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

From expedition doctor dreams to pioneering gene therapies in Silicon Valley, one physician’s radical approach is rewriting the rules of human optimization. In this interview with Dr. Matt Cook, a former anesthesiologist turned functional medicine pioneer, we uncover the revolutionary treatment pyramid that’s transforming how we approach longevity, from daily biohacking routines to stem cells and gene therapies. Could his three-tier approach be the key to extending not just lifespan, but health span? Watch to find out why some of the world’s top health experts are calling this the future of medicine! Connect with Dr. Matt Cook: Website: https://bit.ly/4g5zbW4 Instagram: https://bit.ly/3D4hDer Facebook: https://bit.ly/3BxtAIV 00:00 ​​Intro of Show 02:33 ​Dr. Matt Cook’s Journey from Anesthesiology to Functional Medicine 09:22 ​How to Be in Your Most Optimal State 15:09 ​Peptides as Treatment for the Immune System 21:10 ​Peptides on People with ADD/ADHD 24:19 ​Types of Peptides and Their Functions 26:30 ​Peptides for Cognitive Function 30:53 ​Stem Cells and Exosomes Benefits 37:06 ​Are Gene Therapies Safe and Beneficial? 43:50 ​Connect with Dr. Matt Cook 45:21 ​​Final Question: What does it mean to you to be an “Ultimate Human?” GET GARY’S WEEKLY TIPS ON HEALTH AND LIFESTYLE OPTIMIZATION: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E BODY HEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF YOUR ORDER: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - 91 ESSENTIAL MINERALS PER PINCH! 10% OFF USE CODE "ULTIMATE10": https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa ELEVATE YOUR WORKOUTS WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN STRENGTH TRAINING EQUIPMENT: https://bit.ly/3zYwtSl THE COLD LIFE - BOOST RECOVERY & WELL-BEING WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST $50+ ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y PARKER PASTURES - GET PREMIUM GRASS-FED MEATS TODAY: https://bit.ly/4hHcbhc SHOP GARY’S TOP-RATED PRODUCTS & EXCLUSIVE DEALS: https://theultimatehuman.com/amazon-recs Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Connect with Gary Brecka: Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 SUBSCRIBE TO: https://www.youtube.com/@ultimatehumanpodcast https://www.youtube.com/@garybrecka Download the “Ultimate Human Podcast” on all your favorite podcast platforms: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:14Gary Brecka?

  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.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  The most impactful peptides are this category of peptides that are immune peptides that tend to stimulate or regulate the immune system.

• 0:37Gary Brecka?

  Wow. You think even more so than growth hormone peptides and healing peptides, these are the most impactful.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  We're designing peptides as a strategy that will address every organ system.

• 0:48Gary Brecka?

  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?

• 0:59Speaker 00

  You've got to pick the low hanging fruit and you've got to start with.

• 1:15Gary Brecka?

  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.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  I'm delighted to be here and even more delighted to hang out with you.

• 1:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, we had a great morning. We like did our, 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.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:01Gary Brecka?

  We're actually creating, before we did red light, we did red light, steam and sauna, cold plunge, breath work and. And after the breath work, you showed me a really cool technique for creating a vacuum in your thoracic and abdominal cavities to actually help drain the lymph, which I want to talk about at some point during the podcast, because I love to give people these tips that they can use that are 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

• 2:45Gary Brecka?

  from anesthesiologist to functional medicine practitioner? Because I don't think anybody ever starts out in functional medicine.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, so true. So true. Yeah. Yeah. So I, 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, I went into anesthesia and started doing that with the idea that I could be in a real technical with a lot of physiology. So I was really interested in physiology and medical school. And so was doing that. And 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.

• 3:36Gary Brecka?

  You're really dating yourself with that. You're around for the invention of.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  1842. But that's why I'm an anti.

• 3:43Gary Brecka?

  They didn't even have television back then. It was like horse and buggy, but.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  And so then when I had, when I was in my residency, we basically would use a nerve simulator 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, the person would be twitching. And we would turn the simulator 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.

• 4:18Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  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 it was on this kind of 12 year journey of a little bit of a schizophrenic life of living like the super straight Western medicine injection job and then kind of an alternative. And so I would work in the mornings in the surgery center and the afternoons. And then

• 5:00Gary Brecka?

  In the afternoons, you were more Western medicine, qigong, Ayurveda.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 5:05Gary Brecka?

  These are some of the oldest medicines in the world. I think Ayurvedic medicine is the oldest form of medicine in the world.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  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, they're doing injections with ultrasound and putting something around nerves that's not local anesthetic. 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.

