Overwriting Obesity: The Simple Way to Lose That Belly Fat With Peptides

Welcome to the Peptides and Longevity Podcast, redefining aging and transforming health. Each week, Dr. Kent Holtorf will dive into groundbreaking science, innovative therapies, and the future of health and longevity alongside visionary physicians and experts. We'll explore how peptides, cutting-edge medicine, and lifestyle strategies can redefine the way we age. Get ready to transform your health, optimize your vitality, and unlock the secrets to a longer, healthier life. Let's get started.

Hi, this is Dr. Kenton Holtorf with another episode, and today we have Dr. Mark Sherwood, and he's going to be talking about managing the obesity crisis and shedding pounds with peptides, which is just such a huge problem in our society nowadays. So he's gonna let you know how to fix that. He has amazing background, and he works with his, with his wife He's a naturopathic doctor and his wife is a DO. They have full-time wellness-based practice in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's called the Functional Medicine Institute where they adopt the whole person approach, which is outcome-based on really individual needs. Their goal is to lead people down a pathway of true healing to the end that there are two purposes: to eradicate lifestyle-driven conditions So it sounds like they really partner with the patient and, and to get for, for optimal health and to really eliminate the usage of unnecessary medications that just, you know, mask the symptoms and wait until you get— oh, you get this medication when you got heart disease. Why not prevent it 20 years earlier? Through their unique clinic, they use a lot of different diagnostic tests including genetics, and we're loving the genetics tests. I think it's really helpful, or genomics, I should say. Bioimpedance, neurotransmitter testing, vascular aging, and is that ultrasound?

It is.

We have the vascular ultrasound. We had one. I love those. Stress management, which especially nowadays, my gosh, I think you need to come to our office. The couple hosts a weekly television program airing regionally in the Midwest. They serve patients in nearly every state and several countries around the world. He's completed training certifications in age management, nutrigenics, nutrigenomics, peptide therapy, hormone therapy, stress management, GI health, and immunology. And as we've talked about, these really all go together, and, and that's key with kind of standard medicine. It's like everything's compartmentalized, but you put them all together That's really where the power is. They co-authored 3 Amazon #1 bestselling books. Pretty incredible. The Quest for Wellness, Fork Your Diet— good title— and Surviving the Garden of Eden. They have been on national TV, quoted on CNN, and they're regular contributors to many national publications. And they have a full-length movie for Fork Your Diet that has had over 15 million minutes viewed in the U.S. and the U.K. Pretty amazing stuff. And they're now in production of a second motion picture. With a broad social media network that spans the globe, Dr. Mark and Michelle's influence are far-reaching. The couple understands the importance of nutrition, medical food, supplementation, exercise programs, Rest. Heck yeah, you don't sleep, you don't lose weight. Stress management is huge, easier said than done. So I'd love to hear how he solves that problem. I need some advice on that. Hormone balancing, peptide therapy, of course, uh, and functional movement and functional medicine. So he really makes them the modern day, they're the dynamic duo. The Fuel of Wellness. So, so nice to have you, Mark. We've spoken a lot and I've told people, oh my gosh, he's just the most pleasant, polite person with no ego, which is, which is wonderful. So I thank you so much for taking the time to come on the summit and really looking forward to what your knowledge you're going to share with our viewers.

Ken, I really appreciate it. It's really an honor to be here, and it's been the utmost pleasure to get to know you. So I, I feel extremely blessed, extremely grateful to be here, and I'm excited about the information we get to share together. Because without question— and I want the listeners to hang on because it's going to help them with 100% certainty— use the principles we're going to give you right now, and it will absolutely work to help eliminate this obesity And I'm going to use the word pandemic. That's exactly what's happening right now. It's the worst pandemic there ever is, not minimizing anything else, but we have more people than COVID. You bet. And we'll talk about those disease processes and it's, it's not that hard to fix if you just have a formula that works. And we've got data that I'll show you over 500 people over the last 12 months that we've tracked. So it's going to be cool.

Wow. Did you have a book coming out, The Beer Diet? The Beer and Skittle Diet?

Just take in the gluten. It's all good.

Okay. There are a lot of health benefits to beer actually.

It's— we like that. There you go.

Yeah. Ops are antimicrobial, but yeah. So tell me like, you know, how long have you been using peptides? When did you incorporate this into your practice? Uh, tell me how this kind of all came about.

Yeah. We heard a doctor named Edwin Lee speak on peptides and I was intrigued because I had Yeah, yeah, just amazing man. Just again, a very nice guy, very unique in his approach. And I heard it and I was like completely blown away and intrigued. And I said, I've got to learn more. So we went on this quest that lasted about a year to really learn these things. So we started kind of exploring the data about maybe 2 and a half years ago, and we've probably been using the peptides now about a year and a half.

Isn't that great? Like, when I give lectures on peptides and like the doctors say, "How come I never heard of this?" Because there's hundreds and hundreds of studies.

Yeah.

But because they can't be patented, most of them, that who's going to bring them out? Who's going to, you know, basically put them out as a pharmaceutical? And they're compounded right now, or we have them out as, as you know, as supplements, and we're bringing out more. And we actually have a weight loss one coming out, low molecular weight cell wall peptide. So I want to get that to you. I'd love to hear your feedback, which decreases ghrelin, which lowers appetite, increases leptin. And as you know, so leptin goes up when you gain weight, tells the brain, hey, stop storing energy, increase your metabolism, decrease your appetite, increase your thyroid. But when you get inflammation, you start gaining weight, you get leptin resistance. So the leptin goes to the brain, but the brain doesn't see it. So your brain thinks your body's starving and tells the body to gain weight and lowers your metabolism, lowers your thyroid. So we're excited about that. But, and so you started using— let's say someone comes in as, hey, I can't lose weight. Uh, "My husband doesn't believe me. He thinks I'm eating bonbons in the closet. I exercise every day. Nothing's happening." How do you approach that patient?

