Transcript
Speaker: I can't say it was just the Cloestack that did it because I was also doing the microbiome rehab protocol. This thing takes minimum six months to really get major results. 12 weeks of the Cloestack, my leaky gut was gone. I could eat whatever.
Speaker: I was eating crazy carbs. Whereas a few years ago, like it was that bad. Like I could not tolerate a gram of sugar.
Speaker: This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Speaker: Robert, welcome to the Home of Healthspan podcast. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Looking forward to the conversation. but before we jump in, how would you describe yourself?
Speaker: I guess one unique thing is you could say that I am a lively a lover of training. um It's not a word that people typically have an affinity for, you know, it's usually associated with work or, you know, some other arduous skill acquisition, but I'm inspired by the words of Musashi. He said, the way is in training and he's talking about the way of nature.
Speaker: And so the way that I've interpreted that is, you know, we're We are what we do repeatedly, basically. Right. So, you know, whatever you do day in and day out, your habits become your character, your character becomes your life, so on and so forth. And so I really try to take that seriously and devote myself to daily practices, physical training, mental training, emotional training, spiritual training. I think even in your relationships,
Speaker: you know Obviously, with your children, as you raise them, there's a lot of training involved, so to speak. You're trying to be a good role model and teach them how to be good, rational, competent adults someday.
Speaker: Also, in your romantic relationships, you know there's a lot of training that occurs both ways. I think the man has a lot to teach the woman and women have a lot to teach us as well. I guess that's what I would say about that. A lively lover of training.
Speaker: i do like that, especially, you know, on the the parenting side and the kids that the friend said, kids won't always do what you say, but they will do what you do. And so back to your actions, become who you are, becomes your destiny and all that. And same for your children, right? If they're going to do what you're doing, you're kind of generationally creating that path as well.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly right. we We talk about this in the book a little bit. Um, That's called mimesis, basically. It's ah the ancient Greek word where we get words like mimic, mime, imitate.
Speaker: And this idea that we're always, all human interaction is imitative. But when you're younger, you're much more impressionable, obviously, than when you're older. And so, you know, kids, your children especially, they don't do what you say, but they will always do what you do. They're very much a mirror in that respect.
Speaker: and ah And that's a it's a vibrational thing actually. It's like the frequency at which you interact with someone becomes, you know, who you are over time.
Speaker: And so we draw out this connection. I won't go off the deep end now, but there's this concept in physics called entrainment actually. when you put two oscillating systems near one another, like, you know, one tuning fork and another tuning fork, if they're at tuned to the same frequency, you hit one and the sound waves from one will cause the other one to resonate.
Speaker: That's an instance of entrainment, but we do it too. Like, you know, we would become the average of the five people we spend the most time with, Um, and obviously we become what physical activities we do. we become what ideologies we adopt. We become what books we read, et cetera, et cetera. So the, the idea of entrainment and in training, i think are very interesting, interestingly connected.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's it's almost like a fractal, right? Like you get down to the the waves and then how it amplifies all the way up to organisms. And treatment in training.
Speaker: That's very interesting. I mean, you've gotten very heavy. Your background, right? came more from finance, right? Hedge fund, CFO, and then have moved in, I think got more well-known kind of in the Bitcoin realm and in the crypto world. And then very much now kind of this life health relationship. Can you take us through that evolution? You're only 45, but you've had like multiple identities or careers kind of as the stage goes through.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no, that's that's fair to say. I'm 40 years old now. um i I guess I would give you the background first on like social media popularity.
Speaker: Starting in 2016, 17, had 300 Twitter followers, which is now i had three hundred twitter followers which is now x And I just started tweeting about what I was learning and trying to understand what Bitcoin is. So I'm reading a lot of books. I'm studying the nature and history of money.
Speaker: And I'm publishing tweets and publishing long form essays about what I'm learning. And long story short, I go from 300 followers 300,000 in about three years.
Speaker: Just ideas, though. This is not me. You know, like I'm i'm just the little avatar with words falling out on on social media. It's not Instagram reels. It's not video. You know, I'm not like on camera yet, so to speak.
Speaker: But as a result of that, I started getting invited on podcasts. This was when the podcast wave was really starting to pump. um People were doing more and more video podcasts. A lot of lot of these were in person. Some of them became very popular and viral.
Speaker: um you know i did one with Pomp in New York City in February 2020. That was very popular. like A lot of people um talked about it being instrumental in their orange pill or Bitcoin journey.
