EP 650: Chiropractor to Hormone Expert: Dr. Mark's Wild Journey Into Testosterone & Men's Health

The purpose of this show, the purpose of this show is to guide you to realign with habits that get you to live the life.

Welcome back to the Habit Based Lifestyle podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Ewell. Today we got a very special guest, Dr. Mark Lucky. He's a chiropractor from Charleston, South Carolina, also the owner of the West Ashley Wellness and Rehab and Charleston Testosterone. He's also written a book, Testosterone Testosterone: Be Better in the Bedroom and in ball field. And this has been an Amazon number one bestseller. So I want to welcome you on the show today, Mark.

Thank you so much. You know, I've always been told by my mentors, get in the right places, in the right rooms, with the right people. And I've been following you for so long and really wanted to do this. So when you reached out a couple weeks ago and said let's do a podcast, I was immediately excited and all in.

That's awesome, man. Well, For a lot of the, you know, a lot of my guests, they're obviously in the health space. What kind of got you started, man? And I know you're a chiropractor. Is that kind of the first initial thing you got into?

Yeah, so I got hurt playing soccer in college about 30 years ago, and the only profession that really helped me out of that injury was a chiropractor. And I was amazed at what this gentleman did. There's a whole story to that, but he fixed me, fixed my hip, and I was out kicking and playing, which I hadn't done for about 8 weeks. So, when I got out of school at Landry University, I had a marketing sales degree, did that for a few years, hated it, and something kept telling me, go back and become a chiropractor and help people all around the world. And that's what I did. And 28 years later, I integrated my practice 15 years ago, and it's just been an amazing wild ride.

Wow, 15 years ago, man, you integrated your practice. That's pretty cool. So, you're kind of a— what do we call that? Like a pioneer, right? Of what you're doing because I know a lot of people are doing that now, but 15 years ago they weren't. Yeah.

So when I looked at it, you know, I could only— and as you know, you work with many chiropractors— we can help one person at a time. And I could look at my schedule, my week, my month, my year, my life, and go, I can only help this many people. And I have this purpose of like helping people all around the world. So I was like, if I could figure out a way to how to add services in and more team members in, we could help more people, which would help our community. So we started out doing very simple things. We're still very narrow focused on the body, you know, healing the body from within. We're not pushing any type of medications in the office from a standpoint of like heart medications, all those things. We don't do any ER care. It's all based on physical medicine. So, we always have a saying like, "Physical problems require physical solutions." So, that's what we did at the beginning, trigger point injections, and then, you know, durable medical equipment, which led us into doing neuropathy. And they shut that down after I was at like 6 practices, which then, I mean, one day, Jesse Ewell, I went from being one of the largest neuropathy doctors in our offices in the country to doing hormones the next day. And I never looked back.

Oh my gosh.

What?

Okay, so like, let's talk about that because I come from personal training background, did that for 22 years, had 2 personal training facilities. But like, you kind of bypass that. You're like, hey, I was doing neuropathy, 6 clinics, and then and I made the decision. But like, this is where a lot of people sit in your industry, is like, do I continue?

And I—

this is kind of like what I think is I see chiropractic as two ways. One is a religion. One side of it's a religion where all you can do are these things or you're not a chiropractor. The other side of it is guys like yourself who are, you know, they're, they're, they're doing other things with it, right? And they're supporting chiropractic and what they're doing. But like, talk about what that was like for you to go from those 6 things 6 locations to like just being like, "All right, I'm taking an immediate 180 and we're going the other direction." Like, what was that like for you?

So, for me, it was all about looking at insurance and when the powers that be, the 3-letter agencies walk in and go, "Hey, we think you're overutilizing this code." Never said anything but the word overutilization. I think it was about time for me to go, "Okay, no more insurance." So, I went through a little battle with them for about 10 years. I stayed true to who I was as a chiropractor and our treatments. I never buckled under any of what they were saying. And I went to the very end and they finally said, you know what, you did everything right. You don't owe— I mean, it got up to be— can I tell you how much money they wanted back from me on my audit?

Yeah, man.

Is that okay?

That's a real thing.

It was with interest up to $4 million. Wow. And I was like, I'm not paying that back. We treated these people. Here's our documentation. They're all got— they got better. Not everybody. I probably was 10%. And I kept saying, hey, I agree with you. 1% may be the number. But they would never really look at anything. So they end up, Jesse Ewell, writing me a $6,000 check at the end. So if you're a chiropractor out there right now and you're doing some treatments that they're auditing for you, if you've got your notes, you've done the treatment, you've got testimonials, you didn't commit any type of fraud, you've done the work, stick to your guns, take it to the ALJ, get with your attorney, and good things will happen for you. And it helps my last name is Dr. Lucky, right? I mean, my wife's like, you're the luckiest guy ever. But it's not about luck. It's about having your systems in place and knowing what you do is the right thing and just staying true to yourself.

