The Dr. Hyman Show - The Biohacks Big Pharma Doesn’t Want You to Know: Plasmapheresis, Muse Cells & Peptides

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Cutting-edge medical advances are unlocking new ways to slow aging and enhance health. Plasmapheresis removes harmful inflammatory molecules, toxins, and cellular waste from plasma, helping to reduce biological aging and improve resilience. Muse cells, a powerful form of stem cell therapy, show promise in regenerating tissue and treating complex conditions like ALS and stroke. And peptides—small, naturally occurring signaling molecules—support healing, immune balance, and cellular repair, offering practical tools for longevity and optimized health. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Darshan Shah, Dr. Adeel Khan, and Dr. Edwin Lee about medical advancements that are the ultimate longevity biohacks. Dr. Darshan Shah is a board-certified surgeon, longevity medicine expert, author, and founder of Next Health—the world’s largest Health Optimization and Longevity clinic. He has performed over 20,000 surgical procedures and advised thousands on extending healthspan and lifespan. A prodigy in medicine, Dr. Shah earned his MD at 21 and trained at the Mayo Clinic. He has since launched multiple health ventures, authored a book, and patented medical devices. Committed to ongoing learning, he holds alumni status at Harvard Business School and Singularity University. Dr. Shah is a sought-after speaker on health and longevity. Dr. Adeel Khan, M.D. is a cell and gene therapy specialist with a visionary approach that is changing the way we perceive healthcare worldwide. Khan has cemented his reputation as a regenerative medicine expert and a driven entrepreneur. Dr. Edwin Lee is a board-certified endocrinologist, author, and international speaker specializing in hormonal balance, regenerative, and functional medicine. He founded the Institute for Hormonal Balance in Orlando in 2008 and completed fellowships in Critical Care and Endocrinology at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Lee is the lead investigator of an IRB-approved senolytic study exploring compounds like Dasatinib, Quercetin, and Fisetin, and recently published the first human trial using BPC157 for knee pain. He is an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, co-founder of the Clinical Peptide Society, and founder of SavePeptides.org. His latest book is The Fountain of Youth with Peptides. This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%. Full-length episodes can be found here: This Breakthrough Blood Therapy Could Add Years To Your LifeStem Cells & Peptides: The Secret to Reversing Chronic Pain and Aging?How Peptides Enhance Healing and Longevity

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman show. Most of the molecules that signal the root causes of aging live in our plasma, from inflammation, to toxin buildup, to senescent cells, all of that is inside the plasma. Damaged proteins. We sort of degrade and our resilience decreases and we age faster biologically. If you're suffering from stress, poor sleep, low energy, these are all signs you might be low in magnesium. And not just one kind, your body needs seven are all signs you might be low in magnesium.

And not just one kind, your body needs seven different forms to truly feel calm and at ease. That's why I recommend magnesium breakthrough from Bioptimizers, a complete formula with all seven types in one capsule. Head to Bioptimizers.com slash Hymen and use code HYMENTEN to save 10% and try it risk-free with their 365-day guarantee.

Again, that's Bioptimizers.com slash Hyman with code HYMAN10 at checkout. Now before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand,

well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, the Hymen Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey,

visit my website at drhyman.com for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. I want to start with plasmapheresis because I think it's a really important innovative therapy. It's been around in medicine for decades for treating various kinds of diseases that are autoimmune diseases or neurologic diseases, and it's very effective for those conditions. But it's only done in academic centers. It's only done for very, very rare cases.

It's not part of traditional medicine. It's not reimbursed for general health. And yet, there's incredible research on it around Alzheimer's, around long COVID, around longevity itself. So first, why don't you explain what was the origin of the science that kind of began to let us think about this particular medical procedure

as a potential treatment for aging itself. Absolutely. So let's take the story way back to just even the ancient Romans, you know, they were using a technology that they called bloodletting, right? Because they believed a lot of the bad stuff that causes some disease lives in the blood and bloodletting, removing some of this blood would minimize some of the bad stuff that causes some disease lives in the blood, and removing some of this blood

would minimize some of the symptoms of disease. And as we all know, this didn't really work or pan out because there's other things in blood that you really, really need. Exactly. Although leeches are, had a comeback in medicine for wound healing. Leeches are having a comeback.

Because you put them on wounds that don't heal and it makes two blood vessels. It does, it does. We use leeches a lot in surgery actually. It's a penis congestion and things. So I'm very familiar with leeches, but we're not talking leeches. But you're not doing trepanation,

you're not playing drill, drilling holes in people's brains to let out the bad humors. No, no. So fast forward, apheresis was a technology that was developed to treat a disease called Waldenschirm's disease where you have immune complexes

that make the blood too thick. And that thickening of the blood causes blockages in your blood vessels, and people would die from this traditionally. And then some very smart scientists in IBM, I think, figured out how to actually separate the plasma from the blood cells. And what is plasma?

So plasma is the fluid portion of your blood. It's 45% of your blood. And if you've ever seen someone do PRP, which is take some blood in a test tube, and they put in a centrifuge and they spin it down, the blood will separate to a white layer on the top of the test tube and a red layer on the bottom. The red layer is your red blood cells,

and the white layer is your plasma on top. And it's like a little... But it's also your white cells are all your cells. Right. So basically you separate it's a soup in which all of your cells in your blood flow around. So it's like the red cells, the white cells, the platelets, you take those out, exactly. You separate that from the soup. And in this soup, what's in this soup. So the soup is where all of the words what's in the

plasma. What's in the plasma, right? So this is where all your cells are living and this is what they're exposed to on a day-to-day basis. It's the growth factors, it is cell signaling molecules, it's nutrients, it's a lot of the factors of your immune system live in this soup. So it's basically where all the signaling in your body kind of lives inside of this plasma. And what's good about it is that it carries

these signals throughout your entire body. So if you have something going on in your gut, your brain can hear about it. If you have something going on in your heart, your gut hears about it. So it's the communication superhighway. Exactly, one of the functions it has is being a communication superhighway

for your entire body. And so there are all these molecules in there that are regulating all these things. Exactly. So why do we then wanna kind of take out that plasma, throw it in the garbage and put in a replacement fluid called albumin? Exactly. Like what's bad in there?

