Peptides, Faith, and the Truth About Weight Loss

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Like when you talk about the media and what the media gloms onto, I think you're 100% correct. When you talk about social media too, social media is something that people tend to treat as, as like a photo album. Like when we were young, people put photo albums out on their table and they weren't, they were, it's the highlights of life, right? It's birthdays, it's all these things. Like you don't typically, you know, open a photo album to see how people struggled in life. And so social media's kind of the same way. So you get a lot of the really positive stories. I lost 300 pounds in 2 years, whatever.

Welcome to the Peptides and Longevity Podcast. Each week we'll 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. Hey everybody, I wanna welcome you back to the Peptides and Bioregulators Summit. I have joining with me today a super husband, super dad, a, a man of God, an incredible podcaster. The list goes on and on and on. The man, the myth, the legend himself, Dave Knapp. Thank you so much for joining me today, Dave.

Well, thanks for the warm intro, man. I, I appreciate it. It's nice to meet you. It's nice to be here. And as a fan of what Integrative Peptides does, I've been eager to have this conversation for a while.

So I'm so excited. I, I know that we share a lot in common when it comes to, to the health journey, and it's just incredible to meet someone who's had such success with peptides when it comes to issues like type 2 diabetes or even just weight loss in general. And the struggle that is really like the American plague, I feel like is, sure, we're all just fighting that daily cuz we're bombarded with this system of food and lifestyle that just caters to, you know, increased body weight and lethargy and stuff that just turns into chronic illness, but it creeps up on us and before you know it, we're hit with something. You know, with me it was cardiovascular issues and I was in the emergency room and it was a wake-up call to sobriety and just different things that I had to take that journey to the next level. And I know that you have similar stories too, so I'm just, I'm excited to connect, man. It's awesome.

Yeah, likewise. I feel like you just started to tell my own story. So looking forward to finding all the connecting points cuz I think, like you said, there's a lot there.

True that. Yeah. Hey, why don't you, why don't you get started with that? I, I feel like our audience would love to hear your, story and how you got to be the, the man of the peptide kingdom.

The man on the Majaro. Well, okay, so we got 25 minutes here. So for me, a podcaster that loves to talk, you're gonna have to keep me corralled here.

Okay. Sounds good.

But here, here's my story in a nutshell. I've struggled with obesity my entire life. I've got obesity and diabetes is rampant on my mother's side. It's funny, if you look at me and you look at my siblings, I don't look anything like my siblings, but I look exactly like my cousins on my mother's side. Wow. So very dominant in the genetics from my mother's side of the family. Family. And there's, there's type 2 diabetes there, there's obesity there, the whole gamut, cardiovascular issues, et cetera. So I've struggled with obesity from, you know, I'd say high school, high school age is when I really started to realize that, that I had a propensity to be overweight. And definitely when I started to pack, you know, some of the pounds on, you know, it's funny, like I, I've always been into radio, talk radio specifically. I just grew up, I know this is going to cause, you you know, certain people to cringe, but like I grew up a Rush baby. I listened to Rush Limbaugh from the time I was like in the cradle. Nice. And so the time that I got my like driver's license and I remember just driving around and listening to talk radio. So I sort of developed this passion for talk at a young age. And then as I, I kind of got older, I always worked in restaurants. And so fast food like became like, you know, just 'cause kind of like what I leaned on for food, you know, cause I was working, working in fast food. I got all this access to free food. I had, I always had money in my pocket cause I was always working from like the time I was 14 and I've always been kind of a foodie too. And so just high school started to pack on the weight a little bit. Fast forward to, you know, like we're, we're glossing over a lot of life, married my high school sweetheart, had 4 kids, but ended up at, you know, very high weight, 319 pounds in 2021 on a 5'10" frame. So OB, morbidly obese, as they would say. And I was just feeling bad, went into the doctor and he's like, yeah, you're probably feeling bad because your A1C is a 7.9, which is pretty high. And I was telling my wife, I was like, you know, I don't mean to sound crass, but I was like, I either have cancer and I'm dying or, you know, something is very wrong. So I went to the doctor, you know, sort of fresh off of the COVID era. And I was just skeptical of everything. Just really, it's And even today it's just so hard to parse what is real, what is true, what is trustworthy. And so anyways, I, the doctor said, well, what do you want to do, Dave? And I was like, no, I don't want to be on medicine. I'll tell you that much. And he's like, well, all right, then you're going to do keto. I was like, I'm happy to do it. I understand the science behind it. I know I'll keep my blood sugars low, but I, I've stopped losing weight on it because I've yo-yoed on it for like 20 years in my adult life. I would always go back to this keto diet. Where I would just, you know, ramp up the meat intake, drop the carbohydrates, avoid the sugar, refined, you know, starchy vegetables, refined carbs. So I did it. I was like, doc, I'll do it if I'm gonna live longer. So I, for a full year, 2021 fall to fall of 2022, just hardcore keto, pricking my finger, testing my ketones, CGM, the gamut, right? I get to the end of that year, my A1C's down under 5, under 6, right? So like a 5.4. So I just completely controlled my A1C, but my weight went from 319 to 312. So like, I shed that, you know, 7 pounds of water weight that everybody does when they cut out the carbohydrates.

