8/24/26 Debt, Defense & Dollars — Plus What You Should Know About Peptides

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Monday, August 24th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Radio Show & Podcast" call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com https://www.moneywiseguys.com/ facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management https://www.facebook.com/moneywiseguys/ LinkedIn: Moneywise_Wealth_Management https://www.linkedin.com/company/moneywise-wealth-management-bakersfield/ Guests: Dr. Vip Dev, M. D., Director of Plastic Surgery at California Institute of Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery websites: https://cicrsmed.com/ https://www.adventisthealth.org/central-california/locations/wound-care-hyperbaric-therapy-adventist-health-bakersfield/ The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Dr. Vipul Dev & The Wound Care Center are not affiliated with nor endorsed by LPL Financial or Moneywise Wealth Management].

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Live from the basement inside the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Call or text in at 661-396-1000.

• 0:09Speaker 02

  I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey, well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey, said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me?

• 0:29Speaker 03

  Security offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and MoneyWise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the MoneyWise Show.

• 0:40Speaker 04

  Welcome to the MoneyWise Show. We are live from the basement of the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. For the next hour, you are on News Talk 96.1 and 1230 AM KERN, streaming live at MoneyWiseGuys.com. You can call or text into the show 24 hours a day at 661-396-1000. Today, we are your hosts, I'm Sammy Abiawi with

• 1:03Speaker 05

  Dustin Weaver.

• 1:05Speaker 04

  Happy Monday, Dustin.

• 1:06Speaker 05

  Happy Monday, indeed. Good to see you.

• 1:08Speaker 04

  Good to see you, too. Got a full, full show ahead. Great guest today.

• 1:11Speaker 05

  Oh, looking forward to that.

• 1:13Speaker 04

  Me, too. A lot of, we had a lot of good questions off air and I want to save them for the on air.

• 1:18Speaker 05

  Definitely.

• 1:19Speaker 04

  Stuff, but to start us, can you start us with just a market update?

• 1:22Speaker 05

  Sure, it's a little mixed today. And why I say that, we've got the S and P 500 at down 0.22% currently, with the Dow up 0.29. So as a quick reminder, the Dow is 30 companies, a lot of different industries, and the S and P 500 is 500 of the largest US companies. So, a little bit of movement both directions. We've got the NASDAQ down about 0.57, and the smaller companies, the Russell 2000 down 0.67. So a little bit more red than green, but not dramatic either way.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  Cool. We do have a listener question I want to start with because it's interesting. And I had prepped the show not knowing that this question actually came in. The listener says, but what does the US debt really mean, anything at the end of the day? I mean, it seems like we don't have any plans to attack it, yet they attack us hardworking Americans that are trying to pay the bills and eat.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  I see why that question came in. Did you hear the most recent number about the debt?

• 2:24Speaker 04

  Yes, I think last week I heard that our debt, US debt, national debt exceeded the 40 trillion dollars.

• 2:30Speaker 05

  Forty, yeah, four zero.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Four zero.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  It's a big number.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, four, four, four, and it took us, I mean, it was 39 five months ago. And now we're over 40. It took us only five months.

• 2:42Speaker 05

  To add the most recent trillion dollars.

• 2:44Speaker 04

  That's, that's right. As a comparison, it took us 200 years to reach the first trillion.

• 2:50Speaker 05

  Oh, my goodness. From 200 years on the first trillion to five months for the last trillion.

• 2:55Speaker 04

  And that, that happened in 1981, and President Reagan at the time called it a warning to the nation with our first trillion dollars in US national debt.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  Well, when you talk about the first trillion, currently, the interest that's owed on that 40 trillion exceeds 1 trillion. It's about a 1.2 trillion dollar bill each year, which if you do the math, it's around 3%, which doesn't sound like a high rate, but with higher rates that we have now, some of that newer debt is being put on at a higher interest rate. So.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So, so to the listener's question, what does it mean to us Americans, right? It's really, the first thing is higher borrowing costs. So, as investors demand more to hold the US debt, the 10-year Treasury yield is at 4.7, 4.8 or, or that, in that range. It pushes up mortgage rates, auto loans, small business lines of credit. I would like to ask our guest later about that. And, and just credit in general becomes a lot more expensive. Now, we have to, I have to say this as a, as an ex-banker.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  I, I know for a fact that the largest employer as a collective is small businesses.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  It's not, it's not, it's not Walmart, right? Walmart has a lot of employees.

• 4:23Speaker 05

  They do.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  But small businesses are the, the ones that fuel our economy by creating jobs.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  And, and when a small business cannot, loses the ability to borrow money, or it becomes a lot more expensive for them to borrow money, it just slows down the growth.

• 4:38Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And that's part of why they were raising the interest rates on one hand was to slow things down a little bit, because the intent is, hey, when inflation jumped up to 9, 10%, they're trying to slow that down.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:50Speaker 05

  But we've seen these higher rates since 2022 now. We're going on four years. And you go back 100 years, the rate doesn't seem very high, but when we're comparing it to what we had prior to 2022, we're definitely feeling that impact, right?

