Maximize Vitality With Hormones & Peptides

Jay Campbell

Jen, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. I’m very excited to talk to you on the show.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. How did you get started with all of this? Did you wake up one day and say, I want to optimize my testosterone and live better? Tell us about your story.

Jay Campbell

Yes. For sure. High-level summary. I’ve always been off the beaten path. I’m a wanderer for people who understand what a wanderer a wandering soul is, but when I was six years old, I ran out of the back of a Catholic church, and my dad chased me out. He’s asking, What are you doing? Where are you going? I’m away from that cult. I was six years old, and I just knew that things weren’t as they seemed. But, getting into the testosterone path. I was a basketball, baseball, soccer, and basketball player in high school. I played basketball at a Division 2 school in Georgia, Georgia Southwestern University. and I played at a pretty high level. 

Then later, once I graduated from college, and at the end of my 20s, I was almost 30 at the end of my 29th year. I was playing in a men’s adult basketball league, and I was kicked in the testicles in a game, checked myself out, went over, and within a couple of weeks, probably 4 or 5 weeks or whatever, I started feeling super run down and had no idea what was going on. I went to a doctor, and it was all to say: There are no coincidences—all these synchronicities in the universe. That PPO doctor referred me to an endocrinologist, and it happened to be that the endocrinologist was a Harvard-trained world-class endocrinologist named Dr. Raymond Scruggs. I was in Southern California at this time. He said, Look, I’m going to do you. I’m going to take your lab panels. But I have a feeling that you have a testosterone deficiency. I was. What the heck’s that? He did my labs. Came back. Sure enough, I was in class two, or type two hypogonadal. I had a total testosterone level of 175 or 180 or whatever. He said, Look, I can put you on a course of therapeutic testosterone and HCG, and I’ll have you as rain in 8 to 10 weeks.  He was like, Go home and talk to your fiance at the time, almost your wife-to-be, and find out if she was okay with it. 

We did. She said, Look, you’re a smart guy. We didn’t have children at the time. She’s right; let’s do it. Let’s see what happens. As he exactly instructed, I went on therapeutic testosterone. 8 to 10 weeks later, as he said, I felt amazing. I went back to visit him for my visit, and he said, Okay, we’re going to take you off. I was, no way. You’re not taking me off this. I feel like a million dollars. This is life-altering for me. At that point, he was, okay, no problem. He explained to me, Hey, you’ll have to be on this the rest of your life. I’m okay; there’s no problem with that. That’s worth the trade-off. But from that point forward, this was literally in 2000, 1999, and 2000. There was no information. If you wanted to read stuff on therapeutic testosterone or hormone optimization, you had to read Russian training journals or Bulgarian training journals, which I couldn’t read because the internet wasn’t translating things we have today, so I just went on to, I would say, a vision quest of learning about health optimization and understanding what testosterone was doing to my body. I saw how it changed me physiologically. I was, and I wanted to learn everything there is, so I just started searching again. This was in the very infancy of the internet.

I’ve met or didn’t meet, but I read the book Testosterone: A Man’s Guide by Nelson Vergel. Nelson Vergel was a man who’s been very instrumental in my life and in writing my books. But anyway, his book was about men who were on, who had HIV or had a diagnosis of Aids and were using testosterone and everything else to survive. But anyway, to fast forward, it’s a long story. As I would meet people in my 30s and into my early 40s and people would see me, I had a very impressive physique. They would say to me, They’re, What do you do to stay in shape? I would tell them to their faces that I used therapeutic testosterone, and it would always be met with 1 or 2 responses. It would be, You’re on steroids. Or it would be, Fascinating, tell me more. Fascinating; tell me more group of folks eventually won me over and said, Hey, dude, you got to write a book on this. More about this than probably most doctors. You have to put it out there.

Fast forward to January 19, 2013. I started to write a white paper on it, and then I sent an email to Rick Collins, who’s, to this day, a very close friend of mine now but the world’s foremost attorney on performance-enhancing drugs. He represents the WWE, Major League Baseball, and all these different sporting agencies. I said, Hey, look, if a nonmedical licensed person wanted to write a book on therapeutic testosterone, what would be the risks? Being the attorney and the wise one?  Of course, he said, Well, there were many. I shelved the idea, but at the same time that I had sent him my white paper and that email, I also sent it to Nelson. Four months later, Nelson, out of the blue in the middle of the night, literally sent an email to my Gmail account saying, Hey, I don’t know who you are, but I read your white paper, and you have to publish this. This is fantastic stuff. 

Stepping on the shoulders of giants and allowing him to mentor me. About a year and a half later, the book was published. The first book was published at the end of 2015 when it should have been published in 2014 but at the end of 2015. Then, from there, I’ve met amazing people. I’ve attended medical conferences, I’ve lectured, I’ve presented, and I’ve subsequently written seven other books since that book. I’ve written books on therapeutic peptides, intermittent fasting, fat loss, and understanding bioregulators and hormones. It’s been a whirlwind since 2015. Fast forward to today. but here I am now, speaking to you.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

It’s amazing. You’re helping people. It was a pain on purpose. That’s what happened. That’s what happened to me. Now, do they think that that insult to the groin when you got injured, that that changed your testosterone, that your testes got injured? Or did they think that you were slowly declining?

