Why Every Organ Has Its Own Biological Age

The Life Energy Circle really is focused on the psychospiritual space. And then we focus— the second circle is longevity itself, which is really looking at the hallmarks of aging.

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 want to welcome you back to the Peptides and Bioregulators Summit. My name is Michael McNeil. I'm the director of education through the NH ais.org. And I have joining me today Dr. Jeffrey Gladden. He is one of the most prolific and incredible functional medicine docs that are on the planet with specialties in things like anti-aging, weight loss. He has by far the coolest clinic I've ever been to, and I have been to plenty. And so, Dr. Gladden, thank you so much for joining me today and I'm excited just to talk to you about what you're up to and, and pick your brain.

Yeah, great, Michael. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks.

Heck yeah. So Dr. Gladden, what's, what's the latest at Gladden Longevity? What are you, what are you up to at your clinic and should we look forward to in your sphere?

Yeah, I think, I think what differentiates us from, from most clinics is that we are not married to our answers in the sense that we have all the technologies, but we're not a clinic where people come in because they want to use the technology. They come in because they want access to the technologies that are appropriate for them. Mm-hmm. And so we spend a good deal of time really getting to know the client, if you will, and deconstructing their situation more thoroughly. So that involves a number of different genetic tests and functional tests and lab tests, biometric testing, all of which enables us to really see the cards that somebody's holding in this game of longevity and health optimization, and also enables us to see where they are in the game. So we're able to understand that every client is a mosaic of many, many biological ages. They don't have a single biological age, right? Every organ system has an age. And one of the things that's important for the, for the audience to understand is that in medical testing, it really is more analogous to how a fly sees the world in that for a human, right, we each, we have a lens in each eye and we have stereoscopic vision, but a fly has many lenses in, in each eye. Right. So they, and so it's a compound eye it's called, and it's a compound lenses. So with medical testing, in order for us to see what's happening for the individual, there's never just one test that tells us what's happening. It's very important to look through the, the lens of What's the anatomy? The lens of what's the physiology? The lens of what's the metabolic status? Mm-hmm. The lens of what's the functional status, right? So when you, when you actually understand that, in order to really understand where you are in the aging process, as you listen to this, you need to be deconstructing the situation, understand your genetics. So, you know, the cards you're holding, where the icebergs are and where the life rafts are, so to speak. And then you need to, through this kind of multi-lensed approach, understand where you are in the game. So once we do that for people, then it opens up, and the reason we do it is it opens up much greater precision in the treatments that we then recommend. So my background, as you know, was interventional cardiology, which I practiced for 25 years here in Dallas and ended up building my own heart group and co-founding what's become a nationally recognized heart hospital. And, you know, lots of things like that involved with medical device companies, et cetera, sitting on the board of them. And what I discovered in my practice was that if I had a higher level of precision, I could always get a better outcome. And so that's part of the mindset that we bring here is how do we have a deeper, more thorough understanding of the individual? We've kind of broken it down into 5 areas. So the first one is called life energy, which is really the psychospiritual space. So we have many ways to actually test that and see where somebody is with regards to what's their stress level, how much stress are they carrying in their autonomic nervous system, what's the impact on their hormonal system, et cetera. We can deconstruct all that and then we can really help people to manage that, right? And improves their life, you know, immeasurably, quite honestly, because I sort of believe that all of life comes down to one thing, and that's managing and optimizing your nervous system. The questions that you're asking, what you believe is true, what you believe is possible, what you believe, you know, is true about your past, is true about your future. All those things are really critical to get right. Uh, the nature of your relationships is a function of your nervous system, how you move through space, how fast you can run, how much weight you can lift, all a function of the nervous system. The muscles are just along for the ride. And so we focus a great deal on training people how to optimize their nervous system so they lead a much more tranquil life. It's a 30-year-old body at age 100 and a 300-year-old mind. Right. All the insight. Right. So you see the power of that. And the beauty of that is that I think longevity actually represents the greatest opportunity of humanity to live at a completely different plane, right, than we've ever been able to before. Because when we're youthful, you know, chronologically youthful, you know, we take our health for granted. And then when we start to, you know, kind of pay attention to it, we're already losing functionality. At the same time, we're gaining wisdom and money in other areas in life. We have more opportunity. We are making greater impact as we get more knowledge and more experience. And those, those two lines are, are crossing each other, right? So that's an exponential decline in health and an exponential rise in impact and opportunity. And so the opportunity with true longevity medicine and really optimizing the nervous system, as I mentioned, is to actually live into a bigger future where you can have much more impact and much more opportunity and live life at a higher plane than was ever possible before. So for me, that's super exciting to wake up to every day, right? Yeah, true. That's—

