#406: Peptide OVERLOAD: When Biohacking Backfires (How NOT to Crash Your Mitochondria) With Anthony Castore
87 min
•Jan 23, 20263 months agoSummary
Anthony Castore, an elite strength coach and cellular medicine fellow, discusses how to balance muscle building with longevity by optimizing AMPK and mTOR pathways through strategic training, nutrition, and peptide use. He shares a cautionary personal story about overloading his system with too many peptides simultaneously, which led to hospitalization, and emphasizes the importance of building a strong foundational pyramid of lifestyle, training, and nutrition before adding advanced interventions.
Insights
- Peptides and biohacking tools amplify existing signals rather than replace them—they work best on a solid foundation of lifestyle, training, and nutrition, not as shortcuts for poor fundamentals
- AMPK and mTOR must be toggled strategically throughout the week; building muscle and losing fat simultaneously is possible by manipulating training stimulus, nutrition timing, and recovery cycles
- Mitochondrial structure (cardiolipin health via phospholipids and plasmalogens) must be repaired before using performance-enhancing peptides, or the system will crash under increased demand
- Stacking multiple peptides creates signal noise and oxidative stress; single interventions with clear mechanisms are more effective than combining complementary tools simultaneously
- Recovery capacity, not training volume, is the limiting factor for adaptation; walking and lifestyle optimization often yield better results than aggressive training protocols
Trends
Shift from 'more is better' biohacking mentality to strategic, sequenced intervention protocols based on cellular readinessGrowing emphasis on mitochondrial health as the foundational metric for longevity and performance optimizationIntegration of cellular medicine frameworks (AMPK/mTOR, fission/fusion, redox balance) into mainstream strength coachingIncreased caution around peptide stacking and combination products; market moving toward single-mechanism, context-specific toolsRecovery and lifestyle optimization gaining parity with training stimulus in performance coaching modelsPersonalized training stimulus selection (metabolic vs. tension vs. neural) based on individual recovery capacity and goalsKetone monoester adoption as foundational intervention before advanced peptide protocolsEmphasis on circadian alignment and parasympathetic support as prerequisites for peptide efficacy
Topics
AMPK vs mTOR pathway optimization for muscle building and fat lossMitochondrial fission, fusion, and mitophagy in training recoveryCardiolipin repair and phospholipid/plasmalogen supplementationPeptide stacking risks and signal noise in biohacking protocolsTraining stimulus selection: metabolic, tension-based, and neural hypertrophyKetone monoester (beta-hydroxybutyrate) as foundational interventionSS-31, MOTS-c, and humanin peptide protocols and cyclingBAM-15 and SLU-PP332 small molecules: mechanisms and appropriate contexts5-Amino-1MQ and NAD+ management for metabolic flexibilityRedox potential and NADH/NAD+ balance in cellular signalingRecovery capacity assessment via phase angle, continuous glucose monitoring, and subjective markersCircadian alignment through light exposure and walking protocolsParasympathetic nervous system support via GHRP-6 and lifestylePeptide world congress and SSRP (Society for Stress and Resilience Professionals) certificationsLongevity training frameworks balancing muscle preservation with metabolic health
Companies
Alchemy IQ Labs
Anthony Castore's supplement company producing SLU-PP332 and BAM-15 peptide/small molecule products
Vitaly Skincare
Sponsor offering copper peptides (GHK-Cu) and exosome-based skincare for cellular signaling and repair
Beam Minerals
Sponsor providing liquid mineral supplement to support mitochondrial energy production and cellular function
Level Up Health
Sponsor offering Complete Liver Complex supplement to support detoxification and metabolic health
People
Anthony Castore
Elite strength coach and SSRP fellow specializing in cellular medicine integration with training protocols
Dr. Dominic D'Agostino
Cellular medicine researcher and mentor referenced for ketone and mitochondrial pathway expertise
Charles Poliquin
Legendary strength coach whose integrated approach to Chinese medicine and training influenced Castore's methodology
Chad Koi
Castore's early mentor who coached him through significant natural muscle gain transformation
Natalie Niddam
Podcast host, nutritionist, and epigenetic coach specializing in peptides and biohacking for longevity
Quotes
"You can't build and burn at the same time. Like you got to... there's all these different philosophies in strength training, right?"
Natalie Niddam•~45:00
"If you keep trying to push against that system 100%, you know I hate to say it but you're probably going to land up exactly where I did and as cool as it sounds it really sucks having a tube down your throat"
Anthony Castore•~135:00
"Peptides don't really work that way... peptides might give you a ladder so you can hold your hand against the ceiling... never should you look at them like well if I take a peptide I'm going to put my hand through the ceiling"
Anthony Castore•~155:00
"You've got to support the structure that you're right... this peptide works for this, this works for this, but you're asking these things all to do what they do on a structure that's completely rubble"
Dr. Dominic D'Agostino (paraphrased)•~125:00
"Living life is longevity and we don't get to pick how long we have but we get to choose the quality of how those years are going to be"
Anthony Castore•~160:00
Full Transcript
Welcome to Longevity. I'm your host, Natalie Nidom. I'm a nutritionist, a human potential and epigenetic coach, and I created this podcast to bring you the latest ways to take control of your health and longevity. We cover it all from new technology and ancestral health practices, to personalize interventions, and a very special interest of mine, peptides and bio-regulators. Enjoy the show. With books over back, I'm Natalie Nidom, your host. Now, if you've ever wondered how to train hard and age well, the concept that a lot of people say is not possible, this episode is for you. My guest, Anthony Kestor, blends elite strength coaching with deep cellular medicine. We break down things like, AMPK versus MTOR. Don't worry. If you don't know what that means, we explain it in the episode. Might a congeal health, peptides, and how to structure training for long-term performance. Plus, Anthony shares a personal story about how sometimes things can go sideways when you stack too many good things at once. Now, Anthony and his business partner have designed a couple of very innovative supplements that we do talk about in the episode. If you decide you want to get your hands on them, you can go to alchemyiklabs.com and use code NAT10. We'll put that in the show notes for you. That's alchemyikalchem.com.com and NAT10. Next, I'll thank two of our sponsors, and then we're diving in. Let's face it, you can't change your biology, but you can support it intelligently. A lot of products chase surface-level results, while ignoring what actually drives resilience underneath communication. When signaling gets distorted by age, stress or environment, repair becomes less coordinated, and this is important, and especially in skincare. Vitaly understands this. They first earned by trust years ago, with pharmaceutical-grade copper peptides, like GHKCU, one of the most research regenerative signaling molecules that we can get access to. That actually naturally exists in your body. Now, Vitaly evolved that science by introducing exosomes, the body's native messengers. They use zero age exosomes, which means the signals driving repair are cleaner and more efficient. Paired with copper peptides, it's less about forcing change, and more about supporting skin to do what it already knows how to do. If you think about longevity in terms of mitochondria, signaling, and long-term resilience, Vitaly's skincare built for your biology. All you have to do to get your hands on some is visit VitalySkinCare.com and use code NAT20 for 20% off. If you feel tired, like deep tired, it might actually not just be your schedule. It could be your cells. Mitochondria are responsible for producing energy in every cell of your body, but as we get older, they sometimes don't work as efficiently, which means less energy, slower recovery, and that creeping, why am I exhausted feeling? But here's the good news. Mitochondria also depend on minerals to do their job, and when they're properly supported, energy production improves, sometimes dramatically. And this is why beam minerals is part of my daily routine. It's a liquid mineral supplement you take as quick as a shot in the morning, because it's liquid, it absorbs fast, because it's comprehensive, you're not playing mineral roulette. What sets beam apart is that it delivers all essential minerals in bioavailable form designed to support cellular energy, not just hydration or electrolytes. And because it's founded on phobic and humigastid, that means it's a nature's delivery system to get those things you need into the cell and get the things you don't need out of the cell. So if you want to support your energy recovery and healthy aging at the cellular level, you've just got to give beam a try. All you have to do to do that is go to beamminerals.com and use code NAT20 to get 20% off your first order. It is such a pleasure to finally have you here, Anthony Kastor. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much for having me on here. You're a podcast that I listened to and have enjoyed for years on part of your community, and I was humbled to be asked to be a guest. Well, it's a pleasure. And actually, yeah, I noticed you met and joined my community, but you've been kind of even silent. So I'm kind of like, does he want to be here in cogniton? So I'm like, I'll amount at some point. I got a funny story behind this. You'll appreciate this. For as much as I've started to learn about cellular medicine and I can piece together science, you will not meet anybody. It's stupider than me when it comes to technology. And I couldn't log in. So for the longest time, I kept trying and I've got really, really short patient. So if I can't get it on the third time, I'm like, that. And then I kept seeing things come through. So I was like, I got to get this figured out. So I finally locked back in. But yeah, the silence was, I changed computers, lost my password and could not figure out how to lock back in. Well, if you need any help and let us know and we'll help you out, we can rescue you. I did the silent background because you know, it's no fun being part of something when you, you're like, you read something, you're like, oh, I want to talk. Oh, I can't interact with these people. That's exactly what happened. Exactly. Okay. All right. We'll rescue you out of the backstage. Thank you. All right. So now let's take you. Let's go back to the beginning a little bit. Just for very briefly, just to give people a little bit of background on you, like what, what moment are experienced as a strength coach? Because that's your roots, right? Is strength coaching like what, what, what kind of pushed you into this whole human performance? Like basically saying, you know, telling people, giving people writing a program for someone to build bigger biceps or quads or whatever is all cool. But how did you kind of make that, that next step into human performance, which is broader? Absolutely. So they say those who do, or those who can do those who can't coach. And I love my parents, but my mom was five, five foot one. My dad said he was five, ten, but I think he was probably closer to five eight. And I love training, but putting on muscle didn't come easy for me. And I always, I was that really curious kid. Ask a lot of questions, figure out how things work. And it was always, how's this work? Why's this work? How can I make it work better? So with the strength training, I really made some great progress. I was blessed to have just an amazing coach and mentor Chad Koi. He's still competing strong men and trains a lot of people. And we put, I was a buck 17 dripping wet. And he brought me up to 185 completely naturally. Wow. Six months and a lost 2% body fat. It was six months. Unbelievable. That's so impossible. But now they didn't know what how old were you? So that's young man, hormones, plus. Yeah. And I attempted wrestling in high school. I wouldn't say it was good, but I was significantly underweight. And so it was kind of that perfect storm of training stimulus eating. And I was just, when there's something I'm interested in, I just kind of hyper focus on it. So I was all in. And what was so cool, I mean, from the beginning, it was like, why does this work? Why am I taking more protein? Why am I doing carbohydrates at this time? So I was always thinking, tinkering with stuff and with Chad's guidance. The impossible is possible. And on, we fast forward a couple years and I never stopped looking for answers and came across to work at Charles Polkin. And to this day, I think he's arguably one of the, if not the most brilliant strength coach ever lived. And I had the privilege of being a coach for him and working directly with him. And what was so interesting about Charles's approach was so novel, was how he connected those dots between Chinese medicine, these other modalities, strength training. And I love that whole system, like I'm very math brained. And I like to have this works because of this. So with Charles as kind of a blueprint for what training could look like, I followed that model. I read about Chinese medicine, nutrition, literally everything I could and continued on this journey. It was in 95 when I still thought I was going to be able to do something in bodybuilding. And we can look at me and say, you're not going to be able to do anything in bodybuilding. You put on 70 pounds and six months of muscle. I'm thinking there's not a whole lot you couldn't do. I guess maybe I should have a better outlook on it. But I was really more interested in, to back up a little bit, I did a bodybuilding show and I got to tell you those trunks are not a good fit. And tip of the head to the people that do it, but it just wasn't for me, but I love the process of it. And the whole like, if I do this, then this happens. So get more into the prep side. 95, I started reading about IGF1 and because I could not stand the smell of protein, that stuff you put on to make you dark on stage. Yeah. And it smells awful. And it gets all over your sheets and clothes, but because I can't see that. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. And then I found out about melanitant. So I was like, man, these peptides are really something. And as much as I could, I kept reading about everything and all the stuff around bodybuilding. So when they officially launched peptide certifications, right away, I was like, I got to do this. I want to learn everything. So I did every single certification out there. I did the A4M, all the auxiliary courses with that. I did SSRP, everything that was available. And literally every course that's popped up, I've done. So and it's really, I just love learning. And in particular, to answer your question, getting back to the original question, you know, the training and the peptides, as I was learning things through the lens of Dr. Seats and the SSRP and cellular pathways and mechanisms, I realized these were terms I was familiar with from training. You know, IGF, PI3K, all this stuff, and MTOR. And it's like, huh, you know, if these are working through these pathways and so is this training, there's got to be this intersection. And it was fun for me. It was like putting together a puzzle, piecing it together, and saying, you know, what are the right answers? How do these pieces fit together? And then just have continued to kind of build out that model? Yeah. And would you say, I mean, it's certainly sounds like from a training perspective. So I mean, you have this unique title, SSRP, fellow and elite strength coach, which is this beautiful marriage of cellular medicine and strength coach, which to many people would seem like their worlds apart, right? But it sounds to me like what you're saying is when you put those two together, you all of a sudden, 1 plus 1 equals 5. And you want to talk about maybe some of those pathways that you've found that will you'll marry with physical training and will yield, you know, five times the reward, then just doing the physical training. And I mean, we know we can optimize pathways. This is a stimulus isn't there, nothing's going to happen. Yeah. Maybe talk a little bit about a couple of those pathways, like let help people to understand like, what does that mean exactly? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great place to start. And probably two of the easiest ones to talk about because these are ones I think people will be familiar with. And if not, I'm going to explain me. So we can kind of unpack them and have just a real basic understanding. The two you probably hear the most are going to be AMPK and MTOR. And when we think about those, and I always have to dump stuff down for myself so that I can I can understand it and I just bring it. When I started learning about these, I pictured AMPK almost like fuel gauge. And when you think about what happens if we're driving our car and our fuel gets low, we're going to sense that it's going to start blinking and cars going to slow down. And we want that on there. We want to know we're running out of fuel. And of course, as long as we're not trying to be like, cram around that sign-failed episode, we're just kept driving. What we're going to do is we're going to pull over. We're going to refuel. And that's a great opportunity to do things like check the tires. Make sure everything's good on the car. We're going to get back on the road and we're going to drive. And building on that analogy, we think about AMPK tour. That's our gas pedal. Go, go, go. And it's fun to drive that car. And especially, if there's no cops around, I'm not saying this out loud on air. Actually, it's just theoretical. Speaking for a friend, you can really push that pedal to the metal. He goes super fast and hard. But we want to think about the balance between those. And that's really where I think a lot of people who are in the hospital, this for me was a big pivot in my thinking. I wanted to put on muscle, all I'm thinking about is AMP tour. And when you have people that are interested in slowing the aging process, AMPK, AMPK. And maybe I should explain those both a little bit more. So what happens with AMPK when it senses low fuel, logical thing to do is create fuel. So that's going to drive like policies breaking down fat for energy and glycolysis breaking down sugar for energy. And the other really cool thing it does is all of the car parts that might have got beat up because we were driving fast, it gives us a chance to clear those out. And that's important because we want to replace those rusty brakes with some brakes that actually work. And in our body, it's the same thing. We want to build build build, but we don't want to build on top of bad infrastructure. And when we balance those, and there's a circadian component, there's a training component, there's a food component, there's a pep tag component. When we balance those two, it's beautiful. It's like using myself, for an example, when we think about that transformation I had, those things are possible because we're balancing the building with the cleanup and we're circadian Lealined were getting the right nutrition to support recovery. Everything's working. Now if we were to just try to build build build to use another analogy, you'll notice I speak in a lot of analogies. I love analogies. And if I was going to build beautiful kitchen for my fiance, you know, hey, we're going to redo the kitchen and I go out and I hired the best workers at all. I mean, these guys are builders. And it has cost to me a pretty penny, $1000 an hour. And I come back a week later and I'm like, guys, where's my kitchen? And they're like, we didn't give us any building materials. I'm like, oh, okay, that's on me. And that's mTOR without AMPK. Now to flip the coin, if I were to go out by brand new wood marble, nice, nice, just things can't take over the whole. The things. The things. Yeah. A client was all the things. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm a guy that can't change a light bulb. So they're just sitting in the kitchen. And again, I come back a week later and I'm like, where's my kitchen? I got the best materials available. The Julie, my fiance is not home. I'm looking at this pile of expensive rubbish and I'm like, well, shoot, I'm just going to go store it. So I'm going to push it off to the sides with at least a tad of the way. And that's what our body does when we break down substrate. We don't we're not using it. It gets stored. So that's my overly simplistic and long-witted explanation of cellular pathways, AMPK, mTOR, and why when we're thinking about things like peptides and small molecules and training stimulus, we want to make sure we're pushing or pulling the right lever at the right time. People will say you can't build and burn at the same time. Like you got to and there's all these different philosophies in in in strength training, right? That you'll have people that do like a month of tear down where AMPK is is the lead takes the lead, right? We're stimulating autophagy and mitophagy were were losing the we're getting rid of excess adipose tissue were tearing down and then we'll follow it up with a cycle of build where now we're changing just like what you're saying we're just changing gears. In your in your mind is it you need like big chunks of time to do the tear down and big chunks for cleaning or do you think it's the kind of thing that people can weave in and out of in shorter period like in in over the course of a week or does it depend on the person like how do you decide how you're going to play how you're going to toggle between the AMPK and the MTOR dominant states. Yeah and since really good question and the short answer is it does depend on the person but I'll explain that a little bit better and the other short answer is you can absolutely and you should toggle between those states. So we want to think about with these training stimulus I'll give you three different examples. For the sake of discussion we'll say metabolic training is one type of training and when my definition of metabolic training based on like the stuff that N1 group does that's going to be where our primary goal is to if you think about reaching failure we're reaching failure because we're running out of breath we're not picking up a weight we can't pick up we're just we've exhausted our metabolic capabilities and for me that comes pretty fast nobody hates cardio more than me so an example of what would that work out look like that might be 25 reps rest for 30 seconds 25 reps rest for 30 seconds and that would be isolation exercises because we won't don't want to create nervous system stress or big systemic stress we just localized metabolic stress another type of training we could think about would be tension based hypertrophy and that's going to be something where we're doing a little bit more volume we're not picking a load that we're going to fail with at low reps because we want to create maximum tension for the maximum time and then the third type of training stress and this might be closer to powerlifting neural hypertrophy that's going to be adaptations in the nervous system are expressed through training so are being able to coordinate nervous system efforts and put all that into a single rep and lift a super heavy weight for just a couple reps more demanding on the nervous system so then when we think about these what are some signs that we're going to know like this is the right training stimulus for me or I should pivot so with metabolic training since basically we're trying to create local stress and we don't want to overdo it what we want to think about is if we've got two days later delayed onset muscle soreness that's a good indication that we're maybe not capable of adapting to that type of stress effectively and it doesn't mean we can't do it it means that let's think about what's on the opposite end of that spectrum so if this is really light and short weight um neural really heavy and a few reps it's going to be the opposite so it might be an opportunity to spend anywhere from a couple workouts to a couple weeks doing that and with neural to kind of give you the guardrails for that anything having to do with the nervous system is going to affect our digestion and it's going to affect our sleep so we were trying to lift those heavy weights and all of a seven we're not sleeping so well or our digestion's off um nervous systems not adapting properly and then with hypertrophy when you think about because we're really not maxing out the nervous system but it's involved and we're not maxing out our metabolic system but it's involved the rate limiting factor is going to be our ability to clear metabolic waste um so for example if you're fighting off a cold and people do it all the time I'm going to go in workout through it I'm tough I don't want to miss a workout um what you get sick you get sicker faster yep yeah exactly you're competing with the stimulus so um to get back to the question do we toggle whatever what I do is somebody comes to me day one I say what have you been doing what worked for you what hasn't and that gives us one of those three types of training stimulus that we're going to start with and then based on those guardrails um it's a little more extensive than that but for the sake of discussion I think this will give something people to this will give people something to kind of get their head around um when those guardrails start to manifest and you know for three four days somebody's like you know I really haven't slept well and we're in a neural phase I'm like all right pivot opposite end of the spectrum metabolic um so little delude and so then what we think about is clip notes version when those are in place how do we support the nutrition how do we support the lifestyle step and lifestyle is really the most important um we had a discussion you and I beautiful discussion and I think we're on the same page with this one we think about I like to use the analogy of a pyramid and the broader the base the better the support yeah and bottom of that pyramid has always got to be lifestyle and the beauty of it is like you can build a solid solid base and all you got to do is wake up in the morning get some sunlight all the boring stuff breathe um work work it into your schedule and the better you can do that um essentially the the more you ascend to that next level the next level we think about that's a training stimulus and the cool thing about training when we think about stress in our life there's a lot of different types of stress emotional job training um different time zone whatever but the only one we have a hundred percent control over and we can really use it to signal for the right adaptations that we want is going to be training so pick in that training's dress and then when we think about logically the next layer that pyramid is going to be the nutrition um nutrition is going to be the raw materials for the scaffolding um for recovery for substrate availability all that stuff and then when we think about the top layer that pyramid that's going to be all the cool stuff we love to talk about the peptides repurposed pharmaceuticals and all that cool stuff but I tell people you know so many people want to build that pyramid upside down they want to take all the cool peptides and use that to take care of um maybe a short coming with nutrition maybe a short coming with training maybe a short coming with lifestyle but if you've ever tried to balance the pyramid upside down I'm not very good at it it doesn't work yeah yeah you want to make sure you have a foundation um and the breath or the uh with the foundation is going to dictate you know um what's going to make sense to sprinkle on top because you're into the cellular medicine piece right and that is a very unique perspective that not a lot of trainers are looking at at all so do you do you do you assess your client's capacity to handle load based on their response or are you doing some kind of testing that gives you an idea of what's their capacity at a cellular level to manage this type of training or to even say you know this because like for example for me I know that genetic and like even from a genetic perspective which I always found really interesting when I got told this because I see it play out in the gym I need more time to recover between workouts like my pathways for recovery are not they're just not fast so if I tried when I was doing CrossFit and I was trying to do it five days in a row I was a bag of broken toys until I smart up and cut down on my frequency of training which made me sad because yeah I will kept wanting to go but yeah but you know probably someone at a would be able at a cellular level to say like this this system is not primed to manage the damage manage the inflammatory response fast it will but and is there is there a way for me to cheat like are there peptide strategies I could be using to overcome these shortcomings in my system at a cellular level sure again now and it's a I've found the same thing too we look at these programs in muscle magazines and it's like train seven days a week and for somebody that's worked well but for a lot of us you know there's other factors there's going to be life there's going to be all these things and all those things affect our recovery so to answer your question when somebody comes to me there's a couple different approaches I use if it's if they have blood work available we can look at that and that can give us some some valuable feedback I use an inbody 970 that gives us phase angle which is going to show health of the cell membrane and how well signals are traveling it's going to give us how they're holding their water where they're holding their water fat muscle bone mass all those important things so that's a real good starting point and sometimes people have data like continuous glucose monitor or even something as simple as aluminum yeah these are all good things if I don't have any of those to work with there's some questions you can ask these people or you can even ask yourself if you're trying