Let's Say Hello

[00:02:13.510] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you doing?

[00:02:15.600] – Rachel

Hey, good Allan, how are you today?

[00:02:17.900] – Allan

I'm good. Glad to get into this week. We got a lot going on here. Just some fun stuff or should be fun.

[00:02:24.510] – Allan

We had a chili cook off this weekend.

[00:02:26.730] – Rachel

Oh, fun.

[00:02:27.900] – Allan

Well, it could have been. It could have been.

[00:02:30.030] – Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:02:31.410] – Allan

Well, no. Okay. I was responsible for the chili, and I really put a lot into the chili. In fact, if you know me okay, guess what? There was nothing out of a jar box can.

[00:02:46.630] – Rachel

Good.

[00:02:48.150] – Allan

It was from scratch all the way through. Okay.

[00:02:51.340] – Rachel

Awesome.

[00:02:51.720] – Allan

Everything was all the way through. There were no cans.

[00:02:53.920] – Allan

Only thing that was in a can was the beer. I do use some beer, some dark beer in there. And that did come from a can.

[00:03:01.360] – Allan

But that's all that came from a can. All the tomatoes. I made my own tomato sauce beforehand. I had everything cut up, ready to go. And the folks that we hang out with here, they're a little bit more on the party side. So they just wanted this to be a big party. And so they were busier partying than they were focused on the fact that there was a second competition besides the best booth. And so they were so dedicated to best Booth that everything else just sort of got tossed to the side.

[00:03:34.880] – Allan

So we did win best, Booth. I had very little to do with that other than wearing a costume that was hot and comfortable for about 3 hours, but it was one of those things, so I didn't place still had a great chili. I've got some leftovers, so that's good. But it's just one of those things when you, I guess, hindsight being 2020, if you care about something, then you want to make sure that it's a no lose proposition, set the odds in your favor.

[00:04:02.670] – Allan

And being a part of this group was definitely not putting the odds of winning the chili competition in my favor.

[00:04:10.660] – Rachel

oh, no.

[00:04:11.870] – Allan

Yeah. Winning the booth. Absolutely. These guys were handing out fireball jello shots and everything else, which I don't know if you've ever tasted a lot of cinnamon at one time.

[00:04:21.800] – Allan

Anything you eat after it. Yeah.

[00:04:26.070] – Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:04:28.390] – Allan

Yeah. That was the impression people had of my chili, was, OOH, this doesn't go very well with fireball. Anyway, so it was what it was. It's over.

[00:04:40.350] – Allan

I learned from it. Move on. I had a good time otherwise, and yeah, go on. And then I do want to say something. I am going to be on a kind of a panel thing. It's a summit.

[00:04:54.130] – Allan

And it's called the Women's Strength Summit. Okay.

[00:04:59.180] – Allan

And the title of this, or basically the theme of this, is Women Stronger with Age. At least that's my theme as I go into my part of it. And so this is going to be on November 2, I believe it's going to be somewhere around 10:30 11:30 on that day, I'll be being interviewed live, and there'll be a Q and A. It's Amanda Mackie that's putting this all together. And so if you're interested in getting it, I believe it's completely free. It's on November 2. I think she may be recording it. You may have to pay a little bit just to have access to the recordings, but I will be on the Women's Strength Summit, and you can learn more at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/amanda, again, that's 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/amanda, that will take you to the page where you can get more information about the Women's Strength Summit. And as I said, I'm going to be one of the key speakers there going on sometime midmorning, so you can check that out. And again, it's 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/amanda.

[00:06:01.230] – Rachel

Sweet. That sounds awesome.

[00:06:02.980] – Allan

Yeah. So what's going on there?

[00:06:04.950] – Rachel

Well, I think you planted the seed with chili, Allan. So, over the weekend, we made a huge patch of chili ourselves, and we've enjoyed it over the weekend. And I've put a bunch in the freezer so I can pull it out throughout the winter. That's the fun part about making chili, is you can overdo it, freeze it, and it's there when you need it. When it's super cold up here in the wintertime.

[00:06:26.660] – Allan

Food prep. I love it.

[00:06:28.670] – Rachel

Yes. It was awesome. Thanks for the idea.

[00:06:31.400] – Allan

Well, good. All right, so are we ready to have a conversation about these new weight loss drugs?

[00:06:40.290] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:06:58.790] – Allan

Sergio, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:07:01.600] – Sergio

Pleasure to meet you, Allan. Thank you very much.

[00:07:03.990] – Allan

I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today because this topic, some of the medications, some of the things we're going to talk about today, I'm going to call them medications only because that's my vernacular and you're probably going to correct me later. But we can talk about what they are and why they're effective. But I want to talk about these because they're becoming more and more prominent. There's more and more people who are being introduced to them. I mentioned it to my wife today, and she says, well, what is that? And then when I started talking, she says, oh, that's the wigobi stuff. I'm like, yeah, that's what that is. So it's starting to kind of bubble up, and a lot of people are seeing it.

[00:07:39.220] – Allan

And I think for a lot of people, it looks like, wow, this could just be the magic thing. I don't have to exercise, I don't have to eat right. I can just take shots, and there I am. But it's much more than that. But there's a lot of value here. And so your company, MD Exam, I got on the site kind of went out there. You have kind of a quiz, it's a longer quiz that really does help someone narrow down where they stand in this. And you don't just go at this with one hammer, solves all problems. You have different levels and different things that people can choose and look at from their particular needs, not just one size fits all. And I really appreciate that because I think too many times people think, oh, there's one solution, there's one answer for me. I'm going to do what everybody else does. But you've broken it down on your website that there are particular reasons that you may or may not want to use a different approach, and you've kind of lined that out in your website.

[00:08:31.540] – Allan

So the first thing I want to kind of get into is, let's talk about these things, Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus.

[00:08:42.070] – Allan

Yeah.

[00:08:42.660] – Allan

Now, those are one type of product. And they're built around a product called Simaglutide.

[00:08:49.830] – Sergio

That's correct.

[00:08:50.870] – Allan

Okay. Yeah. I'm not really good with medical terms.

[00:08:54.570] – Sergio

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a clinician. I'm just an entrepreneur with some very smart medical people around me.

[00:09:01.700] – Allan

Yeah. So let's talk about what those are and what they're doing for us.

[00:09:07.150] – Sergio

Okay, perfect. So let me jump into that real quick.

[00:09:09.390] – Sergio

So one of the biggest things that we try to do at MD exam is make sure that if you're coming to us to lose weight, first and foremost, let's not jump into the game about losing weight because it's a fad.

[00:09:22.450] – Sergio

We got to lose weight because you want to lose weight, you need to make a change in your life. A lot of people and I say this because my education level in this is what's kept me in this business long term wise.

[00:09:33.490] – Sergio

We're up and fighting against a lot of people that need to understand because there's a lot of questions. You see them everywhere. It's like, what is this? What does it do? How does it work?

[00:09:41.610] – Sergio

Semiglutide triggers GLP one, which is a gastric like peptide, which what it does is it sends and we're doing this in layman's terms. You eat as soon as you got glucose, sugar goes into your body. Your body tears it down, breaks it down. It identifies what type of sugar goes into your body, common or simple. And we go down two different routes. One of the routes it does is. It triggers and goes into your stomach. And it triggers the incontinent hormone, the GLP one. And what that does is it sends the trigger to your brain mentally wise when you're full, when you've eaten enough and it says, hey, Sergio, stop eating, you're full. And what happens?

[00:10:20.440] – Sergio

You know how America is. We eat till, hey, you get a plate of food, you eat it.

[00:10:26.060] – Allan

Starving kids in India. You know

[00:10:27.770] – Sergio

absolutely. You can't eat anything on the and that'S good and bad. But there's something that has to be taught here, which is how much food is good for us? How much calorie intake is good for us? And that's a whole nother topic because 2400 calorie intake for females are like 26 to 2000 for males at the age of 30.

[00:10:47.790] – Sergio

If you follow that rule, which is like the healthy, you fall to what America is obese.

[00:10:53.420] – Sergio

Almost 80 plus percent of America is overweight. Obesity has over, tipping 46%. The biggest epidemic right now in America is child obesity.

[00:11:04.450] – Sergio

That's got to start with education, Allan. And that's what we're here to do. We're here to educate and help people.

[00:11:10.380] – Sergio

A lot of people say, hey, this is compounded, this is this and that. I think we need to understand I'm not here to fight big pharma by any means. I'm here to educate people, help people get this what they want to call medication with a polypeptide. Let's be realistic.

[00:11:26.500] – Sergio

I am a patent holder. Our company, we do have a chemical company, we are a patent holder or a patent holder 16,700. And we're in that range there.

[00:11:34.110] – Sergio

So you can look us up if you want to find out. So we've gone the level, we've gone the extra by the way, we do have 1250 state licensed doctors on board. We have eight nurses, armps, Or, RNS, three clinicians, and we have a staff behind us to try to support as much as we can to everyone who joins us, because my goal is to follow. If we could help them lose weight by making changes that they have to make every day with either one of the two products. Let's make sure everyone understands wegovy and ozempic are the same medication that is Semiglutide. It was created so that a doctor could never be charged I'm calling a spade of spade here.

[00:12:20.380] – Sergio

I'm sorry, can never be charged for a whistleblower process class action lawsuit, which we saw in the past.

[00:12:27.710] – Sergio

Right? What was the biggest side effect to this test for diabetics was weight loss. So if doctors were going to write a weight loss medication script, let's create and write it to Wegovy. But Wegovy did not have the $25 copay. Only Ozempic did.

[00:12:45.800] – Sergio

So if you don't have the $25 coverage because you don't qualify for pre-diabetic or diabetic, you didn't have access to this. And that's where companies like myself step in, and we have other competitors that have stepped in, and we're all trying to do the right thing at the end of the day. Our insurance companies are being really battered in the space, and I want to make sure that everyone has access to it.

[00:13:11.390] – Sergio

Why is it so expensive? This is one $1600 or charging our insurance companies, and this isn't what this conversation is about. My conversation here is our company slogan is lose weight, feel great.

[00:13:25.270] – Sergio

So there is today a product on the market in Semiglutide that works on seven and a half out of ten people that will help you address what has never touched the US market before. A product that works okay,

[00:13:41.350] – Allan

just to take a step back to help folks. A polypeptide, if you don't know, is basically a series of amino acids. And basically it's in a structure that functioned very much like a particular type of hormone. It may be missing a piece or something like that, but it still generally functions. So when he's talked about hormones and he's talked about these, that's basically what's happening, is you're communicating to your brain that you're already full.

[00:14:06.350] – Sergio

That's correct.

[00:14:07.630] – Sergio

And that's where it starts. So that works pretty well. We see on, like I said, seven to ten out of ten people. And what happens? Everyone works a little different. Some people feel it in the first week. Some people feel it at week three. But we monitor our patients by week three to four. If you're not feeling that little change. And everyone's a little different. This has nothing to do with weight, size, color, gender. I've seen it all. I've seen someone who's taken quarter milligram too much and has had a side effect, what you want to call the half life of this, for every ten units, seven days, had a 22 day uncomfortable. The only way to fix it you need water.

[00:14:54.610] – Sergio

Water is the only way this works. And then I've had people who've accidentally taken a whole milligram CC. And you know what? How do you feel, Mary?

[00:15:03.400] – Sergio

I feel fine. Perfect. Tomorrow, Mary, you're going to get a phone call from one of our nurses to follow up. Make sure. I'm fine, right? Absolutely. My biggest thing in this, there are no shortcuts. As you know, Allan, you yourself, being a trainer in the space, I tell and I preach. I've hired every single one of my employees. We do believe in a culture here. My culture is about exercise.

[00:15:24.630] – Sergio

There is no magic pill. This thing about fentermine and these other past medications, there is no quick solution to losing weight. It didn't come overnight, and it doesn't.

[00:15:36.580] – Sergio

Like I tell everyone, I can help anybody lose weight. My goal isn't just to help you lose weight.

[00:15:40.430] – Sergio

It's to help you keep it off. That's the key. And that's where the habits have to be created.

