EP 652: Peptides, Gut Health & The New Chiropractic: How Dr. Jock Moser Rebuilds the Human Body

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

Welcome back to the Habit Based Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Ewell. We got a great episode today. Special guest coming on, Dr. Jock Moser, who is a, who's the owner and creator of Dr. Jock, Doc Jock. And he's a consultant, functional medicine practitioner, chiropractor, specializes in gut health. And I mean, really, you got a ton of stuff you specialize in, man, but I want to thank you for being on the show today.

Absolutely, man. I appreciate you having me.

It's, I'm excited to do it. So yeah, I've kind of been watching, you know, watching you the last 4 or 5 years, man. And you do amazing work. Love the videos you're doing. Can you give our audience maybe just a little breakdown of, you know, who you are and what you do?

Yeah. So like you kind of mentioned there, so Dr. Jacques here, So I got into health and wellbeing initially just through chiropractic. Got out, I was working in one of the largest chiropractic clinics in the world. And, you know, we'd be adjusting patients time and time again. And, you know, we were taught the philosophy of it is that you're supposed to get healthier and healthier every time you get the adjustment. And so what we found is a lot more people were coming in with more medications and those medications were causing the adjustments not to hold, or they had new things popping up. I'm like, something else needs to be going on. All the while, again, I was working with with a, a meathead of sorts. And I got back into bodybuilding. I started competing and then my energy went down. My testosterone went down, irritable bowels went up. I'm like, something is off. So I have like an obsessive compulsive disorder with learning where I just get obsessed to a T. I just wanna know everything and consume everything. So I figured out how to kind of work on healing myself. And one of the things, and one of the stories that I've had that's kind of stuck with me for the longest time was there was a, a patient. She was in her late seventies at the time. And she was getting adjusted. She was getting adjusted 3 times a week. Her name was Helen, or was Helen, and she could just kept going downhill. And you know, I parted ways in that practice and went up to Pittsburgh, started my own shop up there. And she and her family had reached out and they're like, you know, mom's not doing too great. Can you run some tests? She's, you know, she's not having a bowel movement. I don't know what's going on. And so at that time I was doing more functional medicine on myself and I'm like, yeah, let's see what we can run. And so I found that we needed to do a stool test on her. Did analysis. In the process of 2 weeks of returning the results, she ended up in hospice care. She was in and out of a coma. Uh, I think it was like 3 days coma, 1 day alive, like 3 days coma, 1 day alive. And I get a fax at the time that said confidential written across the side of it. And it was like, this patient has this particular infection. It is life-threatening. Everyone needs to be notified as soon as possible that this infection is in the body. It's very contagious. So I reached out to the family and when I did, I, I got the unfortunate news that she had already passed. Right. So one of those things where, you know, learning from healing myself and like one of the things that I felt was missing in that chiropractic piece is that deep, like that functional medicine work to make the adjustments work even better, chiropractic work even better, and then just make the human as optimal as possible. Wow.

Yeah, man. I mean, I think one thing I've been going to a chiropractor since I was 12 years old. So, you know, I see the result of it, you know, in my own life, I believe in it. Um, but there is this misconception out there that, you know, some chiropractors make it kind of a religion. And, uh, you know, I, I see guys like yourself who are like, hey, I think it's a very foundational thing, but it's not the only thing. Like there needs to be some other stuff on it. And I can kind of appreciate, man, where you come from, you know, just saying that as like, hey, I was adjusting this person 3 days a week. They weren't getting better. You didn't stop there. You're like, hey, I want to find out like what's the real, like deeper issue going on and like really try to solve that. So can you speak a little bit just about, cause like, you know, you're not, I would say you're not a traditional chiropractor in the sense that it's like you can only do these 7 adjustments or, you know, you're not a, you're not a real chiropractor. I hear that all the time. Can you kind of like speak into that a little bit?

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I love chiropractic, but I also, I have like a love-hate relationship. With it. And one of the things that frustrates me a lot is like, there's no, there's no like expectation per se. Like when you go and see a chiropractor, right? If one chiropractor practices the same technique as 10 others, you can still have 10 different adjustments, 10 different analysis, 10 different methodologies, and then they all stack up. So patients don't know exactly what they're going to get. And the flying 7 is what I grew up on is just like the wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, collect the insurance money and move out with it. So yeah, I, again, I have like this love-hate relationship. I adjusted my son when he came out and he was stillborn when he came out and I adjusted his atlas and he popped back immediately. And the midwives at the time were, they freaked out. They're like, what did you do? I'm like, I just needed to adjust his atlas. He was a huge baby. Like he came through a tiny hole, like easy. So there's like the power of the adjustment for sure. And I still adjust, I still adjust my family, but I do think that missing piece, we're living in more of a toxic world than we ever really have. Right. We were just talking about water, you know, before we even started this, like our water is contaminated. We have pharmaceuticals in it. Our air contaminated, there's metals in it. Like our food is genetically modified. So if we just think that chiropractic is gonna be the be-all end-all, or what they say is set it and forget it.

Yeah.