• 5:42Gary Brecka?

  Sounds to me like somebody needed some downtime.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 5:48Gary Brecka?

  That sounds like something my wife would do to me.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Guess what?

• 5:51Gary Brecka?

  And like, try to sell it as like a, a pos-, I bought you a three day vacation by yourself. Like.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  So, and when I got, I showed up, I had already been doing ultrasound guided injection basically all day for the, because what my, my old job was I would put the brachial plexus, which is all the nerves that go to your arm asleep. And then we would do shoulder arthroscopy, but we wouldn't have to put the person asleep.

• 6:17Gary Brecka?

  Ah.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  And so then, you know, then when we found out that there were other things, next thing 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.

• 6:35Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  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.

• 6:48Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  And so.

• 6:49Gary Brecka?

  And what were you injecting them with at that time?

• 6:51Speaker 00

  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.

• 7:08Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  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.

• 7:37Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, I'm really excited to announce this. Perfect Aminos has gotten a serious upgrade. They've added nucleotides, the building blocks of our nucleic acids, DNA and RNA. And this is important. We know essential amino acids are the building blocks of protein and collagen. Having all the essential amino acids in the correct ratio is necessary for complete protein synthesis without the caloric impact. But if we want perfect protein synthesis, we need to look at the process of protein synthesis itself. Because if the process is faulty, we won't get the correctly made protein, collagen, fibrin, or the red blood cells in our bloodstream, or our muscles. We can even stop creation of specific proteins, which

• 8:21Gary Brecka?

  can affect us in so many different ways. Our DNA and our RNA are what direct protein synthesis, building new proteins. If our DNA or RNA get damaged from toxins, harmful bacteria, or just plain aging, we get faulty protein synthesis. So cells, enzymes, and hormones are less functional and we get premature aging. By adding nucleosides and nucleotides, the building blocks of the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, our cells get exactly what they need to help repair faulty DNA and RNA and improve the process of protein synthesis itself. This is next level science and you need to try these. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 9:04Gary Brecka?

  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 and stay in the unit with me and spend so much time. We're off to Honduras here soon for 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

• 9:47Gary Brecka?

  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? And 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 and setting myself up to live a life of, let's call it longevity, not aging?

• 10:32Speaker 00

  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 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.

• 10:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Exactly. So it's the foundation. 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 live the perfect lifestyle. And then I go,

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Carrie's better at biohacking than myself than we are.

• 11:21Gary Brecka?

  Yay.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  But.

• 11:25Gary Brecka?

  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.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  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, what's the best place we can go? You gotta, you gotta have data. And so then, 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, exosomes, 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

• 12:19Speaker 00

  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.

• 12:37Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  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 conversation. And ultimately, that's going to be an assist to a consult. And then ultimately, that's just going to be sitting here doing a consult better than.

• 13:01Gary Brecka?

  Than a physician, because they get, they can, they can weigh so many different independent variables.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  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, exosomes, peptides, regenerative medicine, gene therapy.

• 13:28Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  And so then now you're tracking all of that. And then what 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.

• 13:39Gary Brecka?

  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 genetics laboratories that that we work with takes 700 trillion independent variables and creates an actionable result. And 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 and the and the gene snips, these single nucleotide polymorphs, and you and you try to make sense of it on a spreadsheet or in an Excel model,

• 14:23Gary Brecka?

  it just you just couldn't 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 lifestyle. But once you fix those, 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-recta protein are all kind of normalized. But now, the exciting thing is, you don't have to stop there.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 15:08Gary Brecka?

  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?

• 15:21Speaker 00

  Okay, amazing. So I was saying, our body has about five different ways that it communicates with itself. And so hormones, cytokines, vitamins and minerals and then 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.

• 15:53Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  So 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.

• 16:06Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  So proteins or peptides basically bind onto receptors and then cause something to happen.

• 16:13Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  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 take a hormone.

• 16:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  And so there's, there seems to be about an order of magnitude less side effects and complications. And then we, I was, 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.

• 17:02Gary Brecka?

  All the nine major organ systems. I would agree with that.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  And so then basically there's a pep, there's multiple peptides for each of those organ systems. And for each of each of the pillars. 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 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

• 17:49Speaker 00

  organ system. 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 of their 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?

• 18:17Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  So then the the the most impactful peptides are this category peptides that are immune peptides that tend to stimulate or regulate the immune system.

• 18:31Gary Brecka?

