An Intro to Biohacking and Psychedelics

generally sits outside medicine. And, but I got really an interest in this field, cannabis, which really came out of side of medicine at the beginning. And really medicine is now catching up to that. Same with psychedelics, you know, people have been using psychedelics to expand their brain and, and now we're finding so many other uses.

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Hello, it's Dr. Kent Holtorf with another episode of the Peptide Summit. Today we are honored to have Dr. Goyle from Toronto. He's a biohacker and just really doing a lot of cutting-edge things. And today he's gonna be talking about biohacking, psychedelics, hyperbaric O2, and peptides for peak human performance. Dr. Goyal is founder of Peak Human, uh, so it's at peakhuman.ca, again in Canada. His goal to get you 100 times what you are now with advanced training in anti-aging integrative regenerative medicine. He advocates a healthy lifestyle, really, which everyone does, but it's that biohacking that makes it much easier and you get there much quicker. You know, center on plant-based diet, of course, physical activity, and enhancing mental resilience. Um, uh, he was the main host partner for the Toronto Biohacking Summit in 2018 and brings with him extensive knowledge about a lot of things, but interesting also cannabinoids, psychedelics, and emerging science of psychedelics and peptides. So welcome, Dr. Goyal. Thank you for taking the time.

It's an honor.

And you're doing a lot of, lot of great things.

Thank you so much, Ken, for having me here.

So tell me about what, what you're doing there. I know you're doing a lot, very interested in, you know, this kind of merging field of using psychedelics and cannabinoids, like low dose for depression and other things. So tell me a little bit about that, if you would.

Yeah, like, you know, to be honest, like I really came out of this whole biohacking, the space. And, and a couple years ago I ran a summit here in Toronto with the Biohacker Summit folk from, from, from Finland. And, and basically this, the, the concept of biohacking means to be able to basically take charge of your own body by measuring it and understanding it and then experimenting on what's out there in the world. So generally it sits outside medicine, but I got really interested in this, in this in this field. And, and then, you know, cannabis, which is, you know, really came out of, came outside of medicine at the beginning. And really medicine is now catching up to that. Same with psychedelics, you know, people have been using, uh, psychedelics to expand their brain and, and, and now we're finding so many other uses, uh, in migraines and depression, anxiety, so on and so forth.

Nice. Yeah, because, you know, with this whole biohacking and you mentioned kind of outside of mainstream medicine. You know, things are moving so fast now and there's so much information. You know, 20 years ago, you know, trying to get information, write a book or whatever it is, you know, you go to the library, try to find the journal, copy it. Now it's just so much coming out. It was exponential. It's just really who can gather that information, but there's so much information out there. But, you know, studies have shown, Annals of Internal Medicine found most doctors are practicing 20 years behind. What's available in the medical literature, and it takes on average a proven new therapy that, you know, tons of studies, it'll take 17 years adopting the mainstream medicine on average, unless it's a new drug where they have sales force, then, you know, they're just pounding the doctors. But no, yeah, so everything, you know, is moving so slow in standard medicine, but the so-called alternative or integrative space is moving so fast and it's evidence-based. It's more evidence-based, I found, than standard medicine that's still using the, you know, what they learned in residency and, you know, medical school.

Yeah. And that's why it's not fair to call this, you know, alternative medicine or in, you know, complementary medicine or so on, because then it gets this kind of, kind of, I don't know.

Yeah.

Stigma. Oh no, Stucky. Yeah.

It's kind of non-evidence-based and all that. But what biohacking is all about science. So biohacking. Well, you're looking at, looking at actual numbers and science and data.

And you're, and you're drilling down more to actually, you know, cellular mechanisms and, you know, basically how the body works instead of, hey, let's lower cholesterol. We just put a lower cholesterol, you know, where it's just kind of a little barbaric, you know, where this is the more science we know, the more biohacking goes on.

And I think what that means is that we're not, there's no particular dogma. Like you might have a particular, I don't know, a form of alternative medicine which has this, okay, this is, this is the way it's gonna be. Like, you know, I must, we believe in this theory of how things work. But when you're looking at biohacking, you're just looking at what's, whatever the science takes to that. You know, if it's today, it's vegan diets, tomorrow it could be keto diets. It doesn't really, it, there's no initial attachment to any. Any outcome.

All we're looking for is what is the science telling us and willing to change with it.

And that's what, you know, I love, like, medical debates, right? Free, like, say, here's the thing.

Everyone has their inherent bias from what you've read, what you've seen.

But, you know, just basically going back and forth. Here's the studies on this. But problem is that's gone. Everyone gets it so political and emotional. It's like if you say something that's outside the dogma, you're a quack, you know, it's kind of like you're racist, you know, then ends the, you know, ends the conversation. And so you have, you know, vested interest and bias and you, and you look at, you know, levels of evidence, you know, you got your randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study, meta-analysis, you know, single-blind, basically case studies, anecdotal, and below that are basically this by the WHO, World Health Organization, found that societal guidelines are the worst form of evidence. They're so far behind, they don't change because there's a big fight, you know? When new studies come out, they don't adopt. Say, oh, my patients are good, my patients are fine. And I have an article on the National Academy of Hypothyroidism, NAH, NAH Hypothyroidism, nationalacademyofhypothyroidism.org. But why doesn't my doctor know this? And goes through, there's lots of concerns in these journals that doctors aren't adopting new therapies because the system also doesn't allow them to. Even if they spend all the time researching all this stuff, their, their hospital, whatever, will go, you can't do that, you know? And so it's, they're put in a bad position, you know? They, it doesn't, it doesn't do them any good to learn more and new stuff.

