[42] Enhancing Your Health & Longevity Through Peptides and Functional Medicine with Regan Archibald

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Welcome back to another episode of the Jack Canfield Podcast. I'm your host, Jack Canfield. And today I'm excited to introduce you to one of my new heroes and friends, Reagan Archibald, one of the leading peptide functional medicine and longevity specialists in the United States. And I first met Reagan when he spoke at the Transformational Leadership Council this past summer. And I was immediately drawn to his innovative approach to health and wellness. I was impressed by his knowledge and his insights. And along with my wife Inge, I began to work with him to enhance my own longevity practices. And we're, I think, just finishing up the fifth month of a six month protocol, which is working very well from what I can tell. And so I'm excited to have him share with you. And just so you know too, Reagan's the founder of the East West Health. It's a clinic in Midland, Utah, near Salt Lake City. And his award winning center has performed, get this, 8789 comprehensive blood labs and counting. These blood labs include 94 important markers that allow Reagan and his team to understand the root cause of health issues. And we're going to talk about that in some little bit of depth today, why that's so important. And his work is guided by his philosophy that your blood doesn't lie. And Reagan's also an international speaker. He's the author of nine books, including the Peptide Blueprint and Ageless Future, two different books. And he's the host of the Unreasonable Health podcast where he features thought leaders from various industries. And today, Reagan is going to be sharing actionable steps on how we can all improve our longevity and live healthier lives. So whether you're looking to revamp your health strategy or just curious about the latest and personalized healthcare, you're in for a real treat. And unless you're listening to this while you're out driving a car or walking or running, I suggest you get something to take notes with today because you're going to be learning a lot of valuable things, including practical things you can start doing right now. So, Reagan, it's great to have you here. I'm really looking forward to exploring how everyone listening can or viewing today actually can achieve a healthier, more vibrant and long, a longer life. Which that's why I was drawn to you, matey, as you know through your pioneering approaches. So first of all, just welcome.

Well, thanks for having me. And as I told you when we first met, I'm like, you're my hero. I read Chicken Soup for the Soul when I was like 15 in a small Idaho town. And here I am, I'm with Jack Canfield. It's like, you know, I'm always have to like, like blink twice when I see you. So this is a, it's a real honor to be with you.

Well, I feel the same way with you. So let's start out with some basics of health and longevity. Then we can delve deeper into your specific work. So what would you say are some simple first step everyday practices that you would recommend that people could begin taking today?

Well, one of my mentors, Dr. Checo Maeakawa, she used to say the fastest way to die is to stop breathing. And so probably the first thing, if you're driving, if you're, you know, sitting in a chair, if you're, you know, exercising, like, just focus on your breath because it lets us know that we're alive. And it's one of the, the best ways that you can cultivate inspiration in your life is just through the, the breath. And so I think breathing is very underrated, but the more we learn about it, as you breathe through your nose, you activate more nitric oxide production in your body and nitric oxide leads to more oxytocin, which creates more connection to other humans. Oxytocin is that beautiful neuropeptide that gets released when you hug somebody or that the six second kiss, you get this flood of oxytocin. But just by breathing, you can transform your thinking and transform your physiology.

Are you, I'm sure you're familiar with it. Are you a proponent of like, like I wear tape on my mouth at night, so I don't. I breathe through my nose because I used to wear a CPAP machine. I'm finding when I have the tape over my mouth, I don't need to do. And there's all the research in the book about breath and so forth. Any thoughts about that?

I love it. And you may be familiar with James Nestor and he did the experiment with the opposite where he taped his nose shut for about 30 days and looked at his biometric markers before the experiment and after. And I mean, he just turned into a metabolic dumpster fire for lack of better term, from just mouth breathing chronically. And so that's. That's right. If you can, you know, because sometimes our mouth, it does gape open or our tongue will obstruct the airways. And so positioning your head in the right way, taping your mouth closed can lead to much better sleeps. And, and yeah, and it can in some cases circumvent the need for cpap.

Yeah. So when I first learned about your work from Mike Koenigs, who's a mutual friend of both of ours, he told me, he said, jack, you have to do this. You got to go work with Reagan. He's going to do this blood. It's going to blow you away. And so I did that, and as I mentioned in the introduction, include 94 markers in the work and that you analyze. And I was curious about the significance of this. So last night I went online and I asked Google, how many markers does an average blood test measure? This is what it said. It said, a typical average blood test, often referred to as a CBC, complete blood count usually looks at around 10 markers, including levels of blood cells, white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets, hemoglobin, et cetera. However, depending on a specific test, a more comprehensive panel, like a comprehensive metabolic panel, could measure up to 14 different substances in the blood. You look at 94, and when I showed the workup you did on my blood to my general practitioner, he said he'd never seen such a complete workup in his entire medical career. He was very impressed. And you say that, you know, your blood doesn't lie. So I'd love you to break all this down for us. Why? So many talk about how that idea shapes the way you tailor healthcare for each specific individual you work with.

