EP 72: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I PUT PEPTIDES TO THE TEST FOR A YEAR

Why Peptides Spark Curiosity

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Not Alone with Melissa Sue Methvin. Today I'm so excited because this past year I've been experimenting with myself with peptides. And what I found, what it's been doing for my body, it's opened my eyes to remove the fears from them. And it's I'm all about let's get more educated. When I'm passionate about something where I'm noticing that I'm getting healthier, I just got my labs back. I do them every six months. And how I am optimized. I am all in the green. I am seeing shifts, even like my nitric oxide to be elevated now. And on a cellular basis as well, which many diseases, that's a mutation of your cells, that's metabolic, and how we can remove the fear. For example, some people think, oh, if I take a peptide, it's the easy route. No, we live in a very toxic environment. This is the reality. How we can biohack, help ourselves to optimize, this is peptides. And so today I have Anthony Castori. He is an SSRP health coach. And also he's been in the health industry for a very, very long time. And him himself, as he was training himself, coaching other people through uh life coaching, nutrition, and fitness, he got curious about peptides, how he can optimize his clients. And he got himself certified. And now he will discuss and explain what is a peptide, how we can utilize them for different diseases, for cancer, for optimization on a cellular level, and remove all the fears and the noise that we hear about them. So welcome. Thank you very much for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Thank you so much for having me as a guest. I'm really excited about our conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I know I'm excited. We already started in the trailer before we got. I was like, wait, pause.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

We had a whole episode in there again. We did.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

We had a whole episode, and I it just gets me so excited. And I want to dive into just maybe a bit get people to get to know you and what got you involved with peptides. And then we'll we'll kind of get into how you use them.

Anthony’s Path Into Peptides

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Sure. Yeah. So I grew up in Indiana and I was a small kid. I was buck 17, dripping wet. And when I was a senior, we moved to Ohio. And I was like, I gotta get back to Columbia or back to Indiana with all my friends. So went there for my freshman year of college. My freshman year of college, my girlfriend weighed a pound more than me. So it was like, I better start working out. And started working out. I had an amazing strength coach. And like most guys, I thought maybe I can do something in bodybuilding or powerlifting. I've got the most wonderful parents in the world, but they weren't the most wonderful parents for wanting to be a bodybuilder. So I quickly discovered that maybe this isn't my calling. As they say, those who can do, those who can't coach. And I really enjoy the coaching. I just wanted to learn as much as I could. I'm a guy that asks a lot of questions. If we were in elementary school together, I'd be that kid raising his hand in the front row all the time, and you'd be like, This kid's got another question.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

I love that because that's what I encourage people to do. Ask a lot of questions. You got to, you got to be curious. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

But as I was doing this with the whole bodybuilding scene and everything, one of the hiccups for bodybuilding outside of not having enough muscle was the whole pro tan that you have to put on. This stuff stinks and it gets all over your clothes. And I was reading about this peptide they were using in France. It was called melanatin and it improved your sleep and it made you tan. And I'm like, box checked. So I looked into it. And then I was hearing about these bodybuilders using this IGF 1 and growing these freakishly large muscles. And I was like, wow, this is so cool. I've got to know how this stuff works. So, like a lot of people, it was just kind of experimentation and learning a little bit about it here and there. But I realized, you know, this is something that I really need to understand. It's it's fun to be a chemistry experiment, but you got to be responsible too. And I saw the opportunity to go take these certifications. And there were no other strength coaches really doing it. I'd been strength training for 30 years, working as a coach and worked with the highest level of athletes, but nobody was talking about peptides. So I was like, what the heck? You know, leap of leap of faith, I'm gonna check this stuff out. So I took all the A4M certifications, all the uh SSRP certifications, literally every course out there. And I just kept consuming, consuming, consuming. And I remember when I got offered the fellowship position, it was really kind of a funny story. They had just started these, they were called grand rounds. And it's you, Dr. Seeds, Dr. Page, and there's generally like nine other people in the room. And I'd gone, I've I'd done literally every event they had, and I wanted to go to this one, but I'm like, I'm not a doctor, I'm not qualified. So I was like, I'll sit this one out. I get an email. The email says, Hey, we'd love to have you at grand rounds. And I'm thinking, all right, it's AI, you know, they're sending it to everybody, and they saw I went to a lot of events, so I just kind of ignored it. I got another email and I'm like, all right, you know, it's I'm on the mailing list, I get it. And um, I wrote them back on the chance, maybe it wasn't an auto-reply thing. So, like, you know, I genuinely appreciate this. I love the stuff I've learned from you guys. You guys are doing a beautiful job of explaining the why behind this stuff, so it's not just a protocol, but I want that space to go to somebody that can really use it, somebody that deserves it. And I just don't think I'm qualified. So I get another email, and this one was from Dr. Seeds, but I thought, wow, you know, they stepped their AI game up. Dr. Seeds wrote me, and it was personally asking me to go there. So I talked to my fiance, I was like, Jules, her name's Julie. I was like, Jules, apparently Dr. Seeds wants me to go to this grand rounds thing, and I think it's a mistake, but if they're gonna let me go, you know how much I love learning. And she was 100% supportive, which I'm so grateful for. So I went over there and it was amazing. I mean, humbling, but amazing. I went in there and they say if you're the dumbest one in the room, you're the smartest one in the room. So I don't know quite how that works, but maybe I was the smartest one in the room that day. And I presented the case I had to give you just a little bit of back history, I'd with the athletes I work with, I'd been putting together protocols and nutrition supplements, peptides, all this stuff from what I learned. But um, when they say case study, I was like, I don't know if this is even how to present a case study. A case study went great. The conversation in there was great, and there was just so much support. People love the fact that I was from a strength coaching background, and it's one of the things that made the SSRP so unique that instead of being like, you know, he's knuckle-dragging strength coach, they were like, he's got a different lens he's looking at things through. And it's something that I really value that the more people from different backgrounds that look at the same problem, the better solutions you come up with.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yeah, I