You're only gonna get so far and then you have a lot of people who get frustrated and then like we talked about, they end up on more medications and they end up sicker. So it's just a little bit different with how I approach. I approach the body as a whole and I'm like, I'm obsessed. I want to know the whys, why is that not working. And I'm like childlike curiosity whenever it comes to working with my patients.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I was a trainer for 22 years, so, you know, there's CrossFit, there's functional training, you know, there's, there's bodybuilding. There's so many different, so many different methodologies. I really believe that you can learn from all of them. You can take what's good from, from them and, you know, what's not so good and You know, it kind of gives you like, uh, like to me it gives me a really broad perspective on training, right? It's like it's not really a one-size-fits-all program, but there are a lot of different ways to get to one place. What have you seen? Let's just say, how long have you been a chiropractor?

Graduated in 2013, so about 13 years.

Okay, so 13 years. Like, what have you seen change or shift in the chiropractic space?

A lot of people doing what I did, which is getting, you know, getting the doctorate in chiropractic and then using our, you know, NPI number to get more into the functional medicine. I just I had a guy in New York shut down his chiropractic to do more of this because it, more of this is needed. So I'm finding a lot of frustration, I think, within the profession. And I don't know if it's all, you know, because of feeling what I felt when I was like heavy into it, seeing thousands of patients a week, but I see a lot more people making these pivots because it makes a bigger impact for, for people as a whole, in my opinion.

Yeah. I think the biggest thing I've seen since probably 2020 and 2021 is more more chiropractors kind of stepping into having a bigger responsibility of feeling like, hey, people are looking for different answers now, and I want to be able to give that to them. And, and I think that's probably the biggest thing I've seen change is like people are now coming to you guys looking for more answers versus maybe like 6 or 7 years ago, they would maybe just come in for an adjustment. Now they're like, hey, I want to know You know, I wanna know what's going on with my body and like why it's not working, right?

Yeah. It's a lot more of like, they're coming to us more for like a second opinion instead of going to like another, like medical doctor coming to us and saying, hey, what do you think?

Yeah. And I think that's, to me, that's really where I see the industry. If, if somebody's willing to kind of step out of the norm, that's, that's where I really see you guys stepping into that. And, uh, I think it's pretty cool that, the guys that are really like kind of like tra— you know, blazing that trail and that's what's cool about it. So, all right. So you had, you had your own chiropractic clinic. Like when did you make that transition into kind of like what you're doing now?

So I opened, yeah, so 2016 was when I opened my, my clinic in Pittsburgh and I was always kind of sprinkling in the functional medicine, went real heavy into it. I'd probably say like 2017 when I started learning a lot more. So from there to what I fully do, like 2020, we were in Pittsburgh at the time, so 2020 hit hard with COVID and everything. And we're like, you know what? I want to be in a healthier city. And I love Pittsburgh to death. I'm not talking bad about Pittsburgh. It's where I was born and raised, right? Has a place in my heart. But y'all aren't healthy out there at all, right? If I order a salad and I get 10 pounds of cheese and some fries on it, that's not what I want. That's not nourishment to my body. So I moved out to Phoenix in 2020. So we've been out here fully virtual for about 6 years now. I still do like mobile adjusting. I'll adjust. Just went back to Ohio, did a talk out there and adjusted out there. But the primary focus So what I do now is just meet with people all across the world even, and just try to help them to optimize their overall health.

That's cool. And I know we've chatted a little bit, you know, just on peptides, different stuff like that. When did you kind of start bringing that into what you're doing now? And obviously, you know, it's, it's gained a ton of popularity in the last few years especially. But like, when did you first kind of get into them?

Yeah, so I found out about peptides. This was back when I was down in Houston. And I saw what peptides could do for bodybuilding. There's, there's a girl, she's in great shape, and then she like disappeared for like 6 months, came back looking like the Incredible Hulk. And we were like, what in the heck were you doing? She's like, oh, my chiro got me some peptides. I've been taking XYZ. And at the time that gave me like a negative stigma. Like her voice dropped. I'm like, what happened? Like you were fine before. Now like you just, that's too much, right? In my opinion, that's too much. I'm like, what in the world? So I just put it on the side burner, but that was like when I first discovered it was probably back in, I'd say like 20, 2014 or so.

Okay.

Then fast forward to past couple years, I've got a, a buddy of mine who's been working on developing his own peptides. He got his own compound pharmacy. And so he is like, you should start trying these, you should start using them. And I was very hesitant cuz it was new to me and I saw what they could do and I was just very hesitant. I'm like, let me, find out what's researched, what can happen before I ever roll 'em out to patients. So I started with simple ones on myself, just using BPC to heal aches and pains and injuries. NAD, which kind of peptide or not, I mean, depends on how you feel about it, but BPC and NAD were my intros, right? Or my, my gateway peptides. Right. And so I had initially, I had a weird like trigger finger where I couldn't extend my hand out at all and it just got locked. And so there's a tendon injury. I'm like, I wonder if BPC can heal it. So 2 weeks of injecting into the, the elbow there, and now I have full range of motion. I partially for my pec earlier this year. BPC right into the joint, didn't have to have surgery, full range of motion, no limitations. So I would say in the past year or so, I've been diving in a little bit more of the research. And so I've been using them. I mean, we're not allowed to say what they can do, et cetera, but I've been using them alongside certain protocols to help to optimize performance, whether it's, you know, having the conversation on GLPs or if it's the growth hormone agonists that are supporting growth hormone. I think there's a really great way to be able to use them as long as you use them correctly and then you have them advised because you got to be really careful. Some of these things can be incredibly strong. If you overuse them, you can cause significant damage. And I feel like they're, they're right now too sexy for people to say how bad they are and how bad they can be. But if used properly, they can really optimize your overall health.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I got into bodybuilding in the mid-'90s. So, you know, you were kind of in that, you know, testosterone era and you could really see what guys could do with, you know, some of it. But like a lot of it to me, you know, when you even look at guys from the '90s for bodybuilding, is they like the philosophy was like, you got to have a solid foundation. You can't just rely on these things. And you can see a completely different look from guys in the '90s, early 2000s to guys today.

