The Death of One Size Fits All Medicine | Franck Kacou's Pathway to Peak Performance

As a pharmacist, every time you take something, you're going to have some type of reaction to it, positive or negative. We hope for positive, but it's also negative. If you inject with a peptide, even though it's safe, you're going to have something over time, right? That's how it works. When you go to these online mills that are just pumping out GLP-1s without taking a look at the whole person, they're doing a tremendous disservice to that person. Those online mills are in the business of selling your research product and then you're supposed to go and do whatever you want with it. And this is where there's a lack of accountability.

Culture is about communication, teamwork, and vision. If you're able to actually communicate, if communication is tough communication, good communication and everything around that, be able to disagree, agree, disagree again, agree again, and love each other. Franck Kacou, welcome to the Pathway to Peak Performance.

It's so great to have you in, my friend, all the way from South Florida. That's it. I can't believe you came all the way out here just to see us. I really appreciate that.

Hey, absolutely. You've been doing an amazing job, and I'm so happy to be here. So, yeah, can't wait to talk about the state of the industry, I guess.

Yeah. So, it's gonna be it's going to be fun. I mean, to have a guy with your credentials and the things that you're doing in the space here with us today to talk about that is such a monumental moment really. I think as we take a look at what's happening, we're going to dig deep into it. Before we do, as you know on the show, each guest picks their charity of choice and then all of the proceeds from the show go to that charity. So yours is American Cancer Society.

Um and more importantly also my second one is Blood Cancer Society. We've been really close to them. We're doing a lot of initiative with them down in South Florida. Um you know we had some pretty bad news that happened to us about a month ago. Somebody close to us got diagnosed with lymphoma. So we pretty active. We were active before but now even more active. Um and yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So a blood cancer society if many can can donate there it'll be amazing.

Yeah. We'll put the link in the show notes to that. So not only we try to get some awareness for them but hopefully people will donate directly to them and then all the proceeds from the show will go to them. That's awesome. Which is phenomenal. Yeah. I love it. That's great.

So, the show is sponsored by KetoneAid. I think you're kind of familiar with these guys. You've known Frank for Frank. No, he's Frank. I'm Frank. You're Frank. He's Frank. Yeah.

I met Frank, man. Um, God, seven seven years ago. I was sitting a conference. It was right next to us. Um, and I was hooked and I tried this once. Remember I was I was fasting back then and then he's like came to me and he was just like dumping that in my cup. I was like, "Holy smoke, what is this? This is great." So, yeah, I love it. I love the product. Cool guy. Cool guy. All right.

So, we can choose between K2 or K4. Uh, you're familiar. And if you would just go ahead and pop the top and put some in for us.

Heck yeah, man. I'll go with the K4. All right, let's do that. Yeah, I'll go with the K. Finally. That's the stuff that I use every day. And everybody always picks the K2. So, yeah.

Yeah. Buy the scare. I guess I guess they just don't really, you know.

Well, what do you do?

I do two to four. I usually go four caps. Kind of my thing. Yeah. I saying I I'm I'm used to it. I I take it multiple times.

I can see that. That's pretty impressive. You go four caps on that bad boy. So, don't drink too much caffeine on it.

Personally, yeah, personally, I remember I used to have an issue with the taste on that bad boy. And then I kind of changed things a little bit and start incorporating into different type of juice. Um and it's worked pretty well for me so far. Four is pretty impressive, Jock Putney. That's why you get all that energy from now.

That's what I'm trying to trying to keep up with you, man. No, for sure. Cheers, my friend. Yeah, I think of that. All right. Thank you. Wow. Pretty cool. Good stuff. Now, we're bringing you for an hour. Here we go. All right. So, yes, sir.

The first thing we should start with, I think, yeah, is helping people understand the role of a compounding pharmacy and what the different types are. Yeah, why they're so important in the health care system especially today as things are changing rapidly.

That's a great question. Um, you know, so compounding pharmacy is is one of the oldest specialty within pharmacy. That's really how we we all started pharmacy. Um, you know, in other countries they call it preparation, right? Is where you prepare a drug from scratch. And the idea is to work in concert with physicians to come up with customization of a product for a patient, right? That's the whole concept of compounding, right?

Um, you know, I got into this game about 10 years ago. You know, I was I was a pharmacist. I went through I worked at CVS back then. Um, you know, retail pharmacist. And um during one of my side jobs, I was in South Carolina working. One of you know I got a side job in a compounding pharmacy um and walked into there right after school. Um and I had this gentleman that kind of taught me everything about compounding and that was in the vet world, right? They were working on horses and things like that. And I just fell in love with the whole concept of working directly with physicians to come up with custom products designed for a specific you know back then he was a horse or you know a person right so I just I thought it was amazing so from there I started digging into a little bit more start learning because obviously they don't teach that in school so not all pharmacists are compounders because they don't it's a very it's a one semester thing that you learn in pharmacy school. So, you had to get out and actually learn on your own, right? And usually you have to go and potentially spend time with a mentor that can teach you the in and out of it because it's actually very very complex.

Yeah, it is. I mean, it's complex and precise.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, um I got into the game um said to open my own pharmacy actually 2016, so we're getting in 10 years now. Um and saw this amazing opportunity to get into HRT back then which is hormone replacement therapy. Started digging into it started learning more from physicians um about the role the importance of you know hormones in overall wellness in general right something again they don't teach us in pharmacy school right um and really spent a lot of time with the whole compounding industry as a whole as I was learning, right? And kind of opened up my mind and and my mindset towards why it's so important to have more compounders and have patient access those compounders to actually create better outcomes in the healthcare environment. So what I saw when I first got into it is I realized that we had a small group of physician that were very comfortable with compounding, understood compounding, right? Um and rely on compounders to make products for them, right? Specific to the patient needs um and we got into CO in 2021.

CO was really what changed the whole game, right? COVID was okay, well, where are those people that make, you know, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, like what is this, right? The reason why compounders now became elevated is because of their ability to start making things when things are not available. Right? When there's a shortage, the FDA asked compounders to make products. People realize that, wait a minute, there's a shortage of hand sanitizers in the United States. What do we do? Who can make it for us? The factories are shut down. People can't make enough hand sanitizers. Well, what do we do? Well, we're going to rely on pharmacist to make them for us. This is where everything changed, right? People realize, wait a minute, oh, these guys can also make hand sanitizers. Yeah. Yeah. They can make anything, right? That's when we elevated the profession in a sense, right?

And then from there, one thing, you know, people started asking, right? You know, the mentality started to change a little bit about about medication in general. You know, well, what if I want to get a different strength of something while I'm in there getting my hand sanitizers? Well, what what if I don't want to get a vaccine? I want to get this they're talking about, didn't somebody make it for me? Yeah. The mentality started to change a little bit. Go forward two or three more years, right? Shortage of GLP-1s. And what happened? People realize, well, let's work with those compounders again because we can't get enough GLP-1s in a country, right? And that's what happened. So FDA allowed compounders to start making GLP-1s. Then the entire country and the world knew what compounders did. All right? Because we actually were going in there and helping the supply chain, right, legally, right, to make compounds for people to get access to medicine, right? So that's the role of compounding in general, right? So from being in a corner somewhere in a pharmacy, you know, a series of events helped us elevate the profession to a point in which now everybody's talking about it.

You know what's so phenomenal about that whole runup is the awareness around customization of dosage. I mean, there's a number of things, but like when you talk about GLP-1s, most of those come in a one-size-fits-all kind of approach. And, you know, I like the notion that you could actually customize that to, you know, the actual patients situation requirements. Um, so that's pretty cool when you think about that.