Yeah. And you know, luckily Canada's been a bit of a pioneer in, in the whole cannabis space because it, you know, we've had the medical cannabis stream now for a good 10, 15 years and now it's, you know, it's become clinics, you know, where we write prescriptions to, to licensed producers. That has been about already 4 or 5 years.

So we've had a lot of ability that, you know, there's been, been much more openness now.

So I think there's already about, 10% of the population has received, has probably used cannabis and—

Nice.

Nice.

So yeah, I know you use a lot of that. And then the, on the psychedelic realm, what, what can you tell me about that? Like what you use, what have you found it useful for? Like dosing of things?

Yeah, so psychedelics, I mean, again, they said it's still in the gray zone in Canada.

Like they're, they're not, it's not an official thing that one can prescribe. But I can educate patients on how to use it and what the science is saying.

So, you know, generally what's been in fashion is, is either microdosing, you know, something like 100, 100 milligrams to 200 milligrams once every 3 days for a couple of months.

And what people are—

of, let's say, sorry, of just dried psychedelic mushrooms.

Okay. Yeah. How is there different?

I, I don't know about all this.

Is there different potencies, like how do you know like which one to use or different strains or?

It's, it's still very difficult in the psychedelic world. Yeah, there are in the psychedelic mushroom world to know what's more potent or other, but generally if you just go with that type of, you know, 100 milligrams, 150 milligrams of, of a dried psychedelic mushroom, you should be fine.

It's not gonna cause an issue.

And then what, what would the normal dose be?

Oh, I mean, if, if one is going to a therapy session, they're, you know, if you take about, if you take about usually about a gram, they'll start to—

that, that's like recreational use. They use about that.

Well, I mean, I think that let's, let's, it's being used in therapeutic settings at bigger doses.

So under the care of a therapist, you know, this has been shown to help people get, you know, get through some problems that understand what's going on, what has happened in their life. Sometimes people see. A different, see the same problem a different way. You know, that's, it's something, it's very difficult to say.

And so is it like a lasting effect?

And so people say they kind of like look at themselves from kind of the outside and say, I'm not doing this right, or I'm not doing that right, or, or that's what, I think that's more with ayahuasca. Is that, they're similar there.

Psychadelics, they're still similar, acting on similar receptors.

So it's the 5-HT2A receptor. So this serotonin receptor specifically that the psilocybin or ayahuasca or DMT is acting on. And what that's doing is, is increasing serotonin level, but it's giving a sense of interconnectedness, this, this feeling that you're connected to the, to everyone else, to the nature and stuff like that.

And at a higher dose, what ends up happening is your, what we call the default mode, default mode network starts to get suppressed. So whatever's underneath starts kind of a bell shape or inverse bell shape, whatever.

Well, at ecstasy.

Yeah, MDMA is, MDMA is the part, part of ecstasy. But MDMA is, is clearly being used for PTSD in trials right now. What we just don't underst—

don't know is, and this, some of my concerns is that what are the long-term impacts of taking, you know, MDMA on a regular basis? We just don't, I don't know about it. Yeah. That aspect.

But yeah, the weather, I think at high dose is kind of the same thing. You, you start downregulating or there's some, you know, toxicity.

Yeah.

You know, but probably are, could be downregulating serotonin cuz such a big dose of serotonin is coming out.

So receptors might be getting downregulated. But we don't see anything in, in the psychedelics like psilocybin, ayahuasca, or DMT of of people getting any type of overdose or downregulation of those receptors.

But you need to do, you need to take these doses. The maximum you could be taking is once every 3 month, every 3 days, because otherwise you won't have an impact.

Gotcha. And then when do you see a difference and what do you generally see and, and how long do you do it? Yeah, so let's cycle it.

Does it not happen?

Let's come back to the microdosing. So if somebody is taking a microdose, they, they may or may not feel that dose. Like it's very subtle. Like they might just be a little calmer.

They might think, you know, they, they might just be a little bit sharper or something like that.

But generally they won't feel it. And, but it's, you know, what they, what this research showed was that people who did microdosing after a few months, they did, you know, surveys before and after.

They just found that their mood was better.

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There's that.

And other people don't notice, like, oh, you know, dude, I love you, man.

Yeah. Not at, not at the microdose level.

But if one is taking in a treatment dose, like you're with under a therapist or, you know, you're doing with somebody who's there to support you and watch you. First is it, it's important of the, we call the set and the setting.

So that you have, you have set a right intention, you know, for the, for the one week before, you know, you set yourself that you're not, you're avoiding alcohol, you're avoiding thinking, trying to be, put yourself in a good space.

You're, you're not having, getting into fight with somebody.

You're putting an intention of what do you want to get out of it?

Even if in your mind you're putting forth, you know what, I'm, I'm kind of working on this issue of my relationship with my mother or something like that.

And you know, you just put that in your mind and when you actually do have the session, these things just tend to come up.

That, that problem tends to come up.

Oh, interesting. So you're, yeah, intentionally trying to solve a problem. I heard like with ayahuasca, if you drink alcohol, doesn't really work, or, you know, and you found it when you use this for addiction as well.

Yeah, for sure.

I, I have patients who are using it to get off, you know, painkillers or alcohol, and they're taking more in the microdose microdose dosage and they're having a lot of success.

Gotcha. And you're kind of doing the same every 3 days and how long till they start seeing benefit and how long do you continue?

Yeah, I, it's, it can be, it can be a long-term thing.

I get, this is a, again, very, these are microdosing people are doing that for some time.