What A Peptide Actually Is

SPEAKER_01 7:49

believe that. Did you find some of your athletes that were resistant to using these peptides? Because almost looking at it like they were gonna cheat the there was on themselves, on their body, you know, they're they weren't seeing it as like just optimizing, but they were thinking, well, this might be the easy route.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

There was some of that. It was kind of an interesting, almost both ends of the spectrum. So you have the ones that are like, I don't want to cheat, this isn't natural. And then you have the other ones that are like, can they test for it? Yes. I work with both of them. They're like all in, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

But yeah, maybe to dive into that, where the confusion of is it cheating? What is what is a peptide? Like just if you're gonna make it speaking to the child, you know? And just make it so easy to understand that we are not cheating when we're adding these. We definitely have to have the right person, you know, that knows how to work with them, right? But what is a peptide?

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Easiest way to describe what a peptide is is imagine um you and I are amino acids, right? Um, it doesn't matter which one we're amino acids, and we decide to hold hands for no other reason than we want to make a bond. So that bond to amino acids, peptide bond, we've got uh we've got a peptide. And the shorter ones, up to four amino acids, those are going to be bioregulators. Now, if we had a bunch of our friends with us, you know, we'll say up to 40 of them, um, we each bring 19 friends. We've got this big chain of hands. I mean, how cool is that? Hands across America, right? Yes. Um, that would be a peptide. Anything up to 40 people holding hands, or in this case amino acids joined by a peptide bond, is considered a peptide. Now, to give people a little bit of history and some other, you know, peptides they're probably more familiar with, insulin was the first peptide, and it's been around for years. And it's longer, it's a longer chain of amino acids than what they now consider a peptide. So it's still a peptide, but because it's a longer chain of amino acids, it's different regulatory category. And with a longer chain also, kind of how I think about it is it's like your insulin, for example. If you don't make insulin, you're adding it into their your system. And if you do make insulin, you're adding it in so you can achieve a superphysiologic range. Growth hormone would be another example, 191 amino acids. With the peptides that are under 40, what I want people to think about when we're asking ourselves what's a peptide, is it's a supervisor and it sends a message and it tells us, it tells our cells what it needs to do. So that might be something as simple as hey, we could use a little bit more vascularity to where this injury is. Would you mind um directing some of it over there, like a BPC 157?

SPEAKER_01 10:47

And um Okay, so just to kind of bring it back is so I'm understanding, you're saying the peptide is just kind of speaking to the cells.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

It's a signal.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

It's a signal. So it's telling them, okay, let's produce a little bit more. So it's not so much it the peptide itself is mimicking uh, you know, what it needs to produce, and then we're we stop producing it. It's more of a signal for our own body to produce to produce more.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

That's a perfect way to describe it. It's a signal. And the other thing that's unique about peptides that I really want people to understand is peptides modulate. And what I mean by that is imagine your stereo. You know, you can crank it up to 10 if you've got your favorite song on and you want to make some noise, or you can turn it down to zero if the kids are trying to study or something and we can't have noise in the house. But you can't crank it up to 12 because there's no 12. It's just gonna oscillate between 10 and 0, whatever's appropriate for the situation. So when we talk about modulating, that's what a peptide does. It it has that ability to go up to 10, back to zero as quick or slow as we need it to.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Okay. Wow. So I love that explanation. It really gives me kind of the more understanding of what it does when it, you know, I've been taking them for

Tirzepatide And SS31 Explained

SPEAKER_01 12:05

a year. And now I I'd love to dive into just some of the peptides that are some of your favorite ones that you love that you've used and explain to them. Like some people have never used them. So if we could start even with uh yeah, a list of some of your favorite ones and explain what they do.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

There's gosh, this is That's probably really hard.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

