y
>> sometimes wake up feeling a little
groggy, but it is a whole other life to
get that much REM. I don't do it
regularly. It's not, you know, I would
say maybe three times a month, but
here's the interesting thing. It
improves my percentage of REM on all the
other nights in between those three
injections.
>> So I'm coming clean here.
>> Lingering effects.
>> Very cool. You're interested in
pinealone for a whole other set of
reasons. But first of all, what is
pinealone and where does it act? Does it
have a known receptor?
>> No known receptor. So pinealon is a
tripeptide edr discovered by the
mentioned of Dr. Vladimir Cavinson. He's
a Soviet researcher that comes out of
this Soviet era research to make
soldiers, astronauts, and pilots uh
better. There's concern that the US
might be using lasers to to shoot at
soldiers. So, the Soviet Union um tasks
him with identifying peptides to defend
soldiers, their eyes, and then they're
aging because what would happen is
they'd be in a submarine for a few
months, there'd be a nuclear sub, and
they'd they'd come back to shore and
they'd be like, you know, these
submariners, let's call them, would look
10, 20 years older. also happens to
astronauts.
>> Yes. So then the same the same thing as
astronauts are coming back they're
they're aged. So Vladimir Cavson is
looking at this and he's like hey
there's there's got to be a solution for
this. There's been literature about
using extracts of other tissues notably
the pineal gland and the thymus from you
know late 1800s till this this 1970s uh
point that we're you know starting our
story. And he starts grounding up these
um extracts and injecting it into these
people and then undoing a lot of this
aging effects through pineal extracts
and thymus extracts because these what
do these soldiers have? They had very
bad circadian rhythmicity. So they they
can't couldn't sleep properly. They had
terrible immunity. They'd get sick
often. They'd be uh have autoimmune
problems. All these conditions that come
with it. And then they were able to undo
this using these organ extracts. So
Vladimir Cavson takes it a step further.
He looks like, hey, what's causing this
effect in these in these tissues? Like
people have been injecting pineal glands
in different research models or taking
out pineal glands from rats from the
1800s onwards. He finds peptides in
these extracts. He's like, "Huh, I
wonder if these effects are from the
peptides, not from this the gland
itself." So then he sequences from the
pineal gland epialon and from the thymus
gland a couple different peptides vyon
thyogen cristaggen that you'll be
hearing about in the next few years that
on their own do a lot of the effects
that the whole extract would would do.
Now you're talking about epialon but
pinealon and epon
>> is not from the pineal gland
>> is not from the pineal gland
>> even though everyone
>> no I think it's called that because
there's there's as far as I understand
please correct me if I'm wrong there are
animal data suggesting that pinealon can
help either regenerate or enhance the
the general functioning of pinealytes.
So it's having an effect on the pineal
when cult like you take cultured pineal
glands like little PI gland you put it
in a dish and you dissociate the cells
or keep it you know as a little P-siz
thing and then you give it pinealon and
seems to improve the timing and perhaps
even the amount of melatonin output from
the pineal these kinds of
>> epialon does that so that's a big
confusion I don't know why he named them
the way he named them if anyone knows
please let us know but epalon is from
the pineal gland pinealon comes from a
groundup brain extract called cortexin
>> and brain has a pineal in it.
>> Yeah. But it was the cortex
specifically, not not the subcortical
regions. So he specifically not the
subcortical regions. So flavon
identifies he makes a drug in Russia.
It's called epialamine which is the
pineal gland extract and had great
effect on circadian rhythmicity and it's
rich with melatonin basically giving
people melatonin
>> but also you up with enzyme that creates
melatonin from from serotonin to an
acetyl serotonin to melatonin. So like
um when he gave it to young monkeys, the
monkeys had no effect, but he gave it to
age monkeys that have decreased
melatonin and you know from puberty
onwards your melatonin levels
dramatically decrease. He was able to
restore melatonin production in these
aged animals and eventually replicated
it on humans.
>> I want to talk about thymus because it's
fascinating and you are truly aversed in
this. But before we do that,
>> so pineal comes from the cortex, not the
pineal. That's annoying.
>> Yes, very annoying.
>> Um maybe we just rename it today. I'll
let you do the renaming. We'll call it
EDR.
>> EDR.
>> That's the three amino acid sequence.
>> Great. We'll call it EDR so people don't
get confused. What are some of the known
effects? Or am I just imagining this REM
increase? Because I can't change what's
happening to me during sleep. Y that
would be an amazing placebo effect. And
the reason I say amazing is there are
many things that one can do to improve
the amount of slowwave deep sleep. Not
eating too close to bedtime, doing some
exercise early in the day, etc., etc.
very hard to increase REM except by
heating your sleep environment in the
last third of your night and maybe some
alpha GPC in the late day can bump it up
a bit or you can REM deprive yourself or
you can smoke cannabis for 10 years then
quit and then you'll get a lot of REM
because you got no REM for 10 years do
not recommend that protocol but
>> for me it was just striking so why would
EDR
>> tripeptide with no receptor
>> right previously called pinealon but
from here uh here forward EDR why would
that have this effect on on REM sleep.
>> Yep. And and I actually searched through
all of the literature from Cavson. He
never mentions REM sleep once in his
studies. He studied pinealon quite
extensively on different neuronal tissue
extracts, animal studies, even in in
athletes and never mentions the REM
sleep. They weren't having they didn't
have Whoops in the 1970s in the Soviet
Union. They didn't have an eight sleep.
You're kidding me. No.
>> So they didn't have, you know, sleep
trackers in the 1970s uh when it came to
to these. So there was no reports on on
that. But what seems to be happening,
let's see, what is this on this edr?
It's a tripeptide that um meets the
groove of the DNA of different key
regions and helps the promoter region be
exposed. So then that DNA transduction
can happen uh translation transcription.
So you get
>> it's turning on genetic programs.
>> Yes.
>> It's acting a little bit like a
transcription factor.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Almost like that or maybe
assisting transcription factors in
accessing the DNA in the right places.
So pinealon in in one sentence it's
leading to better brain metabolism
through modulating all these different
pathways. for example GDF11 sod one sod
2 uh iris PPR alpha PPR gamma so what
seems to be happening so he made
pinealon as a anti-stress um cognitive
performance compound
>> uh and it was available orally in like
Kazakhstan to
>> that I'm taking before sleep I should be
taking in the morning
>> yes so if you take a high enough dose
there is sedation from it but if you
take it in the morning or prehit workout
you get quite an interesting effect so
he studied this um compound on athletes
and he would uh do have them do their
training session, go to exhaustion and
then do a test afterwards. And there's
two groups, pinealon and the placebo.
The pinealon group could keep their
performance up despite uh being
maximally exhausted from their training.
>> I feel like such a dummy. Here I am
having like these elaborate dreams I
don't really remember or care about when
I could be actually thinking better
during the daytime.
>> Yeah. So, a lot of people report less
brain fog, you know, better thinking. Uh
a friend that has a a you know, nine
figure company has all of his employees
on pineal on. They're taking it in the
morning.
>> In the morning, uh, or at night,
depending on,
>> do you know the dosages? Not that we're
recommending it.
>> Orally, people will take anywhere
between, you know, half a milligram up
to three milligrams is what where people
um, settle in. Um, the Cavson ones that
that come from Russia are like 200
micrograms.
>> Some people are injecting it.
>> Some people are injecting it.
>> It goes systemic.
>> Ego systemic. It's orally available
through these uh, Latin pep
transporters.
>> Crosses the bloodb brain barrier
>> most likely. Yes.
>> Okay. Okay. Cuz it's coming from cortex,
but otherwise we're the way you're
describing it, we're putting no one's
infusing into the brain.
>> No one's so we're assuming it's small
enough. It's trieptide to cross the the
bloodb brain barrier.
>> Have you tried it?
>> I mean, I took some last night, but
>> Okay. At night.
>> Yeah. So, I I will take larger dosages
uh if I want to get good sleep. I'll
describe as 8K. Some people it will
cause them to have a little bit of
awakening um at first. That may be why
your deep sleep was going away. I'll say
this.
>> If I take half of what was recommended,
I'm great. But I'm very sensitive to
everything. Just sensitive. If I take
what was recommended, I fall very deeply
asleep. I have elaborate dreams and I
wake up. Yeah. And I couldn't tell if
that was a disruption in sleep
architecture.
I just found and and granted I'm only
doing this three times per month
maximum. And I often forget and then I
go months and months and I was like, oh,
maybe I'll take a little pineal. Whoa,
this is wild. and then I'd stop taking
it because because I don't know enough
about it. Now, I know it's cleanly
sourced because I trust the compounding
pharmacy it's coming from, but I should
ask, are there any known risks of EDR?
>> So far, nothing in the Russian
literature. So, big caveat, it's Russian
literature. It's not gold standard
American research that we love here. Um,
so there's nothing that's come up as a,
you know, clear sign because what what
it seems the big theory of Cavson is
that as you're when you're younger, you
make a lot of these peptides naturally.
these tri die tri and tetropeptides and
as you age they go down in function and
quantity and by replenishing these
peptides you're restoring some aspect of
youthfulness
>> something similar happens in America
with GHK copper which is another
tripeptide that's technically like the
collagen regulator so the brain
regulator and GHK copper is the collagen
regulator but so far the the side
effects we've noticed we have the
probably the biggest anecdotal
compilation of N equals 1 every every
day I wake up someone texts me be like
hey Pineelon did this to me some will
have a little drop in blood sugar
because it activates PPR alpha PPR
gamma. So it'll have positive metabolic
effects. So that's something to keep an
eye out. And in some people even had
their A1C's drop. So
>> hypoglycemics and other people blood
sugar issues take extra caution.
>> And then very vivid dreams for some
people that could be disheartening if if
they have like you know nightmares or
something like that. But very very vivid
dreams uh as a result of a pinealon
especially like the the color and the
the quality of the dreams is very
different than you'd normally expect.
What seems to be happening
>> is like just like you know psychedelics
change the redux state of the brain.
Pinealon is doing something similar
where you're getting more alertness
during the day
>> like you don't wake up with as much
brain fog uh at least anecdotally. Uh
you get better performance during like
high-intensity interval training and
then you get more REM sleep at night. um
because the neurons are in a better
oxidative state thanks to the PPR alpha
PPR gamma iris and all these different
pathways that it's modulating
>> um with no clear one you know receptor
that it's doing it through.
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>> What about epital, which turns out comes
from the pineal? I'd love your thoughts
on this. I've heard and I thought it was
complete nonsense when I first heard it
that the pineal becomes calcified as
people age. The reason I thought it was
nonsense is I used to co-e neuro anatomy
when I was at UCSD before moving my lab
to Stanford with a guy named Harvey
Carton. You guys can look him up.
Unfortunately, he passed away. He was in
his late 80s and he had this incredible
career as a I think one of the greatest
neuroanatomists of the last hundred
years. It's a that's a good category to
be in because we have like Kahal who's
like discovered everything basically and
then the rest of neuroscientists are
just kind of tinkering around with what
he predicted and then a few other neuro
anatomists like Ted Jones is there but
he's like the neuroanatomist of my
generation and I asked him about this
calcification thing cuz he had looked at
the brains of so many different species
including humans. He was also an MD by
the way and he goes, "Yeah, I don't know
whether or not this calcification thing
is real." M
>> and he kind of brushed it aside and I
thought well Harvey doesn't take it
seriously so I'm not going to take it
seriously but even though he was
absolutely right about many many things
I think he might have missed that one
because when I go to the literature now
it's a little bit tough because the
cadaavvers that you looked at in medical
school and not all of them are processed
on the same timeline right it's not
thankfully it's not a controlled science
right these are people that generously
donate their bodies to science right
>> does our pineal calcify and even if it
does does that somehow inhibit its
ability to communicate with our other
tissues.
>> It's it's a big kind of debatable thing
in in the pineal research. If you look
at the pineal gland Wikipedia, it's very
under uh developed, let's say, because
it's kind of woowoo. Like when you think
of pineal gland, you think of someone
who's going to sell you
>> a neuroscientist chooses to work on the
pineal.