Yeah.

Minus a couple of guys like I think Phil Heath was kind of an anomaly and a couple of other guys, but like a lot of the guys today, they look weird. Compared to a guy, you know, back then. But yeah, you know, what I see a lot of times, like you mentioned, is like, hey, if you don't have strong foundational principles and these lifestyle things, you can't stack a bunch of peptides on top of it and expect to have, you know, these changes. But like, what are the things that you're seeing that you need to have in place before you ever start thinking about adding peptides and, and thinking it's gonna be some type of miracle?

Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that too. Cuz a lot of people will come to me like, hey, I've tried peptides and they haven't worked. And I'm like, well, have you started foundationally? Did you work on diet? Are you moving your body? How's your sleep? Right? So when we talk about optimization, overall human performance, I like to throw it into like 3 main categories. So you've got the GI system. So is your gut working right? For every meal that you have, you should have 1 bowel movement to go with it. So 3 meals a day, 3 bowel movements a day. Any less than that, you're clinically considered constipated. So you may wanna start there. Could be I need more fiber, could be some enzymes, could have some infections in there, but is your gut good? Right? Then we go to the neuroendocrine. So adrenals and hormones. All right. This is, this is the, the big buzz for peptides is like we can work with growth hormone. We can increase testosterone. We can do this, we can do that. But if we don't fix the whys behind it, like if you're stressed out, you're overworking and you're like, well, I'm going to take something to increase my stress load so I can stress out more. Well, your body's gonna break down faster, right? So it's like putting a supercharger in a car that's got 2 miles left until it explodes. Like you're gonna rev it and then it's gonna break down on you and you're gonna have more problems.

Right.

So you've got that, that side of things, and then you've got the detox pathways. So making sure your body can detox, right? If you fix those foundational things, then you can use some of the peptides if you sprinkle them in to try to help. But the, you have to set that foundation first. Move your body, eat clean, healthy food, eliminate some things, put in the work to deserve the peptides, right? Don't just try to optimize a damaged body. So if you clear you clean that out and then you say, okay, what can I do now? Right? So things that ride along healing, right? So the BPCs, you could do oral, right? If you have a problem with your gut, right? We, we use BPC oftentimes with like ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, blood mucus, things like that in the stool. Oral BPC, KPV can be very beneficial for overall GI inflammation. Calms it down really, really well.

Okay.

If we're talking about stress, some people use Ceylanq or Ceylanq, however you wanna pronounce it. Ceylanq and CMAX. Yeah. Or it's 2 of the 2, like, nootropics, get the brain anxieties down, calm your body down, right? Detox pathways, I mean, you could do like glutathione, like I was saying. Glutathione's not really like a peptide, but you can use glutathione to help influence those things, right? And then overall sleep, you can use things like DSIP, delta sleep inducing peptide, to help to decrease, you know, sleep aversion so you can sleep a little bit better. So if you've, if you put them in on a body that's doing really well, then you optimize, you hit the throttle so much faster and then you get the bang for your buck. 'Cause they're not always cheap. Either, right? And you wanna make sure you put in the work to be able to deserve them, in, in my opinion there.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I, I agree with, you know, everything that you're saying is like, hey man, you, you have to, like, you gotta understand how the body works. If, you know, you want it to work. I always say like, look, if you had a Ferrari in your driveway, you wouldn't go out to your Ferrari and like put a brick on the, the gas pedal and just sit in it and like stare out the window, like eventually something's gonna break.

Yeah.

You know, and the, the part of the Ferrari, people want to go out and drive it, but if you never make it outta your driveway, you can't do that. Right. And I think sometimes when it comes to peptides, like that's what people are doing and it's like, well, they're, they're not realizing that like, hey, there are actually experts who are gonna work with your gut health, are gonna work with your optimizing your hormones and optimizing your sleep and like your gut health and all these other things. And that's kind of what I see is the oversaturation of the whole space is everybody's talking about what peptide does what, but they're not talking about what system they're actually working on. And, you know, it's, it's kind of crazy. Like, I've been using them since 2016. I got, I got my hands on BPC back then and used that off and on for a few years. And 2020, I started kind of getting into, you know, more, but it's, it's crazy how many people, like, access right now is at an all-time high. Who knows if that's going to change on Friday or not. I'll probably ask you some questions about, you know, what do you see, like, what do you see actually on Friday? Like, what do you see as the changes that's going to be made? Or what do you, what are you projecting to see?

