Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety in 2025 — Dr Jonathann Kuo
"One nerve injection could instantly reset stress, anxiety, and trauma."
Here's a conversation with Dr Jonathann Kuo, my podcast guest this week on That One Time with Adam Metwally.
He’s a double board-certified physician blending Eastern and Western approaches.
He’s known for pioneering neuro resets, interventional mental health treatments, and cutting-edge longevity therapies.
Below are some of the key concepts we explored in the episode:
Learn how a “Neuro Reset” injection can rapidly halve PTSD symptoms.
Understand how microdosing GLP-1 may supercharge insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammation.
Explore practical ways to combine peptides, psychedelics, and daily habits for long-term mental wellbeing.
Timestamps:
00:00 Understanding Stress and Anxiety
03:03 The Interconnection of Trauma, Stress, and Anxiety
05:57 Innovative Approaches to Mental Health
09:07 The Efficacy of Interventional Treatments
11:59 Exploring Root Causes of Mental Health Issues
15:06 The Role of Inflammation in Modern Health
17:55 Hormetic Stress: Sauna and Cold Plunge Benefits
20:58 The Journey to Longevity Medicine
24:12 Personal Insights and Daily Routines
27:10 Cultural Influences on Medical Career
30:04 Innovation in Medicine and Risk Management
33:12 Research and Clinical Studies in Practice
35:48 Daily Habits for Longevity
39:33 Exploring Peptides and Hormonal Health
44:18 Microdosing and Longevity Benefits
47:16 The Role of Psychedelics in Mental Health
51:43 Transformative Experiences with Psychedelics
58:08 Shifting Perspectives on Traditional Medicine
1:02:27 The Future of Preventative Medicine
1:08:03 Generosity in Medical Practice and Community Engagement
It’s up on YouTube, Spotify, X and everywhere else.
YouTube
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Here’s the full transcript:
Speaker 2 (00:00.172)
Welcome to that one time with Adam Metwally, the podcast conversing the pillars of health, wealth and wisdom. We are at the Beautiful Music For A While studio and I’m with Dr. Jonathan Kuo. Hi Dr. Kuo, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you my man. Good to have you. This is a long time coming. So, we’ve got a lot to get into. So what is stress and anxiety? What do those words mean? And what is causing the increase in prevalence of it in the world in 2025?
Hi, such a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:17.454)
this video.
Speaker 1 (00:30.03)
Stress and anxiety, feel, is a super common topic now. I think a lot of the stressors of modern life, what’s going on in the world, the kind of deluge of information and, you know, from different sources is, you know, causing a lot of people to be imbalanced in their kind of fight or flight and rest and relax states. And so stress and anxiety kind of go hand in hand. You know, if you’re living in New York City and, you know, doing all the things like you’re, you’re, you’re going to be, you’re going to be feeling these things at some point. Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So how does it tie in with trauma, stress, anxiety and trauma? How do those things tie into one another?
Well, trauma, if you’ve had trauma, causes stress and anxiety, especially anxiety. You know, think all three of these things are very well intertwined. If you have one of them, you probably have some component of the other two as well. yeah.
What’s, from your experience, what do you think is the biggest, most impactful pillar to break down, to begin to reset your nervous system, to move away from being highly strong and highly stressed?
Well, I mean, there’s the kind of more conservative ways of trying to improve your kind of rest and relaxed state. I mean, getting away from the trauma or anxiety-inducing life factors and situations. And then there’s the breathing, the meditation, the exercise, kind of the grounding. Those are kind of the basic methods. And then, you know, if you kind of need something a little extra, then...
Speaker 1 (02:02.53)
you know, the kind of things that we offer at Extension Health are meant to kind of be that next level of intervention. Yeah.
What do you offer? What’s the most interesting things you’re working on at the moment in this space?
So we have a division that is specifically for mental health and that’s the interventional mental health division that I started a few years ago. And interventional mental health to us basically means using more techniques to fundamentally change the course of anxiety or PTSD or even depression. And so this is a combination of therapies.
we do a very special procedure called the neuro reset, which is the injection in the neck that blocks the fight or flight state by injecting the stellate ganglion. And then we also do a vagus. The stellate ganglion is injected with a long acting local anesthetic similar to lidocaine. Okay. And what that does is it blocks the nerve signal pathways and resets them. Once those nerves actually come back online, they.
What is it injected with?
Speaker 1 (03:03.778)
work a little differently. They are slower in firing and so it kind of slows down and kind of resets the fight or flight state of your body by blocking those nerves.
Interesting. I recently bought one of those Vegas nerve stimulators, and I’m not really sure if it’s doing anything
Yes, vagal nerve stimulation in the vagus nerve is a hot topic these days and there’s quite a few kind of devices out there that can kind of help with that. You know, in our specific case, we actually inject the vagus nerve directly. This is, you know, I’m one of the very few physicians that does this, but you know, the vagus nerve is located kind of next to the carotid artery and you under ultrasound guidance, you can actually get right next to that nerve and inject it. Yeah. kind of.
what we call it, doing a hydro dissection of the vagus nerve. And so next to the vagus nerve, we put a combination of things that can be helpful for a nerve, such as glucose or dextrose. We put peptides and sometimes we put exosomes or growth factors next to that nerve. By hydro dissecting that nerve, you free up the nerve, you free up the nerve and kind of bathe it in a column of fluid.
And so the theory is that that can help with the function of the vagus nerve, which is the largest cranial nerve in the body and also is responsible for a lot of the communication from your body to your brain. So it innervates the diaphragm, the gut, it’s responsible for your immune system, it’s responsible for a lot of things. And so by strengthening and improving the function of the vagus nerve, can you potentially improve all these functions?
Speaker 2 (04:34.412)
So with this Vegas nerve stimulator that I bought, am I wasting my time here?
No, no, I mean, I think they can be certainly useful. I think there’s a lot of data these days. There’s quite a few stimulators out there that I think are quite helpful. I’ve actually played around with a lot of them because this is kind of what, you know, is a subject matter of interest to me. Yeah.
have a preference, one that you like the most?
yeah, I mean, I like one by Hoolist, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s a good one. I like one by Parasym.
that one. Yeah, the price is very though.
Speaker 1 (05:07.5)
Yes, yes they are. But you know, I do think they help. In Parasem they have a lot of data actually supporting their kind of usage. I’m a fan, I’m a fan. I mean, we are actually actively studying the vagus nerve injection. We’re in a study right now recruiting patients to kind of see what changes we see with a vagus nerve injection, looking at parasympathetic symptom scores, looking at HRV, resting heart rate.
things like that. we’re, yeah, in the active process of, you know, writing a paper on that. Absolutely.
Can I join the study? That sounds fun. I’m actually down. Are there any risks? Like what’s the potential downside of all of this? I mean, Needle’s kind of scared of it, freaked me out a little bit.
Well, I mean, it’s an injection in the neck, okay? It’s done under ultrasound guidance. It does require a skilled operator because this nerve is actually right next to the carotid artery. But we’ve done several hundred cases at this point, at the very least. And under skilled operator, I think you’re gonna be fine.
So do you do this whole procedure yourself or do you have someone else who does it?