Because well, you just, it sounds good. Right, right, right, exactly. So let's take it back a little bit more also to the con boys with the parabiosis experiment. I think that's interesting to talk about where they hook up a young mouse to an old mouse and they found that the old mouse got younger and the young mouse got older. And so for a decade, people were looking for like, what is the substance in the young mouse that makes the old mouse younger? And so they did all these studies and substance like GDF 11, TNF,

and nothing really panned out. And then 10 years later, there's a story. I think it's a true story, but I hear it all because I hear it all the time. Someone at a conference went up to ask a question to the scientists doing all the research on this. And they kind of knocked on the microphone and they said, you know, I think you guys are looking at the wrong mouse. It's not what's in the old mouse. It's not what's in the old mouse.

It's not what's in the young mouse, making the old mouse younger. It's the opposite. It's what you're taking out of the old mouse. So it turns out inner plasma is also where all the cytokines and all the signaling molecules that lead to inflammation accumulate, right? It turns out that's where all of the toxins that we're exposed

to also accumulate. It turns out where senescent cells, the SASP, the negative products that senescent cells secrete also live in our plasma. The zombie cells, which are part of the hallmarks of aging, which are essentially these phenomena that happen, these cells that don't die, but just become zombie cells that then secrete all these inflammatory molecules

that make us age faster. Exactly. So if you look at all the root causes of aging, most of the molecules that signal the root causes of aging live in our plasma, from inflammation to toxin buildup to senescent cells, all of that is inside our plasma. Damage proteins. Right.

Because one of the other things with age. Damage proteins, exactly. And one of the other hallmarks of aging is damaged proteins our plasma. Damage proteins. Right. Because one of the other things is with age. Damage proteins, exactly. And one of the other hallmarks of aging is damaged proteins. Exactly. And so all these damaged proteins just float around and they create more problems, more inflammation, more dysfunction, and we sort of degrade

and our resilience decreases and we age faster biologically. Exactly, exactly. So it goes to reason from there that if this is all living in your plasma and your body's unable to eliminate this with its own elimination mechanisms, what if we just remove the plasma?

And so some very smart people started doing experiments using a technology that's been in hospitals for literally five or six decades. It's FDA approved, we've been using it like you said. I've been a doctor for 41 years, so I know I'm old, but I remember it even back then. Right, right, you use it a lot, and like, even for like drug overdoses, because you know, that lives in your plasma too.

And it works, it's FDA approved, it's super safe. We've been using it forever. And you know, it just highlights. There's so much incredible technology locked up in the sick care system, that if we just bring it back 30, 40 years, like you can eliminate chronic disease. This is one of those technologies.

So the treatment, like you've eliminate chronic disease. This is one of those technologies. So the treatment like you've experienced it is super comfortable. You just basically sit there with an IV in your arm and your blood is removed like about 200 CCs at a time. So it was a small volume, put through this giant centrifuge, the plasma separated from the red blood cells.

Red blood cells go back into you through the same IV or a different IV. And then you get a big bag of plasma that's basically thrown away. And inside of that, we've basically eliminated one entire plasma volume of all of these negative factors that have been built up over time. So you then throw the stuff out, and has anybody actually studied what's in there?

People are. When you get the stuff, it's like when you get an oil change, your car, you throw out the old oil, what's in there? People are- When you get the stuff, it's like when you get an oil change, your car, you throw out the old oil, what's in that? It's the same things that you measure when you do a blood test. Like, you know, with the function health blood test, you get a lot of biomarkers and blood results basically back

and you're basically measuring those whenever you do a blood test. It's the same stuff, but you're just totally removing it and you're throwing measuring those whenever you do a blood test. It's the same stuff, but you're just totally removing it and you're throwing it away, right? And so I think people haven't really looked exactly like at the discarded plasma. People are looking at it right now.

It'd be fascinating to do. Like what are the toxins in there? What are the immune cells, cytokines? What are the senescent cells in there? What's going on that we're taking out? Yeah, and basically it's all being removed, exactly. So we've actually done a lot of patients now and we've measured their total toxicity levels

in their urine, all the toxins. We measure things like mycotoxins, we measure exposure to heavy metals, we're measuring exposure to even like microplastics and all of these toxins, and we've seen significant reductions in before and after treatment toxin levels. We know toxins are in the plasma.

And when you remove them, your body gets a chance to catch up, right? Now it's able to say, I've lost a lot of the stuff I'm working overtime to remove and it gets a chance to clean up. And like you said, it's like an oil change for the body. For all of us that have had cars forever, we know that if you don't do an oil change every 3,000

to 5,000 miles, your car's not going to run as well. Well, your body's the exact same way. Yeah. It's interesting. I read a study recently that came out of Germany, where they used plasmapheresis for long COVID. Absolutely. And what was interesting was they

looked at a lot of people who have long COVID have auto antibodies against their autonomic nervous system, which is your, you know, regulates all the things that are sort of automatic in your body. You know, all the parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system. And it basically affects your blood vessels in many ways and your blood pressure regulation. And a lot of people have, with long COVID,

they have what they call POTS, which is, you know, they get postural hypotension, they stand up, they get dizzy, they have all these other cognitive symptoms, there's all these other cytokine markers and antibodies, and they were able to actually measure them before and after the plasmapheresis, and it showed significant reduction or elimination of these and improvement clinically in these patients with long COVID.

And the stats are always variable about how many people have long COVID, but it's probably five to 10% of people had COVID. And I think it might be more. I mean, how many, you think how many hundreds of millions of Americans had COVID? You take 10% of that, it's still 20 million people, you know? A lot of people don't even know they have it. Yeah. And it's like little brain fog, not feeling as good, just not as good as they were before

COVID. And, and was even more, more frightening as good as they were before COVID. And what's even more frightening as I was talking to Jeremy Nicholson, who's been on the podcast, who's a phenomic researcher from Australia, who's doing deep phenomics, which means looking at all these, not just the regular blood tests,

but metabolomics and cytokines and thousands and thousands of proteins and molecules. And he says, everybody who's had COVID has something going on. Like they're all a little out of whack in terms of their immune system, inflammatory system. Like my wife says, I never used to get sick. Now I get sick more because I have COVID.

