Peptide Doctor: The Disturbing Side Effects They Don't Teach You About

Most of the people selling you peptides have never run a single blood panel on you, so why are you trusting them with your biochemistry?

Dr. Mark Gordon is a neuroendocrinologist, board certified in family medicine since 1984, who runs Millennium Health Centers, went on ESPN’s Outside the Lines in 2007 to connect brain trauma to hormone deficiency when nobody else would say it out loud, and currently has almost 17,000 people active in his protocols.

In this episode he dismantles the peptide marketing machine and exposes what is actually happening inside your body when you inject a compound you never tested for.

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Transcript

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0:00 They develop anaphylaxis. They end up in the emergency room needing to have epinephrine, oxygen because their airways were closing off from one particular peptide that was coming out of uh India. It’s very important to understand that you’re putting the quality of life at risk by using foreign sources. Here’s what nobody tells you about peptides. You open your phone, there it is. Six different peptides, three different sellers, one for fat loss, one for sleep, one for your need, when to turn back the clock, and not one of them tells you what the thing actually is doing on the inside of your body. You’re a smart guy, though, right? You can smell that half of it’s just the pitch. You just can’t tell which half. Here’s the thing, man. Almost everybody you’re talking to about peptides has something to sell you. That’s not information. That’s marketing. I’m Zach Armstrong, retired naval commander, over 27 years of service with now a high performance coaching for high performing men over 40. And this is no hype, just standards. Dr. Mark Gordon is a neuroindocrinologist. He runs Millennium

1:00 Health Centers in Incino, board certified in family medicine since 1984. Back in 2007, he stood up on ESPN’s Outside the lines and connected brain trauma to hormone deficiency when almost nobody was saying it out loud. He’s treated green berets. He’s been asked to weigh in on blast trauma for military leadership overseas. And this January, he put out a piece called Peptides for Health. Here’s what I like. He runs the numbers before he says a word. That’s a standard. So, I brought him in to cut through the noise. If this show is for you, do me a favor and hit follow. Let’s get into this. Hey, doctor. Again, thank you for coming on. Um, let’s just start from zero. What is a peptide and what does it actually do for somebody’s body? Great question. Uh, a peptide is a short chain of amino acids. Amino acids are the building block of everything that runs in our body. There’s a small set of um peptides. It’s a redundant thing. Small set small peptides which are signals and they send signals to control

2:02 Our cellular functions, our metabolism, our cellular growth. And so peptides are used to send signals that we’ve lost. As we age, we tend to lose some of these signals. So use of peptides can help to re-establish those signals. And you know there’s a lot of if you if you log into social media anywhere now you will see somebody trying to uh sell out the peptide. Um and I assume for a lot of people there’s a point now to where it’s a lot of marketing and a lot of distrust there. Can you kind of walk me through how you would change my mind or a viewer’s mind on why they should be trustworthy in a certain sense? Yeah. Um the issue in the past was that we didn’t know where the peptides were coming from. Yeah, they would come from India, China and Russia. So we didn’t know about the quality control of these products. So now that uh RFK has taken a posture a position behind peptides by

3:04 First thing doing in you know the Joe Rogan 222461 where he was talking about peptides. First thing he did is closed down the black market for uh peptides because we didn’t know what we were injecting ourselves with. It said on the bottle SS31 or whatever it was. We didn’t know it was that because they didn’t have the COA which is the certificate of uh uh assessment and also some HLC which are some of the high-tech testing. So now we’re being made or the peptides are being made in the United States as long as you get it from a reliable facility that has credentials for what they call a 503A or 503b which are the dist manufacturing distribution to uh directly to patients as opposed to going uh to Instagram and getting a phone number on WhatsApp and going to WhatsApp and calling to this Chinese, Indian, French, Italian or whatever.

4:04 Organization is out there that’s selling peptides that have bypassed all the standards that we’ve now, you know, that RFK is trying to put in place. So, knowing that it came from a US manufacturer in a facility that is credentialed, registered, certified to produce them and distributed them. That is where the safety is. That’s our protection. And that that would go for most medicine. But some funny how we don’t treat certain things in the same in the same way. And you called your recent piece peptides for health not performance. Is there any line there that you’re drawing? Uh peptides for health. There are a lot of peptides which can help a person who has renal disease, lung disease, heart disease, muscularkeeletal trauma that could help to accelerate their improvement or improvement um in their functionality and performance. You know, in the military that we both have

5:04 Worked in, I work as a civilian helping our um veterans and active military. It’s all about performance. And as we go through life, we lose these very important peptide signals that tell our muscles, hey, recover, you know, build, you damage them, regrow, or you’re exercising intensely. Let’s give you better endurance, or else you rupture a tendon or a ligament, and they’re very difficult to heal. But we’ve got some beautiful peptides that have gone through years and years of studies. BPC57, Thyosin 4 beta or TB500. And there are ongoing uh studies being done in clinical offices like I used to do in my clinical office because the scientific industry, the medical industry was just taking their time to do it. So we were applying these peptides way before the classical medicine uh was starting to do their studies on it. So we’re in a

