Mark Bell's Power Project - Peptide Therapeutics: The Role of GLP-1 in Fitness and Weight Loss - Justin Kirkland

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

What if optimizing your fitness and losing weight came down to peptides? In episode 1133 of Mark Bell’s Power Project Podcast, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Justin Kirkland discuss how GLP-1 peptides are transforming fitness and health. Justin explains, “It’s not just about the weight loss—it’s about using these compounds as tools for long-term lifestyle changes.”Learn how GLP-1 curbs cravings, supports better eating habits, and the science behind delivery methods like advanced coatings for oral absorption versus injectables. They also dive into maintaining muscle while shedding fat with strategies like resistance training and mindful nutrition.Packed with insights on peptide innovation and safe usage, this episode is a must-watch for anyone dedicated to health, fitness, and personal growth. Don’t miss the conversation on using peptides to unlock better results while tackling challenges like muscle mass loss and dosage management!Special perks for our listeners below!🥜 Protect Your Nuts With Organic Underwear 🥜➢https://nadsunder.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 15% off your order!🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECTUse code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained:   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima InyangFollow Nsima Inyang ➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=enFollow Andrew Zaragoza➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz

What is a peptide? Like what makes the difference between a peptide and a supplement? The definition of a peptide is going to be a chain of amino acids. The FDA at one point decided to make a quantitative value of any peptide that's greater than 40 amino acids they're going to call a biologic. Actually, I disagree with that definition. Insulin's a peptide, all the GLP1s are peptides. Do you think we're at a place where are we anywhere close to being able to make peptides orally as bioavailable as the ones you inject? We're sort of there already.

The problem that I see with that is that our bodies are designed to break down proteins and peptides. So sometimes it's just easier just to inject it than it is to like, you know, try to stomach it. You almost always have better bioavailability through injection. I mean, with IV, you're literally putting the drug in the bloodstreams.

Are these drugs within a category where people can just start and stop whenever they like? Yeah, so you have that start and stop, and then some people stop and they're fine. All right, Justin Kirkland, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Let's just get right to it. What is a peptide? Like what makes the difference between a peptide and a supplement? What's that line that's divided between those two? Yeah, so technically speaking, the definition of a peptide is gonna be a chain of amino acids.

So anytime you have two amino acids connected, that's gonna be your peptide. When peptides get to be your peptide. When peptides get to be much longer and more complex and folded, we typically consider those to be called proteins. And something that we might talk about today is that the FDA at one point in the past few years decided to make a quantitative value of any peptide that's greater than 40 amino acids they're going to call a biologic.

I don't necessarily, actually I disagree with that definition in the sense that there are peptides that can be manufactured by engineering a bacteria to produce them or something like that. That's how I would view a biologic is that you're biologically manufacturing this material. If you're familiar with the supplement carnosine, that's two amino acids. So that's a peptide. Insulin's a peptide.

You can't miss, you know, between the news and the commercials and social media and South Park, all the GLP-1s are peptides. And so peptides by the definition are a chemical, it's a type of chemicals. And so when you talk about supplements, the way I look at supplements are, you're gonna have to fall within the Deshaix Act,

which is how Congress has defined what a supplement is. And so a supplement has to be a naturally occurring compound. It has to be a metabolite of something. It has to be a vitamin, a mineral, can be found in our food supply. So there's all kinds of proteins in beef and milk. And so those are the products that you're now going to supplement your diet with. So if whatever, I'm eating too many vegetables, I need more protein, I can buy a protein supplement and supplement my diet.

So when you get the peptides and having worked at compounding pharmacies where we made prescription peptide drugs, whether they were topical, intranasal, injectable. It's actually whether that peptide is naturally occurring or not. So you can have naturally occurring supplements that become drugs. So there is injectable vitamin C or vitamin C that's in an IV and that's a drug product. But of course, vitamin C is a supplement because, you know, it's in your food supply, it's in oranges, keeps us from getting scurvy. So really you have to look at whether it's a naturally occurring peptide or not. And so there are a lot of peptides we see at the pharmacy that are naturally occurring. There's one called epitalin that was studied pretty heavily in Russia for improving aging,

increasing the length of the telomeres on your cells, but it's naturally occurring. So it's my point of view that you could have that as an oral supplement product. The other thing with supplements are by that congressional definition, they're all supposed to be administered orally. So if you take a vitamin C and make it injectable, it's now a drug product. What's a precursor? We hear that all the time. Like, oh, this is a precursor.

And then like, I don't know, like NAD got real popular, NAD plus. And then they're like, but you should take this because it's a precursor for that. And then the precursor for that is this. And so instead you should take, and it's like, how many steps back are we even going? But I don't even know what the word precursor means. Yeah. Well, you know, if you break it down, the pre portion is going to be before the prequel and whatnot. And so a precursor, depending on how you're looking at it in my chemistry lab,

my precursor is the chemical I'm going to use to make a different compound. So it's my starting material. It might be something I'm reacting or changing with the NAD compounds you're talking about, I think it's really interesting because each camp has their own point of view. There's the NMN camp, the NAD camp, the NR camp. We now have one MNA. Is there glutathione somewhere in there too? Glutathione, yeah, helps with the reactive oxidative ions. And so when you look at that cycle, the NAD and NMN, they're all turning into each other. They're in a circle.

And depending on which products you're looking at, someone's trying to increase NAD by maybe giving you NMN orally, or they're trying to do an NAD drip to get more NAD into your body. And so in that case, excuse me, the non-NAD compounds are typically the precursors that your body metabolizes into NAD. And so I think another way to look at that too was sort of Patrick Arnold's supplements back in the day where he had Anderenedione and androstenediole, those were pro drugs or pro hormones, which were actually precursors that your body metabolized into testosterone. And so he was trying to look at supplementing your diet because those compounds are naturally occurring in beef and other mammals. I think it's so cool.

Like, you know, we sometimes forget that these ideas, these creations, whether it's a peptide or it's a SARMS or any of these things, like it does start with a person. You know, there's a person we could trace back to some of these things. And you mentioned Patrick Arnold and I think he's accredited also with ketones with making exogenous ketones.

I believe him and Dominic D'Agostino maybe were doing some hocus pocus back in the day and they created an exogenous ketone. So it's great that a lot of these things are coming from people like yourself that have actually been in a lab with the beaker, with doing allaker, with doing all these things and doing all the testing.

And that's the exact reason why we have you here today. So appreciate you explaining all this stuff to us. No, for sure. I mean, I've spent a lot of time studying these things. I've spent a lot of time educating both medical professionals and laypeople. I've worked in sales support roles where I have to support a sales cycle and there's always technical questions associated with them. And then at the end of the day, I like helping people.

I think it's a great way to be in business to make products that are either medicines or chemicals or supplements that are providing some kind of benefit. Do you think we're at a place or are we anywhere close to being able to make peptides orally as bioavailable as the ones you inject? For example, we had a guest and multiple guests have talked about how great injectable L-carnitine is, but you can also take the supplement L-carnitine yet, it's not nearly as effective as the injectable version. Would we be able to get there anytime soon, you think, or is that an impossibility? So there's, we're sort of there already.

If you look at semaglutide, there is an oral semaglutide called ribelsis. And the problem that I see with that is that our bodies are designed to break down proteins and peptides. I mean, that's how we eat beef and we break it down into amino acids and we build it into other building blocks of other portions of our body. So the enzymes that are endogenous to us, they're designed to break down and metabolize

things. And so with ribelsis, there's some really cool things. And I've gone to quite a few like technical classes at different types of chemical vendors. And so there's one that provides coatings. And so they have coatings that you can put on the outside of a capsule or a tablet. And there's like 24 different places in your GI tract that it'll release at based on, primarily based on the pH, sometimes on other factors. And so there's a company, I think, in Germany

that makes the coding that allows some of these peptides to get down into the lower intestine where they can be released versus- Continuing to get broken down as it goes further and further. It actually won't start getting broken down. The capsule won't even open up until it's at the targeted location. So when you get to the targeted location,

you have a difference in pH. So you have a highly acidic stomach and then you have a higher pH that's more basic in your intestines. So now the capsules opened up, but you have other digestive enzymes in that part of your body. And so one of the companies I looked at

was making granulated citric acid. So they're taking citric acid, a pretty fine powder and making little cornmeal type size particles of citric acid. So now all of a sudden you have this peptide and you have this little acidic environment in a part of your body that's not acidic. And so these enzymes are like,

oh, I wanna go over there and eat that peptide. They're like, I don't know, something's not right. Like I don't really want to get too close. And so you create this environment that allows the peptide to survive and defend itself from the enzymes. Now you've got permeation enhancers. There's one called SNAC. It's a S N A C.

It's an acronym for a much longer chemical name. That's the Balco guy. I think came up with some of that. Right. I've seen his, his nutrition company has got that same, the same four letters. Yeah, because it's EMA and. Anyway, yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if there's a relationship between his and the, that actual permeation enhancer, but what that does is your intestine decides what it's going to let through into the bloodstream. We don't want everything going through. There's a lot of stuff inside of us and a lot of stuff we eat that we probably don't want rushing around in our blood. And so these permeation enhancers will open up what's called the tight junctions and allow some of this to pass through.

And so that whole combination of all these different kind of little attributes of the drug delivery system actually then allows the peptide then to get into your bloodstream, which is what we're talking about, is trying to make it go systemic. What you'll see if you look on Google and whatnot is that the injectable drugs with a lot of the peptides are like in the 250 microgram, maybe into a milligram kind of range. They're really, really small doses. I can't think off the top of my head, but oral semiglutide, the ribelsis product is like 7, 14 milligrams. And it's not that you're delivering a higher dose, it's that even though I've sort of given you

this description of how we're going to prioritize and optimize allowing that drug to be present, still only the 250 micrograms gets through, or even less. Because it's a daily use, I think they're trying to shoot for getting you that one seventh of the dose every day that you would have gotten in a single weekly injection. And so it's really, the reason I guess, I bring all this up is that science and technology's evolving and it's there, but when I was at the compounding pharmacies, you looked at it,

it wasn't cost effective. And it ends up being this $100 single tablet because of all these different inputs versus a 250 microgram injections of such a small quantity of actual drug material. It's far more cost effective. Some things, yeah, they just get really complicated too. I mean, I guess it's not that complicated, but it's just, you just end up with undesired results. You know, like if you were to try to take carnitine,

capsules or liquid, you're going to have a lot of gastric issues if you're to try to match the amount of carnitine that might be absorbed through an injection. So sometimes it's just easier just to inject it than it is to like, you know, try to stomach it. Yeah, I mean, you usually, you almost always have better bioavailability through injection.