Well, you know, mine goes back to looking for answers in my own health journey. I grew up on a cattle ranch in Idaho, and I moved a lot of sprinkler pipes in the summer, and I would get, you know, planes would crop, dust the fields, and I would get a bunch of Roundup on me. Especially on the windy days, I would just get soaked in the stuff. And then I would go back to the farm, and I'd spray the river banks with Roundup. And the. The reps for Monsantos, for Roundup, they told us it was safe. No, no, no big deal. But in my undergraduate work, I started getting psoriasis and eczema, and then my hair was falling out. I started to get really inflamed. And all the doctors running those same 10, or in some cases, a comprehensive 14 markers, they said, everything looks great. You're fine. You're just stressed. And I was like, no cattle. Roping cows and branding cows and castrating cows is more stressful than school. I like school. There's something else going on. So it was a naturopathic doctor and an acupuncturist who ran the right labs. And that comprehensive panel actually showed that I had an autoimmune condition going on. And the ability for me to address the root cause based on the blood labs helped transform my health. And so we do the same for all of our clients because people come to us and they say, I just don't seem to be getting healthier, and I'm eating the same. You know, my lifestyle hasn't changed. I go to bed on time, I exercise the same way I've always exercised, but something's not right. And my doctor just wants to focus on cholesterol. And that seems to be kind of the story I hear over and over again. And so when we run the deeper labs, we start looking at markers that your doctor doesn't run. And it's not your doctor's fault. It's the way that the medical system is created. It's a. It's a model based on medical necessity. And it actually shouldn't even be called. In my opinion, it shouldn't be called a healthcare model because it's a crisis care model. So when you're. When you're sick enough, then those 14 markers will give a flag that will create a medical necessity so that you can bill the insurance for a more comprehensive test. But in most cases, if you don't have medical necessity, then the insurance company won't cover it. And so it all boils down to a financial decision. And so we just bypassed the insurance company and we just said, hey, we're going to run the comprehensive tests. And a test that would typically cost people, you know, 2,500 to 3,500 based on the area they're in, we've negotiated down to about $750. And so it's still an investment, but in my opinion, it's one of the most important investments somebody can make because you're actually learning before the event happens about what's going on in your health, because we'll find out one way or the other if we're in a crisis. And I'd rather find out before the symptoms show up. And that's. That's the goal of the comprehensive test.

When you look at 14 versus 94, it's a big jump. Could you talk just for a few moments about, like, what are some of the things you're testing for and why it's important to give us a sense of breadth of that?

Absolutely. Because, you know, looking at the white blood cells, looking at cardio metabolic pathways, I mean, those are important markers. But what we do is we go deeper and we'll look at different antibodies for the thyroid for example, like most people, they're really excited if they can get their doctor to run like a TSH or a thyroid stimulating hormone. And so they'll run TSH and T4 and they'll say, oh, those look good. But what we've discovered in the thyroid specific is there's 14 different markers that relate to the thyroid alone. And you can look at reverse T3, you can look at free T3, free T4, T3 uptake. Because the thyroid is kind of a canary in the coal mine. It's usually a secondary organ that's been impacted. And you can predict what's going on in the body just by seeing which of those thyroid markers are out of range. But unless you're at an endocrinologist, they're not going to run those markers because the treatment's the same. It's like, well, you've got hypo or hyperthyroid and here's your Synthroid and you're on your way. But what we've discovered is just by looking at thyroid differently, we can predict a lot of issues. We also look deeper into liver pathways. We look at different antioxidant production. We run all of the hormones, including testosterone, free testosterone, your luteinizing hormone, follicular stimulating hormone, progesterone, estradiol. And we kind of have a saying at East West Jack, if, if you don't think hormones are important, try going without them. But they don't get ran unless you're like begging your doctor, like, you know, there's got to be all this. And then the ranges is the other thing that we may want to talk about because, yeah, there's a whole, you know, as far as the markers, you know, we're looking at kidney cardiovascular markers and we're not just looking at cholesterol and triglycerides. Those are important markers. But we go deeper and look at your apolipoprotein A, your apolipoprotein B and the apolipoprotein B. It seems like all the researchers and people who are actually looking at the values that are the most critical for cardiovascular health, it's that apolipoprotein B marker that causes accumulation in our arteries. And if that marker gets too high and you let it, let it persist for too long, that seems to be where we end up with occlusions in our, in our arteries and where you need stents or you have a cardiovascular event and some cases are deadly. And so, so we were, you know, my question is, why don't we just run those standard because, you know, we've. Heart disease in the United States has been the number one killer since I got into medicine and got interested in it 25 years ago. And it's still the number one killer, even though we have more blood pressure medications, more statins, we've lowered cholesterol, we've learned how to manage blood pressure really well, but yet our incidences of heart disease is still really high. So we just want to go deeper so that we can help people live really long, robust lives with an incredible amount of energy. Energy and vitality.