yeah, that's truly the complete picture. And it's, it's fascinating that in our Western medical culture, you typically only have what, like 12 minutes with a doc, if that, sometimes 5. The level of care or treatment, the decision-making, so nominal compared to what you just described. Even the description alone of taking into account I'm a soul, I'm a spirit, I'm— I have this body. There's different complexities in the relation to my environment that help to build issues that I have or how I'm going to heal. And so it's just refreshing to hear someone with cardiology as their background who is more, and pun intended, heart-centered, to, you know, take on the patient in a way that comprehensive testing, comprehensive diagnostics. Like, it's more than just running a blood panel and trying to get markers right. And I think that's something that we fall in the functional medicine world is we're chasing markers and we're forgetting we have patients. That's right. So it's just— it's nice to hear you have that balance because I feel like that's a huge shift that you bring into the community. And, and as a voice who, you know, is a leader in our community, I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. So to your point, the Life Energy Circle really is focused on the psychospiritual space. And then we focus— the second circle is longevity itself, which is really looking at the hallmarks of aging. These are both the phenotypic expressions of aging, right? Shortening telomeres, senescent cell accumulation, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, decreased autophagy, you know, all the things that are hallmarks of aging, but also fuel the aging process also as they go awry. And they all feed feed off each other. So when telomeres get short, mitochondria don't make ATP. When you don't make ATP, you can't repair your DNA. When you can't repair your DNA, you get senescent cells. That increases inflammation, which damages the telomeres, which damages the mitochondria. So it's becomes this big circular— this is why it's an accelerating exponential decline because it's, it's spinning up like a tornado, right? So what we do is we look at the, at the, the hallmarks and then we can deconstruct those. There's a couple we still can't. But virtually, probably 14 outta 16 or 13 outta 16, we can.

Wow.

And with that, we're able to interrupt the aging process. So that's the longevity circle. And then there's a health circle. How do you optimize every organ system? And then there's performance. How do you be fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced, great cardiovascular capacity, reserve flexibility, recovery when you're 100? Well, when you're 18, you go for a run and lift some weights, but that doesn't work when you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s. And every decade what you need to do changes. And so helping people with that. And then finally, you mentioned the environment, just so important to architect the environment to support the mission. What's the quality of the air you're breathing, the water that you're drinking, the noise that's in your environment, right? As you were recounting. And then how easy is it for you to, you know, get your workout in when it's raining outside? How easy is it for you to take your supplements? What's in the refrigerator? What, how are you gonna do these things? Right? So architecting the environment to support the mission is, is also, we think, a missing piece for most, most people in most clinics because they don't focus on that. It's like, here's your recommendations, you know, good luck trying to implement them, right? So when you take this really kind of global approach, you can start to get phenomenal results for people. And then when you— with that deep understanding, when you now layer in regenerative practices like peptides, biologics, like, plasma pheresis and things like this. And you learn how to actually sequence these things. It's not just about, well, we have exosomes and stem cells, let's dump 'em in. It's like, well, wait a minute, those are Olympic swimmers and this 60, 70-year-old person, they're like a swimming pool with a lot of lawn chairs in it and a lot of tree branches.

Yeah.

Right. If you don't clean that stuff out, your swimmers are never gonna do anything.

That's a great analogy. So true, right? Yeah.

