Why Peptide Channels Keep Getting Deleted - Dylan Gemelli x Ben Greenfield

I got a 15-year prison sentence when I was—

No way.

The first thing I saw was a guy with a big swastika tattooed on his chest, and I'm just going, what am I doing here? So 15 years ago to this 4th of July, I got released from prison. That's where I started completely from scratch. And I studied, and I mean I studied. Well, within a year I had a million subscribers on YouTube because there was like 2 or 3 guys talking about steroids and nobody talking about SARMs or peptides on YouTube.

My guest on today's show is Dylan Gemelli. He's a big figure in the fitness and biohacking industry. He is the creator of the Dylan Gemelli Podcast, which is a popular one, number one in health and fitness right now, actually. Expert in peptides, hormone optimization, SARMs. And he gets into his story, which is intriguing, on this show. Everything from prison to dealing cocaine to becoming an Influencer in the bodybuilding world. This one's juicy. All the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Dylan. That's D-Y-L-A-N. Let's go talk with Dylan. I've been on your podcast. Obviously, a lot of people have been on your podcast. Last I checked, you had the top podcast in health and fitness, which is crazy. That's difficult to do. So, congratulations on that.

I appreciate it.

But, you know what? Even though When you interviewed me, I learned about your interest in heart health. I know that you talk a little bit about peptides, your past life as a gym rat, but I don't know that much of your backstory, man. You just kind of, in my opinion, came out of nowhere. You're all over the health world now, but where'd you come from originally when it comes to your health background?

I was just an all-out sports guy growing up my whole life. My dad started training me when I was 3 with You can go back. I got pictures with my Hulk Hogan weight set training with my dad. He was a college athlete. So we started young, man, and he started training me on baseball. Then it was basketball, football, tennis, and that's what I did, 4 sports in high school. But you know, like junior, senior year, you gotta start condensing it. It's just too much. So I went with basketball, even though football was probably my best sport. That was my, You gotta love what you're doing. So I don't want to sit here and act like I got this woe is me. I had a great childhood. I mean, my parents weren't rich, but they gave me everything. So I don't have this, oh, I came up from this terrible upbringing and everything. My mistakes were Dylan-caused that I'll get to. So I want to make sure I preface that when I get to the part of the bad shit, everybody will say, oh, you overcame, but I didn't overcome what I caused. I just got through it, right? So I played college basketball. I broke my back twice.

Oh, no way. I didn't know you played college ball.

Oh yeah. Small school, D3 in Iowa, and then NAIA Division, what, 3 or whatever. But yeah.

By the way, I played NAIA Division 1 tennis, so familiar with NAIA. Yeah.

Oh, sick. See, I didn't know you played tennis either. Honestly, if I could go back, that's what I wish I would've done the most because the longevity and the fun and the sport, you know?

Yeah.

You talk about, when you say longevity, you mean the fact you can play it for your whole life or that racket sports are actually associated with living a long time.

I mean, I used to play in tennis leagues with dudes that were 60 and 70 and still they outsmart you. You know what I mean? You can be as fast as you want and those guys are so savvy playing the net and you're just— but it's just great.

Yeah, it is a great sport. I want to get back to your story. I got invited to play with a bunch of collegiate tennis players tomorrow night, so I'm a little nervous. Yeah, a little nervous. Back to your story though. So you played college ball.

So 2 broken backs, like vertebrae injuries. But to the, you know this, if you get a step slow in college, you're toast, man. Like it's too tight. So anyway, it was like, okay, what the hell do I do with my life? I don't, you know, I had no plan. It was partying and playing ball and that was about it. So My mom was pushing me for modeling and I just— oh gosh, it was just too feminine for me at the time. You know, things were different back then too. At that time, man, it was like, it was viewed differently. But then I was looking at it to where it was, man, I could make a lot of money. There's a lot of women. I could, you know, get pretty big here. So—

You could be, you could be the next Derek Zoolander.

And that's what it was at the time. Long story short, I ended up getting a contract to Milan first right off the bat, which is like going from high school to the pros, man. It was too much too fast. I couldn't handle it. I got in over my head. Eventually I came back home and started acting and I started to sell drugs because I, I couldn't keep up with the, the image and the money and the desire I had to be the man.

And, and by the way, when you got into modeling, were you Obviously, you were lifting at an early age with your dad and the Hulk Hogan weight set and everything, but were you pretty deep into the aesthetics aspect of fitness when you were modeling?

That was all I trained for. I've always overtrained cardio, which we'll talk about really badly, and I was then. But the problem was then is I was partying all the time, so my eating was way off. It was don't eat for a couple days, but very minimal, and then kind of slam during the week. And it was just I don't even want to go there.

I thought that was called alternate-day fasting.

Yeah, that's a cocaine and alcohol diet plan. It's not exactly ideal, but there is a lot of fasting going on, so maybe that explains the cellular health. Anyway, I ended up getting caught since there's no longevity in that career, and I got a 15-year prison sentence when I was 28.

No way.

Yes.

Well, yeah, that was for dealing drugs.

Yep.

What were you dealing?

Cocaine and a little bit of weed, but mainly cocaine. Not a lot of money in the weed for me to do what I wanted to do. I wanted cars and custom suits and, you know, that kind of life.

Yeah. Were you, were you also using cocaine?

Yes, but not, not like crazily. Just, I, I was disciplined to only do it on the weekends. But yes, I was a lot of, a lot of partying, but I wanted the money more so than the, than the action. So my parents maxed out their credit cards, got me the best attorney in the state, actually got me off to a point. I, uh, I got a suspended sentence, which means you get probation, and if you don't screw it up, then you don't get the sentence. But if you screw up, they can give you the 15. So I screwed up 3 times and got the 15 years. So imagine had I done all that time, I'm 44 right now and I was 28 then.

Yeah, you'd be just— you'd have gotten out like last year.