Speaker 1 (06:22.318)
I’m the main one that does it. Our other physicians are trained to do it, but I’ve probably done over 2,000 or 3,000 of these neural resets at this point. It’s one of the things that I’m known for, and people travel in to see me for that. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Well, count me in. That sounds interesting. Maybe we’ll vlog about it. That could be really fun. I’d be dead. Yeah. So you mentioned that you began the mental health, it’s an interventionist mental health arm of the business recently. What sparked you to want to do that?
We’ll document the whole thing. That’d be fun.
Speaker 1 (07:00.686)
I was an interventional pain specialist by training. And so I’ve been doing that for 16 years at this point. everyone that suffers from chronic pain also has anxiety. The comorbidities of anxiety and depression are very prevalent in the chronic pain population. so I’m someone that really likes to kind of think broadly and try to.
fixed root cause issues. If you can improve someone’s anxiety and depression, you can actually, you know, really help with their chronic pain. And so that’s kind of what led me down this path of interventional mental health. And that was kind of the thing that I’d created before I started the Longevity Center Extension Health. So the interventional mental health was called Hudson Minds, which is a company that we still run right now. And once again, that’s a way of a psychiatrist that leads a team.
do ketamine, the neural resets and transcranomagnetic stimulation or TMS.
What have you found to be the most impactful one? You just spoke about a bunch of them. What have you found to be the most impactful one from the overnight instant changes that last?
Yeah, mean, all three of these things can be quite impactful. mean, kind of done kind of synergistically, I think you get the best results. The neural reset or the Stalagangular Mong is really quite effective for PTSD. so with people that actually have bad PTSD, this can be a real game changer, like a real life changer almost overnight, because it’s a physical, physiological reset of that kind of overactive.
Speaker 1 (08:40.979)
sympathetic nervous system that’s causing PTSD. That’s one of the root causes of that. Ketamine is another one that I find is a very useful medication when used appropriately. A very, very rapid antidepressant. People in very depressed states usually respond well to ketamine. And then transcranial magnet, TMS. We have several protocols, like a Saint accelerated protocol.
also works very well for depression by stimulating the areas of your brain to kind of increase the neurotransmitter levels. The combination of TMS and Ivecadamine for depression is, in my opinion, just much more useful than being on SSRIs indefinitely.
Well, the SSRI thing is quite interesting. I read that there was a big breakdown of kind of the landmark study around SSRIs recently that came out. Let’s talk about that. that’s been, they’ve been prescribed pretty heavily since what, the 80s? But it’s no better than a placebo. Is that where it’s gotten to?
Yes, yes
Speaker 1 (09:45.56)
I wouldn’t say that’s no better than a placebo. I would say that the non-responder rate is quite high.
What is a non-responder rate for somebody that’s not?
I’m not going to quote exact numbers now, but I believe up to a third of people are just, the medications don’t really work for them. Up to a third of people, yeah.
for a of people.
And when they do work, do they work effectively or is it just a numbing agent that doesn’t solve anything?
Speaker 1 (10:17.654)
in a lot of cases is kind of a numbing agent. You people feel a little a hedonic or they, you they, they, you know, you lose your sexual drive. There’s like a whole bunch of side effects to these medications. And it’s, you know, not something that I think people should be on indefinitely for years and years and years. That’s why kind of some of these interventional procedures can help. And we’ve successfully gotten hundreds of people off psych meds using these methods. So.
There’s definitely a place for some of these medications. not saying that there’s... What’s... You know, mean, it still does help with depression, okay? Like in some cases, you would still need a pharmacological support for some of these patients.
What’s the place?
Speaker 1 (11:09.464)
You know, there are kind of the other ways these days to manage these things in a more effective manner is my opinion. Yeah. Yeah.
Is it what are they cost effective versus some of these protocols that you’re working through?
I would say so, yes. Unfortunately, insurance coverage is quite lacking. Only very recently are things like Stella Ganglion Blocks and even Ivy Ketamine. There’s some startups working on coverage for that, but traditionally, insurance cover these do not cover these modalities. And if you look at the lifetime value, if some of these interventions are really quite helpful in getting people off medications, also the medication associated side effects and this and that,
Do I think they’re cost effective? I do, I do, I really do. Yeah.
Well, I’d love to understand your exploration of say the root cause for symptom masking and how you think about that and what kind of markers or tests or investigations do you use to find root causes in stress and anxiety and depression?
Speaker 1 (12:17.836)
Well, specifically for stress, anxiety and oppression, know, a lot of these can be kind of linked to, you know, the levels of inflammation in your body. Neuro inflammation can cause a whole bunch of psychiatric conditions. gut inflammation can cause a bunch of conditions, know, celiac, you know, SIBO, like there’s so many kind of mental health can be a manifestation of a physical dysfunction. Okay.
and inflammation dysfunction.
Yeah, I mean, that’s being a little broad termed on that, but yeah, neuroinflammation can cause all sorts of psychiatric issues, you know, and there’s a lot of, you know, books and, you know, podcasts that talk about the importance of diet in managing mental health illnesses. Some people do better on, you know, say a ketogenic diet. Some people do much better on a low inflammatory diet. The diet really matters. And so you can actually fix a lot of these issues with just
Fixing your diet. Yeah.
Really? okay, so let’s just say I’ve come in to your clinic and I’m stressed out in my mind, extremely anxious, just a roller coaster of emotions. What would be a basic foundational protocol that you would put me on?
Speaker 1 (13:34.958)
Well, would kind of, know, a thorough evaluation does include like your biomarkers, your blood work and all that stuff as well. You would want them to look at the hormones. You would want to look at inflammatory markers. You would want to look at metabolic function. And so those are the basics you kind of want to optimize first. And then, you know, even in some people, if all those things are optimized, like you can still be in a kind of, you know, excessive.
fight or flight mode just because of life situations or trauma or things like that. And that’s where things like the, know, you know, ketamine can be helpful. The neuro recess can be very helpful. In some cases, TMS, transcranial magnetic can be very helpful. You know, it’s, all depends, but you know, you, do want to look holistically at a person. mean, you know, psychiatrists, I don’t think are, you know, most psychiatrists are not like looking at your blood work and looking at whether your hormones are optimized, but.
Guess what? Having optimized hormones means it definitely has an impact on mental
Yeah, well, I spoke to a therapist for a while and he, we would go back and forth for a number of years. And then one day he turns around and says to me, what if none of this anxiety that you’re feeling, cause there was a lot of anxiety, none of this is actually traumatic, trauma related and you’ve just got some physical issue. And I never thought of that as a potential thing. So I went back to the doctor and did some gut checks and turns out there’s like a bunch of gut dysbiosis.
Yeah, over the next few years and very recently actually I’ve begun to really work on focusing on the gut side of things and though the anxiety and the anxiety levels have just gone through the floor.
Speaker 1 (15:18.638)
Amazing, amazing. I mean, very important to look at. know, the gut is actually responsible for like 80 % of our hormone production in our body. So the gut is a source of so many issues.
Well, let’s sit on inflammation for a little bit longer. What are some major causes of inflammation that you see in the current, you know, 2025 modern world?
What are some of the causes of inflammation? you know, it’s a lot of them are the kind of lifestyle related, right? Poor sleep, lack of exercise, poor diet. mean, those things are the major drivers of inflammation.
How does that work?