With IV, you're literally putting the drug in the bloodstream. That's always your measure of what's a dose look like IV versus intranasal, transdermal, oral, rectal. There's all kinds of ways to deliver drugs. Even with something like kratom, you know, it's like kratom just, it tastes gross. Kratom, kava, I don't know if you have any experience with any of these, some of these things,

but to try to like get them to be palatable, you know, sometimes just to even get these ketones or certain products, just to get them even palatable, sometimes it's not, not an easy thing. And so I think sometimes maybe someone's just like, well, shit, why don't we just inject it? We don't have to worry about it like hurting our stomach and we don't have to worry about it,

how disgusting it might be. Yeah, no, that's super true. I spent a lot of time in product development for different projects on taste masking or improving the palatability. And so I get asked about developing products and someone will say, Oh, I want to have a product that does this or has this effects and these benefits and ketones, they're pretty bad tasting. And so they'll say,

that's what we want to deliver. And I'm like, great. And they're like, but we're going to do it in a beverage that's 16 ounces. And like, it's a terrible idea because you know, now you have to drink this thing. And so, you know, you can mask the flavor. I've worked with compounds that actually modify the taste buds temporarily. So you can actually modify how your taste buds are perceiving it. That's kind of neat. There's some bitter blockers they're called.

Sometimes you see that in pediatric medicine because kids can't necessarily swallow a large pill so you might have a liquid. I will make the statement, I'm sure there's some nonchalance, but basically the stronger and better a drug is the worse it tastes. We would develop stuff with really great effects, but it just had the most horrendous flavor. So you're right, oral delivery becomes just a terrible way to go. Dr. Justin Marchegiani I think people have been talking for a while about like oral versions of testosterone, but I think they're finally starting to be available. And what are some

of the results? Like have you seen or heard, you know, people utilizing mainly just oral testosterone with good results, whether it be for HRT or performance? Yeah, I have. And I feel like this is almost going to be a sales pitch now, only because it was a topic I got really interested in. And the reason I got interested in it is that when you look at all the GLP-1s right now, you're seeing a wide population of people, whether young or old, that are looking at GLP-1s.

They're losing weight. They're stopping their cravings. I think some of that's also helping them make better decisions on what to eat and how to eat. But the downside of that is, and I think the studies I've seen show differing results is that you're also seeing muscle mass lost. And that's a fact. So when someone goes, I lost 30 pounds, they didn't lose 30 pounds of fat. They lost 30 pounds of weight. And there's a guarantee that some of that's lean muscle mass or lean body mass, no matter how you look at it. And so I believe

that you're going to see a lot of issues if we look at people that had massive weight loss in the last few years. If you fast forward 10 or 20 years from now, as they're getting higher in age, they're going to have most likely be sarcopenic. They're going to have weaker bones, weaker muscle. And so the reason I mentioned all of this is that I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and up in Research Triangle, there's a company called Marius Pharmaceuticals, and they have a product called Kisatrex. And so I got interested in Kisatrex.

I was speaking at a doctor's conference last summer, and my pitch was, hey, weight loss is great. There's so many people making so much money with these GLP-1 drugs. You really need to talk to your patients about muscle sparing at least, if not muscle building. Eating protein, some sort of resistance training. And so my concept, and one of the reasons we're talking about peptides and why we see a lot of people who don't want to use them because they're injectable, about peptides and why we see a lot of people who don't want to use them because they're injectable. Yeah, it comes back to HRT at that point.

And so I think you'll see with obese people because they have more fat, oftentimes they have higher levels of estrogen because you have estrogen receptors in your fat tissue. And so I do think there's a great demographic of people that, and I mean, you're the man behind all this societal perspective, what testosterone is in steroids. I think having an oral steroid, which Kisotrex is, I think you'll see it adopted by, I think,

a more common average population of people that are starting to be interested in their health and maybe a GP will say like, hey, let's look at this versus a lot of times guys will get their blood drawn. They'll say, oh, you know what? You're in the range of the two bars and so we're not letting you take testosterone. So yeah, I actually went and met with the owners of the company, got to sit in their boardroom,room asking questions. What's really interesting about their formulation is it's pretty high dose.

It's off the top of my head and certainly your viewers can look it up. I think it's like two capsules twice a day that are like 200 milligrams of testosterone on deconate. So it's a high volume of testosterone, but again, because of the metabolism and whatnot, you're not getting as much delivered as you would with an injection. But I think that the demographic of men in this case makes it a lot easier. What's interesting is the reason that you don't generally see oral steroids are the first past liver metabolism.

And that's why you would go to methylated steroids that are a little more harder on the liver. Stuff I'm sure you've talked about quite a bit, but this formulation actually has a bunch of- That one doesn't hit your liver. Like I think some of the oral drugs, my understanding is like it somehow needs to go through the liver twice or something like that. Yeah. If you were just to consume regular testosterone orally, you're most likely your liver is going to break it down when that's why you have your 17 methylated, uh, things like Oxandrolone and, um, a lot of the, the synthetic hormones that were available supposedly

as supplements, maybe in the early two thousands, uh,s, like, God, what was the chlorine, halodrol, those kinds of things were methylated to allow them to be orally active. So they're less harmful to the liver. Those are harmful to the liver with that methyl. I see. That's what made them orally active. But with Kaiser-TREX, they're actually doing a delivery into the lymphatic system by using a variety of, I guess, excipients that allow it to metabolize differently.

And so you're seeing decent levels. And I also think you're seeing, and I've looked at their clinical trial data. I mean, I presented some of it at this conference basically saying, hey, if you're giving your male patients weight loss products, get them on HRT also so we can keep that balance. We're trying to improve their health. So it's not just a one stop shop. There's not just one way to do that. So we do see less aromatization with this product and then we see, I think, a little less DHT production. So you don't really see hair loss that you might see more commonly with other routes of administration. And so it looks like a pretty decent product.

My personal take is that HRT patients that are probably already doing injectables may not be interested in switching over, but I think people that have not really been exposed to HRT are like, hey, I'll try this, I'll check it out and, you know, see how it goes. I've watched these groups. It seems like a great way to just try it

for just a couple of weeks, injection and getting the needles and figuring it out and drawing it. And there's a lot of stuff to figure out when you're learning all that. And insulin pin versus a regular needle. I mean, we talk about this stuff all the time on the show and he's like, I'm just glad I never chose to take anything because it's kind of confusing. It's like you need this

drug to have this result, but then if you take too much of that one, then you need this other drug to help potentially counteract that. And then for that drug, you might need something. So it does get to be kind of complicated, but with just an oral that might just, you know, slightly alter your testosterone a little bit, that sounds like a great thing to just give a shot. Give it a try rather. That's funny. I do think you'll not see as quick as a result

as you would with an injectable drug. I mean, obviously you're doing a pretty direct delivery. And so I think with the Orals, it takes a little longer time, but there are a lot of patient testimonials on this product where there are men are like, wow, my mood's lifted. I didn't realize that, you know, I might've been slightly depressed or something and, you know, more, more engaged, more engaged, have a better outlook on life and so, and yeah, and all the other benefits. Back to what you're mentioning about GLP-1s, you mentioned how despite weight loss, people

are going to be losing muscle. Do you think, I don't know if you pay much attention to this, but even if they try to get it enough protein, even though it's more difficult for them to even want to eat, do you think the muscle loss is still something that would be pretty substantial? Yeah, I think you're going to see it if the GLP-1s are acting in a way such that they are really limiting your caloric intake. Yeah, of course. I mean, there are, and I've seen patients on semaglutide, trisepidide, and even retitrutide, lyraglutide,

I suppose in the past. And some of them, and depending on the dose and the patient, I mean, they just don't want to eat. They just literally, and if they do eat, they'll have a small amount of a serving of something and just be like, I'm full. And so, but for some people and people that I've met and spoke to, you know, they were carrying a couple hundred extra pounds. And so, you know, I think I'm hoping that some of those lifestyle changes, maybe they

get through those and they look at building muscle. It's surprising how many patients I talked to that don't really have, it's mentally easy for them to understand the weight loss, but it doesn't really cross their mind to add weight as muscle. And then it's always the number two, they're like, oh my God, I'm at zero this week. I'm like, did you start going to the gym? Yeah, I've been going to the gym now for like four weeks. I'm like, okay, well, let me explain to you, the muscle's adding weight, which is what you want,

which is gonna increase your metabolism. You're gonna burn more calories. You're gonna have a healthier lifestyle. And I think that with our current healthcare system, the doctors just, they don't have time to spend with their patients, you know. It's a short period of time, you know, if you're going through a normal insurance plan.

So the education sort of has to be self-derived, but a lot of people, they're busy with their life and their families. Getting into fitness and having that focus and knowledge is not right in front of them necessarily. I think for some people, they're going to lose some muscle mass, probably just in general, if they just lose weight way too fast. You know, so if you lose a hundred pounds in like a year, then you are probably gonna have lost some muscle,

even if, but I would also say, you know, there's, I don't think there's a diet that you can select where you lose significant amounts of weight without losing any muscle mass. I think you just, I think it's part of the weight loss game, but I understand your point is that in some cases, people are losing like two part of the weight loss game, but I understand your point is that in some cases, people are losing like two thirds of the weight in some cases has been muscle.

And so that's something that people really need to be aware of, make sure you're getting your protein and some sort of resistance training of some kind that I think is almost a must at that point. Yeah, and I think there's a very strong educational point because people that have that level of obesity aren't aware of a lot of things you just mentioned and that's why they're obese potentially.

So yeah, it's a whole process. I think the drugs are selling really well, so people are losing weight for sure. With the oral testosterone is, I think that, you know, men going and getting TRT is like, you know, super common now. Like it's just, it's really exploded. And women's hormone optimization doesn't really seem to be as talked about as much. But it's my understanding,

there's a lot of women that are utilizing testosterone and they really like the impact of that. Obviously they're using different dosages. Would something like that oral testosterone be something that could potentially be helpful to a woman or they would have to find maybe some sort of different dosage of some, because that sounds like maybe it's a little heavy

on the dosage. It is and that's exactly the problem. So the current FDA approved product, they have three dosage levels and really the smallest level is a little high for a woman. And so it was approved for men. And we actually had that conversation with their executives about like,

hey, this looks great, where's the female product? And they're like, yeah, it's something we probably should have considered a little more upfront, but most definitely. I think there's a lot of money being made right there. There is. And so when I worked at the compounding pharmacies, there were a few products we made.

