Celebrity Doctor: Honesty About Ozempic! Peptides Will Drastically Improve Your Health (Masterclass)

Who doesn't want to look and feel their best and perform their best, Right? Like, I want that for everyone. Everyone is clamoring for this.

Ozempic.

Ozempic. Ozempic. It is a peptide. And what I like about it is that it's predictable and reliable and safe. We have more disease than ever before. More cancer, more autoimmune disease, more neurodegenerative disease. So I think peptides are a way for the body just to clean some of that up and become efficient. They've just been such an amazing tool. We see amazing results from people losing weight, getting stronger, thinking more clearly, helping with inflammation, boosting the immune system, helping with skin repair, on and on and on.

What's your deepest concern there?

That they'll be, you know, taken away.

Have you already seen clues of that?

Yes.

Many of us that are sprinting to get the results as fast as we can, we're just missing the journey.

If you're trying to get strong to be your best self, what is the urgency of you getting there? Leading our best life, to me is about being happy, finding purpose, and being at peace. But true peace can never be taken away from you. There is no external circumstance whether you have cancer, whether you have Parkinson's, whether you lost someone you love. And so you can't force anything because when you try to force something, it will always break.

Foreign. Hey, it's Josh. Before we get into this episode, I have a small yet powerful favor to ask of you. The community has been growing by thousands lately, and the bigger the tribe, the bigger names of world class guests we can have on this podcast that I can bring to you from my heart, from my curiosity so you can have more wellness and wisdom in your life. Would you please be so kind as to hit the subscribe button wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast. It'll allow us to rise naturally and in the algorithms based on your 2 second act of generosity by you just tapping that little subscribe button wherever you're viewing or hearing this episode. Thank you so much. It means the world to me and our entire team here at Wellness and Wisdom. Now, enjoy the podcast.

Craig.

Welcome to the podcast, man. We've been marinating on this for about four months. I'm so excited to have you on and honored.

Thank you, Josh. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a. It's a privilege and honor to be here with you and I appreciate you having me on for sure.

Yeah. I'm so fascinated with your world and I'm really fascinated to jump into this topic of peptides for this really mini masterclass. Maybe it'll turn into a major masterclass. But when I first got introduced to you by our mutual friend Luke Story, Luke had had incredible results with you. I am now down £19, which I'm officially saying thank you so much. In combination with my food choices, my hot and cold therapy, my exercise, and also the conscious. And I say conscious, underlined the conscious use of peptides, man. So for people that don't know, just give us the skinny. Like, float 30,000ft, Craig, above your life and just tell us the abbreviated story, because I want to unpack all the depths of you on this podcast. I can really feel your heart in what you do, and I felt your heart in how you work with me, too. But if you were to float above your timeline and just say, hey, what was the turning moment when I actually got involved in this space of performance medicine, functional medicine, peptides, Was there a moment for you or was it more like an amalgamation of God's breadcrumbs that you followed?

It was probably both. But I think the big moment was when we started working with the nutrient nad. And so we started working with that earlier than most, probably, I don't know, eight years ago or so. I was privy to get the original NAD IV protocol from the gentleman who brought it to the United States. And so, not to get too far into that story, but that was a real honor that he came to me and said, hey, I need some help with this. He wasn't a physician, but he recognized the value of nad. We started testing it, and once we started utilizing nad, that's kind of what put us on the map in terms of how effective we could be with working with our clients. That was probably 2016 or so. And from there, it's just been an amazing ride of, you know, getting to work with these, you know, sophisticated tools, peptides being one of them, you know, sophisticated nutrients, bioidentical hormones, especially lab testing. And we really take pride in building those relationships and, you know, helping our clients find solutions. It's all about finding solutions.

So we're going to talk about some of the regulations and also, like, the pluses and the things to be aware of when it comes to all things peptides and everything else in your world, which is. It's a big world, man. You have your hands on a lot of different healing modalities. I wonder if you could flashback even further. Thing. I love podcasting. I always love to go deep into the heart and the soul of the guest. And so if you were to float back. I know that your. I believe your father and even your grandfather was involved in medicine. Do you feel like that's being. They were both physicians. Is that being epigenetically expressed through you? Do you feel like that was your soul karma in some way that you came into the world to fulfill?

A little bit. I mean, the interesting story about my dad's dad, who's my grandfather, who never met my mom, could not get pregnant when she married my dad, and so they adopted two children. And then my grandfather happened to. My dad's dad passed away, and one month later, I was conceived. And so I've been told by a lot of people that, like, not that I'm him reincarnated, but there's a spirit there. There's a connection that he's my kind of guardian angel. I've heard that from. From several people. So there's an interesting connection with him. He was a primary care physician working on the streets of Philadelphia neighborhoods, you know, carrying the little black bag, the traditional kind of older type of doctor. My dad's a radiologist. I can't say that, like, oh, when I was younger, had this sense of a spirit, of being a physician. But growing up with it, it's all I ever wanted to do and kind of set my sights on it and made it happen, thankfully.

I love your connection to your lineage. You know, we just had Teal Swan on the podcast, and she was talking about the ways in which we either accept our lineage or we reject our lineage, the psychosomatic, even spiritual connection to how disease actually manifests in the body through lineage or not. And it was so fascinating to me to understand that when I was doing research for our podcast, that medicine. It's really part of your dharma as a soul. It's really part of why you're here on planet Earth. Otherwise, you would not be having, Craig, the success that you're having.

True. No, I like that. I like that outlook. I believe in that, too. I mean, it's like anything. None of us are victims, and the struggles, we invite all of it in. And I have that outlook. I invite everything in, all the good, the bad, as a gift. For me, some of it's hard, some of it's stressful. Some we have to work through. And I kind of relay that with patients. I think one of the things I enjoy with patients, why I'm good at it, is because I can be authentic. Because we're not under the confines of insurance. We're not under the confines of, you know, working for someone Else we truly cherish the relationships we have, that we can do our best efforts and not worry that someone from the outside is going to come knock on the door and say, hey, what are you doing?

It's so important. And you're at this juxtaposition of, like, performance medicine, functional medicine, some would even say alternative medicine.

Sure.

But really, at the core of all medicine is the promise and really the promotion of healing. That that's really what you are and how you have embodied that in your work. So how do you explain where you. Where you sit at this confluence of different healing practices? If you. If you had to explain it in a few sentences, what is exactly that you do at that confluence?

Now, that's a good question. I've thought about this a lot recently, actually, to kind of help define what we do and how, you know, my lens of the world is different. So when I started my practice in 2006, I started a traditional primary care practice on family medicine. Trained, but I brought in the nutritional IVs. I don't know exactly why, but I just had a sense I want to do something a little bit outside the box. And once I started thinking that way, you know, like, how can I help my patients? That wasn't just confined to pharmaceutical medicine, referring them for surgery. So much opened up for me, and it was amazing. And I got so busy so quickly. I mean, I went from zero to 3,000 patients in a matter of, like, two years. It was just me. I got burnout, stressed out because I was seeing patients every seven minutes still under an insurance model. And I said, I can't do this. Like, this is not valuable for me. And so I restructured my whole practice went to just a direct pay model. Some people would call it concierge. I call it direct pay. And that worked. It was a stressful time because paying the bills and literally making ends meet was a struggle. But I rebuilt it and I stayed true to that. You know, I wanted to be a resource for people, but I needed to feel valuable in what I could bring to the relationship and how I could help people. I never loved functional medicine. Functional medicine to me was very similar to allopathic medicine or pharmaceutical medicine, where it's, you know, take this for that. What a lot of the functional doctors do is they just replace the pharmaceutical with nutraceuticals. And so as my practice evolved, what I've thought about is I kind of sit in the middle of three things. Number one is pharmaceutical medicine, conventional medicine. I'm not against writing medicine. I'm Not, I think there's a time and a place. I think it's way over utilized, harmful at times or many times. And so I'm not a huge fan of it, but I, I recognize there's some value. I also sit in, in the middle of the alternative functional medicine world. Again, don't really jive with their philosophy. And then the third component would be the health and fitness gurus who I'll get into, who are really, really focused on quantity. Right. Data tracking, measurements. Where I see myself fitting in the middle is I'm way more about quality. Right. Quality over quantity. Sure we do labs, sure we care about different assessments, but at the end of the day, leading our best life to me is about being happy, finding purpose and being at peace, you know, finding coherence. It's way more important than saying you're going to lift this weight or you know, run this race or I slept six hours, like at the end of the day, none of that stuff really matters if you don't have those other things.