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  Mortgages were down below 3%.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  And that's where, to your point from earlier, a lot of this expense is interest, is interest expense.

• 5:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  So, so you have this large, let's, let's just put it in a consumer point of view. So you can, you, you have a mortgage, then you need to build a patio or fix your yard, and then you go and you borrow money.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Through like a home equity line?

• 5:33Speaker 04

  Home equity line, credit cards, whatever. And all of a sudden, maybe your hours at work get reduced. Right? So now, you have this debt, but not, so what you're doing is just servicing the interest. Right? So you don't have the ability to keep reducing that debt. So, the avenue that we have is, is through tax collection, correct? That's, that's the main income.

• 5:57Speaker 05

  Right.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  But what have we seen in the last, I would say, two administrations, three administrations?

• 6:03Speaker 05

  Oh, several. Talking about tax cuts?

• 6:05Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, since 2001, there's been seven different rounds of major tax legislation that have reduced revenue. So, the, basically, it's almost $9 trillion of less tax income to help service that debt.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  And, and coupled with other things that we've had, we had the 2008 recession. All the bailout money that we had.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 6:29Speaker 04

  Right? That, that, that had to come from somewhere. So that bailout money got spent. Then we had COVID, I mean PPP loans, if you remember. I remember that vividly because we did about 800 loans in about six weeks.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  You know, time. 600 loans is what we typically do in a whole year.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  Is that right?

• 6:51Speaker 04

  And we did it in about six weeks.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  Wow, that's incredible.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  But that money had to come from somewhere, went and got forgiven.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  Right.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Right? If we did not do that, a lot of businesses would have gone under. And coupled with other loans, the disaster loans that a lot of businesses took advantage of because of the low interest rate.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  So the term, the term they use is balancing the budget, right? At the end of the day, just like us as individuals, we have a budget to balance. It's money in, money out. And there are different things that cause pressure, like what you've mentioned, but then also I think of some of the entitlement programs, right? We look at the baby boomers born from 1946 through 64 are approaching, more of them have gone on Medicare, right? So you got Medicare's and social security costs have gone up, too.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  That's right, substantially, substantially. Wars, we've had, we've had wars along the way. We almost hit, you know, like we were not in deficit, but 2001, 2003, but then we started, we had two wars that got started, the Iraq War, then the Afghan War. Both started almost at the same time. So we had two fronts that we needed to feed.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Both expensive.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  War is expensive.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  It is.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  Right? And most recently, we have the conflict in the Middle East with, with Iran. And that's costing money as well. I mean, when you see the trillion just got added to the national debt in, in five months' time, a lot of it has to do with defense spending.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  Right? So, I really don't have an answer to the listener question, what, what?

• 8:34Speaker 04

  I'm just trying to.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, they said, what, what does it mean at the end of the day? That we're just paying attention, right? And being mindful of the decisions that we make when, you know, they're, they're out there saying, hey, here's, here's what we're trying to do. And sometimes the taxes, for example, is one that is a source of contention. And this is not a partisan issue either, by the way.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  Both sides of the aisle have spent more than, than we'd like, right?

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Yes. So, so, so for me, I, I look at this as, as a consumer, what it means to me, that means that I'm not going to have any reprieve on interest cost, for instance. My interest on my credit cards is not going to diminish according to this data, right? My mortgage rate, if I want to go and buy a new house or refinance, is not going to be lower than what it is today.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Right? If I'm going to buy a new car, I'm going to think twice. So, as a consumer, it's, it's, it's, we always talk about budgeting. Still talk, look at your, your, your balance sheet, look at your income versus what you're spending. This is still a great time as any for us to look at our spending, budget our spending, and make sure that we're not over spent.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  That's right. And one of the areas that we look at is healthcare related. I know we have to go into a break here, but we've got an interesting guest you're going to want to hear more from.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  That's right. When we come back, we have Dr. Vip Dev, a great friend of mine, great friend of the show, great friend of Stephen himself, our producer. So when we come back, we'll introduce Dr. Dev. We'll be right back.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm back.

• 10:21Speaker 06

  He's back.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  I'm back.

• 10:22Speaker 06

  You're back.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  We're back.

• 10:27Speaker 06

  Good to be back.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  Welcome back to the Money Wise Show. I'm Sammy Abiawi with Dustin Weaver.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  Yes, sir.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  We are about to introduce our guest, Dr. Vip Dev. Dr. Vip Dev is a friend of the show, a friend of mine, a former client of mine when I was a banker. That's how I got to meet Dr. Dev, a great human being. If you have not heard of him, he is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon here in Bakersfield. He runs the Wound Center Medical Director, he's the Medical Director at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital for the Wound Center, and also the Head of the California Institute of Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery. Welcome, Dr. Dev.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  Thank you very much, Sammy. One correction, though.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 11:09Speaker 06

  Former client, but still friend.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Of course, yes.

• 11:12Speaker 06

  And still a client, by the way. What you set up is still going on, so they should thank you.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  Well, thanks. Thanks for that compliment. You were one of my very, very good clients because you always were good at listening to advice. And you're very good at money and business ideas, besides just being a doctor and a surgeon. But you made my life a lot easier whenever I did your loans and your banking because whenever I ask for a financial statement or this, oh, yeah, it's available, bam. And other clients were, it was a little bit difficult to obtain a package and do things.

