E130 - Everything You Need To Know About Peptides For Fat Loss, Muscle & Longevity

0:00It's not the peptide, it's the individual. I think the worst things I've seen personally, I've got a lot of horror stories from doctors and what have you, but from clients I work with. He's a functional medicine coach, therapeutic nutritionist and a peptide therapy specialist, Dean Henry. I work with healthy people to make them healthier, longevity, anti-aging, prevention. I help people understand more about peptides and the education that I've learned for them to go on as a guide. Peptides are made of these 20 amino acids that are found in the body, essential and non-essential. They're sequenced in different ways, have a different objective or target area.

0:30We see a real safety profile with peptides. And then you get these people, these doctors all over social media trying to monetize from peptides. They say, well, these have got popular. And then some of the protocols that I'm seeing from them, really, really worrying. I'm the typical guy who's going to the gym. I want to improve my body composition. I want to have more energy, feel better, look better. Very popular protocol is... What are the red flags and things that you should be aware of when people are talking about peptides? There's a few variations that I think. Firstly... Quick pause, guys.

0:59I need to tell you something. it's that time of the year where everyone's on the winter arc hype where they're building their physique which they plan to reveal at some point in the summer of 2026 but i hate to be the guy that says it most of you are going to end up getting fat you'll be overeating you'll be following some sort of a program which isn't actually going to be getting your results you're going to be improvising on the spot no doubt you won't be tracking there'll be no structure just random exercises with minimal progress seen on a week-to-week basis pretty frustrating right Well, that's the whole reason why I built the Thirst app, to help busy people like yourself find a system they can actually stick to over a long period of time.

1:37We have thousands of transformations for men and women who just plug into the app and get the exact plan they need for their goals, show up to the gym and just put in the work, all for less than an hour of their time. You get access to over hundreds of programs and hundreds of different meal plans, everything which you could possibly need to get yourself in shape. So if you actually want to stick to something and see results without taking things to the absolute extremities, click the link in the bio. Let's get on with the video. What's up, guys, and welcome back to First Things Thirst. We have the peptide expert, Dean Henry, in the building today.

2:13How are you doing? Very good, Mike. Thank you for having me. Lovely view. Yes, yes. I'm looking forward to this. I mean, obviously, peptides have been all the rave recently, like the past couple of years, particularly the past year. Everybody's talking about it. Everybody's experimenting with it. But there's a lot of things which people need to be aware of. And a lot of misinformation out there, which you've said, obviously, is quite annoying for someone like you who's been in the game for a very long time. Yeah, it's frustrating. As I say, you know, I've been around this for 11 years now. And the great thing now is there is awareness.

2:44So a good thing of awareness, everyone's jumping onto it but of course when something's popular especially now with the rise of social media there's some things definitely to watch out for for sure yeah how did you get into this space really just from my background I was uh I did some sport when I was younger had some knee injuries decent levels a sprinter footballer uh snapped my ACL when I was 15 16 um and really I just kept getting misdiagnosed like it was shaving my cartilage instead of work on the ACL I mean I was 15 a long time ago so it wasn't quite there with the advancement of medicine we are now and um then it was just about regeneration and i came across a podcast i think in 2015 and they're talking about epithelon epithelon which is anti-aging at cellular level showing that years of russian data was showing that you could increase your telomere length after seven years so literally reversing aging at a cellular level just get me that yeah so i jumped on that and then from there i've just been rabbit holding and deep diving for 11 years and experimenting with yourself lots of lots of self-experimentation yes so okay let's let's go to the very basics of what a peptide is for those people who don't know what is a very kind of simple definition yeah i always like to give two answers here so there's a there's a peptide that we we get in our food uh that you know when you eat a steak it goes from a protein to an amino acid to a peptide so it's just your digestive enzymes break it down to a peptide they offer many processes in the body from your hormones to your immune system so without peptides wouldn't exist.

4:09They're just small chains of amino acids. Normally one was, it's two chains of amino acids up to 50, depending on who you speak to, above 50, a polypeptide above that protein. Therapeutic peptides, which we're going to discuss today. So these are signaling molecules. So again, two chains of amino acids to around about 50 chains. And then these target receptor proteins in the body mostly, and they trigger an endogenous response. And generally these peptides are always found in the body. I always say this and I simplify it that these peptides are found in the body, but that's not exactly true. So it is true, but it's more specific.

4:47So peptides are made of these 20 amino acids that are found in the body, essential and non-essential. So with these 20 amino acids, they're sequenced in different ways to, or modified and sequenced in different ways to have a different objective or target area. So there's around about a trillion, trillion different sequences you can have when you think about you know you could let's just say it's from number one to twenty you could have one two and three then you could have three two one you could have one twenty so bases are trillion trillion you've been told so these different sequences are then created by people a lot more intelligent than me to target different areas in the body so as an example um c max and solanck that's a seven chain amino acid now c max and slank is for a neuro receptor and cognitive health now c max which is for cognitive energy comes from a stress hormone in the body.

