Solutions to Orthopedic and Musculoskeletal Conditions

I see a lot of 30 to 50-year-old guys that are traders and hedge fund guys and they let their butt get a hold of their intellect and they're working themselves to death and they got kids and wives that are unhappy because they're never home. They're up at 3:00 AM because international business, et cetera, and they're traveling and they get all strung out. And the next thing you know, to get up, they're doing Adderall, to go to bed, they're taking Xanax and they're drinking and they say, "Look, I got to get off this." I get off this. So I've, I have really a fairly robust NAD practice where I do a string of 5 days of NAD, uh, 800 milligrams IV drip. And, and it literally clears the brush in front of them after 5 days.

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Hello, this is Dr. Kent Holtorf with, with another episode. Today we'll be talking with Dr. David Calvo, orthopedic surgeon. He's going to talk about peptide solutions and orthopedic surgery in musculoskeletal and regenerative medicine. Dr. David Calvo earned his undergraduate degree in microbiology from the University of Texas at Austin. He then completed his master's degree in cancer research at MD Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute. And the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Houston. Very interesting background. Upon completion of his master's, Dr. Kavel obtained his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, completed his surgical internship in orthopedic surgery residency at Hermann Hospital— Hermann. He completed his fellowship in sports medicine, arthroscopic surgery, and reconstructive knee surgery at the world-famous Steadman Clinic in California, and reconstructive surgery of degenerative joints at Princeton Margaret Rose Orthopedic Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland. That's interesting. Man, you've had a lot of training. Before coming in the— to the Austin area, he developed the Travis Orthopedic Sports and Spine at Lakeway Regional Medical Center. He participated in Sugar Land and the surrounding Houston metro area for over 28 years. He is board certified, American Board of Orthopedic Surgery. And was a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Special interest in sports injuries and artificial joints in upper and lower extremities. He served as a physician and surgeon for thousands of patients including amateur, collegiate, and professional athletes. He is an accomplished triathlete himself, a sports enthusiast, and competing for over 20 years. Uh, pretty amazing. He and his wife Diane live in the Austin area and they have 2 adult sons and 2 grandchildren. Current passion, we're gonna— I'm gonna ask about this, like, yeah, what made— he's an orthopedic surgeon, why, why would you want to change into regenerative medicine? And based on many years of study and utilization of regenerative autologous and allogeneic components, including bone marrow aspirated concentrate, adipocyte and pan-vasculocytes, as well as amniotic materials, exosomes, and medicinal signaling cells, which used to be called mesenchymal stem cells. He has developed numerous, very successful methods, adjunct and sometimes replacement techniques to assist injury and surgical results, to replace or delay surgical procedures and spectrum medicine and surgery. And current research and guidance by regulatory agencies is further focusing his attention on treatment efficacy and safety for patients. That's a mouthful. Additionally, Dr. Kawazuoka is extensively trained in the science of clinical application of human peptide therapy and is a member of A4M and honored with certification by that organization. He uses peptides as standalone therapies and also as combination therapies. So very extensive history and impressive schooling there. Welcome. First, first off, thank you for taking the time to be with us. What, what made you go from orthopedic surgery to this regenerative medicine?

Well, I've always been intrigued by what we refer to now as the terrain theory. I trained in microbiology, which is Pasteur's germ theory, but no matter what I did, it seemed that there were, there were components that defied the treatment program that were based upon what I only knew of at the time as the cause of disease, which was the germ theory. And as I became more and more knowledgeable of the fact that no matter how good a seed you have, if you plant it in bad soil or bad terrain, it won't do well. So many of my patients throughout the years were older or were in poor nutrition status, nutritional status. And as I became more and more knowledgeable of this, as I begat a a personal selfish knowledge of what would keep me healthy and going longer, I began to realize this is applicable to my patient population. And if I made them more optimized, that my results would probably be better. And lo and behold, that is exactly what happened.

So did you originally look into this kind of for yourself, being an athlete, trying to optimize your physical performance?

Of course, as athletes are always trying to get an edge. And, you know, I can remember back in the high school days of using Nutramint, which was the canned protein drink, which nobody knew was in it, but seemed to make us feel better anyway, taste good. But as we, as we moved along, and I would say more of a— I would say more of what was, I would classify as a deficit in my performance as I grew older in my 40s and early 50s. Led to my interest in finding out why. I was 45, 48, 49, and in a roaring orthopedic practice. I could have seen 3 clinics a day. I had so much business. I was doing 800 cases a year. I found myself not being able to get out of bed in the morning. I was, "What the hell? How could I possibly?" I got like a world by the tail. And through some experimentation, if you will, with laboratories and such, I realized that I was thyroid deficient, I was vitamin D deficient, I was testosterone deficient, nutritionally deficient, etc., etc., etc. And I didn't feel like I was practicing too bad a lifestyle, but I mean, that was at the point where we were still doing IHOP and donuts for breakfast.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, we all did that.

Now, you're an orthopedic surgeon, you're not supposed to be asking these questions.

Right. Well, it kind of slapped me in the head.

Yeah, see, I think so many people that get into this specialty or whatever, you know, whatever we want to call it, it's usually, you know, and I was very evidence-based, still am, and it was just ingrained, anything alternative, you know, I hate that word, like there's no evidence. And well, yeah, if you don't look, you don't know. But then when I got sick and found they had nothing for me and I snuck out and went to these those crazy people. I'm like, oh my God, they're more evidence-based than what we're being taught.