I would, I would, I would suggest a couple of months, 3 months trial and people are noticing after usually a month that they're, they feel different and they can increase to, you know, to 200-300 milligrams if, if they want.

And for, let's say for depression, do they notice like, oh my gosh, I'm no longer depressed? Or just like, you know, I don't feel depressed. Like is it, you know, kind of a slow steady type of thing?

I would say it's, it's slow and steady cuz what this is actually doing is helping you to see something a different way. We call this rewiring your brain.

It's, well, I'm like, how'd you get there, Brian? That like crazy. We call the anti-Tony Robbins. You tell him this is what you can do, he'll give you a thousand reasons why you can't do it. He keeps rewiring.

You just need rewiring because that's exactly it. Because you can tell a depressed person how to change the way of thinking, but it's very difficult.

They feel they can't get out of that, you know?

Yeah. And rumination.

Yeah.

Rumination.

You know, so it's very interesting. I, you know, watch some of these documentaries on, you know, some of these people have everything, like some of these celebrities, they have fame, fortune, you know, everyone loves them and they're so depressed. They want to like kill themselves, you know, it's, it's amazing. What shows depression, it has nothing to do with logic, you know, like, look at all this stuff I have. It's, it's, you know, what do you have to be depressed about?

You know, well, that's depression. You don't have anything to be depressed about.

You know, or everyone can find something, but yeah, look at it.

That we, you know, this, there's a society unfortunately puts, sets us up that so many of us are struggling with negative thoughts.

Yeah. And, and I think, you know, would you say society, the way everything is now makes everything worse? We have the COVID thing, you know, everyone's, you know, stuck, you know, in, but also just like even, you know, going to— we'd have computers, you'd send a letter, you'd wait a week for something to come back. Now it's like, or when you're in high school, you never know, you're, you know, where are you in this pecking order where, you know, it's all vague. Now it's like, how many likes do you have? And everything's texting, instant response, instant gratification, stress. We got traffic, you know, emails. It's like we're just being overloaded constantly.

Yeah, I think that, I don't know if you've seen Social Dilemma on Netflix, but it's pretty impressive, like how—

I just saw part of it. I was just talking about it with my girlfriend's son about it. Like, damn. And I only saw part of it. It's like, they know more about you than you do. I heard they can tell if you're pregnant before you do by your, by how you, your shopping changes.

Right, right.

But it's very clear that it does cause like, you use of social media causes depression, anxiety. Yeah, okay, looking at everybody else.

And also, you know, they were talking about news. If you look at certain news sites, they're going to feed you that same news, so it makes every— polarizes everyone because this is all the news you see. This person's all saying, no wonder everyone's fighting, you know.

It's like, that's what the political climate's about.

This is what people are going down their own rabbit holes, and that's how people are getting, uh, radicalized.

Yeah. And they're just adamant because that's all they see. Yeah.

It's scary. It's scary.

We can go on by that. Like on that, it's very political.

Yeah.

It's like Dalek's opener, basically rebreak, like, you know, cause what happens, the more we think some way, the roads get stronger and stronger, the paths. So what we want to do is make it that it's again, again, like wash over some of those roads, you know, like those. So that way you can start new paths. And so by, again, suppressing the top part of your brain, the rational part that's always thinking and thinking, suppressing that allows, you know, some new pathways to form.

Basically, that's how.

So just, it's not always gonna be an antidepressant. It could be put in the wrong hands. If you go and take a psychedelic dose and then you're in a bad situation and you, you're having a fight with somebody, you're not, not doing.

Yeah. I've heard it's from the experts, it's like context, right?

You can't be in a bad mood around bad people and, you know, bad energy.

And I always like to make an analogy with people when we see this with a lot of, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme patients, you know, you can almost tell that they have this illness within a minute on the phone, right? And they're just, they get wired different. And I think of kind of like a feral cat. If you bring that feral cat in very soon after, you know, it could be totally normal. But if you wait a month, there's almost no way you're going to get that cat to be comfortable, you know, holding it like a regular cat. I'd like to see a study on a feral cat and give the feral cat the— see if you can rewire it.

Definitely are people giving cannabis to pets. Definitely seen that.

Yeah.

And then the psychedelics compared to cannabis, what's your thought? Like, yeah, can we actually use cannabis?

Completely separate, two separate types of medicines.

Like one is acting on endocannabinoid system, you know, helps with balance, immune system and happiness. But yeah, they, they work in completely separate systems.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, the endocannabinoids, let's say we'll take out THC, but you know, it's so anti-inflammatory, you know, the melanocortins and like alpha-1 site stimulating hormone, amazing for like mast cell activation syndrome. But you gotta inject that, that's super short acting. So there's like melanotan, which thing is good or bad, you know, it's basically like melanotan 1 and 2, you know, called the Barbie doll, whatever. You get tan, you increase libido, and you lose weight. But we found that tiny fragment KPV. Uh, which is also absorbable orally, is great. It's such a great immune modulator, anti-inflammatory, mast cell inhibitor. So I think that's—

the gut, are you using a KPV for gut issues?

It actually absorbs too. So we're using it for mast cell. We just, we haven't used it for a long time cuz we couldn't get it. But it's also coming out as available as oral. And we're finding, I wanna do studies on actually showing the bioavailability, but we're finding the clinical outcome, like with mast cell, is, is very good. But also gut is great.

Yeah.

And initially with the gut, it's also, you know, delta sleep-inducing peptide. You know, we use it for sleep, but the highest levels are in the gut. And it's very anti-inflammatory.

You know, when it lowers hypothalamic inflammation, which causes, you know, diabetes and leptin resistance and. Hypothalamic pituitary dysfunctions, all the hormones are low. So, you know, it's, you know, kind of amazing new systems everyone's looking at.