5:33So it's a derivative of a stress hormone in the body. So this stress hormone is four, the extract is four amino acids. They then add another three amino acids to it. And then you can take it as a nasal spray and it's more stable and goes straight to the neurocephalism and breaks the blood brain barrier. So it's just one example of many. But so the amino acids are found in the body. The sequences are not always found in the body, but derivatives are okay so in very basic terms a peptide that you take externally would go into your body and start signaling to a particular area to to fix repair to start doing something if it's stopped doing something to optimize and to regenerate so i i always so i always sound like i'm dumbing this down but it's for myself i have no i'm not a medical person you need to dumb this down for me this is for me so i can explain it i often do use analogies so um when we tap when we take these peptides they're then looking for receptor proteins in the body these i say like in the doorbells so it's ringing the doorbell and so what we do we're not actually letting the peptide in as such if we was taking say steroids or growth hormone where a stranger's ringing the doorbell we're letting that stranger in then it's endogenous we don't know what's going to happen yeah so it's exogenous going internally when we take a peptide it's like what we used to call knock down ginger in the uk so it rings it it rings a doorbell runs away but creates activity in the house so you're not actually letting the stranger into the house and this is why when taken sensibly is a real safety element to it because you're not actually really letting anything in in theory so that that's how most peptides work not all how most peptides work okay and then the the rise in your in the popularity recently what where has that come about that's because of the glp1s the ozone pick and the the skid pens the you know the the weight loss and that the so they are basically peptides but i would always put them in a category of peptide drugs the reason for that they've been modified to stay in the body longer so this uh this analogy again i'm going to use this quite a lot today probably but this analogy of bringing the doorbell and running away suddenly because we've extended the half-life now turn this into a drug they're keeping the finger on the doorbell for longer.

7:39So you start to desensitize the receptors. So now they need to start increasing the dose and it's staying in the body for five to seven days, depending on the GLP. And that's when we see side effects. So essentially when we take a GLP, it's hitting multiple receptors at the same time. The higher the dose, the more receptors going to hit. And it's staying in the body for an average of six days. That's the downside of what I would call a peptide drug. The pro to a peptide is that they don't stay in the body very long. They bring the doorbell run away for sometimes for minutes the downside to that is you have to take them multiple times a week or sometimes multiple times a day to get the optimal outcome okay so that's the basics of what they are in terms of the sort of the stigma and the the potential downsides and disadvantages for for health what might that be for a peptide um i think it's misinformation information um because as i said we see a real safety profile with peptides i've never really seen any side effects from my clients or people that i'm advising educating for 11 years and we always stay safe low slow stay safe in the parameters take do the correct cycle six weeks on six weeks off for many um and i think what's happened now is that i'm trying to be diplomatic here is a lot of medical people have jumped on the back of course influencers pts everyone but For me, it's more dangerous for the medical people that are jumping on the bandwagon because these are the people you should be listening to in theory.

9:07And they will say, well, I only use a medical professional for peptides. Well, by default, that doesn't make sense because peptides in general, apart from the peptide drugs, are research only. There are a few that are FDA regulated now, but the masses are not. So there is no human studies. So if they're saying use them for medical purposes, then that actually is probably more gray than what I'm doing because I'm not a medical professional. so we need to be really careful here so then you get these people these doctors all over social media trying to monetize from peptides i say well these have got popular just use me i'm a medical professional and then some of the protocols that i'm seeing from them probably because i'm noticing more really really worrying yeah mot c is a big one uh so mot c is trending a lot at the moment that's uh exercise mimetic so basically all the benefits you get from exercise about doing exercise of course you should do the exercises and the problem with this is that this does stimulate the receptor proteins it does ring the doorbells but it's going in at a deeper level it's dna encoded so because we have mitochondria it's a mitochondrial derived peptide because we have mitochondria in every cell in the body it's literally hitting every cell in the body so taking this like a normal peptide which is generally five days on two days off for six weeks is actually quite dangerous because it can start to trigger mass cell activation as in a histamine response without you being allergic to the actual peptide that you're injecting because it's so potent so i'm seeing these protocols from these doctors and online and hearing it through clients that come to me that they're taking this peptide every single day for six weeks ridiculous i i was told eight years ago i mean mozzi's quite new it's 2015 i think it was founded um and people are taking that every day because they think they should take it like a normal peptide but in fact you just pulse it like three times a week for two weeks take a break yeah and that way you avoid the histamine response and i've seen some really bad outcomes actually from top doctors in the u.s given these protocols and people are going into anaphylactic shock.

10:55And this is just simply ignorance on their part, not understanding the effects, or they're just wanting to monetize by selling more? Both. They say, you know, this is how peptides work. I've been on a two-week course, and that's what they do because they didn't learn about this at med school. And I feel like I'm really targeting doctors. I'm going to just do a caveat to it at the moment. So they just get this two weeks of information. They have no real life data on it because they haven't been working in it for the time that we have or people that I aspire to have. So, you know, I've got a couple of thousands of hours now of educating feedback, anecdotal feedback.