to think about where to start and generally the questions I'll ask is what have you been doing so if somebody says you know I've been training four days a week and I haven't made any progress so the first thing I'm thinking is like four days a week well let's style that back to three really good days and it's all about just starting so if we start with three days and they're making progress great if they're not then as they're working out you can observe things like are they having trouble recovering between sets so if they're having trouble recovering between sets that means their aerobic systems not very efficient at recovering that ATP because when we're resting and we use that oxidative phosphorylation that's what banks that 32 to 36 ATP compared to if we're still running in glycolysis and we're just spitting out six to eight ATP yeah and if we're looking at somebody that doesn't have good throughput they can't generate power and they tell me their sleep and their work is stressful their sleep is bad that tells me the nervous system we got to build that up slowly and if we think about somebody that really does you know a ton of walking all the right stuff but they're still not really getting the performance within those sets that we want that could be something like the folds in the christ day where the super complexes are at and when we think about what's going to improve that that's going to be like intervals so basically kind of looking at giving somebody like this is what you're starting with and then conversation with them how are you sleeping how are you feeling are they making increments in weight or decreasing rest time or variables and if not observing why that's not happening is are kind of the tools to point in the right direction and then even to build on that when and this goes back to your original question about building and building and burning at the same time I look at it a little bit differently than a lot of people and what I'm looking at is specifically through the lens of the mitochondria and to explain that a little bit better when we exercise when we're working out or driving vision and vision is when mitochondria is splitting apart so basically they've been worked and there's a lot that happens in between but I won't bore everybody with that you're getting bad parts over here good parts over here and we want to have mTOR afterwards that's why we do our meal after the workout and I actually have people push it back 30 to 60 minutes to allow for time for my topogy my topogy is clean up of damaged mitochondrial parts that were exposed to oxidators stress during the workout and then that mTOR you know that big meal with the carbs all the good stuff we like to eat and the protein coming in that stimulates pathways that are going to be conducive to growth and fusion and then in the next day it's kind of like going back to our building analogy we got all the workers on the site we got all the materials on the site but we don't want to just keep bringing in more workers and more equipment what we want to do is give them time to build what they have and clean up so the day after the workout that's actually a really low calorie day and the purpose of that is to improve fusion and fusion is where we have those leftover parts from fission I know fusion fission sounds a little confusing but just think fission is splitting fusion is joining we're fusing together yeah when we fuse together it's so cool it happens I say so I kind of nerd out on this stuff so cool it happens the one mitochondria fused what they're doing is they're essentially looking around they see their buddy over there mr. broken mitochondria and they're like man you know three quarters of this mitochondria is so perfect this is better than anything we had before and that mitochondria sees them and it's like we really could have used those that half of mitochondria is before we were exercising and they fuse together and now we got this better mitochondria that's more efficient at using energy more efficient at handling oxidative stress so when we balance that whole fission fusion my topogy it's absolutely possible to build muscle and lose fat my own data last five and a half weeks I did this experiment I tracked it and five and a half weeks on inbody same time of day same hydration everything seven pounds of muscle and only one up three tenths of a percent of body fat you so feeding the day of the workout and then stripping like kind of pushing that amt-k cycle the next day yeah and at jokou people you know the bros had it right a long time ago cheat day um but this is just kind of expansion of that and when we think about you know we're so conditioned to think about how many calories do we burn in a day but our body's really thinking bigger than that it's thinking you know a week or whatever so what I do if I'm trying to lose fat I would for that week I'd start with average of a 10 percent deficit and my training days would be really high with all of most of the calories focused right after the workout um my recovery days would be really low but that's going to average out to 10 percent deficit over the course of a week and if I'm not losing fat I'll take that down to a 20 percent deficit and then for muscle building it's going to be the exact opposite but what you'll find if you do it that way is you'll absolutely put on muscle even if you're losing fat and you'll absolutely lose fat even if you're gaining muscle it's just which one do you want to do more of mm-hmm so we're talking about performance now you know from like building muscle adding muscle to the frame what if we start what if we now overlay this whole framework of longevity over this because we don't typically think of bodybuilders as the most longest-lived people like they're not you know what I mean like because the nature of the bodybuilder is the to me they're the original biohackers right these are people who will stop at nothing to achieve the outcome that they're after and they're very specific it's a physical aesthetic outcome it has very little to do with you know how metabolically flexible they are or yeah yeah yeah yeah no no rank because if I if I get the cuts sort of the lines or whatever it is that I'm looking for that I need in my in my abs or my shoulders or my glutes then I've achieved my gold on my insulin resistant don't care like you know I'll deal with that on another day and so as a result bodybuilders often don't live the longest or most vital life so you know the audience that's listening here is sitting there going okay great you're telling me I can build muscle and I can clean up and that sounds like a good idea but what if we're training for longevity like what do we where do we change things up a little because I'm a big believer obviously in having lean muscle as we age we need it to remain functional but I also don't think that carrying a ton of muscle in in older age is necessarily the best strategy like you want enough and you want it to be functional but you don't need loads yeah I completely agree and you know I've got all the love and respect in the world for the bodybuilders was never any good at it but I did it myself and now you know 53 you can tell by the gray in my beard the focus is on longevity and love have a muscle but there comes that point where it's like I'm happy with what I have and it's practical but I don't need to walk around with the biggest muscles I want to add years to my life I want to have a sharp mind during the day all these things so what's really cool is with the same pieces I would give a bodybuilder we can give your person that's looking at longevity and going back to those three different categories of training stimulus or somebody is we always hear about the benefits of raising VO2 max so they might spend a little bit more time doing metabolic type of training and then when they and less time and kind of that neural type of training or tension training so if I could simplify for the audience just because people might be a little mixed up so on the metabolic training it's kind of high reps it's high reps moderate weight and short rest period yeah I'm short rest period in between the neural training is when you're you're doing high high weight low reps and you're training to failure and then in between there's something there's that other space which is tension the tension which is not going to failure you might be working to I don't know 70 80% of your max maybe 85 that kind of perfect yeah exactly and if we think about how those kind of line up with our longevity goals so metabolic is going to be a lever we could pull on to improve VO2 max tension based aperture piece is going to be a lever we could pull on to improve organ function and immune system and then the neural training is going to be lever we can pull on for everything from like brain function to vision when we think about taking peptides to increase BDNF nothing does it better the next exercise especially if you had to pick up something heavy so there's a place in everybody's program for all these and it's just realizing that you know every time that it had to be a PR but these are all awesome levers we get to pull on and then when we pull on them that's kind of how we choose our peptides what are the signals that my body's capable of creating with this stimulus and what are the ones that you know just like a old speaker we need to turn that volume up a little bit we need to make it clearer so what are the specific peptides we can add in to amplify those signals okay well so let's talk about that a little bit so that's interesting so what you're saying and probably I guess it's how much weight you put to each one is going to be what stage you're at in your life and what your ultimate goal is right from a longevity perspective you're going to want to toggle between the three probably do less of the neural maybe than than the metabolic and the tension I'm guessing or is really good way to think about it is and you're right on track with that in terms of like specifics for how much remember when we were talking about like for example metabolic you're going to have that delayed onset muscle soreness and neural digestion sleep the tension you know some some immune