Yep.

But I didn't lose any weight. And it wasn't surprising to me, but it was incredibly defeating because I'd never worked harder. Mm-hmm. And the keto diet is a very hard lifestyle change to, to keep long-term. And I mean, there's lots of studies on it, not knocking people who do it, but to, to maintain it, you, if you've done it for any period of time, you know how hard it is. Especially with the food environment that we live in. So he said at that time, he's like, well, we didn't get your weight down, but you're probably a candidate for bariatric surgery. And I was like, whatever is gonna make me live longer for my kids. My dad died at 54 from a massive heart attack. Now I'm like not even 40 years old. I got type 2 diabetes. I, I know all of the associated comorbidities and risks. And the fact that, that right outta the gate, you know, means I'll probably live a shorter life by the numbers, all that, right? So I look on my formulary and I don't have coverage for obesity surgery, metabolic surgery.

Wow.

And so in hindsight was probably a, like a, like a blessing, right? But he says, well, there's these medications that really are mimicking hormonally what bariatric surgery does. And he explains to me, you know, bariatric surgery, really everybody thinks that it just works by reducing the amount of food that you take in. And he goes, that is true, but how it does it is what people don't understand. And it does it by rebalancing these hormones that are stimulated when you eat. And these hormones are all sorts of dysregulation. Dysregulated in people with diabetes and obesity, and there's this regulation that comes back into play, and these drugs are helping people to accomplish that. And so I set out to learn everything there was to learn about these medications, and there was no good information online about 'em other than people who were like, yeah, I'm on Ozempic and I lost 50 pounds. A lot of that content, but nothing about like, what are they? Where do they come from? How do they work? And that's especially kind of fresh off the COVID era and not like really super trusting a lot of the information that was out there. I just wasn't gonna accept something on surface level, so I really dug into it and started started sharing it and that would ultimately sort of turn into this thing we call On the Pen, which is now an obesity medicine news platform where we're just constantly sharing the data that's dropping about these medications that we're sharing about the future of these medications. Accessibility is a huge thing cuz all of a sudden you have these peptides that are absolutely seem to be the antidote to the standard American diet and what that's doing to us metabolically. And so accessibility really like, You could have the biggest breakthrough in the world, but if people can't get access to it, what good is it? That's the kind of stuff we cover and really have just kind of been known or become known in the industry for covering that type of stuff and, and a trusted place for patients to come to, to get information.

Wow. That's incredible. What a journey.

Just take a big breath now. Okay. So that, no, I told you, I talk, I talk, I talk for a living. No, you're like around me.

I'm a, I'm a professional yapper is usually what I tell people. 'Cause I, I do it for a living. You know, I'm sure like, maybe not at your level, but I'm either educating doctors on peptides or I'm playing music on stage or I'm in a ministry capacity talking to people about healing the soul. So, my daily walk is filled with conversation. And my dad always told me that if you're great at conversation and you got wit and charm, there's literally nothing that you can't do and no place you can't go with those two qualities. So, That's a, it's a blessing to talk to someone with the same skillset. And a little bit about me, Dave, that you don't know is I usually used to tell my patients my superhero origin story is I had two traumatic brain injuries back to back, one when I was 12 and one when I was 13, one practicing fake kick in the theater class. I myself am a 5'9" man with 6'3" brothers. God made me more compact, but he gave me different skillset and he gave me a better hairline than them and a better beard and some, you know, different qualities when it comes to charm. And so, Practicing fake kick, I hit my, the back of my head on a metal podium corner. I cracked the front of my forehead open on linoleum floor, rushed to the emergency room, a $20,000 bill with no help, a diagnosis of post-concussive syndrome. And then that was basically it. A year later, I was in a random drive-by. I got shot at 3 times in the face, nicked my left ear, left brain injury, and got up and was pretty much mute with learning disabilities. I had ate myself into being a type 2 diabetic and I wound up developing Tourette syndrome and dropping outta high school when I was in 9th grade.

The story escalated really fast.