And let's be honest, if they were going to a traditional doctor, that 10% would have probably turned into 90%, right?

Right. Yeah, because they didn't know— well, put it this way, the treatments we were doing, you can't find them anywhere in the country right now. But everybody's, you know, going to you know, Lexapro and all the other things that they're trying to give you for neuropathy, which is basically not working. So, okay.

So, do you do neuropathy today or did you get out of there?

No. So, when I made the decision, closed the 6 offices, I got all my— my attorney was like, I've never seen anybody do this. I picked up the phone and got every single person that was working, all my team members in 6 locations jobs that next day. So, I didn't leave them hanging. And he was amazed at that. I just— my exchange in abundance. And the next day I said, you know what, we're gonna go all cash. We're just gonna hit it hard. And so we went all cash, do a little personal injury, of course, but, uh, we went right into hormone therapy. We started with 10 guys the first month. They grew 10, 10, 10 almost every month. And, you know, 15 years later, we have thousands of patients on our neuropathy pro— I mean, our, our hormone therapy program, and it's just been amazing. So never look back at insurance.

Yeah, tell me a little bit about— so it sounds like you've kind of had your own personal experience with fatigue, weight gain, a lack of drive, you know, before you got into hormone therapy. What kind of drove you into that a little bit?

Yeah, you know, again, just being inside of four walls, seeing, you know, 400 patients a week, you know, depending on some coffee to get through the day. Weekends were more about recovery and not living, getting, you know, not dreading Monday, but going, you know, Monday starts it all over again. And I love my patients and I love treating patients and I love seeing them get better, but I still wanted a quality of life, you know, was divorced, you know, was getting a divorce. I'm happily remarried now and have 2 wonderful other kids. So, and I have 4 kids total. But, you know, it was just one of those things. I just wasn't really thriving. My purpose was off, gained weight, terrible skin. I mean, listen, I've got some pictures somewhere. I know I could show you if I pull them up real quick. It is wild what I looked like then and then after my transformation from getting on hormone therapy, from really taking care of my collagen needs, from using the peptides, how my body has actually changed.

Yeah, that's amazing. So, you know, you wrote a book, Testosterone: Be Better in the Boardroom, Bedroom, and the Ballfield. Like, why do you think so many men and even women at this point, like, are, you know, resistant to hormone optimization?

You know, that's a great question. I think people have been fed, you know, stories about what it does or what it doesn't do, if you know what I mean. Like, they— I'm trying to get my camera back up, I apologize. They have listened to the other side and they're scared of doing hormones. They don't understand that it's a system that's safe, it's affordable, it's extremely effective. And we're watching their numbers. We've got our medical team, our medical staff that does that. And I don't know if you saw the latest on that, but the Dietary Guidelines for 2026 for men is you should get your hormones checked, your testosterone checked, because it's part of a healthy healthy lifestyle. And not only that, they're removing the heart restrictions off of it and the prostate restrictions, which we've known for many years isn't a real thing. If prostate caused you to have— if testosterone caused you to have prostate cancer, every man, right, with testosterone in their body would have prostate cancer. It just doesn't do it. I've had in the years that we've done this, about 15 years, I may have had one person, maybe two, where after we placed them on hormone optimization therapy, TRT, testosterone, whatever you want to say, that the, the prostate did kind of get activated a little bit. That was a predisposition. Send them to urologist because we're looking at those numbers. And that's the big deal. You don't just put people on hormones and never look at them again. We go first day blood work, um, about the 8th week blood work, and then every 6 months. Yeah.

So tell me, tell me kind of like what are the important numbers or what are the important things? Because I know a lot of, you know, these, these clinics online are like, here's your total testosterone. They're not looking at all the other numbers and they're just basing everything on that. The guy gets on it, they feel good for 6 weeks and then they feel terrible. And it's, it's like, well, your numbers, you know, have tripled, but it's like they still feel terrible. So like, talk about the real numbers that matter when it comes to testosterone.

Yeah, you know, so I'll use LabCorp reference points. So they say your testosterone should be between 264 and 916, and that's a very wide gap. So if you were to, Jesse Ewell, to go to your medical doctor today and you had 300, they're going to go, hey, you're within normal, like you're You're right there. But Jesse Ewell, you know, as somebody who has owned gyms and been involved in this industry for many years, that 900 and 300 is two completely different things. Normal is not optimal, and optimal is where you want to be. That's where you actually live. Normal is where you die. Optimal is where you go to live, right? So when you take a look at blood work, that, that's that total number or serum number is just a number. And the sex binding globular hormone can actually attach itself to that number and make it go 150, 200 points up or down. This is why we do look at that number, because all the men want to know that number. But in actuality, we're looking at the free number, and that's a percentage. And I like to keep mine personally at around 27%. Most men are really optimal between that 21% and 30%. We never let it get over 30%. If they, if they're— if they get over 30%, we check them again. They're over 30%, we're going to bring the numbers down, their testosterone numbers down a little bit, their milligrams. But as long as we can keep that somewhere between 21% and 30%, and we're all all different. Like, you may feel amazing at 850 total and 22% on your free, where somebody else may feel amazing at 27% and, you know, 980 or whatever the case may be.

