When we think of health, most think of diet, working out, or even stress levels. I, like so many others, overlooked the crucial importance of my mitochondria, When your mitochondria work better, everything works better. Maintaining muscle gets harder with age, and cellular energy plays a significant role in strength and function. My world turned upside down when I learned about Mitopure gummies. Mitopure gummies are longevity gummies and the only clinically proven form of urolithin A shown in human studies to help renew mitochondrial function, which is designed to support cellular energy so you feel stronger and more vibrant as you age. They are my key component to longevity and quality of life. Not only do they taste great, but they are sugar and allergen-free, non-GMO, and Clean Label Project certified. Support your cells and how you age with Mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit timeline.com/dylanjameli to save up to 39% off your Mitopure gummies. That's timeline.com/dylanjameli. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Jameli Podcast. So this is a different one for me today. I am in a, very famous setting, I would say, at the Sound Shed Studios, thanks to my guest today who set this all up.
And I'm traveling, doing a nice little run here in Austin, Texas, and I am beyond blessed, as I was just telling my friend here before. But my guest today is a close friend first and foremost, so I can give him every accolade in the world and give you an intro, but I want to make sure that I say he's my boy. And I met him through a friend of ours named Molly Eastman. And actually, it's funny because I was checking out my friend's work and she wrote me and said, I have a friend that wants to connect with you. And it was— I told my wife, I said, whoa. I said, this is the guy. It was just— I had my eye on because I don't sit around and look and reach out for people very often anymore. I did that when I got into the space, but it was just It's God's work. So, but my friend today, listen, first and foremost, he is known as the most trusted voice in supplements, and that's why I was deferring to him beforehand and discussing everything. But I want to talk just a couple other things he's done.
Biochemist, sports nutritionist, he's a clinical dietitian, and, and he's helped people all over the world for many, many years. Super respected, well known. I can go on and on. But anyway, my friends, Sean Wells.
Thank you, brother. That means a lot. You're a great friend as well. And yeah, looking forward to, to diving in here and glad you came out to Austin. And I'm stoked right now.
You know, I know that you made some sacrifices for me today to even, even be here, cutting a trip short that most people would never dream of doing. And I appreciate you. I appreciate everything. More so I appreciate the friendships and the discussions and the talks and the voice notes and everything else. It, it's really nice because you have a lot of friends, but you have very few real friends. So thank you for that more than anything.
Oh, thank you, Dylan.
All right, so I've got a lot to talk to you about. I've been in the supplement industry since 2011, probably in and out. And I've seen a lot, I've done a lot, I've heard a lot, and I've been around a lot. I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I want to talk to you first about how you got into supplements in general, because it's a slippery slope when it comes to the whole game and how it works. And then I just want you to talk about some of the really bad things that have gone on and why you are a beacon of hope in the industry.
Yeah. Thanks. For me, I guess I'll go all the way back. I'm 51, closing in on 52. My mom in the '70s was like kind of a pioneer with this company, Shaklee. She was obsessed with supplements, had the tackle box way before anyone else I know. And there was like the whole food, it was called Vital E. Multivitamin and there was a, you know, vitamin E that she would like break open, put on my wounds if I had wounds. We had vitamin C because Linus Pauling's work was just coming out on orthomolecular dosing of vitamin C and like the benefits it might have far beyond just scurvy, right? And vitamin C deficiency. But fast forward. So that was where I grew up with the belief that these tablets, capsules, soft gels had power, but I did grow up with a difficult time at home, at school. There was bullying, there was a, you know, a lot going on. And I became morbidly obese. I became very sick. I was going to school at a very prestigious business school, Babson, and getting my business degree because that's what I was told to do. You know, just go out there, make money.
I didn't know what really sparked my passion at that point, but I started working out. I was reading these magazines, reading these bodybuilding encyclopedias, like from Arnold. There was these supplement review guides and, and all these things that I was at GNC. I was at, at the time Barnes Noble or, you know, Waldenbooks or whatever, reading all the, the magazines.
Yeah.
And I was just obsessed with it and I would spend like 3, 4 hours in a GNC just reading labels. And I believed in the power of these supplements. I believed in the power of working out. I started working out and, you know, especially when you're first working out, you know, you're moving up like a, a set of dumbbells every time you go back to the gym and it's super exciting. And at that same time, of yes, me working out. Yes, protein. Creatine had just dropped into the market and it had radically changed the landscape of sports nutrition at the time. And with that came a lot of other innovation from companies like EAS. And I was just working out like crazy, taking all the supplements, seeing changes. And I went to my doctor in between my sophomore and junior year for an annual physical. And I was telling him all about like my passion on this and just how exciting it was and all the changes. And he saw the changes in my body composition, my health, and was very happy for me. And I remember seeing these ads where there was this guy who I eventually got to meet, Dr. Marv Hoyer with MuscleTech, and he had like these like colored bottles and there's bodybuilders in the, in the lab with him.
And I was like, That's cool. I want to do that. And I was telling him all about this and I thought he was just going to laugh at me and tell me that's stupid. And instead he drew out a lifeline for me and told me, why not be happy between here and here? And that was the first person in my life that gave me permission to not do what's smart or what's logical, but pursue my passion. You know, I didn't have the Tony Robbins, the Oprah Winfrey, the Instagram, the, all the entrepreneurs. Like at that time, everyone was doing what they're told to do and working corporate. There were no entrepreneurs that I knew of for the most part. And that shifted everything for me. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go back to school, even though it's going to be difficult. I'm going to get like 2, 3 years worth of prereqs and sciences. Then I'm going to get into my master's at a, at a great school. And I did it at Chapel Hill. And, and then that led to me becoming a dietitian. And then I had to work as a chief clinical dietitian in long-term care and acute care like hospitals.
But all the while on the evenings, on holidays, on weekends, I was working at supplement shops. I was working on at that time, different forums for different companies, doing white papers, going to the Arnold, the Olympia, doing all these kinds of things and building my cred. And eventually After about 10 years of working clinically, I got on in industry to become the director of R&D at Dymatize.
Really?
And which is a massive company and we helped take it to sale to Post for $425 million. And then that just set my whole career ablaze because one, I had worked at a top, one of the top, maybe like them and Optimum Nutrition were the top at the time supplement companies in sports nutrition. And I helped sell a company. I was instrumental in taking that company to sales. So now all the sports nutrition companies were coming to me and especially supplement companies that were looking to go to sale to private equity, to strategic, were seeking me out. And then I even started working on my own ingredients in the background, like TeaCrine and Dynamine were my first, and, and I've done about 40 since, and, and I've formulated about 1,200 products since. I've had a bestselling book since called The Energy Formula and a course to go with it. I've been on Mindvalley with The Ultimate Guide to Supplements. I've spoken in 60 countries, like it's been Amazing. From just a, a fat kid with a dream at one point to, to where I am now, it's, it's pretty incredible.
That's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Dymatize was pretty damn insanely big. I mean, like you said, it was at that time that I remember Optimum Nutrition and Dymatize, and there were just a couple others that were like the top 4 or 5. So well known. That's amazing, man. So are you creating ingredients yourself?
I have a team of 100 scientists that I work with in China and a business partner in China in Nanjing. And it is a pharmaceutical level, multiple facilities. We work with a number of not only elite brands, but truly like a number of pharmaceutical companies. So, you know, you may hear China, but this is like the most elite level of manufacturing and synthesis. And as I'm saying, when you have 100 scientists, like you can create a lot of things. So I'll dream things up and literally like a week or two later I have it in my hands. Wow. And that's pretty exciting. So, and we do synthesis, enzymatic, herbal extraction of a number of methods. Fermentation, which I believe is, is the future, this bacteriologic fermentation where you can create an ingredient cleanly by, you take like yeast and you modify it genetically, and then the yeast can make this compound. And so instead of having like a starter material and solvents and all of this stuff, like normally with, with a typical synthesis, synthetic ingredient, Fermentation, it's just made there. There is no like solvent. There's no like other starter products. I mean, besides like maybe glucose or something.
So it's a really clean process, a vegan process, a sustainable process for the environment and for your health and fermentations, the future. So that's what we've been working heavily on is making ingredients through fermentation. And then I've been very focused at shifting a lot of trends in the industry. Like with N&B, the company that I created ingredients with, we went to a new concept of pure, potent, precise. We're very focused on ready-to-drink in the industry. It's called RTD. So that's things like Update Here or LifeCider, you know, things like that. You know, basically cans, bottles, et cetera. We're also in like, ready to consume, I would say is, you know, things like oral pouches, gummies, sublingual strips. We're seeing the market move— shots. We're, we're seeing the market move this direction because the ready-to-mix powders, and then most certainly the tablets, soft gels, capsules are just not as popular anymore, especially with Gen Z and in particular Gen Alpha. They want ready to consume. Is that more expensive? Is that more complex? Yes, because you're flavoring it. There's stability issues. How well does it dissolve into things like with gummies? Like, is it stable in heat and the moisture and sugar and, you know, whatever it is, there's more complexity to it.
But younger people just want to consume whatever it is they're having and enjoy that experience rather than choking down a handful of capsules or having too much powders and, and all those kinds of things. So with the market shifting, our company is shifting and we're doing pure, potent, precise. And so we are looking at no herbal extractions, no extra biomass. You know, when something's a 1% or 5%, that means that there's 99% or 95% other stuff than the active. You know, that's going to settle to the bottom. That's going to have what we call organoleptic or basically taste issues. It'll have solubility issues, stability issues. We're putting that to the side. We're just doing pure compounds. Then we want potent, which means tiny doses. A lot of the things that we're working on have like 5, 10, 50 milligram doses, very small doses, not, not typically like multi-gram doses. And then precise is around all the technologies that we're using for delivery and enhancing stability, whether it's liposomes, microencapsulation, emulsions, like a lot of these different things that we're looking at as well. So we're pioneering, I believe, what's coming next, and we're setting the tone for that.
There's a lot of difficulty I think people don't understand. Like for instance, like with a creatine gummy or how much you can fit in there to where it actually works, doesn't taste bad, doesn't stick, isn't chalky. I, I've seen it so often and there's so many things that turn out bad. You guys are pretty precise with how you do that and, and how it works and like the sugar contents and all of these things. I mean, I see these everywhere and I sit there and I ask myself, Why would you sell some of these things with this much crap in there? I mean, do you advise people when they come to you? Do you tell them like this, or do you say this is how it has to be? Because I, I'm curious, 'cause I see it and I sit there and I say, well, for people in our industry, sucralose, I mean, things like this that we, we speak out against, should I see so many of them being sold in front of all of like the people that we work with? Tell me about that a little bit.
Yeah, so I, I have another company called Zone Halo and, and I have a team around that where we do formulations, QA/QC, uh, packaging innovation, regulatory studies, patent filings, third-party logistics, all this kinds of stuff. And we definitely do formulations like you're talking about. And typically I'll tell you with creatine gummies in particular, you may have seen The data that NOW Foods tested from Amazon as well as Supco, another new company, a new app, they've looked at creatine gummies and between both of them, about 90, 90 to 95% of the products on the market are bunk. Yeah. And the reason this is, is because creatine in particular converts to creatinine under moisture. And so this is the problem why you can't currently, you know, we're all trying to work on this. I, I'm working on this. I think the industry's trying to work on this, solving creatine in ready-to-consume, in particular ready-to-drink beverages, because as soon as you put it in moisture, it starts converting to creatinine and therefore it is not stable and you won't deliver active creatine. You're delivering Essentially inert creatinine. And that was the case in all the testing that's been done.
Even companies that have overages, I would say the only creatine candy, if you will, that I would trust, that's not, it's not a gummy. I wouldn't trust that, but something that's more like in the dry sweet tart kind of idea. I know MuscleTech, IOVATE, they make one. I think Animal, which is a brand in sports nutrition, they make some creatine chews or Sweet Tarts or whatever. You know, Smarties, you know, that kind of thing. That makes sense. Anything with significant moisture, like a gummy or certainly a drink, it's not going to last. It's not going to test out. Further with Amazon and the testing that was done by NOW Foods, who has been a just gold standard for 30, 40 years now. Like, I, I love NOW Foods, great price. And I think they were taking a beating because they've been in retail, in particular the mom and pop shops. Yeah. In supplements. And they've been taking a beating obviously from Amazon. And in particular, the Amazon Choice supplements that are basically whatever's cheapest. Yep. And they have manipulated reviews and they did about 14 different single ingredients and maybe as many as 20 or 30 different products on Amazon per ingredient.
