The Peptide Expert: Big Pharma Are Hiding This Powerful Peptide From You! - Dr. Alex Tatem

The FDA silently banned 19 peptides overnight, now RFK Jr is reversing it all. Dr Alex Tatem reveals the truth behind the cover-up, and what peptides can really do for your body. Dr. Alex Tatem is an internationally recognised urologist who has studied peptides for 12 years and runs a men’s health clinic. He also hosts a YouTube channel dedicated to demystifying peptides and men's health. In this explains: ◼ What peptides are, how they work, and which ones target your health problem ◼Why the peptide industry is quietly approaching the size of the entire AI sector ◼ Why male fertility is collapsing globally and what's silently driving it ◼ What low testosterone is doing to your body and how to fix it ◼ Why 30 million men with erectile dysfunction are never told about the most effective fix 00:00 Intro 00:03:15 What Exactly Is A Peptide—and Why It Matters More Than You Think 00:05:14 The “Lock” Explained: How Peptides Actually Work In Your Body 00:08:34 Why Peptides Are Suddenly Everywhere (And What Changed) 00:11:09 The Real Role Of Compounding Pharmacies—And Why They’re Controversial 00:17:16 Are Pharma Companies Prioritizing Profits Over Patients? 00:20:22 Why Peptides Are Back After Being Banned—What Happened Behind The Scenes 00:20:56 The Most Shocking Patient Transformation From Peptides 00:22:26 When You Should (And Shouldn’t) Use Peptides In Your Life 00:24:28 The Latest FDA Update: What It Means For Peptide Access 00:26:05 How People Are Actually Getting “Illegal” Peptides 00:27:41 How To Take Peptides Safely—What Most People Get Wrong 00:29:38 Why Big Pharma Feels Threatened By Peptides 00:33:53 The Exact Peptides Alex Uses—And His Reasons Why 00:37:49 How Peptides Could Transform Your Insulin Levels 00:38:42 Do Peptides Work As Creams? What You Need To Know 00:40:30 How Peptides May Unlock Better Cognitive Performance 00:42:58 The Future Of Muscle Retention On GLP-1s—What’s Coming Next 00:48:03 Ads 00:49:05 The Hidden Trade-Offs Of Peptides No One Talks About 00:52:09 The Real Benefits Of Different Peptides—And How They Compare 00:57:30 The Peptide That Could Change Your Sleep Quality 01:01:58 What Happens When You Stop Taking GLP-1s? 01:05:40 Ads 01:07:33 Is There A “Super Peptide” For Anti-Aging? 01:11:04 The Truth About Peptides And Erectile Dysfunction 01:11:56 Why Medicine Burned Me Out—And What It Reveals About The System 01:18:57 The Enhanced Games Explained—And Why They’re So Controversial 01:22:46 How To Improve Erections—What Actually Works Enjoyed the episode? Share this link and earn points for every referral - redeem them for exclusive prizes: https://doac-perks.com Independent Research Document: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/DOAC-Alex-Tatum-Independent-Research-Further-Reading.pdf Follow Dr Alex: X - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/DS0mGd3 Instagram - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/36mqqnE YouTube - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/4SagDuv Website - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/5WRUIrQ The Diary Of A CEO: ◼️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼️Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook ◼️The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb ◼️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Pipedrive - https://pipedrive.com/CEO LinkedIn Marketing - https://www.linkedin.com/DIARY Wispr - Get 14 days of Wispr Flow for free at https://wisprflow.ai/steven

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This may be the most controversial thing we have on this table. This is a peptide that absolutely torches belly fat at a disproportionate rate. And what we found is not only do patients lose an incredible amount of weight, but they also get the best improvements we've ever seen in their liver health. It's absolutely wild. And I think this is going to be a trillion dollar drug when it comes out.

• 0:21Steven Bartlett?

  And I've brought you here because you're an expert on the subject. And it's worth saying that there was some significant news about this.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Correct, from the FDA, saying that in July, they are going to consider legalizing seven peptides. And by pharma's estimate, it might be the most dangerous thing to their entire business model.

• 0:36Steven Bartlett?

  So do you think it is plausible that Big Pharma didn't want these in the hands of regular people? Because they can't patent this and it's powerful.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  110%. Because the question isn't what can peptides do, it's what can't they do?

• 0:49Steven Bartlett?

  And we've got several peptides here in front of us. I want to go through all of them.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  Let's do it. So this is probably the most well-known peptide for skin complexion. And it improves quality of hair and nails. And then epithelone is maybe, maybe not going to be the fountain of youth. But I'm very skeptical as far as that goes. Next, we've got this. And if you injected that at night, it would improve your quality of your sleep. Next, melanatane 2. And this will actually end up giving you a deep tan in response to just a little bit of UV sun exposure. It'll also give you some of the most impressive erections you've ever had in your life. So be warned.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  And what else have we got?

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. There's methylene blue, where people take it and they think it's going to make them live forever. Don't take this. It literally will stain your nails blue and your hair blue. These two here stimulate building muscle. This one can aid with healing after an injury. And then is this, this, this, this.

• 1:36Steven Bartlett?

  It's crazy.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  It's wild.

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  So why don't I take it?

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Well, we need to talk about that because there are trade offs.

• 1:41Steven Bartlett?

  But also outside of the world of peptides for a second, I've got these three vials. Do you know what those are?

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is unfortunately our future if we're not careful.

• 1:49Steven Bartlett?

  Explain.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  So what we've got here is representing the fertility trajectory for young men. I'm so scared.

• 1:57Steven Bartlett?

  Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make the show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much.

• 2:35Steven Bartlett?

  Dr. Alex Tatum. There's this word that has exploded in society in recent times. In fact, when I look at the data, people searching this word has increased by 400% just recently. And that word is peptides. I have no idea what peptides are. I'm someone that wants to be healthy, that wants to optimize my health, wants to live long, doesn't, doesn't love aging.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:03Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm told that this word peptides is somewhat linked to it. So I've brought you here because you're an expert on the subject. When I've watched your videos on YouTube. To start at the very beginning, Dr. Alex.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 3:13Steven Bartlett?

  What the hell is a peptide?

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Peptides are a structural class of medications. The best way to think about peptides is that just like we have small molecules, which are drugs that are very small, taken in a pill and have a wide-ranging effect throughout the body. Peptides are derived from little pieces of amino acids, which think of them as the Legos that make up the human body, the Legos that make up proteins. These are fragments of proteins that are designed to specifically target certain receptors and affect cells in a very targeted fashion. Or a best way to think about it is a very specific targeted key to unlock a very specific lock. So instead of a small molecule that may have a wide-ranging effect throughout the body,

• 4:00Speaker 00

  peptides are much, much more focused.

• 4:02Steven Bartlett?

  So you've got different types of Lego cubes here. Would they be different types of peptides? Or are they different types of amino acids that come together to make a peptide?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  The best way to think about it is, my son loves Legos, which is why I'm glad that we have these here. But he can take the same set of Legos and he can build a rocket ship. And then just a few minutes later, he can build a pirate ship. And then he builds a race car. And he's using the same Legos, but he's creating very, very different things that all do very, very different things. And so peptides have become incredibly popular because yes, we have some really fascinating peptides that can help with anti-aging, with healing and with tissue repair. We're going to talk about some of those hopefully. But they can do so much more than that. The first peptide that was actually isolated and used in medicine was insulin back in 1921. And then all the way in 1985, in the world of urology, which is where I was trained,

• 4:57Speaker 00

  we had Luprolide, which is a different peptide that again, also a peptide like insulin. But instead of having wide-ranging metabolic effects, it had an endocrine effect. It was designed to shut down the production of testosterone for prostate cancer patients that needed to have their testosterone taken away.

• 5:13Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. Okay, so insulin's a peptide.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Insulin's a peptide.

• 5:17Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's a series of amino acids.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  amino acids that are put together.

• 5:21Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so you said that the combination of amino acids forms a key. So what is the lock?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  The lock could be a cellular receptor. It could actually be regulating a certain pathway within the cell.

• 5:33Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so let me repeat this back to you to make sure I understand it. So peptides are like a key.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:38Steven Bartlett?

  Which you can make by configuring amino acids in a certain way. And there's different locks in our body that these keys can go into. So if I take, you know, we've got some peptides on the table in front of us here.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  So a good way to think about it is this. If you've got a hammer, right? Which is what a lot of small molecules are, like you can do a lot with that, right? Like you could hammer in a nail. But if you try to use that hammer when you're trying to put in a screw or you're trying to put together, you know, a table that you got from Ikea, it may not always end the way that you want to. And that's the problem that we have with a lot of small molecules. It's not that they don't do what we want them to. They do a lot of other things while they're at that job that can have significant negative side effects, which is why a lot of these small molecules actually don't make it all the way through the FDA approval process. Because we find something, it does what we want to do, but has significant safety concerns down the line. All right.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Now, what we see with peptides, for example, I've got in my hand right now, a little vial labeled, you know, BPC157. This is probably one of the most popular peptides that we're talking about right now. Because BPC157 is a synthetic version of a naturally found peptide in the gut. But what this actually does is it enhances blood vessel growth in areas of injury. And it kind of makes sense because if you think about it, our gut, our stomach is really just this bag of acid that sits inside of our abdomen. And yet somehow you and I are here talking to each other and our bodies aren't eating themselves. Well, how does that work? Well, it's because we've developed a lot of really robust systems to encourage healing of the gastric lining.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  And so the idea is, well, if this is one of the compounds that can help do that, it's been proven in multiple animal models. For example, they have completely transected the Achilles tendon in rats.

• 7:29Steven Bartlett?

  Transected?

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Transected, so they've cut across the Achilles tendon. So not just a small injury that you or I might experience in the gym where we pull it or strain it, but actually surgically cut the Achilles tendon. And then they administer it to rats and they are healing spontaneously with administration of BPC157. If you have an Achilles tendon injury and you're a rat, BPC157 is one of the best things that you can ever have. Now, that is not a one-to-one translation to what we might see in humans. But as we talked about earlier with our point on safety, when they were studying BPC157, we tried to look for something called the LD1 or the LD50. How much can I give this to someone until 50% of the population that receives that dose doesn't do well or dies?

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Okay, that's called the LD50 dose. We have yet to figure out what the LD1 dose is for this, which is the amount that it would take to hurt even 1% of the population because it is so incredibly well tolerated. So just giving you an example of this is a compound that can have profound healing effects, at least in our animal models that we've seen so far. But so far, we haven't seen any precipitous negative effects in human patients when taking this. Okay, but we need more data.

• 8:45Steven Bartlett?

  I am mind blown and I'm very, very excited. We've got all of the several peptides here in front of us. I want to go through all of that and understand which ones do which things. But there's a bigger question here.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:54Steven Bartlett?

  Which is, why now? Why have the subject of peptides suddenly exploded into society's consciousness? What's going on? What's the big picture?