• 11:48Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, you know, you made the right decision because all those have been paid off.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Good for you.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  Just so you know.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Good for you.

• 11:54Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  The importance of, we're talking about interest rates, like just earlier.

• 11:58Speaker 06

  It matters.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  I mean, imagine if you, if you still had that debt or if you had to refinance it. And when we did these loans, we were in the 4%, 3%. Right now, we're in the sevens and eights. Can you imagine the impact on the business?

• 12:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, it, you know, I have to explain this to people all the time, especially when I travel and give lectures to younger surgeons. And one of the biggest conversations and the toughest conversations we have is, you know, healthcare is not a retail space. When you go see a doctor, you expect great service, but you don't have to pay for it right then and there. Think about it. It doesn't happen many places in our society.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 06

  Right? You get a highly educated, skilled person, and maybe you'll have to pay $10. Because the insurance is paying six weeks from now.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:51Speaker 06

  Right? Because by the time the bill comes in, it gets processed, the invoice goes out from the biller, who takes 3% to 5%.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 13:01Speaker 06

  Then the insurance reviews the claim and then pays it.

• 13:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a misconception. I did not understand that part of the business until I started lending money to doctors.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  Right.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  So there's, I mean, you can bill all you want.

• 13:15Speaker 06

  Right.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  But the insurance companies have kind of like a rate.

• 13:18Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  For every little thing you do.

• 13:20Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  So you can bill $1,000, right? But you're still going to have a collection of, let's say, I don't know, $150 based on whatever you did for that patient.

• 13:29Speaker 06

  Correct, correct.

• 13:30Speaker 05

  Well, there's full-time positions as medical billers, right? Isn't that a full-time position?

• 13:36Speaker 06

  That's right. That's right. And as a matter of fact, you know, a lot of people now, Dustin, that's a good, very, very good point. People are going away from that and outsourcing them. Because they actually are better off by outsourcing the billing than keeping it in-house.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  That's the 3% to 5% that we're talking about.

• 13:53Speaker 06

  That's the 3% to 5%.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Get absorbed just off the top right away.

• 13:56Speaker 06

  That's exactly right. Well, but think about it. The model then is you eat what you kill, right? If you bill properly and you collect properly, you get to get that a lot sooner.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 14:05Speaker 06

  Both the biller and the physician. So that's a symbiotic relationship that I think is incredibly beneficial, but it has to be vetted very carefully.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Yes, and just running a medical practice is not, is not easy. It is still a business at the end of the day. You have to hire, you have to fire, you have to discipline, you have to bill. And you have expenses along the way. You have rent.

• 14:28Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  You have all sorts of expenses.

• 14:30Speaker 06

  Well, you have your lifestyle too. Remember, most, most physician practices in most states of our country are S corps. So which means that the person that is in the S corp, all the taxes are running through that directly to that person. And so a lot of them aren't necessarily set up the way they should be.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:47Speaker 06

  And they're, you know, running things perhaps a little bit inappropriately, and then they're spending basically the business money, right? But you need to keep a certain revenue, operating revenue, in the account that's going to pay for your business on a daily basis.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  I think you, you hit the nail on the head by saying you're outsourcing, for instance, like the billing. Because I view that as a doctor, a surgeon, whatever, just a doctor in general, focusing on the patients at that, just giving that care.

• 15:24Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  That needs to be given. And money is going to be spent, but if you do hire certain people or you outsource certain things.

• 15:32Speaker 06

  Right.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  Then you get to focus on that patient.

• 15:34Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  And the end result is a stellar name like you have, referrals, right? And just a much better patient care in general.

• 15:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, without a doubt. You know, I decided early on, Sammy, that in my career, I was never going to advertise. And, you know, to this day, I'm fortunate, I still don't. But it does depend on consistency. Everything depends on consistency, right? I mean, the best companies in the world are consistent.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  And even when you have breakdown, it's easy because consistency repairs it. So I've, I've been fortunate to have very, pretty much the same staff for almost 22 years.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 16:15Speaker 06

  You know, some of the same people that started with me are still with me today, which I'm incredibly grateful for. And they make it happen so, so much better than, than it was just me by myself. So it's never just me. It's always this group, and I've been fortunate.

• 16:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I've been privy to your practice. I had a car accident that Dr. Dev helped me with.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  The patient care, your staff, just amazing. Not just leading to the visit, but even after the visit, with even the billing itself, with the insurance and what have you, very, very helpful.

• 16:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, you talk about, you know, not having to advertise, and I've heard people say, well, how do you get referrals? Well, be referable.

• 16:59Speaker 06

  Right.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  And that's what you've done.