Yeah, it is extremely important because when you think about it, you know, um we believe in standard of care, we believe in evidence-based medicine, we believe in certain things, you know, in healthcare, right? Um but what we're realizing as um you know, people starting getting more information about their health is that there's a very high level of customization needed. You're different than me when it comes down to what kind of drugs we need for each other. You know, you might need something different than me, right? You know, we might have high blood pressure together, but a certain type of blood pressure will work better for you than me. We might have um depression, but certain type of, you know, anti-depressive medication work best for you than me. You might have a gluten allergy, so you might be different than me. I have to get something else, right? A filler that's a little different. Then so you start realizing people need custom access right and this is where the role of a compounder is. It's not about mass producing stuff right we can play on that mass production when when we need it right when there's a shortage and things like that but you know it's about how do we create access for people to understand that hey there's a customization that's needed and people need to have access to those things right and that is really the anchor of compounding.

We had a conversation about this um at COMM um where there was the presentation around genomics and really getting into it, really testing it. And I asked you, hey Franck, do you think this is really where this is going? And you said yes. I thought that was so exciting. What you're talking about really is like the next level. It's the it is the big shift to be able to get down to understand exactly what hey what do you really need? What's going to be effective for you? No guessing game. Let's well, you know, to the best of your ability, right? But let's get down to it. And so I think as time goes on, compounders are going to play such a role in the overall health care system. It's amazing.

I totally agree with you. Um and it's because you guys are asking for it, right? The patience is asking for that, right? The patients are becoming more educated. You know, Jock Putney, you might be smarter and I hate to say, than a lot of primary care physicians out there, you know, because because you open up your mind to trying to understand what's out there, what's different, and you go and dig into it, right? Um, and then you, you know, you look at it because you're your own, you know, motivator, right? You know, you're like, "Okay, I got to do this for my health. I got to go find as much information as I can."

If you go to a physician, right, that's working for a big group. You're probably going to have potentially one minute with that physician, right, to ask your questions. You're going to be seen in a standard of care, right, based on evidence, based on your age group, based on what we seen, based on whatever. Okay? Nobody will ask any other question around the simple narrative that they have customized for you, right? Somebody might miss something, right? I hate to say that, right? Um, nobody's going to ask for different type of testing or diagnostic needed. Nobody's going to ask you, do you want to get a genomic test? Why? Because it's not covered by the insurance, right? You know, so there's a there's a narrative in which most people go into, right? Because they're trying to do this to create better access, right? Because it costs money. So, it has to be easy, right? I guess for me, the challenge, right, as we're going through this is like how do we do what we do the way we see healthcare and create access around that?

Yeah. Well, you know, you I when I look at your company progress, you kind of you guys lead the way in terms of quality. And it brings us to another topic, one that we really have to discuss. And that is with the boom of peptides at large, you know, the whole peptide sort of revolution that's happening, there are certain things that are people are rushing to get. And uh unfortunately, in that rush, they're getting it from sources that are just it's such a bad idea. If they had any idea that COA where we could see where it's like basically it's the it's the same COA would they just photoshop their thing into it and it's and it's out there all over the place and then these people that are just like basically putting people at risk and all in the name of making money they don't care that's pretty bad. I mean how do we we need to make people aware of don't buy peptides online man that's a bad idea. Yeah, you got to get it from compounded pharmacy.

Yeah, it's uh it's it's it is the number one problem that we see right now. Um it is it is very troubling concerning that you know nothing is being done about it. Um but your year is a state of affairs. We have even before GLP-1s um an online group of people that were in the business of selling peptides. Peptides before GLP-1s were the dark secret of the internet, right? You know, usually the gym bros usually will if you were part of the crew will give you access to it. They're like, "Hey, we got we got a secret. We got the juice, man. We can whoop you up." That's how it started right so they had their online groups in which they were going in and you know some of them were cooking down in the garage some of them were getting them from other countries like China and India and all those places getting them into the US in a very safe way I guess um and we're distributing that in the country.

From there something else happened when GLP-1s came out they saw potential to actually also monetize and commercialize what they're doing and giving even more access to people, right? Because it's the same supply chain that are bringing certain peptides in the country that can also bring GLP-1s. Okay, it's the same supply chain. So, okay, you're getting your peptides preg online. The same supply chain can bring the same GLP-1 in a country that blew up. On top of that, social media. So you add people on social media now going online and talking about the beautiful things out there about peptides, right? That's it's the solution to every problem that we have out there, right? And most of those people are not healthcare providers. They're not practitioners. They're just salespeople out there just pushing for stuff, right? So, you have this nice mix of bad actors that get into the game and on top of that, you add very smart marketing companies into the mix that create this disaster that we end, right?

Because now there's this research peptide folks out there that are supplying 90% of all the peptides on the market in the US right now. They're not coming from compounding pharmacies. People don't even go to compounding pharmacy to get them. I mean, the people that are coming to us, other groups are going in there because they're actually using a physician that is testing, checking the labs, making sure they're being actually um followed before they actually order those things. Let me let me tell you, as a pharmacist, I want to I want to tell I'm going to tell anybody out there, every time you take something, you're going to have some type of reaction to it, positive or negative. We hope for positive but it's also negative. It does something good but also does something bad. When you do something bad over time it becomes more of a problem. So you negate the good.

So people need to understand that it's like you know whatever you do if you take 3,000 milligram of vitamin C you're going to have some type of diarrhea. Okay, just very simple simple fact. Vitamin C is safe, right? It's the same concept. If you inject with a peptide, even though it's safe, there's no other toxins. It's sterile. It's potent. You're going to have something over time, right? That's how it works. So you need to understand that you can't just inject yourself with a drug because that's what it is, you know, without thinking that you're not going any type of side effect over time, right? Because we're not the same. Remember, you know, so this this peptide that you like might be a peptide that might be allergic to, right? And there's a lot of peptides out there people can get allergic to.

Yeah. People always ask me questions um you know vis-a-vis the world that we're in right and I always say number one not a doctor right number two not a pharmacist uh I'm N-of-1 and so whatever supplements I'm taking whatever I'm doing that's not the that's not what you should be looking at you should work with a provider and it all starts with labs and understand exactly where you're going and It's a progression. I love what we always talk about on our show uh that we have with the group uh where we talk about like, hey, if you're starting out with something, it's probably not where you're going to stay.

That's right.

Because as you said, things change over time and and we're trying to achieve a goal, right? So, I think that's the other thing that people are just not aware of. You see this stuff where it's okay. Okay, not only is it potentially dangerous, but the notion of continuing to use something without any kind of checking on or the other thing that I really I think when you go to these online, you know, kind of mills that are just pumping out GLP-1s or whatever it is without taking a look at the whole person, they're doing a tremendous disservice to that person because that's not treating the whole person. And that's not looking at their entire uh makeup, then there's so much more to it, right?

There is so much more to it. And let's let's be honest, those those online mills are in the business of selling your research product and then you're supposed to go and do whatever you want with it. Their job is to provide a product to, right? And this is where there's a lack of accountability. Yeah. If you go to a pharmacy, they're going to provide you the product, but you also have clinical information regarding the product. Yeah. Something goes wrong, the pharmacy is legally binded to help you with information or help, whatever help is needed. You have a pharmacist that you can talk to, right, about side effects or want to get something else, increase in titration, decreasing titration, increase in strength, what whatever you need, you can talk to someone about online. You have no accountability. They don't they can't even tell you what the dosage and frequency is by law because it's a research product. They're not pharmacy.

