121. Dr. Matt Cook: Reversing Age with Peptides, Stem Cells & Gene Therapy

Who's the queen of healing in the body is the stem cell. The immune system is the system that heals musculoskeletal problems.
It turns out that there's a peptide that is an immune peptide that tends to be very helpful. I'm such a huge fan of the peptides and their use because of the limited risk profile.
Some of these other really advanced, scientifically valid, evidence-based, have a real propensity to truly extend life.

The most impactful peptide... these other really advanced, scientifically valid, evidence-based have a real propensity to

truly extend life. The most impactful peptides are this category of peptides that are immune peptides that tend to stimulate or regulate the immune system.
Wow. You think even more so than growth hormone peptides and healing peptides, these are the most impactful.
We're designing peptides as a strategy that will address every organ system.

What is a journey like that? peptides and healing peptides, these are the most impactful. We're designing peptides as a strategy

that will address every organ system. What does a journey like that look like from whatever state

that I'm in now to where I'm really optimized and setting myself up to live a life of longevity

anti-aging? You've got to pick the low-hanging fruit and you got to start with... Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
I'm your host, Gary Brecka, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. And we are very, very blessed to have a good friend of mine.
He's somewhat a mentor to me, probably a mentor to a lot of physicians in the functional medicine space, an anesthesiologist that became a functional medicine icon. Welcome to the podcast, Dr.
Cook. Thank you so much.
I'm delighted to be here and even more delighted to hang out with you. Yeah, yeah.
We had a great morning. We did our functional medicine morning.
You know, we did the biohacking morning. We did breath work this morning.
You showed me some really cool new techniques too for actually creating. Before we did red light, we did red light, uh, steam and sauna, cold plunge, uh, breath work.
And, um, and after the breath work, you showed me a really cool, uh, technique for creating a vacuum, um, in your thoracic and abdominal cavities to actually help drain, um, the limp, which I want to talk about, um, uh, at some point during the podcast. Cause I, I love to give people these tips that they can use that cost absolutely nothing, but could have a profound impact on the trajectory of their life.
But for my guests that don't know you, I mean, you're a medical doctor, but you started your career as an anesthesiologist. can you talk a little bit about your journey from

anesthesiologist to functional medicine practitioner because i don't think anybody

ever starts out in functional medicine right yeah that's so true that's so true yeah yeah so i um

i thought i was going to be an expedition doctor and go on big journeys and i needed to be in a

field where i could take six months off and go to Everest. Wow.
And so we, uh, I went into anesthesia and, uh, started doing that with the idea that I could, uh, be in a real technical with a lot of physiology. So I was really interested in physiology and medical school.
And so I was, uh, doing that. And, uh, I got really lucky that the year that I got out of my residency was the year that ultrasound basically came onto the market where we had portable ultrasounds that we could use.
You're really dating yourself with that. You're around for the invention of 1842, but that's why I'm an anti-Asian doctor.
They didn't have television back there. It was like horse and buggy.

And so then when I was in my residency, we basically would use a nerve stimulator.

And we would use landmarks to know where a nerve was.

And then we would go and then we would touch the nerve, which would sometimes hurt a little bit.

But then the person would be twitching.

And we would turn the stimulator down to know that we weren't in the middle of the nerve and then put numbing medicine around those nerves and so basically i was doing nerve blocks running surgery centers and doing basically surgery for sports medicine okay and but you know i started to realize surgery was not the panacea for healing athletes that we thought it was.