There's a lot of them. I mean, for example, I've I've now tried the trizepodyne. I've tried uh and I've noticed, and I know there's a lot of noises just for but for me, what I noticed would most help with my nervous system to calm down the food noise, like the um the sugar cravings, you know, that I was getting late at night, you know, because of cortisol spikes and all of that. And so it quiet all of that and it almost made me cra I've always been a healthy eater, but now it really built that foundation where I don't crave that sugar as much, and there's not so much noise for those sugar, like it balances, you know, the insulin. Is that right? And so I and it reduced a lot of inflammation right away, which for many diseases, we want to reduce inflammation, right? And uh so I've then tried SS31 as well, and so I'd love for you to just dive into those to start off. I've done epitalon as well, which I noticed my sleep. Oh my gosh, like so, and I'm such a light sleeper ever since I've had young children and always on alert. And and it's a lot to do with my story as well. I'm still working on building stress resilience and my nervous system. That's why I use breath work because I was always on, right? And so how I've noticed these peptides help me along the way and to find more cellular energy because I was really depleted. For a while, I was losing my hair, I'm auto autoimmune, and now I don't have any of that, right? But I've learned how to optimize that my cellular energy. And I've been seeing it in my labs in a lot of the work that I do. So I'd love to, yeah, dive into some of these that I mentioned.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Well, those are two of my favorites. So this will be okay. This will be a fun, fun topic. We'll start with the trzepatide, which I think is really fascinating. People are familiar with what it does for the food noise, and the way that it does that is it tones down that dopamine reward signaling we get in the brain when we eat something sweet. So when it tones it down, we don't crave it as much. But the inflammation, that's the real kind of like behind the scenes super cool thing. So I like to talk about this through the lens of exercise, coming from the strength coaching background. Think about when you work out what happens. You're creating a stress, right? And when you create that stress, there's gonna be a little bit of breakdown of tissue, and there's gonna be inflammation. And those are positive things as long as we get that uh signaling from uh IL6, not that it matters, to um create that inflammation. And then we have our antioxidant system turn on, put out that fire so we can repair. Easier way to think about it is my fiance would love it if we redid the kitchen. And if we were to rip out all the cabinets, but while we were ripping out the cabinets, try to put new ones in and we never cleaned up, like that's gonna be a big mess. She'll be happy we're getting a new kitchen, but it's gonna take forever and it's not gonna look real good. So with these peptides, what we're able to do with the inflammation is help that process run a little bit smoother. We're able to say this is a time where we want to have cellular cleanup. This is a time where we can focus on a little bit more building. And the GLPs actually do both. So trzeptide in particular supports it's called phase shift. What phase shift is, is going back to that exercise analogy, when we work out and we get that inflammation, that positive inflammation, it's just think about the letter M and the number one, M1, and that's macropage phase one, but nobody needs to know that M1. And when we get that anti-inflammatory response so that we can adapt to the exercise, M2. And as simple as that, when a GLP um supports that process, it keeps us from staying in that chronic inflammation state. And this will kind of be a nice transition into SS31. Because when we think about, well, what happens when somebody's taken a GLP and they say, I'm just not making progress anymore, I'm working out, I'm barely eating anything. And even to pin it to your experience with um still working through stress response and resilience, they've got kind of this always-on thing. So if we think about, you know, our cell can't see what's going on outside. It doesn't know if we got a mortgage payment coming up or we just went to the gym. It just senses the chemical signals from stress. And when it senses those, it says, this is our cell that supports our whole body. So most logical thing it's gonna need to do to keep us upright is make energy. And it doesn't have time to make that energy that's gonna give us a lot of ATP. It just needs energy really quick. So it starts burning through glucose. And when you think about burning through glucose, that's gonna create a lot of oxidative stress. And the inside of our mitochondria, which is made from cardiolipin, it's a four-tail phospolipid. What's gonna end up happening is it's gonna oxidize. And when it oxidize, it's gonna crack like a wall getting cracks in it. And when it starts to crack, the mitochondria's DNA leaks out into the cytosol. And the reason that's so fascinating, these mitochondria that power our whole body, you know, sixth-grade biology, the powerhouse of the cell, right? The mitochondria that power our whole body, they used to be bacteria, single cell organisms, independent. And at some point our cell was like, that looks like a good meal, I'm gonna eat this. And then it figured out, hey, we can work together. This guy makes energy, and I was pretty hungry, so we got a good thing going. But when that DNA from the mitochondria leaks into the cytosol, the cell panics. It thinks it's being overthrown by a bunch of bacteria. It's like, whoa, you know, I ate this one guy, now his buddies are mad at me. This isn't good. And what it does is it trips um pathway, nobody needs to know this, but I'll throw it out there for the nerds like me. Sea gas sting. An easy way to remember that, you know, if you get stung by a bee, that's not a good thing. Sea gas sting. And what that does is that triggers inflammation and it throws off a whole, it throws off a whole immune response. So now all of a sudden our immune system's on overdrive, it's overreacting to everything. You see this auto, autoimmune reactions. And our macrophages, remember the M1, it's stuck in that M1, it won't switch to M2. And our mitochondria, there, they've got those oxidized inner membranes that are leaking DNA. So this is a real pickle we've got ourselves into. Body doesn't want to lose fat. If we take calories away, it perceives that as a threat because now there's not enough energy available. If we give it more calories right now, it can't even do anything with them because the mitochondria is all beat up and it's so stressed, it's just reacting. So SS31, other peptide he talked about, this is where this can be so effective. SS31 binds to the cardiolipine inside the mitochondria. So imagine if you got an old building you're fixing up. It's a beautiful building. You don't want to just scrap it, but it needs some work and it's raining outside, and you got the materials on their way, phospholipids and whatever in the case of the cell, but they aren't there yet. So we just need some duct tape for the mitochondria. So the SS31 is like duct tape for the inner mitochondrial membrane. It's gonna patch that up so that electrons can flow through.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

And what that means is we can make energy that but not use the glucose as the source. Is that does it help with that?

SPEAKER_00 20:26

It it's a first step in helping with that. Yeah, it definitely does help with that in the sense that now when that glucose is going through there, that inner membrane's more resilient from it, so it's not going to be as damaging. So we can start to recalibrate our antioxidant response system and start to have that whole build and then clean up, repair, and then I want to kind of touch base because now we're kind of talking of the mitochondria in the cell.