There's a branch of medicine and I'm sure you've probably even dabbled in it quite a bit. And it's the neurological connection to psychoneuroimmunology, how thoughts become things.

Yes.

I'm so fascinated by that because I've been diving into personally for a book that I promise I'm gonna write at some point, but I want to do it right and I want to take five years, if it takes five years. And it's this study that was referenced in Africa and I'm curious your thoughts on this from a medical perspective as a jumping off point, by the way, for health span, lifespan and peptides. I think it's really important to understand that it's not just the air we breathe, the food that we eat and the water we drink, and even the smart supplementation that we take in. It's also what we were born with, what kind of trauma we came into the world with, what kind of relationships that we have that are attached to 1, 2, 3, 4 lineages back. Anyways, Craig, in this study in Africa, they traumatized the male father, the male mouse, I think it was a mouse or a rat. And we'll link it in the show notes today for our podcast. And they tracked that hormone response of cortisol and of other cascades of hormones. I'm not sure which they were, but they proved their theorem that four generations after the father was traumatized the rodent, they could actually pick up on the same stress response in the fourth generation offspring. And that was, by the way, with a mother rat rodent who was not traumatized. So how do you see that playing out in your practice? I'm sure it's why we actually come up with disease. It's why we have disease show up for us is because of these things that were given to us that maybe we don't even know about.

No, I think it's huge. And I think physical manifestation of disease really is just some emotional construct. For most things, it's some emotional thing that happened when we were younger, some trauma that happened in our childhood or something that happened in our lineage. Like you're saying from a different generation, from ancestors that's being passed through, that we're being given the opportunity to work with. Right. And so what I think about it, I mean, there's a lot of different directions people can go with that. But one of the problems with allopathic conventional medicine is the message of pain or the message of inflammation is a message. Right. And so those messages are actually the healing. That is the healing taking place when you have pain. That is the healing taking place when, when you're uncomfortable. And what we do in conventional medicine for other sectors of health and healing too is we try to, you know, diminish that or squash that. We try to do away with that. And that is why things I think just broadly and simplistically get, keep getting passed down. Because we're not giving a forum to, you know, empower people to actually deal with these things. Right. We just have a different perspective that, oh, if you have a headache, you need to take medicine to get rid of the headache as opposed to being like, where does this headache come from? What is this telling me? And I think that's missing in many of these conversations.

Yeah, it's like a top down approach versus a bottom up approach. And I think there's room for both. I mean, I'm sure in your world you probably prescribe both. You know, the cliff that we're standing at, that I think we're looking at now is is this massive, understood and also misunderstood valley of peptides. And it's something that I really didn't know too much about before I was connected to you. I had heard about it from my friends at the Mind Pump podcast. They've done a lot of content with peptides. Let's go really simplistic for people in this, in this very nuanced conversation of peptides.

We've been using peptides, I don't know, about six years now. And very simplistically Peptides are just chains of amino acids. So amino acids are the building block of humans. Right. And so they make neurotransmitters. They make. Help us make bones and cartilage and soft tissue and help all of our tissues and really solid structures. That's amino acids. If we stack them together in different combinations, we get a peptide, we call it a peptide if it's 40amino acids or less, and then we call it a protein if it's 41amino acids or more. And so, you know, whether it's a protein, a peptide or a hormone, I just think of them all similar. They're messengers. They're messengers. So even getting back to what you were saying about the psycho neuroimmunology is you can have thoughts and feelings that we then physically, you know, relay in our body through things just like peptides. That's how it works. Yeah, it's very real.

I think of. And these, these messages are happening how many times per second? Uncountable times per second.

Right, sure.

And a lot of these peptides, and this is what I'd love clarity on and also for. For the audience to understand too, that they mimic the functions of other naturally occurring peptides in the body. Right. When you're taking exogenous versus endogenous, can you unwrap that a little bit?

Yeah. The best example probably to talk about that is growth hormone. So growth hormone is an anabolic hormone released by the posterior pituitary part of our brain that kind of is in charge of releasing hormones, growth hormones, anabolic in nature because it's helpful for healing, mending, rejuvenating tissue. It's released in. For this example, growth hormone is secreted for most people around 10pm and so we pulse it between the hours of 10pm and 2am that's why, you know, the common knowledge is, oh, be asleep at. During those hours, because then you get exposure to growth hormone. Well, growth hormone has a very short half life. So it travels in the bloodstream down to the liver, and the liver makes this substance called insulin, like growth factor one or IGF one. So what became popular and how we got into peptides first is from the competitive CrossFit community who started using growth hormone releasing peptides. These were substances. The big one is something called semirelin, which, where if you inject it into your skin or under your skin subcutaneously, it will then travel to your pituitary and say, you know, bind to receptors and push out some growth hormone. So it mimics the effect of growth hormone. It's also a bit of a push, but because it's a, you know, just less than 40, 40 or less Amino acids, very small molecule. So we what the beauty of peptides, which I would love to stress is so, so, so, so safe. I mean it's so rare to see any sort of side effect, let alone negative side effect. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's super rare because these molecules are really small. And because molecules are really small, they can signal without any sort of harsh side effects. And so that's a really good example. So you know, growth hormone releasing peptides, there's a lot of them. Now a popular one's called Tessamorelin, which is a fat burning peptide that people inject and travels up to the brain, says put out growth hormone, that growth hormone travels in the bloodstream. You're making insulin like growth factor one and you're helping to not only push out the growth hormone but you time when you push it out. So those two variables are really effective for people looking to lean out, get stronger recovery sleep, better, better skin, you know, all these kind of wonderful things that people aspire to get.

I mean at this point there's probably hundreds of peptides that are played with, but I'm sure you probably only use a good 50 to 30. How many peptides do you actually feel are efficacious right now for people in longevity performance medicine?

There's probably closer to 20 to 20 to 30 that are, you know, and there's, to your point, there's probably many, many more than that. But that are used routinely, it'd probably be between 20 and 30. Yeah.

In a very low level. Peptides are messengers, which I loved how you said that so simplistically. So why would the body need support in proper messaging in the first place?

Well, I mean, there's lots of reasons, right. One, you know, most people, I mean if we're going to be totally honest, think negative thoughts, right? So they cloud up, you know, their ability to be clear and coherent. They're eating food that's not good for them, whether it's processed or flat out toxic. We're exposed to heavy metals and you know, non native EMFs on a continual basis. You know, one thing that I enjoy talking about and thinking about is energy, right? And so we think like, and it's interesting to think about energy. Like why is it that when we become adults it's like we have to like ration our energy or even think about it. And I think, you know, we know the Physics, you know, paradigm that energy is never created or destroyed, just transformed. I think we all have plenty of energy. In fact most of us have too much energy. It's the wrong kind of energy and we don't know how to utilize it and we get stuck. So I think peptides are a way for the body just to clean some of that up and become efficient. We need help with that. We live under artificial light. Most people don't get out in the sun, most people don't get out in nature. They're not breathing appropriately. I mean there's all these things, they're not getting sleep and it just, you know, compounds, you know. And when you're in 25, you can handle it well, right? I mean you just can. You're young, metabolically, from a cortisol perspective, hormonally, you can bounce back quickly when you're 35, much less. So by the time you're 45 you're going to be feeling the effect of life. And it's not even like most of us will ever have a life or death situation, but boy, for most people it feels that way.