And so then I began to get skeptical. And so almost right away, I started becoming a functional medicine doctor.
And so I studied Qigong and Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and got board certified in functional and integrative medicine. And so I was on this kind of 12 year journey of a little bit of a schizophrenic life of living like this super straight, uh, Western medicine injection, uh, job, and then kind of an alternative.
And so I would work in the mornings, uh, uh, in the surgery center and the afternoons. And then, um, in the afternoons, you were more Western medicine, Qigong, Ayurveda.
Exactly. These are some of the oldest medicines in the world.
I think Ayurvedic medicine is the oldest form of medicine in the world. And super, super advanced, super advanced stuff.
And so then and then what happened about halfway through, I came home and one day Barb goes, oh, guess what? I found out what you're going to do for the rest of your life and then i go what's that she goes oh the um they're doing injections with ultrasound and putting something around nerves that's not local anesthetic and i go really and i go where is it she goes oh it's it's happening tomorrow i bought you a plane ticket i've got you a hotel and i signed you up for the course. Sounds to me like somebody needed some downtime.
Exactly. That sounds like something my wife would do to me and try to sell it as like a pause.
I bought you a three day vacation by yourself. So, and when I got, I showed up, I had already been doing ultrasound guided injection basically all day for the lot because what my my old job was, I would put the brachial plexus, which is all the nerves to go to your arm asleep.

And then we would do shoulder arthroscopy, but we wouldn't have to put the person to sleep.

ah and so then you know then when we found out that there were other things next thing you you know, we're putting dextrose followed by PRP, followed by peptides, stem cells, exosomes, and all of the regenerative things that we now inject around nerves. Right.
And then as soon as we started doing that, then all of a sudden the awareness sort of came out of regenerative medicine. So we started injecting ligaments, tendons, fascia, nerves, and joints.
Wow. And so what were you injecting them with at that time? So at the very beginning, we were doing the injections with PRP.
And what PRP is, is if you do a blood draw and you take and you isolate platelets in the blood, and then those platelets, you can concentrate them and inject and they've got a lot of growth factors. Eventually then we started to move up the ladder of regenerative medicine to better and better products.
And so now we have a wide variety of different products that we inject with and we can inject those not just into joints and nerves, but also we can put them IV. And so we combine that with glutathione and vitamin C and all of that stuff.
So there's a systemic approach and then a local approach. Hey guys, I'm really excited to announce this.
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You know, we've had some really