11:30I see what a client's response is after four weeks. I know how to adjust the protocol. They don't have the information. They just don't. And it's so individual. I just want to say a caveat now is that the people I aspire to, the best people I've worked in the industry are doctors, but they've been doing this for 15, 20 years. They've been doing in clinics. They're based in the US. They train at the peptide university in the US. And these are the people that I aspire to and have learned from, but they've been doing it for a long time. So I just wanted to caveat that. It's something I've seen a lot now, even from just purely fitness influencers who have seen the potential for making money with peptides suddenly announced that, oh yeah, I'm launching my new peptide company.

12:07It's like, what the fuck do you know about peptides? Like that's, it's ridiculous, but it's, that's just the way the world works when there's money to be made people will just jump onto it yeah and i see a lot with the personal trainers and getting their clients in shape even out here like they will just recommend their clients to start taking these steroids just so they can get their client in shape and get the transformation because they get the transformation they can put that on social media they get more clients but they have no consideration into the the health damage that they're causing for their client and the permanent side effects that they're going to have after that so it's uh yeah it's a it's a pretty sketchy area to be in it really is so how if someone's like browsing through social media what are the red flags and things that you should be aware of when people are talking about peptides and then who should you be listening to and taking advice from um there's a few variations that i think firstly doctors have just started talking about peptides and you can see and they're normally the ones that say only use a medical professional that's a red flag straight away because that's not really the case because these are generally research compounds number two is when it says not for human use that's worrying they say that to protect themselves but there's a you know I had legal as you can imagine I had legal advice on this many years ago and putting for research purposes only is fine but in the research purpose only not for humans when you are saying and selling this product for humans it's just not you know yeah it's not ethical so that's that's number two and number three is a little bit difficult to explain but it's just over the years i can visualize and see when a peptide sold online if it's a cheap peptide or not and hasn't gone for all the testing and studies and the other bread and a good thing to ask people that are buying peptides or you're buying peptides from is when they say their purity is high so 99 purity or whatever we see it all the time I would always say to them first, can you tell me about the endotoxins?

14:09And if they respond by saying the purity level is really high, they don't know what they're talking about because purity doesn't relate to toxic level. But they think it does. Okay. So yeah, that's one thing, again, I wanted to dive into is the sourcing of the peptide itself. The best peptides, is there a specific area where they're usually produced? Is there other areas in the world where they tend to have a lower quality, a higher toxicity level compared to others? Yeah. So again, diplomatically from Asian countries, China, I've been doing this a long time. So diplomatically, look, peptides from China, they have a bit of a stigma associated with them.

14:50Not always so fair because there's a small percentage of labs in China that probably produce some of the best peptides in the world. But then we're talking about the raw material. So when you go from raw material to put it into vials, this is when you start having toxic exposure. And this is where some of these sort of developing countries, if you like, they sort of struggle. So at the very worst case, to have the raw material from a good CGMP certified lab in China, sent to somewhere in the US that have a lot of experience with this, have a CGMP certified lab in the US that are doing the filling, that's a good place to start.

15:25And ultimately at the moment, where we tend to get our peptides from is it's all created in the US. The CGMPC lab is in the US and they also connected to our lab in the EU where we're having the ready-made peptide pens. And that comes from a lab that's CGMP certified and they also deal with oncologists. So we know we're dealing at a good level here. So it does take a bit of research, but going online, seeing these little 3ml vials, shiny foil labels, selling BPC for$50,$60, dollars you know it's a real red flag for me what's what's on because you mentioned the the foil label what is actually the logo well so they generally they will get this from a source in far you know in Asia or the far east and they will say can you just give me this BPC 157 uh 10 milligrams they'll buy it for five dollars and they say oh yeah we'll customize this for your white label so they white label it there stamp it uh get sent to them in the UK or wherever and then they sell it it is tricky like how would you if you were a consumer and consumer and you get it, you wouldn't really be able to know.

16:27It's not like you can do a home test. No. And this is something you're just going to put into your body. Absolutely. That freaks me out. I thought of that. I'm trying to go back to what you originally said. The original peptide could be fine, but it's the container that it's put into that's the problem. Yes. In the labs, generally, they will receive the raw powder. So the raw peptide powder, the compound. that compound needs to go into a vial so they can sell it so they they might buy this powder for very very cheap for one kilo that's a lot of 10 milligrams yeah right so then they need to quality though it could be good it could be good quality absolutely but then it's that process you know what what method are they using you know for example the um the lab in uh eu that we're using they have got you know got the the shielding the glass shielding they put their hands through these gloves oh yeah yeah so it's very sterile environment absolutely and this is what you need to do you know no corners in the room so there's no bacteria being caught in the corners there's a there's another level of thing of of conversation yeah and majority of the stuff on the market i'm pretty sure doesn't cover all those aspects damn okay so people need to be very careful and cautious absolutely um moving on to i want to go through some of the most popular and trending peptides per sort of category.