So think of like astaxanthin, um, berberine, um, maybe it was like ginseng or, you know, something like this. And they tested out all these different products and about 80% of them tested short of label claim. About 30% of them had no active at all. And this is allowed on Amazon. So be careful what you're consuming. Be careful what you're paying for. Just because it has a great price, just because it has great reviews, I would be very reluctant to buy it if it's not a great company like a Thorne, a Pure Encapsulations, Nordic Naturals, NOW Foods, Designs for Health, Zymogen, like some of these really great trusted names that have been around for multiple decades and have quality control departments bigger than these companies have employees. Think about that, 'cause I've been at these companies where we had 20+ people in quality control just doing testing.
Mm-hmm.
These other companies that are on Amazon, some of 'em are making 9 figures on Amazon, have 1 or 2 employees, and they're just pumping out dust in a capsule. Yeah. And not only that, what I also worry about is, yeah, we're talking about the things that you want in there not being in there, but what about the things you don't want in there being in there? Like heavy metals, like bacteria, like some foreign substances or even banned substances. If you are, you know, tested at your job, if you're a pro athlete, be very careful. You know, this stuff can lead to health issues, even like companies that don't have great quality control and their contract manufacturers where they're made. There's been cases where they were off on the vitamin D by 10 or 100 fold, and then people got very sick because there's way too much in it. Yeah. Yep. And so I will just put this out there right now. Just please. Stop buying 10 bad supplements and just buy one really good supplement and start from there. And that's the scientific method too, is to do one thing at a time, see how it works for you, and then move to the next thing.
So if you're going to add one thing, make sure it's the right thing and from a quality company and it's got what you want in there and doesn't have what you don't want in there. And then add another thing, but don't tell me how supplements don't work because you're using crap from Amazon that has sawdust in it and maybe some heavy metals, right? Because supplements absolutely do work. And there's thousands and thousands of studies showing that. And I've been behind a number of these ingredients and formulas, and I'm very proud of them. And I take I, I, I know people are shocked often. I take more than 100 capsules a day probably, but you know, I, I'm almost 52 and I feel very young. I think my metabolic age was, on a recent test was 33 years old. So I'm doing something right.
Would you say then that on Amazon, and we're gonna just talk about Amazon briefly right now. That as long as it's a company, like you said, a reputable company, it, you're still gonna get what you're supposed to get? Or is there anything being faked around there? Like if it says sold and distributed by Amazon, or if it's coming from the said company store, like should you even buy anything from there?
Yeah, great question. I love this question because it's very relevant.
Mm-hmm.
So be very careful when something's third-party seller on Amazon. You can, there's a lot of counterfeiting on Amazon. Some of these elite brands that I was just talking about are the ones that get knocked off in sports nutrition. It is like a company like a MuscleTech and, you know, and kind of wellness. It would be the, the NOW, the Jarrow, the Life Extension, you know, these really great brands are the ones that get knocked off in particular in foreign countries like India. It is about 85% of the supplements in India are counterfeit and have nothing in them. That's a whole other discussion. But on Amazon, 20 to 30% of these high-quality products are also counterfeits. That's been found as well. So be very careful when you're purchasing on Amazon, even these elite brands, make sure you're buying them from a first-party seller. So if it's NOW Foods, you're buying from NOW Foods store on Amazon. Mm-hmm. Or someone who is trusted, like if GNC or Vitamin Shoppe are on Amazon or someone that's a, a trusted seller. I, I don't know who else, like Target or, you know, someone on Amazon that, that you know is, is legitimate.
Great. But if it's some company you've never heard of selling the Thorne or Pure Encapsulations, I would be very wary of that.
And make sure that, and people watching, make sure you actually look, because it's very easy to just click, click, bye-bye, because it says Amazon Prime. I, I've done it. I've made that mistake before and caught it and was like, uh-oh, cancel, you know, because it will say right on there sold and shipped by Amazon and you can see if it's coming from the actual store. Because that's scary, man. Like I can go back on so many instances where I know for sure that people have overdosed things. And, and I'm gonna touch on that in a little bit. I'm gonna go down, down the line on some things I encountered and see your thoughts on it. But it's dangerous. It's, it's actually worse to get too much of it than to not get any at all. I mean, and, and that's what's scary because I mean, it's, it, it's been the Wild West out there. I remember particularly, I think I was 18 years old and, and it was called Xenedrine. Yep. And I took, I took a couple and I mean, there had to have been way too much in there cuz I, my heart was coming outta my chest.
And I thought I was gonna die. Like, I, I remember going to my mom and dad panicking, like shaking, and my heart was skipping beats and all over the place. And it's, it, it, these things, they're not, and I, and I wanna touch on that, the FDA regulated and how do we know if we're getting what we're supposed to with supplements? Are they, is anything FDA regulated? Is it, how does this work so we know what we're actually getting?
We are, it is a regulated industry. I know it gets said often that it isn't. It is. The FDA, the FTC, the FTC when it comes to like messaging in print, on, on radio or voice ads, social media, FTC is part of that regulation. And then FDA would be over supplement products. The problem is the FDA is woefully undermanned.
Yeah.
And supplement companies are coming out by the hundreds every day. And it's an industry that really can't be kept up with. So it has to be pretty egregious for the FDA to red flag it and step in. As you've mentioned, like there are situations with like Ephedrine or DMAA or some of these ingredients through the years that have been an issue. Certain brands, there's been owners that have gone to jail from the FDA, like USP Labs, Speakam DMAA, but it is rare. It is rare that, that this kind of thing happens. The FDA typically will do more on the contract manufacturing level with audits of the contract manufacturers. They'll inspect these facilities and make sure that these facilities are doing what's called GMP, good manufacturing practices. So that's where we see the FDA, but by and large, it's It is regulated, but woefully underregulated, I will say.
Okay.
That's what I thought.
And, and it's, there's so many people that run their mouth that say things that don't know what they're saying out there. And it's, it only gets worse, especially in bodybuilding industries. Things get passed along and then people believe it. And I've been seeing it since the, since I started doing this, it's been going on forever. Now we, You, you went way back in time. When do you think was this major shift towards supplement use? Creatine for me was always one of the first things I heard of in high school. Yep. I was, that was like later '90s, '96, '97 was when it kind of became popular to me. Is that when you feel like there was more of a shift towards supplements? Was it prior? 'Cause there was a lot of multivitamins were being pushed a lot. And, and I do want your thoughts on multivitamins too, as opposed to taking singular things, but what, what was it? Was it creatine that you think was the biggest thing first? And this is not, we're not talking steroids or PEDs, I'm just talking regular legal supplements. Do you think that was the first one that really got it really smoking here, or?
It is like mid to late '90s when we saw not only creatine but ephedrine. Yeah. And ephedrine like shook the country, like in a good and bad way. Like, I mean, there was, as you mentioned, like Xenodream, but also Metabolife and Hydroxycut and Ripped Fuel and Diet Fuel. And there was so many of these and everyone was using ephedrine. Everyone was talking about ephedrine. Creatine was something that truly worked. And before then, a lot of products in sports nutrition were just hype and sawdust. And that was, that was the game changer for sure. Where, and then we started seeing the ready-to-drink products. There was American Bodybuilding that had like, that was at your gyms that had, you know, carb drinks, protein drinks, pre-workout type drinks. And then there was the birth of the pre-workout around that time with NO-Xplode. And that was a game changer too. Pre-workouts became a staple for anyone working out and still is to this day. Those were huge. And then that we also had the Barry Bonds, Patrick Arnold, Mark McGuire scandals with PEDs. And a lot of these athletes were starting to delve into steroids or designer steroids, breaking records, becoming like kind of uber athletes, if you will, that were generation-defining.
And then that was the, the era of prohormones, and we saw a lot of these prohormones that on some levels were rivaling the steroids that bodybuilders were using for decades. You had ones like Superdrol and Feraplex and methyl-1-testosterone that were, I mean, people were putting on, you know, 10+ pounds in a month of lean muscle from a quote unquote supplement. And trust me, the FDA had to step in on that one as well, uh, with prohormones. And then of course later on it, there, there was SARMS, a kind of another era. But I think it was around that time, it was like mid-'90s to maybe mid-2000s, uh, that we saw like a huge boom in particular in sports nutrition.
All right, here we go.
This is my wheelhouse.
And so this is where I really want to go with you. I started to get the fascination studying steroids because I was such a massive sports that. And so in the era of Andro and HGH and steroids and everything else under the sun, and all these stories of them telling you, oh, I didn't know I was taking this, or it was flax oil. And I quickly understood the nonsense behind all of this, but I also understood what they did and what they didn't do and how crazy and wild the things that you hear in the media are that just clueless. Just clueless on what they say about these things. And then it, it became shifted towards the prohormones like you're talking about. And, and I want to get into all of this with the prohormones to the SARMs because that's kind of where I really got into everything and what I became known for on YouTube. So I want to hear your thoughts on all of this. So it was 20, 2010, '11 was when the prohormones really, really became popularized. And like you said, Superdrol was a big one. Epistane was very popular. Halodrol was very popular.
There were many, many, many, and some were methylated, some non-methylated. And these, like you said, designer steroids, but, you know, often more toxic than just taking straight Anavar or Winstrol.
A hundred percent.
I mean, Superdrol made me feel the worst of any steroid I ever used aside from tren. I could tell you that was the worst experience of my life where I gained 20-some-odd pounds in 3 to 4 weeks, but I felt horrible. And when I tell you I felt horrible, I mean, I hated the world. I mean, not wanting to get outta bed, my liver values through the roof. How, how did these get to become legal? Like how did, how were these ever legitimately overlooked with what they were doing? And when did they really first come out?
It started, it started with EAS, who I said was like behind creatine. And they had Phosphagen, which is their creatine, Phosphagen HP, which was creatine plus carbs. Phosphagain was creatine and protein. But they became huge and eventually Abbott bought them out and then actually shut them down. But EAS was massive at one point, really the ones leading the charge in sports nutrition and everyone was following. The first one was a product called androstenedione. Yep. And that was the first thing. And it was a kind of like precursor to DHA, DHEA. Mild, very mild. But they found that it occurred naturally in Scotch pine. And so they found like a naturally occurring occurring source. And with that, you can have DSHEA, the Dietary Supplements Health Education Act, which means if it is naturally occurring or a metabolite of something naturally occurring in the quote unquote food supply, it can be a dietary supplement potentially. So that led to a prohormone, uh, which was a, this androstenedione is a precursor to testosterone being on the market and people were stacking it with DHEA and saw palmetto and, you know, whatever these things at the time, seeing very minor effects.
But that led to basically other people coming in and saying, oh, well, we'll just release steroids. And it was completely overlooked and underregulated at the time. And it got so extreme to the point that you're talking about where these methylated steroids that absolutely shouldn't have been on the market that do not occur naturally in any plants or anything in the food supply were on the market and literally killing people in some cases, like what you're talking about with, with Superdrol and Feraplex and these methylated steroids that people are stacking, getting all kinds of liver damage. And people were thinking that they are safe because they're supplements.
Yeah.
And that clearly wasn't the case. And at least with steroids, we have, you know, 30, 40, 50 years of data of bodybuilders using them, knowing how to use them safe, safely getting labs and, you know, working with a doctor potentially and a coach. You had just kids going into GNC and Vitamin Shoppe just buying steroids and saying more is better and not doing a proper, proper post-cycle therapy or knowing what their labs are, any of that kind of stuff. And certainly stacking it with things like ephedrine and, and it became very dangerous for sure.
I remember I was testing this out at the time and I was writing some of the companies and I was saying, well, what's your protocol and how do you come off of these? You know how many people were saying, oh, just take our, our post-cycle supplement and, and, or you just don't even need one. And you and I both know taking these, you absolutely need a post-cycle therapy or you are going to wreck your pro— testosterone production. I don't know how many people that were teenagers or in their twenties that probably put themselves on TRT using these, not running a post-cycle and, and never doing blood work, thrashing their liver, thrashing their blood pressure, cholesterol, everything through the roof. I mean, that Havoc was one that was super popular that was an epistane form, but running something like Superdrol and not taking proper protection and protocols, that's just like running anadrol. I mean, essentially. And DMZ was another one. So here, here's what happens. 2011, 2012, I was working with several companies. They were producing prohormones and they got me on YouTube and got me to do videos and One of the things they wanted me to start discussing was SARMs and peptides.