A poor diet leads to inflammation. A poor diet leads to gut dysbiosis, ultra processed foods, a lot of the simple sugars, those can cause inflammation. The metabolic process of what happens there is your body needs to of process those kind of nutrients and the glucose spikes that you get, the glucose spikes your body needs to deal with by secreting insulin, like high glucose spikes and high glucose levels cause inflammation.
Speaker 2 (16:30.7)
Really? is the process of...
excretion of insulin, a cause of inflammation. Is that how it works? I don’t know how it works biomechanically.
Your body secretes insulin in response to glucose in your system. If you have repeated very high kind of glucose loads, your body becomes insulin resistant. If your body becomes insulin resistant, your glucose levels and your hemoglobin A1c can increase. so the higher circulating levels of glucose in your system can cause damage and inflammation.
to various systems.
Okay, okay that makes sense. And then the lack of exercise, good quality exercise, how does that affect you on inflammation level? Because doesn’t exercise cause some form of inflammation in the body?
Speaker 1 (17:27.244)
Yes, a good form of inflammation, Like, you know, your body needs like hormetic stresses to function optimally. Like all your systems, your musculoskeletal system, your cardiovascular system needs kind of these like inputs, these hormetic exercise inputs to kind of function optimally. And so, you know, exercise releases a cascade of signaling molecules in your body that are actually beneficial. Does it stir up a little bit of inflammation? Yes, okay? But exercise also.
just improves blood flow, improving blood flow throughout the body kind of helps you eliminate some toxic waste and metabolic buildup in your cells. So having adequate levels of exercise and hydration to kind of get some toxic metabolic byproducts out of your system is very important.
And then sleep, what’s the inflammation process around sleep?
But as we sleep, the sleep is the most restorative process. That’s when our brain is kind of going through, circulates the CSF and just basically taking out some of the metabolic waste that’s accumulated through the day. so that process is very important for kind of brain health in general. mean, yeah. And then when you don’t remove these toxic metabolic processes that are part of a natural cellular process, then
that could lead to inflammation.
Speaker 2 (18:48.334)
Okay, that makes sense. touching on hormetic stress for a little bit longer, what are your thoughts around the sauna and cold plunge, or the increases of sauna and cold plunge in day-to-day society?
I think they’re great. There’s plenty of literature that says sauna is very beneficial. And so, I see it as an exercise of your...
Also your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, as I mentioned, like all of your body systems need kind of stimuli in various directions, kind of function at their best. And so, you know, when you’re sauna, you’re vasodilating, you’re sweating, you’re kind of letting out toxins. And then the cold plunges too. They’re kind of shocking your system, your body releases a whole bunch of cascade of, know.
chemicals and heat shot proteins and things like that, that kind of rapid vasodilation and then vasoconstriction, you’re really also just, you you can think of those blood vessels as kind of pumping things in and out. And so good for cellular health, good for metabolic health, good for mitochondrial health. I think they are both great. Yeah.
Do you know of an optimum time for saunas and cold plunges a week?
Speaker 1 (20:01.898)
I don’t know the optimal level by off the top of my head. There’s a lot of Finnish studies that demonstrate it’s several times a week of sauna. I don’t think the literature is quite there yet in terms of cold plunges and stuff like that. Cold reduces inflammation. And so that’s a kind of a good, easy way to think about it. Yeah. Right? Yeah.
I read somewhere that if you’re looking to build muscle, you wouldn’t want to do a cold plunge after working out because you are blunting the inflammation response and that inflammation response is a positive. Do you know much around that?
Yes, that’s correct. I would say that that is correct.
So what would be the positives of, so would you say that maybe you do a cold plunge if you’re say training for a marathon and you’re just trying to survive and you’re not trying to let your body break down as opposed to building and growing?
Speaker 1 (20:58.648)
I would just say avoid cold plunges immediately after exercise. mean, several hours after exercise, can certainly, I think you can do it then. I like doing cold plunges first thing in the morning. You just take a cold shower if you want, or you can dunk yourself, you can just dunk your face in cold water, because a lot of the receptors are kind of in the craniofacial region. So poor man’s cold plunge.
Look, want to go back a little bit because you’ve got a lot of experience, a lot of history, you’re pioneering a very, interesting field of longevity. How did we get here? So I’d love to hear your early years and the processes that got you to this point.
I mean, I trained originally as an anesthesiologist and an interventional pain management specialist. I did my residency here at Cornell Columbia here in New York City. And subsequently I started a practice and my first practice was an interventional pain management. So interventional pain management is basically the use of nerve blocks, steroid injections, epidurals, radiofrequency ablations to treat chronic pain. And so I did this in high volumes. I actually built one of New York City’s busiest pain clinics.
But after a while, you just realize that you’re basically slapping Band-Aids on all these problems. And patients would feel better for a few months and then come back and they’d have the exact same pain. And so you’re helping them functionally for three months, but then they come back and they’re inevitably in decline. And so what can you do to actually fix these problems or get down to the root cause of these issues? And that’s what kind of led me down the path of regenerative medicine.
So regenerative medicine is the use of things like PRP, platelets or stem cells to kind of encourage your body’s own natural healing process. The body has a really good innate system of healing. know, when we’re young and you get cuts and scrapes, like you heal really quick. As you get a little older, you know, our stem cells and regenerative capabilities decrease over time. The stem cells get exhausted, they don’t function as well. There’s a lot of senescence in your stem cells as you get older. And so, you know,
Speaker 1 (23:16.322)
what are some kind of ways to kind of fix chronic pain? I would say regenerative medicine is kind of very high on that list. The use of platelets, stem cells. And so that’s how I got into regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine at its core, okay, is really about cellular function, all right? Because regenerative medicine helps improve the environment of these cells, okay? And so it comes down to basic.
cellular function and physiology. If your cells are functioning in the right environment, if your cells have the right kind of micro environment, they’re going to thrive. They’re going to function, they’re going to thrive. If your cells are going to thrive, then you’re going to have good physiology. So you think about physiology and cellular medicine, and that’s kind of the basis of longevity medicine. Longevity medicine is just optimizing your physiology and your basic cellular functions.
What made you want to be an anesthesiologist? Why did you choose that as your pathway?
I was always interested in, very interested in how the body works, the plumbing of the body. The body is so fascinating. And even now there’s so many things that we still don’t understand. It’s an all encompassing field and to really truly understand human function, that’s kind of the field that I picked. And then I also picked pain management because I wanted to do something that was a little more kind of,
using my hands, instant gratification, kind of procedural. I played a lot of video games when I was a kid. Yeah, dopamine hits. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, the long-term relationship with patients is something I really enjoy. I’ve been seeing some patients for, you know, over 10, 15 years now. know, that kind of relationship brings me a lot of joy. And so that’s what got me into interventional pain management. And, you know, now longevity medicine is a field that I really enjoy because I enjoy making fundamental changes to
Speaker 1 (25:18.286)
Yeah.
Okay. And where were you born?
I was born in Taiwan. I born in Taiwan. I was in Taiwan until I was in middle school. Yeah, my whole family came over. My father kind of worked for the embassy. so we had exposure to the US from a very young age. So I kind of traveled back and forth. But I kind of formally moved to the US when I was 16.
whole family come over.
Speaker 2 (25:46.422)
Was your English solid at that time? was kind of pretty, you spoke.
