Peptides, Biologics & Small Molecules You've *Never Heard Of* For Sleep, Mitochondria, Kidney Health & More, With Jim LaValle.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast—

Ben, if I showed you the data on the dementia cases, I'm talking about significant swings in their Mini Mental Status Exam numbers, like from being in the high 20s to going down into the teens. That means people were starting to remember their name again, and they can have conversations again, and they can function again.

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Ben Greenfield: Hey, just finished recording a great episode on peptides, biologics, small molecules you've never heard of for mitochondria, for longevity, for sleep, for kidney health, a whole lot more with a great guy, pharmacist, Jim Laval, you're going to love this guy. Show notes will be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Laval, L-A-V-A-L-E. Let's go talk to Jim. My guest today might have more alphabet letters after his name than anybody I've interviewed in a long time. Jim Laval, BS, CCNMT, DHN, DHPH. I think that exhausted the entire alphabet, but he's an internationally recognized clinical pharmacist. His stuff goes way beyond just standing behind the front desk at CVS and filling out your prescriptions. He's got 40 years of clinical experience in drugs, nutrients, compounding pharmacies, peptides, natural products. I met Jim at an event and was just blown away. We sat at a table together. And we were geeking out. And, I'm like, "Who is this dude?" And then, we've had some conversations since then. He's actually even tested me using this super weird test that he has or at least novel test called the Metabolic Code, which I want to fill you guys in on during this show. But then, I recently attended the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine down in Vegas. Jim, I think I told you this afterwards, I didn't realize how big of a deal Jim was, literally posters of him as big as the the Kenny Chesney and the Cirque du Soleil just plastered over Vegas. So, he is one influential guy, very knowledgeable in the field of pharmacy peptides, nutrients, and a whole lot more. So, Jim, welcome to the show, man.

Oh, Ben, man, it's great to be here. I'm already having too much fun.

Oh, yeah. We have fun. Dude, what's the journey like from pharmacy into kind of being what at least I consider to be after interacting with you kind of like the GOAT of the anti-aging industry.

Yeah, man. It was interesting. So, I was into it, so I started training with weights and was kind of into things in my early teens. And, my cousins were importing natural products from Germany and selling them to physicians. And I went to a pharmacy school that was founded by John Uri Lloyd. And so it was Lloyd Brothers Specifics and they, they were like the biggest botanical extractors in the world. When I was going through pharmacy school, man, we didn't even use calculators. All right. We had to use slide rules and we had to study botanical medicine and we had to learn how to extract things. And so, there was a little bit of that in my head, but when I got out of pharmacy school and I was bodybuilding, I just qualified for the US Nationals. I was all into it, as I still am in my 60s. But I wasn't feeling good. I mean, I literally was getting skin rashes and passing out after I ate. I was, yo, eating the wrong foods, too many carbs, spiking my blood sugar. I went to somebody that did this kind of work, integrative medicine, put me on a specific diet, gave me some nutrients, changed my life. I mean, it literally changed my life. I mean, I thought clearer, my skin rashes that were plaguing me from the time I was a young child because I was one of those kids that lived on antibiotics, thought amoxicillin was a part of my meal plan. Oh, yeah.

I hated that stuff. And, by the way, the way it went down at my house was I would go to Albertsons and buy a couple of those big plastic gallons of 2% milk a couple of times a week. I'd punish half to a full gallon at night, get a horrible stomachache. I found out later and I've actually been working with your wife who has tested me who can attest to this. I'm pretty dairy intolerant. And my parents were just like, "Man, you get the stomach flu a lot. Here's some more amoxicillin." Same.

I lived on amoxicillin and Dimetapp. And likewise, my dad thought, "Hey, I love my son." He was a world-famous chef, but he worked 16-hour days and he would bring me home an ice cream sundae every night. So, I lived on dairy and therefore lived on tonsillitis and sinus infections and skin rashes. So anyway, I mean, the journey, it just intrigued me that I could feel that much better that fast by someone telling me to avoid— this is like 1983. They said, "Get off of dairy, get off of gluten. I need you to clean up your gut. Hey, your blood sugar's off, chromium, mag." I still remember that conversation. Did it, felt amazing. And then, I thought, "I need to apply my knowledge in pharmacy." And, that's what kind of got the journey going is teaching at the College of Pharmacy and Medicine at University of Cincinnati, writing 20+ books and 5 databases on natural compounds. I made up with it, man. I don't know how else to put it. I can't get enough of information regarding how do we look at the world of peptides, nutrients, compounds, training, right? To your expertise, which I loved your talk on was how do you start to combine all these things of regenerative therapies and peptides which I thought was fantastic. And most importantly is, 'cause I had like 6 patients this morning, how do we get people to feel better? And we measure it so we know they're getting better, right? And that's the big thing that I think was the journey for me. And whether it was working with the Pro Football Hall of Fame and their performance health program or being the co-chair at A4M or chairing the Peptide Society, All that stuff, I'm just trying to move the ball forward, man, and let the next generation of people not have to suffer, I think, what I had too early on, which was people thought I was pretty weird.

