Jim LaValle - Peptides, GLP-1s, and the Product Problem: What Longevity Brands Are Missing

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcast. If you're interested in staying up to date with the Future of Fitness, go to futurofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now onto the show. One theme keeps coming up: the right technology can make or break your business. That's why I'm thrilled to introduce our new presenting sponsor, Perfect Gym. Perfect Gym isn't just another gym management system. They are part of the Sport Alliance Group, Europe's leading fitness software company that has officially entered the US market. Now, I've seen this movie before, but here's the difference. They've opened up a U.S. headquarters in Boston because they understand that the American market deserves dedicated, localized support. After digging into the platform, one benefit especially stood out. They are simplifying the nightmare that keeps business owners up at night migrations. These guys were able to migrate one mega client with more than 250 locations in six different countries in just 20 days between two payment runs. No disrupting operations, no member loss, one seamless operation that simply works. Now, if you have ever switched platforms, you know how terrifying that process can be and how truly impressive that feat is. At a high level, here's their secret sauce. They give the power back to the operator. Instead of forcing you into their closed ecosystem, their Perfect Gym Marketplace connects with over 120 integration partners. So want to use your own app, your preferred payment processor, class pass for booking? No problem. Whether you're running a single studio or managing a multi-location enterprise, Perfect Gym was built from the ground up for multi-club operations. They have invested a ton into this platform, and now they're bringing that European engineering excellence to America. The migration experts have arrived. Check out perfectgym.com where enterprise level sophistication meets operator freedom. All right, here we go. Jim, welcome to the future of fitness, man.

I'm I'm happy to be back to the future.

Yeah. It's uh, you know, I I got to spend some time with you last night. Um we're here at the Connected Health and Fitness in Los Angeles. We're doing this in person. Um, I got to ask you some questions, and Jeff Sweefle, thank you for for making the formal introduction.

Right.

But uh this is a real treat for me, man. You know, I've been around the industry for 17 years, and uh you are on kind of the Mount Rushmore of our industry in in so many ways. You've done a lot. I'm not gonna get into your history and your background because there's so many things that are really um you know relevant to today's world that I want to extract information to get value from our audience. But um maybe let's start with this. This is always an interesting question to me. If let's say you know you sat down on a plane, right? I I would imagine it's business class, but you don't have to answer that. Um I hope it is. Uh and someone asks you, like, hey, what do you do for a living? What do you what do you tell them?

Uh I said, how long of how much time do you have on this flight? First of all. Yeah. Uh I you know, I I I typically tell people, you know, my primary thing is is uh I research fixing people's metabolism.

Okay.

And then everything flows around that, right? So whether it's you know, assessing labs or whether it's um looking at nutrients or peptides or biodentical hormones, or but it's really in the end, I have this never-ending passion for ISS metabolic function for human beings. I haven't done many, you know, frogs or anything. But human beings, I've done in quite a bit. And I and and I have this um just research desire to figure out how do I create the best possible outcome for someone's health. And that takes into account a lot of different categories, you know, whether it's you know, technology on like peptides or small molecules, is it training, exercise, the value of good diet, like all these pieces are all a piece of like kind of who I am.

Yeah. It must be a very exciting time for you right now because there's a lot, I mean, personalization, um, preventative health, like all the buzzwords that go into just this this new model that's being created, um, due to so many different factors, right? Yep. Um, I mean, the consumer demand, consumers are more knowledgeable than they've ever been, right? Up without a doubt. The science is, you know, the um the ability, you know, the the self, the quantified self is is stronger than ever. That's right. Um, we got peptides, we got you know, hormone replacement and optimization has become mainstream. Um, you're getting all these factors, longevity, whatever that category is, everyone defines it differently. So it's a lot, it must be very exciting for you right now, um, because you've been working on this stuff for a long time and you have an opportunity now to kind of help sh get us into this next phase of whatever it is. So, yeah, how are you feeling about things?

I I I I call it being 40 years lucky. You know, you know, when I started when I started at this in the literally in the mid-80s, right? I you know, people looked at me like, you know, what are you talking about? You know, and and it's incredibly exciting now. And it's exciting, I have to be honest, it's exciting because after four you know, over four decades in it, like getting some recognition and people coming up to me and saying, hey, you changed, you know, the way I practice medicine, or hey, I remember the programs you did at lifetime, or all that is um, it feels good. I mean, it really does feel good. I mean, I and I and the the coolest thing is is I still wake up every morning and want to keep innovating and shaping the future. I mean, I I I have this insatiable just thirst for it, man. I mean, I don't even know how to put it. I mean, I you know, maybe it's maybe maybe I need medicated. I'm not quite sure. But I but honestly, I I really just get up and just like today, I I you're being here today and talking to people and getting their perspective, and then all of a sudden you start see looking at something a little bit different, and it takes you down a whole new path of hey, here's where we could go with something, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's uh your energy is undeniable. Like you, I mean, we sit here even at dinner last night when there's no cameras or recorders or anything. I'm like, I can just sense like you're having a great time.

Oh, yeah.

Like it's you're having a lot of fun. And uh so I some of the things there's many things I want to ask you questions about. I mean, this could this could easily be one of those like five-hour Sean Ryan show podcasts, but we just don't have that amount of time. Um let's start with GLP1s.