6:04 Translational translational medicine means we take the science, read the science, look at what they recommend and we take it into a clinical practice and we start applying it and we see what’s real. No, there are a lot of medications that are out there that you know say we do this. Yeah, 15% does it. 85% it’s lost in translation so to speak. So what we have done in the past is put it through the test and we have over 318 veterans who were given VA disability for orthopedic problems and their performance was down their mental state was poor because they weren’t able to do the physical physical level of activities that they were when they were active and so now we’ve been able to accelerate their in healing. One gentleman uh wait you know had a very intense back surgery and three days after surgery his surgeon was freaking out because he was walking without any support. I had back surgery in March

7:04 16th and 5 days after surgery I’m uh walking a mile. I left the hospital. The surgery was at 1:30. I walked out of the hospital at 6:00 after the surgery. And uh the surgeon freaked out because why was I able to do that? I wasn’t taking any narcotics, any pain medication after the surgery as well. Well, there are peptides like ARA290 which help drop inflammation. You have any kind of surgery, it elicits an immune response, inflammatory response, and that adds to your pain load. Pain isn’t just pain. It’s a biochemical reaction. And it’s when you get to see things like that and see where you’re using the data and using it to the the sense where it’s supposed to be done correctly and it has those those causations of healing faster. That’s this is where we’re really talking about uh evolution, right? Not necessarily um snake oil. You know, a lot of guys though, half the

8:05 Guys that are probably listening to this, they associate peptides and hear testosterone and they think it’s the same thing. Like no for you. Why is it that way? you what is the misconception there? Um I don’t know how the misconception came to be. Peptides are peptides. Are there peptides uh like testogen that can actually increase your production of testosterone? Yes. Similar to what clomophin citrate or eclomid do or enclein does for stimulating uh the brain to release a signal to the pituitary to increase luteinizing hormone to increase testosterone. Yeah, there are peptides which will specifically improve testosterone production, estrogen production of female. Um, so why there is this uh misperception is because they think it’s linear that A equals B, you know, and that’s not the case always. Not unless you selectively choose the A equals B’s like the testen um peptide which will stimulate luteinizing hormone.

9:08 Luteinizing hormone goes to the ovaries to theal cells to the males latic cells and stimulates testosterone production. Both testosterone comes before estradi. We both develop it but females obviously develop more estradi relative to testosterone and males the opposite more testosterone than estradiol. So they’re separate issues peptides and testosterone. also all our steroidogenic hormones like DHEA, pregnnolone, progesterone, estrodol, estriol, testosterone, DHT, um adinosine, dione, uh DHEA, all come from cholesterol, right? That’s how important cholesterol is. Cholesterol is the foundational um chemical for producing vitamin D as well, CoQ10. So, it’s extremely important. Peptides don’t come from generally speaking peptides don’t come from cholesterol and I think that’s very important what

10:08 You just said knowing the difference and another thing I would say is important too is knowing kind of what’s wrong before you just start randomly taking stuff you know and I bring guys inside my program we do a 80 biioarker panel for every person what do you recommend for people or what would you do if somebody was going to come to you looking for help with peptides what would you what kind of test would you want beforehand right well we have uh what’s called a 28 point biomarker panel which is interpreted by a computerenhanced system. Um, and we also get a general chemistry, urine analysis or uh urine testing and a complete blood count. The worst thing to do hypothetically theoretically is to put someone on a peptide that might have a proclivity or a chance of inducing some aberration or abnormality in cell function. uh that’s not really what I’m seeing or how I focus my application of peptides. The most important thing is restraint because everybody wants to go on to you

11:08 Know BP5 uh BPC57. They want to go to FamousOS. They want to go on to um what is it? Uh MCI they want to go to SS31. They want to go on to a whole bunch of products all at once. That’s not how it works. Well, I mean this is part of what I’m doing in volume two of the peptides for health is looking more closely at synergistic and complimentary use of peptides. I mean we already know that BPC57 and thyosin 4 beta are complimementaryary and uh supportive paper that I released about a month ago on growth hormone secrets talks about um how to use tesmemoran CJC1 1295 and uh together the best combination if you really look at the broad spectrum of the benefits of each one the combination I believe which is the best uh is the tesarellin and

12:08 Epramarella. So the question is okay what do you do before you put anybody on that? Well you got to make sure that their growth hormone parameters are great you know in their in their body. You want to look at you know growth hormone in the morning. You want to look at um IGF-1 insulin like growth factor 1. You want to look at binding protein 3. and binding protein 3 as an aside. Uh binding protein 3 is one of seven proteins made in the liver under the stimulation of growth hormone from the brain which tells it to make these seven proteins that carry IGF-1. Well, it turns out two of them are anti-cancer. Binding protein 3 and binding protein 4 are anti-cancer. major study out of Melbourne uh 2018 where they showed that there was a 48% reduction in colon cancer death rates in people who had col cancer. So it’s called the uh Melbourne collaborative

13:10 Study and when I read it it just blew me away. So because of knowing how important binding protein 3 is, you’ve got to think twice about using a product called in uh IGF-1 LR3. Uh IGF-1 LR3 is a what is it? A 18-hour halflife. Our body makes a IGF-1 which is 8 to 10 minutes. So it gets in, it’s like a peptide. It’s a little bit larger, but it’s like a peptide. goes in and turns on a system in the liver to produce nine different 10 different proteins and two of the important proteins are the u binding protein 3 and four which are anti-cancer and when you use IGF-1 LR3 you bypass that you don’t make it so you don’t protect yourself with you know um IGF- binding protein 3 and four why is that important well you know 20 some odd years ago I gave a lecture to a hospital