Yeah, you mentioned ranges. And, you know, like, when you get blood test back, you know, you're either in a normal range or too high or too low. And most of the ranges in the test that I got back from you, my doctor looked at him, he said, wow, they're really wanting you to be super healthy because these are high ranges or low, you know, that are. They're better than the standard norms, which are kind of based on walking around almost healthy people, the average American. So that was impressive, too, to him and to me as well. And. And I've been doing, you know, the program, I said, for five months, and I do feel. I feel healthier, I feel more energetic, I get better sleep, I've lost weight. You know, all that good stuff. So, again, a lot of your protocols are based on peptides. And I have to admit, before I got to meet you, I didn't know what a peptide was. And I thought I was pretty sophisticated in terms of, you know, natural health and alternative health and all that. And I think. I think I read There was, like, 700 peptides, and we figured out how to synthesize 70 of them or something like that. Talk about peptides and how. What. How important it is in your. Your protocols, because it's obviously been something. We've been shooting ourselves up with these little peptides every day.

Yeah, I don't know anything about it, Jack. I just played a joke on you and Ingrid, and just tell me how it goes. Yeah, well, yeah, so I've been obsessed when it comes to health. I've always wondered, what's the fastest way that I can help my clients achieve optimal health with the least amount of effort and sacrifice as possible, but not compromising your future health. So you probably remember it in our first talk. I was like, I'm thinking about, Jack ten years from now. What are the most important things that we need to do today so that we're prepared for you to be healthier a decade from now? Now? And in that, just simple question, or what are the treatments that will. Will move the needle the most effectively? But they. They have to be targeted because, as you know, the. The older we get, there's a headwind called aging. And it doesn't play nice. You know, it kind of feels. Some days, feels like the universe just wants to recycle us after a certain, certain age. And so I said, well, how can we fight back a little bit? And that's when I started learning more about peptides. And so all peptides are these. They're just simple communication patterns in the body. So if you think of cell signaling like one of the gifts that you have, Jack, is your ability to communicate and to do it in a way that's disarming, that's warm, that helps open up people's hearts, is you speak very clearly, and that's what we want happening in. In our cells. So imagine your cells, if there's. If there's interferences between your cells being able to communicate, it's kind of like, you know, when you're trying to talk to somebody on the phone or on a zoom call and the Internet's glitching, or you don't have good cell service, that's what happens is we have these toxic accumulation in our cells, and it's one of the things that causes aging. And so what peptides are, is they're messengers that our cells send out to communicate with each other. And when. When you have these RNA transcription factors, they can go and land on the surface of the cell, and it's like turning a light switch on. So imagine you walk into a house. It's completely dark, and the light is just a form of communication. And so you turn on all the light switches, and suddenly you can roam around the house, and everything is a little easier to navigate. And that's all peptides do, because over the course of time, we have what we call the epic accumulations. And these epic accumulations cause our peptide pathways to get turned off. And so we look at your blood labs and we say, okay, which lab markers in Jack's labs or whoever we're running, which. What switches do we need to turn on? And that's where you'll see. Your peptide protocols will keep you on the same peptides 30 to 60 days. And then we shift and cycle new peptides in so that we can work on new pathways. Because once the light switches are turned on, the thing I love about peptides is it stays on. So you keep that communication and that harmony between what's called cell signaling, that stays Optimized. And then what you notice is you start feeling a lot better quicker. And it doesn't require a whole, you know, we try to bypass the, the willpower in, you know, effect because, you know, if someone craves sugar or if they're prone to overeat or, or drink too much, there's great things we can do by turning on pathways that, that don't really cause you to lean towards some of the behaviors that can be more destructive when it comes to your health.

You know, it's funny, my wife Ingo used to be, she used to love sugar and now that we're on the peptides, she finds that she doesn't want it. But she actually got mad about it. She got mad about it. She said, I missed my craving for sugar, she's not eating it. But there was this secondary psychological thing going on which I just cracked me up to no end. That's interesting how that works. I didn't understand. I mean, I, I understood it a little bit, but that's helpful what you just shared. Wow. Okay, so let's talk about you're a functional medicine person as well. And you combine what's called traditional, functional, modern medicine and east west stuff. You know, I know there's acupuncture involved for some of the people you work with and so forth. Talk about what functional medicine is for starters, because a lot of people don't know that. And talk about how you integrate all these things into your, in your practice.