17:44If we move on to the peptides trending in research and metabolic health, retitrutide, retitrutide, retitrutide, say it for me, please. Retitrutide. There we go. So what's that one all about? Why is that the trending at the moment? So that's a triple agonist. It's going through medical research at the moment, should be launched for doctors and clinicians later this year. So that's evolution. So that's what they call triple agonist. So we had Ozympic, which was a single agonist. We had then Monjaro, which was a dual agonist. And now we have Retitutide, which is a triple agonist. Okay. So what the hell does that mean, agonist?

18:24Agonist, it means it's triggering receptors in the body to perform better. So you're saying it's like what, triple agonist is three times better? Essentially. Very simplified. essentially yeah yeah i mean if i was just break it down a little bit about being too boring so ozenbik which was the glp1 yeah so that's uh appetite suppressing slowing down gastric emptying and then you have monjaro which is a glp1 and a gip which is a gluconinotropic polypeptide and that's basically enhancing what the first one did we then have retitutide now what seems to be happening with these new these additional agonists they seem to be mitigating the potential side effects from the previous agonists so what happens with glucagon is it helps balance your glucose variability so like when a diabetic takes their insulin and their glucose levels drops too low they then need to take a sugar pill glucagon in theory is doing that there's no sugar it's balancing out that glucose variability and that's why i took it because minimizing glucose variability is really good for anti-aging longevity so you take that you get a more balanced glucose levels so you weren't taking it because you were just being a little fatty like eating too much you actually wanted for the the other health reasons as well for longevity i I mean, apart from a little thing I did last year, I've never wanted to lose weight.

19:35I've always struggled to put on weight. So I would never take a GLP. It goes against everything that I want to do. But because of the longevity aspect, that's why I took retitutide. So that's the triple agonist, glucagon. Has other benefits like helps you maintain muscle while you're losing fat. That was a big thing when people were taking Ozempic and Monjaro. They were losing too much muscle. So it seems to balance that out. And that's why people are really enjoying that particular product. and because this is a peptide drug my guidance and education to people is to do a microdose because what we're trying to do is we're trying to take a peptide drug and turn it into a therapeutic peptide like the bpc so the best way to do that from my experience is doing a super low dose two or three times a week and what would that look like super individual but generally it's half a milligram monday wednesday friday some people uh someone i worked with the other day i've got them doing 0.2 so that's 0.6 of a milligram per week um but 0.5 seems to yield the best results for the less side effects put this just put this into context from what i can see uh when it's launched uh medically uh they're going to get people taking one shot nine milligrams to 12 milligrams per week 10 times more than what we're working on and seeing good results from okay and for what period of time and there's it needs to be a cycling aspect six weeks on and then the six weeks then we say six weeks off and then decide whether you need to do it again the whole idea of taking peptides is to get your body your base level to a certain level and then it's about your lifestyle the better your lifestyle is after you've got your optimal outcome with the peptide then by default the reason why your peptides are less functional is because you're aging so the better you do with your lifestyle to maintain aging at a cellular level then the less time you'll need to do peptides if you finish your retitutide so i've rebounded and now I'm eating crap, going out drinking, you know, sleeps all over the place and you're going to need to go back on it sooner.

21:22Does that tend to happen? There are some people that it's habitual because they've stopped taking the retitutor. It doesn't work anymore. And they've told them, I've rebounded, I'm really hungry. I don't think that's really the case. And that's more psychological. And then it's about, all of this is about lifestyle first. All the peptides we're discussing, the icing on the cake. I guess that's one of the biggest things that would be up for debate is the dosage and the cycling and duration of the cycling because I could ask probably loads of people maybe even like a lot of people like you who really know their stuff and I would probably I don't think I would get the same answer back every single time no similar I would say similar as long as I really do know what they're talking about and this sort of four weeks to 12 weeks I know that's quite a difference but that does depend on the individual uh you know the peptide university i'm planning to do some work with they they run a lot of their cycles for 12 to 16 weeks which is a long time um it's very hard for me to go against what i've learned because i've seen such great results with no side effects and it's low slow effect generally five days on two days off six weeks on six weeks off i've seen such good results there's no reason why i would feel i'd need to change that yeah is this something you can easily get at this point what's that uh yes yeah yes yeah it's i I mean, this is all for research purposes, obviously.

22:44Yeah. So what does the future look like for this in particular? Is this going to literally solve obesity in America, for example? Absolutely. I mean, even lipid panel, we've seen improvement in lipid panel, rain fog, hormone health, and weight loss, of course. My concern is the level that I'm hearing they're going to go to market at. That worries me because then we will see side effects for sure. You know, I've seen... what they're going to be recommending. Yeah. So they're saying between nine milligrams and 12 milligrams, one shot per week. And then we've been seeing that 0.5, three times per week works well with no side effects.