>> They should, but it's not a very sexy.
>> It sounds like someone's going to sell
you crystals or something about your
>> It's not very sexy. Yeah.
>> But I think it's it's a key aspect of
aging and longevity. So that's that's
what gives us, you know, our interest in
it. the pineal gland. Um it seems from
Caven's work that the decrease in pineal
gland function with aging is more of a
physiologic than a anatomic problem. Now
I will see some calcification on MRI is
when we have a patient come in for like
a stroke or you know TBI will look at
their MRI and I'm like hey there's that
looks like a little bit calcification
there. uh maybe my neurology colleagues
will disagree but that seems to happen
but the question is what is actually
leading to the deterioration of
melatonin synthesis because it decreases
quite dramatically and some people even
think that might start puberty like if
you have a pineal pineal cyst you can
have precocious puberty like eight or
nine years old
>> the rhythmicity in melatonin because a
young baby very young baby their
melatonin secretion is not very rhythmic
but they're in REM like a lot a lot of
their sleep is REM it's a beautiful
thing Right. With time it becomes more
rhythmic. And of course in today's day
and age with all the artificial lighting
and the lack of sunlight exposure things
that you and I care a lot about. Um
people are making themselves somewhat
arythmic or phase shifted.
>> But epialen is somehow restoring
pinealytes is somehow enhancing function
of the pineal and other tissues.
>> Yep. So uh in in cabin's work he's found
that it will increase the expression of
the different clock genes. So in like
you know lymphosytes that he'll measure
in peripheral tissues he'll notice that
the clock genes actually change. So in a
more rhythmic pattern he'll notice that
morning cortisol is higher. Great. Which
by the way folks I've said this in the
cortisol episode. You want your morning
cortisol super super high. You want your
evening and nighttime cortisol low. If
you're a resident in medical school just
listen to what your superiors say. They
don't give a [ __ ] about your cortisol
levels. You got to do the hard work and
then uh later you get to later you get
to go to bed. It's a little weird that
the medical profession tortures their
own by disrupting one of the one of the
primary anchors of health. Yep.
>> And and cognitive function, right? I
mean, I've had 28 hour shifts and that's
what got me interested in security.
>> You're young. You're good. You're good.
But yeah, the idea was it was restoring
a more um circadian appropriate hormonal
profile through you know HTH cortisol
>> taken when
>> anytime because the idea with these bio
regulators unlike you know a GLP-1 drug
that you take today and have the effect
for the next week the idea from the
cavonin model is that you take these and
then you acrewue benefits when you're
off of them like you notice with
pinealon you took pinealon for a day or
two or three days a month and you had
effects until you took the next dose. So
the idea is can you acrue benefits from
these compounds as they upregulate or
downregulate certain genetic pathways in
a more favorable state and then keep
those effects later on. So in the cavson
seminal work was this 15y year um
longevity study he got people in nursing
homes two groups one them got echalon in
the form of epathalamine which is the
whole pineal gland extract and then a
thymus peptide called thyolin not
thyulin there's two different peptides a
lot of people confuse them every peptide
website confuses them but I inject them
for 15 years like a 10 or 20 day course
per year just just uh beginning of the
year middle of the year and that's it
and they had a significant lower
mortality when it came to cardiovascular
disease, uh, infectious risk and for,
um, cancers. So, Russian study, caveat,
but that would would be the most
interesting longevity study I've seen
done if accurate, if true, uh, because
he was able to take nursing home
patients, give them peptides for, you
know, very small amount of the year, and
yet they accred benefits the rest of the
year.
>> Impressive. Uh, one of the things that
really got me excited about epalon, is
italon or talon? The Russians say epylon
is the the way they say it, but it's
spelled with a th Okay. So, I'll say
epal whoever wants, you know, we're
making the rules today. So,
>> okay, epitoon is also a a DG. That's
that's the amino acid for amino acid.
>> I'll say epialin because it's uh easiest
for me and forgive me if anyone takes
offense. I took interest because uh in
my former life running a lab focused on
among other things uh visual pathway
repair y um to reverse blindness or
impending blindness. Um there's some
interesting papers and there I can
really gauge the data even though
they're in mice. I can say this is a
real effect or like a me effect or like
a wo effect using epialin to combat some
of the neurodeeneration in things like
uh retinitis pigmentotosa downstream
neurodeeneration in RP uh which is a
very common unfortunately blinding
disease or even in glaucoma. Y
>> I should mention that BPC57 to my
knowledge hasn't been looked at
extensively in terms of optic nerve
repair but it absolutely should be. If
if someone knows those papers, please
put them in the comments. So, I was
intrigued. Yep. Like, there's this
molecule that's somehow involved in DNA
repair,
>> and it's uh either maintaining or
restoring some of the machinery that
would otherwise definitely be lost in
one of these optic nerve damage
conditions that models things like
glaucoma, retinitis, pigmentotosa,
stroke, uh traumatic head injury. It's a
big deal. Yep. Vision and movement are
kind of the biggies. I mean there are
other things too but like you know you
don't want to lose those and if you do
you can get by but it you need
additional support obviously. So the
reason it's so interesting to me is that
it's getting to DNA repair as opposed to
these downstream
um you know working on any number of
vague receptorish maybe no receptor
things like and this is what gene
therapy is about.
>> Yep. So do you think of epien as kind of
a gene therapy of sorts or do you think
about it more as support for genetic
machinery that has lots of downstream
targets?
>> Yes, I think it it supports this genetic
machinery. Um when it comes to the eyes,
it seems to be repairing some of the
photo receptors that might get damaged
in a red pigmentotosa. Melanopsin wasn't
discovered when when Cavson was was
kicking it around. But I would my my
theory is that epiphylon is working on
melanopsin.
>> Interesting. and that it may be
upregulating melanopsin levels and then
making that morning sunlight that
everyone likes
>> to be more effective because the big
problem is a lot of people will tell me
doc I did morning sunlight didn't I
didn't feel the effects I'm like have
you had enough darkness to regenerate
melanopsin levels because we know that
uh in animal studies 5 days of pure
darkness dramatically increases the
amount of melanopsin in the redness
>> this is interesting and I certainly have
a lot of close close friends that are in
a position to do these studies um and
you know the podcast is obviously
available free to everyone but we have a
premium channel that funds research. We
don't talk a lot about it, but we we've
given a lot of money away to excellent
laboratories where they're free to
explore these things. I'd love to see
some of the studies that we're talking
about today supported. And by the way,
that's done in collaboration with donors
that do a match. So, we could get the
right people to do the right studies
with no bias toward what the preferred
outcome is. In fact, the scientists that
we both know, the right ones, would try
and disprove the hypothesis that any of
this stuff was real. And if some makes
it through that filter, then they would
conclude it's real. Otherwise, they're
trying to essentially knock down the the
the quoteunquote positive outcome. Yep.
I mean, and I think as a clinician, one
of the key things to pe for people to
remember is that we've screwed up a lot
of times as clinicians through different
grotesque abuses of our, you know,
trust. We've done, you know,
interventions or drugs that weren't the
most efficacious. For example, like in
the 1910s to 1940s, we irradiated the
thymuses of young kids to prevent SIDS.
This was considered gold standard
medicine. Like
>> does it have anything to do with SIDS?
>> No, they thought that sudden infant
death.
>> They thought that the thymus was too big
and was sitting on the heart and that
might be the cause. So tons of these
kids, you know, I think at least 10,000
died from cancers. No, I think the only
person that's talked about it is he has
a video talking about this. So we've had
a lot of issues as a as a as a field. We
have to be very cognizant of that and
know the history of where we've been
like like Verkow of the famous Verkow
triad. He was like pro this therapy
>> and we all know learn about it in
medical school but no one talks about
this aspect. So there's a lot of
grotesque abuses of medical power. Let's
say we have to be very careful in which
interventions we give people and the
first things like do no harm. So while
we are you know excited about these
therapies we have to be kind of careful
in where we're taking people.
>> Appreciate that. I wasn't aware of that
study. Perfect um tea up for uh no pun
for the thymus. Tell me about the
thymus. Um super interesting organ.
>> Yep.
>> We gland.
>> Yep.
>> We all have one when we're born.
>> Yep.
>> By the time we're what age is it mostly
gone?
>> So the thymus is grown under the
influence of a lot of these youthful
hormones, melatonin, growth hormone, um
DHEA, um and then is shrunk at the
moment you hit puberty. So until from
your the day of birth until puberty, you
grow this massive thymus.
>> Where does it sit?
>> It's right above your heart. Right
behind this the collar bone.
>> How big is it?
>> It's a in in a baby, it could be quite
large on on the chest as a baseball.
>> Like maybe the size of half the heart,
let's say. Maybe bigger. Depends on on
on on the size. Right now in our bodies,
it's going to be a bunch of fat with a
couple of different globules of thyic
residue.
>> Tiny tiny.
>> Very tiny. In fact, most surgeons will
just remove it um when they do surgery
nowadays for like open heart. U but
there's, you know, good data from New
England Journal of Medicine that
removing the thymus tissue, residue
tissue leads to uh a mortality signal
within the first 5 years after those
surgeries.
>> So people have died because of thymus
removed.
>> They'll have like either higher rates of
cancers or, you know, higher rates of
autoimmune diseases if they have their
their thymuses removed. Now there are
thyomomas where people have to have
their thymus removed but we're talking
about people that you know the surgeon
is going in to do a coronary artery
bypass surgery.
>> Is the thymus neurally innervated?
>> Yes.
>> So it's getting signals from from brain
>> Vegas nerve. Yep.
>> So it's getting sorry to get technical
here but I since I did the episode in
the Vegas some people might remember
there's a lot of ascending sensory
information from the Vegas going up to
the brain. There's also motor control
from the brain going down through the
Vegas. So it's two two-way street mostly
up some down. Is the thymus controlled
by the descending is like in other words
is something going on in our brain like
stress level or or sleep controlling our
thymic?
>> There's sympathetic and parasympathetic
intervations for thymus
>> um that dictates its hormonal output
because the thymus what what is the
thymus?
>> Yeah, it's it's a gland that both
secretes hormones
>> and develops the tea cells. So your your
lymphatic cells are found in your bone
marrow that's where they're made. the
tea cells will travel up to the thymus
and get trained so they don't kill you
and they don't attack your own tissue
but attack a foreign invader or a cancer
or whatever it may be that process is
very good in youth and as you age you
get more autoimmunity more cancers etc
etc because the immune system is not as
robust
>> both because the thymus makes less of
the hormones that train the immune cells
and makes less of these immune cells
themselves so when you're you know 15
you're making uh 10 to the eth magnitude
of these cells every single day they're
called naive T cells, they will
eventually become your CD4 and CD8 T-
cells. Uh, as you age, this number
dramatically decreases. And those cells
will live somewhere between 10 and 15
years. And that can kind of gauge when
the mortality window kicks in for a lot
of these different disorders. When your
thymus reaches a, you know, minimum
level of output, you get a lot of these
disorders like cancers, uh, heart
disease, autoimmunity. If you put almost
any disease and look at the thymus um
risk associated with it, it increases as
the thymus um function uh decreases.
There's a nature paper uh 2026 just came
out that looked at cardiovascular
disease and cancer mortality and all
these different metrics that they did
MRIs of people and and the people that
had the higher thymic scores had less
mortality across every single one of
these conditions. But you said, not
challenging this, but what's surprising
about that very interesting result is
that you said that by the time you reach
your you're in your 30s, I'm in my 50s,
those ages, our ages, you there, you've
got just a bit of residual tissue there.
It's just a few cells and yet it's
somehow maintaining function. The rate
of decrease varies dramatically from
person to person. So we call this thymic
involution. So from the moment puberty
starts till um you die, your thymus is
slowly shrinking. That really happens in
your 20s and 30s. the majority of that
under the the pressure of androgens,
estrogens, progesterines and
corticosteroids. Those are driving a lot
of the shrinkage.