So I feel like there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear behind what these things could potentially do. So that's why, like, things being cleared and FDA clearance, like, to me personally, I don't, I don't really want the FDA getting their hands in. On anything to do with peptides, because to me, I feel like the FDA screws everything up. Just my honest opinion. Or they want to try to find a way that if the FDA covers it, then they're going to be pharmaceutically used only. And I've seen doctors using these, like MDs using peptides improperly, even HRT, overdosing, underdosing, and just doing it based off medical guidelines. So the more the government kind of gets their hand in it, I kind of get a little bit skittish in a way. I'm like, please stop, like, don't, don't mess with it. So I'm not sure exactly what to see, if they're going to approve, if they're not going to approve, and what that's going to ultimately lead to. I feel like they've been talking about this for a while, but I mean, at the very end, like, we've got RFK Jr. in there trying to, to push for, for these things being more accessible. So I guess we'll see what's, what's going to happen. I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think the biggest thing is, is maybe just the, this manufacturing of like how they're produced, you know, the whole process with that. Like, I can see that changing and then being able to trace that back to, all right, is there an actual like serial number on these? Is there a lot number? Those are the things I kind of see as maybe having a more standard approach to those. But I, I kind of feel like they do this every like 12 to 18 months, you know, and they build it up to be a big deal and then it's not. Yeah.

But you know, it's great for the peptide companies cuz people stockpile peptides. They're like, well, if you're gonna ban them or something's gonna happen, like I'm gonna stock up and, you know, but, but I, I think, you know, there's, there's the, you're right. There is no, there's no real standard for what you're getting. Right. In, in a lot of cases there's really not. And you can buy these things, they're like Walmart, in my opinion, like Walmart peptides or like back in like the '80s, like where a guy would just hand you a bottle of testosterone, like, you should take this. Like, what is it? Like, don't ask questions, just take it. Welcome to the dark side. I'm like, what is this stuff? So in a way, right, if it's done correctly, I think it would be great. Like, if we can get all APIs like to be made and manufactured— like the company that I use, the APIs are, they're actually in North Carolina, so they're like the only US-based API peptide that's out there. So you can track it from creation to development to serial number, COA, certificate of analysis, you know it and you know it's gonna work. But I've had folks at like the gym, like even BPC, like to me it's hard to screw that up. But BPC, I had a, a buddy at the gym that was playing soccer and just did a gnarly injury to his lower leg and he was taking BPC and he is like, this stuff doesn't do squat. And I'm like, then you don't have BPC. He's like, huh? And he showed me the bottle. I'm like, use this one. Within a week he was like, it's working. I'm like, it's the quality. Like, so I think if we can have qual— like at least regulation of quality, then, you know, if they allow for dosing, you know, for, right, not just for human consumption, not for just for research purposes only. Like you can actually use professional use only, right? Yeah. Then I think it can help in the overall scheme of things. I just don't want big pharma kind of getting their hand in it cuz I think they'll screw it up.

Right. And you know, you've kind of already started to see that with FDA guidelines for dosing on GLPs and, and things like that. In my opinion, FDA guidelines for those, they're way too high.

Mm-hmm.

And that's kind of how things are getting messed up, you know, and you, you probably see that too. Someone who's prescribed too much, they're the ones getting sick. They're the ones getting the side effects. They're the ones that are kind of giving a negative connotation on it.

Yeah.

And it is frustrating because if you're on the other side of it, you see a lot of the benefits of people doing it correctly, not having to take such a high dose and like what it can ultimately help them with. Say someone's out there, maybe they're buying, you know, research juice only, whatever, compounded, like what are the things that people really need to look for when they're, when they're going through this process and like your opinion?

Yeah. I mean, it's, that's a, that's honestly, it's a tough, that's a tough question. Cause a lot of the, the good quality, you can't just buy over the counter. I know we're in a process, like the company I'm working with, they're in a process of building like B2C, so business to consumer that they could purchase. Yeah. That's going to be North, North Star Molecules is that company that the US-based API. So that's going to be in the works. So I would try to search there. There are like Peptide Sciences. I think, I think they're shut down now. I know they got in trouble last year.

Yeah.

I would just, I would be cautious to, to see, to buy from websites that they're either really, really, really cheap. Okay. And then I do know people, like I've had people tell me there's a guy who literally sells them out of their garage, but they're really cheap. I'm like, like there was a guy who's on Reda Truthide and I'm like, you're not on Reda. He's like, yeah, I am. I'm at this dose. I'm like, no, you're not. Like, no offense, but if you're at that dose with Reda, you wouldn't have that much excess body fat on you.

It's impossible.