fascinating conversations over the last few days, and I appreciate you being willing to come and actually stay in the unit with me and spend so much time. We're off to Honduras here soon for some really interesting gene therapy injections.
But, you know, one of the things that I really found fascinating about our discussion is that, you know, I was talking to you about how do you walk a patient through from where they are to being good, to being better, to being their absolute best. Because I think that a lot of people think the presence of health is just the simple absence of disease.
And I think the functional medicine doctor would take issue with that and say, it's not just that you're not in a disease state, you know, it's that you're in your most optimal state. So for someone listening to this podcast that is really interested in going as far as they can possibly go within the limits of evidence-based medicine.
What would a journey like that look like? What would, you know, would there be testing in the beginning and then would you progress to some of the biologics, peptides? What does a journey like that look like from whatever state that I'm in now to where I'm really optimized and setting myself up to live a life of, let's call it longevity, high aging. Okay.
That's a great question. And I feel like I'm doing that here because we're doing all of these fundamental things.
And so, you know, you've got to pick the low hanging fruit and you got to start with the with the easy low-cost things to do which is super healthy lifestyle perfect diet and then all of the lifestyle biohacking things that we're all doing today yeah yeah exactly so that's the foundation and and i think that it's probably a year curriculum to learn how to design your life so you create the space for all of that stuff and as i was i was saying to barb we basically feel like we got we we live the perfect lifestyle and then i go carrie's better at biohacking lifestyle than we are yay um but you actually said that to me at the coffee maker this morning. I was like, I'm feeling pretty good on the top functional medicine experts.
Like, I like your biohacking pad. I think you got me.
Yeah, you beat me. But it's amazing here.
But so then the next thing is, where are we starting? What's our baseline? You need a before and after. If you're going to say say what's the best place we can go you gotta you gotta have data and so then um i'm i'm part of a team that we're developing an ai platform and then we're going to do all labs wearables and then track all modalities that are done so we're tracking peptides stem cells exomes, and then every other intervention gene therapy that people are doing to really know how people are doing.
We need to have heart rate variability. And, you know, my issue is I basically started to have the amount of data that I used to get.
I could kind of, I had it all in my head. And then now basically I get a pile this big.
It's from five or six different countries. And I don't have access to your wearables.
I don't have access to all this data. And so nobody's able to pull this into one central place.
Right. So one, we've got to organize that and then track that longitudinally over time.
And then basically you use basically language modeling to understand labs and data and and and conversation and and ultimately that's going to uh be an assist to a consult and then ultimately that's just going to be sitting here doing a consult better than i can a physician because they get they can they can weigh so many different independent variables exactly and so then the other part of it is if you look at the big pharma companies when they're trying to determine effectiveness of their drugs they use a quantitative model and so we're using a large quantitative model to turn that lens of looking at all of this data in terms of effectiveness of stem cells exososomes, peptides, regenerative medicine, gene therapy. Wow.
And so then now you're tracking all of that. And then we're going to learn a lot.
We're going to learn exponentially more than we've ever known in the next five to 10 years. I would agree with that.
And what's exciting is as all of this data comes in because of artificial intelligence and the capacity to take large pools of data and create an actionable result you can for the first time sieve through it and really create something that's actually actionable you know one of the um genetics laboratories that that we work with takes 700 trillion independent variables and creates an actionable result when people how do you take 700 trillion independent variables? Well, I mean, if you look at your genome and you look at the possible variants in all of those sequences and the sub-alleles and the gene snips, these single nucleotide polymorphs, and you try to make sense of it on a spreadsheet or in an Excel model, you just couldn't do it. But AI can take all of that information and create these actionable results.
And I like how, you know, you described to me this morning, you know, it has to start with the diet and the lifestyle changes. You don't fix the lifestyle.
Then you're just pushing down from the top, right? I mean, you're, you're just, you're just fixing the consequences of the lifestyle. But once you fix those, um, and you've got, let's say somebody's blood work in good condition, you know, their triglycerides are where they need to be cholesterol as well.
Their hormones seem to be balanced. They're not nutrient deficient any longer.
The big cardiac, you know, risk markers, homocysteine C-reactive protein are all kind of normalized. But now the exciting thing is you don't have to stop there.
A hundred percent. So I wonder if we, we might just start with peptides as a treatment, you know, option and what they are, what they do and, and why we should be using them and where you see it going.
Okay. Amazing.
So our, I was saying our body has about five different ways that it communicates with itself. And so hormones, cytokines, vitamins, and minerals, and proteins.
And these are proteins are made up of amino acids. And so then if you have an amino acid that's more than a protein, that's more than 50 amino acids long, that's called a protein.
If it's less than 50 amino acids, it's called a peptide. So a peptide is a baby protein.
And so then an example of a protein would be like insulin. It binds onto an insulin receptor, opens a channel.
And so then that causes sugar to go inside of a cell. Okay.
So proteins or peptides basically bind onto receptors and then cause something to happen. Okay.
Now, if we take a drug, a drug is usually trying to hack biology, but biology typically tries to overcome that hack. So a lot of times then as a result, over time, you end up having to take more of that drug and there's a lot of side effects in the case of a peptide or a protein we're just giving the actual thing that's working in the body kind of like when you you take a hormone yeah and so there's there seems to be about an order of magnitude, less side effects and complications.

And then for us, our pillars, which I think are probably fairly similar to yours, we have 12 pillars, cell biology, musculoskeletal system, and genetics, and then nine pillars that are organ systems.

All the nine major organ systems.

I would agree with that. And so then basically there's multiple peptides for each of those organ systems.