So, so yeah. So, what do you rely on? Do you rely on on the gym bros that told you about it to tell you, okay, that's how you're supposed to inject it. So, accountability is the key, right? So, those guys online are definitely um in the business of selling, but they're in the business of treating and and that's and that's the biggest difference. And you know, while we were on the show and and and I'm sitting there and I'm listening to, you know, Christy, I'm I'm listening to Craig. I'm Miss Sus. I'm like, Susan, I mean, they're so smart. I'm like, people need to access these people. You know what I mean? I'm like I I like this is who you need to talk to, you know, not the internet or not somebody online that's going to tell you what to do. This is where you need to go to get better if you're interested in those products because it might actually not be the solution for you. Solution might be somewhere else you know and and knowledge is the key and this is this is where I really believe that at the end the pharmacies and the physicians who are doing it right will succeed why because they actually have access to the knowledge that's right they have the blessing they they got they got this and and you can't take that from them right because it's just experience.

You know it's interesting when Leonard was here Um, Dr. Mastana, we talked about when I was a kid, uh, right down the street, there was a pharmacy, there was a pharmacist, and the doctor would write some sort of prescription. You give it to him and the pharmacist said, "Oh, no, no, that's not what you actually need. You need this." There wasn't a formulary. There wasn't a PBM. There wasn't insurance involved that, you know, dictated all of that. There wasn't a gag order or a kickback. And we live in a very weird time. And I think we're coming to a place where the average health care consumer is starting to wake up and is displeased with what's happening.

100%.

Well, I mean, you've been in it. You've been doing this as is leading up to it.

I've been in healthcare for what, 30 years, but I what I can say is that I I probably just not as aware of it as you have been. I see it now and I think people are going to are gonna at one point in time just say enough's enough. Like this this is getting crazy.

Yeah. You want to know something funny which you just it just brought me back to years when I was at retail retail pharmacy and one of our KPIs of key performing metrics they were looking at back then was some you know in the pharmacy it wasn't it wasn't move it wasn't it wasn't something that corporate was pushing but something internally was hey how many brown bags do you have in the pharmacy because a brown bag means what because when you go to a pharmacy you have one little bag. It means that you only have two drugs. Oh man, I can't believe I have two drugs. The push was to have brown bags because the brown bags got more drugs in it. So, we're trying to see who's got the most amount of brown bags because that's the most amount of scripts that you're pushing. The idea is to push scripts, push prescriptions, push revenue. You see what I'm saying? At the expense of the patient, right? We talked about it. You're gonna have 10 drugs. That's 10 side effects times 10.

I love it when you I love it when you start talking about this, right? I mean, this is like you're taking the thing to fix the other thing to fix the other thing, right?

It's crazy, dude. It's like it's like one of the craziest thing, you know, and the thing is a lot of the customers, the patients tend to do better when you remove drugs from from their their profile, you know, and they start doing something else like exercising or like, oh, I'm I'm walking more. Oh, I just started yoga. Oh, I'm playing tennis and pickleball.

One of the things I love about you, Franck, is that you and Leonard both are the pharmacists that are always like, "Oh, yeah. You know, you think we'd be the guys that are always like, there's a pill for that, but you always bring it back to like, hey, let's let's try to do less and let's try to actually adjust our lifestyle to working out to, you know, meditating to breathing to being around. I love what you say about social. Hey, you got to have some social in your life. That kind of interaction with positive people who make you feel good.

100%, man. You know, and it took me a while to understand that, you know, especially being, you know, behind the counter in the pharmacy like I I need more drugs to, you know, so I can pay the bills, you know, it it was it was totally different. It was a different setup. It's like, oh no, no, you have to get education. People will pay to get access to education instead of the drugs to get better. That's when things changed for me. You have people want to they're willing to give you the cash but not the insurance card because you know what I mean? So we were told give me what's your insurance right so I can give you more drugs now forget that now they're willing to give you the cash to give you so you can get access they want access you know I want to get better education on the drugs I want to get you know what's the best drug for me I want you know like what's the best doctor I can go to like you know they don't want to get access so now they're like you know what forget the insurance card not helping me I'm getting sicker anyway right you know let me just give you a hundred bucks instead of my insurance card that's not paying anything. So, I can get one or two drugs and access to a good doctor. You crazy far. You know what? It's so interesting how pharmacy is changing medicine.

Yeah, it's wild to think. I think that people are really tuning in. I mean, they've picked up on it. The word's getting out. It's like spreading. It seems like it's going starting to really accelerate.

It is. I think some groups in South Florida like big groups sometime have big like hospital groups are now I'm starting to see within this big hospital groups like this little you know department that's like this wellness department within the group right um some hospitals are groups are also trying to come up with you know a concierge service okay this is a you know the underground name for functional medicine okay so if you see a concierge service in you know, University of Blah blah blah hospital group is really functional medicine, you know, so you're starting to see that popping left and right. That means that they're they're they're keeping their eyes on it, the tracking.

I wouldn't be surprised if within the next 5 years, the footprint of a retail pharmacy is totally changed. A CVS or Walgreens will now become a wellness destination where you'll go in and the pharmacy will be probably the size of of of here with minimum of drugs, right? All the drugs will be shipped to your house because you don't need all that inventory. They're going to realize, oh my gosh, those pharmacy manager were right. We don't need a million dollars worth of inventory. We can just ship it somewhere. We just need like 10 fast movers, right? Okay. And then the whole thing, the whole footprint now becomes what? You can have a little pickup place there. You can have access to yoga. You can have access to a cold plunge. You can have access to red light therapy. You can have access to nutritionists. You can have access to I'm telling you that's where that's my vision for pharmacy, right? And then you have a pharmacist there working in concert with physicians, nutritionists, health coaches, physical therapists to really kind of enhance the experience. You want to have better outcomes, that's how you're going to get it. That's it. But five years, if they don't do it in five years, somebody's gonna give me money so I can show them how to do this.

Seriously. Yeah. It's like I mean you've got to do it because the customers want that. The patients want that. It's over. You know, it's like nobody wants the brand back anymore. They want they want they want the keys to actually get in. How do I actually have a healthy long life?

Yeah. You know, I think you're on the money. And I think there's so many interesting therapies that are coming out. What we're seeing all the the data on hyperbaric and what it can do and um you know the interesting thing too is I think confidence in the healthcare system has been eroded through things like you know what we saw with OxyContin where we just had this mass prescription. I mean well we were talking about this the other day what was the other drug we said was statins and SSRIs when we're in a show. Yeah we're talking with talking about statins being side effect there's a lot of side effect of statins. I I mean, we know we have a product called Citron LNA uh with a new bow age that it's a supplement, you know, um shrinks in very good, you know, evidence when it comes out to decreasing LDL um as a supplement. But the problem with statins is a lot of side effect with statins, right? Um and a lot of patients are really anti-statins, you know, a lot of doctors are really into statins, right? Um we're talking about oxycodone, right? I mean he created a mess that we still dealing with.

Yeah. I mean you got people on the streets today just you know this is this is a direct relation. I mean this is directly affecting society right now. You know doesn't matter if you happen 15 20 years ago. You know these people had kids that are now in the street. They're just boom boom boom boom. You know it's just it's it is it is you right. So that's more as a social aspect of it. It's pretty scary um what's happening when it comes down to no accountability towards pushing medications that can be very dangerous for the public for sure especially around the epigenetic portion of that when I think about what somebody's doing something right it's affecting child which is affecting grandchild right without even ever taking any never taking you absolutely you know it's just it's a wild time and I think one of the things that you and Leonard do so well um you know it's so great to be a part of it is that you really focus on bringing this high level of education. Yeah.