And so you've gotta really optimize the individual to actually receive the regenerative information, right? Mm-hmm. What are their hormone levels? What's their thyroid level, right? What's the inflammatory level? Taking out the, using the plasmapheresis and then putting back in things like IgG to, to calm down inflammation and bring things forward. Now you can actually start to rebuild brains. You can rebuild joints, you can rebuild all kinds of stuff. And so that gets super exciting. Right. Super exciting.

I love that. I, I love that what we're seeing is that there's a direct correlation between really longevity medicine or anti-aging medicine is really the prevention and/or the helping the body heal itself if you're already in a position way downstream in autoimmunity, SIRS, toxicity buildup, all the things that you're talking about. But then once you get on the other side of that, it's really tapping into our genetic potential of the way that we're created, which is—

That's right.

We're at our cell's ability. You nourish the environment from the external to the internal. You have enough energetic capacity and we're gonna be 100 doing workouts together. We're gonna be 120. Like, there's— there's no, you know, nothing. In a sense, you become untouchable because you have that intelligence mixed with a routine that's come from, you know, a spot that makes sense. And that's what I love about you. It's like so many people— I see this all the time in our communities— they shoot in the dark when it comes to treatments, and they shoot in the dark when it comes to supplements. They may get a $10,000 stem cell injection, they never needed it, and it's like— and they're just throwing money to the wind. So I hope you guys listening, you're encouraged to reach out to someone like Dr. Gladden and his whole institute out there in Irving, because if you start to do things with intelligence and on a track that makes sense, then the mark and measure of the progression, not just to the markers, but in your own body, you literally see it. Hair, skin, nails, teeth, flexibility, athletic performance, all these different things. And that's what I've noticed once I got over the chronic side of, of where I've been. I've now pursued basically dialing in just feeling amazing every single day. And I'm taking my— like I mentioned to you earlier, I'm having a high resting heart rate, higher than normal. And the noise from the road in my environment is causing me to not rest as deep as I can. So I'm not getting REM and deep sleep. So it— my heart rate goes higher during the day because my adrenals are stressed from not getting rest at night.

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm a heavy thinker. So I know that it's just a matter of time to change my environment, get back into a peaceful place. And everything will calm down. And it's that type of thinking that I feel like you guys empower patients to really start to become tuned into their nervous system, tuned into becoming— I usually say a sensitive person, a feeler is a healer because you know when the shifts occur and you know what to do. And so that's just really the shift, the way you practice, I'm sure, you know, for—

Yeah, no, that's well said that a feeler is a healer. You have to be able to feel it. You have to, you know, pay attention. You know, the other thing we find is that a lot of clients will come in very dedicated, very committed, and very well-intended, and yet they may be doing the wrong things. Like, we just had a guy in from Italy who flew in, and he basically wants to be a cyclist. He's in his early 40s. He cycled as a kid, successful entrepreneur, sold a company, moved to Italy, and has been cycling 4 hours a day. And he's getting sick all the time. And it's like, well, what's happening? Okay, well, we deconstruct it. So genetically, he is really challenged when it comes to handling all the oxidative stress from sustained exercise like that. Right? His SOD genes and glutathione peroxidase and catalase genes, they're just not, they're just not built to handle all that oxidative stress. Yep. He's actually built for shorter duration exercise. Right? Mm-hmm. So when we measured his oxidative stress age, It was 20 years older than his chronological age. Wow. So here's a situation where incredibly well-intended, incredibly disciplined, and yet actually aging himself more rapidly because he didn't know how he was built and what was actually right for him. So, right. This is the kind of stuff we find all the time.

Wow.

