What Your Doctor WON'T Tell You About Cholesterol & Peptides for Longevity

Today I've got my friend Reagan Archibald. We're talking to a functional medicine expert who is also Eastern medicine trained, and he is my peptide guru. He is so knowledgeable when it comes to peptides. I had him on midlife conversation a while back when he was really just getting known in this space. He had known himself in this space, but he was getting more and more popular in the space a few years ago. But now I've watched him just really grow and what he's created and the education he shares and how he's influencing so many, so many people in health and longevity, I had to have him back on. I want to go deep today on a lot of things that might feel a little bit controversial at first, but I'm hoping that you stick with us and listen and open your mind, because this stuff shouldn't be controversial. This is longevity, this is health. And a lot of things that we've been taught that we've been led to believe, especially when it comes to cholesterol, to blood sugar, it's just not correct. I'm going to put it out there. And when you go to the doctor right now, sometimes you go, you get these labs and you get in a frenzy because of what your doctor's telling you. And I think your doctor. Doctor might have great intentions. But there is a big difference between what we've been taught, standard care, and what is actually optimal and is going to make a difference when it comes to longevity and living well. So that's why I wanted to have Reagan on today. Thank you so much for being here, Reagan, man.

It's an honor. And it was so fun seeing you a couple weeks ago.

I loved. That's what made me think, I've got to get you back on. Reagan talked at a mastermind I was at, and he blew us away with everything that he shared. And I thought, I've got to have him back on. This is so, so, so good. So good. Okay, so, Reagan, let's back up a little bit. What made you start to specialize in this? Or were you always looking at optimal labs? Like, give us a little background into your. The medical profession.

So originally I, you know, I grew up on a cattle ranch in Idaho, and I wanted to be anything but a farmer when I grew up, and my uncle was a doctor. So I was like, that's a perfect route. I'll just go that way. I knew I had to get good grade. And it was. I always enjoyed learning. And then it was when I started getting sick in my undergraduate work, I realized wow, there's a whole nother world out there. After I was misdiagnosed by five different doctors, they all said, your labs look great. And I'm like, well, why am I anxious all the time? Why can't I sleep at night? Why am I gaining weight even though I was in my early 20s? And why is my skin all flared up? So it's finally a naturopathic doctor who was also trained in Eastern medicine. He ran the right labs and said, oh, you've got an autoimmune disease. And at the same time, I was taking this history of medicine course from Dr. Baumann and I started learning about the origins of Western medicine and how the Flexner Report, if you go all the way back to the early 1900s, you know, John D. Rockefeller funded this doctor named Flexner to basically, you know, turn down any kind of credibility that existed with natural or homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic, any care that was outside of a chemical based medical model. It was completely denounced and they became quacks. And so it's deep in our history, but now we're seeing the end result of it. And I just heard rfk. I was at Genius Network and RFK was there. And so it's so fun hearing him because it's make America healthy again and it's all the things that the Rockefellers and the Flexner Report tried to suppress 120 years ago. Now I think we've got this platform and this window where we can actually start using medicine that works because it's working with your own biology. We're not forcing chemicals and suppressing pathways and which leads to a lot of side effects.

Before we go further into the health questions, I'm going to ask you, and specifically about labs, what you just shared, I already know half my audience is going to go, yes, let's keep going. And half is triggered right. Right now just because. And I don't want to get into politics, but people have different views on what just happened politically. And the reason I want to ask you this right now is despite what people thought voted for what they wanted, why do you feel this is a great move that we have RFK specifically, I'm talking about him, not anything else political. RFK helping in the health front right now.

Well, if you look at what RFK has done historically is he's actually sued a lot of these companies that are putting chemicals into our food. So, you know, one of the things that he's done is he's made sure that our kids don't have these yellow dyes. So yellow dye is one of the most egregious food sources that we put in almost everything. And originally it's a byproduct from manufacturing, and they used it for roads, for asphalt. And then there's a chemist who realized, oh, I can make this dye. I can turn it into a yellow dye, and we can put it in food as a preservative instead of waste, you know, and then we can sell it for more instead of putting it in roads or they couldn't dump it in fields. And there's just story after story like this. In fact, he sued Trump twice in the 80s because Trump was trying to build golf courses around Manhattan.

And I heard that they had the cleanest water and that was going to mess that up, right?

That's it. Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you think about it, RFK brought this to the Democratic Party. And I'm not trying to make this political, because I vote on what's going to make us healthy in the future, because I don't think politics. At the end of the day, there's so much innovation in the United States. As long as we're adhering to the Constitution, then, you know, I just want a Runway so that I can help people get healthy. But it's really hard. There's some headwind when there's all these chemicals in foods.

Totally. Okay. And I agree. I'm very excited about this turn of events. I like that this is going to get a lot more attention right now. I've been screaming about seed oils and misinformation on cholesterol and blood sugar and food coloring and processed foods for years. So this feels like, okay, finally, maybe we'll get someplace here.

We're not so fringe after all.

Yes, we're not so fringe after all. So let's talk about. Let's start with blood labs, because we go to a doctor, well, meaning doctor, they run these standard labs. We get the little things come back in red that say H next to it. We panic. Mainly blood sugar, mainly cholesterol, maybe liver numbers. Ferritin tends to come up. Help us with. Where do we actually need to be concerned? What should we be looking at? Like, what do you look at with patients?