And sorry, just, just one question. DSIP. So how are you finding that you can get that every single day?

Like I've been giving it every day, but is it, is it something I should?

Yeah, I found, I mean, it kind of one of the ones that changed my life for sleep, you know, it's not a sleep medication where you, where you get sleepy.

It.

Kind of changes that whole sleep center. I found if you combine the delta sleep-inducing peptide, epitalon, so pineal hormone or pineleon, and then a growth hormone, either growth hormone secretagogue, growth hormone itself, or AOD, anti-obesity drug, which is a fragment of growth hormone. That combination seems to work very well. It takes a couple weeks more epigenetically. But I've been the worst sleeper. I had Lyme all my life. It just messes your sleep up like crazy. And it's not still not perfect, but it has helped so much. Cause I would, you know, I'm a cost me a vampire. I get energy at midnight and, you know, if I wish the world was turned around. When I was in China was awesome because I could, I was on US time, I'd be up all night and just to talk to people during the day, you know. But it's, that combo's helped a lot of people.

The epistalon, are you giving this all big doses at like at one time?

Like, can you put this in IV or, or people take it?

Yeah.

If, when you look at the studies, they're, you know, basically done in big doses. They did like one week every, you know, every 6 months. But we just do it smaller doses every day. Yeah. And, and we find that it works. And, and Delta Sleep also looks like it's. Orally bioavailable. And it's interesting. So generally the smaller the peptide, the more likely it is absorbed, but there's certain ones that the conformation, if the amino acids, if it has enough hydrophobic, so lipid-soluble amino acids that it tends to conform, it gets, it can actually be absorbed. So like, you know, BPC-157 is It's, it's not a tiny peptide. Well, it's tiny compared to proteins and things like that, but it is equal potent to injectable for synthetic, or for synthetic, for systemic conditions. Like they did study on same colitis and Alzheimer's model that worked for both. Where people with joint pain, just give it orally, boom. And that's why we also like the, you know, TB4, thymosin beta 4, you know, immune modulator, thymic peptide. A lot of great studies on modulating that immune system, but it's 43 amino acids. It doesn't absorb. But the 4 amino acid end terminal absorbs whole and has the majority of all the effects of some beta-4, but it doesn't stimulate mast cells. Which, so that part was taken out. And there's another smaller fragment, nano fragment, that also is immune modulatory. That should be available orally coming out too. So kind of interesting stuff when you kind of dig down into the dirt, right?

Oh yeah, that's quite exciting.

Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, so what do you like for cognitive? I know you do a lot of your, obviously a lot of brain stuff, depression or cognition, dementia. What, what type of things do you like?

Yeah, pretty excited about, I've done, used a lot of cerebrolysin, which I'm giving in kind of a big like 10mg dose by IV.

If a, if the person can make it into the office, I'll try to do as much as often as they can get into the office.

But usually it's something like once a week. We'll do at least 10, 10 treatments. I've seen good results on patients with early dementia and, you know, just people just wanna have a edge at work.

And, and so Cerebrolysin is basically, you know, brain peptides, a mixture. Which no one knows the exact composition, but we're, but we're actually testing with the mass spec time of flight. We're gonna figure out exactly what's in there. But they made it here a biologic, so you can't get it IV or as injection anymore. But it is orally bioavailable cuz the peptides are small enough.

Oh.

And they've had the studies showing that orally, you know, EEG changes. So they show, show that it works. So that's. That's, I know, gonna be out in a couple weeks or so.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited if you can get that. That's—

yeah. So like 1 cap equal like 2 cc.

It's very difficult. We have to get it shipped right from Austria and like, it's not easy.

Yeah. And, and you, we used to get a lot of stuff from Europe and I mean, they're approved in, you know, in, in Europe and these other countries, but we had a, a patient who was FDA age or DEA age, and because you're on the list. You better stop getting stuff from Europe, you know, that like, oh yeah, we gotta stop even though, you know, and, and people think something's FDA approved, that means it's proven and safe. It's like there's so much corruption in the, you know, but you know, hopefully there's no FDA approved. I'm just kidding if there's anyone listening. But yeah, you know, all these, these great chews shown to be exceedingly safe, much safer than standard meds, you know. And, uh, it's funny, my pharmacy attorney, we have so many FDA attorneys too, they say, yeah, if you find something that's totally safe and works, it's like it, you get taken away.

So I've also been using FGL at the same time mixing in with the Sreeper Lysine through the IV and, and doing some C-Lanc and C-Max if the patient has, you know, anxiety, things like that.

But you could, can you talk a little bit about those?

Yeah, so I'm basically at the, the FGL looks to be like neurogenesis, helps to increase neurogenesis of brain, brain cells, neuron cells, and about 2 milligrams I'm putting into the IV with every treatment.

And, um, so with that you need a little higher doses where a lot of peptides like are nano, you know, basically micrograms. Yeah. Rather than milligrams, it's 1,000 times more. So they tend to be more expensive as you need so much more.

Yeah, that's the problem with some of these.

These are kind of a, $100 type vials.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Expensive. And I'm, I'm definitely adding in thymosin alpha into these for anybody who's got any type of brain concerns because of, you know, trying to reduce neuroinflammation and, and, uh, yeah.

Yeah.

And a nice study, thymosin beta-4 frag reducing microglial activation. Yeah. Yeah. So it's all these people, you know, brain on fire. And yeah, it really is, especially these, these chronic infections. And we heard a little about C-Max and C-Lang.

When do you like one or the other, or what line?