• 9:04Speaker 00

  So this is really interesting. In 2013, there was actually a court case in the United States. It was, it was called Myriad Genetics case. This was the company that actually patented the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. They discovered the genes that cause breast cancer. All right, this was mind blowing. They identified the specific genes that would predispose patients to developing both breast, ovarian, and since we've learned also prostate cancer. It was a fantastic discovery, but they patented it. And they said, we now own this intellectual property. And then everyone else said, no, no, no, that's, that's the human body. You can't patent that. And the Supreme Court actually sided with that argument, saying that if something is natural, it's found within us. Okay, I can't patent, you know, your muscle cells, right? Which is a wonderful thing.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  But the unintentional, unintentional byproduct of that is all of a sudden, pharma had no incentive whatsoever to pursue really promising compounds that they could not monetize. So that happens in 2013. At the same time, I believe it was around 2012, 2013, there was a terrible event that happened in New England, where there was a compounding pharmacy that was not doing the right thing. And they ended up having a bunch of contaminated specimens that caused a fungal meningitis. A bunch of patients got really sick. It was a huge scandal. And all of a sudden, the FDA stepped in and said, hey, historically, all right, states have been allowed to regulate compounding pharmacies themselves, but we need some federal oversight here because this is not acceptable.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  Completely agree with that. And they introduced a new set of regulations on top of compounding pharmacies, basically saying what you can and cannot make. And what they eventually said is, well, the only, you can only make three things. You can make things that are in the USP, United States Pharmacopeia, okay? Things that have been, you know, well-described, already published, things that are already in drugs that are already on the market. Or three, things that are on a very specific list that we're going to give you. Okay. And in that list, they actually included a lot of these very promising compounds that were stuck in drug development, you know, limbo.

• 11:09Steven Bartlett?

  And you say compounding pharmacies, you said that a few times. What is a compounding pharmacy, just so I'm clear on the definition?

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Back in the 1800s or early 1900s, if you ever needed a medication, you'd go see the pharmacist who had a shop down the road and he would actually make your medication in front of you. And he would do that custom for every single patient that came by. All right. And it was only since the advent of modern factories that we had the modern pharmaceutical industry come about. But the truth is, is that again, you know, that's kind of paint by numbers. You're creating this one pill and you know, it always seemed kind of crazy that the adult dose is one standardized dose for all adults. Like if you look at what your body composition is versus some of my patients, why is the dose in your blood pressure medicine the exact same? Like that doesn't seem to be quite right, but it is what it is. So when patients fall outside of that and they need custom medication, we still have those people who make custom formulations of medications.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  But instead of it being just your local pharmacist who's using a mortar and pestle and you know, is creating something in his back office, these are now large sophisticated industrial operations that can make custom formulations for patients.

• 12:10Steven Bartlett?

  I think, I think the important context for people that don't understand how drug development occurs is that to get chemicals like the ones we have in front of us on the table through FDA approval, you've got to spend millions and millions and millions of dollars.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 12:24Steven Bartlett?

  Sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  An incredible amount of money and.

• 12:27Steven Bartlett?

  And if you know you can't protect it, once you've spent a hundred million dollars, you have no incentive to just do charity work.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Absolutely not. Okay, because you have shareholders and you have to make payroll. And so because drug development is so expensive, there is no incentive for commercial pharmaceutical companies to pursue the development of these compounds. And then on the other side of that, well, we have compounding pharmacies that, you know, for them, it makes sense. What if we could just make these compounds and then sell them directly to patients? We make a small margin when we sell it. This makes sense for us. Well, they could do that, starting in about 2014, whenever that legislation finished. All right.

• 13:02Steven Bartlett?

  What did it do?

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Essentially, what it did is it gave a, it gave a assignment to each one of these compounds. It was either going to be category one, which is you can compound this. This is on our specific list of approved compoundable drug ingredients. Number two was, hey, we see some negative safety signals here. You cannot make this. Okay, something goes in category two, it's forbidden. And then we have category three, which is we just need more information. And all of these original compounds, these peptides that we're so interested in now, were originally on that first list, category one. All right. And so they were able to be compounded. We could prescribe them to patients, I prescribed them to patients, all right, from 2014 onward.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  But then in 2023, the FDA at that time switched all of those peptides, 19 of them, that were popular to category two, and then they were banned. Overnight, we got notifications in our email inboxes from our compounding pharmacy partners saying, hey, we can't make this anymore. We're sorry.

• 13:59Steven Bartlett?

  So I've got two questions there.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:01Steven Bartlett?

  The first is, when you were prescribing these peptides to your patient.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:07Steven Bartlett?

  Were you seeing incredible results?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Very much so, very much. Again, you have to use the right key for the right lock. Okay. But I think a really good example, all right? So there is a compound that is not technically a peptide. It is a small molecule, but it was lumped in with all of these and was the victim to the same process. Something called MK677, also known as ibutamoren. So this is a small molecule, but when a patient takes it, it's orally available. It binds to this receptor called grelin and it actually stimulates the release of significant growth hormone. But what was really interesting is that it would actually stimulate hunger a profound amount. And all of a sudden, patients that were struggling with cachexia, okay? So being very, very thin, very malnourished, maybe they're going through cancer treatment.

• 14:53Steven Bartlett?

  Grelin's the thing that makes us feel hungry.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 14:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  So they were able to stimulate the hunger response and patients were actually able to eat more to meet caloric goals. And so this was a medication that was fantastically effective at that. Again, it had gone through some clinical trials, but was never taken all the way to commercial. And so it was never going to be available from CVS or Walgreens, but you could get it from a compounding pharmacy. And so that was one that made a big difference for us. We also had other peptides. So GHRP2 and GHRP6 were some of the ones we were using at that time. Those are growth hormone-releasing peptides that stimulate the release of your body's natural growth hormone, which can help with tissue repair, can also help with fat loss and with building muscle.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  We also had BPC157 and we had derivatives like thymus and beta 4. These are also compounds that can help stimulate angiogenesis, so making new blood vessels, all right? And tissue repair. So if we have a patient that's injured themselves, maybe we could help them get back at life faster. These were all things that were used very commonplace for many years. And truthfully, they weren't super popular at the time. We were just using them and then they were banned overnight.

• 16:04Steven Bartlett?

  And they were working.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  And they were working and they were working. And we were not seeing adverse events, which is the most important thing.

• 16:10Steven Bartlett?

  What's an adverse event?

• 16:11Speaker 00

  An adverse event is a patient has a terrible side effect. They call you, they have an allergic reaction to something. They call, they've got shortness of breath and it's a direct result of the medication that you gave them. It was working, it was working and by all accounts seemed to be incredibly safe.

• 16:25Steven Bartlett?

  And then they banned it.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  And then they banned it.

• 16:27Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 16:28Speaker 00

  That's a great question. So officially, what happened is there is a meeting where they brought together the experts at the time. And they said, there is insufficient data for us to say that these are safe. Because again, they had not gone through the full FDA approval process. And so as a result of lacking that data, we're going to say that they're too dangerous. Now, there wasn't any evidence of any of that in the population. These were widely used at the time. Potentially, we had commercial pharmaceutical companies saying, well, hey, this is people spending money on a compound, on something that isn't coming to us. So, hey, like we love medicine, but maybe only when it's our medicine. And so there's concern that that was at play as well. And so there is not a great paper trail and there's not a great explanation why.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  And that's something that's been iterated by our current administration from RFK himself. You know, he himself has characterized that move done in 2023 as being illegal.

• 17:20Steven Bartlett?

  With everything you know about the medical industry, do you think it is plausible that Big Pharma?

• 17:26Speaker 00

  110%.

• 17:28Steven Bartlett?

  Didn't want?

• 17:29Speaker 00

  110%.

• 17:31Steven Bartlett?

  These in the hands of regular people because they can't patent this and it's powerful.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  So ultimately, the way to think about it is this.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Pharma may not have a compound that directly competes for BPC157.

• 17:47Steven Bartlett?

  BPC157.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  So this is the medication or the peptide that can aid with healing after an injury. Okay. So it's not necessarily there's direct competition. But at the end of the day, your average patient going throughout their daily life only has so much money that they can spend on medicine. And $10, $15, however much money that goes to this, doesn't go to a prescription drug from a commercial pharmaceutical company. And so there is real concern that potentially that was at play during that decision.

• 18:17Steven Bartlett?

  You said 110%.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting because, you know, I try to walk a very fine line between what I can prove versus what I suspect after being in this space for a long time. And you know, ultimately, you know, I don't think it's accurate to characterize pharmaceutical companies or really any other entity as being, you know, evil or, or bad. The truth is maybe a little bit more ominous. The truth is, is that they are these large machines that are designed to prioritize profit over everything.

• 18:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  And that's everything.

• 18:52Steven Bartlett?

  I think this is one of the really interesting observations I've had the higher I've gone in my career, is that oftentimes, you know, we had about the Illuminati. Like when I was growing up, I was like, oh, there's this Illuminati.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:01Steven Bartlett?

  And you think of it as these like shadow hooded people that get together and decide evil things. But the further I've gone in business, the more I've realized that the Illuminati or these evil forces are actually just machines that were designed to optimize for profit.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Correct, correct.

• 19:13Steven Bartlett?

  So like corporations are the Illuminati.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so I don't actually think that there's necessarily, you know, a group of maniacal individuals, you know, the Legion of Doom, you know, plotting to like take away your health. But at the same time, I think that there are these large organizations that really couldn't care less about your health. You know, they are prioritizing what's important for them. And regular people just get caught up in the mix. And what's challenging is that as a physician, you know, I took a Hippocratic oath. You know, I care about my patients. And so those are the people that are in front of me every single day that are seeking to improve their lives, to recover from injury. I have, you know, fertility patients that are just dying to start their family. And I have patients that are suffering from hormonal imbalances that haven't felt right in years. I treat erectile dysfunction in men that have been struggling for years after prostate cancer treatment.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  I mean, these are people that are broken and hurting. You want to be able to help them. And so I feel that as a very strong personal calling that I have to be the advocate for that patient, both in the room, whenever I'm treating them and taking care of them, but also when I'm talking to others and I'm, you know, speaking out about these issues. Like I want access to these medications because I care about the patients who benefit from them.

• 20:22Steven Bartlett?

  So they banned these peptides that we have here.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 20:25Steven Bartlett?

  And we're sat here two years after the ban, I believe, roughly two years after that ban.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:28Steven Bartlett?

  And suddenly, everybody's talking about peptides again.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:31Steven Bartlett?

  Why? What's going on?

• 20:32Speaker 00

  So I think what we're seeing is the forbidden fruit effect, because this was banned. And all of a sudden, oh, well, why'd they ban it? Well, they wouldn't have banned it if it weren't working, right? And we're also seeing the effect of TikTok and short form content being spread very rapidly, very virally. And that's been going on for two years now, combined with new emphasis from administration leadership and HHS and RFK.

• 20:56Steven Bartlett?

  What is the most incredible impact that you've seen peptides create in a patient?