[00:15:46.360] – Allan

Yeah. And we're going to dive a little bit into nutrition and exercise later. So basically, if someone's not hungry, then they're obviously not as interested in eating, so they eat a little less or eat less, they start to lose some weight.

[00:16:01.320] – Allan

Now, there's a couple of different things that I've heard about it. Some of these are relatively rare, some are a little bit more common. So the rare one would be that there's some issues with your stomach and you don't tolerate it well, and that could cause a little bit of problems, and even if you stop taking it, potentially little problems down the line.

[00:16:19.550] – Allan

Could we talk about that? And then the other side of it. Which, again, I think we'll get into with the nutrition and exercise, is if you're not eating enough, if you actually tried to just starve yourself and not eat at all, you're not just going to lose body fat, but you're also going to lose lean muscle mass and potentially bone density and some other things.

[00:16:37.860] – Allan

So let's talk about kind of the problem with the stomach first, and then we'll pivot over and start talking about muscle mass and lean body mass.

[00:16:48.000] – Sergio

Perfect. And let me jump into and that's a great topic. I live with it.

[00:16:51.190] – Sergio

I suffer from this the stomach side issues. So if you starve your body and a lot of Americans suffer from very simple gas. Gas is created from the lack of food sometimes, and I could go into some more medical terminology, but let's make it simple. A lot of times when you don't eat a lot, if you don't eat food or eat the wrong foods because there's a restriction of intake or wanting tea, it can create all sorts of gastric, little issues in your stomach and your intestines. And that's where it starts.

[00:17:22.340] – Sergio

Okay? I've preached to people always, you have to put a little something in your stomach. People say, I can't eat. I can't eat. You need to find a little protein bar. You know, they'll find a little something.

[00:17:32.100] – Sergio

Because that's what you get is that a common side effect for everybody? Negative it's not. Between that and the headaches. Those are typically the two biggest nausea is typically the first and headaches are the second.

[00:17:44.480] – Sergio

The biggest thing is what we try to do is make sure is how much water are you drinking? Realistically the majority of the time people are not drinking enough water. And if you want to ask me on how much water do you need to drink as an individual you need to make sure when you go to the restroom and you do number one it comes out clear. If you're taking vitamins it's one thing. But people understand it. You need to be hydrated.

[00:18:09.920] – Sergio

Come on. Because hydration also takes a big effect on how your stomach functions and your intestinal functions. And then that goes into a lot of what you've been hearing out a lot of stuff about stomach paralysis and this and that. How many subjects are we talking about? We're talking about feeding millions of people here. We're not talking about deaths. We're talking about losing weight is not easy. It's not fun. It's a challenge. It's a lifestyle. Doesn't come overnight. That's where the education comes in here.

[00:18:39.740] – Sergio

The education is critical to understand. I tell people all the time don't come in here to I want to lose weight in 30 days. We're not the right program for you. I see it in our you know we do some very interesting meetings and pull out these clouds and we get all the stuff like I took a shot last week I didn't lose any weight.

[00:19:00.520] – Sergio

But on the contrary we do have people that say hey I took a shot last week and lost nine pounds. I have thousands of that's.

[00:19:10.850] – Allan

That's kind of point is everybody react differently.

[00:19:14.210] – Sergio

I'm scared of those Allan by the way. I'm scared of those because those are the people that really they got to work at making sure that hey this wasn't magic. It's just like everyone's body's different and realize that because your body was affected a little different on how you break down this peptide inside your body and how it affects your peptide. That's the key to understanding.

[00:19:36.010] – Sergio

And that's where we are trying to different. And as we grow our business that's where we are leading to.

[00:19:42.330] – Allan

And so at MD exam they're going to have access to nurses and doctors to be having these conversations of I'm feeling this, this is going on. And they're going to get that guidance and education.

[00:19:52.910] – Sergio

Yes sir. That's correct.

[00:19:54.850] – Allan

Cool. Now there's another product and this is sort of what you I guess you kind of call this. This is the ultimate one. Okay. So this is the newer one I think. I think it's newer but they kind of came up around the same time.

[00:20:05.330] – Allan

And it's called Manjaro.

[00:20:07.400] – Sergio

Yes sir.

[00:20:08.420] – Allan

Okay. And this is a different peptide polypeptide it's called Tirzepatide and it so it works a little differently. Can you talk a little bit about that one and why that one would be a little bit more of an intense treatment.

[00:20:24.630] – Sergio

Okay. So as we know everyone's hitting immediately. How do I take that shortcut? How do I get to that shortcut you know?

[00:20:33.200] – Allan

Oh right. And I'm telling not to take the shortcut, but I'm just saying it's just knowing that there's a higher level treatment. And this is not about I hear I hear tons about how this is the biggest thing that's hit LA in forever because you're about to do a photo shoot and you want to drop those nine pounds and, well, that actress or that model did it. It can seem like that because that's how some people are going to use it. But the reality of it we're a health and fitness show and the principle being is if you're really struggling with obesity and the other comorbidities that come along with it, this is a tool.

[00:21:11.190] – Allan

And so knowing the tool and knowing what the pluses and minuses are of a tool is valuable.

[00:21:18.210] – Allan

You don't want to take a hammer when you need a screwdriver. And I think that's the point is that maybe one of these is the screwdriver and the other is the hammer. But you've got to define what you're trying to accomplish.

[00:21:29.850] – Sergio

Well said. And let me jump in there because if you want let me give you a little bit of both so people understand how this works because I go through this all the time with people.

[00:21:39.600] – Sergio

And they think bigger is better. I think very few people understand this like I do. My sister in law is that person for  FYI. So I had a past Christmas at my house with six of her friends that were not happy people.

[00:21:57.960] – Sergio

Why? Because my sister in law put them.They all want to lose weight. All qualified. She hit them up immediately with Manjoro tirzepatide.

[00:22:06.690] – Sergio

Okay. Two of them it worked on four of them were miserable at my house for Christmas Eve.

[00:22:12.820] – Sergio

I sat there and talked to them for a while.

[00:22:14.700] – Sergio

I love to hear feedback because the more I get the more I could help.

[00:22:17.560] – Sergio

So where are we going to go at this?

[00:22:19.340] – Sergio

Semaglutide is a one peptide, is a GLP one, tirzepatide which the brand name is Manjoro. It will be approved for weight loss. It is already on the books for approval. It is approved but it hasn't verbally been said.

[00:22:34.530] – Sergio

And you can look it up, you see it yourself. But that triggers two peptides, the GLP one which is the semaglutide and the GIP which is the gastric inhibitor peptide.

[00:22:45.750] – Sergio

Those two I'm going to go back down on what you said. It's the screwdriver versus the hammer.

[00:22:52.010] – Sergio

Okay. Great model. I love it there. We want to help people minimize their caloric intake, which is something else I'm going to talk about CRM which hasn't been spoken about in this space. Which is massive but we want to make sure that people have some food.

[00:23:08.080] – Sergio

Tirzepatide. It kills your hunger to the majority of people. Again, it's not the same on everybody.

[00:23:15.230] – Sergio

By week five in our program, if you haven't hit that four to six seven pound change or percentage in your weight loss, we typically move you to tirzepatide, and we've been very successful with about 90% of those. We do not allow anyone to start on Tirzepatide unless you come with an understanding or we have information that you already took it. So do people lie and try to get around it? Yes, absolutely. All the time.

[00:23:44.980] – Allan

Do I have no, people aren't going to lie.

[00:23:47.820] – Sergio

No. Why not?

[00:23:51.240] – Sergio

We do have a lot of famous people across the board.

[00:23:55.660] – Sergio

I talked to males and females, primarily females. I'm a person that's accessible. I want to help people.

[00:24:01.500] – Sergio

When people say, oh, you took my money, this is what happened.

[00:24:04.530] – Sergio

If there was so much business. What happened was when Nova NorDis pulled a $25 copay, everyone got backed up. Our company went from a three to four day delivery turnaround time after your consultation to a 55 day turnaround time. I'll take the blame for it. My setup just outgrew us real fast. We're there today and we're not only going to help as many people, but there's 144,000,000 Americans that need our help.

[00:24:31.100] – Sergio

How can we help them? Semaglutide and or tirzepatide today are expensive through big pharma, they're getting more and more economical. And a lot of know you do have to find out. Do your homework. Just don't buy it off the corner of the street. Buy from someone who has credibility.

[00:24:50.470] – Sergio

Our company is Legit script certified. You cannot just go buy your legit Script certification. That allows us to mass market as a pharmacy because we do have a physical pharmacy ourselves in Texas 503, a sterile pharmacy and a non sterile. We do specialize as well Allan in rapid dissolvables, ribelsis is a product that big pharma came out with. The problem is you have to take so much of it because it has to hit your stomach. We made a rapid dissolvable that's a couple other facilities in America making it because it helps people, because a lot of people that does it don't want the injection. They take a couple of these tablets daily. Dosage.

[00:25:30.290] – Allan

Yeah. I think that's a key point I missed before. I should have put that in the plan is that this is not just a shot. There are pill versions. There are oral versions of it as well. Okay, cool.

[00:25:40.350] – Allan

Now, up until now, kind of the final go to for someone who was obese was they'd go to their doctor and explain to their doctor they can't lose weight. And the doctors realize, okay, there is a fundamental problem here. They would go to bariatric surgery, lap bands, things of that nature. Surgery either to actually cut the stomach or to actually just put bands to restrict the size of the stomach. As a result, someone wasn't capable of eating as much.

[00:26:09.840] – Allan

And then that kind of got them to losing weight because they would eat a little bit and be full. And obviously, if they followed through with that, everything's cool.

[00:26:19.610] – Allan

But most people tend to eat a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. They've still got the food issues and things like that. Can you kind of give us some of the pros and cons of these polypeptides relative to bariatric surgery?

[00:26:32.760] – Sergio

Absolutely. Okay, so two things here. Bariatric surgery will be going away. That'll be a thing in the past and the next. Technology here has taken tremendous leaps. AI, teaching big pharma the ability on how to create and manufacture medication at levels and speeds that we were never able to the next 60 months. Supposedly, there's about another 25 to 35 peptides in the works.

[00:27:03.990] – Sergio

And some of them are tIrzepatide is what we are seeing now. There's three others. Another one by Eli Lilly, two in phase, two by Pfizer, and there's somebody else. But almost every big pharmaceutical company in America's got a name brand, will have a product that will outdo anything bariatric surgery could ever do.

[00:27:24.610] – Sergio

So my answer to you, AlLan, this will be gone. But let me just say one more thing. This today is a very expensive product and or solution because the educational level I got to tip my hat to Nova NorDis. The educational level that they have put out on the market space is worldwide, is phenomenal, but they're also you've seen, they've become one of the most valued companies in this world overnight.

[00:27:50.970] – Sergio

But I will say one thing to this, is that if people don't understand that minimizing your caloric intake is an issue, we'll never get to the next level because you said it. You made a very good point. The bariatric surgery, where does it go? It's a lesson. You need to adapt your body to it.

[00:28:16.590] – Sergio

If you don't change those habits and. You don't make that effort, if you don'T make that lifestyle change, it's an issue. And let me go back to one thing you said. It's easy for me sometimes you may say to sit here and talk a lot about this. People say, oh, you don't know what it is because you're not overweight. Blah, blah, blah.

[00:28:34.510] – Sergio

I'll tell you one thing, my friend. I think the biggest thing in America is wearable depression. It's the number one mental health problem in America.

[00:28:43.410] – Sergio

You wear it 24 hours, seven days a week.

[00:28:47.110] – Sergio

Trust me, I'm out there to help people. People say, oh, you took my money.

[00:28:50.090] – Sergio

I give medication away all the time. If you can't afford it, I'll work with you. Our company works with you. You know what I'm saying? What I don't like and let me tell you one of the biggest thing that I do talking about bariatric surgery. Let's nip something in the butt real quick. I've had two patients in the last four months that are a 16 and a 17 year old female. Both parents have been ridiculed because in our state, you have to be 14 years old to have bariatric surgery. That's a big step for a parent to take for a child, a massive step. Those parents came to me, as I do have many other parents that have come to me. And I think the biggest thing that makes me smile in this business is.