Testosterone focus on women would be transdermal creams. But I actually also formulated implantable pellets. And so you would see women getting, and I would talk to patients afterwards, they would get administered estradiol pellets to help balance their hormones, maybe progesterone, and then occasionally, you know, a single testosterone pellet where a male might be getting

five or six pellets. These things disperse over a period of time. They do. It's like a injection almost like they do into like a cow or something. It's a pellet that breaks down over time. It is. It's pretty interesting stuff.

They use a, I can't think of, trocars, the device. So it's actually a, you go to your doctor and they actually numb an area, put an incision in, put a sterile trocar. It's a long cylindrical tube. You lay these cylindrical hormone pellets into that. I've also worked on some naltrexone to help stop cravings, whether that's for weight loss or for opiate addiction.

And then, yeah, they're under the skin, oftentimes kind of in the hip or the glutes. That's so weird to me. It is. It's like everything. There's camps of people that are like, this is the way to go. This is really great for number one,

people who won't do injections. And number two, it's for months. And so the patient compliance is just showing up at the doctor's versus, you know, I think if you're injecting testosterone, you occasionally have that day where like, Oh man, I don't want to do another injection and just kind of skip it. And you know, that affects your levels. So these are pretty wild. So we would actually granulate the hormones, compress them into the cylinders on a tablet press, blister pack them, and then we would

send them off to be E-beamed. So there was kind of like a form of a radiation to make sure they were sterile because they're literally being implanted under your skin. So it was quite the manufacturing process. You know, I'm always going to be the one who has a level of skepticism when it comes to like tests and all these different drugs.

And I get it, they're great for people who need it. But is there anything that people need to be careful about with testosterone pellets, testosterone in general, outside of obviously dosages that are just way too high? Sure, yeah, absolutely. And I'm also curious, because are there any long-term ramifications that you know of that people also just need to maybe keep in mind?

You know, yeah, so there's probably answers for everything and a range of answers for the questions you've had. I mean, there's no one perfect answer, clearly, or we would all be doing that one. There are, inserting those pellets is a technique. I mean, it's a procedure, and there are good ways to do it and bad ways to do it.

Typically we would hear a negative, an adverse event for pellets would be they come out. And so like they actually do stitches to close up that little incision. And then there's concerns as to whether you have scarring over time. You know, if you're going back every four to six months for your next insertion, eventually there is the potential depending on how you heal, whether you have scarring or not.

And there is two with intramuscular injections. Yeah. And the other thing is with pellets, depending on the doctor and the patient, those are in there for months. So that decision on that dose that's made that day, you're stuck with for four months. And so I have heard stories where people have either, the doses have been too low or they've been too high

and those are both not necessarily the best situation. And especially, I would say like HRT naive patients that are just getting started, you don't really know how you're gonna react. And so that's certainly an issue. I think as far as for long-term ramifications, in the literature, I see both things. And I do think it's a whole topic on its own

of how studies are done, because there's so much to a study. Even without testosterone administered, multiple patients may have different cholesterol levels. And so, we started giving you know, even without testosterone administered, multiple patients may have different cholesterol levels. And so, you know, oh, you know, we started giving you testosterone, your cholesterol went up or yours went down. And so there's, you know,

depending on which direction that's going, the health outcomes can be a benefit or not. And I also think too, and I enjoy talking to patients where I think we're all as individuals think like my doctor's thinking about me right now. Like they're thinking about, I wonder how he's doing and like if that's working for him, like guess what? You know, you got your lab test, you know, they made their decision, you got your prescription

and you know, we're going to see again in six months maybe or 12 months. And so the actual patient contact time in six months maybe or 12 months. And so the actual patient contact time in that context is not a lot. And so we talk a lot about treating patients for their symptoms more so than their labs. So instead of chasing a number where I want to see this level of testosterone, hey, are you having symptoms of low testosterone? Because I think you can have, again, in an extreme example, you can have somebody who's got a high testosterone level but has symptoms and somebody who has low testosterone with no symptoms.

And so I think it's important to try to chase the symptoms more so than the lab results. Got you. Yeah. What's some of the stuff that you see out there that you might think is potentially dangerous when you're thinking about like peptides and, cause like these sites will have, they'll have a lot of different peptides on them. Yeah.

And it's like, shit, it's hard to keep up with even, and some of them are oral, which is cool cause it's more people will be more likely to try it, but there may be, there's even more danger because more will be more likely to try it, but there may be there's even more danger because more people are more likely to try it rather than like maybe the injectable which might, you know, somebody might, somebody I would imagine if you're going to inject something,

hopefully you research it a little bit, a little bit more so, but in any case, hopefully you're researching it. But do you see some stuff where you're like, I don't even know about that one. Now I don't really think that should even be on the market. Like they haven't tested that one enough yet. Yeah.

And that's kind of a complex question in the sense that, yeah, there's a lot of aspects of that. Having worked in sterile drugs and even oral drugs, you always look at the bacterial load. So even if this was our pharmacy or our drug manufacturing facility and we wanted to make a tablet or a capsulated product, we have to know about the air quality and test the air quality.

We had to do cleaning validations at some of the places I've worked at, swabbing the walls, trying to see what the bacterial load is, making sure the cleaning records are done, the walls are sterilized before you go in there. And so generally, basically, and generally speaking, an oral capsule, you're gonna have a better safety profile

if there's a little bit of bacteria in there. I mean, we make food at home, it's in open air. The reason that it turns green in the fridge after so many weeks, because it's in the back corners, because there was bacteria in the air when you closed the Tupperware. And it sat there so long, was like, alright, you know, it's cold, but I've been here so long. I'm taking over and you know, we've all had that

whatever thing we've opened up and like, whoa forgot that was in there and so For oral delivery, you're gonna be better off If you have a bacterial issue with injection These places that are like research chemical places or stuff you see online, they may or may not, well, they may or may not have a sterility program. And if they do, you typically do sampling where if you're making 1,000 vials,

you're going to pick seven or whatever the number is and then go swab those or do tests, whatever testing you do for microbial content so that you know you're getting a sterile drug. So even if the chemical or the drug is safe or not, you still have to understand what the quality of the manufacturing is such that it's safe because you're putting it in. I mean, the reason we have skin is to keep bacteria out. So we're piercing through that and delivering the drug.

On the sense of a lot of these compounds not being approved and not having studies, and yeah, that's always a good question. I mean, even when we do have drug approvals, you can see historically where the FDA has had to go back and go, hey, we have to change our mind, or we have to put a black box warning on there. Or now that we see more people under more situations, we're seeing different types of

results and even potentially negative results. I mean, I don't understand how some of the drugs I see, they're like, Hey, this is an antidepressant. Now it might cause suicide, but I'm like, well, wait a minute, like we're trying to prevent. And so even, even, you know, it's my, my personal opinion that we have one of the best, no matter how you want to look at the FDA, we have one of the best programs globally that everyone else follows to determine is it safe?

Is it, there's, I mean, I can't imagine how many drugs have been started. I mean, I've worked on projects where there's been thousands of compounds made to type one drug start a trial and then maybe that drug doesn't even finish the trial. And so the volume of things that are tested for toxicology and solubility and all these other factors are failing before we even hear about them. And so when we do hear about stuff, yeah, sometimes, like you said,

it can show up on a website and you're like, oh, I don't know if there's enough data. And my guess is if it's not approved, then there probably isn't enough data. But, you know, it's certainly out there. I also think too, that you also have situations, especially with terminally ill patients, where they're like, hey, I can't wait

for this drug to be approved. I mean, in my opinion, hey, if you know you're terminally ill, then I'm not necessarily sure there's a, depending on the drug and its effects. And we do have programs in the United States to allow patients to go through special singular trials where they may not be around to see it approved. So there are some regulatory pathways

to allow them access to some of those drugs. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they wanna do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with him more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tanned. A lot of us just wanna look good, feel good.

And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have, high cholesterol or these various things, it's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing, they can look at your cholesterol, they can look at the various markers that you have,

and they can kind of see where you're at, and they can help guide you through that. And there's a few aspects too, where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shade to doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coordinators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including

working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk, but that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health

because you can just basically live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind guys, when you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with.

Whereas, if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what type of things you can do in terms of your lifestyle, and if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to

to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation. Sometimes it's TRT and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes.

All right guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, head to MerrickHealth.com and use code powerproject for 10% off any panel of your choice. When it comes to the GLP-1, you're mentioning a couple of them and you're mentioning the oral form. It's my understanding they're moving onward with like second, third generations of these things. What are some things that are kind of coming down the pipeline that will maybe potentially even be more powerful? Cause I'm hearing some things that I think the one of the ones you mentioned, red at trutide is supposed to be like extremely powerful.

And I heard there's like one beyond that even so. Yeah, so red at trutide looks really interesting. When you look at semiglutide, which I think has had the most press, it's more focused on a single receptor than we had tr resupport the next generation that was hitting a couple of receptors and even with true type we're hitting three receptors and so you're getting different benefits from different metabolic pathways

and activities. One of the things that you see in that case are less side effects. So because you're sort of spreading out some of the activity, your body's responding in a way that you're not, you know, just focused on one thing and going hard on one thing. So you see some benefits there. I have seen some orally active GLP-1 compounds now that are starting to make the news that are not peptides. And so probably have better bioavailability than a peptide since you're not going to necessarily see the same enzymatic metabolism or degradation. And so yeah, it's a hot area. And now that we kind of see it out there more too, I've been speaking with other scientists

who are telling me like they were working on GLP-1s, you know, six, seven, eight years ago or even for farther back. It's a really neat area. And originally some of these, not some of these, most of these were used for diabetics. They just started statistically knowing that, especially with semaglutide, diabetics were losing weight. And so that's sort of how you see, what is it, the ozone peak and what's the semaglutide for weight loss? Like Wigovia or something? Wigovia, yeah. And so those are the same drugs. They just have different names based on the

indications. And typically that's for like an insurance classification. So there are a few prescription drugs we have where it's the exact same drug like Wellbutrin. You've got a version of bupyrion for, it's a different name if it's for stopping smoking versus treating depression, but it's the same exact compound and drug. Do you think that, I mean, maybe you already see this happening, are these drugs within a category

where people can just like start and stop whenever they like? It's like one of those things where, you know, if you get a little bit of weight, you can just start taking your semiglutide again. When you're where you want to be, you can just stop. Is it that simple? Yeah, I think that's a very complex question and answer.