14:11 On why growth hormone is not canceric. It really is not canceric because when you use growth hormone, it stimulates two anti-cancers. You know, it’s a it’s a long discussion, well, not really that long, but it’s a long discussion about the mechanism by which growth hormone protects you against cancer. I have a DVD that I did in 2003 or four talking about this subject because it was so important because a lot of doctors were still in mythology like cholesterol mythology. I mean it’s still there too. Oh yeah, absolutely. When you when when do you think you know peptides um on this subject that what you’re talking about now? What do you think a peptides actually genuinely call for? Um, and when is it just a man wanting an edge? And what what do you recommend for both? Um, I think under certain situations getting that edge is a benefit because they are when used properly under direction of a

15:13 Physician safe. Okay, they’re safe. when you’re using them ad lib without knowing really the risks and benefits as you need to know about each one and it’s in the book the book tells you you know what labs to do beforehand what testing to do it tells everything you know I try not to be too superficial in what I do so it’s why the book took took what seven years to write um but it talks about the labs that need to be done if you want to get an edge like someone who is recovering uffering from a muscularkeeletal situation. That’s beautiful use. If you’re a regular person who just wants to get better muscle size, guns defined better, uh remove some of the body fat. Yeah, there are peptides. The GLP1s are good for that. Uh there’s AOD 20, what is it? 2906, 2904, 2906, which mobilizes body fat. I I mean I tried a lot of these

16:13 Things out to see how I’d respond to it. So I firsthand can tell people about it. AODD 20 20 2904 2906 is a piece of growth hormone. Uh I used growth hormone a lot in the past. I used to dispense about 40,000 units a year during the late 90s and early 2000s and written quite a bit about its uh use and benefits. One of the side effects I would get is when I’d use it for only three months on, three months off, three months on, three months off, my abdominal fat would disappear. My body fat would disappear. And then they find out that it’s this short piece of 199 amino acid protein that does all the fat mobilization that they call AOD. Uh 2904 2904. So yeah, so it’s a it’s a neat one. So if you want to help with body fat and safer than the GLP1s, um it works well. You also get

17:15 Stimulation of muscle. You get improvement in inflammation. Talking about growth hormone, uh not so much the AOD. Uh BPC 157 phenomenal for anti-inflammation. in the uh the book, you know, most um not authors but most promoters of peptides talk about the primary function. Well, it turns out that a lot of the peptides have uh multiple of functions called pleotrophic effects. So things like uh BPC57 has ligament and tendon because it increases blood supply, oxygenation, nutrient to the tissue, increases cell migration so they can help repair uh the tendon. In fact, that’s how I started off with peptides in 2019 is I tore my vasis lateralis and mediialis in my quadricep muscle partial tears and uh in 6 weeks I was back to normal using BPC thyosin and IGF-1 LR3 did well and I was

18:17 Convinced at that time that there was something to these peptides and that’s what started the entire program. So my personal experience on these peptides are very important. CAX for brain function, SS31 for improving all the energy production throughout the cells. This is extremely important and this is not your personal opinion. you, you know, we’ve had this conversation before. Um, we got on the show. Um, use data. You’re you’re using, you know, data from other countries and studies and your own to help with this. And then your own experience, right? I mean, you had a green beret that walked in dozen medications. Um, and you kind of saw something that other people would miss. What was that? Uh, you know, all I see are veterans. So, uh, all I see is veterans. So, which one specifically? I mean, if the green the there was a Green Beret

19:17 That had come back. Yep. Yeah. Um, well, Andrew Maher is uh, you know, way back in 2014. Uh, in his fourth deployment, he was, um, exposed to over pressure that knocked him unconscious. And, uh, not a scratch on his body. And about 6 months later, he’s on 13 medications, full-blown alcoholic and suicidal. And um he, you know, I connected with him over a television program that he was in and I told him, “Look at I’m not crazy, but I think I have the solution for what’s going on with you.” And we took him, ran blood, put him onto a protocol which consisted of returning his hormones, all his pregn, progesterone, DHEA, testosterone, DH, uh, DHT, all to normal, excuse me, all to optimal levels. Okay? There’s no real normal based on the traditional ranges out there. Okay? They’re just statistics.

20:17 I’ll come back to that if you want. But, uh, we put him on everything and he got better. He got off all his medication, stopped drinking. He and his brother Adam, who was Apache helicopter pilot out of Bragg, uh, wrote a book called, um, Tales from the Blast Factory, and they ended up, the book got picked up, made into a movie called Quiet Explosions, which you get on tubv.com for free, okay? And watch it 90 minutes. and it tells the story of five uh veterans and then there’s a couple of there’s one first responder from 9/11, there’s a heart attack, there’s a gymnast and there’s a uh someone out of the military who was uh raped multiple times and uh you know she responded to our treatment protocol. Uh Andrew subsequently because of uh everything that had happened, he was you know top of his uh team. He’s EOD, explosive ordinance demolition, and very physically fit. And using the peptides,

