How To Get Your Own Vitamin and NAD IV's, The Truth About Umbilical Stem Cells, Peptide Injections

Hey, what's up? If you like to stick needles in your arms, this podcast today is for you. No, well, I'm actually not totally joking.

I'll let the podcast guest explain, but I honestly think this is one of the better podcast episodes I've released in quite some time. I personally was on the edge of my seat. Actually wasn't sitting down. I was kind of on a stool thing, but I was on the edge of my stand up stool thing. So anyways, I'll let you be enchanted by this guest the same way that I was. His name is Dr. Craig Conover. Today's show is brought to you by something that you may not be aware of, but that exists over. Well, I'll tell you where it exists in just a moment, but it's got pretty much anything that could ever be used to heal one's joints or to allow one's muscles to recover more quickly. We're talking cherry juice, ginger, turmeric, white willow bark, hyaluronic acid, which is one of the main components of synovial fluid. Boswellia, which is also known by its more popular name, frankincense. They gave it to baby Jesus. It must be good enough to put into this stuff. And even Cetyl Myristolia, which a lot of people don't know about, but it's a naturally occurring fatty acid that has some really fantastic research on it, particularly regarding knee pain. So really good blend. It's got a ton of enzymes in there to help to break down fibrinogen, the type of things that cause soreness. And it's called Kion Flex. Kion Flex. I'm gonna give you a 10 discount on this stuff. You get it over at getkion.com that's getk I-O-N.com you just go to getkion.com and the discount code that you can use. Drumroll, please. Is Ben Flex 10. That's Ben Flex tenetkion.com this podcast is also brought to you by. This is when I adopt my sexy, sultry, radio announcer voice. Seared chicken and honey mustard sauce with roasted sweet potatoes, chipotle black bean quesadillas with caramelized onions, and even a zesty chickpea and kale saute with tzatziki and a sunny side up egg. These and many other fantastic recipes are able to be delivered to your house every week by this company called Blue Apron. And the cool thing about it is you don't have to know how to cook, but you can learn how to cook. As these recipes get sent to you because they come with cards, they come with ingredients. My children make them. My kids have actually learned a ton of cookery techniques using these fantastic Blue Apron meals that just ARR at your house. They even have different things going on, for example, like a Bob's Burgers inspired chef designed recipe and a Whole 30 approved meal plan. And it's just super duper convenient. It allows you to skip a lot of meal planning and shopping and just get straight to cooking. So what they're doing is they're going to give everybody who's listening in right now a chance to get your first three meals free. Not a chance to. They're just going to give you your first three meals free. You go to blueapron.com Ben that's Blue Apron.

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I have a Master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and Human Nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan Agoji and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. Combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here and I don't think it's any secret that for quite some time I've been doing a weekly, admittedly self administered, although that's not necessarily advised, push iv. A push IV with this potent cocktail of vitamins and glutathione. And I've also talked about how I actually have been doing a weekly NAD IV as well. That's that really powerful anti aging molecule I've discussed before on the show, but it's something that I inject. And while you may not be quite willing to hunt down a vein in your arm and administer your own IV, which again, I do not recommend the doctor who I actually get these IVs from and who also has people fly in from all over the globe to see him, who also trains practitioners in this whole idea of how to implement this style of what he calls performance medicine in his practice. Well, he's finally making his first appearance on my podcast because I've gotten a lot of questions from my listeners about IVs and stem cell infusions and NAD, all of which this guy is an expert in. He's going to blow your mind. He has a very broad range of knowledge on these topics. There's just a few select people who I tend to either text or Facebook message back and forth with about a lot of these health cost concepts. And he's one of them. He's one of the guys who I definitely listen to when it comes to health advice and specifically some of the cutting edge medical concepts that can help us to live longer and to perform a lot better. So his name is Dr. Craig Conover and he's a founder of what's called Conover Wellness in Charleston, South Carolina. He's been doing this for almost two decades. He does what is called, like I mentioned, performance medicine. Everything is science driven, everything is tested. And he's also the founder and creator of fast, Vitamin IV and these NAD protocols, as well as a program that we'll talk about today called Brain Refuel. He works with Navy Seals, NFL, PGA, NHL, Fortune 100 execs, a whole bunch of celebrities and TV personalities who we actually aren't able to talk about on this show due to patient physician confidentiality. But regardless, I happen to know that he's working with some pretty high level folks. So he is definitely the man when it comes to this stuff. So, Dr. Con Iver, welcome to the show.

Dude. Thank you so much, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, and I just threw out a term that I don't think a lot of people are familiar with. So I figured that's a pretty good jumping off point for us. And that's this idea of performance medicine. So what is performance medicine? And also I'm curious how you got into it just being a physician. How did you kind of get down the road of doing what you do now?

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. So I'm family medicine trained, so after my residency I did something unique in that I wanted to practice medicine my own way, so opened my own practice and quickly dove into this integrative alternative. One of the main things that drew me to that was these IVs which we'll get into. But you know, practicing that type of medicine, which a lot of practitioners align with now, you know, more of the functional medicine, alternative medicine, it made sense to me, but there was also this element that I didn't like or don't philosophically align with in terms of functional medicine. It's almost like Robotic. It's almost like we're robots and everyone has to be the same way. And what dawned on me one day was, you know, we're humans who, in our health, we're actually trying to perform our best. How can we help people not only live longer, have more quality of life, but also perform better? I think that's what most people are aligned to anyway. So that's kind of the edge we took with that, you know, not just we want everything balanced and functioning well. We want to help you perform your best.

So at what point did you get into this whole idea of using IVs?

Yeah, and so IVs we started early. And what really stuck out to me with IVs is we're able to move the needle with folks very quickly. And so in the world I work in, I see a lot of, or I used to, and still do actually see a lot of complicated medical problems. People who are really sick, who are on multiple medications, who have seen lots of doctors who are not getting anywhere with conventional medicine. And what stands out to me is that what most doctors forget about is what most people want is just to feel better, right? Like, that's it. And they can jump on board with all these other plans and schemes we have for them. And so IVs, specifically nutritional IVs, in my opinion, are the fastest way to move that needle. And so that's what I kind of started focusing on. That's led to a host of other therapies and whatnot.

So with IVs, why is it that they would be more effective? And I understand, I understand thatthat any doc listening in might yawn at this question, but I think a lot of people really don't grasp it. This idea behind just shoving something into the bloodstream versus, say, taking it orally.

You know, the number I use is 20%. We only absorb about 20% of nutrients orally. That's through supplements, that's through food. That's an average. But if you take Dr. Yeah, well.

Lesssorry to interrupt, but, like, less if you have leaky gut, compromised gut, imbalanced gut flora, like, you'llyou'll get some people who absorb almosti mean, these are the same kind of people who getas fat bastard from Austin Powers would say, you know, corn in their crap. But the, you know, you look at your stool and you've got a whole bunch of undigested food matter. A lot of people will even see, like, the vitamin capsules that they're taking in their stool. There are so many people Who I think absorb near nothing from their food.