>> So the hormones that everyone seems to
want to increase the rest of their life
and that uh become you know active a lot
during puberty actually cause thyic
involution.
>> Yes. So like u castration will undo some
of the thyic involution. Um, pregnancy
is a great time to involute your thymus,
which makes sense because you don't want
to be having an autoimmune attack
against the baby or an immune attack
against the baby.
>> Do women's thymus disappear after
pregnancy?
>> They they involute and then will regrow
during the breastfeeding period under
the influences of growth hormone and
prolactin. So, hibernating animals will
have a dramatic shrinkage of the thymus
during hibernation and then a regrowth
um during the feeding window. Is there
any benefit to doing or taking something
to either maintain or regenerate thyic
size? So there was
>> as an as a let's just say somebody 25 or
older.
>> Yeah. There's a um interesting study
trim trial from Dr. Greg Fahhee. He's
doing a study where he's giving a
cocktail of growth hormone, metformin,
and DHEA. Uh gave that for 12 months and
had the thymic size increase on imaging.
The amount of CD4 or CD8 T cells
increase and the ratio of which
improved. uh and then some of the
markers that would show like immune cell
exhaustion like PD1 and all these
different aspects of T- cell um dynamics
also improve. So they're they're trying
to use growth hormone to regrow the
thymus.
>> Getting us directly to peptides. Many
people who are peptide curious start
asking about thymus and alpha. Is thymus
and alpha a peptide that comes from the
thymus? Thankfully they named it
appropriately this time. Uh great uh for
that. What does thymus alpha do
endogenously when you're not injecting
it or taking it? What's its normal
function?
>> So thyosin alpha 1 is part of this
thymic family of hormones that gets
secreted. It's like at least 21 amino
acids. It uh increases T- cell
development in the thymus, increases TE-
cell perforation outside the thymus and
makes the T- cells more likely to
properly attack a pathogen. Um like it's
like a you know jet fuel for the for the
tea cells.
>> So it's like proimmune. Yes. I've heard
of people taking it when they feel run
down, if they're traveling, they're
sleeping less than usual, they're a new
parent. So, obviously that's kind of,
you know, uh, peptide wild west kind of
indications.
>> It was FDA approved as Zidaxin, um, for
kids that were born without a thymus or
a malfunction thymus like Dor syndrome,
these different kind of genetic
abnormalities um, to be used for these
kids to help develop the T- cells that
they had that weren't um, in the thymus
because they'd have like bone marrow tea
cells that weren't properly developed.
So there was good support from thyopaf 1
for these kids. I don't think that FDA
approval still exists. So the people are
trying to you know grandfather thyop one
into these this peptide conversation. Um
in other countries it's approved for a
ad aguant therapy for like hepatitis B,
hepatitis C and and in different
cancers. So far the sepsis literature
and the infectious literature is not
that promising. It might be like if you
take antibiotics with thy one you might
have a quicker bounce around. What what
I would be interested to see is like if
you you know went to nursing homes
injected everybody with thousand thyin
alpha 1 in November and December would
you have less flu in January and
February? That'd be like the interesting
thought experiment. Both thyus alpha 1
and thymus and beta 4 come out of the
Goldstein lab. That's the very famous
lab that studied the thymus in the 70s '
80s and 90s. Um but thyic research kind
of fell out of favor the last few
decades but now
>> also sexy as the pineal. I say that sort
of tongue and cheek because I mean I
think these are fascinating glands and
um the reason I ask if they're neurally
innovated is that you know nowadays
there's a there are a lot of reasons why
people choose to study one thing or the
other. But these um underststudied
glands if neurally innovated then open
up a lot of interesting questions about
brain control, behavioral stress control
and the and the experiments kind of
write themselves. doing them still takes
a lot of work. Interpreting them is no
easy task either. But um I think there
should certainly be more work on um on
the pineal and on on the thymus. So I
want to make that clear that have you
taken thy alpha? Oh yeah, I' I've used
thumbs off one when uh when I travel to
to avoid the uh cesspool of planes and
hotels and all these places which uh
like I would say traveling and then this
year on the wards the first time I don't
get flu, cold, whatever kind of
infection I do one throughout and I
didn't get sick a single time.
>> What time of day or night are you
injecting?
>> Uh twice a week uh time agnostic. Uh
we're talking about you know 2.5
milligrams uh as a prophylactic. that's
not FDA approved or Yeah.
>> or this is just you doing your thing.
>> I'm I'm curious and see if it would it
would work.
>> You're trying to stay healthy so you can
uh take care of patients. Exactly. So
you're willing to be your own
experiment. When we hear about thyosin
alpha, we usually hear about TB500 also.
What's TB500 and how are the are the two
related if at all?
>> So while Cavinson's finding thyolin and
he's injecting that into people, the
Goldstein lab finds thyin fraction 5
which is this giant uh protein that has
many different peptides in it. Thy alpha
1 being one of them and then thymusin
beta 4 being the other one. Thyself
alpha 1, thyus beta 4 were discovered in
the thymus but they're not exclusive to
the thymus gland. They're also made in
other tissues. Thysin beta 4 seems to be
uh this 43 amino acid peptide that helps
in the actin cytokeleton of cells. So if
you think about it, immune cells have to
move a lot. So they have to re
reorganize their actin cytokeleton quite
quickly. So it seems to upregulate that
movement
>> which you know the horse community for
doping uh and other athletes have found
a niche for thy beta 4 to use it as a
>> the horse community.
>> Yeah. The horse races. Thus made 4 is a
very common doping agent
>> for the riders or for the for the
horses.
>> For the horses.
>> Yes.
>> Do they test the horses for?
>> Yeah. No there's like a big doping
scandal when it comes to to horses and
uh I don't know if they test them or
they like
>> you know what's funny this is a very
relevant tangent. Occasionally someone
will say, "Hey, does all this morning
sunlight stuff, does that work on like
dogs?" And I go, "Listen, I hate to tell
you this, but like a lot of the
literature came from animals, not
necessarily dogs, and they have
melanopsin, ganglen cells, they have
super kaismatic like yes, yes, and yes,
same physiology."
>> And then recently, won't say who, wasn't
me. Um, truly, I have a friend whose uh
dog was injured. And the question
becomes like, would BPC work? And you
can actually say, well, there's a lot
more animal data than uh human data.
talked to a couple vets and vets will
they're a lot more adventurous than we
might think and I thought well listen
you know now of course these are pets
they're I love my dog you know not the
same as a human I am a bit of a species
but love them tremendously um
>> and I think the
>> pet peptide industry is going to be
enormous already
>> so here's the question and then we'll go
right back to what we were saying before
>> there's been so much interest in NAD NMN
and NR to upregulate NAD what NAD is a
prolongevity NAD for you know one of
these things that drops over uh over the
lifespan
>> although the paper last week says that
it doesn't drop in blood the landmark
paper
>> I will say which
>> is the news stories on that claim that I
called it a longevity drug I've always
said that NAD I I do augment NAD using
NMN it gives me more uh morning energy I
will say it does make my nails really
thick and my hair grow fast two effects
I was not looking for but I like the
energy effect I've never said it
increases lifespan ever. So, um, this
was mentioned in the New York Times and
elsewhere, and it's absolutely false
that my name is included in that
statement. So, their fact checkers need
factchecking. NAD has been kind of the
thing for a lot of people who want to go
beyond supplements, right? They kind
beyond creatine, beyond magnesium,
beyond what they can get, you know, just
on Amazon or whatever, but
>> they don't want to go all the way to,
you know, like blood cleansing and all
this other stuff, which I I certainly
don't do myself, and I think that's too
extreme, at least for me.
When I hear about thy alpha, TB500, BPC,
it occupies this kind of middle ground,
right? And so I think this is why a lot
of people are saying, "Hey, Alison, I
love my dog. I love my cat." I don't
know if NAD is going to do anything for
their longevity. It doesn't look like it
may or may not. I don't know. But I
think a lot of people are starting to
think, oh, you know, like,
>> and here we go, Pavlov and his dogs. So,
I do think this is another category of
interest. And of course, we're the
curators. They don't get a vote. They
can't consent. Right.
>> Right. So, we have to be very thoughtful
there, too. Yep.
>> If I ask you, let's say I had an aged
dog and I come to you and I go, "Listen,
I know you're a human physician, but
he's getting sick a lot. I don't know,
maybe getting some thyus and alpha. He's
kind of creaky joints, some BPC. He's
probably got a couple years to go and
that's it." Would you say like,
>> "Well,
>> I know you're not a vet.
>> The veterary board is going to sue me
now, but
>> No, they're not. Actually, I have
relatives who are vets. They are very
open.
>> Interesting.
>> Very open. The veterary community has
been very open. I injected my previous
dog. Yeah,
>> with testosterone later in life. And I
expected the vets to come after me with
pitchforks. And I got calls that we
would love to prescribe this. In fact,
we wish we could just do vasectomies on
male dogs. Let them keep their
testosterone and then you don't have to
worry about this breeding problem. And
you let people train them not to hump.
>> Yep. No, my my sister was at a
compending pharmacy here locally that
would give dogs their testosterone. And
it made him so much healthier and
happier. I have zero regrets.
>> I'm propeptid for pets. Let's say let's
say I think there would be beneficial
effects. We know dogs when they vomit
they end up licking some of the vomit.
You've seen this before.
>> Yes.
>> Unfort is he trying to get peptides back
from the gastric tract like the first
from a pavlovian dog
>> being kind to dogs.
>> So I'm like but I mean intuitively
instinctively there might be something
there like they might be trying to get
BPC out of that. Who knows? But um I
think there would be less hesitation for
people to use these on animals. They
come from animal literature. Like you
said we don't want to be harming these
pets, right? But a lot of I think a lot
of the the positive signals are going to
come out of people giving them to their
pets. Unfortunately, there's so many
brands now that are popping up every day
giving uh their pets peptides.
>> Um because BPC, is it going to be
treated as a supplement when it comes to
oral capsules or is it going to be
treated as a med? Like we haven't got
got that answer from the FDA. RFK
himself has kind of said like these are
supplements. They're not they're not
medications. So FDA said that he said
that we're not going to regulate them as
meds because they're not meds which I
don't know if the agency themselves is
going to be too happy with that. I mean
there's a big well McCary just McCiri I
don't ever know how to pronounce his
last name um recently left so that there
was a from what I understand a kind of a
split I don't think he left because of
peptide anything I think it was related
to other things that I'm not aware of
but I do think the question that you're
raising is one of the most important
questions
>> is BPC going to be taken seriously as a
drug
>> y
>> or is it more creatineish
>> yep I mean for example I could give you
a B12 supplement you could buy that on
Amazon or I could prescribe that to you
but if I was to give you an injectable
B12 shot, you would need a prescription
for that.
>> So, is that distinction going to apply
to peptides also is the big question
that no one's answered. And is a, you
know, pinealon is a supplement you can
find in Kazakhstan and Russia and
Ukraine wherever all these different
countries over the counter in
differenties.
>> Is pinealon available as a capsule?
>> It's available as a caps.
>> Does it work as well as a capsule in a
capsule?
>> Higher doses as needed, but it still
works.
>> What are the doses dosages excuse me
that people are injecting versus taking
orally? So when it comes to the bio
regulators the epitalon pineelion the
cavon literature looks at like microgram
dosages from 10 to 100 micrograms of um
of the actual raw peptides of the
peptide mixes we're talking about 10
milligs. So 10 milligs of you know
desiccated cow brain that might give you
a few hundred micrograms of pineon. Oh
man, desiccated cow brain makes me think
of crutzville yakob aka mad cow pry
first patient I had on on wards in third
year of medical school
>> had degenerative brain from crutzville
>> yak there was yeah it was a bad bad case
on neurology
>> wards yeah please folks do not be
consuming brains I know there's some
people like oh he's got all this stuff
that can help you like please please
please like these these uh these pron
things are really serious
>> yeah scary
>> it's really scary it's really really
scary and not just from wild game, but
it's it's really scary.