  Wow. You think even more so than growth hormone peptides and healing peptides, these are the most impactful in terms of their system wide.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  In terms of a system wide, and I'm going to say that in at the end of 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 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. And so then that cold lasts for a day and a half instead of 10 days. And so then where 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. So and so then you

• 19:24Speaker 00

  can regulate and and peptides for the most part lasts 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.

• 19:37Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, I don't take peptides every day, but when I do, it's BBC 157 Solank.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 20:04Gary Brecka?

  That's great. So, um, so let's climb the ladder of peptides. So the peptides are amino acid sequences, which, which means that the body recognizes them, which I, I am, by the way, for the record, a huge fan of peptides. We've used them in our clinic system on well over a hundred thousand 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, and then you can't just say, hey, my bad. I, I altered the neuroplasticity of your brain.

• 20:44Gary Brecka?

  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 that's that where it's progressively gotten, you know, more and more and more. And now you've, you know, you went in to fix a condition of attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And now you created a central nervous system dependency on an understanding.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Okay. So I'll take.

• 21:22Gary Brecka?

  And that sometimes works, right?

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Just a hundred percent. So I'll take that one.

• 21:26Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  So then. In a situation like that, then what for the ADD people, then there's an idea, one of my lines is a rising tide lifts all boats. And so

• 21:41Gary Brecka?

  I say the same thing. Tide raises all the boats. I say it almost every day. Don't I, guys?

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Okay, amazing. And so then the one functional medicine idea is if you could just improve mitochondrial function.

• 21:53Gary Brecka?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  Then everything, then you're going to improve cognitive function. And so then we like to use SS31 stabilizes mitochondrial membranes.

• 22:02Gary Brecka?

  SS31.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  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 neurotropic factor. And will help for cognition. And then a lot of people with ADD actually have a little bit of immune overactivation, which basically leads to blood flowing with more viscosity. And I think that's one of the reasons for brain fog.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  And so we'll give often a little bit of TA1 or BPC157. 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.

• 23:04Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you would not need a stimulant.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:07Gary Brecka?

  Hey, guys, I'm beyond excited to introduce something that's going to transform your nutrition game. A new protein bar formulated by me, created in partnership with Body Health. Now, this is the kind of protein bar I would want in my own backpack. In fact, as I head out on the Great World Race, it's going to be in both my son's and my backpack. It is packed with perfect amino, the same essential amino acids I use every day for up to 99% protein absorption. Clean, plant-based protein, energizing MCT oil and a powerhouse organic fruit and veg. Blend that will fuel your body at a cellular level. And guess what? It's naturally sweetened with monk fruit for that minimal caloric and glycemic impact. Whether you're hitting the gym, grinding through a busy day, or you just need that nutrient dense boost.

• 23:51Gary Brecka?

  This bar is my go to and your new secret weapon. This is not just any kind of protein bar, guys. If I formulate a protein bar, it's going to be made out of nutrient dense whole foods. And that's what we accomplished here. And if you're part of my rule bracket community, you'll also get an exclusive discount. So snag yours now before they're gone. Your body and your future self will thank you. Links to my protein bar and my rule bracket VIP community will be down below in the description. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Again, for, for the listeners that are not exceedingly familiar with peptides. You know, there's some great healing peptides, you know, wound healing peptides, tissue repair peptides, peptides that actually help with not just bumps and bruises, but also micro tears in our ligaments and joints

• 24:35Gary Brecka?

  and attendants and cartilage and what have you.

• 24:39Gary Brecka?

  And this is the BPC 157, which I'm also a huge fan of. She gave it to me today.

• 24:46Gary Brecka?

  So the BBC 157. And I'm also a very big fan of that and the TB 500.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  That's right. So that's, 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 what all of the, who's the queen of healing in the body?

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Is the stem cell.

• 25:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  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 four peptide. But that immune peptide tends to be very helpful for connective tissue healing.

• 26:03Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  And so we'll combine BPC and TB500. And together that that that combo is 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.

• 26:19Gary Brecka?

  Site injected.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Do a site injection.

• 26:21Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that's amazing. And and, you know, again, I'm a big fan because the risk profile is really very attractive. And then if we move up the ladder on peptides and we start talking about things like cognition, you know, we're talking about tissue repair. But if we talk about cognition, meaning 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, or they're not able to recall things as accurately as they used to.

• 27:03Gary Brecka?

  And what what do we have in the category of cognitive peptides?

• 27:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 27:20Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  And which is the brain derived neurotropic factor.

• 27:24Gary Brecka?

  And which is that? Why is that important?

• 27:26Speaker 00

  It's like an antioxidant to the brain.