Well, I think if you look at blood labs, there's so many different areas you can take it. But when you take. Take your ranges that your doctor gives you, those ranges are based on 90% of the population in that geographical area. And then all they're looking at is they're running it through Averages every year. And then they're modifying those markers based on averages. And so if you look at the average testosterone in men, for example, 30 years ago, those levels were, you know, total Testosterone was between 7 and 900. Now you look at it, and the average man in his 40s and above is closer to, like, 300.

Wow.

And what that leads to is men not feeling competent, men not having as good of cardiovascular health, men not building muscle mass the way they want, men not taking on risks in a healthy way. And it's been devastating. But doctors just look at averages, and the labs haven't been able to conform to the reality of health. And so what we do is in functional medicine, we take those lab values and narrow those. And then when you're looking at optimization, it's like diseases can. You can have, you know, a hundred people with the same disease, but they may have different symptoms, and their labs may look different because there's a different cause. And so if you're not narrowing the ranges and then seeing how everything's intertwined, you're going to miss the whole story about why the person feels the way they do. And so I love functional medicine because it tells us a story about the past and where that person is in the present. And then it also helps us predict where they can go in the future.

Mm, Good. Okay, let's talk about cholesterol. This is. I heard you talk about this recently at the Mastermind, and I thought, this is gold here. I need everybody to hear this. Cholesterol. We've been scammed by this. I don't think intentionally scammed, but we've been scammed. Can you talk about this?

Actually, we. It is intentional, and I'll share with you some of the studies on this. And there's, you know, your previous guest, Dr. Shanahan, she has some very. I mean, if you read her book, she's got some very interesting and compelling data that you can't deny it. But the biggest thing we've learned about cholesterol is if you don't ask the question, why is your cholesterol high in the first place, then you're missing the whole message of the body. It's like, well, what is cholesterol? Where your liver. The first hormone it makes is cholesterol, and it's a hormone. And cholesterol can go down two pathways. One is cortisol, and that's the stress hormone. And I think we have far too much stress in our society today. And the other pathway it goes down is dhea and DHEA Is this beautiful precursor for all your sex hormones downstream. Your testosterone, progesterone, estrone, estradiol, all those gorgeous hormones that help us feel vital and youthful and help us recover. And the problem is, when you just look at cholesterol as a function of cardiovascular disease, it. We're kind of missing the mark because cholesterol, like LDL cholesterol, which is considered the bad cholesterol, for example, one of its primary functions is to carry nutrients through the blood brain barrier into your brain. And if you want that, you know, there's. There's cardiologists who I just had. Finally, I had a cardiologist. We must have spent an hour and a half on the phone having a conversation around why he believed that this particular patient needed his cholesterol. His total cholesterol was 77. And the dude was tripping over curbs because he couldn't lift his foot up. His brain was turning off. And I warned him. I said, six months ago, I said, you're on too much of a stage statin. And I reached out to his cardiologist because his levels were in the 80s, and his cardiologist just couldn't. He was like, wow, baffled. And he was almost combative. But I said, you're going to start showing up with side effects. And when the side effects finally came, then his cardiologist became reasonable after I gave him a ton of data. But the cardiologist was trained that the statins are what are going to be the protective factor. The lower the cholesterol, the better. But cholesterol is what protects your cell membrane. So for a lot of you, the older we get, the more cholesterol we need. And if you look at the Amora study, it's a longevity study that was done out of Sweden where they followed people for over 35 years. 42,000 people, I believe, was the size of this group. And they wanted to look at the different biomarkers in people who made it past 100 versus the ones who didn't, and the group that made it past 100. They all had very stable versions of glucose, and their blood sugar was in the optimal range. Their liver enzymes weren't elevated, their inflammatory markers were low, but their cholesterol was high, like in the 230s total cholesterol. And their LDL was in the 140s on average, and their HDL was closer to about 70, but their triglycerides were low. And so. So you look at that study, you're like, well, if I have a better chance of making it past 100 with high cholesterol.

Right.

Maybe I should reconsider this idea, this concept that low cholesterol is good. And another study just came out a couple months ago that found people with lower cholesterol have a higher all cause mortality than people with high cholesterol and are more likely to have a cardiovascular event.

So wild. Okay, where did this come from? And I did ask her when I interviewed Kate earlier. She had a. She had a theory. I'm curious, where. Where do you think this came from? Where did this story about high cholesterol come from? Because this is an emergency. Like, half people I know are on statins. This is a big epidemic right here that doctors prescribe cholesterol medicine constantly.

Oh, well, it's. That's it. So the statin medication, you know, it goes way back. And. And if you look at President Eisenhower, so Dwight Eisenhower, we all remember him, he called B day like probably the most influential general in United States military history because we had one shot to. To win World War II, and he called it. And then he was a very celebrated veteran and got called into the office. But right when he got called into office, shortly after, he had a massive heart attack. And he started seeing this surge of cardiovascular events increase in America. And he said, why is that? And so he sent out all of his leading researchers, and there's one researcher named Ancel Keys. And I'm sure. Did Kate go through this?

Yeah, she did talk about him, but yeah.