>> By the way, I think this set back all
that research in the when when the you
know the PON stuff happened in the early
2000s that set back a lot of these
animal derived peptide research
dramatically cuz people like oh we don't
want to touch these extracts anymore.
Makes sense
>> because there was thymus extracts. There
were like there was about you know 10
different groups in Eastern Europe that
came up with their own thymus peptide
drug
>> which was a polyeptide fragment with you
know thyusphan thus beta 4 vylon thyogen
crystal like all these different
peptides that you'd get together. The
the Eastern Europeans went down like
this mix of just mixing up young thyuses
because you don't want an old thyus from
a cow. You want a six-month old cow that
has the giant juicy big thymus with all
the healthy hormones in there. uh they'd
grind that up and inject that into into
humans with positive effects like you
know hundreds of papers on that. The
American side, the Goldstein um group
came up with thyin fraction 5 which has
thy one and thyin beta 4 in it. Also
thyin beta 10, thyin beta 9, a bunch of
different thyosins but studied these two
dramatically thy 1 and thyin beta 4. The
French came up with the actual main
thymus hormone which is thyulin not
thyolin. Thyolin is the Russian
polyeptide mix. Thymulin is a nine amino
acid uh peptide that is the marker of
thymus function. It also has very
interesting neurological effects which I
think you'll you'll find interesting
because it modulates the what we're
calling the thymus pituitary adrenal
axis thymus pituitary gonatal axis.
Thyulin is this peptide that's secreted
by thymus dramatically decreases with
age um as zinc dependent. So biology
likes to use metals with different amino
acid structures. Hemoglobin with iron,
GHK copper with copper. Thyuin is zinc
dependent. So it's a nine amino acid
peptide with zinc inside inside of it to
do its effects. That will develop NK
cells and T- cells um stimulate the
immune response. But also in the animal
models, not replicated in humans yet,
when they take out the pituitary and
then inject, you know, act or ACG, the
amount of thyline sensitizes the end
organ to production of the targeted
hormone. For example, if you were just
to give ACG alone to the animal,
>> hCG, synthetic glutinizing hormone.
>> Yes. Yes. Yes. ACG is is binding to the
it's called the ACG LH receptor. So they
would get more testosterone produced
when they got ACG with thyulin
>> versus ACG alone.
>> So what you're saying is that thymus and
alpha potentially or TB500 or other
thyic hormones,
>> thy thyulin specifically.
>> Okay. Thyulin specifically. Okay. The
other ones do different effects on the
on the pituitary axis.
>> So thulin specifically can augment Yes.
>> the effects of indogenous and perhaps
also exogenous hormones.
>> Yep.
>> Interesting.
>> And it makes sense because if you're not
robust when it comes to immune status
because you you can think of your
thyulin as high in youth, low in aged,
>> you have no business investing in
reproduction. You have no business in
creating a lot of cortical steroids
because that gives you that, you know,
youthful energy in the morning. But if
you're making a lot of coral steroids,
you're shrinking your thymus. So it
creates kind of a feedback loop,
negative feedback loop to prevent you
from overrunning your system. A lot of
young guys will be like, "Oh, my immune
system sucks and my testosterone is
low." Like, is there a thymus link?
There is the question.
>> Interesting. And I I'm sure that you're
the first person in the last 20 years to
be talking about this publicly. Um, and
I really appreciate that you are because
of course you knew what the thymus was.
don't know a lot about the biology but
you've really um opened people's eyes to
and um what it is that it goes away over
time. People taking thyosin alpha TB500
and um thymulin.
>> Yep.
>> Is this something that people would
cocktail or is taking thyulin something
that generally could be a good idea
under certain circumstances?
>> Thyulin itself has a very short
half-life. The goal would be to increase
endogenous production of the thymulin
itself.
>> How would you do that?
>> So sufficient zinc status is necessary
to make thyulin. The first sign of zinc
depletion before RBC zinc or serum zinc
decrease is your thyuline levels tank.
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copper.
>> Yeah, most of the questions I get about
it are from women.
>> Yep.
>> I sent out a little informal poll to the
uh be careful how I say this. women in
my life um including siblings and things
like that and and almost all the women
said, "What about GHQ copper? I hear it
can be good for my skin. Should I use it
topically, take it orally, or inject it?
If I inject it, should I inject it
locally?" I'm like, "Please don't inject
it in your face cuz I don't as much as
I'm comfortable with people giving
themselves like a little, you know,
sterile injection and you know, belly or
something like I get worried about
non-experts injecting themselves in the
face and other other tissues. So, a lot
of interest in this.
>> What is it? Why has it made it into this
kind of um aesthetic category?
Because I'm guessing it has a lot of
other effects too. But it's kind of
funny how things kind of land in one
region. Like creatine was like the
muscle thing for a long time. Then it
got some kind of like maybe it's good
for cognition, maybe for people with
Alzheimer's. Maybe women should take it
too for all those reasons and more. And
it kind of reverted back to like the
muscle thing. GHKCU is a tripeptide um
with a copper uh ion in the in the
middle. It's glycine histadine and
lysine. Um it's actually found in type
one collagen fibers. So
>> it's only where type one collagen fibers
are
>> all over your skin and hair and
connective tissue. So
>> uh just like Vladimir Cavson discovers
these 40 different peptides, liver
peptides, brain peptides, pineal
peptides, whatever it may be, there's a
American researcher Lauren Pikart, Dr.
Lauren Pickard uh who's passed now he
discovers GHKCU
uh in the collagen tissue and he's like
hey this might be the the factor that
controls collagen synthesis and also
collagen breakdown. So he does a bunch
of studies his work is all about this.
So almost all the the literature comes
from this one lab a common theme in
peptides unfortunately um he discovers
it in maybe the mid70s it's um found to
be very high in youth in in serum
levels. So you'll find this in the blood
of of anyone that we test um up to like
200 I think nanogs whatever the the unit
was and then gets down to like in the
levels of the 60s by the age of 65. So
dramatically decreases with age. It's
thought to be maybe what leads to the
youthful appearance of young skin and
with age you lose that effect. So he did
a bunch of trials both topically for
skin for hair. Um there's now injectable
work being done. So, similar to the BPC,
they would, you know, cut rats open,
inject GHK copper, uh, in a different
site, and they'd get faster wound
repair, uh, of the the skin tissue from
injecting this. So, that's, you know,
it's become synonymous with BBC157,
TB500, Wolverine stack, which is someone
online just made up. And
>> that's that's the Wolverine stack.
>> It's those two. Yes.
>> TB500 and and alpha.
>> No, the T500 and BBC157.
>> BBC157. Okay. Now people will add on GHK
copper and call it the glow stack.
>> The glow stack.
>> Oh, interesting. Okay.
>> Someone has made it up in a research
chemical.
>> Like a glow Wolverine. Yeah.
>> Yeah. There's there's a big debate about
whether or not if mixing those together
causes, you know, denaturing of
different peptides. That's beyond this
discussion. Point is GHA copper. It both
upregulates the synthesis side of
collagen and the breakdown side of
collagen. So, because when you're you're
remodeling tissue, if you're just
rebuilding it, you're you're going to
get like very pathogenic uh structures.
And if you're just breaking down, you're
getting bad structures. So you're doing
both. So the idea is does it number one
have a skin effect, which it seems to
be. The pickards, you know, compared it
to to retinol and vitamin C creams and
all these things with positive effects
and people anecdotally talk about like,
you know, their crows feet going away
and topically it does good for them.
There was a study on hair that didn't
seem too promising. So it's not going to
the peptide sites try to tell you like
this is better than minoxidil. Not
really. Maybe it could be an adjunct and
a lot of patients will will have that
success using that with some of their
other topical um hair hair loss agents
and now there's a Chinese group studying
it for um lung regeneration because
there's a lot of connective tissue in
the lungs uh between the different
alvoli and there's some you know hype
there of using um GH copper as a
regenerative from that side. How many
people are trying to regenerate their
lungs is for like COPD
>> COPD and and smokers it's a big big
issue.
>> Maybe long lung CO from what I hear is a
real thing. Lung damage from COVID. Y I
know some people debate it but it seems
like there are enough people walking
around
>> who were vaccinated and nonvaccinated
who claim that they have
>> symptoms postcoid that have last a long
time aka long co. So that might be an
interesting place for them to remain
peptide curious.
>> Yeah. And enthyic atrophy is a big part
of the I suspect
>> postco. Yeah, because any infection
actually leads to we talk about the
thymic involution that happens with age.
There's thymic atrophy that happens
after every infection the thymus kind of
shrinks down and then the idea is that
you you know recover you convoles we
just have convolescent homes for for
sick patients and then you regenerate
your thymus in the state of health. I
think the problem in modern day people
are stressed out they're at work they
get sick and they get keep getting sick.
So they never get this this chance for
that thymus rejuvenation. So then
they're constantly getting hit down and
they're ending up with these diseases of
aging that could have maybe been
augmented, amilarated, maybe pushed down
had their thymus function been better in
youth. Raise my hand, Professor Bachery.
Um, I'm only half. I really feel like
I'm in school. This is so cool for me. I
I'm truly in heaven right now. If you
look back at the literature on
convolesing, how long were people uh
recommended to take some time off after
a cold or a flu or some other That's a
good question. because I think this
would tell us like are we just like with
um sort of uh how long um maternity
leave type things like you know the idea
now is people are being forced to go
back too quickly in countries like in
Scandinavia perhaps where they get more
time positive outcomes for baby and mom
like I think it's an interesting and
important question because our biology
hasn't changed that much no in the last
you know couple thousand years at least
like after one has a cold typically
people go back as soon as they deem
themselves non-infectious which really
worries
Um, but do you think people are getting
back to work too quickly? I mean, I
understand the reasons why, but do you
think that adding a stage of of really
getting back to full functioning without
getting into the, you know, back to the
gym, back to work, back to everything is
could be beneficial for these longevity
effects,
>> right? Right. Well, I mean, if you think
about it, nothing that they do once they
come back is is, you know, additive to
healing. Their their circadian rhythms
are are thrown off. They're under
malilluminative lights all day. Okay,
they're not getting sunlight. They're
not their vitamin D levels are
atrocious. Their blue light exposure at
night is is high. Their stress levels
are very high. Their guts are inflamed
from from eating processed
hyperprocessed hyper palatable foods.
They have obesity or they're
pre-diabetic. So all these things now
lead to this inflammatory state and they
just got sick and their thymus didn't
bounce back. So then they get sick the
next time in two or three weeks. Like
post pandemic a lot of my colleagues
were like dude I get sick three four
times a winter now before I'd get sick
you know once a winter. So this is where
the interest in thyic peptides is very
elusive. We have to figure out if the
STPs or the PTE are the the the more
interesting ones. There's synthetic
thyic peptides thyself one thus beta 4in
and there's purified thyic extracts.
There's the the two different research
committees that exist when it comes to
the thymus. Which one will be more
advantageous? Vladimir cabin came up
with the thyimolin inject injectable and
oral versions of that. and he had
positive uh immune markers and he showed
like CD4 cells come up and CD8 cells
improve and all all his um immune
markers become a more youthful state
let's say
>> but unfortunately what's happening here
is we don't have thymologists like we
don't have a branch of medicine that's
dedicated to this aspect of immunity
like there's you know allergy allergy
and immun immunologists
but they focus more on you know
allergies to different agents or very
severe immune diseases is they're not
really addressing the immunity of the
general public and how you can boost
that. And I think post pandemic a lot of
people started to ask hey how can I have
better immunity for myself. Uh and now
finally people are starting to talk
about the thymus. Unfortunately it's
been too little too late. That would
have been great during the pandemic. uh
because we could have used these thyic
you know focused interventions whether
it be zinc or you know uh thyic peptides
or your purified thymic extracts to
augment immunity of the population as a
whole especially because Dr.
was doing this in the 70s in Russia.