Speaker: So the like I became more recognized by my face. Um, and then that became, i don't know, more and more social media popularity.
Speaker: And so for me, the experience has been like, I'm an introverted person. I'm a nerd. like many Bitcoiners, I'm probably on the autism spectrum slightly.
Speaker: And ah the whole, I was very comfortable sharing my ideas, but it was very uncomfortable being on camera and like trying to talk online and all of these things. But I've done the reps, I've done the training and I've gotten used to it.
Speaker: And now I'm really making an effort to like, completely go extroversion, completely capitulate and adopt social media as the, you know, the dominant media paradigm that it is. And I'm trying to, I guess, open up, share my life, share my story, share everything that I've done. Because one thing that like people really gravitated towards was once...
Speaker: They liked my writing and my ideas, but then once they see me on camera, they're like, oh wait, this guy's in shape. Like, what what do you do? So it became like this, oh, you're an athlete nerd. yeah And so that was motivating for me to start sharing more of that. And then now that journey has changed a lot and accelerated for me over the past year.
Speaker: I've started using peptides. I started using testosterone. I used other anabolics. And I started of sharing all of that as well. This is largely inspired by the ethos of Bitcoin, which is, well, there's many different aspects to the ethos, but one of them is open source.
Speaker: Bitcoin is open source software. So this idea of just revealing everything, not concealing anything, just being very open about, you know, who you are, what you do, how you think, you know, not trying to have proprietary secrets and this whole, like the game of yesteryear or pre-internet or pre-social media.
Speaker: um it just doesn't apply today. Like you mentioned, uh, offline, there were a lot of athletes and stuff doing these biohacking, you know, either pep, maybe not peptides so much, but like anabolics in the nineties, but they were very hush hush about it. You know, it was,
Speaker: ah very secretive, basically. And I think because of the change in media paradigm, that is shifting. you know ah There was an incentive, basically, for these guys to like be quiet about what they did because they're trying to get on magazine covers and get sponsorships.
Speaker: And if they're you know representing that they're doing something that's illegal or gray market or you know and other otherwise tainted, then they could jeopardize their commercial success.
Speaker: But in the age of social media and the internet, it's like authenticity rules. You know, it's like, just tell the truth, yeah spread good information and let the market do with it as they will. It's it's as if we've monetized attention very directly. so now there's, and I'm not saying there's not a lot of bullshit on social media, but there is a side to it where people are very open, very vulnerable, very authentic about things that you wouldn't expect them to be typically. So yeah.
Speaker: That's kind of been my trajectory is like started with the ideas and Bitcoin and then got into a little more of the lifestyle and fitness stuff. And now, you know, I'm a 40 year old guy just trying to, I guess, just optimize, you know, I'm really trying to optimize.
Speaker: fitness, well-being, you know the the sovereignty I have over myself emotionally, psychologically, etc. And then trying to you know look good, feel good, age well, just really trying to embrace the whole paradigm. you And there's a lot of... I say the paradigm. There's lots of things happening at once. you know Guys are into looks maxing, and guys are into biohacking, and guys are into peptides. And there's a lot of different things happening simultaneously.
Speaker: And I'm just enjoying the learning process and trying to share the learning process with other people as I go so that other people can get good information from it. So that's basically it.
Speaker: I certainly am the beneficiary and ah appreciate what you're putting out there. The anabolics one is a really interesting one because right, like going back to the eighties, whatever the bodybuilding rate it was this very dark seedy thing you don't do.
Speaker: Then we get the black box off of ah HRT for women. You're like, oh, no, actually, this can be this really beneficial, healthful thing. And then more and more you know clinics popping up for testosterone for men all over. And we see...
Speaker: sperm rates way down, sperm counts way down, testosterone way down for people. For you, what ultimately helped you decide you wanted to go down that route when you did, right? Because it it is, i would imagine, a highly personal rate of, it's a question for me, right? You're you're looking at the the measurement and whether it's high or low, people say, is really less important than the subjective experience of like, hey, are you suffering these symptoms?
Speaker: But the tough thing when you talk about optimization is a little bit like the David Foster Wallace, hey boys, how's the water? Like what the hell's water? You only know the water you're swimming in. So you can say, yeah, I feel great because I feel like feel all the time where you don't realize you're actually at 40% and you could be to 85% some, you know,
Speaker: with ah some anabolics added in. So I'm curious what the the trigger was for you, how you to say I go down. It's a great framing for it. Actually, know, there's this, i think it's Schopenhauer. he says, every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of reality.