Jay Campbell

It’s probably a combination of both. I mean, because it’s a great question. I mean, we’re talking 1999–2000. Now here we are in 2024, where that question is highly relevant because the environment is so contaminated now. Anybody who watches this show or this interview understands that. I mean, there are so many end-of-construction chemicals. We’ve got plastic, we’ve got blue light, and we’ve got dirty electromagnetic frequencies. I mean, there is no escaping endocrine system disruption in today’s modern society. It was probably a combination of both because I was living in Southern California and I was a very hard-working athlete, still playing competitive sports, still lifting competitively, and stuff like that in my late 20s. I would say it was probably a combination of both.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, that makes sense. Yes. Everyone listening out there, we’re living in a toxic soup. I was just having this conversation with someone. You have to be proactive, and this is why we’re talking about peptides, bioregulators, and optimizing our hormones. You have to be proactive. This is why sperm is declining. How many kids are going to be infertile? I always joke: I have three boys; I have a daughter and three boys. I’m always like, All the girls are going to love you because you’re going to have such healthy sperm. After all, we’re taking care of you. 

Jay Campbell

It’s true. 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. Why does this happen? Why is it so important to deal with these hormone imbalances? With fighting disease?

Jay Campbell

Well, with sperm, I mean, let’s talk about sperm for a second. There was a giant meta-analysis. It’s called the Hebrew University Study. It started there, actually, when I was after I was born, in the late mid- to late-70s. I was born in 1971. For you guys watching, that means I’ll be 53 on February 24th. Yes, I’m a Pisces, but they started this meta-analysis on all seven continents, and they measured 48,000 men over four decades or three and a half decades. In 2011, they published the results of the study, which showed that fertility had dropped by literally more than half. Also, on the other side of the study, they showed that testosterone levels were declining in that the testosterone levels of men in the post-World War II generation were literally three times higher on average than the testosterone levels of men in 2011. 

Now, Jen, let’s fast forward to now. Where are we now? Again, I always use a quote from Dr. Anthony Jay, who has an amazing book, the transcending book: Estrogeneration: about how if you put a male fish into any freshwater aqueduct, stream, lake, or estuary anywhere in the United States, it’s also Canada in the West, there will be a female by the end of the year. All you have to do is understand that, literally, the chemicals, the birth control, and the water supply—again, all these different phytoestrogens and deconstructing chemicals—atrazine and glyphosate—all these things are changing the DNA. They’re changing biological feature sets in the species. It’s not just in animals or fish; it’s in humans, too. 

I mean, again, look around. I mean, how weak is the average 200, 21-year-old man today? If you measure their testosterone, you will find out that almost every single one of them has a deficiency. I mean, that’s unheard of insane. I do have my tinfoil hat over there if you want me to go put it on because that’s where this conversation would go. But people ask, is it purposeful or is it indirect? I would say, again, it’s a combination of both. The environment is contaminated, but modern-day society is living with industrialization and chemicalization and then all of these different things with technology, again because blue light is also very harmful. It’s a combination of all those factors that are destroying, if not decimating, the male and female endocrine systems.

That’s why you have so many men who are, let’s call women, two who are sexually confused. You have this entire gender crisis where people don’t know what they want to classify themselves as. But look, I say this, and I’m very outspoken when I say it, and maybe you guys might have to remove this from the video. But the truth is that sexual identification issues are due to a lack of testosterone in utero. It’s literally that simple. No one wants to talk about this. But if you went back and looked at all these babies being born and looked at their actual hormone levels, which of course is very difficult to do, and nobody’s doing this, you would see that both males and females have low levels of testosterone in utero. 

Once you then come out of a chemically laden environment and you fast forward 16, 18, and 20 years, when they’re now prepubescent and entering adulthood, they have these very severe low levels. Again, it’s effective at all levels of society. Look at sports. I always talk about this. People are putting these memes on Instagram. If you look at professional basketball players and how spindly and skinny they are and just how little they look in comparison to just 20 or 25 years ago in the NBA, it’s insane. Again, this is all due to a lack of testosterone. It’s all due to stronger bones and bone mineral density because they don’t have the hormone levels that they would have had 20 to 30 years ago.

All these factors into where we are today, and that is lower birth rates. Now we have the lowest birth rate in the history of recorded history in the United States. Almost everyone who’s in their 30s and early 40s who’s trying to get pregnant has to use in-vitro fertilization or fertility medications. I mean, that’s where we are. We are in, as you said, a contaminated, toxic environmental soup. This is why optimizing your hormones, understanding how to do this, and working with doctors who know how to do it are so much more important today.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, it makes it difficult when women go to their doctors for irregular periods and they’re put on a birth control pill to regulate their periods. Just for those listening out there, that’s not how you regulate your cycle. When you have an abnormal cycle, it’s probably because you’re not detoxifying estrogen as well, or you have too many xeno estrogens. 

This is crazy, Jay. I went to the mall with my kids after Christmas. It was after Thanksgiving. There was a line, probably with 50 people in line, to get the special Black Friday deals at Bath and Body Works, and that’s just slathering chemicals on you. It’s in your stuff too. Yes, it’s draining them.

Jay Campbell

Further chemically castrating people. Yes. 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Exactly. If you go to other countries, obviously the food’s different. The chemicals are different. Even companies here, when they’re shipping products out to Europe, have a different standard. They can’t have mold in their products. All this stuff. Yes, it’s very disturbing. talk about environmental toxins. There is a mold that can activate those estrogen receptors and cause problems in males with extra estrogen. There are a lot of different things. when we’re looking at hormones, so someone is curious that maybe they have a hormone problem. They just go to their conventional doctor. No. What do they need to do? Because they’re not going to get help if they don’t.

Jay Campbell

Yes, it’s a great question. That’s the last thing that you want to do. Then again, this is not to disparage physicians, but the average insurance-obligated PPO or HMO doctor doesn’t train or has no training. Again, there’s no standard patient-centered care model for hormone optimization. They’re not aware that it’s not their deal. It’s not in their crosshairs every day. Most of those people, if you happen to go to one of them, are going to write your script for an SSRI.   To improve the depressive effects or depression symptoms that you have. Because if you have a low, you have low hormones or low testosterone if you’re a male or even female, and then they’ll address the sexual dysfunction by giving you erectile dysfunction drugs. Yes. That whole world is broken, from the standpoint of helping you get it optimized. 