Even in Russia, they don't really look
kindly to this research. Um, the Soviet
era research has been kind of pushed
aside and it's like more big farmer
style because it's more profitable
because how many thymuses are you going
to inject into people and how many
thymuses exist on the planet to make
these different peptides from
>> but you could inject a lot of synthetic
thymus and alpha TB500. Yes.
>> Um, and maybe BPC so Wolverine stack
plus you know.
>> Yeah. So it'd be very interesting if if
we can get that cuz now that everyone's
getting like these puno scans and
different full body MRIs, we can see the
thymus size.
>> I was going to ask you can can I get
some sense of my thymic size and output
from a blood draw or do I have to do
whole body imaging? I've done whole body
imaging. It is somewhat costly and
that's that's a prohibitive barrier for
for people. But if people can afford it,
I actually think it can be useful. I
have a number of friends including a
neurosurgeon friend who said that he's
um some people are still alive now
because they got that scan. A lot of
people get scared about what they see.
Wouldn't you rather be scared about what
you see and be told that it's okay than
not know it's there and then have a
catastrophic event?
>> We always have a patient that comes in,
you know, car accident, young 45year-old
car accident, comes in, has a pancreatic
mass that they would have never known
about had they not had that accident.
They get a CT scan just to check for any
kind of internal bleeding. They find the
pancreatic mass that gets removed. It
ends up being a malignant mass that had
they waited six months, they would have,
you know, had stage four pancreatic
cancer and passed away. So that's that's
a theory. There is a concern about false
positives and false negatives when it
comes to these screening modalities.
Like any screening modality is not
perfect. So there's a big debate on
whether or not to do do these that will
leave to people and their physicians.
But I'm I've been trying to lobby them
to give the thymic score to everybody
who gets one of these scans because they
could see like, hey, can can you see
where the thymus is at
>> because, you know, someone might come
in, you know, for five different scans
over 5 years, they did a TRT protocol or
a GH protocol or whatever it may be. And
we could see did that improve uh thymics
status or or make it worse or different
infections, different interventions.
That'd be very interesting to to kind of
tease out on blood tests. We we've been
trying to work with a couple different
labs to figure out a thymic score. M the
most commercially available is going to
be a a lymphosy count which look at CD4
to CD8. There's an ideal CD4 to CD8
ratio that's more youthful. You don't
want to have more CD8 cells than CD4
cells. You don't want to have too few of
either of them. That goes more into like
the HIV literature. But the the most
simple thing that almost every single
person has gotten done but no one's
looked at is their lymphosy to monocy
ratio on their CBC. So almost
everybody's gone to CBC with diff. It's
a $3 lab test. If you type in any
disorder, cardiovascular disease,
cancer, uh diabetes and put lymphosytes
to monocyt ratio, there's a study that
will talk about how like low lymphosy to
monocy ratio is associated with poor
outcomes when it comes to that disease
state. So it gives you kind of a general
gestalt of what's going on with immunity
because you want a high absolute
lymphosy count not too high because it's
associated with like lymphas but
somewhere the hazard when you look at
the charts around 1,000 total
lymphosytes is um where the hazard of
different cancer sites starts to
increase a young healthy person will be
between you know 1500 and 33,000 total
lymphosytes and you want the ratio to
the monocytes. Monocytes are different
types of uh immune cells that are more
inflammatory. So if you have a robust
amount of lymphosytes with low amount of
monocytes that suggests you have a more
let's say ready and robust immune state.
>> So $3 lab test that everybody gets
almost every lab testing company now
checks it and no one really do reports
on it. But you can kind of u stratify
people into disease risk based on that
score.
>> Out of a hundred randomly pulled um
physicians who receive their license in
the United States, how many of them
probably know what you just described?
>> Uh zero.
>> Why not? It it's like rabbit holes that
you kind of go down and find out. Like I
I've been lobbing everyone in the
hospital to look at this.
>> But it's very easy, right? The data are
there.
>> No, I look
>> It's not like you're saying, "Oh, you
got to do all this additional work. You
got to build insurance. I mean, it's
there."
>> Like I I I started to care about the
thymus uh post pandemic because I
noticed people's lymph counts were
lower.
>> And I I could notice that, you know,
anecdotally or looking at, you know,
small data sets like, "Hey, people had
lower lymphosy counts had worse disease
or like earlier like people that had
cancers in their late 30s, early 40s."
I'm like, "Huh, they all had like lower
lymphosy counts." So I started to like
dig into the literature and I'm lobbying
a lot of the hematologists and
infectious disease doctors in my
hospital to start to look at this.
Unfortunately they they kind of are
textbook. It's not part of the
guidelines. It's it's in a space that's
not p pathology. So it's not clear like
hey if I check your lymph site to
monocite count right now is it going to
change my management of you in the
hospital today? Not really. It's more of
a long-term look. So that's where all
these direct to health uh direct to
consumer um companies have an
opportunity to kind of modulate the way
medicine is practiced in the United
States. But if if we have this metric
that we can study, why not use it and
then like try different interventions
and see what actually helps people like
we've gotten sometimes peptides. We've
had people go from like a 4:1 lymph to
monocy ratio to an 8 to1 ratio. Now is
that significant? That seems to be
significant. Um but no one's really kind
of discussing it unfortunately.
>> I know who I'm putting my vote in for
surgeon general and uh if ever there's a
turnover. I don't haven't explored the
most recent person. So that's not a
comment on her. It's um I know they
elected to not uh vote Casey in. Um but
uh so that's not truly not a mention. I
haven't done but I I think uh your voice
should be heard uh far and wide on these
things that I mean like more data is
good. The scientist in me just says you
got the data. Data could be informative.
Take a look.
>> There's a category of peptides such as
growth hormone secret testin MK677 that
we could we could do the deep dive on
all those but I'll just batch those and
and maybe we parse them a little bit.
and things like melanotans. Um these are
>> to my understanding FDA approved for
certain indications. So they've gone
through the randomized control trials
for like uh growth hormone secret dogs
for uh small stature in kids. They might
use it for that or for um postsurgical
uh burn uh recovery. I think some HIV
HIV HIV. So the idea here, the sort of
framework that I'm I'm teeing up is that
that these molecules are have been
explored.
>> Yep.
>> For their known biological function in
animals. It's established these
molecules lead to an increase in growth
hormone above what would normally be
secreted. They do it indirectly by so
they're sort of the gas pedal on that
system. Growth hormone secret cause more
growth hormone to be secreted, not
actual growth hormone. They vary in
terms of how much they stimulate hunger
or don't stimulate hunger. Yep.
>> And on on you should take them if you're
going to take them before sleep, but not
having eaten in the last two or three
hours. All all that stuff. We can save
ourselves some time here.
>> Y
>> most people who are taking these things,
whether they get it from pharma or
compounding pharmacy or gray market,
research purposes only, um
>> or black market, god forbid, they're
doing this because they want to lose
fat, gain muscle, recover from exercise
more quickly, and look more youthful.
>> Yep. Can we assume that those effects
are real given that they were FDA
approved for other things?
>> Yeah. So when it comes to let's parse
out the effects and and the different
types of of compounds that exist in this
category. So there's the grein side the
grelin agonist like MK67 not FDA
approved orally available pill that you
makes you bleed out uh growth hormone
like you make so much growth hormone in
response to that and in non-pulsatile
fashion. Growth hormone is a very
circadian hormone that gets released in
the first you know 90 minutes of a
slowwave sleep. Um, and if you miss that
big pulse, you're going to get small
pulses throughout the day. The question
is, is that big pulse better than small
little, you know, u mini pulses
throughout the day. The secrets will uh
address the the broader category of
something called somatopause. So, you've
heard of menopause, you've heard of
maybe andropause. Somatopause is this
event that happens somewhere in the 30s
where growth hormone production
dramatically decreases. So if we kind of
paint a picture, your pineal glands
aging before puberty, your thymus right
after puberty, you know, in your 20s,
and in your 30s, you're having
somatopause. That's where your growth
hormone production is decreasing. You're
having they call it adrenopause where
your adrenals stop making as much DHEA
and the different ratio of cortisol. And
then you're having menopause, andropause
and all the other chronic conditions. So
it's like your first 50 years of your
life, that's what you have to expect.
The question has been, and it's a big
debate in the medical community, is
replacing growth hormone and addressing
somatopause useful because you can
measure if we had your IGF-1 when you're
18 and your IGF-1 when you're 30 and 50,
it's going to be a dramatic decrease in
that. Should we now replenish this
IGF-1? The proponents will say IGF-1 is
important for skin and and good quality
sleep and for muscle recovery and joints
and all these things and those are true.
We know growth hormone has all these
beneficial effects on that. We also know
growth hormone is thymore regenerative
because it stimulates the regrowth of an
aged involuted thymus gland. Based on
Dr. Fee's work, the question is, is
there an ankcogenic signal when it comes
to growth hormone?
>> Does it cause cancer?
>> Yes.
>> Can it sorry, can it promote more rapid
growth of other of existing cancer? I
don't think anyone thinks it causes
canc. And this is the big debate when
people are like BBC causes cancer.
There's no muten effect from BP is BPC
like smoking a cigarette. Smoking a
cigarette. you get carcinogenic damage
to the lung tissue that causes a cancer
later on. There's no direct mechanism
that would link any of these peptides to
a carcinogen carcinogenic effect. But is
it you know a growth factor that could
grow a cancer potentially? There isn't
good data showing that the the debate
may be like hey by boosting thymic
function from growth hormone are you
increasing immunity and then immune
surveillance of different tumors right
and therefore decreasing and then
causing the scale. There's a big debate
of of whether growth hormone is even
beneficial when it comes to aging
because growth hormone does grow certain
tissues. There's models where people are
growth hormone deficient and they live a
lot longer
>> and growth hormone is not positive when
it comes to a cardio metabolic
perspective.
>> And in species like dogs where there's
tremendous variation in the amount of
IGF-1 that's made between say a
chihuahua and a great dane. The breed
that makes more IGF-1 downstream of
growth hormone of course lives a lot
shorter lives than smaller versions of
the same species. So, you want a dog
around for a long time, get a Chihuahua.
You want a real dog, get a excuse me,
you want a dog that lives a long time,
get a great Dana or a bulldog. There's
that whole discussion of what's better.
And then you get into antagonistic
pleotropy. Is this something that's good
in youth but detrimental for longevity
or is it prolongevity? And that's big
the big debate in the longevity field,
whatever that, you know, field is of
whether or not to use growth hormone.
So, now growth hormone has become very
difficult to acquire through clinical
prescriptions after the whole anabolic
steroids act and buried bonds and all
all that stuff. So people have now
shifted to using secrets in lie of
growth hormone.
>> Also growth hormone is very expensive.
>> Very expensive. Yeah. Like Fizer's pens
are are in the thousands of dollars. So
like if you want if you're rich you can
afford to you know have a growth hormone
have it but otherwise a security go cost
you know less than 100 bucks.
>> I'm told that growth hormone uh doesn't
shut down one's own production.
>> Yeah. It's not it's not a a uh strong
shutdown like the uh testicular axis.
I'm also told that when people take it,
they feel awesome,
>> which is scary to say on a podcast
because you're like, "Oh, no. I don't
want everyone running out." And, you
know, young people are already making
tons of it. But, I mean,
>> that combination of looking younger,
feeling great, cognitively feeling
great. I mean, I have some friends
who've taken like an IU a night or even
two IUs a night, you know, five nights a
week for for years. And
>> you go, "Hey, like, are you worried
about some of the tumor effects?" And
they're like, you just function at a
whole other level. and then you go, "Oh
god, that's really enticing." But, you
know, even with great imaging, you don't
know if you've got tumors that you're
accelerating in that case. So, it's kind
of scary.
>> Yeah. And and we don't have a data set
that would show that. Like, where's the
body count from from growth hormone? Uh
like the bodybuilder body counts are
from other compounds, not doing
everything.