Yeah, I speak Mandarin and Cantonese pretty fluently, you know, those are my kind of first languages, but hopefully my English is decent.
Which is good. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder when you when you came to America, how was that transition?
It was pretty rough. Yeah. mean, even though I had basic language skills, mean, the cultures are actually very different. Like starting high school, starting high school as a foreigner, it’s like all these kids have been through elementary school together. There’s bands and cliques and social groups and this and that. And I had to find my own place and do my own thing. But I managed.
How did that process impact you in your?
Speaker 2 (26:39.34)
your pathway to medicine, do you think?
I mean, it definitely led me an edge, I think, to my career as in, you know, when I first started my practice, you know, we’re located in downtown Manhattan and Chinatown’s right there. you know, I was basically the only kind of like Chinese Mandarin Cantonese speaking pain doctor. And so I was actually able to build up a practice really quickly based on that patient’s clientele. And honestly, to this day, I still see them, you know, it’s
It’s almost like serving the community and I love that, you know?
Yeah. Okay. Cool. Did you, cause you, you’re a double board certified doctor, right? I didn’t know what that meant before I researched. It sounds like a very complex amount of study. So what, for what, how was it, how was the cultural differences a positive into making you study really hard and, and, go above and beyond everything you did?
Yes.
Speaker 1 (27:41.912)
I mean, Asian tiger parents. The school system in Taiwan is a very rigorous academic system. so you’re kind of, not forced, but really encouraged to make academics the number one priority. And I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. And so I actually enrolled in a seven-year medical program right after high school. I went to Boston University for that.
You know, it was just something I knew that I wanted to do from a very early age. yeah, that just kind of, you know, that’s that’s that’s kind of carried me through on my career path until this day.
So you made your parents proud.
Well, you can never make Asian parents proud enough, No, they’re proud of me, but you know, they still give me.
shit all the time. I bet. It drives you. Well, that’s an interesting, I want to, this can be an interesting segue. Um, you’re an artist as well, right?
Speaker 1 (28:35.406)
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:42.286)
I am, am, yeah. Yeah, I’ve always had a creative side. I grew up playing instruments and piano and stuff like that. And then I kind got into a whole bunch of mixed media artwork and,
I haven’t done as much of it recently, but yeah, for period of time, I create, you know, I produce a bunch of works that, you know, I was able to go on some international art fairs. I had some pieces of art Basel. sold a bunch of stuff and it was just a fun little side gig. guess. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, having creativity in medicine, I think is a, is a really good thing. It kind of allows you to think outside the box a little bit. And so, you know, coming up with creative solutions that are not just, you know, bound by traditional medicine is,
Kind of how I got to what I’m kind of doing these days. And even these days, I feel like being creative in terms of different modalities, stacking different modalities, thinking about the way various things can work together is a process, right? The different kinds of peptides that we have these days, the different formulations that we have, constantly trying to improve and kind of...
and improve on that process is something that I just constantly want to do. Just innovation and try to be creative at the same time.
Yeah, I mean, it’s a good outlet. I feel like the rigidity of a lot of the medical fields seems to be a bit of its downfall.
Speaker 1 (30:14.798)
Yes, yes, mean, it is a downfall, but I also kind of understand why it’s there. The medicine is a very conservative field, Especially academic medicine is a very conservative field. The FDA, there’s just a lot of regulations around how you...
should practice medicine. It’s also a very litigious society. how far outside the bounds can you step really? You’re also kind of trained not to step outside the bounds. so therefore, a lot of doctors are conformist and everyone’s trying to do the right thing and do the right job. I don’t know, day solutions require modern day problems, require modern day solutions.
there’s a lot out there that, you know, if you’re not out there constantly learning and figuring out what’s new and effective, like, you know, stuff that I learned in residency is just not really relevant anymore. Stuff that I was doing five years ago might not be relevant these days. just, yeah, you always have to be innovative. You also have to think outside the box. You have to, you know, connect with peers, really understand what’s going on out there. I think that’s very important.
do you balance that conservatism and that potential fear of litigation around being at the forefront of medicine? Because it’s kind of like a risk-taking endeavor almost.
Yes, yes, mean, you you, you, you think carefully and take very calculated risks. down. Slow down. in, you know, it also comes with experience. You know, I’ve, you know, throughout my career, I’ve seen, you know, probably 50,000 patients at this point, you know, and
Speaker 1 (32:03.598)
You do have to push the limits, I think, okay, in some cases, but you do have to kind of respect the boundaries as well. It’s a fine line. It’s a fine line that you have to toe. And yeah, I want to be innovative. I kind of want to be at the forefront of science. You know, a lot of this stuff doesn’t necessarily have like, you know, long-term human clinical data that’s double-blinded, randomized. Like it doesn’t have that kind of data. That’s the question. That’s the question these days, I mean,
necessary?
Speaker 1 (32:34.262)
You know, the gold standard is still the randomized double blind clinical study.
analysis of the randomized double-blind clinical studies.
Yes, yes, but you know, I mean, first of all, those are very hard to do, okay? And some of them you just can’t really do, okay? And then a lot of times you are just going to really kind of understand the, you know, the actual physiology and the pathway of some of these, how some of these things work, okay? And like, I’ll just give you an example of peptides, right? Like peptides are naturally produced in the body.
They’re very simple molecules. just a few amino acids strung together. All right. They break down into inactive metabolites. Like, you know, these are going to be safe. Right. Even if you don’t have long-term human data on BPC 157, we know that it’s safe. You know, and I can confidently say that it’s safe. Also just based on, you know, many years and thousands of patients that I’ve seen that I’ve put on these. I can tell you that it’s safe. Do I have the kind of clinical human grade study and evidence to back that up? I don’t.
Right? That doesn’t really exist in literature right now.
Speaker 2 (33:44.782)
How do you approach this without having the clinical support? Do you create that yourself? Do you your own studies? Just quickly though, I love doing this podcast. If it’s positively impacted you in some way and you would like to support us, please subscribe. By subscribing, it allows us to build a much bigger base of listeners, which results in better guests, better production, and a better show overall. Alternatively, please take a look.
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We have, I’ve done quite a few studies internally. We’ve looked at, know, stellic ganglum blocks and treating long COVID. We found positive results with that. We have clinical studies looking at exosomes in the epidural space to treat pain. You know, we’ve done that for the facet joints as well. We published two studies there. We’re currently looking at this vagus nerve hydro dissection to see how that works. Yeah, I’ve done, you know.
A small amount of research, as much as a small private practice can do, but we’re always trying. mean, yes it is, you know, to kind of do the write ups, to kind of publish them, the staff, need the coordination, you need people to kind of write these reports and gather the data and analyze it and write the papers. Like, yes, it’s human capital. you know, am I, you know, at the end of the day, it’s not.
I’m just contributing to a body of literature and investigating an idea that I think is valid. Once again, we’re a small private, self-funded private practice.
Speaker 2 (35:40.696)
Yeah, that makes sense. So what’s the process around that? Usually, so you come up with an idea and then you have to.
Yeah, I come up with the idea, something that we’re doing clinically and say, hey, you know what, we would like some clinical evidence, actual data to back this up. so, you know, as an example, like, you know, we’ve been using these neural resets, Stelaganglians to treat people with long COVID with dysautonomia, with POTS, with kind of those kinds of symptoms. know that it works clinically. Like, how can we prove that? you know, write the paper and gather the data. And so we actually demonstrated that that is quite effective.