Again, as a person, your first order of business is to get your blood work done. There are millions of private labs out there. I happen to work with one of its private BMD labs, but there are a ton of them. Discount labs and direct labs. There are all these places out there, and any male or female with a hormone deficiency can go on the internet and spend 100 bucks and get a free. If you’re a man as sensitive as estradiol, if you’re a woman and you want to get progesterone, estradiol, and testosterone. It’s very simple to find out if you’re functioning with the deficiency. From that point, if and when you are. Again, most people put a gun to my head all the time and say, Jay, how many people out there in normal society today are functioning with a hormonal deficiency? I’d say it’s 80% or higher. The saddest part is that 98% of them have no idea. Have no idea. 

If you do these lab works, if you watch this podcast, if you happen to come across my brand, read my books, or follow me on social media or whatever, and you hear this stuff, it’s then incumbent upon you to find a physician who is a cash-paying physician who has opted out of the allopathic system and has experience working with male and female patients and optimizing their hormones. When I say an experiential body of work, I’m saying, if possible, you want to work with somebody who’s been doing this for 10 years. Look, there are doctors out there now, and I happen to work with many of them who’ve been optimizing hormones for 25 years. 

There are plenty of amazingly resourceful doctors who understand how to do this, and they understand how to do it in the context of health and longevity. Because, as Jen said, there’s also a lot of doctors out there who will just. We call them hormone clinics or windmill clinics, where they’ll just write you a script for hormones to put you on hormones, and then they don’t know what they’re doing, and then they send you down a bad path. I mean, the best doctors today will tell you to a man or woman if you have a conversation with them that the majority of their job, and I’m talking hormone optimization physicians, is getting people uneffed up from the previous doctors that they originally saw, whether it was their primary care physician or their HMO doctor, or even just, again, somebody that they looked up on Google that was at what I call a hormone windmill clinic. Some people call them T-males.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, that happens a lot. I see these popping up because my phone can hear me talking about GLP-1 with my patients. Then I get all these ads for, you can get $200 a month, and that’s with a doctor. No, you don’t just want to be prescribed these. You want someone to guide you through these hormones and these supplements.

I had a patient that I was helping through perimenopause, which could be a 10-year process for women. She was on progesterone. We were starting low and going slow. Her OB put her on progestin, and I’m like, did she even look at what you were on and taking? These are synthetic chemicals that are usually prescribed. I said, No; this has happened a lot. I’ve had patients whose doctor knows that they’re working with an integrative doctor, but they still try to give them birth control pills.  

Jay Campbell

Unbelievable stuff. But maybe underlying everything you guys do, I know. I try to question all the things that you put them on, and then you confuse the patient even more. Because now the patient doesn’t know who to trust.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Well, they got to write the scripts. I mean, my patients, they know that I have their back, but I don’t know; maybe they’re worried that their rep’s going to be. Why aren’t you prescribing these? I have no idea. The only thing I prescribe is a lot of compounding pharmacy stuff and then a lot of continuous glucose monitors. 

Jay Campbell

But when you’re in northwest Ohio, one of my good friends is Dr. Rob Coleman.  He’s in, south of Dayton and Centerville, or around that area. I live in the capital of metabolic emergency land, Because, well, I mean, look, we talk about that. I mean, it’s, and I’m not making excuses for people in the Midwest and just saying, I was born in Cincinnati in Christ Hospital. Shout out to the Bengals and the Reds. But look, the reality is that if you live in the middle of the United States, you are being blasted and inundated by chemicals, whether it’s glyphosate or atrazine. I mean, those poor people that live in the Cincinnati area get hit with Procter & Gamble. 

I mean, I just went to a funeral three weeks ago, and it was cold. I almost died. I live in South Florida. We went up there to see an uncle, a very close uncle of mine, who died. God rest his soul. But we went to the funeral, and I was looking as I was driving from where I was staying, in my hotel south of the river, in Riverfront Stadium. But across the river, the Ohio River is there, and there’s the Procter and Gamble plant, and I’m I was born there, and I lived there until I was 11 or 12 years old. I remember that distinct smell waking up from the plant 60 miles away. It’s also the hotbed of cancer; southern Indiana, southern Ohio, and northern Kentucky are the triumvirate of the most cancers ever. It’s all from Procter & Gamble again: chemicals and all that stuff. But people don’t realize, living in the Midwest, how slammed they are with chemicals. 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

They blame themselves. We also normalize things. We normalize all this. But I do tell my patients, especially when they have kids who are having medical problems, that we live in a toxic area with glyphosate. You need to drink clean water. You need to just mitigate at home everything you can. It’s difficult. I’m glad you brought that up because people are sick there. Sometimes I’ll talk with colleagues about certain cases I have, and, My patients are more difficult because of the environment.

Jay Campbell

We live in, you said it already. I mean, I go to Mexico often; I live my life. I lived in Mexico, in Playa del Carmen, for 10 months. We sold all of our stuff—both of our houses and all of our things—in 2022. We went down to Mexico, and we just got tired of living in Mexico because of the corruption in the government. But in Mexico, they don’t spray the skies. There’s no GMO food. All food you eat at a restaurant is farm-to-table. I mean, if you lived there for ten months and you said it earlier to some places in Europe or similar Balkans, you would taste the difference when the food is not laden with chemicals. Being back in the States, I’ve been living here now for, this is my seventh month because we moved back here in June. I live in Tampa. The food is different. We know everything is laced with chemicals here. Preservatives you can’t even buy. Whether you go to Sprouts, Whole Foods, or any of that, the quote-unquote healthy whole food, health stores, or groceries. You can’t even prove or determine whether or not your grass-fed, sustainable, wild-caught food is until you eat it and cook it because you can taste the chemicals in it. 