Yeah, well, so functional medicine. Jeffrey Bland, I'll give him a shout out. Just a phenomenal doctor, a couple decades ago kind of coined the term functional medicine because if you think of what the word function means, it's the ability to perform an action. And so if you have optimal function in your body, then the, you know, the argument is, well, then you have optimal health if you can, you know, all, all, all we're trying to do is create better functionality in every system in the body. But a functional medicine approach, what we do is, is we go back in time and we look at the root cause. And the school I went to was founded by Earl Bakken and he was the inventor the, the pacemaker. He founded a company called Medtronics and massive company. But he realized that there's some wisdom in looking at the body completely differently and taking action before the body started to break down and function. But you can't do that if you're in a disease based model. And so functional medicine is a branch of medicine that analyzes each of the, what we call the five core pillars of health. So we look at gut health, and that's where the stool test is everybody's favorite. We send you a kit in the mail, you get a send in your stool sample, and then that allows us to see how the bacteria is in your gut. And if you're. If you have enough healthy bacteria versus maybe what we'd call pathogenic bacteria, or if there's yeast or parasites, or if you're producing the right enzymes to break down proteins and to get energy from your food. It's a. One of the hallmarks of aging is this loss of proteostasis and dysbiosis. Or dysbiosis just means, like, gut imbalance.

So.

So just by doing a functional medicine analysis, you know, from a gut perspective, that opens up so many different doors and avenues to help people improve their energy, their vitality, and to, you know, unless people love. If you love being bloated and having gas all the time, then don't do this test. But. But if you want to get down to the root cause of it, then it's really hard to do it without the right tests. And so the other pillar of health that we look at is brain health. And the brain is. Is a fascinating organ because not only does it process pain in the body, it processes a lot of the emotions, but from a cognitive perspective and the ability to focus, the ability to, you know, remember somebody's name, even the ability to, you know, perform complex problem solving, which is actually really important. Especially the older we get, our brains can actually. Your brain, actually, the older you get, the better it can perform. And the problem is we've. Our brains have so much accumulation, and what we found is there's infections that can get in the brain, there's heavy metals that can impact the brain, and then there's also some atrophy that takes place because we live in a world that's so easy to be distracted by the social media feeds and the phones. And. And so we have this digital dementia issue that's going on, so people end up with these dopamine deficiencies. So analyzing the brain, you can see markers in the blood labs, and you can actually see markers in the gut that reflect the health of the brain. And then one of the more advanced things that we'll do is we'll send people in for a brain mri. And so we can actually see how the circulation is in the brain. And if there's parts of the brain that aren't functioning properly or even through an electroencephalogram, which, when I First did my electroencephalogram. I could see areas of the brain where I'd had my worst concussions, and one of them was right here. And it was fascinating to see just the lack of transmission, of electricity in the brain. So we look at the gut, the brain. Hormones are another pillar of health. And hormones are, you know, I think a lot of people have recognized the value of it. I've. I've had people tell me it's miraculous. You know, when you get the hormones back, you start to feel this level of vitality that you are missing. And it's. It is really a magical experience. But if you want the hormones to continually work and to be optimized to, then there's other pathways that we look at beyond just what's in the blood. We'll do a salivary test. There's another urine test called the Dutch test. And so these are all functional medicine tests that allow us to go deeper and to leave no stone unturned. Even in the gut test, there's a pathway called beta glucuronidase. And if that pathway is underutilized or underperforming, a lot of people get put on either testosterone or estrogen or progesterone, and the gut just doesn't process the hormones properly. And so they can have really adverse responses to hormones. And they basically almost, you know, they get so turned off by the experience they had from it because their body wasn't ready to receive the treatment because the functional medicine approach wasn't applied. And so I love hormones when they're done properly. So that's one of the pillars. The other pillar of health, which probably won't surprise many of you, is detoxification and nutrition. You know, food is. Is medicine. And, you know, what we found is that there's not one diet that fits all. I think I read somewhere that there's like almost 1500 new books on diets and nutrition that come out every year. And so you'll find there's a lot of discrepancy in the functional medicine world. And so what we've done as a community is we've just decided that we're going to personalize it based on what the biology wants and needs. And so it removes a lot of the dogma that can come around food, because you've. You've experienced it in your community as well as some people are, you know, they're very attached to a certain way of eating. And I do respect that if it's for religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs, but if it's from Just a straight physiological belief. Then we're going to look at the labs and in functional medicine, we'll apply what's needed based on the deficiencies that show up in the labs. And then detoxification is part of that pillar. We found that it's not just sending people into a massive detoxification process. What ends up happening is a lot of people come out of those, they feel better, but they're depleted. And so you need energy to properly detox. And so we work on the mitochondrial pathways as we're working on the detoxification. And one of the coolest, I'll just call it an innovation, is some of my friends, they started analyzing the way that mushrooms would go and clean up an oil spill. And you know, if you go into area where oil is washed up on the banks and all of the, you know, the, the life is just depleted and there's oil and toxicity in the soil. You can plant mushrooms there. And then within a matter of just a couple of months, those mushrooms have transformed the toxins from the petroleum and now you have fertile soil. And so they said, well, if mushrooms can do that for the earth, I bet they could do it for the human body. And there's, there's so many cool things on mushrooms. I mean, we could talk for a couple hours on that. But all kinds of mushrooms, by the way, I'm a, I'm a big fan of all of them. But, but the, the detoxification process using some of these short chain and medium chain carbon bonds is one of the things that we continually do throughout the course of people's work with us is just detoxification and figuring out from a genetic perspective what those pathways look like that are most compromised. So many people are maybe familiar with like MTHFR or Com T, but we want to go even deeper than that. And then, and then the final pathway is just exercise and fitness and it's, you know, you just can't out eat, you can out hormone, you can't out peptide. A sedentary lifestyle, movements, healing. And so we have very specific criteria. You're Familiar with my Fitness 58H100 category. Dan Sullivan came to me and he's like, all right, Reagan, when I'm 100, he wants to live to be 156. And so I'm like, I'll do everything I can to help you get there, but there's no promises. You know, no one's ever done it, actually. Well, no one. People have claimed to be lived at longer than that. And, you know, if you take the Old Testament literally, then. Yes, you can argue with me that people have. But so far, we don't know of anyone that has made it on record. Official records.