And the problem is that our brethren, our historical forefather brethren, have what I refer to as a sometimes fatal disease called psychosclerosis. It's hardening of the attitude. And I've never been one of those guys. I was trained in that world, but I'm not of that world. And I've always been looking for better ideas and better suggestions as to what to do to improve my surgical techniques, to improve my rehabilitation techniques. And one thing that Stedman taught me was you can do as good a surgery as you want, but if you don't do the right therapy, if you don't start it on time and do it aggressively, your result's going to be subpar. And the reason I did my fellowship with Stedman, because I read all of his clinics in North America in orthopedics, and I understood that he had a different animal. He took a lot of these patients home. Phil Mayer, Steve Mayer, Cindy Nelson, yada yada, took them home and they stayed in his basement. And the day after their surgery, he did their rehab before he went to work, personally. Wow. So I learned from this man that there was a different way to do this. And so when I built my practice, I built half of my practice as a rehab facility and I joined them. So I had athletic directors, so I had nutritionists, I had nurses, and I had physicians, et cetera, in my practice that helped me run this thing. And in spite of that, I burned out. But I burned out because I wasn't taking care of my health and because I didn't know how. You and I came from the generation that testosterone causes heart disease and causes prostate cancer.

Yep.

Right?

Yep, exactly.

And you don't need vitamins, all you need is 3 squares.

Yeah, it's just all you're gonna make is expensive urine.

Exactly. We've heard that, that's a euphemism. So, and in fact now what we know is we want to have expensive urine.

Yeah.

So anyway, to get on with what we came to talk about today, we're gonna run out of time.

I know you have to go, so— but yeah, so you have a PowerPoint, and most of the time we don't, but—

yeah, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put the slides up and I'm gonna talk about those things as much as you want to, and then we'll move on.

Okay, sure, sure.

Enough about me and such. It's just that my evolution was like most of our evolutions, as a result of something that happened to us or with us.

Yeah. Yep.

All right. So my specializations now are relevant but not important to the subject, but bioidentical hormone therapy is, as you know, is very important. Peptide therapeutics, very important. That's what we're talking about today in bone, muscle, tendon, sexual function, sleep issues, hair loss, and many others. The regenerative medicine that I do on a day-to-day basis. That includes PRP, regenerative growth factors, and the FDA won't let us talk about exosomes and perinatales and things like that. They've decided after 30 years that those are dangerous and they need safety studies. Well, I've used them for 30 years and never had a complication. So yeah, yeah, nonetheless, that's about neither here nor there. I can't fight city hall on that. So I do fat-derived, and I do PRP, and I do bone marrow regenerative medicine stuff because it is grandfathered under the previous generation of rules and regs that orthopedics has been grandfathered into until we get the IRBs and INDs and everything out of the way so we actually prove safety on what we already know is safe.

Yeah, so the exosomes are now termed decellularized growth factors.

Yeah, I mean, they're basically water balloons that come out of the side of cells and they've got all kinds of goodies in it and they're care packages and they have autocrine function in the cell, they have paracrine function outside the cell, and then they have endocrine functions long way from the cell.

Yeah, can you kind of just take that to more layperson, just like what an exosome is compared to a stem cell?

Well, a stem cell can reproduce itself in the right circumstance, and all of our tissues have stem cells, whether they're muscle, bone, brain, heart, kidney, whatever. And the, the essence of aging is, is the deficiency of stem cells and regenerative factors. And ultimately death occurs when those regenerative factors fail to keep up with the degradation. So we no longer, we no longer can keep up with regenerative aspects of our degeneration and we fail and we fall apart. It's like an old car, it just quits. And then on top of that, if we throw that into the mix of what happens in the hypothalamus and what happens in the rest of our bodies with peptides and things like that, which is the subject of our conversation today, These stem cells have the ability to produce, depending on where they are, have the ability to produce peptides and hormones and things like that, whether they're from the pituitary, the hypothalamus, the adrenal gland, the testicle, the ovary, whatever they are, wherever they are, they can produce these amino acid stacks, if you will, naturally. And what we've done in medicine now is we've learned how to stack these things synthetically in a way that they mimic biology. And, and so the stem cell is the kind of the origin of life, if you will. It's, it's a specialized cell that can reproduce itself and also affect the surrounding cells that aren't stem cells by exuding exosomes, which are mini care packages, like taking the mini care packages, like taking a rocket to the space station and replenishing the food and the fuel and the oxygen and all the things that go on up there, these exosomes are exuded from stem cells and are in the milieu of the interest of the intracellular space, or they actually merge with the cell wall of the surrounding cells and actually dump their content— contents into the surrounding cell, just like what happens in the fertilization process of a sperm and an egg that merges with an egg and it dumps the DNA contents and starts the beginning of life.

I'll just mention, because like so many people, they think of stem cells, they you give them, they go to the area, start growing and replace that tissue. And they don't do that.

No.

In fact, you know, some studies show, for instance, they'll induce a heart attack in an animal, whatever. And they'll give stem cells and it helps repair it. Then they'll give a second set, the same stem cells, but they'll keep them away from the heart. So they can't make it to the heart. And the repair is exactly the same. So they're sending out something to basically heal that. They're not going there and turning into cardiac cells.