23:21Some people have had side effects. Myself, I stopped after two weeks because I noticed that was a bit too graphic. I noticed my stool quality wasn't as good. So, you know, I said, well, this isn't good. You know, if my stool quality is not as good as what it was, it's going somewhere. So I stopped, took six weeks off and then did it again. And it seemed that my two weeks is just at my maximum level. So that was, it's so individual. but of course we're my job really is educated and working with healthy people to make them healthier or you know longevity anti-aging prevention in medicine that's not what they're doing they're working with obese diabetics so at nine milligram 12 milligram might might be what's working for them but you know the researchers and the biohackers and the health optimizers they need to take that into consideration i've seen rebuttal on my on my posts and you know youtube videos i've done before where they said, oh, you shouldn't be doing microdosing retitutide.

24:09Who told you this nonsense? You know, you've got to hit all your receptors at once, do high dose one shot. Where'd you get all this rubbish from? I was like, okay, well, firstly, it's based on my anecdotal evidence for the last year. I've seen some great results. And secondly, I'm always trying to avoid side effects. And, and, you know, it's, it's basic science. The more receptors and the longer the half-life you're hitting all at once, the higher chance you've got a side effect. Yeah. I guess we're only going to find out in like five years, 10 years, 20, you might even be looking back and be like oh dear that was a that was a big mistake because it is we are in the early stages like there's there isn't really any long-term scientific studies done on this quite yet it's the same thing with like all this biohacking equipment yeah it's trending and like everyone's like oh i'm going to do the the red light therapy and the oxygen stuff or the saunas and the cold plunges and it's just like this is maybe it's not actually as good as we think it is maybe it's still a placebo thing in the head absolutely yeah i mean generally you You know, most of us are intuitive enough to know if something feels good or not.

25:06You know, training, energy levels, sleep. You know, if all these things are optimized and you notice that from something you've been protocol, you've been running, then generally that's a good sign, I would say. Yeah. Let's see what the future may bring. Yeah. What about... Oh, God, I can't even pronounce these. Ty... I think I'm like a little bit dyslexic. We'll find that out today. Tysopeptide. Tysopeptide. Tysopeptide? Terzepatide. Terzepatide. That's Monjaro, so that's the double agonist that we just spoke about. Okay. That's the double name for Monjaro. And then semaglutide. Semaglutide is the ozempic, so that's the single agonist.

25:43So semaglutide, which is ozempic, was first. Terzepatide is Monjaro, was second. And now retitrutide, which doesn't have a medical name yet, but it's called retitrutide. What do you mean? How can it not have a medical name yet, but it has a name? So it's got a scientific name. So the scientific name for ozempic was semaglutide. Okay. The scientific name for Monjaro was terzepatide. and now the scientific name for retitutide is retitutide because it hasn't been launched into the market yet okay so that's gonna have a new name i guess so i guess so who the hell's naming all these by the way i guess it's big farmer yes so yeah the big farm whoever like creates it's like i'm gonna call it this yeah yeah so eli lilly is the producer for um retitutide if you created one what would you call it it's like a dh super fat burning peptide okay moving on to recovery regeneration and performance this would be obviously interesting for me because i want to maximize performance maximize and optimize recovery we have a couple of ones here i guess the popular one the bpc157 yeah body protection compound yeah why is that so good that's probably one of the longest standing peptides that most people have been working with when you mentioned why did I get into peptides, the regeneration aspect, BPC-157 was the first one I took.

27:01So that's a 15-chain amino acid that's found in the stomach and gastric juices, and that helps your gut repair. So taking it systemically will go around the body and look for parts of the body to repair. It works well with blood tissue, cell migration, sorry, blood vessels, cell migration, soft tissue like connective tissue helps rehabilitate this. I've seen some amazing results over the years just even today someone posted messaged me saying how quickly their knees recovered and even just for you know a lot of the high rocks athletes now they take bpc as part of their training because you recover better from training you just rehabilitate better so you're able to push harder in the gym especially if you're planning or training for an event um and yeah that's a 15 chain amino acid that focus on connective tissue mainly but also really good research around heart health because of the blood vessel optimization okay that's interesting so i i guess for those people who are training regularly and need to perform at their best that is something that would be worth looking into because i imagine if somebody is just casually going to the gym taking seriously but they're going three times per week would there be a need for them to take it because assuming that they're eating right and they're sleeping right and then having like a rest day or two rest days in between each session very unlikely um but you know if there's someone that gets quite a lot of niggles and you know people you know doing shoulder press and their shoulders are getting niggly they don't seem to recover then uh for me that was the last time i did bpc um i just got a little niggle in my shoulder it was doing something really silly actually i wasn't training i won't talk about that but um and it had a niggle there and then um you know i took the bpc and i can just tell you know when i get this i thought oh that will hang around a while took the bpc it cleared up in five days i know previously it would have taken weeks yeah and i was back training again so there's always a always a possibility to take it but you're right you know just let the body recover eat well do your saunas or whatever and see how you feel but if you're still not recovering yeah and that happens when you get to my age it can happen then you start then you might need guys is 78 by the way