So I think plasma freezes is an fascinating treatment for that. I think it has a lot of promise. As a doctor, I've seen how chronic stress impacts nearly every system in the body from sleep to mood, energy, and even inflammation. But what many people don't realize is that stress often depletes a critical mineral your body needs to feel calm and at ease, and that is magnesium. And not just one kind. Your body actually requires seven different forms of magnesium to function optimally. That's why I recommend magnesium breakthrough by bioptimizers. It's the most complete magnesium supplement I've found, combining all seven forms your body uses to regulate stress, improve sleep quality, and support a healthy nervous

system. Personally, I noticed the difference within days, falling asleep faster, waking up more refreshed, and feeling more grounded throughout the day. Over 1,500 5-star reviews back it up, and it comes with a full 365-day guarantee. Head to bioptimizers.com slash Hymen and use code Hymen10 to save 10%. Thin cells have two functions. One is to self-renew and the other is to differentiate and turn into all types of tissue. So the analogy I like is kind of think of it like a master key. And that master key can replicate itself, and then it can open up different doors, or it can divide and clone itself, and then open up other doors that way. And so if that's a function of a stem cell, in theory, then it should be able to repair

tissue and fix things in your body when we put them there. But it turns out when we take stem cells in the test tube and then when we put them in your body, they became differently. So it's not as simple as we thought. And there's a lot of different types of stem cells. So. Those stem cells are one of the big categories

of regenerative medicine. That's one of them. Right. So keep going around that. I'm just sort of contextualizing because there's a lot of other compounds that are used besides stem cells. And even in stem cells, I mean,

you can just do a whole podcast just literally about that, because stem cells are such a depth concept, but at a very high level, what people need to understand is just, when you take something from your own body, like for example, if you go to the US right now, there's a lot of stem cell clinics, but they're not actually true stem cells because if you're just taking your ball marrow or your stent and then you're just isolating

that and injecting it, it doesn't actually have the ability to turn into new tissue, but it does have an ability to reduce inflammation. And so a better term for it that Arnold Kaplan, who's a guy who coined the term mesacromal stem cells in 1992, he's a guy who coined it. He wrote a paper about this but basically he said that these things should be called committed progenitor cells, which is a fancy word for just saying that they can't turn into new tissue and they can reduce inflammation, which is still which can still be useful in some conditions, but it's just misleading

because a lot of patients are like, oh, yeah, I got stem cell injections. It's like, well, it wasn't really a stem cell. But see, it was more just something to reduce inflammation. Because remember, the definition of a stem cell is something that can actually regenerate new tissue. And if you're just taking your fat or your bone marrow and injecting it, that's not regenerating your tissue.

Through the mechanism of that stem cell, it's not regenerating your tissue through the mechanism of that stem cell. It may send signals to your own body stem cells to help with some regeneration, but for the most part, it's an anti-inflammatory product. And so that's the number one thing to understand about these. And this is, we're talking about the broader category of mesenchymal stem cells, which is just an embryological term. But essentially what it means is this is from,

the reason we use mosaicomal stem cells is because they're the easiest to source. Because they're in the fat, they're in the bone marrow, they're from the milk report tissue, or dental pulp. There's so many different sources now. But that's the reason why MSC's or mosaicomal stem cells are so popular. And the other reason is because mosaicomal stem cells only have a finite ability to differentiate,

which means they won't cause tumors or cancer. Of course, that's always been a concern with embryonic stem cells, which if you're taking them from a board of genesis, which some clinics still do. And obviously during the Bush era, there was a lot of controversy around that. And that's why stem cells kind of got categorized into this unethical thing. But that's not how we're sourcing our stem cells. We're sourcing them, obviously. We're not harming any babies.

And they're being sourced from C-section birds. And instead of being thrown away, they're donated. It was a very simple collection process. But the problem with the mosaicable stem cells, as we said, is first of all, there's a lot of clinics saying that they're taking your fat and bone marrow and playing with stem cells. But let's, is first of all, there's a lot of clinics saying that they're taking your fat and bone marrow and claiming they're stem cells, but they're not. Let's say you go offshore somewhere and they can isolate them, and then they can do what's

called culture expansion, which means they can grow them and they can replicate them. So then they can actually have some sort of dose that can be a therapeutic and potentially regenerate tissue in theory. But then what happened, it turns out, when you take these stem cells, whether from any of these sources, when you put them in the body, most of them don't survive. And when you do them intravenously, most of them get trapped in the lungs and die. And that's why the results have been very inconsistent. And that's why stem cells haven't taken the way you thought they would, you know, 10,

15 years ago. And that's why the clinical trials have been so mixed. And so unfortunately, there's still a lot of clinics claiming that we can regenerate tissue and it's just misleading. And even I thought this, which is that I thought IV stem cells were great, but it turns out a lot of them just get trapped in the lungs and most of them die. And even with that, you still get some people who get benefits. And that's the old generation technology.

But now we can isolate the best stem cell population and use that one. So it turns out that when we take a stem cell, a mesenchymal stem cell, there's actually 17 subtypes, which is kind of crazy to think about it. So it's like there's something called single cell RNA sequencing, which is kind of crazy to think about it. So it's like they, there's something called single cell irate sequencing, which is basically to look at gene expression of individual cell profiles. So that way you can see how different cells behave. And then you can see that, hey, there's actually

these 17 different groups that they hang out together and they behave differently. And some of them are more useless and some of them are quite useful. So we don't necessarily want all 17 subtypes, which is what most stem cells do. That's why we were doing up until a year ago. But as you know, I spent the summer in Japan

and in Japan, they won the Nobel Prize for projective medicine, Professor Yamanaka for cellular reprogramming, in which we can talk about those stem cells. But there was another professor, Professor Mary Dizawa, who discovered something called MUSE cells, which stands for Multi-Bini-Age Differentiating Stress Enduring Cell. So it's a mouthful. All you need to remember, or people, is that these are cells that are MUSE. The MUSE is a cool stuff. They're able to, they're pluripotent, which means they can differentiate into all 220 cell types in your body or over 220 cell

types. And they are stress-injury, which means they can survive harsh environments. So that's really the key. So they don't die when they go in the body. So we can isolate these using cell sorting technology and filter them out so that we're injecting primarily new stem cells instead of just injecting all the different types of stem cells. And so that's now what we've moved on to. And of course, we talked earlier about your back and that's what we use for you. And that's what we're using exclusively just because the results are so much more consistent and the science makes a lot of sense. And you know, I'm in the process of doing some clinical work with Professor Nusawa as well.

And we want to investigate these new cells for a lot of different conditions, but in Japan, they've already published trials for ALS, for heart attacks, for stroke, and these are not easy to treat conditions. And with intravenous new cells, you do see benefits. And of course, we're seeing that in the real world, treating patients with all sorts of degenerative conditions and actually seeing a real difference. And that's just because these cells are actually surviving

and doing what they are meant to do, which is reduce inflammation, repair cellular function, reduce oxidase, drastically. We know one of the biggest mechanisms by which they work is through mitochondrial DNA transfer and mitophagy, which is repairing damaged mitochondria. And I think everyone now knows the mitochondria are so important, not just for energy, but for regulating cellular metabolism and aging.