Cancer Metabolism And Ketones

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

And there's a lot of talk for cancer now that it's a metabolic disease. And how you know we feed cancer with glucose, right? The sugar. So take away a lot of times. They say get in on a ketogenic, ketogenic uh diet, and just say so. We're not feeding the cell the glucose, right? Taking it away. And so that's kind of what you're explaining is that it just finds a source of energy, it's looking for something else, and it it gets um glucose, but that's not what we want, right? We want the cell to feed on something else, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Good way to think about it is our cell has the ability to use either fat or glucose for an energy source. So, in a perfect world, if you think about like when we're sitting here having a conversation, neither of us have to jump up really quick so we can take our time to make some energy. And when we can take our time to make energy, we use um here I go again with sixth grade biology, oxidative phosphorylation. And the reason that's so cool is because. Because one, we're starting to use fat for energy. And two, um, it's going to make more ATP. And remember, ATP is your checking account that writes checks to your immune system, your brain, your muscles, your heart, all that stuff. So we want to have as much of that as possible. Now, conversely, mean you go to the gym and we're doing a workout where we're pumping some heavy iron or we're doing some uh interval training, we need that energy really quick. We don't have time to be like, eh, you know, just make some ATP, no big deal. We need that energy quick, so we need that glucose. So where cancer kind of breaks the metabolism, at least one of the points where it breaks the metabolism, is it makes it want to just ferment, makes it want to just use that glucose for energy. And it's also cancer is so smart, you know, it it's got a lot figured out. It has a way of dampening down our antioxidant response system. So thinking back to remember when we work out, we create oxidative stress and inflammation. And the whole positive change we see from the workout is the ability to put that fire out, to smolder it, and then to have that repair start to take place. So cancer turns that antioxidant system down just enough that it doesn't get that signal to come in and repair. And that's where that oxidative stress comes from. So definitely what you're saying is, in my opinion, accurate that cancer is a metabolic disease. So the challenge becomes how do we re-educate the cell on its ability to use multiple fuel sources? How do we restart the antioxidant system? And that kind of circles back to the ketone thing. It's really interesting the way it works. When you think about outside the cell, we have an NAD to an NADH ratio. And then we have if you think about the electron transport chain as bus stops. We got five, four bus stops. And the first one is where that electron or bus is coming in. The second one, we have our Krebs cycle. You guys, man, I'm right on the six, sixth grade biology.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Oh, I love I love all this.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Krebs cycle is um when it's working, it's gonna dump electrons in at complex two. And so inside we have uh FADH, and when it gets those electrons, that's one of the things that are gonna signal uh it's called NRF2, which is our antioxidant system. So with a ketone, what we're able to do is bypass that complex one, we're able to put an electron right into that FADH uh and get that uh antioxidant system started. So even though cancer kind of outsmarted us, we're like, well done. Uh we'll we've got one for you, dumping a little ketones in there.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Ketones, okay, and ketones just from diet change, or is there some peptides that you can use for that too?

SPEAKER_00 25:11

So for the ketones, actually, in my opinion, the best option because remember, we want to have flexibility in the cell. So we don't want it just not to use glucose at all. We just want it to be more intelligent about when it's using glucose, and we want the antioxidant system to work. So with a healthy, balanced diet where we're getting some carbohydrates, and most importantly, we're getting our fruits and vegetables. And super important from there, we're getting those fibers that uh are going to help with our microbiome. And we're getting from resistant starch things that are going to make butrate. And um, I'll circle back to the butrate.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

This is actually, I love to, yeah, I heard about butrate as well. Super cool stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

But um with the ketones, if we use what's called a ketone monoester, specifically uh the Veach um monoester, some people call it the Oxford monoester, it's the same thing, but uh Professor Beach was the one that discovered it. What's unique about it is when we make a ketone, if we're on a ketogenic diet, we make it's called beta-hydroxybutrate. And what a ketone monoester is, is it's got this beta-hydroxybutrate, and then it's got like, imagine like a little timing fuse that's attached to it's called 1-3-butane diol. And the 1-3-butaneol gets metabolized in the liver, it makes ketones. So we've got the BHB just like ours. Um, cell can use that right away, and we know that's gonna translate into more ATP at the end, just like we were burning fat. So we're re-establishing what we want. We've got that timing fuse. So after we get that bump in ketones, we still have a little bit of backup fuel if things start to lag. And the reason that's so important, and this is uh ketones are almost a whole nother topic, but I'll try to make it brief. When we think about if somebody's on a ketogenic diet and we've just got that BHB coming in, ketone gets transported into the cell from MCT transporters. There's also transport lactate and pyruvate, and those are both important. Lactate helps for modulating redox, which is gonna be our antioxidant system. And both of those are important fuel sources, so we don't want to use up all the transporters with just this big dump of BHB. So with the monoester, we're taking some of the BHB in, so we get all the benefits. We've got the timing fuse, but we can still get some lactate and uh pyruvate, whatever we need in there, and then we can have some more ketones. So we kind of have this constant stream of energy coming in. And when the cell starts to sense, like, hey, I've got a constant stream of energy, so I'm no longer on uh amber alert for energy failure. And uh we've got the electrons being donated to bottom of the Krebs cycle. So we're starting to jumpstart that antioxidant system again. These are a couple of the things that, with a lot of other things, can start to make steps towards getting somebody back on track.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

On track.

Nerves Telomeres And Better Sleep

SPEAKER_01 28:27

And then so SS31, you said will kind of help seal the uh the cell and become kind of stronger cell. Now, what's another one that you that you love using for uh gosh, another one I love.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