Sure.

Right? That's uh I was here last year at this event. The GLP one panel, you were just on one. Last year was the high the most attended. I was in the room this year for the one you you were at. I think it was very highly attended compared to some of the other ones. Um, which means that people are what's going on, and the stats keep changing, right? There's one in eight Americans. Um the uh the introduction of Wagovy's pill is gonna change a lot of different things. So yeah, give us your take right now on you know, where are GLP ones, like if we're in this hockey stick acceleration of of this medication, right? How do you feel about it personally? Do you think it's good, bad, indifferent? And then how um what what is it that we don't know yet about GLP ones from your research?

Yeah, so I think the first thing is I think they're uh tremendous. It's it's literally a seismic shift in how we can work with someone's metabolism in order to uh correct a lot of things that happen either because of stress or their diet or their overtraining or undertraining, environmental burden, there's all kinds of reasons why um we start to see problems in you know glucose regulation. And I think they're fantastic, but there's a big but. I mean, I honestly. One is there are people that it is not their answer, either they don't tolerate it or that it's it's not what's working for them. So we have to keep that in mind. The other one is that people that use it and think, hey, all I have to do is take this injection and I'm gonna lose weight. Uh it to me that's dangerous. Uh in fact, that without proper information on how should I eat? How should I be exercising? Am I managing my stress? Basic things like are you taking fiber while you're doing it, are you on magnesium while you're doing it? Are you uh getting enough protein is probably the number one thing. Sure. And what are your strategies to get that? So if you if you don't do them correctly, and I really am passionate about teaching people how to titrate their doses, it's how I teach people in the certification course at American Academy of Anaging Medicine, and it's how I did it at Miora at Lifetime, is titrate the dose, get to where you're losing a couple pounds a week. That way you can get what when it's time to come off, the the receptors aren't so dependent on that massive injection, the highest dose right away, right?

And that's what most do, right? If you get a prescription, they're just gonna heavy dose you, is that correct?

That's right. And that's to me, the individualization of dosing is kind of the next generation that's coming with GLP1s. And obviously, we've got the new GLP1s that are coming out and um small molecules like orphoglyprin. It's it's a small molecule, it's not a peptide, behaves a lot like a peptide related to GLP1, but it's it's a different category. And then Reditutride's gonna be, you know, you know, you're the next big, big thing. I mean, uh, you know, obviously, you know, you know, I mean, I know it's gonna be big because it was on Humorin's podcast.

Right.

So Right Right, but seriously, it's a big, it's it but you know, it's it it's so 300 million downloads, yeah, it's gonna be big.

Exactly.

That's what I'm saying. So so the thing is is that GLP1s um are one piece of the puzzle to performance health and really creating a great health span for yourself. And putting too much emphasis on it, I think is problematic, and not realizing their benefit is problematic. And I think the thing we're not recognizing yet, and we don't I don't think we know enough about it is been out for 30 years, we know how they work in type 2 diabetics. It's been a drug, a staple for a long time.

Right.

But it's different when you're giving it to people that are healthy, they're just overweight. And so what is how is that going to change? I'll give you a good example. Metformin. Metformin for type 2 diabetes. Then everybody started talking about there's a big book that came out, metformin for longevity, it's amazing. Well, then they found out people that don't have diabetes that take it end up having trouble putting muscle on and they get a little catabolic. And so dosing takes for people that are basically well versus people that are real are two different things.

Yeah.

And we have to understand that.

Well, you know, um, did you follow this whole thing with jelly roll?

Yeah.

Right? And his his story. Amazing. 300 pounds he lost, he went from 500 to under 200, and metformin was like a big part of that. So you hear these stories too, and everyone wants to rush. This is just human behavior, like, well, I want that. Give me what that guy has. Yeah. Right?

Right.

And I think that's one of the things that we're seeing, you know, right now is like obviously, you know, GLP1 as a category, is everyone just thinks, well, it's gonna I'm gonna lose weight, it's gonna help me lose weight fast. But I don't think really people understand like the underlying, like, how does it actually affect metabolism? And like, you know, there's a lot of different things I keep hearing, and I don't study the science like you do, obviously, but like, you know, uh different forms of addiction and other things. Like, there's a lot of other benefits, but also I'm sure a lot of other things that we're not seeing that are detrimental to one's health. So maybe explain it to me like I'm a senior in high school.

Sure.

Right?

Yeah, I mean, well, look, here's the biggest thing. So if you so mitochondrial health, like everybody's talking about the mitochondria now, right? The powerhouses of your cells, keeping those healthy. Uh, that's a big feature of what they're finding out that the GLP wants to. So if you think about it, um when you have insulin resistance or you are a person with diabetes, you have something called metabolic inflammation. So metaflammation leads to inflammaging or inflammatory aging. So why would a GLP1 help somebody uh reduce their risk of Alzheimer's? Well, it's because you reduce the when you when you reduce the, and this is my working through it clinically, okay, right? It's not like it has a bunch of different buttons that it pushes and hey, it works on your brain, and hey, it works on your kidneys, you know, there's all these different buttons. It's really a central theme of when you reduce insulin resistance. You're not pumping out too much insulin, your blood sugars are good in your bloodstream, you're not when you're insulin resistant, you create a lot of uh inflammatory compounds like something called lipopolysaccharide. Like so people with insulin resistant have a lot of that in their bloodstream, gets into their brain, triggers inflammation, and now there's dementia at risk. So is it true that it shuts down some of the inflammatory signaling in the brain? Well, sure it is. And is it true that you're reducing insulin resistance? Yes. And is it true that the reward center, it is one of the areas that it triggers in the brain, is new like the nutrient sensing part, the the food noise. It does have an impact on that area. So your hunger goes down.