Yeah.

And that's I think just an accumulation and compounding of all the negatives.

That's so beautifully said. Yeah, we're not in our ancestors world anymore. They weren't being bathed in EMF and dealing with lack of nutrients from the soil and chemtrails and all the other crap that, that really, that's why you and what you do is so powerful. You're almost a shield in a way. You become a shield and you become a fortress for people to start taking care of their body in a way that quite possibly our ancestors never really had to worry about. In other words, we're not in our grandparents time anymore. They had it so good. They also had challenges. But I think it's a really beautiful place that we are now where we have technology that can actually help us. Look at you and I talking across the United States through a fricking camera and a computer. Like my grandpa would have been like this is so awesome. And we take it for granted every single day. So okay, let's go to a little bit more of a deep dive into this. It's the thing on everyone's mind right now. And it's Ozempic and tirzepatite. We've heard a lot about this in the media. I think Elon Musk was public about his use of Ozempic. Can you paint a picture of clarity between the difference of ozempic and tirzepatide and honestly, who they're even a fit for.

Yeah, I mean, it's been amazing over the last two years. What's, what's happened, you know, that class of medicine. And the generic name for ozempic is semi glutide. And then, sorry, tirzepatite is the generic name for manjiorno. And we started with semi glutide Ozempic. And what they found is it is a peptide, just like you're saying. But the pharmaceutical company got their hands on it and said, wow, when we're giving this to diabetics, we're seeing a lot of weight loss. So, you know, ozempic was never approved for weight loss, is Approved for type 2 diabetics or more blood sugar management. And then, you know, the FDA does not regulate what doctors can prescribe most medicines. Actually, people don't know this, but most medicines are prescribed off label, meaning they're never prescribed for what the FDA approves, but we're allowed to prescribe them. You know, we will obviously make sure things are safe. And so we started with ozempic semiglutide and yeah, it just took off. And the trajectory of that was crazy. Right behind that was manjiorna or tirzepatide. The biggest difference, I keep it simple, is manjiorno. Tirzepatide works on two different receptors by semaglutide, Ozempic works on one. And what that translates to for tirzepatide mounjiorno, you get faster weight loss with less side effects. And so to answer your question, who's this for? I mean, it's. It's almost like everybody. And I say that seriously, I mean, we take care of a lot of famous people, supermodels, politicians, athletes. Everyone is clamoring for this. And people would be surprised. You know, people are kind of like, oh, what's going on in Hollywood? And actors and actresses, I mean, it is so common. And what I like about it is that it's predictable and reliable and safe, you know, and so the way I look at it, who doesn't want to look and feel their best and perform their best, right? Like, I want that for everyone. So I know there's some people who are going to say, oh, it's not natural, I shouldn't do it. You should really put in the hard work and lose weight. I get it. But at the same time, my philosophy is I'd like to help people win the race first and then when it clicks for them, they're going to be committed to figuring it out after that. And that's their buy in. And so with Ozempic Manjiorno, that's what's happened. I mean, people who are on it who want to lose 10 pounds, 20 pounds and we have people who are losing 50 pounds. You know, my approach to it is I don't want it to be forever. I don't think really any pharmaceutical, I mean, very few are forever from go. And so we just start out with, hey, let's do this episodically. If you need to go back to it, great, but let's use it for its purpose, lose the weight and come off. We are learning some interesting things. I mean we have a, we are based here in Charleston, South Carolina. Then we also, I have a clinic open in London, England. And over there we're noticing some interesting things with the medicines in terms of people, you know, thinking about food differently, like they're not consumed with it. You know, London's a very social, you know, atmosphere people, a lot of big dinners and events. And my clients tell me they're just not thinking about food the same way. And that's powerful, right? It doesn't consume the energy to be when am I going to eat? What am I going to eat? So there's a lot of upside to this for sure.

I love the conversations you're talking about in London. That's so fascinating. Look at London. They're not necessarily. I know I'm blanketing statementing here, but the food culture there is fairly unhealthy. It seems like lots of beers and like bratwurst sandwiches with like blood sausage stacked on top have some interesting food over there, fried fish wrapped in newspaper.

They do, they do. But what I learned because I've been there a bunch in the last two years is their portions mandated are much smaller than we have here in the US and, and it's, and the quality, you know, again, I'm not saying 100%, but equality across the board is, is, you know, kind of cleaner than it is here in the US I mean a lot of people say that when they go to the uk, Europe, they can eat grains, they can eat things, bread that they don't normally do here. And a lot of that has to do with how it's processed.

I definitely, we went, I went to Italy in 2013 and I had no GI distress, I'm lactose intolerant. I was even eating like the buffalo mozzarella over there. There's just something to be said about where the food comes from and the micronutrient profile inside of that food here in America. It's really just a profit game and this is another point of contention that I'd love your take on. The profit game for food mirrors Craig. The profit game for peptides, they're really, whether it's the pharmaceutical industry, Big Food, the medical, the insurance triad, the broken machine that seems to run on the fuel of our souls in a way if we're not sovereign. This is what really hurts me because I think about my mom's health, my dad's health, my just lots of people that I've known throughout my life that they could have just created a different story if they knew that they could be liberated from the shackles that they just accepted as truth. And to be honest, many of those shackles are just given to our parents that give, that are then given to us. How would you describe what's really going on with the money back and forth that's happening right now with peptide specifically and how does that mirror exactly what's gone on with Big Food?

Well, it's, it's an interesting time. So you know, there's been some changes in the peptide space which we're trying to sort out and I think it's been driven again, this is just my personal opinion, I may be wrong. I think it's been driven by the success of Ozempic and Manjiorno that pharmaceutical companies recognize that there's massive success which means profit to them in more peptides and different peptides. And so the peptide space is changing and I think the origin of that comes from the pharmaceutical companies greed. Right. And I've had a lot of patients, you know, we don't work with insurance but they want to get their Ozempic or Manjiorno run through their insurance. They're like, it's great, you know, I only have to pay whatever, $50. But they don't realize that then their insurance company is ending up paying $1,000. Right? It's still being paid for and it's being paid for on a massive scale. What we do is we like to get the, you know, medicine, peptides compounded one, we can work with the dose better and fine tune it but also then it's going to be less expensive for people when we, when we're able to do that. So I think, you know, if we extend that what you just said to even being totally truthful as a country, United States spends the most money on healthcare and we aren't even close in terms of outcome. I mean I think the last time I looked. We're at like 72nd in the world, and we're not making any progress. Right. Like, if we're going to be really honest, more cancer, more autoimmune disease, more neurodegenerative disease, maybe heart disease is decreasing a little. But when you talk about these things, we're not being honest. Right. And so we have an entire system of programming that says, you know, and the other statistic I like to use is, and this is the truth, in our society, greater than 50% of adults are overweight, tired, depressed, and on multiple pharmaceuticals now. And so the model that's presented to people massively is get on some medicine, and that's the only way to do it. And then people don't feel empowered and they don't feel sovereign because they say, well, my doctor said this is my only choice. And again, not to knock doctors. I think most of them have good intentions, but they get wrapped up in the programming, too. We're probably. I mean, we saw it with COVID You know, it's like, what. What happened there, right? Doctors are the. Became the mouthpiece for the vaccine and the mandates and all this stuff is a very slippery slope. And it. But it's. It's important to bring up because I know you and I have talked about sovereignty. It is so important that people are able to be sovereign over the choices in their life and tying it back in when we have, you know, I don't know if people realize the largest lobby in the United States is the pharmaceutical lobby. It's the most powerful lobby. When in the mid-90s, when we went to direct to consumer advertising, it was like game over. It changed the entire landscape. And so now people feel the only way to be healthy is to be on multiple medicines. And if that were true, great. But like I said, people are tired, more tired, depressed, overweight, and we have more disease than ever before. We're going backwards. We're going backwards. So it's. It's a really interesting time.