I think I saw someone the other day, 114, and they said they were the oldest person that was living at the time. So. Yeah, I'm curious about. I want you to go back to digital dementia and talk about that for a moment. That's fascinating to me because you were talking about things in the brain, almost like pollutants or something, and I was thinking about how does too much cell phone digital playing or whatever create that or can you unpack that a little bit?

Well, think about a conversation you've. You've had with somebody and they're. They're looking at their phone as they're talking to you. And you think about how much of that communication that you're. You're attempting to have because of the lack of attention. Because attention's like our, you know, that's. That's the, the biggest resource that humans. That's the. Actually, your attention is what drives your energy. And I think health is directly proportional to the amount of energy that you can generate. And if your attention is. Is pulled on someone else's agenda. I'm not saying, like, all social media is bad. I'm not, I'm not in that camp. But. But when you're fed with so many different flashes of new knowledge and insights, and even if it's really inspirational, if you don't go deep on it, your brain just is learning things at a superficial level. And so what we've learned is you can't. You lose the ability. It's called acetylcholine. And acetylcholine is one of the neurotransmitters that comes when you've really deliberated around something like. Like what's the book you've read more than any other book, Jack?

Me? I don't know. I probably think and grow rich a few times. And the Bible, when I was younger and more, I was more into being a devout Christian at that time than I am now. But yeah, that kind of thing.

Yeah. So if you think about, you know, think and grow Rich is. It's powerful because you're experiencing it with your whole body as you're reading it. And, and the Bible can be like that, you know, and, you know, and you can put yourself in more of a meditative state. Like the Dow Te Ching is a book that I probably read, I don't know, 400 times, but it's Verses and it's. And I just throw that number out there because I pick it up all the time, and I have for 25 years, you know, but it's like. But you. You sit and you concentrate on that and. And that's the real pathway that. That allows you to build acetylcholine. But what's happening in the digital world with all these flashes and social media is we just learn little bits of things. And so then our cognitive bias kicks in and we just. We just pick up what we want to pick up, and we just, like, we just, you know, we get this. This confirmation that, yes, I know everything and what I know is the truth, but we're never forced to really think about our thoughts and never forced to, like, really layer in some deeper levels of understanding and learning. And so what the result is is digital dementia, because we're just looking for the instant dopamine hit.

That's interesting. I know one of my best friends is a tai chi teacher and a qigong teacher, and he studied the Dow Te Ching, like you, many, many times. And he'll read a. A verse and he'll contemplate on that for a week. Then he'll come and tell me, I got some new insight into this verse. You know, like, so it is, it's. And I often talk to people about reading a book versus watching a movie. When you read the book, you're having a conversation with the author, in a sense, you can stop and think about it for a moment, whereas the movie just keeps you moving along. Not that it's a bad thing, because I love watching movies, but I think the idea of the building this. You look at all the monks, the Japanese with the coans, the Zen Buddhists, etcetera, You're forced to reflect, to think, to contemplate. You know, meditation used to be called contemplation. And I never thought about the effect on the brain the way you just described it. That's really quite cool.

That's it. All right. Yeah.

So I know that I'm assuming you're. You're, from your perspective, you see a lot of challenges in today's healthcare practices. You talked about that, in a sense, that there's a system. It's somewhat shallow in some ways, and it's somewhat anti, I think, health in many ways. But when you think about looking at the healthcare practices of the general public, our hospital system, et cetera, when it comes to managing longevity and chronic illnesses. What's your perspective on all that?