>> Yeah. Exactly. I mean, when you go into
a gym, you can tell who's who's doing
growth hormone versus not based on their
skin shining. like you see a 45-year-old
dude that's through sematopause but has
perfect young skin and
>> you know there's Botox and all other
things involved but you can tell there's
that growth hormone look the hair looks
a little bit healthier
>> because growth hormone favors the
conversion of T4 to T3 so it changes the
thyroid dynamics it can have
protesticular effects as well from the
IGF-1 perspective so there's a lot of
you know youthful effects to it the
question is is that been a good idea to
replace it traditionally like the
medical field's kind of anti um using
these secrets to augment sematopause but
I think there's going to be a role for
it perhaps cyclally because I don't
think anything in nature is is year
round so what if you did a cyclical
cycle of and this is not medical advice
but theoretical cyclical cycle of
tesmoral for uh a certain amount of time
got your IGF-1 to a certain level under
clinician guidance measured your your
thymus on an MRI before and after and
then you saw that the thymus grew and
you had you know higher CD4CA count that
would be pretty interesting
>> be interesting a few years back and I've
told this story publicly before I tried
um smearin Yeah,
>> it's different than obviously than
testom but similar in the sense the end
point is you're seeking is more uh
growth hormone IGF-1 and it dramatically
increased my deep sleep and like nuked
my REM sleep. It's like the opposite of
pinealon together.
>> Yeah. So well didn't try that. The other
thing that it did and the reason I
halted it almost right away because I
was really just running it as an
experiment on myself was that it spiked
my PSA, my prostate specific antigen. It
had always been in range and and
relatively low. Boom. Spiked it and I
was like, "Wo, that's wild." And I don't
want that. Off it.
>> Yeah.
>> It reverted to a low level. So that was
pretty striking. So obviously, you know,
hyper respponsive prostate to smearin.
Maybe it wouldn't have been to testo,
etc. But but those are the kinds of
things the growth hormone itself that
growth hormone secretion. That's a good
point. As you age, your prostate gets
bigger. The bane of every man is going
to be BPH. like that's going to be the
reason that you hate your life when
you're in your 60s and 70s because you
have to wake up at night to to to pee
>> and then when you're at, you know, an
amusement park, you're going to have to
find the nearest bathroom very
frequently because your bladder size is
>> it'll go it out. There's there's some
prostate peptides we're looking at. So,
>> there's a young guy old guy like
taunting like, you know, you got 10 more
years before you're miserable. Thanks.
>> There's prostate peptides that uh
Cington looked at that we're trying to
translate some of that literature.
>> You'll save me.
>> No, there's there's people uh this guy
named Brennan Henry who's translated
like thousands of these papers from
Russian to English. So shout out to
Amnoiliation, but he's translated a lot
of this Russian literature and helped us
from that. So that's great. But the
prostate is growing with age under the
control of DHT and estrogen and then
probably growth hormone. So the question
is, do you want to be messing with that
and increasing the size of that? There's
there's concerns about, you know,
cardiac growth, liver growth. So there's
all these things, but also growth
hormone and and the secrets have a
negative effect on on insulin
sensitivity,
>> right?
>> So people's A1C's will usually jump.
Like the the joke in the bodybuilding
community is you have to get lean enough
and healthy enough to be able to take
growth hormone.
>> Oh, what's happening?
>> Growth hormone or the secretogs.
>> The growth hormone more so the
>> it can make you insulin insensitive.
>> Yes. Uh especially with more like
tesmlin especially when combined with
epomorlin. Ceremorine is kind of a
weaker um GHR. Tesmorine especially when
combined with eporin. Tesmor is FDA
approved. Eporin is not. The the GHR
versus GHRP kind of in the weeds there.
Those two together can create a giant
growth hormone response where your IGF-1
is in the 380s, 390s. Um, so that's
that's that's quite high like puberty
levels of IGF-1
>> and you're hungry all the time.
>> Yeah. Yeah. With MK for sure with with
tessimorin. So tesmorland has more
fidelity uh less grein effects
especially um because you can have grein
effects, prolactin effects and cortisol
effects from whenever you're mucking
around with the pituitary because
they're all in that in that same area.
Um, I think MK bleeds out the worst when
it comes to having the other effects. MK
is not a peptide. It's a a non-eptide
GHRP.
>> What's happened now is people are now
stacking their GLP-1 as their insulin
sensitivity tool, their growth hormone
or their GHR
>> and their androen modulation therapies
as this trinity stack.
>> Trinity stack
>> to get very fit, very healthy quickly.
So a lot of these transformations you
see in CEOs and celebrities and stuff is
using a combination of those three
things. You know your TRT plus maybe
anavar with tzeptide or retrruide
whatever it may be and then using a
growth hormone modulation with your if
you can afford growth hormone or that's
more epor and you're seeing people lose
a lot of fat gain a lot of muscle in
short amounts of time. Is that healthy?
We'll find out. But that is like the
celebrity protocol.
>> Very interesting. And I'm guessing that
for women the it's the combination of
growth hormone secret plus um something
like and we'll talk about these now uh
reatride or um one of the other GLPs.
I'm going to acknowledge because people
are going to start like dart throwing
darts at me about this. Yes, reatride is
hitting things other than the GLP
pathway. It's also GIP and glucagon
pathway but most people put it under the
category of GLP. So you are an
encyclopedic my friend. I I really
really appreciate the clarity and the
thoughtfulness of your answers on these.
And as people are probably becoming
aware, we could spend 50 hours talking
about salank about cerebral ly. I think
we we will have to have you back to
explore those other ones. There are a
few other things I'd like to talk about
if you're willing to give us the time.
We should close the hatch on
>> GHKCU. I misspoke and I saw it in your
eyes. You're like, he said it wrong. Do
I correct him? Yes, correct me. Everyone
else does. Um GHKCU for the collagen
effects. It's available in a lot of
creams, assuming it's real, assuming
people are doing this medically
supervised. Um, is there any benefit to
putting it directly on crow's feet or
other wrinkles or face versus injecting
it for it to go systemically?
>> Yeah, I think if you have a well-
formulated topical that's actually not
broken down because a lot of these, you
know, from these research chemites, they
sell topicals now because everyone's in
skincare. Uh, they're, you know, poor
quality. They're not even blue. Like the
GHK should be blue, but that that is
blue
>> from the copper. Yeah.
>> Okay, that makes sense. My copper pills
are blue. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
Okay.
>> But that doesn't mean that it's real.
Could be copper that's fallen out of the
G the complex of the GHK. So yeah, you
want a well formulated like a good
skinare brand that knows how to
formulate these uh and deliver them into
the skin cuz that's that's another
thing. So like you know every skincare
brand has their now GHK formulation cuz
people are demanding it but it's been
around for 30 40 years on topical. The
injectable is not FDA approved of
course. I think it's going to be on the
second round of discussions when it
comes to the peptides coming back to
category one. The first round is going
to have these seven peptides BPC, TB,
etc. I think the second round is going
to look at GHK. I don't imagine that
that makes that there's no good human
data on that. But topically, there's
great human data on like different
aesthetic outcomes, especially when
coupled with red light therapy um
because it seems that the the blue
pigment and and the red light seem to be
synergistic in that effect. There's also
some some uh literature when it comes to
GHKU um for post um UV damage. So people
that are, you know, sun friendly um can
use GHKCU topically to alleviate some of
the the photo damage. Of course,
dermatologists are going to get mad at
us and say like you you just use
sunscreen and don't get the damage in
the first place. But for people that you
know aren't as responsible, you can use
GHKCU as a you know, post sunscreen.
Listen to the derms who are slightly
more sun positive like especially low
low UV index sun when the sun is low in
the sky.
>> Yep.
>> Uh Dr. Abud Bakri is is perhaps the only
other person on the planet besides um my
friend Samra Hatar who's been on this
podcast who's as excited about circadian
biology as an organizing feature uh as I
am. There are a couple others out there
but in terms of people who are like
really grounded in what's real that he's
um he I put him in that category whether
he likes it or not. So people are taking
GHKCU
cream putting it on and then doing red
light therapy and there are human data
that that perhaps can augment some of
the collagen repairative effects. the
photoagging effects, some of the the
effects of aging when compared to like
different retinols and stuff like that.
I think the the consensus in the field
now is to use it with the rest of your
skincare routine, not in place of it.
>> Um, but a lot of people, especially bros
that have never been into skincare, are
now into skincare because of
>> Oh my goodness.
>> Yeah. So, there's that, but it's
promising.
>> Bros are into skinincare.
>> Be a documentary before long like what
do you call that? The manosphere. It's
like the skinosphere.
>> Well, with with looks maxing, that's
it's it's the looks maxing peptide now.
GHK because all these guys that are into
looks maxing will use GHK.
>> They're dipping their hammer in GHK CU
and and tapping themselves. And by the
way, if you want great longwavelength
red near infrared and infrared light to
augment your GHK CU uh peptide, by the
way, I'm not suggesting that. There's
this thing called sunlight that provides
that. You just have to be careful not to
get too much UV in the process. So
before before uh people start thinking
they absolutely need a red light device.
>> Full spectrum, too. full spectrum,
balanced, great article in Nature we can
link to recently that describes the
different uh spectrums coming out of
different devices and that thing that we
call the sun which is the best source of
all of that
>> and better blue light too
>> and better
>> because we're deprived of 480 nmters in
this setup that you have full spectrum
lighting that that we don't know about.
>> I don't get paid to say what I'm about
to say but I'm really excited about
something. For a long time, I've used
Bon Chargar's bulbs cuz they have these
bulbs that switch from full spectrum in
the day. Then you, you know, flip the
same switch and it goes to yellow and
then flip flip the switch again and it
goes to red. I find the red to be kind
of difficult to navigate at night. Raw
optics.
>> Yep. Then you want
>> made one that goes from like a morning
really bright light full spectrum with a
with some a lot of blue in there on
purpose to wake you, you know, part of
the way
>> and the right blue. The 480 cyan blue
>> switch the same switch. Don't have to
change the bulb. goes to kind of a late
morning mode to afternoon mode and then
goes to candle light mode in the
evening. And here's the cool thing. Not
only did they get the spectrum and the
balance right, but it doesn't flicker.
They got rid of the flicker that you get
from LEDs and yet it's an LED, so it's
>> energy efficient. Yep. Infrared and
>> Yeah. And I have no affiliation to them
whatsoever. I pay full price for these
things. And I have to say, I really,
really like them. Even my bulldog puppy
has a little one. I have this little
monkey holding a lamp and I say, "When
the monkey goes to candle light, you're
going to sleep." and he knows he's
learning when it goes to Cantalite. Now
he's sorry he's a dromat not a tri
chromat but that's a different podcast.
All right GLPS yep now we can
comfortably exhale into your colleagues
can you can feel completely comfortable
about anything that uh that they might
think or say because the GLPs are the
reason why people are comfortable
injecting themselves. It's why this
whole thing of peptides has really taken
off. BPC kind of rode in on the GLPs in
my opinion even though it's been around
for a long time and so have all the
other peptides we've been talking about.
>> So what are your thoughts? I've never
taken one of these. Um first things
first, we're hearing that some people I
think Sam Alman actually talked about
this publicly um overdose with with Cara
Swisser about what he thought yeah where
he overdosed actually a compound
pharmacy issue he thought was what did
it. I trust him to do the right
calculation. And so it does sound like
that was a compounding pharmacy issue.
>> Could afford it? Is the buy the farmer a
great option?
>> I think back then people were just
getting them where they can. I I didn't
ask him why uh why that happened, but
nonetheless, get the dosage right. Make
sure you're getting the right stuff
clean. But he talked about the kind of
lack of uh motivation, which many people
have described anecdotally um like,
okay, lowered their food drive, but
lowered their drive period.
>> Yep.
>> Makes sense,
>> you know, depending on which pathways
are being affected. But do you think
that's a real effect? Is that something
that people need to be concerned about?
Do you think people can micro dose this
stuff? Because a lot of people are micro
doing it regardless of what their source
is. They're taking a lot less than the
kind of standard clinical trials will
be. And we're leaving out red tide for
now because it's so new. We're going to
talk about it, but I'm talking about the
>> standard ifide.