• 17:00Speaker 06

  Yeah. You don't ever say no. You know, none of my staff knows the word no. It doesn't exist because that's the first hurdle. You know, if someone calls, I think everyone's always busy.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:14Speaker 06

  That's a given now. Everyone's schedule's busy, but everyone has time for five minutes.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:21Speaker 06

  No matter what. You got five minutes to see somebody, look at someone and say, you know what, I'll have someone call you and we'll set this up. You just have to make that possible.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:30Speaker 06

  And the more you make it possible, then it just keeps happening. And so that's where I've been lucky. It's just kept happening. And so, again, I don't have a formula to it. So I don't want anyone to think that he's got it figured out. I don't think anyone's got it figured out, but I do have one thing figured out, and is just don't say no.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, and we can feel it in this community through the Wound Center. So for people that don't know the Wound Center, what is the Wound Center, doctor?

• 17:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, the Wound Care Center is a space that, with the help of Catholic Healthcare West so many years ago, now Dignity Health, we were able to establish a Wound Care Center. And a Wound Care Center is a center, basically, I describe it as a place where patients can go when they have the worst of the worst problems. And I don't mean internally from a health-wise, I mean on the outside. You know, the largest organ of our body is the skin. So when the skin breaks down, it can be a big problem. And that's the way I go about it. And so we went out setting up a Wound Care Center

• 18:40Speaker 06

  for basically helping the community, because all these patients were going to UCLA, Stanford, USC, everywhere else, but leaving town. And we didn't want that to happen. And so because we didn't want that to happen, what we did was we said, I'm going to be a plastic surgeon that's going to be at the Wound Care Center. When I trained in San Antonio at the University of Texas, we were one of the biggest wound care facilities in the world at that time. And San Antonio, there is a, there is a conference every year, it's called SAWC, San Antonio Wound Care. And so it is a world-renowned conference. Thousands and thousands of people come from all over the world to this conference.

• 19:25Speaker 06

  And so I was, again, fortunate to be around that. Therefore, when I came back to Bakersfield, I decided, look, I'm just going to, I'm going to start with this. And then we'll build around that. And that's what we did, along with the help of the hospital. And it would not have been possible if it wasn't for the hospital, because you need a base, a foundation. That's where, in case anything got really, really bad, you can go right to the hospital and operate on them, fix it.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 19:53Speaker 06

  Most of the Wound Care patients are oftentimes sick, and they need a lot of help. And so we're able to get them right into the hospital and fix them.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  And by the way, for our listeners, this is just not Dr. Dev talking. I, one time, wanted to, or needed some paperwork signed. And I tracked Dr. Dev, and I found him at the Wound Center, working at night. That's when I was able to actually get those signatures.

• 20:18Speaker 06

  Is that right?

• 20:18Speaker 04

  He was actually at that Wound Center, working on a Saturday night, because that was the only time that I could, I could find, because he was busy with other things. And of course, he gives a lot back to this community. And it's been the case for years.

• 20:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm still there. I still go to Wound Care Center every Monday. That's kind of like the common schedule. I don't deviate from that. I'm there every Monday. No, no fail.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  That's amazing.

• 20:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  It's amazing. Well, there's, there's, there's a lot of stuff Dustin and I wanted to talk about.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's get into it.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  And then, and then the subject of peptides came up.

• 20:54Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, peptides.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  So we definitely want to, want to talk about that and see what's the fastest way to lose weight, at least from my end.

• 21:04Speaker 06

  Why are you looking at me, Sammy?

• 21:05Speaker 04

  I didn't look at you. I looked at my bill. I looked at myself when I said that. And I looked at Steven, actually, when I, when I said that. So we'll, we'll be right back. Stay tuned.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  That's nice.

• 21:28Speaker 06

  I like the beat of that one.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do too. Stephen is the man. Sometimes he does good. On Mondays, on Mondays when I'm here.

• 21:37Speaker 06

  I'm gonna take that weight thing back, dude. I'm down thirty pounds.

• 21:40Speaker 04

  Good for you, Stephen. Welcome back to the Money Wise Show. I'm Sammy Abiyahu with Dustin Weaver.

• 21:45Speaker 06

  Yes, sir.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  We are joined by Dr. Vip Dev. Uh, Dr. Dev, we had a listener question, uh, coming in the break. Is the wound center what is going to step in for the burn center closing? Would the burn center closing?

• 21:59Speaker 06

  Yes, uh, we, we are and we have. Um, you know, the burn center, uh, closed just about a month ago officially or roughly around there, maybe, maybe a few weeks shy of that. Uh, and yes, we, we definitely are stepping in takeover. I helped my friend Peter Grossman with it anyway. And so, uh, now we, we just see those patients at the wound care center. I see them particularly on Mondays and then we get them situated. If they need more surgery, then we take care of it. If they need dressings, if they need wound care, we, we take care of all that. And by the way, this ranges from kids all the way to adults. So I just saw a couple of kids this morning, so it's great. Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  It's awesome. It's awesome. It's such, such a great to have you in this community, uh, Doc. Um, we, we, like I said, we were prepped with a bunch of questions about business, medicine and all that, but then you mentioned something that triggered both Dustin and I, and that's peptides.

• 22:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  And, and, and first, like for the listeners, what's a peptide?