Speaker: So you you don't know what you're missing, so to speak, right? If you think, Oh, I feel fine. Well, you know, you, okay, maybe you do feel fine, but you also are missing out on whatever benefits of things that you're not doing or acknowledging.
Speaker: And so I've actually have a good story about that because for me, I'll try to answer your question more directly, but i want to share this first. When I started taking TRT, Actually, to have many of the issues. Like I was okay in the gym. I'm recovering fine. My sex drive is good and healthy.
Speaker: I didn't think I really had any issues. Now, diagnostically, my free testosterone was low. My normal T was fine, like mid 800s, but my free T was low. And so the guys I was working with at the time...
Speaker: and know, we're saying this is the one that matters. This is the free T tends to be the one that really drives that subjective experience. To your point, the diagnostic does matter, but to your point, some guys feel good at a certain level that other guys don't feel good at.
Speaker: And there's a myth, there's many variables that I won't go into, but like, it really does come down to that. Like, how do you feel? And so I thought I felt fine too. And everything seemed fine. i was like, I don't think I need testosterone, but I was approaching 40.
Speaker: I did have this curiosity about it and that I wanted to try to push myself athletically to the next level. Like I, I'd kind of like tapped my natural, ceiling as a lifestyle athlete.
Speaker: Some people use the term lifestyle bodybuilding. I mean, I do bodybuilding style movements, but I'm not trying to get on stage and you know wear a Speedo. I'm just trying to be jacked and feel good and look good. I had kind of pushed that ceiling as a man that was 230 pounds of maybe body fat. you know For me that was like in my late thirties, that's like ah basically as good as I could get without any um performance enhancing compounds.
Speaker: So I was curious in one sense, like, oh what is it like to go to the next level? So I started taking the testosterone because the free tea was low and that curiosity, what I didn't realize, you know, I thought I was fine.
Speaker: My motivation for work and my like hunger for goal achievement, came on so strong when I started using the injectable testosterone.
Speaker: And I didn't realize it had faded. you know like As I'm experiencing it again, I'm like, oh, this is what used to feel like in my mid-20s when I would work. you know I like really was like, I loved going to work and I loved the to do, like just attacking it. And some of that had just faded for me over time, but in a way that was so subtle, I didn't realize it was even missing.
Speaker: But then I started the injectable testosterone and a few weeks later. I'm like, I feel different about work again. And so that's just one story. I think that's a good example of of what you're saying. Yeah. Cause we talk about sex drive, but I guess it's drive in general, maybe. Yeah.
Speaker: Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And so, I mean, that was like my initial foray into it. And then I kind of like dabbled and pulled back, like, I did it for a few weeks and then I stopped and then I tried an oral testosterone and I pulled back from that. And i was like, kind of like, ah, do want to do this?
Speaker: And, um, I, yeah, that this is all July of last year. i eventually decided, Hey, I'm going to do a push and try to get into like the best shape of my life for my 40th birthday.
Speaker: And for me, I have this like, I guess it's mesomorphic body type where I'm like kind of built like a bear. Like I get big easy, but it's very hard for me to get lean. I have to like really diet and cardio my ass off. And then as soon as I deviate even slightly, i you know, I gained the weight back.
Speaker: So I wanted to like, just as a personal aesthetic goal is like, Oh, what, could what would I be like at sub 10% body fat? You know, I'd never been at that point. I don't think in my life,
Speaker: And so that's what I did. I did a push and, uh, A lot of assistance from the appetite suppression peptides, GLP-1s, trisepatide worked really well for me.
Speaker: ah Testosterone, obviously. And then Anivar, like a hardening anabolic. These are just like basically the three things I did the first time. And that got me to a certain level of fitness. And then when I approached my 40th birthday, i felt a little more comfortable. You know, my blood work is okay. And like, all right, let me press the gas a little more.
Speaker: And so I was doing DHT derivatives, primobolin, master on testosterone still. Testosterone is the base for for all of these anabolic cycles.
Speaker: And I was able to get in incredibly good shape, you know, and I did some photo shoots and, um, It was, i don't know, just like a kind of a fun hobby experience thing to do. And then I learned a lot about my body, how I respond to these compounds, you know, what, what effects it had on my blood work, et cetera. And so now After that, I pulled back. I was just on testosterone for several months to like recalibrate.
Speaker: And now I'm in this phase of like, you know I don't know exactly what I want to do next. I've i've never tried to gain weight with anabolics. You know, there's a lot, obviously a lot of guys get very big on this professional bodybuilders, but I've only done the cutting phase.