It went from here to, you know, and, uh, and so I was completely debilitated, basically had body dysmorphia. I was kind of the opposite of you. I was like Syndrome X, skinny fat. So, you know, I was rocking like an A-cup chest on a very, very small frame of like 120 pounds. And I couldn't gain weight, but my blood sugars were still super high. And that's another kind of the other side of the piece of the puzzle when it comes to, you know, how we're hit with metabolic conditions. It doesn't always manifest the same body to body. You know, there's people out there struggling with skinny fat syndrome. There's people out there struggling with weight loss and obesity. And so I found a functional medicine doctor and a funk neurochiropractor, and they took me from totally debilitated to fully healed in 3 years. And I made that my expertise. Knowledge that you don't, you know, regurgitate from forced education becomes a superpower because we apply it to ourselves. Just like your story, you're the walking testimony of, you know, what happens when you, you know, use a GLP-1 correctly, when you couple it with something maybe like sobriety and you stop, you know, consuming alcohol or reduce your alcohol consumption. When you balance out a diet that doesn't yo-yo and it becomes balanced. All those are like the sweet spots that just push you into a healthier and healthier state. So I wound up becoming an integrative health coach. I wound up working inside clinics and I've dedicated my life to empowering people on a healing journey to inspire hope, which I know you do probably every time on the pen. You're, you know, helping people, you know, to have hope in this. And I don't think there's anything— I tell people my healing duration could have been cut in half if I had peptides back then.

Mm-hmm.

That was 18 years ago. I didn't know what a peptide was. And now I'm glad that we have access to them because I feel like they shorten the duration with little to no side effects and it makes it easier for patients to see the results they want. And it's just so much, you know, I mean, it's a less hefty thing, like having a procedure like they were, they were offering you. So just kind of just to fill in the gap there, I'm like, it's cool that we both used to be type 2 diabetic. We're both believers. We both have had quite a journey. And, you know, look at us now. We're, we're helping educate others and inspire people on their journey. It's pretty awesome. Yeah.

It's a huge blessing to be able to find something that you, I mean, I worked for years and years in restaurants and I remember how, you know, worked up people would get in that industry. It's a very stressful industry to work in. And I'd always try to remind people, I'm like, hey, we're serving spaghetti and meatballs here. Like, it's not rocket science. We don't have to stress, you know? And so I worked many years in a job that was, you know, much less fulfilling. You always try to find the meaning as a believer. You're always trying to find the meaning in what you're doing and what, why God has you in maybe seasons of life that you don't understand, or you feel like you're in this endless loop. Like God keeps bringing you back to these moments where it's like, okay, joke's over. Like, what are you trying to teach me here so we can move on?

Yeah.

And level up here. Uh, but it's such, such a blessing to be able to wake up and do something that you love and are passionate about.

True that. Amen to that all day long. So I'm, I'm curious on your, your GLP-1 experience, like did you start with traditionals like Ozempic and all of— did, did you move through the gambit of trying to find the one that had the least amount of side effects with the most benefit?

I wish that I would have. Actually, I was introduced right off the bat to Mounjaro, which is, you know, for those who are listening, I don't know how educated y'all are on GLP-1 specifically, but Mounjaro currently is the king of the hill in terms of, we call 'em incretin therapies. Now, incretins are a class of hormones in your body. I'm not telling you this, but for those who are new to this, incretins are nutrient-stimulated hormones and your body just makes them when you eat. They're, they're hugely dysregulated in people with especially type 2 diabetes because your gut bacteria's all sorts of outta whack, right? Yep. And the byproduct of this bad gut bacteria is something called DPP-4 and it destroys these nutrient-stimulated hormones. That's like what it exists to do. And so actually the first class of medicines that predates GLP-1s were just DPP-4 inhibitors, right? Instead of like getting to the root cause of why is your gut bacteria so screwed up? We're just like, let's kill off what these bacteria are producing, right? So that DPP-4 inhibitors came along and they just kind of destroyed this byproduct of gut bacteria to let your naturally occurring, you know, incretin hormones thrive. Well, then they, they found a way to sort of wrap to, to mimic these peptide or mimic these hormones with peptides and wrap them in a fat molecule so they just last a long time in your body and Mounjaro and Zepbound actually mimics two hormones, not just GLP-1, but also this other hormone called GIP. And it's actually 5 times stronger a GIP medicine than GLP-1. So when people call Mounjaro and Zepbound a GLP-1, it's actually kind of a little bit of a, a incorrect couching of what it is. It's more, more so a GIP medication. I found this first and currently it's the king of the hill, both in controlling type 2 diabetes and controlling obesity in terms of weight.

Wow. That's incredible. And I, I'm curious cuz I have never been on a, a GLP-1 myself, but what's the, what's the feeling when you got started with Mounjaro? Like it, I feel like the media either propagates like scarcity around side effects for people who overdose, or they tout amazing benefits. It's the answer to everything you've been looking for. And I've never really heard someone kind of balance out the you know, in between, what's the actual reality of when you start, what do you feel like? Mm-hmm. What's it working on? Ghrelin, leptin, it gets rid of hunger noise, you know, kind of what's, what's your experience with all that, Dave?