So that's why there's so much interest in this space for longevity and not just for the conditions. And so those are mesenchymal stem cells, and then there's also induced pluripotent stem cells, IPSCs. And that's the Yamanaka stem cells, where you can take any old cell and you can make it young again. So of course, when you think about that, you're like, holy, that's great. Shouldn't everyone be doing this?

But it turns out when you make that old cell young again, it makes it almost embryonic in nature, which means it can cause cancer or tumors. So iPSCs, as they're called, or Yamanaka Stem Cells to honor Professor Yamanaka, they're great, but the problem is they have the risk of tumor genicity. And so we don't actually use them clinically yet. There's a lot of work being done on it, but it's still, I think, a few years away from clinical translation.

So that's why the new cells, because we know they don't cause cancer and we know they're naturally occurring in the body, so they have a lot more clinical translation than they have in the stem cells. So these are basically these different kinds of stem cells and then most of the kind in the first generation seems like they were getting you know an anti-inflammatory effect but they might not be doing the full effect we had thought they might and why there was variable results. And they get trapped in the lungs. The mu cells seem to be stress resistant.

So they hang out more, they have time to do their job more, and they have the ability to actually work in a different way because they're not sort of chewed up so fast. And these don't get also trapped in the lungs. They are resistant to that. Yeah, so about 10 to 15 times more are able to go into circulation. So there is still some that could trap their lungs, but Professor Juzawa's shown work showing that it's you know it's not like two times more, talking an order of magnitude,

ten times more are able to go into circulation. So it is still a big difference compared to standard MSC. And there's two kind of uses, as you mentioned. One is injecting it into a joint or back or some damaged traumatic tissue, or injecting them intravenously for systemic effects around really things like ALS or stroke. Those are really, like you said, almost impossible to treat problems.

And what kinds of results are they seeing when they do these systemic treatments? What are the kinds of conditions where it might be applicable for? Yeah, look, I just had an ALS patient I treated a couple of weeks ago and I was blown away because it was my first ALS patient I treated with new cells.

And she couldn't swallow because of the bulbar symptoms. And now she can swallow, she can speak clearly, she's barely able to speak before. And that was just one IV. And it was pretty incredible to see. Obviously that's anecdotal, but the clinical trial that was done also showed some slowing of progression. And we all know how devastating ALS is.

And if you can, something that could go down a little, I think we just don't know the exact dosing for ALS yet, but I think for now, I think we can certainly say it can be helpful and it's not harmful. And then for stroke, we can be much more, much more kind of certain that they are gonna have positive results. Because in stroke, for example,

she showed that 30% of patients in the clinical trial were able to go back to full-time work when they were disabled. We're talking patients who were disabled. And so, imagine- So are you saying if someone's in a wheelchair and can't move the side of their arm relating to the knee, back to their walkie?

Yeah, exactly, and they go back to full-time work. So now 30% of people and the other 70% still had significant clinical benefits and were able to get, you know, they weren't necessarily able to return to work. A lot of them were able to get back to like normal puncturing of ADLs and IADLs and stuff like that, which is still. And you know what the most interesting part was?

25% of the patients in the clinical trial had reversal gray hair. And that was just like an accidental thing. It's something. That's amazing. You thing. It's something. That's amazing. That's wild. So what other kinds of conditions might this be able for?

Immune diseases, lung disease? Yeah, it sounds, you almost sound like a, you know, a used car still in there or something, when you're like, this can treat everything, you know? But once you understand the physiology of chronic disease, as you do, you understand that there's Certain hallmarks of aging and there's hallmarks chronic disease that overlap So I'm not gonna list all follow them because I'll bore people but there's basically 12 hallmarks of AJ

We've listed a few of them mitochondria dysfunction. I you know stem cell exhaustion Yeah, chronic inflammation, which is related to amino acid essence and and you know, stem cell exhaustion, yeah, chronic inflammation, which is related to amino acid essence, and, you know, there's loss of protein, like, there's so many protein misfolding, there's so many other ones. And so basically, these 12, what's called in the 12 hallmarks, they actually underlie not just aging, which is, you know, arguably the most complex chronic disease. They underlie all chronic diseases from heart disease to asthma to dementia to cancer even and components of that that are overvying. A lot of them are metabolic in nature and so that's why these stem cells have this ability to restore metabolic health because of that mitochondrial DNA

transfer and helping to repair the mitochondria to metophagy. And then of course the mitochondria are the ones that help to regulate metabolism, right? That's where they have, that's where when you eat food and your body has to process it, it has to go through your mitochondria to produce energy. And if your mitochondria aren't working properly, which is what happens to everyone with aging and chronic disease, then guess what? Your metabolism is messed up. That's why metabolic disease is really the root cause

of so many different problems. And that's why they call dementia, like pre-diabetes and all this other stuff, right? Because a lot of them are metabolic in nature. And if you can restore metabolic health, which stem cells can do, then that's why you can treat so many chronic diseases. And that's number one. And number two, the other beauty of these stem cells can do, then that's why you can treat only quite diseases. And that's number one.

And number two, the other beauty of these stem cells is their ability to regulate your immune system. So this is called immunomodulation. That's the medical term, but that just basically means we're shifting your body from a pro-inflammatory state to an anti-inflammatory state. So this is called immunomodulation, which is reprogramming your immune cells, specifically your macrophages. And if there's one cell that you need to understand,

it's your macrophages. They're probably, they're my favorite cell in the body. Then- You're like little Pac-Man. They like go and chew up all the stuff that shouldn't be there, right? Exactly. So they're like your little,

they're like your little Pac-Man controlling and surveilling and making sure the bad guys don't get in. They eat guys when they're around they take them away and they'll dispose of them but what happens to a lot of pacman or police officers are like calling this they get fat and tired and then they start eating too many donuts and they can't do their job anymore and this is actually called lipid associated macrophages or LAMs. And so they accumulate fat and lipid period oxidation inside of the macrophages and then they can't do their job anymore and the job is so important. And then they start releasing the wrong signals. They start saying, so the macrophages start releasing pro-inflammatory signals. And then that causes the cycle of

chronic inflammation and that's really the root, as we know, of so many disease processes. And that's why if you can treat chronic inflammation, you can treat so many different chronic diseases. And that's why these IV mu cells have so much potential. And even with IV, let's call it the first generation, even with the IV first generation stem cells, there are clinical trials that are published

showing that insulatory bowel disease can get into remission, that rheumatoid arthritis can get into remission. It's just the dosing is quite high and people need a lot of frequency of those. With the new cells, you can get, obviously you can get a lot better results, but it's the same principle,

which is you're just regulating the immune system. That's incredible, yeah. So for autoimmune disease and for chronic inflammatory age-related diseases for just rejuvenation and longevity itself, these can seem to be helpful. One of the things I'd love you to explain is how does some cells work? Because you kind of alluded to the fact that they don't actually work as we thought they did, which is you inject them and then they go, if you have a liver problem, they become

a liver cell, or if you have a kidney problem, become a kidney cell. They just have certain compounds inside of them that go out and kind of are- Yeah. They have renewal things. So mosaicomal stem cells primarily work- Let me just, before you kind of go into that, mosaicomal, for everybody listening, that's a big word.