Yeah, I mean, I know it's not, I'm not saying this is what you would suggest somebody do. Yeah. But I mean, is this, you see so many people taking this stuff. Is this what some people are, is this what many people are just doing? Yeah, so we have seen, I have seen patients that,

and as far as I know, on all three of the GLP-1 agatists we've just spoke about, there's a dose escalation protocol. So you start at a low dose, typically once a week for four weeks, and then some of these you actually double the dose and double the dose, and you go up until you're actually at the active dose. And the active dose is the most efficacious dose,

however, if your body's naive to that compound at that dose, there's a lot of side effects. But as you're building up your sort of tolerance to it, and that's why they have the escalation, so you're avoiding a lot of these side effects once you're hitting the maximal dose. Now there are patients that are trying to lose 10 pounds and they actually don't hit that maximal dose.

They lose their 10 pounds, they've made some lifestyle changes and can go off of them. We do see patients that hit their target weight and go off and gain their weight back, maybe not all of it. And then, yeah, so you have that start and stop and then some people stop and they're fine. And some of that's because, you know, there's a few stories I know from talking to patients were like, I don't think this stuff's working. And then they have a cheeseburger and they're like, oh my God, I'm dying. Like, this is like killing me. I'm never doing that again.

And I kind of think in a dark way, I'm like, that was probably a good experience that you're like, wow, that's not the best choice for me. And so with that in mind, some of that's forcing some lifestyle changes that they don't go back to. And so that's also an issue. I do think, especially in studies I've seen with women, women that, you know, part of the GLP ones that would really cut back on calories to lose weight, they would have the same experience statistically where they would lose muscle and fat. But if they didn't change their lifestyle and then they went off their diet and regained

that weight, well, they were gaining more fat because they weren't replacing the muscle they lost with more muscle. I mean, obviously this is a big generalization. And so that's one of the problems you would see in years past with sort of just kind of a yo-yo dieting. So I also have seen patients then that after they hit their target weight, they may wean back down to the starting level of the GLP-1s and then just maintain that sort of on a cruise control for longer periods of time.

I talked to a patient this week who said, you know, one of his, he felt like his weight gain was, what did I feel? He knew his weight gain was from snacking. He's like, I just love snacking. I love picking up stuff. And he said, when I take really, really low doses of a GLP-1, he goes, I just don't crave snacks. And so he goes, that really works for me.

Yeah. And maybe like during that process, maybe somebody can just learn a lot about themselves and maybe at some point they could discontinue the medication. And if, if that monster kind of comes back, then maybe they just have to resume the medication again. And we've seen that and I don't really see any problem with that. Yeah, because some people are like, oh, you might have to take it the rest of your life. But for a lot of people, especially those people that are losing, you know, a hundred and so pounds, it's really helping them like change their lives in really drastic ways.

And I know, I mean, me personally, when I slack off on the diet a little bit and, you know, oh wow, this belt's a little tight and I'm not going to go buy a new belt, I'd better kind of pay attention to what I'm doing a little better and kind of get back into my, you know, the weight I want to be at. And so I think there's some of that, that, that those drugs have given them the ability to have a sort of a mental perspective that they can hold onto. And we don't think about, we don't think about it as much when it comes to exercise, but once you start exercising, you kind of need to do with the rest of your life too.

Yeah, for sure. You got to like keep that shit off and you got to try to stay in the best shape that you can. And even though you may have lifted when you're younger, it could potentially help a little bit as you age or something like that, but you really have to continually lift or continually exercise.

Sure. Yeah, and that might be kind of a good transition into an interesting topic that I have an interesting history with is the SARMS. One of the reasons, my introduction to SARMS, we're working at a chemical plant in Champaign, Illinois, kind of outside the University of Illinois. And Dr. Katzen-Nellenbogen is a chemistry professor, and so I'm sure your AI is going to love transcribing that one.

We call him Dr. K for obvious reasons. But my understanding is that they were doing x-ray crystallography of the androgen receptor in their lab. So they were trying to look at the protein that's our androgen receptor and what shape that protein is. We talked earlier about the difference between peptides and proteins. And with proteins, you get into much larger sizes, larger shapes. And so when they were able to sort of see how the steroids fit in, and we know some of the structural activity relationships of steroids where, you know, the steroid favors

these effects or that effects, a lot of that's going to be how they're fitting into that receptor. What we see with some of the existing steroids and testosterone included is that it's not always selective and that's the essence arms is the selectivity. And so you may send these signals, these metabolic signals of growth or whatnot, but you may end up having growth in areas that are unintended. And so Dr. Katz and Ellen Bogan was able to look at these receptors and then go, well, hey, how about we design a selective drug that, you know, hits the parts we want to

get the benefits we want, but maybe we can increase that selectivity so we don't see some of the negative potential side effects. And so that's about the same time, it's kind of about the same time a lot of these other drugs you've probably heard of like Ostarine. And so he went on to be part of radius pharmaceuticals. And then that was what I was referring to earlier where we were one of a couple chemistry places that were doing libraries of drugs. Like we would have these meetings and the PhD chemists would go, okay, this week we're going to make, we're all going to make five different drugs based on crystallography.

And then they would do studies either on rodents or in toxicology to kind of see how they were working. The goal with the SARMs in this case where they want them to be orally active, they didn't want an injectable drug, they wanted a lower dose. And I'm trying to remember some of the other things, but we literally as a contractor for Radius Pharmaceuticals

made over 2000 different SARMs. And then- From scratch. Yeah, from scratch, literally looking at chemicals. That's amazing, it's like made a drug out of nowhere. Yeah, and so if you look at- I always kind of wondered where the health SARMs came from because they did just sort of like explode.

They did, and so- They came out of nowhere almost. What's really cool, I think, and the reason I bring this up is you were referring to without really knowing is that when Radius came to the lab for our annual meeting, just sort of a check in, they were out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, they would say like, here's the problem we're solving. And so the example they gave, which I'll sort of paraphrase is that, you know, there's grandma's declining, like her muscle mass is going down, her bones are going out.

You guys had a podcast, you know, what a month or two ago talking about your parents. And, and so what happens is, is nobody wants to be in the nursing home. You want to be home, but because of her diet lifestyle, lack of exercise, she falls down and breaks her hip. And so what they showed us is what that looks like in the United States, the amount of cost for the ambulances,

picking her up, taking her in for surgery, maybe putting a pin in her hip, guess what? She's gonna recover in a hospital nursing home, being more stagnant, less mobility. And so she's probably gonna have even an increased rate of decline of her muscle mass. And so, and then she may not go home. And so now she's a nursing home for the rest of her life.

In the case of even my grandmother, she had a fall in the nursing home and they said, well, we don't want you to fall anymore. So we're gonna put you in a wheelchair, more decline. And so Radius Pharmaceuticals business model, which they showed us the financial potential was, hey, if as people become elderly, we give them an oral pill that hits an androgen receptor

that says, hey, let's at least be anti-catabolic where you're gonna maintain your muscle mass and your bone density, then grandma gets to live at home, live out her life healthy, and it's less of a financial stress on the entire healthcare system. So that was the goal of the SARMS. My take is that like a lot of things, once those patents are filed, and some of my friends are on those patents, specifically RAD 140.

Now the way to make the compound, the identity of the compound is public. And so it shows up on the underground and what you realize is that, well, if you take higher than the anti-catabolic dose, you'll end up increasing your muscle mass and increasing your bone density. And so that's how I think we're even talking about them now, other than me obviously working with them, is that they showed up in the black market So that's how I think we're even talking about them now,

other than me obviously working with them, is that they showed up in the black market and people started using them and seeing some benefits. 2,000 different SARMs. I mean, I think there's like maybe, I don't know, maybe there's like what 20 or 30 on the market that you- Yeah, and that was so- So where are the rest of these?

Yeah, I mean, and we did 2000, they had a overseas contractor that would do like maybe double that. I forget. But I guess the, I forget the entire details, but our PhDs there in Champaign were doing a much better job. We were more expensive, but we were putting out, maybe it was the other way around. We're putting more combines, the cost per compound, we were more affordable, but yeah were putting out, maybe it was the other way around, we're putting more compounds. The cost per compound, we were more affordable. But yeah, so there's probably three, four thousand, just in that series. But there was also, and you also mentioned like, hey, how do I know this is safe? We made compounds that I'm sure are not published publicly where they would pass the toxicology,

they would pass certain assays, cellular assays in a Petri dish, and they're like, this is the compound, we're sure about it, we're super excited. And then there was one situation where they dosed rodents and all the rodents died. Yeah. All right. Well, we're done with that one. So back to the drawing board. Yeah. With the RAD question real quick, with that, the anti-catabolic rad 140, you mentioned that was the intention for it to be used for grandma so she doesn't lose muscle. Do you think that was like looking at it now?

Is it successful in that case? Can it be used for that? Or is it like with what we know about SARMS, is it still? Maybe not. No, I do. I think, and I actually looked, I think last year, because I was at that job for I think three years and got to see a lot of what they were doing and some of their business model and talk to them about their entire business plan. I moved on into other areas of science and medicine, but yeah, I think that they were headed in the right direction.

I looked on their website to see where they were at, to see if it had gone on and it's no longer there. So I don't know if it could be financial. There's a lot of really cool drugs I'm interested in that for business reasons go away. I've seen, there's a drug I really like where I think it was in a publicly traded company and another company came in and bought them so they could be on the public market and they were like, oh, but we're not nursing that drug. And it just gets laid to the side.

So I didn't see anything with my knowledge that there was any reason that they weren't headed down the right path. Sometimes some of these things, they get like a bad reputation or there's like studies done and then people take those studies and they just tarnish the, they've tarnished something like Rad 140 or GW I think had some bad press. People were like, oh, it's cancer causing. But I think like it did appear that it may have caused

cancer, but it was like some ridiculous dosage that they gave to rats or something like that, which is still a good reason to be cautious of it, but it was some amount that like a human would never even be able to take or something like that. Yeah, and that's one of my favorite arguments or point of view, especially, you know, I guess I look, I hang out on Reddit a little bit

and read some of these things is that like, Oh no. Is the selectivity of like, that causes cancer. Yeah, but that's an amounts and I'm not a mouse. So ignore that. But then they'll go, you know, the exact opposite direction. Like, oh, it's safe. These mice are fine.

And so, yeah, you don't know until you know, really. What are your thoughts on just the overall safety of SARMs? Like. I mean, I think the ones that were published, especially RAD 140, there's a reason that you didn't get to see 1,999 of the other ones. So those are the ones that actually like, hey, were some of the ones that did not have activity that was positive, they didn't get put into a patent because there was no reason to protect those from an intellectual property standpoint.