Yeah, so I think my experience probably a bit more reflective of what people experience in the real world en masse. Like I feel like my story's been a little bit more even keel. I mean, as a type 2 diabetic, you tend to respond from a weight loss perspective less so than, than people who, who aren't diabetic because it's addressing some other metabolic underlying issues that you don't have to address in people who aren't diabetic. But my experience was kind of profound at first because I started to feel full and the feeling of fullness, the feeling of eating a certain amount of food and then having your body go, sit, was like, it was foreign. Like I remember telling people when I would get online and talk about it, I was like, I feel like a normal person. I feel like what it must feel like. For most people who sit down in front of a meal and they, they, they consume the meal and then they don't feel like they're already thinking about what am I going to eat next? Because this isn't, this ain't doing it for me, especially in like settings with other people where you don't want to be the guy that's going back, you know, that's obviously overweight. That's like going back for a second helping or something like that. So the feeling of fullness to me was like foreign and such a welcome and exciting feeling. Over time it, it faded. You know, I, I actually got up to the highest dose, 15 milligrams, very quickly within like 4 months. Now there's like, I can't remember how many doses, 2.5, 5, 5, 10, 12.5, 15. There's 6 different doses till you get to the high dose. I had to skip a couple of those doses because they just weren't available. They weren't around. So many people were on the medication and they weren't manufacturing a ton of it at the time. And you could get it like basically free with a savings card there and you didn't even have to have diabetes. So. It was a quick titration up and like, so I got to the 15 really fast and it, it peaked from a weight loss perspective and like what it was gonna do from a satiety standpoint pretty quick. And so I lost that, you know, I went from like 312 down to, I think at my lowest weight within the first like 5 months, I got down to 276. And then that was like within 4 months. And so this is early 2023. So from early 2023 to about May of this year, 2025. It was just like a, a yo-yo between that 276 and like all the way back up to 299. So I actually gained weight on the 15 milligram dose. I even went off this and tried Ozempic for a little while. Hmm. But then ultimately came back to, to Mounjaro. But yeah, just kind of like the same old story. I yo-yoed. I never got back up to where I was, you know, which my high of 319. I never actually got over 300 pounds, but it was just this, yo-yoing, and that's, I don't know how much you want to get into it or how much time we have left, but ultimately led me to like a medical event that put me in the hospital this year without, you know, getting into the weeds on what it was. It was like a cardiac thing for me too. They thought that I might have been in heart failure. And so I just said to God in the, in the hospital room and to my wife, I just, you know, basically, you know, just repented of the ways that God was bringing to my mind in that moment that I wasn't taking care of myself, that I wasn't doing the extra thing I'd spent. The last 2 and a half years building this, like, basically startup company. When you think about it, just like being in startup mode. And I let myself rely too much on alcohol in terms of like, that was just what I fell back to, to relax at night. Mm-hmm. And to turn my brain off. And in that time since, in that moment, I, I basically told God, I told my wife, I was like, I'm done with alcohol. God's brought that to mind. I'm done with it.

Wow.

So since May, I haven't drank and it's like that flipped a metabolic switch for me. Mm-hmm. And, and opened up like the, my body to being just able to shed the weight a lot easier. So I haven't really changed a lot other than that. And people might say, what's the calories in alcohol? Well, I'd cut out alcohol for, you know, a week or, or 2 weeks or even up to, I think 6 weeks at a time. I would cut it out to see if I'd lose weight and I never did, but it like, After I hit about 3 months off of it, it's like there was a light switch that went off in my body. My blood sugars, it's like I'm not diabetic anymore, honestly. Like my blood sugar, I realize I'm on, you know, medication, but like they just don't spike like they used to. I, they, they maybe go up to like 120 if I eat carbs. So it's just like a metabolic switch. And then I do love the Integrated Peptides products. I've used Can't Wait off and on. That's helped me, but I, I got back on the Can't Wait like 2 or 3 weeks ago and, and it helped me to break past that. Like it got down to 272 and I was like, then it was kind of waffling going back up. And so I integrated the Can't Wait again. And now I think today when I weighed in, I was like 268. Wow.

That's awesome.

And so it's just like at that added level of appetite suppression. So yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of information.