It shreds it. It. Like, there's no way. Right. And he was like, well, it's this much. And he tells me how much it is. I'm like, I don't know how he could sell it for that. That's like a quarter of what it costs me to even get it. Like, I don't know what it is that you're taking, but it's not that. So I think with certain ones you should be able to feel, right? Yeah. So like the GLPs, you should feel them, but start really low. Okay. Low and slow. I have people microdosing and we don't know what a microdose is until we put it into their body. And sometimes that's all they need. And I've had people drop 20 pounds in a few months just at like a teeny tiny itty bitty dose, like for Loretta, like doing, I think it's like 0.5 milligrams a week is all we were doing, which is a tiny dose and they're dropping the weight. So why would you need to go up higher? So watch for overly cheap, watch for people overprescribing. Med spas, like some of them may be good. Med spas are like my worst enemy with peptides. Right. Because they have a process of going up every 2 weeks, no matter what. I'm not dropping weight, go up to 2 more, you know, another 2 weeks at this dose. Yeah. But their guts are just wrecked. I had my uncle. He's actually in Texas. He couldn't make it to my grandma's 100th birthday cuz he was on too high of a dose of trazepatide and he passed out, smashed his face off a sink, and he's been having explosive diarrhea for like 6 months, dropped 60 pounds, and his doc's like, we'll just keep you on that one. I'm like, what are you guys doing? So I know I got sidetracked, but from a quality standpoint, make sure it's a reputable site. And if you want to ask Jesse, if you want to reach out to me, I'll help you. If you want to ask, like find me on Instagram. Instagram, super active there. I'll guide you right in the right direction if you need to. But if it's too cheap, too high a dose, right, then I would be— I'd be very cautious with where you're getting them from.

Yeah, I mean, so really kind of like what I hear you say is like, number one, source matters. Number two, dosing matters. And then I think number three, whoever or however you're getting them, you should have some type of professional, you know, helping you kind of look at your blood work, look at your goals, and make sure that whatever you're taking is actually lining up with what you because, you know, ultimately, man, like, you can hand a bunch of people a gun and then you can blame the gun or the person like shooting it. Right. And ultimately, I think a lot of times we like to blame the gun, but it's like, well, what about the operator? And like, is he, is he getting trained properly on that? And that's really the way I think about peptides is like they're typically only going to work as well as the operator and whoever's like helping assist that. That. But it's, yeah, it's kind of the Wild West right now with all of those.

So, yeah.

Let's talk, we'll talk a little bit about GLPs because those are obviously popular now. What are important things that you need to make sure you're doing if you're taking GLPs besides obviously, you know, starting lower on your dose and kind of working your way up if you need to. But like, I know there's other support systems with that that can take a smaller dose and really help somebody get better results.

Yeah. So if you're, if you're jumping apply to the GLPs, right? Assume, assumably you've done a little bit of research on how to eat, making sure you're eating healthy, right? And not using the GLPs as an excuse to continue to eat McDonald's daily, right? Yeah. So remembering what GLPs most negative impact is gonna be is on the stomach, right? So things that I like to, to give patients to work with would be some sort of a digestive enzyme to make sure that we're protecting digestive ability, right? And that'll also help with overall absorption of vitamins, minerals, nutrients. Okay. And then I like, there's a product, it's designed for H. pylori, which is a stomach infection, but there's two products in particular. It's Gastromend HP from Designs for Health and then PyloriStat from NutraDyn. Those two are like my, my sensitive stomach buffers. There's DGL in there, right? There's one of them has slippery elm. There's another one, a marshmallow root in there too. Something that soothes and coats to make sure that the gut is really pretty good. Okay. On top of that, right? So taking the GLPs in a low dose, make sure that you're elimination, you're eliminating the bowels. So make sure you have proper fiber intake too. So 20, you know, shoot for 20 grams for women, men like 35, 40 grams of fiber per day. Okay. That should be your goal.

Right.

And then on top of that, something I found just in doing blood work, protect the kidneys. Okay. A lot of times we'll drop in on those electrolytes. Our electrolytes will drop. It'll be more difficult for our kidneys to function appropriately and energy will drop. So those are usually some of the things that I'll sprinkle in to protect from the side effects as well as increase overall, I guess, success with, with the GLPs.

Yeah, no, those are, those are great, man. I, I think, you know, the biggest thing I notice, I have noticed from taking GLPs is dehydration. And I'm a, I'm a, I'm a big water drinker, you know, so like, I think a lot of times it's like I'm drinking a gallon a day, but like, if you're not feeling hydrated, it doesn't matter if you drink 2 gallons a day. The point is, is you're still dehy— you can still be dehydrated. So I agree 100% with, you know, all the points you're making. Let's, let's talk a little bit about, so you mentioned you've tried, you know, obviously BPC, NAD, you've talked a little bit about glutathione, which I actually think personally in my experience is one of the better ones to include with GLPs, especially somebody trying to lose, you know, fat and, you know, if they're obese, but what are some of the other peptides maybe you've tried or that you've seen really good results from?

Yeah. So SS31 is a great one. Great one. So SS31 is gonna help. Think of that SS31 as going in and cleaning out the mitochondria. So making sure it's nice and healthy, nice and neat, and doing it in the proper order too is really good. So SS31 clears the debris out and then MOTS-C like recharges or supercharges your cells. If you do it inversely, it, the MOTS-C doesn't work as well. A lot of people are like, I don't really notice much of a difference. SS31 is amazing. It's really, really good. And then you throw the MOTS-C in afterwards after you do a little round of it and it's great. So those are the two that I've used for like the mitochondrial function. Okay. Then you've got C-Max and Solanque. I was currently doing just, I placebo it. So I'll put it in random days. I'm like, how do I feel today? Energy went up a little too high for me. So I couldn't sleep, couldn't sleep at night, which it's fine. Right. So decrease the dose down on that. Those helped me get a lot, a lot, a lot of work done. Multitasking really, really well, very efficiently. And to me, there were no side effects of it. The only side effect I would say is I was busy, so I didn't eat as much, not because I didn't have an appetite, but I was like in the zone. I was in that flow state. So, it worked really well. I've used DSIP, so delta sleep-inducing peptide. I think it's a great one. I've tracked it on my Garmin watch too and saw an actual tangible improvement in my sleep quality and then depth of sleep. So, I wasn't having so many like restless movements at night. I was out. Works really, really well. I've used IGF-LR3. That one's a big boy. Have you used that one, Jesse? Jesse Ewell?