Well, you gotta approach them from a holistic standpoint, you know, Kent, from number one, you know, are they getting enough sleep? Because as we talked prior to coming on, if you don't get enough rest, you're gonna drive that cortisol animal, as we call it, driving yourself to this condition we call fat loss resistance. And that's just the body's natural survival mechanism. So we gotta look at stress. We got to look at lifestyle. We got to look at current age in life because hormones are going to play a part. And you mentioned correctly that the more elevated adipose tissue they have, the more leptin they'll have. And that signal's supposed to say, "Hey, it's time to turn up the thyroid." But when it becomes so elevated, it becomes where the body says, "I can't hear that signal anymore." And they have a lot of joint pain. So we talk a lot about dietary principles. We don't put anybody on a diet. We will give them a list of foods to eat. We'll give them a compressed window, which, which to eat inside. We'll talk to them about the benefits of fasting, how to incorporate that, the benefits of feasting, how to do that. When that happens, we measure their body composition. I don't want to know weight loss. I want to know percent body fat, even though weight is, is a measurable, of course. And so we'll put them through all that gamut. And then we talk about peptides. I like to think peptides are the missing link or the secret weapon, if you will, to really making someone go from a good program to perhaps a great program with predictable results. And we really try to get people down in the percent body fat range, 2% to 3% reduction per month. And we've been very successful at that.

That's nice. And like, we'll check— people come in and say, I can't lose weight. I've wrecked my metabolism. Everyone says, oh, yeah, right. And we'll check their, you know, basal metabolic rate. And we find that also like sick people, anyone with inflammation, diabetes, that have significantly diet— studies show if you like do drastic diets, like let's say 3 times in a row, which who hasn't done that, it drops your metabolism. And if you go back to normal eating, it doesn't go back.

Yeah.

And so we find they're about 25% lower metabolism. So they have to eat 500 calories less just to stay normal. And so they're starving all the time.

That's right.

And, and their thyroid's low even though the tests are normal. So yeah, I think it takes all, all those different things. So someone comes in and they can't lose weight. What's the first thing you said? You talked about sleep. What labs do you do?

Yeah, we're going to use a comprehensive panel. I like to do one that sort of encompasses all of our vascular inflammatory markers because if you have lack of good blood flow, you know, the principle is the life's in the blood, right? So how do we transfer things to the bloodstream without good flow? I want to know their inflammatory markers from the Omega Index as well, vitamin D. I'll look at certainly blood sugar, the classic markers, the hemoglobin A1c and the glucose, but I also look at and put a lot of stock in the C-peptide and insulin because I find that that's the underlying trigger. You can really see these people that are insulin resistant before they're actually clinically referred to as insulin resistant. And then finally, I wanna look at their hormones, not just from the thyroid, not just TSH, maybe T4. We're gonna look at TSH, T4, T3, reverse T3, and the antibodies, and then a full hormone picture, of course, along with our complete blood chemistry, which is standard of care, and then our hematology. So we'll do a complete panel right up front because I want the best observatory picture I can of their life. And then it's up to us, isn't it, to convince them that we know what we're talking about and teach them, right? If they understand and it makes sense, anybody is gonna go, "Man, it goes from here to the heart and then it becomes normal." That's the only way to get lifestyle change, Kent. When you go from— knowledge has got to become internalized. And once you do that, people believe in it and it becomes something we do. And it's not something— even though it's counterintuitive to our culture, right? It goes different. It will sound very normal because frankly, people should not— and I repeat, not— be walking around with excess body fat. That is abnormal to our physiology. It's abnormal to our genetics. It's not something we should expect and accept as normal. That's just accepting sort of mediocrity, if you will, in our world. We can do better than that.

Yeah, and so it sounds like you also look at optimal, and like you look at testosterone ranges for men is every decade they drop significantly, right? And because they take 95% of the people, it's just lower and lower as normal. And so it's like, you know, basically you're getting that if you— if it was 30 years ago, you'd be low. Oh, now you're normal. Or it's like heart disease is normal or cancer is normal, you know. It's crazy.

Funny you say that because it's like I look at those labs, those normal ranges, and when someone says, you know, again, not poking fun at anybody, when they say my doctor said it was normal, I'm like, no! That kind of freaks me out because that tells me we're using these normal ranges from a normal sick population saying you fit right in there. Stop.

That's who they check. Yeah, the sick population. Yeah. And people are, you know, right in the lowest 2.5%. Is that where you got a D-minus? Oh, don't treat it, you know.

No, we will— we're going to optimize things. And, and I hope people don't take this wrong, but, you know, labs are simply pieces of information, and our job is to look at those things as pieces of information, but Man, we gotta treat people. I gotta treat Kent. Kent's gotta treat Mark. And I can care a lot about those labs, but if I start treating a lab, I have lost sight of the individual person. That makes personalized healthcare kind of what it's not supposed to be. And most likely that happens a lot, and maybe this summit is a way people can kind of get out of that box a little bit and realize, you know, there's another way to approach it that's gonna give you predictable beneficial outcomes that's going to optimize your life.