dysregulation and so what we want to do is all three of those are going to move us towards longevity and the amount of time we spend in one we probably want to spend more time in metabolic but we just do it until we kind of get to that point where we're not adapting and then we pivot and we do that until we don't adapt and then we pivot because all three of those are moving us in the right direction and as our system adapts and that's with the peptides and lifestyle and nutrition all that stuff is going to help us do even faster that lets us be a little bit more specific with which of these trainings are we going to be able to tolerate for longer and which one is moving as closer to our specific goal example if I wanted to build a B of 2 max but I have really poor metabolic tolerance I might have to work these other two levers just to gradually move that up but once it gets up then I can spend a little bit longer there at what point you bring the peptides in did you use them all along kind of thing as a support and what peptides and small molecules are we talking about here are we talking about things like VPC157 to help recovery to help support recovery are we talking about mitochondrial peptides to support mitochondria I know that you're a big fan of uralithane and I am as well I think that anything we can do to help the mitochondria keep that kind of cleaner constant cleanup going the better off will be but you want to maybe talk a little bit about the peptides you use in those different phases to support and do you ever use the peptide as a as a gap stop or you really using it just to support what you're trying to achieve yeah absolutely so when we think about all these awesome tools that we have out here and I'm guilty of this happy to share my story a little bit later but you know it's like this does this so I'm going to take it for this and this does this and it's like where do we stop putting stuff in and when we put too many things in we create signal noise it's just like having a hundred of your favorite people in a small room you get the chance to interview them but if everybody's talking at the same time there's no signals getting through so to answer your question where do we start I always I'd say probably 90% of the people I start with the first thing I'm going to reach for is actually a ketone nano-ester and the reason for that is we always want to think about how many things do we have to check off to adapt to this training stimulus to get a training effect and some of those things are improving the ratio of NAD to NADH managing our antioxidant system decreasing histone deacetylase so we don't replicate inflammatory genes managing inflammatory cytokines and elucin one beta two-minute crosses back to your alpha NFKB things like that so what if I were to tell you if you throw back a terrible tasting shot of ketones or if you use the kinetic protein actually tastes good I have some downstairs yeah I just got I live off it yes great stuff so with that that gives people something to start with and you're already making huge steps towards getting a training adaptation and then we have budget considerations and everything too so there's a lot of good things out there but if if that's usually my first go to then we want to think about next most important thing and we'll absolutely get to the peptides but I just really like to lay the foundations yeah so just go back to get the ketones so we're using the ketones because there's source of energy they are also anti-inflammatory so they help with those that manage inflammation really nicely and so it's kind of like this low level it's I find that and like it's almost like a very easy low risk intervention they're just amazing I mean I could go on for hours about them they when we think about you know people going and getting an NADIV to get that NAD into the cell it depends on NAD NADH ratio so when you take a ketone estuary you've optimized that so you're getting energy in the cell and then when you think about reducing oxidative stress that that's going to activate NADPH which will activate NLRP3 and NRF2 which will decrease oxidative stress and then so we've got an buffer for oxidative stress we've got energy for the mitochondria and we're basically forcing that cell that might be metabolically inflexible to make that big stockpile ATP with oxidative phosphorylation so you know stockpile in 32 to 36 ATP the other things we want to think about is the actual structure of the mitochondria before we add in mitochondrial peptides it's like I always joke with people and I took this from Charles you can't shoot a cannon off of a canoe so if uh not unless you want to go swim no it absolutely won't work out unless you want to go for a swim and if we're taking all these things like slu or motsy that can improve throughput and that's a good thing from the mitochondria but you know if we don't if we've got cracked cardi or oxidized cardiolipin in there cardiolipins the four-tail phospholipid that makes up the inner membrane of the mitochondria or you know we don't have uh enough folds in the Chris days so we don't have these super complexes um then uh it's just like trying to um drive a car super fast with a cracked motor block um you put you put nitrous boosters on there but that poor thing can't even go to 65 in the first place it's absolutely gonna crash and so we so scapuling is gonna be the next thing we want to address and that's gonna come from phospholipids plus malogens and um making sure you're getting like your phospholipid fisheyeels and even just taking a half of a baby aspirin with that to help convert it to the perversalbic mediators the resolvins like toxins, maracens and protectants and um and those are actually what modulate the whole inflammatory process in our body just so yeah cheap simple fix you know people are taking these megasus of fisheyeel take a good phospholipid bound fisheyeel and add a half of baby aspirin and boom box checked or even need a canisteredines if you don't mind them and take a half of baby aspirin so you're producing these perversalbic mediators um so after we have the scapuling in place i do think um best place to start in my opinion is usually gonna be mitochondria and when we think about mitochondria peptides people are gonna be familiar with we have montsie we have ss 31 we have humanin um there are others but if we focus on those can kind of give um clip node dispersion of what and when so when we think about montsie what it's really good at doing is helping us switch fuel sources and what i mean by that is switching from like uh running on glycogen like when we're lifting weights to running on oxidative phosphorylation when we're covering in between so we get that ATP back um when we think about ss 31 what that does you know it tells people duct tape fixes everything so ss 31's like duct tape it uh stabilizes that cardio lepon so remember since that's the intermited condrial membrane for the electron transport chain if that's got those oxidative patches which cracked and rusty not gonna work but if we can stabilize that while we're replacing things for the scapuling from the phospholipids we were just talking about um then you know we can get some performance out of it and then when we think about humanin humanin's kind of like the um it prevents uh uh apoptosis and it also crosses the blood brain barrier so i tell people when you get to that point that um you've got good mitochondrial structures so the scapuling has been replaced with nice fresh phospholipids and plasma allegins and you've worked out that mitochondria so maybe exercise mimatic like montsier slu and then um you know you get the perfect blueprint for mitochondria that would be in my opinion a smart place to freeze-frame replicate those by using humanin for a couple weeks um so that's a blueprint we're going off of and then we can even talk about so what's next um that would be an opportunity that you could do like a fox-so-for for three days clear out your senescent burden and then when people go and do something like an n-a-d you're not going to have the problem of it getting sucked up by these senescent cells with an upregulated cd-38 because you cleared a lot of those out with the fox-so-for you can actually get a boost from it and don't keep doing it um instead get that boost and then use a five amino one mq which will keep in an empty down so you're not um because if you put more n-a-d in you make more in an empty so there's no net gain but if you manage the amount of n-n-m-t then this bolusive n-a-d you have can kind of burn off through a longer amount of time and then uh keep your apigenin in there for down regulating the cd-38 so those senescent cells that might be starting to pop up again aren't taking your n-a-d and um make sure you're using like a one m-n-a one m-n-a is going to help with the recycling of the uh n-a-d um perfect yep absolutely and really what I do uh what I tell what I do what I tell people to do days that I'm training I use the five amino one mq there's some cool studies about how it actually improves performance as I went on vertical jump um and the decreasing n-n-m-t will shrink fat cells um and then on your days that you're recovering remember our goal is um to get those macrophages from m1 to m2 so anti-inflammatory reduce inflammation or cover from workout um and we raise pre-prostocyclins and um improve endothelial function with the one m-n-a so recycle that n-a-d on those days use the one m-n-a on an off-training day and um so that's my my example of yes about how I put things together. 