Yeah. I'll tell you that you have your
you know semiglutide which is obey and
uh the wgov is the FDA approved version
for the weight loss. For teptide you
have zeppbound and moner. Zapbound being
the FDA approved version for weight loss
that allows them to keep their patents
for longer. um these medications are
good kind of transforming medicine
especially where where I practice right
if you if we kind of zoom out our
medical system if we didn't have these
interventions was going to collapse on
itself thanks to the obesity
pre-diabetes diabetes epidemics because
we don't have enough clinicians or
finances to get everybody who was
pre-diabetic in the in the last you know
20 years and they all transitioned to
diabetes and ended up with you know
diabetic medications and dialysis and
eventually cardiovascular disease and
all these things we don't have the
resources to take care of all these
people like our medical system was going
to collapse and there wasn't enough
finances to take care of it. Now these
GLP1s are coming in and kind of
transforming that phase of medicine
because now we have a chance to
dramatically change the rate of obesity
uh diabetes pre-diabetes and all these
cardio metabolic disorders. So where do
we stand? We needed something to happen.
I mean, ideally, everybody, you know,
would get morning sunlight and eat only
healthy foods, unprocessed foods, and
have low stress and sleep great at night
and maybe no one would develop to become
obese. But the reality is people become
overweight, obese. They get stuck in
that hole. And if you just try to step
out of the hole the way you came in,
sometimes that doesn't work. You need a
different path out of that problem. And
that that's been, you know, the diet and
exercise literature for the last 40
years. Millions of books have been sold
on how to get people leaner. We now have
interventions medically that can
dramatically change people's weights for
the first time. We've had drugs in the
past that you know 5 10% of body weight.
Now with the GLP1s we're getting 10 20
even 30% of body weight being shaved off
of people especially with the new
reduced data. Is there a free lunch?
That's the big question. Like like we
kind of talked about earlier there's
always been these medical mishaps that
have happened. So far the data is very
promising when it comes to GLP1s and
that we are now reversing this rate of
chronic disease. Is it going to stay
that way? That's a good question. I'm
I'm cautiously uh optimistic when it
comes to these medications. I've been
prescribing them since I was a resident.
Uh in my VA clinic, I was putting all
these vets that are, you know, 300 lb on
GLV1s, they were losing 50, 100 lb.
Before it was FDA approved for weight
loss. We knew that that if you put
diabetics on this drug, they would lose
weight thanks to a lot of the
bodybuilders um that kind of pioneered
that.
>> When did the bodybuilders first start
using GLPS?
>> Uh late 20110s. Wow.
>> And then the signal I don't I don't
think Norvo or Lily wanted to make these
for obesity. They were focused on making
diabetes drugs because like if we zoom
out even further, this is another animal
derived compound, right? It's found in
the the saliva of the Hila monsters.
GLP1 was discovered. It's too um short
acting to have worked on its own. Then
pharmaceutical companies, this is where
you got to give pharma their credit.
they developed these drugs into more
functioning versions that had you know
longer half- lives and could stick
around in the serum for longer to have
the clinical effect. So then we started
noticing that diabetics like my my
grandma got uh Betta which was one of
these first uh GOP one drugs like 25
years ago. It was the out of all the
drugs she was on the reason I went into
medicine that was the drug that changed
her her whole trajectory because she had
less insulin needs and she was losing
weight and more energetic. So we had
seen the effects on diabetics and then
you get luraglutide dlutide and then
eventually semiglutide was the is the
blockbuster but you get all these
positive effects coming from these drugs
on diabetics. It gets translated into
obese people and overweight patients.
The question is what is the long-term
effect of this? Do you have to stay on
this drug forever? Um can you titer it
off? The the pharmaceutical companies
have not given us good guidelines on
that. They've shown us what happens if
you stop the drug. You can max out on
maximum dose. Pull the brakes on. People
tend to sometimes gain the weight. Some
people don't, but some people will
regain back to baseline. Because if you
think about it, the better way to think
about weight loss, it's a calculation
your brain does every single day with
all the different hormones and and
peptides that are made from the gut, the
GIP, GLP, glucagon, insulin,
testosterone, estrogen, all these things
kind of modulate. And there's this thing
called a set point theory or settling
points and they integrate. Should I eat
or not eat, right? So the GP1 is a giant
signal to the brain of don't eat. So
we're we're modulating this pathway.
What happens to all these young kids
that are 18 19 years old on 5 milligrams
of ratutide uh that have lost 30 40
pounds? Are they going to have to be on
that for life now to maintain that
weight?
>> Can I ask you about that? Because when
people say
perhaps you have to be on a drug for the
rest of your life, I think okay, what's
the availability? What's the cost?
>> What's the real world cost of taking six
months off because you can't access it?
Y there's a shortage and maybe better
drugs will come along. Like I don't
necessarily have a problem with it.
Although if you talk to type 1 diabetics
in the old days, they weren't crazy
about the idea that they had to
constantly inject themselves with
insulin. Now there are better better
delivery devices. I kind of feel like
eventually there'll be some slowrelease
um polymer that will just kind of give
you a micro dose of it. You could dial
it up if you want.
>> Those are all pills. Now
>> personally I don't worry so much about
like for the rest of your life. I worry
more about the much shorter life if
people are obese. But what about these
brain effects? I I do worry about a
brain that's developing in the context
of of a you know thousandfold or more
increase in these GLPs because when we
had um Zach Knight on the podcast, he's
not a clinician, he's a scientist up at
UCSF, Howard Hughes investigator, which
means he's like a superstar and deserves
to be in that category. He described
that the diabetic drugs would increase
GLP by like like double, quadruple, but
the weight loss effects weren't really
there. But the drugs that you rattled
off a few minutes ago, Monaro, Zmpic,
etc. And certainly Red True Tide. We're
talking about thousandfold increases in
GPS, we don't know what the long-term
effects of those are on like
neuroplasticity and learning. Could be
great. Yes.
>> Could be positive. We shouldn't always
assume those effects are bad.
>> Yeah. Like the effects for like let's
say a 60-year-old pre-diabetic diabetic
on Alzheimer's disease seems to be
potentially positive. I think the the
study last year didn't show a good
signal on our Alzheimer's prevention,
but we know diabetes and cardio
metabolic disease speeds up that
transition. So controlling insulin
dynamics might be beneficial there and
the obesity is not great for for
Alzheimer's risk. The question is what
about for like these cognitive effects?
Is the effect happening from the drug
itself? Is it from misuse of the drug?
Too too high of a dose. You're not
getting enough electrolytes. You're not
getting enough micronutrients,
macronutrients. You know, your blood
sugar is low. Because a lot of these
patients, the way we we approach it is
training wheel effect when it comes to
GLP-p1s. Like, hey, you come to us,
you're a patient, you want to use GLP1s,
we'll give you a lowest dose as possible
that has an effect for you, GLP-1 in
conjunction with lifestyle modification,
dietary advice, exercise programs, etc.,
etc., and then hopefully peel away those
those training wheels or keep them on if
you need them until we get to the end
point that we want. Now, when people do
it that way, I don't hear a lot of these
effects anecdotally from from Brookley
patients that we hear about online where
people are like, "Oh, I'm depressed. I
hate my life from from these drugs." And
the question is, are they just, you
know, a lot of people have low blood
pressure from from these drugs because
they're not, you know, consuming enough
electrolytes or enough food period?
>> Cuz like some people will take a mega
dose of these drugs and end up not
eating like a day goes by, they've eaten
one meal. That's not conducive to to
good feeling good. everyone, you know,
the reason people are eating in the
first place is because eating is is such
a pleasurable experience for humans and
a social experience, etc., etc. The
other thing is if you're not eating with
people on the same table, are you having
less of that socialization aspect? A lot
of times you meet up to eat or drink or
whatever it may be. So I'm very curious
when it comes to the cognitive effects,
is it from the drug directly interacting
with receptors in the brain when we
we've seen that the right amount of dose
decreases inflammation in the brain or
is it because of the social aspects of
the drug changing the way you behave and
therefore leading to negative out? dare
you think of confounding variables. It's
like, no, it's so cool cuz you're
willing to go outside the box and say,
"Hey, listen, this might be due to some
of the um downstream consequences of of
reduced appetite."
>> Yeah. And we know the literature shows
that people now are having less alcohol
cravings from this. It might be changing
the way the dopanergic signaling is
happening in the brain, which is
concerning, right? Because a lot of
people will be stacking this with, you
know, ADHD medications. Uh they might be
using some of these peptide stimulants,
um smax link, whatever it may be. So the
question because what happens is people
go to these websites, they they buy one
more peptide and they got a great result
and they'll be like, you know, let me
add three more peptides on peptides.
>> Yes, it's a increasing AOV problem. So
the average sale value goes up
>> from these research sites.
>> We'll see where where GLP ones go. The
the the reality is it's here. There
there is no pre GLP1 world for us as
clinicians, as health enthusiasts. We're
in a postg world and everything kind of
dictates downstream from that. The
people I know who've taken um these and
I don't know exactly which are taking
much lower dosages than were prescribed
to them and they are indeed sharing them
with getting the prescription than
people are sharing them. People are cost
sharing now people are trying to get
them from other sources. Several of
those people say they they feel like
they can think better. But I told them,
well yeah, if your insulin sensitivity
is improved, if you're carrying less
body fat, body fat's an endocrine organ.
It's you know you need some body fat.
But
>> there could be a number of reasons for
that. I don't know if these are direct
effects on the brain.
>> Yeah. Well, I mean leptin sensitivity
increases as you decrease the body fat
mass. There's there's GP1 receptors on
the palm neurons in the brain and no
one's kind of examined what that means
downstream for the leptin melano uh
leptin melanocortin pathway and what
that means for energy status you know
thyroid hormone production reproductive
status. We know a lot of people are oyic
babies in that a lady will will be
subfertile or infertile start a weight
loss drug and then find out by accident
she's pregnant.
>> Was she obese before? Yeah, there's
these are overweight obese women that
are having um their fertility improve as
a result of losing the weight because we
know
>> uh your leptin status is a key driver of
fertility because if if you're having
low leptin levels, you're starving. You
shouldn't be fertile. If you have too
much leptin and you're at leptin
resistant, you shouldn't be having kids
either. So, both of those those things
kind of get modulated by these drugs as
well.
>> There was a science paper some years ago
that leptin hitting a certain threshold
is actually what signals the onset of
puberty in females. Is that still
considered true? I think that's that's
that's part of it
>> makes sense like enough body fat to
signal that there are enough resources
and then um animals or that was an
animal study or the idea was that people
perhaps also become females become
reproductively competent at the point
where there's enough energetic resources
that
>> interesting. Have you ever taken one of
these?
>> Oh wow. Yes. I uh I uh had a family
member with a GLP1 pen uh from four
years ago that um said it wasn't
working. So I'm like okay let's see
what's going on here. I got a pen. Don't
do Don't do this at home. And I was
like, "Yeah, it's not working. Like,
it's bunked. They got it from overseas.
It was a a brand name Ozamic pen, but
gotten from overseas." Got the pen. I
was like, "You know what? If it's bunk,
let's see what it is. Don't do this at
home." Biohackers in me came out and
tried it. I injected a I think it was a
milligram of ombic.
>> What's a standard dose?
>> You start at 0.25 and escalate to 0.5.
>> You went straight to a milligram.
>> Yeah. Cuz I was like, "Ah." They're
like, "It doesn't work. I'm I'm eating
so much." I'm like, "Okay, whatever."
You got bunk bunk pen from overseas. I
go to do a shift. I was on a night shift
that day and I've never had Charizard
like projectile vomiting
>> and low blood sugar presumably.
>> The blood sugar effect for for
non-diabetics don't get that low, but it
was just miserable. Like I would I would
go admit a patient, go upstairs, vomit
in the in the call room.
>> You just gave a really good reason why
people shouldn't just do what you just
described.