Right.

But what you know, when when I explain it to people, it's like that the center of this is the fact that you were insulin resistant, now you can't access your fat. And when you can't access your fat stores to burn them, you start make you start collecting a lot of visceral fat. And now that visceral fat is making all kinds of inflammatory compounds that get released into your body. Oh, interesting. So when you think about, I I like to think of GLP1s as like that lifeline. It's a lifeline to get your metabolism back on track, to stop making um so many signals, you know, from different systems of the body that are leading you down a chronic illness path. So now you're erasing those signals, getting your body back in that homeostasis. Here's the you know, where the conundrum is. People go off of them, and if they haven't corrected their sex hormones, say you're a 60-year-old female and you're you're you're low in in estradiol, of course you are, but we know that that has an important part to roll in your health as you're aging as a woman. Um but if you haven't done that, you haven't looked at your gut health, you know, you're stressed out, you're gonna go off that GLP1 and you're gonna start gaining weight right back. And the problem is you've lost 30% of your weight or more in lean mass. And now you're gonna get on it again. And you're you you see that that's where it can it can be an it can be a real um problem with long-term metabolic health if we're not telling people, hey, look, you need to, you know, you you you gotta manage all these other issues, should really be managed in order to take full advantage of what that lifeline called a GLP1 just did for you.

So if I'm hearing this right, it's it's a corrective measure, right? It's like a reset mechanism, but it's not something that you're gonna get on and be like, okay, I'm just doing this now for the rest of my life, because that's gonna be detrimental in numerous ways.

That's all you do, a hundred percent. There's no, and there's no doubt in my mind, well, we've already seen it. You know, we've already seen people where they it stopped working, or they got off of it and they gained all their weight back. So by so it either boxes you in to having to take it the rest of your life, but then you don't necessarily optimize your health, you're just you know, yeah, there's a certain part of it is because you've gotten thinner, and now you have less fat to make inflammatory compounds coming out of your body. That's cool, but at the same time, it doesn't make everything like harmonize. You know, your body's a system of systems, you're only as strong as your weakest organ. Right. It's that simple. And if you don't respect that, I think it's simple.

But I mean I've been saying well that's how you know if you can understand something and explain it simply, right?

Yeah, it's a system of systems. And hey, if if my kidneys are weak, everything else can be great. Yeah, but kidneys are still weak. Yeah, right? So that's why I think I love I love what GLP1s have done for people. It's given them hope. Uh it's it's like really tangible results for them. But you know, unfortunately in America, and this is just the way it is. I've been around it. It's like, hey, if I can get a quick fix, man, I'm gonna do a quick fix.

We love it.

Right? We love that quick fix.

We love it.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's where I think the danger's at.

Yeah. Um there's a lot of I guess the regulations around this is a really fascinating topic and extremely critical in how this whole thing plays out. I mean, so and and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I mean it's it's a it's a peptide, it's not a pharmaceutical, right? And this is what I've never been able to understand is like how large pharmaceutical companies can own this when it's a peptide, which is something that technically is not a pharmaceutical. Am I wrong in that? Or like what am I missing there?

So peptides, if they're studied and you you you make up, you know, you extract a peptide. So you know, you've got like three different GLP ones right now, right? So they all look a little different. That unique signature, and then they put it through FDA approval as a drug, it becomes a drug.

Okay.

But peptides are basically a chain of amino acids that is smaller than protein. And there are a lot of peptides in your body like glutathione. You know, glutathione is eight amino acids, and that is a dietary supplement. But another peptide is oh no, that's not a supplement. That is in the it's that that's a in the nether world of oh, we can compound it, but it's not an FDA-approved drug.

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It's very con I mean, I have to be honest with you. It's it's it's black and white, kind of, not not really. Right? How can I say it? You know, because it no, I no, I went, I look, I went um to the FDA hearings. I actually testified at the FDA hearings on peptides. So I mean I and I've just turned in about 4,000 pages of research um to be able to kind of look at the new ways the new legislation is going to work. So I I donated a bunch of research. So I'm very bullish on we should be able to allow peptides to be utilized by people. Obviously, we had this issue of category two peptides, meaning the FDA said, Oh no, all these peptides you've been using, uh, all of a sudden they're not not safe for human use. Yeah, which you know, nobody's gotten hurt from BPC 157. Right. But, you know, unsafe. Take them over here. So then what happens? We get this spring up of research-only peptides, which it's interesting. I didn't realize so many people were researchers. Crazy. Do you know? I thought I've bought them all. All these labs that are out. I'm a researcher. Did you know that? I didn't. Well, I could kind of tell by the question. So I thought you were a researcher. You know, here it turns out I was right. Yeah. But I mean, so you've got explain that to people.