The United States is a toxic soup bowl of chemicals at this point. As you said, to maintain health and to maintain physical, spiritual, and mental optimization, you have to be extremely proactive. There is no one out there looking over your medical records or going through your case histories to understand whether or not you are at risk. It’s up to you. All these different things that we’re talking about here today—hormonal optimization—I know we’re going to talk about peptides. These are massive tools for people to use and take ownership of. Again, there aren’t a lot of doctors out there that can help you with that. Thankfully, there are some because you want to get compound pharmacies, scripts, and stuff. But as and, this is a big part of the stuff that I’m involved in, not guides to transition because you might have some more questions with testosterone. But peptides are crypto for health care. That’s what I tell people. You have this gigantic, deregulated, or decentralized financial world now with all these cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and all this stuff and peptides is the same thing in health care because it’s unregulated. 

You’ve got the FDA trying to classify the new class two classification with 28 of the peptides and all the documents you use that are all working, all beneficial, and all proven to do things. The FDA is, we can’t have those out in the wild, because then that’s going to erode the big pharma. petroleum, there’s still a drug supply because that’s the model that makes them money. Remember, Chris, as Chris Rock said, there’s no money in the cure. The money is in the medicine. Peptides seek to treat the fundamental root cause of the illness or issue. They don’t want that. Now they’re going to tell everybody that all of these are dangerous. These are not safe. Or whatever other nonsense they’re going to label it. But we all know it’s all to say that the genie is out of the bottle. You cannot stop human beings from using peptides, bioregulators, and even better stuff that’s going to come from that, because we all know that it works. It’s been around. I’ve been using peptides since 2004.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. It’s amazing. I did want to ask you because I know you’re passionate about this. If someone is listening now, they are on testosterone. Maybe they’re not on the formula or the way to get it into their body. You have two preferred ways that we were talking about earlier.

Jay Campbell

Yes, 100%. It’s a great question. I’m glad I wanted to bring that up anyway. There are a lot of delivery systems. Unfortunately again, because big Pharma makes money, they want physicians that earn a good living, which many of them still do. They also have compounded versions of oral tablets now, I think it’s called Jatenzo, and there’s No Testo. There’s even a nasal mist. There are so many substandard delivery systems. As a consumer, if you want to do this, you have to be cognizant and proactive about what delivery system you use. As I was telling you before we started to show off air today, there are only two delivery systems that are tried and true. Again, I speak because of my experiential knowledge of using them. That’s injections. and then, of course, the trend, and this is for men we’re talking about now. We can talk about women if you want to, but there’s also the trans-scrotal compounded cream formulation that you can use. Again, at the base of the scrotum, you have the peritoneum skin, which is eight times more permeable than any other skin location on the body.

When you apply trans-scrotal or testosterone-compounding cream there, it’s much more readily and faster absorbed. Injections are tried and true and have been used literally for more than 70 years because they simulate or not simulate, but once they get in the bloodstream, they cleave as testosterone, depending on what you’re using, at basically the same rate and speed. That I always tell people, because people get all caught up in the different testers, it’s at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, because what matters is that the frequency of the delivery system of injectables is at a level that stimulates the body’s natural production. 

Three shots a week for men is usually the one that most settle on. However, if you could inject yourself daily, and again, very few people are that anal retentive or organized to do it, it would be best because then the body would see that as literally a pulse, a mimic, or a limitation of what the body is naturally producing. But between every other day shots or the trans scrotal application, those are the two tried and true delivery systems that will cause the least amount of harm to the endocrine system, the least amount of side effects, and the least amount of endocrine perturbations.

Everything else is fraught with issues. The two most expensive formulations or delivery systems are, of course, pellets, which are ineffective, both for men and women. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re worthless. I mean, I know some people will say to me, and I’ve had these people say, Hey, man, I’m on active duty. I’m a Special Forces soldier, both men and women. I cannot inject; I cannot carry needles with me. I also can’t carry the cream because I can’t have any prophylactics, banned substances, or whatever. With the way I travel, everything has to be copacetic. I understand that in those types of situations, some testosterone in the form of a pellet is better than none, as you’re the agent for optimization, but for anyone else, you’d never want to use pellets. I have Jen A, and obviously for confidentiality purposes. I never talk about this, but I have a desktop folder on my computer that I’ve had for more than a decade of people sending me pictures of pellet extrusions of infections. I mean, it is insane to say that people are still choosing the medieval practice of pellet insertions. It’s not. 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

It doesn’t make sense. A lot of medical spores are jumping into this, and they’re not. It’s just the GLP-1. They’re here, and here I am. I’ve been using peptides for five years in my office, and then everyone just jumps on this bandwagon, and I’m just, this is not okay. Then pellets. Yes, people need hormones, but pellets are not the way to do it. 

Jay Campbell

No. 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

It’s just a trendy thing now. It’s giving high doses, and it’s very organic excretions. because your body is absorbing at different rates. 

Jay Campbell

Exactly. People should understand what you’re saying. Pellets are inefficient because everyone cleaves the testosterone esters molecularly at different rates and speeds. You can’t, and we’re all biochemically unique. We’re all in one. You cannot put a pellet that’s supposed to last for eight weeks, 10 weeks, or six weeks in you, me, my wife, your husband, or whomever and expect it to cleave at a universally accepted rate. It doesn’t work like that. Some people are literally what we call hyper screeners of testosterone and who will burn through a pellet in three weeks. Now imagine what they feel when they have to wait 5 to 10 more weeks or five to eight more weeks for their physician, who says, I’m sorry, I can’t give you any more. They’re dying. Dying, because now they’re eunuchs because their natural hormones are way lower than when they started before they had the deficiency. As you were saying about extrusions and infections, I mean, it is insane how people tell me their stories of how I did it for two years. then it just got to the point where I had scar tissue build up from where they were cutting me.