Uh the COMM conference you know I've been to I don't know how many conferences in my career. You guys really bring this next level of education. You do it a way where it's actually digestible. And I think that's like so powerful for those providers that, you know, you really focus on the providers, the people that are actually going to be able to make something happen with this information. I heard uh I you know, I really appreciate the invitation. Um you know, obviously I'm not a provider, but I got to go and I I really enjoyed being there. Um and I was able to understand quite a bit of what was being said. So, it was really interesting to me like all of the things that just are not talked about, but there's plenty of data showing that it's actually happening like the stuff in the gut. Um, which we're talking about, um, hormone, you know, plast microplastics, uh, nanoplastics and endocrine disruption, some massive phthalates, you know, in like, you know, like I don't now I'm like, oh, I'm not wearing scents anymore. Or I'm not I'm not doing that because it's like woah that's it's crazy. And then Christy we were talking about lotion and I've always had dry skin what you know and she said I always go back to the gut something in the gut is telling me that you know you got you have a disruption in your gut and you've got if you need your dry skin all you having that all the time. So it's amazing to see when you go you know if we were to take a trip down the street to to the CVS it's so interesting to see what that pharmacy has actually become. It's like a I don't know, part grocery store, part paper supply, part school supply, part liquor store, right? Like, you know, it's so sad what happened to us. Uh I know, I know, but I want to go back to comment. I'm going to make a comment as on that grocery store next door.

But yeah, I I am so glad that you went to COMM and I can't wait for you to come back again this year. It was great meeting you and your son and your team. It was it was really cool. Um, but I'm glad that you actually, you know, um, got a sense, right, to see what we're trying to do.

Electric. Electric. Thank you.

Electric. I mean, you know, actually, when I think about it, I kind of get a little bit of chills or because we walked in like the energy was so good. It was like, you know, you know when you walk in someplace and like you go, this was like it was just like everybody was like they were yeah, that's great.

You know, listen, you know, the Leonard's got his goals. I have my goals. My my goal is simple. Um it's with COMM, you know, people talk about longevity, they talk about wellness, they talk about advancement in diagnostics tools, talk about investment in compounds, they talk about all those awesome new initiatives in healthcare. You know, it's it's a lot of talk about. How do you transfer that into a 2D experience where you can go in and experience what they're talking about and actually connect, take it and go and apply it. That's my goal with COMM. Basically, that's that's all it is. It's like, okay, everything they're talking about is great, but what does it mean for me as a physician, as a pharmacist, as a consumer? What does it mean? I I don't get it. Like, can somebody just check on this? Is there evidence really on this or is just like bunch of are they trying to sell something like what is this right? You know how do I how do I figure out the dosage? I don't even know what the dosage is. I mean what's going on there? What kind of side effect I should be worried about? You know, like what is all this?

Then you can go to a place where they go over the latest of everything people are talking about because they did their research on it. Look for evidence to make sure it's actually on par with what we believe in. And then you experience everything people have been talking about for the past year leading to COMM and then you take everything with you when you get out of there. So you can actually go in there and be a better physician, a better clinician, a better patient, a better pharmacist. That that's the goal. And I'm so glad that you actually it was that impactful for you because that means that we're doing something right. And 27 is going to be even better.

Oh yeah. I I you know, if you guys will invite me back, I'll be there.

Oh, you'll be there. What are you talking about? You You're going to be there for sure. Come on, man.

I'll tell you what. I'll wait. It was so interesting to see that in motion really to see that like people were absorbing this and that I think that's why the conversations continue on afterwards. Remember we we had but uh and Salvo systems were at 7. We just filmed the 18th episode, right? So think about it. Every single one of those episodes has happened since COMM and every single time we talk about something that was talked about at COMM.

Yeah. There's so much so much content.

Oh my gosh. It's unbelievable. You know, it's like you can see how like it all kind of links back up and we and it keeps coming back to this notion of hey, there's a foundational level. Uh and you know, it's super exciting. I feel like um I don't know how how how you guys are going to run that conference, but I feel like it's going to be a lot of people trying to come.

Oh, for sure. We would love to see that more people for sure. I mean, I don't know if we can take more, but we'll love to have more for sure. I you know and you know one thing about COMM though is you know on top of that I think people like you, quality people like you obviously u you know it's really designed for people actually are truly impacting you know what we're doing here in longevity you know it's designed for people out there to actually go out there and actually do something about it. Yeah. You know not for the people just trying to get in and just kind of learn and see on the side. We want momentum. Yeah. And we want people that really want to get in there, take that and go and apply that in their practice, take take that information and and actually go out there and try to start a new practice, right? Um and and that's really what the design is. We want to get more people. We want quality people, right? Because that's the key to get a momentum to get a you know changes to happen. You need to have people are engaged, right? Um and we had, you know, 500 people are in that room. They're all engaged. You know, so the goal is to get another 500 next year to get super engaged and then fixing it now. Then we have conversation going left and right about everything we talked about. Jock Putney on her um podcast, we can't stop talking like we have an hour. Like man, we need two hours. I know, right? Because every topic is like, hey, there's so much more to talk about and we can't do that for an hour. And I'm always like, I know, right? So it's it's crazy.

Yeah. You know, I think that's what's so cool about it, too. And part of that thing that you're creating is we're fighting, you know, you're fighting the tide of uh misinformation. You know, these people that are out there that are pushing stuff, saying stuff that they don't really know about, right? They they have no idea what they're really talking about, but you're bringing the people who do together around the evidence, around the research, and getting that out there. And when you get that out there in the way that you're doing it, it fights against the people that are doing it the wrong way, which is I mean that's a huge service that you're providing to the world by doing that. I can only imagine it's just going to grow and grow.

It will being here will help as well, you know, being getting the message out there for sure. Uh the there's really this this is really where I think that we're making our biggest impact, you know. I mean, medication. Yes. Right. No problem. Compounds. Oh, yeah. Right. You know, but education is the key. And that's when you that's when what Lar and I realized, you know, you know, five, six years ago. I was like, that's the key. That's the key because, you know, AI is great, right? Talk about AI, you know, it's in your world. So, AI is great, you know, but there's no accountability around AI. There's no accountability around the education that was provided to you.

What I've learned in training models is, you know, is that is what you put into it. And so, you know, at the end of the day, um, you know, how it's drawing its sources, uh, it's so easy to have it get off track and start to hallucinate and lie to you and do all sorts of crazy stuff. That's all right. You have to be careful. It'll be a great assistant to physicians, providers, uh, pharmacists. It'll do all sorts of things. I think it help in drug development. Um, certainly in radiology, it'll have an impact. But I think at the end of the day, one of the things that's um a little scary is like it goes unchecked. Like you're saying, if we let it go unchecked, it could be dangerous. So I have to be careful with it.

Yeah. Because because because of a lack of accountability, right? You know, because people will take that information, apply it right, clinically. Um you know, for a physician, can they take that information apply clinically? A patient can take information apply clinically with no accountability and create a problem, right? And that's why we have to be careful. It's funny, Leonard said something the other day that I thought was profound. He said, "This year, a physician or provider will be sued for using AI in a diagnosis in a treatment plan. And this year, at the same time, a a physician or provider will be sued for not using AI in a treatment plan, which is wild, right, to think that that's the world where we are today."

I know. I know. And it's I I it's fascinating to me. I I just every time I think about it, I'm like, you know, how is it going to affect pharmacy? Is it a fire? It's great. It's right now it's helping the world, right? We see the positive as much as possible. Um you know, and and we just I think I think I think at at this point is we got to be better at putting guardrails around it. That's all it is. Because right now there's no guardrails around anything. So why put some guardrails around it? I think we'll have a little bit better, you know, better feel, you know, how to to leverage it. For sure.

It has to happen. It will. Um because otherwise, you the problems are so big. I want to ask you more about you as a person. Why? One thing I've learned about you and spending the time that I have with you is that you're really kind of obsessed with uh the like being the best. Where does that come from?

So I I was I was playing sports as a kid early on. I was pretty I was a competitor early early on. Um but I'm a quiet competitor, you know. I'm like I So I was playing tennis. I came to the United States playing tennis. That's how actually I came in. I was playing sports. Um and um you know it was it was interesting because I was playing at high level when I was 12 years old internationally. Um, and so from 12 and then I went to college, play D1 and all that stuff. Um, so it was always in me to be to be to be very competitive, you know. Um, but very I'm I'm a quiet force. I like to lead from behind, you know. I like to really kind of engage people around me to help me get to the goal.