So when you’re these studies, how many people do you tend to get into the study? What’s kind of the minimum effective amount for it to be statistically significant?
It depends on how great, it depends on the magnitude of your results, right? If you think something’s gonna be very effective, you probably don’t need a high N number. If you think something’s only gonna be marginally effective, then yes, you need a lot of patients to demonstrate that. One of the things I’ll also mention is we’re doing, we’re collaborating with NYU on a study looking at these stellic ganglion blocks and neural resets on functional fMRI changes in the brain.
And so we’ve actually completed most of this study so far and yes, guess what? The procedure does work. It improves blood flow to certain areas of the brain. You do see functional MRI changes and there’s a significant drop in PTSD scores. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:08.28)
Yeah. Nice. Before we move on to some of your personal stuff, before we move on from some of the personal stuff, I’d love to know, given that you are right in the heart of longevity medicine, what is your daily routine and kind of habits look like?
my personal one? Yeah. Okay.
I know there’s always an ideal that you aim to have. Maybe that list is written somewhere and you get it. Sure. mean, I,
I drink my own Kool-Aid. I do basically everything that I recommend for patients. Like my daily routine.
Start from the morning when you’re getting up.
Speaker 1 (37:48.462)
I wake up, I meditate. I meditate for like, you know, 20 minutes, I would say on average, you know, a silent, silent kind of a positive kind of, you know, self reflecting kind of thing. Then I try to get direct sunlight exposure for, you know, X amount of minutes. And then my morning routine is, you know, I have a sauna, so I get in my sauna and then I will, you know,
How long do you manage?
Speaker 2 (37:55.98)
Is a style of meditation you like?
Speaker 1 (38:16.898)
Then embark on a morning routine of peptides. There are usually around, you know, six to 10 peptides that I’m currently on and that I kind of rotate through on time.
Bye bye.
various peptides for inflammation, for metabolic health, hormones, you know various peptides for metabolic health, inflammation, hormonal support, you know I take a bunch of supplements as well.
you know, the NMN, NAD, I urolithin A, I take my metformin, I take rapamycin, those are things I do. Peptide wise, I rotate between BPC-TB4, I do three month cycles of that. GHKCU, I do three month cycles of. do two months, three months on, one month off. Yeah, of the three anti-inflammatory peptides.
So three months on, three months off.
Speaker 2 (39:05.292)
Why do you take a month off?
Just to let the body kind of reset a little bit of the receptors and it’s always good to take little breaks Okay, you don’t need to kind of stimulate the same pathways continuously for a very long time Growth hormone peptides I cycle between CJC, ipamerelin and tesmerelin I do that one month on one month off of CJC and then I’ll do IPA and CJC IPA then I’ll do tests and then I’ll take a month off I am on a rotating schedule of
HCG and enclomaphene, kind of alternate those month by month kind of for my testosterone levels. I take thymus and alpha one probably once every quarter, especially on the shoulder seasons. I find that that really helps my immune system. I take pineal on for sleep and improves my deep sleep.
What is that?
Pineal gland is a tripeptide that’s a pineal bioregulator. So what that does is it actually improves the melatonin secretion naturally from your pineal gland, regulates your sleep-wake cycles and helps with your circadian rhythm. Pineal gland.
Speaker 2 (40:05.295)
Would that be good for jet lag?
It can be, Pineal on and a pill on are good for jet lag.
So cool, I’ve never heard of that. So is that a better way to approach sleep than taking melatonin?
I think so. Yeah, because it actually increases your body’s natural ability to produce melatonin.
Yeah, is that usually the goal, especially with hormones, to improve the internal production?
Speaker 1 (40:30.67)
Correct. The kind of goal and process of peptides is to stimulate your body’s own natural processes to increase the amount of growth hormones you’re creating, the amount of anti-inflammatories that you’re creating, the amount of collagen that you’re producing. so, know, cycles of these peptides have been on for many years at this point, you know, I think have made me...
I think I’m the healthiest state that I’ve been. Back in my kind 30s, before I was doing all this, I was actually suffering from some health conditions that I kind of really couldn’t figure out. And so that’s another kind of reason why I kind of got into this field.
So what would, know, if I was to go, all right, I’m going to do all this, how much is this going to cost me a month?
Hey, listen, mean, peptides can be pricey. I mean, we’re always trying to democratize the process and get people the lowest prices we can. But hey, it’s one of those things where we try our best. They can still be pricey. Peptide for a month is typically around $250 to $300. And so when you kind of add them all up, they can be a little pricey. GLPs, I’m a fan of GLPs for just longevity in general.
Yeah, it’s the semaglutide, it’s the terezapetide and the newest reddish-rootide. And so those can get a little pricey, know, $700 a month. But you know, they help, they help. I take a bunch of Nutropix as well. do a bunch of these. I like C-LINK, I like C-MAX. C-LINK is actually really good for anxiety. We actually have that as a nasal spray. S-E-L-A-N-K, C-LINK. The injectable form of C-LINK is one of the actual
Speaker 1 (42:09.548)
You know, things that I feel like can help with anxiety quite a bit. And so that’s in our anxiety protocols. We do a neuro reset and put people on C-Lanc, whether it’s injectable or a nasal spray. You know, there’s some kind of other nootropic, you know, peptide nasal sprays that we have and that I use. New PEPT, new PEPT with a combination of NAD, NMN and L-Carnicine is something that I like.
Yeah, and then the mitochondrial peptides I like a lot too. I cycle between NAD, SS31, and MOTC.
What do think of methylene blue?
I love wrestling blue.
blue gator right now. It’s methylene blue and it’s electrolytes.
Speaker 1 (42:53.563)
Yeah, use Methylene Blue quite a bit clinically, know, it improves kind brain metabolic rate, help with cognitive function.
very sharp since I started taking that I’ve just I’m dialed in on a level that I haven’t been in a long time.
Yeah, it’s been really nice. Yeah, great, great, great. Yeah, mean, yeah, we give that as an IV infusion quite frequently in our clinic. Yeah, I do take that as well. Not on a daily basis, but I kind of rotate through nootropics. kind of stimulate different receptors.
Yeah, I mean, it’s a lot to take on for someone not in the world of it. So what would you say, based on peptides, based on nootropics, based on maybe just simple supplements, what would be a solid, basic, foundational stack that anyone could take and see noticeable improvements in general health markers?
If I had to pick one, would be a microdosing of GOP1. Okay, whether you microdose it or you’re taking an actual dose to try to lose weight. think...
Speaker 2 (43:57.294)
Even if you’re healthy, even if you’ve got, you’re not overweight.
Yeah, yeah, I put a lot of people on microdose GLP-1s just for the longevity benefits. Longevity benefits. Yes, fundamentally, it makes you more metabolically flexible. Wow. It makes your body more sensitive to insulin. Fundamentally, that reason.
Well,
Speaker 1 (44:18.19)
Because of that reason, it lowers inflammation. And so there’s actually many studies now that show that it’s neuroprotective, cardioprotective, renal protective. There’s just so many benefits from taking low doses of a GLP-1.
So what would be a dosage like 200 pounds? What’s a reasonable dosage of microdosing it?