Right.

But the other key to this is estrogen. All testosterone will convert to estrogen. Now, I have so many guys that come in, they go, I want no estrogen in my body. Like, like Give me all the anastrozole. I'll take it every day if I have to. But estrogen is so important for your heart health and it's also important for your erections. So when you, when you block that estrogen and take it down to almost zero, right, you're not recovering, you're not sleeping, you're not having great erections, you're tired. But on the flip side, if you don't block it down a little bit, if you are converting fairly quickly, then when you're watching cat commercials, you know, you're crying, right? You're like, uh, why am I crying over cat commercials? So, you know, we want to— and again, it's different for everybody. Some men optimal at 50, you know, 50 on the, on the estradiol number. Other men, they're optimal at 25. So that's probably for us, for me, and in our clinic, our medical clinic, that's probably the harder number to get right. The testosterone is easy, you know, you just— we're giving 2 injections a week, 50 units or whatever milligram. That estrogen takes a little bit of, uh, craftiness to get it to the right area.

Got it. So, okay, so let's, let's talk about somebody who's watching this. Maybe they're either not on testosterone or they have been. What does free actually mean? Because, um, that's kind of the big thing that you're talking about, right?

It's like, yeah, that's a great question, Jesse. So, you know, when I, when I talk to the patients, I talk about testosterone coursing through your body. And testosterone is needed by every system in the body. I think as men, we get convinced that testosterone is only about our sexual proudness, if you will. So a lot of my guys will come in, they're like, oh my gosh, I don't need testosterone. I, you know, ask my wife, I'm great in bed. And I'm like, well, it's not just about being great in bed or being able to get an erection. First of all, It's not only getting the erection, but it's maintaining the erection. But, but not only that, that's great. That usually is the last thing to go. The first thing to go is concentration. You got to make a list. When your wife goes, hey, go to the store and I need 3 things, and you're like, I got to make a list of the 3 things. That's a telltale sign. You're gaining some, some belly fat that you can't get rid of no matter what you do. You don't— your muscle, you're going to the gym and you're not getting any um, getting any, um, you know, any results. Your sleep is only— you go to sleep and you go right to REM. So when you wake up, you haven't been in any restorative sleep patterns. So you're like, I feel like I've been working out all night, I'm, I'm still exhausted, and now I can't think. And now you're trying to have an erection and you're like, uh, those are the things that can give people problems.

And then obviously there's, you know, different versions of, you know, testosterone therapy. There's your cream, your shots, even now they have sublingual, and then, you know, there's other versions. Is there a specific version you like best, or does it just kind of depend on the client?

For 90% of our— 95% of our men, it's all injections. And, you know, they'll come in, they're a little bit nervous of the injections. Back in the day, we were doing intramuscular, IM, and, you know, you're talking about an inch, inch and a half needle. Now, we switched over to sub-q. Now, some of the guys from the gym, from your gym, have a problem with that. They're like, well, you know, you don't really get it in your body, can't absorb it. But in reality, what we found is completely opposite from that. And the research shows you absorb it just as well, if not better. And what we've noticed is the estrogen doesn't spike and the hematocrit doesn't go up. That's the other thing that's really important with men on testosterone, especially those men that are very active. We want to look at that hematocrit number because that's how those red blood cells It's kind of clumping together. And of course, you don't want that to, you know, to cause problems. As long as you are working out, you're getting your blood checked every 6 months, the hematocrit goes up. And you happen to see if you have a Chick-fil-A, I don't know if you have Chick-fil-A near you, but if they're donating blood at a Chick-fil-A, you swing in, you donate your blood, you get your Chick-fil-A card, you go get you some grilled chicken nuggets or give the card to some one of your patients. And then everybody's happy.

Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, so, okay, so talk to me about like what are like the biggest things that you see as far as issues with, you know, TRT and any type of testosterone today that, that's going on? From issues from a standpoint of like, yeah, like a guy's, a guy's on testosterone, he's not seeing the results, or he's not. Yeah, so like what, what would you say are some of the biggest contributors to that?