Yeah. Well, I think weird is good these days. We were down at the— I think it was the Florida Chiropractic Association. I think it was FCA. Right. And, you had you had a booth there and you told me to swing by and try these things you had at the booth. They're like chew— How do you describe this? Like chewable peptides?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, basically, they're a liposomal tablet technology and that's Metabolic Elite is the brand. My son runs that company. And, I was looking for how to deliver small molecules or peptides in a solid state. And so, I partnered with a pharmaceutical scientist And they're liposomes. So everybody hears liposomes. There's a lot of different ways liposomes are made, man. It's like people can just pour some lecithin in with something and shake it up and say it's a liposome. This is a multi-layered liposome where the particles stay really small. And so whether it's a botanical, so I think you tried that Enduro 2, which you really like that, which is like a botanical that we enhance the absorption of and then your VO2 max goes up and you oxygenate your tissues. Or synapsin, which is a ginsenoside that's hard to get to absorb orally, but now when you get it to absorb, your brain gets clear.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And, by the way, real quick, I'm glad you brought up those two because I was just kind of waiting for this podcast to pick your brain on that. Just unpacking those a little bit more, I did— I don't think it was placebo even though you told me, whatever, I had to be like a three-lung mutant trying the Enduro 2. I don't think it was all placebo, 'Cause I tried it, I still have, I'm almost done with that bottle you gave me, and I take it before my HIIT interval training. It makes a big difference. What is it doing exactly?

Yeah. So, that one, Enduro 2, is a 98% salidroside. It was developed in France. And, salidroside comes from rhodiola, but rhodiola is usually 5% salidroside. So, what it's doing is it's increasing VO2 max, an increasing microcapillary delivery of oxygen into your muscle tissue, and it increases your lactate threshold. So, that's what the data, the studies have shown on that. And so, what we decided was to take that extract, give the full clinical dose in the clinical trials, but then wrap it in a liposome to get it into your tissues so that it doesn't go through first-pass effect. And, I have to tell you, I mean, I've got operators because I do a lot of work with military, I've got pro athletes, hockey players, hockey teams, they just go, "Wow, I chew this up and it makes a difference." Yeah.

So, with VO2 max primarily, it's the oxygen delivery to the cells that that's working on, not necessarily lung capacity or— well, I guess you look at lung capacity, you look at oxygen utilization and cellular delivery and it's working more on the cellular delivery component.

Correct. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And, the other one that's interesting, Ben, is I started having people chew some up at night. And, what we're finding when they do their readings, their wearable device readings is, "Wait a second, my deep sleep's getting better and my HRV is improving." And, that makes sense from the salidroside standpoint because what salidrocides do is it decreases the beta-adrenergic response in the periphery. So, your blood— basically, what's happening is you're turning off the sympathetic dominance that you acquired during your daytime, right? So, you bring that parasympathetic tone back, which is going to allow for kind of more rejuvenation and more kind of a downregulation of the microglial cells, which is inflammation in the brain.

Yeah. I'd be curious if it's having any effect on SpO2 as well. Yeah. Which some of these wearables are measuring now just based on the capillary delivery.

Right, right, right. So it's very interesting. And then the other one was Synapsin, which, you know, when we first developed Synapsin, it had to be a nasal spray and kind of on the performance side. The first time we used it was with Corvette Race Team. So, you know, Corvette Race Team, they said, hey, our drivers aren't winning Le Mans. I'm like, you know, you get new drivers. I mean, yeah, I don't know if I have a pill for that. You know what I mean? It's like, or get better cars. I don't know. But, they said, "No, no, no, we want you to work our drivers up, clean up their, you know, clean them up, look at the sympathetic dominance and all that." Well, what we found out is that we had them do telemetry and when they were racing around the track, they were losing brain coherence 'cause their core body temperature was going up. And so, therefore, their reaction times were eroding, right? So, what I had envisioned was if we could have them do an intranasal spray of ginsenoside R3, which is an extract from myrrh. It's a 95% ginsenoside of ginsenoside R3. What that does is it quiets microglial activation, reduces glutamate, and you basically get this focusing effect without stimulating them like caffeine or any of the typical nootropics that are more stimulating. And, we gave them that nasal spray, their core body temperature didn't go up, And, the rest is a fairytale. They went and won Le Mans. But, the problem was is nasal sprays really aren't dietary supplements. You don't eat through your nose. I mean, at least I don't. I try to eat the way I'm supposed to eat. So, we used that same technology in order to put it into a tablet. So, we took liposomal tablet, put the ginsenoside R3 in it, And now, people are enjoying the benefit of that cognitive focus, improved performance, less cognitive loss into the evening, right? They kind of feel focused in that mid-afternoon. And obviously, one of my roles as Chief Science Officer at Life Time, I got 2.5 million lives I have to oversee the scientific programming for. And we're using that in their Miura clinics that are at Life Time and people love Those two for performance, people just absolutely love it. Yeah.

What I liked about this synapsin is I can kind of stack it with anything, whatever. I tried it with methylene blue, I tried it with Qualia, I tried it with like SS31 C-Lanc, C-Max nasal spray. It kind of seems to enhance the effects of any nootropic I've tried it with.

What I love hearing is that you're trying all those different stacks because honestly, when you look at the chemistry of what synapsin does, it should enhance it because it helps with BDNF, right? It's helping downregulate microglial cells. It stabilizes the glutamate and NMDA bridge to reduce calcium ion excitation. So, you're kind of getting that baseline of, I would call, a harmonic in your brain and now you add that nootropic. And, if you're using something like SS31, you're getting up mitochondrial upregulation, It makes so much sense to do that together.