Thankfully I was in Iowa and the laws are different. I did 2 years and got out essentially with all the good time and all of the things I did in there and all of the changes I made. They gave me the early release and then I got sent to Hawaii because my parents moved there. So I went from a hellhole in Iowa to getting released on the 4th of July in 2011. So, 15 years ago to this 4th of July, I got released from prison. And that's where I started completely from scratch. And that's where the health and fitness and the personality and persona online got started.

Yeah. What was prison like?

Interesting. So, when I first got there, I went to like a holding area where they classify you. So it was called 23 and 1, which means 23 hours in a cell, 1 hour out. Except that was bullshit. It was 23 and a half and a half. And the half an hour was inside. It wasn't outside. I got to shower 3 times a week, 5 minutes max, and that's it.

Well, I mean, that's probably more than I shower anyways, but you know, that's all like microbiome sun thing, not because I'm in prison.

We, uh, We ate at 6:30 in the morning, 10:30 AM, and 3:30 PM, and that was it. And it wasn't much. That was it. And that was 2 and a half weeks of that. Then I got sent to a little bit better area. It progressively got better, but you know, like you get strip searched randomly, verbally abused. I mean, people trying to just do things to you all the time, whether it's guards. I got in good with guards, so I was— I had a lot of privileges after a certain period of time. But initially, you know, first day that I got to the actual prison, I got out into the prison yard and the first thing I saw was a guy with his shirt off with a big swastika tattooed on his chest. And I'm just going, what am I doing here? Like, what happened?

Yeah. Were you into like the— who's the guy who like wrote the combat— not combat, the convict conditioning book? Like, were you doing like Prison cell style workouts or anything like that while you were locked up?

I didn't miss one day. I was outside in 10 to 15 degrees below windchill in Iowa, in the snow and blizzards. I was out in the blistering heat. I did not miss one day of training. I did— listen how good I was conditioned. My sets of burpees were 100 sets of 100 straight. And I'd do 5 sets a day. I did 1,000 jump ropes a day. I ran 5 miles a day and I lifted. I did about 5.5 hours of training a day, right around there. Because what was I going to do? When I got out, I was only 159 pounds and I'm still pretty skinny now at 175. So you can imagine.

Yeah. How tall are you?

6'1.

Okay. Yeah, that's pretty light. Yeah.

For my frame, it looked like I was about 130. It was really bad. I gained 20 pounds in a month when I got out, just eating.

What was it like spiritually in prison? I mean, I know you're a man of faith. I don't know when that developed for you or if that was a thing in your life at that point, but was there much, you know, just like time with God?

My entire morning when I— so I'd go out and start training at 4:30 in the morning. You have to come back in at like 6:30 for count. So the 4:30 to 6:30, there was a lot of just me one-on-one talking to God while I While I trained. And then I read several chapters every morning of the Bible. And I got— the thing was, Ben, is like, at the time, I was just finding my way. I grew up Catholic, did everything, but didn't really live it. I was finding my way and learning and reading, but I still wasn't God first. And I can explain what that means to anybody wondering. But when you become God first, everything you do really goes through him, relies on him. I was just trying to connect.

Yeah.

the dots at the time and fix myself because I was just a real selfish and self-centered person. And I just didn't— that wasn't who I was. I created that and I wanted to fix it. The only way to fix it is to have God help you fix it by living the way he wants you to live. So I was learning more.

And to reframe your identity around it not being dependent necessarily on your body, your fitness, your mental acuity, or anything of that nature, but instead your identity is rooted in your faith. In terms of like, you know, what I mean by that is I wake up in the morning personally and know that if I can love God and love other people and at some point tell other people either through word or deed about the happiness and salvation that's found in Jesus Christ, like that's all I really need to do and everything else is the icing on the cake. And to me, that's what it means to have your identity rooted in your faith.

That's exactly— I couldn't say it any better, man. I love that you speak that and feel it and live it. It kind of gave me chills because that's exactly the way I feel. My goal every day now is to just get a little closer to Jesus, whether it's this much or this much, just a little bit every day. And some days it's going to be more than others, but as long as it's in your heart, man, like there's nonstop progress.

And I know we're rabbit-holing a little bit away from prison and then you going to Hawaii afterwards. But related to the faith piece, do you have like wife, children?

Yeah, I have. I'm married. I have 3 grandkids.

Yeah.

And my, that's my stepkids 'cause my wife's a little older than me, but I have a 3-year-old grandson and 2 twin granddaughters that are just turning 1.

Yeah. The re— the reason I bring that up is that, you know, the faith piece I think becomes all the more meaningful when you realize that You have this responsibility of future generations of you who you can equip to go out and help people with that same message of hope. And that was a real turning point in my life was when I realized, oh gosh, I really have to get my priorities straight in terms of where God fits in my life because I'm no longer just me. I'm these 2 boys also.

I won't speak for you, but I have a feeling you and I feel the same way too. At a certain point, you realize you have a gift and the gift was given to you For other people, not just Ben and not just Dylan, right? And when you figure that out, that's when you actually become the most successful, when you just start giving and stop worrying about, oh, who's saying what about me? Or how does this look? I don't care. All I care is I have a platform to say what I need to say. And that's all I worry about now. You know, and I, like I said, I don't want to speak for you, but I have a feeling you probably feel similarly, just giving, you know?

Yeah.

So when I got out, What happened was, is obviously I had to find a job and I had, you know, I had a degree in finance. I had 10 different person— like between personal trainer certifications to nutrition certifications, but I had 2 felonies. So every single time I applied for a job and got a job, they'd write me back and say, oh, we pulled your criminal record and sorry, we can't offer you the job.

Did you tell them that cocaine is good for weight loss?