• 22:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, peptide, okay. So, you know, we all talk about this. Yeah. People know proteins. You know, we throw this word out there, creatine, whey, all these, you know, they're, they're proteins. Proteins are what really makes up a big part of our body, but also fats make it up and then sugars make it up too, right? So you have, you know, when you eat foods, you get these different blocks of, of things within the food substance. And so one of the things that's in the food substance is protein. But you're getting big molecules of proteins. And when I say molecules, a lot of people, that doesn't register either. But think about it as a ball. Okay? And, um, you have a ball that's made up of all these little bits of material, like little

• 23:42Speaker 06

  pieces of rope, example. If you cut that big piece of rope into small pieces of rope, like twine around a golf ball, right? If you break up those little pieces, those little pieces are peptides.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 23:56Speaker 06

  Okay? So it's a big protein. Now you have a small little peptide. Those little peptides, it's like, um, it's like a plug in a socket, a, a, a, electrical outlet. So think about the peptide being the plug and our cells being the actual part that the socket inserts into, the plug inserts into. So those peptides have to attach to a cell and we have receptors and that's the plate on the wall.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  I see.

• 24:25Speaker 06

  Okay? So think about all these little pieces of peptides floating around our body and then you have an outlet that's going around trying to find this little piece of twine, but it has to be specific for that little piece of peptide. So those little peptides are the ones that signal some of the function of what our cells do.

• 24:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 24:45Speaker 06

  Okay? But these peptides are formed in various different ways and our body forms them. Our cells can make proteins, DNA makes all the proteins is that, that expresses the way you are and the way he is and the way Stephen is. So in order for them to work, we have to have a certain amount of them floating in our bodies.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 25:07Speaker 06

  And like everything else, things break down. Our bodies break down. They get old, right? You wouldn't think about peptides in a child. It doesn't work that way. Pep, kids don't need them, but as you get older, you break down and you have to replace them. And this is one way to replace them. So people are talking about peptides. What if I told you that the peptide story goes back way, way long ago to like the early nineteen hundreds? Think about it, the early nineteen hundreds. What I'm talking about specifically is Pavlov. Everyone knows when you ring the bell and the dog salivates, right? All of us studied that in school at one time or another in various different forms.

• 25:45Speaker 06

  Well, that same guy who studied gastric juices in dogs and realized like the gastric juice in dogs makes a certain type of protein. Well, our bodies make that protein too. All of us make BPC in our stomachs. That's what gets us through a lot of inflammatory phases and all that stuff, right? Well, BPC was one of those peptides that actually helped repair or decrease inflammation.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  I see.

• 26:18Speaker 06

  And so what he would do is he would feed the dogs. The dog's stomachs would churn and start to make these gastric juices. He would extract the juices and then give them to people. But they didn't know that it was BPC he was giving them back then in nineteen hundreds, right?

• 26:34Speaker 04

  He knew, he knew what he was doing.

• 26:35Speaker 06

  But he knew that something's going on, right?

• 26:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  Something's here. And so of course, you know, like every scientist back in the seventeen, eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds early, they were like, well, this guy's crazy. And a lot of these guys were crazy, but boy, they were really onto something.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:51Speaker 06

  And so now fast forward to now, actually fast forward to the early two thousands, nine, uh, nineties. You know, all those Russian athletes, Eastern Bloc athletes, all these guys that were power lifters, you know, like I'm, look, I'm, I'm an old man. So I was watching, you know, Wide World of Sports in the eighties and I'd see these Romanian like power lifters and Russian power lifters do these things that we'd never seen before. Well, theory is that some of those were, were, were taking some of these peptide like supplements. If you look at the old literature, the scientific literature that, that I've studied on this, it goes all the way back to Ukraine where scientists were doing this in labs and testing

• 27:35Speaker 06

  it and trying it. And so now what we have are little peptides and what they are now, those peptides are like Wegovy, Retitutride, right? All these things that people are talking about, those are little fragments, they're peptides.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 27:51Speaker 06

  Right? So think about it. What are they using for like the Wegovy or Ozempic or Reta, right? All these are little peptides from the insulin molecule, right? Insulin's a protein. Glucagon's a protein. They come from the pancreas. And what do we do? When we eat, the pancreas squeezes out a little bit of insulin. So the blood sugar as, as it rises, as we get to dessert, then it starts to push the sugar down into our body so we can get energy. The people that need it, what's happened is the insulin is released, but it doesn't, they have become insulin resistant.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 28:34Speaker 06

  So now what happens is that we need to make the insulin sensitive again. So we introduce another type of molecule that lowers that sugar down, that blood sugar, pushes it in and gets them a little help because their body isn't able to either produce enough of it, too little of it, or doesn't make enough of it that works.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  Is, uh, uh,

• 28:54Speaker 06

  And I'm simplifying it, but you know,

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, just different, when you said insulin resistance, is, is that reversible?