And obviously, you've got a bunch of other liposomes you've developed. By the way, for those of you listening, I'll link to all Jim's stuff. You go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Lavalle, Jim's last name, L-A-V-A-L-L-E. First time you and I talked for a long time, Jim, was you had me do a test. Actually, I had a phlebotomist come to my hotel. On a trip. And then, a couple weeks later, you and I got on the phone with this Metabolic Code thing. And, I have to admit, it seems like every time I turn around, somebody's standing there with a needle wanting to get my blood and run me through some tests. And, I've seen a lot of them. This one was kind of interesting and you walked me through it. I thought it was interesting enough to actually unpack a little bit. So, what's the Metabolic Code test? Where'd this come from?

Well, I wrote a book called "Cracking the Metabolic Code" back in 2002. I started talking about the metabolic code philosophy and 1997. It's about the body being a systems of systems. And now, everybody goes, "Yeah, that makes sense." Well, back in 2002, people were looking at me like I had 3 heads that adrenal bones connected to the gut bones connected to the heart bone or the hormone bone. But, the Metabolic Code, what it does is it takes all of your labs, a questionnaire, biometrics, and now as well wearable data that we've now created increased risk indices for lab values based on where your wearable data's at. So, this is a pretty big innovation. But, the big thing it does is it groups all of it into 5 buckets or 5 systems or networks of the body. The reason I developed it, I was seeing 300 to 400 patients a week at our institute in Ohio. So, we had 3 physicians running, nurses, dietitians, I kept seeing the same problems over and over again. Adrenal thyroid pancreas relationship between cortisol, insulin, and thyroid hormone and mitochondrial function. When it's the good, you got energy. When it's bad, you're tired and you're gaining weight.

Wait, you said that really fast. You said adrenal thyroid pancreas, then what?

Cortisol, insulin, and thyroid hormone. 'Cause right, 'cause your cortisol goes up, your thyroid conversion goes down. Now, you don't get good mitochondrial function. And, as your cortisol goes up, your insulin goes up and that starts to create more sympathetic dominance and more inflammation, right?

Right. So, what you're saying is when you say adrenal thyroid pancreas and then you say cortisol thyroid insulin, basically those last 3 are the functions of the first 3, adrenal to cortisol, thyroid to thyroid hormone, pancreas to insulin. So, you're tracking those.

That's exactly right. We're looking at those relationships saying, Is this playing out in you, right? Are you dizzy on standing? Do you get tired after a big meal? Is your skin dry, right? Like all the things that relate to those 3 organ systems. And then, the other one, gut-immune-brain would be about resiliency. How's your immune system functioning? Do you get sick easily? Do you have any inflammation? Do you feel like someone's— you're pushing a thought through Jell-O, right? Cognitive loss, right? Like I'm not thinking clearly. So, gut-immune-brain, meaning that gut-brain connection with the immune system being the signaling between those two, really important. The reason we did this was to make it easy to explain, well, where are you metabolically broke at? Because typically, people get a lab test, if they're not really a student of biochemistry and labs, the doc is writing notes on it and putting smiley faces on it and putting arrows up and down and writing a vitamin by a number. And people leave confused, like they don't have an actionable plan. So "The Metabolic Code" tries to find where your metabolic roadblocks are. And I think in your case, we got you turned on to kind of that gut immune side and really dug into that with you. And, it was something that I think I remember our conversation and I think you were a little surprised that we were able to pick that up and really run with that and actually find some gold there, right? I mean, we were able to find some gold.

Yeah. And, to clarify, by the way, when you say gut, immune, brain, I actually have and I'm an open book, you guys, if you're listening. I'll put my full results in the Show notes. But, for gut, you had CRP, eosinophils, monocytes, vitamin D. For immune, you pulled in the albumin-globulin ratio, basophils, globulin, lymphocyte, neutrophil, the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio, and then red blood cells zinc. And then, for brain, you had homocysteine and B12. And then, I was kind of lit up like a Christmas tree on a few of those, but that That's just one example. And, we can keep on going here. I know this is going to rabbit hole quite a bit, this discussion. But so, yeah, gut-immune brain, we started diving into that almost right away all the way down to where I think basically based on some of these values, you were like, "You probably have some food sensitivities." And then, we did a really comprehensive workup with your wife. And man, oh man, do I ever.

I know. I got to review that. I thought, "Oh, I remember that." Yeah, no, for sure. And so, the whole purpose of this is all of us are reaching for that. I mean, look, I want the best healthspan I can have. I want longevity. I've got a big gym right behind me out of my studio here. I want to work out when I'm 80 years old and when I'm 85 years old. I love movement, but I find that a lot of people don't know where to start. And I'm not saying The Metabolic Code is that for everything. I love mitochondrial testing. I test for heavy metals. I look at all kinds of stuff. Metabolism of hormones. I mean, I'm, you know, as the chair at A4M, I gotta look at all this stuff. But the bottom line is, where do we get people started to where we can begin to move the big levers of health, meaning gut integrity, cortisol, did you lose your cortisol curve or not? Where is your insulin resistance at? Where is your inflammatory chemistry at? Are you metabolically inflamed? You know, obviously now the big term, metaflammation, leads to inflammaging. And then, hey, are your lipids, which I think are usually the tail wagging the dog, the lipids get bad when the insulin's bad, the cortisol's bad, you're exposed to things, your hormones are kind of trending low because you've either overtrained or you haven't trained, right? But still, these are the big things that if people don't correct them, and that's where peptides come in, they give us the next level of help, right, to get these big things to move. They're just gonna accelerate their aging. And I find a lot of times people are using more exotic things to try to help themselves before they work on the fundamentals of movement, movement, movement, movement, eating better, learning how to do that, find joy and purpose, and then yes, you need to work on your chemistry.