Yeah, yeah, go on to.

So research peptides are, research only is, they don't have to go through the scrutiny of for human use compounded pharmacy regulation. So there's a lot to when you go to make something for pharmacy and you're going to inject it in a human being, so there's there's all kinds of steps and procedures you have to document to say the final product is safe. And it is what it says it is, and there's no impurities in it, and you can take it. Research peptides, none of that's necessary. Now, some people may do that voluntarily, but as we know, I mean, now we're having labs test them, and there's a wide variety of hey, this had adulterants in it, this had toxins in it, this one didn't have the peptide in it, this had 70% of the peptide in it. And so research only is, you know, not for human use, not for animal use. Oh, okay. I mean, I you know, I didn't realize you were an amphibian, so I was, you know, it's like I got it now.

A lot of people don't know that. Yeah, I'm just figuring it out. It's kind of weird I don't share it. Yeah, exactly.

You don't share much. But but my point, my point is um, I think that set us back. And I think there was this spirit, you know, compounding pharmacies. When when GLP1s got popular, right? And you know, Lily and Novo ran were run out, they had shortages, they ran out of stock. Compounding pharmacies saved that business because they were making it and making it for the shortfall, and that's a that's a beautiful thing. That's kind of the beauty of you know compounding pharmacy, right? They're there for you. But all of a sudden, when they could make enough, now all the negative chatter came out and said, Oh, these things are you know unregulated and not made well. It's like, well, wait a second, they were made well when they were saving you, right?

Yeah.

So I think there's this middle ground that has to happen where the Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA give us clear guidance on what peptides are allowed. One, uh, how they're allowed, you know, like you know, they're gonna have to be for human use and made in a pharmacy. Or maybe there's something that could be made orally and then sold at, but what's that category? Because it's not a dietary supplement and it's not a drug, right? Officially. So I think there's a lot of gray in it that I'm just hoping for clear guidance that you know people because people rely on these things. Like when when a when a lot of the peptides were kind of taken out of category two, uh, or you know, through category two, I mean there were peptides that people were you know relying on for their health. And I think that was you know, that's what kind of pushed people into, hey, and if I gotta get them somewhere, I'll get them, you know, through research peptides, right? Yeah. So it's it's very complicated for me.

What what would you if you had the power to just okay, you had this magic wand, Jim, and you could be like, this is the way I want it moving forward. You could just dictate the regulations, you could usage form of you know injections versus like what would be ideal to you? What would you hope for in the best case scenario?

Well, yeah, you got uh, I mean, I I think drug companies should be um look, they spend all the money to do the research on them, right? So there's a certain amount of honoring that you know, that thought that they put all that research and time and money into it. And then I mean compounding pharmacy, if they can create unique differentiated products with that raw material that, you know, just like the laws say, if you can have a uh unique application that you now can take that raw material and add something to it that creates added value if it's not commercially available, fantastic. I think that there should be categories of peptides that are available, like you know, for example, um bioregulators, right? Which in the past had been extracted from tissue of animals, right? You would take adrenal gland extract or liver or whatever. But why can't we just synthesize those now in a lab and make a pure one and be able to sell those still as a dietary supplement, right? Because now, but it's not coming from a food anymore, right? A gland. It's uh now it's being synthesized in a lab. So I would love to see more access orally. Uh but uh, you know, on the injectables, I really think that injectables shouldn't be sold unless they pass the rigor of for human use. I really that's fair. I own yeah, and only because you know when you and this was the big argument when I was up FDA was when you inject something in your tissue, your immune system could react to it pretty dramatically. So if you're injecting something that's you know impure, adulterated, or you know, we don't know what's the immunogenicity is to it, but that's I think kind of important. So there should be like a uh maybe a minimum standard of studies that are published that would support the use of a peptide. And then it should be made to be safe, prescriptive, or over-the-counter. I don't think it's that much to ask.

Because it I think a lot of people are drawn to these research only because of cost. I mean, majority of it, right? And accessibility and like a lot of things. Like it's really easy.

Well, why and why is it costless? Because you don't have to spend.

Why does it cost less?

Well, because you don't have to spend $100,000 on the front end with all the validation studies in order to get it to the point where you can say, here, I have my bat, and that's for my batch. Then every time I make it, I have to create other tests that are another $25,000 for every batch. So when you don't have to do that, the cost is less. And and and so that's the you know, I I like my first degree was pharmacy. I'm a huge believer in the elegance of pharmacy practice and making things, and and I just, you know, you uh you you want to be able to ensure safety. In the end. Safety is what counts.

Yeah.

You know?

So when you go to these um these research only, what what what have you heard as far as like safety concerns? Like I mean, you mentioned a couple things, like it's only a certain percentage what you're getting. It doesn't have anything at all, it's got some toxins in it, like anecdotally or or real through research, like what are some of the real risks that you've heard that maybe should scare someone, like an amphibian, right, into saying, like, hey, second think what you're doing.