Oh, I mean, the stem cells, not unlike other organelles like mitochondria and such as that, they have their own proteins, their own peptides, their own RNA and DNA and everything else. What happens is this, they don't have the replication. Well, stem cells have replication capabilities, but they really don't once they're given autog— I mean, allogeneically. Now we do know that there's a difference between cancer therapy.

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We're talking about, you know, basically, you know, the different ways that you practice then and how you got into this and how you got into exosomes.

Yeah. So let's motor through the different— our purpose is peptides, but let's talk about the basically basic cellular components. Herewith. And so exosomes basically are expressions of the cell wall with intracellular components, which include nucleic acids and proteins and various other and sundry things from within the soup of the intracellular milieu. And those things are passed on to either the surrounding extracellular fluids or in fact merged with and entered into the surrounding neighboring cells in what we refer to as paracrine. Autocrine means what happens in the cell, paracrine, which means hap— what happens near the cell, and endocrine happens distant from the cell, like from the hypothalamus down to the testicle. The hypothalamus is in the brain. So we can actually have 3 different ways that these things help. They help themselves, they help the neighboring cells, and they help distant cells in the systems. So exosomes are an expression of a cell and they can be an ex— and they're almost always an expression of the stem cell from which they are mothered. The industry has been able to replicate and grow up cultures of mesenchymal stem cells or medicinal signal cells, if you will, depending on whose terminology you use, whether you're talking to Dr. Kaplan or somebody else, but they— those cells then can be milked, so to speak, It's like milking your cow. You keep the cow in the barn, but you take the milk to the store. And so the exosome and its contents are the milk, and you supply the nutrients and the wellbeing to the surrounding cells and distant cells via exosomes, and you never have to use a stem cell to do that. So it's kind of a novel idea. Now, going back in retrograde, back to the concept of giving stem cells, and we were talking about cancers being We want to replicate in the bone marrow lymphocytes and leukocytes to regrow the bone marrow that we've wiped out because they had a cancerous immature cell inside the bone marrow that was going to kill the patient. They got rid of them and then replenished them with stem cells from themselves if they were stored at birth, or from a twin sister, or from a donor. That's a whole different animal. There are stem cells that can be— that are, uh, that we use that can be derived from virtually any tissue. And the cells that I've used thus far started out in the realm of bone marrow because I'm an orthopedic surgeon and I live in bone. So we can extract bone marrow in the operating room when we're operating and actually put that into a fracture or a knee or whatever tissue that we're operating on, whatever's injured, and it can accelerate the healing process and is what you said, we're not counting on necessarily the replication of those cells that we're extracting and reinserting, whether they're perinatal or autogenous or perivascular or lipogenic or whatever they're coming from. It doesn't really matter because if you tag those things and you— if you can tag them with a radioactive tracer or whatever, you really don't find them after more than 5 to 7 days. in rare cases now and then you'll find one in the lungs or somewhere where they set up camp, but they don't reproduce themselves and they won't grow a liver. That's not their purpose. What they do is they supply the substances that are within them by either the cell wall of the stem cell destructing and spilling its contents or by exuding exosomes or whatever method reveals the contents within, and those substances go on to make the surrounding tissues more normal. Interestingly enough, they don't really affect normal cells. They affect abnormal cells. If a cell's good, they don't supercharge it. They just go to work on things that are not right and they optimize them.

And they can also stimulate that tissue stem cells to then, you know, repair the tissue as well.

That's exactly right. They can reconstitute the wellness and youth of the surrounding stem cells in the tissue. Issues that are part of the nascent stem cell population in the patient, and they can supercharge those cells to make them better by virtue of the supplies that they give them. There's a lot of stuff we don't know yet, and a lot of this stuff is propositional, if you will.

I mean, that's medicine. The more you learn, the more you know you don't know.

That's great.

I think that's the problem. It's the doctors that think they know everything. Yeah, the ones that know the least are most adamant they're right.

Exactly. So if we go on to the next level, which is peptides, which are components of stem cells, the cellular milieu within the stem cell, the cytoplasm, if you will, they are— they're also exuded outside the cell in form of exosomes and also just exported through the cell wall, through pores, etc., lysosomes, whatever, and they can be expressed from the thalamus, from the hypothalamus, say, into the pituitary and turn on components of the pituitary. For example, let's just use for a minute, uh, CJC-1295 with ipamorelin, or any of the other growth hormone-releasing hormones and growth hormone-releasing peptides. They basically can turn back on a deficient or slow pituitary to specifically produce a certain necessary hormone or prohormone that the body has become deficient in. We learned very early on that If you take an old man who's 80 years old that died unfortunately, and you biopsy his brain, take the pituitary, grind it up and measure the growth hormone in it, his growth hormone for the most part is the same amount quantity-wise, concentration-wise as a 21-year-old pituitary. But the difference is the releasing hormones, the growth hormone releasing peptides that release that growth hormone are not around, or they're deficient. It's kind of like having a skydiving plane full of parachuters and you got one guy stuck in the door, doesn't want to jump, and you got the instructor puts a boot in his ass.

I have not heard that analogy before.