Yeah, and this metabolic code, we mentioned or you mentioned number 1, And number 2, the gut-immune brain and then the—

what was the third one? Yeah.

Yeah, the pancreas. But then, you've also got basically of the 5, there's a cardiopulmonary, neurovascular, the liver, lymph, kidney, and then the hormones, the testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. You mentioned a few things that are kind of like, I'm guessing just trends or things that you see pop up over and over again. Just real quick, what would you say are some of the biggies that you just see over and over again even in people— let's say me, I'm a high performer, I take care of myself, I'm not just eating out of a trash can and yet you see some things pop up. What are some patterns that you tend to see?

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, the big patterns I see are people that, one, are either under a lot of stress psychogenically or physically. So, people that train a lot, their gut tends to break down. So, then we start to see that gut-immune-brain barrier, the gut barrier's breaking down, a little bit of it in the resiliency side on the brain can be breaking down and therefore, their focus is starting to go away. But when you're under a lot of stress due to that, I start to see younger and younger people with lowered sex hormones. So, one of the big trends is that, hey, stress, lowered sex hormones. The other one is increased insulin, like, "Hey, I'm taking on too much carbs. I'm eating too many of the wrong foods and now I'm making bad actor lipids," right? So, when you think of cardiopulmonary neurovascular, when your insulin's up, your heart rate goes up. When your heart rate goes up, you're more sympathetic dominant and that neurovascular component HRV, heart rate recovery, resting heart rate becomes an issue to shift. So I see a lot of people that are pre-diabetic, glucose and insulin are off, and now their heart rate's like in the 70s. And then you have to remember, for every 4 points above 62 on your resting heart rate, you got about a 7 to 10% risk on a future cardiovascular event. Wow.

So, that's the first time I've heard that stat. So, for every 4 points above— 62. 62. Yeah. Okay, interesting.

Yeah. And, I think it's that part where people don't tie in their nervous system and the vagus nervous system and understanding the parasympathetic nervous system. And now, it's becoming in vogue, right? Like, people are using vagal tone stimulators and all that stuff. You know, it's about are you breathing deep? Do you take a deep breath? 'Cause if you don't, it's kind of showing you're in that sympathetic dominance. So, the trends for me are your body getting under a lot of stress, creating allostatic load, right? And the circuit breaker box in the brain breaks, and now you're not telling your testosterone to be produced, and now you're not regulating your glucose and insulin, and now you're not sleeping well. And as soon as you don't sleep well, Now, you start to throw off the whole circadian rhythm of all your hormones, right? And so, these are some of the patterns I see now when it's environmental burden like toxic metals, mercury, lead, arsenic, those kind of things. That's when things can get sideways in a lot of different directions, right? Because it affects all the enzyme substrates in your body. So, people can be— blood sugar problems with pesticides, right? Obviously with glyphosate, it creates problems in the gut. Mercury, nervous system issues, lead, bone, brain issues. So, but that's when I start to look at those kind of things, it starts to, all bets are off as to what the issue is. But if it's a natural progression of where your body's at, adrenal, thyroid, pancreas, gut, immune, brain, That's, I get under stress, the gut gets permeable, I start making more kind of inflammatory compounds in the brain, right? Yep. And, you know, one of the big things that we're now finding out is that, you know, when you're insulin resistant, you make more galectin-3. Galectin-3 starts to—

Galectin-3.

Galectin-3. So, this is a big one. This is massive for dementia and Parkinson's. We know that galectin-3 goes up in the brain. And when that's going up in the brain, it's because you've made too much lipopolysaccharide, which is what gets made in your gut, right? Gets made in your gut because of the breakdown of the microbiome. LPS crosses the blood-brain barrier, galectin-3 gets made, and now the inflammation bombs start taking off, destroying your neurons. And, for example, we know using something like— there's a biologic called TB006, it blocks galectin-3, symptoms of Parkinson's and dementia get better.

Is that a peptide, the TB006?

It's actually a biologic, so it's kind of not a peptide, it's more of an immunologic molecule. But, it's a very— so, for me, I look at people's chemistries not as a series of numbers, but as a slipstream. Their chemistry's in motion through time. What are the factors like stress, like insulin exposures, your gut being thrown off inflammatory? Now, you're making a lot of inflammatory compounds that lead to autoimmunity. Where are you moving based on the look of your metabolic code? And those 5 triads of adrenal, thyroid, pancreas, gut, immune, brain, cardiopulmonary, neurovascular, am I breathing deep? What's my CO2 like? What's my blood pressure like? What's my lipids like? Where's my iron and ferritin? And then, of course, liver, lymph, kidney, which I think oftentimes we forget about looking at the kidney as being incredibly important to try to help people. So, we're big on the— that's the triad of detox, right? Liver, lymph, kidney, but it's also, are you anemic? What's your iron? What's your ferritin? If your GFR or your kidney filtration is low, are you under heightened oxidative stress? What's the pH of your urine? And acidotic urine means you have excess hydrogen ions. You don't want that. Means you got oxidative stress.