Because there's one thing that I learned because I was playing a sport where you have to be by yourself on a tennis court. One thing that I learned is there's so much you can do, right? We all have some type of limitations, you know, and I always love to play doubles in tennis because you always have another person with you. And I remember when I was playing singles and the feel that I have when I was playing doubles because now I'm not by myself. I have another person that's just pushing me to do this, to do that. Give me another thing like serve on his back end, serve on his forehand instead. I want to move on this side. You get, you know, and I was like, "Oh man, I always love that feeling, the team feel, you know, the team spirit, you know." So, um, when I opened my businesses, that's that was my mentality. It's still my mentality where let's go and do amazing things, right? But we have to do amazing, not just me as a team. We've got to go and do amazing things, you know? And um everybody's got the role.

You know, you can always you look at people's kits, right? And you can tell sort of um you can also look at people's underlings in their organizations and you can tell what kind of organization it is. Your assistant is so great.

Thank you.

I mean, she is phenomenal. I mean, you know, I got to tell you story about her. I think it's Jessica. She'll be she'll be pretty happy to actually talk about her. She's so funny because she's stressed out right now. She's from Brazil. Yeah. The World Cup for them is like the World Stop. Yeah. The World Stop. And all is Brazil playing soccer, right? [laughter] That's how they So anyway, um that was the best move, one of the best move ever for me. Um is to kind of understand that I need to have someone with me that can help me right throughout the day, throughout the month, right? Get engaged as much as possible. Basically, I need I need an expansion of me, you know? So, when I was going through the interview process, right, I interviewed a bunch of people. I mean, it was crazy. Is like I think we had like 200 applicants that we yeah we'll put on LinkedIn just for fun we had 200 applicants you know because like this is another thing about longevity like wellness everybody wants to be part of that so she put on LinkedIn I was like oh my gosh oh my gosh I want to be part of this they'll they'll drop their job to get into this they pay less money so they can just like get some peptides you know it's like crazy so um the so went to 200 interviews she had the least experience came down to like top three least experience and I did something funny.

She interviewed with everybody, right, that you know me. Um, and they think they know what I need. So, everybody did not pick her. They picked somebody else with more experience at doing the, you know, the the admin stuff like the pharmacy admin, supplement admin, compliance and you know, you have to have a lot of experience. So when I went through the whole thing, everybody picked somebody else. I was like, "Well, thank you very much because that's exactly what I don't want. I want that person. I know what I need." You know, so I picked the person that nobody else wanted, you know, and she's been amazing. It's funny.

Yeah. You know what? That's that's so great. It's like, you know, you you trusted your gut and it and it worked out so well. Her energy is so amazing. You know, just brings a certain level of positivity to any conversation. It's so refreshing. You know, it's it's great to see people who really love to do what they do. And I think that speaks to the next piece, which is, you know, you're a pharmacist. You also got an MBA and you and you built two companies. Yeah. Two very successful companies. Yeah. Um at a point in time where you're standing on the threshold of really what I think is probably going to be the biggest thing in healthcare that we've ever seen. So, how do you create culture? I always want to hear from other leaders their philosophy around culture. How do you create the culture that really wins?

That's a really really awesome question. Uh but thank you very much for u for the good words there. Um, you know, I I I definitely see myself as as a leader in training. Um, I think that leadership is constant training. You know, you're constantly learning. Um, you know, and and what I said to you earlier is really for me the foundation which is you have to understand your own limitation. It starts by that. So once you understand as a leader that you don't know everything, you understand that your limitations are you know are there and that you need to learn from others to get better. That's recognition of a this is part one. Part two is now once I understand that my limitations are right there, where can I go find people to complement me to get to where I need to be and what kind of culture can I create around that as a team to elevate these people to the same level at which I'm elevating myself to go towards the same goal.

For me, culture is about communication, teamwork, and vision. Meaning that if you're able to actually communicate efficiently, because there's people talk about communication all the time in very easy way. No, communication is tough communication, good communication, and everything around that. Be able to disagree, agree, disagree again, agree again, and love each other, right? Because the intent of that communication is to make the whole organization move forward. The minute that you have that intent because you're misaligned, well, you're not part of that culture anymore. So, communication is extremely important because that's for me is just like the the most important thing you can do because if you don't communicate, then there's nothing else. There's there's nothing left. So, when I think about it, I think about communication as being one of the biggest element of it.

You know um then your ability to actually find the right talent to complement yourself is the key right the people piece I call it because a good leader has the ability to recognize potential leadership in other people but more importantly a good leader is also able to help the other person elevate right because you got to you know coach and counsel that person to actually elevate it right because nobody but can people don't recognize have leadership skills right some of the best hire I ever had is by going to Chick-fil-A and waiting in line with someone there that just oh my gosh this is leadership and training right customer service everything else in between right so it's your ability to actually recognize in other people and find the right talent bring them together and make them part of that culture we're talking about in the communication side to have the right intent to go towards the same goal.

Teamwork. Teamwork. Yeah. To feel a part of to feel. Yeah. Exactly right. You have to connect. You have you have to be part of the whole of the whole organization at the deep level. No, forget the financial side. Yeah. Financial is right there. But you got to really believe in it. You know, believe in the goal, you know, and you know, one of the thing is during, you know, during reviews, team reviews that we do, you know, we do once a year review. First question I ask them is like, hey, what's the goal of the company for this year? If that goal is not aligned with everything that we've been working on, we've got a problem. You see what I'm saying? It's like, you know, because we putting money initiatives and if you're not cannot articulate what the goal of the company is, we got we have a problem, right? So, it's oh yeah, it's all through communication.

So culture for me is really that um is you know you know your ability to understand you know your your um as a leader understand what your limitations are and your ability to go find the right people and elevate them to a certain level in which they're all you know aligning with the same goal as you.

Yeah, it becomes so evident. You see it in in the company and it's it was amazing too, you know, when we talk about acquisition of talent um at times and I've had this happen to me. I've done it where you get thirsty, you know, hey, we've got to fill this role right now. You try to make the best decisions you possibly can in the moment. Sometimes it doesn't always work out and man, that can really cost you.

Yeah. You know, time is the most important thing to have, man.

Yeah. And I think all I think that's that proper planning that's an ability to actually operate out of a plan and really kind of see what's going look at the metrics of the business and understand okay if we continue on this particular trajectory what will we need at that point at that benchmark what will we need in order to maintain quality. And I know that you are a person your companies are known for producing the highest quality products um you know and so we probably don't need to. I mean, although these listeners who are listening to me now, if you're going to see a u longevity medicine, cellular medicine, functional medicine, concierge doctor, whatever you want to call it, uh make sure you're asking for progress, uh peptides, let me tell you, we're going to talk about quality.

I don't mind talking if you mess quality because it's a word that everybody's throwing out there, right? It's very easy to say, oh, we have quality this, we have quality that, but what is what is quality? And I like to talk about this because um in in the pharmacy world, right, in in our world, I have compounders, true compounders. Yeah. Uh you have quality standards, you know, those are recommendation um set forth by quality entities, you know, governments, state board of pharmacy to basically set a standard of quality, right? So most compounders follow those set standards of quality. You have to do this. You have to wash your hands. You have to do this. You have to gown this way. You have to send this for for this testing. You have then you have other people that are no. This is the this is the the gold standard. No, no, no. This is the standard. See what they require. Okay. Good. We're going to go two, three, four steps ahead of that to set our own quality standards based on the way we want to do business, right? And that's us.