Interesting is an understatement. Craig. I feel like. I feel like. I wonder how you feel. I feel like 20, 24among all years I've ever lived. I'll be 44 this year. Okay, this year. This year, to me, feels like the year of psyops coming to light. It really does. There's you. You've mentioned a few, but I'm just going to even go to things outside of our world, which is wellness. But look at De Beers and their diamond campaigns in the magazines in the early 1900s. That's where the whole buy your wife a $30,000 diamond ring came from. Same thing with conditioning around what a woman should do, what a man should do, a woman's worth, a man's worth. One could call it feminism and patriarchy. That's fine. Labels aside, we have been fed so much bullshit, it's almost like we as a society are a goose. And we have been, we have had our liver fattened by the force feeding tube. That is media, that is culture, that is society. And I wonder your intention with so many interviews that you do and just your intention with your wellness clinics now, you know, here and overseas, if you could wave a wand and change the narrative about, let's just say peptides, because there's only one, one battle we can fight at a time. True. What is the narrative that you would like people to understand about Peptides? And also what do most people get wrong about them?

So for me, the big thing is I want people to have access. Like I don't think anyone has the right to stand in the way of any of us trying things, right? There has to be some level of safety. I think we've reached that with peptides. Here's a big challenge, and this comes up a lot is we've been programmed to think that the only way to classify something as safe is to. For a pharmaceutical company to run a clinical study, right? Double blind, placebo, random controlled study and then find out the results and then publish those results. And the trouble with that is, you know, the scientific method that has been around for forever used to include anecdotal data as part of a legitimate way to test things, right? I'm a clinician, so I'm in the trenches every day for 20 years, whatever, seeing patients and testing things, obviously making sure. I don't want to recommend anything that's not safe. But I also don't know, right? I don't know how you're going to respond to something, how someone else is going to respond something. So I want people to try it, right? As long as it's safe, I want people to try it. And if we limit that based on, you know, I think I can say it better this way is I went to, this was many years ago, I gave a talk at a company about sleep and we were talking about the botanical herb Ashwagandha. Ashwagandha has been in the historical record for thousands of years, literally documented. And I said this is a great option for people to try. Very safe. Here's a dosage range, here's what you can Expect can help you calm down at night, you know, tune down your nervous system. And someone said, well, where's the study in ashwagandha? And I said, well, it's been in the historical record for thousands of years. Like that's more proof then, you know, getting 20 people together and saying this works or doesn't. He goes, no, no, no, we have to test it. And so that's where we are. That's the programming is we don't feel like we can get access until someone gives us permission. And I don't understand the permission, you know, like, that's confusing to me now. And I want people to know, like, we're all complicit in that. When we just sit there and be like, yeah, I can only do if my doctor does it or if my insurance company approves it. It's like, what? Like, why are we all choosing to be mediocre? Why is that? Okay? And so if I could waive my. I want people to have access to stuff, you know, and I think it's important for people to try stuff. That's the only way we learn. That's it.

There's no way to be healthy unless you have your life as an unfolding experiment. You know, in the quantified self movement, they have this term called N equals 1. An experiment of 1. And I think if we could apply that logic, Craig, to everything we do. Yes, Our peptide usage, the way that we experience our body and health and all aspects of the wellness pentagon, our. Our physical health, our mental health, our emotional health, our spiritual health, our connection to a higher power, if we don't actually do the work to try the things to put on the sweater and see if it itches, you know, to quote Rob Wolf, like, how are we ever going to know if it works for us? I think the logic here is, and I wonder how you see it from this place, if mommy and daddy or if big government or if big medicine, if someone outside of myself says that something is safe, well, then I can take a big breath. I can trust it too. But what if it's not? Look what we just went through with the COVID theater. And look at the results that have come out in quarter one of 2024, where these pharmaceutical companies are being annihilated for the lockdowns and the insanity that they pushed upon people with an experimental underline. Experimental jab. Just because medicine or mommy, daddy or big state says that something's safe, it doesn't mean it's safe at all. But there's some kind of bias that we have, Craig. There's some kind of psychological seeking that we have for safety. And if someone else tells me it's safe, well, then I don't have to use my mechanism of trust. I don't have to use my mechanism of intuition to figure out if something's safe or not. Therefore I outsource my sovereignty completely outside of myself for life. But there's another way. I mean, there has to be another way.

Well, I think what it comes down to is, you know, you can never get risk to zero, right? The only way you could do it, and even you really couldn't be. The only way, theoretically, is never to leave your house, right? Never be around other people, never expose yourself to anything in your environment. You'd have to live in a bubble. That's impossible. So if you can't get risk to zero, like, it's okay. I think what people don't appreciate, and again, making a generalization, plenty of people do, but plenty of people don't, is conflict and struggle and stress is part of the human condition. It's how we grow. We absolutely need it. And it's been very confusing. Like, I am totally fine with people choosing whatever path they want, but just let me choose my path as well. Like, we can agree to disagree, but that's gone away in such a polarized world where if we're disagreeing, we're enemies and it has to be emotional and there's villains. It's. It's gotten so twisted, right? And I think if we're okay with ourselves and having self worth and forgiving ourselves and loving ourselves, then we're going to be okay presenting ourselves to the world and helping others and contributing. You know, I think, not to get too philosophical and off this, but it ties in, is when people don't value themselves, right? And they don't have self worth and they don't have self, you know, love. What they tend to project is more of a negative framework and lens of the world. And they want to be controlling, right? And what they're projecting is their inferiority or their lack of control because they want to control. And that comes from, you know, not having, like you're saying with families that work on having values and kids, you know, it's not just about participating. Like that's not what life is, right? Like, you gotta try and you gotta fail. That's how you make progress.

The way I've learned it and how I've been teaching it in the BREATHE program and in the liberated life community is I've really been talking about. We gather, we apply, and then we embody. Now most importantly, we want to embody. Right, but, but the gathering is where everyone gets stuck, Craig. And I'm sure you've seen this where you may have a patient or even a movie star or like a high powered CEO that's like, hey doc, gimme the shortcut. Gimme the thing that's gonna get me the results so I don't have to change my mindset or my lifestyle. It's actually gonna shoot them in the foot. It's really in that n equals 1. That application phase of the arc of wellness that leads us to sustainable and permanent embodiment. Case in point. Right. Um, I'm very open about this. So my use of tirzepatide was something that came to me because of labs that getting and having chronic sleep deprivation with two children. It just became a lot. And like you said, I couldn't even see the finish line, let alone finish the race. And I find it, I find it quite interesting that there can be such a hard mindset against these purists in the fitness and wellness community that say things like, well, if you're doing peptides, you're cheating. If you're doing this, you're cheating. And I say to them, do you live in a house? Do you drink water, do you buy food at a grocery store? Like, aren't you cheating as well? How many things can we justify righteousness upon before we all can just know that we're all walking each other home, we're all giving each other support when needed. How do you see that conversation unfolding? I'm sure you've been challenged around peptide use, especially by the purist community.