It means just your body's tissue. What the other kind of stem cells come from, umbilical cords or from embryos. We're not doing embryos at all. We're talking mostly about umbilical cord blood that actually has basically baby stem cells as opposed to mine, which are like almost 65, right? And they're not as antigenic. In other words, they don't tend to cause this foreign reaction.

Like if you were to take, I was taking your stem cells, I'd have a rejection of those stem cells as part of my biology because we don't like foreign stuff. But with these kind of umbilical cord cells, it's not like that. So you can use these umbilical cord, use stem cells to actually kind of bypass that thing, but actually have the benefit of these younger stem cells. Right? Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately, using your own stem cells, there's many reasons

not to, but the biggest one is definitely they've gone through a lot of replicative stress because they've gone through their own aging process. And so they can actually have markers of senescence and other, even cancer markers as you get older. So you don't want to take your own stem cells and put them in your body, especially if you're over 40. But anyway, yeah, back to the point about, you know, what these stem cells are doing inside of your body. The mosaicomal stem cells are primarily

reducing inflammation via what's called the secretome. So the secretome is kind of the soup that the stem cells grow in or release and their signal so there's micro RNAs, there's what are called cytokines, which are these proteins that help to reduce inflammation, there's growth factors. So this is all what's called the secretome and depending on what type of secretome the stem cells are releasing dictates their ability to change the microenvironment and help with these different cellular processes.

So for example, the sacral film of a stem cell from your old body isn't going to be as good as the sacral film from the umbilical cord tissue. And you can probably understand that intuitively because it's like, oh yeah, it makes sense. My cells are old. They've gone through X amount of cell damage versus the medical core tissue, which doesn't. And that's why exosomes are such a hot topic because if most of the benefits of the Zec and most stem cells are due to the signaling process,

then why not just isolate those signals and inject those? And that's what the exosomes are. Okay, so hold there for a sec. There's stuff that the stem cells secrete, right? That's why it's called the secretome or secratome, which is, hey brother, right? There's stuff that it squirts out, basically, in its environment that goes out

and does all these good things. And what you're saying is that inside of the stem cells, there are these little vesicles, these little packets of healing factors called exosomes. And they're maybe where most of the benefit comes from, from the stem cells. So you can actually take the exosomes out of the stem cells you grow. The stem cells in the lab, you remove the exosomes, you can concentrate them. They don't have any DNA material.

They're much safer, they're less expensive. And then you can use them also. So now explain to us what are exosomes, because that's another part of this whole field of regenerative medicine. We kind of sort of basically skirted the surface of stem cells. I hope you got a good sense of that, but I want to get into the few other things. So exosomes are the next topic, and let's kind of explore what are exosomes, how do we use them, and why do they work. Yeah, I mean you kind of just said the definition,

which is they're a type of extracellular vesicle, which are just packages by which your cell communicates with other cells. So they help with cell-to-cell communication. And there's different type of extracellular vesicle. So there's something called apoptotic bodies. There's something called MVBs, which are micro vesicle bundles.

And then there's exosomes, which are the smallest type of extracellular vesicle. So extracellular vesicle, or EVs, is kind of the class. And then there's different types of EVs. And exosomes are the smallest type of EV. And they're basically to help facilitate cell-to-cell communication, which interestingly changes as you age. So exosomes are also becoming a hot topic in diagnostics because it turns out the exosome profile of your cells

as it becomes cancerous or as it becomes chronic diseases, you can detect certain exosome products because we didn't have this technology, right, like five years ago. And now while we do, and now we can figure out, hey, the signals your cells are sending are changing. This means that you might be developing this problem. So that's why exosomes are becoming

a hot topic in diagnostics too. And then of course in intervention or therapeutics, then it makes sense because like I said, it's all about the signals that are being sent by the stem cells that dictate their ability to modulate or change the cells in a favorable way. Now, the exosomes can be isolated in a lot of different ways.

Previously, it can only be done through ultra-centrifugation of cells that are replicating. So you have to have cells that are replicating. But now that technology is improving, so that you can actually get exosomes from terminally differentiated cells. So meaning, even if they're not replicating, you can basically homogenize, it's called homogenization, which is basically like,

you know, you're blending, you know how you blend like fruit to get like the pulp out and the juice, it's like taking the juice basically of tissue and that's the exosome. So you can do that now with any tissue. So for example, there's people working on natural killer exosomes, dendritic cell exosomes, exosomes from liver, from muscle. So there's so many interesting exosome products being worked on. There's 290 or 281 patterns, something like that, on exosomes in the last like couple years. So there's different kinds of exosomes. That's not the scale. Yeah. There's different kinds of exosomes. That tells you the scale. Yeah. There's different kinds of exosomes. Oh yeah. So that tells you the scale though, over 200 patents on just exosomes alone in the last

couple of years. So that tells you the scale and the magnitude of research that's happening right now. It's quite amazing that we've kind of, you know, gone this long in medicine without really taking a hard look at peptides in a conventional way. Now there are things that people know of as peptides that you don't even know are peptides, right? Like insulin is a peptide. Exactly.

Ozymphic is now the sort of blockbuster drug of the day. Ozymphic, yes. And that's a peptide. That's always been a peptide. That's a peptide. Glutathione is a peptide. Glutathione is a peptide, yeah. So there's a lot of compounds that we use in medicine that are peptides.

It's probably worth 7,000 produced by the body, right? So there's a lot of compounds that we use in medicine that are peptides. It's probably over 7,000 produced by the body, right? Actually, technically 300,000. 300,000. Okay, I was off by a few thousand. But we only understand a fraction of it. And outside in nature, there's I think I estimate about 6 million peptides out there. That's incredible.