I love that. I tell patients, you know, we do a big set of labs like sounds like you do and try to paint a picture. Yeah. And tell me, how do you incorporate the genomics into that?

Sure do. And I like to look at the genes in a way— and this is a, this is a cool way to understand it in the sense that the genes are like a dam in a, in a, in a river. And I've explained this to patients like this, and they get it, and even clinicians. So the dam has to sort of deal with upstream processes. The upstream processes come in two categories. Number one is those things we do control and those things we don't control. So the dam has this interaction with the genes, and this is this nutrigenomic or perhaps epigenetic, environment genetic expression, and the dam has to make a decision. If the dams are genes, it has to deal with this stuff and make a decision on how to let water out downstream. Downstream would represent perhaps disease process or dysfunction. And classic medicine is if a little floodwater comes up, we're going to throw a sandbag at it. A sandbag is like a pill. Now, does that help? Is it necessary? Perhaps about that long, but it doesn't solve the upstream problem. So I want to know how someone's dam works so that I can give the right things coming into that so that I get the right expression downstream. And get this, we can predictably increase disease resilience by putting our genes in the right environment. Therefore, we get the correct expression, and it gives us great confidence. So we see many, many disease processes go away. There's a— kind of behind me, there's a big vase full of empty pill bottles. And so become a master of deprescription because it's not that the prescriptions were bad, it's just created function now so there's not a dysfunction that the symptoms are being treated with that.

Yeah, they don't have a statin deficiency or a Prozac deficiency. And I think it's, it's great too using those— you, instead of shotgunning, you go, here's the supplements you need.

That's right.

And our way to patient with mast cell and she had a sniffle, doesn't make B6. Gave her B6, asthma went away.

Yep.

You know, and it's just— it's really nice. So you can actually target— goes back to that precision medicine that, that you're saying.

That's right.

Upstream healing.

Yeah, exactly. And if we would look at things differently, upstream healing is really looking at disease as a non-existent non-needed process. And here's what I mean by that. If diseases are nothing more than groups of symptoms we cluster together to name, and I think we'd all agree that's probably what it is, if we would eliminate the clusters of symptoms by going upstream and figuring out what caused those symptoms in the first place, therefore disease becomes unnecessary, and we really got to stop focusing to become perhaps master diagnosticians and become master upstream diagnosticians instead of downstream. And that would give us probably a better perspective. We need both ends, but if we can master the upper end, we're going to go a long ways because I fully believe, Kent, that the majority of our illnesses today that are rampaging our nation and around our world— and frankly, started in America, a lot of them— are driven by lifestyle choices, if you will.

And so I think what you're saying is that you may have the genes, but you can turn those off.

You can. Genes— you know, we don't treat the genes. We have to understand that we can't change the genes. But through epigenetic modification, we can change the expression of those things to make them express themselves or speak or act or appropriate to our benefit. And that's wonderful when you look at that, because for years and years we thought the genes were stuck and you're stuck with what you got, and too bad, so sad, deal with it. But now we're understanding that just because one has a set of genes— I like to look at it like this, man, that's freaking empowering. I want to know, man, that empowers me. If I got the ApoE4, which I know that's part of our subject, but that's For those who are listening, that's like the heart attack gene and/or the Alzheimer's gene. So if I got those, I want to know because I want to know what to do and take the weight of susceptibility off of that through lifestyle. And wouldn't you know, you can do that, which is really cool.

And you can probably go from increased risk for heart disease and Alzheimer's to lower risk than average interventions.

Without question, 100% certainty.

Yeah, I did. I really think, I think that's awesome. And we're really looking at, at the big picture. Um, and so, so tell me how peptides play a part in this.

Yeah. So peptides, I use them a lot to sort of lace into a lifestyle protocol and I've prepared a PowerPoint for us if I, if I might at this point.

Yes. Yes.

And I think—

Yeah, so let's go ahead and do the PowerPoint.

Great time to show the PowerPoint to people right now. And here it is. So I think everyone should see that right now. And obviously, we know that the obesity crisis is horrible. And I just saw a couple of statistics here that we can see. I was looking back at 2000 by the color code map. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand, everybody, that certainly in 2000, there were very, very few states that were, you know, really a problem. We saw some of them approaching 40%, but that was in the South and that was rare. But we go forward just nearly 2 decades and we see it's shocking. Some states are over 50%. You project that on out, this is what I find is just terrible. Look at this map. This is projected by 2030. Now—

Hey, obesity is going to be the norm.

It is. Now granted, yes, people would say that obesity is measured by BMI, which is— I get it, it's fallible. I mean, my wife and I, just because we have muscle on our frame, we are obese by that measure. But this is not the norm either. This is a great way to measure population statistics, so we can't sort of dismiss it. It really means something. You go certainly down in the numbers today, if you want percentages, this is what it is right here for the obesity rates as of today. And this is men 35.5% women, 37%. That's right now. Now we talked about just a few moments ago the idea that these obesity rates and obesity itself contributes to disease. Let's pull this off the CDC. I mean, clearly we have these all causes of death, all mortality, but we can read there some of these things. Again, let's understand that heart disease is still the number one killer of men and women across our country. I mean, I wanna know why that is. I don't wanna manage it. I don't wanna deal with it. I don't wanna have it. So isn't it better to be prehabilitative rather than rehabilitative with our processes? Now, it's very understandable, we gotta mix a little science into this, and I wanna show a chart right now that's a little bit cumbersome, but it's gonna show two pathways. Two pathways, one being building pathway, and one, a cleanup pathway. The body needs to build appropriately and clean up appropriately. And this will give people an idea of how we can use peptides to benefit us. Here's the pathway right here, and it's a little confusing, so I'm just gonna use my mouse, and I'm gonna be looking to my left 'cause I have another screen over here. So as you can see the mouse on the screen, this is the mTOR pathway.