Well, I think it's a system that's heroic. Like, if we just look at.

You.

Know, if you have a crisis, you break an arm, you are in a severe automobile accident, you're in a coma. Like there's, there's no better place to be than in Western medicine. The advancements that they've made there incredibly life saving. But if you're looking for solutions when it comes to health, or if you have a chronic disease, which, you know, the majority of people who really need the help are they're trying to treat chronic disease with acute care medicine. And so you think about when Western medicine, if you just look at the origins of it, there's a report called the Flexner Report, and John D. Rockefeller, I think, hopefully everyone's heard of him, he's very historic because not only did he dominate the petroleum industry, but he also, he sought out and he said, well, I want to make chemical medicine, or what we know of as allopathic medicine. I want that to be the dominant medicine because he had the inlays for the materials to supply the medical needs of people in the United States and people in the world. And so he hired a Dr. Flexner to write a report that basically it, it slandered anybody that didn't practice allopathic medicine at the time. And they said, any of the holistic medical schools, this is when homeopathy, herbal medicine, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic care was not really big even, you know, this was like 1905 when he released it, but it was starting, it was called bone setting. It's actually an Eastern medical tradition. And, and so what happened is anyone who didn't practice that medicine, the propaganda out and it said they're considered quacks. And so we removed this, this layer of, you know, kind of a. More of a comprehensive medical approach when it comes to health, and replaced it with the crisis care model. And that's where they started rolling out different, you know, chemical agents and looking at the body as if you just treat the pathogen, for example. The pathogen is the issue, not the terrain. And that's. That was the big argument for a long time. And then you fast forward into World War II and the introduction of antibiotics probably saved more lives because infections kill more people than the guns or the swords or anything in battle. And having access to antibiotics just in time is probably what one of the big things that allowed us to win World War II, for example. But, but then everybody became very. They said, John D. Rockefeller was right. The Flexor Report was this is the medicine that we need. And then when Steroids came on the scene and you could just suppress any kind of inflammation in the body and you could walk in and be in pain and then take a steroid and be out of pain. We just thought we've solved all the world's problems when it came to health. And then we over prescribed antibiotics and everybody knows what's happened with that route. And then we've used steroids to the point where we're causing diabetic comas and we're causing people to have bone that are brittle and osteoporotic. And so I think today what's happened is we've just tried to create stronger and stronger biologic agents, stronger and stronger drugs that have a higher and higher price tag. And the end result has been an unfortunate drop in function in the United States. I mean, we consume more drugs as a population. We consume almost three times more drugs on average than anyone else in the country. And we're operated on twice as much as anyone else. And maybe that would be great if we said, well, our life expectancy must be better, but we typically end up around 49 or 50 on the list and we spend three to four times more money on healthcare than anyone else. So I think it's a big crisis. But, but after 2020, people are waking up. And so the medicine that we practiced, that was considered somewhat taboo, you know, we were doing stem cells, peptides, you know, all kinds of regenerative medicine, you know, for 14 years. And we had a lot of, you know, there's a lot of criticism and a lot of people, they were questioning what we were doing. And I spent a lot of time, luckily I sat on the medical board for the state of Utah for about seven years. And so I, I had a lot of data that I could bring up to them. And everything changed after 2020 is about 2022 when we looked back and we said, man, maybe, you know, maybe the vaccine wasn't exactly what we need to do and maybe the government's intervention, we don't really like to be told what to do when it comes to our health. And that's where medical freedom is such a, it's such a gift and it's a powerful thing we have here. But we took it for granted because, and that's part of the issue of being in a, in a free market system is the best marketer wins. And I can tell you, John D. Rockefeller did a brilliant job of it. I mean, he's just a very smart businessman. But we're still trying to recover from 100 years ago, that philosophy.