So when you do that, obviously you don't have the ability to mass-produce stuff out there because that's not what you do. You are creating very highly quality products with the best testing possible to ensure that customers are getting the right products. Right? That's what we do. So, so when you think about progress pharmacy um and all the otheries that we do business with that we're the part of part of the network, we want to ensure that we go above and beyond what is set forth by this the gold standard and quality. Right? So having an accreditation does that mean that you are the most qualified pharmacy out there or you follow the best quality right that means that you meet the standard you meet the requirements set forth. We don't function that way. We want to go above and beyond. They say send one testing for one batch, well we'll send multiple testing, right? They say just test this no we test other things too right because we want to make sure that this batch is not going to come back and say it was a problem downstream, right? Those are the differences that we do, right? And and you know, it takes time.

Let me give you an example. If you're a physician listening right now and you call a pharmacy and you tell the pharmacy, can you make this product for me? A product is a sterile product. And the pharmacy tells you, oh yeah, no problem. I'll have it for you in 10 days. That's a problem because there's a certain testing that needs to be done to ensure that this product is actually stable, potent, sterile, have no end toxicity. So you have to have a standard that takes about 45 days to ensure that your formula that you created for that patient for that doctor is up to par. Nobody can create a new drug in a compounding site for sterile right in couple days. Doesn't work that way, right? I will not do that. Now, can you make a one little batch for this person? Potentially, yeah, sure, that's no problem. But usually, that's the answer you want to get. You want to get, okay, well, it's going to take me time to actually develop this through R&D for you because you really want to go deep in this. You just don't want to just mix a few things here and give it to the patient because you don't know what the stability of. You don't really know what the long-term potency of the product is at day 30, at day 45, you don't know. You have no idea, you know. So, that's quality.

I want to ask you something about that. You you sparked a memory or a thought process for me. There's some stuff that's going around right now where people are um actually taking and we you know, again, we can't mention these actual names of these peptides, unfortunately, just because of the rule.

They're going to change very soon, don't worry.

Yeah, I hope so. Oh my gosh, it'll make so much better for us. Um, when we can actually give the real information, uh, that'll be phenomenal. Um, because the people that tend to watch this, the demographics are, you know, people who are high performers who want to, you know, maximize everything in their lives. So, it'd be good for them to actually know. What I would say is stay close to what you guys are doing. That'd probably be great. Um, and that directory of uh providers that is coming uh from you guys is going to be huge for the world. Um there are people that are mixing peptides together. Um so let's just imagine there's one out there. I'm not going to say what it's called. Uh but it's one where they take three peptides and they put it into one vial. So I'm not clear how you can take three different peptides, three different amino acid chains and have them be stay separated uh from one another. How does that actually really work? I mean, the pH levels must be different things. I mean, like, how does that is that is that that's not the standard, right? That's not the right way to do.

No, it's not it's it's definitely not the standard. Uh, for sure. Um, you know, it's very funny asking this, Jock Putney. I was in a I was in a meeting with some um people that I think kind of dabble in the resource side. They asking questions and and they're, you know, they carry some of those uh cocktails, I call them. Um and um one of the reason why they're saying that they're okay with it is because well the patient doesn't want to inject three times. They don't want to inject 15 times a day. Right? So I understood exactly where they're coming from with their argument here. Um, however, if you're going to engage into um, peptide therapy, you have to understand that those long chain of amino acids are very sensitive. Okay, you have to understand that part first. Um, there's really no testing long term that have been done to show that together they mix extremely well for a long period of time. There's no testing that's shown, hey, together they actually will go and bind to the receptor site together because you just created something funny. Okay? So, there's nothing out there showing anything. In in theory, yes, you moving putting them together, you're going to have this outcome, right? But zero testing done. So, we were all speculating on something, right? And and then that's that's the message here.

Um in the spirit of trying to save money, a lot of patient will say, "Can you mix them together?" And a lot of pharmacy will say, "I'll gladly do so for you, but I don't know if I can provide you long-term potency study and stability study on this product because I'm not sure if they want to be stable in that in that solution. I'm okay with it." Fine. We'll do it for you. We don't function that way. Okay, you won't do it because no because we we don't know, you know, we have to do R&D studies on this and see exactly, you know, and R&D research and development studies to see if it's really going to be stable, right? Um, and then we have to see actually if the intended outcome is actually still going to be there because I don't know it's going to bind to the receptor site, what's going to happen when, you know, when when you inject. We don't know all those things. We're speculating.

Am I a big fan of this? No, I'm not. I I think that I know a fewies out there doing some studies, thank God, uh on on this product, but as of right now, based on the information that we have, I will not recommend doing so. I'll recommend potentially the worst thing that you can do. Seriously, here's one thing you can do. You can have one bottle of peptide A, one of peptide B, one bottle of peptide C. I will not mix them together. I'll take peptide A5. Same syringe. Peptide B5. Same syringe peptide C that way just a one-time deal because when they're in the same vial over time because of storage you know storage condition syility I don't know what's going to happen to your vial you know what I mean I have no clue nobody's done any testing on it you know um so that's probably the only thing that will do if you don't like to poke yourself multiple times but the really right way to do it is just accept the fact that you should in a different injection site, administer that particular peptide 10,000%.

Yeah. Like I think I think if you're going to do it, I mean, again, I love the way that you think about less is more. Um, you know, we ran into this lady at the gym the other day and I don't know. She came up to me. She's like, "Hey, what do you know about peptides?" And I said, "Well, you know, a little bit." Um, [laughter] as her and she said, um, she's, "Hey, do you have the hookup?" I'm like, "No, no, I don't. I don't have the hookup." And she said, "Well, I'm doing this and I'm doing that. I'm doing this and I'm doing that." And I said, "Um, where are you where do you get your peptides?" And she said, "Well, I get them from this guy." I said, "Well, where where does he get them from?" I'm not really sure. Well, first things first, not really sure is not really a good idea. Uh second thing is those peptides that you're taking may not be the right mix of peptides for you 100%. You know, you should really think about seeing a provider who really knows this. And the key is to do they have the education. Have they actually spent the time to find out what's really, you know, what how does this all really really work?

You know, it's crazy. It's a crazy world out there, man.

I'm telling you, it is wild. And everybody's talking about it, you know. It's is like blowing up, you know. You know, I I wish I could say names of certain products. I can't. But, you know, there's this this this thing on Bloomberg. Uh sitting in my on my chair at work. I'm looking at Bloomberg talking about peptides like did I miss something? Is Bloomberg talking about peptide right? It's like and it's like it has this chart of GLP-1 and they're talking about the GLP-1s and then the number three peptides sold in the US is not an FDA approved peptide. Yeah. It start with a B, right? I'm like what is going on? It's not going through my pharmacy so I don't know who's selling that, you know.

But it is absolutely insane. So that means what? That means everybody's talking about it, right? Everybody's talking about it. The lady at the gym, the barbershop, the the the cashier, the register, the other person, your flight attendant, the pilot is on it. Uh the other everybody's on it. The problem is they're not going to see Chrissy. They're not going to see Craig. They're not going they're they're they're doing something else. They're getting the stuff from somewhere else because your regular PCP is not writing a script that for a peptide, right? I can tell you that. So, you know, they're on they're on Cigna, Caremark, Blue Cross, you know, it's not happening there, you know. So, what's going on here, you know, so you know what I mean?

So, they're on different things. I don't know if it's working. Of course, you don't know if it's working because you don't even know it's the right thing. Think about it. Oh, I have a I have a shoulder injury. Somebody told me to just inject something there that start with a B. I I don't know. I don't know if it's going to help. Of course, you don't know because you're injecting something else at the same time on the other side. You're mixing things at the same time. You're glowing your face. You're doing all that. Of course, you don't know. It's wild.