It'd be easier to tell you what ones I don't love, but here's some interesting. Yeah, but yeah. So some other ones that I really like, I think are maybe underused, is a lot of people talk about nerve pain and inflammation that comes with that. Yes. And there's a peptide, and it's actually uh proved medication, cbenitide, it's ARA290. And ARA290 is unique in that it works on that big inflammatory NFKB that we hear about, but it also works on it's called the innate repair receptor, and that allows us to actually repair nerves. So people with like diabetic neuropathy, this is something that can be helpful for them. And when we think about, well, where is ARA 290 come from? And this kind of circles back to that point we were talking about originally, where people are like, you know, these are, I don't want to take anything unnatural. So the ARA 290 comes from erythropoietin, which we make. And erythropoetin would be great to take if it didn't make our blood so viscous, that we don't want to have thick, sticky blood that's gonna affect our vasculature and all sorts of problems. So they found a way to take that property of being able to work on the innate repair scepter, repair nerves, and reduce inflammation without erythropoesis, and voila, we got uh ARA 290.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Wow. Yeah, that's interesting now you say that because my husband always complained of nerve damage. But now I know from like having being a dentist and having mercury poisoning, which affects the nerve and neurotoxin, and there's so many other uh diseases that are are they attack the nerve. So this could help with recovery, right? And um, what about epitalon? I know that helps uh elongate uh the telomeres, right? And I they recommended to maybe use it once or twice a year to help with the stress damage. Yeah. Can you explain how epitalon works?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Yeah, absolutely. So the epitalon's uh fascinating peptide, and the research comes from Professor Cabinson over in Russia and to give people the backstory. I'm I love the history around these things, it's really cool. The history is the during the Cold War, we had Russia had these submarines, these nuclear submarines. And you can imagine being underwater in a submarine, nuclear stuff around after six months, people are coming up like 60 years had gone by. And there's a lot that goes into training these people, so they're not expendable. And he was tasked with the challenge of what can we do to preserve youth in these people and restore some of that, protect them even. And one of the things he observed was that their telomeres were shortening. And to give people a little context on what a telomere is, if you look down at your shoelaces, mine are tucked in, but I swear I have them. Don't worry anyhow. All right, bad analogy. Um, if you think about a shoelace, you know how you got that little plastic thing on the end? So imagine the part of the shoelace, that plastic thing goes around, is your DNA. And that shoelace essentially is the protective coating that keeps it from getting frayed. And our DNA, if it's damaged and frayed, we're gonna make copies of that. So when the telomeres are lengthened and we have that protection for the DNA, it allows things like a GHK to get in and um edit parts of the DNA that might have got damaged. So the epitalon, um, great for resyncing circadian rhythm. And honestly, I'm not a hundred percent clear on the mechanism behind that. I know it does that, but I don't want to give information I'm not clear on.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Yeah, I wonder if because it helps, you know, elongate the telomeres, right? Repair stress damage, then your your nervous system almost like, oh, it's able to relax a little bit, right? I wonder how that affects the nervous system. Because I can't help to see the the world in the nervous system lens and how it impacts me and how it can help prepare the body for maybe some deep work.

Reactions Stress And The Right Terrain

SPEAKER_01 33:01

But I've also noticed with peptides, though, when when uh others decide to try them, for example, they may have adverse reactions right away. For example, some of them have tried trzerpathyline and right away they can't sleep.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

They can't sleep, they have almost um anxiety. And for me, it's almost a signal of their nervous system where it's at. You're exactly right. And and accepting that medicine, yeah, you know, accepting that peptide, it's it's because it's on high alert. It's almost like, oh, I'm not ready for repair.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

A really good way to think about it, and you're spot on. Um, just to build on top of what you said, when we think about what's terzepatide doing, it's creating an environment where we're not gonna want to eat as much. So if we don't eat as much, we don't have as much fuel. And if we don't have enough fuel, then we have an energy sensor, the AMPK. Um, so that's gonna say, like, hey, we need to make substrate available, we need more energy. And when it does that, if there's no food coming in, that's gonna start to potentially break down like muscle tissue. And that's one of the reasons sometimes people lose muscle. And that protein is gonna go through the liver, gluconeogenesis. If you think about that word gluco, like glucose neonesis creation, it's creating a new sugar, and that's supporting that energy. So, where I'm going with that is the process of breaking things down and making energy available is a catabolic process, and it's gonna be something that's gonna temporarily spike sympathetic drive. So, going back to the person who's super stressed and is like, my friend lost 30 pounds on a GLP, I'm gonna put that in, even though I'm super stressed. You're putting even more sympathetic drive in them. So that's why it becomes just exponentially more important to do the breath work.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Yeah, beforehand. I always say that actually, my gut god, um my god connection book is that I could tell you all these protocols that I've tried and love. But before I've noticed, if you are in the sympathetic, you're gonna have adverse reaction. For example, like when you're detoxing, you know, detoxing from heavy metals or or parasites and trying to find that biome, you know, harmony. And I'm seeing people react. So I said, let's work on your nervous system first, because what happens, and I see this in the mouth too, if the patient is in the sympathetic, you're reducing the oxygen to the tissue, the blood flow. And so, how is that gonna repair? Right? We need to be in that rest and repair and digest. And so it's important to do that first. But I also notice some of them can maybe help you with that nervous system. And, you know, are there tools that alongside, like if somebody's having a reaction but really needs to stabilize their glucose, and this would be really beneficial for them. What can they do so their body can accept this this peptide?

SPEAKER_00 36:09

So for stabilizing the glucose, uh a couple things they can do. Peptide-wise, MOTC can be effective.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

It's gonna Yeah, I've heard MOTC is actually really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

It's a great peptide in the right environment. It's gonna help the cell make the decision about which fuel it's using so it can improve that uh metabolic flexibility in the cell. And it disrupts the folate cycle, which is gonna affect methylation, which your body's gonna interpret as a stress. And remember, stress AMPK, uh, and that AMPK signaling um makes substrate available, and then signaling also like now we got more substrate, but think about it, where are we gonna burn this? You know, we got to have more mitochondria. So it makes more mitochondria through here. I go with the alphabet soup again, PGC1 alpha. Nobody needs to know that, but um, it makes more mitochondria, so we have more places to make energy.

unknown 37:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

And now would you combine both, like MOTC and trizepodine, or one or the other?

SPEAKER_00 37:15

I think that you could definitely everything, and that's the challenge that for a lot of people. We hear about these tools, and it's easy to think about it. I'll use myself for an example. I used to think of peptides like a vending machine, like this does this, so I'm gonna put a quarter in and get this out. And we have to think about um exactly what you said, the terrain that you're putting it in. You can't plant a rose bush in a swamp. And that terrain is gonna be your central nervous system, your circadian rhythm. And the other one, and this ties into your question about the glucose sensitivity, the lowest hanging fruit is how we hydrate. Would it be crazy if I told you you could drink eight glasses of water a day and be dehydrated?