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, I have a best story for you. So one of the most frustrating things about my practice is treating infertility in young men that have significant metabolic dysfunction. These are young men that have a low sperm count, right? So they can't get pregnant because they just don't have the numbers to make it happen. And you're looking at them and they're morbidly obese. Okay? They have high insulin resistance, right? And their endocrine system has been damaged by that obesity. So they don't have low testosterone levels and their brain is not making enough of the signals to stimulate their testicles. Now, we have medications that we can use to help stimulate that, to make more of that signal stimulate the testicles, right?

• 21:43Speaker 00

  But really, what is eating at them, what is causing this, is not that chemical imbalance. That's the symptom. That's not the problem. Okay? And treating symptoms doesn't really get you very far. And so I would have patients that I would take care of, and we would never see a significant improvement in their numbers, because losing weight is really, really hard, regardless of all of the education and resources I try to give them. But now we have peptides in the form of GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide and terzepatide. And I just saw a patient last week who increased his sperm count 10 times over and is now in a normal range, because he's lost 100 pounds due to using terzepatide, exercising and improving his diet. And he has totally changed his life.

• 22:26Steven Bartlett?

  And that started with a peptide?

• 22:27Speaker 00

  It started with a peptide.

• 22:28Steven Bartlett?

  So we've got lots of peptides on the table in front of you.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:31Steven Bartlett?

  We will go into them individually, but just can you give me a high level view of the types of areas in our health and life that these peptides can help with? So we've talked there about infertility.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 22:41Steven Bartlett?

  As a downstream consequence of the like weight loss and fixing metabolic health. What other parts of the body do peptides touch?

• 22:48Speaker 00

  The best way to think about it is like this. So peptides are almost like an app on your phone. So imagine before we had apps. Like, I'm old enough to remember trying to log on and do my banking online before we had apps. And gosh, it was so painful, right? Like, there are ways to accomplish things, but they were very inconvenient in a roundabout way. And now, all of a sudden, we have these apps on our phone that can do just about anything except fold your laundry, right? You know, there's some limits to it, but I mean, really, the sky's the limit from an electronic standpoint. And really, that's what peptides are. So the thing is, is that we have peptides that can help you lose weight, like the GLP-1 drugs. We have peptides that can improve skin quality, like GHKCU.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  We have peptides that can help heal your gut, like BPC157, particularly effective in ulcerative colitis, which is something that's being investigated with the FDA's planned upcoming meeting on it. We also have peptides that can help with sleep and with recovering the gland in your brain that's responsible for melatonin and regulating your sleep-wake cycles. So the question isn't, you know, what can peptides do? It's kind of, well, what can't they do? And if they can't do that yet, can we develop a peptide that can accomplish that task? And the answer is probably. And simultaneously, while there may be resistance from pharmaceutical industry in these peptides, the ones that we're most interested right now, they have signed multi-billion dollar deals

• 24:10Speaker 00

  with other pharmaceutical companies that are involved in peptide development aided by AI to try and fast track their own peptide products.

• 24:19Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  And so we are going to see exponentially more of these products come down the pipeline from pharmaceutical companies in the form of commercial products.

• 24:28Steven Bartlett?

  And it's worth saying that there was some significant news today.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 24:31Steven Bartlett?

  What happened today, but also what's going on? And just for anyone that doesn't know, it's April the 15th.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Yes. So today, we got a press release from the FDA saying that in July, they are going to consider seven peptides for removing from category two back to category one.

• 24:49Steven Bartlett?

  Legalizing them.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Legalizing them. Okay. And some of the heavy hitters from that list include BPC157.

• 24:59Steven Bartlett?

  Which is the one we talked about to do with like repair and injury.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Okay. And then we have the brother to that, which is TB500, this vial over here. This improves blood flow to an injured area. You could think of this as sending the soldiers, as sending the cells that are required for rebuilding that tissue matrix that was damaged by a tear or a cut. All right? On top of that, we're also getting something called KPV. May not have it here, but that is another peptide that has been linked to angiogenesis and tissue repair. We're also getting MOTC. And then, you know, some patients will call it exercise in a vial. It improves your VO2 max and your exercise tolerance by upregulating the energy pathway,

• 25:42Speaker 00

  basically making more ATP, the energy that we all use to move, and makes more of that available. All right? We're also going to get DSIP, epithelone and Cmax, which are all peptides that affect cognitive function. So improving thinking, like Cmax is a great option for that. And then DSIP and epithelone both have roles in regulating sleep and recovery.

• 26:05Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, pretty wild.

• 26:08Steven Bartlett?

  And I've got to say, how does, so some of them are becoming legalized, but even the ones that aren't legal right now, a lot of people are taking them anyway.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 26:15Steven Bartlett?

  So my question is, how are people getting them? Listen, I don't want to promote illegal drugs here. This is not that kind of shit. But I just want to know what's going on.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  No, this is, well, this is important to talk about, right? Because we have to understand like what's going on in the marketplace. The moment that these drugs were banned, or these medications were banned in 2023, it was kind of like the United States experiment at banning alcohol. It didn't go very well, right? All of a sudden, you know, they, you know, the mob came around and we started, you know, seeing unregulated saloons and unregulated alcohol production, and it was contaminated with all the stuff that you didn't want.

• 26:47Steven Bartlett?

  And so we're like. People are traveling.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's not a good idea, right? And so what happened is we banned these and the gray market stepped in. And so these are companies that will sell peptides that have on the label for research use only. All right? And the idea is that that takes them out of the FDA's jurisdiction, because they're not selling it for people to inject into themselves out of the FDA's hands. I'm just creating a vial of this magical juice that you can use for your rat. Okay? That's the idea. We all know that's not what's really happening. But because there isn't any quality control, it's kind of like getting gas station sushi. Like, yeah, you can do it, but you don't really know if it's sushi and it may not end very well for you. And so, again, not saying that there aren't some people who have gotten good results with research use only peptides,

• 27:34Speaker 00

  but again, it's not standardized, which is why I think moving this back into the 503A compounding world is the best thing for everyone.

• 27:41Steven Bartlett?

  Which is the legal framework. Okay. So how does one take a peptide?

• 27:45Speaker 00

  That's a great question. So what's interesting is that, as we mentioned, you know, peptides are just made up of building blocks of amino acids. And, you know, if you were to go make yourself a protein shake, you know, what is that going to look like from a Lego standpoint? It just looks like this, a handful of Legos in your hand, right?

• 28:00Steven Bartlett?

  All sort of ground up.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  All ground up in individual pieces, right? Well, the thing is, is that your gut is designed to break up any sort of protein that you ingest orally into these little pieces. And so if you were to say, I don't know, drink some of, you know, this TB500, your body wouldn't be able to tell the difference in between that and a piece of chicken.

• 28:19Steven Bartlett?

  Because it would, it would break it all apart.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  It would break it all apart. Now, there are some very unique exceptions to that. There's a form of BPC157 that actually is tolerated in the gut. But by and large, the overwhelming majority of these have to be injected, either subcutaneously or into the muscle, and that's usually a preference.

• 28:35Steven Bartlett?

  Subcutaneous being my belly?

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Just underneath the skin, you know, as I tell patients, just pinch an inch, inject under the skin. We do that for a lot of other medications as well.

• 28:42Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what this is?

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. So this is a prescription Manjaro pen. So Manjaro is the brand name for terzepatide, all right? Terzepatide being the leading GLP-1 product right now from Lilly. So this produces more weight loss per milligram than any other product that we've got out right now.

• 29:01Steven Bartlett?

  Is this the mechanism in which people inject peptides?

• 29:04Speaker 00

  A little bit different.

• 29:05Steven Bartlett?

  A little different.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  This is an auto-injector pen. And so what you do is you're able to actually ratchet the dose there on the right side, and then you pinch an inch in your skin and then push it up against and it'll auto deploy. And so there's nothing that you need to do. You don't have to learn how to drop medication and inject. Whenever you're administering peptides at home, especially for patients that have obtained them from research use only markets, they usually come in just little vials that need to be drawn up with a needle. Okay? Now, the benefit of that is that you can do custom dosing, right? But the drawback is, is that, well, you have to know how to calculate that and put it together. This may be the most controversial thing we have on this table. And by pharma's estimate, it might be the most dangerous thing to their entire business model.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Because this is terzepatide, the exact same thing that you had in that pen. But this is made by a high-quality 503A compounding pharmacy. And the reason why this is so controversial right now is because it offers an incredible amount of flexibility, because what you have in your hand there is very standardized and you administer it once a week, because that's what's approved by insurance.

• 30:10Steven Bartlett?

  This is like the XMPAC thing everyone's been talking about.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 30:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Right? But think of that as paint by numbers. Okay? You are, this, this section is this color, this section is that color. All right? Think of this as.

• 30:23Steven Bartlett?

  The thing you've got in your hand.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Right now, yeah, exactly. Just a vial of terzepatide as being able, having infinite permutations and dosing ability. Because you can draw this up with a small syringe and do microdosing. So instead of one large dose once a week, because what many patients will experience is they'll have a return of their hunger by the end of the week and they end up losing ground. You can actually, instead of doing a full dose once a week, you could do multiple mini doses throughout the week with this formulation and with this presentation of the medication. All right? But the challenge is, is that that is the benefit that allows this to be compounded by compounding pharmacies, because they are able to provide something that is similar to what's in your hand, all right? But it offers more flexibility that may be the right choice for some patients.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  So personalization of medicine. Okay? But the challenge is, is that if you spend however much money on this, you're not giving it to Lilly. And so as a result, we have seen an unprecedented crackdown in the United States from the FDA in trying to shut down compounding pharmacies and prevent them from making these medications, even though that ability to customize, the fact that this is not an exact copy of what's in your hand right now, should protect it under current legislation. But there is now enough pressure from the powers that be and from lobbyists from both Lilly and Novo Nordisk, that, which are the two companies that make the GLP-1 medications, that we're seeing Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner,

• 31:51Speaker 00

  has now tweeted more about cracking down on compounded GLP-1 medications than he's tweeted about diabetes or heart disease in his entire time in office.

• 31:59Steven Bartlett?

  And just so I understand, I want to play this back to you to make sure I understand.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 32:04Steven Bartlett?

  In my hand here, I have trisepatide on my left.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 32:09Steven Bartlett?

  And this is made by Lilly, which is a corporate company who patented it, so they can make lots of money from it.

• 32:14Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 32:14Steven Bartlett?

  In my right hand, I have trisepatide.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Terzepatide with niacinamide.

• 32:19Steven Bartlett?

  With niacinamide.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 32:21Steven Bartlett?

  And this is not patentable?

• 32:23Speaker 00

  So Lilly has a patent on the terzepatide molecule in that formulation in your hand. Okay? And if anyone violates a patent, that can be pursued in US court.

