Age Proof
Age Proof: Unlock the Real Fountain of Youth
What if the secret to staying young isn’t a myth, but just hidden in plain sight?
Age Proof is where real science meets real-life results.
Each episode brings you inside conversations with doctors, biohackers, and longevity experts who are redefining what it means to grow older. Together, we unpack breakthrough treatments, debunk outdated health myths, and explore everything from anti-aging supplements to the newest regenerative therapies.
No trends, no shortcuts, just practical, science-backed tools to help you feel better, move better, and stay sharp as you age.
This is Age Proof, where growing older comes with smarter choices and stronger health.
Age Proof
Is This the Natural Alternative to Ozempic?
What happens when a Versace model walks away from the spotlight to heal from the inside out?
In this episode, we dive into her powerful journey from battling addiction and chronic health issues to finding real healing through meditation, plant medicine, and shamanic practices.
She opens up about how reconnecting with nature and ancient wisdom changed everything—and why so many of us are unknowingly held back by processed food, stress, and chemical overload.
We also explore how alternative education like Waldorf helps raise more creative, resilient kids and why blending old traditions with new science could be the key to a healthier future.
It’s raw, inspiring, and full of hope. Press play and discover what true healing really looks like.
so how'd you like la?
Speaker 2:I loved la, I mean la became my number one home. It was the most time I've ever spent as a human being anywhere 25 years, yeah so, and I never thought I'd leave. But covid got a little weird and, um, the homeless population got out of control. Yeah, uh, when everybody was locked up and I was living in between two halfway houses in santa monica, yeah and uh, and I had two small children yeah, and they got louder as everyone was, you know, told to stay indoors yeah I don't stay indoors very well yeah, how old are the kids, or were they at the time?
Speaker 2:uh, they were probably what like seven eight okay and 11 type of thing, we moved to sedona with no mask requirements nice they were in waldorf and we were paying for private schools and, uh, we like the waldorf curriculum. But they went from a zero media policy, yeah, to being on zoom for six hours and I said I'm not paying for that, yeah but yeah, that just switched.
Speaker 3:I mean, my daughter was similar age, she was like six or seven and that zoom shut, the whole zoom classroom thing. It was so bad she would just flip out. Because she doesn't usually spend much time on a screen, we limited her screen time, like she would only get like one to two hours over the weekend, and then it went to like trying to keep her on a monitor for like three hours at a time, five hours at a time. It was just not working out well, how about this?
Speaker 2:I mean, uh, pornography's everywhere and my daughter at 11 years old got caught on it, or the girls in her. Somebody pressured them or whatever but it's, it's available, and so, and I love the zero media policy from Waldorf education, you know, and not everybody can be zero, but at least that's a good marker. And so you know there's that. So you know, society definitely got a little strange over the years.
Speaker 1:And was that the main thing at waldorf that you liked, or like what else?
Speaker 2:brain development yeah, as well um so what what? Did they do so? The first thing they do at early childhood is that they use silks, wood they're all natural fiber toys or they also would go out in the garden. So by the time they are learning abstract how to plant seeds, they already have a visceral experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a tactile experience of working in the garden at the waldorf school and so um they also. They don't teach them how to read, they kind of learn by osmosis. And instead of making them go after mathematics, uh, linguistics, those types of things, I do believe steiner philosophy is that the the right brain.
Speaker 2:Right is that the creative side of the brain one's logic and one's one's logic and reason and the other one's creativity and that develops and there's kind of a window of development and it kind of stops at 11. So instead of focusing on reading and mathematics, which they bring in, but in more in the form of art and then that visceral type of learning about being in the garden et garden etc and play, lots of play, so gross motor skills are directly related to, uh, fine motor skills, so needlepoint, knitting, and then they would have them go on the monkey bars and actually they're looking at the development uh of their gross motor skills and their fine motor skills. My son had like a learning issue where he was turning and he wasn't listening as much and the teachers are able to spot that and through the developmental you know philosophy of Steiner and they said that you know his gross motor skills weren't being as developed as much and this may help his learning and so we got him out on the monkey bars a little bit more and my, my children are already active. Yeah, we live in such a domesticated world, yeah, that, um, they needed that, that part of development. So I, I like that they.
Speaker 2:They focus on the brain development. They also, uh are understanding of like cortisol and how much testing and competition really elevates cortisol, and chronic elevated cortisol can shut a child down neurologically and so and this sounds like all highfalutin philosophy, but I am here to tell you that my children are very attentive, they're very present, they're like adults when you engage them. Their artistic skills are amazing my son can draw. Their problem solving is amazing, and so the proof is in the pudding, and I've done the best I can to keep them away from devices. My ex-wife and I are divorced now and she decided to buy them devices to get against me and I'm like we actually invested in the children's development.
Speaker 2:So but anyway, I digress. But yeah, the, the, the, the investment was worth it. Yeah, for sure I recommend other adults that are interested in child rearing to definitely investigate Waldorf and what it has to offer. It's not right for everyone yes, not.
Speaker 1:Every child is different yeah but definitely look I think, just like opening their minds to, you know, to different things, and seeing where they excel in instead of being like no, these are like, you need to excel at math or biology, or you know now.
Speaker 1:Now they get into like computer coding and stuff, like even at an early age. So like I think it's important to kind of get their creativity and get their brains growing before like just fixating on certain things, and like we've had a couple of friends that their kids played like ultra performance athletes in hockey and like at 18 they don't want to play anymore yeah, my son's a hockey player and he just went through that he wanted to go pro and I sent him away and he went to montreal and everything and he came home this story.
Speaker 2:He went to canada, got into a good school and then like doesn't want to continue anymore yeah, and I'm happy because the, the athletics really, they worked them seven days a week and on the ice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, the one thing I will leave with the Waldorf education is that I know that Ivy League schools and tech companies covet Waldorf children because of their problem-solving abilities, and so their test scores, their SATs, may not be as high as others, but if you ask them a direct question, they'll look in your eye and they'll they'll give you a well thought out answer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, around here it's like there's a school that's pretty popular because it gets rated high. It's called basis, but they're strongly about like test taking skills and I know a lot of people, like a lot of physicians, put their kids in there because, oh, they're going to do well on tests like sats. Um, but it's it's definitely high anxiety. I know more than one person that had to take their kid out of there. Yeah, one of their kids responded and it's doing really well there. The other one was just like high anxiety to the point where like it was affecting her attitude and everything.
Speaker 3:So they it was good they took her out in like less than a year, but like not everybody can yeah, it's recognized that there's different things for different people and the nice part is we have a lot of options now Because, like my daughter, she's been like charter school Montessori until.
Speaker 2:My children are Montessori now. Okay, yeah, but charter. So there's still the testing, yeah, and that stresses my daughter out and I told her child psychology totally works right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I told her I don't care about school.