And there will be a test after this.

Yes, there's a 15-question test that will not be open PowerPoint, right? But the idea is mTOR, it has a name. It's called mammalian target of rapamycin. But nonetheless, I just want people to see quickly what upregulates this. And I'll start over here in the right corner, cytokines. So we're talking about a cytokine storm has been much in the news lately. So this is inflammation. So inflammation is going to trigger it. We also know that there's iron and there is high fructose corn syrup. There is EMF, right? You know, this electromagnetic frequencies. And then we see dairy over here, these hormones in our meats and things like that. We see pesticides. And lo and behold, over here we see this thing called ATP. That is energy. So this mTOR pathway is gonna sense when we're fed, when we're in a fed state. So if we're not in a fed state, the body will bounce out of mTOR and go into autophagy, which I'll talk about in just a moment. But right here, I want people to note this. IGF-1, it stands for insulin-like growth factor 1, and this can be measured in blood, and we want to optimize that thing. We don't wanna have it chronically upregulated, but we don't wanna have it in the tank either. This one is gonna signal mTOR as well. When mTOR is working right, and it's supposed to, we're able to build things like muscles, like repair cells. That is good. However, if we are building things that's from a dysfunctional state, that would mean clearly dysfunction upon dysfunction upon dysfunction. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that if we have broken cells that are continuing to build and build and build, that could be a player in this disease process called cancer. So we don't wanna have mTOR upregulated all the time. So we need to mix in a little bit of fasting. We need to upregulate this pathway called autophagy, which is cellular cleanup. I like to look at like cellular cleanup as a building that's become dilapidated, like torn down, and we're going to go in there and fix it up so it can be repaired again. That's our physical bodies, isn't it? I mean, we certainly need to be understanding that our body is going to break down and needs to be cleaned up, break down and clean up. So Understand over here, there are peptides that will upregulate this pathway, and there are peptides that will upregulate this pathway. And if we can use those appropriately, the body will not be growing as rapidly with generating excess fat over and over again. When we're in autophagy, we can break down fat. When we're in mTOR, we can't. So that's the key point here I want people to take away. Now, Again, very busy pathway. If somebody wants to study this, they can. These in the orange are all these different genes that matter. So that's another discussion for another day, probably. But when we talk about the peptides to use based upon building and cleaning up, here is the protocol. And I went ahead and put exactly what they are. We use Sermorelin, and/or CJC-1295 ipamorelin. And the way these guys work is they will, in a secondary signaling manner, they will upregulate your own body's production of growth hormone, which goes down the pathway to eventually make IGF-1. So these will help build. This will give you more of a youthful appearance with your skin, with your body healing, with body fat loss, and yes, muscle building. So these are good. Now the only caveat is with this one is I want people to understand that ipamorelin— I know you spoke of ghrelin earlier within our discussion— this one will upregulate ghrelin, so it can upregulate the hunger just a bit. So I have leaned more towards this guy over here, the sermorelin, to upregulate the pathway.

Now, can, can you just describe what those are?

Yeah, so these Sermorelin and CJC-1295, Bipamorelin, these are peptides that are gonna— they operate on these G-protein receptors that are outside the cell. So many times when people take a hormone, it has to sort of hit in a receptor, right? So these don't have to do that. They can sort of go by and knock on the door and say to the cell, Hey, I need you to behave yourself tonight. So we take these typically, I like them before bed so that our bodies will respond well by producing quality growth hormone like we produced as we were younger. So, right? Makes sense? All right, and then I like to use the BPC-157, the thymosin beta-4. And the MOTS here for these reasons. BPC-157 is gonna induce healing. So think about better cleanup process, reduction of inflammation, and through the process of possible autophagy. Thymosin beta-4 is gonna upregulate the proper immune function, reduce inflammation, and again induce autophagy because we saw cytokines, when they build up, they're gonna upregulate the building process. And then we use MOTS. It's gonna upregulate AMPK and autophagy. And if we look one time back at that, and then we'll jump forward, there's autophagy, there's mTOR, and we really wanna make sure we have a balance between those two. So if we use those peptides, and I'm gonna give you an order with which to use those two, and even dosages that work very well, which works nice. So here's our peptides. Here's our peptides, and we go forward. We have to talk about exercise too, 'cause I already told you that strength training would upregulate mTOR and Cardiovascular training upregulates autophagy. So if we have a, for instance, exercise protocol that says strength training Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and then Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, maybe some cardio. On cardio days, we're gonna compress our eating as we talked about so that we're not eating all the time, not having presence of calories, and we want more time in an unfed state or a fasted state. And then We look forward here. Here's our rotation schedule. So if strength training is on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, we're gonna use sermorelin or CJC-1295. Now this 0.20 is 0.20 milliliters. SQ means subcutaneous. So I hope everybody is not unfamiliar with what that term is, but we're talking about this subcutaneous injection into our fat in our belly with a little bitty baby insulin needle. And I promise you, it does not hurt one bit. Maybe mosquito bite at the most, mostly nothing.