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I love this liver complex you guys I do 30 days every few months every year and it never fails to deliver so to get your hands on your own go to leveluphealth.com lvluphealth.com and make sure to use code not to save 20% off your order. With the mitochondrial peptides you were talking about the SS 31 the MOTC the human and how often do you feel and again it's going to depend I mean some people just need it more than others but is that the kind of thing you might do like a eight week cycle a couple times a year or is this an ongoing thing you dip in and out of like what are your thoughts on that because you know we're let's agree that our mitochondria are the are the I mean we have so many important parts in our body but if the mitochondria go down nothing else is going to happen. They're the captains of the ship yeah completely. When we think about you know how do we rotate these to your point it is person specific but in terms of how do we choose when to rotate them things we think about have I been beaten up my mitochondria for a while if I have I probably need some SS 31 and I probably need those to go hard on those possible that but to make sure those are repaired and things that you're going to notice when you repaired those membranes decreased oxidative stress there's going to be less inflammation you're going to have clearer thoughts you're going to recover faster between workouts you're going to see improvements in blood glucose so then after we know and this is all without blood work just blood work would be a whole different discussion but yeah with subjectively we'll assume we've got good mitochondria structure now so now it's just like recovering from a workout now that we recovered from a workout what we're going to want to do is work out again so that would be like a motzi or a slew or an ATX 304 and then after we train for a while you know we need to recover so that could be a little bit of SS 31 or if you know we didn't push too hard we just enough to get mitochondrial biogenesis but still been keeping up with our plasma allegins and phospholipids that's where we do just that really short acupids short two week humanin for the freeze frame and then kind of rinse and repeat start again with well I guess at this point you would start with if we're not doing the FOX04 a different exercise mimetic then stabilize a cardiovascular iphone repair and then freeze frame humanin that makes total sense that's really interesting so the five amino one mq there's a lot of interest in that and I'm seeing seeing combinations of five amino one mq with n a dh on the market what are your thoughts on that I would say don't and the reason uh um you know I could be completely wrong on this one so this is what you're but you're you know here's the thing like I mean you're sitting there and you're thinking it through at a cellular pathway level so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss your don't tell me why explain to me why you're feeling like this is just is it too much is it too little is it the wrong stimulus at the wrong time like what's what's happening here because we're putting two things together mm-hmm exactly and when we think about n a dh and n a d the the balance of those essentially is that redox potential and when we talk about redox potential um easy way I like to remember it all you got to think about is oil rig on oil rig it's a acronym oil oxidation is lost lost with an electron reduction is gained rig RIG and as silly as it sounds that balance of redox is everything that is what modulates our antioxidant system that's what gives the mitochondria energy that's what is the spark that creates all these signals in our body and it's a really difficult thing to measure even with blood work so when we dumped in n a dh yeah yeah we're making the assumption that that we're low in that and if we're not and we throw off that redox potential then what happens is we're creating oxidative stress with antioxidants basically things go haywire that creates oxidation in membranes and when membranes get oxidized you've seen a car rest just imagining a cell's resting and so for that reason I don't think it's a good idea I think if we use something like a ketone ester that can almost intelligently optimize that redox potential and then we use a 5-amino 1MQ because the specific purpose for 5-amino 1MQ is to hold down that NNMT and we don't need to manage NADH to do that their independence so why did they put them together I don't know you got a good idea was any dh to me like introducing an adh just seems for exactly the reason you said like it seems like you're loading up one side of the scale in a system that the body is constantly working to balance you exactly right you somehow that you were deficient in an adh would I don't even know how that would happen because essentially that would be it would be an imbalance in a process not an imbalance in a molecule yeah every cell yeah and I think I mean the best explanation I have and I don't know the people that are coming out with this I don't want to speak for them but what we see a lot of times in the industry is random example no actual example but you know like well okay here's a real world one says slew is good uh bam is good let's just put them together now people have have all their fat burners in one and you will recall the conversation I had around that and why that's not a good idea because independently they can both work in the right context but together they're basically blocking each other from doing their job creating excessive oxidative stress and the exact opposite of what you'd want to do if you're trying to improve mitochondrial performance great so what we're talking about here is bam 15 which is a small molecule and SLU PP336 332 sorry so those are the two small molecules we're talking about and and the reason why we're talking is so people are listening to this either they know and they were part of that whole craziness for a while or they know what we're talking about so and what you're saying is they're essentially redundant you would you actually want to toggle maybe you want to toggle between them or use them at different times because they're both and and there and there was maybe maybe what we should do because we're gonna run out of time and we're just going to the meat of it and I want to talk about the story because you have a really powerful story to tell and I'm and in this space I think those stories don't get told enough you're both well going oh I'm gonna use this I don't know what this is for me and this was great right now we're just we just finished saying you know the five amino one mq with the n a dh probably not a great idea like just you're you're taking a risk right so when we come to the bam 15 and them and the SLU PP the slew as you call it let's talk a little bit about what does each one of them do like maybe quickly don't go too deep and then why do people think and people are thinking putting them together is amazing we're just going to do more of the same only better and how would you use them instead so the short version is when we think about SLU PP332 it is it's helping with fat burning potentially it increases use of fat for a substrate by up to 30% and it does this by increasing activity at complex one and complex three in the electron transport chain so it's turning up that volume and it creates this futile cycle even though there's more throughput there's not more energy yield so it's more and that's almost where the exercise mimetic kind of thing comes from we're really working that mitochondria but we're not making more ATP when so that can create oxidative stress when we think about how bam works bam can also create would be something you would do for fat loss some people might remember from way back DNP they're both uncouple-ers and an uncouple-er what it does is essentially it causes energy to leak so it makes the cell less efficient at making the energy it needs there's a time and place for both but if we think this through logically when you're uncoupling you're decreasing membrane potential and you need to have membrane potential to increase throughput at complex one and three so when that complex one and three has to work even harder to do what it's supposed to do you're creating oxidative stress oxidative stress is going to oxidize the cardiolipin and what all these big jumbled up words mean is you're going to have brain fog you're going to collapse and you're going to ruin your redox potential so that's really what we want to think about when we're taking these things it's not this works for this it's this works for this in this context what's the whole picture what are the on-site off-site targets upstream downstream signaling is this right tool for the job it's not about how much we can put in it's about choosing the right tools and really how little you can put in because remember exercise will send all these signals exercise all signal PGC1 alpha for mitochondrial biogenesis exercise all stimulate IL-6 for healthy inflammatory response exercise can improve NAD to NADH ratio so it's like as much as I hate to tell people like come on just go exercise and then have these cool things yeah then when would you use the slew and when would you use the band 15 you're not going to use them together right not together now based on what we're talking about so when would you use them separately like what are you use case scenarios sure so the first thing we want to think about is again the structure structure dictates function so if we've got a healthy carina lippen and we've got well performing mitochondria we're managing our oxidative stress this might be a really cool opportunity to use small amount of the SLU PP332 because it's going to increase bed oxidation so fat loss and it's going to increase throughput in the electron transport chain but the mitochondria can handle it because we've got the scaffolding place yeah and then what we would think about is after we've done that for a while you know we need our time out our recovery so have a couple weeks in there to recover just you know take care of those mitochondria then if we're not doing a hypertrophy type of training where you're creating more oxidative stress or metabolic you know maybe it's more a neural type of training where you have a little bit longer rest in between and you're doing like more walking to make up for calories you're not burning in the gym for maybe 10 days maybe two weeks that might be a good opportunity to use BAM and really pull on that fat loss lever you especially if your goal isn't to PR on strength on your off-training days where you're getting that walking in that can amplify the effects on AMPK so if I was going to do them that's how I do them yeah but it's a perfect example for the name is during more restorative periods where you're you're you're