Speaker 1:You hear?
Speaker 2:about you, know, know all these entrepreneurs right now yeah, you know steve jobs dropping out of school, etc. I said I don't care about school, I'll train you, I'll homeschool you whatever you want. And now she's a student. She wants to go to harvard yeah, I can't even stop her right and so, but she does get stressed out from the state testing because it's charter school, they get money from the state, and so she does get stressed out and I'm like honey, don't worry about it, she gets straight A's right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my, my daughter, I mean she just doesn't like school. She's like me when I grew up, like until med school, I was not. I was like one of the worst students and I did like just enough to get my C's and I would. I was good enough and I was really good at math so I could calculate. I'm like I can just get these grades that way. I don't need to do any homework or I miss. I did bad on like one quiz or test and I was like, okay, I got to do like two homework assignments this semester and like that's how I was and she's like exactly like it and it's like kind of driving me nuts, but it's just like come on, come on, just turn it on. Like I honestly don't know what to do. She's really like artistic-minded, great at drawing, even painting stuff we've worked on together too Like she's really good at that. But like with classes and the state testing. Also, how old is she? She's 12.
Speaker 2:And what does she love to do? She's good at drawing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she definitely is on the creative side, so that's why we have, like, her playroom is pretty much like a creativity room, so you got the easel in there. Creativity room, so you got the easel in there. Whatever I think I might have fun using with, like drawing and stuff like markers, paint this, that or anything she brings up to like create, like, whether it's clay or some knitting stuff now I forget the name of the toys that are popular I was like yeah, sure, let's, let's get that.
Speaker 3:Um, so that that why I'm like just push this and eventually she'll figure out where her real interest is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I mean, everything's changing so much and AI is displacing people out of businesses, but I think creativity and authenticity, they're never going away. I talked to some tech kids in LA. I was at an event. It was tech and psychedelics. It was right in Venice Beach, pretty big event, and it got a lot of media and I I talked to some virtual reality, uh, kids in their twenties, but you know really high level employees and, uh, you know they're creating gaming, they're doing all this stuff and and they're basically trying to say they want to get away from their phones and they want, want, you know, direct interaction.
Speaker 2:They were, uh, they were at this tech and psychedelic event and they were. It was kind of a strange question because I've used psychedelics to do my own personal spiritual work, um and and they were kind of like we want to hang out with, like this crew and I was, and that's not the way I think. Right, if I'm going to do psychedelics in the Amazon and drink ayahuasca or something like that, I'm going to do it for my own personal introspection. I'm going to take that home. I'm going to do that work for the next few years. I'm not going to get around a bunch of people and like do a party drug or something like that, and so I think their, their thinking was a little bit off.
Speaker 2:But it was very interesting to talk to these people because tech and entertainment in Los Angeles has really. I went away for quite a few years this was last year and I went back there and I was amazed at how much tech kind of took over Hollywood, because when I lived there it was all about filmmaking and. Tv and acting and all this stuff and I went back there and I saw this kind of takeover from tech and it was just interesting to hear young people say that they want to get away from the phones.
Speaker 3:I hear a lot like. A lot of stuff I listen to is like tech-based, like podcasts, stuff like that, and psychedelics and stuff is really big in that field. I find a lot of young founders of these startups. They all experiment regularly with psychedelics but I didn't know that's how they were using it?
Speaker 2:Well, that's the question that was posed to me, and this was only one conversation with a couple of people. But I just thought it was strange myself, because I don't usually typically get with other people. I go to a psychedelic conference to offer my perspective and my work in the Amazon and my work with Ibogaine for addiction and stuff like that. Actually it's been not for my addiction, just for my own research. It's utilized for chemical dependency. You know about it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:We actually had a whole podcast. We talked about it a couple months ago.
Speaker 2:Oh sweet.
Speaker 3:Because, yeah, it was on any of the things that show up on wellness, or like becomes popular or anything we just like if we don't know about it. We'll, we'll like look it up and make sure we cover it. So Ibergame, what's it? Senator Rick Perry's backing it. Now he's trying to back.
Speaker 2:Correct for the veterans, which is very important. So we've got the veterans and then we have the blue-collar workers that got on to OxyContin and stuff like that, and there's been lawsuits and big payouts for, I think, purdue Pharma, yeah, and they're trying to get some of that money rolled over into because the stuff works. Yeah, yeah, the heroin addicts years ago found it kind of underground and we're using it amongst each other, um, and it's been around for a long time. I was fortunate enough to do it twice because my online platform is holistic health and exploration and all things. Natural healing, yeah, and uh clinic in cancun contacted me and, uh, I went down there to experience it because you can also do it for, uh, personal development, introspection, trauma. Um, they're doing it for PTSD.
Speaker 2:There was a did you read that paper on Nature Magazine? Yep, and he was on Tim Ferriss' podcast, that doctor from Stanford, I do believe. Yeah, 360 Navy SEALs and I think all their markers got so much better from sleep. A crazy amount To nutrition, yeah, yeah. And so I had incredible and really good experiences spiritually. There was a lot of darkness and war inside of me and I've never been through a war and to witness that for eight hours and lynchings and hangings. What?
Speaker 3:did you do in the meantime? Were you just out in the wild when you took it, or were you doing certain things?
Speaker 2:I was in a medical facility called Beyond and actually it's gotten a lot of popularity.
Speaker 2:It's mentioned multiple times on Joe Rogan just in the last few months there was an Arkansas attorney that's working on litigation to get this in the state of Arkansas for the veterans. So the Bwiti tribe used to use it after the war. So they call it, I think, like the eating god, and so it has a healing element for the nervous system. But they would take it after war and you know what were they killing each other with back there Spears and stuff like real brutal stuff, and so the Bwiti tribe would use it. Um, the music is very weird and intense and also rhythmic, and I, uh, I had you also have hallucin, uh, auditory hallucinations and I had never heard about that.
Speaker 2:And I was listening to a playlist and I've done ayahuasca and been on like really cool spiritual playlists and it's amazing to hear these sounds and stuff and I was on that playlist. I was on a playlist like that the first time and it just sounded like just really depressing music. I was like why, why is that? And they're like, oh, there's auditory hallucinations. I was like okay. So the next time I went back I listened to only the Bwidi music and it sounds a little discordant. And they have these what are those things called? Where they put them in the mouth?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, australian thing yeah, they have these instruments and drums and it just sounds like, and then this one's making a sound over here. But when you're on the medicine it all makes sense because it's playing with your brain.
Speaker 2:It's like it's triggering different things in your brain, and so for the next experience I did most people only do it once, and so I went back. The next year they invited me back and I listened to it and, um, it actually helped my experience. The first experience was just a walk through hell for eight hours Solid and you went back.