21:18 We were able to help with some of his muscularkeeletal uh problems, ligamental, uh with CAX for brain function. Um so yeah, there are a number of peptides, but it was based upon his biochemistry, his history, and his exam. So it’s not just here, take this. You’re right. here. Take this. See what happens. It’s a matter of okay, here’s the problem. Here’s the here’s the causation. Here’s the problem. Here’s how it’s expressing itself in symptoms. And now let’s address the underlying causation by fixing the inflammation. And in um for my back surgery, I went on to AR290, which helps to bring down the inflammatory uh status of the body. Okay. Yeah. So, it’s it sounds like this is going to a point now to where you’re not just seeing this as um nice to do or have for

22:18 Injuries. You’re it’s almost like this is another our next evolution into human the human evolution in which we’re improving in areas in the medical world in which we we haven’t done for a long time. Correct. Uh instead of being symptomatic uh approach symptom okay you got depression take this anti-depression. what I’ve been doing, you know, for the past uh 20 years with the military and past 31 years with everybody is that there’s a reason why you develop testosterone deficiency. And that was in the letter that I released this weekend, open letter to Pete Hexath because of their new proposal of every special operator getting testosterone tested and if deficient, put on testosterone. No one’s asking the question, why are they deficient? It’s from inflammation, but more importantly, it’s due to all the ibuprofen you guys were using. You know, vitamin M, you know, Skittles, what a pain skittles, whatever you called it,

23:18 Depending upon the branch that you were in. The paper that I released last year that’s being rewritten to be published this year is the two eyes of hypogonatism where inflammation from any source can shut down your ability to make testosterone, estrogen and all those hormones and ibuprofen in uh interrupts the process in the brain and also stops the gonads female ovaries male testes from recognizing the signal called luteinizing hormone that turns on uh testicular function. Now since 2018 when my whole world was changed because of this article that came out that said huh this appears to be the problem and then they constantly improved it and proved it improved and proved it and changed the way I practice. So we have we first check them for their hormonal parameters and see if they’ve got the pattern of this um it’s called compensatory hypoganatism high

24:19 Luteinizing hormone low testosterone and it’s they do and when we fix it how do you fix it? Selenium. Selenium, the mineral, has been found to be what reverses the damage toxicity caused by the ibuprofen. It’s not just ibuprofen, it’s the entire class of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. And so, uh, we use, um, Clomid or Enclomid to stimulate the brain to increase luteinizing hormone to send it to the testicles that are now regenerating their ability. they start making testosterone. Our oldest is 76. That’s amazing. 76%. And then there’s other factors too like the sleep. Sleep is where the testosterone and the non you know alcohol um can just absolutely both of those can wreck testosterone. So like you said without knowing the problem or the reason or rationale why the testosterone is low. When you put um testosterone I know it’s not a peptide but there’s also effects there to where

25:19 You’re putting it into an already inflamed body. You’re not just producing testosterone, right? There’s other there’s other factors that will start happening there, estrogen and things like that. Yeah, testosterone can actually stimulate growth hormone production just like DHEA can increase growth hormone production at night. Uh 10% males, 15 to 20% in females. And that’s why DHEA should only be taken 15 to 30 minutes after dinner to help stimulate. You know, there is a peptide growth hormone releasing peptide, growth hormone releasing hormone. You know, it’s a short peptide, right? And there’s a few on the market now, too, which you you said again, you need to know stuff like your IGF-1 before you start taking that stuff because there could be mass consequences. Absolutely. Um, and most people don’t even know what IGF-1 is, uh, because it’s not something the doctor usually tests for. So, um, it’s something that you would make sure you wanted to do before you start delving into uh that those those peptide ads that are not going to have that

26:19 Oversight. Um, and so what are some of those real side effects with the peptides that people are probably not understanding before they just go and buy off that online which could be coming from China, Russia or wherever, right? Um, in talking about the foreign manufactured products, they don’t put it through the purity testing like we do in the United States. They have to be 98.5 or 98.8% pure. What does that mean? Well, we’ve got a protein, we’ve got a peptide. Let’s say it’s 10 amino acids, 10 of the building blocks lined up together to make this peptide. And in the foreign mate, uh you’ve got a combination of six and five and eight and nine whatever uh amino acid lengths. Some of those short amino acid chains, I won’t even call them peptides, but they are. But what’ll happen is they can induce an allergic reaction. I’ve seen in patients who have purchased um product from companies out

27:20 There that they inject it and they develop anaphylaxis. They end up in the emergency room uh needing to have epinephrine, oxygen uh because their airways were closing off from one particular peptide uh that was coming out of uh India. Okay. So it’s very important to understand that you’re putting the quality of life at risk by using foreign sources. Now US sources, there’s a possibility anybody can have an allergic reaction because they’re short chained amino acids. Let’s put it into small smaller than protein. Okay? But our body is unique in that the immune system if it’s hyper sensitive vitamin D deficiency can do that. uh that um it’s hyper sensitive to um the putting in to the body of these amino acids, these peptide chains that it can elicit an immune response and then you get

28:21 Itching, redness at the spot. So, if you develop any of those uh local reactions, you’re probably allergic to it. If you’re taking an American manufactured product, if you’re taking a foreign one, okay, something’s not uh it could be allergy. It could be also a lot of uh abstract parts in it, not complete parts. So, you have what’s that? I said laced. Yeah, laced with something different. Well, let’s hope not. But, uh yeah, the best thing to do is, you know, know your manufacturer. uh you know I work for uh the company here in uh the south American company that manufactures it uh manufactures an array of peptides they don’t have all of them yet but they’re working on it you know they’re following what RFK is trying to bring back as you know in 2023 the FDA the prior FDA illegally removed 19 peptides from the roster that were