29:00yeah so um yeah so for regeneration it's good and for training recovery um and as I said if you're an athlete and you're competing then I think for me because I'm obviously at the point where I'm shifting quite a lot of weight and that the form is controlled I don't feel like I'm overdoing it at this stage but I have noticed recently whenever I've been pressing particularly any kind of like incline press or shoulder press there is a I'm aware of something in my shoulder that's like limiting me from really giving a hundred percent and I'm always a bit wary of that usually what I would do in that scenario is I would just not press for a while okay or maybe I would completely change the position of the pressing so instead we do a neutral press and just leave out any pressing where I'm sticking the elbow up but I feel like something like this could just heal it yeah especially if it's something you're aware of and it's been around for a little while it's niggling then absolutely I mean you know I've seen the thing is I've seen um I shouldn't call them kids but 25 rounds taking BPC and they've got tendinitis in their elbow and they heal in three days because their receptors are so sensitive they're still optimized as a at a cellular level the peptide still optimum in their body because they're so young whereas someone a bit older or you know closer to my age and they take it for tendonitis you can see it can say two to three months okay that's interesting so the older you get the the slower the response might be more often than not yes yeah yeah and is is there a point where you know you could be too young and should be completely avoiding it or is that not an issue um i think really just just by default i i anyone under the age of 21 just seems pointless you know you should be at your optimal recovery anyway you know even up to 25 that's when stuff that's when a lot of these sort of peptide functions and growth hormone i think starts to decline but um anything below 21 would seem a bit ridiculous you're pretty much invincible that age i mean i would go straight into the gym and crack on with my working heaviest weight without any warm-up and i'd be absolutely fine then you realize after doing that like you get into your late 20s like you definitely can't do that no no you'll have a wake-up call i think i spent half hour warming up 10 minutes training we'll get back to the podcast in a second but first of all i want to say a massive shout out to bionic i have been using their supplements for the past four years i never knew what supplements i needed to take i'd always go into the pharmacy and buy a load of random bottles and end up popping pills all day every day not having a clue if i was consuming the vitamins which I should be consuming at all.

31:30But Bionic came to save the day. They are a tailor made supplement company that will put together your own specific formula based on your activity, your gender. I have Bionic Pro where I get the blood test done every three to four months and based on that blood test I get my own personalized formula. For those people who don't want to do a blood test or don't have access to that then you can go with Bionic Go where you just have to fill in a short questionnaire and based on that questionnaire you will get your tailored supplements with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy so stop the guesswork sign up to bionic and ensure that you remove those deficiencies and build up your immune system um okay tb500 yeah tb500 so that that works very well it's synergistic with bpc157 uh frequently put into a blend so it's from the thymus um it's a fragment it's generally a fragment of thymus and beta 4 so thymus and beta 4 is in basically all the cells in the body and this helps regeneration um that's a uh 43 chain amino acid the thymus and beta 4 tb500 is a synthetic version of that does very similar to bpc but it focuses on um soft tissue so where bpc was connected tissue this is soft tissue so muscle fascia so it does that so working the two together is amazing for rehabilitation um tb500 is often referred to as a fragment 1723 so that's a 17 chain amino acid which is extracted from that 44 chain amino acid seven of those and it's got another 10 amino acids to make it more stable and more effective in the body but it's just sometimes people call tb500 um tb500 when it should be called 1723 the only difference is it's more targeted whereas is uh tb500 and it's 44 43 chain amino acid for it is more systemic it goes around the body more broad spectrum um when you take it in the 1723 uh the 17 chain that's more specific to the target area okay important for both they can be used intramuscular or with a clinician or medical professional it so i've had my my elbow using both of those under ultrasound so a very long needle and then they've put it into the area and that's not fun yeah but then but when it's intramuscular then it's less systemic so it's going to stay in the target area i get that question all the time people say i've got my insulin needle where you know and i've got a bad shoulder so i inject it in my shoulder for me it's ludicrous i mean it's subcutaneous so unless you've got a long needle you're actually going into the area which i certainly wouldn't suggest doing at home yeah subcutaneous would always be the safest option so you mentioned a blend is that something where you're getting the two individuals and you're putting them together the labs will generally make a blend they'll make it for you it'd be in one vial or in one pen and they'll put the blends together they're normally synergistic there's a specific ratio which is yes and that can work for you and against you there's a lot of again there's some doctors online that are making me smile at the moment talking about disassociation when you put one peptide with another and the pH levels start to interact with each other.