Yeah, so, so number one, are they giving themselves the right amount, the right dose? So, so we know, Jesse Ewell, being guys. We know that you got to make things simple for guys, right? If you make like women, you could give women a list of like 10 things to do and they will get them all done exactly how you say, especially in like the spas and in the office. They're just going to, they're more proactive, which is why they live longer than us, by the way, right? Whereas men, it's like, they're not going to do anything until they can't look up the duck hunt or they can't throw a fishing rod or, you know, they can't have, you know, relations with their wife, then they're ready to do something. And so, we make it extremely simple. We give them simple instructions, but if I've had guys go, "I don't think it's working." And then I go over the— "Well, I'm only putting like, you know, I'm only putting like this much," you know, when I told them to do like 50, a 50-unit syringe, and they're like, "Oh, no, no, I just pulled it up to 5 right here." So, that could be a problem if they're not using the right amount. If they're spreading it out too far. If they're not getting the protein that they need in the body, that's really important. If they're not sleeping, that's really important. I want to know that. If they're on a bunch of psychotropic medications that could be covering up the way they should be feeling, I want to know that. Now, you know, in my office, we don't take people off of medications. We send them back to their doctor. But I've had so many people on that point either come in and go, "If you don't fix my testosterone," and that's like, they're about to put me on psychotropics. I don't want to be on psychotropics. I know all about how dangerous those are. And we've saved a lot of marriages and a lot of people's mental health by not putting them on psychotropics, but by getting them on testosterone. And on the flip side, people that have been on psychotropics that are still feeling bad, they get on testosterone, they're able to go back and go, okay, got my testosterone levels back, I'm feeling good, Doc, can we start weaning me off on the things that you have me on? And I love that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing, man. You're doing, you're doing amazing work. Um, so you've been doing testosterone 15 years.

15 years.

Uh, when did you start kind of like integrating or kind of hearing about peptides? And because that's a lot of what I see, you know, now is, is that coming from you. So, but also like a lot of people are just starting, you know, a year ago or in the last 6 months. You've obviously been doing this longer, but like what got you going down that path?

So There's a story behind that. I'm sure you know Grant Cardone or at least have heard of Grant. I attend Grant Cardone's, one of his masterminds or one of his weekend trips down there. And the first day I kind of watch and see how, you know, there's probably 1,500 people there. I'm watching kind of the whole setup and how it works. And then, you know, he does questions and answers, of course. And so, the next day I was like, I'm going to get a little closer and ask a question. So, I raised my hand and I was like, hey. Hey, Grant, you know, you've written 9 books. What would you say to somebody like me who has a hormone clinic, who would like to be the expert in the field and wants to write a book? And he leans over at me, kind of like over like this. And he's like, um, bud, never write a book. And I was like, wow, that's kind of weird. You've written 9. He goes, finish your book. You got to finish the book. Don't write it. Finish it. And I was like, wow, that's great advice. So then he looked at his watch, you know, his watch that he loves. Yeah, I don't want to know how much that watch is, but it doesn't matter. He looked at it. He goes, I'll tell you what, today is— what's today? Sunday. If you finish your book by Friday, I'll do a podcast with you. And he charges $200,000 to do a podcast. So immediately I got to just write. And I wrote it in 5 days. Testosterone: Be Better in Your Boardroom, Bedroom, or on the Ballfield. And the thing about it is when we did the podcast, we had such a great time. And if you go to charlestontestosterone.com, the podcast is is there. You can see that it's about 20 minutes and it is really, really good. I actually shock him and it's very hard to shock Grant. But the question was, how did I get into peptides? So as I'm writing the book, I'm learning about peptides. This is 5 years ago or so, and I decided to put my last chapter about regenerative medicine into the future. And I knew that was going to be peptides. I didn't know it was going to be this quick and this big as quickly as it became. But I wrote about Wolverine and BPC. You can see it in there. But what it amazing experience. Again, as I started with this podcast with you today, put yourself in the right room with the right people at the right time, and amazing things will happen. I just asked a question. Next thing you know, I'm writing my first book with a podcast with Grant. And then I wrote another book called Inflammaging: Unlocking the Secrets to Inflammation and Aging. This one went number one on Amazon as well. And then my, my last book I wrote, Rest to Repair, repair. This is all about how your body repairs while you're resting and what happens in those, um, sleep cycles. And then how do you set up your room? No phone beside you, all those things. So sorry if I went on a tangent there, but I want people out there, you included, Jesse Ewell— and I think you've probably written some books— but, um, I want the doctors and the people out there to know, if you've got all this information in your head, get it out and write it and just do it. Contact Amazon Prime there. It's not expensive. You don't have to have a publisher and all those things. Just, just do it yourself and get, get what you know out to the public. You'll be so amazed at what happens.

I think, you know, what's cool is, you know, I wrote a book back in 2019 and, you know, it's always one of those things is like once you do it, it's like, oh, that wasn't that hard, right? But it's like the story we build up about it is 10 times harder than what it actually takes to do it. And then once you do it, you're kind of like, dude, I could do this again, right? So, um, I think that's cool that you, you know, it's like you, you seem like the type of guys, once you do something, you kind of go all in with it and, you know, you don't stop. And, and that's what's kind of cool about it.