Yeah, I, I wouldn't, I think C-Lang is, I'm using more for the, for the addiction.

People have addiction issues and, and C-Max more for the depression.

But apart from that, no, I don't.

Yeah, I, I think I'll, I'll agree.

Very similar, you know, subtle differences.

I think the C-Max. A little more activating. People like take the either nasal or, you know, with it or shot and they'll go, you know, I think a little clearer. Where Serine, I find people with like anxiety, it's a little more calming, helps deal with stress. They gave it to rats, like, which they did terrible things to rats, like, you know, how long they can last even with, you know, swimming until they drown type thing, but, or at least they think they're going to drown. And I find when I'm really stressed, I'm looking for the Serine, you know. But so I, I like those. And sea leg has a lot of also immune modulatory properties. There's some studies, you know, showing to prevent viral infections, anything like that.

What do you, you know, just jumping there, you mentioned the FRAG with the T, with thymosin beta. So what's the FRAG part?

Is that an addition?

No, it's actually a piece.

So if you look at thymosin beta 4, it has multiple domains that do different things, right? And like you'll have part of this, you know, immune modulatory, some activate mast cells, uh, one fragment works for hair. So, the fragment that, uh, that is available currently orally is the one that does the immune modulation, very anti-fibrotic, great studies showing, you know, reversing diabetic nephropathy, you know, kidney damage, heart damage. Traumatic brain injury, reverses, you know, heart failure, post-infarct, but it takes away that part that stimulates mast cells. Now, if you give TB4 to a person with mast cell, usually they're better because of the upstream immune modulation. And, you know, all these mast cell, you know, experts, they're stuck direct mast cell inhibition, you know, antihistamines. Yeah, that's part of it, but look upstream and you'll do so much better. And so, and it's also smaller, so it's only 4 amino acids. And so it crossed the blood-brain barrier, so we get a much better effect. Now there's another fragment that actually works for hair. And by using the hair fragment, like you'll see the studies on TB4, the, you inject or, you know, put it topically, topically, probably 'cause it's so big. But the fragment actually can get into the, into the scalp.

What fragment is that? Just curious.

So how do you know, how does one, how does some, somebody who's trying to get this understand what the different fragments are?

Yeah.

So there's, yeah, so you basically gotta dig down. So the hair, so the, the amine fragment is basically the first 4 amino acids. And then the hair is about 3/4 of the way in, another 4 amino acid. And then the nano fragment is another one that actually is located multiple places in the TB4 is a 3-amino acid.

And actually there's also dipeptides, so 2 amino acids. It's amazing that they have all this immune modulatory effects. And you think, how could a 2-amino acid thing do that?

Mm-hmm.

You know, but it doesn't, it also makes it through the, the enzymes, the enzymes don't break them down. And then, so they'll show that, you know, they'll do have studies, you know, basically the 2 amino acids, the 3, the 4, and extend it. And then all of a sudden, like, if you go too long, it stops, you know, makes it not work and you go backward. So it's, it's interesting stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yeah.

Makes sense to me now.

Yeah. And let's see, you also, you talk about, I know you said you mentioned substance abuse, you found some use with peptides and also the microdosing you already talked about, substance abuse.

The peptides, I guess mentioning the C-Lanc and some of the neural like FGL and C-Max and thymosin alpha. Also doing the vitamin C IV drips for that. Yeah, those are, those seems to be what—

Gotcha. So it kind of, kind of that rewiring and I think just you know, we see work for depression, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress, you know, and, and anxiety. I think anytime you reduce that anxiety, 'cause so many people with substance abuse, they're really using it as, you know, self-medicating.

Yeah.

And yeah, you reduce that constant anxiety. It's huge.

That's great.

And what are the ones do you like? So you said you like thymosin alpha-1, BPC-157.

Yeah, definitely using BPC.

I'm using a lot of AOD.

9,064 for weight loss. We're having a lot of success on that.

And if you talk, can you explain that? What AOD is?

Basically, yeah, it's, AOD seems to be, it's a fragment, I believe, of human growth hormone. So it seems to have, without the side effects of growth hormones, it works only, I think, the weight loss part, the fat loss.

It's called anti-obesity drug is what it came out as. And the studies actually looked pretty good, but they dropped it. They dropped from finishing the studies. It was in clinical trials. I don't know what happened because the, the studies are good. You look at like studies on like Neurontin, on other drugs for nerve pain, right? It occurs exactly like placebo, then it dips down a little bit, then they go, here I go. You know, it helps, you know, and all the side effects. But yeah, it doesn't increase IGF-1. But has a lot of healing effects and very safe. I haven't seen any side effects with it. And you can also be like, put it into joints and, and things like that. We're like, yeah, like the AOD, BPC-157, and either TB4 or TB4 Frag as our kind of standard cocktail for joint injections works really well.

You mix with PRP?

Yeah, either PRP, stem cells. Exosomes or decellularized growth factors now. Ozone, I do like Prolozone. I think it's, you know, they're all, they all work, but I think putting in together, you might oxidize the peptides, but so we tend not to do those together, but yeah, or just even doing the peptides, but it usually will be with like a little PRP or, or exosomes or something like that.

Any of these growth factors, I know we can buy some of these growth factors, like epidermal growth factor. Can these things be added to PRP? Would that have any benefit?