If you’re on Tierra’s Epitide, could be anywhere from a quarter to a half of the starting dose. Sometimes I like people taking this even three to five times a week. You can divide a starting dose into five and kind of microdose it that way. Once again, just makes your body more sensitive to insulin. The body’s sensitivity to insulin does decrease over age. And so that metabolic flexibility, that decrease in inflammation drives a lot of the processes in the body.
at this point, unless there’s a real contraindication, this is one of the things I like a lot.
What kind of contraindications can there be? Because my, I find this quite fascinating. my, one of my close friends has a company that does this and they’re doing some crazy numbers. Some really, really big numbers.
Speaker 1 (45:28.172)
I mean, last I heard like, you know, six to 8 % of Americans are on GOPs already. you know, you know, what’s, what’s the potential kind of population, percentage of population that could be on them? It could be even higher, right? If we’re kind of using it for microdosing for kind of, you know, other purposes, like, you know, the neuroprotective, cardio protective purposes, you know, you could theoretically think that, man, almost everyone could be on the GOP, right?
Maybe
Speaker 1 (45:57.228)
you absolute contraindications. mean, you know, if you’re like, semi-glutide has, you know, potential risk of increasing like thyroid, medullary cancer, or if you have any kind of, you know.
very severe active disease, you kind of need to deal with that kind of stuff first if you’re really anorexic or cachectic, like that’s not something that you want to start. There are side effects to these medications and it’s very well documented that when you lose weight, you also lose muscle mass. so being counseled properly on diet, improving your protein intake, having exercise to make sure you’re not losing muscle mass is something that’s necessary with these medications. Using them in microdose fat,
Like I don’t see people kind of, you know, necessarily losing a lot of weight. know, the other benefit of this, it is actually does shift the satiety centers in your brain. Okay. So, you know, you have a, we have a lot of people that, you know, drink a lot less alcohol, eat a lot less sugar, smoke a lot less because of the GOP ones, because it, you know, activates certain areas of satiety. And I think that’s, you know, that obviously has a lot of downstream health benefits just based on that.
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve never heard of microdosing it, but I’m curious about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something to look into.
Speaker 2 (47:16.818)
You mentioned that you meditate regularly and I know you’ve had some experience with psychedelics and plant medicine and that sort of stuff. So how has this whole experience affected your medical practice?
Speaker 1 (47:35.47)
I think psychedelics are going to be a big part in transforming the way we approach mental health. Because the breakthroughs that you can have on psychedelics with trained professionals administering and integrating afterwards can be very profound. so, I’ve had the fortune of being in...
I’ve had the fortune of, you know, basically, I don’t know if I should say this on camera. I’ve had the fortune of being in, you know, trying all these psychedelics and being in a lot of these situations and having kind of guides guide me through the process. And I truly believe that’s kind of made me a better person fundamentally and kind of helped me deal with a lot of the, you know, perhaps issues that I was dealing with from, you know, young age and early adulthood.
And I’ve honestly seen that in many people that we’ve sent for these kind of psychedelic retreats or psychedelic sessions, whether it be, you know, five, MEO DMT or psilocybin or MDMA or ketamine, like there’s a place in there. There’s a place for all of these things when done appropriately. Okay. They can certainly be abused and done inappropriately, but you know, when done in the right set and setting, they can be very powerful agents of transformation.
Yeah, I have a habit that I’ve done over the last few years where I’ll just take myself off to say the mountains like I go upstate and get three or four grams of mushrooms and I just Take them and sit there
And think. And think. It’s powerful.
Speaker 2 (49:14.022)
Yeah, it’s like a, it’s a strange recess, like a hard reset. I, you know, I came up with a bunch of ideas and directions for the next few years, cause I was feeling a little bit lost on my last trip, like October last year, I sat there and had this big trip. was by myself in the, in the Catskills.
on the tail end of, you know, seeing Jesus, got some notepads out and some sticky notes and I just started like putting them on the wall and kind of mapping out the directions. And now I have a better, clearer idea of where I want to take things. that was from going away and being alone and using these. So huge proponent of it. I’ve not done ayahuasca, I’ve not done any of those.
more intense experiences. They kind of scare me, but for now, yeah, huge, huge fan. Also micro dosing mushrooms. There was a little while where I, where I spent a few months just doing 0.1 of a gram of mushrooms every morning. And I found that I was quite, I didn’t realize it, but I was actually undiagnosed ADHD. And in the process of taking this micro dose of mushrooms, I don’t know if this is
been tested or studied in any meaningful way, my symptoms of ADHD dropped precipitously. I was able to focus so much more, I was much more creative. was able to, I was genuinely happier. It was strange.
And everything you say is what I believe in as well. Psychedelics, mean, microdosing mushrooms does help with depression. Yeah, wow. And it can help with focus and it can improve creativity. It just improves neuroplasticity in the brain. Yeah, think LSD has many of those kind of similar potential properties.
Speaker 2 (51:11.15)
between the two when you’re in your personal setting or a clinical setting.
Well, clinically, we don’t use psilocybin or LSD. That’s not legal at this point. It’s just based on, know, by my experience of other people. Yeah, would say that, yeah, both microdosing LSD and psilocybin have their places. Microdosing psilocybin, I’ve seen, be quite helpful for depression. I think there’s actually clinical evidence on that at this point. so, yeah, you know, I mean,
experiences of other people.
Speaker 1 (51:43.598)
MDMA can be very helpful for PTSD. There’s studies demonstrating that.
And you do the ketamine therapy as well.
Ketamine is very helpful for depression, I also see that as you can get really deep breakthroughs with ketamine as in it’s a dissociative and you kind of leave your default mode network and are able to kind of see yourself and your problems and explore your subconscious and see yourself from the third person perspective, which is really powerful. so, yeah, I’ve had lots of people have significant breakthroughs on ketamine. Once again, it does need like,
with a psychiatrist.
Yeah, yeah, you should have proper integration afterwards. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:26.03)
I’ll have to your brain on some potential people to go to in this space because it’s been something I’ve wanted to explore for a while.
Welcome to come in and try a little session.
Yeah, well, I might have. It’s a little bit scary when you start doing these things that can potentially impact your mind. You’re like, oh, do I want to do this right now? Am I ready for it? Do I have time to sit there and process 10 years of trauma in the next few months? You know what I mean? It’s like, do I want to unlock this door just yet?
What I say is never be afraid of your own mind.
Yeah, I mean, it’s with you at all times, right?
Speaker 1 (52:59.758)
I want to know the little nooks and crannies. kind of want things to come up. Like you don’t want to have repressed feelings, emotions, trauma. kind of want to deal with all that.
I think it’s important to not run away from them for sure. And the way I think of it is these things are going to be impacting your decision making either explicitly or implicitly. So you’d rather at least know that they’re there as opposed to just having them in the background and you making these maybe not optimal life decisions and then wondering why things aren’t the way you want them to because you’ve never actually tackled why you’re
Correct.
Speaker 2 (53:39.308)
making the decisions you’re making and what’s, what’s the stems of these, these, these poor decisions potentially. So let’s do it. I, you mentioned that you, what was it? you take a few things for testosterone. what are your testosterone levels?