Um, I think that's the Sagittarius in me. When, when I, when I do something, I want to be the best at it. Like, I want to be the absolute and I want to keep doing it. So, I'm actually just finished my latest book and you can guess what it's on. I'll let— it starts with a P. Peptides. And this is a book that's going to help the layperson, but it's also going to help the practitioner. So, of course, I had to put educational advice, not medical, but I do go into the circritogogs. I do go into different patients that I've had, first names only. What my experiences were with them. I do go into the history of peptides, down into like the first, you know, one of the first peptides was created in Zagreb, Croatia. I was in Zagreb last year. And if you've never been to Croatia, that's the place you want to be. But pretty, pretty interesting just taking that deep dive into it. And you know how insulin was the very first peptide back in 1922, saved a little boy's life, and then oxytocin, all of them. So pretty amazing.

That's cool. What, okay, so what do you see as far as like number one chiropractic industry? What do you see as an opportunity with peptides for maybe chiropractors out there that are thinking about it? But I know a lot of them are like, does that mean I'm not a chiropractor anymore? So they're always like wrestling with this. Religion-based chiropractic.

Right, right. Yeah. And then, you know, so I will say this, when I go back to my education, I went to Life in Atlanta, I got out, I have 4 children. My kids, by the way, have never once taken a shot, no antibiotics. I mean, I raised my kids just like I want to be, you know, for me, drug-free, except for my peptides and my hormones. That's what I'm into because that's what our body body, I believe, needs as we age in order not to age, right? You know, we want to reverse that biological age. And I think when you really look at those things, that's exactly what they do. So if you're out there and you're a chiro and you're like, you know, I'm a straight chiro, if that's what you're going to call it, and I don't mix any other, um, any other, uh, things in my practice, then, you know, that, that's something that you'll have to wrestle with. But I think most people are starting to go, you know what, a true peptide— you know, when you look at the FDA, they don't have a classification of peptides and all the peptides fall under them, they look at the peptide individually. And, you know, the GLP-1 peptides are in the drug categories. And then you got the categories too, that by the way, we're not supposed to be in category 2. So, so they're all, you know, you've got the ones that are the secretagogues that are, you know, secreting growth hormone out of the pituitary or at least stimulating it to. And then you've got the other ones that are helping build collagen in your skin, hair, nails, and gut health. So for me personally, If I was a straight chiro that was only doing chiro, I— and I wanted to add peptides or was thinking about it, add the ones that are amino acids. Peptides by definition are short chain, you know, short chain amino acids, 2 to 50. And these amino acids are found in protein chains. You're eating protein or you have to have protein in your body. So because of that, it should fit right in with your philosophy. Now, if you're somebody who's adding in physical therapy and you're already doing that, you're doing personal injury and you got TENS units and heat and cold and all those things. And, you know, you can bring these things in safely, affordably, economy, you know, and of course, you know, medically necessary and those things.

Right.

You've got either the right connections with the 503As or you have medical in your office. It's a no-brainer for me. People want them. They need them. They really do work. If you don't want to do the GLP-1s, leave those out. There's plenty of other categories to help people, especially Wolverine in a chiro office, especially Glow in a chiro office, too, really. Clo as well.

Yeah, I mean, let's, let's kind of dive into those because some of the things I've read is, is Glow and Clo aren't as good as taking, you know, BPC by itself or TB500 by itself. Do you have any like insight on that? That?

So, yeah, I've been watching. I cannot— I wish I would have written his name down, but there's some research out there that shows that you can put them together and they work just as good together. So, I'm going to— next time we do this, and I hope you'll invite me back, I'm going to have that research for you. But we look at it as a stack and we've had zero people having any problems with stacking them together. In fact, we've had some really fantastic results on the Wolverine first. And a lot of times if they come in with some sort of, you know, ligament, tendon, joint issue, I go right to the Wolverine. And then 3 months in, I switch them over to the Glo because I want that— I want that copper in there because normally they're having some skin issues or some hair issues. For the women, I normally will start them on the Glo as well because they all have gut issues as well. On the CLO, you know, that's relatively new. I know it's been out for a little while, but I've not brought that into the office as of yet. Obviously, it's a 4-stack, which is going to make it a little bit more expensive for patients.

Right.

Like, right now, I'm really liking MOTC for perimenopausal women that are having a hard time losing weight. I'm loving NAD+. You know, Jesse Ewell, I know you keep up with all the all the literature and all the things, all the research and science papers are coming out on NAD and what it actually does and the reservoirs, if they're halfway to full, how it really does turn on your anti-aging pathways, your sirtuins. It's going to repair DNA. It's going to give you all that energy. But when it hits below that 50%, it affects you downstream like nothing else before. And they're literally coming out and saying NAD is one of the most— and of course, not a peptide. Everybody clumps it as a peptide. It's a coenzyme, master coenzyme. But they're saying it's one of the most important things you can put in your body. Now, let's talk about that for a second. You've got the injectables, probably the most affordable way from— like, if you look at injectables or IV, IV is going to be expensive, right?