Speaker: And so I'm curious about maybe trying to add some body weight, but I'm already pretty big. my girlfriend was like, yeah, she's like, my girlfriend's like, you don't need gain weight.
Speaker: And so I'm like, ah but the thing is, you know, this becomes, this lifestyle becomes, Your hobby, your vice.
Speaker: I mean, youre it's like, it's what I do every day. know, it's like, I work out. i work Working out is my fun time. yeah And now it's, it's great. it has all these other benefits and like it, it instills discipline in other areas of my life, but I don't drink, you know, I don't really party.
Speaker: you know, obviously i have dinner with friends, you know, we listen to music and do some normal stuff like that. But like, I'm not going to clubs till four in the morning or bars.
Speaker: I'm a 40 year old man. You know, i've got kids, I've got business goals and I like being productive and disciplined and up early And so that becomes such a central feature of your life that, um, you know, I don't really want to do anything else. And it sounds like people are like, oh well you could do that without all these other things. Like, yeah, you can.
Speaker: But then, um I don't know what's like a good metaphor here. It's like, you say you try to like do work, and you've had coffee, but then you try to do your work without coffee. It's like, well, yeah, sure, you can do it, but.
Speaker: You can research without the internet. Like there are a lot of things, there are these tools that you can enhance and implement. So you you talked about going on, kind of pulling back everything around that.
Speaker: My understanding with testosterone, because it starts shutting down your ye own production, once you go on, like it's it's basically a lifelong commitment. Is that correct?
Speaker: Yeah, that's so that's the conventional wisdom. And maybe there's some truth to it because I haven't done it long term and then tried to come off. I do have friends that have done that. Uh, my friend, Aubrey Marcus was on it for six years and then he came off completely and got his wife pregnant. So I don't think it's impossible. You have to use transition compounds. People use things like HCG and in clomiphene and these other things that like stimulate your endogenous production to come back online.
Speaker: And so it can be done for me when I was kind of starting and stopping, it's like, I don't think I was on it long enough Well, actually two things. I take a maintenance dose of HCG when I'm on it.
Speaker: to To maintain fertility or? Well, more so just to keep the endogenous testosterone production online. Okay. um Fertility, like I have kids and there was a point where I was trying to get my wife pregnant.
Speaker: um And I just came off basically. And so, but again, I was on the maintenance dose of HCG. So it wasn't for fertility, but I guess, it you know, indirectly it yeah it helps with that too.
Speaker: So I guess the thing I would say is i think we're in this phase and I don't know what a good parallel would be, but maybe something
Speaker: something like either Bitcoin or maybe even what we're going through with peptides now, like there's a period in time where these things are very frowned upon. And, you know, they think, oh, Bitcoin is like money for terrorists and drug dealers and criminals, you know money launderers or whatever the like 10 years later, you have presidential candidates campaigning for it and, you know opening mining businesses and all this, you know, this completely does like a night and day a shift for for the narrative.
Speaker: Peptides, I think, are maybe going through some of that now. like Obviously, that's a very broad category, but things like BPC-157...
Speaker: I don't know, five or 10 years ago, people were still like, oh, I don't know. It's like pretty risky. And now like anyone that's paid attention to BPC-157 is like, this is the safest thing on earth. Yeah. like what is the risk yeah So as long as it's real, it's incredibly safe. has like one of the highest safety profiles of any compound known to man. And so that narrative also has shifted. I think the anabolics narrative will go through a similar shift in the age of the internet and social media because the truth And look, everyone can do their own research. I'm not saying this is gospel. you know Don't take me at my word, fact check me, whatever. But the research that I've done and then the anecdotal experience I've had with these compounds, like they are very safe. If you use them as they're meant to be used and you don't abuse them, well, then you can get significant benefits with you know minimal trade-offs.
Speaker: And if you do it intelligently and you work with qualified medical people and you do your blood work and you know you do all the things, track everything, then you can get a lot of benefits with with very low risk. And so I think that realization will shift the narrative on anabolics over the next 10 or 20 years. And probably, you know, it's very uncommon now.
Speaker: mean, not uncommon, but it's it's more rare for a guy to be on testosterone now, i would say, than and not. I think that will invert. you know, I think most guys over 40 will be on some form of TRT or anabolic in the next 10 or 20 years.