It's so easy, men can do it.

Yeah, I've had guys that are more scared, you know, than that. And in the South, we have a saying, "Don't be skeered." And they're not scared when they do it. They actually are like, "I can't believe I'm giving myself a shot." So they They grow confident like that. So maybe they're better fathers like that. I don't know. I'm hoping. But Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, these would be our cardio days, right? Cardio is gonna upregulate autophagy. So we're gonna capitalize on that. We're gonna repair. Remember, BPC was repairing. It was recovering. It was redoing things. We're gonna work on thymus and beta-4 because that will absolutely downregulate the inflammatory action and improve immune function. And then MOTS, from these 3 guys, game changers, they will induce a lot of fat loss. So we've got our proper building and then we got our fat loss. So with BPC, you can use it subcutaneous or oral. Great, no problem. Thymosin, subcutaneous or oral. And MOTS, it's gonna be subcutaneous.

And again, I just want to mention, you said, you know, BPC subcutaneous oral. Your studies show that oral and shots, they're equal potent for systemic. And I don't know, I think we sent you some of our thymosin beta-4 fragment, which is orally active.

Yep.

And so I'd love to hear your feedback on that. I know you just got it, but yeah, the MOTC, you can't, you can't do orally for, you know, for people who don't want to do the shots. And, and I, I think like I won't exercise unless I'm doing the peptides because I'm like, I gotta exercise 3 times as long, right?

Yep. That's really, you know, the, the thing about exercise, you know, a lot of times we put so much emphasis on that. It doesn't take much. I mean, but when you have a sort of a program or a protocol that you can say, like for example, if on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, if I can just dedicate 15, 20 minutes to a well-designed, very efficient strength training program, that's enough. It really is enough. And then with the cardio, you just need to move more, move more, sit less. I mean, on my computer, I have a little thing that pops up for every 20 minutes. I need to stand up, right? Just standing up will sort of help upregulate, you know, the, even the, the enzyme lipase, which is great to break down fat by standing up. And this is great because I just started using thymosin beta-4. About a week and a half ago. Thank you for that. That was awesome. I'm excited about that. But you're right. I was looking at the studies, and a lot of efficacy. So someone says, man, I don't want to stick a needle in myself every day. Okay, use oral. And certainly, this is just a suggestion. This is what we do. We'll go 3 times a week for 7 weeks, each of these as we roll through this. And we will keep bouncing these things in and out. And we've had incredible results. Now, I guess I would be remiss if I didn't give somebody a little bit of, you know, kind of idea what to eat. You know, again, I told you beforehand, we don't do diets. So, you know, how do you mix this in and what does that look like? Just really quick, and then we'll come back to our pathways here. But, you know, I tell people, you know, don't diet. You know, eat when you're hungry, chill out when you're not, relax. Always practice some sort of fasting. Remember the body, when it's in a building state, when there's calories around, it can't repair. Very important to understand that. From the standpoint of disease— Yeah.

Oh, sorry. When you say fasting, like how long? Do you like fasting mimicking diet where they're eating something or don't eat, like, you know, after 9 o'clock or whatever and then don't eat Lunch, or how do you like to do it?

Well, I prefer, you know, because it's easiest, I prefer targeting people to an 18-hour fast a couple times a week. If they can do 3 times a week, and that looks like about 6 PM to about noon. And yes, people say, can you have a cup of coffee? Of course, have some black coffee if that's what you want, right? Just don't put any substance in there like cream. But general rule, if you can do that and get 18 hours and then not eat in a 3-hour window prior to going to sleep, look, you're gonna do well. So take pressure off and just do that little formula there. There's all kinds of products out there. There's a fasting mimicking diet. There's longer-term fasting. There's other terms that people use. But 2 or 3 times a week, if you just do that, without question, you'll have a lot more positive results because we're accomplishing from a science point what we really need to do. Now there's lists that I give people. Here they are. This is— This is our anti-inflammatory foods. And I just like— there it is. And I tell people to select wisely. I don't give them limitations. I don't say no more than or no less than. I just say this is your selection list. And just a quick point of note, low glycemic, non-root, non-starchy. If someone is obese or has excess adipose tissue in their frame, we've got to lower that glycemic load. And therefore, it's going to lower our insulin output. And just remember, when we're measuring insulin in labs, folks, when that's elevated persistently, you cannot lose weight. It's not gonna happen. Insulin is a building hormone. Think insulin in your mind as a fat-storing hormone. So if you eat like this, you're going to drive down the insulin, which gives you more platform regardless of peptides to be able to access fat tissue for utilization. Or for fuel. You put peptides on this, it absolutely causes the success to go up. And these that I've got listed here are, generally speaking, and I use the word general, anti-inflammatory. I just want to give you a place to start. We have to look at the inflammatory foods, and here they are, you know, clearly. I know the ones on the, the, the left side would be like this low-hanging fruit. Well, of course they are. And then you've got that caffeine and alcohol. That can be a variable because some people genetically metabolize either or very quickly, and There are people that can get some benefit perhaps from a little bit of red wine and alcohol. There's, there's some benefit there. So, but if we do anything too much, we can have problems. Breads and grains probably are the ones that people have the most trouble with. Just a side note, when they are digested in the belly right now, because of their genetic modification, they create these substances that act like morphine in the brain. They're called exorphins, and those things will bind to your receptors in your brain and making you feel really good and not feel pain. And so That's why they're addicting to everybody, and that's why when you say some— somebody give up your grains and breads, they're gonna look at you like you're from Mars or something.

But yeah, just a little side note with NutraSweet. So I— my family stutters a lot, and I was just stuttering so bad I could not answer a cell phone. I didn't carry a cell phone because I would just stutter, "Hello?" And I read an article on NutraSweet causing stuttering. Went off it about 2 weeks later, I stopped stuttering. And if I accidentally get some NutraSweet, it— I start stuttering. But it is very hard to get off. It is a cytotoxin, but it shows how— what a toxin it is. It causes stuttering.

Yeah. And these, these substances in our, in our body that are generated from our food supply, I mean, we know— I use air quotes— the Environmental Protection Agency. I mean, I'm not sure there's any protection about that because all these thousands of chemicals and and 5 digits are released every year. And we don't have studies on them. They say, well, this little bit won't hurt you. But honestly, Kent, I mean, you're talking about stacking the deck. And so a little bit becomes a lot. And it just— it's what teaches people over the edge. And so I've found that if people just do these 2 slides, just bring in anti-inflammatory foods, remove most probable inflammatory foods, and they get better just with that. No diet, just with that. And just follow the principles. I tell people that too, that it's really important to understand that don't use exercise and try to exercise away a bad diet. That won't work either because that's just gonna create more inflammation. I tell a story all the time of, I call her Boot Camp Mom. Boot Camp Mom goes to boot camp 5 days a week, twice a day and can't lose any weight. Well, she's chronically inflamed because of the stress she's putting her body under, chronically upregulating mTOR, chronically building, and her body is in a, fat loss resistance mode. So certainly, you know, this brings us back to, to this guy, you know, our pathways here. Remember, we have to balance 4 days a week with the IGF-1 upregulators, and that was with Sermorelin or CJC epimorlin. And then we use our BPC, thymosin beta-4, or MOTS in the protocol that I gave you to upregulate autophagy 3 days a week by just using the protocol I gave you. That's it, real simple. This is the results that we've got over the last 12 months of over 400 men and women. We've tracked this. They will lose 2 to 3% body fat reduction for women in 30 days, and men sometimes get 3 to 4. And this for them is a game changer because I've already told you the percentage of this obesity that's in our world. And I let the results speak what they may. And so people ask me, does this work? Yes. How often? 100% of the time. And I'm very confident about that. There's nothing— wow, you look at peptides, there's no negatives, right? Use them like this, it's great, and you're going to get results, right?

I love it. And if these results came out as a pharmaceutical weight loss med, oh my God, it'd be all over the news and would be a billion-dollar med.

Well, here's a cool thing though, and we all— I think we all can get this. I mean, all of our listeners right now said, I want that, I want to do that. You can. It's not that hard, you know, it's not expensive. You just gotta like invest yourself in a process that works. And when we talk about reversal of disease processes, already stated that if you can reduce obesity and use this protocol Obviously, if obesity causes disease or it's associated with them, however you wanna look at that, then when we lower obesity or, matter of fact, eliminate it, which is my goal, then these disease processes by association would go down. And then you have these necessity that when we had these disease processes of medications being used, you would eliminate the necessity. And of course, at that point, I'm sure big pharma would not be happy. But Mark and Michelle will sure be really happy because I want to see this fixed.

Because yeah, we're really getting killed as a nation or as a world is the diseases of aging, right?

Yeah.

So it's— obesity ties into that. And I find it really interesting. You look at chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme, autism, and obesity, diabetes. They had the same picture.

Everything matches, doesn't it?

Yeah. And so it's like, instead of like, oh, you get this drug, you get this drug, it's get at the underlying, because it's— it's— there's commonality there, significant commonality.

I want to see a world where— and that's why I was so just really keyed up to talk about this subject, because I, I dream of a world where people become, and I hope people hear this, fat gain resistant. I'm gonna say it one more time, fat gain resistant, because that is normal. You look at pictures that were 75, 80, 100 years old. Did you see people that were struggling with this obesity thing? It was rare, and when someone would go to the doctor in those days, I would presume, I didn't live back then, although it seems like I'm older than that, but the bottom line is I'm sure that the doctor would say, Oh my goodness, Kent, look, this is serious. You're gaining too much weight. This is associated with all these disease processes. And they would be genuinely concerned about that. But today we go to the clinic and we see, you know, and again, this is encouragement, we see doctors, we see staff that same way with cookies, donuts, ho-hos, and sodas there in the lobby for free. And it's not conducive to even health. It's an obesogenic environment. Whereas today, if you begin to lose weight— and I'm encouraging people to absolutely put this protocol into work, do it, it will work— but when you lose weight, be prepared because you're gonna have people ask you the question, "Hey, you're getting a little skinny, you got cancer?" You know, it's really odd the way it works. It's flipped. But as I like to say, become an outcast, become an unusual person. Become someone that's maybe considered—

I love it—

maybe a radical or a freak. Because look, we need more radicals and freaks like Kent Holthorff in the world so that we can have change. Because man, we need it. We're exporting this obesity in the United States of America. It's the fastest-growing non-communicable disease on the planet today. This is a problem. And if you eliminate it, I don't think— I mean, the timing of this, we're talking about a COVID pandemic, serious. But we probably would not be having this discussion if our immune system were healthy based upon our lifestyle rather than unhealthy based upon our lack of proper lifestyle.