Right. So, and then the other thing that we're involved with is, you know, really, really cracking the code on aging. So we've been doing some things around reprogramming the cent— one of the central clocks of aging that resides in the walls of the third ventricle of the brain. There are stem cells in there that secrete exosomes that are basically information that tells your body to stay young. And in a mouse, if you go into the third ventricle and destroy those stem cells, within one week, a young mouse will be old. Within one week, they just crash. And if you restore those stem cells, they get young again. So I just had mine reprogrammed, and we're gonna be bringing that here to the clinic as well. Yeah. Programming cells, right? Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. We're all in. I wake up 27 every day. I was born in 1954, but I wake up 27. And that mindset alone is massive in terms of, you know, helping you to ask the right questions. If I don't feel 27, what do I need to do to be 27? Mm-hmm. Right? Because at 100, I wanna be 30. 27 this decade, 28 the next, 29 the next, and then I'll be 30.

Let's go.

Right. So, yeah. So we're doing that. And then I just got back from Mexico investigating. I don't know if you saw David Sinclair's paper from July 2023 where they reprogrammed stem cells not using Yamanaka factors, but using actually chemical cocktails. And so I gotta have my hands now on a chemical cocktail to reprogram my own epigenetics, and we'll see how that works. Wow. I just wanna let the people know that we're out there on the bleeding edge of this stuff. Mm-hmm. And we never, we never recommend anything to anybody we're not doing ourselves. We run a lot of different IRB trials to be able to enable people to get access to things. But we are, we are all in on cracking the code on aging and changing it for the planet, quite honestly. So we're coming out with a course that people can sign up for that's based on my book, 100 Is the New 30. It's about $500 for the course. It's going to walk them through and teach them all kinds of things about how we go about things and what to do and not to and all that. We're building an app called the Longevity Wingman app that's going to be beta and testing in September. It's gonna make longevity as easy as possible for every individual. You'll be able to order tests, order supplements. You'll be able to have your data analyzed by AI. Wow. So all that's in the works as well. So yeah, we wanna democratize longevity for the whole planet, right? And so that everybody can have an elevated life. That's really the goal over here. So yeah.

Man, that's powerful. Let's go, Dr. Gladyn. I love that.

Yeah.

Well, I would be remiss if I asked you, since this is the Peptides Bioregulator Summit, is there any peptides in the anti-aging longevity space that you really kind of, you know, gravitate towards when it comes to maybe your daily stack or what you've recommended to patients that you see kind of move the marker in the right direction?

Yeah, we really like things that augment growth hormone release, CJC-1295 with ipamorelin or tesamorelin. I think those are very helpful. The thing that you need to understand is that when you're using testosterone or using growth hormone-releasing peptides, you're basically standing on one side of a teeter-totter, and that side you're standing on is mTOR, right? Which is basically building cells, building muscle, but it also increases your mortality and increases your risk for cancer. So you've gotta balance that by not being on those peptides and being on other things that actually activate AMPK, which is the counter to that, which is, you know, involved with autophagy, which is activated by fasting and, and things like aerobic exercise and things like metformin and berberine and MOTC and peptides like that, right? So these will go in and activate the AMPK side of the equation to keep you balanced, right? Biology is a, is a really a, an economy of balance. It's not about how keto can I be for how many days or how long can I fast. It's about how do you actually move and cycle back and forth between these two healthy but complementary sides of the, of the thing. So, We like using those for those peptides. And then we, we love, you know, things like BPC-157, TB-500, you know, thymosin beta-4 is the same thing, thymosin alpha for immune function. Sometimes we use LL-37 for infections. GHK-CU is awesome for healing. So we're, we're using peptides all the time and we're using cocktails of peptides in combination with other regenerative procedures and processes. Right? So yeah, I love that.

Yeah, I love, I love the ability that peptides can come in and clear up systemic-wide inflammation fairly effectively. And I know way rapid healing in patients that are dealing with like multi-co-infections, multi-comorbidities, sort of like the fast track. I usually say in the height of my healing journey, if I had peptides, I probably would have cut my, my duration of healing in half.

That's right.

Because they're so effective.

All the time.

Yeah.

And as to your point, it's just about 50%. Like, somebody comes in, I'm gonna have my gallbladder, I'm getting, I'm gonna need surgery, I need my wisdom teeth out, or whatever it is. It's like, okay, let's set you up with these peptides. You'll heal in half the time. And if you wanna get rid of the scars, we use some ozonated olive oil.