No, I've never used that.

It's, it's fun. I use it cuz people were asking about it and I was like, I'm gonna put it in my body and see what happens. It's nuts. It's one of the stronger growth hormone agonists, so it'll push your growth hormone more. You'll take it pre-workout, but if you take it pre-workout, you will notice the effect within 30 minutes of taking it. It's unreal. Your pump will be better than you've ever had. You'll be super strong. Have to be careful with the joints though, cuz your muscle will grow quite a bit, so it'll put more tension on the tendons. So make sure you do good stretching and just good form too when you're in the gym.

Yeah.

Then I've done copper peptide, so GHK-CU, because everyone said it, it stings when you take it. I'm like, I wonder what'll happen. So I did a bottle of that and my skin, I don't think I have skin issues. My skin looked pretty good and still looked pretty good. So that worked well for me. Trying to think of these other ones I've done. I think those are the only tests I've done.

You know, yeah.

Have you tried Tessa? I haven't tried Tessa myself. I've done ipamorelin and I've done a blend of ipamorelin, IGF-LR3, and MOTC. All-in-One before. That one worked really well. My gosh, I've tried Reda. Reda, Reda was good. Wasn't using it at all for weight loss and I was bulking at the time. I was like 220 pounds. It felt great. I worked really hard to get to 220 and Reda dropped 10 pounds off me in a week and a half. I'm like, crap. Okay. So I had to, I had to rebuild, but it literally, it just dropped inflammation and just, I was shredded within like a week and a half of it. So that one I've tried, I've used, it works. RETA, just be careful. Some people do really well with RETA. Some people do better with tirzepatide. I don't give anybody semaglutide. I don't, I don't, it's just my opinion. I think it's a horrible GLP.

I agree.

RETA. Yeah. RETA will drop your glucose really quickly. So if you get exhausted immediately after, make sure you're eating food cuz it, it's so strong, it'll drop your glucose down. You'll go hypoglycemic real real quick. So it's not good to do that one before your workouts, but tirzepatide can kind of step in. It's not as effective as the reditryptide that way, but it'll still give you those desired results. I haven't tried tirzepatide myself. Trying to think of some of the other ones. I guess probably Tesafenesin was another one.

Okay.

That one was insane. That was, that was too much for me.

I couldn't, that kind of revs your metabolism up, right? It's kind of feels like a fedra a little bit.

Yeah. It's, it's pretty intense. That was another one where I couldn't sleep for like 5 days in a And I kept breaking the little tablet down into like quarters and it still was way too much for my body to be able to handle. So for people who need that drive or in a season where you're like, maybe you're addicted to Adderall or even if you go harder to cocaine, Tesso would be a very, very similar feeling, I would imagine, to those guys. It was, it was hold on tight, but stay hydrated on that one too. 'Cause you'll sweat more than you ever have. You'll burn fat really quickly, but you have to stay hydrated. You gotta keep those electrolytes in too.

Yeah. I, well, I'll say this, I've done the CMAX, Selang combo, and I will say that after about 5 days of taking it, I kind of stopped noticing and I notice it more if I, if I know I have something coming up where I gotta kind of lock in, just taking it like then versus taking it all the time, I feel that a lot more. I will say the best brain kind of optimization thing I think I've taken is Biomind. From that's got like Dihexa and some other things in it.

Yeah.

But I, I do think like for the brain stuff, I think it's different for each person. Like, right? Like if you have a certain type of personality, C-Max, Ceylanq may be better for you where, you know, maybe it's the opposite. Maybe you're someone who does not as energetic, maybe like Dihexa or vice versa. So I do think there's a little bit of that involved in it. Yeah. But yeah, I, I know that Dihexa is really good for brain damage too.

So I, I took Dihexa as well cuz I had subdural hematoma. So I bought some of that just to try to help with just any damage I may still have up in there.

Okay. Nice. Is that, did you play football growing up?

Yeah, this is, I got jumped in Pittsburgh, so that was a whole, that was a whole other thing. I almost died. It was a whole thing. Yeah.

Wow. Okay.

Yep.

So, all right. So let's talk a little bit about the type of client, like what are the types of clients you work with? What are you kind of seeing from like them as far as like what they're coming in with and then how are you helping them kind of like optimize their health?