I tried, but nobody wanted to hear that. I justified it the best I could, physiology, like why But anyway, I got a job selling cell phones at a local, like, little crappy Hawaii place. I learned deeper sales, like, to a point where I was making a lot of money, $5,000, $6,000 a month selling shitty cell phones that were like $50 apiece. So that got me ready to go and move forward to where I was okay making money again. But I started to study really deeply different aspects of hormones in the body. I got an email about a testosterone booster one day and I just, I started looking at it and going, man, I wasted all this time. How can I just get jacked? You know, like, how can I get, take this to another level? Got that email and then I just went crazy, went into bodybuilding forums, started studying steroids, And different supplements, and I was fascinated by baseball steroid era, and I already had a deal—a great deal of study there. So anyway, I started getting into bodybuilding forums, and a couple companies found me, and they asked me if I had any ability to like speak on camera. I said, "Yeah, I got a little bit. You know, I can show you what I can do." Man, this might have been before the word influencer was actually prevalent in in.

In our modern terminology.

No such thing. I made them a couple videos. I had made videos prior where I was just joking around doing sports debate and everything because I was really into that. And I sent them some new stuff too I had, and they said, we— here's what we want to do. We're going to build you on YouTube. We're going to help you and grow you, pay for it all. We want you to get on there and talk about steroids, peptides, and SARMs. And, you know, at the time, red flags go up everywhere. I said, man, I just got out of prison. Like, I don't want to talk about any of this. So, I dug and saw that it was fine to talk about. I'm not selling it, but I said also, I don't know what the hell peptides and SARMs are. I have no clue. Zero. No, they're underground. There's, at the time, Ben, there were 2 SARMs and 7 or 8 peptides.

Yeah. By the way, approximately what year would this have been?

2011.

2011. Okay. Yeah. Oh yeah. That was like I think my first peptide that I ever used was maybe 2015. So, yeah, that's pretty early.

The first peptide I used was Melanotan-2. I'll get into that in a minute. That's just— oh, man. So, I started researching as much as I could get my hands on. And, you know, at the time, it was very limited, but there were studies going back to the '90s for MK-2866 and MK-677. So, I started really digging in hard because I What the hell was I gonna do? I was scared to leave my house. I was still on parole. So, I studied, and I mean, I studied. Well, within a year, I had a million subscribers on YouTube because there was like 2 or 3 guys talking about steroids and nobody talking about SARMs or peptides on YouTube. So, I blew up fast. Well, the thing was is in that time period, I started to, you know, start testing these out and using them. So, I used steroids, I used SARMs, used peptides, Fell in love with SARMs because I saw what they could do. I saw the results I got. All I could use was S4 and MK-2866. That's all that you could buy.

Okay. And, by the way, brake pedaling here for a second, selective androgen receptor modulators, SARMs. Dylan, I kind of messed around with those for maybe a year max. I came across multiple packets of data indicating some potential carcinogenic issues. I steered clear of— I didn't feel good on SARMs. But, for people unfamiliar, how do you describe SARMs?

Basically, in a nutshell, it was an alternative to steroids in the bodybuilding world. And, the reality why they were created, it was for people that were suffering from osteoporosis, AIDS, muscle wasting diseases. Those were all designed for that purpose really.

Primarily acting on growth hormone pathways.

Basically. And, They, they, they had selective binding, so they were different than steroids. In the bodybuilder's eyes, it was okay, we're not gonna have prostate issues, we're gonna avoid toxicity. And, you know, years later we find out there is some toxicity, more than we ever thought, more suppression, a lot of things that weren't, you know, really on the, the front end because there was no data.

Yeah.

It was, you know, it was basically trial and error and guinea pig it and, I got to the point where I didn't want to do that anymore, but I ended up losing a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers about, I don't know, 2016. And basically, I started to kind of speak out against steroids. What I was doing was teaching people the mechanisms of action, the science, how they were made, and telling them how to use them safely. But trying to tell people also, look at all the bad stuff happening here. And, I was pissing a lot of people off that were selling steroids or had involvement because I was getting people geared towards SARMs, peptides, and alternatives. They got me shut down reporting my channel over and over and over.

Right. Reporting your channel not because you were giving just basic unbiased advice but because you were talking about drugs, if you want to call them that, that could potentially get you banned or limited on social media.

The thing was is at the time I got banned, there was hundreds, if not thousands of channels discussing the exact same things.

Yeah. And this was early, by the way, there's a crackdown going on right now. A lot of people, even just for peptides, are getting restrictions. Like, I tried to— I was going to play my guitar and go live and do an Instagram Live the other— this was like 2 weeks ago. And I clicked Instagram Live. It's like, you can't do Instagram Live. Your account is restricted. And so, I clicked on it. Some post I had a year ago on oral BPC-157, literally a gastric anti-inflammatory peptide that your body makes itself, got flagged and they said, you can't do an Instagram Live for a year, which is crazy. But yeah, and I'm not the only person this is happening to. Just like they're digging stuff up that might be A year or 2 years old systematically, and this is just based on advice I've been given, I'm having to go back and delete any old post I've ever done on peptides, anything where I might be holding a needle, anything. It's crazy.

I did an interview last night and one of the guys I was interviewing told me he got strike or a warning about just some supplement, just a basic herbal ingredient. He was talking about. So that's wild, man.

Yeah. I think the best mentality for anybody who does social media stuff listening in is just like, get into the mentality of bracing yourself to have other avenues to put your message out there besides social media. Because you might just wake up one day and not have an account and that's just happening with increasing frequency.

And imagine at the time with the, you know, what kind of income and what kind of following you're sacrificing, losing a channel of that size. I started a new channel after I kind of mentally recovered a couple months later, built that one to like 250,000. And then right around COVID time, they did a sweep and I wasn't talking about anything COVID related, not a thing, but they just kind of did a sweep of anybody talking about anything crazy. And they really targeted bodybuilders too, got shut down again. So I had pretty much said, Okay, we we need to reverse course here. So I started working.