Which I had, by the way, because again, you're not just testing blood, there's a questionnaire, there's some wearables. And, you told me, "Hey, go check your urine pH because you saw some indications that it might be low on the liver, lymph, kidney." And then, I tested and it was acidic. And then, we had a conversation about that. I don't remember if it was me and you or me and your wife Laura, but it turns out that you can make a case for hefty use of exogenous ketones, which are kind of a staple in my diet, especially 1,3-butandiol. As potentially causing that. So, just as an experiment, I cut the volume of particularly 1,3-butanediol that I was consuming and the pH became less acidic.

That's beautiful. I remember it was so funny because we had just had it hit early on that and I was being somewhat predictive for your gut and then the pH of your urine and you were kind of like, "Well, okay. Yeah, I'm going to check that out." And then, you checked it out and then you searched and found solution, 'cause there's no getting around an acidotic pH in your urine will damage your kidneys over time. That's why they give, I give this example, when you're getting ready to go on dialysis, right? So your kidneys have really been messing up for a while, you're probably a pre-diabetic and you haven't taken care of your insulin for a long time, men's triad 1, what the nephrologist does is gives you baking soda capsules. They give you baking soda capsules so that you can suspend the time until you actually need to start dialysis. Because when you alkalize the urine, well, your, your kidneys, it takes the pressure off the damage to them. But what— why are we waiting to teach people that they should try to keep that urine a little less acidic? Because You know, Ben, you drive around, man, you see how many dialysis centers are going up.

Oh yeah.

And it's like, it's like you could be taking mag, you could be doing chlorophyll, you could be eating more green foods. You know, there's a lot that you could be doing that is good for you. And, you know, it's gonna spare your kidneys, which I'm passionate about that because I watched my father go through dialysis.

I don't know if you've talked much with Dr. Greenberg, Alexander Greenberg, who was at A4M. You know, I've gotten to know him a little bit and he's, He's super knowledgeable when it comes to kidneys and especially when it comes to peptide solutions.

Oh yeah, absolutely. So he's big on using humanin, using TB500, BPC. I'm actually on a board with him. I know him really well. He's a brilliant guy, really brilliant physician on the peptide side. And we work together, actually collaborate on peptide design. And but yeah, there are some keen peptides for the kidneys that I think are essential. And small molecules, OSO-1, which otherwise known as ATX-304, is a small molecule, is not a peptide, but absolutely has got a lot of promise when you combine it with some of these peptides for really helping people that are in big trouble with their kidneys.

Yeah. Now, when you're talking about TB-006 or ATX as a biologic or a small molecule, obviously people aren't grabbing these from Costco. Um, what's the regulatory landscape look like as far as, right, getting educated about these things or even getting access to them?

Yeah, sure. So TB006 is, uh, it's under a Phase 2a trial, so people can absolutely enroll and legally get TB006, uh, and both for Parkinson's and for dementia. And Ben, if I showed you the data on the dementia cases. I'm talking about significant swings in their Mini Mental Status Exam numbers, like from being in the high 20s to going down into the teens, which basically, for those listening, that means people were starting to remember their name again and they can have conversations again and they can function again. And this is a very real benefit. And then on ATX-304, otherwise known as OS-01, compounding pharmacy use it, you can do that. PD Labs out of Austin, Texas is big on OS-01. I like OS-01 because it modulates mTOR and upregulates AMP kinase. So you're getting an increase in lean mass and you lose fat mass a bit. And, uh, and I found it to be— I mean, probably given it to a couple hundred people. I mean, people like being on it. The only thing about it is you got to be on it 6 weeks and then you take off 4 because you start gaining lean mass. And if you don't have tendon structure and strength— oh yeah, you could start blowing out a tendon, man. Like, all of a sudden you get an Achilles tear. So it's kind of like a 6-week-on, 4-week-off cycle for OSO-1. So, OSO-1 is fine from the regulatory side. You can get it, you can get it prescribed, no problem. And, I personally love it. And, being in my 60s and still wanting to maintain lean mass, I'm solidly in my 60s. I'm on my last half decade. I just am looking for things that help me to maintain lean mass because lean mass to me is the currency of longevity, man.

You got to have it. Oh, yeah. How would you compare that to something like follistatin?

Yeah, I think that's a little bit different. I like follistatin. I think it's great in terms of being able to maintain lean mass with it and gain lean mass. A little bit different of a mechanism because it's going off of AMP kinase, right? Instead of myostatin, it's kind of an AMP kinase activator. So, I like it because it's a It's not creating any excessive muscle stimulation directly like, "Hey, we're going to really jack up mTOR." In fact, it's modulating mTOR, but it's improving mitochondrial signaling because obviously, when you upregulate AMP kinase, here comes the PGC-1 alpha, which is fantastic for creating mitochondrial biogenesis and all those muscles. Yeah.