>> No, they shouldn't do that. Uh then go
back to back to the ER, admit a patient,
and then it was it was the most
miserable night of my life. Uh so be
very careful how you use these drugs.
That's why titrate very slowly. Um
luckily with the newer ones the effects
are much less like people who report and
retroide even have less of these
gastrointestinal effects
>> but um that's a peptide gone wrong
story.
>> Peptide gone wrong. Um reatride. Yep.
>> I put out a post on X. I thought and I
do still think that it that Red True
Tide is going to be a trillion dollar
industry. Not because so many people are
necessarily going to use it for weight
loss,
>> but because many people will use it for
weight loss. Many people will use it for
other things because you can be sure,
absolutely sure that Lily is going to
find other
>> ways to market it. And you can protect a
patent by finding additional uses for
things. I mean, a lot of the the
blockbuster drugs for eye diseases, um,
the patents to prevent generic forms um,
were continued by Here's the deal,
folks. companies are really incentivized
to take the hundreds of millions of
dollars that they spent on clinical
trials and research and development and
not have to do it again. So, if you can
find another valid use for a drug, you
don't have to run all the safety stuff,
you don't have to do a lot of stuff, you
just have to show efficacy and a few
other things, but that's the way that
drug companies continue to play the game
um to protect their their investment,
right? I mean, it's you can understand
why they do it. If you like or not,
that's that's your business. But um so
I'm guessing that Reddit True Tide is
going we're going to discover that it's
um useful for a number of things and
from the clinical trials there's a
reason to believe that's going to be the
case.
>> And the big thing they're trying to do
now is classify as a biologic. So
Retroide has 39 amino acids. Uh to be a
biologic you have to be above 40 amino
acids.
>> And once you get to above 40 amino
acids, if you are a biologic, then the
patent lasts
>> way longer. I don't know the exact
number.
>> It's like 15 years.
>> Yeah. Much much longer. If it's a if
it's 40 or below amino acids, then it's
something like five five to seven years.
>> Someone in law will have that.
>> So, we're talking like hundreds of
hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe
billions of dollars. If it's a if you
and you can tinker with this, you can
amino acids
>> and more importantly, no one can
compound it if it's a biologic or if
it's very difficult to compound like the
right right certificates. Something
similar happened with ACG where it was
taken out of the compounders um
recently.
>> Really? Yeah. Yeah. So ACG um
>> human coriotic ginatotropin this is
commonly prescribed for trying to
restore fertility to uh to men but it's
main mostly being given in IVF cycles to
women.
>> Yep. Yeah,
>> there's a big controversy about ACG
compounders and who can compound and who
can't that's that's beyond this. But uh
this is a very important thing cuz if
Lily gets rea
then the compounders are out of luck
because the compounders all have the
formula for reetta they're ready to make
it like they can get the API from China
and and and start compounding it as soon
as it's available. It'll it will make
them all billions of dollars but if Lily
is able to do this they'll be able to
protect themselves from what was going
to happen. You see the Trump
administration now is trying to get with
Trump RX Lily and Novaist to drop their
prices to make it more available which
has happened like now I think you can
get a you know $300 monthly dose of
Tresepite available through these
websites
>> used to be 1 1500
>> yeah 1 without insurance some insurance
will cover it some some wouldn't you'd
have to get you know savvy clinician
that will advocate on your on your
behalf to get these covered but cash pay
between you know even some of the the
pills I think you can pay 150 bucks a
month for the oroplon which is not a
peptide but still GLP1 agonist um which
kind of gets to the point like it
doesn't matter if it's a peptide or not.
What matters is where where it touches,
what receptor it touches because orupon
is more similar to semiglutide. Both of
them are GLP-1 drugs. One's a peptide,
one's not. Then BBC is to semiglutide.
So like everyone online talk about
peptides are good or peptides are bad.
There's no actual scientific category of
peptides that gives you a functional
definition that's discussable between
two people because what do you mean by
peptide? Do you mean carnosine or do you
mean ratitude?
>> Excellent point. uh speaks to a lot of
the confusion. Um you are a beam of
clarifying information uh on this. I
actually am going to put in a vote um
publicly right here and now, but also uh
I'm going to do what I can to contact
folks that are relevant. I think you
should, no joke, I think you should be
in charge of a nomenclature committee. I
think for in in the world of genetics
for a long time that people would just
name genes Sonic Hedgehog or you know
you know sink one or people name it
after their cousin or what and it was a
mess and so what ends up happening is
you find similarity between genes across
different laboratories and eventually
you have a meeting and you come up with
a you have a nomenclature committee and
then you say this is you know ephrine 1
2 3 4 5 6 these are the sequences the
general public doesn't think about
molecules in that way no but the general
public are diving right into this they
are the experiment and so what I think
would be very very useful would be a um
clear and accessible nomenclature to
divide up what we've talked about today
you know BPC-157
um you know peptides with and without
known receptors the regenerative
peptides as you've called them like
thymus and alpha TB500 which are
amunogenic peptides I think
>> the word peptides is just too general
too general
>> I'm putting my vote in for you not that
you don't already have enough to do to
um come up with some nomen clature that
maybe I can help propagate and some of
the other people in the podcast
community. We'll even contact our our
our close close friends in in um legacy
media and explain to them how this works
and maybe they can help propagate just
for sake of clarity. Yep.
>> Right. We're not taking the stance these
are good or bad but just for sake of
clarity as given that there's so many
people that are peptide curious. Okay.
So before we wrap
>> I solicited X and Instagram for
questions about peptides. I did not
reveal exactly who you are, but I gave
some of your credentials and got back
many, many excellent questions. Most of
which, thanks to you, were answered
during the course of our conversation up
until now. But there are a couple of
them that many people asked, we didn't
touch on, at least not directly. One
thing that's come up several times is
the question about for women who have
endometriosis or fibroids or other
things related to reproductive health
and potential. Can things like BPC57
help and or hurt those circumstances
given their potential role in
angioenesis and the other things you
described?
>> No literature exists on either animal or
human data that that relates to those
peptides. I'd say those are more
hormonal/ metabolic issues that that a
good obgine should should take care of.
They're very difficult to treat
conditions and very miserable to have
for people and they have fertility
implications. But those are more on the
hormonal side. I think the hormonal
lever is way stronger than a peptide
level like BBC or any of those. And as
far as I'm concerned, there's no case
reports or studies that would suggest
positive or negative. CNS effects
central nervous system, excuse me, of
BPC57 or other peptides that we've
talked about that are don't fall under
the, you know, typical um umbrella that
people, you know, go to when they think
about BPC57. Now, you talked about some
of the uh stuff related to alcohol and
perhaps other things like aderall, but
anything known about, you know, people
feeling better or worse on different
peptides just psychologically,
neurologically?
>> TBI, I'll throw TBI in there for myself.
I I don't have TBI fortunately, but I
know many people that do. They reach out
to me. Could it be beneficial in those
cases?
>> Yeah, there were studies in Russia on
TBI when it comes to cortexin and
cerebralin, which would probably never
be available in the United States. So,
we'll we'll we'll skip those. Uh there's
no good data on BBC TBI. They
theoretically could be useful from a
from anti-stress perspective. That would
be interesting to explore that. BBC's
neurological effects are very
homeostatic in nature. They don't let
you get too high in the in the mice data
at least. the mice can't get too drunk
and they can't withdraw from malcol.
They can't get too high on on the mice
methamphetamines and they can't get too
high on the methamphetamines and they
don't withdraw either. So there's a
homeostatic mechanism that might explain
some of these anhidonia uh side effects
that people are reporting where BBC
modulates the gut brain access in a way
which we do not understand. It's kind of
woowoo that makes it so that your brain
can't go too far in one direction. Maybe
in putting if we think of a just just so
story it's putting you into a rest and
digest state to heal whatever problem
you have. If that's why BBC exists as a
big parent compound that might be part
of the fact that if you secrete BBC your
body goes into like a convolescent mode
because it will it will take away
stimulants it will take away sedatives
um don't try this of course but there
seems to be a homeostatic mechanism in
BPC that needs to be explored further
with good data very interesting thank
you the major question was what should
people do if they are actually
interested in obtaining peptides let's
just set the GLPs aside because it's
kind of a separate category and they
want to explore their use and they want
to be as safe as possible. Where
shouldn't they look?
>> Yeah.
>> Is how I'll phrase the question. Um
where should they look? Who should they
talk to? At what point do they can they
be confident that what they're taking is
what you know the bottle claims and and
that it's you know free of contaminants
um and so on. I many many questions but
I think this is like kind of the
question.
>> Yep. It's it's the most difficult
question to answer because uh the
majority of people are getting their
peptides from research only websites. Uh
unfortunately those are not reliable. We
don't know what's in them. They they
could be good, could be bad, could be as
good as a compound pharmacy, could be
much worse, could be the wrong peptide
in in the vial. So we don't know what's
in there. What should happen over the
next 6 12 24 months is there will be a
lot of physicianled options for patients
to get peptides. Number one, you should
encourage your physician if you don't
have one. Uh, get one and get a good
relationship with one because having a
good relationship with your physician is
a key aspect of driving good health. But
having a physician that's educated on
peptides to my doctor friends, all of
you guys are now live in a peptide era.
You have no choice but to get educated.
So get educated. We should create
resources for that. There will be a lot
of telemet options opening up soon uh
through various companies that will
offer these peptides and it will be good
for the consumer because it'll be a race
down in price and then we'll know which
which compoundingies are better which
ones are worse so you can get a better
source peptides but you should get them
from clinicians. The question that's
going to happen is there's going to be a
lot of these orally available peptides
and they're going to be all over
supplement websites like you you'll find
them with your magnesium and your
creatine and then your pinealon or your
BPC157. The question is what is that
going to look like? So we'd like, you
know, our FDA overlords to give give us
some guidance there on what can and
cannot be sold and bought. But it should
be physician le. You should be doing
this under the guidance of a physician
that's monitoring you. You know, you
shouldn't be taking testes in without
checking IGF-1 levels. Uh a GLP1 even
should be monitored with the physicians
that can counsel you on on too much
weight loss. Like some of these some of
these celebrities should have had better
clinicians monitoring their GLP1
journeys cuz they lost way too much
weight. That doesn't look healthy at
all. Unless someone's first of all
someone's not having the basics in place
there's no I point in putting all these
peptides in like
>> morning sunlight sleep darkness at night
yes good diet minimally processed food
>> yes the next phase of peptide curious
and peptide driven discussions is going
to be like how do you incorporate it
into a giant health system like you do
morning sunlight blue light blockers and
epitalon you do you know BPC and you
work out in the gym or whatever it may
be there's going to be you know
protocols that that develop but I think
within six months there'll be very good
physician options for everybody Abud,
amazing. Thank you so much for coming
here today and again shedding so much
light on what all of these things are.
You have an clearly a virtuoso level um
understanding and ability to communicate
about the history of these things, what
they are, what they aren't, what we
know, what we still don't know, um the
potential upsides, the potential
hazards, the uh the regulation, and on
and on. Um there are 50 other topics
that you and I must talk about at some
point. your knowledge of hormones in men
and women, pregnancy and women's
hormones affecting the fetus, how
progesterone impacts DHT and male
offspring. Incredible. Absolutely want
to have you back to have that
discussion, but we'll let people digest
this in the meantime. We'll put links to
where people can find you. And I just
want to say thank you for doing what you
do. And if you don't mind me sharing,
you're you're 33 years old.
>> That's right.
>> I love that you're a clinician and
you're practicing medicine, but please
please please keep wherever you can keep
up your efforts as a public educator.
come back and talk to us again. Uh
you're a gift to us all and um thank you
so much.
>> Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here
and thank you for the kind words.
>> Thank you for joining me for today's
discussion with Dr. Abud Bachri. To
learn more about his work and to find
links to the various things we
discussed, please see the show note
captions. I should also mention that Dr.
Bachri has just released a new app which
is focused on circadian biology which we
didn't talk about today, but he's a true
expert there as well. You can also find
a link to that app in the show notes
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