And I said, I don't know shit about any of these things. I gotta learn them and study 'em. 'Cause the only way to get these is on the research market underground. So I became known as the SARMs guy at the time because peptides were not popular. Bodybuilders, they were pretty useless. I mean, there was like 7, 8 to pick from. GHRPs, melanotan, there really was next to nothing and they weren't producing size or anything. So SARMS obviously became of interest, as you know, with what they can do. And, and the first things I ran, 'cause there was only a few at the time, was MK-286 and S-4. And that was really it. MK-677, when I learned about 'em, then they started coming out with more. Well then what happened? Pro hormones get banned. And then 1-Andro, 2-Andro, those are still legal. They're looking for loopholes. But what happens? All these people get stuck. With all of their prohormone powders and they find SARMs and start selling those in supplements. Now, one of the things that I found rather quickly was that people were putting their prohormone powders in there and selling 'em as SARMs and people were getting side effects they shouldn't get with SARMs.
And then all of this stuff compounds and all of these articles come out about how dangerous they are when in reality they weren't, they are, but not to the extent. What happened there? I mean, how did this shift so quickly? And do you remember who the first, like, companies were that started doing this?
Well, there was a lot of companies that were making a fair amount of money being like hardcore and underground by selling prohormones as they were getting banned or pulled off the market, or the bigger companies remove themselves from the market either because of lawsuit, bad press, FDA pressure, et cetera. But the smaller companies knew there was still money to be made. And with that vacuum filled in, SARMs, the selective androgen receptor modulators. I will say that the SARMs, while potentially the idea was that they were safer than these prohormones, but had the effects of steroids. The promise was the effects of steroids without the side effects. The problem is the HPTA, this hypothalamic pituitary axis, that you were still getting suppression because these doses were much higher than they were supposed to be because that's where you were seeing the significant effects.
Mm-hmm.
So these like YK-11 and RAD-140 and, you know, there's a, there's a slew of them.
Oh, S23 is like on a steroid. Yeah.
It's just impressive. Exactly. There's, there's a number of them that are out there and, and they are very potent in their effects, but they're potentially very potent in their side effects. And you still need to run post-cycle therapy and all these things. And, and they are orals and in some cases are potentially still hard on the liver. So I don't know that they're really at this point any safer than the prohormone era.
I have come to the realization that I, and part of this is the evolution of them because when it started they were lighter and the more that they made, the YK-11 has actually got methylation in it, for example. So it's very, very toxic to the liver. But then we started to see more blood panels where, oh wow, MK-2866 has really hurt the liver and we see some estrogen activity. It's aggravating people with gynecomastia, which wasn't supposed to do. And then the S4 side effects with the vision. And then they, they came out with S23 and I started to see, well, this is, this was, it, it was nicknamed, it, it was like a male contraceptive. That was the nickname of it. It's just completely shutting down testosterone. Well, you can recover from it quicker. Well, how do you know that? You know, and, and it's just the marketing trick. I guess that I've seen that evolution go on and it's scary, you know, it's very scary. The uneducation that people have and what they're doing to themselves. And that's why, you know, everybody's looking for an edge. Everybody's looking for to build muscle. And that's where I'm transitioning.
So we've got all of these, we've got your prohormones, we've got the SARMS, we know what they can do. We also know the damage they can do. For you, where has this gone for something that's natural and safe? Like, what are the options aside from creatine, which we know, and I want— we'll go back to creatine on the other benefits, but what else is there that we could potentially build good strength and good muscle without shutting down our natural testosterone, without thrashing our endocrine system and having all of these side effects? What, what are the options?
Yeah, I have handful that I would say are actually quite potent and effective. Are they going to be steroid-like? Probably not, but radically safer for sure. D-Leucine is an ingredient I've helped bring to market. It's a dipeptide of leucine. Leucine drives muscle protein synthesis, the key amino acid, the branched-chain amino acid, the essential amino acid that drives the creation of more muscle. Very key in your body for this reason when you care about skeletal muscle hypertrophy or muscle growth. And certainly this applies to repair and recovery and athletes in general, not just bodybuilders or people looking to put on muscle, but, but those that need muscle repair and recovery. Dilucine is a dipeptide and it's much faster than leucine. And uses what's called this PEPT-1 transporter in the gut to deliver it about 189% faster. And what we've seen is 60% more muscle protein synthesis over leucine and 159% more muscle protein synthesis than exercise alone. And this is really impressive because leucine is what we would call refractory, where it doesn't matter how much you deliver at some point. It just shuts off. That's as much muscle protein synthesis as you can get. We're seeing a dramatic difference in muscle protein synthesis, strength, and recovery with dilucine versus leucine or anything else.
So this has been exciting. This is one that bodybuilder, natural or unnatural, would would be excited about, like, cuz this outperforms EAAs, BCAAs, any like leucine-based anything. So this is the most potent natural anabolic that we know of.
How's the safety profile?
Incredibly safe. This occurs naturally when you hydrolyze or break down a protein, you get down to dipeptides. And it may seem counterintuitive that a dipeptide is which is two amino acids together, is faster than a single amino acid. But that's the case where this special transporter in the gut takes up di- and tripeptides because of signaling. Actually, we now understand that as peptide signaling, where this peptide is going ahead of all the free amino acids and telling them what to do and where to go. So that's what's happening with, with dilucine. With that, there's two sides of the equation, muscle protein synthesis, muscle protein breakdown. So to prevent the breakdown of muscle, HMB is an ingredient that's been around for decades, but is great, especially paired with D-Leucine. So HMB, D-Leucine. And then with that, I love obviously creatine, as we've mentioned, that protects skeletal muscle mass, increases power, but we're also seeing it be protective to DNA, to traumatic brain injury, reduces fatigue, improves bone strength and bone mineral density, improves fertility and protects the ovaries and testes, improves eyesight. I could just keep going down the line of all the benefits we're seeing of creatine.
I think everyone should be on that.
Yeah.
And it truly protects muscle as we age. Which is that muscle loss as we age is called sarcopenia. Everyone should be on creatine. Another strength enhancer that I like is betaine. Okay. Also called trimethylglycine.
Yep.
That's a great one as well. So this is like kind of my ultimate stack. There are some of these peptides out there that are claiming to be peptides from like fava bean. There's a brand called PeptiStrong, I think, and that, yeah. And I don't know that the data seems a little confusing to me whether that works or not. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't. I'm not really sure. I haven't truly seen compelling data to this point, but maybe that's helpful. I don't think taking additional BCAAs or EAs are that helpful unless you're on some kind of extreme caloric restriction. If you're getting enough protein, if you're getting enough calories, I think those have little to no benefit. I think taking Dilucine 2 or 3 times a day with HMB and creatine at each of those potential 2 or 3 doses is going to have far more impact. So that would be my ultimate stack.
So creatine, HMB, betaine, and Dilucine. Correct. Okay, sweet. Can you just stay on those? Do you need to cycle off of them?
I believe you can stay, like it's safe to stay on them. There is an idea maybe with pathways, receptor density, all these kinds of things. Maybe you cycle off things for, you know, you're on them 12 weeks.
Yeah.
Get off 'em for 2 to 4 weeks, you know, that kind of thing.
Okay. So your body could acclimate to 'em, but not necessarily.
Yeah.
Okay. I always like to cycle things in gen— like 12, 16 weeks on, take a couple weeks off.
Yeah.
Reintroduce some. That's just how I've always operated. But I, I'm always curious. Creatine, I just stay on.
Mm-hmm.
I, I, okay, let's talk a little bit more about creatine. I want your thoughts on this cuz this is one of those things that drives me nuts. Loading phase. What's your thoughts on loading phase of creatine?
There is legitimacy into the idea of a loading phase in that you can have, what you're trying to do is increase creatine phosphate levels in the muscle.
Mm-hmm.
And by taking creatine monohydrate or, you know, some form of creatine like that, you're going to increase endogenous in the body levels of creatine phosphate, right? The, the higher you dose the creatine, the faster you get to saturation levels in the muscle. So with creatine loading, which is typically around 20 grams a day, we see saturation in the muscle at about 5 days. If you were to do 3 grams a day, we see it at about 28 to 30 days. And of course, somewhere in between, if you were dosing 10 grams a day, maybe it's, you know, I don't know, 10 days, you know, something like that. But that's where the logic is beyond that. There is some really compelling data now that the muscle has active transport of creatine into the muscle. The brain does not. We see a lot of effects of creatine on the brain, but it's a passive transport. What this means is that only very large doses of creatine are affecting the brain.
Got it.
And that's where we're seeing effects on traumatic brain injury. Like literally one being prophylactic or neuroprotective, or two being therapeutic or healing to the brain when you already have a brain injury. But also, and by the way, ketones would actually be really good to combine with a traumatic brain injury with creatine. But also we're seeing new studies talk about fatigue and resistance to fatigue and those being underslept. There was a study with the 20 to 30 grams where they only got like 5 hours of sleep, I believe, and they felt as good as and performed as good as those that had 8 hours of sleep. And so we're seeing creatine be remarkable, truly remarkable. You have to think about how big of a difference that is. I mean, that would be being 3 hours underslept would probably be the equivalent of having like 4 alcoholic drinks in terms of your performance. Oh yeah. It has a dramatic effect. So having your brain perform at a well-slept level just because of one intervention, because of 20+ grams of creatine, is quite profound. Where we're also seeing some interesting research and the data's not complete here yet, is a precursor to creatine called GAA.
And this is fairly new to the market. GAA may help push the creatine to the brain in a way that just taking creatine alone doesn't seem to work. We're seeing 1 or 2 grams of GAA with a few grams of creatine, say 3, 3 grams of creatine work as well as 20 grams of creatine. Really? So this is very interesting, especially because that's a very large dose of creatine. And two, there may be some GI distress associated with, in particular, women seem to have a harder time with larger doses of creatine. This could be a game changer there. So that's been very exciting is this GAA along with creatine.
Are any products that have this GAA in it or any solo products yet?
I am not sure. Th— this data is pretty new. I think that, I think maybe at the time of this podcast dropping, maybe there'll be a few companies.
So would you say that there was like a good neurological benefit then to take in the GAA with—
just thought of my, my friend's company actually. Unmatched, Chris Gaffin. Yeah. Who was the face of bodybuilding.com back in the day. I've loved them for years. He has a product called Cregotine. I've taken it. I love it. And it has creatine GAA in it. And yeah, so that is a product that you can take. I'm a huge fan of all things Chris Skeff.
He's my guy, man. He sent me that when he first was coming out with it. And I, I always tell him, hey man, I got to get some more of that. I'm out. I got to get some more. That's one of my favorite products. I love it. Okay.
One, one secret ingredient I did not mention. If you are into working out and maybe it could enhance certainly muscle, but like workout adaptation much faster. Think of it as getting more reps, more steps out of every workout is an ingredient I've worked on that is an exercise mimetic. We've seen ingredients in that SARM market that you were mentioning in the past, that GW501 5-1-6.
Yep.
Or A-CAR or SRA.
Exactly.
You know, these kinds of ingredients that mimic exercise, literally, quote unquote, exercise in a bottle. Now we can't say that with the FDA. You have to say with good diet and exercise and all that. BABA, beta-aminoisobutyric acid, especially the L-isomer, which is sold as Mitoburn. Enhances this exerkine. So as you're working out, your BCAA pool, which is about 50% of your muscle, breaks down to some degree. This was the theory around taking BCAAs while you're working out. And in particular, valine is one of the 3 BCAAs. Valine will convert into an exerkine, meaning like a signal from exercise. It's also called a myokine because it's a signal from muscle breakdown. And this signal says to the body, we're working out intensely. All the adaptations associated with intense working out, let's ramp those up. So BABA is literally associated with improved VO2 max, neuroplasticity, bone mineral density, muscle innervation and strength, increased skeletal muscle mass, all of the things that you would associate with working out intensely are associated with BEBA. And we've shown that oral BEBA, the, the Mitoburn will increase your endogenous or in-the-body levels of BEBA around a workout quite dramatically. So this is literally, like I said, like getting more reps or more steps out of every workout.