Right.

One-time shot, $500. It's going to be $350 to $500. So I think the injectables— I like 2 a week, keeps me—

I think the hard thing with with getting an IV is how long it takes, and then it's obviously painful. Like, I don't know about you, but as an entrepreneur, I don't have 3 hours to sit, or 2.5 hours to sit in a chair 2 times a week.

That's right, that's right, exactly. That time, right? It's all about time. Yeah, I, I love— some people don't like that feeling of the NAD, you know, when you, when you, when you first put it in. You can, you can let it cool— I mean, you can let it warm up a little bit. You don't get quite that sympathetic, um, response But that, you know, when I do mine, I do it in the back of the arm. I want to put it as close to my upper body as possible. And I get that almost that flushed feeling. But yeah, it just makes me feel alive. It makes me feel like I could really go through a wall if I needed to. I won't, but it makes me feel that way. I— that's probably my favorite injection of all. Just the— just that aftereffects.

I think my favorite— I think my favorite with NAD+ is NAD, methylene blue, and MOTC as a combo.

Yes. Yeah, that's the stack right there. Everybody write that down. NAD, methylene blue, and MOTC will take you to another level.

Yeah. So, but yeah, it's, it's— I remember taking too much NAD. I, I think I missed like a week. I took like the same dose and the back of my hamstring started sweating. And I've never had that happen. And I was kind of like, whoa, you know, I'm gonna pass out. But that was one time where I was like, all right, I don't, I can't miss a week. Or if I do, I'm gonna lower my dose a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. Have you noticed that your internal body temperature with MOTC goes up a little bit as well? Like I'm noticing, like I'm burning more, I'm burning more, like it's like calories in, but my calories out are going up because of my body temperature's rising. Raising a little bit.

Here's what I notice. I have a Lumen, okay? So you know what a Lumen device is? It's kind of like shows you— so it— I see myself in fat burning mode kind of like all day on the Lumen device when I'm on it. So it's like you're utilizing fuel way more efficiently, and that's, that's probably one of the biggest things that I notice. And then obviously, you know, you can notice like body fat, stuff like that. But that's kind of how I notice it when I'm doing it, is my Lumen device will put me in, in the middle of the day or like even in the evening, it'll put me in for like a 4-hour period where normally eating would like pull you out of it.

Yeah. And it's still there, right?

Yeah.

You're still in that fat burning series. You know, interesting, today I read something about about Reda doing the same thing. All these women, and men too, they think they're hitting a plateau with Reda, so they want to bump up, but they don't need to. You're still in that fat burning stage, even though you're— maybe your appetite's crept back in a little bit. That just means you need to eat some more protein and stay on the lower doses you can. You don't have to go up. And then there are also research out there saying that 4 milligrams is just as effective as 6 milligrams. You don't have to go up to these higher milligrams.

So I think the main reason, the main thing I've seen from people having to up their dose usually comes from like their liver dysfunction and not processing fat. And so if you focus on that, you can usually maintain, like, maintain the lower dose and see the positive benefit of it.

Yeah, no, no doubt. You know, we started the conversation by saying, what would chiropractors do? What should they do? Guys, it's gonna be a $300 billion industry in the next 5 years. Don't miss this one. This is right for your patients. It's right for you. So, find the right way to put it in the practice. Don't take any chances. There's plenty of ways to get it in there right. Jesse knows the way to do it as well. And I mean, it will change your practice and people want this. Them. They want them. It's not that you have to talk them into it. They're going to get them somewhere too, right, Jesse Ewell? I mean, they're going to get them somewhere.

Well, here's two things that I look at. Number one, if they're asking you about it and you don't know how to answer it and your answer is like, don't do it, you're going to lose a client. You know, number one. Number two, they're going to stop trusting you. I think the one industry, because I've been in, you know, health and fitness since since I was, you know, and I started in like at 19 years old. What I see is that people trust chiropractors more than they trust their medical doctors. They're looking for other, they're looking for the information that's not biased on drug companies, prescription drugs. I think the chiropractor has the ability to step into that. I see a lot that do, but I see a lot that don't. And they just, they just want to do the adjustment. I don't, I'm not biased on either because I've been going to the chiropractor since I was 12. Uh, changed my, changed my life. I had a neck injury, so I believe in what they're doing. But like, the industry has to step into like, hey, after COVID, after all these things, people are looking for other answers, and chiropractors are the only ones really trained trained to give those answers?