So you guys are going to have to go back and get the full picture from Kate because she's a genius. I love Kate. But essentially, Ancel Keys manipulated data and said, hey, it's the saturated fat that's causing it. Everybody needs to be on a Mediterranean diet, and we need to get rid of saturated fats. Well, for those who have studied chemistry, the saturation in the fat, that just means there's not any open carbon bonds so that you can bond other nutrients to it. Anytime you bond a nutrient to these, these open. I'll just call my open gate. And you put something in that gate and close the gate, then you have this oxidative stress. And so the problem is, when we changed our diet, we went all vegetable oils. And these vegetable oils are polyunsaturated fats. So when they're unsaturated, that means lots of gates open. Poly means many. Saturated means. Oh, like we're just using a simple analogy, but that's like the gates are open. And now you close the gates. But every time you close the gates, you have this inflammatory assault on your cardiovascular system. And so that was the problem. So we shifted everything over. And you remember Crisco was the safer and more natural healthier version to bacon and lard. And, and some of these, like tallow, like some of these really good.

Yeah, margarine started making it like all.

That started margin margarine came around and you know, that was like the damage had been done because he manipulated the science and it was fraud and but unfortunately when you have all the money that backed him and all the, the competing interests because these seed oils were waste products just like we, you know, what, what is going after these, these food companies for putting, you know, known carcinogens in our kids food, you know, Fruit Loops or anything that's got these colors to it. And, but it was the same thing that happened back in the 60s. And so the more that you eat and the problem with it is you can go about a year before you start seeing the impact of it because our bodies are resilient. But then after about a year of being on these, these PUFAs, these polyunsaturated fatty acids, that's when the cells lose signaling and that's when we start getting inflammation. And so it's almost too late to see the poison happened, you know, a year ago or in some cases two years ago.

Wow. This is, you know, I am hoping that we're going to see a big shift in education around this because right now I feel, and especially for most of my clients that come through my programs, they're, they're all dealing with doctors they've been going to for years that are telling them cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol. So many are on statins, they want to go off them and doesn't seem to matter yet what information they bring in. And I feel that a lot of doctors are doing this to protect themselves because they, that's what they've been taught. So they're worried about being sued or something happening or doing something against the grain.

Yes, it's wild because if a doctor doesn't write you out a prescription for a statin, depending on the clinical model they're in, they're going to get reprimanded. And if they do that long enough, then they'll be replaced. And so they can't think outside of the box. So one of the reasons I didn't end up going directly through traditional medical school and I can tell you my family, my dad was like, well, you can always be a carpenter if it doesn't Work out, you know, going into this alternative medicine, are you sure you know? And I was like, I didn't know. All I know now, but I do know I made the best decision of my life when I ended up going to more of an integrated medical school in Hawaii. Not because it was Hawaii, that was great, but it was because of the education I received. Earl Bakken is the founder of my school and he's the inventor of the pacemaker or a company called Medtronics, if you. And he realized that most of the pacemakers could be prevented. He had this knowledge, you know, 25 years ago when I started school. And so I had this really unique training. But it was based on this idea that most of what we've been taught in science and nutrition is wrong.

But there's a lot of undoing that's going to need to be done. And you look at even going to the grocery store, I think of these names, these marketing things, Smart balance with a heart on it or heart healthy listed on everything with seed oils and things that are not great for us. There's just going to be a lot of unwinding that needs to happen around that. I want to talk about blood sugar for a minute. We are told that a certain A1C means pre diabetic, but I know I'm assuming you look at lower numbers as a, as kind of a red flag there. How do you feel about blood sugar and what do you think we need to be looking at on labs here?

Well, I think if you're looking at hemoglobin A1C, the typical prediabetes. Prediabetes range is 5.7. And then typically it depends on the lab, but it's going to be about 6.5 to 6.8. And then you're diabetic, you're type 2 diabetes. And so the 5.7 range, it's already too late. Like your insulin resistance, if you go above about a 5.5, that's when your body and insulin resistance is when the glucose can't make it into the cell. And it's more of a cause of overeating and where you have this, this over nutrient status in your body where you can't take in sugar anymore. And then one of the most interesting things is, you know, look for skin tags. Because a lot of my clients will be like, I'll look at their blood sugar. They're like, no, no, I don't eat any sugar. I don't do. You know, they, they don't have any of the symptoms. Then I'll say, well, do you have skin tags? They're like. Like these things. And they'll show me their neck and I'm like, that's it. And if you read the book why We Get Sick by Benjamin Bickman, he's a Utah, got a great protocol, but it's one of the most common signs of skin tag. Skin tags, yeah.

Wow, Interesting. And I know I've seen people with, like, lots of them where they have. Does it need to be a lot? Or you can even just one would be a sign of that.

You can just have one in a really random place, like under your armpit, for example.

Let me ask you a question here, because let's just say someone has their A1C is creeping up, and maybe they are at first of all, a couple of things wrong. One, they are at 5.6. So they're right on that cusp, like you're saying 5.5. You're already getting into that. Their doctor says, nope, you're not. Not pre diabetic yet. Let's just watch it. They're not doing anything yet. What do you want that person to know?

Well, I want that person to know what their future looks like if they don't correct it. Because, you know, it's. It's hard to make the changes necessary when you're at like 5.5 or 5.6 or 5.7. You make hard changes and it takes a few weeks, we'll say. But that's so much easier in the future. In the future, if you have type 2 diabetes, it's the leading cause of kidney failure, so you end up on dialysis. Leading cause of blindness. You have vascular damage to your eyesight. Neuropathy. If you enjoy sex, too bad, because it damages your vascularity. So your endothelial cells and your blood vessels, when your blood sugar is going up and down, it's. That's really the culprit of a lot of the plaque and arterial accumulation is this blood sugar instability.