Yeah, I I and once again, I know there's research companies that have you know, they they go and they get independent testing and it looks good. The problem is that it's all over the place in terms of that. Some are, some aren't. And there's been um, you know, I was on a podcast, a big podcast, and we were talking about this. And you know, the the host was saying, Yeah, I had a couple of my friends going and buying research peps, and they really felt bad. I mean, they had it, you know, inflammation in their tissues, and you know, you can you know, you could like because it's endotoxins, a big thing you're trying to filter out of injectables because endotoxins do little things like cause heart attacks. Yeah. You know, you know, you can you can have life-threatening um, you know, effects. And like I said, I've got nothing again, like I love peptides. And I love people to have access to peptides. I just want them to be safe. Like, that's it. That's the that's the number one thing. Be safe. Make sure because they're not you have to imagine you're taking five say, for example, um semiglutide. Yeah, 500 micrograms.

Tiny.

Tiny in a little tiny injection, and it has that kind of effect on your whole body for a week at a time.

It's wild.

It's not like you're taking a botanical or a supplement. Right? I mean, that's why I I think a lot of people they don't understand that these are very powerful. You're injecting them into your body, and your immune system is gonna see that, and your tissues see that. And um so a lot of the people that are buying them and just using them on their own and they're not doing lab tests, and they don't have any practitioner guidance, you know, it it it's it's playing Russian roulette. I mean, you know, for example, if you're buying the GLP1s and you're not looking to see if you have pancreatitis, your liver enzymes elevated or not, and then you go to inject that. And I have heard that problem occur, right? So there's it it's that thought of these very powerful things that by law anything that you in anything that's injectable is considered a dangerous drug. It could be B12. As soon as it's an injectable for human use.

As soon as it breaks the skin.

It it's a it's a dangerous drug. So now you're buying stuff that's not it's breaking the skin, injectable, yeah, but it's not going through any of the rigors of for human use.

Yeah.

I, you know.

I would love to know what uh syringe sales look like on Amazon over the last three years.

I bet it's pretty good. I bet they're doing pretty good. I bet I bet the syringe companies are loving that. I mean, and those are probably coming from another country too. It's like, are they sharp? Who knows? You know, is it an accurate number on that syringe?

Yeah, all that.

But no, no, I I remember seeing on a Facebook uh GLP1 group, yeah, somebody they had their syringe pulled up, and the question on the group was, is this the right amount? Oh fuck. That's what I'm talking about.

Right, right.

And it's like, well, it depends on what the concentration of the peptide you have is, right? I mean, what's the strength per milliliter? I I you know, so so that's the kind of stuff that you go playing with a little bit of a loaded gun there.

Yeah.

You know, and and as I said, never met a peptide I didn't like. I've written over a hundred monographs on peptides. I you know, I chair the International Peptide Society. I'm a fan, right?

Yeah.

But I'm also realistic. Yeah, I'm all in.

Yeah. Well, let's get into like the world of peptides because I think there's certain ones. GLP1 is that's the one that everyone talks about, right? And I think there's there's BCP 157, people talk about for injuries. There's um summerelin, itmerelin for HGH, right? There's a couple the ones that are popular, but what are like give us the wide array? Like, what are some of your favorite peptides?

Yeah, I mean, I like uh I mean I love using Surmarelin with GLP1s because it helps to maintain lean mass while they're losing weight and their skin doesn't get as creepy. So it's kind of cool when you start looking at how do I combine these things, right? A little Frankensteinian, but you know, it's cool.

Like it's cool.

Yeah. Um, I like I I I love um epitalin. Uh and the reason I love that is that you know, we live in this world of blue light, high stress, sympathetic dominance, right? We, you know, we're we're basically on high alert our nervous system. You know, people's heart rate variabilities aren't all that great, and their resting heart rate's not great, and you know, not sleeping. That throws off what's called your superchiasmatic nucleus. So your brain, called the master slave clock.

Okay.

It is. I mean, you gotta try spelling that. I mean, I still have trouble.

I don't do public spelling.

Yeah, but that's a good idea. I mean, so but that master slave clock is regulating all of your hormone signals that your brain is going to push out to the rest of your organs for the next 24 hours. And so when when they did research on this, just giving it 10 days um um uh you know every six months, it created a dramatic increase in survival in elderly people that already had pre-existing heart disease. Like, I mean, the data was crazy different. And it makes sense to me because when we lose our circadian rhythm, I mean, I don't release testosterone when I'm supposed to.

Right.

Right? Morning, mid-afternoon. I don't release cortisol like I should. So instead of normally being high in the morning, low in the afternoon, lower in the evening, nothing at bedtime, up goes the melatonin. Now all of a sudden you got it backwards and you go to sleep and your brain's wide awake, and you're, you know, you can't go to sleep, you have latency, and you wake up at 3 a.m. thinking about work.

Which is that resonates.

Yeah, right? It's like but it's that, it's it's it's that understanding that you've got all these things in rhythm. So I love you know epitalin because of that, or epithalamine if you want to use the bioregulator. Um, I love KIS peptin's another one. Kispeptin uh is a peptide that um it basically works on your limbic system in your brain. So that subconscious part of your brain where you know the stress is coming in. But it it's very powerful for helping, you know, men get their Latig cells to wake back up. Say start making testosterone again, maybe they've had too many head hits, or you know, once again, stress is a big one. When your cortisol goes high, you stop making gonadotropin-releasing hormone, and now your gonads are saying, hey, we don't need to make this testosterone. Why? We're under chronic fight or flight. We've got to worry about survival. Why worry about procreation when you can, you know, you gotta survive, right? That's how your that's how your body works. And I so I love kiss peptin. I've seen it work for women, and uh, you know, women had trouble with conceiving, you know, so really helping to re-regulate their cycles, and uh so that's fantastic. Uh great in terms of just mood, so that's that's that's really solid. Um, and then you know, like the the ones I love are the ones that heal the gut. I mean, there's so many people that have got gut permeability problems, food allergies, food sensitivities, and of course, you know, the you know, the gut problems lead to autoimmune problems, which is rampant in our country right now.