• 32:36Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Patent law, right? But what's interesting is that Lilly and Novo Nordisk know that that's different in your right hand. It doesn't look the same. You can dose it differently. And they know that if they were going to fight that in court, it would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. So you know what's a lot easier? Calling your friend at the FDA and getting him to step on the competition so you don't have to. And then who's paying for that enforcement? It's not the lawyers that the pharma company is paying for. It's the taxpayer paying for the FDA through taxes.

• 33:08Steven Bartlett?

  And you seem to imply that this was actually better, because you could take it in a more flexible dose. You could take a little bit, a lot, you can take it when you want, whereas this is kind of once, once a week.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, you know, what is better, right? So I like this option for many of my patients, because it's flexible. All right? So that is something that works for most patients. All right? But then, then again, this works great for patients too.

• 33:28Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  But what you want is you want an ecosystem where you have choice, so you can make the right choice for the right patient. For a lot of patients, they're going to do exceedingly well on this, and there is so much data to support that. But I also have a lot of patients who get really ill after they do a large dose of Manjaro or of GLP-1 med. And if we take that same dose and we just cut it into multiple doses within a week, we can avoid those side effects.

• 33:53Steven Bartlett?

  So you've told me that these peptides we have on the table in front of us can improve your skin, weight loss, muscle, energy, chronic illnesses, you talked about the cognitive upsides, and you talk about it very passionately.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:05Steven Bartlett?

  So one should ask you.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:08Steven Bartlett?

  Presumably, you're taking some peptides.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  I am. Yeah.

• 34:10Steven Bartlett?

  Which ones do you take?

• 34:11Speaker 00

  So I will tell you that as of right now, the only peptide I'm taking is a small dose of terzepatide.

• 34:18Steven Bartlett?

  Which is the one we were just talking about.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because back a couple of, couple of months ago, I was probably close to about 240 or so. And I was into powerlifting, you know, I still am. But, you know, it's really great to be able to deadlift 500 pounds, but then stairs become really hard when you're trying to walk up. And you're like, I don't know, I kind of like being able to not take a break after two or three flights of stairs. And so I was like, okay, all right, longevity is a priority of mine. I'm going to slim down a little bit. I was like, let me just try this for a little bit. And what I found is that it is incredibly potent and at a very low dose, very, very tolerable.

• 34:51Steven Bartlett?

  Why don't you take some of the others?

• 34:53Speaker 00

  Honestly, because right now, there is not a legal framework for me to obtain them. And the truth is, is that I want to be an example for my patients. And that's why I'm out here advocating that we get access to these peptides in a legal, safe way again. All right? And because it's the best thing for everyone.

• 35:10Steven Bartlett?

  If they were legal, which ones might you consider?

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Oh, man, I will tell you this, as some, like, I don't know how old you are, Stephen, but I'm in my. 33. God bless you. I will tell you, once you get over 35, man, that is brutal. All right? I sleep on my neck in a wrong way and I need like a fricking brace for like two weeks. And so as someone who spends a lot of time in the gym, you know, working out, like you start to accumulate all these little aches and pains. And so the idea of, for example, I have a very finicky right shoulder. If I try to do a really heavy bench and I haven't warmed up, I can tweak this and it takes me out of the fight for at least a month. Okay? And I have to do other things. You know, I would have killed at various points in time over the past two years to have had BPC and TB500 to hopefully speed that sort of healing. All right?

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Also, for example, I suffer from really bad rosacea. It flares constantly.

• 36:01Steven Bartlett?

  What's that?

• 36:01Speaker 00

  So just redness of the face. Okay? That, you know, it makes me look like I'm sunburned. And then I come in on the office on like a Tuesday and then my staff's like, oh, my gosh, you go out in the yard and do some work this week? I'm like, it's just my face. You know, for example, that's something that a lot of people have reported benefits from GHKCU from. So again, another compound, another peptide that could be beneficial for a patient like myself.

• 36:23Steven Bartlett?

  What about muscle mass and gaining muscle?

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that is an interesting misnomer, because that has been a common selling point that you'll see on social media. But as of right now, the only peptide that you might construe that way would be this guy right here in my hand, IGF-1 LR3. Okay? Now, IGF-1 LR3 is basically the longer lasting version of IGF-1, which is the downstream effect of growth hormone. I'm sure you've heard of bodybuilders taking growth hormone to increase size and, you know, lose fat. In higher doses, it can help contribute to muscle mass. All right? But truthfully, if you're trying to gain significant muscle mass, this is, this is not the way to do it.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  And so the, right now, one of the things that peptides can't do for you is independently put on significant amounts of lean mass.

• 37:14Steven Bartlett?

  You still have to go to the gym.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  You still have to go to the gym, believe it or not. And guess what?

• 37:17Steven Bartlett?

  Well, that's the end of the podcast.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. I tell you, and but something that blows my mind is that I have so many patients that think that they can just take testosterone and just put on muscle naturally. And it doesn't work that way. You might get a tiny little bit, but you still have to have stimulus. You still have to get in the gym. You still have to put the work in. And so I tell patients that I am not a replacement for a personal trainer. I'm your doctor. You also need your personal trainer. And most of you need a nutritionist, man. And so I'm lucky to work with some great people in the community who partner with me on that. But, you know, it's a, it's a full court press when you're trying to get people to, you know, live the highest quality life.

• 37:49Steven Bartlett?

  What about some of these metabolic disorders and diseases in terms of like insulin?

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:53Steven Bartlett?

  Resistance. People on the diaros here, the audience are very interested to learn about insulin. I see that a lot on the comment section and a lot of the data.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:00Steven Bartlett?

  So how can, if someone's struggling with their insulin levels or their, you know, their glucose response, how does these peptides help?

• 38:06Speaker 00

  Honestly, the best peptides for that right now are the GLP-1 drugs, okay? Hands down, because what you're doing is you are slowing gastric emptying. And so you have a slower absorption of that bowl of food that you've eaten, so your glucose doesn't spike. And so as a result, that increases insulin sensitivity significantly. Now, again, you have to be careful about what peptide you're using for what. A lot of these peptides that boost growth hormone and boost, let's say, IGF-1, those can actually increase serum glucose. And that may not be what you want if you are someone that is trying to work on your insulin sensitivity.

• 38:42Steven Bartlett?

  And do any of these peptides come as like creams or as pills or anything like that?

• 38:47Speaker 00

  If you look online, you can probably find a version of everything. But if we're talking about actual legitimate formulations, the best example of a topical cream is going to be GHKCU. And this is interesting, because this is a copper tripeptide that has been found to decrease in expression and concentration as we age. But when it is applied topically, it's highly effective. Topically. So putting on a cream on your face. All right? It's been found to be extremely beneficial in regenerating the quality of skin. So complexion, all right? Increasing the amount of collagen and elastin, the things that we need to keep our faces taut and youthful, the things that people will pay lots of money to go get lasered to get improvements. Not that it's a replacement for that, but that's a topical form that, believe it or not,

• 39:32Speaker 00

  you could go out and buy today, because topical GHKCU is regulated very differently than the injectable form.

• 39:39Steven Bartlett?

  Is it expensive?

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Usually.

• 39:41Steven Bartlett?

  You know, growing up, I thought all these sort of anti-aging creams were bullshit. But, but you're telling me that this has actually been associated with improving signs of aging?

• 39:50Speaker 00

  I will tell you this, when I was going through college and medical school, I was the biggest skeptic. Like, I did not believe any of the health or wellness claims that we saw coming out at the time. And again, you know, that was at a time where we were getting bombarded with stuff about the Atkins diet and this, that or the other. But then all of a sudden, you start having patients come back to you and they're testifying as the benefits they've seen from these things. You start to actually look at the biochemistry behind them. You're like, there's a lot of science backing this up. This isn't just mumbo jumbo. And so, believe it or not, yeah, there are creams that can slow the process of aging, at least from a visual standpoint, when it comes to your skin. I have yet to figure out anything that, you know, makes me as energetic as I was in my early twenties, but you know, I'm working on it.

• 40:31Steven Bartlett?

  But on that point of energy and cognition, if I wanted to become a better podcaster.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:35Steven Bartlett?

  And you know, I sit here sometimes, sometimes we do two in a day, which means I might sit here for eight hours. Once we did, I think a couple of times we've done three in a day.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  That's brutal.

• 40:41Steven Bartlett?

  Which is 12 hours of recording.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:43Steven Bartlett?

  But what would you recommend if I was trying to improve my cognitive performance?

• 40:46Speaker 00

  So again, as a physician who likes keeping my license, I wouldn't say necessarily recommend, but I would say if we're looking at how these medications have been used and potentially one that may be legal again, coming this July, pending what the FDA says, intranasal Cmax. And this was one that was originally studied actually in Russia many years ago. And what they found is that this seven amino acid peptide, when it was administered after a TBI, so a traumatic brain injury, all right, or acute injury, that patients tended to bounce back faster. Also, they saw evidence of it improving outcomes after stroke. And it also seems to upregulate the same sort of factors that help with cognition and with,

• 41:29Speaker 00

  you know, connecting sentences and bits of data in your brain. And so it's also one of the, interestingly enough, one of the ones that is available, you know, intranasally because it goes through the mucous membranes and gets right where you need it. And so that's going to be a really, really fascinating compound to see back on the market. And then we can actually get more data regarding efficacy and across a wide population.

• 41:50Steven Bartlett?

  So interesting. And you sniff that through your nose.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Like you would for any nasal decongestant, right? And if you have allergies or something like that. Also, for someone like yourself, you travel a lot, you know, you're going in between different time zones, you're balancing multiple obligations at different odd times of the day. I shudder to think what your circadian rhythm looks like, my friend. But you know, that is what we have, some of these other compounds that are going to be available for. So if we look at DESIP, okay, that has been shown to be helpful with regulating your circadian rhythm. All right. That is one of the ones that's going to be approved, hopefully here soon again in July, right? And then, you know, on top of that, you've got, you know, things like Selenk, which is another one that can help calm you as you're going to sleep about an hour ahead of time. And again, help those, you know,

• 42:37Speaker 00

  deep delta way, brainwaves that are so restorative whenever you actually are, you know, resting.

• 42:43Steven Bartlett?

  Where will we be able to buy these, when and if they are legalized?

• 42:47Speaker 00

  So from 503A compounders here in the United States with a prescription from a physician.

• 42:54Steven Bartlett?

  So you still need a prescription?

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Still need a prescription, correct.

• 42:58Steven Bartlett?

  Could be quite a crazy world when everybody is going to be injecting themselves every day. I mean, we're already getting to that point now with the Zempec, where I've got loads of people in my friendship group that are.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they're, yeah, and they're doing great.

• 43:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, they're doing great.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  They're doing great. And that's what I like about, you know, the advent of these GLP-1s is they're removing the stigma of a needle. And I look at some of my friends who have been on it, I can't recognize them, they look awesome.

• 43:21Steven Bartlett?

  Are you concerned with any of them?

• 43:24Speaker 00

  You know.

• 43:24Steven Bartlett?

  I've got a couple of friends in my circle where I'm a little bit concerned. I don't even know if I should be concerned, but it's just when you see someone you know change so dramatically, so quickly.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:34Steven Bartlett?