So we need to take it seriously. So for the people listening, we have different camps of people. We've got people listening, hearing this for the first time, and they say, okay, I would assume, Reagan, you would say, first step, we've got to look at our diet. We've got to look at, are we eating low glycemic? Are we combining foods properly to not create blood sugar spikes? So that's sort of the obvious for most people. But some people, it might not be so obvious right away, but then you look at traditional medicine and they're Right away going to say, oh, Metformin or there's even some new, newer diabetic medications. Let's talk about that first. Then I want to go to Peptides with this. Where do you think? And is there a place for things like metformin? And then there's a new one, I can't remember what it's called that my mom just mentioned to me. I'm blanking on the name. Another pharmaceutical for diabetes or for prediabetes. How do you feel about that? Metformin. I even know some biohackers are into metformin and microdosing that well.

Yeah. So there's two schools of thought on this. So Metformin, what it can do is some, some, some people use it in the longevity space. But metformin cleans up some of the mitochondria. But metformin is actually glucophage. And so what glucophage does is it's, it's, it basically helps regulate some of that insulin resistance. So you have a little better receptivity which can draw, bring down the blood sugar. But unfortunately what it also does is, is because it's kind of cleaning up some of the mitochondria, it can be pretty toxic really fast. And then people can get like, you know, stomach issues. The nausea is like the worst. A lot of my patients complain about that. And then some of the others, if, if you start moving into some of these, these, you know, more like glucophage related type treatments outside of metformin that are a little stronger. You just see I typically see more and more side effects from it and.

Wow.

It's better than not treating it by all means. But it's something that you have to take very seriously. And just back to the blood lab levels and we'll jump into the peptides because the GLP1s are probably.

Yeah, I mean that's what I want to definitely talk about. Yes.

Yeah, that's going to be a fun one to discuss. But, but some of the things that you'll see in the studies is if your blood sugar 5.7, then the research shows, and this just came out about a year ago, you will live four and a half years of a shorter lifespan. So your lifespan shrinks by four and a half years just with hemoglobin A1C at 5.7. But think of your health span and then for every tenth of a point, every decimal that you have higher on the hemoglobin A1C, you're taking off years of your Life. And so it's not just a matter of lifespan either, but it's your health span. And so by relying on these medications, they have very dangerous side effects. And I think there's a better way of working on that kind of MTOR and AMPK pathway that a lot of longevity experts are using. And we can get into some of those treatments as well.

So when you say that, is that the GLP microdosing or is that something different?

It's both.

Okay, so there's. So let's talk about that a minute. Because when I say GLPs, what most people think of is Ozempic for weight loss. And that's right where they go to Ozempic for weight loss. And I want to talk a little bit first about the history of Ozempic. This was originally a diabetes medicine. Can you just talk a little bit about the history of it first and then how it became a weight loss drug? And then I want to get into the microdosing and what's different there?

Yeah. If you look at GLP1 and if you just for those of you who are like love Google or love pathophysiology, you just plug in, what are the benefits of glucagon like peptide 1? And there's, you know, there's a few of them, but, but specific. What it is is it's neuro. Protects your brain from damage. It also protects your kidneys, it protects your heart. And the reason why it's so powerful is it also turns off our appetite. And if you think of what happened, has happened to us in the last hundred years is we have light all the time, we have food all the time. And so our appetite has gotten dysregulated. And so one of the things that that GLP1s do is they let you know when you're full. And one of my Japanese doctors, Dr. Mayakawa, she used to say, the greatest sin you can commit on your body is to overeat. And, you know, not knowing all the, you know, kind of the metabolic pathways at the time, I kind of laugh. I'm like, well, I may make it to heaven after all, you know, I was like, this is good news. But now I realize what she meant is there's such like this metabolic overload. And then you start dysregulating your GOP1 cycle. So you turn it off. The more you overeat, then the more you think you need to eat.

Totally.

Some people say, oh, you're stretching out your stomach, but that's not it at all. It's the GOP one. So it's a really powerful hormone. And actually when they had it approved as a drug, it was approved to treat diabetes, not obesity. And that's where everybody.

Type 2 diabetes. Type 2. So your blood sugar is already chronically high. Yes.

Yes, that's it. Yep. And so it wasn't until they started, like, going deeper into it, and now we have, like, a Manjuro, which is Tirzepatide, so that's a GOP one and gip. So it's two peptides combined. And now that one is approved to treat obesity, which we have a massive epidemic of it in our society.

Was it almost found by accident to treat obesity? Because originally it's for type 2 diabetes, and then they found it was a, like a byproduct, became weight loss. So then it crossed over kind of first off, label for weight loss is that. Okay, so when somebody does this for weight loss, which, for the record, I'm not against GLPs at all. In fact, I think they are a huge breakthrough in a lot of different reasons for people. And I'm somebody who considers myself a fat loss expert, so I teach the diet and the workouts and all the things, and I still think there's a huge place for GLPs at different levels. What I think there's a big confusion around, and I want to bring these up. One, there's the myth that people are cheating by using Ozempic, and I want to talk about that. And then I also want to talk about the amount that people do in GLPs because we don't necessarily need to use the standard prescribed dosage to get the results in blood sugar and even in craving control and weight loss. I want to talk about those two things with this.

Great. Well, I think you nailed on. And. And this is controversial because, you know, we've used these peptides before. It was Ozembic. I mean, we've. We've used GLP1s, but if you look at the dosing like Ozembic, for example, when you have the preloaded syringes and in GLP1s, as Natalie and I have been talking, they're naturally occurring in your body. And so you can't patent something. You can't say, hey, I discovered this, therefore it's mine. But it's like it's already there.