SPEAKER_01 38:00

No, I've heard that actually, because I kind of do that. And sometimes they're like, you're dehydrated. I'm like, oh, so now I've incorporated more drinking like electrolytes and yeah, some salt, like mineralized salt. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

So this is really cool. Um, you know, creatine's a peptide. And when we think about the other thing, creatin is it's a neutral osmolite. And don't worry about the neutral osmolite, just think of it as a particle. Water follows particles. So imagine this cell that we have that we're trying to get water in. Um, good example is if we take a shower, are we gonna be hydrated after we take a shower? That's a silly question. Of course we're not. We're gonna be clean, but we're not gonna be hydrated. And that's because it's not getting in there. When we take electrolytes, um the there's ion-gated channels that are gonna allow things like sodium, potassium, chloride to go in and out of the cell. And if we accumulate too many in there, it's gonna fry the circuit board. Because that little mitochondria we were talking about, it carries a charge. And too much of a charge, it's gonna be just like if I tried to rig up my stereo back in seventh grade, uh, my parents' amplifier, and it wasn't meant to do that. We'll just leave it at that. But um getting back to the neutral osmolites, like a creatin, some other examples would be like alanine, which is an amino acid, glycine, which is an amino acid, or glutamine. People are probably familiar with that one. Um, these particles they don't have any charge. So what they can do is just kind of float into the cell. And when they float into the cell, what the water does is it follows these particles, and that cell stretches. And when it stretches, that sends signals. It um basically, when we think about our hormones and all that stuff, the receptors on the cell and their responsiveness is going to be dependent on that volume of the cell, the polarization of the cell. So with the neutral osmolites added in with the electrolytes and sipping it throughout the day, we can maintain cell volume, which is truly what hydration is. And that plus the nervous system, plus the circadian, is how we turn that swamp into a yard where we can plant that rose bush and everything's gonna work beautifully.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Okay. I love I love the way you explain things, it makes a lot of sense. And I there's so many things I want

Humanin And Brain Energy

SPEAKER_01 40:20

to ask. But the next one was peptide, and then I want to go into your own story of mercury poisoning, because that's a big topic that I talk about with biological dentistry. And and it was interesting when we were in the trailer and you had mentioned you had mercury poisoning. But first, one more the humanin. Like, can you explain to me like what's the benefits of using that one?

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Humanin's fascinating. It prevents apoptosis of the cell. And when we think about what that means for uh our mitochondria, think about it like this, and this is just a real kind of dumbed-down version of what these mitochondrial peptides do. Um, if we think about SS31 as the duct tape repair, we think about Mot C as the strength coach, the exercise memetic, and we can think about humanin as the hold it, you guys are perfect, let me make some copies of you. Um, so it prevents that uh apoptosis where the cell is gonna die and we're gonna lose that blueprint of good mitochondria we have. Now, because of that, in certain types of cancers, we don't want that to happen. We need to have that cell death and turnover. So you have to be really careful with that. And we don't want to have it for too long because, again, there's supposed to be some cell turnover, but when we get those mitochondria to where we want them to be, freezing them for a week or two and making some copies of them, it's like we're transcribing the best possible mitochondria. And when we think about the other unique thing about humanin is its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. So a lot of things that we think about with regards to cognitive decline truly reduces down to an energy crisis in the neuron. And that's gonna translate into mitochondria, could be a little better. So that's where something like um SBT 272, which is SS31's beautiful little cousin that can cross the blood-brain barrier more effectively with humanin, uh, really shows some promise for these people.

unknown 42:38

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

So exciting stuff on the horizon for sure.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Like I think am I saying correctly, Christogen? Christogen, there's another one. Is that what it's called?

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Uh, I forget. I kind of forget.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

You know what you're talking about, and I am blocking out the name of it. Um, I want to say Chryson, but that's not it.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

Yeah, but it that's another one I think that uh helps for uh focus and and then Clax as well. Right, C Max and T Mickey. Yeah, those ones I've tried just to calm the nerves before I speak. And and so, yeah, but I I do feel it's important to work with someone that's very knowledgeable. Like you said, too much of one thing is not that great. So, and then all at once, you know, trying them all at once might not be a really good idea because you're like, oh, your body won't know what to do. And and so working with someone is very knowledgeable and also your source where you're getting them.

Mercury Toxicity Detox Support

SPEAKER_01 43:31

But I I'm curious as far as detox. Your story of mercury poisoning and going through detox. Did you use any peptides to help you with any uh your mercury detox?

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah, so my mercury poisoning, you know, go big or go home. I managed to get it twice.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

And you said first was like fish related, right? First, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Yes. It was the funniest thing. I was typical bodybuilding background, you know, I ate a lot of steak and chicken. And I just decided fish taste pretty good. So I was grilling it. It was the summer. Next thing you know, I'm grilling it four times a day and then five times a day. And I was really responsible about where I got it from.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

And did you also at that time when you're grilling, you're saying your early 20s, did you also have amalgam fillings, the silver fillings in your mouth? Were they already there?

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Already had the fillings and how many?