You mentioned— I know we're bouncing around a little bit here, but this is great. And, by the way, for those of you who are like, "Whatever." working out, on a commute. I'll take notes and I'll put all this stuff in the shownotes so you don't have to remember it all. For the lipopolysaccharide piece, a couple of things regarding that as it relates to gut permeability. One would be any peptides you favor, like one that I know is often discussed for this is KPV for lipopolysaccharide or leaky gut issues. And then, kind of related to that, you hear people talk about potential LPS contamination in the peptides themselves. I don't know if you have a take on that, but how do you approach the LPS issue specifically from a peptide and a safety standpoint?

Endotoxin can be a byproduct of making an injectable, right? That's what you're worried about. And, it really is dependent on the manufacturer of the peptide or compounding pharmacy using the appropriate filter to get rid of that endotoxin, one, So it's an expensive filter to do that. The second one, of course, is measuring it after the finished product. So I'm a big proponent, obviously being the chair of the International Peptide Society. I'm a big proponent of for human use, compounding pharmacy production, or if it's a— right now SS31 is a drug now, right? It's an FDA-approved drug. That's fine. I mean, that's going through the safety standards. So, that's where you have to watch on appropriate acquisition of peptides is circulating endotoxins is an issue, man. I mean, if it's not made appropriately, that's a risk and people can get really sick if they inject endotoxin. It's not a good thing.

Yeah. I've had it happen to some friends and frankly, they they bought the bargain bin peptides and they were injecting them and that happened.

That's exactly right. I mean, we warn about it all the time. I'm on my pulpit about it. It's like, look, these are not dietary supplements, especially when you're injecting them. This is a next order of seriousness when you're doing that. The lipopolysaccharide in the gut, I mean, I first started lecturing on it about 20 years ago and I couldn't get a lot of people to understand the issue that as the microbiome breaks down, and you release millions of molecules of lipopolysaccharide with every bacteria that dies, that lipopolysaccharide, if it's not being filtered, it's going to circulate, crosses the blood-brain barrier, gets into your systemic circulation, attaches to your heart and triggers inflammation in the heart and other vital organs and tissues. And I love KPV. I mean, I got to be honest with you, Ben Greenfield, KPV for me, One of my absolute favorite peptides. First of all, very small, right? 3 amino acids. It's a very small peptide, but its ability to regulate inflammatory signaling is phenomenal. So, I love that. And, the other one I like is lorazetide because lorazetide, when the gut is permeable and the gut gets permeable for a lot of reasons, medications will do it, stress is a big one, If you upregulate interleukin-6, you're gonna get a more permeable gut because it triggers the loss of your tight junctions. So, you know, you lose that epithelial barrier. And so I love lorazetide for the bringing the tight junction together, reducing zonulin, BPC for redoing the mucosal barrier, KPB for the counterregulation of the inflammation that's occurred, in the signaling of the epithelial cells and the immune cells in the gut.

Yeah. And, if we're specifically using these for gut support for KPV, lorazetide, and BPC, would you prefer oral administration or doesn't matter?

I like oral. Obviously, I'm a little jaded because I really believe in the liposome technology that we have.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I'm going to just say that out front. You know, I obviously have an opinion, but I know that people that are using it are saying when they chew that up and use it orally, they're getting better effects than other oral peptides. So if it's for the gut, if it's for the gut, oral will work fine.

Yeah. And you guys have KPV and BPC. Do you have lorazetide?

Uh, we use lorazetide, not as a chewable and not available through Metabolic Elite, but, uh, we have that on, uh, with PD Labs, uh, in Austin. And also with Strive Pharmacy. So, erazetides, I mean, my people that are really food sensitive like you, your test was amazing. We've got a— Yeah.

Some people tell me it's all the Ashkenazi Jew.

I don't know. Well, there's something to that, man. I mean, you're right.

There's something to that.

So, I mean, 500 micrograms of lorazetide twice a day, 30 minutes before a meal. I mean, I've just found I can get people over their kind of food sensitivities that they've developed and evolved over time. Yeah, obviously allergies as well. But, but yeah, it works great. And I love, I love BPC and KPV riding along with it. It's a beautiful trifecta for healing that base layer of what's going on in that gut lining.

Okay. I got a fun one for you. So, you mentioned sleep and circadian rhythmicity. Let's say I come to you, I sleep like shit, what are you doing?

The first thing I'm doing is talking to you about what your stress is like during the day because what happens is people treat sleep problems at night, which you do need to do that, but Insomnia is a disorder of hyperarousal of the HPA axis. So, your brain takes on too much stress, you're sympathetic dominant. So, love Cell Anc. Once we can get DSIP back, I thought delta sleep-inducing peptide was fantastic. But, the big thing that I do with people is I start to work on their nervous system. I want to understand where their heart rate's at. I want them doing some breathing exercises during the day. I want them to get up and move during the day. I want them to really work on dampening that stress response. And then, what I'll do in addition to, say, using peptides that are good for dampening the stress response, I'll give them something like relora, theanine, holy basil, something that's going to start to retrain their brain to not be so excitable. And then, when we go into the night, so one of the things that we've been playing with is a group out of Taiwan actually that makes a string of peptides that look like a protein. And, there are 15 peptides related to sleep, but when you look at them because they're all tied together, it's actually just a protein and there's a pepsin break between each of the peptides. So, when you put it in your stomach, breaks apart and you've got a pretty good delivery of peptides. I like using their sleep product, you know, and it's pretty amazing actually.

Is that something you guys are selling now? You got to get that from Taiwan.