Yep.

And you don't even see the scar. I mean, it's, it, it's really cool. So, you know, people just don't realize how, how accelerated the healing can be. And that's critical because the more days you're away from your routine of working out and doing the stuff and being active, you know, the harder it is to pull back out of that.

So, yeah, it's so true. Stagnation breeds sickness and movement is medicine. All day, that's my—

that's—

I live by that motto. Even today where I was feeling like a little bit tired and stuff, I still got 45 minutes on the incline treadmill just to offset that, you know, deload the stress through movement. Yeah. And, and I'm gonna go take a nap later and it's sort of just, you know, complementing. And I got a fridge full of CJC in there and Tessa, and Motsi, everything that you're talking about, I'm starting to, to practice what I preach when it comes to that. So, um, but I felt those huge shifts bringing in those peptides on a consistent basis, and it's just accelerated all of the damage that I had from chronic issues. I just know that I'm on the other side of healing, and it's just dialing in that much further of you know, sort of, sort of just maintaining homeostasis. And I feel like that's the patient journey is— and I like, you kind of alluded to it, but we don't know how good we can feel. Like, we— a lot of us have never even been at a baseline of feeling amazing.

That's right.

You know, so it's— but you got the journey mapped out. So if you're a good patient, you know, or if you're a practitioner listening to this, you know, buy that that $500 course, or if you're a patient, I know I'm, I'm gonna get that because that just sounds like a nice roadmap to follow. And that's really what we're looking for because I noticed that good education creates great expectations.

That's right.

So the, the better we can map it and the better we can— like you said, you program your mind to say, I'm 27 today, and literally it starts to shift your body's ability Yesterday, my niece, who's 21, uh, was actually having a high heart rate and her blood pressure was high.

Okay.

And, uh, and we were doing breathwork together, and I was showing her that if you do breathwork, meditation— these are things that I would like read in the Bible, but you actually have to practice them.

Yeah.

And immediately, 10, 20 point drop, just like that. Yep. And I was telling her, if you feel that throughout the day, let's, let's practice that together, you know. And so those things, like those actual practical lifestyle things that we can adhere to are just so powerful. And it's just, it could be as simple as stopping, resting, taking a moment to breathe, you know?

And so, yeah, it's huge. I think it's possible to, you know, we're big fans of BrainTap and we're big fans of C-Lanc and C-Max for the brain as well as Diehexa for cognitive ability. But C-Lanc in particular which is a nasal peptide, is really good at calming the brain also, as well as increasing BDNF and improving cognitive function. Right. So, so that works well. But when you learn how to meditate using things like BrainTap that can put you into a deep meditative state, which is theta state, right, just as a hypnagogic state right before you might fall asleep, you can actually get to a point where you can go through your day in a meditative state. Wow. Right. And that's about being present. Stress comes from thinking about the future. Like, what's going to happen? What's going to go wrong? What's whatever, right? Or having some reaction to the past, right? It's either guilt or resentment or anger or whatever that is, right? But if you let go of the past and you let go of the future and you're just fully present, which is really when we're in our sweet spot, and then you're connected to source, you're connected to God directly, and you stay unattached to the outcomes. Knowing that we're just here to respond in the appropriate ways, we move through these different things that pop up. Oh my gosh, you can go through the day in a very calm and relaxed fashion. It's true. I love that. It's just like skiing when you're in a state of flow. You're just going through the moguls, but you're just dancing through them as opposed to crashing into everything. Right? Yeah.

And I find that if you stay in that, I always imagine myself from a detached perspective is like, if there's a string tied to me to you and you to me and me to my mom and my mom to my niece and my niece and all that type of stuff, if you let it go, we're not getting tangled.

That's right.

We're staying free. And I was alluding to it earlier, and I like what you said. You know, I was using, uh, cast your cares, you know, give everything to God and let him take it. Let source carry it. It. It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to do it, right? But once you do it, you clip that string and all of a sudden your nervous system can relax. And so, and you become much more productive.