No, I agree with that. And so if you're only absorbing 20% or like you mentioned, a lot of people less than that. And we verify this because we've done a ton over the years, a ton of nutrient testing with almost every patient who becomes a patient. And so we see, okay, you may be taking all these vitamins and supplements that are quote, unquote, good for you, but in your bloodstream, in your tissue, you're not absorbing it. And so when we do that, and we've done that over the years, we say, you know what, it doesn't make sense to keep throwing all these capsules and pills at people. And so from a very basic science standpoint, when we give something intravenously, the absorption rate is much higher, close to 100%. And what I tell people, to simplify it, you know, pneumonia is, I think, sixth or seventh leading cause of death in this country. Still a prominent disease for, you know, a lot of people. Every winter, for most people, we can give them oral antibiotics. We can't treat it orally. They have to go into the hospital. Why? To get intravenous antibiotics. Because they need that absorption to get those antibiotics to the bacteria in their lungs to treat that pneumonia. Well, same thing with IV nutrients. Getting those IV nutrients in quantities that are much higher than we ever could with an oral supplement or food.

Yeah, the same could be said for vitamin C. Like, I actually right now go down to Dr. Jason West's clinic in Pocatello, Idaho, and do a high dose vitamin C injection. And when I say high dose, I mean high dose. It's like, you know, I guess it would come out close to 100,000 milligrams of vitamin C. And to put that in perspective, for folks, typically a high dose orally is like 200 to 500 milligrams. So literally hundreds and hundreds of times the actual amount that I could even absorb orally without gastric distress. That's the thing with a lot of these molecules is even if some of them are getting absorbed to get to the level that you'd want to get, you know, and for me, I do that because of some of the research on vitamin C and its effect on autoimmunity, its ability to be able to protect against cancer and heart disease and a few other chronic illnesses. I mean, saturating yourself with ascorbic acid, despite some physicians thinking that that's bunk and that it doesn't work. I actually have seen some pretty good research out of, for example, the linus Pauling Institute that compels me to actually do a regular, high, high dose vitamin C, particularly for my immune system. And so that's a perfect example of a case where I would just, there are good whole foods based vitamin C and of course I can eat kiwis and oranges all day long. But for me to use better living through science and just mainline a whole bunch of the stuff into my bloodstream and walk out feeling like Superman. There's a night and day difference between that and me taking like high dose vitamin C orally.

Oh, sure. And you bring up a good point about people not believing that. I think people don't totally get, certainly with IV nutrients. We are not talking about doing double blind, you know, randomized control trials like they do in the pharmaceutical world. So we may at some point have clinical data and actually, like you point out, with vitamin C, intravenous vitamin C, we do have clinical data, but the rest of it we don't. So we're dealing with a ton, a ton, a ton of anecdotal data, which to me works very well. Like you said, there's night and day difference in how you feel. And I could tell you years and years of patients, same thing. And so it's tough for people, some people, especially the, the mainstream, the academics to say, well, you haven't proven it, doctor.

No, we haven't. But there' sthere's a lot ofthere's, a lot of N equals one. I meanfor me, particularly when I return from jet lag and I open up my refrigerator and I've got that little Ziploc bag you send me with the IVs in it. I mean, when I inject one of those after a bout of hefty travel and I wanna get into the actual ingredients and some of the active ingredients that you put into them. I mean, I feel like a million bucks night and day difference. Then when I add the NAD on top of that. And I've talked about this before in a podcast. I mean, I can, this, this might not be healthy. And I do try to sleep seven to nine hours a night, but I can wake up and crush the day on four to six hours of sleep when I'm using these NAD IVs and it's, it's almost unfair. So I don't want to make this sound like some big sales spiel for IVs, but I'm just, you know, kind of backing up that N equals one experience that I've had.

So I want to talk about these ingredients like what's actually in, in these IVs, what are the actual formulas that you use and why?

Yeah, so, well, it came about. We used to do a lot of IV chelation with calcium EDTA. And those IVs were three hour protocols, people sitting in a chair for three hours. And a long time ago, I got my hands on the European administration of calcium EDTA, which is 3,000 milligrams pushed. That's a 10 second push. And when I started to do that, I noticed my patients felt better. Their labs were, and they'd much rather be in my office for three minutes versus three hours. And so I started thinking, and again at this time, people weren't doing these vitamin IVs like they are now. It wasn't trendy. There weren't all these IV centers. It was people who were sick, people with chronic fatigue, things like that. And so I thought there's got to be. Because these IVs work so well, there's got to be a way to do this proactively instead of reactively. And I'm lucky. I have a lot of patients who like to experiment. We just tried it out in terms of different nutrients and, you know, would use a host of different vitamins, minerals, lots and lots of amino acids. And we just tested and by testing years and years, thousands and thousands of patients and really documented what works and what doesn't work.

So Craig, we were just getting into the actual ingredients of these IVs because if I understand correctly, there's kind of like some different mixes for specific goals. And I'd like to take a deep dive into these actual formulas and what they're designed for.

Sure. So some of it was based on, since we do a lot of nutrient testing, the three big arenas where people are most or most commonly deficient would be B vitamins, minerals like magnesium, and then amino acids. And so when I put this together, I thought, let's shoot for the low hanging fruit because that's what people need most. And we also wanted to things agents that are water soluble because, you know, we really don't want to deal with anything. And honestly it's, you can give fat soluble nutrients intravenously, but you're talking about a central line and things. So it gets, it's so much easier just to do with water soluble nutrients. Very, very, very safe, meaning there's no ceiling in terms of a lot of these things. We could even see you can give, you know, hundred thousand, two hundred thousand milligrams. If you do it right, you're not going to run into any safety issues. So the core of all the formulas we have has those three arenas included a full array of B vitamins. So B complex, which has vitamin B1, B2, B3. We use a lot of vitamin B5, primarily because a lot of people walking around today are stressed out and have adrenal issues. And vitamin B5 seems to be the most important B vitamin for adrenal health. We use some vitamin B6. We use methylated B12. That kind of rounds out the B vitamins.

Okay. By the way, isn't vitamin B12. Isn't that nicotinamide riboside you're thinking of, like, vitamin B3?

That's right, yeah. Vitamin B3 is niacin or niacinamide. And we chose niacinamide, which is like a chemical cousin to niacin, because niacinamide, there's a host of data saying how it helps with mood better than just niacin. So niacinamide, people could, you know, people are thinking about taking a supplement. You could take niacinamide orally and get a nice bounce to your mood. Helps with people who are depressed or feeling kind of blue. So niacinamide is what we chose for vitamin B3, and then NAD is a chemical cousin to those as well. So we'll get into that.

Okay, got it. So you got your whole vitamin B complex. And by the way, before we delve into the rest of what's in here, is this all in just one? Like, is it 1 IV, or do people have multiple options for the type of IV that they get?

So, you know, we have a couple different formulas, but by and large, we do best with our main. What we call our core formula. That just seems to be what. What people kind of align with and get the best results from.

So that's what you're referring to right now, as you're describing these ingredients. All these things are in the core formula. Okay.

Correct. Yeah. And then in terms of minerals, we use. Oh, and you said in terms of one iv. Yeah. So one of the keys to what we found over the years is what separates all the other conventional or even nutrient IVs, is we give this as a push. And through our testing, we found that when we push these nutrients, and by push, I mean 30 seconds, 45 seconds, sometimes 60 seconds versus 45, 60, 90 minutes, we got a much more robust response. So the total volume, Volume that we use for these IVs is only 30ccs versus, you know, a drip IV may be 500 to 1,000ccs, which is mostly water. Right. So our idea is we flip the script. We focus on the nutrients, not the water.