Well, you know, I, I've been looking and thinking a lot about greed lately and, and the greed which is based on fear. I don't have enough, so I gotta have more. And, but that, it shows up obviously in the medical world, pharmaceuticals, and, but in the oil industry. I'm watching a TV show right now called Landman, and it's all about the oil industry and. Fascinating. And, but it's in another thing. I just, this is a little off purpose, but it relates in a sense. I, I watched the documentary the other day about unidentified flying objects and, and how they interviewed several people, you know, people you'd probably could have great conversations with, like at the Stanford Medical center, who, who say they can't deny that they've actually worked on extraterrestrial beings. They say, I can't talk about that. I've signed papers. If I talk about that, I'll go to jail. But, you know, in the way they're answering, they're saying, yes, I have, but I can't talk about it. And what was fascinating is that several times they tried to pass in Congress bills that would force the Pentagon to release the information they have about this, because they don't. And if they passed a bill, they'd have to. And the thing that always gets in the way of the bill passing are two senators and congressmen, one from Ohio, one from another state, where when these aliens landed and we were able to get part of their, their craft, they went to certain aerospace industries to try to reverse engineer them. And the biggest fear they have right now is if all this gets out into the open, all the aerospace people that didn't get them are going to sue the government for not getting access to that. So it's all economic. It's just like, we can't afford that many lawsuits, you know, and you've got, you know, they say, well, with Christians, it'll screw up their belief system because no, I'm a born again fundamentalist who said, they're not going to screw up my belief at all. It's totally economic. The congressman from Kentucky. So it just shows up in so many places. It's, it's unfortunate, but, you know, it's, it's. I always believe something like what I think it was Gandhi said, you know, the truth will come out in the end. You know, it's a long line of history, but the truth will eventually make itself known, which it's doing, you know, through your work and other people's work, and it'll be interesting to see what our good friend Mr. Kennedy does now that he's supposedly going to be running, you know, because he's got a lot of views, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't, but certainly going to provide a little more openness for this kind of discussion than I think we've had before.

Yeah, well, and, and I'll be on be talking about peptides on Make America Healthy Again docu series actually Thursday. I'll be in there all day. So should be very interesting because you know, he, he's somebody who uses peptides, you see. You know, he's, he's a pretty buff 70 year old. You gotta give him that. You know, from a fitness perspective. Pretty, pretty good human to run our Health and Human Services. I think it's good, good role model there.

Yeah. Be fascinating. A couple last things. Talk about stem cells for just a moment. I'm on some. I took some stem cells from your clinic when I was there and I think they're working. From what I can tell, I definitely feel different and better. But talk about that. A lot of people hear about it, but I don't think many people know exactly what they do.

Yeah. So the stem cells that we use are from umbilical cords. And that's one thing that happened In Utah in 24 we passed a bill in Senate Bill 198 that gave clinics like mine the ability to utilize umbilical cord stem cells or perinatal tissue. As long as we're not making claims that we're treating disease and things like that, and even if they're not FDA approved. And the great thing about that is if you think about the raw material that allowed us to form in our mother's womb, it's all in that, you know, the umbilical cord, the placental tissue, and even to have a placenta to grow to the size that it does in a small amount of time, the, the mother's body produces, you know, billions of stem cells. And these stem cells, you know, once the baby's born, it's like, well, what do we do with it? Well, usually we just throw away what I think is probably the, some of the most powerful medicine on the planet. And so what we've done is we've worked with scientists for over a decade now. And I got into it because I was in a snowboarding accident. You know, I had a choice. I could hit a tree or hit a skier, and I love trees. So I took out the skier and I had a pretty, pretty severe rotator cuff injury. That, you know, required a surgery. I had a full thickness tear and I broke my clavicle, my scapula. And I just decided, I'm going to try some stem cells. And there was no one in Utah doing it. So I worked with doctors out of Texas and we injected my shoulder and didn't notice anything for three days. But then that third night, I went to bed, I slept through the night and I woke up and I hadn't slept in six months from the pain because weird at night trying to get comfortable with shoulder pain and it started to feel better. And then by the three month mark, it was this, if I didn't have the accident. And so then I started noticing my clients who had, you know, osteoarthritis in their knees, or clients who either they were denied the ability to get surgery based on, you know, health history or age. And then I said, well, we could try stem cells. And we noticed that about 50% of them got really good results. The other 50% didn't really see the difference that they were looking for. And so we just started working with the lab and I actually started testing the stem cells independently. And so I would take tissue samples, I'd take them to the University of Utah, I'd run it through flow cytometry. Then I could see what labs were producing the highest quantity of live stem cells so I could test for my own viability instead of relying on them because it was a new industry 10 years ago. And, and so now what we're seeing is the stem cells that we used on my shoulder, for example. We were really happy to get a million lifestyles post thaw. Now we can get about 50 times that amount and we get better results. And so now our, depending on the condition we're treating, we can get closer to like an 80 to 90% improvement in function and outcome from osteoarthritis or pain conditions. And we've seen dramatic improvements just from putting that natural product in. And so the stem cells, they're basically signaling cells and they're turning on all your body's own healing properties. We talked about how peptides are these signaling factories. Stem cells are like peptides times a thousand or a million. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's an agent that will go and find the areas of the body that are damaged. And that's why I do stem cell. I'll do IVs, I'll treat my brain every year because I want to make sure that I'm staying ahead of any disease. Process or anything that's malfunctioning. And, and we have great diagnostic tests, but sometimes things get missed. And that's where stem cells come in because they're the intelligent factors that are recruited by any kind of inflammatory signals in the body. And so they'll, they'll hone into areas that have been damaged and they'll start bringing in all the, the growth factors and cytokines and, and they'll help rejuvenate what's been lost.