Yeah. Yeah, you can, you know, add all stuff. Problem is like the growth factors tend to be very expensive. Like if you try to, you know, there's certain serums and things like that that you can buy from companies that combine different growth factors and you know, very similar to peptides and in terms of turning genes on, you know, signaling. Epigenetic change, the, you know, basically what genes are turned off and turned on. And I know you do genetics and, and the thing is I love genetic tests, but your genetics are really about 20% of what's, you know, of what your destiny is. Other 80% is how you could turn those on or turn them off depending on lifestyle, food, sleep, peptides, hormones. And like GHK is another one. So copper peptide, I forget exactly, it turns like on like 78 genes and turns off 43 or something like that. I mean, that's not thinking the right number, but it's like amazing, you know?

So it's okay.

And only I know of use, I've used it topically a lot, you know, for, yeah, stuff.

But yeah, it works great for skin. We also do it in injectable and it looks like oral will work as well. It's only a tripeptide.

But it has that bluish color, but it's fine if you're injecting it, doesn't burn or whatever injecting it like I use.

Oh yeah, no, that, that can, yeah. And you have GHR in your body and so usually it's 2 milligrams injection, you know, a day or a couple times a week. But we'll do higher doses in the, in the joint and then orally we're we're looking at how much is actually absorbed or transdermally, you know, how to get it through the skin, not just into the skin. And it looks like GHK by itself does not absorb, but if you have the copper already attached to it, yeah, yeah, then much better absorption.

Right, the GHK copper.

Yeah, that's how I think I've seen it. Yeah, coming.

Yeah. It's like, also zinc thymulin is going to absorb much better than just thymulin. So if they're tend to be positive charge, positively charged, they tend to get in much, much better. And like AOD, what is it, like 167 to 191? Yeah, Craig, right?

Adding that, yeah.

I've seen that. And that actually absorbs orally. And a study showed that where you wouldn't think based on the size, but it has a lot of positively charged amino acids and the hydrophobic or lipophilic amino acid, so it absorbed very well. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Yeah. And when, when you do AOD, like for weight loss, what else do you, do you like? The, also the, you know, mitochondrial boosting peptides along with that?

Yeah.

The only ones I'm using is I've used MOTS, which I'm telling patients to do on a weekly basis.

And then I'm also, I'm just testing out the SS31 on some, a few patients. It is.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, SS31, and if you tell about, uh, talk about SS31.

Well, as far as I, I was doing some reading on, it looks like it, it seems to be improving mitochondrial efficiency, uh, and improving the energy production of the, of the cells. I think the study showed that in, in mice, the, the mice were given SS31, just some the older mice became younger, I think after a couple of months.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, and I believe also it, there were some human studies that also saw some improvement in elderly.

Yeah. And, and when you look at all these studies on aging and age-related illnesses, they have a number of things in common. You know, immune dysfunction, you know, your thymus goes, you get that poor, you know, Th1, Treg. So you can't fight infections, can't fight cancer, but the Th2 is too high, so all this inflammation, autoimmunity, and then also mitochondrial dysfunction is huge. And so the cells actually don't have enough energy to even like detox, to kick out heavy metals. They don't have enough energy to die when they're supposed to. So the cell needs energy, what's called apoptosis. So in the cell, the bodies, the cells have a a inherent mechanism of when they get senescent and they don't work very well, they self-destruct, or they should, but they don't have enough energy to.

So all of a sudden you add the energy, now they can die.

And you know, it's called autophagy where you're getting rid of all the old bad cells. And which there's a lot of, you know, kind of people promoting, I agree, is you want to do some things for autophagy and get rid of those old cells first. And then start promoting the health.

'Cause you wanna promote, like, you know, make a senescent cell that's all crazy, especially like mitochondria, has a lot of inflammation and things like, you know, so the TB4, TB4 Frag, BPC, um, so the mitochondria, actually Alinea, which is an anti-parasitic, antiviral, anti-cancer, actually that's not in the literature, it's not approved for that, but it's amazing. Substance. Metformin, resveratrol, all the bioflavonoids are great at autophagy as well. Intermittent fasting does that as well. So you get rid of the bad cells before you try to, you don't wanna stimulate all the cells, you want to get rid of the bad ones first.

Would you, what have your, what's your experience with like fasting mimicking diet?

You know, I'm, I don't promote much diet because I wanna be a hypocrite because I eat like crap. And, and I, I, I tried the fasting mimicking diet and I did, I lost like, like 10 pounds and then, but then I gained 15 back. So, and I'm also with exercise, you know, I'm religiously exercise. That's my passion every 4 months for 8 minutes, you know, you know, rain or shine.

So I don't, I don't wanna be a hypocrite, so I don't talk.

There's so many people that can tell you more about, you know, what to do, exercise and stuff. Stuff.

And I think the way you explained about the autophagy, that's exactly, that's where every, that's where it really is now.

That's so exciting.

This, the science now, senescence and yeah, how to help get rid of those cells that are in the senescence.

Yeah. And I'm, I mean, it's amazing. You look at people, you know, I have friends in their 80s that it's where they're 40, you know, and other people who are 60 and they're, like what I remember thinking in high school, someone's 60, that's nursing. And you know, I'm, I'm 56. I'm like, damn, I'm almost 60. And you know, you think about whatever it was, The Simpsons, Mr. Burns, or whatever, you know, and just hunched over and, and people are like that. And it's, it's, it's such a difference. Like, do you want to live longer if you're in a nursing home and you know, don't have your faculties and can barely do anything, I wouldn't, you know. So I think that's, that's the big thing, you know, the healthspan and vitalityspan versus lifespan. And you look at the money spent in people's, you know, last year or two of life is huge. We spend all this money to keep them alive, but they're already, you know, their heart's failing and, you know, they got dementia, they can't remember anything, and neuropathy and diabetes and, Yeah, that's like, you know, when I got heart failure, it's just from Lyme. I'm like, I can't live like, I'm not gonna go on where I, you know, couldn't stand up and I'm, would walk 1 mile an hour. I remember, you know, going around the world and trying to catch my plane, just sweating, you know, trying to make the plane at a mile an hour with my head bent down like a bull and then pulling my suitcase in the, in the snow and getting on a subway in New York by this and it's crowded, I think someone's gonna just, you know, hit me at the back of the head cuz you're like, how annoying. But yeah, like stuff like that. And some people with heart failure until like the, the peptides changed my life, you know, reversed the heart failure. And, you know, studies show that with, you know, TB4, BPC, certainly stem cells and exosomes help, the levosome. I mean, there's a lot of things that work and, you know, peptides, one, one part of them. You know, it's a, it's a nice tool to have in your toolbox.

Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

I think this is, I'm so happy that you're doing this summit because this is, this is the, this is really the future of medicine. And, yeah.

And, and so many people, you know, they hear about peptides and, you know, you can give people studies and, you know, even doctors are not gonna, okay. They want to hear what doctors are doing, you know, and, and, and what, you're finding that works, because I'm telling you, like, there'll be a study that comes out and shows, you know, X treatment is so great. Uh, I find it doesn't work. You know, I use it, like, wait a minute, study showing it's wonderful, like, I haven't seen any benefit. Or sometimes it's the first person it works on, but then no one else after that.

I know.

Or it's like giving T2, you know, basically the thyroid, there's T4, T3, there's also T2. Which stimulates mitochondrial function. And the studies show, they're like, oh my gosh, this would be great for weight loss. And there are some people it works amazing. They're like, this stuff is amazing. But majority of people we found, it didn't work. You know, it's safe. So it's to try, but it's probably 15% of people notice a difference. And there's certainly not enough T2 in like Armor and those things. So you need, like we're doing like probably 600 to 800 micrograms a day of it. I mean, no side effects, but I tell people try it for a month and if it works, great. If it doesn't, no worries. But for people it works on, it's like, it's amazing. But then another mitochondria booster. I think it's the same with everything, you know, the other mitochondria booster, some people are, oh my God, I feel like Superman. I think all the peptides, I think Really, everything's like that, you know? You can look at, you know, why that's, I think that's the problem. People go to the internet and, oh my God, I got cured me with this herb, you know? But try it on a bunch of people, that doesn't work. And, and so I love patients that go to the internet and look for everything. You know, if a doctor says, stop reading the internet, run, but just bring it back and we'll talk about it. You know, and, and a lot of things just work on a, on a few people, but we gotta play, you know, one percentage is you want things that work for majority of people, are safe, you know, effective, and, you know, being cost, you know, and so you try to weigh all those things. And, which is like, you know, patient, well, my doctor says this, you know, well, you ask 3 doctors, you get 4 different opinions. But, and we found less a doctor knows, the more adamant they are they're right. You know, I, I think, I think you've probably found when you get in this biohacking and dig deep in all this stuff, you realize how little we know. You know, and that's the thing.

I still think it's a, it's still quite a bit of an art. I'd like it to be a bit more, unfortunately, you know, the blood tests we have unfortunately don't provide enough guidance. Okay.

Like, okay, which peptide works, which person, let's, you know, some of it's, it's a bit of a, Yeah.

And, and, and that's why, you know, tell doctors that, you know, the labs are a piece of information. And I love getting a ton of labs, like, you know, we usually have 35 for the sickest patients, but they've been everywhere and they, you know, and you look at the chart, they get CBCs and chem panels and the doctor can't find anything. Well, if you don't look and, and you should, you know, we know what's gonna be wrong, but also our job is convince the patient. And also convince the patient's doctor that, hey, you're in the right spot. Here's, here's what's going on. But, you know, any one test, it could be a LabAir, it could be, you know, and there's no perfect test. And I love to run a lot of great tests, but, you know, costs and a lot of tests are great in research because they're right there and doing it. But once they try to commercialize them, you got a tech drawing it, it sits out, you You know, and we sent our internet guy, uh, just pretty basic lab. Just, he went to Quest and then LabCorp or LabCorp and Quest, one was right on top of each other. Didn't need or anything, just went one to the other. One showed he was diabetic, the other one showed his blood sugar was awesome. You know, okay, fine. Yeah. And one insulin was sky high, the other one was low. I mean, it's, these are just standard labs.

So you got to take everything with a grain of salt, or I don't understand why doctors They order a lab and it's abnormal and they go, oh, it's a false positive.

Well, why did you run the lab if we're not gonna do anything about it?

You know? So anyways, a couple last, okay, so do you, what, what labs do you like to get? What?

Yeah, I, I mean, I tend to get like a, I'm looking at the hormones, like, you know, free testosterone, estradiol, DHEA. Um, but I'm also looking at HSCRP.

Lipoprotein, Lp-PLA2.

So do you looking for, you know, prevention, heart disease and looking for signs of inflammation, you know?

Yeah.