I mean, so many can of worms there you're opening, but I'll say this, that your medical team, your medical doctors, get less than 30 minutes of training on nutrition in any one year. So, by the time they get out of school, they may have, maybe some of them, 20 hours. It's very, very, very, very, very, very small.

Yeah.

But yet, these are the people that are writing the GLP-1 scripts, and nutrition is the foundation I mean, it is like you have to prioritize protein, like getting a GLP-1 script and saying, okay, here's your script, here's your refill order, try not to eat so much. That's not a program.

That's—

you will lose weight, but you're renting results. The foundation has to be prioritize your protein. You got to move your body. You got to drink your water, right? You have to build your collagen. These things destroy your collagen production. You have to build that collagen back up. So, um, I hope that helped everybody, you know. Not— and, and write this down if you're out there and you're taking some notes: not all GLP-1s are peptides, and not all peptides are GLP-1s. So I think so many people are so fixated on these GLP-1s as peptides, and that's the only thing they can see, when there are are 400, 500. I mean, let's just look at your body. Your body makes thousands and thousands of peptides. So yeah, what—

okay, so the biggest— here's the biggest thing I see with a traditional medical provider, right, is they have to put them on the FDA-recommended dose, which many times is 5 to 10 times higher than what they actually need to be on. And then the only option they have is to go on a higher and then like you said, there's a limited amount of, you know, nutritional help, support, and, you know, just being in the fitness industry as long as I was and owning training facilities, if clients didn't learn how to eat better, it didn't matter how much they worked out. Obviously it would help them, but it was minimal. And, you know, having that support system is key with nutrition, you know, lifestyle, sleep, deep. And without those, like, it's, it's just a temporary fix. And unfortunately, if you're using GLP-1s and you're not changing any of those other things, like, there's going to be a cascade effect of issues.

100%. Go back and listen to everything he just said because he laid it down. I mean, that's exactly what people need is a community, a system, a protocol, not just a script. You're renting results if you're only using a script, which is why in my practice in our medical weight loss clinic, people come in that we don't send bottles home with them. We don't drop ship to them. That's not a— let me say, that's not a bad thing. Like, people can do that as long as, like, Jesse's people give them protocols and tell them what to do. We just like to check ours in and look at their scale and see exactly if they're drinking enough water or all the things that we want them to do. So, that's kind of our program here in the office. Now, I've got people, you know, outside of our office that are on our program as well that we have to drop ship them to. They're just on the phone with them making sure that they have that community support that they need to continue to lose the weight and build their foundation. Because it's the foundation. It's foundation first, right? You— I have a saying, um, you cannot inject your way out of a bad system, right? You just can't.

So I like, I like the, uh, renting results.

Yeah, you're renting results because you are, you're losing the weight. As soon as you stop the meds, or as soon as you have a problem, the weight come— I mean, I read a study yesterday. The first 50% of people quit their GLP-1 in the first year and all the weight comes back. All just comes right back because they did not fix their foundation. So, they're still getting sick and all these things. So, I want to hit one topic with you too, Jesse, before we go. I know we're coming up on it.

Yeah, man. Let's hit it.

Hit the 503 and the 503 because so many chiros and laypeople don't understand the difference between these to. So, so 503s are FDA-regulated compounding facilities that have— that can make multiple doses for multiple patients. And when there was a shortage of these GLP-1s, they allow these 503s to make the medications, make the GLPs. The shortage is over, and they're still making them, and people are still using them. I have no problem with that. But the pharmaceutical companies, I think, do have a big problem with that because they're definitely losing profits from that. And they're going to try to put a stop to that. So, if you're on a 503 right now, that may be— I don't know. They're coming out June 29th with some sort of— it's not a ruling because the ruling is already there. I don't know if they're going to come out and say they're going to enforce it hard or whatever. But then you got the 503s. And that's where the compounding script comes per patient. And that's where you have your one-on-one with a nurse practitioner. Or a medical doctor, a healthcare provider, and that's made or presented to you for that one script. They can't bulk dose and all those things. Both are legit and both give you great products. The challenge has been when the government did what they did, it caused— like Prohibition, remember? I mean, we don't know Prohibition because we weren't around in the early '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, whatever it was. But when they said, "Hey, alcohol is bad. You can't drink alcohol." outlawed alcohol, you had all these places, you know, these backyard saloons and everybody create, you know, making them, making liquor in the backwoods and stuff because they outlawed it. Everybody wanted to know what they were outlawing. So it's no different here. Once they started doing that, you had the gray markets and the, and the, um, and the research peptides come up. But this is the problem with them, Jesse. There is a big problem and I want everybody to hear this. 20% of gray market peptides, research peptides, peptides are mislabeled, means you're not getting the medication that they say is in there. They're underdosed, overdosed. They have problems with them. Now, I know what some of you are thinking because some of you are probably on a gray market or their gray market or research peptide. I'm going to get to what you're thinking in a minute. I want you to know that there's a Dana study, 100% of the research peptides that they went and looked that all had contaminants, 100% contaminants, lead, mercury, plastics, glass, whatever the case may be, right? So, you wanna look at the COAs, the certificate of authenticity, and you wanna look at the sterility testing. Now, a friend of mine the other day sent me something and said, hey, listen, we've got it. And when I looked at it, it wasn't a real COA. They didn't have any lot numbers on it or anything like that. So, right, work with somebody like Jesse, work with somebody that you know that you can trust that can get the right peptides into your clinic, um, the way that you stay on top of it and that you're doing the right things, in other words. Um, so that's what I'd say about that.