Oh, for sure. And not just peptide use. Even into hormones, you know, men using testosterone. It's very common in people. Like, well, I don't want to rely on anything. The reality is we all rely on lots of things all the time. And that's great. And it's also good to ask for help. Like that's being vulnerable and putting yourself out there and saying, I'm not perfect and I can't do it on my own and I need help is a really endearing quality. It makes you a better person and builds your character and integrity. But with peptides, for sure, people are, there's a lot of pushback. Being like, you know, yeah, this is, this is a cheat code for you. It's not fair. Guess what? Life's not fair. Right? Like, never was life intended to be fair. I don't Understand what's wrong with wanting to, you know, look your best, feel your best, and perform your best, like, period. Right. And if that, as long as you're not out there actively hurting someone, then let's leave each other alone and be supportive.

Yeah.

As opposed to trying to tear each other down and have some moral value attached to what we want to do in life. Like, that doesn't make any sense to me.

The morality conflict and really the morality crisis. We had a guest on the show, Scott Jackson, and he was talking about the meta crisis. Part of the meta crisis is my morality is far superior than yours, therefore you should believe and do what I believe and do. But just like we all have a unique thumbprint, Craig, we all have unique biochemical individuality with unique stressors in our lives. So there's no one statement, one blanket, one peptide for anyone. There's a process, man. And I think this is really a soul journey for all the patients, all the clients that you have. Is there a common thread, though? Is there something where no matter if they're an athlete, an everyday mom and dad, someone like myself, like a busy entrepreneur, like, lots of stress, lots of responsibility, Is there a common thread when someone is even having an open mind or an open heart to Peptides, do you see a commonality there?

I think the commonality, you know, my patients tend to be the kind of peak performers in life, wanting an edge. I think it's that I think people who are looking for, you know, I want to do this better, whether that's, I want to be more productive at my job, I want to sleep better, I want to lose weight. People are sovereign over that. Right. And it goes back to that sovereignty they choose. They raise their hand, they say, I'm ready for more. And I think we should applaud that. You know, I think, again, we are here to support each other. Like you said, we're here to walk each other home. So with Peptides, they've just been such an amazing tool, so safe. We see amazing results from people losing weight, getting stronger, you know, thinking more clearly, helping with inflammation, boosting the immune system, helping with skin repair, on and on and on. I mean, I could spend the rest of this podcast telling you case study after case study, such a positive tool, you know, and I think there's a common denominator. It's people raising their hand, said, I'm ready.

Yeah, I remember I was hearing Taylor Sheridan, the director of the Yellowstone series, which is. Have you seen that series? Okay, don't start, because you might not want to stop. I don't watch tv. I'm not a big TV guy at all. But I watched that and I was like, wow, I actually can't stop watching this. Maybe it's my addictive personality that I get to be aware of. But anyways, he was talking on Joe Rogan's podcast and he was taking specific peptides for inflammation. So most people, Craig, think of peptides for weight loss. That's the common thinking around it. But there are other avenues about peptides that are freaking fascinating. One of them being inflammation, others, longevity. What are some of the other things that fascinate you about the other branches of peptides besides just weight loss?

Yeah, I think inflammation immune system. There's a peptide, probably the most popular and utilitarian one called BPC157 which stands for body protective compound. We've just had amazing results over the years. Whether people have, you know, they sprained their knee or they've got systemic inflammation, they've got an autoimmune disease. BPC just seems to really calm down that fire, that inflammatory fire, take the edge off. Some people it's more long lasting and some people it's less long lasting, but it's so safe. Over the years we've administered it intravenously, subcutaneously, topically, orally. It's. I've never seen a problem like it's, it's been amazing with the immune system. We saw a lot with, with COVID and viral illnesses. This peptide called thymosin alpha 1 where it modulates the immune system. So whether you have autoimmune disease, which means your immune system's overactive, or post viral syndrome, where your immune system's Overactive, Thymus and Alpha 1 tends to turn down the volume of that. And so people just feel better. We've seen a lot of immune hits from the vaccine and from COVID itself, a lot of autoimmune disease. Over the years. Thymus Napha 1 has been our choice to really tame that and calm it down. It's been super impressive, super, super impressive. And then from a skin perspective, the peptide's called GHK cu, which stands for copper. And that grew up in the wound healing space. They use it in denture street. We use it in the aesthetic space. We've used it to help after procedures or just people looking for better skin complexion. It's a fascinating peptide and very, very safe. Over the years we've used it intravenously, subcutaneously, topically, you name it. So high utility, different ways to utilize it and just tremendous safety.

Anything specifically for longevity, that's piquing your interest right now.

Longevity is tough for me because longevity, I know that it becomes this catchphrase, right? And people are interested in longevity. The trouble with that for me is it's very amorphous, right? And so then we try to put some parameters around and say, well, how do I know? And I get it right? People just want assurance that the things they're doing or not doing are going to lead to a long life. That's very challenging, right? So we've utilized NAD I was saying, which is that vitamin B3 derivative, which certainly helps the mitochondria, helps you become more metabolically flexible. There are. There has been research that says it will help with longevity. I think it's a kind of an insurance policy for people to help their mitochondria operate more efficiently. I think the biggest thing that I would focus on, though, is helping people rein in cortisol, the catabolic hormone. Because cortisol has. Is like a bully, I think, of hormones like kids on a playground, and cortisol is one of the bullies. And so if cortisol is mismanaged, we tend to negatively affect all the other hormones as well as our nervous system. And my lens is that I've seen is people run into trouble when they get an imbalance between their sympathetic nervous system, which is a foot on the gas, and their parasympathetic nervous system. Foot on the brakes, right? And in our society, we tend to be like, let's be additive, right? Let's put our foot down harder. We can go there faster and go farther. When in reality, the wisdom that I've learned is it's not about all the grit and hard work and reaching for that and chasing that. It's actually about the wisdom of, you know, surrender, allowance, acceptance, and just letting go, creating space. And to me, that is in line with modulating your cortisol response. And biochemically, we can do that, right? And that's what people meditate for, right? Is to be more present, be more aware. That's having a very positive influence on your cortisol and your nervous system. So to me, I think in terms of. I understand people, again, looking for some, okay, I want to live 30 more years. To me, that's really challenging. Challenging, right. We've seen from what happened with COVID and the way things can flip on a dime, I think it's better to be more present and, you know, focus on the day. Literally. Right. Isn't that one of the goals is just to be here, be now.

Yeah.

And then not to look far ahead.

So, wow, Craig, there's so much there, man. That's a whole podcast. You just. That's a whole podcast. Derivative. For me, the challenge as a father, as an entrepreneur, as a future husband, like, these are all things that I marinate on quite a bit. And I don't know if you've felt this from your entrepreneur clients or even just people that are kind of more on the go side rather than the break side. We tend to have a challenge turning it off at night, turning off the mind. And the challenge for me is, and this has come up not only in psychedelic journeys, ketamine journeys, breathwork journeys of any kind, and even just when I'm driving in a journey from the studio to home. And it's, how do. It's, you know, God, how do I do it all? How do I do everything? How do I be the best businessman, podcaster, father, partner, husband, lover, community member, leader? How do I do it all? And you said this word, surrender, that just like it actually washed my nervous system for a second. The surrender aspect in which you speak cannot be written on a pad for people to employ. It actually has to be lived through life experience. I wonder for you personally, you know, as somebody who's healing so many people and going through the challenges of regulations with governmental agencies, like, how do you handle it all? How do you practice surrender?