Yeah. So I feel I feel like, you know, my ideal client has already been through a lot of attempts in my opinion. Okay. So a lot of medical doctors have attempted to try to help. I would love it if they came to me first so they don't have to spend and waste all their money on that. But what I say is like the, the people who are eager to be healthy, right? Ready to make change, ready to do what it takes, not make excuses, right? Those are like my ideal people. So who I typically serve, I mean, I'll serve I serve anywhere as young as a, a baby. I mean, like their parents, they're on board. I'll help children out with their, with their health. I've got a lot of, of infant patients, gut health especially. I work a lot with infertility cases. That was something that my wife and I had gone through. She had a uterine fibroid. So a lot of patients will come to me having gone through similar situations and we fine-tune their bodies, get their hormones right, and then they have a bunch of kids afterwards. Demographically speaking, usually between the ages of like 30 to like 55 tends to be like when I see the most of my clients. But it's anybody Honestly, just trying to optimize, man. I've got a 90-day transformation challenge, so we'll do like fitness goals, diet, exercise routine, hormonal optimization. We kind of stacked it all in together in like a sprint. So that's usually like what I'll do and what I'll see in terms of my patients and clients.

Nice. That's awesome, man. And what are you seeing now? Like patients come in now compared to maybe like back in 2016, 17, are you seeing like better results? Are you just seeing people that are like, hey, like they're way worse off when they walk in now than they were 10 years go and they're younger, way worse off. Right. I would always say the same thing with when I was training people was like, I'd have kids come in 17 years old. And then I would have people come in 50 years old and the 50-year-old actually could move better than the 17-year-old. And so I was like, wow, this is fascinating that, but it's like the 50-year-old never had a cell phone, you know, for 30, 35 years of his life where the 17-year-old grew up staring at an iPad or phone his whole life. Safe. And so it's just different dynamics, right? And like, you could really see the developmental movement patterns, you know, at 17, the kid couldn't do like half of the movement patterns where the 50-year-old is, can do all of them.

Yeah. It's, it's shocking what I see, honestly. You are 100% right there, Jesse. Like the, the older generations actually tend to be much healthier than the younger and the younger have so many things stacked against them, right? They've got, they got to trudge or drudge through a lot more stuff, right? I think of like, uh, the Rocky training, like when Rocky's going through the snow and he's like, it's like 4 feet deep and he's like trying to go through it. That's like how kids are growing up nowadays and then they're distracted, right? So they're distracted all the time and the lack of personal responsibility is plaguing the world, right? I'm this way because of that. Well, that's fine. And yes, all of those things are out there, but you still get the right to choose what you eat. You can choose what you drink. You can choose what habits you want to do. You can choose how you wake up and when you sleep. So I'll have some patients that will come in and the younger generation like my nickname in high school was Protein because all I did was eat protein, like protein shake this, proteins all the time. There is a malnourishment that is happening at a much younger age, not just in like the quality of food and not the nutrients. I'm not talking about that, but people don't know what protein is anymore. And I'm like, well, you got to get some more protein. And they're like, I think I'm eating enough. And then I dissect their diet. I'm like, you're eating 20 grams of protein a day. My kid would kill me if I gave him 20 grams of protein. Like, what? What are you, 20? So it's like we have unhealthy parents, right, that are not sure how to lead their kids in health. So they're like, I don't know what protein is, I don't really do this for myself, I eat the way that my family fed me, and now you're being pickier, you're not choosing this protein. So now we're having hormonal issues much younger, right? Whether that's from the makeups or, you know, the cosmetics, the plastics, the air, water, whatever, right? And you have parents that don't know what to do, and we're still indoctrinated that when something goes wrong, you just still need to take a medication, right? So antibiotics, you know, vaccinations, all that stuff stack the cards against us. And again, like, I can have a 70-year-old that is just with it. A lot of it ultimately is this. Yeah, the mind, right? And the younger generation, I don't know if it's the iPads, I don't know what it is, but they don't have that mental resolve that a lot of what I would say, like, to— I would say like 35 and older. And there may be some younger ones that have some still, but it's that the younger generation, it's like, I don't understand the brain processing. So then they make poor choices, then they make all the excuses, and that's where the lack of personal responsibility comes in too. So it's, it's tough. It's tough to see.

I, I think it's stress resilience. So like how resilient are you when, when you get stressed, right? And a kid who's growing up on an iPad, he can go play the iPad and like kind of forget about it.

Mm-hmm.

Where, you know, when we were kids, you had to go fricking play outside. You know, say that you got in a fight with somebody, you just figured out how to like make it work. So like you said, hey, distractions are huge right now. I think people now can be like, all right, I'm not gonna go play with my friends, I'm just going to go distract myself with an iPad or iPhone. Where back, you know, back in the day, you went and played with, played on the playground. Maybe you got in a fight, you showed up the next day or, you know, the next time. And like, it was like nothing ever happened and you just kept playing. And so I think that part of like the stress resilience is like, you just had to figure it out. Right. And nowadays kids, they don't have that resilience to figure things out the same way, unless, you know, their parents are obviously like trying to teach them and and stuff like that. But that's, that's a big part of kind of like what I see. Yeah.

And the parents, a lot of the parents nowadays, in my opinion, are trying to overcorrect from their parenting. So like, they're all like the whole breaking their generational curses and there are, you know, breaking that. I get it. But sometimes you overdo it. You flip it so far in the 180 that like, when a parent tells me I can't make little Susie eat this food, she's very picky. She only wants this, this, this, this, this. My thought goes into why does she have that to begin with? Why was that even introduced into her diet? And you're also the parent, right? Like just checking, like you're the parent on that, right? So make, make them eat the food that's healthy for them. They may be mad at you for a couple weeks, then it's just gonna be normal again. So yeah, it's, it's tough to see. It, it really is.