Now I totally agree. And do you find— I think you see patients, they go and they exercise, they diet, and nothing happens, so they go screw it. Yeah, you know, and So it sounds like you can really— I love the program. I can see how that just would work and it's not drastic, you know, and, and where all of a sudden they're like, I'm getting results, which then fuels the motivation. And you're seeing changes because you go to the gym every day and I gained 3 pounds. Like, forget it. Yeah.

I had a guy come in. This is, this is a couple that came in and we've been working with him about coming up on a year now, and they're in their 60s, right? So they're no spring chickens, right? So I can say that, I'm good. But he, the male, in this period, he put on 12 pounds of lean body mass. 12! And he was just doing the same program, and he lost 16 pounds of fat mass. His percent body fat completely turned around. His wife, on the other hand, she put on 7 pounds, and this is cool, 7 pounds of lean body mass, completely reversed, and they didn't talk about this, osteoporosis. So she went from a -2 to a +1. Shocking in a 12-month period. And she lost 20 pounds of fat mass. We saw them and I just, I mean, I don't see them all the time 'cause they come in about every 3 or 4 months, but it blew my mind. And I actually cried, you know, I'm kind of an emotional guy. I cried because it, it made me feel really a little good. Because, you know, our job is to really— is to, is to bring healing to people's lives. It never was intended to, to, to manage anything. I mean, we're supposed to help people, for God's sake, not keep them where they are. And so that's why, you know, I think if we really would embrace this philosophy that we have, it would work better.

Yeah, I think it is a very different philosophy. And you look at You know, they go to the endo, whatever, they give bisphosphonates, you know. Yep. And which basically kill your cells from breaking down the old bone and putting new bone on top of old bone. Right. And people get femur fractures and all this. But you've shown what you were saying is that all of a sudden you reduce the inflammation and go to a building you know, basically system instead of breaking down like you build bone.

Exactly. And you know, the bisphosphonates don't— I mean, they might stop osteoclastic activity, but they're not going to start osteoblastic activity, which basically is bone building for everyone. But the bottom line is like, you know, I've got a pen here, but they're just going to make the bones more stiff and they're going to break easier like an old pencil we used to have in school.

You know, they look better on X-ray, but It's not healthy.

No.

Or what's your thought on statins?

Yeah. Statins, I think, as opposed to some saying, I don't think they belong in our water supply. I think that's a mistake. And I think from what I've seen, genetically speaking, I think they tie directly to the Alzheimer's increase clearly. And I think that I've had incredible success not using them because I think the only data out there is a little bit that would would fly towards the secondary prevention but not primary prevention.

Yeah.

And so I've had really good success using red yeast rice and those things like that and, and really seeing the lipid particles expand in size, inflammation go down. So even with the protocol we just gave you, I mean, I'm going to go there, but we're not going to use statin drugs. And we have a heck of a time convincing someone because honestly, if we suppress the induction or synthesis of cholesterol, I mean, what did we just do? We just suppressed the ability of our body to make hormones that really— I mean, this goes right in the face of what you just talked about osteoporosis. Women lose bone when they reach menopause because they lose hormones. Well, now we're just creating a situation where we're gonna lose bone quicker. So it doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, I know the cardiologists might not care about the bone, or might not the brain, but I do. I care about it. And it is.

And I think all the studies are showing that they thought, oh, give it to everyone, and it's really narrow. And they're showing like even elderly diabetics would be— you think the ideal— oh no, it doesn't help. I mean, it lowers mitochondrial function.

You betcha.

And your memory loss, muscle aches, because you're destroying the energy of the cells. And it's so underreported. People go, I got these muscle aches. Oh, don't worry about it.

No, I see it all the time, all the time. And it's disgusting to me because people come in here with, you know, they got familial history of dementia and all this, and they're on a statin drug and they're told, they're honestly told, hey, you can eat anything you want as long as you keep your LDL at 70.

Because they go in, the doctor does a CBC, a chem panel, and a cholesterol, and the patient's self-worth is based on their cholesterol level. The doctor goes, I gave you this pill, look at your cholesterol, oh, it's great. You didn't do them a favor.

I kind of like, you know, and this is going to sound a little bit contrary to— I don't mind when I see a lab panel, Kent, where LDL is elevated because there's a reason for it. It gives me an idea, something to go look at. But I need to look at oxidized LDL, I need to look at MPO, Lp-PLA2. And for our listeners, those are other markers. You know, I want to look at the the fractionate the particle size down to see what it is. That tells me everything, you know. But the LDL to sort of act on that in any way, as— or having the ability to make a clinical decision on that, I don't think it's there. I would consider that, that marker by itself is pretty worthless.

I agree. You look at the studies, so people with lowest cholesterol, earliest heart attacks, you know.

That's right.

And also antidepressants, 2 to 3-fold increased risk for osteoporosis. Do the doctors ever tell them that? No, they freak out when their TSH is suppressed.

Yeah, a lot of the medicines we take— there's a website out there if anybody wants to write this down. It's really cool. It's called MyTavan, M-Y-T-A-V-A-N, M-Y-T-A-V-A-N.com, and you can type in any medications you're taking right now and it will spit out the nutrients that are depleted with references. Boy, if you know anything, if your clinician knows anything about biochemistry and/or genetics and stuff like that, you can clearly see whole entire pathways becoming dysfunctional based upon not a side effect, the effect of medications. Now, we're not talking about side effects. We know this. So it's expected, and we have to replace that just to get it back to ground zero or a homeostatic balance set point, not to mention what we might want to be doing So this is a big deal. So I hope people will even utilize that website.