  I think there's something in us, which, something prehistoric in us, which goes, oh my God, there's a problem.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. One thing I am concerned about is the rapid weight loss with GLP-1 medications. Because the problem is, is that when you go into such a radical caloric deficit, your body goes into catabolism, which is breaking down tissue. And you want to break down fat, right? But your body isn't that judicious. It's going to break down muscle. And muscle is the most metabolically important tissue that any of us have. And so if you really want to optimize your insulin sensitivity, well, you need to maintain your muscle. And right now, really, the only compounds that we have that are really good at preserving muscle with resistance training is testosterone, right? But that isn't going to be a good option for our male patients that want to get pregnant because testosterone turns off fertility in men. All right. It's also not a great idea for our female patients, all

• 44:20Speaker 00

  right, depending on their age, testosterone, TRT is a thing in older, you know, women, menopausal, won't go into that. But truthfully, testosterone is not the right answer for everybody. And so what we are going to see come down the pipe very soon is kind of the older brother of peptides, the more complex form, biologics called monoclonal antibodies that are specifically designed to inhibit the enzymes that break down muscle. So these are specifically called myostatin inhibitors. There are three that are coming down the pipeline. There is one called bemagromab, which is owned by Lilly. That is going to bind to the peanut butter to myostatin's jelly, which is called Activen. And then you have garetosmab and trvogumab, which are two other compounds owned by different

• 45:04Speaker 00

  pharmaceutical company that are all designed to maintain muscle even in a significant caloric deficit.

• 45:10Steven Bartlett?

  This is getting interesting now.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. So you're telling me I'm going to be able to inject myself with a Zempec to lose the fat?

• 45:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:16Steven Bartlett?

  And then inject myself with something else to keep the muscle?

• 45:18Speaker 00

  It's wild. It's wild.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  And, and I'll tell you, you know, one of the hardest things that I'm sure you've heard being on the receiving end of this is just the complexity of it. And there are so many levers that are moving at once and trying to get your head around it and balance it all. Like, it requires nuance and it requires a thoughtful discussion with your doctor who is well educated on them. And that's one of the challenges is that there isn't broad, great education on these products right now in the medical space. And so that's something that I'm very passionate about is improving education across my colleagues so that they're not afraid of these anymore.

• 45:56Steven Bartlett?

  What do you say to people that are listening to this now, go fuck it now, why don't you just like eat your greens and go to the gym?

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:01Steven Bartlett?

  And just be more human and you'll be fine?

• 46:03Speaker 00

  I love that. I love eating your greens and going to the gym. Okay. But the unfortunate reality is that here in the United States, it depends on what database you look at. But obesity rates are estimated to be 40 to 70%, okay? Whether you, depending on what BMI cutoff you're using, okay, BMI is not perfect, but it is what it is. And so the thing is, is that, well, eating greens and going to the gym are not working for us as a society. And we could talk about how we don't have real food anymore, we have food deserts, we have this calorically dense but nutritionally poor food. I'll tell you, the most disturbing thing I see as a surgeon is I'll see a patient come in the door and they're morbidly obese, they're a large individual, but I have to do surgery on them. But the connective tissue, the stuff that's made up of protein that makes them them, that

• 46:48Speaker 00

  literally holds them together, is paper, paper thin because they're eating an incredible amount of calories, they're gaining fat, but they don't have any protein in their diet. And that's not something that's rare. I see that on a daily basis. And so the truth is, is that, you know, we're talking about this from the angle of biohackers and people that are super engaged in our health. But the truth is, is that this is going to be able to be used to help our population at large and, you know, ultimately, hopefully avoid a lot of the terrible disease states that we're seeing overwhelm the medical system right now.

• 47:19Steven Bartlett?

  How big is the peptide industry right now?

• 47:22Speaker 00

  If we look at the top four large language models companies, all right, so all the heavy hitters and how much revenue they're generating, it's estimated between, be between 58 billion up to maybe 62 billion. Yet the income and the revenue from just semaglutide and terzepatide alone is going to be over 55 billion this year. And so what we have is peptides, without even considering all of this happening in the research space or the research use only space, without even considering the peptides that we'll see come from compounding pharmacies, we're already approaching parity with what we're seeing in AI as far as revenue goes. That is the demand that we're seeing in the marketplace.

• 48:04Steven Bartlett?

  I run multiple companies that have multiple sales teams. And one of the things as a founder of a company that's often confusing is you find it hard to figure out where sales are. So about 10 years ago, I started using Pipe Drive in my former company. And it's also the reason why I switched over all of my commercial teams in my current media company called Steven.com to use Pipe Drive as well. Not only do they sponsor the show, but they've been an incredibly effective way of scaling our sales engine over the years. Pipe Drive is an easy to use intelligent CRM. And at its very core, it makes your sales process visible through one dashboard, a visual pipeline showing every deal, what stage it's in, what needs to happen next, and it's all in real time with no delay. It doesn't magically close the deal for you, of course, but it does replace complexity with clarity. If

• 48:48Steven Bartlett?

  you want to join over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive, you can use my link for a 30 day free trial with no credit card payment needed. Head to pipedrive.com/CEO to get started. That's pipedrive.com/CEO. I'll see you over there. When your patients come and see you, Dr. Alex, what are they asking you most frequently as it relates to peptides? What are like the top three questions you get asked the most?

• 49:14Speaker 00

  The first thing I get asked is, what peptides do I need? And then I just look at them, I'm like, well, what's your problem? You know, like, what's bothering you?

• 49:22Steven Bartlett?

  And what do they say?

• 49:23Speaker 00

  You know, and then they'll come in and they'll start talking about energy, sex drive and that sort of things. And I'm like, okay, if that's it, well, we need to check your testosterone levels, brother. Okay. So instead of looking for peptides, right? You know, you don't walk into a Home Depot or a Lowe's, you know, but what tools do I need? And you're like, well, what are you trying to do? Right? And then you start to talk to someone there, like, well, I'm trying to build this. Okay, you need a saw, you need a screwdriver, you need this. And some of those tools might be peptides, all right? But some of them may be hormones, you know, some of it may be diet and exercise. And so peptides are just another type of tool that we can use.

• 49:54Steven Bartlett?

  We all want a shortcut, though, doctors. We all want a quick way to be better.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:58Steven Bartlett?

  And ideally not to have to do hard work. That's like what most, you know, the average person is looking for. And we hear about these peptides, we hear other people are taking them, we hear the fantastic results in skin, hair, muscle. And we go, fucking, what about me?

• 50:08Speaker 00

  You know what I tell patients? I'm like, me too, man, you know, but my alarm still went off at 4:45 this morning so I could hit the gym before I made it to clinic because there are no real shortcuts. There are things that can help, right? GLP-1s are the best example of that, right? Okay, this is the closest thing to do a shortcut you're going to get. But the truth is, is that this isn't going to go to the gym for you and it's not going to lift the weight. So you can maintain that muscle mass, you get the best possible result and try to hold on to your muscle while losing the fat.

• 50:31Steven Bartlett?

  One thing I've learned from doing this podcast that has really grown with me over time, people ask me all the time, like, what's the one thing you've learned from the podcast? One of the answers that I've never given that I'm going to give now.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:41Steven Bartlett?

  Is that I've learned that there's no such thing in life as a free lunch.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  No, absolutely not.

• 50:46Steven Bartlett?

  And what I mean by that is like, everything is a trade off. And if you ever hear on a podcast or in any medium that something has tremendous upsides, the first question one should ask is what's the trade? And like, just with everything, you can apply this to having a relationship with a partner, huge upsides. Also, trade off.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Trade off. Yeah.

• 51:06Steven Bartlett?

  Kids.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  I love my children. I haven't slept in years, right? You know, like, this is just, this is, this is life, right? There are trade offs. And even with great tools, there are trade offs.

• 51:14Steven Bartlett?

  So what are the trade offs of these peptides?

• 51:17Speaker 00

  The biggest trade off right now is you don't know if you're even getting what you're, what you want, right? Because you're ordering this from some research, you know, compound only, you don't know whether or not they've gotten out all the appropriate endotoxins, you don't know if you're getting what you actually paid for. So that's the biggest thing. And also, the thing is, is that, well, all right, I, these have a good example of, okay, preventing or helping heal injury. But the thing is that, well, we've got other compounds over here, you know, let's go ahead and like, let's just pull tesamorlin as an example. So this is actually interesting. It's a peptide that is commercially available right now. I could write the script for you, you could go pick it up from CVS or Walgreens. Okay, this is available as a commercial product. And people really like it because it'll help boost growth hormone and it happens to be uniquely good at stripping abdominal

• 52:00Speaker 00

  fat, okay, or visceral fat. But the thing is, is that, you know, the moment you stop taking it for a brief period of time, well, if you haven't changed anything about your lifestyle, you're going to go right back to where you were.

• 52:09Steven Bartlett?

  It's good at stripping abdominal fat, belly fat?

• 52:11Speaker 00

  Belly fat. This is what it's known for. Yeah.

• 52:14Steven Bartlett?

  It's good at stripping belly fat?

• 52:15Speaker 00

  Stripping belly fat specifically. So bodybuilders actually really like it for that particular application.

• 52:20Steven Bartlett?

  I had no idea there was a peptide for stripping belly fat.

• 52:23Speaker 00

  There you go, man. You know, and like, for example, here, we've got another one. So this is melanatant 2, right? So this is a melanocortin receptor agonist. So melanocortin is this, what makes you tan, right? So you could administer this, all right, and it will actually end up giving you a deep tan in response to just a little bit of UV sun exposure. All right. Now, I know, right? Listen, I've embraced my pasty whiteness, so I'm not, you know, not necessarily my, my bag, but it's real. Now, again, there are some safety concerns with this because again, could that potentially stimulate a melanoma or something like that? But this is something, again, it's a peptide that gives a wildly different result than tesamorlin, right?

• 53:01Steven Bartlett?

  It gives you a tan.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  It does. Yeah, it does. It'll also give you some of the most impressive erections you've ever had in your life. So be warned.

• 53:11Steven Bartlett?

  Wait, it's literally tanning you into a black guy?

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Finally. Yeah, right. And it's wild. So there's actually, and there's even a derivative, a melanatant 2 called PT141, brimelanatide, that is a commercial product right now that you can write as a prescription. Okay. But that doesn't have the tanning benefit, but has the sexual, you know, benefits.

• 53:34Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, wow.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:36Steven Bartlett?

  Keep those ones over here.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  We have to talk about this. Another really interesting thing, phenomenon that we've seen, right, is that now we've got all of these companies that are making these research use only compounds, right? It used to be that you would have a compound that's in drug development and you're seeing all the advertisements for it, you know, maybe if you follow these sorts of things, like I do because I'm a nerd, right, you get excited about it, but you don't get access to it, right? Well, believe it or not, the next blockbuster drug that Lilly is going to come out with, probably in the next couple of months, is this guy called retitrutide. All right. And retitrutide is fantastic in that it is the first three receptor agonist GLP-1 drug. So the GLP-1 drugs, okay, whenever you're talking about semaglutide and terzepatide, they have slightly different profiles.