So that's pretty compelling as well. And we're also seeing decreased fat mass, improved like ketone utilization, glycogen utilization or storage, like all of these kinds of things that, that we associate with exercise.
We, we've talked about creatine a lot, but I wanted to ask one more on your thoughts here, cuz you and I have both seen the evolution of creatine and all of the different forms of it and the price of things that have gone up and down and the popularity now all of a sudden is out of this world. Just all of a sudden, the past couple years when it's been sitting there the whole time. Two-part question. One, is, is good old monohydrate the best or is HCL or any of these other forms right on par? What's your thoughts there? And two, when did it occur that it just all of a sudden, everybody knows now all of the benefits, whereas before it was just for muscle and strength and that's That's really all it was known for, water retention, because that's like, essentially that's what was always talked about amongst everybody. It's gonna make me stronger, it's gonna make me bigger, and it's gonna hold water.
Yeah. By the way, I, I'm a fellow in the ISSN, the International Society of Sports Nutrition, and I have my fellowship there and that's, that's very prestigious and I'm thankful, but we worked on, um, really like a potent textbook around sports nutrition. And I got to be one of the authors around 2010. And at that time I was writing of the neurological cognitive enhancing benefits of creatine.
Really?
At that time there was only some preclinical, which means animal data, maybe some in vitro data. And I took so much heat over that. You can't even imagine like how much of a beating I took. Just talking about the theoretical benefits well beyond muscle of creatine. I mentioned bone fertility, eyesight, you know, brain function, and potentially being a tool that we will tap into in the future around traumatic brain injury. I was saying that over 15 years ago, and I took so much heat from the academic community, and I honestly forgot all about that until right now. So this is a little bit of vindication. I was going to say, just a little bit as an indication. It is incredible. As I said, everyone should be on it.
Yeah.
And it is not just strength and power and what we've come to think of as a bodybuilder or athlete's ingredient, like a sprinter's ingredient. It is for everyone. It is for grandma. It is for everyone because it is protecting muscle loss as we age, that sarcopenia. It is protecting, uh, your DNA. It is protecting against cancer, protecting your brain, uh, protecting your eyesight. Like I said, fertility, all these bone. It's powerful, like for your full body and how well you're aging. I do believe everyone, everyone should be taking at least 3 grams a day of creatine.
Agree.
100%. Uh, period, the end. So there is over 1,000 published studies. Now, this is another place that I took a beating when I was working clinically. I tried to put all my patients in a nursing home on creatine because of muscle mass loss, as I'm talking about with sarcopenia, as well as cachexia with those just not getting enough protein. We had pressure ulcers from those that were not, not being turned or moving enough and were laying in bed. Literally the skin and muscle breaks down and can become necrotic and infected and they can just die of just their muscle breaking down. And I tried to put them all on creatine and my rounding physician, the house physician said, there's no good studies on supplements. And I was like, buddy, there is 500+ studies at that time. Now there's over 1,000. And I was like, most of the medications you're putting them on have 1 or 2 studies, and quite often they've been manipulated with many rounds to show minor positive benefit, enough to push it through the FDA. And you're telling me that's better data than the 500+ studies that we have on creatine, and this is safe, and I could literally prevent decline of these people dramatically.
And that was one of the reasons I ended up getting out of my clinical practice and just going into supplements entirely. I was so frustrated at trying to make an impact on that level. Yeah. It felt like I was just constantly, you know, working against intuition or knowledge or innovation. It's just so frustrating. Yeah.
It's like a barricade.
So I believe fully in creatine. I believe everyone should be taking creatine. Everyone should be taking at least 3 grams, maybe up to 5 grams a day. Again, cognitive benefits, maybe up to 20 grams, maybe GAA at a couple grams plus 3 grams of creatine could be the easier, the better way. You do have to actually look at, and Cregotine has these other compounds in it. With GAA, you can raise levels of homocysteine. So this formula, Cregotine, that I know Chris Geffen has, has the B12 and folate in it to actually offset that. So that's really important to keep homocysteine levels in check. And they've actually shown with the data that homocysteine levels were lower with supplementation as a result. So that's ideal.
What about the forms of creatine? Ah, yeah. Yeah.
So creatine monohydrate is, is easiest to say, and most everyone that's a fellow in the ISSN or, you know, people that I know would say creatine monohydrate, that's the gold standard. That's the one that everyone uses. It's the best price. Be careful what you're buying. I've come out with a form called the purest creatine that's actually purer than the well-known German creatine. It's the purest one on the market. Is that ClearPure? That is, that is a brand that's well known, but I have one that's called Purist. Mm-hmm. That actually exceeds that one. Those are both great creatines though, but there is a lot of creatine monohydrate on the market that has an impurity called DCD in it. And we're bringing light to some of these toxins that are present in the creatine. So I would be careful and only buy the highest quality creatine that you can. As far as creatine HCL and creatine malate or creatine citrate or all these different forms that have, that have been on the market, there's probably been 30 forms. Creatine ethyl ester, there's the milliolean anhydrous. There is a lot of creatines on the market. You're just overpaying.
Yeah, I believe it's, it's really just Creatine has good bioavailability, great conversion to creatine phosphate. So I don't think there's additional benefits into spending more money on your creatine. One thing I will say is creatine monohydrate does not have good solubility. So what I would do is actually take the teaspoon of creatine, throw it in your mouth, then kick it back with you know, some water, some juice, some milk, your protein shake, whatever, as a way to ensure that you're getting it all. I think that's the, the smartest way to do it. Otherwise, if you're just putting it in your shaker cup or, you know, with your pre-workout or those kinds of things, it can end up being something that settles to the bottom of the cup and you may never drink it. So that would be the, the smartest thing to do.
What about the water retention thing? Myth that everybody is so fearful of that always wants to bring up. And I think that it's gotten better over the years. 'Cause before that was like the biggest fear with it was the GI and then the water retention. So tell me, is that true?
I think that a little bit, I, the, the higher the body fat, and so women tend to carry more body fat potentially than, than men. Just for maintaining fertility and, you know, all the things, you know, men, like maybe like an ideal might be, you know, somewhere like 12 to 20% body fat. For women, it's going to be like, you know, 18 to 26% or, you know, something like that. They're, they're a little bit higher in body fat. The more body fat you have, there is a little bit more water retention that's visible. This is very small. Like it might be, you know, 2, 3 pounds if you're fully saturated. Some of the other weight that you're maintaining is actually intramuscular. There may be a little bit of water weight retention. What we've found through the years is that dividing your doses seems to resolve that dramatically.
Okay.
So if you, you know, if you're taking, you want to take 10 grams a day, just take 3 grams 3 times a day. Yeah. Or if you want to take 5 grams, you know, take 1.5 grams 3 times a day, or, you know, something like that. And we tend to see that results. Results that, okay.
All right. So my shift, I would say, well, really when I met Dr. Dave Rabin, I, I went from being so focused on fitness and strength and nutrition and muscle, which is all important, obviously. But that's only one piece of the puzzle really, because for me, the, what I've gathered over time is, and I always talk about this now as a mind and body connection, and you have to have 'em both. Now I start from a, I like take it like a top and then I branch it down. So I start with spirituality and go then to neurological and like nutrition training. I know some people don't want to hear that. I don't care. That's my, that's my belief. We'll just focus today on the, the neurological and then the physical side of things. How important do you feel it is to have those both dialed in? Do you think people are so focused on the physical side with the supplements especially that we're taking, that they kind of bypass the importance and the understanding that if you're misaligned up here, you're never gonna be aligned over here and vice versa? But I, I think the amount of understanding that needs to be said on being good neurologically and having a balance between your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, understanding that there's traumas there that linger and how much of a drastic effect that has on all of our blood panels, the stress, the anxiety.
I don't care how good we train and how we eat and how much creatine and, and supplement we take. This is off. I mean, what's your thoughts? Because what I am finding is you're just never going to be aligned.
Absolutely. One, I had read a study not too long ago that one use of any type of psychedelic in any environment, in any dose, one use or more was associated with a one-third reduction in all-cause mortality. Wow. And I believe that is because of trauma and stress and these things that are stored in the body that are stored in your operating operating system stored in your belief system, your ego of how you play out the routines that you're going through day to day. It's only in these kinds of highly neuroplastic environments that we can rewrite that code, that we can go into the operating system like Neo and change that, that those lines of code and say that no longer serves me more. Otherwise, the ego's very good at justifying your trauma, creating identity around that trauma where you believe that is who you are. And that's where powerful dissociatives like ketamine, for example, that can actually pull you apart from your identity where you can actually see yourself as a spirit, if you will, or a soul, if you will, or something like that, apart from this, this created identity. Like you're not your name, you're not your job, you're not all these things.
Those are identities. And these are routines that we've created on who we are while we've been experiencing ourselves on this planet. Uh, when you see yourself apart from that, then you can say, whoa, I'm safe. I am someone outside of that identity. And then once you see that, once you tease that out, then you can again rewrite that code and potentially delete that. Code and say that line of code doesn't work.
I've got a lot of deleting I need to do, brother.
Like a lot. So yeah, most people do. Yeah. And so, you know, that's why we do see, you know, alcohol use and other things like that, just because people are overwhelmed, overstressed, and, you know, maybe it's not alcohol, but it's Xanax. Maybe it's not alcohol or Xanax, but it's kratom or, You know, whatever it is, like people are always trying to figure out a way to kind of escape their thoughts and these routines that are playing out, especially for those of us, I had pretty severe depression, like ruminating thoughts. Like I would tend to like dwell on things for weeks and weeks and just stay in circles. And, you know, those are, those are definitely counterproductive to your, to your health and wellbeing. And so 100%. We're seeing, as you mentioned, that mind-muscle connection or the gut-brain axis, or we're hearing about the brain in all kinds of ways. And certainly athletes are trying to tap into nootropics and, you know, cognitive enhancement and all these kinds of things now, because yes, like paraxanthine, for example, which we can talk about where athletes are talking about things slowing down and, you know, being in a flow state and being tapped in and how much easier life, athletics, performance can be when you're in these flow states.
And you mentioned sympathetic, parasympathetic, which is your autonomic nervous system. This is kind of that yin and yang, if you will, that balance that we need where yes, we need to be in sympathetic some of the time, which is fight, flight, or freeze where we're stimulated, you know, and think of like dopamine more on that side of things where it's like the, the get stuff done neurotransmitter. But then you have like, you know, more on the other side, the parasympathetic, which is more like GABA and, and some of these neurotransmitters where you're more relaxed. Which is, you know, like rest and digest, for example, like where you're recovering. And then I believe flow state is this combination of the two where you're stimulated, but things are coming easily. Like this one composer talked about the phantom hand, whereas like he was like looking at his hand, observing his hand, like not even knowing what it was doing. Because it was just reacting in real time to the orchestration. Yeah. You know, or, or like a Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods again, where, you know, things get quiet, things slow down, things become easier. It's like you're again, going back to Neo when, when he's just kind of like smiling and he's like, you know, moving his body around the bullets and it's like no problem.
And, and it's like, you know, he's kind of like flicking the bullets out of the air and he's like, oh, this is like nothing. He's in like kind of the ultimate, ultimate flow state. Yeah. And so that would be how I would discuss that. But certainly we're seeing nootropics in general go through the roof. Mm-hmm. Uh, there's a lot of similar to SARMs and prohormones as we discussed, and we can get into peptides and certainly get into paraxanthine, but there's a lot of nootropic sites that are selling research compounds that are not well researched. Some of them are, some of them are are not. Some of them are very new compounds that are experimental compounds that may have some acute benefits, but we're not sure of what the long-term benefits are. We don't know what the polypharmacy effects are where they're being combined. Like no one studied this crazy research compound and this crazy research compound and this crazy research compound all, you know, stacked. That's obviously very understudied. And so we don't know what the net effect of some of these things are that people are just stacking. Yeah.