By the way, were were YouTube shutdowns for you?

Yeah, both. Yeah, both. So I switched course to Instagram, focusing on that, which I took me several years. But I you know people knew who I was, so I got a lot of following really fast. Anyway, let's skip to 2024. I got invited to speak at Mr. Olympia. That was the big thing for me because it was me and a bunch of doctors and practitioners and the guy that's on the internet talking. And I was— trust me when I tell you, I was ready, I was prepared, and I really— I did my job, let's put it that way. And, uh, when I was there, I was co-hosting a podcast with Monica Branch. She was a former Miss Olympia, and Stem Regen was sponsoring her.

I know Monica, by the way. She's super cool.

Okay. Oh yeah, you know Monica? Damn. When I was talking with her then, she's like, you gotta meet Ben and Yeah.

I remember that. And you know what's kind of funny is I used to read all the fitness magazines. I met her in the lobby of an event that I was speaking at, the hotel lobby. And I was talking with her, I'm like, I know this girl from somewhere, and just didn't put two and two together contextually in terms of the fitness magazines and stuff. And then we get to talking, I'm like, oh my gosh, you used to be posing and flexing in all these magazines I used to read. And then we both did a Spartan indoor fitness race together and went to dinner with her and her husband. And yeah, great, great person in the fitness community.

I love it. I completely forgot. She definitely, when I met her, I got introduced to her and then got that offer on top of it. And I said, yeah, hell yeah, I'll do it. And then she was telling me about you at the time. I remember now. So, Stem Regen was there and then I started talking with Christian and met them and they watched me speak. And so I got to meet them, but I made all these contacts, man. Like I went home feeling on top of the world because it was like my, all these years in the bodybuilding world. So I get home, I go to the gym. And as soon as I'm like finishing my workout, I called my wife. I said, man, I don't feel good. Like something's really wrong. I'm going to go to CVS and get a COVID test. Sure. Sure enough, you know, so the next morning I couldn't get out of bed. And I was just saying, God, like, I know I always pout when I'm sick or something's wrong. I'm just going to trust you today.

Should have gotten quadruple vaccinated, man. I'm sorry to hear that happened.

They lost me on that one, right? I was too busy injecting TRT and peptides to inject any vaccines. But I was laying there and I said, you know what? What the hell? I started looking at Stem Regen on Instagram, start digging, and then I started learning about biohacking and I spent about 3 hours sitting there just scrolling through my phone because I felt so just drained. I called my wife in. I said, babe, I said, you've always trusted me. I said, it's time to change course. And that's the moment where I started to do what Dylan does is just start chasing everybody down. I just started reaching out to everybody. I said, you know, I would love to connect with you. I would love to try to meet with you, discuss some things, some opportunities. And I decided to launch the podcast at the same time. Well, Stem Regen invited me to Eudaimonia with them after I started talking to them, and I went and met them there.

That's the big, uh, the big like fitness health event in Florida?

Yeah. Yep. In Palm Beach. Yep. My first guest on my podcast was Misha Tate. I met her with Monica at Mr. Olympia, and that set the stage. And here we are today, a year and a half later, man.

It's kind of interesting because you talk about COVID and there's, there's Some parallels here. I mentioned it earlier in the show when I was introducing you. You seem to have a pretty big interest in heart health. Somewhere along that way, did you have some type of an experience in the cardiovascular realm that led you to be interested in that?

That's probably what— if I go back to the trajectory, it was like I had a moment on vacation in Florida where something hit me that I needed God more than I ever did. I was sitting outside, it was like 2:30 in the morning. I was listening to Stone Temple Pilots on this patio. On the beach, and my wife was asleep, and something hit me, and I was looking, and I started to pray, and see, I got chills. And like three weeks later, I ended up doing this video, and doctor, a doctor online that does videos reached out to me. He called me out on a video, and then he reached out to me, and we started talking. He said, "You know what? I want to hire you." Upon hiring me, he said, "Every single person that works for me." I have him do a calcium score. He said, you, you don't need it, but I want you to do it anyway.

Okay. And he wanted to hire you to be like, like for publicity, like do videos and stuff?

Yep. Help him on social, do content together. So I went in to do the calcium score. I honestly, Ben, I didn't know much about it at all. I never really got into the aspects of the heart that I should have been studying, especially coaching steroids. I was more focused on other hormone panels and other Areas of concern, liver, kidneys, you know, those types of things. Yeah. I got the test done and I really wasn't even thinking about the results, really wasn't even worried about it. Well, I got a letter in the mail and it said my score was 120. And I didn't know what that meant either till I looked it up and then I freaked out, right? Panicked. And I didn't know what to do. So I started digging and studying and he was telling me, oh, you gotta go do this and this and this. And I'd come to find out the doctors—

And at that time, were they differentiating Differentiating between stable versus unstable plaque? Do you have any idea?

On those calcium scores, it was really just stable. And so, I dug enough and got enough work done to find out I had an extremely elevated Lp, like 330 elevated, meaning I had the gene that obviously came from my dad because he passed away when he was 59 from a heart attack. And so that led me into the direction of, okay, how do we fix this? And at the time I was told, well, you don't really fix it. You can take a statin. And I, I had done enough research to understand that a statin was going to increase the number and make it worse. So I went to the Mayo Clinic, and this is the most ridiculous and disappointing thing in the world, considering that's supposed to be the end-all be-all. I had a game plan where I wanted to be on Repatha and Vascepa and some natural ingredients that I had come up with that were gonna treat my Lp and in my view, reverse plaque in my arteries, if not stabilize it.

Which you could technically make a case in the literature for, like double dose, like slightly lower dose statin combination with some things like nattokinase, et cetera. Like you could make a case that that might cause some amount of plaque regression.