No, you can get it now. Yeah, it's really neat. They've got a longevity one and they've got a sleep one that are fantastic. I mean, it's So, it actually is made— PD Labs carries it but it's over-the-counter. You can buy it. It's like their longevity powder and then their sleep powder are very interesting. I can get you the names of them and that stuff.

Ben Greenfield: I'll find it and throw some info in the shownotes. Yeah, the breathing thing, by the way, I'm glad you brought that up. It's kind of top of mind for me because I accidentally slept in this morning. Somebody sent me this lamp. It's called an OHM, O-H-M, and it has a little stone in the top of the lamp. When you remove the stone, the colors of the lamp go up and down in correlation to your breathing, almost like coherent breathing. And then, the stone vibrates because it's detecting your heart rate. And so, I just got this thing and I woke up at 4:30. I wanted an extra 30, 45 minutes or so in bed. So, I took the stone off the lamp and just kind of laid there on my side watching the lamp and breathing. And then, before I knew it, I wake up, I look across the bed, my wife's out of bed, it's like 6:15. And, this thing just shut my nervous system down into total relaxation. Again, just like coherent breath, like a 5.5-second in, 5.5-second out correlated to haptic cues.

That's fantastic, man. I might have to look that one up.

I don't know if you can buy it yet, but it's called the OhmLab, O-H-M.

I'm such a big believer in breathing because I cut my teeth on doing tai chi and qigong and all that for 15 years. I did breathwork and I just think it's something that most people just have lost. They're sympathetic dominant, they're shallow breathers, their diaphragm doesn't move. It's no wonder their carbon dioxide is horrible and they can't oxygenate, right? So, that's a biggie. Yeah. No, that's very cool. I mean, the other one I'm doing right now is just breathing in aerosolized hydrogen water, right? So, I'm bubbling hydrogen because I published on hydrogen water actually in a tier 1 referee journal because it was very interesting that you drink hydrogen water and then all of a sudden your mitochondrial biogenesis goes up.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And actually, actually, Tyler LeBaron just released a paper on this I think last month because I'm a huge fan. I use a hydrogen inhalation machine for half an hour every afternoon when I'm doing a little siesta from work. I use the H2 Inhale. And, Tyler just released a paper and he elucidated the newfound mechanism of action, which is actually the hydrogen acting on, I believe it's called the RISP protein complex in the mitochondria, essentially blocking that complex and short-term hampering electron transport chain activity, which results in these protein unfolding mechanisms that result in mitochondrial biogenesis. So essentially, hydrogen gas is almost like a hormetic stress that's inducing mitochondrial growth.

Ben Greenfield: Mort Nicholson was kind of one of the big forerunners. If you look up Nicholson and his papers, he was one of the early researchers that I ended up writing with. And I think it's One of the most interesting things you can do easily for being very interested in a longevity platform for yourself is breathing in hydrogen via that vehicle of aerosolized through water and getting that hydrogen up in your tissues. I think it's profound.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. You're put together, you're in good shape, you obviously practice what you preach, which I respect when I'm talking with somebody as somebody who studies this stuff. You've mentioned a lot of stuff, but in terms of what you found, I have to ask this question without offending you by saying as you get old, but in terms of keeping yourself put together, muscular, strong, you mentioned a couple of these peptides that act on AMPK pathways, et cetera, but what are some of your big wins in that department that you can share with men and women who especially want to fight things like sarcopenia with age.

Yeah, right on, man. I mean, I'm a huge advocate for keeping strong. I mean, I've made it a personal journey turning 65. I use OS-01 now as one of my faves. I'm big on using sermorelin because of my age now. I really like helping myself to kind of improve the secretagogue activity for growth hormone. I'm big on oxygenation. I'm big on protecting the brain because from the brain down, you get the signal for tissue anabolism, right? So, that's using that Synapsin. And actually, I mean, for me, I mean, I had a hormone replacement that I had to work with, right? But I moved away from doing subcutaneous testosterone. And recently, over the last, I don't know, 8 months, I actually put testosterone in that liposomal tablet technology and I just chew a physiologic— Oh, no way. Yeah, I do a physiologic amount of testosterone. So, I chew 7.5 milligrams of testosterone in the morning to match my morning circadian peak and then I let it drop till about 1:00 PM and then I chew that testosterone up again at about 1:00 PM. And actually, we've started to map this on a few, uh, people, and what we found was they're— it's 7.5 milligrams. Their testosterone went from, you know, pre-treatment— I got to a 36-year-old male with a 240 testosterone, right? Not good. He went to 1,100. So he chewed that 7.5 milligrams, went to an 1,100. Then the next— we draw blood every half hour. He dropped like he should have circadian-wise till about 1:00 PM, had him chew up 5 milligrams, bumped them back up to like 700, and then goes into the evening in a circadian rhythm for testosterone. And I think that's really helping me to maintain my lean mass. Just circadian, I really am big on how can I create circadian timing? Alertness in the morning. My evening, I don't work in the evening now. Once 7:00 PM hits, man, it's like I'm with family.

Yep, same. So, the circadian rhythmicity, if you look at that, basically you're kind of glancing at the natural, say, diurnal variation in testosterone that occurs with a normal circadian rhythm and you're mimicking that via an acute oral supplementation at a couple different periods during the day.