[00:29:37.100] – Sergio

The smile that I put on people's faces when they see that their lives get changed by losing two pounds, five pounds, 40 pounds, whatever your goal is, it changes. These two females that came to us both came back almost all their weight. They've both been on a program here for about six day months, like seven months. The other one's almost done because the idea here is to wind yourself into a maintenance program.

[00:30:02.850] – Sergio

I don't believe in the philosophy, like, you should drive this up to the top. It doesn't work. And you're taking 2.4 milligrams. No, type one diabetics. We have two, three dozen type one diabetics that this is knocked out. This side. This I don't want to get into the medical side of this, but the bariatric surgery, if it's helped you out and there's people that have gotten beyond phenomenal success with it, so I'm not knocking it, but they do charge our insurances and tremendous amount of money. You put your body through a tremendous amount of hurt, okay?

[00:30:37.930] – Sergio

And that hurt comes from building tissue now inside your body. So now you are a person trying to cope with the recuperation of surgery. If you have you mentioned something earlier at the time of eating is critical.

[00:30:52.490] – Sergio

The cortisol, the fight or flight, the whole thing where's your body storing foods and blah, blah, blah. We go into all that.

[00:30:57.970] – Sergio

But there is a room everywhere to make this work. There's room for semaglutide, there's room for tirzepatide. Bariatric surgery is very tough. I don't want to take doctors'opinions away because I'm not a doctor. I'm sure there's many doctors who disagree with me and say, hey, no, you're wrong, Sergio.

[00:31:17.630] – Sergio

I'm not a doctor. But I do have some clinicians, and I understand this very well.

[00:31:24.830] – Sergio

I do know that this should be affordable to everyone. And Allan, I promise you this. In the next four to five years, the positive results we have from these two products alone and semaglutide will change the way people look at each other, the risk factor levels, cardiovascularly wise. And I tell you what's bothering everyone in America and all over the world.

[00:31:50.360] – Sergio

Is that when enough people take it and it minimizes their ability to eat or want to eat and makes them healthier, because it's proven everywhere they don't like that. Because for the first time in history, I think one month, these last couple of months, beverage sales are down. Food sales are down.

[00:32:11.370] – Sergio

When you touch the scales at a very small percentage, you don't like that. But five years from now this will be dirt cheap because the risk level, you want everybody on it, right? Your cardiac level has been proven now it increases by 25%. So what we're trying to do is help the person who could afford it.

[00:32:31.180] – Sergio

And help the person who can't by educating them one way or another. Our company does not bill insurances. We're a fee for service company only.

[00:32:39.860] – Sergio

But I will tell you this. I sell it as inexpensive as anybody in America. It's not because we sell a product. We're partnered with the ten largest 503 A and B pharmacies in America along as we own our. So it's critical for us to make this work.

[00:32:57.300] – Allan

So now again, I want to kind of bounce back to the concept of okay, I'm not eating or I'm not eating nearly as much as I used to. This makes nutrition really hard because we need vitamins and minerals from our food. We need essential amino acids, we need essential fats. These are things our body cannot make for itself. So we're going to need some level of nutrition.

[00:33:22.670] – Allan

How do we counsel someone to eat enough where they're getting a proper nutrition when quite frankly, they just don't feel hungry because they're reacting the way this polypeptide is encouraging them to react?

[00:33:39.910] – Sergio

Very good question. That is a very good question.

[00:33:42.650] – Sergio

And I think that's I'll be honest with you, I think that is very the trick. Tricky question, and I'll tell you why.

[00:33:49.870] – Sergio

Because we get all sorts of responses across the board. We have people that say, hey, I was doing great, everything was great and all of a sudden I just fell off the wagon.

[00:33:59.970] – Sergio

What do you mean? Well, some people's inabilities to eat caused some of the cons that we talked about before. So finding and understanding from the get go that you're going to have to find a way to change your eating habits and make sure they work because we do know where this next question is going to go to. If you don't eat properly, how do you make this effective?

[00:34:26.210] – Sergio

So much in the word that it's conducive for you that you're not tired. Because if you don't eat, you don't get the right nutritions. This is a snowball effect, right? Understand the end of the day, it'll be like, oh, I'm diet. So we do have to understand that. And I think it's one of our biggest things that we try to teach.

[00:34:42.490] – Sergio

And we're going to continue to teach. And finding people like yourselves and partnering up with everyone has a different way of thinking about how you are going to change this.

[00:34:52.590] – Sergio

People say, how do we know when and how everyone's different? But I will say something. I've been read and I try to do as much reading as possible. We have thrown out all sorts of stuff. Finding some type of protein bars, some type of bars, because they're available everywhere.

[00:35:08.760] – Sergio

These energy bars, protein bars, granola bars. They're crucial. They're crucial. I say these little bites, it's not eat it, I know it, I get it. Take a bite. Take a bite every couple of hours. Put a little timer every 2 hours, 120 minutes. No, you need to I get it. So we need to make those changes. Those are habits. Those are those couple of minute habits. It's the same thing. If you are not willing to exercise, I don't want you on this program.

[00:35:38.650] – Sergio

I don't. You're going to fail. I'm setting you up for failure. And that's where the nutrition comes in here, because let's get to that point. Let's get there and we'll deal with that. And that's critical here, because if you're not going to drink water and you're not going to do that part about exercise, and when I tell people exercise, I go very clear. When I tell people get up 15 minutes earlier, 20 minutes earlier, you don't need to join the gym. This is free.

[00:36:05.990] – Sergio

No, you don't understand. I'm 280 pounds. Not a problem. What do we got to do? How much do you do today? Where are your goals? I have people that have lost 120 pounds in a year with us and have been off now the program, for 90 days and have not gained but five, six pounds. We're doing all sorts of surveys, test. We are going to be running some interesting stuff now. So going back to your point and touching base on the nutritional factors, I think understanding that people like yourselves in education and knowledge about how do I continue to help myself while I'm on a program like this, and I say program that's sometimes taken the wrong way.

[00:36:42.450] – Allan

Yeah, quick question. This is just a curiosity question from my perspective, because one of the ways I've personally used and I've worked with various clients is on the low carb keto scale.

[00:36:54.870] – Sergio

And so it would seem to me if someone's not eating, they're effectively, let me say mimicking fasting. They are fasting, effectively. Do you find that your patients tend to get into ketosis? Is that where they end up from burning the body fat to have the energy and operate?

[00:37:12.830] – Sergio

You know what? That's a very good question. I'm not going to tell you yes or no. I've heard and seen some interesting results. We've seen, but I don't want to tell you yes on that that is true. Can they fall into it? Absolutely. Are we trying to identify, hey, what's the best way? Because remember, the way I feel and the way you feel and the way we both take our avenues is not right nor wrong. It's how you feel.

[00:37:36.930] – Sergio

I tell people if you're at a half, listen, let's go to the semaglutide route. Week one to week four is a quarter milligram. Week five to week nine or to week eight is a half milligram. Nine to twelve is a milligram 13 to 17 or 17 is one seven, and then two, four. That's what Big Pharma has seen great at. Okay, if I have a patient that's losing good weight at a half a milligram weekly, why am I moving him? No, because Big Pharma said so, and they're going to push it down your throat.

[00:38:10.340] – Sergio

No, that's where we step in and say no, because that's where we differentiate ourselves from it. So if I could tell somebody how and what to do, in a sense, we are putting all sorts of educational. We have recipes, we have all sorts of stuff that we've putting in our portal to help people on the nutritional side. But I think more than anything, it's understanding, hey, what you possibly could endure. Starting this little program. Because I think everyone's mindset's got to be set for the following hour. And how long are you going to take this for?

[00:38:42.220] – Sergio

That's something I tell people, you're not on this for life. I personally tell people, this is a four to six month window. It all depends on where you're at. So everyone might be a little different. If it's got to be an eight month window, that's fine. But I've had some people say, I quit. I stopped. Why? Guy down the street, Barber, said I lost 26 pounds in seven weeks. I freaked out. I get it. What do you have?

[00:39:11.490] – Allan

So let's take a step, because I really appreciated that you mentioned exercise. I talked offline a little bit, and you said you're an athlete. And we both agreed that even though you might not be competing at an elite level, we're all athletes and living the life that we're trying to live and the fitness level that we need for our own selves. But one of the struggles that I have and we see this with starvation studies, we see this with individuals who try to lose weight too quick, is they tend to jettison a good bit of muscle at the same time that they're getting rid of the body fat. So they're losing lean muscle mass, and in some cases, that could even be bone density. So they're weighing less, but they're not losing what they thought they were losing. They're losing both. And so I see exercise and nutrition as critical components to make sure that this weight loss is geared more towards body fat than toward the whole body.

[00:40:08.760] – Allan

What exercises do you think someone should be doing while they're going through this that will give them the best opportunity to lose what they actually want to lose, which is body fat, to get the right health outcome and actually end up stronger, better fitter when this is all said and done?

[00:40:27.030] – Sergio

Very good question. So you started off right out you nailed it right off the head. I think we're all athletes in this. This isn't you. This is everyone being an athlete. This is the journey of life.

[00:40:36.730] – Sergio

This is getting up in the morning and wanting to challenge it. And that's how I say it starts in the morning. It's an everyday thing. We've seen it. Everybody's challenges are different. Everyone's lives are different. But exercise must be a critical thing. When I tell people about exercise, I make it simple. I don't want you to go join the gym if you can God bless you. That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean you're going to be lose weight faster or quicker. It's the determination you have every day to spend those extra few minutes and let's go into something about exercising.

[00:41:06.390] – Sergio

You lose too much weight. What you lose in muscle density, it's very true. A little different for everybody. But two things you must understand. I talked about the components of nutrients and kind of the energy bars or protein bars and that same thing with the smoothies and shakes like that. Those are also really good ones because you can put all sorts of stuff in that and you don't need a big shake.

[00:41:29.860] – Sergio

You need a shake. And that's a meal supplement to a lot of this. But protein, the right intake. Let me say something real quick. Eating at home is critical, my friend. Eating at home is critical. I travel this country all the time. There's fast food on every corner everywhere. It's easy to eat fast food nowadays. I know it's tough when people say. Oh, you don't understand what it costs. I get it. I get it.

[00:41:57.740] – Sergio

You know what our program cost to purchase $5.66 a day for a 90 day program? I promise you I'm trying to help you out. The amount of people that go out and spend $7 $10 on coffee a day is ridiculous. It's hard to eat at home all the time.

[00:42:16.780] – Sergio

People don't want to come home and cook. People want to make life a lot easier.

[00:42:20.930] – Sergio

And that's part of the challenge in losing weight. How do you break those habits? How do you change those habits? Losing body fat and muscle mass go. Hand in hand with the majority of the time. And you hear when people say, oh. Man, it's hard in the afternoons. I'm big into the peptide space. We do work with other peptides so.

[00:42:41.510] – Sergio

We do understand how this works. I'm a big individual into. Like I got friends of mine say, hey Sergio cheater life because I've been on a couple of different peptide programs on the BPC. BPC one five seven has done great for my gastric, for my intake, for everything from my throat down the rebuilding of muscle tissue. BPC one five seven and TB 500. I'm a patient.

[00:43:08.010] – Sergio

I had surgery on my right shoulder, three screws, the whole nine yards. I had my achilles. I'm an athlete but gone through the works. And I believe in peptides because I'm a results guy. I would be sane if I didn't get results myself. And I'm not saying this is for everybody, but I will tell you something. When people come to me and say. I feel horrible, I feel like this, I tell them really nice. Have you tried to make a change in life? That's it. And it depends on that outcome. And that response is whether I jump in immediately. Because my thing is how do I put a smile on that person's face? Because at the end of all, it's about the attitude. If you got the wrong attitude, I've been trying and nothing works. Let's give it another shot. Let's try it. I got some 60 day.