Speaker: I'd buy that. what How often do you do blood work? I do every two months. Yeah. and now And that's only because I'm being very aggressive in a way. It's like I'm trying to really track. And I also do the super comprehensive blood work with all the 200 markers in it or or whatever it is. And I'm just trying to capture a lot of data because we publish the data. So you don't have to do it. I think...
Speaker: More realistically, people only need to do it typically like once every six to 12 months, depending on obviously what they're doing. Most corporate wellness programs overwhelm employees with too much, or they offer too little to be useful.
Speaker: Alively gets it right. We start with each employee's data and goals, then serve one clear, personalized action at a time. No noise, just real behavioral change.
Speaker: The outcome? A healthier, happier workforce. A measurable impact for your business. Visit Alively.com to see personalized wellness in action. You do a lot of experimentation where you're publishing. So I'd be curious. I mean, one, what you were able to move your free tea from to and like what your maintenance level is. Oh my goodness.
Speaker: Well, the funny thing is like, In some of the experimentation phases, there's been some of my blood work where it's come back way too high. I don't know the exact numbers here because I forget. Do you know the standard window for free tea? I forget what the range of reference range is. Your normal tea I think between 600 900 healthy, normal range.
Speaker: i think between six hundred and nine hundred is like the you know healthy normal range um There's an equivalent reference range for free tea, which I'm not sure what it is, but let's say, let's just focus on tea actually. So my tea that was 850 before I started anything, which was normal, healthy testosterone.
Speaker: ah I was doing large dose of testosterone for my most recent blood work. Just like i wanted to see like what, how my body responded.
Speaker: It wasn't long term. I just wanted to like take a few of the injections and see how my body responded and what it did to my blood work. My T levels tested at over 5,000. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Because in a function, the target range is 35 to 155. Yes. For a free T. Yeah. Okay. So free T, I'm not sure what the number was, but like just focusing on T because I remember that one.
Speaker: And so that's too high. Like you don't want to be 900 to yeah. that to five out Yeah. So now I think where i feel really good is in the 1200 ish range. Like if I can, when I get the TRT dose dialed into that, i feel very focused and I feel very healthy and I feel very goal oriented as in the way I described earlier. You're just,
Speaker: what What do you see it do for like sleep and recovery or do you see it do anything? And do you track that side of things? You know, sleep is harder for me to say Recovery is obviously very potent. I mean, you just feel stronger.
Speaker: You know, you can push harder. All the traditional masculine qualities that you would, you know as they show up in the gym, all of those get turned up a notch.
Speaker: The sleep quality, though, I don't know. I haven't made a connection there so much. um But yeah, i do feel just stronger and hungrier for goals.
Speaker: And um I think there is an increase in your libido. You know, the one... Here's another thing that I think was... Because a lot of people, there's a stigma or conventional wisdom.
Speaker: People use term like roid rage. And that is certainly possible, I think, with certain compounds, especially if they're used at the wrong dosages or maybe in the wrong mixes or whatever. I'm not saying that's not possible to have those types of reactions. But when you have your testosterone dialed in and you're doing it in like a healthy dosage and you're getting your blood levels to a healthy level,
Speaker: you actually get the, for me, it felt very opposite. Actually, I'd never felt more grounded and unshakable. Like you, you're not, your emotionality is very, you're very docile in a way, you know, like ah they're just, things couldn't bother me as much.
Speaker: Yeah, I think my understanding is it it amplifies whatever your natural tendency is. And so it may have been other things were knocking you off kilter. And that is more your default natural. And so it depending if you're more competitive, like it drives more into the competitive side.
Speaker: And so it I think it may be more personal on that front. I'm not really sure, but like, I, you know, there's a couple of other guys I know that have shared similar perspectives on it, that it's the opposite of the conventional wisdom. Basically, you know, people are you're going to take testosterone and get aggressive and mad and like road rage and and yell. It's like, no, actually the exact opposite. Like i was, um you know, the one thing that used to to like, well, i this is probably comes with age too, but like, you know,
Speaker: I just don't argue with women at all, at all anymore. I just don't. And it this happened over the past year. I don't know if it's the testosterone or it is...
Speaker: getting older or a combination of the two. But like, it used to be something that I could get upset about, you know, you get into an argument with my woman and like, Oh, I have to, I'm in an argument and I'm perturbed by it.