But that means it's in essence, I mean, it's more of an orthopedic analogy, but it's a concept, a mechanical thing, or maybe a chemical thing that they found that if they give a combination of growth hormone-releasing hormone with growth hormone-releasing peptide, they get a normal 8 to 10 pulses of growth hormone a day instead of a plateau that you get by giving growth hormone, which is a much more physiological, normal way. And the body knows what to do with that. It doesn't know what to do with a flat or a decrescendo flat plateau of growth hormone. It doesn't quite know what to do with it, and you don't get the side effects from it, etc., that you do from growth hormone.

Yeah, because you can't overdose.

It just stops working if you try to overdose in it. Do you use more growth hormone?

Like, do you inject it in the joints as well, or I haven't injected growth hormone in the joints because I'm not sure I'd need that. I haven't injected. I'm not sure that it— I'm not sure.

It may be most of it's done through IGF-1, you know, most of the work. And do you— and I think what I was trying to get at, I guess, was that, you know, with growth hormone, you look at— send the blood to the lab, lab sends back 95% of the people is normal. So the highest and lowest 2.5% are considered abnormal, and most people they take are sick. And so the growth hormone normal is so low that it's crazy. So that you, you go to the doctor, doctor says, oh, your growth hormone's normal, you know, it's like saying you got a D minus, you know.

Same with testosterone.

Yep. And for this, every decade they just lower the normal range.

—and I tell my patients, right or wrong, I think I'm right, but I tell my patients that my idea is to optimize you to a 35 to 40-year-old man or woman for the rest of your life. And I want to do it in such a way that I don't endanger you, and I know that IGF-1 in an elderly patient could potentially endanger them because it could promote carcinogenesis in some people. So I aim at trying not to raise their IGF-1 but raise their growth hormone level.

And, and, you know, I did a review. I did— I looked at every single study published up to that point, published my results. No study has ever shown giving growth hormone causes cancer.

Well, and I love to believe that, but I don't want to give somebody growth hormone and they get a cancer and they end up in some attorney's office and say, you know, it's kind of like testosterone sarcophagy— medicine.

And then there's, you know, And now I do have a little concern of giving IGF-1.

I do too. I do too.

Now growth hormone will, will cause, you know, IGF-1 in a test tube is going to stimulate— it's a growth factor, it's going to stimulate growth. Now IGF-BP3, you know, so make both of those, actually is very anti-carcinogenic, right? So they balance out. But yeah, and that's the thing I think with peptides, they kind of do a lot of things where like if you just give IGF-1, you're just going to do one thing, you know?

Yes, and I think that integrative approach is— it's much more physiological. It's more what we are. And so if we move on to some of the other musculoskeletal things that I do, my favorite cocktail, if you will, for anybody over 35 or 40 that is having some issues or starting to get burned down like I was is I like to give them a growth hormone-releasing hormone and peptide that doesn't raise their appetite and doesn't raise their IGF-1 too much. And then I like to give them BPC-157, which is a very powerful reconstructive, reparative, anti-inflammatory type of peptide that, you know, Pavlov discovered at the turn of the century. And then in '64, or whatever it was, in Eastern Europe, they rediscovered it and found a way to synthesize it and stack 15 peptides. And now it's probably one— It is one of the most used peptides in the world and probably the safest in the world. And you can bathe in it and not get sick from it. Yeah.

Now, is that cocktail shaken or stirred?

I drink everything straight up. All right.

Good joke. It's getting late. But yeah, the BPC, it just, it does so many things and I give lectures on it and you list everything it does. I, it's almost embarrassing because it sounds like snake oil. You know, it sounds like Dr.

Hook's Medicine Show. Yeah. Yeah. But I can tell you, I mean, I'm going to stay on this stuff the rest of my life. I can afford it. I mean, I'm almost 70.

You know, the FDA is trying to take all this away, trying to take hormones away, thyroid. Again, it's crazy.

I was going to say, I'm almost 71 years old. I function at the level I was when I was 35 or 40. You look great. I feel great. And I want to, I want to, I don't, I want to stay off of Porch.

And if you notice how many people feel great, like at a party, I'm telling you, Either, you know, someone always comes up to me, it's either them, their family member, their friend is so sick. And I think 20 years ago, 10 years ago, I didn't get that. It's like everyone's sick and you're saying, "I'm feeling great." It seems that's so rare now, you know?

Yeah, I mean, it is rare unless somebody's doing something. And there's so few of us that have found that holy grail to where we can work together. Are you still there? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So we're, you know, we've, we've found some of the holy grail and we're starting, we're hanging on to it as long as FDA didn't take it away from us. And we're certainly doing no harm from what I've— That's the thing.

Show me someone who's been harmed. And if it actually works and is safe, they're more likely to take it away because it's— they're the basically enforcement arm of big pharma.

Well, let's shift over to, to the thymus peptides, the thymosin alpha 1 and the thymosin beta 4. Those are the two predominant ones, and thymosin alpha 1 is more of an immune modulatory peptide, and thymosin beta 4 is more of a reparative recovery type peptide. They both work in the brain, they both work on the hair, they both have broad, wide spectrum of benefits, kind of like BPC-157. I use, you know, alpha 1 for— thymosin alpha 1 for people that have viral syndromes, like my granddaughter got mononucleosis with cytomegalovirus I put her on everything known to man, the ultimate cocktail. I brought her over here from UT and bedded her down for 3 days and had IVs running with vitamin C and quercetin and high-dose vitamin C, zinc, everything known to man, and put her on thymosin alpha-1 twice a day. And that girl was flat on her back, moribund. Within 36 hours, she was up smiling, running around.