[00:43:56.410] – Sergio

We're going to do something. I'm working with a lot of athletes. I'm working with the guys at the Pivot. I'm working with the guys at a couple of different places. And we're going to come up with something interesting because we are going to run a study. I am going to do some stuff that's fun. I like to make this fun. Losing weight is fun. When you lose the weight, right, you know it. You're a personal trainer. You see the personal satisfaction that people get when they lose two pounds. People are like, oh, I don't see it. Whoa, look at my watch. Wow. Yeah. It's areas that they don't see and then all of a sudden, once they believe in themselves is the key.

[00:44:30.460] – Sergio

So let's go back just real quick two things you went hand in hand is nutrition and exercise. They're critical. Is there a challenge in them when you lose a lot of weight? Yes. That is something that we must continue to educate. Find individuals like yourself to be able to educate the people out there that need that knowledge on how do I continue to build muscle? Because you know what? You might get a little weaker, but help yourselves out. The stretching part of it. A lot of people say, I can't work out. Let's stretch. You stretch properly. You got a great workout. Once you start getting that blood flow. Things change a little bit. And a lot of people say, hey. And I've learned this. This might be a dumb one, but they always say here, how do you grow like a big sense of energy boost in your life? Stand up and stretch. Lift up your shoulder. Stand up.

[00:45:16.950] – Sergio

You understand that military style thing, it works for everybody. It works. It puts it and then you're like, but let's find I don't have an answer. If you see I haven't given you a direct answer because I don't believe I have one. I don't know if there is one. Because everybody is different. But if we educate them properly, I think we could win the battle of all of us helping people.

[00:45:37.610] – Allan

Sergio, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:45:47.890] – Sergio

I love that. The first one is always I tell our people. Are you committed? That's our first strategy is to commit yourself. If you are not committed to being the best person you could be, you're wasting your money, you're wasting your time, and you're wasting your energy. And then when I say, people say, I'm doing it for who are you doing this for? What are you doing this for? You have to do this for yourself, because it's about feeling good. If you don't feel good, stop. That's why I've been in several businesses. They've all been in the same space primarily, but there's a personal satisfaction asking people, how do you feel today? I feel great. That's a good feeling to get from people.

[00:46:26.490] – Sergio

So when you ask this, tactics and strategies for that is number one is commit yourself to it.

[00:46:31.640] – Sergio

Number two is make that plan. Make that daily plan. Write down those top three things that you're going to do, and people say, it's dumb, it's stupid. Make that little to do list. You're getting up in the morning, you're going to walk for 15 minutes. I'm going to eat three things. Do that. Commit yourself to it. You commit yourself to losing weight, and you do this properly. It works.

[00:46:52.500] – Sergio

It's proven. This is a game changer in life. This isn't just it's a non control. You need to exercise. This is the first time in our lifetime, I mean, obviously mine, and as I've grown up in this, because I've been involved in this 24 years, one way or another, that a doctor could write a prescription for this and say, hey, Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith need to make sure you're exercising. Go exercise today. Start today. You know, people like, oh, I'm going to get dizzy because you've always heard that exercise and medication, that's a problem. It's always been a problem. No, sir. In this, if a man, female, son, child, whatever it is, you want to lose weight, you must commit yourself to it.

[00:47:40.630] – Sergio

This is a booster. This is a helper. People say, you're cheating now. You're not cheating in life. If you need a little help, what's a problem. That's my strategy. How do you make your body feel better? Like you said, how do you get up in the morning with a smile? I promise you, if I could help you lose a couple of pounds every week, will your life change? I have it all the time with people, all the time, and I'm pretty damn successful at it. So I think strategies, commitment, plan A, plan B is that plan A doesn't fail. That's the commitment to losing weight and is following your habits, making sure you're eating a little bit and making sure you're exercising. And by the way, if you don't drink water, this doesn't work. It doesn't work. People like, oh, I drink water. Water and the nutrients. We could feed the nutrients, but you need H20 to make this work, because the amount of water you lose in muscle and forget muscle mass. Body fat is tremendous. Your body freaks out. Your body freaks out. I tell people, hey, I lost whatever it is, seven pounds, eight pounds. How much water are you drinking? No. Eight glasses of water.

[00:48:55.450] – Sergio

You lost ten pounds and you haven't increased your intake of water, you've decreased it? No, let's increase it. And this goes back to where we started, Allan. Education. Let's educate. Let's educate our patients. Let's educate our people. How do we make America healthy? Let's make people healthy. There's nothing worse than when I travel around and see people that aren't healthy. And the worst that hurts me is when I see younger kids that aren't healthy. We could help. There's help today. There's help.

[00:49:27.800] – Allan

thank you, Sergio.

[00:49:29.630] – Sergio

Couldn't say this a while ago. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

[00:49:32.810] – Allan

So if someone wanted to learn more about you and MD exam, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:49:38.540] – Sergio

You could send them directly to start.mdexam.com or go to Mdexam.com.

[00:49:44.730] – Allan

All right.

[00:49:45.470] – Sergio

There's plenty of information there, and someone could always reach out to me directly at sergio@mdexam.com and I'll make time.

[00:49:54.910] – Allan

Well, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/614, and I'll be sure to have the links there.

[00:50:01.740] – Sergio

Thank you very much

[00:50:02.960] – Allan

Sergio. Thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:50:06.540] – Sergio

Allan, thank you for your time and I appreciate it. Hopefully you guys got some out of this and I could help you guys lose weight. Feel great. Thank you again, Allan.

[00:50:13.850] – Allan

Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:50:14.610] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:50:15.880] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. This was really a very helpful educational interview about these amazing weight loss drugs that are being marketed these days, because I see these commercials, I see them every day. Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus, Manjaro, I just saw that one this morning. I've been really wondering about what these things are, and it was interesting to have this education and listen to one of the manufacturers talk about how they work and what they're good for. So it was pretty interesting. But I do have some feelings on these things, as I imagine you do as well.

[00:50:50.880] – Allan

I do. Everybody wants the easy button.

[00:50:57.410] – Allan

Let me just do this, and then it solves the problem. And then I don't have to think about it anymore.

[00:51:02.690] – Allan

And if I had to look at this and say, okay, what does this mean? I would choose this over surgery.

[00:51:10.150] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:51:11.270] – Allan

Every single time I would choose this over surgery. I just would. There are side effects, and so if you're going to go this route, you need to do your research because the side effects are not pleasant, and there are a lot of people that will start taking it and they cannot tolerate it, and they get off of it. And so there's that. The other thing that happens here that is really a struggle for me is that you're in your 40s 50s 60s you're already losing muscle and bone, sarcopenia and ostopenia.

[00:51:46.360] – Allan

And if you don't manage your nutrition and exercise as a part of this program, you will lose it faster and you will become frail sooner. Okay? I want you to hear that.

[00:52:00.630] – Allan

You will become frail, you will lose muscle mass, and you will lose bone density. So enjoy the BMI. While you sit. In a dependent care facility because you can'T take care of yourself because you don't have the muscle mass or bone density to do so. So that being said, if you go at this responsibly, then you're going to understand that these things work by making you not hungry. Meaning you're not going to eat. You will have to force yourself to eat what you do eat. Most of the time you're just not going to be as hungry.

[00:52:44.120] – Allan

If you're going to be hungry at all, it's going to be on the last couple of days. It lasts about seven days. That's the half life of this whole thing. And so basically you'll take it and for the first three or four days.

[00:52:54.940] – Allan

You probably won't want to eat anything. You might even struggle to drink enough water, okay? And then you're probably going to say. Yeah, now I can eat a little bit. Okay? But if you do that, if you effectively starve yourself, you're going to lose muscle mass and bone density.

[00:53:12.230] – Allan

So go at this with the mindset of lowest effective dose, okay? If they recommend that you start increasing the dose or you think increasing the dose is going to make this go faster, rethink that strategy.

[00:53:29.650] – Allan

Because you need protein. You need the building blocks. There are essential amino acids and essential oils in our diet. We have to get. Essential is not this thing where you're talking about the essentials, like the essential oil stuff where. It'S just pure these essential oils, essential fats and essential amino acids in nutrition means your body cannot manufacture them.

[00:53:54.730] – Allan

Okay? Your brain is 60% fat. You need these essential fats to have a healthy brain. You need these essential amino acids to build muscle and maintain muscle. So if you're not getting nutrition, you'll lose it. You'll lose your brain, you'll lose your muscle and you'll lose your bones. You just will.

[00:54:16.870] – Rachel

It's serious. And the phrase serious as a heart attack. And the reason why I say that is because if you're so severely obese or you have these comorbidities, this could be a tool in helping you lose the weight to become a healthier body. To have a healthier body. But patients need to realize that there's a big picture. There's a long game to this. And so losing weight can get you to a place. But also the nutrition, you need to eat properly. You need to have ideal movement. No matter what your size is, you have to be able to move. So there's like a big picture. And this is just one very serious tool that could be deployed, should somebody be a good candidate for it? But yeah, it's certainly not for everybody, and it is very serious.

[00:55:04.670] – Allan

Yeah. And so, yes, if you're obese or you've got comorbidities, this can be a great tool to help you drop some of that body fat, but it has to be done along with lifestyle changes. Again, I've talked to people about this that have started it or that have used it. I was talking to one guy, asked his results, and he was really excited about what had happened because he started a lifting regime.

[00:55:32.910] – Allan

He managed his protein and nutrition, and then he used his product to basically lose body fat. And he felt great. He maintained his muscle mass and he lost weight and so for him, it was a wonderful tool. Now, one of the other sides of this thing is eventually the intention is. You go off of this. Okay, I'm looking at it. You see different prices, but we're talking $1,500 a week.

[00:56:04.230] – Rachel

My goodness.

[00:56:05.610] – Allan

So you do the math. That's more than $6,000 a month.

[00:56:10.950] – Allan

Okay. Now, is it worth investing that for this and for a lot of people? Maybe it is, yes. Okay.

[00:56:19.210] – Allan

You're going to invest over $6,000 a month to do this, but there's going to be a time when you go off of it, unless you're just weird. And you just want to keep paying that money and going when you need to.

[00:56:30.430] – Allan

But you're going to probably go off of it. And if you haven't made the lifestyle changes, then you're going to be that friend you saw the person that got the bariatric surgery? Yeah. They lost 80 pounds and then gained 100 back because they went back and they stretched the stomach out again, eating the way that they were eating before.

[00:56:49.600] – Allan

They weren't getting the nutrition because they were eating crap food.

[00:56:52.900] – Allan

Their body kept telling them, eat more, eat more. You didn't get what we need. Eat more. And they answered with eating more of the crap versus getting the nutrition their body needed. And so you've got to make some nutritional changes and be ready for that, not just while you're doing it, but the whole time. So again, you can maintain the loss. A lot of people love to go out exercise and think that's the way you'Re going to lose weight. No, but exercise can be a key to maintaining weight loss.

[00:57:23.150] – Rachel

Well, you've seen it, Allan, with all the clients that you've had over the years. You've seen it how when people make changes in the kitchen and they combine that with weight loss or I'm sorry, exercise, and they combine that with adequate rest and recovery and sleep. I mean, there's a lot that goes into successful weight loss. And it's important to make all these changes in how you're eating, what you're eating, how you're moving, when you're moving, as well as utilizing tools like bariatric surgery or weight loss drugs like this, like serious. Weight loss drugs, not the junk you buy at the drugstore.

[00:58:02.250] – Allan

I'm all jittery. I'm all jittery. I got to be losing weight. I'm all jittery.

[00:58:07.050] – Rachel

But it's a big picture. There's a lot that goes into this. This is just not a shot, just not one thing to do. There's a lot to this. Like I said, it's a long game. You've got to look for use this now. But how healthy are you going to be a month from now or two months from now or a year from now? I mean, there's a lot that goes into it, not just

[00:58:27.220] – Allan

and the prices of this stuff will invariably go down over time as they make more, and then other versions of it come out. So the prices of this stuff will go down.

[00:58:37.560] – Allan

But again, if this is a part of your strategy, it can't be all of your strategy. There has to be the rest of it. And so if you're thinking about this from being healthy, not just what you weigh, but being healthy, you need to be smart about it.