And I think that's a pep there's multiple peptides for each of those organ systems and for each aspect of each of the pillars okay and so then when when we're working with people and then we're working on optimizing their life and then i would say there's two things one is uh if there's a problem then you might be working on the gastrointestinal system and you might be giving supplements. You could also give a peptide that would help the gastrointestinal system.
You might have a neurological problem. And so there are supplements that'll help with the central nervous system, but there's also peptides.
And so then now we're designing peptides as a strategy that will address every organ system. Wow.
And so then to, to answer

your question, I got, I got somebody, we, we spent a year and all of a sudden their lifestyle is perfect. Then we spent another year and they solved basically their brain fog and all other kind of main problems and so here they are we've got all of their data they've got wearables and they're getting their labs and they're in a good place where are we going to go from here right so then the the the most impactful peptides are this category of peptides that are immune peptides that tend to stimulate or regulate the immune system.
Wow. You think even more so than growth hormone peptides and healing peptides, these are the most impactful in terms of their system-wide.
In terms of a system-wide, and I'm going to say that at the end of 2024, coming 2024 coming out of covid and so then what happens is is the immune peptides when we travel and we're on planes overnight and and uh our immune system is a little down then we take immune peptides and they stimulate the immune system if we get a cold we start taking immune peptides right away right and so then that cold lasts for a day and a half instead of 10 days.

And so then you have an ability to be basically released into the wild and running around and exposed to risk.

And so then we've got peptides basically for everything.

And so then you can regulate.

And peptides for the most part last about a day.

Thank you. And so then we've got peptides basically for everything.
And so then you can regulate. And peptides, for the most part, last about a day.
So they're a short-term thing. And so I don't necessarily do peptides every day.
I feel like the Dos Equis commercial. Yeah, yeah.
I don't take peptides every day, but when I do, it's BBC 157, it's the link. Exactly.
And so then, and so then that's a, it's a real nice regulatory tool that you can use and we travel with them. And then, and then interestingly, they're very helpful tools as part of a functional regenerative medicine strategy towards, towards optimizing the body.
So we even do injections with them. That's great.
So, um, So let's climb the ladder of peptides. So the peptides are amino acid sequences, which means that the body recognizes them, which I am, by the way, for the record, a huge fan of peptides.
We've used them in our clinic system on well over 100,000 patients and virtually no side effects. The downside is occasionally they don't work, not that they create harm.
And I think that risk profile is excellent because a lot of times when we use chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals, the downside is that you do permanent irrevocable damage, right? And then you can't just say, hey, my bad, I altered the neuroplasticity of your brain and And what we decided, you know, to take this for, it didn't work. But now you have permanent alteration in physiological function.
I've seen that quite a number of times, you know, with, you know, amphetamines and things like that, that we're using to try to get people around conditions like ADD or ADHD. And now somebody's been on a long, prolonged dose of Adderall where it's progressively gotten more and more and more.
And now you've, you know, you went in to fix a condition of attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and now you created a central nervous system dependency on a stimule. Okay, so I'll take that one.
And that sometimes works, right? Just 100 percent so i'll take that one yeah so then in in a situation like that then what for for the addd people then and the there's an idea one of my lines is a rising tide lifts all boats and so i say the same thing tide raises all the boats i i say it almost every day don't i guys okay amazing And so then the the same thing. Tide raises all the boats.
I say it almost every day. Don't I, guys? Okay.
Amazing. And so then the one functional medicine idea is if you could just improve mitochondrial function, then you're going to improve cognitive function.
And so then we like to use SS31, stabilizes mitochondrial membranes. SS31.
Like to take NAD, which will also donate electrons in the mitochondrial chain, so it helps give you energy. And so then just that combo, and then we'll take CMAX, which increases BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and will help for cognition cognition and then a lot of people with add

actually have a little bit of immune over activation which basically leads to blood flowing