Yeah, it's approved in 30 countries for everything from cancer, infections. No, knowing what—

knowing what I know about mononucleosis, before I knew anything about mononucleosis, you don't get up that quick from mono. Yeah, it kicks your butt.

And that's the thing, like, how many— I just, you know, it's commonplace now, I think, with the peptides. And they saved my life.

I see it with so many people, you know, reverse my heart failure and the line when I had it, is that it's, you know, what do we have that's so safe and you get so many profound benefits, you know?

I mean, there's, to me, there's nothing out there that has a blunt edge on the back side of the sword, you know. We carry, we have the ability to carry sharp knives and we have the, and most of the time our knives are sharp on both edges.

Now, are you using TB4 Frag?

I'm using— well, now I am.

I'll say we'll send you some, yeah.

Well, I've got some, but I've been using TB4 injectable, and then recently started using the product that your organization manufactures, and then my latest order has the TB Frag.

And we love feedback, so we're going to start an IRB, and we want to gather data.

So let me just recap real quickly. My protocol for, say, an orthopedic surgeon surgical patient. I've got 2 or 3 patients right now that are, that are recovering from ACL reconstructions. And I put all those people on TB4, on BPC, I put them on one of the growth hormone peptides and growth hormone releasing hormones. I put them on— now the only reason I don't is if they're in competition or getting out of competition testing because TB4 And the growth hormone peptides are WADA negative. They're WADA bad. So WADA will not allow you to do that. They're considered performance enhancing. And you can't do that on people who are going to be tested. So you got to be careful.

That's a disclaimer. Doesn't mean it's dangerous. It means that it gives you an advantage.

They convert a, you know, a 3-month ankle sprain into a 3-week ankle sprain. And I've seen it over and over and over again. Partial rotator cuff tears. They re-knit the tissues back. Now, they won't reattach the tissues that are pulled off and on the other side of the room, but they'll help heal it once you put it back.

So have you seen really significant reduction in that recovery time?

Well, I mean, let me put it this way. Yeah, the answer is yes. The— I don't want to be a politician and dodge the question. The, the Yeah, the patients, the patients that I've worked with have shortened their recovery time significantly to the point that they go in and they're not telling their doctors what I'm giving them because I told them, I said, it's probably not a smart idea for you to discuss this before with your doc because he's going to say I'm crazy, you're crazy, and it doesn't work. And he doesn't because he doesn't know anything about it.

If a doctor doesn't know about it, it's quackery. And I mean, it's You know, they don't know about it, they're leery and—

But what happens, they go in and they're going like, "You are doing so well." And the patients come back to me and say, "What did he mean by that?" I said, "He's just telling you what I told you before I ever told you we're gonna do this. That you're gonna do better than the average patient." It's not magic, you're not Wolverine, but it's just gonna optimize your system. And so, you know, I've got another guy right now that just underwent a wide excision of a squamous cell or maybe pre-squamous cell. He'd had several large biopsies. And then finally I told him, I said, "Quit screwing with this thing. Go get the damn thing widely dissected and get it out of there because otherwise you're going to have mets to the brain." And he's a former TCU football player, defensive end, big strong guy, you know, years ago. He's now 55, but sun lover, he skis with me. We're out at the lake drink a tequila, so we know each other real well. I told him, "Quit screwing with this. Go tell your dermatologist to cut this damn thing out and get a wide margin and send it to pathologist and make sure the margins are clear." He said that after he went in for his first visit, she says, "I can't believe how fast you're healing." Well, we know this from the plastic surgeons and the dermatologists that are doing elective procedures and are doing other procedures for breast reconstructive and things. They're in there, they're using exosomes, they're using peptides, they're using all this stuff.

Did you know some cosmetic surgeons doing that? I haven't found any.

Yeah, absolutely. Greg— I'm blocking his name right now— he has practice in Cincinnati and Newport Beach.

Hey, it makes them look good, you know.

Oh, I mean, and he does research with it where he does it, he does one side with and one side without, and he does photos. And I've been to his lectures and it is dramatic.

Oh, I'd love to see those. Yeah. Yeah, because I had, you know, I broke my nose. Yeah, skateboard accident and big gash, and it was like split open, and I can't even see it now. Yeah, and I swear overnight, people, that was just open. It was like separated.

Sure.

Yeah, well, I mean, we know BPC-157 works in corneal abrasions. It works in dental scenarios with gum issues. It works in ulcers.

Yeah, actually use the BPC and TB4 for dry eye. It works well, especially in clinical trials for that.

It works incredibly well in most of the tissues in the body. So, and then just to— we're kind of running out of time, but from the standpoint of other things that we can do, and we can always do a second phase of this if you want at a later point, but 2.0 is that GHK-Cu, which is a trivalent peptide that captures copper in the middle. I'm sure you're aware of that. Works great as a foam on the hair. I literally grew back my little bit of a bald spot in the back of my head within 6 weeks. It works great as a cream on the face for minimizing wrinkles. It increases the dermis. It grows collagen and it increases the dermis thickness, minimizing fine lines and wrinkles. It helps in terms of— away from that, going back to orthopedics, it really does accelerate the actual collagen growth and production in healing tissues, muscle, tendon, and bone. And in combination with TB4, TB4 has a predilection to restore the normal collagen and to diminish the scar collagen so that you don't have scar to deal with in your healing naturally.