It's wild. You know, that's why this show, for example, is a way to actually get the message out. It's like, "Hey guys, stop. Relax. Those things are awesome. However, this is how you got to do it." Yeah. I mean, it's been so incredible for me. I learned so much from you guys all the time. And it really has come back to this notion of, you know, I thought, hey, I thought my diet's pretty great. My exercise is pretty great. I'm doing things pretty pretty much the right way. Um, but, you know, the more you learn, the more you find out that there's there's so much more to it. If you really want to live a life of health, you know, and as you always say, health is wealth, right? You know, there's a lot more to it. And I think one of the things great about all this talk is making people aware and what we have to do is help them be aware of the fact that well that's definitely not the right way to go. There is a better way to do it.

That's right. There's a better way to do it. And that's the beauty. And you're constantly learning. You know, you know a few things about peptides, but now you know you know a few things about breathing. You know a few things about listening to us, right? You know a few things about all kind of crazy stuff, right?

Oh, the breathing stuff you were talking about the other day. Yeah, that was so good.

Dude, this is too This is amazing. Um, you know, I I I connected with a, you know, gentleman that came to COMM, you know, um, he's really is amazing. He's doing a lot of work. He's his company, his name is called O2 Max. Um, um, and he fought me, you know, first of all, I wish I met him 30 years ago when I was playing tennis because nobody ever told me that I don't know how to breathe. And and sometimes and and people need to think about it. Think about it. Sometimes you forget to breathe.

It's so true. And you in tense moments you hold your breath, right?

That's right. And it's a it's it's a muscle memory thing. So if you don't train your body to breathe, open up your lungs and do it. If you don't train your body to do it naturally, normally without you thinking about it, it's not going to happen. That means that when you are in a very stressful environment, you're still stuck here, right? Because you have to remember to breathe. The goal is not for you to remember to breathe, to breathe. You see what I'm saying? So, so you got to constantly train on how to breathe. And and that's one of the biggest thing if we talked about last time I was so on our call last time, I was so passionate about it because it just blew my mind. I was like, "Holy smoke, this is it. This is the most natural thing that I've ever experienced."

I'm doing breathing techniques in the morning and I'm doing breathing techniques at night. And my day is enhanced to the next level. I sleep better. My Oura Ring is picking it up. I feel better. Heart rate at night goes down perfectly. During the day, my stress level is a little different. I can tell that you know in certain situation I'm just like mine is still there thinking clearly, right? And then in certain environment, I'm like I'm breathing like I was like, "Holy smoke, this is amazing." Right? We got to put his information in the show notes here. So, I'm pretty sure I can actually find that info and tap into that.

Yeah, I'll share that information with you. This guy has been amazing and we're going to have him again. But that's how you increase your VO2 max. You know, for me, it's like, you know what, we're talking about, you know, VO2 max, right? We're talking about talking about your your biological clock, right? Your age that's being you know your ability to actually see how well your oxygen is being utilized by your body you know uh as a substrate. So, so you think about all those things and you think about okay cardiovascular wise how can I improve my cardiovascular output just by breathing right without taking any single drug that it's it's like it's crazy I I love it you know and um again no drugs right [laughter] yeah I know yeah it's crazy what I'm learning out there but yeah breathing is freaking amazing I love to get to that topic but it's an amazing thing uh to see what's happening right now and I think what the the interesting thing about COMM is that you guys are bringing so many I mean that pre-conference day was so cool to see kind of like what you guys are doing at NewHX which we haven't even talked about. Uh I guess we'll talk about NewHX on Cellular Systems but you know the notion of uh really figuring out how to maximize how to optimize and I think that um more and more people are just going to want to do it. They're just going to do it.

Yes sir. And you say the new ways idea that's something that needs to be in a CVS in five years.

Oh, you know what? Can you imagine? Can you I mean I can see it for sure. I mean it just makes perfect sense. Like remember we just going to get a blood pressure cuff, you know this.

Yeah. Yeah. You want her? Yeah.

Right. So now imagine getting a full diagnostic and really being able to tell Okay. And then having a full understanding of what you need in order to to optimize.

You have a good baseline.

Yeah. Because you get your blood work, we got all that stuff. Yeah, we got it. We can add a few more good things in it. You know that nobody see that we talked about power last time. The difference you go to this NewHX place, they're going to tell you, "Okay, well, can you get your reverse T3?" No, I don't care about your TSH. Thank you. Get my reverse T3, right? Um, get a few more things like this on the diagnostic side, but more importantly, just getting people access to this information, right? You know, what is your VO2? You know, what is your VO2? Putting people on somebody on a DEXA scan, get that baseline and come back and just like, okay, just go breathe a little better. Come back here. Let's take a look and see exactly how you're doing, right? Um, put somebody on a VO2 max and say, "Hey, get to your zone 2 training for 20 minutes. That's all I'm asking you. Don't do anything else. Go for a walk. 20 minutes a day. Get in zone two. That's it. Come back again." Just just very simple information to what you said beautifully. Optimize. That's it. That's all you want to do. Optimize people as much as possible.

Incremental improvement. That's it. You know, that's the one thing the other day. So, I have a friend um who just uh you know, he's a musician and he um spent a long time sort of traveling and came back and wanted to get back into the gym. And I said, "Okay, well, we're going to we're going to work you up, but my workouts are going to be a lot different than yours and and don't even think about it, right? I'm going to work you through this in a way where it's got to be perfect for you. So, don't pay attention to what I'm doing cuz that's just going to that'll just mess up your mind." So, we worked him through and he's like, "Oh man, I am so sore." And I'm like, "Yeah, and if I had pushed you any further, then you wouldn't want to go back the next time." So, it's like just a little bit. Like, let's just take this a little bit at a time, right? You don't want to overdo it. Because I think so many times back in the day, right, as athletes, you'd see people like, "I want to push you as hard as I possibly can. I don't want to break you." Later we talk about that on the football field where you know you're not given running without water when you come back. No water man you're stronger with no water. I like [laughter] the worst idea ever right. Oh you know what I mean we we can't leave the show without talking about I mean you know it has been such a game changer for me. I feel like um there there are two products that I really love that you guys produce. One is called AKG Plus um and the other is ISO. Uh, and I feel like if you could just share this because I'm not sure that everyone Yeah. Yeah. Buckets of hydration. Let's let's let me let me let me put it this way for you. Very easy for you know for the listeners. Yeah.

Okay. There's two things you have to think about when it comes to drinking something. Okay. Electrolytes replacement or cell hydration. It's two different things. Two different things. If you are dehydrated because you just ran a marathon or you're playing soccer at World Cup, they're going to put you in some type of IV and give you electrolytes. Electrolytes are a bunch of electrolytes going in your body in your bloodstream to help you become hydrated again. Okay? So, those are bunch of stuff that just go through your body through your through your bloodstream. They're not going inside your cell to the same level as a cellular hydration drink does. Cell hydration is different. Your job is to win the cell, right? Because you want to go to the main part of it. This is this is where everything happens. This is this is command center, right? So command center is inside the cell. You have mitochondria. You have all the cells. So you got to be in it to get that cell that shrunk from being dehydrated into going and going back and being healthy again.

Plump of the mitochondria exhaust would create the ATP.

That's right. That's right. So don't get too confused about electrolytes replacement and cell hydration. Electrolytes you dehydrated is after the fact. Cell hydration is proactively making sure that your cell are nice and plump like you just talked about because what happened when they're nice and plump a lot of beautiful things happen right because now you're actually sending the right message. The proteins are folding perfectly. You're creating downstream app. So think about it. Energy comes from your cell. If your cell is shrinking, right, because it's not working properly, it's hard to create energy from the cell, right? To go out there and through a cascade of events make your life better. Okay, we're not going to go in details because that's biochem 101.