There's a lot of people taking a lot of different things and it's risky. I, I used to be that way and I won't touch things without years and years of data. Cause I get that fear. Unfortunately and fortunately, I'm like that type 1 where I never shut off. So when I'm good, I'm great. But when I'm stressed and anxiety filled, I am like rock bottom because I can't get out of my own way. In fact, on the way, the drive here, I was doing like a morning prayer and I was just asking for help to just like stop letting anxieties and stresses dominate my bad days. 'Cause when, like I said, when I'm on, like when you're like my type, you're on, but when you're bad, it's bad. And I, I used to use marijuana to, to calm, but then it got to the point where it was causing me more stress because it was like over years and years I became to be panicky with it and, and, and it was like counterproductive. And I'm trying now to use prayer to calm and like actually took a step back and do like gaming because I never do it and I want to at night.
And that's actually provided me relief. Even last night when I was worried about, oh, am I going to be late tomorrow to this? And I've got such a stacked day. And I sat there and played for an hour, dude. And I passed out and I was happy as could be. But I think finding something that can do that for you. To put you in that state is important. That's kind of like the Apollo here. We both wore that. That helps me stimulate my vagus nerve. And I want to talk to you and I'm gonna pull these out now because I, I look for, as you do, companies that are smaller, newer, innovative, and, and we, and you know where I'm going, cuz these are our friends here that we both, but these are Tonum's products and I want to talk to you about them cuz I found them in November at Eudaimonia. And they said, oh, we know Shawn and Shawn. And I said, okay, well legitimacy, I'm sold because if Shawn's backing it, I'm going to be introduced to it and have interest in it. Now these two Neuro and Modus, I want to talk to you about, 'cause you brought up paraxanthine and I know paraxanthine's one of the bigger ingredients in the Neuro product.
I'm more drawn to the Neuro for the personal side and the Modus for the client side. 'Cause I don't, I'm not really focused on weight loss right now, but I know And you know how many people struggle with weight loss and GLP-1 use, which I want to get into with you too when we get to the peptides. But I want to start with the neuro side in this product in particular, cuz the alpha GPC is the one that interests me and the paraxanthine. There's great 7 ingredients in here, but I want to talk to you specifically about those two, especially since you brought up the paraxanthine. Tell me about that, how it helps for focus, what, what for So paraxanthine is one of the three metabolites of caffeine.
When you consume caffeine, your body breaks it down into, demethylates it into one of three compounds: theophylline, theobromine, and paraxanthine. Paraxanthine, we used to talk about as the metabolite of caffeine, but said better, caffeine is the dirty precursor to paraxanthine. Paraxanthine is the active that we really want. Caffeine and in particular theophylline are responsible for a lot of the side effects we don't want. So getting rid of caffeine and, or at least minimizing it as, as much as you can. I mean, we've shown with data that anything after noon with caffeine, any level has been shown to impair sleep. So this is where switching to paraxanthine, you'll see increased neuroplasticity, meaning like youthfulness of the brain and kind of regeneration and protection of neurons, the brain cells. You'll see increased nitric oxide to the brain blood flow. You'll see increased glutathione and catalase, the master antioxidant, and decreased oxidative stress as a result. Decreased beta amyloid plaque, which is associated with Alzheimer's, increased acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin. What are all the ways we know that the brain ages? Increased oxidation, decreased glutathione, decreased nitric oxide, increased beta amyloid plaque. You know, all of these things, decreased dopamine.
Those are all neurodegeneration and aging of the brain. Literally, paraxanthine is reversing the aging. And so not only is it acutely neutropic, meaning we've shown in many studies in the one use, like we showed with athletes in a 10K race where they took a multitasking test before and after the race, that they performed better after they raced, after they were exhausted because of paraxanthine. They had 11% decreased mental errors, whereas the caffeine group had 23% increase in mental errors. So literally paraxanthine is the flow and caffeine is the frazzle. And this is where they're just radically different. They're, they're not the same at all. And so we're seeing both that acute nootropic as well as that neuroprotective effect. And we actually see the reinforcement of this idea of being neuroprotective and enhancing the brain in an e-gaming study we did. Where we saw the e-gaming athletes over the course of 6 weeks and playing for 2 hours per session, that not only was there an acute time effect where with each gaming session, we saw that they improved in resistance to fatigue, like literally where at 2 hours they were basically playing at the same level they were at hour 0.
Whereas with nothing, when they took nothing, they had a steep drop-off at hour 1, at hour 2. And literally at 6 weeks, we saw basically they stayed the same across 2 hours. And so there was a time effect acutely, meaning with each session, but there was a time effect across the 6 weeks too, where they seem to be getting better and better and better with continued use. With caffeine, we see a negative time effect where you get worse and worse and worse with continued use. So this is just a night and day difference in how paraxanthine works. We've been obviously very excited about it. And, you know, I've talked to you about Update, which is one brand that I've been involved with. And there's a celebrity that's probably one of the top 5 most well-known human beings on the planet that is coming on board with Update. And, and it's launching into the rebrand is launching into Walmart and a lot of other places. There's also another drink called Life Cider X that has apple cider vinegar and paraxanthine. That's, that's quite delicious as well. So paraxanthine is certainly having its moment right now. There's also, if you like pouches, there's these oral pouches similar to like the idea of these tobacco or nicotine pouches, like Zyn.
There's one called Ultra that has paraxanthine in it. Alpha GPC is another nootropic that you mentioned in particular, our studied version called Genius Pure.
Yeah.
Yeah. And we showed that with the 330-milligram dose that we doubled focus, literally 2x the focus. So that is a huge deal. That number is a staggering number to improve productivity and focus to that degree from just one nutrient. And certainly when you have Alpha GPC and paraxanthine together, that is the most potent thing I know of that you can, you can add for, for focus and flow.
So the paraxanthine, cuz I saw your face when we brought that up, so I know it's a big deal to you. I let, let's just make this very simple cuz you covered all of the good science part of it. Essentially it's the good part of caffeine.
Yeah.
Okay. And you can take that later in the day without losing sleep or getting jittery or any of that. It's not gonna have that kind of effect on you, right?
It typically lasts about 3 hours, maybe 3.5 hours, 4 hours, absolute max. People that are working out in the evening get great sleep. We've actually shown improved HRVs, whereas with caffeine, as I mentioned, like even at 2:00 PM, it worsens your sleep at 10 or 11. So let alone working out on a pre-workout in the evening with 400 milligrams of caffeine and all this other stuff, like it will jack you up. So absolutely much cleaner, better sleep. You don't have the bio-individuality we have with caffeine. There's fast and slow metabolizers where the fast metabolizers can have like an hour and a half half-life. The slow metabolizers, which is 60% of the population, the majority of us can have up to 10.5-hour half-life where it's literally taking days to get that caffeine out of your system.
I wish I, I could make my coffee and just pull paraxanthine and no caffeine at the end. Shit. So I gotta stop.
I do decaf coffee, use the Swiss water method, not some chemical method.
Uh-huh.
Yeah. Get a Swiss water. You know, mold-free, decaf, I believe Lifeboost, Purity. Yeah, there's some, there's some good coffees out there that you could find. But those would be the ideal way to do it and just take paraxanthine in capsule, gummy, oral pouch, drink, you know, whatever.
Okay. So, 'cause I think that this product is, the best one that I've seen for neuro products, and I haven't seen millions of 'em, but I, I swear by this one. Couple of the other ingredients in here that I, I know that I like that I'm curious on the alpha lipoic acid. And then this berberine is a berberine phospholipid. So what are your thoughts on those? 'Cause I, I mean, taurine, very well aware of the milk thistle. This is a better form of milk thistle in here too, from what I understand. And then niacin is nicotinamide. I want to get into that too, but alpha-lipoic acid, tell me about that one a little bit.
It is an antioxidant that is a very, one of the most powerful antioxidants, but it's also associated with regulation of blood sugar.
Mm-hmm.
So it's in there along with some of these other compounds that help to regulate blood glucose, keep insulin and blood glucose low. Which keeps growth hormone, GLP-1, et cetera, higher. So that's the thought process. Tonum has done some very powerful research at Duke comparing the Modus product to GLP-1s. And what they saw is very similar results, but the dramatic difference was actually in maintaining muscle mass and most of the weight loss was coming from fat mass, whereas With the GLP-1s, they were seeing most of the weight loss be bone and muscle, which is definitely not ideal. Actually, a very small percentage was actually from fat.
It's dangerous. I don't think people realize when they're doing this what goes along with the GLP-1 use and why alternative methods are much better. But you know how it is, everybody wants stuff right now, and they want it now, and they want it fast, and oftentimes they don't care how they get it or, or what the side effects are going to be. That was always my problem with bodybuilders. They never thought about tomorrow. It was like, we wanna run these cycles, we want to get big, and we don't care what's gonna happen down the road. That's why when I was looking at this and when I was getting the explanation on the weight loss side of it and how it was preserving muscle with the GLP-1s, one of the things that I've sat in on that most people have the biggest problem with is how do we eat on this? We can't even eat because I mean, all you're really doing is shutting your brain off from being hungry. Right?
Well, and gastric motility and yeah, like you're talking about, it can, for some people it can be pretty severe constipation and heartburn and just food essentially is not moving through the gut, especially at higher doses.
Well, and then the weight gain when you stop taking it, you know what's happening. You're gaining all the weight back and sometimes more than what some lost.
More. Yeah. Which is really bad. There's signaling, there's processes where your body feels like it's been starving and then they oddly, they don't recommend that you would titrate down off a GLP-1.
No, shit, it'd take you forever.
People just stop. Yeah. When they're taking like the highest doses and then they just stop and then they have horrible side effects, which is obviously not ideal. And so having a product like Modus that is natural, that's easy to take, that doesn't have the habituation adaptation you know, side effects. And by the way, that, that berberine is a phytosome and it's very bioavailable. So they're switching to my version of berberine called dihydroberberine. Mm-hmm. Which is exciting. But honestly, in, in this form, obviously it's performing head-to-head pretty well with GLP-1s. And again, a lot better in some ways in terms of protecting muscle and bone and almost all the weight loss being from fat. But that's, uh, going to dihydroberberine is even more exciting. That's a metabolite of berberine. We don't see any GI distress. We see 5 to 20 times the bioavailability. We see it last twice as long in the plasma than regular berberine. So it's just gonna take Modus up another couple of notches and love it. And we also see with berberine and dihydroberberine that they're a positive hormetic stress on the mitochondria. So by, on, by working on this AMPK pathway, it's enhancing the number of and the activity of the mitochondria through stress.
And so that can be powerfully anti-aging for anyone. This is like one of the ways that metformin works and metformin was a great diabetic drug, but we also saw people that were 8% body fat that have been anti-aging using metformin. And so it's the same idea that we keep insulin low, we keep blood glucose low, we keep ketones higher, growth hormone, IGF-1, growth factors, autophagy, all these things are much higher when we suppress insulin and blood glucose along with inflammation being lower. And that's what we see like on berberine and dihydroberberine, we see improved lipids, triglycerides, inflammation as well to go with that lower blood glucose.
When you talk about triglycerides and everything like lower cholesterol, that's heart health. I mean, cardiovascular health. So there's multitudes of benefits here that we're looking at. That's why when I, when I saw this and I was like reading over the literature and the makeup and the compounds, I just kept going, holy shit, like this was done well. I mean, very well, cuz you know this, I see a lot of the same types of products out there that kind of parrot off each other and they'll do one ingredient different or a little bit higher dose here or there. And there's just not a lot of differentiation and definitely not a lot of money spent on proper studies. The nicotinamide, niacin is nicotinamide. What does that mean?
It's a no-flush form of niacin. Nicotinic acid would be the, the full-flush version of niacin. Nicotinamide or nicotinamide is an amide-bound niacin that is going to one, be vitamin B5, enhance, enhance your deficiency in potentially nicotinic acid, but it also leads to increased, sorry, B3, increase NAD levels as well. So this is where we're getting more energy and that was the reason they're including it is, is to increase energy production because around weight loss can be, uh, like cellular fatigue. Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Uh, so you have the berberine enhancing mitochondrial biogenesis, increasing the number of mitochondria, but you also have that a pretty potent dose of niacinamide, nicotinamide to increase NAD+ production, which is cellular energy.
And that what was wild was, is they were making the neuro product and then found the weight loss benefits through some of the—
Well, what I love about them is I've been in the industry a long time, 25 years probably. And I see so many companies, I mean, that have been around 20+ years that won't spend $50,000 on a study.
I know.
They spent millions.
I know.