[00:58:55.690] – Rachel

Yeah, I feel like, thank goodness this is a prescription that you need a doctor's assistance or a prescription to get it. But it would be also important to have other experts on your team, maybe spend some time with your nutritionist or some sort of an expert nearby, and also maybe get a trainer to help you in the gym. I mean, if you're going to go get to the doctor to get a shot, you might as well rely on some other experts to get you through this safely. In the long run,

[00:59:25.750] – Allan

have a plan.

[00:59:26.960] – Rachel

Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

[00:59:30.510] – Allan

All right, well, Rachel, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:59:33.270] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:59:34.370] – Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:59:35.360] – Rachel

Bye. Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:18.690] – Allan
Ras, how are you doing?

[00:02:20.560] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:22.800] – Allan
Doing a little better. They finally gave us our Saturdays back and they changed their mind and said the islands could have their Saturdays. And everybody is speculating that they were afraid if we got more days available to us than other people, that those people would just travel here to spend their weekends.

[00:02:41.890] – Allan
And they don't really want people doing that. But they they did decide to give us the weekend back, which was really nice because I was able to go in and get a good long walk in, see parts of the island I haven't seen yet because I just haven't been up that way that far. But I found my limit, you know, I found my spot. I was not going be able to probably go much further than that because four hours and five minutes on your feet as well.

[00:03:06.350] – Rachel
That's a long day. Yeah, for sure. So but I enjoyed it.

[00:03:10.180] – Allan
I enjoyed getting out and got a lot of sunshine and a beautiful day in the jungle. And the cows, most cows got free and we're walking down the road looking around. Yeah. So it's interesting all around. So what are you been up to.

[00:03:26.230] – Rachel
Probably the same thing actually over the weekend. I did two long runs. I told you I was going to get back to double digits and I did. And I did some long runs over the weekend. So today is kind of a rest day.

[00:03:37.970] – Allan
Good rest days are good. I'd say it's kind of a rest day for me to had a lot going on. I just didn't really have time to put in a good. It's weird. I don't like getting out walking if I can't do two hours.

[00:03:50.680] – Rachel
I understand that. I do understand that.

[00:03:53.380] – Allan
If I can't get to a part of the island, it's just gorgeous. Then it's like, you know, it's just not as much it's not as much fun. So and it doesn't it's not that it takes me two hours. It's just once I get to about the 45 minute part, 45 to 50 minutes, that's when I start getting the prettier beaches. And so, you know, just that point, I don't really want to turn around, but I, I do sometimes.

[00:04:18.250] – Allan
But, you know, because I know once I get that next mile in the just the beaches are just that much prettier. So it's really hard for me to to pull it back in but rest day to day and I'll hit it tomorrow.

[00:04:30.360] – Rachel
Awesome. Sounds great.

[00:04:31.840] – Allan
All right. So let's introduce our guest.

Interview

[00:04:35.080] – Allan
Our guest today is a world renowned men's health and performance expert, professional speaker, entrepreneur and author. He has over 20 years of experience focused on providing Fortune 500 executives, business leaders, entrepreneurs and athletes, a personalized path to optimizing their health and performance. With no further ado, here's Dr. Tracy Gapin.

[00:04:57.120] – Allan
Dr. Gapin, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:59.890] – Dr. Gapin
Hey, Allan, thanks so much for having me today.

[00:05:02.830] – Allan
The name of your book is Male 2.0: Cracking the Code to Limitless Health and Vitality. And, I think everybody aspires to be a better version of themselves, but we don't always have the tools or the know how to get there. And I guess as you wrote this book, and it's something that's been kind of top of mind for me, is that you just at the very beginning of the book, kind of just grab us by the collar and say, dammit, grow up, man.

[00:05:30.550] – Allan
You know, talking about covid-19 and all the things that we're going through right now, now, more than ever, men have to start paying attention to their health.

[00:05:39.880] – Dr. Gapin
Sure. Yeah. You know that I use the term Male 2.0 as really a contrast to what men have done up until now. And that is now 1.0. And you and I spoke briefly before we started about how men don't typically go to the doctor until there's something wrong or their wife is nagging them or there's an acute problem, like they have a disease, a kidney stone, a cancer, or something. Or more commonly when they start to have some issues with their sexual function, sexual health concerns.

[00:06:13.390] – Dr. Gapin
And so what male 2.0 is all about is really shifting the mindset of men to focus on proactively optimizing their health before disease sets in. And we could talk about how we do that in a moment. But the key is to understand that guys need to take control, take charge, own their health, and do something about it in a proactive way before it's too late. And that's what Male 1.0 is waiting until disease sets in. Now, 2.0 is being proactive and taking charge.

[00:06:49.000] – Allan
Yeah, because our current health care system is designed for sick care. It's not really designed for health care. But, that's when one of the cool things that I've noticed that's changed in the last product, the last ten years is there's a higher emphasis on well care. There's thee's more opportunities than ever for a man to go in and talk to a doctor and start doing protocols that are going to get them healthier.

[00:07:14.140] – Dr. Gapin
Sure. Exactly. And, we could talk. We can call that. Preventive medicine, we can call it functional medicine, we can call it personalized precision medicine, but it's really about optimizing yourself and optimizing your whole human system. Men think that all they need is testosterone because that's what's kind of drilled into your head from all these T clinics that are on every corner now. And the key is to understand that if we're going to optimize our health and have amazing energy and feel confident how we look and feel, you have to go well beyond testosterone and focus on stress, which is a big issue right now with covid, especially,

[00:07:57.250]
Sleep quality of sleep. Almost every man I see has struggles with poor quality and or quantity of sleep nutrition. What should you eat and when should you be eating it? Looking at our detox and our body's ability to clear toxins, our environment, our fitness, our mindset is a big part as well. You an I spoke briefly before about, you know, limiting beliefs. And and so it's putting all these pieces together into what we call a systems based approach or call it a comprehensive approach, or it's really looking at the whole human system as a complex network of different parts.

[00:08:33.560] – Dr. Gapin
And you have to focus on all of it or else you're wasting your time.

[00:08:37.820] – Allan
I think that's that's the unfortunately the approach I think a lot of us will take. You know, well, we go out there and say, OK, well, I need to I need to exercise. So we go out and we get some shoes on and we get out and we start doing the jogging and we just don't see the change. The knees hurt the ankles hurt them all hot and sweaty. Now I take a shower and I can feel good about that, but I didn't really change my health significantly.

[00:09:02.090] – Allan
And so it almost seems a little too hard. And then I was you had it in the book and I actually saw it on on one of the YouTube channels that you had a speech on that that you were just talking about how low T has just become this epidemic thing men are dealing with. So, obviously, if they know that, that's probably the problem, fatigue, you're lethargic, you don't have any energy.

[00:09:27.890] – Allan
Things aren't working the way they're supposed to be working. You're not sleeping. You're not gaining muscle. You're losing muscle. You're putting on body fat, all those things. We know that testosterone helps us not have a problem. I was just shocked when you can say that free testosterone, a male now at a given age, has 45% less testosterone than we did 15 years ago. That's crazy. We're becoming women.

[00:09:57.030] – Dr. Gapin
Yeah, you're exactly right. And we could talk about the causes of it. But make no mistake about it, the testosterone levels in men are plummeting. Free testosterone, which is the bioavailable form of it, is even worse. And that's causing all the I shouldn't say necessarily causing it. It's a big part of all the health issues that men are experiencing now. And the mistake is what you just mentioned is to think that, well, if I just go get a testosterone shot, that solves the problem.

[00:10:26.900] – Dr. Gapin
And I can't tell you how many men and I see on a daily basis who come in and they're getting testosterone shots from the place down the street. Forty five bucks every two weeks getting the shot. And I still feel like crap. And I'll be like, well, what are you doing for your sleep and your stress? And you know what? You should be eating based on your genetics and. Well, the answer is no, no, no, no.

[00:10:47.720] – Dr. Gapin
And and so it's understanding that that as massive a problem as low testosterone has become, if we don't address the underlying causes of it and the other cofounding variables as well, then you're not going to get the success that you're looking for

[00:11:05.090] – Allan
That kind of leads me to you had the four components of male 2.0. Could you kind of go through those? Because I think it's really important to understand that this is like we've been talking about. It's not just one things. There's not a magic pill or a magic shot to solve this problem for us. But there's a holistic approach that we really have to consider.

[00:11:26.910] – Dr. Gapin
Exactly. Yeah. So over the last twenty years, really, I have formulated this process that I use, that I've now coined the male method as my approach to help men focus on the key pieces of optimization that they need. And so M is mindset, A is aging, L is lifestyle, and E is environment.

[00:11:50.990] – Dr. Gapin
So M looking at mindset. I focus first and foremost on your why. Your why is what drives you, what gets you up in the morning, what keeps you up at night, what is your motivation. You're never going to turn things around and get optimized because your wife is nagging you because just because you want to lose ten pounds just for the hell of it. No. My why for example. Is my kids, those beautiful little kids of mine are my everything, and everything I do is to create a better life for them, and that drives me every day more than anything else, more than than any other superficial details. So the key is with mindset. Focus on your what is your why? And don't ever lose sight of that. Don't ever let that go.

[00:12:45.250] – Dr. Gapin
Number two is eliminating limiting beliefs. We talk a lot about how guys think that they can't change, that they're too old to change or they'll never lose weight or they'll never have the energy they have when they're 20 years old. Those are all just lame limiting beliefs that we need to overcome. On mindset l also focus on stress mitigation, understanding stress and accepting stress and being able to to put it in it place, put it aside, and move on with your life and not let it let it affect you at a physiologic basis.

[00:13:18.090] – Dr. Gapin
So I focus on mindset, techniques, breathing techniques, mindfulness practices like meditation to help with mindset

[00:13:26.220] – Dr. Gapin
A is addressing the challenges of aging.This is where I really focus on hormones. Testosterone is just one piece of the the whole picture. You have to look at thyroid and cortisol and estrogen and DHEA, melatonin. The list goes on. There's about eight or nine different hormones that I focus on and all those are associated with the root cause of aging. We look at glucose regulation. We know that that long term blood sugar regulation, insulin sensitivity is the medical term for it has been correlated with obesity and mortality as well. So regulating those sorts of things.

[00:14:04.590] – Dr. Gapin
L lifestyle, this is where we focus on the basics of nutrition and fitness and sleep. And there are, of course, generic recommendations like nutrition. I really emphasize the benefits of intermittent fasting or time or restrict feeding, but there's also genetics. We can talk a lot about your epigenetics, how by understanding your genetic blueprint, we can really dial in on exactly what you should be doing, Allan, which may be different than the guy next to you and then the guy next to him. And so it is really personalizing it with genetics can take this to the next level as well. And then finally E is exposures. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals and toxins in our environment which are crushing our health, causing obesity, autoimmune disease, crushing our hormones. And so mitigating exposure to these toxins, as well as improving our body's ability to handle them is the E of of environment.

[00:15:03.410] – Dr. Gapin
So that's the Male Method.fifty-sevenOK, and I think one of the core of that, yes, it's a very holistic thing. And one of the areas I want to dive into is the limiting beliefs, because I think many of us still sit there and we'll say, well, my my father my father was obese and then he had a heart attack when he was fifty seven. My mother was obese. And then this happened, which is not actually true.

[00:15:26.150] – Allan
I'm just saying. And someone said, but we feel like we're on a track, we're on a train track and we're going at the same speed that our parents went and we're going to the same destination. And while it is true we're going to the same destination eventually, If we believe we're going there faster, we are. I think it was. Was it Ford that said, I really believe you can or you can't? You're right. Can you talk about these limiting beliefs and some things that we can do as a practice to kind of get past them?

[00:16:01.880] – Dr. Gapin
Absolutely. And so living beliefs are exactly what you said. They are ingrained beliefsthat really formed the basis of your of your behavior and your emotions.

[00:16:15.320] – Dr. Gapin
And these beliefs arewrong. So one of them, you brought up the concept of genetics and how if my parents died young from heart disease or my mom had breast cancer, that means I'm going to get as well and I'm destined to to die early. And and from that perspective, that's just epigenetics where we know that your genes are not your destiny. And we now understand the concept of epigenetics, which means that our actions, our lifestyle, our behaviors and what we do, how we eat, how we move, even how we breathe and how we think it's amazing affects the expression of our genes.