It's already there.

But what you can patent is the administration of it. And so if you look at the administration, that dose, in my opinion, is about 10 times higher than what you'd want to be using. And, and in some cases, don't get me wrong, you do, you may need to use it at a higher dose temporarily. But once you're on this drug, the pharmaceutical companies, they love this drug. They're like Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, they're like, please, let's administer this to as many people as possible. Never get them off. And then now they're going after kids, you know, like as young as six. And it's like, hey, I don't think their GOP one's broke. I think, no, that we're feeding them is the, the biggest risk.

So, so let' about obesity and then let's talk about the blood sugar and somebody that's not obese for people that are actually obese, so they are chronically obese. And I believe there is a genetic component going on there. I don't believe people are just overeating. That is not my belief set. So if, if someone's believing that, that's not what I'm talking about right now. Somebody has a genetic marker that they have this obesity issue. What is a proper dose for them to start out? Is that very dependent on person? And how do they know if this is being effective and they're doing it safely? Let's start with that.

Well, and this is challenging for me to get into specifics, but because I don't advise anybody to just go and purchase any kind of peptide, over the counter, peptide sciences, whatever, make sure you're working with a team of physicians who actually knows peptides, knows how to dose them, knows that you don't ever want to use a GOP one alone. You want to add in other peptides with it and we can get into those stacks. But if you, kind of a general place to start would be like, if you have a 5 milligram bottle, then you may want to be doing like 0.10 units in the beginning every week. And then you want to slowly pick it up. And if you go off the GLP1s then, then you need to start at a lower dose again and then move up if you're trying to lose weight. But the, the, because the pens start.

With, I believe it's like a 12.5 starting. Right. So is that, do you, in your opinion, is that pen amount too high?

Oh, it's. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like you're going down to like not even 10 of that amount.

Wow. So this is interesting. And because a lot of people have tried these and they get so sick. And this is why it's too high of a dose.

Way too high. Yeah. It's like you can drink too much water and die from that faster than you can from being dehydrated.

So it's why in your opinion do they start at such a high dose? What is the rationale behind that?

I think the rationale is to kickstart the body as quickly as possible and get that person. It almost makes you dependent on the drug when you go a high dose up front. And so now your pancreas is going to need it because now that pathway is already overexpressed. So you're turning on the genes so you have more expression of GLP1. And I almost wonder if it's almost like a crutch. But there's also some studies that they found and they're working with people who have had, they're incredibly sick. I mean they have metabolic disease times 10 other diseases. And so for those individuals to have the result they had to be on a higher dose as well. If you don't fall into that camp, it's very dangerous to do the same type of dosing.

Now let's talk about the other person. The person that is not obese but they have these metabolic markers creeping up up their blood sugar. Is that borderline and microdosing for them, what does that look like and is that something you suggest to people?

Well, you know, once again it depends, but absolutely, I think microdosing the GLP1s. Every week I see a new study that comes out and they're showing all these, these benefits and even though there's all the, the things on social media that you and I see where it's like, oh, they're, they've got ozembic face or they've, you know, I think you use the word cheating. You know, it's like because I think you've helped like a million people lose. I mean it' a ridiculous amount. How many people have you helped?

Over 250, 000.

Over 2. Yes. It's amazing what you've been able to do. And so someone like you, I'm impressed because you're actually open minded to it. You're not on the bandwagon of like, you know, everything's evil if it's, if you're, you know, manipulating chemistry at all in the body. But I think if someone's looking to microdose it once again you want to see where your blood sugar levels are because you can have, have too low blood sugar. You also want to see the protein consumption that you're able to consume, because if you are not getting your protein consumption in now you get on a GLP1, the chances of you actually consuming the the right quantities are going to be very low.

Because what. And what Reagan is talking about here is if you do a GLP one and you depending on your dose, but your cravings go down, your hunger goes down, so then what happens is you're working, you need to eat. And when you don't really want to eat, the last thing you're probably reaching for is protein. And then the problem is we start just losing calories and losing mass, and that taps into muscle, which is a whole problem. And that's when we see that ozempic face or that radical weight loss. So one of the most critical things, I think, for anyone doing GLPs is to be making sure you are really hyper focusing on your protein and on lifting weights to preserve and. And retain muscle.

Couldn't agree more. And one thing that makes GLPs work just a little bit better is because it's slowing gastric motility. And so if you have gut issues, if you're already constipated, you want to fix your gut, you want to fix all the detox pathways. So that's where, you know, you talk a lot about detoxification. Working on the kidneys, the liver, the.

Colon, and you got to poop every day because you don't want to be on glp slowing that. And then you're not going to the bathroom. That's the problem too.

Yep, exactly.

You got to get that dialed in. And that's why when they say things like, you can't be on GLPs before surgery, that's all related to that because you don't want to. You're slowing your gastric emptying, you're slowing all that. You're you. You're gonna slow how anesthesia works in your body. So there's a lot of little nitpicky things you gotta look at with that. But I think this is super cutting edge. I think what we have some work to do on the education side is the dosing of it, because I think it's not a one size fits all. And unfortunately, a lot of these prescriptions are.

Couldn't agree more. And now there's, you know, there's oral versions that have been available for semaglutide or semaglutide or now we've got it for tirzepatide. And tirzepatide is two peptides. And what I found, you know, we've been working with peptides for over a decade. What I found is typically when you stack peptides, not only do you get a better benefit from all of them across the board, but there's less side effects. And so if you look at semaglutide versus tirzepatide, the side effect profile is so much better on the tirzepatide. And then there's a new kind of what we call a triple agonist that, that we've been using.