Yeah, it really reduces formation of fibrous tissue, or even like, you know, diabetics, they get, you know, fibrotic kidneys, liver. So reverses that. Now, are you injecting GHK?

I'm doing— yes, I inject it and I use it topically as well.

Okay, well, what, what kind of dose are you doing?

I use about 10 units, about 1/10 of a cc, and I'll sometimes do it twice a day.

Okay, and I guess it depends on the size of the vial. How many milligrams is that? Grams?

You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna make me lie here.

I don't remember. The usual dose is like 1 milligram or 2 milligrams. Yeah.

And I've gone back and looked at it all, and I've looked at the numbers, and to the point that I just do it by rote now, that I don't pay attention to the dose. But what was I going to say with respect to— oh, with the fibrosis, as you were talking about. I like to— I'm a keep it simple, stupid guy, KISS principle guy. And for me to understand how this stuff works, I come up with these kind of models in my brain. When we have a tissue or an injury that occurs, the normal process is, as you know, it starts out with hematoma and then fibrosis and then alignment and hopefully, hopefully, collinear bonds between the collagen molecules, etc. And things line up and they get better over time. And if you're lucky, they don't stretch out or they don't lump up and don't form keloids or they don't give you an elongated tendon and a loose knee or ankle or whatever. What we know is that for the most part, healing is by natural, what we call either early primary intention or secondary intention, is basically the— it's like throwing down pick-up sticks like when you were a kid. You know that game where you have those little plastic sticks?

Yeah, they're going to be all over the place.

You throw them down on the floor and then you align them. Well, as our bodies try to align this stuff, hopefully they align, and they align side by side, but they don't always end up sometimes a mess. And so what, what, and I don't know how, I don't know why, but thymosin beta-4 allows the alignment to occur more in line with the forces to give you a better strong tendon with less scar and less restricted range of motion, more pliability of the surrounding tendon and muscle. And I would love to know the research behind that. I just don't know. I haven't delved into it.

I just, you know, I know, I'd love to see your side. I'll send you the research.

I was going to ask you, have you seen people like the scars that get better, keloids and things like that? It's just not really our population. I can send you the studies. I just was wondering if you—

it's not something that I have dwelled on, but I know that Greg— god dang it, I can't remember his name— Greg has dealt with that. He does biopsies and he does— he's a very scientific guy. And he's done all this stuff, and I'd love to put you guys together. He's out there with you, he's in Newport and Newport Beach, and he could, he could have a nice conversation with you the next time you're near one another. And he's got stuff that shows what both exosomes and peptides and everything else does.

Yeah, and that's, you know, really, you know, I love stem cells, exosomes, you know, and like the— it's, it's interesting that stem cells will secrete TB4, that's also have that in there, and also TB4 stimulates stem cells.

That's the other thing is that we know that, that TB4 is not an extraneous material. It is a, it's a natural thymus-produced and tissue-produced hormone or peptide that modulates healing and growth and wellness overall, including post-traumatic brain injury. I think you and Kathleen have communicated, and she treated her own son with thymus alpha-1, thymus beta-4 when he got his brain turned to mush with a crowbar out in LA. And he just, I mean, he's back in full classes and doing everything else after she nursed him back to wellness. And then you hear the stories about complete hair loss overnight. The kid wakes up and all his hair's on his pillow. Obviously some sort of autoimmune reaction and TB4 and TBα1 and CJC, I mean, I'm sorry, GHKCU and all these different peptides regrow a full head of hair in less than 6 months to a year.

Yeah, she has some nice slides on that. Basically totalis, where you lose all their body hair.

Right. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's crushing to these patients when it happens. You have a 13-year-old kid lose all his hair. You know, so you use other ones, Epitalon.

Have you got into the melanocortins for inflammation or Delta sleep, or—

I've used, I've used my memory. I've used Epitalon, I've used cerebral lysine, I've used DSIP, Delta slow-wave initiating peptide, for sleep, and it's dramatic. One thing I discovered that I finally convinced my mentor Bill Seeds after about 6 months to a year that it did raise testosterone levels in men and women.

Oh yes, we've seen it significantly. And I mean, is it because they're sleeping better or it actually stimulates? It does— it seems to be both.

Well, there's some actual research that shows it works through luteinizing hormone centrally, and it probably— that's probably the pathway. But nonetheless, I know I gave it to my wife because she was having horrible insomnia And she just absolutely broke out the worst cystic acne you've ever seen in your life. And it took me about 3 or 4 weeks to get her levels down. I had to get her off of it and she couldn't, you know, no testosterone, no nothing, and just totally cleared her receptors. And it took forever. And it was the DSIP that did it.

Wow. Yeah, so she kind of went back to age 14, 16, yeah, whatever. Yeah. And yeah, I've had, because I'm a terrible, terrible sleeper and it's kind of, yeah, the combination of DeltaSleep, Epitalion, and either, you know, CJC, ipamorelin, or some sort of growth hormone releasing hormone has just been tremendous.