• 27:28Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  And so then we we have 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 we tend and inflammation tends to go up. And a lot of times that comes from. Gastrointestinal inflammation, 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 getting causing leaky gut that's going to leaky brain.

• 28:05Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  And so then, you could go, I'll 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.

• 28:18Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  And it also improves the flow of blood. So like, if I do an IV and then I do BPC 157 IV.

• 28:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  What happens is, is you can see that the blood becomes a little bit thinner.

• 28:32Gary Brecka?

  Wow, you see the viscosity change.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  You can, the viscosity changes for sure.

• 28:35Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  And so, a lot of times, people will just do BPC plus Cmax, which is, which is a great cognition enhancer. Adding an AD, like we were talking about in the setting of, um, somebody with ADD can be helpful. Uh, the, uh, 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 could be binding onto things, which is decreasing viscosity and decreasing blood flow.

• 29:08Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  And so then, uh, 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, to go up the ladder. Another thing that regulates immune function is exosomes. And so then, you could, you could potentially take exosomes with, uh, any of those other products. And you could do them either subcutaneously or IV.

• 29:38Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Uh, you could even inject it into your joint and then some of that's going to be absorbed and will have a systemic effect. And so you'll, a lot of times we'll do an injection for somebody and all we'll do is do a shoulder joint injection and they'll go, oh, how come my brain fog just totally went away?

• 29:57Gary Brecka?

  Wow. When you inject them with exosomes, which I want to get to next. 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 Cerebrolysin 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?

• 30:23Gary Brecka?

  He's like, she wants to redecorate the whole house. She's got all new artwork coming in like, she is on fire. I mean, she went from being mid seventies year old woman cognitively to like an early forties. It was night and day the difference. And that was the Cerebrolysin peptide. And I got it originally injectable. Now she takes an oral version of it, but I'm, I'm, again, I'm such a huge fan of the, of the peptides and their use because of the limited risk profile. And now we get into the, like, the really exciting things. You know, stem cells, exosomes, and some of these other really advanced, cutting edge, but scientifically

• 31:06Gary Brecka?

  valid, evidence-based therapies that are going on in mass outside of the United States. And in some cases are allowed here, some 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

• 31:51Gary Brecka?

  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, what are some of the things that they could do and expect from some of these biologics like stem cells?

• 32:04Speaker 00

  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.

• 32:21Gary Brecka?

  Pluripotent.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  So it's kind of pluripotent. And so then this was this idea. And so then for the first half of 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 I was and still am fairly involved in adipose stem cells. 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.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  And it's the name was mesenchymal stem cell.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Basically, what happened is, is the person Arnold Kaplan, who passed away, but is like the 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 of that have signaling molecules inside that tell other cells what to do. It's kind of like currency. And so then they changed the name to medicinal signaling cells. And so stem cells are essentially a little mobile pharmacy.

• 33:28Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  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 is just goes to the other cells in the area. And then it initiates healing. And basically.

• 33:45Gary Brecka?

  It tells them how to behave.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  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.

• 34:11Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  That are coordinated by the stem cell. And so the stem cell. Decrease exosomes that and I basically I always tell people economic indicators are good, kind of like right now.

• 34:22Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 34:28Gary Brecka?

  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 about one eight hundredth the size of a stem cell. They're nano vesicles, nanoparticles. We've talked 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'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

• 35:12Gary Brecka?

  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 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?

• 35:43Speaker 00

  So then I would say the most important thing is, 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 ten 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.

• 36:11Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  And so then 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 like you're feeling like you just took a shower and all the stress on the inside of your body just went away.

• 36:28Gary Brecka?

  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, it's hard to describe. Like your vision is brighter, it's clearer and you have that just very clear, cognizant, awake, focused feeling of, 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 noticed 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.

• 37:10Gary Brecka?

  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.

• 37:20Gary Brecka?

  And one in particular, I, 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, well, 14 pounds of muscle in 45 days. And I remember seeing him at a, I saw him at the conference in, in 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, he went to Honduras, I did this folistatin gene therapy.

• 38:01Gary Brecka?

  And, um, and then I just went deep down the road of this genetic therapy. I wonder if now, you know, I would consider these to be sort of top of the food chain, longevity, anti-aging treatments. Could you talk a little bit about those?

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, a hundred percent. That, that, can we, can I say that person's name?

• 38:19Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it's Ben Greenfield.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:20Gary Brecka?

  I think Ben's talked about it.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he talked about it.

• 38:23Gary Brecka?

  Before we air the podcast, I'll make sure he said it in the pod. We talked about it on my podcast. Yeah, yeah, okay, so.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  So.