Yeah, you told that one called that.

You said that's the retatrutide. And the studies have shown this one's three peptides. So it's the GOP one, it's GIP and then it's glucagon. And if you use these separately, they just don't work and there's different side effects. But when you combine those together, it's amazing. And especially if you can put in like a BPC157 or KPV and then you have like some kind of growth hormone releasing peptide or like a myostatin inhibitor like ACE31. See that people actually can gain muscle because the biggest anabolic hormone in our body is insulin. And if you become more insulin sensitive, you're going to build muscle. And that's, you know, when everyone talks about the muscle wasting, I'm like, you're, you're missing the whole mark. Actually what it does is because people aren't hungry, they're not eating and, and so of course you're going to lose muscle. And if they weigh, if they lose 50 pounds naturally, your body doesn't need that additional muscle to move around all that weight.

Anyone? That's really super anti these peptides, especially the GLPs. I'm just going to encourage you to just really open your mind to this because that's like saying you're anti insulin for diabetics. This is something our body already is making and I think we are being really harsh to say that this is just, just like this is cheating or denying. This is really, this is one of the hugest science breakthroughs I've seen in health is glps. I think it could end the obesity epidemic if done right.

Couldn't agree more. And that's our go to until we can actually fix the food supply. And the thing that we have not had is we haven't had the right food supply. And fortunately we've got this window where hopefully we do a lot of healing in our country.

Yes, yes, for sure. Let's talk about. Well actually let me ask you about that before I jump into my next question on some, some of these other peptides that you just mentioned when you say that about food supply. And I know this might sound like a basic question, but I want to make sure, because we've got all different listeners here, what are the main things in our food supply? If you could wave a magic wand and you thought, think these are the most critical things that we've got to address right now. What are those things?

Probably the first thing would be just any of the artificial sweeteners, dyes, all those things that make food look really pretty, if you could just get rid of those things. I think that from a neural inflammatory perspective, we just make better decisions because that manipulates so much in our brain.

See, people are in denial about that too. Can you explain that a little bit more? Because they say, well, FDA approved, red number whatever or blue number whatever. What is that actually doing to our body?

Yeah, FDA approved is, it's kind of a loaded gun because a lot of these chemicals, they look, look similar enough to something else that the FDA has approved for safety. But, but it's the FDA and the EPA that you have to look at. But they don't have time to look at all the different chemical structures. And maybe we've analyzed about 20% of them is all. So there's a risk. And even if something is shown to be carcinogenic and because there's so many interests, there's the, if you follow the money, you'll see where you know you'll find the source. But you'll see that just because they're carcinogenic, they'll claim that at lower amounts it's fine, it's very stable, it's well tolerated. You can't prove that it creates cancer. There's other causes. But at the end of the day, if we just kept food real. And if you look at Europe. So one of my clients, good friend, he runs Burger Kings and I know it's like he's a capitalist. I mean, he's got a venture capital fund and they, they purchase, they purchase different business opportunities because they have billions of dollars of, in this fund. One of them that's interesting is, is he says the Burger King. And I'm not advocating Burger King by any means, but.

Right.

What you get in Europe at Burger King is different. It's, it's completely a different looking food when you go to the United States.

Wow.

Because in Europe it's illegal. Like you go to France and a baguette is four ingredients and if you mess with that like you're. They make a big fuss out of it. They protect their food and there's a reason why you can go to Europe and you can, you can eat all the things and lose weight or feel better versus coming back to the United States. So I think just getting back to the roots of what food is and glyphosate is, I mean that's why I'm here today. Because I was exposed to so much Roundup growing up on a farm, it destroyed my immune system and you know, without. Now I'm grateful for it because it gave me a totally of experience that I wouldn't have had otherwise. But if we could get rid of glyphosate, our guts would be so much better, our immune system would be. Our liver could actually detoxify. I mean there's just, there's just those small things that make such a big difference.

Makes a big difference. Let's get back to peptides for a minute. You mentioned a few. I want to ask you specifically about BPC157 is one that people keep hearing about and it gets a little confusing on. Do you take an oral, do you do an injection? Who needs it and why? I do personally use BPC157. I've done both. I do, did the, the pills that you swallow. I also now do an injection weekly for it for inflammation. Can you share your opinion about BPC157 and who is it for?

Yeah, so I prescribed over 5000 patients with BPC. And so what you'll see is the oral version is great if it's the argonate salt. So there's very few even compounding pharmacies, you know, certified registered FDA pharmacy, FDA overseen pharmacies and licensed, licensed pharmacies that make the arginate. But that's more stable for the gut and it mimics more of the expression of the BPC that your body's already making. So it's body protective complex. And what you'll see is it helps tighten the junctions in your gut so you have less inflammation from the foods you eat. You'll also experience like I have clients who have had heartburn or acid reflux for almost their entire adult life. And BPC is the thing, the very peptide that helps mitigate. When you're looking at the injections, the BPC157, there's different variants of it. So a lot of what you get online is fragments of BPC and sometimes those can be contaminated. But if you have the right Version, you're going to see an acetyl group on these covalent bonds. And that acetyl group actually creates a better expression of the bpc, so you can have better healing of the connective tissue. Like you said, for recovery, you'll find that it's like, oh, I didn't. Don't even feel like I worked out yesterday, even though it was a slugfest.