I mean, I like to keep mine between 800 and 1200. so yeah, listen. I know that’s, that’s totally free. Free is like, you know, 80 to a hundred. Um, you know, I feel the best at those levels and you know, it’s a, it’s, it’s been a little, you know, every, every man has his kind of pathway to get to those levels.
Is free Tesla’s turn or is that total?
Speaker 1 (54:21.1)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, you know, there’s so many ways to do that, whether you’re using exogenous versus trying to stimulate your body to do its own. yeah, I mean, I’m seeing there’s epidemic of guys with low T, know, like guys in their 30s and 40s. very, it’s almost a rarity that I see someone that’s, you know, in their 800s these days. So yeah, kind of T boosting, T boosting strategies are honestly a big part of what we do.
Do you like, I spent some time on this a little while ago and I came across Tonka Dali. Yes. And I took it and my testosterone went up by 50 % in three months. Wow. Yeah, wow. It was on a pretty low base.
Okay. Very interesting. mean, I typically don’t see that working that well. I mean, you’re, would consider a hyper responder, you know,
Yeah, maybe that one and icing my balls
I don’t know. Maybe it’s the latter. mean, yeah, Tomcat LE, Fadogea Aggressus, you know, there’s a, you know, a few of these natural supplements that can, that can help with that. But you know, in my clinical experience, like if you’re starting at like three or 400, really? Okay. That’s not bad. mean, but you’re not going to get from 300 to 800 on Tomcat LE. You’re just, you’re just not, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:37.303)
from 400 to 600.
Speaker 2 (55:46.358)
It also then made me feel really sick after a while. Like I got some really bad. And so I stopped taking it on that note. I sent you my blood. did you ever go and have a chance to go through?
God.
Speaker 1 (55:57.454)
I went through one of the panels and everything actually looks
Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. You’re in good.
Good shape, yeah. I saw your T levels. They were in some Australian measurements. Kind of looking at the ranges. Kangaroo units. But as I recall, your free T and your T were pretty good. mean, all your other markers from what I saw looked pretty good.
I never remember what they are.
Speaker 2 (56:24.462)
Yeah, I’m not taking any testosterone boosting supplements. Tiny bit of zinc. But I spent a month and a half in Australia and I went to this, every day I was going to this kind of private wellness gym place that had a co-working spot, sauna, cold plunge and a gym. And I was just with my friend, the Slamegalita. What is it? How do I say it?
Tiny.
Speaker 2 (56:55.246)
Yeah, that guy. We would hang out every day and we’d just work, co-work. And I was doing a sauna and cold plunge, half an hour in the sauna and a minute and a half cold plunge every single day and working out every single day and doing the cold therapy on Tessac, the cold therapy. And then I got my blood done just before I came back and they were pretty solid.
I mean, I think that’s probably that that caused the increase rather than Phenoggia. Okay. I mean, the best way to increase your T-levels is to lift heavy weights. Probably the best way to kind of naturally stimulate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (57:39.534)
Yeah. One of my friends, I should connect you guys actually, his name’s Lucas Aeon. He’s been on the podcast a couple of times. He’s probably one of the biggest buy-acres in Australia. Okay. And yeah, he’s, he was talking about the ice over the icing, testicles thing for like five years ago. And it’s kind of become his like thing. I’ll connect you guys. You guys would be great together. So look, I’d like to, I’d like to just
Okay, I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:08.224)
explore a few general philosophical ideas before we wrap up. What’s the biggest thing over the last few years you’ve changed your mind on?
Speaker 1 (58:20.418)
that traditional medicine is always right. And a lot of these alternative therapies are just kind of like woo woo. Yeah. Yeah. As in like, you know, I’m still a traditional medicine background trained. still practice traditional medicine in my kind of interventional pain clinic, but you know, like lasers and you know, infrared and ultrasound and a lot of these modalities really do work. But they’re just like kind of
ignored or poo-pooed by just the traditional medical establishment. Things like ozone, okay? Like I love ozone, I use it a lot. That’s just, know, no one in traditional medicine knows about stuff like this. So yeah, my views have changed a little, you know, over time to kind of really, you know, being very wide-open-eyed about some of these alternative modalities that I really believe can work, yeah.
Yeah, mean, I’ve gotten more and more esoteric as time’s gone on. I started off very, if this can’t be proven clearly, I don’t want to hear about it. And I’ve got an engineering degree and my brain is very analytical in my thought. And then I would continue to have all of these unexplainable things happen in my life that you just don’t really have an answer for. And you have to kind of begin to let go, I feel.
You do, you do. There’s not a rationale for everything. There’s not. promise, you know, I’m quite confident that there’s another force out there that governs many of the things. And that fate is a real thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, yeah, I, when I, when I hear people talk about say like energy, I would just shut off and oh, here we fucking go. But now the more I think about it, it’s everything is energy. Everything is a vibrational feeling. And to think that that does not impact your day to day experience is probably naive. Um, and yeah, I went through a, um, have you ever done a Vipassana? you did.
Speaker 1 (01:00:14.702)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00:30.358)
So I did have a passion a couple of years ago, the first one. I haven’t done one since. I’m still a bit scarred, but I’ll come back to it at some point. And I remember, you know, he, he talks about the subtle vibrations for the first few days for anyone listening that doesn’t know what this is. Basically you’re meditating for 12 hours a day, 10 days. You have no external stimuli. So you pretty much go as internal as you possibly can in, in a safe environment. And you begun, you begin to become really, really.
in tune with some things that you’ve never felt before. don’t know if you felt the same and the vibration thing freaked me out. I felt like I was buzzing and I couldn’t sleep because I was buzzing so much.
But how do you how do you reconcile that? You know, you kind of the reconciliation is I am so unaware of what is actually going on in the world The reality of what’s going on in the world. I think I need to be a little more open to open and curious to some things that maybe don’t necessarily make sense on the surface, but Potentially have had thousands of years of anecdotal evidence Which I think is what’s been missed in the the Western medical fields is that trust on the
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:01:45.396)
Ancient wisdom. Yeah. I think we’re coming back to very slowly.
Yes.
I think we are, yeah, I think we are. I think more and more people are open to these alternative therapies and there’s just a lot of failings of the medical system. We all know what those are and people are looking for alternative answers.
Yeah, I mean, I like to think of Western medicine as a good tool if you’ve lost an arm, maybe a bad tool for chronic issues, chronic systemic issues. And I think the combination where you’re at the combination of the two is the sweet spot that I hope that the rest of the medical field gets moves towards.
Correct.
Speaker 1 (01:02:27.502)
I think it will. Yeah, it’s just a matter of time. mean, you know, these things work, you know, at the end of the day, it’s just, know, all I care about is whether something actually is effective and it works. so, you know, preventative medicine is just going to prevent chronic illness, which, you know, has a certain monetary value tied to that, you know, sort of like
or five ex return on investment versus dealing with it once you’ve got a disease.
Correct. And so, you know, the average, you know, you’re going to be spending a lot less money preventing disease and treating it. totally. so, you know, the system is going to shift towards that. It already is shifting towards that. You know, it’s still like, yeah, when will insurance companies start reimbursing for things like peptides and PRP and regenerative medicine?
and opportunity cost as well.
Speaker 1 (01:03:17.634)
PRP has been around for 15, 20 years now and it clearly works.
for somebody that doesn’t know that.