Did any of them have like some of Red Hulk type of impact? Were there things that you guys did where you were like, holy... Exploding rats. Yeah. It never came to be, but the rats got super jacked or strong or anything. I don't think so. I mean, our area was just the chemical manufacturing, which is a soft to a biology lab for the animal studies. But yeah, I'm not familiar with-

No superheroes. No cool stories like that. I heard that some people have taken certain SARMs and it kind of has messed with their eyes. Have you heard of that before? Yeah, I have heard that. I did read that. I don't remember which one it was off the top of my head, but obviously when I was working-

I think Derek from More Plates, More Dates, he was talking about like he took something like just a couple dosages of it and like he just like couldn't see kind of his like peripheral or something for a couple days. He was like, well, screw that. I'm not messing with that one again. Yeah. And that's, that's the things that concern me with studies. You're looking for specific things and specific results.

And, and, and a lot of times there are obviously other things that are occurring, in that case, you know, vision type issues that, yeah, he found out apparently the wrong way. The other question I always have when I read these things, at least on the internet, is they're like, oh, hey, I'm trying this, and I had this terrible reaction. I'm like, well, how do you know you were trying that, depending on, I mean, I was in a laboratory,

we were making it, they were going into an NMR, they were going into mass specs. I mean, we knew what it was. And so, you know, if you're buying something off the internet without regulatory oversight or controls, you don't know. And I'm not saying that everything out there that you can find on the internet is fake, but there's definitely fake stuff. The other thing that often concerns me is that I have worked in environments that are highly regulated. We're doing everything by the book and mistakes still occur. There's a reason, I mean, if you go to the

FDA, there are drug recalls. Something happens where some unexpected thing or, you know, an operator error. And so I always imagine in the perfect world, the best we have, we're following the best rules or the best controls and the best oversight, there are still mistakes. I mean, we're humans. And so if you don't have those controls, like, so what's the percentage of mistakes that are there? There is a little bit of published data, especially on the forensic side where you see like anti-doping organizations will buy products off the internet and then test them. And there are some published studies. Some of them are a little older at this point where like that's not the drug that's in the vial as it's labeled. And these were just

one of the groups was in Europe, one of them was in Japan. And so you just, you don't know what you're getting unless you've got the ability to check it out. And that stuff can change batch to batch too, I would assume. How often do you do that actually? Because you have the ability to test different types of... I do. It's kind of a cool superpower.

Being able to take, with the mass spectrometer, I can look at the molecular weight of a compound. And then with the HPLC, I can look at kind of the purity. It's not like, I think my friends, you know, those memes were like what I think I do and my friends think I do and what I really do. Like there's no magic machine. You just stick your thing in your compound and it tells you everything.

It's actually a lot of work in methodology, but the goal is to be able to look at the purity. Typically, you want the purity to be compared against the standards. You want something that's certified of known quality and known identity. We do buy analytical standards depending on the projects I'm working on and it's a whole process to get your system sort of tuned in to like, okay, now I can quantitatively measure and tell you the dose.

I don't spend as much time on the quantitative side because it's just, it's really rigorous. But the identity side I think is really important of like, is this compound that, yes or no? Which you can quickly do by checking the molecular weight. So maybe shift gears a little bit and talk about some other types of drugs like cannabis, THC, nicotine, you know, just some of these other types of drugs and maybe some of their maybe like off- use I think, you know, growing up, you'd see all these weird, you'd see all these weird

information about marijuana and you know, pot smoking and like, it's just like insane the stuff that they would show you on TV, that if you smoked pot one time, you would turn into this like completely crazy person and you'd jump out a window or something like that. What are some of your experiences and what are some of these off-label uses that we were talking earlier about, like mushrooms and stuff like that? What's some of your experience with being in this field for so long, messing around and not messing around, but being in a lab

with many different types of drugs, like what are some things that maybe surprised you? Like, wow, I didn't really know that, you know, cannabis could be potentially used for cancer or something like that. Yeah, that's a big question, I suppose. And I think I spent two years employed by a cannabis company. I'm not a cannabis user myself.

I think I'm happy to see it's decriminalized. I think I'd rather see money spent on other things than people sitting in jail. I don't miss anyways, there's a whole, obviously we don't, there's a whole political view, but I spent a year developing products without cannabis for a cannabis company. In the case, in that case, I worked for a company called 1906 and they were offering initially in Denver, Colorado,

chocolates that were experiences. And so the name of the product had some type of effect like that would indicate it was beneficial for sleep or relaxation or energy. And tying a lot of our stories together, we had a product called Go, which was our energetic cannabis. And so we would pick a strain of cannabis

that was thought to be energetic inducing. We'd pick terpenes that are part of the cannabis plant that we thought had energy perceiving ability. And then in that case, we used particle coated caffeine. And so we were able to purchase caffeine that had a cellulose coating on it. So you would get a little dose of caffeine, like a cup of coffee's worth,

but without the bitter flavor. And so we were very much into the whole sensory experience. That was our focus. It was experiences associated with the product. And then the owner's goal also was that it was kind of a higher end product that you could take to a dinner party as a gift. And yeah, that's Peter there on the bottom right

when you're scrolling, the guy I worked for. So that was his vision. And it was super interesting to be involved on that. And so my part for the first year was to develop all these dietary supplement ingredients. So there were things that were either food, food type products or supplements that would give that effect. But with cannabis and being an American, you know, if one's good, well, two's better and probably three's better. And so I also had to develop

the products such that, you know, somebody that had a small amount would feel the effects as they expected. But if you had a large amount too, you weren't going to have too much. And so it was a really interesting project to do product development for. And that's the one I was kind of mentioning where the better activity we got in the product, the worse the thing tasted. At the end of the day, you still had to enjoy eating a piece of chocolate. You do see that they actually changed to, I think, tablets. I think they call them drops or something,

but covering up the flavor and making the flavor taste good on this stuff was just, it was a really serious challenge. And so a tablet was a lot easier. The other thing we did that I was really excited to be involved in is that we looked at delivery systems. And one of the, when Peter hired me, he was doing fundraising. And so we would go meet wealthy people who decided they want to invest in the Colorado.

Colorado is kind of at the cutting edge at that point, Colorado cannabis industry. And we'd explain kind of some of the science we were looking at is that we were looking at reducing the time to onset. And we talked about how we felt that that was super important. And then every single investor we spoke to, without a doubt, had their story about, oh, back in college, I made the brownies and I tried them and like, oh, it's not doing anything. You did something wrong. So we ate another one.

And then after over consuming consuming five minutes later, they start getting these super strong effects and are like, Oh man, this is super strong. I hope it doesn't get stronger than like, well, we just ate a lot more. And so every single person we spoke to had a similar type story. And you know, that got filled with worry or anxiety or, yeah. Going crazy. For sure. And so what we did, like I said,

I was really excited about was we reduced the time to onset. So it was something more like alcohol where you could consume a little bit. You'd feel the effects in a much, much shorter timeframe and then go, okay, I'd like a little more, I'm fine. And I want to stop. And so I did a lot of work on the delivery systems and formulations.

There was one point where we got down to single digits of onset with oral cannabis, like six, seven minutes on average, which was amazing. How long would it last? Well, that would last even less time, which at the time I wasn't sure how that would be perceived, but some consumers were telling us like, this is great. I can get it in the evening after work, enjoy my time and then it's gone and I can go to bed knowing like I'm not going to wake up in the morning and wonder if I can drive to

work or not. So yeah, it was an interesting experience looking at that from a scientific drug delivery stance. So Mark, you have been loving wearing these Paloovas for a long time. Why is it that you like these shoes that look like this? I'm trying to get my feet to be jacked. You know, I think it's funny how sometimes people will, when I wear these shoes, they're like, oh, those are different. And I'm like, well, maybe you should blame God

because this is the human foot. This is the way that it looks. But Paluvas are awesome because it's gonna allow you to train your feet and train your toes and allow for that toe spread because you got the five finger toe thing going on. It's like a, like put on a glove for your feet. Feels amazing.

It's like walking around with toe spacers. You know, we've been working on our feet for a long time. Now you always hear the benefit of people talking about like these tribes who have gone without shoes forever and they have this toe space and have these amazing feet and these shoes will allow you to just passively get that back by walking around. You don't realize what a disadvantage you're at when your foot is all clumped together from the football cleats or soccer cleats or whatever else you were

wearing when you were young. And so it's nice to be able to splay your toes. In addition to that though, one thing I love about Paloova is the fact that it's not a regular barefoot shoe. I do love barefoot shoes as well, but it also has appropriate padding. And when you're stepping on some crazy pebbles and rocks

and different things, like when I'm out on a run, some terrain is a little different than others. I don't have to be worried that I'm going to get some sort of stabbing crazy thing happening to my foot because it has an appropriate amount of cushion underneath the foot. And guys, Paloova has a lot of different styles on their website. I think one of the newest styles they just came out

with, which is a little bit more of a rigorous do, is the Strand ATR. It's not these. These are the Strands. But the ATRs have a little bit more. If you wanna go hiking with them, you totally can. Those are amazing. If you go out, throw those on and go sprint on a field,

and your feet feel so strong, grabbing the grass and being able to actually grab the ground with your foot feels amazing. I'm more of a chill guy with my Paluva, so I like the Zen slip-ons, but that's the thing. With Paluva, there's a lot of different options. So if you head to Paluva.com and use code power project, you'll be able to save 15% off your entire purchase.

And they also have toe socks. Their five feet of toe socks are no show. So check those out too. Have you, I'm just curious. Have you seen any type of health benefits of any of that stuff? It's not, you know, cannabis isn't an area I follow too deeply.

Yeah. I think there's obviously a lot of proponents of a lot of value. I got to meet, can't think of the guy's name off the top of my head. He was like a neurobiologist, like a brain surgeon, literally. And he said he saw a lot of like just patients

he couldn't treat. And he really got into the medicinal values of cannabis. Patients couldn't treat for what? Neuro issues, actually. And then you had Dravet syndrome. They had the CBD, Charlotte's Web coming out of Colorado also. So I know that it's actually hemp derived oral CBDs

and FDA approved drug for Dravet syndrome. Again, not the THC that's intoxicating, but I see, yeah, I see both sides. I mean, I do have concerns. You see some of the development of younger people, the younger age, they try it, you know, not fully developed cognition. And I do see having worked in addiction medicine, which is a whole nother podcast probably. Yeah, I mean, I think there are people that regardless of how you want to look at cannabis, there are people that have bad habits with it and trouble stopping.