It's a great question. I mean, I. It's been an experience. I think one of the things. And I don't know when or how it came upon me, but, you know, this idea you talk about, about trying to do it all and show up for every kind of hat you wear, and one thing that I've learned in real time is that if you trust life will do that for you, you don't have to be the driver in any of this. Right. You can, certainly. And this is really challenging for people, particularly for people who are achievers, who want to not necessarily even micromanage, but they want to be in somewhat control of, like, okay, here's my destiny, and I'm helping navigate it, which is great. And I want people to have preferences because those are important. You know, I think just staying on the sideline doesn't work, and, you know, you got to speak your truth. But what I've learned is, you know, life will figure it out for you, and if you can create the space for that, it gets magical when you then start having these synchronicity events and things start Clicking and it takes the pressure off. I really think what people strive for most, this is just something I've come to recently. More so than wanting longevity, more so than wanting happiness, is peace. It's peace, right? That's something that in true peace, right? And some of that has to do with what people feel and think about death in many ways, right? The big question and the big fear. But true peace can never be taken away from you, right? There is no external circumstance whether you have cancer, whether you have Parkinson's, whether you, you know, lost someone you love, whether any stressful, anything. If you have peace, then you've achieved something that very few people will ever achieve. And, and so that's kind of my barometer. That's what I'm looking for, is how do I bring more peace not only to myself, but the people I care about, which is the people I take care of. Because it's not talked about enough. Right? Again, we're in this mode of let's talk about metrics and, you know, what can we do physically to be here longer and stronger and bigger? I don't know. You know, I think the real life lesson for me is how do I create a life that's, you know, I'm going to have peace. And then what that means to me is trusting God so much that I let him fill in the gaps.

I think everybody just did a big exhale. Craig? Yeah, this, this concept I have really been meditating on lately is the holding of two worlds. You know, are things happening that are stressful? Of course they are. It's like you said, that stress happens actually as a proponent to us growing. And then on the other side, can we see the stress is actually something that's working truly for us not even to use NLP and try to trick ourselves into believing it, to act, to actually, on a somatic level, on a soul level, can we believe, can we allow ourselves to believe that when we surrender to, like you said, just the wisdom of life, the wisdom of God, the wisdom of nature, what else is possible? How many amazing things that we don't even know, we don't know yet are possible? If we can allow ourselves to hold two worlds, One of, yes, it's painful. And two, well, in every crisis is a beautiful opportunity. How can we hold both of those worlds? And I think that's the question that's so challenging for me and many, for many people that are probably attracted, maybe they read the title, they, they were given this podcast by a friend. They, they want the edge. It's Such a paradox, Craig, because many of us want the edge, but paradoxically, we also get to learn how to surrender at the same time.

No, I agree. And that's what I've been on this journey with a lot of these, you know, high octane people. And when you have this conversation of, listen, I know you spent the last 38 years, 48 years, you know, grinding and waking up early and kind of overseeing and being hyper vigilant of every aspect of your life, and that served you, but for whatever reason, it's not serving you anymore. Right now you're not sleeping, or now you have autoimmune disease, or now you have cancer or whatever it is. And so that's where the wisdom is, is it's not going to be the same for you going forward or will be the same for you if you keep up the same approach. It changes when you're able to step back and just get out of your own way. You know, I mean, I think something I have to remind myself a lot about is all of us take it way too seriously. Way too seriously. Like, we get so caught up in the theater and drama of politics and what this means and what's my place in the world? And like, awesome, great questions asked. Like, great. Find meaning. You need to find your purpose. Life gets really good when you do, but part of it is just sitting back and laughing at all the kind of chaos that's around us and knowing even then it's gonna be great. Right? And that's really hard for people. Right. Because it is a stressful time. We're bombarded with so much on our plates. I think it's. It seems like. I don't know, but it seems like this is probably the most stressful time in human history. Right. We have so many people who are struggling and suffering. It's palpable. And I agree with you, 2024 is the year that this turns over. You know, you feel it. There's something very big here happening energetically. And for those of us who are awake, it's so exciting, like, just to sit back, but it's. It's exciting because you get to sit back and watch. And so amazing with that, you know, solar eclipse yesterday and, like, feeling like the refresh in that instant.

Oh, my gosh, so many things there. I'll. I'll start with this question that came up for me when you were speaking sovereignty. It feels like the antidote to sovereignty being stolen is play.

Yes.

It seems so simple. It's just. It's actually just playing and by playing, you don't take it so seriously, which then makes you more sovereign, but seems so paradoxical.

I love that. I think that's so true. I mean, I think about it, like, when is it that we switch? Like, when we're children, right, and we're curious and, like, we're just so caught up in the moment that we. We just. We don't even think about the future. When does that switch to now? You're, like, thinking ahead and you're worried and you have responsibility, and it, like, it all turns and it's that childlike play that really is so critical. No, I love that you said that.

Is there a peptide to increase more childlike play does.

That would be amazing. Josh. There you go, man.

We've covered some ground on peptides. I know there's a lot more that I want to dig in with you. You specifically, on, you know, performance. Performance medicine, to me is great because it allows us to take where we are and then maximize how we can actually show up for our loved ones, for our work. But what else did we miss? What else do we miss about peptides? Is there anything else that's been really fascinating you or that you've really been enjoying either in service of or learning about peptides? What did we miss there?

We've. We, you know, there. I think we've covered a lot, which I appreciate. One thing that we're doing more and more of now is using peptides intranasally and so introducing them to our nervous system kind of at a. At a different rate, different pace. And what I like about that is, you know, I like nasal sprays because we can introduce compounds into our nervous system quickly. The downside is they tend to wear off quickly. But the good side is you don't have this big systemic, you know, event from them. Not again, not that peptides are. We have to worry about them, but there's something about kind of a quick hit to your nervous system. So there's peptides we're using. There's one called cmax, which is a peptide. In Russia, they give people after they've had a stroke or traumatic brain injury, and it just kind of gets your nervous system revved up a little bit in a very positive way. And then you can combine that with a peptide called Celan, which is the chemical cousin of C Max, which is more calming. And. And so using them together, you get this really nice kind of, you know, stimulating, calm effect. Like, it sounds weird, but it kind of gets people into that place of, like, they're just Feeling it right in that kind of flow state almost. And it happens quickly just from a nasal spray. So we're, we're exploring the use of more nasal sprays. Just, you know, it's just a novel thing that. A novel vehicle, I should say.

Sure. So.

So there's, I think there's going to be a lot of different peptides introduced over the next couple of years. Right. As this takes off, I think the curious thing, honestly would be how is the pharmaceutical companies going to respond to the massive success that so many people are having. Right. And so I'm concerned about that for sure.

Concerned about what's your deepest concern there?

That they'll be, you know, taken away.

Have you already seen clues of that?

Yes. What we're starting to see, and again, I've been in this space a long time, we're starting to see is. And it's all kind of happening at the same time is just more poking and okay, we need this done this way and got to be careful with this. And compounding pharmacies got to, you know, last fall, I think it was passed through the fda. Compounding pharmacies have a very strict by use state that they have to put on every compound, which means that it's just going to limit these compounding pharmacies. Frankly, I think a lot of. Not a lot, but some compounding pharmacies won't be able to survive some of these oversight, regulation and which is very real. Peptides are changing for sure. The fda, it's unclear where they're headed with peptides and what's going to happen with them. There's hints, you know, for sure that yes, some of them, if not a lot of them will be removed from use. And I think that sucks. I think that sucks. There's no, you know, I think government's there to, you know, first and foremost protect the public interest. Right. And so from a medicine perspective, that would be safety. I can't, you know, again, just from what I've seen, I think we've overseen more peptide treatments than anywhere else in the world. We've never had a problem. Is it always perfect? No. Does it always work? No. But nothing disastrous has ever happened. People have gotten rashes. Some people haven't felt good from some for sure things happen. But no one's ever had a catastrophic event from using a peptide.

Yeah.

As far as I know, in the.