That's why. Millions. And do you know where they studied at? Not just some random place. Duke University.
Yeah. That's why it was— you could, if you've been around long enough, you know, like you do. I don't know anywhere to the near the extent that you do, but I do know a great deal and I know what people do and the shortcuts they take and the money they spend and where it goes. And most of it's on tricky marketing. It's certainly not on this. And that's why I said, okay, count me in. I just gave them my flagship 2026, like this is my company of the year. I just put it out yesterday. Online. That's like where I'm at with it. And I'm, I'm super excited. I'm, I'm glad that I met them. But like I said, when I heard your name involved, that's when I continued the conversation. Was like, okay, all right, let's roll.
Let's do this.
So, okay. You know what? I want to ask you about something I wasn't planning on, but because we just touched on it with this, you talked about NAD. Now I've been talking about NAD a good bit here recently because there seems there's not an understanding with the NAD supplements on what works and what doesn't. A lot of people are, have the last, I would say 2, maybe 3 years flooded themselves with NAD supplements, NAD IVs. It's just one of those trends where everybody's kind of onto it and pushing it. I'm more of, and I've talked to many experts of of the precursors, the NMN especially, NR, the NAD supplementation itself, from what I understand, doesn't really penetrate the cell if you're taking straight NAD because it's too large. NMN is the easiest to get in there. 'Cause NR actually converts to NMN and then, then it, you know, increases our NAD levels. So what you're thinking there is, is that just a prevalent problem and do more people need to be taking NMN? Or what's, what's the deal?
Yes. NAD IVs probably do little to nothing.
Exactly.
NAD IVs probably do little to nothing. They actually may cause more inflammation than actually do positive benefit. Right. There is very little of that NAD that will get in the cell. To that point, because you have to get into the salvage pathway and and all of this when we talk about NAD. So yes, I do believe NMN is better than NR and a liposomal NMN, or maybe there is a new form called NMNH that could be potentially better. There's almost no data on it.
Mm-hmm.
So take caution on that. That's a maybe, but like a liposomal NMN or some kind of protected form of NMN may be the best form. But also delivering it with nicotinic acid, niacin, would be ideal to have both of those delivered. And then lastly, add in an NADase inhibitor, which is also called CD38, the enzyme that breaks down NAD.
Yep.
So this is where all the polyphenols are actually very exciting. So things like apigenin, fisetin, quercetin, EGCG, resveratrol, pterostilbene, you know, these things like that. And it seems like fisetin may be the most potent at doing this. So that would be kind of an ultimate stack. And then adding some other ingredients like ones that are brought to the market, like ergothioneine, which is a potent mitochondrial antioxidant and mitochondrial enhancer. And maybe like a CoQ10, in particular ubiquinol, and then a PQQ. Now you've got the ultimate mitochondrial formula is a liposomal NMN, fisetin, the PQQ, the CoQ10, and ergothioneine in high dose, like 50+ milligrams.
I have spoken, could deal with the wonderful Dr. Andrew Saltzman I interviewed, and he kind of educated me on the NAD, NMN side of things. And they were, that's where I learned about CD38 too, because I didn't know anything about any of that at all. And they have their younger product that addresses CD38, 'cause you brought up resveratrol. I'm off the top of my head. I know that's in there, but I think people don't understand how much we actually lose as we get older. And that CD38 is a prevalent issue and has to be addressed. You can't just take anything without addressing that, that is NAD-related, right?
Yeah, it's a double whammy where we, We produce less NAD as we age, and then we break NAD down faster as we age. So that's the double whammy. So it certainly makes sense to try and enhance NAD levels directly and then inhibit the breakdown of NAD. And just stress, alcohol, poor sleep, bad lighting, junk lighting. You know, you can go down the line of, of all the reasons why we are making less NAD and breaking it down. Down faster.
Mm-hmm. Let's discuss peptides. Now, I told you I started researching them, it was 2011. There was literally, I believe it was GHRP-2 and 6, CJC-1295, Sermorelin, Hexarelin, and Melanotan-2. And that was about it that you could buy. There was really nothing else that was really being sold on underground markets. I'm probably leaving out a couple, but that was about it. And I've watched it evolve now into thousands and gone insane. And now more obviously everybody's into it. Everybody wants to learn about it. What I'm curious, what are some of your favorites that you lean towards? I'm going to give you a couple of mine. Okay. KPV is one of my favorites. MOTC is one of my favorites. And I'm sure you can understand why on both of those. I tend, of course everybody and their mom wants to talk about BPC-157 and GLP-1s. Now BPC rightfully so, obviously for multitudes of reasons I'll let you get into, but GHK-CU is another one of my favorites 'cause I'm a longevity skincare guy.
Yeah.
But those are some of my favorites. Ipamorelin is, and that's one I left out, is probably the, I don't know, I would say old reliable. 'cause it does a little bit of everything. I like that one as well. But those are, for me, those are my favorites. I look more on the cellular side, more of the longevity side, more of the skin side, and then the healing and all of that. And then SS31 because of the, the heart. For you, what are some of your favorites and why? And how do you, how do you feel about their place now and moving forward?
I think they're absolutely profound. In terms of their effects. I think there's no going back. What's frustrating right now is many of them are getting pulled off these sites. There was a 150-page document that went out from the FDA and big pharma to most of these companies that are selling research peptides, certainly around the GLP-1s, which are medications. But there is a changing of the law that's happening where peptides initially weren't allowed to be patented because they're naturally occurring compounds in the body. Think of BPC in the gut, or even the old school ones like GH or IG, or sorry, of insulin that are peptides that are naturally occurring. You can't patent them. Are they sold by big pharma?
Yes.
But you know, maybe it's in a modified form. Maybe it's because of the brand and it's in an auto-injector syringe or, you know, something like that. But that's changing.
Really?
Because these things are so potent. Big Pharma has put pressure on the FDA to change this, and now they will be able to be patented and they're taking them away from these research sites in particular. So not only are the GLP-1s getting removed, but you're also seeing potentially a lot of the other compounds may get removed and are going to be behind a prescription wall or any that you know of that you would— Almost all of them really. Yes. They're, it's being hotly discussed right now. Certainly the most effective ones that you're mentioning are the ones that they care about. So going to the stacks that I would mention right now, BPC-157, as you mentioned, is just, I can't even tell you, I'd probably in the hundreds now over the last 10 years of people that told me they were going to have surgery but then didn't need surgery because of BPC.
I agree.
Tendon damage, ligament damage, bone damage, muscle damage.
I've seen disk damage.
Yeah, it's wild, like how quickly people are healing with BPC. So clearly there's interest there.
Before you go, BPC methods of delivery. When, when we talk about those, cuz I've been using a cream honestly that I love. And it's a BPC-TB 500 cream. Discuss the capsules, like oral form versus injecting site injection.
Yeah. Capsule I think is not systemic. I think largely it is peptides are smaller proteins that are very prone to be broken down by the stomach and certainly the liver. And you're just, for the most part, you need to inject these. Now, when we say injection, we're talking about subcutaneous injection, which is a tiny insulin needle, which is in your body fats, which easy feels like nothing. So for those of you that are, that are needle-phobic, we're not talking about IM, which is intramuscular. We're not talking about, which is a big gage needle and much deeper and much more painful, like a testosterone shot or something like that. And we're not talking about certainly IV where we're going intravenous and you need to know how to put it in the blood concerns or whatever. This is very easy to do. And yes, you have to add bacteriostatic water to hydrate the peptide powder that's in the little vial and draw it up and then inject it. But this oral capsule, I believe, is just working more at a local level on the stomach. So if there are gut issues, I do believe oral BPC-157 can be very helpful.
KPV could be helpful. TB-500 could be helpful. And the TB4 fragment, I believe it is. Yeah. TB4. That can be orally active to some degree, and there may be some systemic benefits, but I believe most of it is, is working at the gut. That if you want the true systemic benefit, then you're going to need to inject. Now, as far as site-specific, this gets argued a lot, but I will say anecdotally, everyone I've talked to, it seems to help to some degree. It's certainly not going to hurt. If you are injecting in the area that there's been some kind of trauma, harm, damage that we want to repair, it does seem maybe there's a slightly better benefit to injecting in that area. Versus just injecting into like, you know, your stomach fat. Yeah. For example.
For sure. So what else? I cut you off there 'cause I wanted, I needed your answers there. What else are you looking at that you are really—
The, the ones you mentioned, like BPC-157, TB500, KPV, and GHK-Cu, which is like the Glow Stack or the Clo Stack, like those are all very healing peptides and, you know, Ben Greenfield used to call it the Wolverine stack with the TB500 and BPC. Those, those are very powerful. And then certainly the GH secretagogues, as you mentioned, like tesamorilin. That's my favorite. Tesamorilin. Yeah. CJC, Nodac. You know, those are, are very helpful too. You know, growth hormone is going to be, and especially these ones because they're keeping up pulsatile growth hormone, which is actually better than like directly injecting growth hormone, which is not pulsatile. It's just a big bolus of, of, uh, growth hormone. Whereas your pituitary releases growth hormone about 6 times a day. So you actually want this rhythm because all these hormones and peptides are, and neurotransmitters are all tied into like this undulating circadian rhythm of your body. And having things be more pulsatile is ideal. Behind growth hormone is growth hormone releasing hormone. And so like working on that level allows your body to produce more, but in a natural way. So all that to say that that's, that's a better way of, of doing growth hormone.
Yeah. Tesamorlin is one of my favorites because of the ability to lose fat and maintain muscle and even build upon the muscle. That's like a recomposition in a bottle type of thing. I, I look at it as if you're eating right, you know, with it.
Of all the GLP-1s like semaglutide, you know, which Mounjaro and, and Ozempic and then tirzepatide. Which is the second generation. Retatrutide smokes everything.
It is insane.
Like that one is incredible, but it's right now it's gone from almost all the sites. Incredible compound. I have seen tremendous benefits from myself and other people I've worked with. Whether you are lean or overweight, you'll see benefits with reta. If you're already lean, then I would use kind of more microdosing level and you'll see like that metabolic advantage. Because it's working on 3 mechanism levels. It's working on, yes, GLP-1, but also working on GIP and then glucagon. And glucagon is kind of the, the new one. And it just keeps your blood sugar super stable all day long. It helps maintain muscle mass, whereas the other GLP-1s, as we talked about, can be terrible when it comes to muscle mass. And that's going to improve inflammation, healing in general. you know, give you that metabolic advantage similar to like when you were 18, 20 years old in the way you could eat. So at least on the microdosing level for longevity, we're seeing a lot of people love retta. And then certainly if you're overweight, like maybe 4 to 6 milligrams, the 12 milligram in the study was way too much. The side effects increased dramatically.
So I don't think you really need to go above 4mg a week.
Yeah.
More is not always better. Right. Next up in terms of peptides, let me think here.
I forgot my other two.
Okay. Tell me.
The Lank and Semax.
Okay, great.
Yeah.
Let's go cognitive peptides. Yeah. So Semax, especially the N-acetyl Semax amodate is actually the kind of the acetylated versions of CMAX and Selank are actually a little bit better in terms of bioavailability. These are nasal sprays, super easy. And CMAX is honestly as experiential as paraxanthine for me. Like, it is awesome. I feel a huge cognitive lift. I feel much sharper. Selank is almost like kind of your, uh, anxiolytic, like it really reduces anxiety, like helps you feel like more at ease, relaxed. This is going to be something like a theanine or rhodiola or maybe like a magnolia bark or, you know, something like that herbally, like where you just feel like a kind of wave of relaxation and ease. And then of course, Some people love combining the two because that is flow state where you have cognitive enhancement and a relaxation. This is just like how all the studies that have shown caffeine paired with theanine are very powerful together because it smooths out the negative side effects of caffeine. I don't know that C-Max needs like smoothing out per se, but the flow state, as we mentioned, is kind of that relaxed versus stimulated.