You actually get a lot more done with a lot less effort, which is actually— you feel good about that. It's like, oh, okay, we're actually making progress. It's not like you're— it's not like you're ignoring things, right? People think, well, if I do that, I'm just going to ignore it. No, you're actually more effectively Working your way through whatever you need to work through. So, yeah.

I love that. And I love that you said DiHEXA cuz I took my first dose of DiHEXA today and I took my first dose of 5-Amino today.

I'm like, oh, okay. 5-Amino.

Just getting on the, you know.

Yeah, that's good. I took 31, 5-Amino.

But I felt that immediate cognitive shift. I'm talking within like an hour of, of consumption.

Nice.

I was just like lit up and turned on, which was powerful. So.

I love it.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Gotta, gotta feed the brain, you know. It's synaptogenesis, the neuro reset, and the— how powerful the brain's connection is to the gut microbiome, that gut-brain access, as just one portion of probably 7,000 things we could talk about. But that's where I noticed most of my healing came from, was actually just resetting that vagal nervous system response to put me in a parasympathetic where I wasn't recycling trauma that had occurred to me. Because your body, you know, we all know, but your body stores trauma in the fascial plane.

That's right.

And as you release all of that, the memory of what you went through completely goes away. And I think that's part of the detachment process too, is we don't recycle the old and keep it alive. Every day is a new day. Every moment is a new moment. Moment to be present, even this interview. Just being present. We're not following a script, you know, we're, we're literally just from our heart, from our, what's connected, you know, I like what the Bible says, but out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Whatever's welling up inside of us tends to be the stream that gets passed on to the next person. It just really feels good to get to a state where you can flow in the stream and not feel like you're being dragged along in life. And so if anybody's listening to this and you do feel that way, reach out to Reach out to me and we'll definitely support you in the journey of getting you into the state of presence.

Yeah, exactly. And I think to your point, everybody has suffered trauma. I've never met anybody that hasn't. And the way it works for us is we end up living in reaction to that trauma. Right. And to your point, it gets imprinted into our nervous system and also into our fascia. And so for me, it's kind of like you can almost imagine Earth as an escape room. Right? Because you come in here and you get this trauma imprinted into you, and now it's like, okay, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to live in reaction to it, or— which puts you on tilt— or are you going to go in and deeply understand it, how it happened, who did what, what I did, what you did, what somebody else did, and then forgive yourself, forgive the other people involved so you can heal it and then actually transcend it to the point where you become grateful for everything that happened because it gave you more wisdom, more insight, more empathy, right? Not only for others, but for yourself. So now you're on your way to actually— once you could release that and transcend it, now you're kind of on your way to escaping it, right? And coming back into the kind of the fullness of who you really are, right? Unencumbered. Unencumbered and fully expressed.

True. I love that.

Yeah.

So what a way to wrap that up. That's probably like the ultimate closing line is to come back to your true self, unencumbered and and to get back to full expression. I love that. Well, Dr. Gladden, this is like one of the best conversations I have had. I'm curious, how do people reach you? How do they get plugged into what you're doing? And sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So the book is out there, 100 Is the New 30. It's been well received and the course is coming out shortly. People can go to our website, gladdenlongevity.com, and find the course and the book. We have a podcast also, the Gladden Longevity Podcast. We do a lot of really interesting interviews. We also did a longevity summit on the Doctors Talks, and I interviewed about 30 different people for that. If people wanna check that out, they can go find that as well. And then they can, they can talk to us at the clinic if they're interested to become a client. They can reach out through gladdenlongevity.com and, uh, we'll set up a, a call with them. And then, uh, keep your eyes peeled for the, uh, Longevity Wingman app that'll be coming out. Uh, we're gonna beta test it in September and probably come out a little later this fall. To go. I can't wait.

That's awesome. So cool. Well, Dr. Gladyn, thank you so much for joining me today, and I look forward to a future of being 100 with you and lifting weights and doing all the most amazing things on the planet.

I love it, Michael. Thanks. Yeah, great.

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