with more viscosity and and i think that's one of the reasons for brain fog and so we'll give often a little bit of TA1 or BPC-157. That as a stack is way better for mental clarity than a stimulant.
And so then the ADD conversation is a conversation that would be like, I could probably just quit everything else and just have a scaled approach to ADD and we'd be stimulants every day. Yeah, you would not need a stimulant.
Yeah. In other words, yeah.
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Again, for the listeners that are not exceedingly familiar with peptides, you know, there's some great healing peptides, um, you know, wound healing peptides, um, tissue repair peptides, peptides that actually help with not just bumps and bruises, but also micro tears in our ligaments and joints and attendants and cartilage and what have you. Um, um, and this is the BPC one five seven, which I'm also a huge fan of.
You gave it to me today. So the BPC-157.
And I'm also a very big fan of that. And the TB-500.
That's right. So that's been this tag team combo that people have used for both for pain and for inflammation.
And that remember, I said there's something for every organ. Basically, BPC is actually a gastrointestinal peptide.
But when we eat, it's secreted. And so the idea is we're mostly hooligans.
And we're going to do whatever we're going to do. So our body makes some anti-inflammatory things to protect us from ourselves.
Now then the other thing to remember is who's the queen of healing in the body is the stem cell. So the immune system is the system that heals musculoskeletal problems.

And so then it turns out that there's a peptide that is an immune peptide, which is called TB500, which is a fragment of the thymus and beta 4 peptide. But that immune peptide tends to be very helpful for connective tissue healing.
And. And so we'll combine BPC and TB500,

and together that combo is very helpful.

And you can do it in your belly or your hip for a systemic effect,

but you can also, if you have pain somewhere,

do a site injection.

Yeah, that's amazing.

And, you know, again, I'm a big fan because the risk profile is really, um, very attractive. And then if we move up the ladder on peptides and we start talking about things like, um, cognition, um, you know, we're talking about tissue repair, but if we talk about cognition, meaning, um, improving our cognitive function or short-term recall or focus or waking energy or concentration things like that that are a little more difficult to measure but people notice and the people around them notice that you know they're not as sharp or they're just not as attentive or they're not able to focus as much they're not able to recall things as accurately as they used to and what what do we have in the category of cognitive peptides okay so then the probably c max which i mentioned is going to be your best cognitive peptide that's commercially available and so then that one increases bdnf okay and uh which is the brain derived neurotropic factor and which is that why is that important? It's like an antioxidant to the brain.
And so then we have probably, on average, more neurological inflammation than we can handle. And that as we get older, our ability to handle neurological inflammation goes down.
And then inflammation tends to go up. And a lot of times that comes from gastrointestinal inflammation.
That's why they call it the gut-brain axis. So then one thing is going to be to do something for the brain.
The other thing is going to be to do something for the gut to heal that so we don't have inflammation that's causing leaky gut that's going to leaky brain. Right right and so then you could go make it easy since you already talked about it bpc 157 which is the gastrointestinal peptide also promotes something called angiogenesis which is blood vessel growth wow and it also improves the flow of blood so like if i do an iv and then I do BPC-157 IV, what happens is, is you can see that the blood becomes a little bit thinner.
Wow. You see the viscosity change.
The viscosity changes for sure. Wow.
And so a lot of times people will just do BPC plus C-Max, which is a great cognition enhancer. Adding in AD, like we were talking about in the setting of somebody with ADD can be helpful.
I would say that there's an idea that immune stress and immune activation leads us to have basically more antibodies floating around in our blood that can be binding onto things, which is decreasing viscosity and decreasing blood flow. And so then things that can regulate the immune response.
And so one of those at a peptide level would be something like thymus and alpha one. Another thing that it to go up the ladder, another thing that regulates immune function is exosomes.
And so then you could potentially take exosomes with any of those other products, and you could do them either subcutaneously or IV. You could even inject it into your joint, and then some of that's going to be absorbed and will have a systemic effect yeah and so you'll a lot of times we'll do an injection for somebody and uh all we'll do is do a shoulder joint injection and they'll go oh how come my brain fog just totally went away wow when you get injected with that yeah yeah which i want to get to next um you know i i my mother had some struggles for a while because she was bedridden from a bilateral knee surgery that she had.
And I put her on cerebral license. And I'm telling you in just a few weeks, it was night and day.
My father actually called and was like, can you tone her down a little bit? Like, he's like, she wants to redecorate the whole house. She's got all artwork coming in like she is on fire i mean she went from being mid-70s year old woman cognitively to like an early 40s it was night and day the difference and that was the cerebrolycine peptide um and uh i got it originally injectable now she takes an oral version of it but it.
But again, I'm such a huge fan of the peptides and their use because of the limited risk profile. And now we get into the really exciting things, stem cells, exosomes, and some of these other really advanced cutting edge, but scientifically valid evidence-based