Yep.

Uh so I love you know KPV. KPV is a three amino acids. Three little amino acids together makes up KPV. And KPV acts like a biologic, it shuts off tumor necrosis factor alpha, TNF alpha in your gut. Like it shuts it down and it tells your your cells that line your intestine, quit being so ticked off. Come on back, immune system. Let's re-regulate. I think that's a really neat peptide. I think it's gonna become very popular, especially if they get it back on category off of category two. It's gonna be very popular. Um, larazotide, another one, they develop that for celiac people. So people with celiac, uh, their gut's permeable. They make a lot of something called zonulin in their gut, which breaks the tight junctions of your intestinal lining, and now the gliadin and gluten get in there, their immune system hyperreacts, and now they get all inflamed and foggy headed and fatigued. Um and the lorazitide brings the tight junctions right back and shuts down the zonulin. So, I mean, what's cooler than that? You can seriously, like you so think about it. You you you shut those back up, you turn off the inflammation, then you put a little topper, little like little cherry on top.

Yeah.

BPC 157, which helps to rebuild the mucosal barrier. So now I've got this system of repair, right? And then I look at the immune system and think of you know, thymus and alpha one, uh, thymus and beta four. Everybody calls it TB500, but the 500 is actually the dose. It's thymus and beta 4. Uh, those likewise can be utilized in how do I start to rebuild and repair, right? So, you know, there's a lot of cool ones. I mean, everybody's up on you know SLUPP332 right now, right? It's like slump, oh I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that one, right? Because that one, you know, helps you know burn fat. Not a lot of human studies on that one yet, but uh you get a lot of people that are really in it, especially in the you know what started all this is the bodybuilding community.

Of course, of course. Of course, that's where all that's where all the good stuff starts.

The best chemists.

The guy in the locker room, yeah, slinging it.

Slinging it needles, yeah, yeah, slinging it. Yeah, exactly, right? Unfortunately, a lot of those guys are d dying young, unfortunately. So I'm not quite sure on that. But but the point being is um I think that uh there are so many peptides in different categories. When you look at the brain, for example, yeah, I mean, you know, just brain health, like sparing the neuroinflammation, things like you know, cerebralcin or or dihexa. I mean, there there's just there's literally not because your body makes all these peptides, thousands of peptides to help create regulation, right? Whether it's for your skin, copper peptide, GHK, AHKCU, right? For the hair, AHK is for the hair, GHK is for getting collagen in the air. I mean, there's so many applications that I think if we get over our fear of um, we need providers to step up and get educated in them and use them and be able to organize how you can track the results. One of the biggest, and I have to agree with this, one of the biggest criticisms was well, there's not enough clinical studies on it. But you know what the FDA does accept? Real world evidence. So if you're in a clinic and you set your data up correctly, like age, gender, what the reason for giving it was, what was the dose, what was the outcome. That's real world evidence.

Okay.

And you could and you could and you could submit that. So like I'm I yeah, I I I went it was kind of funny I came back there with my tail between my legs. Honestly. Yeah, which is hard for me to watch something. But I did. Yeah, because I mean, literally, you send in your the slides you're gonna talk about, yeah, and you know, they've got uh experts, I mean, honestly, highly trained PhDs and MDs that have basically filleted your presentation and they get to talk for about an hour, and then you get up for two minutes, and you're supposed to defend yourself, right? But but I learned so much about what's expected. And now with the new administration, um, I think there'll be some favorable changes for peptides. I'm I'm sure hoping, and the noise sounds like that's gonna happen.

Yeah.

Um, but I do think we still have to do our homework and collect data, make them safe, create a way that you know that that it fits, so it's not just the wild west. Because I think it's a little bit of the wild west right now, honestly.

If if people are following my same train of thought, it's like why now? Like, why is this all coming now? If these have been they're so prevalent and there's so many different forms, and there's so many applications that are beneficial, and it's like if you're not getting excited about listening to talk about like I want to try that, why would I want to try that? Like, I want all those things, dude. Why why why uh why is it now? Why is it now? Why hasn't it been around forever?

You have to understand when I'm educating docs on it at you know, International Peptide Society, we have our meetings at the American Academy of Aging Medicine, right? So we do our docs, and docs are just like that, too. Like, I want to do that. I want to do that. Yeah, I want to do that.

You'd be out of your mind not to say that.

Yeah, yeah, of course, because they got all these cool you know outcomes. Um, I think one, it's learning um, well, which ones when.

Okay.

Right? Yeah, like how do I use them? You think of it as like you're building a found a house. You know, you buy an old house and you gotta rebuild it. And there's a huge crack in the foundation. But you're convinced that it needs windows. Before the foundation, which is sinking, right? The slab is changing.