Makes a huge difference. And there's so many more of them out there. I mean, I've used— we're using more pineal instead of Epitalion.

It's a shorter peptide and Orally available.

I'm not familiar with that one, but I haven't been in the books in a while. I'm probably losing ground. But the— there's so many of them, you know, Selank and Semac and, and Cerebral Lysine.

I've used, uh, finally Cerebral Lysine, you know, FDA took that away, but it's available orally now, which is shown to absorb with studies on EEGs and things like that. So that's— it should be available soon as well.

Yeah. And then what was I thinking of? I was using 5-Amino and—

and talk about your experience with 5-Amino because we may be able to get that back.

I have limited experience with it because it got busted right at the time I started using it in patients and myself. But I've had any information from other people. For example, a 40-year-old guy that played basketball every day said he took it for 6 weeks and he increased his vertical leap by 5 inches. Wow. So yeah, that's, you know, a case of one, who knows. Yeah, but yeah, we've had—

it's my— probably too much different, but my sister was just basically— well, I don't want to give too much information, she doesn't mind, but it just changed her whole mood. People with OCD, within 2 days it's like they're, they're better. But so it's a mitochondrial peptide, it increases NAD into the in the cell. And there's so many trials now with mitochondrial peptides because as your mitochondria get older, basically slow down, everything slows down.

Sure. Well, and that's kind of a big part of my practice is, is mood and, and depression and things like that, just as a result of the patients I see. I see a lot of 30 to 50 year old guys that are, that are, that are traders and hedge fund guys, and they're They let their butt get a hold of their intellect and they're working themselves to death and they got kids and wives that are unhappy because they're never home. They're up at 3:00 AM because of international business, et cetera, and they're traveling. And they get all strung out and the next thing you know, to get up, they're doing Adderall, to go to bed they're taking Xanax and they're drinking and they say, "Look, I got to get off this. I got to get off this." So I have really a fairly robust NAD practice. Where I do a string of 5 days of NAD, uh, 800 milligrams IV drip, and, and it literally clears the brush in front of them after 5 days.

Yeah, it's so nice. So, you know, NAD, you know, stimulates the mitochondria, and, and I like using that with the 5-Amino because you get the 5-Amino blocks that accessory pathways, so you get even higher levels.

Do you know if that's available somewhere now?

It—

well, in my drawer. And I got a bottle full. But it should be available again. But I've got a bottle full, but I'm getting low.

The other one is the SC. I know I've guinea pigged my own son on a little bit. My older son, he's 47, and he told me one day, he says, Dad, I've been on this SC for 6 weeks now. He says, I swear to God, he says, I am 47 years old. I haven't been this ripped since I was 17.

Yeah, it's, it's kind of amazing that— and yeah, we've had, in fact, another doctor in our office has told me, it was like probably 3 weeks ago now, but is that she had diabetic patient and just, you know, they— nothing really worked to lower hemoglobin A1c. Put our C and just dramatically dropped her hemoglobin A1c. Her triglycerides went from like 600 to 104.

Oh my God. Well, I, I mean, I can't, I can't take it. Because it nauseates me and it creates a welt on my injection site. I don't know why. I don't know.

I have the same thing. I'm a big fan of follistatin. I have never tried taking follistatin. Yeah, and that's one of those things that seems to work. It works for weight loss and kind of muscle growth, but it either doesn't work at all or works amazing. We'll get some women come in and go, "I got a wedding in 2 weeks. I need to lose 20 pounds." You know, And it can work. Very hard to find, very expensive, but I'm allergic to it. But I also found is that when I was sick is that I ended up being like allergic to everything, but then when I got well, I wasn't, you know. So it was— I was so mast cell activated.

And I've got a guy— I've got 2 patients right now that are— that have mast cell activation syndrome. And I wasn't going to mention it, but I will. I started experimenting a little bit with oxytocin. And then, and then with oxytocin being kind of a nesting hormone for relaxation, etc.

It's immune modulator too. It is.

And then I added to that microdosing ketamine.

I love the ozone ketamine NAD combination IV. Right. I haven't done that.

I've done nasal spray ketamine microdose with with oxytocin. And I'm telling you, I have a drove of patients that love it. They say it's basically cut out their alcohol use. It's eliminated nicotine. They don't take any Adderall. They don't take any Xanax.

So you're using, say it again, oxytocin?

Oxytocin and ketamine microdose.

And ketamine, when you say microdose, well, what do you do?

Pharmacy grow up again. Don't get me lying on the dose. I should remember it, but I don't. I can send you the details on it, but I have a pharmacy that compounds it for me in a nasal spray. They do one spray in each nostril before they go into a social event where they've got social anxiety, and they just— they don't pick up a bottle of tequila. They don't— they don't— they can get by. They're wonderful. They're great.

And, and we're actually using a lot for pain. And, you know, now a lot of insurance companies are not even covering doctors, they write for an opiate, you know. It says, what, you know, all these people are in pain and we found these ketamine, they, they really come down on their opiates, you know.

That's, yeah, that's, that's a good thought. And I haven't done that, but it's probably another market for the product.

Yeah, like regional pain syndrome, just regular pain. And we don't find people abuse it, you know. It gets a bad rap.