Platelet rich plasma. Platelet rich plasma. Just taking your own blood. has buttons. Taking your own blood, taking the platelets and injecting that in all sorts of places. Like that works for injuries, for all sorts of stuff. And there’s not a single insurance right now that covers that. Like, know, 10, 15 years later. So, you know, my hope is that.
All of these new things that I talk about, the regent medicine, the peptides, will be eventually covered by a forward thinking insurance company. But that’s yet to be seen. We’ll see where that goes.
Did you think half of the problems of the medical system are the insurance component?
Speaker 1 (01:04:07.406)
I mean, it’s, there are entrenched interests in that are very hard to break, right? And then you have the pharmaceutical companies and you have the pharmacy benefit managers, and then you have the insurance companies. then, you know, I mean, everyone has a hand in the pie, right? I mean, out of every dollar that’s spent in US healthcare, like, you know, what percentages go to each component? And these are-
didn’t even know there’s no
I mean, it’s administrative costs are a huge burden. The pharmacy benefit managers are way too big for their own good. Pharma companies have their entrenched interests. mean, it’s going to be hard to of break these things. mean, RFK, think, is going to go in and try and make a difference. big pharma is tied to these are like.
I’m a slave.
Speaker 1 (01:05:08.078)
multi-billion dollar companies with their own kind of interest profiles. It’s just the way the system’s set up. I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily blaming anyone, but the actual money that kind of comes down to either patient care or reimbursing physicians is...
It’s weird one because it’s people’s lives, know, as opposed to just numbers.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that’s true. And the US spends the most per capita on health care in the entire world. And you get the worst outcomes. The outcomes are terrible. I mean, hey, listen, there’s a lot of other health systems that, they all inherently have their problems as well. There’s no perfect system out there. But I hope a lot of change and reform can be done to our current system.
Country scares the shit out of me.
Speaker 2 (01:06:07.766)
Yeah. Do you think it needs to be? Do you think it’s change like an external push that’s the only way it’s going to change or maybe they’ll like what’s what’s the economic value driver if you’re an insurance company and you begin to look at preventative medicine? They’re going to spend less money over like how does that how does that turn into like a P &L?
I mean, the only thing that’s going to drive an insurance company to cover this is if they actually can demonstrate.
They’re gonna make money off costs. Yeah.
lower cost, lower spend per patient. yeah, they could make more money. mean, that’s kind of the only way that I see that changing. And I see that changing by actually presenting the data that preventative care can save X amount of dollars over a lifetime of a patient. mean, those studies are gonna take a long, long time, right? As in, they’re like hard to study. Some of them are hard to study.
So you basically, so the insurance company basically needs to have a patient, have someone with them for 20, 30, 40 years as a customer for it to make sense.
Speaker 1 (01:07:21.922)
the benefits of providing that preventive care when they were not that sick.
Yeah, versus, you know, you know, like maybe having people switch around to 10 different places and then, and then one of them gets unlucky and gets hit with a hundred thousand dollar bill. then, you know, every second one of them, they managed to get out of by, you know, some, some shit that they bought.
Yeah, yeah, ultimately that bill falls on Medicare. mean, you turn 65, you get Medicare, and it’s the government’s problem. And that’s why the health care bills are so high.
Which is everyone’s problem.
Speaker 2 (01:07:58.542)
Well, I can always get back to Australia.
What’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for you?
I mean
My patients are so great to me. I get food and gifts and presents from them all the time. I’ve had patients invite me on pretty crazy trips.
Do you take them? Do you ever go on any fun crazy trips? Do you got any fun stories you want to share?
Speaker 1 (01:08:33.966)
You know, can read act names. mean, you know, when you have a long-term relationship with some of these patients that, you know, you are helping them, I mean, they honestly become friends. Okay. And then, so that relationship feels very natural. You know, I mean, I, I never want, I never to take advantage of a situation, but you know, people have been very generous to me. And so, you know, obviously that, that’s, that’s, that’s a really beautiful feeling. Yeah.
How do you take that generosity and then apply it to your own life and the way you give to the world?
Great question. mean, hey, listen, I I believe I’m a giver at heart. Okay. And so, you know,
Believe it not, I I still actually see patients with the worst insurance as possible, the Medicaid patients, like, because they’re part of this Chinese community that I’ve kind of served for a very long time. you know, every Wednesday I go and I see all these patients that, you know, I may or may not get reimbursed for, but it’s just something that I just do. And yeah, hey, I mean, you know, while most of my patients now are just in a...
different kind of life circumstance. Like, you know, I do want to democratize a process and make these available for more people. you know, there’s, you know, I have a kind of, you know, charitable foundation that, you know, I kind of want to put more efforts into as my career kind of advances.
Speaker 2 (01:10:04.366)
You’ve spoken about precision health equity. Is this something you’ve spoken about in the past? Or is it a term that you’ve...
Hmm
Speaker 1 (01:10:19.726)
Precision health equity. mean, precision health is, I guess, you know, the end of one where you kind of like dive really deeply into one person’s kind of, you know, biology and kind of do everything that you can for that one individual. Obviously that’s going to take a lot of time and costs, right?
of just the sheer amount of testing and thought process that you need to give to one person. Democratizing that process. It’s hard. It’s hard. I think it’s going to be much, much more advanced with AI. AI is going to really make that process just so much easier in terms of data aggregation and seeing patterns and trends. that’s my thought process on that. As of right now, yeah.
fully optimized one human being, know, with kind of the most advanced kind of longevity therapeutics and diagnostics. that’s a, that’s a, that’s very expensive. Yeah.
So when’s the extension app coming out?
We’re working on it. We’re working on a comprehensive AI platform that aggregates our data, assists with a decision-making process that also has outcome measures built in. And so we can really track our outcomes. That’s the most important part, I think, of what we need to do is really have the data that backs all these therapeutics that we’re doing. And so that’s something that we’re actively working on.
Speaker 2 (01:11:54.654)
Is there anybody, or is it even medically possible, like you’ve got your glucose monitors, is there a way for them to be the equivalent of taking a blood test every second and like getting all of that data? that something people are working on?
Totally, that’s, for sure, that’s, it’s happening and it’s gonna happen. Oh really? You know, I mean, as of right now, you can already live measure glucose levels. I mean, very soon, I mean, maybe not very soon, but you’re gonna be able to wear a device that can track all of your numbers, all of your hormones, your metabolic numbers, your kind of, you know, blood counts, your blood oxygen, like all
Why do these metrics? Like, because they don’t go into your blood, right? how would you?
Speaker 2 (01:12:55.246)
the fluid between the skin and the...
Speaker 2 (01:13:27.31)
It’s an exciting time, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (01:14:00.398)
She’s got to make it that far, you know?
Yeah, that’s right.
Speaker 2 (01:14:10.688)
and become the AI overlords. One of the two ways, we don’t know. We’ll see where it goes. Is there, is there, if you could only recommend one book for somebody to read over and over again for the rest of their life, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (01:14:36.846)
Yeah, why do you like
Shall service
Speaker 2 (01:15:14.05)
What’s the moral sense?
Speaker 2 (01:15:34.296)
Great. Dr. Quote, I think that’s a great way to wrap it up. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your energy.
Speaker 2 (01:15:45.102)
And for those who have made it this far, please go to YouTube search that one time without a met while and click subscribe, like the video and leave us a comment. Great.