Yeah. And I think that's also important for people to know, because I get called out on this a lot. People are like, you're illegally doping. Right. Because I compete in spartan races. I have a lot of, like, triathletes who listen in, a lot of UFC fighters who listen in, and a lot of these folks are concerned about the issue with IVs being banned by WADA. But the thing is, and I'll put a link to this in the show notes, if you guys want to see what the WADA description of this actually is. You're not supposed to get a fluid volume of IV, like a drip IV that's over a hundred milliliters. We're talking 30 milliliters. So you're not like, sitting under a big bag of fluid for 15 minutes or an hour or something like that. This is literally like this tiny little 30 milliliters push IV that takes, as Craig just said, you know, 45 to 60 seconds to push into your vein. Then it's done. And there's nothing illegal going in. It's basically like taking a multivitamin. But you're putting the multivitamin into your vein instead of popping it in your mouth.

Yeah, exactly. So for really, for any, you know, professional sports entity, you know, who they all seem to follow somewhat with the WADA or USADA recommendations, you know, their official statement is, like you said, less than 100cc's of fluid. And there. And as long as you're not using any, you know, adulterating substance, which we don't use, we're just using vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. So this is technically the only way for people to professionally get an iv, a vitamin iv, you just have to be less than that. Fluid quantity.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you have the full vitamin B complex that you got into. And what else is in this core formula?

We use a lot of magnesium. We use a full gram of magnesium, which, at first blush, scares a lot of people, because they think, well, that's going to bottom people out in terms of blood pressure, because magnesium is a vasodilator. But again, I think that's the conventional teaching is with any of these nutrients and most things in general, you have to go slowly. That's how the teaching is. There's all these IV courses that these doctors put on across the country who say, go slowly, don't irritate the vein. Don't harm the patient. We Found just the opposite. When we go faster, people get more out of it and buy more out of it. You know, their sense of well being's increased, their sleep is better, their recovery from exercise is enhanced, they just feel better overall. There's an amplification to things. So we are very, very comfortable using a full gram magnesium. And to be completely honest, we've never ever had an adverse reaction. Like never ever. We never had anyone call saying, I had to go to the er, I got a rash, I got short of breath, nothing. I'm very, very, very safe.

Yeah. And so we'll talk about the shortness of breath later on when we talk about the nad. That might be a different beast altogether. But go ahead and keep filling us in on the ingredients in these IVs.

Yeah. And then I think a key part to them is the range of amino acids we use. And so early on I started including these amino acids. And people are familiar with the amino acids, especially in the fitness and sports world world in terms of like post workout drinks. They'll get their whey protein or they'll get their BCAAs, or they'll get their glutamine. And we use all of them intravenously. Now we don't need to use as high dosages. Right. Because they're being absorbed intravenously. So for example, we use acetyl L, carnitine and that I think is 200 milligrams. We use glutamine, 30 milligrams. We'll use all the branched chain amino acids, valine, leucine, isoleucine. We give tryptophan, tyrosine, serine. All of them are given intravenously. So as a sum total, there's about 19 different nutrients in that 30ccs of fluid. So it's very potent.

Wow. Okay. So you would basically just take this. And I know that you guys do it at your clinic where people can go in there and get these things overseen, but obviously that's horribly inconvenient for everybody listening in to fly to South Carolina, even though I know you have like more intensive protocols we'll talk about later. So how does this work exactly with like the athletes or the folks, you know, who are like anti aging enthusiasts, et cetera, who want to just basically get their hands on these IVs and figure out a way to get them administered themselves?

Yeah, it's a good question. So what we have a, it's a growing number of nurses in our network around the country who we've trained, who we feel comfortable can administer. But certainly there's going to be a lot of other metropolitan areas which we haven't tapped into yet. So for people interested, what we do is we just make sure that their nurse is trained in how we like to administer this. Not that this is technically difficult, but it is very different than administering any other type of iv. And so for us, that safety comes first. And once we kind of sign off on that, make sure, talk to the nurses, just run through a little training protocol, then people, wherever they are, can purchase these IVs, hook up with their nurse, and have them done once or twice a week.

Okay, got it.

The part about the nurse practitioner, does this mean that if someone gets the IVs, they would be able to get a nurse to actually come to their house?

Potentially. I mean, that's when it works well. And so, you know, the different professional athletes or high octane people who are already doing this, that's what they do, right? They don't want to be inconvenienced. They say, hey, we just started with one of the Houston Texans on Wednesday. Have a nurse in Houston. It's exactly what that happens. They get a group of guys together, nurse goes to the house, in 10 minutes, they've all been treated.

Yeah, that makes sense. I know when I go and hang out Onnit, I know Onnit uses a lot of your IVs, they just have a nurse practitioner there who comes by. I don't know which day she comes by, but she administers the NAD, she administers the push IVs, and you just sit there in a chair and she does it and then she leaves. It's not that easy unless you have a friend who's an EMT or a doctor or paramedic or something like that, and then you're good to go because they can just do it for you. Okay, so the next question that I have for you is you also have this thing called brain refuel. Is that also an iv?

Yeah. So brain refuel is really the combination of nad, intravenous nad, plus the FAST vitamin. And so years ago, when I got my hands on the NAD protocol, and if we back up a little bit, NAD, a B3 vitamin derivative, by and large, is used mostly in this country for addiction. That's how it grew up from the 1930s, actually. That was the science then, was helpful for addiction, really. Turns off cravings, whether we're talking opiates, alcohol, you name it, almost better than anything. And it does it quickly. But those protocols were very long, arduous, 10 straight days of intravenous NAD. And each protocol lasted, excuse me, each day would last six to eight hours, which is crazy. And so when we got our hands on the protocol, the first thing I did was say, there's no way it's going to be feasible for most people to get the benefits. If it's going to take six to eight hours, people just won't come back to the office. And so we did a lot of testing in my office. Again, I'm lucky. I have a lot of patients who like to experiment, try stuff. And so we played around with all the different dosages, doses, and came up with what we call what we think is the sweet spot in terms of dosage, where people will get the benefits but be able to tolerate the iv. And really, for most people, the drip IV takes about an hour, hour and a half. That was the first big change we made. And, you know, if you talk to the people, the original people who brought the NAD IV protocols to this country, and there's one gentleman in particular who purchased the distribution rights for NAD back in. In around 2005 or after. @ that time, there's only one company in South Africa making nad, an injectable nad. And the thought then was that NAD has to stay in the body or the only way it'll be effective is it stays in the body as long as possible. And we just don't. We don't believe that to be true at all. That doesn't make much sense. So.

We encourage people to go fast as they're able to. And for most people, it works out to be an hour, hour and a half. That was the first change we made. The second change we made was NAD cannot be mixed with any other nutrient. We put it in saline. It has to drip in. But then we pushed at the end, the FAST vitamin, which has a host of really, like I alluded to, amino acids, things like glutamine, acetyl, L, carnitine, which help transport the NAD into the mitochondria or into the cell to get to the mitochondria. And so that's really what brain refuel is. Our naming of the combination of intravenous NAD and the FAST vitamin.