Because so for me, my knee. Knees have been bothering me. I don't even inject it near my knee. And I notice the difference doing it, which is wild. So I don't even. I don't know how that worked, but it did.

So, yeah, so just think of peptides is they're just these little. These protein shapes. They're folded in in just the perfect way to turn on genes. And so when you turn on the genes that BPC157 turns on, you're getting these. These vascular and endothelial growth factors. You get nitric oxide production, and then that goes systemic. That's why you use a tiny amount. But it makes a big difference overall.

Should you be injecting BPC157 near an injury, does it matter where you inject it? As long as you're putting it in fat, does it matter?

We found that if you can drop it right into the area where the tissue is injured, it's great. But most of you do not have an ultrasound to guide it where it needs to go. So. Yeah, but if it's a shoulder injury, go ahead, inject it around.

But, like, I could put it near my knee, for example, and that would probably be better. And just putting it in my stomach. Okay, got it. Let's talk about some more. And that's another one that's gotten a lot of attention lately. I have tried to take some more, and it makes me so flipping hungry, Reagan. I can't do it. Like, I wake up ravenous. Like, I want to go raid my refrigerator. What's going on with the moral? And it's a growth hormone. It's a natural growth hormone. Why is it recommended? And I'm personally not taking it, because it makes me too hungry. What's going on there?

Yeah, and watch your REM sleep on. Sir. Morelling. Because the thing that you want to do, if you're using any growth hormone releasing peptides, and these are great, there's over a hundred of them right now. There's about maybe 25 that we use on a regular basis, but you want to use Ipamorelin with it, so there's two pathways on the growth hormone cycle. So. So the other, the, the pathway that sermorelin's hitting is the growth hormone pathway, which triggers a lot of hunger. The other side is the ghrelin pathways. So if you use ipamorelin, it's a somatostatin inhibitor. It also changes the ghrelin expression so you don't have near the hunger. But you get about seven times greater benefits of growth hormone just by stacking that in.

So if I want to take it, I'm going to. I need to add that in.

That's what's missing is the. I think EPAM is probably the safest and you could develop an immunogenic response to some of these growth hormone peptides, which means like you're. You can have like some elevated heart rate. But if you add ipamorelin or just you ipamorelin alone, it seems to be.

Incredibly safe because I just said that. Let me just go a little deeper here because people probably like, why did you try that? Why did you. I'm. I'm like in a human. I'm a human experiment. I like to try things. I like to know what I'm before I'm talking about something. So I do try things a lot. That's just who I am. And I also feel everything. So I'm really quick to know if something's working or not working or how I get like every possible side effect. But the reason I wanted to try it is because it should help with muscle. And we have sarcopenia. We lose muscle as we age. And I wanted to be able to maintain that. And I am on bioidentical hormone replacement. But my fear with growth hormone, with taking Samora Lana. I'm not even pronouncing it right. Maybe this is unjust. But let me ask this. My fear is that if you are helping to retain muscle or to help it's a growth hormone, could that also grow tumors? Could that also grow things we don't want?

Yeah, I think it's a great question that you need to look at because MTOR is the. That's the growth gene. That's where you can get big and muscly. And that's where they looked at rapamycin. It turns off that MTOR expression in the gene. And so growth hormone is. Is triggering mtor. And MTOR is what researchers have found can feed cancer and even IGF1. People who have cancer, typically their IGF of 1 levels are too high. So anytime you're using those, you want to cycle on and cycle off of those and if you're on growth hormone itself, if you're using the hormone structure, a hormone is a long term communication network, whereas a peptides is short term communication. So most peptides are metabolized in five to seven minutes. With Sermorelin, for example, you want to do it in a fasted state, you know, 90 minutes, you know, after your last meal. Yeah, exactly. Or first thing in the morning. But if you're taking growth hormone, it's always there. So that MTOR is continually expressed. So I look at it and I say, well, maybe five days on, two.

Days off is cycling it. Yeah, that makes sense.

But you always want to also look at using five Amino One MQ mod, SC, Human and or SS31. These are mitochondrial peptides that activate AMPK that other side of the cycle. So there's, there's very safe ways of doing this where you, and you'll actually get more benefits from the growth hormone side. Because what 501MQ does is you get better muscle contractilities and you also have better energy and you feel more light on your feet. Like that proprioception, you know, when you're young, like did you do dancing or anything?

Of course. All of it.

Yeah, all of it. Right, yeah. And so you probably don't feel as quick on your feet now as you did when you're younger. But you add in 5amino 1 and Q with, with some of these growth hormone socratagogues, you're going to feel that same. Natalie Jill, 20 years.

One of the fun peptides I just learned about recently, I'm not doing this one, but everyone that I see that's tan and like you, Reagan, I'm like, are you taking melanitan? And some of my friends that I know work with you. What is melanitan and why are people loving this thing?

Oh, well, well, you've got this pathway in your body. It's called your MSA pathway. So it's a melanocortin pathway. And what it does is if you stimulate it, you get these, this melanocyte production. And melanocytes are great for the hair, great for the skin, but the melanin that gets produced causes a natural tanning with very little time in the sun. And the other thing on the, on the flip side of it is it creates better protection against mold. So there's Michael everywhere. So I don't just take it for the tanning, however. I like that because if you look at the, the more we use sunscreen, the higher our skin.

Sure.