• 29:02Speaker 06

  Okay, so look, uh, let me, I give this example quite a bit and if people that want to listen, right? I always say, when you wake up in the morning, you know, the first thing you should do is drink some water. Okay? Drink some water because you're dehydrated. But what happens is that people eat and people eat like a donut and coffee or they do something like that. If they don't have like egg whites, scrambled egg whites and a rye toast, they have something else. What's going to happen is your blood sugar rises. Okay, let's just say ten, let's give the number ten.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:32Speaker 06

  It goes all the way up to ten and what happens is your body's like, hey, I better push out some insulin because the sugar's really high. I need to push the sugar into the cells so it gets used, this person can go off to work. Well, the problem is that by the time they get to work at nine, they're like, you know what? I think I'm gonna stop off at Starbucks and get like, uh, you know, a, a caramel latte or whatever that has like 500 calories or something and sugar. Well, the problem is, is their, their, their, their sugar level was ten and it only got down to like six or five before they got that caramel macchiato and then now it's up to ten again.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Or higher.

• 30:10Speaker 06

  And so, or, or higher. And so the insulin is pushing out again, but now, you know, 11 o'clock comes along and 12 o'clock comes along and they're eating lunch and their sugar was only down to like four, when it should be like down to one.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 06

  You see what I mean? It's not, you don't want it to go to zero, but you want it to go down to like one or two and then eat. So it goes back up to like maybe six or eight and then insulin comes and then you reduce it and it goes down again. And then you eat your last meal of the day. You see what I mean? But the human body doesn't allow the pancreas to take a break. You see what I mean? And then it becomes exhausted. Think about this, right? It's exhaustion. Now you're so tired, the pancreas is so tired that it doesn't want to put out more insulin or the insulin that it does put out, your body's saying, no, it's okay. I'm good. I like that high sugar. You see what I mean? Right? It's so, you know, again, I'm oversimplifying it, but I found that the more simple I make

• 31:11Speaker 06

  it, the easier it comes across for people to say, all right, so I want to lower my sugar purposefully.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  And give my body a chance.

• 31:19Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  Chance to,

• 31:20Speaker 06

  That's exactly right.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Which we don't, to your point, because we get off the car and we go sit at a desk.

• 31:25Speaker 06

  Right.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  I mean, a lot of us do and there are some people that move and like we have servers upstairs at the restaurants, we have blue collars that move a lot, but the average American doesn't.

• 31:35Speaker 06

  They, they don't. That's exactly right. So what's the purpose of it is because, you know, we, our, our minds are eight AM breakfast, 12 o'clock lunch and, you know, five or six o'clock, I need to have dinner. And I would think that if we started to think differently, like I'm only going to eat when I'm hungry or I'm going to train my body to eat in small bits, but to have different types of foods. So like I'm going to have only, you know, good fats, which are nuts, right? Avocado, all those kinds, those are good fats and limit the animal fat. So there's different things, right? Animal fat, self-explanatory, but the plant fats are really good because they're broken down differently and they're utilized quicker.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, so when you say avocado, you say nuts. I mean, throughout the day, people can, like nuts, for instance.

• 32:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  It's good to have them throughout the day.

• 32:30Speaker 06

  Cashews, Brazilian nuts, macadamia nuts, some of these. I would probably stay away from just peanuts. You can add a few little peanuts in there. It's probably the worst one of the, all of them. But, you know, there's good choices there. The other thing that people forget is that when they eat fruits, you know, people like, oh, well, I get all my fruits. Yes, but the problem is that you're eating cantaloupe, watermelon, banana. The sweetest fruits that have so much sugar in it already.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  You see what I mean? So the idea is to limit your sugar intake because you're getting sugars in almost everything. And when I say sugar, by the way, Sammy, remember, sugars are carbohydrates.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:08Speaker 06

  So if you're taking in a carbohydrate, if you're eating like rye bread. Rye bread is a good choice, by the way, for people that can't stay away from bread, but they like bread. It's a good choice. And so that comes out to be a fairly good option for you, right? But I kind of took a, took a turn from the peptide story because now if you do all those things and then you're starting to look at peptides and so on, you're going to go online and you're going to start to see people, especially on Instagram and TikTok and all this stuff. You know, there are all these guys that are usually in their twenties and thirties or mid thirties and they're just in tremendously great shape. Well, you gotta think, you know, all that is not from peptides. Yes. And so, right, right.

• 33:53Speaker 06

  I think the idea is to look at the three of us and say, look, you know, what, what can we do first from a diet perspective to do that? And then if you're going online and really thinking about these peptide story, I, I would urge people to really read everything about it. Talk to your physicians, really talk to your physicians. That's important. And they should be able to direct you to the right place. And it's not necessarily peptides.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 06

  It's just eating better.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  And moving, maybe?

• 34:21Speaker 06

  And moving, exercise and so on, right? But if, if you ever want, I'm, I'm happy to talk to people and give them a list of peptides that, that people are using right now, like people are trying it. And I tell them, look, here's, here's all the problems with it. And you need to study it and you need to look at it.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  You've talked to me about this about maybe seven, eight years ago. And one thing that stuck with me when we were talking about this diet, because I was a lot more heavier than now, like by almost thirty, forty pounds. Doctor Deff told me something that stuck with me.

• 34:54Speaker 06

  What was it?