• 38:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, Ben Greenfield, shout out, buddy. You're looking good.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  I love you, Ben. We love you, Ben. So then I was in London at that health summit.

• 38:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I saw you there too.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  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 at the camera. And I just was like, fuck, that guy's jacked.

• 38:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  And then I was like, and then I'm looking and then.

• 38:54Gary Brecka?

  Ben was doing good before that, but.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  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. He was so big. I did it also. And I, I've put on about eight pounds and, and so then let me, let me tell you about the, the science of this one. And remember we were, uh, 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.

• 39:35Gary Brecka?

  Right, peptide.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  And, and it's easy to inject peptides. It's a lot harder to inject a protein. Folastatin's 344 amino acids long. So then what happened is, is there's two ways to do this, but there's a company called Mini Circle. And what they did is they, they took the gene for folastatin. So it's, it's a gene that codes for 344 amino acids. And they put it 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.

• 40:16Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  But while it's in there for about a year and a half, your, your body prints that plasmid. And so then when it prints that plasmid, it actually makes folastatin. So instead of doing an injection every day, then for a year, year and a half, you have this, this protein at a higher concentration in your body and, and it's floating around.

• 40:43Gary Brecka?

  And then that protein is actually is inhibiting the protein that inhibits muscle growth, right? The myostatin protein, and there's a second one.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Activena.

• 40:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that's actually inhibiting muscle growth because obviously when we damage muscle and it grows back larger, that 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 therapies, I mean, just like you said, it migrates into the nucleus of the cell. And in the nucleus of the cell is our DNA. And our DNA is sending messages into the cell transcription, right? Messenger RNA.

• 41:39Gary Brecka?

  But it actually reads our DNA and reads that full of statin DNA and takes will take the command from both.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:47Gary Brecka?

  Okay, that's really.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  And make sure I understood that. And we, you know, I would say this, this one's really early. And so then this, this one, I, it's, 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, I told you in the, I'd had this long experience doing adipose stem cells where we do a liposuction and harvest some stem cells.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  So I, I show up and the, the doctor who is, is doing the, the study in Honduras is a doctor named Dr. Terry. Who was who me and him had the same mentor in adipose stem cells.

• 42:42Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Bob Alexander.

• 42:43Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  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 and so then he walked me through their trial and he'd personally treated 250 people and had followed up with them all.

• 43:00Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  And he hadn't had any negative side effects. There's a there is a trend for LDL to go up by about 10 points.

• 43:11Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  So that's the about the only negative, but it lengthens telomeres. It decreases biological age. So this is part of a very big anti inflammatory.

• 43:20Gary Brecka?

  And this is called what?

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Full set.

• 43:22Gary Brecka?

  Full of full statin, the full statin gene therapy does all of this, too.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  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 would say that we've had a lot of people emotionally feel better.

• 43:40Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  And and.

• 43:42Gary Brecka?

  I'm in. I'm gonna let you guys know how this goes. Under us. Here we come.

• 43:49Gary Brecka?

  You know, I I I want to I want to save some time for my my rule record community because we've got a lot of questions coming your way for the for our rule records. But 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?

• 44:22Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 44:23Gary Brecka?

  You written a book?

• 44:25Speaker 00

  No, I need I need to write a book.

• 44:26Gary Brecka?

  You really.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  I need to write a book, but.

• 44:29Gary Brecka?

  Be a best seller.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Where you can find find you can you're going to find me at a bunch of international stem cell clinics.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  And.

• 44:37Gary Brecka?

  Stay tuned because you and I've got some.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  We're using we're using these muse stem cells, which I think are going to absolutely transform regenerative medicine.

• 44:48Gary Brecka?

  I think so, too.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  And they're the the most effective stem cells that I've ever found. And we've been doing it for a long time for for orthopedic and for pain issues. And so but you can find us at bio reset.com.

• 45:04Gary Brecka?

  Bio reset.com. Okay.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, uh, and I'm, uh, I, I promise that I'm going to actually start doing social media.

• 45:14Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I mean, it took me a long time, too. 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. Um, and there's no right or wrong answer to this question. Uh, but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 45:32Speaker 00

  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 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.

• 46:02Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  And so then, and I always said, it, it, that basically everything else doesn't matter. And I, I basically feel that way.

• 46:09Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  And, and what really matters is if you can have a meaningful impact that gives back

• 46:16Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  to, to, to everyone.

• 46:18Gary Brecka?

  Humanity.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  And so then, for me, being an ultimate human is, is actually having an ultimate impact.

• 46:25Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 46:25Speaker 00

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

• 46:31Gary Brecka?

  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, um, 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.