34:42It's mainly nonsense. But to optimize, sometimes BPC and TB, for instance, BPC, ultimately, if you're trying to recover from an injury, you should take twice a day, five days on two days off. TB500, you should probably either take every day or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, as an example, a slightly higher dose, but only in the mornings because tb500 can disrupt sleep so if you take them together you're already losing if you if you i mean if you're not if you don't care about disrupting sleep it's fine but if you want to have maximum sleep which is the key for foundation for recovery then you don't want to take tb500 in the evening which means you can't take it with a bpc so i get it but it's not always optimal interesting okay cgc1295 plus hypomerulin yes this is the first time I'm saying half of these this is the growth hormone releasing peptide growth hormone secreticogs so that's good growth hormone secreticogs are really good so we talk about the doorbell again this is the saying create more of your own growth hormone so it's stimulating the pituitary gland it's ultimately stimulating the pituitary gland to increase your own endogenous growth hormone uh really good that's the one i was psyching whenever i'm you know trying to do body composition that's what i cycle the most everybody loves these you know you're getting the the the benefits of growth hormone potentially about the side effects of injecting synthetic growth hormone into the body yeah um and yeah you you put on muscle easier you sleep better you got more energy you lose fat better um so it's just optimizing again when you're 25 your growth hormone is when it reached its peak or probably a bit before that but it starts to decline from age 25 and we know as we just said you know you can train harder yeah sleep better have less sleep have loads of energy so that's what optimized growth hormone does and it's something women could take as well absolutely yeah yeah um i mean explain the differences there are there are slight differences so uh testomarylin that's a 44 chain ghrh growth hormone releasing hormone your growth hormone releasing hormone that's produced by the pituitary gain is actually 44 chains so testomarylin matches that almost identically with slight modification to extend half-life.

36:56That's a GHRH. CJC1295 is also a GHRH, but that's a 29-chain amino acid, so that's an extract from the 44-chain. Generally, based on my experience, other people may differ, based on my experience, the testemarenin is a safer place to start than CJC1295 because the latter seems to and can stimulate a histamine reaction. So I would generally start with which is FDA approved for burning fish oil fat actually um and then ipramrelin is a growth hormone releasing peptide the ghrp uh does the same thing eventually it targets the pituitary gland but it goes for the ghrelin hormone first and the ghrelin hormone is responsible for hunger hunger a lot of people get worried say am i going to be more hungry it doesn't it disassociates itself from the hunger stimulation and just goes from there to the pituitary gland and then what you've got people take these together testinrelin the ghrh and ipramrelin ghrp and that gives you the full spectrum or close to the full spectrum of taking a growth hormone, an actual growth hormone synthetic drug.

37:53So taking the two together will give you potential. That's pretty amazing. So then would that kind of cancel out the need for you actually having full-on growth hormone? In many cases, this would be where you'd start. And this is why testinrelin has been approved, and even semirelin, I think, was approved for the same effects as growth hormones. This is the safer way to do it without putting exogenous growth hormone into the body, and then you've got all these you know potential side effects and most people you should do this first you know my in my opinion um it becomes an age when because remember we're just creating what's already in there to optimize so there will be an age when maybe when i really am 78 thank you for that um where my my uh my growth hormone is not really anything to grab onto yeah at that point there's no point me taking a secretive or it's going to stimulate growth hormone because there's nothing there so then we would start to take gah maybe yeah so okay that makes sense but if you if you're trying these and taking these, you really have to be keeping an eye out for how your body's responding and whether or not it's actually working.

38:50Um, so let's say for example, I'm, I'm the typical guy who's going to the gym. I want to get stronger. I want to improve my body composition, lower body fat, increase muscle mass. You know, I don't want to be jacked beyond belief, but I just want to, I want to have more energy, feel better, look better. What out of those ones we've just discussed would be an appropriate uh thing to do moving forward very popular protocol is um tessimrelin uh ipramrelin or cjc and ipramrelin for all the things we just discussed for optimized growth hormone and bpc and tb500 and you can get blends for both so you can you can do a blend of the ghrh and ghrp the tessimrelin and you can do a blend of the bpc and tb500 so with that you've got recovery building muscle ways yeah burning fat so you've got a combination you take all of them all of them the thing is because because you can do a blend because if you either inject yourself four times or two times so if you do the blend you only need to inject yourself you couldn't put it into one blend all four of them um i would suggest not i mean if you if so what some people do and again a doctor did this in the uk and there is an issue with this but if you pull them all into one syringe a bit fiddly so it's not in the pen and you just pulled from four vials and put into one syringe and took it immediately then that's the way of going around not having to inject four do four injections at once i did hear one doctor that did this with all these different crossovers of peptides different families different groups put them into a syringe for their client it's quite a high-end client and said right take these away with you and all these peptides are all counter and they all died i mean they're just going to be so less effective and you know they start they will the blends once reconstituted don't disassociate but all these you know mixing a bioregulator with thymus now for one and you there's a reason why these labs again a lot more more intelligent myself are doing certain blends and not yeah so for these doctors say i'll just put only one syringe and keep in your fridge for six weeks yeah yeah okay yeah just genuinely curious and then for a big topic at the moment of men having less testosterone than you know 20 30 years ago whatever uh will these have an effect on overall testosterone production is there anything you can take to help guys improve their testosterone or is it something they should do just literally by improving their sleep, reducing stress, all these other things?