Speaker 1:How did you feel afterwards? Like amazing, yeah, even after the bad trip.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, the shamans in the Amazon I learned this many years ago. They say when you have a bad trip, it's actually better, because then every life is gravy right.
Speaker 2:Life is difficult, you know, there's no doubt about it, and so depends on your trauma and your experience and how you've been able to process and react to certain things neurologically down regulated, upregulated nervous system. And so, um, and I had problems with addiction when I was younger and I used to down regulate my nervous system with alcohol, uh, and so, um, years later, I mean to be able to work with something like this. It seems like it just smoothed everything out and the shamans in the Amazon would tell me you know, the walk through hell is like, you know, number one, keep going. But that makes life itself a bit more of a gravy train instead of. You know, because you've been able to deal with that much of a issue. And what I realized with Ibogaine and walking through hell for eight hours was all that stuff was resided in my nervous system. Yeah, so I was already reacting to this stuff, unconsciously, subconsciously that was already part of my internal makeup.
Speaker 2:So for me to come home, I mean I'm still integrating all my ayahuasca experiences since 2006. I've had a handful. I haven't drank ayahuasca experiences since 2006. I've had a handful. I haven't drank ayahuasca in four years or so, but I'm still integrating the messages and whatever the experience I was going through, the ibogaine has noraibogaine that off-gases in you for at least six months to a year.
Speaker 2:So it's still inside your system and that's what they're studying neurologically and how effective it is. I haven't done too much of the reading of the research. I've just experienced it, yeah, directly that's sometimes the best evidence right I mean me. I'm kind of an anecdotal guy myself yeah, you know what's the application in the real world. Data is great, yeah, and if it's backed up by experience, it's even greater. In my humble opinion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, so that medical setting, like do they do any, whether it's with the shaman, or do they talk you through anything, or is you're just on your own with your thoughts?
Speaker 2:it's an amazing facility. Uh, tom and talia run it. Talia was a socialite from New York City and she was in the art world and she got caught up in heroin and Iboga and Ibogaine helped her. And then Tom, he ran this. He's ran multiple companies but he had maybe you remember it during COVID AO. It's sold at Whole Foods. It's a little herbal hand cleanser spray.
Speaker 2:I think it's EO. He ran that company for many years and they were living in Mill Valley. They had the dream to open this place and they've done an amazing job. They raised the capital. They bought a hacienda in Cancun. Cancun it is unscheduled, so it's Schedule 1 drug felony here in the United States, not to mention you can't use it medically. And so in Cancun it's unscheduled, and so they have access to it. They have 37 nurses that run in shifts and they have, I think, three doctors. Okay, the one doctor was kind of funny because he'd been using it for 19 years but had never done it.
Speaker 3:I'm like man, you got to do it yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and I actually, after I did the medicine, I came back and I go, this guy needs to do it, and I could see him then putting on his shaman makeup and getting his little shakapa going, because he was that guy. He just hadn't done the medicine you know, whether it was a past life or something, and so the facility is amazing, and I, over the years I'm 59 now I don't go to doctors. I don't have a lot of experience in the medical field whatsoever, and so we don't either.
Speaker 1:We're doctors like I, I refused my. My wife wants me to get a colonoscopy. I'm like I'm only 45. She wanted me to get it before I even hit the age wow yeah I love that.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty bad yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you guys, you guys know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So uh.
Speaker 3:I just I just went to the optometrist for the first time in 10 years. Our other brother is an oculoplastic surgeon, so you have to do ophthalmology first and I posted about how this one three month case case of daily contacts I've had for like this was like five years ago. I've had them for five years and he was like dude, you can't post that online. You're a doctor. I'm like well, where's the research? They tell they. The website says it's made of better material than permanent contacts were a couple years ago, but these are only good for one day. I'm like they just feel they're like jeans, that you don't wash jeans. They're just more comfortable that way. So like, if I just take them out at night and put them back in, they're more comfortable than a new pair in my eyes.
Speaker 3:So I just I just went to the optometrist for the first time in 10 years. I was gonna. I brought a couple of my contacts to, just so they can see the scripts, and I was looking at it. I was like, oh shit they're. They expired in 2022. They expired three years ago, but they can do enough testing without these. Uh, figure out my, what my script is.
Speaker 1:So I just got.
Speaker 3:I just got finally got new set of contacts for six months and I'll try to use them for less than the expiration date. But they gave me a couple five pack samples. I'm like these samples are probably good for a year for me, as long as I don't lose them.
Speaker 2:But that's, that's funny, yeah well, yeah, I mean, whatever my uh psychological bent towards that situation, even with eyesight, I mean I had great eyes, I had eagle vision up until I was 45 and then, uh, it's definitely been declining. I think a lot of it has to do with the phones and I sat next to an ophthalmologist on a plane ride one time and talk to him about a lot of stuff and I think you know, the corneas wear out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they dry out, and so I also know that once you start wearing glasses, that it weakens your eyes, and so I've got this like phobia about getting glasses all together I got some readers and I got some blue blocker readers as well, and so I do use them occasionally, uh, but I am on the phones for business and so I'm like uh, anyways, I got.
Speaker 3:I got the blue blocker, uh glass shield for my phone. I don't know you might want to look into that. That way it's. It's right on your phone. Yeah, so do you see it well?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, it doesn't do anything.
Speaker 3:That's why I'm like is it really blocking anything? So um, but I figured, instead of getting glasses I would just put it right on my phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just reticent to kind of weaken anything with any kind of external exogenous synthetic anything.
Speaker 3:That's just the way I'm being. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So my point is is I never spent that much time with that many nurses and these people are amazing. They're like angels. I was like holy shit, I, I was, uh, I was walking backwards, because I like to walk backwards for my hip flexors and my knees and stuff it actually works really well, do you?
Speaker 1:know this the knees over toes. No, knees over toe, guy ben patrick, was it rogan?
Speaker 2:keeps on talking about. Yeah, ben patrick, the knees over toes guy, he's been on rogan, yeah. So I've been walking backwards for, uh, the last few years and it's really helped my hip flexors, my knees. How often do you do it?
Speaker 1:you gotta check out what that looks like. I was gonna actually search it and start doing it because he keeps on saying it and, like all the people that come on and talk about mobility and health, always it started they start talking about the knees over toes thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's, it's phenomenal. Um, so I started doing it a couple of years ago and the best way to do it is, uh, just do the gym warmup five to 10 minutes and do it on a. I do it on the max incline, so 25 or whatever, and then I do it. About 0.9 or 1.1 is my pace.
Speaker 2:I'm getting older but it works great and you have to watch it, um, because you can trip in. Your vestibular system is, you know, it's constantly balancing you, and so it it helps with the neurological like it takes a lot of energy to walk backwards, and so, uh, so I was in Cancun. Um, I love to walk barefoot, uh, on the grass, and they've got a patch of grass and I was walking back and forth backwards and there was a rose bed or something and I tripped on it and there was a fence and I cut my hand and so I'd never been around nurses or whatever. So I was like, help me around nurses or whatever.
Speaker 2:So I was like, help me, and they bandaged me up and it was amazing and I I just felt so like, uh, luxurious and like really cared after, and actually they, they prescribe you a nurse for your whole trip, right, eight hours, one person, and they're like angels and so and the doctors are there, but they're there less because the nurses you guys probably know this as doctors the nurses do all the monitoring, yeah, and the doctors I think they have three of them, so they're one they kind of come on call, uh, and I think they're only doing one to three patients a day, okay, for the actual trip, and they have, uh, I think, uh, they've got seven, maybe they've got 15 or 20 beds.
Speaker 2:So I think they're opening up a new facility as well. But it's the first time I've been in a medical facility and I spent a week there two years in a row and it's just amazing the care that's down there. It's not cheap, right, it's not a cheap date. I think it's $10,500 for seven days and $15,000 for 10 days but the care is phenomenal. The food's all organic, they have art therapy, they have breath work, they have qigong, they have yoga, they have all the psychological circles, journaling. They have all the aftercare that you need to take home and change your lifestyle, because if you're getting off heroin.
Speaker 2:You probably need to change your friends and get a few new habits, because it definitely gets you off heroin. All the chemical dependency is gone. It's guaranteed. That's the miracle of it and that's why Rick Perry, the miracle of it and that's why, uh, rick perry and uh, um, some of these other politicians, uh, including that lawyer from arkansas, wants to bring it in because we have so much homeless and the fentanyl situation is out of control.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's crazy. That's why I left california. Yeah, I bet you it's going to show up even more for Adderall in the future. There's such a high percentage of people, Even in med school. You're just like how many people are on this stuff, Forget about med school.
Speaker 1:Everyone's trying to be a high performer. We're talking about kids and you just build a huge tolerance, so it's just like some people are like what Half our workers are like? Really Adderall yeah.
Speaker 2:Because that's methamphetamines. Yeah, it's speed Speed, I mean speed kills because you don't eat nutrients.
Speaker 3:And just your heart's racing at an obnoxious rate, which is not good, and you compound that over time. So it's just yeah. And it's so crazy how many people are on it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the one thing that I studied in college. I took a class called Drugs and Human Behavior and the one thing that I learned in that class was don't mess around with speed because you don't eat and most people it's just a downward cycle. Are they finding that that's happening with people on Adderall? Or can you eat on it? Did they tweak the drug enough? No, no.
Speaker 3:They actually use it for finding that that's happening with people on Adderall, or can you eat on it? Did they tweak the drug enough? No, no, they actually use it for appetite suppressant. You could use it for weight loss, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like most of the supermodels and stuff they probably like. They're all on it, yeah, or Miss America Sharon.
Speaker 2:Osbourne yeah, have you seen her lately? No, ozzy Osbourne's wife yeah, she's ozzy, she's ozzy, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're starting to see the ugly side of some of these things coming out into our society people don't know how to balance it.
Speaker 3:Some people just go crazy with it. They're like, oh, I gotta get thinner, I gotta get thinner. Like even when I was in good shape, like in undergrad wrestling, it was just like I was always like, oh, I gotta get a little more cut up, gotta get a little more cut up. But um, I just constantly check my body composition.
Speaker 1:If you know, I, I take it, I dose, I play around with dosage and, like you know, I, I check my body composition. I have with those epic yeah, I check my if I'm losing muscle mass. I like stay off of it, so do you it controls my sugar really well. Do you microdose it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, microdose it, Because I've heard about that but I know nothing about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just controls your sugar, and controlling your sugar is going to be anti-inflammatory and that's why they're finding all these added benefits. I know there's a lot of people against it, but it's preventing cardiac disease, alzheimer's and arthritis. It's anti-inflammatory just because your sugars aren't bouncing all over the place and staying pretty much regular. So that's one of the ways it's helping overall health.
Speaker 2:So what's the happy medium then? Because I mean she's looking pretty bad.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, well, that that's the thing. Like some people are taking it to lose 5-10 pounds, which, like there's a lot of other things like you could do to lose 5-10 pounds, like, and some of these people they they got body dysmorphic disorder. Like she's got body dysmorphic disorder where it's she's taking too much of a dose because, like what, what we use in our clinic, it's usually take it until you're like eating half the amount you're used to eating and you've, you know, until you. And if you've reached your goal weight, you should start dialing back and trying to come off of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we establish ideal weight, like to start, like, go over goals like what they're looking to achieve, and monitoring regularly, and we do the body composition for all of them too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we check their body composition to make sure they're not overdoing it and, just like you know, some people just use it as their crutch and they're eating garbage and, like I talked to them about you know, no processed foods and sugar like no sugars.
Speaker 2:Simple carbs.
Speaker 1:Yeah because that's the way you're not going to keep muscle and you can't lie. You get on that scale. You can tell You're like all right, you're just losing muscle mass, like you shouldn't be on this medication because you don't know what you're doing, you're not living a healthy lifestyle and although it's helping you and weight wise, it could be detrimental to you because once you're off of it like especially like the fda took it off the shortage list so a bunch of people aren't able to get it now they're going to gain that weight back and it's going to be even worse because now they're going to gain all that muscle that they had. It might not be much, but that's even turned into fat and it's going to take much more to try to turn that back into muscle.
Speaker 2:So what's the age, demographic of people you're working with, all over, all over.
Speaker 1:All over. Yeah, I've treated people as young as 16 who you know. I treated them for a butt infection and, like you know, reconstructed them with the general surgeon, and you continue to have issues with it. I'm like you're not going to get anywhere unless you lose weight. So, um, and we tried to get it through insurance for him, and tried multiple times. The insurance company wouldn't agree to it. Now the kid's lost like 150 pounds on it, in great shape, much happier kid. He was 16. He was getting bullied all the time, unhappy with himself. Now he's lost almost 150 pounds. He's more active and just a much happier kid. It was just like you know, so so what?
Speaker 2:was he eating to? He was what was he like? 250, 275 pounds.
Speaker 1:He was about 300, yeah, 300, yeah, I think he hit max 310 so okay, yeah how tall um, he was 510 and what was he eating?
Speaker 2:or was it emotional, or you guys?
Speaker 1:emotional um, we didn't get.
Speaker 3:It becomes habitual, I think if you go over bmi of like 30, it's. It's just habitual things that like build up over time, like it talked to a lot of people, like even outside the clinic and like look at him, they're like really overweight. It's like, but I, I don't eat much, like your body's telling me otherwise. Um, so I don't know. I think it's habitual, and then like some reluctance to admit to what's what they're doing and what's wrong with it so then it just keeps cycling in that direction I think ibogaine would probably help
Speaker 1:them too, because I I think it's a huge addiction issue. Yeah, um, we treat a lot of patients that have gone through bariatric surgery. There's the motivated ones that have lost tons of weight on their own and you know, we operate on them, take off the excess skin and they bounce right back and they're, you know fully functional. Then you got the patient who like, had bariatric surgery. What is bariatric surgery?
Speaker 3:That's the weight loss surgery that they have Bypass like stomach bypass.
Speaker 1:Staple their stomach or bypass the intestines so that they don't absorb the food or they just can't eat as much because they fill up At first.
Speaker 1:some people get, you know, some of the surgeons make sure the patients are able to lose some weight on their own, but others they're like you know they just operate on them and like they just depend on that as a crutch. They still, you know, with good surgeons and good follow-ups they still lose a decent amount of weight. Good follow-ups, they still lose a decent amount of weight. But you know they can never get to that like the person that's like highly productive and motivated. So then you operate on them and like sometimes they end up in the hospital for five, seven days just taking pain medication. Where you know like there's the motivated people they're like up and ready to go the next day you know um so, and I think the addiction becomes a part of it.
Speaker 1:And usually we see this, you know, even after getting out of the hospital refills for pain medication, stuff, you know we we do it up to the second week, but after that we like cut it, cut it off most of our patients are only on there for three to five days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, most of our patients, yeah, and we've, we, we, we do a recovery system where the patients usually have tons of their medications left, but when, when we were doing them on some of these more obese bariatric patients, they were, you know, they were asking for it even after two, three weeks so you think there's underlying addiction, whether yes it's food or sugar, fake sugars yeah, so food colorings plus drugs probably yeah so there's, yeah, it's just that that part of the however, they're not addicted to drugs that like, yeah, it's just that part of the.
Speaker 1:However, your dopamine receptors, even if they're not addicted to drugs like, yeah, it's a dopamine, they're prone to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And the one thing about like Ozempic and the GLP-1s. They do help people with addiction like cocaine, alcohol cigarettes.
Speaker 2:Really, that's like Ibogaine, yeah, so it's like.
Speaker 3:Ibogaine light. I mean it does have, like it's not as effective.
Speaker 1:It's like the walk through hell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're already living in hell, yeah.
Speaker 3:But yeah, so I think it's like Ibogaine light because it does have some effect on the neural process. So like, yeah, their data is pretty strong, like for cigarettes someone actively trying to quit even with patches they were twice as likely to be successful if they were on a glp-1 and that's for cigarettes. But their strongest data is with alcoholics.
Speaker 1:Cocaine is the strongest. I know they were studying with alcoholics too. Yeah, yeah, it's making a major change, so let's circle back a little bit. So what got you into the health and wellness? How did you change over to that?
Speaker 2:Well, I had my own digestive issues and I was a fashion model. I was a Versace model. Back in the late 80s, early 90s. I went out to milan, italy, and, um, that's a pretty cutthroat industry, yeah you know, and I was bloating and digestive issues. I had asthma when I was younger as well and I grew up on captain crunch and pop tarts like everybody else here.
Speaker 2:You know, actually the food, I think, was still a little bit better than it is today, like it's out of control. Oh yeah, genetically modified organisms didn't get introduced in glyphosate, I think late 80s, early 90s, so we're in a different era completely. The amount of seed oils, yeah, I think we were still using lard and other things back then as well, but no canola oil and all that stuff got really heavily marketed. Since I was a child, um, and so I was, I had digestive issues. I was bloating and you know women understand this because they get their period and they can bloat yeah, um, but my agents were like, oh honey, you're fat and I, you know, I wasn't fat yesterday. I was like God, what's wrong with me, you know, yeah, and just eating pizza and beer. It took me years to put together the gluten piece, yeah, and that was a major trigger for me. Like now I don't mess with gluten, it's like alcohol.
Speaker 2:It's like I'll get a hangover, multiple day hangover if I mess with gluten.
Speaker 1:clear on that for myself is gluten as bad here as, like, if you go overseas or something?
Speaker 2:oh, I've got clients that go to italy and eat pizza, pasta and ice cream and lose weight.
Speaker 3:That's what I've heard like go to a european country. This is technically the same things but nowhere near the same reaction to it I.
Speaker 1:I say you, you know like I probably have a gluten allergy, but like it's not I think everybody does to a degree.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a glyphosate allergy, is what it really is yeah. So, they're spraying that herbicide on everything these days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like your rings don't fit the next day, you know, and when I go to Europe I don't have that issue Like. I eat whatever but Europe. I don't have that issue. Like I eat whatever, but like I'm always low carb. But even if I eat carbs I don't feel horrible, you know.
Speaker 3:Well, you eat the simple carbs here, your body shuts down Like mid-lunch. You're like oh, crap.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I pretty much just fast all day because of that and I've been juicing for 35 years so that was 35 years ago, so years. So that was 35 years ago. So I learned about herbal medicine, I learned about fasting, I learned about juicing, I learned about whole foods. So I was like farmer market. I've never been to a farmer's market.
Speaker 2:it was italy they're everywhere, yeah right big ones, yeah, and so that's where people get their food. Italians love food and so, um, I started applying some of the things. I went down to the english bookstore, bought a couple books. Yeah, started started applying some of the things. I went down to the English bookstore, bought a couple books, started applying them. One of the books I bought was Back to Eden, jethro Kloss. He was a doctor in the 1800s and people would be suffering and they wouldn't be able to solve the problem and they'd call Jethro and Jethro would come across the prairie on his horse and give him an herbal enema or something like that clear the channels. And lo and behold, you know, jethro was the guy. You can still buy this book. They used to sell it at almost every health food store. It's a family heirloom from 1840s. And so I read that and read about herbs and I was like wow, and One of the herbs was dandelion.
Speaker 2:Right, I was like oh, it's a diuretic, oh, I'm bloating. Let me try that. Sure enough, I tried it and it worked like a charm. I urinated more, the water went out of my face and I took that for years and, lo and behold, it's a liver tonic, and I was drinking like a fish back then too, and so, between that and juice fasting, I was able to get results, and um and so then it's just been trial and error ever since I finally sobered up. I got out of the modeling industry. I think we're seeing a lot of what's going on with the diddy parties right now and jeffrey epstein, and there was an undercurrent of that in my industry, yeah, yeah, and I don't play any of those types of games.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm a straight heterosexual man and homosexuals were everywhere and it was kind of sexual innuendos and I think they call that what is that? Sexual discrimination? Now, yeah, you know, and, but you didn't say stuff for risk of your career. But you know, you let it go, you just let it go and um and so. But now with the Diddy parties you know, I see that, that, you know that was people that were, that were successful. You're like, oh yeah, they're sleeping at so-and-so agent or whatever.
Speaker 2:So I was able to, uh, um, go through that career and, um, I started drinking a lot because of that reason, because I give it the old college try and I want to do the best I can at anything. I had a couple Versace campaigns, which is the height of the whole fashion industry, and so drugs and alcohol were everywhere and if I couldn't get the jobs that I wanted and get the career that I wanted, I just kept on drinking, partying. So I finally sobered up. I found Vipassana meditation. I sat 10-day courses of meditation in silence. That's one of the main things that got me sober. It took me four and a half years to get sober, going in and out of AA and applying some of those principles. I think there's some good principles, but I also think there's a lot of sick people in there and they're kind of trying to guide other sick people.
Speaker 2:And so and so you know there's tools in the toolbox. I take what's useful, I discard the rest. I make it my own.
Speaker 3:I went to a couple of meetings and it's just like the experience I had in there. It's just like the experience I had in there was just like a lot of people just got up and told funny drunken stories. I'm like, how's this going to be helpful?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think people need to be heard. Number one, number two it has some value but, like I said, it wasn't for me. But it took me about four and a half years using that tool to sober up and actually it was meditation that I heard about step 11 in the AA rooms. That actually really helped me, because whenever someone would talk about step 11, they had a certain je ne sais quoi, they had a certain way of being and I was like, hmm, that looks good and I started meditating and it instantly helped me. And then somebody turned me on to these Vipassana courses taught by my teacher. S N Goenka came out of India, burma.
Speaker 3:What is it called again?
Speaker 2:Vipassana. Okay, v-i-p-a-s-s-a-n-a. It's what the Buddha discovered underneath the tree, and you can find it at dhammaorg, d-h-a-m-m-aorg. I've sat 11 of them. The first time it was like a psychological lobotomy. It was like a truck of grief was just lifted off.
Speaker 1:They actually have it on the brain tap.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so that really catapulted my healing. And um, um, that was, I think, 1999. And then, uh, and then I was working with an herbal company. Somebody turned me on. I'd been studying herbs for many years and then somebody turned me on to an herbal company in the amazon rainforest and that's the strongest plants on the planet. Yeah, 42% of all drugs, 25% of all cancer drugs, get their impetus from rainforest botanicals.
Speaker 2:So I was studying with herbalists and ethnobotanists and then I went down to the Amazon and met our vendors, which are the Shipibo Indians, and their herbal lore is more profound than Chinese medicine, which is written. The Shipibo don't write down their language and they drink the ayahuasca and they carry the, the, the, the lineage of ayahuasca, and so had some profound experiences from that. And I started working with Maori indigenous healers as well. They use the body, yeah, they step on the nerve centers, they can break the bones and reset them, and I witnessed many, um, powerful healings with them. I worked with them for 25 years. Um, then I got married and had children that's, that'll keep you on your toes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and so, uh, I had three very profound visions in the Amazon in 2006. One of them was an amalgamation of my on-camera career I was doing stand-up comedy at the time in Hollywood and all my natural medicine studies that I'd been doing since I'd been in front of the camera, and the certified health nut was born in the Amazon. That's been unfolding for the last two decades. And the second one was the vision of my daughter. That came to me in ceremony and I wasn't married at the time, I wasn't even in a relationship, and so my daughter will be 14 right now.
Speaker 2:She was my second child, so my family's been unfolding and the third vision I had in the Amazon in 2006 was that humanity makes it from the precipice of ecological disaster that we find ourselves at. I came out of the jungle and I started really investigating not only geopolitics but kind of the way of the world, and I read a book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins and he worked for the World Bank and he did all these loans to Ecuador and Panama and some of these drug interactions that were played out on narcos as well.
Speaker 2:And these governments, and basically wherever there's natural resources, we're going to go take that, and Halliburton and Bechtel are going to get the, the loans.
Speaker 2:And then Dick Cheney is the, you know the vice president of the United States and he's running Halliburton and you know. And then you've got Iran, iraq. So you've got Saudi Arabia is number one oil producer. Iran is number two. Iraq is number two. Iran is number three. Number four is Venezuela. Everybody see what happened down there. Number five is Ecuador, number six is Peru. So that was me and the Amazon Oil exploration is one of the main deforestation components.
Speaker 2:I come out of the jungle after drinking ayahuasca, heart wide open, flipped on, and I see mountains of sawdust and two-by-fours going up to Home Depot and me, as a man, I go. I got a responsibility for that. It's up to me. Who else is going to save the planet or whatever? And so I started researching. All this Oil exploration is the number one deforestation component of the Amazon. We all hear about the destruction of the rainforest, the coral reefs, what's happening on the planet. And I drank all this ayahuasca and I'm pretty awake now, did a lot of meditation, worked with the Maori healers, and so I go. You know, this is my responsibility.
Speaker 2:And so I started doing research and then, at the same time, I watched what happened in 9-11. And then I watched us go into Afghanistan and then, all of a sudden, I voted. I was like, all right, barack Obama, the black man in the White House, we're progressing. And then I watched more wars happen on his watch. And then I watched Syria and I protested Syria. I was like that's not America. What are we doing over there? Oh, in Afghanistan and Syria, these are pipelines. This is how to get the oil out of the earth and then get it out to market.
Speaker 2:And so so I, I started advocating for free energy, which is Tesla technology. He was uh, he was, he was uh, sponsored by JP Morgan, who was the big industrialist in the early 20th century. And so, uh, you know my four major solutions for saving planet earth, and I run for president of planet earth every time the uh, every time the circus comes to town, uh, but it's a real platform, right? And actually, if you didn't get the memo, I've been president of planet earth for the last eight years. But it's free energy self-care, when we teach children how to take care of their real estate they naturally want to take care of their local real estate and they know they're connected to the all.
Speaker 2:And I like to say that no one's free until we're all free. We're all one or none, as Rabbi Hillel taught Jesus. And so we're all connected, we're all. There is no separation. And so free energy, self-care, education, permaculture, food's free.
Speaker 2:We get that seed in the ground. Maybe it takes a little money to bring to market. But what's money? Money's fake. Right now it's the petrodollar right. You've got the oil oligarchy. It's got everything set up around that and not that John D Rockefeller and his monopolies are a bad thing. It's allowed us to do manifest destiny.
Speaker 2:But what's what's up now? Now that we're connected with the internet and we're all connected, we're all one and our resources are coming out of africa. Where's the lithium and the cobalt coming for our electric cars and all of our cell phones? What little black children from africa? What if that was your child? So it's up to us. We're all connected. So this is kind of my bent, and you asked me about natural medicine and how I got into that and became the certified health nut, and this is the accumulation of it. So free energy, self-care, education, permaculture and the gift economy. I do believe that all brothers and sisters have their own unique gift from God and I do believe that we can all give that in exchange and we can make technology our whipping boy instead of the other way around.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:AI coming like the. Terminator.
Speaker 3:Hard and fast. Yeah, hard and fast, right? You see, some of those robots. A friend always sends me any like advanced robot. He sends it to me like the one running like 60 miles an hour through a rainforest is like we're dead, we're dead, we're all dead. And I get one of these from him like every year. It's like, oh my god, did you see the new generation? I'm like, freaking, stop it, dude. It's like imagine this thing with a machine gun on it well, here's what I ask people to imagine.
Speaker 2:Imagine ai goes oh, that's not right, let's flip this switch, that switch and humanity's free. How about that? There's two forces that are guiding everything, yin and yang, up and down, black and white masculine feminine inhalation, exhalation catabolic, anabolic. So I believe in the freedom of humanity, I I believe in the sanctity of human life and life on earth and I do believe that we can change everything, yeah, so you're an optimist. Overall, I'm an eternal optimist, that's right.
Speaker 3:Same here. Same here, even though I can be a negative ninny. Oh yeah, you know can get dark at times, but like got to sometimes be realistic but like the hope for the future.
Speaker 2:It's always there. I'm an eternal optimist. I've actually seen the vision. The third vision that I see is that humanity makes it.
Speaker 2:And so my mission is to raise human consciousness. My vision, my mission is to raise human consciousness and change all systems. So farming, media, commerce, economy, everything needs to change. And so education, especially with Waldorf education. I'm living proof, my children are living proof, that this type of brain development in art school can actually grow children that can think for the future of humanity. And then my vision is clean air, water, soil and equitable systems for all of mankind in my lifetime.
Speaker 3:It's doable. I really think it's doable.
Speaker 2:I postulate that peace and harmony is completely doable. Yeah, absolutely. If the Wright brothers wanted to fly like an eagle and we called them crazy and said that man will never fly, and Steve Jobs can put a handheld computer in every man's hand so he can change the world, then we can do whatever the mind can conceive and believe and achieve.
Speaker 3:I agree with that completely. Um, on the educating the next generation, I shot a series of videos. I haven't edited them yet, but my my way to help was I was thinking like I'm I'm really good with kids and like teaching kids, because I found out, like how much a kid can learn is. I was studying for my yearly exam for plastic surgery and this chapter I was on is about the mandible, like fractures in different areas of the mandible, first of all, like what each area is called, then the fractures on each, each portion, and how you treat it and which options are best. And my daughter was four at the time and she came by and I was like, if I can teach her, then I know this information, like cold, and we just went through it and at the end of like 45 minutes together she was able to give that. She was like, oh, this is this part of the mandible. I was like Sarah, come watch. She's like, oh, yeah, this is this part of the mandible. Oh, if you get a fracture there, this is how you should treat it. But you could do this and this too. I was like, oh my God, I was just like thinking more and more about it.
Speaker 3:I think the more we educate kids with human anatomy and physiology and how the body works early, they'll make better decisions from a younger age. But I highly doubt, like what the way the school systems are, you're going to be able to add anything. So that's why I shot the videos. I'll probably have to reshoot them, but, um, once those are edited I'll get them out. And nice part is I have a couple friends in animation that are going to add their little bit to it. So hopefully it'll be just a fun little series and, if it works, go on to the next chapter. Teach a little more, go a little more in depth, because I think within, by the age of 16, anybody can learn the med school level anatomy and physiology.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that goes back to what Steiner was all about. These are little geniuses, and we are. It's not so much that we're dumbing them down, but I mean, rockefeller gave a lot of thought to this right. The King of Prussia and all that whole system was brought over here to make good factory workers, not intelligent human beings. And so when you're not cramming linguistics and mathematics into their head while their creative centers are developing, then they have the ability to see these things in a different way. And then, once they start to get into a more abstract thought and book and logic and reason and these types of things, they can put the experiential, visceral, artistic, creative side to it and dream the impossible dream, which is the biggest thing. For problem solving, you have to think outside of the.
Speaker 2:Boxstein said that, uh, you can't solve a problem at the same level of the mind that created it. Number one, and that's what we're still trying to do. You got any scientific research for that? And then, uh, he also said we're only human beings, are only using five percent of the brain. The I think the dolphins are using about ten percent, and they've got a system that makes radar look like child's play, right, so imagine what the brain can do if we really truly open it up. And children are geniuses yeah, they're absolute geniuses and I think that we just dumb them down and fill them up with a bunch of stuff that doesn't make a difference.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's all like just standardized stuff, correct, this is what you're supposed to know.
Speaker 2:It's like well, everybody knows it my daughter didn't like me at the eighth grade because montessori, uh, first of all, they, the teacher, uh, the teacher conference, they, the children, are the ones that speak, which I think is great. But she brought up all this standardized stuff and she said that, uh, we, um, um, here's my one project. That is all about um, uh. It was like what was it? Disillusion or no, it was some term. And I was like, well, what does that mean? And she had to look it up. And I made her look, look it up. And I was like I'll wait. And then they studied genocide and I said, well, what about the Armenian genocide, the Khmer Rouge? She studied part of that and I was hard on her. And I wasn't that hard on her, I just asked her a bunch of questions. I'm like a kid, I'm very inquisitive.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to find out.
Speaker 2:Who funded the camille rouge? What is? What is communism? Where do these ideas come from? That's all I asked and she was. She thought I was just going to be like and so, but. But she went home and studied all that and came back and had the answers for me the next day because she was, so you know, taken aback. Yeah, the teacher was like, oh, my god. But, um, I'm the type of guy that's going to ask that question because here I am. I don't really believe in the educational system in the first place and I know I have a very intelligent human being. So they taught you to learn this and you studied this. Okay, what does that mean? And come to find out, oh, that was just programmed in surface. You don't even know the definition of the project that you put together yeah, and so just remembering facts, remembering and reciting facts correct, correct and so, um, yeah, I forget what the the, it was some kind of scientific term solubility.
Speaker 2:I was like, what does soluble mean? I was like what does soluble mean?
Speaker 3:I mean I could think about it right now but I want you to explain it to me right now. I can't even describe it right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and you wrote a whole little booklet about it Because I wanted to catch her in just doing rote learning. And sure enough, it did and it questioned her and she went home and studied everything. But she got the reason why I was asking her that Because if I'm going to send you to school I'm going to want you to come with the knowledge. The application of the knowledge Makes sense, Not memorizing yeah, that's not going to serve you in the real world.
Speaker 3:No, even for, like our fields where it's test heavy, like standardized tests for like how many years, then during school, during residency, after residency, our board exams, it's all like multiple choice and it's just. The thing is, a lot of people will go and just try to remember the facts the first first time, or first two to three times. I was just trying to get the bigger picture and then remember the facts. Because if I didn't get the bigger picture, remembering random facts is just so much, so much more difficult because I didn't know how to like put it in context.
Speaker 1:But like, but like you see the bad surgeons like they can't make a decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they read it in the book, but they don't know how to apply it when it's like well operating and also when I'm thinking with you guys, when, when, when I'm talking to you, it's like when you get out of school. Okay, well, what's your bedside manner?
Speaker 1:yeah I mean, you guys are healers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're dealing with people and cutting them open. A human being like you have to have knowledge beyond the book. Yeah, yeah and so and then you know when it comes to, you know there's a lot of people because of fauci and the whole trust the science thing. What science are you talking about here? Yeah, because we got newtonian, mechanistic, cartesian, you know linear science. Then we got quantum mechanics.
Speaker 1:We got uniform it's a field theory yeah, it's well.
Speaker 2:What angle are we talking about? Science is the methodology of observation. It's not just in the can and, like you said, you guys come out of school with all the book smarts. You got to cut a human being up and sew him up and make sure he can walk right. You know, it's not just out of the book and I'm sure there is some people who are a lot better than others.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, yeah Well even like what we were talking about Even something squirting blood like some people freak out Me. You know what to do.
Speaker 3:I'll put my finger on it and figure out how to control it. Yeah, you know it's pretty simple.
Speaker 1:Simple stuff like that. They start freaking out and then they start making mistakes.
Speaker 2:Well, it takes a certain human because I couldn't handle it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not for everybody, and not everybody likes doing that kind of thing. But to go to the bedside man, I think I didn't know what I wanted to do until I went and visited him in med school and his talk to me was like dude, you guys just got to get your act together. Visited him in med school and his talk to me was like dude, you guys just got to get your act together and get get to med school. He's like look at these guys, they're going to be talking to patients. He's like, if these guys can learn this and go actually have an interaction with another human being, like you guys can't do it. I was like, oh yeah, it can't be that hard. I don't know, I can definitely talk but talk you guys are extremely down to earth.
Speaker 1:But we see the problem in the US healthcare industry because we're plastic surgeons. But I seriously like do more than people's primary care physician, their endocrinologist. I sit down and listen to them and see what's actually wrong with them and try to you know what's actually wrong with them and try to, you know, get them to a good point like I. I don't just go and like perform plastic surgery or reconstructive surgery just to do it. I listen to them, I try to listen to what they got and like and because they got other problems it's not just the problem they're coming to see me for we try to solve as much as we can with them, rather than, you know, their primary care can spend like seven, eight minutes with them and it's like oh, you're hypertensive, here's blood pressure medication. Instead of finding out why they have high blood pressure, instead of just prescribing medications, you know.
Speaker 2:But the system's all messed up too Well, I get that I've interviewed whistleblowers people that worked at labs and I've worked for a drug company. Whistleblower Guy won a lot of money working. He became a lawyer on Bristol. Squibb on their dollar and became a lawyer and then went back and sued him. Myra Squibb, on their dollar and became a lawyer and then went back and sued him, and so, uh, it's so.
Speaker 3:that's another thing like medical science literature, just the whole process, cause, like I was in a transplant lab at Harvard for like close to three years and transplant transplant surgery. Like I was working on research related to hand and face transplants, um so, hand and face really yeah, um face too.
Speaker 2:Is this for war-torn countries, or um no?
Speaker 3:this um like one series out of france. They did it on people who shot themselves in the face. Um another one. The first one was ripped apart by a chimpanzee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, chimpanzee burns. Um, there was a recent one, the guy actually. They did eyes and face. Um, they did a complete face transplant. It's one of the first ones ever done and um, he, he was scared to do it because he has, like I think it was a four-year-old daughter that he hadn't ever gotten to see, and like there's a huge risk of death with it.
Speaker 3:And you've got to be on immunosuppressants your whole life.
Speaker 2:Immunosuppressants for the rest of your life For a face transplant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, because your skin's one of the most immunogenic uh tissues in your body.
Speaker 1:You're like I think he had like a fungal infection of the face or the sinuses and that usually takes like lose eyesight. They take your eyes, everything how? Did he get that um just being immunosuppressed like we've seen it after with the face transplant he got that before, that was before the face transplant with the burn and well, it wasn't the burn, it was how he lost his face, like he lost his eyes, his face.
Speaker 3:So then he needed a transplant after that, so like but he had never gotten to see his daughter, so that was like the big part of it so the reason I brought it up is, like a lot of people like, whether it's like pharmaceuticals backed, uh, or big company backed research, it's not going with like a good question to answer. It's going with a purpose, like I want to get this answer. How am I going to get this answer? Because if I don't, then it shows this doesn't work.
Speaker 3:When I was trying to come up with a few projects to go with the, the principal guy at that lab, david Sachs, is a phenomenal researcher. He was like why don't you? He's like, why don't you ask a good question? If you ask a good question, it doesn't matter how the answer turns out like, even if you're dead wrong. How the answer turns out like, even if you're dead wrong, that's still something people are going to want to know. So that that had a huge impact on not just like how, like what subjects I pursued to publish papers on, but also how to like rate other papers when I read it like yeah, this I mean I'm a little hyper analytical when it comes to research papers I want to like just just tear the whole thing apart, um, but do you find that you can often?
Speaker 2:yeah yeah, there's a lot of garbage being produced.
Speaker 1:There's so a lot of times there's, you know, in plastic surgery world it's, you know.
Speaker 3:People get published because of their name, no matter what they publish um but all their medical and even though the the whole like higher education system works like if you're a professor, you're got you got to publish to keep your job and to get funding. So that system it's a whole system, yeah, yeah, systemically it's not ideal. I don't know what would be better to replace it. But now there's more and more like open journals. So it's not like and it's also gated because all these journals are peer reviewed, so they have a board that reviews the papers. So now with open sourcing, like, there's more and more of like people putting out research and it gets published. So then it's on the community to try to. Can you re? Can you get the same data by following the same procedures this guy did? And if you can, then it's like okay, I second this and that's another open source article, or everybody's like. We can't replicate this data. So it's that kind of tells you it's bullshit.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I can go on rants for yeah, yeah, they're, they're, they're being you know they're being funded who? They're being funded by who's writing the papers like they can like.
Speaker 3:I want to start my own thing called the certified research net. I love it. All right, I think we're going to wrap it up, I'm out.