Absolutely. And so, I went up there and they told me everything I said would be bad practice. If I took a statin, I would have nothing to worry about. There was no concern of any kind whatsoever. I have rarely gotten into an argument with my mom and wife, and I mean rarely. And we drove from Iowa to Minneapolis, which was like 3 and a half hours each way. And on the way home, I, I'm not going to say exactly what I said explicitly in the car. I'm just going to tell you that I said, you guys, I said, what happened to my mom and my wife and the people that I know? I said, that's fine. I'm going to do what Dylan wants to do because I know And sure enough, a year later, they told me I was not crazy. I got my Lp number down into the 90s from 330.

Oh wait, by the way, you said Repatha, so not a statin. You're using a PCSK9.

Yep. So I got it down into the 90s from 330, which I was told was impossible. And telling me something's impossible makes me want to and will make it possible. So, I ended up getting a CT angio and that showed a 37% blockage all in one specific area. So thankfully, I caught that early enough to where, of course, that's not good for my age, but it could have been far worse.

Right. And then, for people listening, can you explain really quickly the difference between the calcium scan that you did and the follow-up CT angiography?

Yeah. So, the calcium score is really just an estimate. Based upon some, some factors that they, they look at in there. So it's the, the 121's given me an estimate of that. I've got some, some hardened plaque built up, but it doesn't tell you the percent or exact, but it will give you the location of it. And the CT angio is gonna show you the exact percentage and where. It doesn't show the soft plaque though, like a Cleerly would, right? So the Cleerly's gonna be the ultimate test.

Cleerly is basically a CT angiography with AI-based Predictive algorithms built on top via software.

So, that at least gave me the understanding of, okay, this isn't great. It's not end of world and I'm not completely screwed here, right? And not that you're screwed if you are above that, but it would bring up real cause for concern. Now, I had several things working against me. Years of cocaine use, eating disorder when I was younger, really significant amounts of overtraining and long-distance running. And so there were, and then a family history. So I have a lot of things working against me. A year and a half, completely fine. No problems, taking all the medications, feel great. And then I woke up one day and I started having really strange heart palpitations. And I had had a history of anxiety and things. So I thought maybe it's just a panic attack.

Panic attack. Did too many pushups the day before.

Exactly. Exactly. And dehydration. And I had it happen at one point where I was really overdoing magnesium, like really bad, didn't know what I was taking. And that had caused it before. And I thought, man, is there something I'm doing again? Am I taking something? Well, it happened like 4 days in a row. So I went into the— I had my wife take me to the hospital after a gym session one night, late at night. So they— I stayed there all weekend. They did the catheter up my arm. Because they thought there might have been blockage there, and he I looked right at me and said there's no blockage here of any kind whatsoever. On my echocardiogram showed a low ejection fraction, 45%, which it's supposed to be 55 to 70. And so they put me on Jardiance, and I continued with everything I had. But the Jardiance doesn't agree with me because of I'm in the bathroom 20 times a day peeing, and it's stripping me of all the electrolytes. I was losing weight.

Jardiance mechanism of action, is that just diuresis?

Yeah, it's an SGLT2 inhibitor, so it's really for diabetics. And I'm the furthest thing from a diabetic, but it has shown significant means of improving your ejection fraction and your ability to pump. See, the problem is, Ben, is all the heart medications are for people that have high blood pressure. My blood pressure normal is 95 over 62 from all the cardio.

Right.

So, taking one of those will just eradicate me. And so, there's really no strong answer. So, I went with a natural solution trying to build the nitric oxide levels, D-ribose, high-dose ubiquinol, and I've kind of stabilized it at about 50 right now. The problem is the overtraining.

Stabilize your ejection fraction, you mean?

Yeah, just to a higher level. And, 45 is not so terrible, but it's certainly lower end. But, people that train the way I do, I do 90 to 100 minutes of cardio So yeah, it does take the ejection fraction down pretty low.

When you say 90 to 100 minutes of cardio, because obviously you implied a few minutes ago that you were a little bit disenchanted about the effect that long-term chronic cardio might have on heart health. For you, do you mean like you're walking like I am right now, or do you mean like cardio cardio?

So, I walk on non-workout days, I walk about an hour, which turns out to be a little over 5 miles. On workout I walk 40 minutes and then I do 80-some minutes on the elliptical, and then I do about a 25-minute bike ride after I have dinner just to do— I don't ride hard. It's just a smooth ride to move after dinner.

Yeah. Not, not, not, not to poke holes in your training routine too much, but why are you doing 80 minutes on the elliptical?

You know what? I used to do way more. It's just kind of like an addiction at this point of where it's just what I do. And I, I need to tone it. I've actually toned it down. From where I was before. And I'm trying to— now I'm doing it less days a week and I'm trying to— you know, when you do something that long, you have to wean yourself off because if you try to do it all at once, you're just going to lose your mind.

Right. And obviously, for people wondering like, well, isn't cardio good? The reason I push back is just chronic cardio, the effects on testosterone and the— and when I say chronic cardio, pushing above that aerobic conversational pace. And then, the potential for paradoxically arterial stiffness, right? A lot of the work of James O'Keefe indicates a risk for atherosclerosis or arterial stiffness once you exceed a somewhat low number of minutes of cardiovascular exercise per week. Like, in the study you look at, the 150-ish to 175 minutes-ish per week range.

That's my concern and why I know that At certain points, I'm going to have to really, really get it down significantly lower. I have tried to lower the intensity because man, I do these sessions on the elliptical where I'm like the freaking Terminator. I'm like zone 3 and 4 for 75 minutes straight.

I'm on the Mark Sisson bandwagon, like move at a low level all day long. I'm like 15,000, 20,000 steps a day, whatever, but at a low level. Lift heavy shit and sprint every once in a while.