And with just a little Bit of melanitan. There's Melanitan one, there's Melanitan two. I won't get into all the details, but. But the other thing is it's also a sexual rejuvenator. I mean, in the studies, they found that at a certain dose. There's a few men in the studies that they had erections and that lasted longer than 30 hours.

Oh, my gosh. That's a little excessive.

Don't overdose this one, but that's a little excessive.

The reason I don't want to try a melanitan is it also would make your brown spots darker. And us women, we don't want brown spots. So, like, if we have that kind of skin, I don't want them darker. That's why I don't, you know, for.

The record, it goes away. You can stay on it, but you want to, you know, because you dose it, you build up a threshold maybe after 10 to 14 days, and then you just do a tiny amount once a week and. And you can stay there, but it takes about 90 days before those dark spots mellow out. Okay, you can make it to the rainy days. You'll be fine.

You just look tan. One of my friends is like super tan, and she's taking. I'm always. She gets got back from a vacation all the time. But she said that it's because of that peptide that you gave her. What are some other that I'm missing, like, right now that we need to know about? And that question's one of them. And the other question is, when should peptides come on board? Because I've got a lot of different listeners, different stages. When is this important? Or like, you don't need to worry about this right now.

Well, I think, you know, so the first thing. What peptides did we miss? I mentioned some of the mitochondrial peptides. They're the most underutilized, beautiful medicine that is on the planet, in my opinion. The other thing is, is, is there's peptides that you can use for the immune response. SO THYMOS and Alpha 1LL37. These are peptides that, that almost every person needs. Because we have so many infections coming at us because our gut is, you know, we go back to the source, you know, sure. You're eating, you know, foods that are not real foods, and that's disrupting the gut biome, which impacts your immune system. And using the peptide LL37, which is a Cathy, it can break through biofilms, it eradicates, you know, molds, yeast, anything in the mycotoxin. Family, but it also can take care of Lyme, which we see a lot of Lyme disease. And then it can take out all the bacteria that you don't want and it allows your good bacteria to flourish. This will be a peptide you'll probably hear more about in the future.

Okay.

And if you stack it with thymos and Alpha one, that's your best peptide for retraining your white blood cells. Because as we age, our thymus gland gets smaller and smaller and our immune systems become less and less responsive. And so this is where Thymus and Alpha 1 can help protect you against any kind of infection or illness because it creates more intelligence in your immune system.

That's amazing. When should peptides become on come on board? When is this? Like you're not even in this conversation yet. Do you think there's a place for everything? And then will regular doctors do you think ever, will they ever be talking about these?

Well, there's more and more. Absolutely. The peptides are so huge. I mean, I created an educational peptide course for the doctors in my group, group Go Wellness. And we've had over 150 go through it. But I created it in 2019 before peptides were a big thing because they were just coming on and I got so tired of texting all the doctors. This is how you do it. But the best time for a patient to get involved is if anyone struggles with willpower at any time in their healing journey, which is 100% of the time, you can bring peptides in and they accelerate the progress faster. So I found that. And you've worked with far more clients than I have on weight loss. So I may be wrong, but I found that just by restricting someone's diet, getting them off the foods, having them eat this, it does require a certain amount of mental capacity and energy. And the attrition rate's too high. People can't comply. But when you can use like a GLP1 or when you throw in, you know, recovery blends like Thymos and Beta 4, BPC157, where people start exercising and moving their body and they're not sore the next day, they stay motivated and they see results faster.

Yes.

And so I like using them right out of the gates because it gets willpower out of the way and then I can just go right for what they're looking for.

You nailed it right there. And that is why I'm a huge fan of the low level microdosing of GLPs and BPC157. Because if I can get people out of pain and get the willpower out of the question, then they're going to move more and they're going to eat better. So it's like to me, I'm like, why would every weight loss fitness coach on the planet, nutritionist not want to learn more about these? Like I don't understand. I just, it's baffles me.

Yeah. And if it's done properly, I think that's the risk is as you know, if you don't do it properly then things could end up worse.

Yes.

But man, if you do it the right way.

Yes.

It's a life changing is an understatement.

Now I will tell you, being from the fitness industry, there are some fitness professionals threatened to by their careers. They're like, oh well that's it's going to go away. And I encourage them to look at this differently because I feel anyone on GLPS needs the education about fitness and nutrition too. So it's actually will help that too. So. Well, this has been fascinating, Reagan. I, I love this. Where can people find you? Where do you want them to go and how do they work with you? If they want to work with you, you.

Well, the probably the best is ageless future.

Ageless future. Okay.

Yep. And I can provide a link in the show notes that we made great listeners specifically so they'll get front of the line. We're, we're very busy but the first step we'll do is make sure they get their blood labs ran.

Okay.

Yeah, they can go to agelessfuture.com and.

I will put a specific link in the show notes that gets you to lets you cut the line. If you want to talk with, with Reagan here. Um, and then where on social media can I follow you? Are you on social media? Do you do much on social media?

LinkedIn. Just look up Reagan Archbold on LinkedIn and I'd love to connect with anybody there. That's the best format for me.

And if you're not watching on YouTube, if you're listening on the podcast, Reagan is like super fit, like crazy lean, super fit. He knows what he's talking about. He looks like he's 20 and he's not 20. So this guy knows what he's doing. And I met him before he got all super crazy popular. He's always been super knowledgeable and helpful. Well, thank you, Reagan. We're going to stay on and let the community ask you questions. Questions for listeners. Thanks for joining us in and we'll see you on the next show.

Awesome. Thank you.