41:14Let's get the basics right first. We have to keep caveating this before we talk about peptides. So making sure you're going to bed around the same time every night, getting your minimum hours of sleep, eating food, lifting weights, do this for a long period of time. And then if your testosterone is still not optimizing, you're taking all the different supplements and it's still not increasing, then we can look at some peptides, precursors really to producing testosterone. because again, we're not putting synthetic hormones into the body. So there's one called Kispeptin, which stimulates LH and FSH hormones.

41:41So that's like your precursor to your testosterone production. So again, all we're doing is ringing the doorbell to try and tell the body to produce more testosterone. We're not putting testosterone into the body. So that's really good. Also, the testes bioregulators, we haven't discussed the bioregulators yet, but there are a subcategory of peptides, two to four amino acid chains that you can take orally. And these come from animal. so this would come from the ball of an animal so pretty much similar to your organ meats but a lot more uh defined so and uh what's in it uh they're basically for two to four chain amino acids from the ball of balls right from the testes of balls and um and they naturally find the target area so they match up sort of the amino acid sequence so they would in theory target the epigenetic environment of your testes of your testicular function and optimize that regulate it so if it's down if it's already down regulated or up regulate it if in very unlikely effect you was producing too much it would down regulate it so it's creating regulation for the target area acting oh it's like a dna switch it's not changing your dna it's a dimmer switch it's either going to increase or decrease so really for thyroid uh if you had hypothyroidism it down regulate it if you had hypothyroid up regulate it and there's 21 of those yeah yeah it's fascinating because there's so many guys in the industry who are just so quick to hop onto TRT just because they want results quickly and they're either impatient or they've not looked at other areas of their life which can drastically improve.

43:06It's funny, I wonder like, you know, you could be on all these different protocols of peptides and I guess you can kind of still class yourself as being natural. Like it'd be funny in the future to try and figure out at what point are you not natural this is like a weird obsession people have in the fitness industry massive discussion people have about me and like other people is he natural is he not natural and then like in the future you could be on on this peptide protocol and doing all these different things but technically not taking any steroids no so it's like oh well technically i'm still natural yeah i'm not taking any steroids but really are you natural anymore with like everything you're taking here's some uh here's some stories uh so but based on this conversation so firstly uh wadda or wadda they've banned a few peptides now um even though they're not deemed as peds they have banned them um there was an american football team i believe i was told this by one of my american counterparts that took bpc 157 during training and they said so that going back to the start when you take these peptides during the body very quickly you can't find them you can't test for peptide levels in the body in theory you know so i'm saying can i test your collagen levels it's just not really possible.

44:18I mean, anything's possible, but you'd have to, you know. So, it's all we're doing is stimulating what's already there. Who can say that my production of testosterone isn't this high because all you're seeing is endogenous testosterone. There's no synthetic testosterone going into the body when I take his peptin. But, so BPC-157, they're all using it for their training. And then they went out and I think they won, you know, the bowl or something. And they were just so advanced more than everyone else. And they said, what are you doing? And they said, oh, we're taking this peptide, BPC-157. It's fine.

44:44It's natural um and they said and they looked into it said actually you can't use this because you're able to train better so because you can train better that's not fair and everybody else yeah because that is going to be a big thing now in the olympics all these other big sports categories i mean what's your opinion but you think like surely it's okay it's everyone to take it yeah it's a level playing field it's fine you know and it's and again these things don't work unless you're enhancing your lifestyle anyway so it's about your fit i mean if you're just taking bpc and sitting around doing nothing it's not going to do anything really it might heal your gut but not much more than that yeah um and it's for me i i shouldn't simplify it so much but let's call it an advanced supplement one which i'm becoming increasingly interested in moving on to uh cognitive and nervous system peptides so this is um i guess the peptides which is going to improve brain function alertness focus all these things um start off with cemax what's this one so cmex so russian derived peptide founded in the 1970s or 1960s um it was used during the cold war i believe for more focus for russian soldiers loads of human data on it and uh this helps stimulate uh neuroceptors be more cognitive for cognitive energy and focus i think i mentioned at the beginning it comes from the stress hormone in the body.

46:10So it's a four amino acid extract, added another three amino acids to make it a seven amino acid chain. And the reason why they do that is so it breaks through the blood-brain barrier and is more stable. And that really works well as nasal spray, actually. So because you're just common sense, you know, rather than take it subcutaneous, straight to the neurocephalus. And actually the great, even though you're taking it as a protocol for long-term compounded benefits, when you do take it as a nasal spray, you do feel a little boost straight away. it's important to understand where it's not stimulant we're just optimizing the neuroceptors to perform better we're not stimulating okay so it's not like taking a caffeine shot all out of coke no no okay uh what so so if you took that could that potentially fix a um an individual who just has poor focus and um just has a poor attention span yes absolutely yeah very common actually for females at perimenopause they suffer from brain fog yeah i often guide them to use c max as part of their protocol to help them with just uplifting mood well more cognitive energy and focus and to help with brain fog and over time we are seeing some good responses from yeah okay and then solanq and am i saying that right solanq is good yes yes p e 2228 yeah so uh the The C-Lanc is, so I always remember C-Lanc by C-Lanc-tious as in anxiety.