• 34:55Speaker 04

  He said, Sammy, don't be Moroccan when it comes to your diet, right? It's true, seriously. He, he told me that and my wife is Filipino and he told her the same thing. He said, don't be Filipino when it comes to the diet, meaning that, you know, rice in the morning, rice at lunch and rice at dinner. Same thing for me, bread for breakfast, bread for lunch and bread for dinner. And he was like, just think different. Your ancestors did not eat that. They, they, they probably worked the fields or ran after animals or whatever, so think different. And, and, and that's stuck with me.

• 35:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 05

  And I, I feel like the one that you hear positive things are Mediterranean, which can be a broad term, but Mediterranean diet.

• 35:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, and well, I mean, and, and you know, like all cultures across the world have bread in their diet. All cultures. The Chinese culture has rice.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 35:42Speaker 06

  You know what I mean? But, but, but everyone has a form of carbohydrate that they depend on. And I think it just depends on how you eat it, what your activity level is compared to that and how you change throughout the day.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 06

  You know, like, how do you change your diet throughout the day? What does it look like? And I think that that matters too. You know, a lot of people tend to eat their heaviest meals in the evening, which I think is really dangerous in terms of watching your diet and your weight and so on.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  That was my number one issue. I mean, one was soda. I cut out sodas in April, haven't had one since. That one was just, I was so used to a soda after this, a soda after that. But the other one that I learned from Doctor Sandu was fasting. I was that same guy you're just about to bring up. I work all day, I get home, I shower, then I eat, then I go to sleep. And I learned from fasting from seven P to seven A and drinking a ton of these waters.

• 36:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Thank you, Sammy. But I've dropped thirty pounds in probably a little over ninety days just from cutting soda and not eating right before bed.

• 36:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's amazing, you know, Stephen, you, you talk about going to sleep. Let me, let me just touch on that. You know, when we go to sleep, our liver is really building. You know, people say your, your, your muscles, especially in young folks, your muscles are really building at night. The reason why is because everything that you've eaten, your liver, your body knows, hey, I'm going to sleep, so I don't need the energy. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my fats, right? My carbohydrates and my proteins, and I'm going to start shuttling things around and putting things where they need to go in case I need it later. Well, guess what happens when you eat a really big meal? You're eating a lot of calories that you don't need because your body's going to rest. It's not going to break it. So what, what does it do?

• 37:40Speaker 06

  It stores it into the easiest store sources, which is fats and carbohydrates. The hard ones are the muscle. Think about it, right? Because muscle is complex, it's complicated. What's the last thing to break down when we're starving? Muscle. So, you know, if you see kids that are starving, which we've all seen pictures of, what do they have? They have very little muscle left.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 06

  Right? And so that's because the body is breaking down the muscle to feed the brain.

• 38:12Speaker 06

  To make sure that that stays alive.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  Science is, is, is amazing. I mean, talking about just how you eat throughout the day is, is a, like, it makes sense. Like, it's like aha moment for me. It's like, yeah, I woke up in the morning, I try to start with water, but you know, like.

• 38:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  That donut comes to mind.

• 38:32Speaker 05

  I'm hearing, I'm saying, what you eat is important, but also the timing and how it corresponds with the other activity that you have.

• 38:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  So, so, so doctor, a lot of the listeners, including myself, maybe Dustin, dinner is where the family gathers, right? I mean, we all, my son is at school, my wife is working, I'm working. Like, that's the time we get together and the family dinner becomes very important.

• 38:53Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  So, so we can still do that, but with, with maybe a different way of eating is what I hear you say.

• 39:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, like in my household, it was, you know, we, we had two kids that were athletes. And so, you know, restricting their diet at dinnertime is not a great idea. But choosing the food that they eat at dinnertime is a great idea. You know what I mean? So, so what we, the best thing to do is to offer a higher amounts of protein, a decent amount of good carbs, right? And then the right fat that goes along with it. If you choose the right protein, you're going to get the right fat with it usually, usually, unless you're a vegetarian. But you can really pick some good, good meats, proteins that, that you're going to get with it. And then the, the fats and carbohydrates to go.

• 39:44Speaker 06

  I would urge you not to add the dessert as your carbohydrate, as your sugar carbohydrate. But, you know, complex carbohydrates are great. Quinoa is a great, is a great example. Not everyone likes quinoa, but you can add just a little bit of rice even and it's okay. As long as it's a small portion, not, not the overwhelming portion of that meal.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  I love quinoa and, and it's so adaptable. You could use, you could use it with a lot of stuff. You could use it as a side, but I love it in salads. Like I add a lot of vegetables to it, including like beans.

• 40:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. Or banjo beans, tofu is another great example that people can.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  That's, that's, that's a food that's, that does not come to mind like as a protein, but it's full of protein, right?

• 40:26Speaker 06

  It is, it's very, it's, it's highly full of protein and it takes on the flavor of whatever you make it with.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  That's the good thing about it, yes, yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  I, I feel like I heard or read something and I knew, I, I then learned that it was incorrect. Somebody was saying it could be high in estrogen.

• 40:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  But I feel like that was a myth or.

• 40:46Speaker 06

  No, it's true. You know, it, it, because again, you know, plants have fats too, right? Soybean, it's, it's, it's a soybean product. And so they, they do have fats. But you'd have to consume huge amounts of that to even affect your, your, your estrogen, which is very minimal effect of it.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, sometimes you go to an Asian restaurants and they have soup, a simple soup. And then they have these little bits of tofu in it and it tastes so good. I'm like, how come I did not think about this when I'm at home?

• 41:14Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  You know, it's so simple to make too, especially after a long day of work.

• 41:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  We have a listener question, what fruits are better and lower in sugars? Too much chicken isn't as good as most people think too, right?

• 41:28Speaker 06

  Right, yeah. I mean, you know, especially certain chicken, you know, like for example, I, I have taught my children to, to, to just stay away from anything other than a boneless, skinless chicken breast. It sounds so boring, but not really when you think about it in the long term. You can make it anything you want.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  It's like tofu.

• 41:48Speaker 06

  It's so easy, yeah, it's so easy to work with. It is so easy to work with. And so I think, you know, the, the answer to that is there are certain types of whitefish. There's a certain type of, you know, chicken breast, for example, you know, the boneless, skinless chicken breast, which becomes less and less expensive as time goes on, by the way. I don't know if you've noticed that, if you really look at it. And if you try to stay, so the other part that really is questionable to me is if you study it long enough is turkey. Ground turkey, they say, has really large amounts of sodium in it that you had to be careful, a lot of people should be careful about eating it long term.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  Talking about just naturally, even without adding salt, you're saying?

• 42:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, the ground turkey because of the processing of it.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 42:36Speaker 06

  There's quite a bit of sodium in it.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  I see.

• 42:39Speaker 06

  And so you have to be careful with that, otherwise a lot of people have eaten. But the sliced turkey meat is a little bit better, but even that has its own issues with it. So you got to be careful. People substitute cheese for protein as well, but you have to be careful with that because that's a high amount of saturated fat.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 06

  Right? And people don't understand what saturated fat means. Saturated fat means if you have a rope and you have a bunch of bonds stuck to it trying to get everything off the rope, like, you know, barnacles.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  The more barnacles you have it, the more saturation there is. So a fat has more hydrogens attached to it, which means it's saturated, which means it's hard to get all that fat off of you. If you have short chain, less saturated fat, it's better.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  Any cheeses that are low on that?

• 43:32Speaker 06

  So like mozzarella is low part skim, you know, that's part skim milk, right? That's the whole skim and it's low fat. So, you know, that's how you look at it. So every word has a meaning to it.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 06

  You've just got to know what that meaning is.

• 43:46Speaker 04

  How about the fruits? The listener also asked about the better fruits when it comes to lower, low sugar.

• 43:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, you know, the fruits that have the lowest amount of sugar are like the Granny Smith apples. Some of those can be really sweet, have a fairly, but apples generally are not as sweet. There are certain peaches, there are certain plums, apricots, you know, that are not as sweet, but they're good fruits to eat. Berries are usually very good and the natural sugars in theirs are good because they also have a high antioxidant component.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  My favorite.

• 44:19Speaker 06

  Blueberries, raspberries.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Berries in general, absolutely.

• 44:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  I love berries.

• 44:24Speaker 06

  And so people, you know, again, people, "Oh, I don't like berries," you know, I'm like, "Well, just try it. You know, just try it. Do you like them?"

• 44:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I put mine in just Greek yogurt sometimes and it's just, I like berries in general.

• 44:37Speaker 06

  Right.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  I like every fruit, that's my problem.

• 44:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  But, I mean, to your point, you reminded me of a watermelon and melon, I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm eating fruits," but I'm eating them after dinner.

• 44:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  As a dessert, but it's high sugar.

• 44:47Speaker 06

  High sugar.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  And if you don't move, if you don't do that 10-minute or 15-minute walk, which a lot of us don't do, then you go to sleep, story and all of that.

• 44:56Speaker 06

  It does. And then last thing, guys, we haven't touched on it, but I could tell you, a lot of people, I mean, the wine drinkers won't like it, but to be honest with you, I think there's a lot of wasted calories in the wines that we drink, although they are fun and good to drink with food and so on, but you have to take that into consideration because wines are sugars.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 06

  Okay, that's how most of the alcohols are made, is they're just broken down sugar, right?

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Back to moderation.

• 45:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, just amazing, amazing science. Science is amazing, just listening to you and listening, breaking down the peptides and how things work, the saturated fats and just eating in moderation. Divide the day or your meals and how you eat and how you look at meals throughout the day. Things that we don't think about because we are, you know, quote unquote, busy, but we should be busy with our bodies. Like, we should prioritize that and think about that first.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Thank you for all the illustrations and explanations.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  This was great.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Thank you so much, Dr. Depp. Always a pleasure to have you.

• 46:03Speaker 06

  Thank you. Thank you, guys.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  What do we have tomorrow, Stephen?

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Oh, it's you and Sherrod, and then we'll welcome back Stephen Winters from the White Wolf Wellness Foundation, but till then, be smart, be safe. Be money wise.