And really the two work so well together. There are other peptides that are nootropic peptides like cerebrolysin dihexa. I mean, there's, there's a number of them that, that are probably for getting a pinealon. Like there, there's some really good ones, but it, I would say the most experiential, like the best ones are those two. Yeah. In particular, if you use that, the N-acetyl form and Yeah, they seem key. They seem to have great synergy. When you're talking nasal sprays, one benefit that you can have is one, you should know how much the concentration is because you could just get a bottle from someone and it could be a 10th of the concentration of someone else's. Two, it's good if you clean or rinse your nasal passages first because for the spray to adhere and then pass through the nasal membrane to these vascular tissue and nose, it's ideal if you're getting rid of kind of excess mucus or, you know, what have you. So like doing like a saline rinse right before, and then maybe, you know, giving it 10 minutes and then doing the nasal spray, you're actually going to maximize it more and be careful if you have 10 or 15 nasal sprays from some peptide company.
One, a lot of these peptides will not work intranasally. Nasal.
Mm-hmm.
There are a lot of 'em being sold, but they're too big of peptides to actually cross intranasally. So Selankin Smacks do, but just be careful on, you know, trying to do too many peptides or too many sprays. Like Melanotan actually does work.
Yeah.
Intranasally. I love that one, especially Melanotan 2.
I had the worst experience with some people multiple times.
Some people have nausea. Oh yeah. Some people don't, but it just, it's, it seems bioindividual. So if you do have nausea with melanotan, melanotan 2 does have some like thermogenic benefits that are kind of like along with the tanning, you can like lose a little bit of fat. So yeah, if you can use it, melanotan 2, if you can't go melanotan.
So man, you explain a little bit on how to use the nasal sprays for people that are wondering like, like, because I, I, I've had that question.
No, this is a great question. Yeah. This is true with like, you know, intranasal ketamine. This is true with like some of these other research peptides that are coming out to the market that are compounding pharmacies using like PE2. I, I believe maybe there's even like a tesafensine and like some other things that are, that are more like research drug level. Compounds that are being delivered intranasally. So one, clean the nasal passages. That's ideal. Two, don't stick the whole thing up your nose. You're going to get like that postnasal drip. It's going to go behind your sinuses and then just drip into your throat. And you're getting very little benefit from that. Literally just barely have it at the opening of your nose, the tip of the cone. Bone, if you will. And then make sure that you're pulling down in a, in a pretty firm way. So you're getting a full spray. If you kind of pull down slowly or not as firmly, like you won't get as good a spray. So don't go too deep, make sure you're pulling down firmly and then don't breathe in. I think it's like a natural idea to like, like when you do it, I think everyone does that.
You're pulling it back again, like to your, you're getting that postnasal drip. Just don't breathe for a second. Let it kind of coat the nasal passages and hit that vascular tissue. And, and that's ideal.
Okay. All right. Yeah. Cause I mean, that's a, it is different and they can't explain how to do it on research sites because the minute they start doing that, it's, it's over.
Right.
Right. As soon as somebody Sees it, they're shut down because their research, I think a lot of people don't understand that those research sites, they're, they can't market it and they can't tell you what to do or how to do it. Then it's not research anymore. I mean, that's why it says not for human consumption and so many people don't understand.
Yeah. These sites aren't supposed to say anything about the ingredient, but then you'll see some of these sites saying all the benefits and yeah.
And they get shut down.
Yeah. And then that's clearly no longer for research use only. That's what RUO means. Yeah. Research use only. If you see that term on these peptide sites, that's what that means. Yeah. Yes. And then also be wary of, say you may, oh, so MOTS-C, I'm a huge fan of.
Yeah.
MOTS-C, especially if you're using REDA, like that's the ultimate combination, that REDA trutide. You'll keep your mitochondrial function up, you'll keep your cellular energy up. It actually works like via that AMPK, like hormetic stress as well. That is a, a really powerful one. And as you mentioned, SS31, really powerful as well. Those are like, I think we've mentioned all the ones that I would definitely put towards the top of my list. There's some other ones that are interesting along the lines of NAD and anti-aging, 5-Amino-1MQ. Yeah. Fat loss, but also increasing NMF. NAD levels, really compelling. That one is actually effective orally in the right dose. And then there are some ones, if you dose high enough, the SLU, P or BAM-15 that are exercise mimetics, thermogenics.
Well, SLU was always told to be used at a really, really small dose.
It goes for low dose and it does nothing. Does nothing. They've been selling it at like orally at 50 micrograms, 500 micrograms. You're grass. Doesn't— we're seeing that 50 milligrams or 100 milligrams, I wouldn't go above 100. There are some people playing with mega, mega doses, but a hundred is I think where I'd max out, but 50 milligrams. So you're talking about literally a thousand X difference in the dose here. So insane. No one was seeing benefit in the microgram levels.
Mm-hmm. So yes, so SLU PP332, very potent for fat loss and I like what you said, exercise thermogenesis combo with BAM-15 is mean.
As long as you're getting the right dose, that's a, that's another one that I would say about 50 milligrams. So 50 milligrams for each. Yeah. That is, that is a really awesome combination.
Yeah, it really is. And a lot of these have multi-benefits. Fits, you know, I mean like MOTC for example, multi-beneficial. I like was drawn to SS31 because I had a low ejection fraction issue and I think that people don't know or don't understand like that, that can help with potential heart failure or lowering of ejection. It can raise your ejection fraction, make your heart pump more efficiently, stronger. I, I do question then moving forward since we're talking about heart and everything, so What's your opinion on SGLT2 inhibitors like Jardiance? Do you have any opinion or thought on those? Because a lot of the people in my realm disagree on a lot, but they all agree on Jardiance. And I'm taking Jardiance for a specific need. And I, I, I've noticed though too, it's inhibited some of the things for me. I'm urinating frequently and I'm pissing out glucose and what it's done. I already had low potassium from all of the training and not eating enough. And now I've noticed like when I start to have funky heart palpitations, I go slam potassium. It stops.
Mm-hmm.
Because of, and, and I, I'm gonna transition into electrolyte importance, but I am curious as your thought on these medications.
It is a new frontier. This pathway that you're talking about, is while some of the pathways, like with a metformin or insulin, are kind of capturing blood glucose after it's happened, SGLT2 inhibitors are preventing the absorption of glucose in the first place. And literally just as you said, pushing it through urinary pathways. Yep. So for anti-aging, there's been some excitement around that because it does seem like while we all talk about like hypoglycemia and oh, my blood sugar's crashing, it does seem like, especially when we look at ketogenic models, lifetime models and animals and things like that, the lower the blood sugar, the better. We're, we're just not seeing that like, oh, it needs to be in this kind of normoglycemic range. I mean, obviously you don't want it to be like below like 25, 30 or something like that. Right. And saying that, like where the body can regulate and make its own blood glucose irrespective of diet glucose, that the lower the blood glucose, the lower the insulin, the lower the inflammation, the higher the growth hormone, the higher the IGF-1, the higher the autophagy, the reduced oxidation and oxidative stress. The higher the glutathione catalase, et cetera.
Like it just higher the ketones. All of this seems to be correlated that the lower the better. Yeah. So that's where a lot of people are using the SGLT2 inhibitors and it's compelling, but certainly I would agree, like what's the kind of longer-term side effects? We don't know. And certainly there's always a price to pay when you're kind of messing with a pathway chronically. There's always downstream effects of other pathways. We know that the body's so great at homeostasis and what we like call like cascades, like, you know, the endocrine cascade, this hormone affects another hormone affects another hormone. Like they're not working in isolation. Their body's working in this beautiful concert of hormones and peptides and neurotransmitters and all these signals that are happening. And it tends to be when you inhibit something chronically that something else is affected. And I think you were seeing that to some degree. And so I guess if I was to use it, then I would certainly not add other things while I was using it. You just do a kind of self-experiment, work with your doctor, work on keeping labs and use the kind of minimum effective dose instead of max dosing things.
See, that's what, it's just one of those things where it was designed for one thing and then I was prescribing it for the low ejection fraction. And I will tell you, I had that episode in June and I got that, the echo done and my ejection fraction was 44. And I had it tested again about 3 and a half months after I started Jardiance and I'm taking D-ribose powder and high ubiquinol with it, and I was up to 50.
Mm-hmm.
I wanna be in normal range, which is 55 to 70, but that was a pretty significant increase in a short amount of time. But you know, like I said, I get those funny heart palpitations, then I start to panic. And then I was try, I, I kept trying to piece this together and I, and I kept getting low potassium readings, which I was already getting anyway before the Jardians. And so it's like, okay, I gotta eat more. Because the, you're, you piss out 500 to 600 calories a day automatically with the Jardiance. And then you're losing electrolytes, you're losing potassium with all the frequent urinating. And like I said, I have potassium pill where glucose slash glycogen goes.
Like, you know this, anyone who's done keto, like when you lose so much weight in like the first week.
Yeah.
A lot of that's that water weight. Yeah. Like where glycogen slash glucose goes, waterfalls.
Follows. So yeah, absolutely.
And that's why on keto as well, like you need to keep your electrolytes up, in particular sodium. But as you're mentioning, sodium potassium play a role together. They're the plus one ion and, and you know, there's the sodium potassium cellular gates, you know, the voltage channels and, and all of that where it's absolutely critical that to have those levels up.
And most people on their diet eat way more sodium than they're supposed to and not nearly enough potassium than they're, that they're supposed to get. I've encountered that time and time again. And a lot of HGH retention revolved around sodium potassium ratios. 'Cause I mean, realistically, you should be getting close to like 4,500 milligrams of potassium a day. Some people will say 3,500, 3,600. Yeah. I think, but for somebody like me that sweats a lot, that trains a lot, and then also on these medications, need to be closer to that 4,700, and then it's finding the right foods that, you know, for that, which is not the easiest thing always to get. I do a lot of avocados that have a lot in it 'cause I eat a lot of avocado, like probably way more than the normal human. But like zucchini, a big zucchini, I have 1,000 milligrams of potassium. It's just finding the right foods and balancing.
Agreed. And, and sodium, honestly, I believe should be a much higher level than, you know, 2,000 milligrams.
Yeah, that's not enough.
Especially if like what you're saying, like you're shedding a lot of fluid and, and glucose and electrolytes that, you know, I'd probably be looking to get a similar level of sodium. I said sodium is +1, but it's +2 and potassium's +1. But make sure you're getting something like, yeah, 4 or 5 grams of of sodium. If you're an athlete and losing a lot of electrolytes, if you are certainly a diabetic, if you are someone who's doing a lot of sweating, maybe doing sauna work, you know, it's very important to replace fluid, but also electrolytes.
90-minute cardio sessions, I come out pretty drenched, brother.
Mm-hmm.
Do 'em every day.
That's impressive.
Yeah, it's, it's probably overtraining, but I've toned it down. But in Arizona, even inside, even in the winter, you're sweating a lot, man.
You know, and well, it's important. One of the things that I love from an exercise is a graduate class I had at Chapel Hill. My teacher told me, maybe don't think of it as overtraining, but under recovering. And I think that's a, that's a good point. That's a potent thought shift or thought experiment right there is to think about how you're nourishing your body to recover from that difficult training.
It's so true. I underate for so many years, like just eating disorder and struggling with how I look and everything. And I'm talking burning 4,000 and 5,000 calories a day and eating like 1,500 to 1,800. Even now I eat 3,000 and on paper I'm still undereating, but I, I don't know how to eat any more than that without, you know, it's, it's hard, but you're right. One of the things that even as a teacher of this for years, that a lot of times we're hypocrites, or at least me, was the lack of recovery, rest, taking days off, sleeping better. I have really had to force myself and now come to the realization because it's hard as you get older to accept I can't do this like I used to, but I can do it smarter and I can actually be better by resting and doing these things, how important is the rest part of the training in your view?
The rest, I mean, massive, like massive. I think foundational, you know, you were talking about Molly Eastman, who's a friend of ours, Sleep Is a Skill. I believe it's the most foundational part of biohacking is to get enough sleep. And there is data to show that 7 hours or less, which is probably what most people think is normal or a great night's sleep for many people, you start to see a dramatic increase, like a 3x increase in heart attack risk and a 5x increase in diabetic risk.
And why is that?