[00:16:53.810] – Dr. Gapin
And so people talk about the BRCA1 gene, for example. Did you know that that lifestyle has a massive impact on whether that brak a gene is going to cause a woman to have breast cancer or not? It's not just the gene alone. You need the lifestyle and the environmental factors as well. And so it's understanding that that's a limiting belief that just because your parents were ill or died early, that you will as well.

[00:17:19.200] – Dr. Gapin
But a lot of it also is really just psychological, you know. We in general tend to think negatively, think the worst, have limiting thoughts of our capabilities and what we're able to achieve. And we need to get beyond that. We need to understand the limitless potential is the phrase that I like to really emphasize that we all have. We all have a limitless potential, if you will, recognize it and pursue it. And I can show you men who are in their 80s who are incredibly healthy, who decades ago were on death's door and they made a decision. It's called Living with intention, I call it where you live with specific intention, laser focus on your goals and you don't ever lose sight of that. And so a lot of that is psychological understanding that these negative thoughts are nothing more than negative thoughts and that you can overcome that it comes down to the power of positivity and living with intention. And again, what's the underlying foundation for all that? What is your why?

[00:18:27.370] – Allan
Yes. When I when I got into all this and I was I was on the wrong path and my wife was that I was I was not going to be a part of my daughter's life as long as I needed to be. I want to be around to help her. And so I know she was getting into things that reminded me of who I was when I was her age. You know, she was doing the the cross fit and the obstacle course races.

[00:18:53.060] – Allan
And I was like, you know, I really want to go there with her. I want to be a part of that. She wants me to go watch. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to be a spectator in your life. I'm going to be a participanttwenty-five. And that was the spark I needed to get in the gym to start moving more, to start learning how to eat, to start working on my sleep and my stress and build the body that could do a Tough Mudder with my daughter, who was twenty-five years younger than me.

[00:19:21.050] – Allan
And the other thing was, I didn't want her dragging me behind or slowing down. I wanted to be there with her the whole way. And the joy of that, that was the reward. You know, there's not a food reward or anything. I threw at myself afterwards saying, oh, well, now I can go off of this. It was this. I just got the best gift of finishing this Tough Mudder with my daughter. And when you have that kind of passion behind what you're doing, you said you can overcome anything.

[00:19:47.750] – Allan
You know, we ran through electricity. They're shocking us with electricity as we were trying to finish this race and people were faced planning left and right. And we just ran straight through it because I was just so pumped about that moment with my daughter. So, yeah, I agree. If you believe it'll happen and you have if you've got that, why build behind it been by absolute sureness. You'll get where you want to go. Yeah.

[00:20:13.550] – Dr. Gapin
What a great story. That's a perfect example. And I love that of how that drives you to achieve something that you would never, ever achieve. If you're doing it just for the sake of doing it or because someone is telling you to do it or something that doesn't have emotion behind it. You know, I see guys every day who say, I want to lose ten or fifteen pounds. Why would I just want to have a smaller waist size or I want to have smaller.

[00:20:39.440] – Dr. Gapin
That's not what the why is the emotional driving force behind it for you? It's that amazing experience with your daughter that you can't put a price on that. It's incredible. For me, it's my kids, same thing. For a lot of guys is to actually feel loved by their partner and they want to feel attractive to their partner. And that provides them fulfillment and an emotion that's very important to them. That's what's going to drive them. It's not the I want to lose ten pounds. It's the emotional underpinning that we need to focus on.

[00:21:14.480] – Allan
Yes. And, you know, one of the interesting things I just had Amanda Thebe on last week and we were talking about menopause. And one of the things that she brought up was that when a woman's estrogen starts going out of whack at menopause, then they also the oxytocin goes down and that's the love and bonding. And so in many cases, we're getting to this midlife point. Our testosterone is crap, their estrogen is crap, and now there's a conflict between us.

[00:21:43.130] – Allan
And we don't have that the bonds sometimes to make it through there. So, you know, I can I can definitely see a situation where you're saying what's happening to me and what's happening to my wife is not working. And I do want to feel that love again. I do want to have that, that. And a lot of that's going to come from what you can control, which is yourself.

[00:22:02.490] – Dr. Gapin
Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree.

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[00:24:12.860] – Allan
Now, we talked about endocrine disruptors and I've gotten into this before, you know, I remember at work there's a guy who would come in every day and he would he would have a little plastic container with his lunch and he would put it in the microwave, but he would microwave his lunch. And I wanted to say something, but I just didn't feel like it was my place there just to say something to this guy. And so I started trying to avoid BPA.

[00:24:36.230] – Allan
I started saying I'm not going to get bisphenol A. I'm not going to use that. And then now I'm reading when they switched to Bisphenol S we don't know if that's any better, any worse. It's just it's different sources that can say it's a BPA free thing.

[00:24:50.480] – Allan
And then there's phthalates and astrazine and birth control and phytoestrogen. And then you're whole talk about cows and the myriad of reasons why cows milk could be a problem or is a problem. I'm just fascinated hat stuff's out there and took me like atrazine. You were saying it could affect male frogs. Could you could you go through that story?

[00:25:16.120] – Dr. Gapin
Because it's pretty dramatic. Yes. So for your listeners, atrazine is an herbicide that's used to kill weeds, basically, and it's sprayed on crops here in the US. It's been actually been banned in Europe, but for some reason, it's still allowed here in the US. Thank you, FDA.

[00:25:34.680] – Dr. Gapin
And it's the second most commonly used herbicide behind glyphosate. So people focus on just glyphosate, but atrazine causes similar issues and it's sprayed mostly on our corn crops and our wheat crops here in the US. So and especially if something is nonorganic then is likely been sprayed with atrazine and that will never show up in the ingredient list of your products. So you don't know what's there, but it's definitely there. We have found that atrazine is found in significant levels of our drinking water and the water tables are contaminated with atrazine because our community, our municipal treatment plants are very poor at filtering out endocrine disruptors such as atrazine and estradol, birth control, and all these other toxins.

[00:26:19.550] – Dr. Gapin
So atrazine, you mentioned the frog story is pretty scary at very minuscule levels of atrazine. Male frogs become female frogs. If they're exposed to atrazine in very small concentrations in the water, they become female and actually lay eggs. So it's amazing to think about these male frogs actually become female and they're actually able to actually lay eggs and reproduce, which is insane. The drinking water here in the US has exponentially higher levels of atrazine than those studies in the frogs.

[00:26:56.010] – Dr. Gapin
And so we know that atrazine causes autoimmune issues. It has been linked with a decrease in testosterone levels. Without question, it's been linked with cancers and obesity and diabetes, and it's unfortunately not really discussed very much.

[00:27:12.960] – Allan
I think the worst of it is that we all have it. Every single every single one of us is exposed to these on a daily basis. It's in our water, as you mentioned. It's in containers that we're putting our food in. It's in products that we're using to wash our hair or shave our face or wash our clothes, keep the static out, make our stuff soft and smell good. All of these are really messing with the way our bodies hormones work.

[00:27:44.490] – Allan
So what are some strategies for us to implement where we can at least do something about this? Because it's not going to change, we can't count on the FDA to come around and fix this for us in the short run. And so we have to be proactive. What are some things we can do?

[00:28:00.360] – Dr. Gapin
Yeah, great question. So we can look at it from two different angles. First, we can look at it from mitigating or eliminating it possible our exposure to these toxins. And then we can look at it from a functional perspective of how do we optimize our bodies, detox pathways to fight off the exposures that we do encounter.

[00:28:23.120] – Dr. Gapin
So from the mitigating exposure part, first, it's from a food standpoint focusing on limiting exposure in our foods. That means eating organic. That means eating grass-fed beef if you are meat eater. That means focusing on almond milk, cashew nut milk, rather than cow milk, because we know all cow milk. You mentioned that cow milk. These cows are eating the crops, normal milk on the shelf. These cows are eating the crops that are laden with atrazine and phytoestrogens and other chemicals. The cows are given steroids hormones themselves, and then the milk, once harvested, is stored in plastic containers and the plastic is getting leached into the milk, the phthalates and the BPA.

[00:29:13.050] – Dr. Gapin
And it's this soup, if you will, of endocrine disruption in that milk. So, limiting exposure in your food by focusing on organic fresh fruits and vegetables, grass-fed animal meat. Looking at drinking water, one of the biggest culprits is plastic water bottles. And so I focus on right here. I know your listeners can't see, but I'm holding a stainless steel water bottle so that every time I drink water, I have this with me and I drink from this rather than ever using a plastic water bottle.

[00:29:45.390] – Dr. Gapin
Another big one is coffee. I'm a coffee addict like a lot of people and cups, you know, plastic when it gets hot, releases these chemicals into your food and drink. So I would avoid cups. For example, I would avoid store your plastic or your food in any plastic containers, especially the story you mentioned of heating up food in the microwave and any kind of plastic container as well. It tends to be more when these plastics are hot, when they tend to leach the chemicals.

[00:30:16.980] – Dr. Gapin
And then you mentioned personal care products like shampoo and soap and laundry detergent and sunscreen and deodorant. You want to really look at the ingredients and choose carefully. There are I like to recommend a couple apps on your phone that you can use to actually scan barcodes and find out the actual ingredients of your products before you buy them. Because a lot of those personal care products you are putting on yourself and these chemicals they can absorb through your skin very easily.

[00:30:47.640] – Dr. Gapin
It's called lipophilic, which means they like to get absorbed through the fatty layer of your skin. And so you want to really do everything you can to mitigate exposure. We find it in plastic products, baby toys, plastic containers, chemicals, paint and hoses and garden. Everywhere.

[00:31:13.980] – Dr. Gapin
Yeah, what's amazing is I've tubing has high levels of phthalates in an I.V. tubing. You go to the hospital and you're getting IV fluids and you're actually getting these chemicals in. It's it's insane that they're everywhere.

[00:31:29.230] – Dr. Gapin
So then the other side of it is really optimizing your detox system and your body has a free radical scavenger system or an antioxidant system where your body is able to kind of detoxify these chemicals. And so we look at things like glutathion and catalase. And thyrotoxin and all these other complex pathways that start in your liver to clear these toxins. And so anything we can do to optimize, that's going to be valuable. What do you what can you do to optimize that? We can look at cold therapy, cryotherapy like cold showers, look at intermittent fasting. We can look at supplements like curcumin or tumeric, supplements like protandem, which is amazing, has Nrf2 activator. And we can look at supplementing with NAD boosters. NAD is a molecule that is very much needed to improve our redox system, redox pathways to help clear these toxins.

[00:32:32.010] – Dr. Gapin
And so making sure that your body has an ample supply and so supplemented with MNN, for example, or NAD patches are great way of doing that as well. And then finally, I'll briefly mention that what I do with my clients is I look at their genetics and based on your genetic blueprint, we can really understand your body's function and your weak spots or your blind spots of what we need to optimize. So for some people, it may be that there are glutathione is susceptible or maybe they don't have good mitochondrial function or whatever it may be. And we can specifically target that area for optimization to improve your body's detox pathways.

[00:33:15.140] – Allan
And there's one I didn't want I didn't want to go on without reminding them you brought this up. Neither one of us are spokespeople for this company, but you filter your water specifically using charcoal filters to try to get these these endocrine disruptors out of our water.

[00:33:32.810] – Dr. Gapin
Sure. It's actually it's a carbon filter, you're right, its a carbon block filter. And there are a couple of different ways of doing that. I have in the past used a Berkey water filter and an nonaffiliated I have no financial involvement with them at all, but I love their product.

[00:33:48.530] – Dr. Gapin
It looks like a tea urn and you can take lake water and put it in this and it'll filter out all the toxins and chemicals and purify it to the point that you can drink it safely. They also are there also is an underwater mount for your sink that you can use that has again, you want a carbon block filter that will clear out these endocrine disruptors. Not reverse osmosis. I actually don't recommend RO typically because it does filter out some minerals that you actually need, like calcium, for example, you filter out too much of the good stuff with RO and you waste a ton of water as well.