6 million. I mean, a lot from venoms and from animals and in my book. Not in human peptides, but other peptides. Oh yeah, dairy and it's really amazing. Spiders and just interesting creatures. Nature has a lot of wealth. Now as a functional medicine doctor and in regenerative medicine,

you know, interested in regenerative medicine, I really love the idea of using bioidentical molecules to support the body to do what it's supposed to do. Oh, definitely. Yeah, so there's, the drug is essentially a new to nature molecule that interferes or interrupts or blocks some pathway in the body,

and there's usually downstream side effects. Okay. Peptides also can have side effects when used in pharmacological doses like we're seeing with ozempi. But these are biomolecules that have evolved over millennia that regulate everything that's happening in our bodies. So they're getting a lot of kind of play in the longevity space to optimize cognitive

health, to rejuvenate your skin, to help with tissue repair, to improve sexuality, vitality, longevity. So kind of take us from the top down, what are peptides? How do they work in the body? And how can they be used to treat disease, optimize this health and rejuvenate our biology? You did a great explanation of peptides, but the way I explain to my patients, Mark, is that peptides are signaling molecules.

They're miniature proteins, small little proteins that are made of amino acids. And unfortunately, the FDA has this arbitrary, just made a clarification that under 40 amino acids is considered a peptide, over 40 is a biologic, and then over 100 amino acids traditionally has been considered a protein. So it's the length of basically how many amino acids are put together. And like I said, the body makes 300,000 peptides. We only understand a fraction of it.

And anyway, it's really fun to read the research that's out there. And I just, I explained that peptides speak to my patient It's really fun to read the research that's out there. And I just, I explain that peptides speak to my patient is a signaling molecule. It's short acting and it's like a doorbell ringing, someone ringing your doorbell, that's a peptide. And a reaction is going to happen,

either your dog's going to bark or someone's going to answer the door. So if you give a peptide to basically help your immune system like Thymus and Alpha-1, that's gonna stimulate your immune system work better. So that's a natural peptide produced by your thymus gland. And as you know, Mark, it's thyroid and thymus, it's always patients always get confused,

but it sits like in your chest and between your lungs or front of your heart. And I have some- Sweetbreads, if you like veal sweetbreads, it's when you go to a restaurant, you can't see a restaurant, they're great. Sweetbreads, that's what it is, is your thymus gland. I didn't know that.

You didn't know that? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I should order some sweetbread. So- I wonder if eating it is actually good. I mean, if you get any of that TA1 or peptides from eating it after it's cooked, I don't know. Well, they did a study, you probably read, I mean, if you get any of that TA1 or peptides from eating it after it's cooked, I don't know.

Well, they did a study, you probably read, that basically they gave human growth hormone and metformin DHEA and the thymus improved. It was only in men, so they were going to do another trial. I'm curious if it's women. But anyway, if the thymus gets healthier, your immune system gets healthier. So that's one key component, have a healthy immune system. So how do they actually work? Are they like binding to receptors and activating gene expression and regulating various machine

networks in the body? Some peptides are so small, like epithalic, it can actually slip through and go through the nucleus and interact with the DNA through the histone binding sites. Some of these peptides were discovered by Dr. Kamason, who is from St. Petersburg, Russia. He has probably 40 years of research on these wonderful peptides. Unfortunately, he just passed away a couple of weeks ago, so I'm really sad about that. I have so many questions to ask.

And you didn't get to ask him. And I did have the privilege to talk to him once, but anyway, to me, he's like one of the top scientists, and he should have got the Nobel Prize in medicine. Yeah, it's quite amazing. But it also acts in certain receptors. So there's a group of receptors called the G protein couple receptor. And most peptides interact with that receptor and basically cause a cascade event. And then basically it's like doorbell ringing and then you get a cascade event.

Well, it's like insulin. Insulin binds to a receptor's cell and then kind of opens the gate for the glucose to go in the cell and PLP1 agonists do a similar thing like OZMPEG. There is a receptor, yes, so exactly. So it's a general class called the G protein couple receptors. It won the Nobel Prize in medicine, the G protein couple. Yeah, yeah, incredible. So they're about 150 peptides now out of the 300,000 that you said, that are are being researched for medical applications, right? And there's over 80 peptides that are already approved by the FDA, right, for medical use. What the kinds of things that people should be aware of that peptides work well for, or maybe even better than traditional therapies?

Well, in my neighborhood, all my neighbors ring my doorbell and they have some type of injuries, so they just point to where they need a peptide injected. So they point to their shoulder or to the elbow, their foot, their ankles. I have every day someone's ringing my doorbell to get a peptide shot. But I usually give BPC 157, which is one of my favorite peptides. It comes from our stomach fluid. And actually, the history is kind of interesting about that peptide. I really have...

Anyway, I can go into that, but it was recently discovered like in the 1990s in Croatia. And anyway, I actually published the first human clinical trial in peptides. A lot of research in animals, but I'm conducting two more human clinical trials, which is really exciting. That's amazing. So, BB157, for example, is a peptide that the body produces. I'm assuming it's made synthetically in the lab by putting together the sequence of amino acids.

The sequence of it. They sequence the amino acids and they put together that string of amino acids. So it's synthetically made, but it's a bioidentical molecule. Exactly. So it's like making testosterone in the lab or making various molecules. And then BP157, let's just sort of unpack that because that's a very popular one.

I personally used it. I've had a bicep tendonitis. I was doing some strength training and it kind of irritated. And I'm like, well, I'm just going to shoot some BP 157 in there. I did a couple of shots and it went away. And it was impressive. And I've used it for other things as well and found them really very effective for immune function. You know, when I had COVID, I, for example, used TA-1 as a peptide using my patients. BP 157, let's sort of just unpack that for a minute.

How does that work in the body when you inject it, for example, systemically in your subcutaneous fat in your abdomen or if you have an issue with a particular muscle? When you attend and tear, you inject it into that. What's actually happening? Is it... Well, for tendon tear, muscle tear, or even like I inject in patients' joints, and they have a tear. What's interesting is that the one classic study that was done is they had these rats, and they cut the Achilles.

That sounds fun. So poor rat. And basically one group basically got BPC injected in their stomach and another group just got placebo. And the group that got injected into their stomach, in a month later, they were walking again. And you don't see that in nature. When you have an Achilles' pair, it's just going to be so much better.

This was the first thing that was shown. And that was like, wow. So for my son, he had basically he was in high school, was on cross country team. He had like six pack. He was just like born to run. He's developed basically ITB injury, Illitulaband. And he couldn't even walk.

Your ITB, we call it, right? Yeah, so he just could not even get in and out of the car. And I told him, he was in length grade, I said, son, I can inject BPC into your leg. And he said, you are f-ing doing that. So I had to show him some slides, and I showed him the rat. I had to show him hard data. And he goes, okay, you can inject.