Speaker: That all went away from me. It's just like, I just, whatever you got to say, honey, it's fine. Like, I'm just going to sit here and be calm. And I was going to let it all blow over. And you know, when you're,
Speaker: When you're done, I'll be here to hug you and everything will be fine. And so like all that, like very deep rooted grounded calmness. I'm not going to say it's all testosterone, but there have been guys that have shared similar views that they felt the same way. So that's, that's really interesting.
Speaker: So that that's on the anabolic side. the What about the peptide side? Because I mean, this is an area you've done a lot of experimentation on, shared a lot, like different molecules, what you've seen what you use them for.
Speaker: Where are you now kind of in that phase? Yeah, so I'll give, you know, the, I guess my introduction story to peptides, which was I struggled with leaky gut for 10 years.
Speaker: um And people that don't know what that is it's like where your gut lining is permeable, essentially. So you're eating food and it's not staying in the intestinal tract. It's leaking out. And the system inflammation.
Speaker: inflammatory responses and different issues. It's also typically associated with autoimmune conditions of which I have one. And for me, the I had dealt with a lot of gut issues over the years, but the thing that I was unable to resolve was carbohydrate intolerance. So I would eat carbohydrates and And as a result of the leaky gut and or autoimmune reaction to them, I would have this like very nasty systemic inflammation response. So my joints would get achy, my gut would get puffy.
Speaker: Like I could go from having, you know, kind of six pack ish abs to nothing if I just eat the wrong meal, you know, like too much carbs or the wrong kinds of carbs.
Speaker: I would get these like stiff joints too. like My hips would get stiff to the point where as I would get up out of a chair to walk, I would need to like slowly kind of warm up the the hip mobility before I started to walk fast. and All of this is like a you know guy in his thirty s So this was like it was very annoying say the least. And not being able to eat carbohydrates is obviously difficult psychologically. you know It's there it's a primary energy source, clearly.
Speaker: And so I had dealt with that for a long, long, long time. Tried a bunch of things to fix it. Couldn't figure it out. i Couldn't figure it out. I had mixed success, but never was able to resolve the carb issue.
Speaker: And then finally, um you know, I was approaching 10 years dealing with this thing. And i realized I'd been trying to do like the quote unquote natural way. So was trying to like do detox and, you know, anything other than pharmaceuticals or what I consider to be anything synthetic of which peptides for me were in that category, right? There's synthetic amino acids. I'm like, no, I don't want to do any of that.
Speaker: I had tried, this is not like a completely bright line story because I had tried BPC-157 previously because it was kind of coming into popularity as this one that's very safe.
Speaker: And I guess I didn't do enough or I didn't do it long enough or or I needed to do the whole stack. But long story short, i I just said, you know what, it's almost 10 years of the leaky gut. It's time for me to heal this thing.
Speaker: So I'm going to do whatever I need to do to figure it out. And so I went guns blazing on the CLO stack. okay which is BPC-157, TB-500, KPV, and GHK-CU.
Speaker: I quickly scaled up to a pretty high dosage of that. And I was also doing ah a gut microbiome rehab protocol with a functional medicine guy, Jaden Pelleggi.
Speaker: And within 12 weeks of starting the peptide stack, And again, i give all those but for context because it's not, I can't say it was just the closed stack that did it because I was also doing the microbiome rehab protocol.
Speaker: However, even Jaden, the guy that was running the protocol for me, he goes, it shouldn't have rehabbed you that quick. Like 12 weeks is too fast. This thing takes minimum six months to really get major results.
Speaker: 12 weeks of the clothes stack, my leaky gut was gone. I can't eat whatever. i was eating croissants, cupcakes, donuts, like any like crazy carbs. Whereas a few years ago, if I ate the leg of a gummy bear, I would be on the couch for hours. Like it was that bad. Like I could not tolerate a gram of sugar.
Speaker: And would you do it daily or five days on two days off? Like for that 12 weeks, I did five days on two days off. Um, And again, high dose. So ah I don't want to misstate the numbers. I posted a reel about it, but I'm pretty sure.
Speaker: again, split into two shots a day. So one shot morning, one shot evening, each shot contained. hope this is correct. One milligram BPC-157.
Speaker: Yes, that is correct. One milligram and one same for TB-500. Same for GHKCU and half of that for KPV. So 1, 1, 1 and 0.5. Twice a day. So then you're doing two milligrams, BPC-157, TB-500, GHKCU, and then one of KPV. Which is pretty high because like a lot of BPC dosing, and people are doing 300 micrograms a day. So like you're you're going pretty high dose.