Yeah.

You probably don't want to put windows in yet. Maybe you should fix the foundation. And and so there's peptides that you may want to apply for foundational. And I think why now is I you know, I think COVID changed everything. I think post COVID people's appetite for information was big. I mean, obviously, I mean, I was probably using peptides for at least a decade. You know, nerve peptide. What's a peptide?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, insulin's a peptide. We've been, you know, using that since 1921. I didn't know that. Yeah, peptides have been around since 1921. I mean, it's like, you know, I mean, uh, you know, it's one of those things people don't understand. You know, peptides have been a part of medicine. And you got probably, there's probably 60, 70 drugs. I don't have a number or exact number, but there's a lot of drugs out there that are peptides. Um, but the point being of the why now is one, I think the explosion, obviously, social media has, you know, everybody is on social media, they're on Instagram, they're, you know, it's like, hey, you know, want to look like me? Take this peptide, right? There's a lot of that going on. Um, and then there's great information that's out there, but I think it's because look, people get frustrated when they're not feeling well. And I think post why I said post-COVID, I think people used to accept not feeling well. Okay, it's part of aging. Right. It's okay if I'm diabetic, I'm just taking my meds or I'm hypertensive. What and this is, you know, I have no like, you know, political opinion about COVID. This is me just talking about it as a clinician. I own clinics, I educate, you know, faculty at universities. I mean once COVID hit and people saw how frail they were, like people with diabetes, more of those kind of people died. People that were obese, more of those kind of people died. People that were hypertensive and had heart disease, more of those people died.

Right.

I think that got people going, you know what? I need to do something about my health. And then that means because I'm not getting an answer from my doctor, my doctor's still kind of giving me the same stuff. I need to look in other areas. And I think that was part of the gestation, the flowering, the the the the like why peptides came in, because they are, my opinion is they are a quicker way. I mean, I've worked on people for 42 years, okay? When I started looking at peptides, uh, they they just change people faster. So you get quicker results, more gratifying results. You help people get to the you know kind of their balance point quicker, and that's wonderful.

It is.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, but it but it's but I do really believe that the why now is I think it was a consumer-generated demand where the research has been there for a long time. There was an underground swell of this information and use, and then it surfaced.

Well, the consumers' demand for better health and wellness is undeniable, right? It's it's it's happening from the ground up, and it's gonna trigger a lot of changes. I mean, I think how how our healthcare is is delivered, insurance models, like everyone, everyone's demanding something better. That's right. And um, I think this is probably a bad analogy, but it's what I use. It's like what was the unbundling of cable? Like people were tired of paying a ton of money for this shitty cable product, so then it it unbundled, right? But now what's happening is now we're end up like we got seven different subscriptions and probably paying more than I was for cable back in the time. But the point is, it's like the consumer demand in it and it was inevitable.

There was a time when it was great to have cable because remember when you had that box and you just had a button. Oh, the black box you can push the 72 channels, it made your decision so easy. Now it's it's like, I don't know where to start.

Yeah.

What am I gonna watch? Yeah, but but like but that's but that is like healthcare. Yeah, it's the same thing now, but the unbundling is well, what do I do? Yeah, I've heard about stem cells, I've heard about TPE, I've heard about EBU, you know, what uh what try for should I do hormones? Should I not? Yeah, you know, there's all so now all these choices are there. And and I think you know, self sovereignty is important. I agree. I think people should have the right, that's my body as long as it's something that's not unsafe, right?

Well, they should know.

Yeah, they should realize safe. Yeah, like getting into a you know, if like if there's a cobra you know, right here, right? I should probably shouldn't agitate it and hope that I get bit.

Yeah.

Those are obvious things.

I would probably get bit. You'd probably be fine. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, and I think that's that's to the point is like the consumer's demanding it. That's it. And the amount of knowledge that's accessible, whether it's good or bad, in podcasts have played a huge role.

Of course. Right?

Like tremendously big role.

Great podcast. I mean, honestly, yeah. Big role.

Yeah. And it's been really exciting.

And um I guess we've got AI right now, which I think is in a very it seems to be the glue.

Yeah.

Right?

I think it's gonna be interesting how it evolves because it's like, yeah, right now I look at it almost as if if it's not managed well, it could kind of fold back on itself and people are gonna trust it less because they can't vet the info. But I think there's enough impetus now to start creating really quality engines to vet your information. I think I mean I think that's gonna be incredibly important over the next decade. That's gonna shape things more, in my opinion, than any other single thing that we do.