just not putting the system under stress so the BAM is going to come in there because otherwise it's just more of a stressor to a system that's being stressed yeah you want to think about the times that you don't really have a big energy demand because what it's doing is making you less efficient making energy that would be a good time to if you want to try it out try it out but if you're doing it at a time where you need peak energy output and you're making it so that you're you're slipping energy in that process and the electron transport chain you're creating stress that maybe you can't adapt to and at the very least you're decreasing your performance let's talk a little bit about when things can go sideways and you've had that experience yourself and I think it's important to share this experience because as a seasoned coach as someone who knows what he's doing a guy who studies this stuff we all fall prey to the same things right we get overly excited about something and we go yay okay fine and we just go ahead and jump into something and low and behold every once in a while we get this cosmic this karmic communication that's like you're not paying attention and we're going to make you pay attention yeah exactly you know there's a saying smart man learns from the mistakes of others a wise man or I'm sorry a smart man learns from his mistakes a wise man learns from the mistakes of others yeah smart man and to kind of give people the history what happened to me and the reason I share this is not so everybody can tell me how much of an idiot I am when they see you but I'm just kidding but yeah I want I want you guys to be wise I want you to understand this and you know I do all my research I look at the pathways the mechanisms so it's easy to make a mistake on this stuff and what had happened was I was going to be speaking at peptide world congress and super excited about this and I was like all right you know we're going all out I got to got to look good on stage you know I'm going to be my healthiest ever so it's like you know Montse is going to help with AMPK so it's SLU I'll do bam on my off days don't worry I'm stabilizing my cardiolipin with SS31 I got my GHRH in here Tessamorel and that improves complex one and three as well as helps with lipid management and I've got my GHRP6 which has GHRS on the efferent nepharant neurons from the vagus nerve so even addressed my parasympathetic balance I thought I had all the bases covered and anybody who's listening right now is probably like whoa you lost me at the second peptide you're going hard I was going hard in the paint and yeah what ended up happening is I got a virus or something I didn't realize this until after the facts on it was a Monday I woke up really dizzy and knowing that I had peptide world congress coming up I'm like and my fiancee had the day up we'd love to work out together I was like I'll just go to the gym I'll be on machines I don't have to balance no big deal I mean could I have been stupider so went in there worked out I felt terrible and we're on our way to Whole Foods we're coming back and I'm having trouble taking errand and then you know I get home I lay down I call the chiropractor it was on a holiday and I was like you know I'm a little bit dizzy today I probably just need an adjustment can you get me in tomorrow so go over two-stay a woke up I felt really tired but not dizzy whenever I got my adjustment I felt worse than I did about three hours later I felt even worse so I was like I'm just gonna lay down so I lay down woke up on Wednesday I've spoiled my dog so much that he expects a ride to the park every morning and I went to walk him that morning I mean the world was spinning and I was like come on Jeter you got a poop today no poop so loaded him in the car drove over to the park and I mean I thought I was gonna have to pull the car over so I get over there I'm walking him and all of a sudden I could not take air and I had to call 9-1-1 my fiancee came to get the dog they had to intubate me I landed in the ICU for five days and at the time nobody knew what happened I mean literally nobody knew and you know God bless them Dr. Seeds came all the way in to see me in the hospital and running Jokey and I have I stood up to go sit in the chair and poor guy had to see my ass through my robe so I'm never gonna live that one down but I get out of the hospital and like I said earlier you know I love putting puzzles together I want to figure this stuff out and what I realized there were so many things that led to this you had a viral insult there was too much demand I was putting on my system and I wasn't supporting the scaffolding so when you think about let's back up what happened with breathing so you have chemo receptors on your carotid that sense ATP so if you can't make energy because you might encounter your broken for lack of a more eloquent way to put it every time that ATP dips it senses low oxygen even though when they had it a O2 sensor on my finger it was reading 8992 I shouldn't be collapsing so it was essentially this not an FATP and how it affects the oxygen signaling and then that causes you to hyperventilate throws off minerals electrolytes as organs stress my kidneys plummeted they EGFR went down to 27 and sustency up to 2.54 so you know really lessen stuck with me so made it to peptide world congress had blasted talk went well and I attended grand rounds and of course I had to present my case so I was holding that I had done like all this background research and I figured out every mechanism and pathway and I was like I got it and I thought I knew it all and I had at least figured it out so I present this case all the details and everything and Dr. Seeds I love it and you know I absolutely love him he is he is such a great mentor he's like you're such a smart guy you're just trying to do too much he's like you've got to support the structure that you're you're right this peptide works for this this works for this this works for this but you're asking these things all to do what they do on a structure that's completely rubble so the way I fixed myself was I started from the ground up it was just the SS31 ketones getting out I was walking I didn't even get in the gym but one time a week for the first couple weeks the rebuilding of the membrane with the plasma legends and the yep yeah and just a lot of walks you know getting out there because we're always thinking we got to build muscle the crazy thing is like when this happened I lost 31 pounds and was just walking I put on 15 pounds back from just walking and working out once a week and that kind of shows people that it's not about how much we can do it's about what can we recover from and fast forward you know now I'm healthier than I've ever been I feel terrific and I really it's a weird thing to say but that was a blessing it happened to me I was strong enough to get through it and now I have the wisdom to share with other people so with sharing that story what I want people to take away is you know we have limits and I know we want to lose fat we want to put on muscle and we can absolutely do those things and we have so many amazing tools for that but at the most foundational level lifestyle then think about the training we're doing be intelligent with it make sure we're doing what we need to send the right signals have the nutrition in there then add your peptide or peptides you know start with one see how it works add another you don't have to add them all in once and most importantly you know support the scaffolding make sure healthy cardiolipin get those possible lipids and all the things you need to do and that's how you go from broken to best ever for yourself but if you keep trying to push against that system 100% you know I hate to say it but you're probably going to land up exactly where I did and as cool as it sounds it really sucks having a tube down your throat yeah well and you know I think it happens more than we know because it happens to people and they don't necessarily talk about it yeah and thank you for being open enough to share your personal experience because you know at that some point you're sitting there going well this shouldn't happen to me I know better yeah but it's for that reason that it's I think so important so that people you know there's a there's a bit of um you know there's such a mad rush to peptides right now and I think that people sometimes run the risk of being a bit cavalier about it just saying well you know I'm just going to try this and oh I heard this was great and I'm just going to try that and not I'm not not respecting the fact that you know when you can put introduced micrograms of something into your body and have it actually have an effect oh yeah powerful powerful signals like that is not to be messed with and what you're what you're describing here is that there is a very distinct order of operations where if you don't if you're not building and it goes back to the pyramid if you're not building on that wide pyramid base you really run the risk of tipping the scales one way or the other the wrong way so as we're closing up here you know like and I have a feeling I know what you're going to answer to this but I wonder if you know like you spent decades pushing the limits of performance and recovery like that's what you do you know especially before you got into this whole cell in a medicine thing you were a coach and you were pushing people and building what do you when you imagine the next decade of human optimization what do you think we'll look up back on and say we totally underestimated the value of this one thing that is a beautiful question I love it and you know it's funny um I really feel like we're kind of coming full circle with all the technology we have everything we have available um people realizing I can do more work I can be faster more and more and more I think there's going to be this tipping point where almost we collapse and everybody realizes like hey you know I'm 53 my parents had a eight-hour work day it's enough like do uh have your work time have your recovery time so work life balance um don't forget to appreciate the beauty around you go take a walk spend some time with your dog your your loved ones um all