Speaker: The like standard dose in the BPC is 500 micrograms right daily. So I'm doing like four X the daily dose. Yeah. And now I did that. That was based. I didn't just start there. I scaled up to it. You know, I assessed my response.
Speaker: But I was basing it on guys that had healed the heat. up They're like, look, this shit's safe. Like test your response and then don't be afraid to go high. Like you'll know if you have side effects, like you'll experience it and you can back down.
Speaker: So I chose to push, you know, push the gas and I'm glad I did because it, it resolved. Yeah. And so that, that's kind of your entry. You're like, huh? Okay. That seems pretty simple.
Speaker: going to have pretty, yeah. it's like taking the blue pill or whatever that that was me with bbc exactly at the shoulder issue for two years and in five days all of a sudden like whoa yeah this is different yeah yeah and i had i've had some follow-on experiences similar to that where i've had minor injuries workout injuries shoulder thigh uh yeah shoulder thigh arm actually too a couple of bpc site specific injections clears it up in a few days.
Speaker: um Which just, yeah, it's it's amazing. So after the closed stack and after the the resolution of the leaky gut, I was very gung-ho about peptides. And I've yeah been experimenting with many different kinds ever since.
Speaker: Yeah. And I mean, you're you're really good at publishing. Like, here's what I find this good for in this, whether it's cognitive benefits and focus or i guess less on sleep. But, you know, what what ones are you most excited about now or experimenting with right now?
Speaker: Yeah. So right now, I mean, the GOP p ones have really been amazing for me as someone that, again, struggles with a mesomorphic sort of bare physique. And i have a very huge appetite. I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe it's related to that or just naturally who I am. And you don't realize how much time and effort and energy you spend thinking about food, preparing food, acquiring food, eating food like a lot of your life for me as a bear was like food, food, food. food food and And, so it's like, okay, in part it's like, okay, it's hard for me to get lean. That's one thing. But the other thing is just the, the loss of productivity and all the time I spent dealing with food related matters. Um,
Speaker: the GLP ones resolve all that, right? Like it helps you lose weight. And it also, people call this food noise typically. So like you just, it turns down all the mental concern with food and, you know, you're eating less, you're eating less frequently that you know, I won't go into all this, but like, there's a lot of, i guess this is a bit controversial, but like, there's a lot of ah what we call these like side benefits of GLP ones, where it's like reducing liver fat and people are clearing plaque out of arteries. And like, there's all these other things that these compounds seem to do that they're not directly um used for.
Speaker: And so those have been great for me. I really enjoyed CJC and ipamorelin. I now I'm on HGH and I don't, I might go.
Speaker: HGH has been very effective, but I think the CJC Niprem Relin is very effective as well. ah This is also controversial. Like the guys that love HGH say, you look no, you just take HGH and that's it. Don't touch anything else.
Speaker: But that's like you're taking exogenous human growth hormone, right? So it shuts down your endogenous production, whereas the peptides stimulate your endogenous production. Right. um So the other school of thought is, oh, you shouldn't take the exogenous stuff, just like testosterone. You should take things that boost your natural production.
Speaker: And so I don't know exactly where I live on that debate. I mean, the HGH has been effective. CJC cgc and epimorellin are one of the secretagogues. There's also tazomorellin, there's sermorellin, and different people respond differently to each compound.
Speaker: But I find that I think I'll probably do, I'll just cycle back and forth. Like I'll do the exogenous and then switch back to the the that's kind of a general tenant of my fitness philosophy is like I try to just not stay on anything too long you know cycle on and off things now obviously testosterone is as we already talked about maybe a bit of an exception can I ask on that cycling with the clo after that 12 weeks did you do you have a maintenance so you have stuff or is like that cleared it up and so you've moved away from it now
Speaker: Yeah, so I was concerned that I would have to stay on it to keep you know reaping the benefits of being able to eat carbohydrates. And so I cycled off of it completely at the end of that 12 weeks.
Speaker: I went slightly longer than 12 weeks, but then I cycled off completely. And um it no issues. I was able to still eat carbs. So it didn't come back, basically. ah Now i am I've cycled back onto it.
Speaker: You get other benefits too, especially with GHKCU. You get this hair, skin, and nails thing. There are photos of me online when I hit like my peak physique. I was 8.5% body fat.
Speaker: It's hard to see it in the photos, but when you saw me in person, I was walking on the beach every day in Miami too, so I was getting a very good tan. My skin had like golden flecks in it. Like I was an actual shining gold human.