Well, here's I and people who listen to this, I've used this code so many times, but it stuck with me. It just blew my mind when ChatGPT released their uh the announcement for their ChatGPT health, and they set in a statistic that 230 million users weekly inquire about health-related issues. 230 million weekly. That if that doesn't tell you like what are people doing, it's becoming the primary source of information and even primary care in an interesting way. Right. And uh I talked to Rob Wolf, I'm sure you know Rob Wolf, and we talked about like how he created his own Grok doc and like how people are doing it, and then I was uh preparing for a panel today at the event where people are like, well, I don't know if I want to give it my information and my data. So that's like a thing. So data security, but I think most people, at least I'm an idiot, so I just give it all to Japan T and just hope for the best. I have the paid one, so hopefully it's not everywhere. But the whole point is like this is happening, right? This is happening, and we're gonna have to, you know, industry is gonna have to react and they're gonna want to leverage it because that's one of the beauties of a capitalist nature is that you know the cream will rise, right? So it's gonna be a very interesting time. One last question for you because I I want to get this. Well, in this world of health span longevity, I think you use the term health span. Is that your that's your preferred? I like that. Yeah. Yeah, I do, I do too. Um in for this industry that we're in, the fitness and and wellness industry, and I know you're deeply in um in the MiR program at Lifetime. That's one of your babies, right? Um, why haven't we seen one tremendous brand come up to the top in the world of longevity and health span? Like, is it there's a lot of challenges to it, but like I'm I'm curious to get your thought. Where where are the leaders going to be?

Well, I think, you know, uh, you know, one of the reasons I went and uh you know went in with lifetime was I thought they have a right to win in a certain segment of the population. They've always you know tried to be at the front leading edge. They you know believe in the healthy way of life, right? So I I think long longevity and health span mean different things to different people. So I think it's hard to be a single brand. Uh maybe. I uh I so you know some people wanted to be able to uh you know travel until they're 85 and are gonna be happy, and other people want to be able to, you know, deadlift 600 pounds when they're 85, right? And so there's different meanings to what what health span can be. But here's for me, the the baseline is we're just now really getting an understanding of how important managing your lab values are, much less any of the other things that surround successful health span. And I I a great example is uh you know fasting. You know, and uh the Keck Center for Longevity, University of Southern California, uh they developed a program called uh Prolon, right? Fasting Mimic Diet Kit.

Yeah, yeah.

Five day kit, it mimics fasting, and it is really effective at changing the markers related to aging. And at the same time, we still get the difficulty of people going, Oh, I gotta do that again. I gotta do that again. Right, right. It's I think one of the brands is that I think there hasn't been trust yet. Like, who can I trust to give me good information that's actionable, and I'm gonna be able to measure that. And by the way, how am I measuring my health span and longevity? Uh I I was I'm a big believer in the traditional labs like cortisol and you know, advanced lipid panels and glucose and insulin and markers of inflammation, but we have all these new labs coming out, you know, that may be or may not be validated. And so I just think we're not there yet.

Yeah.

That's all that's all it is. I think we're we're just not there. And there's gonna be somebody that's into front that gets lucky, right? They're in the right place, right time with the right message. Yeah. And there may be some other companies that may have even had a better mousetrap that didn't make it.

Well, what I've seen, and this is my observation, is that at least in this industry, we're looking for the business model first, but we haven't really solved for product, if that makes sense. Like there's no, you know, mixture of like these things, like I'm sure you know, I'm you're you guys have a formula, like everyone gets their blood work, right? You do probably physical assessments and all kinds of sleep assessments, right? So you're kind of doing this huge assessment phase, but it's and that's uh that's what I would say is like the productization, but people always want to put the business model forward, right? We haven't got the product yet. Is that accurate?

I think it's I think that's really well. I mean, I mean, to be honest, I think we spent a year on what each step of the journey is gonna be. Yeah, what is being measured, why is it matter, what's the communication, and so therefore, when somebody goes through it, they get what they expected they were going to get. Yeah, right, which is what we should be doing. Yeah, right. And you know, we've got a very high success rate, high retention rate. Results are fantastic, but I think it's to your point, you're looking at the business case going, we gotta get into longevity. Okay, but for your brand, what does that mean? And what what are you going to offer?

Right? Well, you know, to steal Rob Wolf's words on this podcast, too, he's like we're we're kind of majoring in the minors most of the time, right? Like it's like we still 90% of this is exercise, nutrition, sleep, right? The peptides are amazing, right? The the hormone replacement is amazing. All the other cool stuff that we've been talking about here are all great, but like still, and this is where gyms and health clubs deliver, is like a fundamentally healthy lifestyle trumps just about everything. And that's we're still kind of there, but everything else is pretty awesome.

Yeah, no, I yeah, and it and it yeah, I I've yeah, I mean, I've been I've I've been exercising now for 52 years, right? Like I remember, age 13, I started, right? Yeah, um, and it's undeniably what you need. Now, what do we have to the but the beauty of it is now with wearables, is are are you recovered enough to train really hard? Because you know, we have that old you know thing instilled in us of you know, if you're gonna train, train hard, hard, hard, hard. And I I think even that we're in the minors.

Yeah.

But we but it's great that we what gyms deliver on. You know, you you create belief, you create come out, you know, there's a there's a social structure that kind of drives you forward, makes you eat better, makes you want to go to the gym and train, and uh creates motivation, which I think is incredible.

Yeah, awesome. Last question, man. If you want um people to, after they're done listening to this, go one place to follow you or check out something online, like what's what's the one place you'd like them to go to?

Uh, the real Jim Laval on Instagram. You know, it's got all my Miora posts, some ones that aren't uh everything that I'm doing. Yeah, real Jim Laval, it kind of uh it all meshes there.

That's fantastic. Jim, uh, it's been an honor, man. Thank you so much for doing this. Ladies and gentlemen, I love it. Jim Laval. Thank you, sir. That's great.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Menace. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it. iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futurofitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.