I mean, it’s insane. Don’t do pellets. The other thing is, why do physicians and nurses prescribe and use them? They’re the most expensive form of hormone. It’s a profit center for their business. Now, again, very few people ever talk about this. The other thing I want to mention about this because I’ve never put this on a podcast before is that there’ll be doctors who watch this, and they’ll come at you, me, or whoever and say, That’s not true. I’ve been using pellets for ten years in my clinical practice, and it works great. that’s cool. 

But here’s the truth: This is what nobody can overcome. There has never been a single randomized control trial in the history of medicine with pellets. Why do you think that is? Because science knows the pellets are worthless. They’re a gimmick. They’re a scam now. Yes, they will deliver testosterone again. I said, In the military, I’ve got a person who’s in harm’s way, who can’t get shots or can’t do the cream. Yes, some testosterone is better than others. But again, it is so inefficient and such an inexact science, and it will fail. That’s the last thing almost anyone who’s ever used pellets will tell you, if they’re honest, that within two years they can’t use it anymore because it doesn’t work. The body rejects the pellet.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. You’re doing something. You’re just putting on a foreign body. It’s just weird to me. Yes. Because I own a business, all these companies try to get me to buy these pellets, and I’m.

Jay Campbell

They’ve got their applicators; they’ve got instant surgical applicators. Take the scalpel out of the podiatrist’s hands and use the art of ice.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

This is where things get a little dicey because sometimes it’s hard to know who to believe and who not to. I even see this with health influencers. They’re getting paid to support these companies. People reach out to me on social media, and they say, Can you try my product? I’m, well, no, I don’t know your ingredients. I’m not going to. You have to be careful who you listen to and what you watch because Greta is a real thing.

Jay Campbell

Well, let me add to that because I’m grateful that you brought that up. I mean, anybody who’s following me and knows me. Unfortunately for the world, there are too many of those people now. But they know I’m very transparent and authentic, and I don’t care. You can say to me that shadows suppress me. But I will say this straight up, and I don’t care. I’m grateful that I even have the opportunity on your forum because I know there are a lot of people who watch this. 

If anybody tries to sell you a testosterone-boosting supplement, you’re being scammed. There has never been one. I don’t care. I can’t name names; I won’t, but I could, as you just said, be a very, very influential health influencer. Biohacker influencers who sell these bullshit, testosterone-boosting supplements. None of them have any clinical efficacy. Any one of them that’s ever shown any increase. It’s been transient. It’s never going to optimize male or female testosterone levels over time, and again, nothing will replace or equal therapeutic dosages of testosterone. That’s the only tried-and-true method.

Don’t come at me and say, Jay, that’s not true. Clomiphene, hCG, or God forbid people even use AIS, aromatase inhibitors for testosterone optimization, which is insanity. Don’t even get me going. If you want to go down that path, we can. But at the end of the day, hCG, Clomiphene, and hMG are all wonderful fertility medications, and they’re all great as analogs or adjuvants. In addition, concomitantly with therapeutic testosterone or hormones, if you’re a woman, estradiol is on progesterone, but you can’t use them in isolation. Now again, I know they’re smart. Doctors will say, Yes, but Dr. Jay, it’s not on your medical license. 

With younger people, I have to put them on Chlomiphene. I got to put them on hCG. In Clomiphene, or whatever. I’m, look, I get all that. But at the end of the day, we will see that none of those things in isolation will ever replace therapeutic testosterone, estradiol, or progesterone. Again when given in clinically precise dosages, even though they want to say that they will. I understand that doctors have to play this mysterious game well. They have to establish a chain of command. Especially with younger patients now, which they’re seeing more and more of because they get hormonal deficiencies or the state of the norm. But you will know if you’ve been in this game long enough, that nothing is going to replace or optimize therapeutic hormones. Well, they just won’t.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, I love that. I love your passion for it too. You’re the man with testosterone. 

Jay Campbell

I mean, I’ve seen it all. I’ve been in this game now, this is my 24th year, and I’ve seen everything. I’m very blessed to have worked with the best doctors. I’ve worked with people who’ve been in this field for close to three decades or two and a half decades, and they’ve seen it all, too. We’ve shared so many stories, and I just know it works. After a while, you see what doesn’t. It’s my job to tell people, Hey, look, you can go down that path if you want, but in theory and practice, or sometimes two different things.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, absolutely. Now let’s talk about peptides a little bit. You’ve been using peptides for a long time.

Jay Campbell

Yes, two decades now. Do you believe that? 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

It’s great. Well, I mean, this is something. I remember when I first heard about peptides, and I remember it was five or six years ago when the FDA was going to jump in. I didn’t want to spend hours and hours taking courses on something that might be taken away. Then I was, screw it, I need to help patients and, amazing stories from adding in peptides while optimizing, sleep, and, of course, gut health. We know peptides work best when they’re optimized in other ways. But you were in the sports for bodybuilding a little bit. Your wife is now in fitness. Why don’t you talk about your favorite peptide stacks for leaning out and building muscle?

Jay Campbell

Yes, for sure. Well, something you just said is genius. That’s why I know your stuff is the biggest issue with people on peptides, and I’ll just give you a little short history. I’ve been using research-based peptides since 2004, which were only found in, quote-unquote, the bodybuilding performance enhancement, fitness, competitive world where they were, using anything they could get their hands on to alter their body composition, speed, the rate of fat loss or muscle building, or any of that stuff. This was at the same time, literally four years later, that I was using therapeutic testosterone, experimenting with delivery systems, and working with various doctors. I cut my teeth in testosterone optimization or hormone optimization. At the same time, I was learning about peptides, so they went hand in hand. But I never wrote anything about peptides. I had people, five years after I wrote my testosterone book, say, dude, you know more about peptides than you do about testosterone. Why don’t you write a book on peptides? I wouldn’t, because they were so underground. As you said, it wasn’t until 2017 or 2018 that the FDA and the AMA started saying, Okay, we can use peptides in medicine.