And then literally, he was, I don't know, 15 at that time. He quickly recovered, and like a week later, he's running again. That's amazing. It's amazing. And so it actually helps. There's multiple theories on how it can help. Number one, it reduces inflammation. It recruits your immune system to basically heal.

But the one part is there's a receptor called the fat clen C receptor that activates your growth hormone receptor. So it's a pathway to help growth hormone receptors to be activated so that whatever growth hormone you have you can actually heal faster. So growth hormone is really involved in healing and repair. Exactly, it's an antibiotic hormone, but you need the receptors and that's what BPC-157 does. And there was a study that once they stopped it three days later, they still had high expression of growth hormone receptors. Interesting.

So if you use growth hormone peptides with basically BPC and TB4, you will heal much faster. So I have people, I have so many patients who've had all these massive injuries. Like the testimolar and somoral Morlin peptides, you mean, for adding it to these? Yeah, yeah, CJC, 12.5, test of Morlin, yes. I think they can all help heal faster too. Amazing. So it works by helping, for example, growth hormone. There may be mechanisms actually we don't really understand yet.

Exactly. What you said in the rat was interesting, is they just injected into the abdominal fat. Right. It's a signaling molecule. So it basically tells the body to but but it didn't have to inject into Achilles tendon. They did not inject even near the test. Does it work better if you injected near the site?

Yes, it always does work better. But that study was like truly like mind blowing in the belly of the rat and the Achilles tendon. That's quite amazing. And you know, in some ways, peptides are used to treat, you know, injury or illness, right? Like, for example, BP 157 or insulin, ozempic, you could say would be something that would be a semi-glutide peptide that would be used to treat obesity or diabetes or to help with various things that it helps with. But many of the peptides are not really treating disease so much as bioregulators that regulate our bodily functions to optimize them.

Right. And my favorite one in regards to bioregulators is epithalin, E-P-I-T-H-A-L-O-N. And that was discovered by Dr. Tavernson. And so for example- The four amino acid peptide. Four amino acids, it seems like what would it do? Comes naturally from our pineal gland. Yeah.

And as we get older, like our thymus gland, it will calcify and will shrivel up and you lose melatonin and you lose epithalin from the pineal gland. Ah. And when you lose epithalin, what happens is your cells that are supposed to self-replicate get stuck in G2.

So there's self-replication. So if you want a new skin cell, your body basically can get rid of the old skin cell and then you generate new skin cells. Inside our body, we can generate new heart cells, new myocytes, new liver cells, new pancreas. But our ability gets less. Yeah, exactly. Because we're losing epithelin. And epithelin basically turns on cell cycle.

It's the peptide to make you younger. And I have patients who have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. Some of them have reduction in their medication or even get off their insulin. I have patients who basically their macular degeneration is improving, their vision is getting better. So it's actually making you younger, but you can't self replicate forever because then you have discovered immortality, which I haven't discovered yet.

Anyway. Far from it, I don't think I'll ever do it, but I'll ever find it. But anyway, I have patients, I hurry up Dr. Lee, which topic, but epithelium is just amazing. I just love it. But anyway, I have patients I hurry up ductile. But epithelium is amazing. Just I just love it. I mean, it's something you take every day. Is it something you take? Cavison once you to cycle it. And so I have made my patients which is sad because the FDA has this on the chopping blocks there too in terms of banning peptides. But you can get epipaline spray, which is actually... Nasal spray? No, under the tongue.

Under the tongue. And normally you have to inject the peptides. The problem is that there's so many on the internet, but if you can get from Russia the original one, capicin... Sure, there's not a lot of commerce going back and forth with Russia. Through China. Through China. Yeah. Yeah. You have the black market for pept Russia. Through China. Through China. Yeah.

Yeah. Got a black market for peptides. Well, this one's a spray, and this one I trust Dr. Cavason. Yeah. So these are... I don't trust the other ones. It's Cavason's brand. So you mentioned, for example, it's sort of epithelin as a bioregulator that controls

our ability to self-replication, healing, repair. And so they're not like treating a disease. Exactly. So you get it. So what happens is... Insulin can treat type 1 diabetes, and that's great. But not all peptides are doing that. In fact, most of them are not.

They're actually simply just enhancing function. Like PT-141, for example. Both of the same peptide, same type. Yeah. That's for better libido, better sex drive, better motor. It's actually approved for women sexually. Yes, it has been FDA approved for that. And it also works for men.

Yes. I have a lot of men and women on it. So it increases desire. So does oxytocin. Oxytocin is actually FDA approved. Is it peptide? It's aytocin is actually FDA approved. Is it peptide? Is it peptide? Yeah.

Yeah. Is FDA approved. Yeah. So oxytocin is the love molecule that you get expressed when you're after sex or when you are pregnant. But there's a lot of other benefits. And my nurse practitioner, Becky Murray, is going to do a webinar, I hope, monthly webinar. Not as popular as yours.

You probably have thousands. I have only 30 people following but anyway. One day I'll be as popular as you Mark. There's no way. You're like New York tries to sell it. That's alright. Well no one bought my books. I bought your book. Actually you know what I went on Kindle and it was free because I think it's part of Kindle Unlimited. Really? Yeah. I was gonna buy it and it's part of the Kindle Unlimited. Oh, really? Yeah. I'm going to take it off Amazon. I was going to buy it.

I was like, wow, Kindle Unlimited. This is great. This is great. I got no go. I got maybe 10 cents a year from Amazon. Let's kind of dive in a little deeper around some of the use cases. And where are you finding the top value for peptides in clinical practice and for patients? What are the ones you like to use?

What are they used for? Well, okay, number one that I just truly love is if you want skin, GHK copper. Dr. Pickard discovered GHK, and it's a natural byproduct. So when you have collagen and basically breaks down, part of it is GHK. So GHK can turn on your fibroblast to make more collagen and hyaluronic acid and make your skin look better. You don't have to inject it in your face. You can just put it in your abdomen.