I think part of that, you know, is like when I was a kid, it's like whatever was put in front of you at dinner, like you didn't have a choice. Like that's what you eat nowadays. You know, it's kind of like everybody's eating something different. And, you know, kid parents are like, oh, well, my kids won't eat this or that. And it's like, well, that's because you've trained them to eat that way and you've been okay with them saying like, I don't like it. But like, if you go hungry a couple days, cause you're not eating dinner, you're going to figure out real quick that whatever's put in front of you, you probably need to eat.

Yeah, exactly. I'm old school that way. Maybe young at heart, but you know, I'm old school.

Yeah. So, all right. We're going to go through a little bit of rapid fire. Fire.

All right.

A question. So tell me like the number one habit that you've had that you feel like has impacted you the most. We'll go health first.

Okay. So number one health habit, uh, prioritization of sleep.

Okay.

Making sure I'm in bed by 10. Yeah.

Okay. Then let's talk about business habit. Like what's been the number one business habit that's made the biggest impact on you and your business?

Business habit would be not doing it all myself and having, you know, a tribe of men, women entrepreneurs that I can to talk with when I'm going through something that maybe my wife might not understand, where I can hash out some of the details. So not burying yourself under, reaching out to others when you need help.

Okay, cool. Good. And then, uh, favorite peptide for you personally?

Man, favorite peptide. I'll probably get crap for it. The IGF-LR3, I think it's, it's fun.

Okay. I haven't, I haven't done that, but I've taken the real growth hormone, but yeah, I haven't touched that in about 20-some years.

So yeah.

Number one supplement you would recommend for, for most people that you've taken personally.

Okay. That's a, oh, that's a tough one. Can I do two?

All right. Do two.

Okay. An enzyme. So any digestive enzyme, right? Yeah. Because I think we all need support there. And then I like either GI Revive from Designs for Health or GI Restore from NutraDyne. Okay. So just kind of like a blanket. It helps everything kind of nice and happy and healthy. It's got a little protein in it. It's amino, amino acids. It's a good blend. Got, tell, okay.

So tell me why digestive enzymes. Digestive enzyme, is this primarily 'cause the way our food's made up today or, or what?

So from what I've, what I've seen in patient loads is that stress is at an all-time high. And so there's a direct suppression of stomach acid and inability to digest food, right? Okay. So if we can't digest the food and we put a, you know, a 2,000 calorie diet in, we may not be extracting the 2,000 calories for ourselves. And then we can have undigested food that leads to gut inflammation, food sensitivities, leaky guts, all of that other stuff. Off. So starting more upstream digestion, make sure it's good, right? And then move down the stream from there. And that would be like a GI Restore.

Okay, got it. All right. So last one. So you, you said sleep was like a big, big thing. Give me your top 3 things to like improve the quality of sleep you're having.

Yeah. So, I mean, I like running tests, but if you don't wanna run tests, a supplement that's really great if you find yourself peaking or getting wired at night, phosphatidylserine. Serine or PS150, but phosphatidylserine will depress your cortisol. So bring it down and then melatonin has a chance to come back up. So that's something that can help tremendously with, with getting to sleep. Magnesium supplementation can also be really good prior to bed as well. So that can help you to kind of calm down there too. And then if you're waking up at 1 o'clock, eat a little bit of food within an hour or so before bed, because you could be going hypoglycemic. We see this a lot with GLPs, a little bit like an avocado avocado pudding is a really good— add some protein in it, healthy fat, healthy protein. You won't wake up at 1 o'clock. And if you're waking up around 3 o'clock, that's going to be more your liver. So you may need some milk thistle or ashwagandha or something like that, some sort of like herbal tonic to help with the liver. You optimize those things and keep it consistent, and you'll, you'll sleep great.

Yeah, that's good, man. That's awesome. All right, so someone's listening to this, they want to know kind of like more about you, what you do, how do they get in touch with you?

Yeah, so the easiest way would be find me on, on Instagram, or even just jock.com. You could book a call with me. It's a free call if you want. If you reach out on Instagram, I manage all of my DMs. So just find me there and I'll message back and forth. And if we need to get on a call, I'll send you a link to do it. So those are the two easiest places.

Okay, cool. So if you guys are listening to this show, if you just go into the show notes, there'll be a direct link to Jock's Instagram or his website. So you can go in there also. Hey man, I want to thank you for being on the show today. It It was, it was great to kind of get to know you more about what you're doing and just really appreciate the work.

Yeah, absolutely, man. Again, it was a pleasure, pleasure being here. And I feel like it's been a long time coming for us doing this, which has been nice.

Yeah, for sure. If you guys want to know more about what we're doing inside the Habits of Base Lifestyle community, you can go ahead and go down in the show notes. You can join our private Facebook community of health professionals. There'd be a link, you know, go ahead and check that out. If you have specific guests or someone you want to see on our next show, reach out to me personally, Jesse@habitbasedlifestyle.com. Until next episode, have a great day.

Live the life you've always dreamed of. This is the Habit-Based Lifestyle Podcast with Jesse Ewell.