Push. Okay, that's exactly what I've been. So I do the NAD once a week, but as soon as the NAD finishes up. And I realized that, again, as I've already warned people, this is not something I endorse doing, but I literally just unscrew the same syringe that I used for the NAD and screw in the Fast vitamin IV into that same butterfly needle and then just push it in right after. So the whole thing, start to finish, takes me about 20, 25 minutes to do. And you notice a big difference when you follow up the NAD with the iv. You still notice quite a bit with just the nad, but man, it's like rocket fuel when you combine it with the vitamin cocktail right.

After. Yeah. And you know, the reason I came up with the NAD push is, you know, there's a, there's a lot of good hard science data about the role of NAD in the acute setting of a concussion. And so I thought, you know, how great would this be to be available, whether it's on the football field, the hockey rink, the battlefield for someone who gets concussed and to be able to immediately give them intravenous nad, because the hard science supports that. And so that's really where we came up with the push. And then it really became a novelty because it's really challenging to get through, especially if someone's never had any sort of intravenous nad. It's uncomfortable, to say the.

Least. Oh, yeah, it's very uncomfortable. I mean, obviously doing like the traditional six to eight hour sitting in an NAD clinic getting the drip iv, people complain that sometimes they feel a little bit of like a butterflies in the stomach or a little bit of pressure in the chest. But dude, the push IV is a different experience altogether. You know, when you do it for an hour via a drip iv, you feel it when you do the push iv. I mean, I have to box, breathe and go into like this deep meditative state. And I realize this is horrible advertising for an NAD push iv, but like, I bring like a trash can next to my chair while I'm doing it, so in case I need to puke. It's almost, honestly, it's almost like a form of meditation. It kind of increases your pain tolerance and makes everything you do that day seem a lot easier. And within, like after you do the nad, and then I follow that up with a vitamin. By the time I finish that 60 second vitamin push after the NAD, pretty much all the stomach queasiness is gone. But there's about, there's 20 minutes. So, you know, start to finish takes me about 20 minutes and I'm just box breathing. Typically I put on some peaceful music in my mp3 player to kind of like distract me a little bit and then I just push it. But yeah, it's difficult. Why is it, why do you feel that.

Way?

Yeah, I mean, so one of the keys, I think to nad, which I think most people don't totally realize. So when we give people nad, and this is going to get into the technical side, but when we give people nad, we increase the NAD to NADH ratio. And that stimulates a process called mitochondrial fission. Fission is splitting, and that is the quality control where we're cleaning up the defective mitochondrial DNA. And really, this is the true benefit of nad, because this is really how we rid our body of potential cancer. We clean up again, defective mitochondrial DNA. And that process is a very negative, energetic process. So that is why we think we get those kind of harsh feelings.

I like people to experience those feelings. So here in our practice and everyone we work with around the country, we don't like to dampen that down. You know, I know there's a lot of clinics who say, oh, we're gonna use this agent or that agent, so you don't feel it, or we're gonna go as long as possible so you don't feel anything. And I tell people I want you to feel it because I want you to understand that you're actually doing some housekeeping for your cells, literally. And that is the true benefit of.

Nad. Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about bird whale beach britches. That's right, Bird whale beach britches. I don't know why I talked like a redneck when Birdwell beach britches, but basically what they do is they take the same stuff that they make sailboat sails out of, and they have developed this stuff called surf nil fabric, which is a two ply nylon fabric that can survive rock scrapes and reef slashes and tons of wear. And they literally were inspired by the sails of these boats anchored at California's Newport Beach. Since 1961, they've been making these britches. For those of you who don't know what britches are, they, they're like shorts, basically, at their Santa Ana factory. And craftspeople have been working on perfecting these britches for over 40 years. So you don't get britches that are much more britchy than this. Britch, britch, britch, britch, britch, britch, britch. Yeah, that's right. Birdwell Beach Bris has just paid for me to say britch seven times. So anyways, the cool thing is that because these things are so tough, if a stitch or a seam or a grommet breaks, you send it back to the factory and then they'll fix it. Lifetime guarantee. Which means that, you know, maybe 20 years from now, if they're getting a little. Your red shorts are getting a little pink or your black shorts are getting a little. Great, send them back. Birdwell just sends you a repaired pair. I don't know if they send you a new pair or repaired pair, but doesn't matter. They're an amazing company and the shorts are amazing. And I'm saying the word amazing too much. So I'm just going to cut straight to the chase here. You get 10% off anything from Birdwell. You just go to to birdwell.com and you use discount code Ben. That includes a lifetime guarantee and it includes free shipping over 99 bucks. So birdwell.com b I r d w e l l birdwell.com and use discount code Ben. This podcast is also brought to you by Gosha's Organics, Gauche's Organics. What they do is they take raw honey, like raw organic honey honey. If you've never had raw organic honey, that alone is a fantastic treat. But then they blend it with phytoplankton and medicinal mushrooms and adaptogenic herbs, medicinal spices, superfoods, and even this special kind of bioabsorbable high quality mineral called monatomic mineral. They put all of this into one tiny little miron glass jar. You can keep this in your pantry. You take a teaspoon of this stuff, it's like rocket fuel. You can stir it into teas, you can stir it into coffees. If you're like me, you can just eat it straight out of the jar. It is a superfood. It has antifungal properties, alkalizing properties, it's antiviral, it's antibacterial. So it's great for the cold and flu season that's coming up on us right now. It's got prebiotics, probiotics, even got postbiotics in it, enzymes, everything. It's like everything you need, like an astronaut meal, but a healthy astronaut meal in a teaspoon. They should have called it astronaut meal. And I probably would have been fired from the marketing team if they try to do that. Anyways, though, it's called Goshes Organics. And this product is called Odd Nova. Odd nova. You get 10% off on it. Very simple. You go to goshesorganics.com that's G O S H A S goshesorganics.com and you use the code BEN10 percentage sign, like BEN10 percentage sign. That automatically gets you 10% off. Over at Gosha's Organics.

You know what's interesting? That Seems to kind of back that up is anytime that I've been beating up my body a lot, especially when I do this after I return from a hefty bout of travel, it's more uncomfortable. If I'm sleep deprived, it's more uncomfortable. If I'm stressed out, it's more uncomfortable. But if I'm in kind of a good place mentally and emotionally and from a recovery standpoint, it's not that bad. I actually save my injections when I can for when I'm already feeling pretty good because it's so much easier, you know, And I've tried it a couple times when my kids are back from school and things are happening at the house and there's like noises around and people rushing and it's horrible. Like, it's literally like trying to meditate in a frickin, you know, subway with trains running around. It's difficult. But the, some of the breathwork tips that you gave to me, listening to the music, all of that seems to help quite a bit. And then also just knowing that this too shall pass. Right. Like when it's over, it's over and you feel like a million bucks. It's kind of like a workout, right? Like, it sucks during a workout a lot of times. Same thing with a sauna session. Like a hefty bout in the sauna kind of sucks. Like I want to bang down the doors and climb out of that thing because I'm sweating so hard and it feels like my whole body's on fire. And then when I walk out of the sauna, I just feel amazing. So it's kind of like a lot of things in life, you know, you got to put in the hard work and then once you put in the hard work, you feel pretty good.