[00:34:26.780] – Dr. Gapin
But there is an undercounter mound that you can use for carbon filter. And then there's also a Kinetico has a good one that we're actually building a house. I'm going to be putting it in that house as a Kinetico, a home system that will filter your entire house water again with a carbon block filter to purify it.

[00:34:45.500] – Allan
Cool. Yeah, we live on an island and a lot of people here are they basically have to get their own water from rainwater and we're told not to drink the city water and stuff like that. So we do some of that. And so, yeah, water filters are pretty ubiquitous here on the islands because you when you're dealing with rainwater and trying to drink that or even the city water, in some cases you just want to be careful.

[00:35:08.900] – Dr. Gapin
Sure, sure.

[00:35:10.250] – Allan
Now, I really haven't talked about peptides on this show. It's kind of something that I think is it's starting to go a little bit more mainstream. When I first started hearing about you and I think the term they used was SARMS. And so I started doing a little bit of reading on them there. But I'm not someone who typically brings the type of stuff that's going to move you two percent. If you're not focused on your mindset and your lifestyle and your environment, then the peptides aren't going to get you there.

[00:35:39.050] – Allan
That's not the secret sauce. Yeah, but they're very, very interesting because they're just amino acid chains, but they have some pretty significant effects on our body. If, again, if we're doing everything else right, peptides might be something to explore. Could you talk about peptides, what they are and what they do?

[00:35:56.110] – Dr. Gapin
Sure. Yeah, peptides are absolutely amazing. And I truly believe that at some point peptides will replace pharmaceuticals. And I know that's a bold statement, but it's true because they have amazing capabilities to provide very precise, specific outcomes with very minimal, if any, downside or side effects.

[00:36:18.290] – Dr. Gapin
So peptides, as you mentioned, are simply chains of amino acids. A protein is just a long chain of amino acids. That's all it is. A peptide is a short protein. Anything under 50 amino acids long is considered a peptide and anything between fifty and a hundred is a polypeptide and over one hundred amino acids and length is called a protein. It's that simple. So peptides can provide amazing specific functions, such as we can use peptides to help with metabolism, burning fat, losing weight.

[00:36:51.500] – Dr. Gapin
We can use peptide for building muscle. We use peptides to sleep through peptides for improved cognitive function, focus and memory and anxiety. There are peptides for improving gut health or musculoskeletal repair or reducing systemic inflammation. There are amazing peptides for men's health, specifically libido and boosting testosterone and actually erectile dysfunction. There are a few peptides that men have actually complained that the erection last too long from the peptide. So they may have taken too much on their peptides for hair loss and for skin rejuvenation.

[00:37:31.310] – Dr. Gapin
And it goes on and on and on. And so so what's amazing about peptides is that you can have very specific functions and again, very little, if any, downside. You know, the first peptide ever discovered was actually insulin. Insulin is a peptide and growth hormone peptide. So these are naturally occurring, signaling molecules in the body that give signals that your body already recognizes. So that's what makes these very unique and different from pharmaceuticals, is that these are natural products that are recognized by your body to provide specific outcomes.

[00:38:08.390] – Dr. Gapin
Some peptides are given orally and some peptides are given via subcutaneous injection. Some peptides are given intranasally, as a nasal spray as well. So you can also inject peptides into a joint. For example, BPC is a great peptide that's amazing for reducing inflammation either in the gut or in your joints.

[00:38:33.560] – Dr. Gapin
And BPC can be given orally, which is amazing for gut health. Or it can be given subcutaneously for systemic inflammation or specifically into a joint to help reduce inflammation in the intraarticular space. So that's an example of how depending on the function, you're trying to achieve different routes of administration.

[00:38:54.950] – Allan
OK, now if I eat a grass-fed, grass-finished steak, it's a protein. My body is going to break that protein down to usable amino acids. What's preventing the oral peptides from being broken down in a similar fashion?

[00:39:10.950] – Dr. Gapin
Yeah, great question, and that's the reason most peptides are not oral. BPC is a great one and BPC is very helpful to be taken specifically orally if you're trying to improve the gut, because that's where it's going to get absorbed and have its function is specifically in the gut and affect the microbiome.

[00:39:31.020] – Dr. Gapin
I've had guys who have come in with significant reflux symptoms, irritable bowel symptoms and chronic gastrointestinal bloating and pain. And among other things, I add BPC and a month or two later they forgot they even had any symptoms at all. It's pretty impressive. So you're exactly right that in general, most peptides need to be given either subcutaneously or intranasal or somehow get systemic other than the gut, because the gut will break those down and they're too big to be absorbed the way they are.

[00:40:07.800] – Dr. Gapin
And I'll also emphasize briefly, I love what you said. That is, once you do everything else, peptides are great. A lot of guys will come to me for peptides first. And my analogy here is peptides are dessert until you eat your dinner. You don't get peptides until you do the heavy lifting and do the right things and make sure that the male method is being achieved properly, then peptides are not necessarily going to be very helpful.

[00:40:35.910] – Allan
Yeah, I think I think the other thing that comes out of this is you can go on onto websites and they're going to they'll sell you peptides. So they'll tell you it's MK677, and this is going to help you gain muscle. And but that's that's not really the route you really want to go with. This is the self somewhat medicating. I don't want to call it a medicine, because when you get it from them, they're saying it's not for human consumption.

[00:41:01.170] – Allan
But that's what your intention is. So how do we go about knowing what one I guess knowing what we need or we could use and then getting it appropriate?

[00:41:11.860] – Dr. Gapin
Yeah, great. Great point. So as you mentioned, you can find these peptides all over the Internet and the problem with these places, and I'm not going to name any of them to call them out, but they are research chemicals in. You know, when you go to these sites that are offering it to the masses, it's a research chemical. And unless it's coming from a compounding pharmacy that have quality assurance, they have good QA documentation of the purity of their product, the safety of the products. You just don't know what you're getting. I've heard amazing stories of people getting these peptides and then sending them off for analysis and they have nothing like what they're supposed to have and other stuff in there that they shouldn't. And so from a pure standpoint, from a safety standpoint, from a quality assurance perspective, I would never recommend I wouldn't take it myself unless it comes from a qualified compounding pharmacy. And so that's why you need to get your peptides from a physician like myself or another prescriber who has experience with peptides.

[00:42:18.930] – Allan
So as we're coming up on November being Male Health Month, we want to make sure we're more aware of it. I have to ask you the same question I ask all my guests. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay?

[00:42:38.340] – Dr. Gapin
Well, absolutely. Great questions. Number one is sleep. I think that one of the most overlooked aspects of men's health is sleep. And I like to use wearable technology to track every client I work with. They have to wear either an aura ring, a biostrap, a Garmin watch like I have on here some they actually track their data. And what we find is their sleep is awful. And so they may think it's fine when you actually track the quality is terrible.

[00:43:07.800] – Dr. Gapin
So I really like to emphasize a couple aspects of sleep hygiene that are very valuable when it comes to basics of sleep optimization.

[00:43:17.140] – Dr. Gapin
Number one is consistent sleep schedule. So setting a time that you're going to go to bed, let's say it's ten o'clock, ten thirty and you go to bed that exact same time every single night, eventually your body is going to get into a good circadian rhythm that is going to help improve the quality of your sleep. And your body senses that your circadian rhythm, your clock genes are called and your period changes are genes that regulate your circadian rhythm. They sense this. And so going to the exact same time every day, including the weekends, there's the social jetlag people have where they tend to sleep very poorly during the week and they go, oh, I'll just make it up on the weekend. It just doesn't work like that. Your body does not recover like it needs to by simply adding an extra hour sleep on Saturday and Sunday. So it's really being consistent about sleep schedule, going to bed and waking up at the exact same time

[00:44:09.390]
For three hours before you go to bed, you need to turn off every single electron in your house, no more phones, no more computers, no laptops, iPads, that sort of thing, turn off the TV, read a book, use an incandescent light to read a book and focus at that time on meditation is great on some mindfulness techniques before you go to bed as well. But you've got to get the blue light that's coming from these electronic devices off of you for three hours before bedtime.

[00:44:37.740] – Dr. Gapin
I would also emphasize that your bedroom should be for two things only.

[00:44:43.890] – Allan
Preach it.

[00:44:45.030] – Dr. Gapin
And one and one of them is sleep. Yes, a lot of guys will, I hear the story all the time: I just lay in my bed and work on my laptop for a couple hours before bedtime. Worst thing you could do is when you go in bed. It's only for two things.

[00:45:02.860] – Dr. Gapin
During the day, your body needs sunlight, you need exposure to sunlight, and so especially early in the morning, as early as you can, you want to get out and get your body exposed to at least 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight, especially in the morning, again, to help with that circadian rhythm.

[00:45:19.110]
We can also look at things like keeping your your bedroom completely dark, keeping a cool, comfortable bedding, get rid of any EMF electronics in your bedroom, such as WiFi, cell phones. There are some advocates for actually turning off the circuit breaker for your bedroom because your outlets are actually releasing EMF, even if nothing is plugged into them.

[00:45:41.780] – Dr. Gapin
And then the last piece that a lot of people may not have heard about is your diet. So what you're eating at dinner can often have a profound effect on your sleep. So foods that are high in amino acids, foods that have MSG, these foods give you glutamate. Glutamate, an amino acid that is actually an excitatory neurotransmitter, it gets converted in your body to GABA, which is a very relaxing, soothing neurotransmitter. For some people, they can't make that conversion very easily. They have a variant in one of their genes that code for the ability to turn off glutamate. And so for a lot of men, what you're eating at dinner time may actually be affecting the quality of your sleep and the disruption of your sleep. So I recommend that you really try to limit high protein foods and MSG, even grains that may have glutamate in them for four to five hours before bedtime as well.

[00:46:41.820] – Allan
Thank you for that, Dr. Gapin. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about your book, Male 2.0, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:46:51.870] – Dr. Gapin
Thanks. Yeah, they can check out my website. It's drtracygapin.com, and I will offer to your listeners a free copy of my book called Male 2.0, and they could check that out on my website at drtracygapin.com/limitless. And again, free copy. Just help with the shipping. Otherwise, the book is free.

[00:47:15.690] – Allan
Awesome. Thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness

[00:47:19.320] – Dr. Gapin
Hey, I enjoyed being with you here, Allan. Thanks so much.

Post Interview/Recap

[00:47:26.480] – Allan
All right, Ras, I know this was kind of a men's health topic, but, you know, there's ways to take information away from all these conversations, whether we're talking about menopause, whether we're talking about some men's health issues. There's always something to take away, if nothing else, than just knowing that your significant other is going through some stuff and things that we can do to make it better for him or her, things we can do to take care of our children, because it's not the amount of chemicals that are going to be available in the world are not going down or going up.

[00:47:58.670] – Allan
And so that's one of the things I took out of this was just how serious endocrine disrupters can be. I mean, you're talking a frog from a male to a female. And I'm like eww.

[00:48:11.010] – Rachel
That's very serious stuff right there. That was a light bulb moment for me, too.

[00:48:17.810] – Allan
I downloaded the Environmental Working Group app. You can find this on iPhone and I'm pretty sure it's on Android. But I downloaded the app just to see what it was like. And it's actually really, really cool. You just take a picture of the barcode, you know, so it opens up like your camera. So it's going to ask to use your camera and then you just put the barcode in that little square.

[00:48:41.600] – Allan
And as soon as it reads what it is off that barcode, it tells you everything that's in it. And, you know, you basically can see. And so my wife bought this body wash. She likes the smell of it. It's supposed to have pheromones. I don't know that it's making a difference, but she does like it. So that's that's that. And it's caught in the middle. And I was like, OK, now it's caught a middle because of possible allergies.

[00:49:04.900] – Allan
And I'm only really allergic to dumb people and people that lie. I'm not allergic to anything else.

[00:49:11.780] – Allan
So, you know, that's got the fragrance that they're using. I'm not allergic to. But, you know, it doesn't have any of those endocrine disruptors, which was good to know. Now, I did have some dyes in it. Of course, they want it to be a pretty color. Doesn't have to be, but it is. And so, there are some dyes in there that I have to think about. You know, there's really something I want to put on my skin or is that something I want on someone else's skin in my family?