Because you are increasing the stress on the neurons and the neurons become acutely insulin resistant. And when you're underslept and this becomes what they call type 3 diabetes or essentially acute Alzheimer's, and then you need, it's setting the tone for your whole body and actually increasing inflammation because there's not enough cellular energy and the brain uses a ton of energy. And all kinds of things are happening. You're not getting the autophagy, mitophagy, kind of defragging of the brain that's supposed to happen at night. And so brain health suffers dramatically. And with that, a lot of the neurotransmitters and signals and hormones that are in that milieu are having downstream effects throughout the body, like where you're seeing increased oxidation, inflammation, glycation, lack of cellular energy. And when done chronically, when chronically underslept, that's when you're seeing just horrible net effect, like really just a terrible net effect. There's no, like cortisol is going to be increased epinephrine, norepinephrine, which is adrenaline, noradrenaline. All these things will be increased and you're just struggling to make it through your day. And then you're compensating with lots of caffeine or Adderall or, you know, whatever. And this is having an impact.
And then add to it, I would say in, for men in particular that are already overweight or maybe have used steroids and, you know, have like thicker necks and you're seeing sleep apnea being a huge thing. Just that snoring that you think is normal is not normal. You're going sometimes over a minute without breathing and you're having these apneic episodes where you're choking and gagging and you wake up and you know, you think someone's been attacking you and it's nightmares and, or your, your spouse can't sleep next to you. Like all of this is you're not getting enough oxygen to the tissues and that leads directly to heart attack and stroke.
Argue lower testosterone from not sleeping enough, harder, more difficulty losing weight. Obviously inability to focus, probably shittier attitude. I can attest to that.
Yeah. A lack of resilience. Yeah. Like, yeah, just a, yeah. More agitation, frustration, anxiety. Absolutely lower testosterone, estrogen, you know, all the things, whether male or female, growth hormone, anything that's ideal is going to be impaired. You will not be optimized, period, the end, if you're not getting 8 hours of sleep.
Yeah, totally. So gimme your list of what you would say are just like absolute essentials that we need to take every day vitamin-wise or whatever. I'm sure there's a list, but in comparison to a multivitamin, what's your thoughts on taking a multivitamin versus supplementing each thing separately that we need?
I do think a multivitamin is ideal for most people that are— there is a lot of pill fatigue. And I don't like kind of these all-in-one AG1 kind of powders that are like jack of all trades, master of none. But I do think that, you know, some of these super high-end multis like a, a Thorne Pure Encapsulations, they make really good products. I will say that the testing, I've formulated some multis, you have to look at the each nutrient's interaction and their stability. Meaning like what overages you put so that they stay stable across the life of the product, the 2 years of the product. That takes so much work in a multi because you're not talking about a couple ingredients, you're talking about 50 ingredients or whatever it is. Yeah. And I've taken 3 years of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in testing to try and figure all that out. So it is very complex to work on a multi and, and do it well. So I would only trust like a a really elite brand.
Yeah.
You do want to look for like the methylated B vitamins, organic forms of minerals, the right doses. I don't think you need like 10,000% of anything. Like, I think I would keep it in the sub-1,000%.
Look at some of those.
I know, right? Myself, what? Like, why? Yeah, yeah. I think some of them are, are too high. And don't need to be that high. Let me ask you this.
Wouldn't that be like just not eating all day though? Can't you get some of those from food?
You can, you can get some from food, but you know, the argument is that what's different now is there's soil depletion, there's EMFs, there's all these toxins that are in the food supply, the air that are in our clothing. There's, you know, endocrine disruption, you know, 5G, whatever. There's all kinds of stuff. Stuff that we're being assaulted with on a daily basis, and we're not getting the nutrients that we used to be getting. Here's a big one. Actually, this is one of the most exciting things that I've really stumbled into in terms of research and is right in line with this. And a good multi hopefully should have this. If not, buy this right away. Lithium orotate. Now you might think lithium, like, uh, someone has You know, what would be called schizophrenia or multiple personality, you know, all this kind of stuff, all these, right? No, that is literally 1000x the difference of what I'm talking about. Lithium at low levels. And again, 1000th the level of a medication has been shown in a recent study. They looked at all the minerals and how they associate with brain health. And they were plotted along the line and they were all kind of going here, like along the line.
And then And way up in this kind of North Star, other side of the graph was lithium. It has a profound effect on cognitive health, preventing Alzheimer's, cognitive resilience. It is a game changer and our soil is all but depleted of it. Our water supply is all but depleted of it. And maybe even some of the other things that are in our soil and water supply are actually preventing what small amounts are even left there from even getting absorbed. So if we look at lithium orotate, game changer. So 5 milligrams, a really potent, profound dose. Take it at night, take it consistently, and you'll see incredible benefits. I have one from Pure Encapsulations that has N-acetyl cysteine with it, which I'm a huge fan of, that boosts glutathione levels at night. I was just gonna say, I was looking. So, so that would be the, the one that I would, that I would suggest you add if it's not in a multi.
What else then? I mean, we need magnesium, we need potassium, we need, so we need our magnesium.
You're probably not getting enough of in a multi. It just needs to be bigger doses. I'm a big fan of magnesium bisglycinate, magnesium glycinate, or magnesium threonate. Those are really the two best forms. They're both amino acid chelates, meaning the amino acid helps the bioavailability. Stability, glycine or threonine. The threonate tends to be better on a cognitive level, and the glycinate might be better on kind of a relaxing level. Maybe Magtein, Mag 3 and 8 during the day, maybe Mag glycinate at night, something like that. Obviously you're going to see, and there's a huge percentage of the population, I think it's up to 70% of the population is magnesium deficient. And we see that It improves obviously bowel habits and constipation. We see it improves muscle contraction, cognitive function, improved blood sugar effects and regulation and insulin control, better certainly bone health, stress and resilience. Like there's so many things that magnesium is helping with. It's more than 200 chemical reactions in the body, and that's where we see magnesium just be kind of the, the gold star of, of all supplements. Everyone wants magnesium, is seeing the benefits of magnesium. It works. You feel it, you see a difference in your life.
So that would be one I would certainly add.
I mean, severe problems if your electrolytes are off, obviously.
Yeah.
Like I was saying, heart rhythm's one big one.
Hydration, high heart rhythm. Yeah, exactly. For sure. Magnesium.
Yeah.
So many places.
What about D3 and K2, would you put those up there as essentials?
I would. Okay. And I do think this is another one that I may add separately from the multivitamin. The D3, we've seen in data that oil-based is better than the dry. I've seen as much as like a 3 or 4x difference in terms of bioavailability where the soft gel, the oil-based D3 is better. And in particular, if you have your oil-based D3 with a fatty meal, then you see the best uptake. And yes, K2, not only for bone health, but as both have been shown to improve bone health with D3 and K2, but also D3 has a co-participant in K2 and a number of its reactions where delivering them both together has been shown to really have true synergy together. And so there's the MK-4. Yeah. MK-7 has more studies, lasts longer. MK-4 may be actually more potent, but is very short acting. If I was to use just one or the other, it'd be MK-7, K2. Ideally you could get both together and that's even better, but I don't know who's selling that that way, but that would be cool if you could get MK-4 and MK-7 together.
I took one, I can't remember off the top of my head. It was a 4 and a 7 together and I, for the life of me, I don't know. I'll figure it out and I'll let you know later. But I, I know I was taking one that way. I was turned on to K2 for the heart health and everything with it. What about selenium, iodine, those, how essential are those to supplement? Like trace minerals?
Yeah, I, I think they are important. You don't want to get too much of them and they end up becoming toxic or kind of interfering with the absorption of other minerals. I do think this in particular, when we're talking about soil depletion and kind of over-farmed soil and, and all of that, that you're seeing a lot less of in particular those trace minerals. And those are going to have the greatest effect when you reduce something that's already tiny and make that half as much or a tenth as much. That's going to have more of an impact. So honestly, there's probably not enough research on the trace minerals. Selenium, yes, there's some good data, like especially around vitamin E and how it works with vitamin E and heart health and antioxidant activity and things like that. But I do think that this is where a multi is good insurance in particular on the trace mineral aspect. So make sure that it does have some of those trace minerals. And iodine, as you mentioned, is really interesting because is salt used to be iodized. Yeah. Yeah. Like the typical Morton salt or iodized salt. But now everyone wants their, you know, Dead Sea salts or, you know, whatever, like this salt from here or there.
And it's not iodized anymore. It's quote unquote more natural, which is cool. It may taste better and all that, but it doesn't have the iodine that the salt that was highly distributed before had. And so we are seeing like a greater increase in thyroid dysfunction and goiters and things along those lines. So again, just making sure you're getting some of these trace minerals is important.
Okay. Well, I, I just looked at the clock and I said 90 minutes and we went an hour longer. I got another probably 10 hours of questions I want to go over with you, so we're gonna have to do several parts to this. This. I can't tell you how much I enjoy this. I mean, not just because we're boys, but this conversation is, uh, I can, I can talk about this all day and especially with you. I have had such a blast doing this, man. And I really appreciate you leaving a trip with your fiancée early for me in Mexico, setting this all up for me here, having me down here. Making the time for me, just the daily interactions that I have with you, or weekly, however they may occur. I value the shit out of it.
I really do.
And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. And I thank you for all of this, especially for your work.
No, thank you, brother. I appreciate that. It's an honor to be sitting here with you and to share my heart and my knowledge with you and your following. And any way I can help anyone listening, please DM me if you have a question. I answer all of my DMs. Follow me on Instagram and all the different things, just @SeanWells, S-H-A-W-N-W-E-L-L-S. Go to SeanWells.com, again, S-H-A-W-N, and I have everything about my formulations or various companies, but also like a lot of cool free downloadable guides, newsletters that are all free. Everything's, you know, free. I have different lists of cool supplements that that I think are good stacks or whatever and where to buy them and all that good stuff. So should be anything you need on the site and should be all free as far as I know. The only thing I charge for out there is my book and, and I have a course around the book, but that's it.
Well, I can say this without a shadow of a doubt, most trusted name in supplements is an understatement. And, and, and it sounds like it's the highest level that you could get, but I think there's even more to it. And I already knew how much you knew, but sitting down here and talking with you and doing it face to face and going back and forth and everything and the quickness and the efficiency of your answers without hesitation, the way that you just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, without doing the political politician answer to dance around the fact that you don't know, you never did that. In fact, you had an answer for an answer for an answer every single time. Time. And that shows me not only the credibility, but the amount of dedication and just time that you've put into this that I can see. So I just want everybody— we'll see this video, but if you're only listening to audio, you can hear it, but when you see it, it's totally different. So my friend, thank you for everything, for all of this. Like I said, it's been a pleasure and honor and everything in between.
No, thank you.
Yes. So, all right, everybody, that wraps up another one. I will have all of Sean's info in the description. Thank you for watching. I am certain that this has been the best episode I've ever done. So take as much as you can from this. That being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli and Sean Wells signing off.
Episode #103 Featuring Shawn Wells! The MOST TRUSTED Name in Supplements!
I also discuss how blessed I am for the people I get to interview, interact with, learn from and become friends with. Many people I interview become more than guests, they become real friends and it is one of the many reasons why I love what I do. Shawn is different to me. From the moment I met Shawn, we clicked immediately and he became a brother to me from the start. This is a much longer than normal interview and you will see with the back and forth, how well we click and interact but also bring out the best in one another.
Shawn Wells is known for being the most trusted name in supplements and that is actually an understatement. His knowledge base, work ethic and desire to continuously look for something better and safer is to thank for the evolving amount of products we are privy to have. Shawn has made it his life's work to ensure that we are all getting the safest, most effective and best researched products and formulas on the planet.
This interview covers it ALL. Shawn discusses the many problems inside of the supplement world, with a history lesson on how things have evolved into the marketing mess and confusion we have today. Shawn brings to light the importance of product testing and provides detailed insight on the dangers of buying third party products, especially on amazon. We have a long discussion on how Shawn formulates and discovers new ingredients and formulas, and the rigorous process he takes to ensure we ALL get the safest and most effective products known to man. Shawn discusses the amount of study and education he has gone through over all the years of his work in the field and how much it requires to stay ahead of the curve today! We have a very enlightening and eye opening discussion on Peptides, SARMS, anabolic steroids and comparison and contrasts to many mainstream popular supplements. Shawn discusses his best stack of natural supplements for muscle gain along with some of his most essential daily supplements he recommends.
This conversation is life changing and provides the insight we need to ensure we are taking the right types of supplements for health and longevity as well as protecting ourselves from dangers and scams. Shawn truly does God's work and I am honored to not just call him a friend, but a true brother! DO NOT MISS THIS EPISODE!
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