therapies that are going on in mass outside of the United States. And in some cases are allowed

here, some cases are not allowed here, but have a real propensity to truly extend life and maybe

even reverse the cause or reverse the pathology and diseases that we at one time thought were not reversible. Maybe we thought we could halt them, but not actually reverse them.
And I'd love first to talk about stem cells and then how a stem cell secretes an exosome, the difference between the two. And for therapeutic reasons, what are some of your recommendations? Let's just assume for the sake of argument, and I don't mean to off-put my audience, that somebody has an unlimited budget.
Just for the sake of this part of the discussion. What are some of the things that they could do and expect from some of these biologics like stem cells? Okay, great.
So there was this great idea that they figured out that a stem cell actually has the potential to turn into any other type of cell. Pluripotent.
So it's kind of pluripotent. And so then this was this idea and so then for the first half of uh my experience in regenerative medicine which was sort of like right at the beginning this was this idea and so we were focused on that and and i was and still am fairly involved in adipose themselves um and so then we were having this idea that that could go turn into a cartilage cell or it could go turn into a tendon cell.
So then it's a total solution. And the name was mesenchymal stem cell.
Basically, what happened is the person, Arnold Kaplan, who passed away but is like one of the godfathers of regenerative medicine, figured out that these stem cells don't really turn into another cell. But what they do is they basically secrete little liposomal balls that have signaling molecules inside that tell other cells what to do.
It's kind of like currency. And so then they change the name to medicinal signaling cells.
And so stem cells are essentially a little mobile pharmacy. And then they show up and then they secrete exosomes.
And the exosomes is kind of like currency that goes around, currency and information that just goes to the other cells in the area. And then it initiates healing.
So it tells them how to behave it tells them and basically what happens is is if we have inflammation let's say you get a trauma we were talking about this today it causes inflammation which causes increased blood flow and pain that's just a signal for a stem cell that may be there or that migrates from the bloodstream and then the stem cell turns the inflammation off as the first step in healing there's a whole bunch of steps that happen after that right that are coordinated by the stem cell and so the stem cell secretes exosomes that and i basically i always tell people economic indicators are good kind of like right now you can get a loan the economy is going to be getting better and we can do a remodeling project and fix this muscle that was torn wow and and so the stem cell arrives on the scene because it's called the site of inflammation and when it arrives it begins to deploy these little soldiers called exosomes which are um about 1 800 the size of a stem cell they're nano vesicles nanoparticles um about these before on the show. You know, they cross the phospholipid bilayer of the cell without permission, which is a good thing because very often when you have damage to a cell, you know, things are not allowed through the membrane wall.
And, you know, imagine having a heart attack on your floor, but the paramedics being locked outside the door. You know, their proximity doesn doesn't matter so very often the proximity for a cell to get help doesn't matter because the help is locked outside the door it's outside of their that cell wall and i agree with you i think you know the really promising thing about exosomes is their molecular size and the fact that they don't have dna right so they can't't actually transmit a signal from somebody else's body, right? And they carry something called high molecular weight, hyaluronic acid, and growth factors.
So what are the benefits of using these kinds of biologics like exosomes systemically, intravenously? So then I would say the most important thing is they tend to regulate immune function and so we live in a sea of inflammation and and we had that one bruise but then that turned into 10 and that turned into inflammation in our liver and fatty liver and inflammation in our brain and our gut and so we have more inflammation than we can handle and then the cells are just waiting for a signal that everything is okay that they can start to heal right and so then uh exosomes are very anti-inflammatory and so like if you take when i take a big trip and i'm i got back from dubai and you get you take exosomes it's almost almost like you feeling like you just took a shower and all the stress on the inside

of your body just went away.