History of peptides, I loved how you talked about the safety early on in our podcast too. Because if you stacked them up, and this is anecdotal Questioning, by the way, I don't have the data. Maybe someone can link it and send it to us. But if you looked at the pharmaceutical model and even like bare pharmaceuticals and the way that the agricultural industry is actually owned by the pharmaceuticals, who sprays the pesticides, the fungicides, the herbicides, it is literally if you put the data of all these companies that are so called regulated by the FDA and the USDA and you put them next to people like yourself who have an amazing, impeccable track record with administering safely peptides, it would be such a David and Goliath moment where you could literally just take off the veil of deception and say, wow, everything I've been told has actually been a lie. It truly has been a lie. And I think that is the year 2024 that we, we take off a really big veil. I think you're just, you're in one veil, but there's so many other veils that are just falling to the floor right now. It's exciting. It's not going to be without pain. Just like any spiritual or any maturation process does not come without pain. But what excites you about your field now where maybe five years ago you couldn't even see it coming, even with the peptide regulations and everything else, you know, what is still lighting your fire to keep doing what you're doing?

I think, you know, for me to answer that question, I think it goes to two things. I really want to help empower people to become sovereign over all the choices they make in their life. So when there is more oversight and regulation and tools are limited and how we utilize those tools is more, you know, scrutinized, it will become even more impressive when people become empowered to be sovereign over all the choices they make. You know, and I think that's what's exciting and helping to motivate people. Anything is possible, right? Anything and everything. I mean, I've seen miracles upon miracles with people. Anything is possible right now. Are some things really hard to attain? For sure, there are some choices really hard to make, 100%. But what, what gets me up and really why I'm passionate about this is, is for those two reasons. I want to empower people to become sovereign over all the choices they make in their life. Just own it, right? If you want to, you know, have a Coca Cola and a Big Mac, own it, right? Love it. Love the Big Mac, right there's awesome, right? Why are we beating ourselves up not just on a daily basis, but on a sometimes minute to minute, hour to hour, basis that we're bad people. We have a lot of shame and guilt over the choices we make. Why would you ever purposely make a bad decision for yourself? You know, and. But I think the programming people. Well, the cake is bad. The Big Mac is bad. You know, like, it's. It's bad for. Well, how do you know that? Well, I just. I was told it. Okay, we'll try it. What if you tried eating and you just had a positive outlook? What. What would happen then? You know, so asking those questions, and that's what I'm curious about, because I think this year in particular kind of is a cascading year for, like, you're saying, ripping off the bandage, unearthing a lot of the stress negativity that's deeply rooted. And it's an opportunity for people to really go there, really feel it, and then know that they can pivot towards something that's. You can't ever have too much positivity, right? Ever. You can never be too strong. You can never be too positive. So let's do that.

Profoundly said. I want to shift before we end the podcast. There's a piece of this space that you're in that I mentioned before, and it's this performance side. Now, we've already laid the foundation that you've told us about the surrender and how powerful that is. So from that place of surrender, from that place of peace, in 2022, I changed the pot. I was actually on February 22, 2022, it just seemed like a cool. Seemed like a cool number to do it. We changed from Wellness Force Radio to wellness and wisdom. And it was actually through the divine grace and some of the use of medicinal mushrooms and laying with my beautiful lady, Carrie Michelle, that this came through. I just felt out of alignment for a while. I didn't like the word force anymore. I don't like forcing things. And I think we earn wisdom by actually embodying the virtues of wellness. And so wellness and wisdom was available. It was perfect. And I moved the entire brand, just my whole being, into that way of speaking, way of being, way of living. And one thing that came clear for me, Craig, was if I'm operating from peace, then my power can be trusted. But if I'm forcing and if I'm taking from others, then my power can't be trusted. And by the way, somebody's going to come take it from me just the same way I took it from them. With that as a backdrop, how do we actually use this specific performance medicine from that place of peace and what are the ways that we can actually use medicine to perform well from that place of peace? That's the caveat. Not. Not to perform well just because we want to crush the competition. Right. But from peace, how do we use medicine to perform well?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really critical question. I think of peace aligning with coherence. Right. And so if you're. If we take the example of working out, right, because people think of being physical and you gotta, like, you know, push your body. But the reality is, I talk a lot about this with my trainer, who I do kettlebells with twice a week, is, you know, if you're gonna be teach your body to be strong, you're not gonna get there faster by beating your body up. In fact, you're gonna beat your body up, which is gonna slow you down, get an injury, and you're gonna delay your progress. The thing is, we just have to get out of our own way. And so this may not be the best example, but, you know, when people are trying to get strong, wouldn't it make the most sense to take your time? Like, what is the urgency? I guess is what I'm getting. What is the urgency? If you're trying to get strong, to be your best self, what is the urgency of you getting there? Sometimes people do, I get it. But I think most of that's made up. I think urgency is totally made up. So if you really want to be strong, then you want to do the correct exercises. We're talking about kettlebells. To then help yourself learn how to do a kettlebell really well or almost perfect, and do that every time. When you start doing kettlebells and you're not taking breaks and you're short of breath, your form decreases, which means you're not doing it well, which means you're not going to get as strong. So you have this false sense of like, I gotta force the outcome by pushing myself to work out harder and faster and all this intensity and stress. And the reality is none of that's true. Right? And it may not be true just in that moment, but it has a compounding effect. Right? And so this stress. I'm not a huge fan of high intensity exercise because I think I've seen it with people is when they get older and they're injured and they can't do what they want to do, to what end? Like, where does it end? And you could relay that to foods people eat, the thoughts they think. You know, meditative practice, whatever, it's. It's the coherence of, you know, being in that flow state. And so you can't force anything. The reality is you can't force anything because when you try to force something, it will always break. It never works out, ever. So even in, you know, for performance, when people are trying to force things, it's never going to work as well as it just take a step back, take a deep breath and allow it. Just. It's. It's one. And then the only way to know that is you got to do it, right? You got to trust enough that you can do it. Because being in that flow state, what you want, right? Michael Jordan hitting all those shots in the flow state wasn't because he was a certain strength, Right. He found a way to naturally be coherent and greatest basketball player of all time, maybe the greatest athlete, you know?

Yeah.

So I don't know if that answers your questions, but that's how I feel about it.

It's a great. It's a great platform for the next question. And what it made me realize was that, you know, many of us that are sprinting to get the results as fast as we can, we're just missing the journey. And by the way, when we sprint, sometimes we can miss out on a lot of things that nature had intended for us and get injured. I was remembering when you were talking in 2018, right when the podcast was really finding its click. I drove down to LA to interview Kyle Kingsbury. And right before I left, I was like, I gotta get my sprints in. I even remember thinking that, Craig, I gotta get my sprints in. And I ended up. Right before the podcast, I ended up tearing my medial gastroc, sprinting. And I was. I heard this. I heard this rubber band, like, boom. I'm like, did somebody just shoot a gun? Like, it was loud. And I fell on the ground and I'm sitting there looking at my calf muscle, and I just started laughing like, this is so funny. Here I am in a hurry, stressed out, trying to get my sprints in before I drive to la. Forcing, doing all these things that I know. The higher part of me was like, what are you doing, man? There's no reason for you to be rushing and stressing. Life will sometimes bring significant events to us so that we actually pay attention. And that was a big turning point for me. Shearing the medial head of the gastroc. The gastroc right there. It was so profound. Have you ever had one of those moments where God universe stepped in and just put you on your ass to where you Said, ah, this is actually not the way. Has that happened to you? Because that's performance. Performance is longevity, not just short time.