Afterwards. Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it, especially with a workout. It really is like you're working out yourselves. And I think, though, if you can. And that's what we try to teach people and educate people. Hang in there. And the first NAD treatment is always the worst because people psychologically have never felt these types of pains or discomfort. But after that, not only do you know it's going to end, but you know it's safe and you're not doing any harm to your body. Just like with the fast vitamins, you know, we've never had an adverse reaction with nad meaning, yeah, it's uncomfortable. We expect it to be an uncomfortable treatment, but nothing bad happens. We've never ever had an allergic reaction. No one's ever Gotten really sick or gone to the emergency room, nothing like that. So very, very.

Safe. Yeah. Now, the absorption issue is, of course, something that's come up quite a bit on this podcast. And I know it goes back and forth between producers of the supplement nicotinamide riboside or NR, are, most of whom will claim, including Dr. Charles Brenner, who I had on the podcast before. And by the way, I'll put a link to all my previous podcasts on NAD if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com IVpodcast that's where the shownotes are going to be for this. And I'll link to Dr. Conover's website if you want to order IVs or anything like that. But anyways. BenGreenfieldFitness.com IVpodcast that's where that'll be.

The thing about NAD is that of course, we have these NR supplement manufacturers claiming that nad, when administered via iv, is not actually absorbed into the cell. Now, you alluded to the fact that not only is it absorbed into the cell, but it's absorbed even better when you follow it up with something like a vitamin cocktail iv. But do you have any research to actually back that.

Up? Yeah, I mean, this is an article I found, I think the main researchers from University of Pennsylvania that was published I think in I'll find the date, but it was 2018. And basically what they showed is they wanted to find out this issue. The title of the article is nicotinamide Adenadine Dinucleotide is Transported into Mammalian Mitochondria. And basically what, until they had published this article, there's just been some references of NAD being transported into lower life forms. So yeast, for example, they thought, okay, there's an NAD transport molecule. But we haven't identified that molecule in mammals and humans. Well, in this article they did. And what is so awesome is they've shown clearly, and this article outlines the whole process, how NAD is literally taken out from outside the mitochondria and taken inside the mitochondria by a certain transport molecule. They weren't able to clearly identify what that transport molecule is. Is, but they were able to clearly identify because they were able to tag the NAD molecule outside the cell and then they showed the concentration inside the.

Cell. So they don't, they don't know at all. Sorry to interrupt. Like, anything about the identity of the actual transport.

Molecule. Right. That still has to be figured.

Out. It seems to me that that would be a pretty profound finding because this is something that if they did Find that out. Seems like it could be a compound that you could potentially include in, like the IV afterwards or, you know, or even people who are, say, like, supplementing with some form of nr, could supplement with something like that to enhance.

Absorption. Oh, absolutely. I think that's. We're waiting for.

That. That's the. That's the. The study. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is transported into mammalian mitochondria. That's the one you're referring.

To?

Correct. Okay, I'm gonna link to that in the show. Notes for people to read. So basically, basically, what it turns out, based on this most recent research, is that you can restore depleted mitochondrial NAD levels and they cross the plasma membrane. The NAD does. And enters the mitochondria.

Directly. Correct. And what they also showed was that.

It was more profound or a greater response when there was a higher gradient outside the membrane versus inside the membrane, which. Which seems to go right in line with what we feel when we give intravenous nad, because we are loading up the extracellular outside the mitochondrial space with nad, and then that NAD is being transported right across the membrane into the mitochondria where it's going to be used to make ATP energy. And they also seem to elude. And the NAD precursor, people are not going to like this, but they allude to how that is a much more efficient mechanism than using any sort of NAD precursor in that.

Article. Fascinating. Now, you mentioned that the IV cocktail, and this is my last question on nad, is one way to enhance the absorption afterwards. I believe that at some point, as we were text messaging back and forth the past few months, you had mentioned, was it phosphatidylserine that you had mentioned to me as being something else that could be co. Administered.

Administered. Well, Phosphatidylcholine.

Okay.

Phosphodylcholine. Yeah. PC Phosphatidylcholine we use sometimes as a pretreatment for glutathione. And what we'll do is we'll put some phosphatidylcholine in the syringe, we'll draw back the patient's blood, agitate their blood, mix it with the phosphatidylcholine, push that into the vein, and then immediately switch out the syringe and push in glutathione. And the thought there is the phosphatidylcholine makes the cell membrane more slippery. And by making it more slippery, you allow things that come after it to get into the cell better. And we've tried that a little bit with nad. I think there has to be some more work done. Interestingly, another agent which we're starting to recommend is quercetin, because quercetin. And we get into this about other things with how quercetin works, but quercetin seems to turn off one of the enzymes that destroys NAD extracellular in the extracellular space. So I've had a few people try that recently where we'll give quercetin orally at the same time as giving intravenous nad. And we're going to kind of chart and see how that plays out, see how that works for.

Them. You would potentially add that to the IV as well, if it turns.

Out that it would work. Well.

As far as I know, so far, no one's making intravenous quercetin, so that will be a challenge. We'll work one. Yeah. Yeah. I trust that would be ideal. Yeah, that'd be.

Ideal. Make it.

Happen.

Exactly. The glutathione that you mentioned, though, from what I understand, is that not to be co administered along with the.

Nad. Correct. So we don't. We don't like to give any antioxidants really, at the time. At the time of administering nad. And the reason is, as I alluded to before, I talked about NAD stimulating mitochondrial fission. Antioxidants will dampen the fission response. And so when we administer glutathione, we'll do it on a separate day than nad. There's lots of benefits for glutathione. We just don't like to mix the.

Two. I began to do that after you told me, I don't take my glutathione supplement. Neither do I. Do. I recently interviewed Dr. Karim Dhanani on my show. We talked about genetics, and he revealed that both myself and my twin boys don't actually produce glutathione. So he sent me glutathione powder to inject. Actually, that's an IV injection. But before that, I was doing intramuscular glutathione injections, which for anybody who doesn't produce glutathione, that's just. And I totally understand there's some people rolling their eyes now and saying, dude, how many things can you freaking inject? I understand, I get it. But this is just better living through scientists, taking better care of the body. And as I explain this to people, like, if I can be around 50 extra years to be able to fulfill my purpose in life and to help more people and to feel amazing doing it for if that Means like once a week I take an extra, you know, minute to do a push IV, 20 minutes to do an NAD, and then five minutes at some point during the week to do a glutathione. Like, this stuff is not that inconvenient, especially when you consider the fact that if you do have some kind of YouTube video or documentary or something you want to watch or you're sitting there, there getting the iv. Fine. Kill two birds with one stone. So anyways, though I digress and I will, I'll link to that podcast with, with Karim about glutathione in the show notes. But what I do is, is I now don't go near that stuff within 24 hours before or 24 hours after I've done my NAD based on your recommendations. And it sounds like what I could do though, with that glutathione is at least include something like, like phosphatidylcholine. Could I just take that orally, for.

Example? I mean, you could, but I mean, it's better to, you know, again, from absorption, you'd better to do that intravenously. So I'll send you some and you can try it. There's been some.

Trouble. Thank you, good.

Sir. For us, yeah, there's been some, like a lot of these nutrients. There's waves where it's more difficult to get them. That's what's happened with phospholine. But it should be back and ready to go. And basically what you'll do is you'll just as opposed to pushing first, you'll draw back, agitate your blood first with the phosphatidylcholine and then push that switch out the syringe, push glutathione. And you know, phosphatidylcholine is one of these stellar nutrients that helps with the liver, helps with brain health, helps with all of our cellular membranes that people often forget about. It's one of these key.

Nutrients. So interesting. I know that there are some other things that you do in addition to the brain refuel program and these fast vitamin IVs, and one that you told me about that I haven't done with you at all, but that I've certainly done in other scenarios is stem cell infusions. And I'm curious what you're doing as far as stem cell infusions are concerned and how exactly that.

Works. Well, so for me personally, I kind of held off on getting into the stem cell world for a while. It seemed like the wild, wild west. And last winter About a year ago now, the FDA changed the classification of umbilical stem cells, umbilical stem cells, from a live cell to a biologic and gave a three year window for where we could use these cells cells. And that's where I kind of jumped in. Because to me, umbilical cord stem cells are really the most potential. They are the most, the freshest, the most potent and the youngest. Right. So if you take an umbilical cord stem cell, it's age 0 versus a lot of people getting stem cells in their 40s, 50s and 60s. Those cells are aged 40, 50 or 60. And so we'd like how these umbilical cord stem cells work and what I do, because I obviously love nad. You know, my research showed that in order to kind of prime the body or one of the best ways for our stem cells to be absorbed and then work is to up level the mitochondria, because the mitochondria seem to direct how stem cells work. And something I read, something I researched, said, you know, stem cells are best infused during mitochondrial fusion. And so what we do is we do a three day program where we start NAD three days ahead of the stem cells because we want to uplevel the mitochondria. We're going to stimulate mitochondrial fission and then mitochondrial fission then stimulates mitochondrial fusion. So by day three, when we're ready to give the stem cells, we have those mitochondria kind of primed and ready for those stem cells to be.

Received. Hmm. That's very similar to a protocol that I was talking about recently and that I even wrote a blog blog post on with Dr. Helen Chen over in New York City, who's doing like a muscle gain protocol. He's using coenzyme Q10, NAD and injectable stem cells. He's actually using autologous stem cells, meaning I think he's using like a bone marrow aspirate along with V cells, which are basically like a signaling molecule that can assist with the stem cell efficacy. But when it comes to these umbilical stem cell cords I have, or umbilical cord stem cells, I have concerns because I have been told that you don't know if it's safe since it's coming from foreign tissue, and that there might be yet unidentified viruses or prions or proteins or other things that you could be injecting into yourself. Or I know there are some clinics like East West Clinic and Salt Lake, they administer them even intranasally, you know, which you would use for like TBI or concussion. And I'VE began to steer clear of some of that because of my concerns about the safety profile. Can you speak to that at.

All? Yeah, I mean, I think that comes up commonly when patients say, you know, what type of stem cells, and that's the biggest thing. Or are these stem cells filtered? Are they clean? How do we know it's different genetic material? So here's what I go back to and I try to simplify things. Number one, the umbilical cord stem cells are immune naive, so they haven't formed any immune antigenicity. So you're not going to react to them. Now, does that mean 100% of the time you won't react to them? Of course not, because everyone's a little bit different. But by and large, and we've done a ton of these stem cell treatments, now we have no reactions, meaning people aren't having any sort of rejection. There's no rash, there's no any sort of, of adverse event from using these stem cells. Number two, I think that the main issue that's going to come up certainly over the next few years is there's going to be a lot of stem cell banks or stem cell companies jumping into this arena because they say, hey, this is a popular way of regenerative medicine and we have to be very careful of where we get these stem cells from. So there are, there are, as I know it, several public tissue banks, several companies that offer the stem cells.

For me in my practice, my patients, we're going to be really scrupulous about only using cells that come from a very company that's been around for a while, who's been doing this for a while. And I think that's an issue. I remember talking to a client out in Los Angeles and I was asking him if he's interested in getting them. And he said, well, he had a friend who, who had umbilical cord stem cells injected into his disc, one of his discs in his lumbar spine. It got infected. He was in the intensive care unit. And to me, I think that's taking it too far. Like, I think, you know, there's, there's people who will inject the heart with stem cells. I think, you know, I think there are people who inject intrathecally into the spinal cord. And I think that some of that is. Yeah, I'm sure there's hope and potential. I just. Some of that you just have to be careful of. So we're going to be very reasonable about what we do. We're going to choose companies that Only give us data in terms of how these stem cells are filtered, screen tested. The other thing I'll say is once these stem cells are taken and made into what is the vial, so to speak? They are frozen and liquid nitrogen, where really nothing can live. Right. It is so cold. So I'm not concerned as long as we, and this is how we do it here we have a tank of liquid nitrogen where we keep the stem cells. When we're ready to do a treatment, I mean, I just did a treatment this morning. We'll take those stem cells out, thaw them out and give them immediately. And doing it that way, we don't worry about, oh, is there going to be some virus or some pathogen that gets in there? Could there be? Anytime you inject anything, there's a risk of infection for sure. But I think if you follow a really good protocol and do your homework in terms of the company that is selling you the stem cells, I really minimize that.

Risk. Is it regulated at all by the government as far as screening? I mean, do companies such as yours or medical clinics need to actually choose sources that have been screened properly? I mean, I get the impression it's the wild, wild west, but me in on what's going on as far as governmental regulations of.

That? No, I don't think so. So, I mean, I think.

I really don't think, like if you're a doctor and you order stem cells, you could order from stem cell company X. It could be horrible. You could perform, you know, stem cell infusions on patients and, you know, potentially using bad lines of stem cells or not doing your homework. I don't think there's much government regulation in terms of that. Now what they ask us to do, the stem cell companies, we have to fill out a form of, and document the batch, the lot, everything about where that vial came from and keep that so that in case a patient comes back in three days, three weeks and said, I had this happen, we can go back to that company and say, hey, it came from this vial specifically, please research this. The company we use is predictive biologics. And I feel very confident in every aspect of how they go about their business in terms of, of showing us data again and then providing high, high quality product and giving us all the tools we need to ensure the safety of the stem.

Cells. That's good to know. So basically, if people are going out and getting umbilical stem cells.

They are ideally obtained from a healthy newborn baby. They are screened properly and they're.

Stored properly, properly correct and Then as well is the doctor who's administering them has done this before and follows a good protocol to ensure that, okay, the stem cells arrive where you take them out of the tank and they're not just sitting there for two days at room temperature. You know what I mean? It's got to be done in the right way. You're talking about, number one, very expensive material. But number two, it is a big safety concern. And, and we never want to put people at risk. That guy out in Los Angeles, who, his friend was in the intensive care unit. My comment was I don't think doctors should be injecting inside a disc with stem.

Cells. What happened in.

California? Yeah, that happened in Los Angeles. A doctor, orthopedic surgeon injected the guys into a disc, an intra disc injection, because he had a bad, maybe a herniated disc. And I just think that's pushing the limits a bit. Little.

Bit. So I didn't know about that. So I feel a little bit more comfortable actually hearing you talk about this umbilical cord stem cell infusion. I didn't realize that the screening process was that intensive. But I guess a big part of this, it sounds to me, is still that process of patient self education and actually figuring out whether or not the doc's actually getting this stuff from a clean source, storing it properly, et.

Cetera. I think so. I think again, I think in the next couple years we're going to see where there will probably be some stem cell companies that go under or get closed down because they don't have good practices and they're into it to make a quick buck like anything. Right? Like, people have shortcuts in this process. We want zero shortcuts. We want the most rigorous treatment, we want the most rigorous filtering, screening, everything.