I'm thinking so. I have a Carol bike out here that I'm going to start utilizing more to do like the REHIT training. And I am a firm believer in walking now that I started doing it for a couple years, because I was one of those, even knowing the science, a meathead. Oh, fuck, walking doesn't do anything. And now I'm addicted to walking.

Yeah. I mean, even just for little things people might not think about, spinal health, Low back comfort, total game changer. I still get crap for doing, you know, for recording podcasts while I'm on a, while I'm walking on a treadmill. But you know what? I think the pros outweigh the cons.

Who cares? As long as you feel good. And it's not like you're— my morning walk is not, it's almost like a damn near run. You're smooth pimp walking, man. There ain't nothing wrong with what you're doing at all. It's good because you, It's not so good to sit here and record all day. It's good to keep moving. So, I have no issue with it at all. I think it's great.

Yeah, yeah. I want to come back to the biohacking piece real quick. And then, I know you talk a lot about your heart health journey also on your podcast, which I'll link to, by the way. If anybody's listening in, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Dylan, D-Y-L-A-N, and I'll link to all of Dylan's stuff. I heard you say, Or maybe it was on the intake form as we were going back and forth scheduling this podcast that you think a lot of biohackers are actually unhealthy. Bryan Johnson is getting a bunch of crap for having a gastrointestinal issue, which is stupid. I mean, everybody's got issues. I think it's horrible that he's getting raked over the coals for having an autoimmune issue that's outside of his control. But him aside, Or maybe you'd include him, I don't know. A lot of biohackers are doing a lot of stuff to stay healthy, and yet, I've seen you say that they may not be the healthiest. What do you mean by that?

Several things that I've seen, and one of these actually has you involved in it. I got some data talking with Shawn, the, you know, the MeScreen founder, and he told me that biohackers had the worst results on their mitochondrial health of anybody except one person that he'd seen that had the most exquisite And that, my friend, was you. And he told me, don't say anything. I said, Ben's not going to care if you tell me that he had the best panel you've ever seen. But he told me what I already know. A lot of times, and you know this, when you know something, you can go to an extreme. So the knowledge, if you don't use it with wisdom, too much knowledge can be a bad thing because then you think you know everything and then you start to go overboard. And I see people that, okay, this helps this and this helps this and this helps this. So we have to take everything under the sun. And I've done this too. When I found this stuff out about my heart, I was taking 30, 40 supplements a day till it regressed me. But, a lot of times biohackers think that they need to do everything or they're willing to try things. And, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but sometimes trying too many things or going completely overboard will cause a lot of adverse effects. And, what I find is that we've become so enthralled with what we know, then we get into this realm of what we don't know.

And, by the way, I think that That becomes exponentially more potentially deleterious when you combine it with a lack of knowledge about mechanisms of action and create redundancy. What I mean by that would be, let's say you were on one of those blood pressure-lowering drugs, Dylan, but then you also started some nitric oxide precursor and you're like, okay, I'm also going to take a baby dose of tadalafil, and everything is causing vasodilation. So then you wind up with orthostatic hypotension or something like that, or back to MK-677, right? The growth hormone-releasing compound. Ipamorelin does the same thing. Sermorelin does the same thing. And, people put together these stacks and they don't realize they're targeting all the same growth hormone receptors but creating exponentially stacked side effects at the same time. And, I think that's a big issue like you were just explaining.

Yeah.

You get on all this stuff and if that's paired with the lack of an understanding of what stuff is redundant, you create redundancy not only in terms of cost but also side effects.

You know what I learned? When I was training the bodybuilders, they had this more is always better mentality and it was this, okay, I'm going to take this steroid, but this one does this and this one does this and this one does this. And, before you know it, you're taking 3 to 4 grams of different steroids a week, which is no wonder why so many people are dropping dead or when they're in their 40s and 50s, their quality of life is like a zero. And it's that concept when honestly, when it comes to supplements, when it comes to steroids, when it comes to peptides, less is more. And people are in this big hurry to take everything because, well, this does this and this does this. But before you know it, the accumulation, your body can't handle it. And then, You don't know when you have a problem what, where it's coming from. You don't know what's causing what. So if I don't do one thing at a time, it's kind of like what I do with my diet. If I'm on a diet that I'm on and I'm like, okay, I want to try something different. I'm going to insert one thing that way. I know if I gain weight or if I don't feel good or get a headache, I know it's from this, whatever I'm eating or that I add. Right. Same thing with supplements. If we're taking 75 things, Well, I feel great. Well, which one's doing it?

Yeah. And it happens. I mean, I don't want to throw people under the bus. It happens to me too. Last week, I had one morning just blew out my backside and painted the back of the toilet seat. Not to get into too much information for people. I'm like, what the heck just happened? I usually take magnesium in the evening to help me have a better bowel movement the next day. And I even take magnesium oxide, Which is useful for that. But then, I took some— it was just a multivitamin type of supplement that someone sent me to test. I didn't notice that it was chock-full of inulin, right? So, I go to bed with basically a combination of magnesium oxide and a ton of both resistant starch and fiber in my gut and wake up and just had a horrible morning. It was like colonoscopy preparation. And, of course, I should have looked at the label, right? And, I think a lot of people create that type of redundancy beyond just bathroom time every day.

I just did that. I'm not going to name the company, but it was somebody I had on my podcast. You know how it goes, the people will send you all their stuff and I just trust it and took it and it was a certain probiotic. And, oh, man, it was brutal for 3 days where I was like, okay, I know what this is. Here you go, you can try it.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you hear, it's funny. I know we're rabbit-holing a little bit, but I got a text from a restaurant owner yesterday and he's like, we've decided we're going to convert all of our stuff to resistant starch, cooked and cooled starches and create good fermentation in the gut. I'm like, dude, you may want to do some internal testing and offer options to people because anybody that's got bacterial overgrowth or susceptibility to gas and bloating, You're gonna give them a very unpleasant time about a half hour after they leave your restaurant.