Sure. What happened to me or what I think about when you asked me that question? In August of 2020, I developed this abdominal pain that got really bad. I tried to ignore it. I tried to medicate myself, and then I finally learned, I did a CAT scan, that I had a massive blood clot in the vein going to my liver. And I had to go to the hospital and get on blood thinners, and they thought I had cancer in my pancreas. And it was a whole big thing, which I learned. It's such a gift for me, even though, like, probably on the surface, the most stressful time in my life. I've never been hospitalized and never been sick. I got discharged from the hospital. I got worse. I had to go back to the hospital several days later and spend almost a week in the hospital. But it was that time where I really came face to face with what is the urgency of life? You know, like, it is all made up. Like, what is the rush? You know? And I know people like, well, I gotta lose weight or I gotta train for this race or. But again, if we take a step back and examine that question, it solves a lot of problems when you can say there is no timetable. Right. Time's made up. We know the time is made up a hundred percent. So what are you. What are you trying to. How are you winning the race by. You know, it's like you see people speeding on the road, like, oh, you're gonna get there 30 seconds faster than me. Like, yeah, how does that help you? Right? But there's something about that where people just, like, urgency drives things. It's so artificial. You know what I mean? So that was a big, authentic moment for me where it's like, I. Yeah, I got put in my place. Like, I've never had pain like that. I've never been a patient like that. And I had to come to terms with for an entire 24 hours that I'm 46 years old, potentially have cancer in my pancreas, which is for most people, a death sentence. And it was the most amazing experience for sure.

What did that liberate you from it?

Well, were a couple of things. One, you know, feeling the love and prayers of so many people who are reaching out to me and just even people I know I didn't hear from directly. Like, it's just such an interesting. Like, we do that for people when there's a time of Crisis, Right? Like, we tell people how we feel or thinking about you. And, you know, people would. Afterwards, I hear from people, hey, I didn't want to bother you, and I wrote them back. You're never bothering someone when you're telling them that you're thinking about them. Right. Like, and so. But we. We think it has to be kind of segregated to negative times. Right? And I think we have an opportunity, like, to be, you know, affectionate and loving with the people we care about on a regular basis. Right? Because ultimately this is just something I've thought about. Like, the energy of life is we get input, right? We get input from food, we get input from sunlight, we get input from exercise and moving our blood. But the output, the ultimate output is love. Right? And that's the equation of being human. How do you take all that exposure and turn it into something so magnificent that there. You can't quantify it? Challenging, but that's. I learned a lot then in that. In that time period. Yeah.

Wow. Such beautiful wisdom. And I don't mean that lightly because in moments where I've either been ruminating or faced with my own mortality or even friends who I've lost. I lost a friend this year. He was tragically killed in a plane crash. Christian Oliver and his two daughters. I'm sorry. I had just done a vision quest with him, you know, previously, the previous year. And we just don't know, Craig. We don't know. There's so much wisdom in the not knowing. There's so much wisdom in the uncertainty. I think there's even a book by Alan Watts called the Wisdom of Insecurity. And so it's this practice that you've touched on a lot, which doesn't surprise me because I remember when we first had the conversation about. I was coming at you with like, hey, what's the best peptide? And how do I do this? I was coming very top down, and you seem to me like you've really done a good job of connecting bottom up and top down together. Do you have a spiritual practice? Do you have a meditative practice? How is your relationship with God? And even your own mortality changed, morphed as you've gone deeper into your world of wellness?

Yeah, Great question. I love the question. Yeah. I have a very strong relationship with God, and I feel like I always have. It's just something I've always known and felt. And again, one of those things that's hard to articulate, but it's there. I've always felt protected, and I'm very curious Very, very curious. And I think that drives me to try to understand kind of the mysteries that we're all like, what is the meaning? What is the purpose? You know? And so I think a great question that I ask is, you know, because people are saying, like, what? You know, what. What am I here for? And, you know, there's other questions, like, when am I here? Like, why am I here for sure. But who am I? Right? And I think a great quote is, the two best days of your life are when you're born and when you learn while you're born. You know what I mean? And I'm forever curious. And there's something, I think, going back to Alan Watts, who I love, where it's this amnesia, right? It's a game. What I love about him is he's so funny and has such a great sense of humor. But there's this game we play of hide and seek, right? And so we remember and we have these moments where it's like that. That's it. You're in that flow state, or it's a synchronicity moment, and then two months later, you'll totally forget. And then you got to play the game again. And then you're like, oh, my gosh, there it is again. And that never ends. And. And the more I dig and learn and are curious, the more I find, right? And then it gets. It gets so deep. But, you know, I think one thing that really was a transpiring event for me was during COVID was learning to really, really question everything, you know, and that was a real pivotal thing for me.

The gift of COVID that was the gift for all of us.

Yeah. Like, question it all. And so in medicine, like, I see so many things now that I've been taught in trained program that I'm questioning, and I'm sure I'm going to get scrutinized on, but, you know, like, I am operating under the standard of care. The standard of care absolutely sucks. And if we want to be and really strive and make change, we got to transcend that standard of care, you know? And so for me, getting back, you have a deep relationship with God. I think everyone. You said it. Everyone needs to find whatever that means for them. It can't be from someone telling you, you have to do this. The only way to do it is experience it. And the only way you can experience it in the true sense is when you've gotten out of your own way. Like, we don't fix things. We just let things go. And so the more you just keep letting go, the more clear you'll be. And that's when I think you start receiving.

So good. I've loved this podcast. I have. Please, everyone share this podcast not just with someone that's interested in peptide therapy or in performance medicine, but for somebody that's just looking for a different way, that is looking to slow down and is looking to not just finish the race, but enjoy the race.

There you go.

Instead of just, like, focusing on the finish line, I mean, we. We hear this adage, we hear this platitude, Craig. You know, it's not the destination, it's the journey and the platitudes. Just like the emperor wears no clothes, they're all out in plain sight for all of us to see, then why don't we, individually and on a societal level lens, just accept these platitudes as wholehearted truth? The hippies had it right, man. Love is all there is. You mentioned it, but yet it's such another paradox where it's so challenging sometimes to embody these platitudes, to embody this truth, this wholeness that we're all born into, man. So I've really enjoyed this for so many different reasons. And, you know, my. My signature question that I always sign off these conversations with has been my curiosity ever since I was a child. You said that you've always been curious. I'm curious for you, I'm curious for me. I'm curious for all of us. How do you see wellness now at this stage in your life? How do you define wellness? What does it mean for you, Craig, as a soul, as a human, as a healer, to live your life? Well, how would you define that?

I think the way I would frame it is being a doctor. I'm so used to, you know, asking people, how do you feel? How does this make you feel? And I think what I've learned in the wisdom, the better question, is, how do you make other people feel? And so that's kind of where I'm headed, because if I can inspire people, because really what it's about, sure, we're here to live our best life, but ultimately we're here to contribute and be service and compassionate for those around us. Right? The way. The way it's. I didn't come up with this, but what I love doing is, you know, setting up canvases for other people to paint on. And it's really about service to others. And once that clicks with people, so many things change because you can't really be, you know, stressed out too much. If you're there, you know, servicing others. And so that's. That's kind of where I'm headed. And that's what wellness is. It's not just how do you feel, but how do you make other people feel. And I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you. I really appreciate it. You struck me as unique when we first had our conversation and, you know, we were talking about peptides, but I feel a very. You're. You're a very warm soul. Like you come across, you're vulnerable, you're warm, you're open. That's very genuine and that's very refreshing.

So thank you, thank you, thank you, man. It feels good to receive that from you. Thank you so much. And tell people where they can go to learn more about you. You work all across the world now here in London, it's pretty amazing. Where can they go to learn more?

Yeah, probably our website. I'm not very active, although get more active from, you know, phases with Instagram, but it's not my thing. Our website, ConoverWellness.com. excuse me. K O N I V E R Wellness.com. that's the best place that we direct people for sure.

Yeah, great. Well, my intention was really just to explore this world of peptides. I did not know I was going to get these other treats, which is why I love what we do, man. That's why I love podcasting, Craig. So from my heart to yours, thank you for coming on the show. And everyone, please again share this podcast with somebody that is really desiring or seeking a different path, a different race to enjoy the race. So until we see you on another podcast, Craig and I are both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon.