Peptides, GLP-1s, and Stress: What Actually Improves Your Health?

Peptides are everywhere right now. GLP-1 medications continue to dominate health conversations. And stress may be having a bigger impact on long-term health than most people realize.

In this episode, I sit down with Daniel Tausan to explore what peptides actually are, how they work inside the body, and why they have become such a popular topic in health and longevity circles.

We discuss:

• What peptides are and how they function as biological signals
• Why stimulating a system can be different from replacing it
• The growing interest in peptides for recovery, performance, and longevity
• BPC-157, healing, and the importance of rehabilitation and movement
• GLP-1 medications, weight loss, and the habits that determine long-term success
• Why health interventions work best when they support—not replace—healthy behaviors
• The relationship between stress, perception, and physical health
• What research suggests about stress, longevity, and resilience

One of the central themes of this conversation is that no intervention can completely replace personal participation. Whether we're talking about peptides, GLP-1 medications, exercise, nutrition, or stress management, lasting health still depends on the choices we make every day.

This is Uncommonly Remarkable In Conversation

Uncommonly Remarkable℠ is a health and wellness show focused on understanding how the body works and how everyday choices shape long-term health.

I’m Artis Beatty, a doctor of optometry and Chief Medical Officer at MyEyeDr. While my professional background informs how I think, the perspectives shared here are my own.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I love the two topics there. It bridges perfectly whereas can I use the peptides to help me live longer and how do I use the peptides to manage the stress that I'm under. And does that even make sense? I know often we're told any question's a good question. I mean, that's not true. There's obviously better ways to frame a question that'll get you to a smarter conversation, but you know, it'll get you there, at least point out where the misunderstandings are. So peptides there are very exciting. We're in an era where you can't escape getting to know some of the lingo behind biology. And I think you have to take a step forward, not to shy away from it and not think it's overcomplicated.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Ladies, gentlemen, all you remarkable people, please welcome Daniel back to the show. Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. It's very exciting to talk to you. I mean, we've had some phenomenal conversations, and I just keep learning things. And so I want to bring that learning to the audience. And so again, welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

It's always a pleasure to speak to you, Aris. You're you're an absolute gem. I think the the field that you're in, the medical field, is blessed to have you. And uh I I I'm I'm the same boat. We we I think like minds, we like the same things. And so, you know, when we get a chance to talk, my it's on my mind's on fire.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I love it because I mean I think we've got we've got a lot um to talk about, and we're gonna figure out how we get to all these topics because you know, when you were with me last time on the show, we spent some time talking about um a few things. We were talking about um health span, lifespan versus health span, living to be a hundred, but not just living to be a hundred and being there, but also being viable and and active at a hundred. We talked a little bit about metabolic flexibility because we were we got into this conversation about nutrition and we got and we started talking about being able to switch back and forth with ketones, and I thought that was amazing. And then we we ended up putting all of that together and really just looking at protecting our DNA and how there's so many things that um bombard us, and there are ways for us to be healthier over a longer period of time if we just remember that our genetic code is really what's helping us make it through from day to day. And all of those points were amazing. And we're gonna point back to that show so that people can go back and listen to that conversation. But when I was thinking about where I wanted to go in the conversation we were gonna have today, you know, there are a couple of things that just are top of mind for everyone out there, or at least a lot of people, because you can't get away from them. One of them is that you hear the word peptide everywhere you turn. And the other is that there's this big conversation around what stress really is and how it how it can wreak havoc on on the body. And in some terms, that could mean not having a long lifespan or at least shortening the health span. And so maybe today we can talk through some of those things that are kind of top of mind for a lot of people, particularly around peptides, because I there's just so much information, and I'm not sure it's very clear, or people don't know exactly where to go. And everybody's got an opinion. And so let's talk about the science today if we can.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Demand a picture. That's right. I like visual aids. And most of the stuff we talk about, you can ask for what it looks like. Now, for a peptide, it's pretty boring. And someone's just gonna draw you a line and maybe some squares, and you'll need to be able to read, you know, an amino acid, you know, chains of amino acids. And so, but there's there's a lot of other, I think, things happening simultaneously where we have access to, I think, a type of medicine, or let's say type of biological agents that our previous generation did not have. And so with the utmost respect and caution to know if you do push something too hard, it might be very difficult for someone to fix. So to approach it with, hey, how do I incorporate this in my life? What's the right time? What's my sourcing? You know, is this the hype? Is there any good, is there enough information on this? And who can I talk to? I think it's very important to have somebody directly to have a conversation with so that they can figure out your needs. I hear often, hey Daniel, I want to get some peptides. What peptides should I take? I'm like, man, do you know how many there are? There's a lot of peptides. You know, I'm not gonna give you insulin, but insulin, I think everyone knows that in today's day and age, it's been present within so many conversations that most people don't know that that's that's a peptide. It's small, small protein. It doesn't have too many other components to it. And so a peptide is very simple. It's a bioactive part of a protein. And you can have a humongous protein and it can have multiple peptides that hold that are part of it. And one part might say, hey, you know, bind to a liver cell. The other one might say, hey, now that you're in the liver cell, go to the mitochondria and now you get fragmented, another part go to the unit DNA. So the peptides themselves are bioactive. That's pretty much the thing to keep in mind. And uh they're unbelievably difficult, also remo biology to study. So this is where coming into it with an understanding that you're gonna be part of something in which you are very valuable if you ever take a peptide because you give information based off of how you felt. That's just that's still pretty good information, even though most people will be like, oh, that's anecdotal. That's great. I still want to hear it. So you know, one of the easiest things to study in biology is vision because it's pretty simple. Someone can't see, you do a treatment, can you see? Yes or no, right? It's we have a very clear, you know, distance-wise too. So other parts of our biological systems are not as easy to communicate. You know, hey, do you have less pain? Well, kind of, but I'm not doing anything right now. You know, I have a lot of dirty myself. So we we have some levers to have an idea of outcomes and then to be able to track the benefits, I guess, or the consequences going down the line. But I think a very interesting time for for us as call it the the biologists or the you know, the people that like all the stuff behind the scenes with physiology and the nitty-gritty, because we get to finally share some of the stuff that's been stuck, I think, for decades at the universities.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

So you you know, I think it's important for maybe we take a step back because you know, we we have been talking quite a while. I understand what peptides are relative to amino acids, relative to proteins. But maybe if you're a listener who's not who's not geeked out like us and you've been uh you've maybe seen ads on television or magazines or they're popping up into your feed, and you're trying to kind of piece together what this what these things are, like how would you explain it relative to something more familiar with like a protein, maybe uh familiar with like amino acids, and and then what the function of peptides are relative to say body functions like hormonal regulation.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Yeah, absolutely. So the peptides is best you can think of it something that already is present in the body. And they're there's signals. Uh, you know, they're they're traffic lights in a lot of ways in which if you don't have the peptide, you're just sitting at the light forever. And so, you know, I I think some of us have been on a traffic light say four minutes long, and they come on, there's no other car. But you know the moment you go through it, woo-woo, right? So uh the body's similar in that way where it needs these signals in order to say, okay, now you do something else. You know, you turn on and produce parathyroid hormone, you turn on and you produce testosterone, produce estrogen, and so on and so forth. So that's what peptides are. And we get into this realm of where we can we can really exercise our intellect. We're saying, hey, I'm gonna chop up the peptide, and it's not gonna be, you know, 20 amino acids long, it's gonna be five. And does it still do anything? And it turns out some of them do, which is pretty exciting. So we we have one called CMAX that's for cognitive function to help people with with cognition. And it seems like it has quite a profound effect. And I forget how big is it. Is it around seven or eight? But it's tiny. So there's a few of these that are very small. And so there's a couple of good things about that when it's so small, is that it's very safe. And then you all you have to worry about is how much you're dosing. So you obviously start low and go very slowly up. But that that part is, I think, the the big thing to know about peptides out there. There's something that works within our body. Now, there's some circumstances where we exercise our our, I call it, I guess our intellect, and we bring things in that are slightly modified from its original form that our body sees. And this could be heightening its effect or changing effects very so slightly. And this is where we need, you know, the science. You gotta do the work. It's that's what science really is. It's some guy doing the the, you know, crossing the i's, dotting the t's in the little charts, pulling out samples and trying to figure out like, is this thing doing what it's supposed to? And is it hitting anywhere that it's not supposed to? And that's not always easy to uh pick up on, especially if there are long-term effects. And so there's a few growth hormone stimulating or testosterone stimulating peptides that are out there, which all function very well to help you stay alive, you know, healthy and viral. And so we can stimulate the gland to tell the pituitary gland to make the associated hormones. Where it says, if I just take melatonin or if I just take testosterone, some pathways are very sensitive in in the body. And they will respond saying, if you give me the hormone, I won't produce it. They're they're a little bit head-offish that way. You know, it's kind of like somebody didn't call for a long time and then they're like, I'm not calling you back, and we're not gonna talk anymore. So that part is something very important because if we abuse, let's say, testosterone young age, and I see a lot of, for some reason, younger gentlemen thinking like that's the best approach, they they get a low testosterone, they think, okay, I should, I should take TRT. If you're if you're in your 60s, 70s, 80s, that might be the that might be good for you. You might that might be the best approach because it gets you the effect immediately. But it's a lot gentler if you stimulate the gland from the back end. And that's what the peptide is doing. And so it tells the hypothalamus to produce kinatotrophic releasing hormone, which then tells the pituitary. So we have these layers of signaling that work in terms of protecting this sensitive part, the sensitive loop, which is the actual hormonal loop. And I think that is where it's very exciting because if you're if you're working to enhance the production of your own gland, you're really still supporting the cellular capability of those cells. And if you're doing it later in life and you're still doing a great job, we never see the consequences. So some people using these peptides in their 60s and they're using them properly and they know how to structure a lifestyle around it, and they know how to say, I'm using it now, this is what I'll do, I'll take a break. They, you know, they they would pass away 84, 92, and we never see any issues with atrophying of any gland. And that's really positive. So this is where I think it's an exciting time because we've we've we've gone through, I'd say, like the grunt, like here's the approach, kind of club, club you in the head. Did it work? Are you awake? And now it's a little bit like, okay, we have a lot more sophisticated measures and understanding of what's present in order to fine-tune your system to get it, you know, back to back to health.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Yeah, you know, I think you uh you said something that I think is still pretty neat to think about in that we have these built-in, I'll call them safety nets, right? And so it's uh it's a built-in safety net because you get one signal for um a pathway to start, that pathway starts, and that signals the next pathway, and so on and so forth until you get your end result. And in the case of testosterone, since we were using that one as an example, if you skip the pathway and introduce the testosterone, you get you get the end effect, right? Because you have the higher level of testosterone. But what it can do, and I think this is your example, is because you never actually went through the cascade, you end up having the gland that's supposed to actually produce the testosterone never actually becoming engaged because farther up the cascade, the hormone is already being seen. And then that can have negative side effects. I think testosterone is a great one. Uh human growth hormone is another one in that if you are using a peptide to signal the beginning the cascade, you are less likely to overproduce versus if you are introducing exogenous hormone into uh the body. And so to your point, I think if you have the ability to have your body produce a um a hormone through the cascade, it will never overproduce because the cascade has the safety net. But if you introduce exogenous, you have a not only do you have the ability to over we'll call it overdose, you have an overabundance of the hormone there, but you also have broken the cascade and your body and parts of your body may just stop doing their function because they no longer have to and they're not getting the signal from the early portion of the of the cascade.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Absolutely. And this might we might go a little bit too deep into the difficulty. So I'll try and and keep it as call it simple of example as possible. But I think this part is is very important to show it showcase a little bit of the complexity that's occurring there. So when someone sees, hey, I have low test, it could mean more than one thing, or hey, I have high tests that can mean more than one thing. And uh when when you put yourself in a state where you're you're functioning at optimum, you're maybe you're incorporated fasting in your life, you're exercising regularly, you get some sunlight exposure, there is a cascade, not just in a pathway, it is happening in numerous intersecting traffic lights, if that's the example here. And so, like you mentioned, when you bring in an exogenous dose, if I take an injection of testosterone or let's say melatonin or something along those lines, it's very difficult to time it perfectly. It would almost be like trying to land a plane in the highway while the traffic is still going. And the you're you're putting an aircraft, you're putting something massive to saying, well, I'm just I'm gonna get it there. And the that's not the best analogy for the traffic, but you you're gonna have a receiver. Something's listening for the signal. These hormones are signals, and what happens is that this receiver is gonna shrink. You're gonna have a smaller and smaller receiver in the end where we really focus on the value is testosterone lower high. Sometimes I've seen for gentlemen that are very low testosterone, be on the lower end still with without a complication, but they don't, they still look phenomenal. Like they look great. And so we don't have as easy testing. I'm not gonna go, no one's gonna do biopsies just to sate some curiosity. But then my I suspect that their receptor for the signal for the testosterone is great. And not only that, what some of them have done, and we have a couple of what I would say, like uh, you know, Schwarzenegger type guys from the movies where they want to do as much as possible, they they get a test where they draw their blood while they're exercising. And their delta for testosterone is gigantic. So that is also a very interesting thing. We're not gonna see, you don't have access to that type of testing. But do you have high testosterone but your delta is tiny, so that your actual response to demands of life is negligible. See, even without seeing individuals, I would say the person that has now, after learning in the background, a very healthy response is probably one looks very muscular, two is probably really toned, three, probably the signal. If I was to do a biopsy on his muscle, would be very, very, very sensitive to hearing and listening and waiting for that signal. Uh so it's kind of like calling a taxi. You call a taxi, it's there within a in a in a second, versus you're waiting around for God knows how long and then finding getting someone to see you. So I this part I think is very important because it's very hard to dose yourself perfectly when you're taking substances. Some stuff is a lot more complicated than others, everything at context. And the peptides, a lot of them, they're working to, they're gonna tie you're gonna you're gonna still live your normal everyday life. They're gonna work into your circadian rhythm. So they'll when the gland's supposed to produce things, it'll be there to be like, okay, well now we're supposed to be producing this thing. And this is why, again, I think they're an exciting conversation to have about because there's a lot going on.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

And I I I don't think I've ever really thought about it from a timing perspective, uh the way you just explained that, right? Like there are there are times of day and activity-based timings that cause variability in the way we regulate our hormone levels. And to your point, if you are flooding the system, it's always available and it may not necessarily be available at the optimal amount or timing relative to trying to stimulate the body to be more active with producing it when the body says that it needs it. And so that's a that's a really big takeaway. And it really points to you having to understand a little bit more about what it is that you're ask what you're asking for and the professional with whom you work to make sure that you're getting what you're asking for in a way that's gonna be the best for you as an individual and not necessarily what kind of what kind of sort of work.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Yeah. Yeah. So this is where who you're with and how they suggest your use of peptides is be very important. So there's a couple on there right now that are very popular, one MOTC, for example. And so it's uh it's one that is interesting for obesity in in the call it the scientific, hey, we gotta have a reason why we're doing this, but because it helps with appetite suppression and helps with the way in which the body uses that mitochondrial component. Now, hopefully I'll just kind of jump into it as if everyone knows what that is. But it's the part of the cell. People call it the powerhouse the cell. I don't necessarily love that analogy because it's doing a lot. It's it's more like a signaling command for nutrient resources. It's kind of like a warehouse, it's also like a market, and it tells and communicates to the cell the state of energy that's going on. So it's almost like a dam that's saying how much water do we have in here and how much energy can we generate. Uh, and not only that, but then that dictates in how the cell is going to respond to whether it's gonna want more nutrients, less nutrients, whether it can divide, whether it's gonna turn on protection, not protection. And so the MOTC is very interesting because it's produced by the mitochondria. We have we have most of what's produced is produced within the cell going to this little factory called the ribosome, but the mitochondria itself can produce its own very tiny, small subset of proteins, only 13. I think it's 13, but it also produces now small little peptides and MOTC is coming from the mitochondria. So very interesting that the, this is more of the genetic side of things, is that it's not just a protein that you can make. Hey, we have 13 proteins mitochondrial DNA makes, but now the mitochondrial DNA can also make these peptides to help regulate how it's going to communicate energy resources with the head honcho, which is the nuclear DNA. And so if you take MOTSI, it starts mimicking a lot of very positive uh energy signals, meaning that, hey, I'm not as hungry. And hey, turn on autophagy, turn on self-cleaning, turn on these mechanisms. But there is a, I would say, like we were talking before, this coordination effect that you really want to consider, where when you do uh somewhat of a prolonged fast, your body would produce MODC. So is now the best time to use mod C is when you're doing this type of, hey, I'm gonna do something that's gonna help my body clean. Okay, it'll help you get there faster. It'll help turn on the signal so it now it gets to rest of lens, because there might be too much oily residue soot that's stuck on all on the inside of the cells and in, you know, in in sugars and whatnot. And so is this the best timing for it? So this mitochondrial MOT C then which people are taking is is a little bit, hey, I took it, nothing happened. What should I keep taking it? I see no effect. But if you were to start going into more and more testing, you'd start seeing like, okay, well, the inside of the cell is looking better and better, kind of like we talked about before of why we're doing these, you know, these actions of metabolic flexibility and all this stuff. I feel a little bit better in those cases. But in the inside of the cell, if we start doing all our measurements and start going in there with our instruments, we start seeing, hey, you're you're looking better. Your biological age, your epigenetic age, everything's coming down. And you know, and I think that part is something to take uh take note of because you could also be taking the boatloads of Mod C and just, you know, be throwing money down the toilet because you're not really coordinating those effects because you're trying to get this orchestra to work together, right? And you know, you're you're trying to adapt to what, right? You're trying to get your system being plastic that I can adapt to something. What are you adapting to? More of a degenerative lifestyle? Or have you picked up, I say, a good trajectory to grow into something worthwhile?

SPEAKER_00 20:24

And that part I think is also really important as we think about what's available to us, right? So I I'm gonna I'm gonna get you to run through some of the peptides that are probably running through people's feeds as we're talking, because now we've triggered it. But like, you know, you think about uh VPC 157 as an example, right? Um that one you see a lot. And it if I'm if I'm remembering correctly, it's produced in the gut in small amounts, and it is in peptide form or or the reason we use it is because it can affect uh healing and recovery. And so we we're we're producing it naturally in the gut. We uh introduce more of it, and people can feel like they recover faster from fatigue, they heal, they heal better from from wounds, and uh it it's got this nickname, the Wolverine uh peptide. And but when you're if you're using that uh as and other peptides, it's not just the peptide that you're concentrating on, like you're you're getting the leg up, right? But there's a lot of other things that you have to do in order to help maximize that. And so the responsibility doesn't end with having the injection. The injection is part of the responsibility, and then you pick up the rest of it to make sure that you're doing all the things to help maximize the effect that you're getting from the peptide.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Absolutely. Like the the peptide is opening up your biology, you still have to now put a stimulus to get the alcohol. Come you want. And so the the BPC 157 is often given in combination with one called thymus and beta that acts. I think that's I think that's what they call the bulverine stack, if I know my branding well. And that's something I'm actually quite familiar with. A lot of individuals have come for injury. And so back in 1992, I think the BPC 157 has been around for quite a while in terms of what do we know of it. And we've seen in horse studies that it can help heal and regenerate tendon. And so it got a lot of people excited and that's been and it's been used for quite a bit. And so they, I guess, on the wider scope of things, I don't know if there's any clear publication, but there is a lot of individuals that use the combo of BPC 157, thyos and beta. And the theory side of things, it makes sense. The BPC is what I would say a stromal activator. And so that's a fancy way of saying it's going to turn on connective tissue. And that connective tissue, you need to make somewhat of a solid, good gelatinous scar so that healing takes place. If it's a dehydrated fibrous scar that's barely holding on, that's not good. You're not getting the healing response you want. It's kind of like bringing scaffolding. You got to bring in your workers, they get the job done. And so who are the workers? The workers are the immune cells. So we have this supportive collagen network that's being made by blood vessels and perivascular cells that sit around in blood vessels. And those are my favorite. They're called them asdecomal stem cells. And I think there's a lot of interesting biology that we know ties into a lot of myths. For example, you know, that your your soul takes more than seven days to leave your body. And I go, well, what is dead? You're dead. But if you die, even seven days later, I can take a piece of your skin and I can grow those fibroblasts or those mesanky stem cells, and I can keep your DNA alive and growing, even though the complete yield is gone, you know, seven up to possibly 14 days. They're like cool. So anyway, my I I enjoy that and just a little slow side tangent. And so the the immune cells are are being stimulated by thymus and beta, and then the kinetic tissue is being stimulated by BBC157. So now you've you've opened up this ability. What are you gonna do? You gotta do corrective exercise, rehabilitation. You gotta go and get your proper alignment on the joint to load it so that it gets the signal to produce more tendon if it can, produce more collagen, produce a little bit more cartilage. And these mesenchyl stem cells divide into cartilage, they divide into tendon cells. They can do that, but they need the signal. They don't just say, I'm gonna do my own, and we can't send this signal because it's nonspecific, then you get weird cells in wrong places.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

I see, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

And so we we also learned this from survivors that had an explosion nearby, and they would lose a lot of muscle tissue. So when they would heal, they would have tiny little slivers of bone within their muscle, almost like shards of glass, and be very painful. So they found out that these mesanqual stem cells will divide into bone. And when there's large amounts of calcium present, that's the signal to change into a bone cell. And because it's not where you want it to be, it's just damage that's occurred, and the body's trying to heal and do its best it can because it's not a tiny scar, it's a gigantic scar. You have this undesirable differentiation into bone cells. So what did people figure out? Well, vitamin A, retinoic acid derivative, will quiet down the mesenchymal cell and keep it a moseenchal cell. It won't transform. So this is a little bit of how through, you know, I guess happenstance, circumstance, and then very careful observation, we've seen, okay, it is very difficult to coordinate exactly where I want something to happen. But you as the organizing being can help direct that more so than we can externally to this date still. I'm not saying new surgical techniques and then instruments aren't going to be developed. That's an opportunity, I think, for you know, the innovators and the geniuses. But this is the challenge that you know we're working with. So Molverine Stack, absolutely, you got to get active and help yourself stimulate that area so that it regenerates, whether it's you know, a lot of shoulders is what I've uh I've dealt with. So it's a lot of Turkish get ups, uh, it's a lot of scapula down, it's a lot of ribcage up.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Because it got injured for a reason. Sometimes baseball players just overuse it. So yeah, absolutely. So that that is absolutely the case. It opens up to biology now. You've got to take the reins.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

And and that excuse me, that extends to some of the other things that uh you talked about even earlier in the conversation, including insulin, and you can't have a conversation about insulin without uh GOP1s. And so like you you end up really understanding that you can have kind of the the impetus or the little push or the little boost because you are you're now finding these very, very useful chemical compounds, but the reality still remains that it does require comfort, conscious effort on your part in order to maximize what you are going to achieve by having these very useful chemical compounds. And when you ignore that piece, you don't necessarily get the best result if you get a result at all.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Absolutely. Actually, I I love the fact that you brought GLP's one here because it's an opportunity to give a little word of warning to a lot of people that are on them that uh, and this is just again my opinion, this isn't hard and stone fact at this point in time, but I wouldn't be in this field if I wasn't really good at predicting, you know, what's coming next. And there is no cheating uh energy resources for the body. And when there's absolutely there's you're never gonna need it. If you the more you study the biology of it, the more you understand it's not possible to cheat. Why? Because it's about the dam. You're building a dam, you got to deal with the water, you gotta deal with the hydrogen or proton potential that you're creating through eating. And if you don't deal with it, you're gonna get damaged. So, yes, you can take a GLP one, it's phenomenal. I think it's great for people to start moving in the right direction, but you got a time limit. And uh, some of the things we know that for sure you have a time limit is around a two-year mark, you can already see a person will have more fat cells. So you have an increased amount of adipocytes. Now, you can say, hey, we can compare it to somebody else. And this is actually in a phenotype or an athlete, this happens. You know, they have smaller fat cells and they have more, but you're not doing a proper comparison there. This is where in science, if you don't know your controls, you're you're you can con a lot of people. Uh you you don't compare someone with Alzheimer's to someone in their 30s. You don't compare someone, you know, from you don't compare a man and a woman, you know, they have two different, you know, they I can tell what they are based off their blood profile. You don't need to see them. They're too complete, you can't compare them. Obviously, within context of what you're looking at. And so for uh the GOP ones, I think the fact that you have more dipocytes is starting to tell you that the body's signal, the receiver, is gonna start having issues and you're gonna have start having problems. And then when it comes time to that the weight can come back because the GLP one has less and less effect, you can only get a certain amount of dose, it's gonna get to a point where you're gonna come back with way more ability to hold fat. Now that you might not ever see that manifest because it's too many cascades of things that already broken, but you can use the GLP one to put yourself in a phenomenal place with your habits with food, with your habits, with your activities, and to start moving towards actually shifting those resources back into the body. Because even though you're using the GLP ones and some weight may be coming off, you can still make it very difficult for your body to burn or use fat as a resource. More, we talked about this switching of hey, I have a little bit of foods that don't have insulin that stimulate insulin. I have now, you know, the keto style uh food, which, you know, again, please don't take that out of context. Go and listen to what we've shared before on the keto side of things. But that metabolic switching allows for your body to be like, I can use both resources. If you're taking your GLP ones and then still doing the exact same thing you're doing before, which got you to the problem in the first place, it's gonna be bad news relatively quick, I think.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

But that is that is a really, really interesting take on it, Daniel, because there's been a lot of research around uh the effects of GLP ones and the effects beyond the the food portion control, right? Because initially initially the thought was you slow emptying of the stomach, so you it helps to control portions, to decrease in the portions, helps to decrease calories. Overall, people lose weight. Then we moved into, well, if you because you're eating smaller portions, and uh but if you're eating the same things you're eating before, if those things were not ideal or healthy, then you might be missing out on micro and macronutrients. And so the balance of the diet, even though you are eating smaller portions, becomes important. Then we moved to now we know that the diet is important and uh it but now there may be some psychological things that are happening along with the physiology that are helping people not want some of the things that they used to want or desire, right? So maybe now they're not craving this type of thing as much, or they're not participating they're not drinking as much alcohol because maybe there's some other things that are happening that may affect dopamine or the or habit formation. And all of these things are leading to people being able to better control their weight. But in the end, the habits that you are creating are fundamentally the habits that you wanted to have in the first place, right? So you wanted to have a habit where the portion was controlled and it was appropriate for your necessary caloric intake. Everybody already knew that they should be eating things that were more natural, more that were better for them instead of highly processed, right? Now there's a there's a a stimulus to help you do that. And then the third is that it you may be eliminating some bad habits because it could be altering your perception of happier pleasure based on some of the studies that are coming out, right? And all of those things, to your point, are good things to get you going in the right direction, but understanding that you can't really depend on the GLP one forever, you've got to figure out how you address those things in your day-to-day, which goes back to our you have to participate in the process, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Yeah, uh absolutely. And you know, it is nice to know that you have this as an option. And I've seen a lot of positive shifts for individuals using it and kind of like you mentioned, their appetite changed. Once they shifted away from some of this stuff, when they would try it again, it would make them nauseous. And I said, Great, that's phenomenal. Now you're free.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

A lot of people experience that with sugar. If they take a serious bout where they where they stay away from all of the easily refined access to sugars, they'll bite, go, they'll go back and they'll eat, you know, a store-bought cake and they'll be like, oh, I uh I started vomiting. Vomiting is a bit excessive, but hey, I got nauseous. I had a stomachache. You know, I was on, I was in the bathroom for way too long arguing with myself. And that's a good thing because your body can now is not no longer numb to being able to take anything in. It's recognizing like, not only is there too much sugar, but there might be other things in here that my body not doesn't like. And I think this is a good place to be in where something's bringing you or bringing that sensitivity back to your system. And, you know, it this is what, you know, us egg heads are around for is to, you know, bring about things to make life a little bit easier. You know, we're not, we're not, you know, a thousand years ago when someone's in pain and you know, close to death, like we just gotta do the brutal thing, poke them with the stick. And now we have morphine, we have other things to help that transition process be smooth and and not messy. Yeah. That's that's what we want. We want to be able to know how to use it respectfully with the right timing and to get really the outcomes we want, right? People in a healthy life, they wanna, they wanna experience and have you know fun and enjoy. But when it gets to compulsions and overindulgence, there's something else there. You know, there's like, hey, are you coping with stress to a point where you don't know how to cope with it other than just slamming, you know, whether it's ice cream or or beer or alcohol, and you know, can we start shifting that? And a lot of people aren't ready to deal with, call it the the demons or the dark side that they have to deal with. But it's it's very funny enough, from the outside it's always looked so easy, but from the inside it's it's tough. We we we carry this on, we it's a part of our identity. Sometimes we don't necessarily have the the skill set to know how to break apart these compulsions. But the first step is always just recognizing it's there.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

And and and that mention of stress is I think one of the things that's really important in all of this, right? Because you know, stress has the ability to, if left unchecked and uh and treated as undesirable, um to change your baseline because your body is always in a response type of position. And I think we've learned that if you get stuck in that position, then some of the things that we talked about uh in our other conversation about this healthy, uh this long health span become very difficult to manage because the body is not cooperating since it is locked in this stress uh I'll call it the stress syndrome. So but you've had you've had a lot of conversation about that and the way people interpret stress and what that means. So can you tell us a little bit about some of the work you've done and some of the conversations you've had about that?

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Yeah. So uh I I love giving lectures. And so I, you know, law firms, engineer firms have brought me in to talk always about stress. And then the talk is called From Stress to Strength. It's the easiest one, I think, to to broach and and it is very practical and applicable right off the bat, even though sometimes you know there would be they'd be better talking about maybe the nutritional component or other parts. It's not as exciting or I guess easy to mark it. But stress is you know it's unavoidable. You as a biological being need this alert, premeditative, hey, get up and do something system, part of the adrenals and part of the nervous system is really when we say, hey, where is stress happening? We can point to it. And I think always important when you're learning things or or talking about it, that you have this idea in your head, like, what are we talking about? And can I point to it? Uh, you don't need to know all the jargon always, but you have to be able to point to certain areas and which allows you to then conceptually have an idea so that it's not nebulous and without a closed loop. And this is a big thing I've shared is that if you don't close loops, stress is going to still be present, even though stress is not really good, it's super vague. What's present is this almost this anonymity of, hey, do I know enough? And can I let this go or can I finish something? And uh there's a very, I like the book called uh Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by, I forget the psychologist. He's uh I think he's almost two decades old now, but very simple idea is that we as human beings, we can run thought loops, right? We can keep putting ourselves this idea of thinking about things, and the animal doesn't. So the animal once it's escapes this thing that is the stressor, it's gone. The human being can inundate itself with terrible beliefs. And those beliefs then reinforce this open state in which then doesn't allow the nervous system to rest and digest, recover, redistribute, do all these things that are activate what we'd call regeneration. So this is, I think, something that's just absolutely rampant today. And the perception, this is the I think the biggest thing that I share, which is the first part and the most valuable, is that the perception of stress dictates the is it bad or is it good? And what do I mean by that? Very, very good study. They asked people, do you believe that stress is bad? And people said, you know, groups said yes and groups said no. And they said, How much stress did you experience in this last year? And people answered a lot or a little. So the people that answered, you know, and they tracked them for five years and found out who died. Very, very sophisticated. Uh so the very very it's fascinating here of really why your perception of whether stress is good or bad dictates its outcome. And we know some of the mechanisms, but the group that said stress is bad for you and they experienced a lot of stress had the highest mortality rate by a landslide. Now, the interesting part is the group that said stress is bad, but I didn't experience a lot of stress was tiny in comparison, but still more than the group that said, I have high stress, but I don't view stress as a bad thing. That was the lowest mortality group. Of course, five years, it was pretty well powered, I think somewhere between 10, 20 or 30,000 individuals. So, like a good enough to have like a, hey, there's something going on here. And so what's going on? Why is the belief in stress causing people to die of stress? Where it's very simple. It's that open loop changes the way your physiology functions. And it changes the way your blood vessels sit and baseline for the majority of the day. Are they constricted or are they elastic and able to respond? So that part is very interesting. Mechanistically, we can point to something. And so your thoughts very much so dictate how your physiology functions. And the easiest example I have is you're walking down the street and you see a snake, and you're like, oh, it's a snake. And your heart rate goes up, and you have all this physiology that tells you it's a snake. If you're scared of snakes, some of us like snakes and we got no issues in them. But once, once you once you take a moment and pause, you realize, oh, no, wait a minute, it wasn't a snake, it's a rope. So the snake wasn't even real, yet it still got you to heart rate goes up, you're gonna perspire, adrenaline's released, you have a whole different neurochemical cascade that's going on, and it wasn't even present in front of you. And how often do we put ourselves in scenarios where we're dealing with things that aren't called real, aren't material, are never gonna actually manifest or or amount to something that we're gonna have to combat, whether it's a person, whether it's a boss, whether it's some other interaction, we might go through through so many different avenues and then it never happens.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

So Yeah, I mean, I think I it it's our interpretation of the situation has so much to do with what happened after the situation is over. And to your point, if we continue to dwell on it, you know, your the I read a study where it was it was a long study, like over decades, and it involved a lot of people, and it was a very similar premise in that the the question that was trying to be answered or they wanted to answer was what is the effect of happiness on longevity? But it became very difficult to define happiness, right? Because people had different ideas about what was happy, what was not happy. And the end result though was that if you took people who were in similar economic categories, they had similar work uh attributes. And so you kind of look at it and say they had similar stress for the purpose of this conversation. And you talk to the people who were in those situations, and a subgroup of them were still happy because they had they were focused on the things that they had, not the things that they did not have, versus uh the other part of that group who was not happy. When you follow them over time, person-to-person uh comparisons, people who were not happy died earlier than people who were happy, right? And so that goes back to the interpreting what is you they had similar stress models. So the way they interpreted that stress made a bigger difference on their longevity. And so I think that corresponds to the study that that you were discussing. And and it's very hard because you know, stress is necessary. Like you you don't get anything out of exercise without physical stress, right? And so you gotta have the stress piece, and so it's more about how you think about it, how you manage it that makes the bigger difference.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Absolutely. It's through stress you grow. And I think if you don't have any stress in life, you're not gonna have a very meaningful life. And of course, we perceive stress differently. For somebody, filling out a form is like, oh my God, I don't want to do this, and they delay it for God knows how long. Well, for somebody else, it's like, yeah, I can do forms, but for the life of me, I can't navigate in the world. It's stressful to go from you know one part of the city to the other. For another person, it's like, what do you mean? North, south, east, west. How do you not know how to navigate? It's pretty easy. So we, we, we really, as we go through things, true joy, this is a bit of a Buddhist idea. True joy comes from when you solve a problem. So, you know, there's suffering, there is the cessation of suffering, or there's the root to suffering, there's a cessation of suffering. When you go through that process of, hey, I'm struggling and you solve it, whether it's, let's say, fixing a car or motorcycle. Now, if your motorcycle breaks down the side of the road, you know how to deal with it. It doesn't cause you stress. You're like, okay, I need this part, this is what I do, and you just get active. And we love those people in our lives. When something goes wrong and they know how to solve it, we absolutely love it. So they get to have, call it the joy enjoyment of being of service, helping, and we get the joy of enjoying their skill and when, you know, very much self-fitting our needs. Now, if you're never the person to go around and solve anything, I don't think you're gonna have that centurion lifestyle. There's a type of temperament that makes it there. No one that's miserable is making it to a hundred. I've not met a I've interviewed well over a hundred centenarians, and not a single one of them was miserable. All of them, funny enough, wanted to make jokes at either their expense or at my expense or something along those lines. They were trying to have a good time amongst sometimes very buoyant conversation where I was like, okay, well, so tell me, you know, tell me how your childhood, tell me this. And like, they don't want to talk to about, you know, they feel like I don't want to give you an autobiography. Here's what I think got me here. But they were trying to make jokes along the way. So I think that's something that's very hard to quantify. But, you know, if you if we had the magic call it instrument to be like, oh, this person is experiencing joy, I think that's really what would signal as why someone is living to a lot longer age, even though other metrics aren't really measuring up. Because, for example, I I've seen a 92-year-old gentleman, his blood looks like you can't even I would the biological age comes out as 180. You can't even calculate it because he's so off the charts with too many things. And yet he's still around. You know, like so what is it? His lung capacity is pretty good. Is that the secret measure? He seems, even though you know his he's you know in in early stages of dementia, very happy. Like he I've never seen him upset. And when you ask stories about him, like, no, as a dad, he was always very loving, very present, very caring, very easy. You tell him the world is uh ending, he'd be like, Oh, Paley, you know, like let's see the show, you know, like there was no shaking his uh mental fortitude. He was very in love with with the world, and I guess he had great family, so it helped him, you know, have reason and purpose. And I think that part is very difficult, but to me very interesting, where you know, we think purpose as as some sometimes very grand ideas or other people's ideas of purpose, but it can be very, you know, very, very simple. It could be fixing the car, it could be, you know, weaving something, you know, uh a blanket. It's anything in which you're doing which you're connecting with people, I do think there's some secret there, which is very hard to do the modern-day scientific approach, like, yeah, yeah, I found it. But I do think there's a lot of secrets there.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

It's interesting to have now talked to you on several different subject matters. And today I think we had three big points, right? The first point was I'll call them magic chemicals now, these peptides that um can really enhance what uh what you get out of uh out of your physical function. But the point two was that you have to participate, and so by themselves, they uh don't do a whole bunch for you. They do their most when you are participating, and then in their absence, you've built these habits, you've built these things that are gonna allow you to continue to function and be the best version of yourself. And the third was that if you understand what stress really is and how to think about it in a way that is manageable, you give yourself a better shot at a longer healthy lifespan because you're not trapping yourself in that stress syndrome, which uh which really does wreak havoc physically, and that physical change can really shorten the lifespan or at least minimize your healthy your health span. And so if you put all those things together, I mean I feel like people have yet another set of tools in their toolbox to really think about how do they maximize the time that they are given and make sure that they are to your point living to be a hundred and not just existing, but doing fantastic hundred-year-old things.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Yeah, I I wish the right amount of stress for every individual so that they can revel in it and uh and grow from it. You know, I think through those challenges and and circumstances, you become the Uber mesh for the better version of you that is just waiting underneath to to do something.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

I gotta thank you again for spending the time with me and um helping me learn something new and different again today.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

It was a pleasure. I thought today we we like you you summarized first, really had a home run. I I do hope that uh people do really do a due diligence of spending a little bit more time with the material before just going around and you know, spending a boldload of money and when seeing no results and be like, ah, this doesn't this doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Well, I think if uh if they've taken if they've taken anything from this conversation, I think it is opening your mind and making sure that you're taking responsibility and and I hope people do do that. And so we will talk to them next time.