Again, it's awesome. But, man, what a powerful story. I, I can completely resonate with that because I, I had been like a skinny short guy most of my life. And I got to the point where I was using alcohol to nurse anxiety. And honestly, it was to run away from the pain of unforgiveness and the pain of things I didn't feel like facing. And I started to feel like I was living a double life. I'm like a Christian man who's hiding alcoholism, and it just didn't, the stories weren't, you know, coinciding. And it led to a cardiac incident for myself. I actually got a C. diff bacteria infection. I went sepsis and I, my, I was in sinus tachycardia. My heart rate was 200 beats per minute. My hands and feet were atrophying. It was Halloween night. It'll be 3 years, October 31st. The very clear message was, don't hold onto unforgiveness and no more alcohol the rest of your life. And when I did that, similar to you, because alcohol shifts your biological terrain in such a negative way, it messes with your liver, it messes with your digestion. It actually creates an acidic environment for bacteria and pathogens to overwhelm your digestive system. And really a lot of these GLP-1 medications or even things like Can't Wait with using DNF-10, they're, they're modifying the terrain from a digestion perspective. So it's sort of like you can cancel it out, you can be taking the medication, or in our case, the supplement, but you can be doing things that's, you know, allowing it to not be as effective as it could. And I was in a similar situation to you. I was repenting of things that, you know, this double life led to. When I got out of it for the first 2 weeks, I had so much mental clarity on the journey of how God was going to use me that I was like, okay, this is what clarity feels like for the first time in my life. I mean, I started drinking in my 20s and it became part of the culture, the whiskey bearded ginger man culture. That I felt like I had to have cuz I was living an identity that those substances were making me feel like I had to flesh out. And so I just resonate with that so much because I like the fact that you're holding yourself accountable inside your lifestyle. So you're not just relying on peptides or these medications to be the 100% answer. And that's where I feel like if you're, if you're working with integrative health coaches or a good functional medicine doctor, someone who has your back, they're gonna look at you, your body as a whole terrain.

Mm-hmm.

They're gonna use these things to push you into healthy habits, drink more water, exercise, you know, do the things that really will shift your body into a positive direction. And then it makes it easier. I feel like when you're on those things, even things like Can't Wait, as food noise gets turned down, as your digestion improves, as inflammation comes down, it's easier to get out and exercise. It's easier to get out and do things that you wanna do with your kids. Yeah. Or with your wife. I'm glad that we have those little things that can nudge us in the right direction, but they don't become like the identity again of some, you have to have it your whole life. And it's sort of a balancing act between lifestyle and terrain and these medications or supplements to help you come into homeostasis. And that's what I would always tell patients for a long time. Like, let this be the nudge you need. To get you in the position to do things that you want to do again. And really, I feel like we are, our bodies are a temple. And so we're called to use this to the glory of God, you know, to, for, for an example to other people. And so I'm just proud of your journey. I think it's, it's incredible, Dave. You're, you're freaking crushing it. And I love that you're adding in a supplement alongside Manjaro because I think sometimes people don't think they can combine that. And I, I've found a huge success rate with patients using whatever GLP-1 they like, retudetide, trisepatide, they kind of find the one that fits them. And then using Can't Wait on top, it's almost like double the benefits with a lot less side effects.

We will get right back to the episode, but first, a quick thank you to our sponsor, Integrative Peptides. If you are enjoying today's conversation and want to support your health and longevity, visit integrativepeptides.com and use the code PODLIFE for an exclusive listener discount. That's integrativepeptides.com, code PODLIFE, P-O-D-L-I-F-E. Now back to the episode.

I feel like the— can't wait. So it's kind of interesting how I discovered it, but I discovered it looking when I was looking at the pharmaceutical industry and I was looking at peptides. There's this whole, you know, like thread that we could pull out all day about how do you even patent a peptide that mimics something your body makes. And there's a whole, like, literally I just recorded my podcast this morning, spent a good bit of time talking about it. But I was looking at why do we even have to, why don't we just bring peptides to market as supplements that can help with these things like food noise. And, and that ultimately led me to discover DNF-10. And then when I was looking, I've learned a lot about the CGMP and manufacturing these things in really controlled environments and the safety and the quality of all this stuff. So I found you could get DF10, DNF10 from other sources. Mm-hmm. But oftentimes the source was sketchy. And then also the, the, the quantity of the, of the DNF10 that you get in like something you buy off Amazon is, is lacking by quite a bit if you compare the amount of DNF10. And, and so obviously another peptide that helps to work on things like leptin and ghrelin, these hormones that are, you know, I firmly believe this is where I get off and, you know, the medical community, you know, starts to label me a wackadoo. But, you know, our standard American diet, I firmly believe whether intentionally or unintentionally, I do believe sometimes intentionally is designed to destroy that which God has created your body to handle naturally, right? So that you become reliant, you know, similarly to the way that we become reliant on pharmaceuticals, So you become reliant on that food product. It, you know, they, they find workarounds from these hormones that God has given you to control satiety, and they literally attack those hormones. And so you get all this dysregulation that, that there needs to be some sort of antidote for. And when you talk about obesity, it is a lot of people struggle with the idea of obesity as a disease. But when you actually look at obesity, first of all, there's genetic factors. You look through a family lineage and you can kind of pull, pull that thread a little bit. There's lots of studies done on that. But then when you get into the hormonal dysregulation and like the, even we were talking about earlier, the DNA or the, the DPP-4 that destroys these incretin hormones, there are things happening biologically that need to be addressed to level the metabolic playing field to allow your body to do what it does naturally. And that is, you know, to reach this homeostasis, which includes, you know, your, your ideal weight.