Possible. Okay, what about things similar to what you could inject with NAD to enhance NAD absorption, like quercetin or these vitamins or phosphatidylcholine with glutathione. What could you administer along with stem cells to aid in the absorption or utility of stem.

Cells? Yeah. So what we do as part of our protocol, so we start intravenous nad. That's day one. We also start intranasal oxytocin because oxytocin has an effect on the brain to help help prime and direct stem cells as well. So people are familiar with oxytocin as kind of the social bonding hormone. It also increases nitric oxide in the brain, but it also has a role potentially in the hypothalamus, where a lot of what we think are kind of the master control stem cells are regulated. And so we just like to start intranasal oxytocin. We also start some injectable peptides at the same time. And that's really what we found to be a really amazing mix or triad is intravenous nad the peptides and then followed up by the stem.

Cells. I want to ask you about the peptides in a minute because that's a hot topic. But intranasal oxytocin, we can't just skim over that. So this is thethe hormone, like the trust hormone, the bonding hormone, that gets released during sex, during breastfeeding, and during human touch. You're actually administering that intranasally like people.

Snoring? Yeah, we compound it into a nasal spray, and then people spray that into their nose a couple times a day. And actually, most people feel kind of more relaxed, happier from just doing that. Again, we're not really using it for that purpose. We're using it kind of from the stem cell aspect, but that's an added bonus. So, sure, we compound a lot of things intranasally because again, going back to you had mentioned, oh, oh, people are gonna, you shouldn't be doing all these injections. Well, I would argue we're sitting here taking all these things orally that just don't work. So why not look at some alternative, you know, delivery systems? And that's what we like. We do a lot of things intranasally, intravenously, injections, topically, because we want to get into the system. That's what matters.

Most. There's a lot of research on oxytocin for a pretty wide variety of benefits that go beyond like stem cells or uplifting mood. I mean, like, I know it's a potent anti inflammatory and it's something that has been studied for a lot of different issues. But this idea of administering it intranasally, I guess in the past, the only other way to do it, aside from the natural release you'd get through sex, would be like an injection. It's not something you could take orally.

Right. You don't want to take it orally. We used to try it as a sublingual too, under the tongue, and that just didn't seem to work as well. And so we like a lot of intranasal things, we make actually nad into an intranasal spray. We use ketamine as an intranasal spray. We have a couple things that we're trying as well that we're putting together. We have actually coming up Is a NAD and CBD oil sublingual. We'll try that intranasally. Yeah, we'll try that intranasally as well. I mean, the idea with intranasal is you're close to the brain. You have the mucous membranes that are very permeable. So you spray up the substance and it gets right to where we want it to, which is the brain. Brain. And that's the hope. Now, some of it being lost for sure. But if we can again avoid the digestive tract and have a different delivery system and get something that potent, that works, all the.

Better. Yeah. The other thing is a good appetite suppressant. It's good forgood for diet. I know that oxytocin neurons in the hypothalamus help to suppress appetite. That's one reason sometimes I don't know if anyone has actually tried this out. But like if you're hungry at night a lot of times, and there's probably quite a bit of dopamine and serotonin at play here too. But, but sex at night, like, you know, if I have the option between like having a bunch of dark chocolate and some coconut ice cream or having sex, ideally it'd be both. But I've noticed like after I have sex, like I'm. I'm ready for bed. You're good. Like my appetite's gone. And I suspect part of that is due to that oxytocin release. So it's got a lot of interesting uses. I love that you guys are forward thinking on some of this stuff, so. And again, if you guys are listening in, I think that that's something that people can also work with you to, to have compounded for them.

Right? For sure. Yeah. I mean, we work with people all across the country and we do this quite routinely. Again, our philosophy is if we're gonna move the needle, we have to have agents that actually work. We're just not interested in giving people lists of take these 16 supplements. And that just doesn't work.

Anymore. Yeah. Okay. Peptides I've talked about, BPC157 is something you could inject into joints or TB500 to enhance healing. I don't know if I've talked about it on the show before, but there are a lot of these anti aging peptides like epithelin or humanin or MOT C that are almost like exercise in a bottle that you can inject subcutaneously around the abdominals for both longevity and mitochondria. And also things like fat loss and muscle gain. And I'M actually working on a new book on longevity where I explore some of those peptides. But I'm curious what, what the injectable peptides you're administering along with these stem cells or along with NID to enhance the.

Effects. We use a Hosom, we certainly use BPC157. It's just a potent anti inflammatory peptide and we use it just systemically. So you can inject it anywhere and get a systemic effect from that. Probably more than that though. We use the growth hormone releasing peptides which are things like Ipomorelin, GHRP6, GHRP2 and then we couple that with something called CJC 1295, which is really a fragment of the growth hormone molecule. But what it does is it. The way I think about it is the peptide portion which is we'll say ipomorelin. And again, a peptide is a small molecule, it's a chain of amino acids. And what it does is it will go up to the pituitary gland which secretes growth hormone and it will bind to that growth hormone receptors receptor and say put out growth hormone. So we're using the body's own tools. We're not adding anything exogenously. We cannot suppress our pituitary output because we're just giving ourselves a little push. So we use ipomorelin. We coupled that with something like cjc, which helps that growth hormone to stay in the system longer. So you're pulsing it. So we have people do it two times a day when they first wake up in the morning, morning and right before bed, because those are where we think you get the biggest pulse of growth hormone anyway, outside of exercise or resistance training. And then we couple that with the cjc. It's one liquid that comes together and what you're going to do is pulse that growth hormone. And growth hormone being such an anabolic hormone is going to not only calm down inflammation, help rejuvenate tissue, but it's going to help with the structure of the cells as well. So the way I think about it is we start these peptides, we start NAD as ways to be potent anti inflammatory while we're waiting for the stem cells to kick in. And then that takes a couple weeks. But these peptides are really fascinating. Like you mentioned, there's a host of peptides being explored. The other one we use in conjunction with stem cells is this one called GHK Copper, which kind of grew up in the wound healing world. And we have people do that at the time of the stem Cell infusion, and they take it for three weeks straight. Because again, the whole concept is we want healing. Right. We want rejuvenation. And that seems to help promote that as.

Well. So that would be like something to promote things like collagen synthesis or joint.

Healing. Exactly, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, for example, I injected a guy soft tissue of his back around his lumbar spine and he's had, you know, herniated discovery and nerve root pain facet issues. And I think a lot of it with people with their spine is they don't maintain the structural integrity of the tissue around the spine. Right. They lose that integrity of the tissue and then they end up using things like NSAIDs like ibuprofen, Motrin, and sometimes even steroids, which can calm down inflammation. Problem is they delay wound healing. They make for. They destroy. And that's a strong word, but they impair, I should say, the structural integrity of the tissue. And when we give stem cells like that, our goal in peptides, we're helping to rebuild the structural integrity of tissue to help the support, you know, the joints like the.

Spine. Yeah, Most peptides, not BPC157, but most of them are banned by WADA. But a ton of pro athletes use them still because they're so rapidly metabolized. Like, you can't, you can't. They're not legal. But they also can't be detected. I'm not saying that I endorse their use or anything like that, but a shocking number of folks in the NFL, for example, or any of these more anabolic sports.