So, but I also think there's a lot of people that I mean, I had a relative that was on chemotherapy and opiates, you know, did not work for him very well and he used cannabis and that worked really well to help with the chemotherapy side effects. So I mean, I saw that firsthand. Yeah. What about something like psilocybin mushrooms? Yeah, psilocybin, I spent a lot of time, you know, directly on and in both in micro dosing studies and discussions

and then in full, I guess, full size doses associated with typically with major depressive disorder or end of life anxiety. And so, and in these cases, both with cannabis and psilocybin, I was working in licensed facilities that were sanctioned in the jurisdictions. I did a lot of, I did all of my psilocybin work in Canada. And yeah, I got to speak to a lot of global researchers, primarily at universities, some independent pharmaceutical companies that were looking at mental health benefits of both psilocybin and some of the other compounds, both synthetic and naturally derived,

yeah, for treating mental health. And I think that the data that I saw and the results and the patients I spoke to had a lot of benefits. There was one group outside of Vancouver that was, they were all veterans, veterans suffering from depression associated with their being in a war zone. And they actually sort of all got together and helped each other with microdosing to alleviate some of that depression

and which actually sort of drove a company to go, hey, we really need to do clinical trials and studies to see if this is clinically significant. So that, as far as I know, that those studies are ongoing, but, you know, they looked like they were pretty valuable and a benefit. I mean, it was sort of the outside benefit is what kind of drove the need to have the studies versus, you know, the other direction. Yeah. What got you really interested in that? Working with psilocybin specific? You know, I think mushrooms are amazing organisms. Man, you just lit up when he started talking about mushrooms.

Well, they're pretty cool. I talked to you guys a little earlier, you know, when I started in college coming out of a rural small town America, studying corn, at some point I was like, wow, I don't want to do this for a living. And I started reading about gourmet mushrooms. And the thing that actually interested me the most was tissue culturing. And so I was super excited. This is early 90s. I was, I'd still go into the agriculture library basement and look

through journal articles because, you know, I mean, the internet was sort of just getting started. You weren't downloading content and I would read all these articles and I understood that you could take the inside of any fresh mushroom and take a piece of it and put it onto a Petri dish and you could essentially exponentially grow that mushroom, you know, to infinity almost. And so that concept to me of totapotency is the genetic term where like the gene and the cap there has the understanding how to make gills and the stem and the cap and all the different parts. I was like, wow, this is kind of amazing.

Yeah, there's some mycelium there on those, some radial mycelium. Yeah, mushrooms are fascinating. Why does that make me itch, man? Some of them are super poisonous, right? Some mushrooms? For sure. And so I ended up going on to graduate school

studying mushrooms, including field mycology. I spent, it was, graduate school was great. We got to walk around the woods, picking mushrooms at different state parks and national parks and learning how to identify them. I had a really great advisor and then I'd go back to the lab and do some of these Petri dish cloning like you see. And yeah, they're really amazing organisms. Some, some, there's some studies Paul Stamets have done. I've met Paul Stamets a few times and gone to some of his conferences and taken his classes. I'm really excited about some of his work in

bioremediation where you have pollution of a certain kind in soil that's really dangerous and he can select a mushroom that mycelium will grow in there and degrade and metabolize it. Mycelium will grow in there and degrade and metabolize it. So yeah, there's all kinds of super cool stuff. There's a company out of a university that was growing that mycelium and sawdust to make essentially like styrofoam packaging. So instead of having the styrofoam around your TV, you'd have this dried out block of sawdust that the mushroom was holding together that, you know, at that point would have been dried out and dead.

But so there's like a mushroom styrofoam and they're just, they're super fun to watch. So all that white you see in the bag is all the mycelium that's colonized the substrate. And then it's amazing. And you see this in your yard when it rains, like there's no mushrooms. The next day, all of a sudden you're like, whoa, there's these full-sized mushrooms. Where'd they come from? So yeah, the whole science of mycology is pretty amazing. Ryan, can you bring up that clip of Mike Tyson jumping down on some mushrooms?

This is how I'm imagining your college experience being when you were testing out the mushrooms. He just takes a giant handful. No water just stuffs it right in his face. I can't. Oh, he's going to be chewing for a second. Now the pussy people put it on a peanut butter sandwich and mix it together. You know what I'm saying? But Mike wants all that, those little particles stuck in his teeth.

You'll be digging a gram out for the next couple hours. Trying to figure out, yo, there's some stuck in the back there or something. He used to do drugs. Yup. No shit. He goes, no shit. No shit. Bro, did you see the look on Mike's eyes?

He's like, yeah, man. He's like, I'm picking your teeth. And you're just like, relax, Mike. When I first heard about mushrooms in LA, everyone would think about the taste. That's cool. You can shut it down. They taste it. I first heard about mushrooms in LA. Everyone would say about the taste.

That's cool. You can shut it down. They taste it. Was there any type of like different delivery systems you tried to mess with with mushrooms? Are they kind of best in their sort of natural state just like that? Yeah. So on delivery, in our case, we would homogenize them and blend them

in the sense that you do see different alkaloid content in like the stem versus the cap. You see different chemical content volume in different flushes. And so when you have those substrates and you have them all sprout up, you can trim them off and harvest them. And then you can adjust the humidity and the temperature and a few days or a week later, you can get another crop.

And so those are called flushes and you can actually have multiple flushes over time. And you see different content over the flushes as well. And it's not always declining. Like it might be the first flush had a certain content and the second flush had even a higher psilocybin content. And so what we would do is dehydrate them, blend them, and then test the blend of powder, still biomass and mushroom material, so that it was consistent,

so that we knew if the capsules were all dosed at the same amount, that you're still delivering the same amount of drug. We also did stability studies to see how the chemical content changed over time, what went down, what went up. There are conversions. We would see some content go up

because some of the other compounds were degrading into one of the other compounds. So yeah, we did all kinds of stability studies, the microbiology studies. Sometimes it tends to hurt your stomach a little bit. Yeah, some people definitely have it. Especially the way Tyson was doing it there. I heard of some people using some lemon. I've heard of some people ste on it, especially the way Tyson was doing it there. I heard of some people using some lemon.

I've heard of some people, you know, steeping it, you know, like a tea almost and doing things like that. And supposedly that helps with some of the digestion and you don't get kind of bubble guts from it type thing. Sure. I've heard benefits of tea. I've heard lemon in the tea, which makes a little sense. We spend a lot of time doing standardized extracts.

So trying to concentrate the siliceous, hydrosilicin out of the mushrooms into, you know, a lower amount of material to do a fixed dose. And so looking at the science of that extraction process was pretty interesting as well. And so I always wondered, you know, is that a sensitive person or is it some other portion

of the mushroom? And I don't know what that answer is, but it was pretty exciting to be able to be in that environment and actually try to answer those questions. You know, again, it's the wives tales or legends on Reddit, like, oh, it's this and that. I actually got to go, well, let's figure that out.

Let's see what this does or what it doesn't do or what heating it does, which solvents the best, which pH is the best and actually go through all those procedures. It's cool you got to do that like in a clinical setting where you can actually like test it. Yeah. You know, and you got as many variables taken care of as possible. Yeah, for sure. No, it was, yeah, there's not a whole lot of people on the planet that get to do that. So it was pretty good.

What about something like MDMA? Have you kind of looked into this? I did. Yeah. So we made MDMA. We looked at, I got to look at different routes of manufacturing, different like synthesis. And in my case, I'm always interested in trying to come up with something new and be inventive. And then I've also got a few patents.

So when I find something that things really unique, we'll go ahead and patent that process. So I've got a process patents for manufacturing drugs, the actual synthesis. I actually have a patent on how not to make LSD. And that's a whole other story. But with MDMA, I think there's good clinical data, especially for treating PTSD is kind of in the clinical focus. I think there was a lot of expectation that the drug might be approved last year. And I did read an update article actually yesterday where the FDA had some

criticism over some of the phase three data in the clinical trial. And so it's going to be interesting to see if some of that data is redone to improve. There's a lot of political frustrations associated with it, or if another company might look at that information and move forward on it. But I think it definitely has a strong benefit, especially with trauma patients, you know, within a therapeutic talk therapy environment to really have clinical value. But again, I've got some videos on my phone, maybe we can send them over to you where I'm taking some of the precursors, which are a bright golden color and I'm someone left one out in my hood and some of it turned red and I'm recrystallizing

it and it's so it's going into solution. And then as it's coming out, I took cell phone videos of the crystal sort of forming and going across the surface of the solvent. And that's one of the things I think is super exciting about chemistry is that like, you see the chemicals sort of appear and grow and form. Yeah, what is MDMA? So MDMA is, it stands for Methylene Dioxymethamphetamine. So it is an amphetamine.

The methylene dioxy is a ring with two oxygens on the outside of the phenyl ring. And so it can be partially natural in the sense that Sassafras and a few other plants have the compounds that are used as the precursor. A lot of times, saffrol's used. I've used Piper now. I think Piper now is a super cool compound. It's actually used in a variety of perfumes, really high-endumes. Um, it is a controlled, it's a, it's a listed compound, meaning commerce in it is regulated and tracked because it can be used as a drug precursor, but, um, Pipernel has a scent that's a combination of cherry and vanilla at the same time. And it's just, it's just a really pleasant smell. So it's a fun compound to work around.

And then because it's found in nature, and yeah, and that's the chemical structure of that precursor, we did talk about trying to make MDMA from, and that Pipernaut can be either pretty synthetically or extracted from plants. And so we did talk about manufacturing some MDMA synthesized with the plant material being the origin of the compound, even though it's a fully synthetic compound.

What do you think it might be that makes these, you know, mushrooms and MDMA and things like that, what do you think allows them to be therapeutic? What is it that maybe gets triggered in somebody that helps them have better outcomes with PTSD and things like that? Kyle Smedley Yeah, that's probably your toughest question you've asked in the sense that there's clearly been a resurgence since the 60s in the last decade in studying psychedelics for therapeutic benefit.

And there's a lot of companies, publicly traded companies and companies that raise money to put these into clinical trials and prove that they have some advantage. There's also been studies to try to understand and do drug development to say, hey, can we hit those same brain receptors and get the same mental health benefits but without the intoxication or trip or function? And so obviously there's proponents of both areas.