29:21 Allowed and they pulled it off under probably pressure from obvious companies and uh what happened he realized that uh RFK secretary HHS realized that uh they were illegally taken off. They was as a you know as a whim whimsical kind of thing. They have to have medical proof that it created a problem and therefore it removed. They had none of that. So, he’s in a uh situation where he’s trying to return uh four, seven, nine, 14 of the 19 uh peptides back to us so that they can be distributed. Now, as you know, peptides are non um patentable, right? And that’s what I was about to say. I’m sure it wasn’t a whim that pulled them off. I’m sure it was a monetary backing from somebody to uh from K Street or something trying to help out getting that pass. There are some interesting stories that

30:21 I won’t get into, but yes. Um, what, you know, when a guy is doing this on his own, he’s getting it from, you know, potentially he doesn’t even know the source when he gets it online. Um, what are what are some of the most common things that you notice that are going sideways for him? I know you just mentioned like the skin reactionary, but what are some other things that you might notice that are going sideways? Um I honestly speaking I have not seen um more than just local reaction uh and then three or four cases of aniflaxis. Um there are a couple of the peptides like PT141 which is uh approved for females but not for males. uh it’s better than Viagra, Levitra, Scios all mixed together uh because it works by restating the libido center in the brain as opposed to peripherilally making sure the uh end organ as I’ll call it uh is filled with blood. So one of the side effects that

31:22 Happens with this product is uh nausea uh not necessarily vomiting but nausea can occur. Um, as far as I’ve seen guys overusing the BPC’s, the thymosins, the CACs, haven’t heard or seen any real side effects. Remember, one of the key factors to the signaling amino acid chains called chains called peptides is that they’re in and out of the system in 15 to 30 minutes, maybe an hour on some of them that are protein bound. So they go in, they do the signal and then they are gone. Okay, which is good for our athletes who are using it who shouldn’t be using it because um the peptides they’re using for healing and injury so they can go back on the field. Um that it’s um removed from the system rapidly. uh there are there are uh amalayas enzymes in the system that will actively destroy

32:23 The peptides within a very short period of time. So you don’t have a lingering uh marker to pick up. Mhm. With in terms of peptides. What about is there any man or woman under certain circumstances that should not be taking a peptide? Is there anything about them physically, mentally that you would say, “Hey, this is probably not an area you should mess with.” Uh, yeah. I think there there was um Sean Ryan had this doc on uh his show and she was talking theoretically hypothetically that if you think you might have a cancer that you shouldn’t use BPC57 because it increases blood supply. It increases um uh vascular generation. Sure. So she was thinking enlarge it. So yeah that by you feeding it well cancers have their own mechanism angioenesis to generate their own blood supply. So

33:24 There she’s trying to say that this will augment that. Well we all have precursor cancer cells through our body. A healthy immune system is what helps to keep that quantity count low and that’s things like thymosin one alpha. Yeah. One alpha is one that stimulates the immune system. DHEA stimulates the immune system. Vitamin D helps to modify the immune system, you know. So, uh, to answer that question, it’s kind of, uh, you know, a little bit too up too broad to to really definitively make a statement on it. You know, what what things can be wrong. Uh, I haven’t seen an issue. Uh, let’s see. Retinol, kidney. I’m just looking at eye recovery and kidney, heart and liver. Uh so I every month I look at a new set of pep or not a new set but a set of peptides as they pertain to how they can

34:24 Benefit um your heart, lung and brain. Right. And you you’ve mentioned the peptide have been helping um working on inflammation a couple times now. Uh where is it genuinely doing something now and where is it getting maybe oversold? Where are the peptides being oversold? No. So people like you know you you said BPC157 outside of outside of GLP1 is probably the second most known peptide and so a lot of times you know it gets sold as a miracle drug which there’s miracles I guess to it but the idea is hey it’s good for inflammation to this point but you know where is it being maybe over marketed uh in a sense right? Well, if you talk about the GLP1s and their benefit throughout the entire body, um, you know, it’s under uh discovery phase of research showing the benefits to all the organ systems. You know, the one coming out read a two tide by I think it’s Eli Liy, you know, will

35:24 Be a fantastic one because it took the uh teripene to zassipene. I don’t deal with any of GLP ones. My daughter Allison does. Uh that’s her her area. Um so but I read about it to see you know what she say. Yeah. To be complete in what I’m doing. But um the there are specific peptides for specific issues. So I tend to use the specific ones like as I kept said already AR290 as an anti-inflammatory. But BPC57 has in its layering of benefits has a layer of reduction in inflammation. So I will use that possibly as a synergistic depending upon how bad the inflammation is. For instance, um 70 one-year-old uh female with seroriatic arthritis,

36:24 Pretty bad seroriatic arthritis. I put her on to AR290 and BPC 157. In less than a week, her pain was gone. Okay. She didn’t have to use steroids. She didn’t have to use some of the uh other tradition uh other medications, traditional alcohol, uh medications which um suppress the immune system, you know, which has a possible delletterious effect. you suppress the immune system and you die. You know, one of the guitar players from the Eagles who had rheumatoid arthritis, you know, died from a pneumonia that he shouldn’t have. And no one’s talking about the fact that he was being treated by one of these medications that influences the immune system. So, he was wide open to infection. So, a lung infection that should have been taken care of easily with your own body or else with antibiotic, you end up dying.