Yeah, that's the, that's the problem is a lot of people, they don't, they hear one thing and they just assume and they don't get into everything. And it's just like what you said, we get things sometimes where people and even us, we don't read the labels fully. I've done that before where I was taking so much zinc, it would've blown your mind. 'Cause I didn't realize that there was zinc in like 5 things I was taking and I couldn't pinpoint the problem. And you gotta be careful 'cause a lot of these ingredients now, they carry vitamin profiles or different profiles of things that you look at it and you're going, holy shit, I'm taking like 20 times the amount of iodine I'm supposed to take. And you didn't realize. So, you gotta be careful.

Yeah. You don't just pee stuff out. Like, you can actually accumulate stuff. Yeah. Like with the whole biohacking thing, you know, over-optimization, over-hacking, whatever, Does it go beyond just supplements?

Yeah. Sometimes I think it's the different modalities people use too. I just had that experience. Scalar Energy, okay? I was listening to what I thought was going to be this, oh, it's going to help me so much. I did a session on it, 15 minutes. Once again, I don't want to name the names because I don't want to call this out, but oh my gosh, I feel like I'm on top of the world here. My body wants more of this. Well, you go, you go dig into this deeper and come to find out it can be very detrimental to you, especially if you go too hard, too fast. Well, I ended up, was gifted one of these $15,000 devices, which I gave back. Well, I, yeah, I gave it back. So here's what happened, Ben. I was on the way home from my grandson's birthday, which was a 2-hour drive, and I left these things on for 2 hours in the car and passed out.

This is like something that you wear on your body?

Yeah. It was earphones that send these these waves and these noises into your head. Well, 2 days later, I woke up at 3 in the morning and I threw up and I thought, man, I must have eaten something bad. You know, like I had salmon the day before. I couldn't stop throwing up for 4 hours straight and it was every 15 minutes. And then I went to the hospital. They couldn't find anything wrong, nothing at all. I got one of those pills that helps you stop throwing up. Well, it was the energy thing that I was listening to that caused it. And I ended up talking to him and he's like, you know, I didn't coach you and tell you. And then I looked up the name of the, what he named it. And it said it was the definition of it came out to evil in the Bible. I said, you can have this thing back. Whoa. Yeah, I'm going to mail it back to you.

People like, they're skeptical, that kind of stuff. But I got sacred geometry posters sent to me once and they said, Put them under your mattress, like your top mattress, and you'll get these great lucid dreams. I did it and I didn't even tell my wife that I did it. Her and I, for 3 days, had nightmares every single night. And the second night, I told her about the posters. So obviously, it wouldn't have been even placebo or anything for her because she didn't even know. Third night, we threw them away, tossed these things, and these were just posters under our bed with shapes and patterns on Dude, it's—

and my wife, when she put the headphones on, she didn't tell me the first night. And she, you know, I always, every night I get into bed, I tell my wife, I love you. And then I always, there's never a night I miss. Well, this particular night, she's like, can you hold me? And I thought, man, something's not right. Is she— and then she told me the next day that the earphones that she had worn, they— she had this feeling and she got this terrible anxiety and she felt like So my wife is like my Holy Spirit when I don't listen, because you know how it gets, brother. Like, you get going and you get antsy, and sometimes you're not listening to the Holy Spirit telling you. And she's— he speaks to her, to me, when I get going. She's up. She bats 1,000% on people. Every single person she's ever told me, don't do business with them, don't interview them, she's always been right. And I— now I've learned enough hard lessons. To listen. Well, with those earphones, I was on my bike riding one day and the guy had said he was gonna gift them to me and something was telling me, don't take them. Don't do it. Don't take them. And I was saying in my head, no, no, the guy, you know, he, he talks about these energy systems and, and whatever. Well, I dug deeper and found out some things that I, I should have listened to and I got what, what was coming to me for not listening, I guess.

Yeah. I think, I think that's wisdom cuz sometimes that voice inside your head, is fear of growth, right? Like my sons and I went skydiving over the weekend.

I saw that.

And it was a blast, but like every, like, as you can imagine, like a million voices in my head when the door on the airplane opened, which is kind of weird if you've never been on an airplane with the door open. And then even more weird when somebody tells you to jump out of said airplane with the door open. There were many voices inside my head telling me not to jump, but those were voices of fear, right? And But by defying those voices of fear, I grew, right? Like I grew in courage, I grew in knowledge. And then there's the other voices, the ones that you're talking about where it's like your conscience or that still small voice inside of you is telling you, avoid this, it's not a good idea. And it's not because you're too afraid to do something that is going to grow you as a person. It's because it really is going to damage you spiritually or mentally or physically.

Absolutely. One of the things that you know you have to learn along the way is to learn how to deal with suffering and also understand when the Holy Spirit's trying to tell you something and what's going to happen if you don't listen. I've learned enough hard lessons now where I'm not trying to talk myself out of anything at all. You know what I mean? And I've had some significant things come my way, very large amounts of money and offers. that most people would tell me I'm absolutely insane, where something said no and I said, fuck it, forget it. It's not that important to me. Not if I know in my heart, forget it. Something else will happen. Sure enough, a couple days later, boom, something bigger and better that I felt good about.

Yeah. You have a lot of interesting conversations on your show. You interview a lot of people in the space. What do you think is coming down the pipeline right now? That we're going to see more and more of, especially in the health biohacking peptide optimization space.