Speaker: It was incredible. And like, I don't know, I've had tans in the past. I've been in, you know, like it had to have been the glow stack. I don't know what else it could have been, but it really made, it made me look like a different complexion. You know, it was, it was really incredible.
Speaker: They call it, you know, GHKACU, they call it the beauty peptide oftentimes. And so, yeah, I think that is wonderful. I take that now. I'm also right now I'm doing. ah ah Because I've used mostly terzepatide and I've tried reticetide before, but like, um I don't terzepatide is doing the job basically. So I didn't I didn't want to take the trade off of retta. But now I'm trying retta to see is how acute its fat burning effects are.
Speaker: And then I'm also stacking it with MOTC and tesamorelin. And MOTC is like a mitochondrial peptide. ah They call it the exercise peptide. So you get a noticeable increase in your physical endurance.
Speaker: So when I'm you know like swimming, boxing, you know cardiovascular activities, my endurance goes way up on MOTC. And then tessimorelin is a growth hormone secretagogue that's more, apparently the fragment of it is more focused on belly fat reduction and visceral fat reduction around the organs.
Speaker: And so again, for me, I'm trying to find like that right mix to stay really nice and lean, which is kind of my overall fitness goal at the moment. So when you do test Morelin, would you come off the CJC and Epimoralin and in HGH or you're stacking it with?
Speaker: So I'm not on, i've when I've been on the HGH, I have not taken it with anything else. So no CJC or Epimoralin. And I am currently stacking the Test Morelin on top of it.
Speaker: Yeah, but that was going to be basically a ah short cycle. I was stacking the red of the mozi and the tesmorellin to do a body fat lean out experiment, essentially. So long term, I don't think I would stack them together, but in the short term, I'm i'm doing yeah Robert, this has been really personally informative.
Speaker: as someone When you were describing the symptoms of the leaky gut, i was like, this sounds like so much of my life. So I think I have a lot of takeaways based on it, and I believe our listeners will as well. I i do want to share with the listeners, you put all this on your Instagram.
Speaker: where people can see as you're going and experimenting and sharing. So I highly encourage anybody interested to follow you, ah to stay on top of that. Before we sign off, we've covered a lot.
Speaker: If our listeners were looking for just one thing say, okay, today or tomorrow, I'm going to start or do this thing differently. What what would that be from your experience? Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to throw a curveball out there. It will not seem fitness or health related at all. But I think if you go deep enough, it becomes very much both of those things.
Speaker: And that is to study the nature and history of money. Actually, I think this is why we named the podcast, the What Is Money Show. um When you go deep into that question,
Speaker: it gives you this clearer vision about how the world works and how you work and how the two things interact. And that will eventually lead you to like leading a healthier lifestyle. So Bitcoiners, for instance, broadly get into working out and eating meat and ah starting families. And some of them go religious. Like there's a lot of of shifts towards traditional value systems.
Speaker: among Bitcoiners or adherents of sound money. And I think that if you study the nature and history of money, you'll you'll find yourself moving along a similar path. Is there a particular book or article you would point people to as a starter?
Speaker: Oh, man, so many good ones. i would, you know, the Bitcoin standard is an obvious one. ah First two thirds are nature and history of money. Last third is Bitcoin. it's fantastic. ah There's a great one. It's a free PDF online.
Speaker: You can um also buy it, but it's available free online. Honest Money by Gary North. It explains the nature of money and how the banking system works through a Christian lens.
Speaker: He's a Christian. he's He's passed on now, but he was a great Christian libertarian philosopher. And the way he just writes very simply elegant, beautiful sentences, but he explains very complex topics and very simple language.
Speaker: And then obviously putting it through the filter of the Bible is useful from like an ethical, moral framework. And um yeah, those are those are really good starting points. If you wanted something much more difficult, you could pull from the top shelf and go read Human Action by Mises.
Speaker: ah one of the most difficult books you will ever read. But if you can get through it all, you'll have basically a master's degree in Austrian economics and praxeology. So amazing.
Speaker: Well, I i appreciate it for people who do want to follow you. we'll We'll put all this in the show notes, but where can they find you? where how should they reach out? Yeah. um Yeah. Thanks again for having me. This is fun. Love talking about this stuff um and great questions.
Speaker: Whatismoneypodcast.com. We've got links to all the socials there. My biggest social platform is X and that is just at breedlove22, B-R-E-D-L-O-V-E-2-2, which is my last.
Speaker: Fantastic. Well, thank you again. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other healthspan role models on Alively.com.
Speaker: Enjoy a lively day.