37:24 Yeah. And this is the kind of stuff that scares people. So, you know, with the regulatory being such a mess, uh, right now, the regulatory side of this, um, what are you trying to tell patients now to kind of calm them down from the thought process? Cuz our human mind already races and goes to the worst possible outcome. Uh, so when we see this regulatory mess, we all often think, oh, illegal or bad. We just you start associating there. What are you trying to tell people to, hey, this is not what you think it is. These these these are these are why you should be calm in nature with this, right? Well, one of the things I stop is try to correct all the mythology that’s coming from promotional advertising of the peptides. You know, they their claims are just expanded. Yeah. I try to bring them down to a realistic approach relative to how I would use it. Okay. Now, for many years, I didn’t sell peptides. I’m being forced to sell peptides right now to make sure that the right peptides get into the right

38:25 Individual’s hands as opposed to someone who’s looking just to make a buck on selling these peptides by selling a whole array. Okay. You know, someone came to me, they had like eight peptides and it was just eight overkill. They only needed two of them. But the hype out there, as you started the program stating, the hype out there is so incredible. Oh, yeah. that it it’s distorting someone’s sense of, you know, what needs to be looked at. And that was the purpose behind the book is to try and bring into it some rational thought on how to go about doing peptides. in the second volume will have specific protocols that we’ve used on our patient population uh with a problem A or problem B macular degeneration um you know orthopedic problem uh seroriatic arthritis uh macular degeneration as I said uh the other one is um yeah macular degeneration and

39:25 Trying to be very focal on using something you know using a pepper peptide so that they don’t go and try 15 different peptides to fix a problem that could be fixed with one or two. Happens. Yeah. More more is better. It isn’t. Less is better, especially in our culture, right? And then, you know, it’s the distortion with it now has become to the point too to where I mean, I don’t know if you see it or hear it, but I definitely do at my my level on um it’s almost treated or thought on like almost in to a steroid type of sense now, too. Like, hey, take CJC, you you’re going to get jacked. You’re going to get huge doing this, this, and this stack. And some of that’s just they don’t understand, like you said in the beginning, these are these are things that are sending signals to the body, not necessarily anabolic. And right, crazy distortion there, which again feeds the fire on the regulatory side. And as you alluded to in the beginning, lifestyle is so very, very important. you know, making sure you’re eating uh

40:26 Correctly, you’re supplementing correctly, uh hydrating well, meditating, keeping your cortisol levels low, um you know, exercising. Uh you know, people think that, you know, the reason why, I’ll be honest, the reason why I don’t dispense GLP1s is the same reason why I never did fenfen. If you remember fenfen fenflamine which fentamine fen fllororamine which is for weight loss is because back then it was the biggest crave and what happened 95% of the people regained the weight a year after they stopped the product. We’re starting to see that with the GLP1s. Yes. You know, so I think lifestyle modification is sensible. Using in morbid obesity these GLP1s for a short period of time makes sense, but of course the pharmaceutical company wants you to be on it for the rest of your life.

41:26 Oh, I mean, you know as well as I do when a doctor usually prescribes something is for life. It’s not to get you get you better and get you off of it. It’s uh from a CY perspective. Well, hey, this has been absolutely enlightening. Um, and we’re very grateful to have someone of your pedigree to be on the show. Um, and so I want to end it with this. What we do is I I like uh ending it on what I call rapid fire. It’s going to be 10 questions. I don’t want to do a lot of thought process put into it and then you just kind of answer it. All right. So, let’s let’s get it kicked off. You ready? Set. Go. All right. First one, it will come a little hard. What are your top five peptides and why? And short answers. Uh, CAX for brain. It helps recovery of multiple scerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and we tested it out through all our patients. We have a Navy lieutenant who had multiple scerosis, correcting his hormones, and Cax was very good. BPC uh 157 and thyosin helping with uh muscular uh tendon ligamental type of uh traumas, um inflammation of joints works very very

42:29 Well. Um, let’s see. Uh, PT-141 phenomenal for older males and females whose libido is down because not because of the functionality of the equipment, but the fact that the brain is no longer appreciating uh, you know, the signals that we’re talking about signals. Yeah, thank you for helping. Yeah, signals. And it works extremely well. Um, so that’s uh, it’s four. If I were to choose a fifth one, I think the SS31 which is a mitochondrial goes into the mitochondria helps increase the uh oxidative phospholiza the production of ATP and reduces oxidative stress and the benefits have been found on retina on eye vision in the brain uh on the heart and on the kidneys. So, it helps people with stage three kidney disease improve diabetic kidney debris uh disease. It they’re monitoring and in the research

43:30 And they’re seeing improvement. That’s that’s all right. Um thank you for that. That those are things that people don’t understand like the signals and what your brain is doing is problematic. So, just putting a bunch of stuff in your body is not going to help unless you know what is going on, which is what the precursor to all this was when we were speaking. Uh 2004, the moment you first connected a hit to the head with a man’s hormones crashing. Can you kind of explain that in one line? Well, the in 2004 you the moment that’s when you you you first connected a hit to the head with a man’s hormones causation of the man’s hormones crossing. Can you kind of explain that in one line? Yeah. Um, head trauma induces inflammation. Inflammation shuts off our control center, the hypothalamus for producing all our hormones. Right. Period. Yep. And again goes, we’re just talking about again signals. If you’re not getting the correct signals, then your body’s not going to know how to react. And obviously that’ll be the causation. And one of the reasons you do this 28 panel too is kind of that realization.