Yeah. And I mean, you look at commercials of medications that's causes da da da da da and death. And I know a doctor tells all his patients, he goes, I can take out my prescription pad and kill you and nothing will happen. But if I harm you with this functional medicine, I'm going to be in big trouble.

You know, that's right.

And a big difference. Just a couple. Yeah, we're getting close to time here, but you mentioned EMF. Yeah, just real quickly, thoughts on 5G. Are you freaked out about it? It's going to be horrible.

You know, I think it could be actually, but I think that we need to look at it from a sort of a soup sort of a viewpoint. When you throw that in a soup that's already a milieu of a quagmire of mess, it's going to exacerbate it. Many times we You know, yes, EMF does affect our bodies in a negative way. I mean, we're all around this stuff. Yes, it is, and it's going to get worse in our environment, period. So do we need to take precautions? Yes, maybe move our cell phones another room, and, and, you know, there's, there's some ways we can shield it with sheets and stuff like that. Yes, all those are good, but I think that the bigger picture needs to be addressed. All these things, you know, with our food, our stress, our sleep, our lifestyle, our exercise, you know, the way we manage things. Do we take a vacation? Do we go stand on the sand with our feet in the water and just dream a little bit, you know, get some sunshine. That all matters. So, you know, I think that from the standpoint of 5G or EMF, yes, it's going to be more negative.

But the same thing, yeah, it's never any one thing.

I think that's right, you know.

And we see like the chronic Lyme patients, like if someone just says Lyme, they're probably fine. You've had the symptoms, that's right. You had emotional stress will just destroy the immune system, mold. I mean, you know, and it's— everything's a vicious cycle, I think, too.

Yeah.

And does your program work for healthy people, also chronically ill? What type of range do you treat?

Well, obviously, I think the prerequisite for someone that I want to work with and my wife wants to work with is they got to want to get well. I mean, they gotta— they gotta have the mindset that I believe I can get well. And the second prerequisite, and this is probably the hardest one, they had to be willing to unlearn some things. Unlearn some things.

It's like the doctors we train.

Yeah, it's like, okay, we've got so ingrained— I'm playing on words— ingrained in something, you know, that we just can't get out. It's like those neurological ruts get so deep where we just do them, we don't even know why. But if someone wants to get well and they want to unlearn and perhaps learn some really cool stuff about how to optimize health. Program works for everybody because it's not again, something that's specific Healthy People only. Anybody can exercise. Exercise is sort of defined as just moving, isn't it? Right. Dedicated movement. Anybody can use peptides. Awesome. Anybody can change their diet. Anybody can work on sleep. Anybody can learn this stuff. It's so— it does work for everybody. And I really, we work with people that are, you know, younger that are getting too much fat in their system and work people that are older, they're getting too much fat in their system. And, and even people that don't have fat that want to grow muscle and lose excess fat. Yeah. This, these principles do work.

I, I think it's great. And I think the days of just going to your doctor and saying, my doctor gave me this pill. You know, and I think patients really need to take an active participation in their health. And unfortunately, the way the medical system— I mean, standard doctors are not bad people. They're in a bad system.

Yeah, that's right. It's gotta be a partnership, right?

Yeah. It's like, I can't say hello in 9 minutes or whatever they have, you know, it's like, oh, here's your pill, go away.

So you need to have a box of tissues in your office because if you can connect on all those pain points and they do shed tears, that means you got into their life. And so I got a big box of tissues right behind the screen here.

It really sounds like, I think it sounds like you really connect with your patients and I can see you've had so many success stories and your face lights up talking about it.

Yeah, I love it. It's nice.

And it's just wonderful to see. I just, I don't know, with standard dog, I just get so, mad when I hear care that patients have gotten, especially like we treat a little chronically ill and the way they're treated. But I just, I love it. You have this dynamic glow and like you're, you're going to help them and you do. It's like, and it doesn't seem that hard.

It's not. And I think this, we gotta like get out of this thing where we're identifying ourselves with sick, you know, instead of my name is Mark and I happen to be a naturopathic doctor, people identify themselves I'm diabetic, and it becomes a damn excuse, quite frankly. And we set our bar about that high instead of setting our bar up here. This is healing. This is where we are, and we think this is the only place we can get. And the thing about doing that is you might just reach it if that's your goal. And so we got to learn to identify ourselves as optimal function. I like to say I'm a great husband. I'm a great friend. I'm a great father, and I live in optimal health. I'm not going to say I'm hypertensive, diabetic, or demented. I mean, that doesn't make sense. That changes my whole chemistry within my person.

I love it. I can just see patients smiling walking out of your office. Yeah, I love it. Hey, thank you so much. I think this— all this information, I think, is just invaluable for our listeners. And I thank you for taking the time. I just think you're an awesome person and with so much knowledge and have really figured it out, you know.

Well, I'm still learning. I don't, I don't have it all figured out yet, but I'm still trying to unlearn and learn too. So we're in this together.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much and have a great rest of the week. And again, thanks for, thanks for being on.

Thank you, Ken. It's been an honor. Thanks for joining us on the Peptides and Longevity Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review. It helps us reach more listeners passionate about optimizing their health. For more insights, resources, and updates, visit our website at www.holtorfmed.com. Together, let's embrace a future of health and vitality. Until next time, stay inspired and keep thriving.