But it was still disdained. I mean, they still would not pay for the research. I mean, we both know what happened to our friends at TaylorMade and all that stuff. I mean, it’s crazy how weird the peptide space is in the clinical community because you and I both know they work better than anything. But even someone like me was reluctant to write a book on peptides. Anyway, I finally put the book out, which was last year; literally, two weeks from this day was the very beginning of February, and the book exploded. Seed’s book was out before my book, but between Seed’s book and my book, we both benefit because all these people are now talking about peptides. 

Listen, the real truth, Jen is that I was in the place at the time. He was a year too soon because, when my book came out, people were looking for alternative forms of healing for the V. You have all these people who don’t know anything about peptides, who aren’t even affiliated with you or me or the clinical space or even the research base, but they’re looking for alternative forms of healing because they have been injured by the V. It’s a perfect world now; all these people in the last year have exploded. Peptides are mainstream. Many people are experimenting with peptides. Many people are trying to get peptides. 

Obviously, in September 2023, the FDA was at the very end of September; I think it was the 29th of August. They classified 28 of the peptides that we all know and love. as a class two restriction. Here we are. Fast forward to today. To answer your question, peptides are insanely amazing. You can use them to burn body fat, enhance cognition, accelerate healing, or heal wounds. improve longevity. You have the telomerase expression peptides; what is the Epitalon? Amylin, there are so many amazing peptides.

What’s crazy is that there are literally thousands of peptides that nobody talks about, and I don’t even write about them because we don’t have access to them. But the Russian community, the Russian sports science community, who’s been involved and instrumental in bioregulators, knows about them, and they’ve been using them for a long time. I watched this documentary the other day because Dr. Victor Cavett’s just died. He’s the father of bioregulators, and he was given a medal. He was given a medal by Putin. Putin is using a bioregulator peptide. Russia and the United States are so far apart when it comes to medicine. I shouldn’t say medicine, I’ll just healing. Alternative healing, understanding, or what’s out there. Quantum healing might be the better line. But to answer your original question, some peptides can pretty much do anything. But what’s available to us and what’s out there are two separate things. To answer on fat loss. My favorite peptides for sure for women are Ipamorelin, and for men, they are Tesamorelin.

Now Ipamorelin, without going into a diatribe, is an amazing peptide that is used in isolation. A lot of people also combine it with CJC 1295 to get a more profound growth hormone release effect because it’s in the GNRH. You can get both of those. Tesamorelin is a clinically approved or FDA-approved peptide called a grifter. That was created for men who have, again, wasting or not wasting but lipodystrophy from HIV, which is hard, visceral body fat and center mass. When you take it as a normal or otherwise normal and healthy aging male, it tears through belly fat. For men who have belly fat, beer guts, or whatever, it’s an awesome peptide if you change your lifestyle. But the other thing is, as you said, I went off on a tangent, but this is important. They’re not magic bullets. I feel too many people start down the peptide route without doing the first order of business, which is finding out whether or not you have a hormonal imbalance or a deficiency. Because peptides will not do very much if you are also massively hormonally dysregulated and metabolically deranged.

If you have a giant belly and you’re not letting insulin control in and you’re on the border of type 2 diabetes and you have an A1C of 5.7 or something, and you start on the peptide train, you’re probably not going to get the same results as someone who is hormonally optimized in living insulin controlled. I think it’s extremely important to let people who watch these physicians and, of course, laypeople know. Peptides are going to work a lot better when you start by addressing whether or not you have a hormonal deficiency, a thyroid deficiency, and also whether or not you’re not living insulin-controlled, you would do the reverse.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, and this takes time and patience.

Jay Campbell

For sure. 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

A lot of Americans don’t have patients. I remember having a patient come. She’s like, I want to be on a GLP-1. I want it now. I have 10 pounds to lose. I’m sorry, we did not finish. Your gut health was good. Because she was an autoimmune thyroid patient. Trust me, I put her on 5-amino-1MQ,

let’s have you do that for a little bit while we do this gut health routine. Then we’ll put you on the GLP-1 for a few months. Then you’ll be on golden. Then I saw her, and six months later she said, Thank you for making me wait. She was, and I feel better than I ever have. Yes, because if you and she could have just gone to a medical spa down the street and gotten her script, but you need to have the guides with you. 

CJC and Ipamorelin are on the bye-bye list. Tesamorelin is going to be what I’m going to be moving toward for patients now because I can’t get the other. How do you use that? Because I think I remember you dosing in the morning and not at night. Because I usually have them dosed at night. Let’s talk about that because that was different from what I’m used to.

Jay Campbell

Yes. Something else you just said that is important is understanding that you have to get mitochondrial optimization. There are a lot of things that you can do before you start peptides. Let’s talk about the GLPs. I will answer those questions. Well, let’s talk about the gold piece. Because so many people are misinformed about the GLP.  The GLPs are an issue because truth be told, it’s in the middle. When people say there’s a lot of side effects and a lot of safety issues with GLP, it’s true. But it’s not because the GLP is ineffective, bad science, or all this other nonsense that people read about in the media. 

It’s because of the instructions that the physicians give or don’t give—that’s probably the better way to say to the patients using GLP—you just said, the med spa prescribers or the people that are just willy-nilly throwing out semaglutide and, ozempic and obviously with Wegovy, which is Mounjaro, if I’m getting a mixed up, which is there’s appetite there—these people are using these things recklessly, and what I mean by recklessly is, if you use a GLP-1 agonist and you also don’t know that you have to eat enough protein, you have to resistance train and do cardiovascular exercise, and you have to get enough sleep. Dude, you already know these people. 