• 54:17Steven Bartlett?

  This is the Azentic category.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  Correct. Right? So GLP-1 is the primary receptor that they work on. And what that will do is it slows gastric emptying and it limits caloric intake. All right. But then, terzepatide, not semaglutide, but terzepatide is a dual agonist. So it has effect on GIP, which is a different receptor. Well, retitrutide adds in glucagon receptor activation. And so believe it or not, your liver actually acts like a repository of energy where it stores glycogen and fat that your body can use as energy. But that's a problem, right? If you get too much fat there, if you have a caloric excess, then you could end up having what's called NASH cirrhosis, but non-alcoholic steatohepatitis,

• 55:00Speaker 00

  basically inflammation of your liver due to accumulating too much fat. It's a problem. But by stimulating the glucagon receptor while simultaneously hitting GLP-1 and GIP, what we found is not only do patients lose an incredible amount of weight, but they also get the best improvements we've ever seen in their liver, liver health that we've ever seen. And people have been buying that from research use only websites and using it for about two years now. And bodybuilders have already made this the standard in their protocol when it comes to cutting for a show. And it is wildly effective. And we're now seeing the population using a drug at scale that hasn't even made it through commercialization yet.

• 55:40Steven Bartlett?

  Why are you smacking? You're using it.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  No.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  I have not. I can honestly say I have not used reta, but I find it fascinating, though. It's absolutely wild. You know, and talk about power to the people, right?

• 55:53Steven Bartlett?

  What about these others then? What else have we got here that you think's interesting?

• 55:55Speaker 00

  So we've got these two here that I think are really interesting. So CJC1295 and ipamorlin. So the whole idea is that, you know, can we stimulate growth hormone? And there's an interesting story behind that, you know, actually, growth hormone itself was very, very popular for many, many years as an anti-aging compound. But then we changed some laws here in the 1990, okay, that made it a little dicey to prescribe growth hormone. And also, you know, it's kind of a blunt instrument. We wanted something to stimulate more natural growth hormone release. So we have this entire class of medications called secretagogues that help stimulate natural growth hormone release. And these are two of the most potent ones that are often combined together.

• 56:29Steven Bartlett?

  And when we say growth hormone?

• 56:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 56:31Steven Bartlett?

  What does growth hormone do?

• 56:33Speaker 00

  So growth hormone acts like a signal that tells your liver to make more of another compound we talked about, IGF-1. What growth hormone does is growth hormone actually stimulates building muscle.

• 56:43Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  It also strips fat, okay? And it's also been found to help with tissue healing.

• 56:50Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  And so there's a significant benefit in that regard. And so people want to boost their growth hormone, improves quality of skin, improves quality of hair and nails and that sort of thing. And so these two compounds together are particularly potent. CJC1295 being a growth hormone releasing hormone derivative. And then we have ipamorlin, which is a ghrelin receptor agonist. So again, release, improving the release of growth hormone through two different synergistic mechanisms. And so that one is really, really interesting, or these two together. And then on top of that, so this one, somatotropin, another word for growth hormone. Okay, so this is growth hormone. Okay, just a different word for it.

• 57:30Steven Bartlett?

  So what would happen, let's just take this one.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 57:32Steven Bartlett?

  Somatotropin.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:34Steven Bartlett?

  Somatotropin.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:35Steven Bartlett?

  If I bought this for research purposes.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  Research purposes only.

• 57:39Steven Bartlett?

  And I started injecting some of this into me.

• 57:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:42Steven Bartlett?

  What would change?

• 57:43Speaker 00

  So it depends on how much you do and when you do it. So the idea is that if you injected that at night, it would improve your quality of sleep. Okay. You would get a boost in your quality of your hair, your skin, nails. Theoretically, it'd be easier for you to recover from injuries, hopefully put on a little bit more muscle, a little bit easier, maybe lose a little bit of fat.

• 58:02Steven Bartlett?

  So why don't I take it?

• 58:03Speaker 00

  Well, because if you take a little bit too much, you can actually get insulin resistance because your glucose levels will go too high for too long. All right. You abuse too much for too long, you will actually get acromegaly. So that's development of the, your bones continue to grow, but not along, only in certain junctures. And so there's a very specific look that bodybuilders who abuse growth hormone in high amounts will get to them. All right. Which is an irreversible change to the facial bone structure. You can also theoretically, if you had a cancer, maybe it could make it worse. All right. We've never shown it that it causes new cancers, but that could be a concern. And, you know, on top of that, it could give you insulin resistance because, you know, you're again, yeah, exactly. Right? And if you take too much, it could potentially make your hands numb in the morning because you get effusions into the joint space. And so bodybuilders

• 58:46Speaker 00

  will talk about lifting a dumbbell and having to drop it because their hand goes numb temporarily if they're taking too much growth hormone too soon.

• 58:53Steven Bartlett?

  And what else have we got here?

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. So epithalon. So this is the medication that is theoretically going to be available to us in July. Okay. And so the hope is that, you know, this is going to expand cell life. So epithalon, the purpose of it is it works to enhance telomerase. So at the end of your cells, imagine it this way, you're trying to copy the genome, but the little copier that copies it, it takes up space enough itself. So it's kind of like it cuts off the last couple of letters every single time.

• 59:29Steven Bartlett?

  This is when you're aging.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  When you're aging, you're creating new cells, right? Cells divide through this process called mitosis where they split. All right. Well, if you got to make an exact copy, well, you've got to read through all these lines of code. But because of the way that we're built, we always end up cutting off the last little bit of code.

• 59:44Steven Bartlett?

  Which is how we age.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  Which is how we age. It is one of the things that contributes to aging. All right. Now, that is considered to be quote unquote junk information. It's at the very end called the telomere. All right. But we know that shorter telomeres are associated with aging, potentially worse health outcomes. And there's an enzyme that can help heal or repair the telomere called telomerase. Epithalon helps encourage that. And so some people are looking at that as being one of the fountain of youth compounds. I'm very skeptical as far as that goes. But it does show some benefits when it comes to, you know, healing parts of your brain that are, you know, associated with regulating your circadian rhythm.

• 1:00:23Steven Bartlett?

  So the average person listening now, they've heard a lot of stuff about a lot of things. How do they know if they should pursue getting and taking peptides? Like, how do they know? What are they looking for?

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  So what I will say is that think of peptides as falling into three categories. All right. You've got category one, which are peptides that you can prescribe right now, legal from a commercial pharmacy. That includes the GLP-1s, PT-141, bremelanotide, I mentioned to you earlier, oxytocin is another one. We have these different compounds that are available. And then we have what we call category two, which we don't have anything in right now, but that will consist of the seven peptides that are hopefully going to be approved in July, whenever they get moved from category two cannot compound to category one can compound. All right. And then everything else is kind of in this category three, where it's only available for research use only. And so my recommendation for patients is don't go out and buy research

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  use only compounds. All right. You don't know what you're getting and you don't know if you're dosing it right. You don't know if it's contaminated. So really what the public should be doing is educating themselves on this and then going and talking to their doctors about what problems they have. And then potentially, when those options become available, a peptide might be part of the answer for their problem.

• 1:01:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. So speak to your doctor.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Steven Bartlett?

  Consult with your doctor and make it a conversation with whoever your medical professional is about your symptoms and what might be useful and what the range, the toolbox, the options are correct to attack those symptoms.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. Talk, collaborate with your doctor. Your doctor should be your partner in you getting as healthy as humanly possible.

• 1:01:58Steven Bartlett?

  We talked about trisepotide, zempic, semaglutide. One of the questions that's front of mind for everybody, whether they're taking them or watching others take them.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:02:06Steven Bartlett?

  Is what happens when you stop?

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  We've looked at that. You actually regain the weight. And so, because the truth is, is that you have introduced something into your life that has moved the needle in one direction. But if you don't change anything else, well, you take that back out, well, you're going to go back to where you were. And so if you're going to maintain that weight loss, you have to make lifestyle changes associated with that. And what we found is that people do regain, if they do make lifestyle changes, they do regain some of the weight, but not necessarily all of the weight. And there's also data showing that you could potentially stay on that medication, but at a much lower dose and then maintain your weight. Okay. So there are options to minimize your medication burden long term.

• 1:02:46Steven Bartlett?

  And of all the things we've talked about today, if you had to just pick one thing that excites you the most, that's either coming down the pipe or here already.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Steven Bartlett?

  What is the thing you're most excited about? I see your eyes wondering.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Hands down, it's that one over there, retotru tide. Because the changes in body composition that we have seen, both in clinical trials, okay, and in anecdotal reports from users who have obtained on their own are wild. We're talking losing 20 to 25% of total body weight within a relatively short period of time. And I think that this is going to be basically the Ferrari of GLP-1 medications when it comes out. It's not for everybody, right? It's going to go faster than everything else, but it's going to change the game. I think this is going to be a trillion dollar drug when it comes out.

• 1:03:36Steven Bartlett?

  And no one's going to own the patent, so everybody will be able to access it. Is that right?

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  No, no, that is going to belong solely to Lilly. And so you are going to see, and they are going to enforce it, you know, as aggressively as they've ever enforced anything. But you will see profound results in patients.

• 1:03:53Steven Bartlett?

  People are referring to peptides as Silicon Valley's miracle drug. And I wondered why that was, why it's been associated with Silicon Valley. Have you heard that at all?

• 1:04:01Speaker 00

  I have. And I'll tell you, I've seen some peptide stacks from Silicon Valley founders and individuals that blow my mind. I'm like, oh, man, even I think that's a lot.

• 1:04:13Steven Bartlett?

  Why would people in Silicon Valley, why would founders be interested in peptides?

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's because we all want to live our best version of our own lives, right? We want to perform at the highest level. And so people will do whatever they can. They'll drink caffeine, they'll pop a zen in their mouth, and they'll try to tweak whatever variable they possibly can to get the best possible performance. And the thing is, is that anabolic steroids come with significant side effects, and that's not everybody's cup of tea, right? And the health consequences from high dose androgens dwarf anything that you might experience with peptides. And so peptides offer a lot of flexibility in pulling many different lovers that are interesting to like your regular, average person. And honestly, it requires a little bit of DIY right now because of the nature of these peptides. And I think you combine

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  that with the kind of rogue founder spirit that is common in Silicon Valley, and I think it's a perfect fit.

• 1:05:08Steven Bartlett?

  I asked you a second ago, what are the three questions that people come to you and ask you as a doctor? The first one, as it related to peptides, was which peptide should I be taking?

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Steven Bartlett?

  Are there any other questions we haven't covered off that are commonplace in your practice?