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Do you remember how many you had? Because I noticed that you've had the mermidory.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Two. Yeah, I had two, two fillings. And the first time I got mercury poisoning, we ended up doing chelation for it. Um, and I didn't get the fillings out at that point. We did the chelation. My levels were at 25.2 in the beginning, and within it was probably eight weeks, we got it down to like 2.4. So the chelation really helped, and it was just giving my body the support it needed for things like uh glutathione that my body wasn't making, and some other things to help bind to the metal and pull it out of the system. Now, the second time, and this is a more interesting one, you know, I thought I was in the clear and I certainly cut back my seafood intake. But what I didn't realize, and I'm sure you probably already know this, that when your levels are that high, you're it's not something you want in the blood, so the body's gonna pull it into the bone. And then when your cell efficiency improves, that's when the body's gonna sense like I can start letting it out of the bone because we have the efficiency to get rid of it, but sometimes it can throw too much in. And the other thing that had slid under my radar, and I didn't know about this one, was we were waiting on our house to be finished, and we were staying in a really nice new apartment complex, but there were railroad tracks by there, and those fumes from the railroads are really high in methyl mercury. And when we think about mercury and the reason like mercury fillings are so dangerous, mercury itself, I'm not telling anybody to do this, but if you put mercury in your mouth, like not good, but that's not really where the problem comes in. When we bite down and it gets converted into methyl mercury, that's when it can more easily travel up. It's a gas, right? It's a gas.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Yeah, that's what I say. It's like when you have that metal in your mouth and you're you're biting and it gets hot, cold, hot, cold is the gas. Yeah, chewing.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

You got a gas making factory. And so the second time my levels were up to like 19.1 and did the chelation again, and I got the fillings out this time. And the other thing I started to do was I used it was called Med Therapy Pro, which is a zeolite binder. And zeolite, well, first of all, it's the coolest sounding supplement ever, and it comes from volcanic ash, so I kind of feel like I'm telling a superhero story when I talk about it I bought some, I have some actually, yes, for our own detox. Yeah, and it's so cool the way that zeolite works. It's almost like a little cage, and it literally traps the metals and pulls them out. But the thing people have to think about with this is because it's a binder, we don't want to take it around the time that we're taking our other oral supplements or stuff. So what I do is I have it sitting in a cup of water by my bed. When I wake up to pee at night, I just drink it down and okay, that's good tough, actually.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Because it's so hard to time it, right? Because I, oh, I take magnesium at night, and in the morning I take my other things. So when do I take this binder?

SPEAKER_00 47:33

Yeah. But circling back to the peptide question about what did I do to support during that time? When we think about the problems that come around with mercury, it's got to do with how our mitochondria is transporting electrons. It does a pretty bad job of it when there's mercury in the picture. And to support that process, we can't increase the throughput of mitochondria or electrons in the mitochondria because of all that oxidative stress, that membrane's already damaged. So SS31, perfect time to pull that out of the head. Okay. That now you've got the structural support so that as you're doing that detox and you're doing the things you need to with your binders and chelation, your mitochondria can continue to make energy and maintain its structure in the face of oxidative stress.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

That's good to

Nasal Sprays Vs Injections

SPEAKER_01 48:27

know. That's really good. And now, if some people weren't comfortable in injections, right, that's probably the best way to for a lot of these peptides. What is your thoughts about the nasal spray ones? I found those. I saw those the last uh Biohack World event when I went in LA and I tried the nasal sprays because some of the um peptides they sting, like the G H K C U. I'm like, oh I'm like, I want the benefit of the glowing skin and my nice hair, but I this it really hurts, and it's a it's a daily one. So I kind of pushed it back, but I'd love to use it. So I bought the um the nasal spray. So I'm just curious as far as the bioavailability, the function of it, does that change?

SPEAKER_00 49:09

It does, yeah. And it's some of the peptides are gonna be a good candidate for this. Generally, what I've heard, and I this is just what I've heard, up to 15 amino acids, it's gonna be stable enough that that's an option. And actually, something kind of cool when you think about AOD 9604 that people might be familiar with, and that's the one that's a isolated part of growth hormones, 191 amino acids. It's basically uh 176 through 191, the part that says burn more fat. But when you take it as a nasal spray, it's structurally really similar to um I can't think of the name of it right now. I'm drawing a blank, but it's basically almost the same. And you have a cribboform plate up there, and doing it intranasally actually activates the immune system in your brain. Um, so there'd be benefit to doing that.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Doing that. Okay, that's great to know.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

With the GHK, that one feels like it got stung by a wasp.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

I don't have any.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Is there a way around that?

SPEAKER_00 50:15

The topical is really, in my opinion, the best option.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

I don't have much experience with the GHK as a nasal spray, but if I'm thinking structurally, because it's a small peptide, I think it would work, but I honestly don't know.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

Don't know. Yeah,

The Most Useful Peptides To Know

SPEAKER_01 50:31

okay. Well, I love the honesty and there's so much. I'm like, is there one peptide that you're just like it'd be so beneficial for us all? You know, I I know that's hard, but is there one that we're seeing there's so many benefits? We and we live in a toxic world that really on a cellular level, that this could be, you know, because I've heard so many doctors that work like at the mayo clinic here, and they say if, you know, all the patients in this hospital would be on certain peptides, you know, with a provider, half of these beds would be empty.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Right. So are there some?

SPEAKER_00 51:05

I know that's probably hard, but uh there's a couple I think that really pretty good safety profile and a lot that they'd improve for people. BPC, people are familiar with it, but sometimes I think because it's so familiar, people don't realize all the stuff it does. And it modulates nitric oxide, which is gonna affect vasodilation and also helps with repairing gut lining.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

Gut lining. That's what I kind of know it as a gut lining and repair of any injury, right? Which you would inject it. Let's say you had a knee injury. Where would you inject it? First of all, your knee, there's not a lot of fat there.

SPEAKER_03 51:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

So where would you inject it if you had like a knee injury or you know, just arm closest to the location?