Yeah, I agree. I, I've been adding in, I don't know if you've ever tried it, Dave, but Integrative Peptides makes another product called Gut Feeling. Gut Feeling has— there you go. Of course you got it. But I love mixing Can't Wait with Gut Feeling, especially if someone wants to start on like the supplemental side of weight loss and they're not quite ready to, to run into the Manjaro camp or Ozempic or those types of, those medications. And I would have patients come back and in a healthy, steady way, month over month, they notice less inches, a couple pounds. It was a steady, Slow and steady wins the race. Mm-hmm. But they improved their digestion. They went to pooping 2 or 3 times a day. They had more energy, they felt more mental clarity. And I love the synergy between them because in Can't Wait, you're working on ghrelin and leptin reducing food noise, but in Gut Feeling, that Arkmancia has been found as a keystone probiotic in patients of a healthy weight. So you literally start to shift the terrain of your digestion. To tell it, let's be one of those healthy patients. Yep. And it, and it's just, it makes huge gains in the journey of, of weight loss for any one of my patients.

When you look at the, the pharmaceutical landscape, everything is focused on the gut and the hormones that are made in the gut because that's ultimately where all of these hormones that are signaling satiety in your brain, they're originating in your gut. And so like I said earlier, you know, pharmaceuticals' answer is to sort of just kind of bandaid what is wrong. So we'll, we'll increase, you know, through a, through a peptide that mimics your natural hormone. We'll just make one that lasts forever and can't be destroyed by what's wrong with your body. What's wrong is DPP-4. What's wrong is your gut health. So I think it's important for anyone who is looking at these pharmaceutical therapies to also be looking at what are the root causes of this. I talked about my podcast this today, you know, a company called Fractal Health that's looking at a procedure to maintain your weight once you lose it with the GLP-1 or however you lose it. But the surface of the duodenum, which is the first part of your gut after your stomach, you know, God has designed your duodenum so that the mucosal lining of your duodenum has cells in it that sense the nutrients that you just ate, and then it, it sets off a cascade of release of these hormones. Well, what have they found at Fractal? They've found that the standard American diet, obesity and diabetes destroys is that mucosal lining. And if they can go in and do like an abl— ablation, kinda like a face peel of the surface of your duodenum, those cells regenerate and then the stimulation of these hormones is restored. And so again, you're just always looking at ways that you can address the underlying thing. And that's where I look at something like a, a Gut Feeling that's going to actually help to bring gut health back to you so that your body can get back to making these hormones and creating an environment that is, is where your body's supposed to be. Like in addition to people who are really metabolically sick, I think that's where it kind of like you get into like the conversation of the Maha movement and everything where that conversation misses it is that there are people who are very metabolically sick.

100%. They're just, right?

Yeah. So let's address that and maybe, you know, a good bit of those people will need pharmaceutical stuff. Yeah. To get there. But once you get there, how do you maintain, how do you restore health because these aren't restoring health as much as they're helping your body create an environment to get to a, the proper weight. But you know, the same foods are in our environment still, the toxins, the alcohol and all of that, you know, it's gonna work to, to bring you back to where you were. And so finding that optimal health, it's, it's a 360-degree way of looking at it.

And I feel like it's so cool, Dave, to hear a man talk about these subjects because I would see 99% of the patient base, at least at the clinic I used to work at, they were all women and children. And it was like the wife was always trying to force the husband to come see me because she knew if he changed, it would be easier for the whole family to change. So I'm just, I'm thankful for you to voice it out there because I feel like sometimes men are starved for information like this. And the only thing you're bombarded with on social media is people who are a thousand times fitter than you. Screaming at you for not doing enough in the gym, and that's the reason why you're, you know, obese. And it almost brings guilt and shame to a situation that's way more complex. Yeah, then, you know, they're built with these perfect genetics, not like you and I who are predisposed to cardiovascular issues, diabetes, heart disease, all these different things. And so I feel like it's nice to have voice of the people, you know, on a man-to-man level of saying like, hey, this is a tough journey, but you know, there's solutions and there's ways to get to hit your goals so that you're the best man that you can be for your family, for your community. And, and I just appreciate that because I feel like there's a resurgence of men taking their health seriously and it's gonna be empowering to the women and children. And we're sort of seeing like a, a transition over here. So I just like to create a different social network, a social scape of things that people can look at, watch, and it's not just the same narrative of a gym bro yelling at you for not doing 7 hours of cardio every morning fasted while drinking 40 bottles of some elixir they've created in their closet. It's like that type of stuff is old school news. And so do things with intelligence. May this conversation launch you on a, a hope journey that, you know, can bring balance to you, whether you're gonna use Manjaro or something like it. Maybe you start with something like DNF-10 and Can't Wait or Gut Feeling, but whatever it is, let it be, you know, I used to tell my patients, if you're investing in peptides, whether it's on the medication side or the supplement side, you know, may it be a reminder every time you take it to make a healthy decision for yourself. Drink water, go on a walk, take your dog on a walk, go on a walk with your kids. It does not have to be what the social terrain tells us it does. Like you do not have to be at the gym feeling ashamed or indifferent and just start slow, you know?

So, and I would just add to that, it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to follow kind of the social terrain and it also doesn't have to follow the political terrain because what I've found is the political debate in this country that it has hijacked health and it's in everything with politics becomes this either or like you have to be either this or that. And where, especially when the, with the topic of obesity, and I'm talking clinical obesity, not just overweight here, but clinical obesity, it's become this either or. You have to do it naturally. You have to make lifestyle modifications. You, you have to do all these things. And if you just did these things like I did, then you would lose the weight. No, but then you have this other camp that's like, it's, it's only pharmaceuticals. And it's like, why? Why does everything have to be an either or? It's a both and for most people. You may need pharmaceutical therapy to address underlying metabolic dysfunction, but that's not, that's not at the expense of identifying things that you have agency over in your own life. And it's not that you can't also include holistic natural supplementation or dietary changes to address those metabolic issues. It's much more nuanced than the world wants to make it be.

Agreed. I definitely agree. My dad, who's a pastor, he told me, Michael, there's a secret that Paul wrote in Philippians. He was like, if you can find this secret out, he's like, your life will be so much easier. And Paul said, whatever state he found himself to be in, there he was content. My dad was like, the secret to a good life is to be content. And so I feel like what kind of rips the political space away, because that space is placating on division and false unification. And I, it makes me so sick because people are torn in that camp mentally. And really above that spiritually is to find contentment in your body, find contentment in your routine, find a way to be at peace where you're not having to be told what to do. You're empowered as a sovereign citizen to make your own choice away from other people trying to tell you what to do. And that, that's always been my goal for patients, clients that I've worked with in the past is like, I want you to be empowered. I want you to get out there and you to make that positive change in that difference as a sovereign citizen. And that way you sort of silence those outside voices from trying to influence you. And that's the part of the thing too, is I've started to like cut off the TV and cut off the programming of what I'm seeing, the algorithms that are created from technology. To influence our decision-making. And I've been getting in a quiet space and I feel like things that shift the mind completely take over the body. And so meditation and spiritual practices. Dave, I'm curious on this journey, how did your spiritual practice improve or influence the progress of, you know, how you made it to where you are today?

It's a great question. You know, everything I view or analyze in my own life is always through the lens of what does this mean to me as a follower of Jesus? What does it mean to me as a creation of God's. So it's sort of the lens by which I view all things. I think at first the hardest thing for me was accepting this idea that obesity is a disease because with a very religious upbringing, and I use the word religious intentionally, with a very religious upbringing, you are sort of taught that you 100% of the time have agency over all the outcomes. When it comes to the disease of obesity, I think we just have a lot to learn. And so like it was a learning experience, an educational experience for me at first, just to learn about the The disease of obesity and learn that, hey, there are metabolic factors at play here that are beyond your control. Mm-hmm. And so I think, you know, sort of wrestling with that for the first couple years, which was, you know, a hard thing to get my head around. I think I'm starting to, to get my head around it in a better way now than I was maybe the first year or two that I was making content about this. But, you know, I'm, I'm often better at times than others, but especially when I struggle, I, you know, I definitely fall back harder into the word of God and into time alone with God. And I would say, especially in the last 4 months, like as I've sort of surrendered the, the alcohol and sort of like let God, let that just be like, that was something that I held onto for a long time. Like I knew that it wasn't great for me. I mean, it's, it's so ridiculous. So much of this like journey. You know, it makes sense, like logically, right? Duh, of course, if you take alcohol out of the situation, gonna be healthier. Duh, you're gonna lose weight because the calories, like obviously on a logical and cerebral level, all of that makes sense. But alcohol was definitely one of those things that I think my spirit always fought against giving up because it was like, I don't have a problem with it. I'm not drinking till I get obliterated. I'm not, you know, in those moments you tell yourself a lot of things and it really isn't until you really surrender it and just say, this is yours, God. Like, if you want me to have alcohol in my life, then you're going to have to speak to me as clearly as you just did when you put me in the hospital and I thought I had heart failure at 30. Like, that's a big wake-up call. And I said that, you know, just surrendered it at that moment. Like, obviously, God, you're highlighting this specific area because I wasn't there because of the alcohol, but I was there and I was analyzing and identifying the things that weren't getting me to, as you said, like the optimal version of myself so that I could show show up the way that I need to show up as a father, as a husband, as a believer, as a leader of a community. And yeah, so I mean, I mean, sorry, this is another long-winded answer for a podcaster, but you know, just always viewing things through the lens of what God is going to use with something and surrendering even my platform to God. How will you use this? Because at the end of the day, I don't, I care far less about people discovering better, healthier versions of themselves than I do people discovering Jesus. And so just, you know, trying to figure out how that all works into it too. So it's, it's always ever before me is how, how God might use something that we're doing here at On The Pen.