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  The second one is, can you prescribe me? And then I have to explain to them the regulatory environment surrounding peptides that, as of right now, the only peptides that I can prescribe are the ones you can get from CVS or Walgreens, which is going to be your GLP-1 medications, and a handful of others that usually aren't applying to the young men that I see in my practice.

• 1:05:39Steven Bartlett?

  I've had so many founders speak to me and say, why didn't this particular ad that I ran on this platform work for me? Maybe the copy wasn't good, the creative wasn't strong, but usually the problem is they're not having the right conversation because that ad never reached the right person. And if you're in B2B marketing, that is much of the game. And this is where LinkedIn Ads solves that problem for you. Their targeting is ridiculously specific. You can target by job title, seniority, company size, industry, and even someone's skill set. And their network includes over a billion professionals. About 130 million of them are decision makers. So when you use LinkedIn Ads, you're putting your brand in front of the right people. And LinkedIn Ads also drive the highest B2B return on ad spend across all ad networks, in my experience. If you want to give them

• 1:06:23Steven Bartlett?

  a try, head over to LinkedIn.com/diary. And when you spend $250 on your first LinkedIn Ads campaign, you'll get an extra $250 credit from me for the next one. That's LinkedIn.com/diary. Terms and conditions apply. We have finally caved in. So many of you have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards with the 1% diary. For those of you that don't know, every single time a guest sits here with me in the chair, they leave a question in the diary of a CEO, and then I ask that question to the next guest. We don't release those questions in any environment other than on these incredible conversation cards. These have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships, people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members

• 1:07:08Steven Bartlett?

  to connect with each other. With that, we also have the 1% diary, which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life. So many of you have asked if it was possible to buy both at the same time, especially people in big companies. So what we've done is we've bundled them together and you can buy both at the same time. And if you want to drive connection and instill habit change in your company, head to thediary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch.

• 1:07:33Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a super peptide for anti-aging in skin and some of those issues?

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Oh, for skin, GHKQ.

• 1:07:38Steven Bartlett?

  GHKQ.

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. So this is probably the most well-known peptide for use for skin complexion. And I mean, really, it may have some small benefits when it comes to hair, all right? But those reports are a little bit more spotty.

• 1:07:53Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Steven Bartlett?

  And then so outside of the world of peptides for a second.

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Steven Bartlett?

  I've got these three vials in my hand.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  I'm so scared. All right.

• 1:08:04Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what those are?

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. This is unfortunately our future if we're not careful.

• 1:08:12Steven Bartlett?

  Explain.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  So what we've got here is we have three different canisters containing water that has a little bit of coloring in it. And what you can see is that all the way back in 1973, this is pretty opaque. All right. Like, you know, this is not what you would, you can't see through it. And then 2026 has a little bit of color to it. And then we've got over here, 2045, which is totally clear. This unfortunately is actually representing the fertility trajectory for young men. Because what we're seeing is that back in 1973, total motile sperm count, so how many healthy swimming sperm do we have in each ejaculation, is exponentially higher and more dense than what we're seeing today. And so what we're seeing is a progressive

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  decline in male fertility over time. And that's been demonstrated in multiple studies. We've debated this at multiple meetings. People tried to argue that it's a measuring difference. But as we give it more time and as we give it more scrutiny, this is real. We are experiencing a significant decline in sperm quality and motility and concentration.

• 1:09:16Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  So the leading culprits are going to be, yes, microplastics and environmental toxins. Okay. Things that are put in our environment that we have been exposed to that we can't help. But again, the biggest modifiable risk factor is insulin resistance and metabolic disease.

• 1:09:35Steven Bartlett?

  Obesity.

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  Obesity. And so a downstream effect that we may see from peptides, like we discussed before, is we may be able to help reverse this for the first time in history by trying to prevent the development of metabolic disease.

• 1:09:49Steven Bartlett?

  Using some of the peptides we talked about earlier.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  Exactly. I gave you the example of a patient that I saw in clinic this past week that increased his sperm count 10 times over. Imagine if we had given that to him before he even got that obese, when he just started to get a little bit overweight and at a lower dose. Well, he may have never ended up in my office, right? Because his primary care doctor would have identified that, treated it, and he never would have needed the specialist.

• 1:10:11Steven Bartlett?

  It's crazy.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  It's wild. So ultimately, if you look at what are the ills that are affecting healthcare in any first world nation, the number one offender is metabolic disease and metabolic dysfunction. And this is something that was actually hinted at by RFK whenever he was talking about root cause of disease. Well, yes, we have many, many diseases and many, many infections that don't stem necessarily from insulin resistance. But if we look at cardiac disease, if we look at issues with lack of perfusion, my specialty, erectile dysfunction, right? We look at cancer. All of this is related back to obesity and metabolic

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  dysfunction. And so if we can eliminate that as a society, or we can minimize it to as little as possible, well, I mean, man, maybe I'd finally work myself out of a job.

• 1:11:04Steven Bartlett?

  Your speciality is erectile dysfunction.

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. So my specialty is this branch off of urology that we broadly call men's health. Okay. And so what that incorporates for us is going to be low testosterone, advanced hormone management. I take that a little bit further than most people. That's totally cool. And then also erectile dysfunction, Peyronie's disease, which is damage to the penis that causes curvature. And then male fertility on top of that. And I do a little other thing, treating leakage after prostate cancer treatment. And that's basically it. I treat like five things, maybe. And that's it. So I'm very, very specialized because I was the kid that liked to take my sandwiches apart and eat it one at a time. I was very precise. And I figured, you can do a lot of things in this world and be okay at them,

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  or you can pick like, I don't know, four or five and get pretty good at them. So that seemed to work for me.

• 1:11:54Steven Bartlett?

  I was looking at a photo of you five years ago, and you were very different.

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Steven Bartlett?

  You've changed a lot.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  So I will, I will tell you this. Medical training in the United States has gotten better, but it is grueling. It's absolutely grueling. For five years, I worked anywhere from 80 to 100 hours a week in a hospital. No eating, very little sleep, did not care for yourself at all. And again, we can argue whether or not that's necessary all day long. But the truth is, is that it really beat me down. It absolutely took me apart physically

• 1:12:41Speaker 00

  and psychologically. In part, it's designed to do that. Because the idea is that as a surgeon, you have to be able to perform when all the lights are on, when everything is against you. You have to be the one to hold it together in the operating room and command that ship, save that patient. And I remember being totally devastated towards the end of training. And I did a very challenging surgery on a very needy patient. Gentleman was about to go into renal failure, did not have a lot of kidney left. And he had a very challenging kidney tumor that was in a very treacherous location. It was in a location where he should have lost that kidney by all measure, if we were going to take out

• 1:13:23Speaker 00

  that cancer. And he was at a county hospital, he had no insurance, and we swung for the fences and did a very, very challenging operation on him. And against our best efforts with having everybody there, he ended up having a bleed post-operatively that night. And I remember getting the call, I was on call, and that his blood pressure had dropped and that he did not look well. And I knew exactly what it was, because again, this was a very treacherous surgery. And I went in, in the middle of the night with my attending, who was a different attending than the one I did the initial surgery with. And I remember just opening him up and just being covered in blood, that we were taking out of the abdominal

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  field, that we were evacuating, eventually identifying the area of the bleed. And there was no way that it could have been avoided. I remember my attending yelling at me, and we ultimately had to take that guy's kidney. And I remember walking out of there, just being totally shattered, covered in blood, crying in a hallway by myself, wondering if, like, what was the point? Like, is there going to be, is there a tomorrow after this? Like, I spent all this time, this training, like, am I good enough? Am I going to be able to make this? And, you know, I wasn't well put together, wasn't healthy. And I ended up spending a lot of time with that patient, literally held his hand throughout the rest

• 1:14:47Speaker 00

  of his hospital stay. And he ended up recovering and against all odds. But afterwards, I took a strong interest in not only taking care of my patients, but also practicing what I preach, taking care of myself and prioritizing my own health. I got evaluated, I was diagnosed with low testosterone myself. Turns out not eating or sleeping for five years will do a number on you.

• 1:15:12Steven Bartlett?

  That causes old stress.

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  Through the roof, 24/7. I cannot even imagine what, you know, there's a part in the brain called the hippocampus, that they, when they do MRIs on soldiers that come back from war, that'll be degenerated in them. I wonder if we did that in surgical trainees, what that would look like. But I made a commitment to take care of my patients, to take care of myself and make that a priority, and to be simultaneously the best doctor and the best father and husband I could be. Not perfect, made a lot of mistakes along the way. But what you're seeing from five years ago is where I was. I've been in training out for seven years, so it took a while to kind of recover from that. But what you're seeing

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  is what focusing on health and wellness can potentially look like.

• 1:16:02Steven Bartlett?

  The emotion in you is palpable when you talk about this. And I'm wondering where that comes from. What is it? Because you're looking off into the distance at something. I don't know what you're looking at.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I, when I'm caring for my patients and I see a young man that is struggling with his fertility, and he wants to be a father, I was that guy. Me and my wife couldn't get pregnant when we first tried. We ended up having to do in vitro fertilization and IVF. I remember feeling like I wasn't a man, because I was sitting in that room holding her hand and not having an answer as to why things weren't working. When I see my patients who come in that are struggling because their hormones are out of whack, and no matter how they try to take care of themselves, something just isn't clicking, I've been that

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  guy. And then when I see my other patients that are further on in life and struggling with things like prostate cancer or erectile dysfunction, whatever the case may be, I see my father, my uncle, my grandfather, like these, and they are someone's father, grandfather and uncle. Like, these are our brothers. And this is who I have been called to care for. And I care for my patients deeply. And it's because I care for my patients. And this is a calling for me, that I care about stuff like this, because I want my patients to have every tool physically possible to live their best quality of life, so that they can be whole and they can be happy, and so that they can be the best version of themselves for their loved ones.

• 1:17:47Steven Bartlett?

  Well, thank you for caring, because it matters. And a lot of this stuff is quite opaque and confusing to an average person like me. But I'm so glad that we have people there in the world like you that are demystifying all of this for us and explaining it in simple terms, but also championing it. Because one of the things, other things I've learned from me in this podcast is solutions to problems that a lot of people are suffering with are option right in front of us. But they need voices and educators like yourself out there, leading the charge so that these types of things are available to everyone, not just the few.

• 1:18:17Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:18Steven Bartlett?

  Not just the billionaires who can get whatever they want straight away any day.

• 1:18:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, one thing I love is that I've been very blessed in my practice to take care of people that are much fancier than I am and sit in boardrooms and that sort of thing. But you know what? I love taking care of my regular patients who are farmers, ironworkers, tradesmen, guys that, truthfully, I have more in common with than anyone else. I joke with my patients, I'm just an overeducated plumber at the end of the day, right? Urologist. And so it's, health is for everyone, not just for the fortunate.

• 1:18:57Steven Bartlett?

  The last thing I wanted to talk to you about is linked but random.

• 1:19:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:19:01Steven Bartlett?

  It's the Enhanced Games.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  Let's do it. I am so excited about these. So.

• 1:19:08Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know them?