SPEAKER_00 51:52

Yeah, generally you want to think about if you have an injury and you're using like BPC or thymos and beta 4, kind of the closer you get it to the injury, the better off you're gonna be. And just wherever you can kind of pinch and use a subcutaneous is fine. And the reason, the way I explain it is if you can picture a van full of workers that want to go repair everything, these guys are awesome. Okay. And if they decide to enter through your mouth, um, they're driving around in me, and they're gonna be like, this guy's gut could use a little work. So my van of 10 is now down to a van of six. Four of them get out, they're working on my gut. They make it down to my knee. And in my glory days, I lifted some weight, so they're like, we could probably patch that up a little bit. And I'm down to a driver and a passenger. By the time they get up to my shoulder, the passenger found something over in this elbow. So I've just got a driver working on that. So the magnitude of effect or response or whatever, the pharmacinetics is gonna be lowered. Now, if we had an entrance ramp for that van right at the shoulder, um, workers are gonna be like, Well, this is a disaster. Eight of them might jump out, but that still leaves two to fix the gut, but most of them are going where we need it.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Okay, so but if you want it mostly for gut repair, which most of us are dealing with leaky gut and overgrowth of parasites and different bacterias, you would PCP 157 to inject it in gut. Now, is this a daily dose that you would do normally with PCP?

SPEAKER_00 53:25

The there's a couple different ways you can do it. On the BPC, sometimes I'll do daily. Um, sometimes you can do a couple times a week, you can do twice daily. It really depends on the situation and what you're trying to fix. Okay. If we're working on something like gut lining, I think maybe just starting with single injection a day would be a good option. And I know a lot of people wonder about BPC as an oral. And it's not so much that it doesn't work, but what I would tell people if they're working on their gut is if you already have a leaky gut and we're taking this, if we are able to do a sub cue, we're gonna bypass that bottleneck, the leaky gut, and circling back to the leaky gut in line with the BPC. Another really helpful peptide is gonna be that larrazotide. Um tried that one. Larazotide decreases zonulin, and zonyulin is one of the things that pulls apart those tight cellular junctions. Um yes, for one that I think everybody should be on, and um most people probably aren't gonna see this one coming, but I think thymosin alpha one, there's so much upside, and it's not an immune system booster.

SPEAKER_01 54:37

Thymosin.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

Thymosin, uh-huh. It's not an immune system booster, it's something that's gonna modulate the immune system. And a better way to explain it is immune surveillance. So if we circle back to the cancer thing and how clever it is at dampening down the antioxidant system so it doesn't trigger an immune response. This is like having a drone floating over and being able to say, like, after maybe the tenth time through, like, that one looks a little off, that cell looks a little off.

unknown 55:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

So it can be part of something that's supporting um that repair process. And even for if you're an old knuckle-dragging meat head like me, for hypertrophy training, one of the biggest limitations people forget about is the adaptability of the immune system. And when we can balance out that immune system with something like a thymos and Apple I that can translate into better hypertrophy adaptations.

unknown 55:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 55:33

And I love that. I love that. That's good to know. I can't wait to try it now. You know, that was the first thing. Uh, I feel like if we our time is up, but I was like, I have so much I want to learn. But what the first thing for me when I was living in a toxic environment was the gut, you know, I had a severe acid reflux. And somebody that's working through all of that with a provider, just knowing that could help with the repair and with some nervous system regulation. But how it's blending, right? Bring in that awareness, even for uh cancer patients. So finding a doctor that is very knowledgeable with this kind of cellular work and these peptides, instead of creating that fear behind it, or or this is um, yeah, just get educated and see fine providers are very knowledgeable.

Where To Learn More And Closing

SPEAKER_01 56:18

And and if people wanted to work with you and follow you, uh how can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Yeah, I'm so I built a school community. I'm not very tech savvy, but I figured out how to make a school community. And I've got over 150 articles I've written written for free in there. And the whole point of it is really, as you can tell from talking to me, I like to take things that are complicated and make them simple because that's how I learn. And my goal with the community is if I can give people agency over their health where when they hear all these cool things that are coming in in the biohacking world or the wherever they're at, and they can make the decision around them like, is this the right tool for me? How's it work? Is this the right terrain to put it in? Then that that equips them to have that conversation with their physician. They can work hand in hand and get the best outcome. So I've got the free community, and then uh I also have an upgraded community. Um, it's my membership tier, it's the classroom. And I've got two courses in there. I've got one, I call it biochemical fluency. And the whole point of it is it's the course I wish I had when I started out that I rattled off a couple of letters and numbers. I know that can be intimidating, but there's an easy way to learn these things and just think through them. So instead of reading letters and numbers, you're reading a sentence, almost a story. And I give people the tools to do that. And the other course I have ties into the GLP stuff. It's about when GLPs stop working and our immune metabolism is off. What do we have to do to get it back on track? And I do all sorts of things in there. It's a fun community. Um, Instagram, it's just not super creative there. It's just at and then my name, Anthony, uh, and T H O N Y C A S T O R E. And I try to post pretty regularly, just get some stuff up there. But I'll be speaking at the Peptide World Congress this weekend.

SPEAKER_01 58:20

I'll be, I'll be, I'll see you there.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

I'm excited for that. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

Yeah, I'm excited for it. It starts tomorrow, and because same with me, I want to learn more, I would be knowledgeable. A lot of it just like for me, and then hopefully incorporated coaching programs. And and so I just want to thank you for your knowledge, your expertise. I feel we could have talked for another hour.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

But uh, so thank you so much for listening today. I hope this trick intrigued your curiosity about peptides, get educated, release the fears, and maybe even try it yourself with a provider. Thank you for listening.