That's exactly what I'm doing and I'm doing it at physiologic levels. And so, I think it's pretty exciting. I mean, one of the other hats I wear is I love invention, right? I like to look for new peptides, new delivery methods. We're working on another delivery method that's pretty disruptive. But, I love it because it gives us a way to make it easier to match the way the body's meant to work. Work, which is we're a systems of systems, we're systems of countermeasures, and we want to keep our body in harmony as we're aging. That's the whole thing around Metabolic Code is keeping the signals of all those systems together and then utilizing peptides, nutrients, bioidentical hormones, small molecules, red light therapy, cold— where cold therapies were appropriate, hydrogen, How do we put together a program that doesn't make you crazy but gives you maximum results, right? Because in the end, you know, you want to feel good and you want to enjoy your family.

Yeah. Are you still lifting much?

I do. I lift. I lift. How it works for me is I do— I mean, honestly, I end up about 3 days a week and I try to have one day where I'm trying to push with a little bit a little more weight. And then, I have 2 other days where it's more about kind of hypertrophy and movement and making sure I'm doing functional movements as I'm aging. So, I don't have to worry about balance when I'm 75, right? I want to balance, I want to be on a BOSU ball, I want to be able to do a burpee, I want to be able to— not 100 of them, but I want to be able to do a burpee. And then, I'll switch that up. I'll go to a fully functional movement workout for 4 weeks. I do interval sprints out of my— because I got a fairly large driveway, so I do interval cadence sprints. And then, I'll do some just kind of light zone 2 run or a zone 2 walk with a weighted vest. That's kind of basically the stuff I do.

Yeah, I love it, especially the functional stuff with age. I mean, that's the one thing I'm always trying to dial in intentionally. Right now, I'm on a 4-week Landmine training program where almost everything is Landmine, Landmine thrusters and Landmine rotations, Landmine squat to thrust, probably the strongest my core has ever been. And, it's dirt cheap. I mean, if you already have a barbell, you buy a $40 apparatus from Amazon, and you just attach to your squat rack or the floor. That's right. You essentially have a landmine training center.

I love landmine training. My son, he works with me in the business, but he got his master's in human performance and was a graduate assistant at Texas Tech University and trained their Olympic athletes. He got me turned on to landmine. He comes home now and he's 26. I tell him, "Make sure you remember I'm 65 on these functional things you're making me do." Landmine was great and I felt strong on it. It was hard though starting out for me. That was a little bit of a challenge.

Yeah. It's like a kettlebell. I mean, anything unwieldy, asymmetrical, I think you get better benefits but there's a little bit steeper learning curve.

Yeah.

So, with the test, I mean, obviously, we talked about some peptides, we talked about some different compounding pharmacies, we talked about interpretation. Let's say somebody, and I'll put a link in the shownotes where you can get this test, let's say somebody gets the test, do you have people they talk to on the phone that make it so they don't have to just go to the four corners of the planet to hunt down where to get this stuff and how to interpret the test?

Right. There's a couple ways that they could do that. Lifetime has people that can do that. At their Miura centers, they do it. But Stealth Health is a telemedicine platform. It's launching in the US in a few weeks. They've got a full doctor backend that we've been educating. They're really sharp, that you could talk to somebody and really get a good interpretation. If somebody really was interested, we obviously have a 50-state telemedicine license in our clinic in Austin, Texas. And so, people could come to us and I've got great staff and obviously, they've been trained up because they're under me. Okay. So, that's an easy way to go. So, there's the Austin, Texas one's easy. Stealth Health is easy. And I love that one of the things that I do love about our work that we're doing with Life Time is the fact that, you know, we're going to have 50 clinics, everybody doing things the same way. The data we're going to get out of there as to what's working and how it's helping people is going to be incredible.

Right. You're going to have access to actual data.

Yeah. Because then we've got, you know, because we're using peptides and we're— they're getting a dietitian, they're getting training all in one spot, all supervised. And I'm pretty excited about that data set that we're going to— we're going to drive right now. It's pretty encouraging.

Yeah. Do you spend most of your time in Austin?

No, most of my time is in Fort Worth, Texas.

Okay.

I'm in Fort Worth on a lake, and— but I have my Austin, you know, practice there where I go down. But, you know, we got our medical director, nurse practitioners, all that there. So I usually end up doing, you know, telehealth with the medical providers. And then— but that's home base for me. I mean, If I have a home, my wife would probably say that I—

Yeah, my wife sometimes says that too. Is the clinic the same name in all the different locations?

The clinic for me is Laval Performance Health and that is in Austin. The clinic in Lifetimes are all Miora, M-I-O-R-A at Lifetime.

Okay, cool. So, if you guys are listening in, I'll link to all this stuff if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Laval. L-A-V-A-L-L-E. Jim kind of fits in the category of one of those cool guys I meet who's a real unicorn in the health space. And, as you can tell from this interview, just a deep wealth of knowledge on a lot of this stuff. So, good guy to keep track of. I highly doubt this will be Jim's only time on the podcast. So, look him up. Yeah. And, Jim, thanks so much for doing this, man.

Ben, I'll tell you what, man, every time I get the chance to talk with you, I look forward to it, man. It was my pleasure.

Sweet, dude. All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Jim Laval, signing out from bengreenfieldlife.com/laval. Have an incredible week.

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