I mean, I've worked with the groups that have used Ibogaine for treating addiction and it's like a 30 hour trip and the people that are massive Ibogaine fans will tell you like that's the experience that makes you say, okay, I want to stop taking heroin. I want to not do that. But at the same time, I was involved with a pharmaceutical company that licensed a drug out of Albany Medical College called 18MC, where they tried to take the beneficial anti-addictive activity of Ibogaine, but take the serotonin allergic like the trip portion out.

And so there is a push right now for getting those benefits without the drug like experience. I don't think anybody's wrong. I mean, I personally believe that if the outcome is a benefit, then it doesn't necessarily mean an issue of how you got there. I am super excited and interested. With MDMA, you generally have a pretty large release of serotonin, which gives that blissful feeling that allows I think patients, one of the ways you'll see it described

is having six months of therapy in like a couple hours. And so with talk therapy, so much of the time is spent with that therapist trying to connect with you and treat you and have you open up. It's a long period of time. Whereas with MDMA, you're like, okay, I want to talk about my problem.

And I think one of the MAPS patients, they gave him a, in their study, they gave really small doses. So you had an idea of how the effects were. And one guy that was enough. He was like, I'm cured. Like, I'm, you know, come to terms with my trauma and don't, you know, I'm over it.

So I think there's a lot of possibilities there. On the other hand, or not the other hand, but another example of a compound I'm really interested in, which is serotonin releasing is Kana. It's one of the many alkaloids and it's called Mesembrane and it is in some pre-workouts. It's in some the many alkaloids and it's called Mesimbren. It is in some pre-workouts. It's in some dietary supplement products. Yeah, I've had it before. Sometimes when you find these compounds, you're not sure where to start, you know, in terms of like dosage, you know.

So I bought this like little vial of it and I was like, let me just take a sip of it. I took a sip of it, didn't notice much. And then maybe a couple of days went by, I tried half of it, didn't notice much. And I tried the whole thing of it, didn't notice much. And then maybe a couple of days went by, I tried half of it, didn't notice much. And I tried the whole thing of it, didn't notice much. So I ordered like a bunch more of it to try to like figure out and I was also seeing like, is it just me? Like, cause I'm just like intolerant to these large dosages or, and my wife tried some and my brother as well.

And we all agreed that the effect seemed delayed for some reason, like hours later, not necessarily even like a feeling, but we all did notice that like the next day, we just in general just felt better. And we didn't know how to describe it, but we're like, why did it take so long? Like we took it yesterday.

Like it was like, so anyway, I need to, I guess, play around with that one. Yeah, so you were consuming it orally. Yeah, right, right. That's probably why the onset was- I need to snort it. It's actually like, no, the alkaloids actually, the tribe that uses it in South Africa, and that's the plant there with the yellow flower,

it's a succulent, they chew the leaves. And so the leaves, those alkaloids will go through the cheek and into the bloodstream, almost like a tobacco. And it is active snuffed as well, intranasally. It might be good as like a trochee type thing. It would. I think a trochee would be a great delivery system. But some of the effects and benefits of con are also serotonin releasing. And so what I did maybe a year or two ago and now at this point is I looked at the MDMA structure, I looked at the mesambrene structure and I was like, well, wait a minute. What if I take this methylene dioxide ring off MDMA and I put it over here on this mesambrene

which has some similar effects and when you overlay them, you can kind of see some of the structural similarities and I filed a patent on a library of compounds that I'm hoping, I haven't made them yet and so there's no studies to share with you, but Kana and its alkaloids have been through grass studies and toxicology studies. So it is a grass product. MDMA has obviously been through some clinical trials. So it's passed some of its toxicology and safety profiles. And so I kind of, my hunch is that this compound is going to be somewhere in between where

you're going to have some of the benefits and that blissful view, but maybe not the amphetamine type stimulation that's associated with MDMA. So I'm kind of hoping that this may have some therapeutic benefit that's sort of better than both compounds. Back to psilocybin real quick, because I heard Serena mention how psilocybin has also been seen to get rid of PTSD, and then you mentioned that MDMA has done the same. So it makes me wonder, not specifically just with PTSD, but do a lot of people use these two compounds to try to achieve the same things and why would somebody try to use one versus the other?

Yeah. I think that they both can definitely have benefits and really, you're talking about mental health, whether it's depression or PTSD, and sometimes depression is a sign of trauma. I think the results are coming from two different directions so to speak in the sense that with MDMA, I see that you're sort of letting down the defenses, that wall we have of like, I'm not going to share with you my real thoughts on this. And so you're sort of dissolving that.

And I think that's where you're getting some of the benefits. You're more open to going, wow, I had this terrible thing happen to me and I was in a terrible situation, but maybe I'm not a terrible person. Whereas the psilocybin and I think more of your classic serotonin agonist, the kind of the true psychedelics, I would say, I think there's some more introspection where it's that wall to your own ego and yourself. You're going, well, hey, why was I doing that? Or why did I behave in that way?

And you kind of go, you know, I got to be honest with myself. Maybe that wasn't the best thing I did and the best thing that led me to whatever has shown up as these depressive symptoms. And so I think- Yeah, it's weird. It's like a mirror. It is. You're like, I don't want to look at that mirror.

Right. Right. And- But you're like, I probably should though. I always make the analogy that when you're sick, you want to feel better, but you don't necessarily want to vomit to feel better. Sometimes that's that internal vomit you're getting rid of. Yeah.

When it comes to kava, have you looked into kava at all? I actually have. I sell some kava. I enjoy going down to the kava bar over here in Davis, and I also sell some kratom. I'd love to get some of your thoughts on those products. And I know, you know, Kratom has some dangers to it. Like Kratom can be very addictive for some people and stuff like that.

So I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on those. Yeah, they're, they're, they're big. I got introduced to Kratom a long time ago, I think 2003 maybe. It's been quite a while. It used to be super controlled in Thailand as a controlled substance. And again, if you look at all the botany of the world, most indigenous cultures obviously have plants that have some psychoactive value, but generally

they're chewing on them versus Americans where we're like, no, we're going to refine this and make it the most potent thing possible. So I think, yeah, I've seen some, I think, Kratom's an interesting compound. I think when I read some of the effect that when the DEA kind of went to control it, there were a lot of people who had used it to wean themselves off either illegal opiates or prescription opiates and use that more as a substitution therapy. And they were like, hey, like we were opiate addicts with problems and we've used this to sort of improve our lives. Don't take those away from us. That's, that's a bad situation. I think that,

you know, we do see substitution therapy in pharma and, and as treatments. So I do think there's, there's some, some benefits there, but again, too, there's also people where, you know, with addictive behaviors, whether that's behaviors or genetics or whatever is creating that addiction, there's definitely potentially addictive aspects of it. And I do think a lot of times when I look at the safety of some drugs too, I also look at if it's taken over a long period of time or the withdrawal symptoms associated with it. And there are some compounds and some plants and some things where it's a little inconsistent.

Maybe some people will have cravings or withdrawals and some people won't. And so addiction is a pretty, another complex indication to study. And yeah, it's a super, I find it really interesting. I mean, it's all these, again, alkaloids that are found in the leaves of a tree. But again, you do see them more refined and more isolated. And I don't know what kind of standardization is done personally. I haven't really looked at that in a long time. As far as Cava goes, I really enjoyed researching Cava for quite a while.

I met a guy at one of the supply side Wests or whatever that had a Cava farm and was selling Cava. He was of the mindset that the worst part that was the most foul tasting and dirtiest like that was the best, a hundred percent. Um, I those alkaloids that numb your whole face. Yeah. I was able to find some Kava, um, that was super critical. See, oh two extracted.

It's a bright yellow, um, kind of gelatinous oily material. Um, and it's standardized for Kava lactones. And so I was able to, I played around with that for a while when I was doing some of the development work for 1906 and a pretty small amount. I remember, I'm sure in my notebooks, I've got all the different weights. It definitely, it was definitely intoxicating. I mean, you would, you would drag your feet and be a little stumbly with intoxication. Like you said, yeah, your entire mouth would go numb. I mean, that was, you had the good stuff.

I feel like it's, you know, I think it's great to have options. You know, I know people like to joke a lot about drugs and stuff like that, but let's just face it, we're all a bunch of drug addicts, you know, like caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, like whatever, like people have, not everyone does drugs, but a lot of people do some form of some of those things I just mentioned.

And it's nice to, it's just nice to know you can go different routes. You don't just have to drink alcohol. And I think alcohol actually is amazing in the way that they have figured out so many different delivery systems of alcohol, so many different, you know, you have beer and then you have your hard liquor and you have wine and you have all these different,

and I think when it comes to cava, when it comes to creatine, when it comes to some of these other things, I would love to see a world where you go to a bar and they're like, hey, you want a cava, you want a beer, you want a creatine, you want, you know, they have other options other than just straight up alcohol. Sure, yeah, yeah, no,

and I think you see those things in other cultures. I mean, I think that if you look at Cathagelus cot, it's controlled in the United States. It's super, I mean, you hear about it a lot in Somalia. With cot, what I was told by some of my, you know- I never heard of it before. Yeah, it's K-H-A-T. Cath cathagyl is the plant and it has cathinones. And so they're kind of like an ephedrine, amphetamine type stimulant with a ketone.

So it's a little milder, but again, it's like, I would put it as the plant itself more in like a tobacco, nicotine kind of level. What I was- A little bit of a stimulant. Yeah, for sure. And so what I was told by one of my friends that was an anthropologist and ethnobotanist

is she was in Somalia. And what she explained to me was that sort of your tea time in the afternoon there, you would go to a business that sold cot. They had these bound up twigs of leaves and you would start chewing on them and you'd have a little lift in your mood. But what she explained to me was that when you were

in this building that a lot of the social classes went away while you were chewing cotton and socializing. And so that, you know, somebody who was really wealthy and somebody that was maybe a laborer could talk to each other in that environment because you were both sort of chewing your cod, enjoying yourselves and taking a break in the day. And so she said, socially, it was a big deal. I think where it became a problem was, you know, we had Marine, the United States had Marines in Somalia for a while. And I think there was fears of maybe some of this coming back

to the United States on their return. And at the same time, Rolling Stone did a really good article. There was a chemist who had found methcathinone, which is sort of a analog of some of the compounds and caught started making this designer drug and taking it and became addicted to it and was kind of over consuming it. So there is an abuse potential. I think there was some correlations made between the synthetic purified compounds.