These drugs are so effective that they will shut down the person’s appetite. The person will stop eating. If you’re fat and metabolically deranged, you’re, well, this is good. I’m losing weight. This is amazing. Look at my pants; they are shrinking, and my dress is shrinking. But as a result, there’ll be hell to pay because now that you’re shutting down the thyroid, you’re shutting down metabolic metabolism. Again, all these people are going to rebound with weight gain. They’re going to Wegovy butt, Wegovy face, and all these.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

I am going to say that, the butt. You can tell. You can tell when you look at people. They are on GLP-1, and they did it the wrong way. Then you can tell people doing it the right way because they’re ripped.

Jay Campbell

The people who do it the right way, they’re metahumans. They’re elite. That’s why I say this to people in the bodybuilding community all the time because I laugh that they’re not recommending these drugs more. After all, they’re doing all this other BS 30 or 40 years ago. Types of fat loss adjuvants, Clenbuterol, all this nonsense that’s just bad for you. That causes all sorts of side effects. It’s, dude, just learn how to use Larazotide or a microdose of semaglutide, and you will get the most amazing results. But yes, that’s very much true. People who are watching this who have bad, quote, unquote intel or insights about these drugs being harmful must understand that they’re not. It’s just anything else; the difference between a pill and a poison is the dosage. You also have to have the correct instruction or user manual. When you do these things, you cannot just willy-nilly start taking them. Then you also see people that literally will take 2.5 mg and then go to five milligrams the next week and then 75mg the next week or 10.

I mean, it’s insane to titrate dosages. Again, that’s also done to make more money off the patient and screw up the patient’s metabolism. Anyway, just to cut over and stop on GLPs, they’re the greatest drugs statistically now. According to what Big Pharma has done in the history of Big Pharma interventions, the best part about them is that they’re not negative. They are rewiring people’s brains. They’re making people have better impulse control. As I was telling you, off the air, in the fast food industry, the CEOs from the fast food industry are all gathering together now, saying, What are we going to do? Because these things are biting into our profit margin. People are not going to the drive-through at McDonald’s or KFC like they once did. They have amazing effects, obviously synergies, and help people live a more healthy life. But again, the understanding or awareness is that you have to follow them correctly. You cannot just willy-nilly use them. That’s where people screw up. Now to your question about Tesamorelin, going away from the drugs that are being controlled, I still think, and again, I don’t think, not because I know that but because I talk to a lot of the pharmacy owners, a lot of the compound pharmacy owners are pushing back.

They’re a lot of them are suing the FDA. Some of the biggest names in the industry are suing the FDA. They’re, look, we have efficacy controls. We have a history of helping people. We don’t care that you classify these as type two and harmful or potentially harmful or whatever that type two classification means. We’re still going to use them. Again, a lot of these people, also two generations old, spent a lot of money last year ordering raw materials to manufacture these products. They’re going to have to raid my facility and shut me down. I think the next 4 to 6 months in the compounding industry, especially, are going to be weird because a lot of these guys are going to be testing the FDA’s metal to find out whether or not they have the decency and the manpower to come out and shut down their facilities. Because, look, you and I both know they’re not harmful. They don’t cause side effects. Yes, they’re side effects with all drugs, again, relative to the dosage and administration and all that stuff. But, relatively speaking, they’re harmless. You’re never going to see somebody overdosing on a fricking Tesamorelin injection. The effects that they cause, from a beneficial standpoint, are profound. I mean, it’s just that I don’t see them going away. then obviously, we’re not even talking about it yet, but I will, because obviously, I’m one of the biggest guys in the world with that. But I mean, the research chemical companies are going to step in and fill the void. I mean, how many physicians have already just said, Okay, well, fine, I won’t get anything from compound pharmacies, and I’ll just buy research?

Now, you can’t prescribe them to your patients, but you can damn sure recommend them to your patients. I mean, so it’s a weird space to be in and peptides now, but at the end of the day, they cannot. Again, the genie is out of the bottle. They cannot suppress the sale of peptides. Sure, they can regulate the compounding industry, but there’s still going to be compounders selling them.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. I remember Thymosin alpha-1, got taken away and was hard to find. I mean, I don’t know any compounding pharmacy that makes that now. Maybe we could talk later about it. But it’s frustrating because, I mean, this was being used during the pandemic in China. There were studies on it with improved outcomes with hospital patients that had severe COVID, and it’s just a slap in the face when you’re trying to just get patients better. It’s also that the stuff is not being taught, obviously in medical schools or anything like that. Going through medical school, I know I was groomed to see symptoms as diseases and diseases that are only treated with medications. When symptoms are not diseases, there are symptoms. Then you have to find the root cause. This is why I love peptides—they’re letting the body heal. Let’s talk about it. I’m sure you love BPC-157.

Jay Campbell

I injected BPC 157 into my shoulder earlier today. I have not a rotator issue, but it’s that the supraspinatus and the trapezius are locked up in there because when I was in Mexico with my wife, I went to a snow day, and she was supposed to pull me up to help me get on this unstable platform. She let me go in my arms and just shot out. But, I mean, the bottom line of that is, I want to say something about TA1 real quick. Because it’s such a profound peptide. True story. I don’t go anywhere in the world without taking three vials of Thymosin alpha-1 with me. I take it before I get on a plane, and I take it when I get off the plane. I always enhance my immunity or upregulate my IMU. My immunomodulation, or what is my immunomodulation by enhancing my all-cause immunity with Thymosin alpha-1. It’s one of the most profound peptides in the world. 