I mean, I can tell you this, I've taken the R.U.O., research use only peptides, from very prominent companies, and I've taken the exact same thing from a 503 business and there's a significant difference.

Yeah. And 503 was better, right?

Of course. But here's the other thing is COAs are not what they were, you know, 6 months ago, a year ago. That's like getting to first base. There's several other things that need to happen as far as where they manufacture them, where they, you know, do the sterility testing, all of that.

And who does it? Who does the testing? Yeah, you'd be the company.

So, you know, like everybody's running around with COAs, but like they're not really telling you the full thing. So, um, yeah, tell— okay, so, uh, last question, man. So if you're right, it's been fun.

Before the last question, it's been fun.

Yeah, dude, I love it. So, um, like where do you see this going, like for you, and then maybe just for the industry as like a chiropractor wanting to offer peptides? Yeah, like, where do you see this going the next 2 to 3 years?

So, so for me, Jesse Ewell, um, I— we're gonna, we're gonna continue to use the 503s in my practice. We had the medical, we can use those, um, and we're going to continue to use the ones that are FDA approved, um, but we're also using the 503s. And you've hit it, you hit it on the head the other, uh, a few minutes ago. You said these pharmaceutical companies make one dose for most people, and that one dose isn't for everybody. So the way that 503As get away— not to get away with it, but the way that they're able to, to provide these things is microdosing, using, you know, ingredients that patients will have better results with, if you will. You know, from some of the pharmaceuticals you get side effects from, right? So continually, the 503B and 503A I don't know if I can mention this, and you can cut this out if you want to. I have no problem with it, but I am starting a brand partnership 503 pretty soon. I know we didn't talk about that before, but again, please, if you don't want this to be on, that's fine too. But that's— you asked me the question. That's what my future is going to be.

So, okay. Awesome. Hey, I love it, man. So, whatever.

Plenty of room for everybody, Jesse Ewell.

YouTube decides to shut me down. Phone, then I'll send them your way.

That's so funny. If you're out there, you're on Instagram, if I can give my Instagram handle, would that be okay?

Yes, go ahead, man.

I'm on Instagram. I'm @thedrluckie, T-H-E-D-R-L-U-C-K-I-E. Follow me. I like to have a good time on my Instagram, my TikToks. I'll do some funny stuff, but then I'll also do some educational stuff. And I just have a really good time on social media. You know, social media is free, you guys. If you— if we all started suck, right? We all started— Jesse Ewell, his first podcast on YouTube, probably not his best work, but he's gotten way better at it. I'm sure. I mean, I haven't seen his first one, but if you're— if you're a chiro and you're not utilizing social media, you got to utilize it. Even if you don't want to be on camera, do your B-rolls, do your carousels. It's a free way to get yourself known. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. I mean, come on, Jesse Ewell.

Yeah. You guys, like you guys especially, you know, I would say for you is like, if you guys don't follow, you know, Mark, go follow him. He's got some great content. But like, I think what's cool about it, man, is like you said suck, but one of my favorite things is like embrace the suck, like suck long enough. At something so you can actually look back and see the progression. Um, I think I'm at episode 650-something on podcasts and like my first 50 I couldn't even listen to. And then I started listening to them and being like, oh, that was actually really good. And, but I could see the progression I made. But if you never allow yourself to suck, you're, you're never gonna actually do it. So, and that's, And that's what I think is powerful in that.

I love it. I love it. I had such a great time today, Jesse. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you reaching out too. Really, I've been wanting to connect with you anyway. I hope we can do this again.

Yeah, for sure, man. We'll wait till your new company is going and then we'll do one there. So, how about that?

I love it. I love it. I'll tell you all about it. See you soon.

If you guys want to connect further with a group of like-minded people, you can go down in the show notes and you can sign up or take the direct link to my Habit-Based Lifestyle and Business Secrets group. If you guys want to know more about Dr. Mark, you can go ahead and go in the show notes, click his link, give him a follow, tell him you listened to the episode. But until next episode, hope you guys have a great day.

Bye guys. Thank you, hunger. You've always dreamed of this. This is the The Habit-Based Lifestyle Podcast with Jesse Ewell.