And I think, yeah, you know, the whole cholesterol theory of heart disease I think is dead. I mean, there's so many studies, you know, inflammation is, is huge. Yeah. And in a lot of patients, for instance, Lyme patients have so much inflammation, but their CRP is normal, you know? And also we found if someone, some people check sed rates, if that's low and low CRP, often they have coagulation defect, you know, immune activation of coagulation, and give 'em a little heparin. Like they'll line the, the infection will cause the body to line the vessels with fibra, not a clot, but now it's lining it. So oxygen usually takes 2 seconds to get into the cell and now it takes up to 2 minutes and waste parties can't get out, nutrients can't get in. Hormones, peptides. Like if things don't work, it's something to really look at. And you can do a little kind of parlor trick. It's not perfect 'cause it depends on also patient in their effort. But normally if you have someone breathe out all their air, have a pulse ox on, and then hold their breath. And so normally, so the oxygen from the lungs, you know, basically goes into the bloodstream and then, you know, go through the heart into the cells and in the cells and is utilized. So you look at the pulse ox, that will go down as you shut off the oxygen. But if they have a coagulation defect, it stays, barely goes down. So if someone like holds their breath, makes good effort, it goes from like, you know, 97, 98 down to like 80s, some people 70s. That's actually the blood's getting it. Oxygen getting into the tissues, but if it doesn't, it's a marker for a coagulation defect, you know? So when you clear that up and all of a sudden the treatments that didn't work before now start working.

Hmm. So it's some heparin and is that how would you do that?

Yeah. Yeah. So usually it's very safe, safer than aspirin cuz it's super low dose and you know, oh my gosh, you're on blood thinner. It's, it's, if you talk to a hematologist, they'll say, why are you giving that? It's homeopathic dosing, you know? But also the, the enzymes like lumbrokinase, probably the best, nattokinase. But yeah, so when I tell people, I say, I got good news and bad news. The good news is, the bad news is you got a coagulation defect.

The good news is you got a coagulation defect, we can, we can treat it.

But so there's a, there's a panel we do for that. But nice. So I love all this stuff that, that you're doing. Anything else you're kind of excited about?

I'm excited about this.

Well, everything about biohacking is about measurement.

So I have this ring these days that's it's called the Oura Ring.

It's really cool.

It basically checks your heart rate variability. That's a, so it's a really interesting measurement because basically can tell you the stress that your system is under. So you'll, you'll notice if you have even a 1 or 2 drinks the night before that your heart rate variability will go down during the night.

But can, can you explain heart rate variability and why?

Heart rate variability is, is the variation in your heartbeat. And when, when you're relaxed and your parasympathetic your system is working well, there is a very good variation of between beat to beat. And when someone's stressed, again, it's like, imagine you're, it's very stiff, your heart rate becomes very stiff.

So it's, there's less variation. So, uh, yeah, yeah.

The more variable, but that actually, that actually measures that. Yeah.

So it's, it's pretty awesome.

Like, and, and so you're really competing against yourself. It's, it's not about checking with somebody else.

You can see day to day. You know, if you're overtraining, you, you know, you'll notice that your heart rate variability might take a day or two to come back to normal.

Wow. Wow.

And we've seen more and more of these athletes, you know, and, you know, weekend warriors and they've gotta finish this marathon and all of a sudden they crash. Yeah. And they've got like chronic fatigue syndrome and, you know, and their immune system's shot. And that's, that's, that's very interesting.

And.

Because I think someone, you know, bought me the watch or whatever. I've never worn it, but that sounds interesting. What does it cost?

You know, it's about $400 US.

Oura Ring.

It's O-U-R-A R-I-N-G. Oura Ring.

And NBA just come out. I think they've made it their official product.

Wow.

They want all the players to use now. So it's, it's pretty cool.

I'll have to check it out.

Yeah.

And yeah, that's, that's pretty much my input.

I think more and more we're also gonna be getting into that, you know, measurement, you know, individual measurements like that. And you can, you can monitor your— so I think people really need to take an active role in their healthcare because, you know, just going for the checkup with their doctor or what's— I mean, they, they find nothing.

You know?

Yeah, I think we're more, we need to start, I think doctors are, cuz there's no way we can know everything. All we can do is guide the patient now. And just like, you know, the iPhone allows people to take movies on their own, it, it's, technology's allowed people to take charge of their own health and the tools are there now.

But we, you know, we can probably provide guidance, but there's no way we can understand it all ourselves.

And so patients have to do it themselves.

They need to, They need to have, they need to go out there and the information's out there now.

Yeah. And, and I find too, I think it goes kind of back, we'll kind of circle back to the beginning and that somewhat seems to sum it up a little bit that I think people, somebody when they try to take an active role in their healthcare, it's so confusing because you read the, you know, all the stuff on the internet says this is good, this is bad. The official stance is this, which is usually wrong, but those are the sites now that come up, you know, Google suppressing, you know, any alternative, you know, facts or, you know, it doesn't matter how many references you have. If you have a couple buzzwords, bioidentical, integrative, alternative, it's like you get, you get penalized and you don't come up. And so people see one thing and you tell 'em like, well, I read, I read this and this, you know, well, here's 200 studies showing that, That's incorrect, but that's the stance of, you know, the Endocrine Society or the Menopause Society. So you could see this adds to their anxiety. So a lot of people, or let's say at a party, well, I'm so sick, I got this and that. And then I go, well, you should consider this and this too. My doctor said, oh, hold on. Well, okay, how's that working for you? You know, and they're scared to make a decision, you know, cuz they're just bombarded with all, you know, basically conflicting information. So it's difficult.

Yeah, I don't envy. I think it's quite difficult to navigate. And so we can only be a guidance to people to help them navigate this. It's very difficult.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, great. It looks like you're doing some great work and on the cutting edge. And I don't know if you're maybe the second person from Canada we hear But yeah, we're getting so many restrictions here on all our stuff. The FDA is trying to shut down everything, but it's, you know, everything's big pharma.

Right.

Awesome. Yeah.

Keep the good work.

Thank you for taking the time and sharing your knowledge and experience. I think it's, uh, uh, gonna be really helpful for all the, all the viewers.

Thank you so much, Ken.

It was good, buddy. Great.

Thanks a lot. Okay.

Bye-bye.

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