That's great. I remember because I did some stem cells when I was there and, and opted to do the brain one. And I found it fascinating because a lot of times people will tell you, well, the stem cells can't get into the brain, it's too hard and all that. But you had us leaning backwards and at the bottom, at the top of the nasal passage, which, when you're upside down is the bottom and it's ingesting into the nose and it sits there for a while and I give. It absorbs through that tissue into the brain, which I thought was pretty cool because I had been doing essential oils for a number of years. And when you inhale them, it goes up into the top of the brain and they say within 20 seconds it starts to move into the brain from the top of the nasal passage. So I thought, oh, that's cool. It works the other way as well. So, yeah, that was very interesting. Well, we're running out of time here. A couple. I've got about four questions which I'll talk to you in Mexico about. But anyway, great. As you're looking forward at this whole world of longevity, do you see other new technologies and fields that are evolving that you're excited about employing at some point in time that you're looking at?

Man. Well, just even on the peptide front, peptides like GLP1s, tirzepatide, semaglutide have been really popular. There's a new one that's coming out and it's called NA931. And so it, it's very exciting because it adds in IGF1. And that's one thing that we've been big proponents of, is you don't want to lose muscle mass. And especially as we age, that's your number one most important organ in your body is muscle. And so now we're seeing the clinical research is very favorable. The other thing that we're seeing very positive impacts from is the, the cord plasma. And so we call it plasma renewal. It's like the oil change for your Blood. And we just started doing that a year ago, almost a year ago. As of today. I was, you know, I'm always the first one to try the experiments, Jack. So if, if I die, don't do what Reagan did. Just say, what, what did Reagan take? And I'm never going to touch that stuff. But I've, I do it all first, even the intranasal stem cells. You know, I did it for my adhd, for my concussions, and I was at a stem cell conference and they were saying, here's how we've been able to bypass the blood brain barrier to get stem cells into the brain. And so with Arnold Kaplan, I was able to get an inside scoop. But, but yeah, that, that's, I think what we're doing with, on the peptide front and with stem cells. We're even working with Dr. Moviglia and he's, he's got a clinic down in Argentina and they're doing, they're using Yamanaka's clocks and taking your own, their, you know, like a skin sample or a fat sample, and they're taking your own stem cells and inducing them back to their primordial state so they can make them young. And Japanese scientists won the Nobel Prize Prize for, for this discovery. And then what they'll do is they'll induce it down a specific lineage. And the, the technology is just phenomenal. And so I hope that we'll have the first clinical trial in Utah this year. And so we're working very diligently on doing that. So, yeah, so those are some of the, the things I'm very excited about.

Very cool. All right, so before we run out of time, I want you to tell people how they can find out more about you. Your work, your books, your podcasts, where, where should they go? Websites, that kind of thing.

If they go to just agelessfuture.com they can learn all about what we do. And there's a free download there can get, get my Peptide blueprint. They'll get access to the Fitness 50 at H100. And for any of your listeners who do want to get blood work done and performed and meet with one of our functional medicine doctors, then they can just go to agelessfuture.com jc for Jack Canfield. So we created a special offer for them and they'll find it on the website they there.

Oh, great. Well, thank you for that. Appreciate that. So, well, thanks for joining us. I look forward to spending more time with you in a bottom a week in Mexico because this has piqued my Curiosity more than I thought it would, for new things that you're doing and questions I have. And what I love about you, in addition to how intelligent you are and how well educated and informed you are, is how calmly you talk about it all. I mean, in a sense, like, you know, I. I went through kind of a rebellious stage when I found out how bad some of the medical stuff was happening in my life. And you just have maintained a nice, reasonable approach to the whole thing, which I really admire. So thank you for that as well. Appreciate that. And I encourage everyone, literally. My wife and I have been doing, working with Reagan, and one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast was to share that work with you all who are listening, because I think it's if. If you can find out more about it, there's staff there that'll answer all your questions and work with you to get a test if you want, and set up some protocols and so forth. For me, it's been life changing, and for the friends of mine who have been exposed to this, who've done it as well. So it's like when I find something valuable, I want to share with everybody. And Reagan and the work that everyone's doing at east west is one of those. So thanks again, Regan.

Thanks for having me, Jack. It's been an honor.

My pleasure. And thanks to all of you who've joined us today. If you found this conversation valuable, please let your friends and family know about the Jack Canfield podcast and this particular episode. And make sure to tune in next time, where I'll once again be talking with a transformational leader about how to be more healthy, happy, conscious, successful, and live a truly fulfilled life. Until then, start putting into practice some of the things Reagan suggested. Talked about breathing, getting some strength training in there and all that good stuff. I talked about the five pillars, and there's all things you can do there. And again, reach out to him and his group. I think they're totally cutting edge. All right, everybody, take care.