I've got one guy that I'm not sure he abused it, it's just he had such an absolute horrible Activation Syndrome, SSO Activation Syndrome, that it worked so well it was the only way he could live.

And yeah, I mean, yeah, is that an addiction or you don't want to feel hard?

So what I did is I cut him off and sent him to an ketamine clinic and said, you need somebody to monitor you more closely than I can.

Yeah, the thing is, I mean, it's very safe because, you know, it— they give the kids in the ER because it doesn't suppress respiratory And we've had people come in the worst pain, the doctors just leave them. And the problem is doctors are scared to death to write for an opiate, right? And they send them all to pain doctors, they can't get in for months, and now the pain doctors won't write for opiates. What's the alternative? They give them like gabapentin and, you know, but we had also IV with one patient on fentanyl, fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme, and was getting stem cells. And we gave her, you know, big dose of TB4 to stimulate the stem cells, and she goes My pain's gone.

Wow. Yeah.

Well, this— there's a whole lot more of this story.

Yeah, and it's— and that's a nice thing is they work very well together. They're very synergistic with so many things, and they're safe. They are safe. And they'll actually, instead of worrying about giving you something, it will protect you from the overdose of— like, BPC will protect protect you from overdose of alcohol, of antipsychotics, of Tylenol. So it's— yeah, they're interesting stuff.

Well, one other thing with respect to BPC is that using it in combination with a corticosteroid, it negates the catabolic effect of the corticosteroid in the tissues but allows the anti-inflammatory effect of the cortisol to work. So that's a great benefit.

Yeah, it's just, yeah, I get embarrassed to say how many things it does because no one believes you, you know. And I, I'm trying to think if I've seen a side effect. I mean, we treat some of the patients that are so sensitive.

I have seen zero side effect.

Yeah, you know, some people see a little insomnia because it is activating. People say that their brain clears up. So some people will kind of say, hey, you know, a little hyper, but for 99.99%, yeah, I mean, you can't overdose on it, you know. Right.

Well, I think we've probably used up my time for today. Well, thank you.

Yeah, I love, you know, getting, you know, all your experience on the ground. You've got a lot of experience, very interesting story how, you know, you went from the dark side to—

and you gave up a lot. Well, yeah, I always say, you know, came from the world of being strong as an ox and twice as smart. And, but I get to utilize all my education in this.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like I started anesthesia because I was sick and I figured the only thing I could do, uh, because it was so exhausting talking to a patient and then you get better. No offense to the anesthesiologist, but I'm like, yeah, it's, you know, but I'm just so excited about this stuff. And orthopedics was a lot of fun.

But it's also a pretty brutal profession. I mean, it takes a lot of effort, you know, to— in operating room, you know, 6, 8, 10 hours a day and you're physically active. And I mean, that was good and bad. It keeps me in shape.

It's good for the surgeons.

I had to stay in the gym to stay strong enough to do what I did. And plus, you know, you're standing on— but it does have a negative effect because you're bent over all day long. Your ligaments in the back of your neck and back are stretched out. Your feet hurt, your knees hurt. You know, you don't hydrate enough, so your kidneys go to hell, you know.

Yeah, it's like one of the doctors don't live as long. And think about it, what job do you have to be so constantly focused for 5 hours, 6 hours, you know?

Yeah, I mean, my record was a 16-hour replant in residency, you know. And that's—

they wouldn't do that, you know, they wouldn't. It'd be Basically, you know, malpractice or whatever for airline pilot to do that or something.

Right, right. But it was, it was a, it was a sign of strength and victory for you to be that strong and do that, you know. Yeah. Well, no more.

So great. Have a great rest of your day. I appreciate you taking the time. I think, you know, we got some good information and, you know, kind of from the horse's mouth. No, I don't mean anything bad by that. Just, you know, you kind of gone through the progression and seen it, and I love it. You're just, you know, adopting new therapies. And I want to learn—

I want to pick your brain and learn more about the science because I've had so much— I'm spending so much time digitizing my practice and virtualizing it that I really have kind of fallen off the educational plateau a little bit.

It's tough. Yeah, trying to manage, and management is always the hard part.

But I've got a good person helping me and I'm getting it back together. I've got a lot of people that are mentoring me that have already been through it and it's really helping a lot. So I would like to stay connected with you and— Yep, we're going to actually start trainings.

So, and really, and there's some other good trainings I can send you to, but we're going to start something really just, I feel I have to give back because it's saved my life. You know, it's like, it's like Lyme. It's like treating Lyme patients. People go, oh, do you do it for the money? No one treats Lyme for the money. It's like the worst thing you could think of doing. Cause it's tough, but it's like a religion. Yeah.

Is that, I think I, you know, well, to the extent that I can contribute to your training and education program, I'd be more than happy to be involved.

Awesome. I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's, it's, I'm telling you, I'm a little disappointed in doctors coming out of medical school that, you know, they just memorize, they don't understand concepts and they just want to show up 9 to 5 and, you know, it's a, it's a different world.

There's no more William Osler's. Yeah.

Yeah. No more physical exams.

No, no, we learned all that, but they don't do it now. All right, Kent, I'm going to go and talk to you soon.

All right, my man. Hey, thank you so much. Appreciate you taking time. I know you're busy. Great. And we'll be talking. All right. Bye. Great. Take care.

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