It's no different than, you know, I'm a fan of Dennis McKenna. He's an ethnobotanist that's currently up in Vancouver. He's talking a lot about the coca plant right now that like in the native areas, the Andes, where they're chewing it for, you know, helping with altitude sickness and stuff. It's not a problem, but we all know that it's,

the more it's refined and flown to the United States, it's a whole different compound. Changes it completely. Yeah. Is there anything that's exciting you as far as compounds right now that's like new or different? Yeah, oh, I mean, that's what I do every single day. I mean, my morning coffee, which I don't know if that's like new or different. Yeah, oh, I mean, that's what I do every single day. I mean, my morning coffee, which I don't have,

is looking at what's the newest drug, like whether that's. We have so many people on the show that talk about so many different drugs and then they're like, I don't touch coffee. Yeah, exactly. I've never actually had a cup of coffee in my life. Wait, really? 100%, yeah.

I was in the army when I was really young. You've never been curious? Yeah, I was. I was in the army when I was really young. You've never been curious? Yeah, I was. I was in the army. I was freezing cold. It was in the rain. I was super young and this guy goes, grab a cup of coffee. And I went over to this big metal tank and took a sip and spit it out.

That was the most disgusting thing and never picked up a cup again. That's great. Nice. Yeah. So I think, I don't know, I should be able to do some kind of study somewhere I don't know what it is, but Yeah, no, that's what I do every single day. I Read about what the next you know health benefit is typically is my focus. I'm really interested longevity

I enjoyed the time I did working on psychedelics and handling them Seeing the patients, you know, obviously major depressive disorder is a terrible disease, but I personally don't know somebody with it. I still find, obviously it's got a lot of value and I understand it and being a veteran, having family members in the military, it's, I want to see our military taken care of,

which is not always the military, I want to see our military taken care of, which is not always the case. But my personal biggest focus is longevity. Everybody I know wants to live longer. So, you know, when you look at those potential drugs and potential treatments or devices, that's of interest to me the most. So, and that can come in, well, anything and everything that helps improve your life can contribute to lunch. It could be even just getting a dog. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's like, there's drugs, but then there's also like just having a cool life, having fun stuff to do.

Sunrise. Having things to look forward to every single day, things like that. Are you aware of Brian Johnson? Have you seen- I have a little bit. And he's got the Netflix documentary and I mean, what's kind of your take on longevity in general? Like you're just seeing so much information being kind of thrown around about it.

A lot of stuff circulating on social media, probably some of it very positive, probably some of it maybe not so much. Guys like Dave Asprey, who I think are, you know, Dave Asprey in my opinion is like a pioneer in the space and he's been talking about these things for a long time and now we hear everybody talking about mitochondria this, mitochondria that. Is there any like, is there anything to be cautious of in some of this because it seems like, you know, methylene blue and a lot of these other things are things that are supposed to make our mitochondria

more efficient. Is there anything to pay attention to there? Can you make your mitochondria too efficient or anything like that? Yeah, there's, yeah, Brian Johnson's obviously interesting. He's in the media now a ton. He's on my watch list. I haven't seen the documentary. He's certainly aware of it. You know, I know of him and some of the people that interact with him. I think that as every topic, longevity is a complex topic. I mean, because we could, I mean, I don't expect you're

ever going to see a single pill for sure. That's like, Oh, there you go. There's your anti-aging pill because we have all these different types of systems in our body that are working in different ways. Um, I do think things that we don't necessarily talk about too much is some of the interventions, um, that are increasing your health span may not be necessarily, they may be accelerating aging depending on how you look at it. By adding growth, by adding more muscle mass

or increasing your growth, you might be actually accelerating some of that aging. But at the same time, I think if you're looking at, I mean, you always hear like, I'm gonna live to be 200 or whatever that lifespan number is. My personal focus is on that health span. And I think Peter Tia covers that pretty well where he talks about, you know, the people that have the best health span are sort of the people like they're all whatever groups

getting heart disease, the people that can push it off the longest are going to have, you know, the healthier overall health span. And so, you know, growing up in the Midwest, that's, it was the hotbed of heart disease at early ages, heart attacks at early ages, a lot of it was diet based or the different types of fats in the diet. And so like you said, lifestyle, having a dog, having friends, good social life. I think for the three of us, I think I got a remedy for us for longer life. Get a sex change, get a little shorter and weigh like 160, 140 and we'll probably live longer.

It'd be a small wound. Yeah. It's just interesting, right? Women tend to live a little longer. There's a lot of people that don't even seem to care that much about longevity. They just kind of go through life and they never really get too large. They never really gain too much weight. There's a lot of centurions that are just, I guess, like sort of living their life, but they just happen to be very small people and so it's just easier for them to live longer, I think, in some cases. But guys that weigh 220, 250 and so on, I don't know. I don't know how

if he can live to be 110, 120 that way, but it would be cool if he could. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me. I mean, I do think you'll see some more personalized medicine. I do think you'll see some more interventions based on genetics. I mean, I think that's some of the stuff you're seeing with Brian Johnson and some of the other people that are sort of in his circle. Some of the genetic drugs that'll's some of the stuff you're seeing with Brian Johnson and some of the other people that are sort of in his circle, some of the genetic drugs that'll alter some of the genetic processes to make improvements. I think that'll be more common.

Yeah, there's just so many aspects. I do think, you know, right now in science, AI is attached to everything. Like this is, you know, whatever, we're doing drug development with AI. I see those headlines all the time. And so at one point, you know, I was a little intimidated, like, oh my gosh, with AI controlling, you know, so much of this drug development, you know, how am I going to file another patent

on an idea I have? Because AI is going to be like, oh, we've, we've magically covered everything. And so that Kana compound that I patented, I was like, holy cow, like this drug has this activity, MDMA and mesomerine has a similar activity. And like, I wonder if I took the left piece and the right piece and kind of put them together. I thought, oh, I'm sure AI is, I mean, I read about it every day. I probably got this figured out and I had my patent attorney do a search and he's like, this is a slam dunk. There's, it doesn't exist.

It's a little slow. It's not going to be able to catch up to Justin Kirkland. That's for sure. Ryan, see if you can bring up, let's see if we can find Robbie Robinson on Instagram, black prints, I think something or other. This is not a picture of him. Like when it pops up,

this is not a picture of him at like close to eight years old, but there's a couple of photos of him recently. They're only from like two, three years ago. So he's still like, you know, mid, yeah, look at that picture. Look at that picture on the top left there. That is like within the last two years, he's like 77 years old or something stupid like that. It's just like, it's unreal. It's unreal. You know, I think what we'll be able

to do, what we'll be able to do in the future. And I think obviously, you know, our genetics and stuff like that play a big role, but this is somebody who has obviously had, you know, healthy practices for many, many, many, many years. For a long, long time. That's pretty amazing. Do you do a particular activity for your heart or anything like that? Do you run or bike or do cardio training?

Yeah, I'm pretty faithful on the CrossFit with all the criticism. Yeah, there we go. I like it. I spend a lot of time in my lab. CrossFit's hard I mean, I like it. I spend a lot of time in my lab. CrossFit's hard. Yeah, I like it. Very challenging.

I'm really technical. So I spend a lot of time reading technical stuff, working on science stuff, really in my head. And I really enjoy going to the gym and having someone go, here's what we're doing today. I don't have to think about it. It's programmed. So that really works well for me.

You just get your ass kicked too. And you do. to think about it. It's programmed. So that really works well for me. You get your ass kicked too. And you do. I think about, you know, when I, when I go with Serena to our other gym, or it's, you know, without an instructor or something, I'm like, there's no way I would have done a hundred pull-ups. Zero way. But when I got somebody next to me that's, you know, getting one up on me or, you know, you sort of have that group pain, it's just sort of motivating and it's socializing for me as well. So I think it's great. I think CrossFit Cross, it checks a lot of boxes.

It does. So I feel like I get some weights, I get some cardio, I almost a personal trainer and so and do and do things I would never do without without being in that environment. When it comes to the longevity space, has there been a product in the last year or two that you've seen that you are super excited about? Or is there something new that you're super excited about? Oh, that's a good question. I guess I look at-

Yes, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that just seems like come and go. I think rapamycin was something that some people were hot on for a while, which is a drug that some people take to, sometimes when they're getting an organ transplant, I believe. And I think Peter Itea and some other folks were utilizing things like that,

but and in metformin, people were pretty hot on that. And I don't know if there's anything now that's like a staple for people. I do hear people talk a lot about NAD+, methylene blue, or maybe what are some of your thoughts on those products and if they do have any efficacy for health and longevity. Yeah, no, I think everything you mentioned has a benefit with some aspect for sure.

And I've seen that. I do think some of the things have, a lot of it is in the dose that, you know, we always say the poison's in the dose, you know, some things, especially the rapamycin, like you said, it's, it's designed, and it's a little bit of an older drug right now, but it was designed to help organ transplant patients

not reject an organ. And so I know Peter mentioned it, actually having some data showing that mice that are using it in small doses are living longer. Of course we're not mice. I think Brian Johnson small doses are living longer. Of course, we're not mice. I think Brian Johnson was in the news last week maybe or the week before stopping taking rap mice. And I have no idea what doses he was doing or what types of protocols or whatnot. But I think that one of the things I enjoy doing is you'll see the headline,

like here's this drug, here's this benefit, or here's what we see. And a lot of times, kind of going back and seeing why they've come to that conclusion is really interesting. And I see stuff, you know, for it to be peer reviewed and published has to be statistically significant. But then I look at these numbers and go, okay, well, the barometer moved here, Is that really going to make a change that's either economical or doesn't affect other things in a negative way? And so I mean, my opinion is nobody's got it figured out. I mean, you know, there's not a lot of Centaurians. I don't know. Joel Green has it pretty figured out. We had him on the show. We asked him

a lot of questions. Remember, you had to has it pretty figured out. We had him on the show. We asked him a lot of questions. Remember, he had it figured out pretty good. He had some pretty good, Carl Ennore's got it figured out pretty good. No, you're right. No one does have it figured out. And I think that's the key, is that all of us should probably keep that in mind.

Like that we're not going to have it figured out either. And you just keep trying and you just keep, thinking about it and you keep working on yourself and keep working on the different things, the different hurdles that might sort of get in your way. Now for sure, I mean, there's always new innovations, new ways to look at things. I do see that oftentimes the people

with the biggest budget and the loudest mouth have the most successful product, but that doesn't make it the best product. And so I kind of consider myself as trying to be very stringent on the science when I recommend things or knowledgeable on something, maybe not to my benefit even, especially from a business point of view,

before I really wanna jump on something. So I'm slow, but really studious to kind of make those decisions. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.