I couldn't agree with you more.

I love taking the exosomes.

I, I, I feel like I'm looking through a 4k screen, you know, like, like the, um, it's

hard to describe, like your vision is brighter.

It's clearer.

And you have that just very clear, cognizant, awake, focused feeling. And it's not being stimulated.
You don't feel like you did two shots of espresso. You feel just clear and awake and alert and cognizant.
And I notice how energetic I am after doing exosomes. And then my sleep just is incredible.
So, and then above the exosome, which, you know, also really, really exciting. And I think this is a frontier where we're safely learning to go so that we can actually manage, begin to manage longevity.
And that's the gene therapies. Um, and one in particular I want to talk about, cause I, I have some biohacking buddies that did some of these gene therapies, specifically the folistatin, myostatin inhibiting gene therapy.
And one of them put on 14 pounds of muscle in 45 days. And I remember seeing him at a, I saw him at the conference in Europe uh, um, in, uh, Europe and I ran into him.
I go, all right, brother, what are you doing? I mean, did you get on growth hormone? Cause I know he's sort of, you know, not for that. And he said, no, I went to Honduras.
I did this, uh, full of statin gene therapy. And, um, and then I just went deep down the road of this genetic therapy.
And I wonder if now, you know, I would consider these to be sort of top of the food chain, longevity, uh, anti-aging treatments. Could you talk a little bit about those? Yeah.
A hundred percent that can we, can I say that person's name? Yeah. It's Ben Greenfield.
Yeah. I think Ben's talked about it.
Yeah. I think he talked about it.
Before we heard the podcast, I'll make sure he said it in the podcast we talked about on my podcast yeah yeah okay so so yeah shout out buddy you're looking good i love you ben we love you man so then i i was in uh london at that health summit yeah and i saw you there too i was i was literally standing and like on my phone and then i i hung up and then i was looking at him just like he was as the camera and i just was like fuck that guy's jacked yeah and then i was like and then i'm looking and i was doing good before that but yeah and then he's he's looking at me and we're both looking at each other and then i and then i didn't i didn't even recognize him so big i did it also So. And I've put on about eight pounds.
And so then let me tell you about the science of this one. And remember, the body has a number of different ways it's communicating with itself.
One is hormones. One is protein-based things.
If it's a baby protein, it's a peptide. If it's a long protein, it's a protein.
One thing you could do is inject it. If you inject it today, it's going to have a nice effect today, but it's going to be gone tomorrow.
Or a peptide. And it's easy to inject peptides.
It's a lot harder to inject a protein. Folastatin is 344 amino acids long.
So then what happened is, there's two ways to do this, but there's a company called Mini Circle. And what they did is they took the gene for folastatin.
So it's a gene that codes for 344 amino acids, and they put in a circular plasmid, and then you can inject that into your shoulder. It gets absorbed by the cells and then it pulls that plasmid into the nucleus.
It doesn't actually get incorporated into your chromosomes. But while it's in there for about a year and a half, your body prints that plasmid.
And so then when it prints that plasmid, it actually makes folistatin. So instead of doing an injection every day, then for a year, year and a half, you have this protein at a higher concentration in your body and it's floating around.
And then that protein is actually um is inhibiting the protein that inhibits muscle growth right the myostatin um protein and there's a second one uh active in air yeah um that's actually inhibiting muscle growth because obviously when we damage muscle and it grows back larger that muscle muscle hypertrophy, it's a well-known concept. But at some point, the hypertrophy is limited by this myostatin.
And what the full statin does is it blocks that from working so your hypertrophy is not as limited. And what do you feel about the safety of some of these therapies? Because when we say gene i mean just like you said it migrates into the nucleus of the cell and in the nucleus of the cell is our dna um and our dna is is sending messages into the cell transcription right messenger rna but it actually reads our dna and reads that um fullest that in dna and takes We'll take the command from both.
Mm- both. Yeah.
Okay. That's really...
I want to make sure I understood that. That's incredible.
And we, you know, I would say this one's really early. And so then this one, it's funny.
Some friends of mine asked me to fly down to Honduras just to do some vetting of the technology. So I wasn't really planning on doing it, although I'd had a whole bunch of my patients have an incredible experience with it.
And I told you, I'd had this long experience doing adipose stem cells where we do a liposuction and harvest some stem cells so i i show up and the the doctor who uh is is doing the the study in honduras is a doctor named uh dr terry who was who uh me and him had the same mentor in adipose stem cells wow bob alexander wow and so then we so i showed up and i was like oh my god i've known this guy for 12 years and is an amazing doctor and um and so then he walked me through their trial and he he'd personally treated 250 people and had followed up with them all wow and he hadn't had any negative side effects there's a a trend for LDL to go up by about 10 points. And so that's about the only negative, but it lengthens telomeres.
It decreases biological age. So there's a very big anti-inflammatory effect.
And this is called what? Full of statin. Oh, full of statin.
The full of statin gene theory does theory does all of this too yeah so it has a host of benefits that are above and beyond just muscle so it's a but particularly anti-inflammatory and then i i would say that uh we've had a lot of people emotionally feel better wow um and and i'm gonna let you guys know how this goes honduras here we come um you know i i um uh i'm gonna i'm gonna save some time for my my rule bracket community because we've got a lot of questions coming your way for the for our rule brackets but um i think this this approach to slowly climbing the ladder from getting your blood work to your genes done, to supplementation,