I'm working on something specifically myself that I feel is going to be very pertinent because of all the GLP-1 use. But I try to do the widest range because for me, health and fitness is, it's mind, it's body, it's spiritual because those all contribute to our health. So, realistically, it's like, okay, what do we see here that's the most popular? It's always based around the gut, the mitochondria, and then something to stimulate your vagus nerve, something along those lines. I see more things coming now that different people are starting to see and realize there's other peptides out there besides GLP-1s. You know, it's like, for instance, my favorite peptide's KPV, but that's more gut-related, but Selank, Semax, things that are for anxiety and stress. And I think that you're going to start seeing People talk about these more, and the the GLP one craze will eventually pass, and more people are going to realize that there's things for the heart, there's things for your mind, and different aspects of the liver and the kidneys aside from conventional medicines and treatments that are going to start popping more in people's like clips that they're doing, and you're going to see more of it. I'm starting to talk more about it, but in terms of like new products and everything, I see people doing a lot of different things now with creatine where they're adding ingredients to them and and. doing different things like that. They're trying to enhance what's already being pushed. And I see a lot of that happening now too. So I would expect more of those.

Yeah. In the peptide realm, there are, of course, you know, there's the whole underground world, which, you know, you and I know about having been lurkers on bodybuilding forums for a long time, the gray market, the black market, whatever you want to call it. But there's a lot of peptides that don't find their way into anywhere from social media to what people are commonly talking about. Like, for example, the other month, 3 months ago, I learned about enkephalin, right? Enkephalin is what your body produces after you run. It's like the runner's high. Well, it turns out you can actually inject enkephalin and get like this nice, calm, even keel, opioid-esque type of response. I'm not a doctor. Do not take this as medical advice. Proceed at your own risk. This is sold for human research only. Total gray market. But, that's an interesting one. Have you come across, again, for human research only, not for anyone to actually inject themselves, have you come across any interesting peptides in the space that you think people aren't talking about that might be a thing one day?

I think there are some that people do know about but aren't talked about enough like what I was saying, Selank and Semax, 2 of mine because I have a history of Anxiety in my family, so I've studied it and I find those to be— I find them to be intriguing because I really despise the conventional medicine treatments for said issue because I feel like oftentimes it exacerbates it or creates a bigger problem. So, those are big to me. SS31 is another one that I really like to look at because of, again, the ability to improve ejection fraction in the heart amongst its other abilities. And then, MOTS-c, I know you've heard of that, But a lot of people still haven't. People look at some of these compounds in one way, but they don't realize the multifacets of what they can do. So, I like MOTS-c because there's fat loss and exercise enhancement capabilities, but then mitochondrial improvement capabilities. So, that's another one that I really like.

Yeah. And great example, by the way, where when we're talking about the mitochondria, some people hear mitochondria and they think, well, you guys were just talking about redundancy and you said MOTS-c. And SS31, but MOTS-c is more of an exercise mimetic and helps out with efficiency in the electron transport chain, whereas SS31 is a mitochondrial membrane-based antioxidant. So now, by using those 2, you're supporting 2 different pathways, right? But some people will hear that and just think, oh, more redundancy. I did not know that, by the way, about SS31 and ejection fraction.

Yeah. So I'm looking this one up. I want to tell you, so EP405 was one I was told about, about 6 months ago. So I have discussions with a couple owners at underground places still that, you know, I still get things from and recommend to. And because I've been involved in those, some of those with people since 2011, since I found 'em. So I like to know, I always get information. This is where I get a lot of my information. What's your top seller? What's your newest thing that's coming out? What do you find in your networks of buyers and people that, that's new or that people are looking into? This one's called PP-405 because I absolutely hate finasteride and the other things for hair loss. I have dealt with people that have developed post-finasteride syndrome and all sorts of side effects with hair loss drugs. And this one, I don't have a ton of information on, but this is the one that was like their golden goose of hair loss.

Interesting.

Yeah, it's called PP-405.

Is that like a topical or injectable?

I think it's an injectable.

Interesting. I mean, with a name like PP-405, I would've expected it to be one of those sexual wellness peptides.

Basically, it like forces some sort of cellular energy production in your hair. Yeah, there's some sort of method of stimulating stem cells, I think. to become active and start producing your hair is, I think, the premise of it. So, that's the one that I had wanted to talk about. I don't get into hair loss a lot anymore because I don't really do steroid videos or for those type of users. And, I've always been so against hair loss drugs because of the side effects, but this one supposedly is the answer.

Well, I'll look it up. For those of you listening, by the way, I'll make sure that I I put links in the shownotes if I come across any juicy research or anything else related to stuff Dylan has brought up. Man, we are running close to time and you have a lot of stuff that you've talked about. Again, BenGreenfieldLife.com/Dylan is where you can find Dylan's podcast. Dylan, are you going to be anywhere in the world over the next few months, conferences, events, et cetera, where people might be able to meet you?

I'm speaking at an event here in Phoenix on the 7th. I'm going to be speaking 2 times at Ultimate Wellness in Miami. And I will— I was going to be at Eudaimonia. I can't because of my grandkid's birthday, but I'll probably be at A4M. I got some big interviews. I'm going to California to interview Dr. Amen. Um, and yeah, that's going to be a big—

You're going to do a brain scan when you go down there?

I hope so. I hope so. I don't know if I— I don't know if I want what's going to be found in there.

Find out how, uh, how cray-cray you really are.

Yeah. I don't know if I want to. That's a, that's a big one for me though, coming up too. So I, I got some pretty, pretty good things coming. That the, the one in Phoenix is a big deal to me cuz I'm gonna get to speak on Mind Body God and then be on a panel there. So I'm, I'm really excited to do that. It's like a Fit Father project. I'm excited. I'm excited.

Cool. That'll be great, brother. Well folks, if you have questions or comments or feedback for Dylan or me, your own thoughts to add, you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Dylan, D-Y-L-A-N. Dylan's podcast is easy to find wherever podcasts are found. Last name is Gemelli, G-E-M-E-L-L-I. Dylan, thanks so much for doing this, man.

And thank you, and congratulations for everything you have going on, my friend. I couldn't be happier. Nobody deserves it more than you, and I'm really excited for you, man.

Thanks, man. Thanks. I always love our So, thank you everybody for watching. Have an incredible week.

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