[00:49:39.440] – Allan
So I thought that was a really cool app to have and just kind of go through and look at your household cleaners, look at the things you're putting on your body. You know, this makeup, all of it. It's just, you know, there's things there that you just might not know which you're getting because a shampoo sounds are, you know, cleaners sound like a very easy thing. Just put some soap and some fragrance and let's go.

[00:50:00.500] – Allan
But that's not always the case. They said they want to make it pretty color. They wanted to, you know, have a certain feel and texture to it. So you feel like you're getting something more than just some soap. And so there might be more than just soap in your soap.

[00:50:18.350] – Rachel
That's so true. And we don't know about what these chemicals, many of these newer chemicals or compounds do in the long term either. So it's helpful just to get a little heads up to see what's in things, just like with the food we eat every day. You just may not know what chemicals are in all of those detergents and soaps and cleaning products. So that sounds like a really neat app.

[00:50:41.720] – Allan
Yeah, I'm glad I did. And also, I'm going to take a few minutes to find that that filter he was talking about, you know, the charcoal filter. It does look like a coffeemaker. You know, one of the things you have in an office space, if you've ever seen office space type of coffee deal where it makes large things of coffee, but go find one of those and I'll put that in the show notes for this episode.

Berkey IMP6X2-BB Imperial Stainless Steel Water Filtration System with 2 Black Filter Elements

[00:51:07.310] – Allan
So if you do go to the show notes, there'll be some links there. I don't think I can link to the app, the Environmental Working Group app itself, but it's easy enough to find by doing the search. But I will I will link to that filter so you can filter out some of that stuff that might be in your tap water at home.

[00:51:27.230] – Rachel
That's a great idea. He didn't talk about reducing exposure to toxins and that's the first step is knowing what we're exposed to. But he also mentioned that being healthy or having a healthy lifestyle can help improve our options after maybe being exposed to some things. You talked about a lifestyle, how that impacts our genetics. And just because we may be prone to certain things, like he had mentioned the BRCA gene, which is on my radar, if we lived a healthy lifestyle with good food, good nutrition, good exercise, maybe that gene won't be activated.

[00:52:03.890] – Allan
Yeah. And then the other side of it is you have to think about these things as far as what's the cumulative thing that's going on with your body. And so if we're throwing chemicals at our body and we're eating crappy food and we're not getting good sleep and we don't have good stress management protocols and we're not moving enough, all of those are basically signals to your body your information, food is information, movement is information, and if you think about it from that perspective, the coding that's there is going to kick off and say, OK, this person doesn't need to be around any longer. Let's go ahead and do these bad things because, you know, they they want it. I mean, not to say you're asking for it, you know, in a sense. So we know that movement. We know that lifestyle. We know that what we eat or sleep, all of it impacts our health. And the more that we can do step by step, just little increments, one, cutting out the toxins Two, looking and getting higher quality food.

[00:53:04.130] – Allan
So you're getting the nutrition, reading another just even another study today that showed that vitamin D deficiency is a big, big deal with covid. And so, you know, if you're not getting the requisite sunshine, 15, 20 minutes out in sun with a good bit of your skin exposed. So, you know, you're getting some sun, you're getting some vitamin D. If you can't get it, then consider supplementation. But if you're not getting your vitamin D, you're putting yourself at risk for complications from covid, that would be worse than it would otherwise be.

[00:53:40.280] – Allan
So, again, these things are cumulative about our lifestyle and other things you can do today to improve all of it, to give your body a fighting chance. Just little incremental things.

[00:53:51.980] – Rachel
Yeah, it all adds up to these little steps really do make a difference in the long run.

[00:53:57.380] – Allan
All right. So we challenged ourselves to start helping you come up with a Keto Thanksgiving, hopefully can roll in to maybe even a Keto Christmas by giving you a few recipes. And the recipe I'm going to bring on is not so much a recipe as a as a style of a way of getting something done. The turkey is the hallmark for most people to to have. Now, if you really want to go, Keto, then I'd say go with ham. Ham is going to be more Keto than a turkey.

[00:54:29.270] – Allan
But if is the thing which for us, Thanksgiving is definitely for me it's the thing. I love cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. It's a gift I do for the family for Thanksgiving every year. And we're going to do it a little early this year because of covid. We're having to change our travel, but I'm still going to cook a turkey for my family about a week early. But anyway, here's how you do it. It's pretty simple.

[00:54:52.220] – Allan
Go find a good quality turkey, you know, get going, get an organic, humanely raised, pastured turkey. You know, just wild out there about their turkey. Better if you can hunt for it. You know, I don't know. I think they have turkeys up there in Michigan.

[00:55:08.530] – Rachel
Oh, yeah.

[00:55:09.200] – Allan
Maybe Mike can go get you one. I just think hardest thing to hunt, but you get a good quality turkey. OK, that's the first bit.

[00:55:16.880] – Allan
Second bit is that I'm going to tell you to cook it the exact opposite way. Everybody else tells you to cook it, OK? You don't want to put it on rack. You want to put it down on the pan and you want to put it breast down. OK, everybody else cooks their turkey breast up, and that's why the breast milk gets really, really dry, because the moisture falls down and it falls out of the breast, which one to do is flip the script on this and cook it for the first bit breast down.

[00:55:47.190]
OK, so what I'm going to do with my turkey is I'm going to clean it, wash it off real good upon the giblets out. I'm just going to lay them down in the pan. OK, those are a treat for me about three hours from now. OK, I'm a preheat the oven to 325. So the ovens warming up. I clean the turkey out. Got it ready. Sometimes they stuff the giblets in the next base, in the neck, in the bottom space.

[00:56:11.230]
And I don't know why that juxtaposition that's backwards from where it came from. And maybe, you know, if someone knows why they do giblets the way they do, message me, let me know why that happens.

[00:56:22.570]
But anyway, you clean out all that stuff, and then I'm basically going to take a complete stick of butter and I'm going to put it in in the cavity. I'm going to take a cup of chicken broth. I put that in the cavity, I'm going to I'm a dice up some celery with dice up some mushrooms and dice up some onions and we'll put that all in the cavity, OK. Close the legs up. They usually don't have some kind of little strap if they don't just use some string and tie the title legs back together at the bottom.

[00:56:56.410] – Allan
So that kind of stays closed. Oh I forgot one thing. Oh I've got almost the most important thing. There's two things. OK, I guess I forgot. One is a beer, a dark beer. So get yourself a dark beer. You know, if you can find a dark, dark beer and you pour that in there along with everything else, and then you want to put some spice in there. And what I usually use is I use Tony Chachere's.

[00:57:20.230] – Allan
It's a Cajun spice. You can usually find it just about anywhere I've never had trouble finding. And if you can't find that, just get a Cajun spice and you want to put a good bit of Cajun spice in the center. OK, so now all that's in there, it's bubbled around, the spices in there, the beers in there, the butter is in there. And then you just, like I say, close the legs up and you lay it breast down in your baking pan in the pan dip and make sure it's deep because the moisture is going to come out and your breast is literally going to sit in that moisture as it cooks cover it all up with tin foil and put it in the oven.

[00:57:54.350]
Now, depending on the size of your turkey. What you want to do is cook the turkey until it has like an internal temperature of about 165, maybe just a little bit more. OK, and that can take anywhere from three to four hours from most of the turkeys that you're going to buy, get it to about 165 internal temperature once it gets to 165 to pull it out and carefully turn the turkey over. I always make a mess doing this, but you turn the turkey over and then you carefully peel all the tinfoil away, carefully turn the turkey over and you put it back in the oven and you let it go for probably about another half hour to 45 minutes.

[00:58:37.970] – Allan
So you get an internal temperature of 185. You always want to cook any kind of poultry, chicken or turkey. You want to get it to internal temperature of 165. That's when it's done. I mean, 185. So once you get it to 185, you're done. Pull it out. Now, when I do the turn over, I talked about the giblets. That's when I go fish them out. And I put them on a plate and I put the turkey back in and I go sit watch football and I eat the gibblets.

[00:59:09.300] – Rachel
Nice.

[00:59:09.560]
Nobody else. Nobody else wants them. I love them. So I sit there and just eat them. And I was like, What are you eating the turkey? Like you started the turkey. Yeah, but not the kind of turkey you want but the kind I want it. And so that's my little treat to myself. And I'm cooking the turkey is to have the giblets while I'm watching it and waiting for that last, you know, half hour to 45 minutes for the turkey to come out.

[00:59:33.800] – Allan
And so that's it. What you've done with the with the drippings and all that, you can use it in something else, a gravy or something. But it basically because the turkey cooked almost all the way through with the breast down in that moisture, it retains the moisture and you'll have a very juicy recipe bird. And it was butter and other stuff that was drifting down through there. So it just adds a little bit more fat. Not a lot, because you only put one stick for the whole turkey, but there's just a little bit more fat there than you would have otherwise had.

[01:00:09.050] – Allan
So that's that's the turkey.

[01:00:11.910] – Rachel
Sounds delicious. It sounds awesome.

[01:00:14.490] – Allan
And it because you've cooked it breast down, it might not be as pretty as Martha Stewart, but it's still going to have that golden brown. It's still going to look nice enough. And is to me, it's that's the taste. You're going to slice it needed anyway. So that's that's my recipe for Thanksgiving. How to make your turkey a little bit more Ketofied.

[01:00:36.630] – Rachel
Oh, that sounds so good. Well, you can't have turkey without mashed potatoes, am I right?

[01:00:42.940] – Allan
Yes.

[01:00:43.870] – Rachel
Except for, if you're Keto potatoes are not part of your day to day from normal diet. So I have a creamy mash cauliflower recipe that I got from the ketoconnect.com. Matt and Megha are great cooks and I have tried this recipe several times and I've modified it to different tastes. But yes, you can turn cauliflower into basically a replacement for mashed potatoes. You just boil the cauliflower to get them soft.

[01:01:14.290] – Rachel
You drain them, you put them in a food processor and you process them until you get them to the creamier consistency that you like. And then the Keto Connect recipe suggests adding heavy whipping cream, butter, garlic, rosemary, parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste to the recipe. But the great thing about potatoes or mashed potatoes is that you could do it however you want. So if you want more garlic, add that if you want more butter.

[01:01:45.460] – Rachel
I've made mashed potatoes with cauliflower, with parmesan and garlic, which is wonderful. But I've also used cheddar cheese and bacon bits to make it a little bit more like a baked potato kind of a meal. So it's just a really wonderful creative recipe that you can modify to suit whatever tastes of the people that you have coming to your party or your Thanksgiving dinner. So it's a nice recipe, very easy, doesn't take much time and you can absolutely practice it in advance to get it to the way you like it.

[01:02:20.140] – Rachel
But I'll send you the correct version of the recipe and then your listeners can try and modify it to their own tastes, OK.

[01:02:28.540] – Allan
Did that come with a gravy of any sort or have you tried any Keto gravys.

[01:02:33.460] – Allan
It does come the gravy. I have not made the Keto Connect version of it, but what Mike and I have done in the past is with all those wonderful juices that you get off of your turkey, we just add a little bit of xantum gum to kind of thicken it up a little bit. And that's just perfect the way it is. But you can absolutely modify that again with adding more rosemary or other fall spices to give it the flavor you like.

[01:02:59.590] – Allan
OK, and you'll have plenty of drippings. That's one of the things when you're cooking the turkey, the way that I cooked the turkey, there's a lot of fluid in the pan when you're done. So you'll have tons of drippings that you can use for gravy this time and or you can freeze some of it. And when you want to have that going on later, then yeah, just mixing in some xanthum gum, which is fairly innocuous. You know, it's not not something, but it's not something you really have to be that concerned about.

[01:03:26.650] – Allan
So perfect. Well, thanks, Rachel.

[01:03:30.020] – Rachel
Sure.

[01:03:30.120] – Allan
Next week we'll be sure at the end. Stick around to the end and we'll be sure to have another recipe for a Ketofied Thanksgiving.

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