to fixing your hormones,

to then incorporating things like peptides,

to then climbing into the world

of biologic stem cells, exosomes,

and gene therapies

is the frontier that people

are really, really, really curious about.

So how can they find out more about you?

Oh, uh...

You've written a book? Because you need to. I need to write a book.
Yeah, you write a book, but it'd be a bestseller. Uh, where you can find, find, you can, you're going to find me at a bunch of international stem cell clinics.
And, uh, stay tuned because you and I've got some, we're using, we're using these mu stem cells, which I think are going to absolutely transform regenerative medicine. I think so, too.
And they're the most effective stem cells that I've ever found. And we've been doing it for a long time for orthopedic and for pain issues.
And so, but you can find us at bioreset.com. Bioreset.com.
Okay. Yeah.
And, uh, and I'm, I'm, uh, I, I promise that I'm going to actually start doing social media. Yeah.
I mean, it took me a long time to, you know, I'm, I barely even have TikTok. I mean, TikTok on my phone.
So I look, I wind down all of my podcasts by asking all my guests the same question.

And there's no right or wrong answer to this question. But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? I would say there's two things.
One thing is living in the moment. And then the other thing is the arc of what your life and what it means and what you're going to do and and so for me the and and these great European philosophers and and physicians came up with all of these stages of life where you go through basically identity and family and relationships and all this stuff but then the final stage is generativity when you give back wow and so then and I always said it basically everything else doesn't matter and i basically feel that way and what really matters is if you can have a meaningful impact that gives back right to to to everyone the humanity and so then for me being an ultimate human is is actually having an ultimate impact.
Yeah.

And at the same time is that being present and awake and being your best version of yourself.

That's incredible, man.

That's one of the better that I've heard in a long time.

Well, guys, you know how to check out Dr. Matt Cook.

I'll put all of the information that he just went through in the show notes below.

And as always, that's just science.