• 1:19:09Speaker 00

  I do, very well. So for those of you, or for those who may not know, the Enhanced Games is a project based off of the World Anti-Doping Agency's own data. Potentially up to 40% of athletes that are competing at the Olympic level have either, are currently using or have used banned substances at some point in time. All right. And also, we know that a lot of the compounds that are used for enhancement maybe aren't quite so dangerous if they're being administered by a trained medical professional with proper oversight. And as of right now, that's not happening. Also, at the same time, we know that Olympic athletes aren't paid enough, right? These are the best of the best of the best, and they're not even making the poverty line

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  a lot of years. And so the idea is this, well, what if we go ahead and we strip away those rules? Okay, we allow athletes to use medications that can enhance performance. We watch them very closely and we have a team of doctors and medical professionals watching them. And then let's see what they can do at these traditional Olympic events and see if they smash world records. Oh, and they're going to give 250 grand to any first-place winners and a million dollars to anyone that hits a world record.

• 1:20:17Steven Bartlett?

  And just for comparison, how much are Olympic athletes getting paid?

• 1:20:21Speaker 00

  They don't get paid to compete at all. Okay, so they don't get paid to be an Olympic athlete. They end up getting sponsorship deals, and that's potentially the money that they can make. So.

• 1:20:31Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. So it's basically the doping Olympics where everyone's allowed to dope?

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  That's the idea. There are some caveats in there. They're trying to say that only FDA-approved medications can be used. Okay, so you couldn't use something like trenbolone, which is for veterinary use only, or theoretically, any of the compounds we've talked about today because they're not FDA-approved. But also, at the same time, they've said that they're not going to test for those things. And one of their athletes, Magnuson, has openly admitted taking BPC157 and that sort of thing. So I think we can kind of figure out that it may just be a wide-open playing field, maybe. So.

• 1:21:04Steven Bartlett?

  The International Olympic Committee does not pay athletes a single cent for winning a gold medal.

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:21:10Steven Bartlett?

  Which is crazy.

• 1:21:11Speaker 00

  How many billions do you think they make off of those without all the advertisement?

• 1:21:14Steven Bartlett?

  So much money.

• 1:21:15Speaker 00

  Right? Yeah.

• 1:21:17Steven Bartlett?

  And this is taking place in Las Vegas?

• 1:21:19Speaker 00

  May 21st through the 24th, I believe.

• 1:21:22Steven Bartlett?

  Are you gonna go?

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  I'm gonna be watching, that's for sure.

• 1:21:25Steven Bartlett?

  Do you wanna go?

• 1:21:26Speaker 00

  I would love to go. That would be incredible.

• 1:21:29Steven Bartlett?

  Well, if you wanna go, I know a few people that are putting the event on, so do let me know.

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  I'm there, man. I'm already interested. You got my, got my attention.

• 1:21:37Steven Bartlett?

  Is there anything else we should have talked about that we didn't talk about as it relates to this subject we've discussed today?

• 1:21:42Speaker 00

  I mean, honestly, I think that we've gone pretty deep on peptides. And so I think we've, you know, covered that. But one thing that I did want to just, I'll leave with you because I think it's pretty humorous. And I think you've talked to some of my colleagues about this before. But, you know, one of the things that I deal with as a surgical specialist is the end-stage vascular disease, the end-stage of diabetes, which is going to be erectile dysfunction. All right. And, you know, believe it or not, whenever we're dealing with that in male patients, they eventually get to a point where things like Viagra and Cialis do not work. All right? And that is a dark place to be as a guy. And so you're taking these medications. All you're getting is a headache and nothing else. And then maybe you have other options. There are actually injections you can do in the penis, which is about as appetizing

• 1:22:26Speaker 00

  as you might imagine. But men want a better solution, and they'll come to us, as sexual medicine specialists, you know, seeking that. And that's what I do. So the bulk of my surgical practice is actually fixing erectile dysfunction with a procedure called implant placement. Okay?

• 1:22:41Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, no.

• 1:22:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So now, I think, did Rena show you one of these last time?

• 1:22:46Steven Bartlett?

  She brought it, and I didn't, I didn't ask her to show me. It makes me like, I get full-body shudders.

• 1:22:51Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:22:51Steven Bartlett?

  About this stuff. Yeah. The thought of putting that up my penis.

• 1:22:54Speaker 00

  Well, so.

• 1:22:55Steven Bartlett?

  You can show me. No, you can show me.

• 1:22:56Speaker 00

  Well, I would tell you, the good news is, is you don't have to. Okay, like, that's, that's what we have a job for. Okay. But the way I explain it to patients is like this. So take this out of, out of the picture. Okay. Ultimately, like, the male erection is just two inflatable tubes that start in the pelvis and go out the shaft of the penis. It makes sense, right? It is a hydraulic motion. What happens is you get stimulated, get a rush of blood into those tubes, get a rigid erection, able to use that for intimacy. And then when you climax, a pop-off valve opens back up and everything drains out. All right. So if you can understand brakes on a car, you can understand erections. But the problem is that when you have long-term metabolic and vascular dysfunction, the brake lines, the blood vessels that feed those erections, they fail. And all of a sudden, you can't get enough blood flow for it to work. And believe it or not, you can actually get atrophy of the penis over time,

• 1:23:39Speaker 00

  and you actually lose size. All right. Which no man is eager to see. All right? But whenever the easy things, like oral medications, Viagra and Cialis don't work anymore, the next best option, if we're looking at patient satisfaction, durability, concealability, is this little thing that I do, which is, what if we took our own tubes, okay, and we put them inside your body's natural ones? It's invisible. Nobody looking at you could ever tell that you've ever had anything done. But all of a sudden, when you want to get an erection, instead of having to rely on pills that don't work or putting a needle in there, right? You could reach down, and there's a small pump that we hide underneath the skin, down in the scrotum. Okay, so I joke, it's like a third testicle. But again, nothing external, nothing you can see. And all of a sudden, whenever you squeeze this, what it does is it moves saline that we hide

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  in a little reservoir that goes in the belly, you never feel that, into the cylinders. And all of a sudden, men are able to get a firm, rigid erection that looks natural, feels natural, and they can use it as long as they want, or until their partner's sick of them. And then press a button and it goes back down.

• 1:24:41Steven Bartlett?

  Do they still feel the same pleasure?

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it does not affect sensation. And so the nerves that affect sensation run along the top of the penis, if you're looking at a clock, at the 12 o'clock position. And we stay totally away from those.

• 1:24:54Steven Bartlett?

  So this is surgically put inside the penis?

• 1:24:58Speaker 00

  All internal. And believe it or not, that takes me about 13 minutes to do.

• 1:25:02Steven Bartlett?

  How many people have these?

• 1:25:04Speaker 00

  Well, I've put in about 11 or 1,200 personally, but.

• 1:25:07Steven Bartlett?

  11 or 1,200?

• 1:25:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:09Steven Bartlett?

  So it's quite a lot of people. There'll be people listening now that have these.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  Well, you know, this is what's interesting. If you look at, in the United States right now, okay, there are 30 million men with erectile dysfunction in the United States right now. That's more than the population of Australia. All right?

• 1:25:22Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  And if you look at statistics, the oral medications are gonna fail in 15 to 40% of those men the first time they fail that. And so you're talking about millions and millions of men who aren't responding to oral medications and need a better option.

• 1:25:35Steven Bartlett?

  So where's the button to get rid of the erection?

• 1:25:37Speaker 00

  You see those two little bars right there?

• 1:25:38Steven Bartlett?

  These two?

• 1:25:39Speaker 00

  Yep. Go ahead and put your thumb on, yep, do that. And then squeeze from the end of the device back towards the pump.

• 1:25:46Steven Bartlett?

  So squeeze it.

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  Yep. Right there. There you go. It's down.

• 1:25:52Speaker 00

  And then you would have the weight of your natural tissue push things down.

• 1:25:55Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, and then, yeah, okay.

• 1:25:57Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 1:25:58Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. Okay. Well, you know, I'm happy people have the options because I can imagine what that would be like to not be able to get an erection. It would be devastating, frankly.

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  Well, I'll tell you this. I get more hugs and high fives than anybody else in my practice. And that includes the guys that treat kidney stones and cancer. So I feel like you're doing some, doing some good work here. Until peptides put me out of business.

• 1:26:18Steven Bartlett?

  I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon. And you have a great YouTube channel.

• 1:26:21Speaker 00

  Thank you. I appreciate that.

• 1:26:22Steven Bartlett?

  Which I think everybody should go check out because you really are great at explaining all this stuff in simple terms. So I'm gonna link Dr. Alex's YouTube channel down below. We'll try and collab. So if you just click on the Diver SEO icon now, you'll see Alex's channel. And I highly recommend you go check out his content because he's really, really leading the charge on this subject of peptides. When I spoke to my team and said, I wanna have a conversation about peptides, they gave me lots of options of lots of different types of doctors. And you were by far and away our preference because of the very fact that you're very, very good at communicating. You understand people. And as you've demonstrated today, you have a very big heart.

• 1:26:54Speaker 00

  I appreciate that.

• 1:26:55Steven Bartlett?

  And you're clearly, it was wonderful to see what's actually driving you. And you did that in a way which is irrefutably authentic. So please go check out Alex's channel. He's around, you're around 100,000 subscribers on that channel now?

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  I'm so close. We're at like 98, 99, any minute now.

• 1:27:10Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so hopefully we can help push you over that, that milestone.

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition, Alex, on this podcast, where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

• 1:27:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:27:23Steven Bartlett?

  A question left for you is, if you could give $1 billion to one person you don't know personally, who is it? And what do they have to spend it on?

• 1:27:40Speaker 00

  Honestly, I would give it to Elon Musk. Okay? And it's not because I think that he's hurting for a billion dollars right now. But if you look at what he is working on to accomplish for us as a human race, right? He, I truly believe, from what I've seen, that he has a similar heart for humanity that I've seen with a lot of physicians. But on a macro scale, as an engineer and an entrepreneur, he's trying to solve some of the greatest problems that are facing us today. And I think that what we are going to see, hopefully, coming from the TerraFab down in Austin, is going to be wild with recursive feedback and engineering on AI chips

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  that are gonna get better and better and better in a short period of time. And increasing independence when it comes to, you know, chip foundries for the United States. Like, it's wild. And I think that that billion dollars would go further and do more for more people than anywhere else I could put it.

• 1:28:42Steven Bartlett?

  And he's also working on Neuralink, which is a really interesting company, which puts a sort of brain chip interfaces to allow people to hear again, see again, allow paraplegics to walk again, which is really, really incredible. Dr. Alex, thank you so much. It's so illuminating. And I can't wait to have you back again sometime soon to talk about all the other things we could have talked about today. We focused on peptides predominantly, but I know that over a new YouTube channel, you talk about a lot more than that. So highly recommend everybody go check out Dr. Alex's YouTube channel. And it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

• 1:29:10Speaker 00

  Thank you, Stephen.