44:32 One marker on your brain panel that no one else is even looking at right now. Um probably prolactin, but for another reason. Prolactin is called the uh prolactin is related to dopamine. So dopamine is called the prolactin inhibiting factor. So when your prolactin is elevated, dopamine’s low. When prolactin’s low, dopamine’s elevated. And you can see it in the person. High dopamine, you know, ideal amount, they’re calm, they’re good, they’re communicative, interactive. But when it’s too high, they’re edgy, agitated, panic attack, emotional volatility, insomnia. So schizophrenia you know certain so this is a marker that a lot of uh the doctors I interact with do not add until they see the rationale and this is a handbook that I wrote about two years ago which explains every single component of the 28 point biomarker

45:32 Panel ask me I’ll send it to you. Yeah. Yeah. I look forward to reading that myself. um ESPN in 2007, one line on what you uh went on outside the lines to say that nobody was saying at that time. Uh head trauma messes with your hormones and changes your psyche, right? Which obviously was the point outside the lines and how big that is in our sports world as well as our military that most people don’t understand. Absolutely. Peptides for health. One sentence on why you titled health and not performance. um because performance is a portion of health but I wanted to make it broad enough so that people understood that there was a new group of call them medicines coming into the market that can do better for your health than a lot of the medication that are being forced on people it’s been in in mass quantities now because that’s that’s what the go-to is now um what about the UK generals Right.

46:33 What what did you you know one line on what it told you when you had high ranking officials flying to you in LA to see you now? What what was that telling you? Like what what was the signal there? Talking about signals, what kind of signal was that showing you? Okay. Uh when the SAS majors were coming in, um they laid it out. We’re not getting any treatment. Okay. And in 2020, Andrew Marin and myself were invited to um Imperial College to explain to the uh military surgeon general why their SAS guys were flying in to Los Angeles at that time to get assessed and treated. My response to him was maybe they want to get better. Yeah. You think? Yeah, a little bit. and and not in not in the I think one thing that we’re seeing too is there’s more people like you know yourself and other people of the same thought process like me as we

47:34 Continue to evolve in this fashion we’re starting to push back on that medical system and what we think is all being and all truthwise right we’re starting noticing um that it’s just as much a money driven business hence the FDA having issues in RFK Jr having to bring it back online because we both know if The pharmaceutical companies can control it. They do. They’re going to monetize it. They’re going to monetize it. Yeah, they do control it. Come on. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What about your own son? What is one thing you would tell him before he ever touched a peptide? Uh, since I have three daughters, two of them are doctors, I’ve already told them, make sure you know everything you possibly can, current knowledge about the specific peptides. Know how to use them correctly. Know what they can do. know what they cannot do. I know uh Andrew was probably a big part of your inspiration in your life. Um what is one thing about his comeback

48:34 That still sticks with you? He comes back. Uh I let me go to the beginning. When we first met, no eye contact, no barely any communication. He ends up getting an NBA from Pepperdine in business. He’s now in law school in Texas. I think this is his last year in law school in Texas. That’s just totally amazed me. Like about a dozen other uh veterans who have gone through our program who have attained a level of science because they saw something helped them. So we’ve got a number of them from SOA special operators association manager you know uh Dan Dan Elen and um you know who was doing very poorly at Lomal Linda graduates first in his class. We’ve got guys who wanted to go to school never could pass the exam get on the program they enter they graduate. The funniest one is a guy who wanted to be a park

49:34 Ranger at in Alaska. He failed the exam seven times. got onto our protocol, passes it, gets his dog sled in uh Michigan or something, you know, to practice with. I don’t think he ended up going to uh Alaska, but he achieved what he wanted to achieve. When you’ve got your chemistry correct, the brain works, right? So, it sounds like what stuck to you is just you’re able to change somebody’s life. Well, best way to put it, right? We’ve got almost 17,000 people actively right now. We’ve had probably a total of uh maybe over 5,000 military from uh active to uh veteran population who, you know, have had uh their quality of life brought back to a semblance of what it was prior to their injuries. My goal is to bring them to, you know, as close to 100% recovery as possible with what we do. And we’ve started adding more

50:35 Peptides to it. Cmax silank uh two separate peptides which work on uh brain. That’s amazing. Um 9,000 algorithms in one line. Why did you build a machine to read your own panel? Um you’re talking about the uh Millennium Office Laboratory Assistant. Um, it was made to help doctors who haven’t spent 46 years in medicine to achieve the same level of interpretation on our lab panel as I do. I do it all manually. I don’t use the software. Software was made for other healthc care providers. We’re in 137 uh facilities. We’re in 16 countries. just got approved by TGA in Australia to address 210,000 veterans in um Australia and uh my partner in Australia just started the process. So they don’t have to get trained in what I’ve trained over 31 years. They just use the software, it