I would estimate probably 80% of the league is on peptides. So it's something that is widely used in sports because of its potency and effectiveness. Do you have any concerns? Because I know we'll probably get this question about undifferentia cell growth and the potential for carcinogenicity or something like that, along with the use of growth.

Hormone.

I think growth hormone is tricky. I mean, we have some patients on growth hormone. I think what happens with growth hormone, in my experience, and I've been using it with patients for a long time, is patients get the sense that if a little is good, a lot is better. And I think that's where people get in trouble, because I think you can use a very moderate dose of growth hormone in a reasonable way without manipulating that hormonal pathway. If we stick to that. The issue is, and this is an interesting topic anyways, what happens with insulin like growth factor one or IGF one And I know there's this kind of rivalry almost with the fitness versus longevity in terms of IGF1. And I think with growth hormone you have to be careful because if you accelerate IGF1 too quickly, you can signal for cell growth. At times you don't want cell growth, whereas the peptides don't seem to elevate IGF1. Unless I mean there is peptide of IGF1 I have a patient on right now. But you really, with the peptides, especially the growth hormone releasing peptides, you're not, not increasing IGF1, you're just making your IGF1 more efficient. And that's the big difference. So people who use growth hormone, the challenge is, in my opinion, the way we do is we monitor their IGF1 levels because if we see them rapidly going up, we know there potentially is, that's the cell signaling telling the cells to accelerate growth, where we probably don't want.

That. Okay, got it. So basically you want to test pretty intensively under supervision when you're using the these.

Things. Not like with growth hormone. Yeah, I just order from a.

Website and just administer willy.

Nilly. Yeah. Andand I think of growth hormone being much more valuable if you're 78 years old. Right. And you really do need growth hormone replacement. Right. Like, just like testosterone declines as we get older, growth hormone certainly declines. But for my patients, I'd want to reserve that till the very end. I think the peptides offer way too much potential. They're not as potent. But again, again, we're fine with that because we don't want to trigger this cell signaling or the cell growth. At times we're not supposed to have cell growth and the peptides don't do that. They make your IGF1 more efficient, but they're not going to accelerate your IGF1. And I know that because we've been using them for years and we measure people all the.

Time. Okay, good to know again, as you guys are listening to me and we're going through this, I'm taking notes. And if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

I will link to some of the programs that Dr. Conover has. For example, for his umbilical stem cell program where you can go to his clinic and do the stem cells combined with the NAD and the injectable peptides that he was talking about. He's also got a program where you can do NADIV therapy. Pretty much every single program he has, he's giving every single one of my listeners a 20% discount which, which is massive on any of these protocols, including just like, ordering the IVs to your house. We didn't want to fly down to the clinic and use a nurse practitioner for some of this stuff. But one of the other things that you have is this idea of distance medicine. You're doing distance medicine and phone calls. How exactly does that.

Work? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't work for everyone, but I think in this day and age where we have technology is cell phones and we can text and call and email, it can work really well for people who want that kind of advice in terms of, you know, whether it be starting peptides or nutrition or. What really ends up happening practically, is we'll start working with them remotely, and then they will eventually come here to Charleston to be a patient in person. And so it's really just starting off, you know, and it may be three months, six months until they're able to get here. But we'll start them off with different programs in terms of, you know, counseling them, giving them advice. Again, not for everyone, but for a lot of people, it's hard to find a doctor who's open to these kind of concepts. And so they're looking for ways to, again, optimize their health and performance. And so we want to offer that.

Service. Okay, now, what about the idea of training other physicians to do the same kind of performance medicine that you do? We have a lot of docs who listen in, and some of this stuff they just. They've never even heard of before or want to do kind of like what you do in their community, but don't know how to get started. Tell me about your physician.

Programs. Yeah, and so one of the things I really enjoy doing, like you mentioned, is working with other doctors. I think doctors are in this interesting place, especially the ones who understand optimization of health and performance. And there's not a lot of us. And a lot of it is being led by other people who.

For example, as a family medicine doctor, I can help people optimize their health, but I can also clean up when they get sick. And I'm here to deal with kind of both sides of the aisle. And I think doctors who embrace that can do very well and can offer a tremendous amount of unique advice for people because we have a different perspective. Right. We know what sickness and disease look like. Not that we focus on that, but we know how it works. And we can prescribe medicine if needed. And for the doctors who then want to take it to a different level and shift their mindset from a disease oriented place to a health and performance perspective. We offer different training programs from phone calls to, you know, personal. They come to our office and do a full day or more of training where we go over everything. You know, we're an open book. We like to provide all the protocols that we use that we've discovered to help physicians. And if honestly we like to collaborate because then these physicians go out in their communities, they try things and we learn from them. And so it's just building a network of physicians who want to collaborate together and do things differently than the, you know, the regular conventional.

Doctors. Yeah, I mean, this is cool. This is cutting edge shit. So II mean, I really dig it. And as you know, like, I just, I love all this cutting edge medicine and I want to warn people once again because I know I get kickback on this all the time. I'm not saying like order a bunch of IVs and start sticking stuff in your veins willy nilly. Like you have to proceed with caution. I realize I'm kind of a cowboy with some of this stuff, but proceed with caution. And that's why I want to get Dr. Conover on the podcast to talk about how you could do some of the same things I'm doing. But. But do it under medical supervision or do it with a nurse practitioner. And I think a lot of people especially would be very interested in at least the vitamin cocktails and the nad. I would say of all the stuff we've talked about, like that stuff is the most simple, straightforward and both effective and legal to just do right away for anybody. So this is all fascinating.

Stuff. No, I love it too. And I tell people all the time, if you're really interested in optimizing your health, health and performance, NAD has to be a part of that conversation because NAD is so foundational on the cellular level, beyond hormones, beyond nutrients, NAD is really critical. And I think we are just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding how NAD works and all the benefits that it provides. So there's a host of ways for people to optimize their health and performance. Performance that are well beyond just taking oral supplements and eating a good.

Diet. Yeah, yeah, it's better living through science, baby. Alright, well, I'm gonna put links to everything over@bengreenfieldfitness.com IVpodcast that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com IVpodcast Check out the show notes there. I'll link to all my previous podcasts on nad. I will give you guys. I mean, you could just go to conivorwellness.com it's k o n I v e r con iverwellness.com anything there? If you use discount code, Ben will knock 20% off the umbilical cord program the NAD therapy, the distance phone call with him, the physician phone call where a physician can hop on the phone with him, the IV's code, Ben covers it all. You get 20% off of anything there. But you can also go to the Show Notes where I'll link to everything that we talked about too. And that's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Well, Dr. Conover, first of all, thanks for coming on the show. Keep doing what you're doing and keep us all posted on all this crazy new cutting edge stuff you're looking into, like the kerosene and the peptides and everything else. Like anytime you come across something interesting, let me know and I'll pass it on to the.

Audience. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a.

Pleasure. All right cool folks. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Craig Con Iver of ConoverWellness.com signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

Want more? Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can subscribe to my information packed and entertaining newsletter and click the link up on the right hand side of that webpage that says Ben Recommends where you'll see a full list of everything I've ever recommended to enhance your body and your brain. Finally, to get your hands on all of the unique supplement formulations that I personally develop, you can visit the website of my company kion@getkion.com that's.

Getkion.Com.

Sam.