those basic things and then with all these amazing tools we have coming out that's where they're really going to shine because we're going to have the ability that when we're doing the right the things right and we've got that optimal work life balance and we hit a hiccup or we want to have that little extra boost that's where these things work and it's going to be such an amazing time so I'm excited for it amazing and so you're really looking at them as and you talk about it at the top of the pyramid as optimizers versus doing the foundational work but there is but there are times I think with certain ones of these where they can step in to help us through the foundation piece right like like repair peptide like an SS 31 or a BPC 157 or thymus and alpha one for immune support like they can do yeah they're not always at the peak here they can sometimes the at the right time can be woven through the foundations just to help us along yeah I think um the way I explain it to people is if you think about um listening to music through a speaker and you know you had a really nice stereo system after a while the speakers wear down wires get thin still the same radio station coming through so what peptides do is they repair those wires and speakers they're not going to put a bigger speaker on there thicker wires but they're going to make those perfect so they set the stage so that recovery can happen and they're absolutely going to be times one using them as an intervention or to clarify a signal that's what we want to do that's what they're there for um to provide people some clarity um what you want to think about is these are here to make a signal clearer not replace it and if instead of thinking um I'm going to take this uh to increase what I'm doing you know peptides don't really work that way it's kind of like um if you think about a ceiling you can you can touch your ceiling um by standing on a table or you can jump up and touch the ceiling but the ceiling still there um so peptides might give you a ladder so you can hold your hand against the ceiling and if you're trying to touch the ceiling you might be jumping and you know nick of the ceiling a couple times so um never should you look at them like well if I take a peptide I'm going to put my hand through the ceiling because it just worked that way okay got it a couple more quick fire questions so the word longevity gets thrown around a lot uh what does it actually mean for you in practice like what is it what what is what does longevity look like is strength mobility energy the ability to still feel powerful in your 70s and 80s like well what does it mean to you when I think about longevity I think about um maximizing every day and what I mean by that is um if I'm reading something being able to retain it and process it quickly if I'm working out being able to perform optimally and recover and if I'm spending time with my fiancee and fur babies being able to really enjoy and appreciate that moment so living life is longevity and we don't get to pick how long we have but we get to choose the quality of how those years are going to be so maximizing that love it love it beautiful answer so there's a lot of noise in our field so much very noisy those hundred people in the room they are okay if you could wave a wand and change one thing about how people are approaching training and longevity today what would it be I would challenge them to beast out on recovery um don't think about what else can I take think about what am I doing if it's not working why isn't it working and what could what could I do to take a step back and get even more beautiful love it um you've trained to lead performers for decades you're that guy what do the ones who age best have in common like physically mentally and emotionally that's a really good question I think when I look at common threads it's um and I don't know if I'll articulate this well but across all the different sports um executives everybody there's this real burning desire to be excellent at what they do and it's not about how many things they do but whatever they're doing at the time they want to be excellent at it they don't want to do it halfway so these are the people that um if I tell them you know take your ketones three times a day they're not asking what else should I take with it they're like he told me to take ketones three times a day so I'm going to take ketones and they're curious they ask questions I give them information but they challenge me on things if they have questions so kind of taking ownership of our own health and and asking the questions but um I guess um I don't know if I articulated it well it's it's that whole focusing on the task and doing doing it amazing instead of um kind of focusing on this and just seeing what else you can pile on top yeah so having that curiosity but at the same time the focus on the one thing nice for someone in the 30s and 40s or their 40s who's just starting to think about building that future proof body what are the simple foundations you want to tell them to look into now what should they be where should they start um some really basic low-hanging fruit uh this is so really simplistic but I cannot begin to tell you how beneficial getting out and taking a couple walks a day is um that's going to help with circadian alignment that's going to help with metabolic flexibility um you're going to be setting a strong foundation just doing that um another one that's not sexy but hydration um making sure that when you're hydrated and yourself has enough volume it's polarized when it's polarized it can send and receive signals so for peptides to work ourselves have to be polarized so walking in water to W's and then um supplement wise you know what what else can I add in um i'm so all in on ketone monoester and specifically the monoester which is the beta hydroxybutrate and the R13 butane dial yeah that uh it's just yeah that's an egg row right yeah uh yeah they connect through it we can do a whole episode on the different ketones out there but I know that that one is the favored one for a lot of good reason yeah absolutely okay so I hope that went an underwhelming answer but no no i mean there's three things uh i promise you wanted your we wanted your your take on it right and and and it's interesting that ketones are in there because what you're not saying is people need to be on a ketogenic diet what you are saying is we want to give the body access to what ketones can bring to the equation absolutely yeah okay all right well this is uh you know i could keep talking to you for hours like i may have a million other questions i want to ask you but i you know in the interest of time i'm guessing we could also always do a part two at some point um but you know you you've you've taken that leap you've put a couple of really good quality supplements on the market in this space that we've been talking about the slupp and the band 15 but you know in our conversation what really strikes me is how focused you are on helping people to understand the time in the place and the conditions that they would even use this in so my guess is you're not just pushing these out there for everybody to buy them like you do you also have a platform where you're educating people on how and when and where and do you want to share that with us and then maybe tell people where they can find you where they can learn more where they can buy this like all the things yeah absolutely thank you so much for the opportunity to share it um so i've got a school community it's called castor built to adapt and i've written over 50 articles for that a lot of stuff i might have conduits kind of where i geek out and then i've got the company with a friend of mine it's alchemiculabs.com and we do have the aicu332 which is our slew your lithin product and the band 15 and we've got an atx304 coming out but um and this is probably the worst business decision ever i'm not telling you guys to rush out by these that make sure um going my my community's 100% free i don't charge people going out read some articles ask some questions all if you have a question i'll answer it i want you guys to be educated when you make a choice if this is the right decision to take or not and if it is you know i feel like we got a good product but um at the same time the last thing is for somebody to take it just because it's antonese product and you seem like a smart guy yeah so yeah i'll just dig this every day with my vitamin c um yeah amazing so what we'll do is we'll put all the links in the show notes um maybe give us a couple of easy links now i mean you've got a great instagram page and your website and or the the community link my instagram is just at and then an t-o-n-y c-a-s-t-o-r-e um and then i do a lot of step with the s-s-r-p i'm hoping i'll get to speak again at peptide world congress um then my school community it's the sk-o-o-l school um it's completely free it's uh c-a-s-t-o-r-e colon uh built t-o adapt built to adapt and um i don't have a website for like meam technical technologically challenged um but uh for uh the company that i have alchem iq labs a-l-c-h-e-m iq l-a-b-s dot com um that's where we've got the products there's a little bit of information on there but really most of the information is in the community and got the um coupon code for your listeners it's net 10 okay thank you for that you're welcome thank you for give me the opportunity to connect with your listeners my pleasure and guys before you go shopping get educated go consume some of this mens he's taken the time to put it out there whether it's in the school community also you've got some really fabulous content on your instagram page so so folks please make sure that you check this all out Anthony thank you so much for your time and for sharing today it's been a pleasure chatting with you again i'm humbled to be on here thanks again for having me to be a guest it's a pleasure we'll talk soon it folks just a quick reminder that all of the information presented in this podcast is for information purposes only no medical advice no diagnosing no treatments suggested here before you try anything that you hear about or learn about here make sure that you check this your medical provider