But what what I can tell you is that if you hydrate yourself, everybody went through, you know, if you went to school and you had biology one, you know that you want a nice environment in your cell to be able to actually send the right message. And that's the whole point with ISO, we're trying to do one thing. We try to actually take a bunch of peptides, okay, and get them into the cell, right? By formulating a product that we know as pharmacies work at shielding well at penetrating the cell throughout smokers getting products inside the cell right to actually get the right peptides to the cell itself. So that's a beautiful formulation that that we came up with that is one of the number one foundational um product that we include in every protocol that we do.

Meaning that if you take a GLP-1 for example, one of the number one side effect is you stop drinking, you stop doing everything crazy, right? Yeah. Okay. By the way, you know, you also have cells in your muscles, right? So you need to get hydrated, right? Right. You're beautiful. Great. You know, you're looking great because you have actually water in it. It's like [laughter] okay it's like you know there's water in your muscle so they expand better right it's a very simple concept but it's it's it's a it's a foundational concept hydration. We are how many percent water right it's like what 70 80% right yeah so if you think about those things you think about the importance of a foundation when it comes to hydration that's extremely important right because we do a lot of things throughout the day that does the opposite right it creates the opposite coffee. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Diuretic. Exactly. Think about things that we do. You're walking, you're sweating, you go, you are losing water. You're losing power to your cells. Right. So, the concept of ISO is just that simple. It's not electrolytes after the facts. That's electrolytes job. Your job is to proactively power yourself through hydration. And that's what we're doing with ISO. And I think people like you, people like me that are drinking this thing like religiously can see the difference, can feel the difference.

I mean the thing I would say to anybody is you have to see a provider to get it. So uh find the provider that has ISO and when you do uh you know send send us comments and we'll we'll try to direct you uh to the people. But the bottom line is I would say use for 30 days. 30 days so you can truly you say two weeks. Yeah, it probably work to two weeks. It probably work a week. But [snorts] use it for 30 days because that's going to give you such an incredible difference that once you try to change go back to water all by itself, it's not going to work. It's not the same.

No, it's never you never go back. It It's really not the same. You know, what I like about ISO is it forces you to drink more water. That's why people tell people this. It forces you to drink more water. That's it. You got to drink more. You know, drink more fluid intake. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Um, so I'm glad you asked that question because that's, you know, as I'm getting back myself into working out and stuff like that, my son's playing a lot of tennis down in Florida, proactively hydration, hydrating your cell is just so important, especially as you're getting older.

Yeah, it's it's incredible. You know, AKG+ alpha-ketoglutarate, right? Um, what's the mechanism of action there that makes that work so well? I mean, I asked Leonard the other day, can I just put it in my water, you know, and drink it throughout the day, kind of like I do with ISO. Um, but I also pre-workout, you were the one that turned me onto that and pre-workout. And man, I got to tell you, that stuff is just like incredible.

Yeah, it's great. So, it's a great question, too. You know, um, I like to get things simple for people to understand. Okay. AKG is a very important um component of what we call a Krebs cycle. The Krebs cycle. Some people probably heard of it, but it's cellular respiration. Okay. So, what you need to do is you need to understand that in order for yourself to stay optimized, forget about all the other details around it. It's boring. Is that AKG is a very important part of it to ensure optimization of that respiration. Okay. So when you have a product like that at a certain dose, okay, uh which is why we have AKG Plus, okay, when you have a product like that at a certain dose, well, you're enhancing that cycle, right? A 12-year-old Krebs cycle is um extremely optimized compared to a 50-year-old Krebs cycle. Yeah. [laughter] So you need to actually think about it this way. Okay, what can I do to enhance that that that cycle again that respiration process, right? And AKG+ works extremely well um as you're doing that. So, you know, to be optimized of next level IQ, I'll think about drinking this stuff, you know, even pre-workout.

Yeah.

You know, um if you don't have the the the beauty of of being as disciplined as Jock Putney, just drink it anytime you can. You see what I'm saying? Just just get in your body, you know? Just get in your body, you know? Drink it throughout the day. Give it a shot somewhere. Put in your smoothie. Enhance yourself. Yeah, that's all it is, you know, and that's what it comes out to AKG+ is a very good, very, very good point there. I'm glad you talked about it, too.

I mix that. Um, so personally, what I do is I'll do, you know, in my drinks, you know, in the morning, I'll do uh ISO before I before I leave work, I do my ice get my ice in there. Um, I'm a little bit I'm a little bit aggressive on creatine. Uh right now I I really I'm really just digging deep in creatine. Um but I I had a little bit more creatine in it.

Yeah. So there's five grams in a serving which is two scoops as is currently formulated. Yeah. I would I would 7.5 personally. That's me.

So you just put a little extra in. Yeah. Um and you guys switch from um leucine to taurine. I noticed a difference. The taurine seems to give you like better overall wonk like it's better energy overall.

That's right. That's right. And you know for us too is you know we have the synergy as well right that I take that after.

Exactly. So taurine this the research that came out with taurine was just fascinating for us um in in the in the cocktail that we already had. It just made so much more sense to add to in it and I love to because of the energy level that it gives you.

I was already taking a capsule form. Yeah. And when you guys switched I was like cool I don't have to give him in the capsules.

Yeah. So you have creatine, you have taurine, you have glycine. It's just so much.

So, I'll add 2.5 uh grams of creatine on top of that. I'll add ketone into it as well, right? Mix that AKG Plus. That's a that's a nice stack. That's my That's my drink for the day. So, I carry my my my my my water with me throughout the day. I'm just drinking that, shaking and shaking and drinking that throughout the day, you know. But at least I'm getting that, you know, and um I I I see the difference like when I'm traveling, for example, I'm not I don't have that with me because of TSA. So it's it's it's a I can see I can feel the difference, right?

I can too. I can I can tell energy level is not the same. Um ability to think. Think about, you know, hydration, you know, comes in your cells are everywhere in your body. They're in your muscles, they're in your brain, they're in your heart, they're in your gut. All right? So, you know, you're just not going, you know, it's not muscle hydration, it's overall cellular hydration. So, that means that your ability to think is better, your ability to exercise is better.

Yeah. You're you're doing it at the foundational level. Correct.

Yeah. It's it's a way different uh you know that helping people understand the difference between electrolytes and osmolytes and how that all plays such a huge role. Um you know, you can feel it in the gyms like when you start to really click in. Oh my gosh. You know, you're like when you're really firing, you're like, "Okay." And you just don't fatigue as fast. You, you know, I feel more so so much stronger. Peptide. I wish you can send an enemy giving me goosebump because like I felt it. I think was the only peptide I I told you that actually, you know, once once Peacak approved this and get it favorable, I'll be able to say it, right? Hopefully, I saying uh but with that that with that one peptide, man.

All right, so here we are. Uh it's been a minute. Uh that ketone stuff is uh working. I I feeling pretty good, man. I feel I feel really good throughout, you know, throughout the conversation. I was just like, "Oh, man. This this actually I can I can feel the energy and that's the thing about ketone for me is like when I first try I remember when I talked to Frank about it is like I was sitting there like at a conference he was like I was there for like two three hours and he came in Frank is just dump that in my coffee started drinking that I was like holy smoke what's going on there and I was feel awesome."

Yeah just the energy level for me it's just it's great yeah I just I love it you know what until once you started to use them you just can't it's hard to stop yeah I can't you can't imagine not having it and then when we first tried it back in the days. The taste was like so tough, but compar I mean the taste is so much better. It's so I mean Yeah. Like so easy to drink as I love it.

Yeah. It's it's you know for me it's like I don't even think about it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Just like boom. I know. I know. Next level. Next level. Just like you my man. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate you, man. Great to have you on the show. Thanks for to see us.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. A pleasure. We'll be back again for sure. I hope so. Thank you. Thank you.