51:37 Does it for them. That’s amazing. Um which allows you to help more than the 17,000 people you already have affected. Correct. And that outreach as you continue to grow changes the world. Right. Again, it’s not about me. It’s about getting the treatment out there to all the people who need it. And that means recruiting doctors, healthc care providers uh to utilize our technology. We have two psychiatrists that knew nothing about endocrinology or neuroendocrinology who are using our software and are changing their entire region of patient population. One of them is in Florida. Excuse me. Yeah. One’s in Florida. The other one Jason uh in Hawaii. Five. He started with two clinics. He’s got five. And he’s taking care of a lot of the military in Hawaii that we’re being taken care of. That’s that’s that’s the whole point because when you help that and you call what you’re doing and I I talk about it all the time, you’re just creating ripple effects in the world and what you’re changing people’s lives. And then that has

52:37 Expeditional when you start, okay, that person helps this person and it just keeps flowing. and sure you’re changing the world with what you’re doing and it’s amazing. Um, and then the last thing I’ll end on the mill the millennium intake one line on the first thing you measure that a standard visit would never check. H we have a separate page that they elicit all their traumas while they were active all their traumas what they were exposed to. Okay. So, uh I don’t know if other people do the intensity that we do. It’s only two pages, but a lot of check the tick off the boxes and so forth with exposure because what I learned uh was that there’s a type of trauma called subconussive subconussive trauma where you have a hit and you don’t know you’ve been hit. 50 caliber gunners are great example of that. uh the breachers uh even though they are away from the actual blast wave

53:38 There is some of the wave that hits them. In 2017 I was at Bragg top of the kill uh house observ observation post with the commander and I’m watching them breaching and going into kill house. I was wearing a flack jacket, a helmet. I felt the blast wave and I’m 13t up and you know I’m 6’ tall 13 plus 6 19 ft up and I still felt the blast wave. Oh yeah. And it was a what do they call it? U reduced charge. It was a training charge. And I’m standing next to the commander, the CEO of Bragg, and I turned to him and I said, “How much money do you spend on doors?” That was my that was my intelligent question to him. Yeah, you know, you talk about breachers. I don’t think I know one breacher that doesn’t have um TBI. Um they all they all suffer subconussive. What happens over time, these little hits build up and create a

54:38 Major change in the chemistry of your brain and that’s when you start becoming symptomatic. And what happens is they go into the to the doc and say, “Doc, I’ve uh I’m not feeling good, blah blah blah.” And they said, “When was your last exposure?” “Well, a couple years ago.” and they say, “Okay, you’re just depressed.” Okay? And they never put the two together that it’s the cumulative effect reaching threshold and creating the symptoms. So you don’t symptomatically treat them. You treat them based on doing the 50point biomarker panel, the 28 point biomarker panel, and you look at how the chemistry of the brain has changed. And this is what we’ve documented uh you know for the past uh since 2004. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s um and I’ll end it on this question for you. Um you know you’ve done a lot of work. You’ve dedicated your life to the you know helping the your fellow man. What does it mean to you sitting back looking at

55:39 Your life’s work knowing how much you have not just changed individual’s lives but made such an impact on the world? Uh, it’s a great question. Um, I look for a who’s next. That that winning mil that winning me mentality, right? That’s what winners always do. Hey, cool. What’s next? That’s right. You know, I don’t look at the water under the bridge so much. I look at who’s next in front of me. Because as long as I’m able to breathe and to function and to get other doctors to understand what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years and hopefully we can recruit them so that they can carry forth with what we’re doing. I send a letter out to the government once a month. RFK Pete Heg said uh Doug Collins I’m looking for someone to help me to get connected. Someone’s helped me with RFK. um you know just to sit down 15 minutes show them what we’ve been able to do and the cost on it is so inexpensive because we don’t do testing

56:41 That has no benefit to the individual. How does a repetitive CT scan, MRI scan, PET scan, spec scan, how does that help anyone? It doesn’t. And now we have a new test which company major army major and a um Apache helicopter pilot John Schmidt uh put a company together that does a genetic testing for markers of inflammation. So we spent the last four months generating ones uniquely for our veteran population, more specifically for brain. So, we’re doing this test, seeing the results, treating them, and then repeating it, and it shows us the inflammatory markers have improved significantly. I’ll send you some documents on that. But it’s wild testing. It’s absolutely phenomenal. I’ve waited 29 years for it. That’s amazing. Um, and then the work you do is amazing. And that that winner’s mentality of who’s next is um,

57:42 You know, come in from me. I’ll tell you that that winner’s mentality of what you’re doing at changing, you know, veterans lives, people in this world’s lives is invaluable and very grateful to have you on the show. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been an honor to be able to share this information with you, Zach. Dr. Gordon, thank you. This is a conversation I wish every man had before he ordered a peptide off a website because some ad told him to, here’s what I want you to take from this. A peptide is a tool. It’s not a shortcut. It comes after you’ve measured what’s actually broken. Never before. The people flooding your feed, selling you some of this miracle molecule. Most of them have skipped the only step that matters. Which is finding out what’s actually wrong with you in the first place. That’s not medicine, that’s marketing. Measure first. Correct what’s broken. Then, and only then, consider the tools. This episode is for the man over 40 who keeps seeing peptides everywhere and can’t tell the real from the sales

58:44 Pitch. Now you can. Don’t buy the molecule. Find someone who runs the numbers first. If this hit home, do me a favor. Rate the show. Leave a review and follow No Hype, Just Standards wherever you’re listening so the next guy who actually needs to hear this is able to find it. No hype, Just Standards. I’ll see you next time.