Well we have GHK copper topical. So I'm not that smart, not that good looking, not a great athlete, but I have ghk copper topical topical yeah, so I'm not that smart not that good looking not not a great athlete, but I have good skin even though I don't mean I live in Florida, I don't even use a sunscreen but I use tons of ghk copper on your face oh yeah couple of other yeah and I told my dad's state is like how you get it. Well, no I'm talking about topical but you can inject and for my father who, who passed away recently

with very aggressive cancer, T cell lymphoma, a small bowel, he had a great life. And he basically was told, we really have like 30 days to live, chemo radiation won't work. And I said, all right, dad, you're like basically in a walker, let me give you some peptides. And so I mean, for cancer, I mean, there's several different peptides that has a lot of clinical studies. So simosanthal 1 could help. To help your immune system fight cancer.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. As an adjuvant. Not the cure. We're not saying it's a cure. What you're saying is just... Oh yeah, yeah, all the studies in stage four, most of them shows basically improvement of basically longevity, the reduction of mortality. So thymus-a-f1 has been used. You can use basically metankephalin, which I was using. GHK copper turns off also cancer genes. Epithalin can also do that.

So I told my dad, you're gonna get some peptides and I already drew it up. And my dad goes, I don't want them. He's like, oh, story. He goes, I don't want them. And he goes, I said, it's too late, dad. Mom is gonna inject you anyway. So you can say whatever you want.

And we got eight great months with my dad. That's amazing. So he went from like literally from a walker to walking two miles a day, regained his weight and started to walk. That's incredible. Yeah, altered peptides and better nutrition too. Yeah, amazing. So, you know, so kind of going down again into the sort of the rabbit hole of like, what

are the best use cases? What are the top peptides in your toolkit, right? For example, I know like my best supplements are magnesium, vitamin D, fish oil, like those are my go-to, right? Probiotic. What are the in your toolkit? I would say number one is I love BPC 157. You can take it orally. People with reflux, it tightens the LES junction.

I have some people get off their reflux medicine. That's the bottom of your esophagus where the reflux happens. It comes back up from the stomach. And there's not many things that tighten LES junction. Yeah, that's the lower esophageal sphincter. It's like a sphincter at the bottom of your esophagus and that's loose and you get reflex. As it comes up, you get reflex, GERD and all that. That's impressive.

But BPC has FYI, I have people taking it and I inject peptides in their elbow and a month later they re-inject their elbow but they go, instead of taking that BPC, my shoulder, I can sleep much better. So it can improve your entire body. So I call it the Wolverine peptide, so can sleep much better. So it could improve your entire body. So I call it the Wolverine peptide, so you'll get younger. Ah, so you can grow back.

Yeah, so you can say Wolverine peptide. That's great. Some people never watch Marvel. That's at the top of your list. So we talked a bit about that. And it's great for injuries, for trauma, for tissue repair. And I think it's one of the ones that I tend to rely on because I think it really personally has helped me and I think it helps a lot of patients.

What other peptides are there? I love thymus and alpha-1 because as we get older, our thymus gland shrivels up and we're trying to basically help the thymus gland. I mean, your immune system will get healthier. And as you know, Mark, you got, you gotta have a healthy immune system. Yeah. Because once it goes down, it goes to two ways. It goes to cancer. Right. Or to infection. So yeah. We get immunosensence. Exactly. Which means the aging of our immune system, which is why when you're older, you get more infections. You can't fight them as well. You die of pneumonia. You don't respond as well to the vaccines.

And you get, you know, looking at COVID, the people who are elderly had the higher risk of death. And so I think you're talking about a very important phenomena that we don't really have a good treatment for with traditional medicine. So generally I tell my patients to use like 250 micrograms of thiaminophenone, like once or twice a week, just as- Not daily.

You can use daily if you're sick, like higher doses. Like if I... You have to go to bed or sleep. My wife, one day she goes... When she gets sick, it's like, it's a nightmare. Cause I don't know when to drop the kids off. Do I give them lunch money? Do I, where do I pick them up?

You don't have the playbook for... I just, this is an Uber driver. So yeah, I mean, so when my kids were younger, my wife goes, I took everything, the C, the D, the zinc, silver. I'm coming down with something. She goes, you have something else? And I go, yeah, yeah, in the fridge.

I have the thymus and alpha-1. So I gave her, I remember this clearly, way before COVID, probably 2016 or something like that. So I gave her about one milligram of thymusinol for one. Next morning she was perfect. I would say thank God. Because if she was sick, I wouldn't know how to handle the kids. We don't have the cure for the common cold, but if you take this, if you start to feel

sick, when you get that feeling, I think I'm getting sick, and you take it, it can be profoundly effective. Oh, exactly. Yeah. What else besides the T1 and BP157? I love epithalin. Then generally, we do 5 milligrams sub-q daily for like 10 days. If you skip a day or like the weekend, you forget, that's okay.

Just make sure you finish the vial. One vial will have 50, 50 milligrams of epithalin twice a year. So you just do it twice a year? Yeah, twice a year. So like 10 days, twice a year, it's kind of a reset for your longevity. And I have people, like for me, when I was doing it, it's amazing, my sleep, I was on melatonin every year,

higher and higher, higher doses. And do you know epithalin turns on three genes of your pineal gland to make melatonin? And my wife goes, how come you're not taking melatonin anymore? I was like, I don't need it. I can sleep without it. So it can reset your pineal gland and help you sleep better.

So I love epithelium because as we get older. And you mentioned the Russian version via the nasal script, but you can also take it. Not nasal, it's under the tongue. Under the tongue, but you can also do it through. Injections through a 503A compound pharmacy, a prescription. Yeah, amazing.

The problem is that most people, when they hear this, they're gonna get addicted to epithelin. Do not use it every day for the rest of your life because you're gonna stop the magic in terms of self-fulfication. It will eventually, like the Hayflick theory, it's gonna stop in terms of... It's no longer going to work.

Just because a little bit is good doesn't mean a lot is better. Exactly. So yeah, just be patient and don't take it every day of the year because it's going to eventually stop working. Now, the other thing that sort of happens as we get older is we end up with hormonal changes. And we end up with hormonal changes, you know, lower testosterone, we have, you know, lower growth hormone, we tend to lose muscle, we sort of age as a result of changes in our hormonal environment.

And what's interesting, a lot of these peptides can be involved in regulating hormone function. And... Well, yes, there are, like, in accordance to women that are done with, they're in post-menopause or finished with menstrual cycle, sometimes I tell them, like, you may start your period coming back and if you get pregnant, please mention me because I want to be famous, I'm national acquired, because I can't be famous like you, so I have to go the other route. So anyway, yeah, it's amazing. They go, my period was gone five years ago

and I was coming back. So I don't know how long it's gonna keep on going, but they've, in the animal studies. Using which peptide? Epithelin. Epithelin. Yeah. So variant function gets better.

So it works not just on the pineal gland, but also on maybe the hypothalamus. Can help the heart. Because it turns on gene expression, which is interesting. Such approaches that get kicked off and things work. So epithalons to me. That's a good one. I love it.

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