Man, I love that. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing, Dave. I've, I've been talking a lot on this. I feel like sometimes I'm the bridge of like a new age community and the Christian community, and I've been kind of in the functional medicine and integrative world. They're kind of all, you know, combining and, you know, new age people are coming back to Jesus and Jesus people are realizing that new age people weren't as crazy as they thought they were. And right. They're tapped into something that was, you know, biblically relevant, but they're not demonic. And anyway, all these different debates out there. But I find that I've been talking about a book from this guy named Bruce Lipton. It's called The Biology of Belief. And he literally shows how our cells are programmed by what we think and by what we speak. And so if you look at that from a biblical perspective, it says the tongue is the littlest member of your body, but it controls your entire outcome. And so if We can be hijacked in thinking in a way of ourselves negatively and speaking out about ourselves and others. Then we're already on the road to misinformation, discord, feelings of shame and pain and different things. And the one thing I've realized going on this alcohol-free journey, hitting my third year coming up this month, is that the way that I speak and the way that I think has completely shifted. I think positively about others. I'm able to let go of things easier. More apt to bless someone than to curse them. And I've just noticed that what's came back to me more, meaning not just in a body that feels good, but I realize that I'm able to uplift others by my voice. And if God created the world with the sound of his voice, every day you are creating your reality by what you're speaking. And so I feel like that's why platforms like this, platforms like your podcast, whether we are talking about GLP-1s or supplements, or at the core of it all, we're using how we're created, which is a voice that sounds like no other, to vibrate hope into the atmosphere. And I find that that's the most beautiful gift. I'm the son of a pastor. I've watched my dad tell beautiful stories my entire life, inspire people on soul journeys, you know, be inspired to change ultimately and to be an unconditional loving version of Christ on earth. And so it's just a beautiful, you know, I feel like we can represent and we can support people at any spiritual level by giving what God has given us, which is a powerful voice. And so Dave, thank you so much for joining me as a fellow believer in that journey. And for me on this summit, or maybe podcasts I've done in the past, I'm always like, go team Jesus. You know, it's exciting for that. And and I feel like we, I'm sure you feel like this too, it's, it's coming from a place where in the New Age community, they accept basically all forms of spirituality. So I'm glad they accept me as a Christian. And I'm learning more how to unconditionally love into things I don't understand. And so I, I no longer come from a place of judgment or that negative thought pattern, and I'm learning how to love deeper every single day.

Yeah. And when you grow up in in the religious world that is something that I believe you have to intentionally fight against. Right. And I think the more you grew up in it and the more intrinsic it is in who you are, the easier it is to not lead from a place of love and lead from a place of like, you've just lived it. It's ingrained in you. It's at a cellular level. You know God, you know the things of God, you know the expectations of God. And, and it's very easy in your repulsion to things that are against God. To lose sight of the message of love and acceptance that Jesus brought to this world, of the narrative-shattering acceptance of Jesus in terms of, not in terms of accepting sin, but in terms of accepting people who weren't accepted by the religious and embracing them and calling them to a life of following him and a life of change. And so I, I find myself in the same boat often.

Let's go. Well, Dave, how can people find you? How, how can they reach out to you? I feel like that's probably like the most inspirational way we could leave an audience with beautiful words like that. Um, but, but yeah, how do they get connected to your network? Which, where, where can we find your podcast? Stuff like that.

Yeah. Uh, probably the best gateway is just onthepen.com. That's our website. And then you're gonna be able to find everything there. If you wanna just like, another thing that I set up this past week was OTP for On the Pen, otplinks.com. Oh, cool. But then otplynx.com is actually a really good, like, landing point for all of the, all of the things. We're just all over the internet. So like wherever you hang out, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, we have a Substack. It's just, it's all there.

Cool. You're gonna see me following you. I'm molecular.mike on Instagram. So when you catch me there, Dave, just know it's me and I'll support you on the pod and I'll support you as a man of God. And hopefully one of these days we can hang out and and just spend some time together. It'd be cool.

That would be great. Awesome. Great. Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much, Dave. Appreciate you.

Thank you. All right.

Take care, brother.

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