I mean, I insulin pack with me whenever I travel around the world, and I carry a pen of my Pfizer growth hormone, and I take my Thymosin alpha-1. I usually, if I’m going to an exotic place, take Melanotan-1. But that’s how irreplaceable Thymosin alpha-1 is. But with the healing peptides BPC and TB-500, I mean, Jen, it’s insane that still, 80% of the planet doesn’t even understand these things. They’re still doing exploratory surgeries—stupid stuff into the knee, stupid stuff into the shoulder. I mean, I hear it from orthopedics all the time or from people who are being seen by orthopedics all the time. They come to me, and they say, Hey, should I have this shoulder surgery? I’m like, For what? It’s because that’s what they’re recommended. That’s their training. You said That’s what they’re going to do. They recommend surgeries. But if you understood about BPC and TB-500, you’d consider going into these tendons and going into these joints to perform surgery when you have such profound angiogenesis and inflammation-suppressing peptides—both of those things. But just to me, it’s mind-blowing that there are still people out there who are not even aware of these peptides, especially considering that I’ve been using BPC 157 since 2008, literally since 2008. I mean, I wouldn’t even think of anything else. It’s mind-blowing. It’s like we’re in two separate worlds in a lot of ways.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, it is. But I also tell people that if you go to a surgeon, they’re going to want to operate. 

Jay Campbell

Yes, of course. 

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

I think. Just refer them to the ortho. Well, they know they want to do surgery. I mean, even crazy things. I had a patient who tore his ACL, and I’m saying, Hey, ask them if they can use PRP during your surgery. She asks, and I’m like, well, why isn’t this being offered? Why does she have to ask?

Jay Campbell

That’s a good question. I mean, that’s a good question. Because I’ve had this, I mean, I feel this is a crisis of conscience for orthopedics now because the best orthopedic surgeons know about BPC and TB-500. They have to decide and look without saying names. I know this person because she is very active, but I give it away somewhat. She’s a she; she’s told me she’s, look, man, I will have this consultation with the patient all the time, versus a $70,000 knee replacement. Because, let’s look, a 50-year-old person plus doesn’t have the stability, doesn’t have—what do you call it? The nerve endings, the nerve bundle fibers that are in for the plants, the plantation to do a replacement. 

Now, if you’re in your 20s and 30s, it’s a different story. But 50 and up, most of those people who are getting recommended ACL reconstructions, PCL reconstructions, whatever the tendons in the knee joints, of course, of BPC and TB-500 for 6 to 8 weeks, will do a far better job of repair, restoration, and regeneration than those surgeries were. Jen, and I both know that’s a 6 to $800 peptide intervention versus a 60 to $80,000 surgery. How do they choose? I mean, at the end of the day, they’re surgeons. That’s how they get paid. But it’s a crisis of conscience because, deep down, they know what’s going to probably provide a better outcome. That’s crazy to think about. But that’s what they now know. They’re working on people themselves. They see it. There’s just no reason for a 50-year-old person to go down the reconstructive route when they can use up, of course, the BPC and TB 500; they’re going to get the same level of regeneration.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Well, I have noticed that doctors will just go; they won’t look at other options. They won’t. They just have their blinders on. They go to work, they’re going to do surgery, and I’m going to get my paycheck. I’m going to come home. This curiosity is killed in medical school and residency. I’ve had doctors think what I’m doing is inappropriate. I’m like, how? You’re hurting people by not telling them the alternatives. It comes down to informed consent, in my opinion.

Jay Campbell

It does. That’s also why that’s a good point because that’s also why the patient has to inform themselves. After all, the doctor is not always going to do the job in defense of the doctors. That’s how they get paid. Their job is not to tell you about peptide interventions bioregulator interventions or hormone optimization interventions because they don’t get paid that way. Now, they do have a responsibility to their Hippocratic Oath to heal and to do no harm. But at the end of the day, we both know, especially living in the United States, that the corporation USA, Inc., everybody’s got to pay their bills; they got mortgages, they got college tuition, they got car payments, and they got insurance. I understand that the doctor is sometimes not going to tell you about much cheaper, probably more efficient, or even better interventions because they have to pay the bills.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. You could do so much healing at home. That’s what people understand: watching things like this, listening to your podcast, reading your books, that stuff, having your information. Then just use conventional insurance for what it’s good for. If they cover some of your labs, if you have a bunch of kids, as I do, and they break bones occasionally, that medicine is good. If I’m having a heart attack, I want to be in an American hospital. But you have to understand that for long-term longevity, you’re going to have to do a lot of the work and a lot of the research on your own.

Jay Campbell

I call it the extortion model. You have to have insurance benefits for that catastrophic event—that LifeFlight that’s required—for whatever—a car accident, somebody ejected, whatever. But at the end of the day, you’re right. Nothing from a longevity standpoint or an anti-aging standpoint; I just want to call it living longer and stronger. There is nothing that that doctor’s going to do for you. Again, they don’t get paid for that. 

If you’re healthy and you want to become optimally healthy, they can’t even help you. Why would you even consider it? You’re right. You have to educate yourself. You have to go out of your way and look. There are a lot of smart people online today who can give you amazing information for free. Yes, the signal-to-noise ratio is getting high now because there are also a lot of people out there who are putting out false and irresponsible information. But if you’re a decent searcher, you’ll eventually land on people who will give you good information. Like I said, There’s a lot of us out there now.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, absolutely. Now, speaking of information, how can everyone find you? Read your books. I know you’re active on YouTube.

Jay Campbell

Yes. The easiest way for everybody who’s watching this podcast to get access to my books is to give them away for free. The two newest books are, of course, Optimize Your Help with Therapeutic Peptides, which is due in February 2023. Then my newest book, which came out in late September, is called 30 Days to Shreds, which is a profound fat loss book because it’s probably the first fat loss book ever written. It talks about how you can use the GLP-1 agonists to your benefit, again, in the context of health and longevity. That’s why we call it 30 Days to Shreds. Because if you understand how to use a GLP correctly and you’re not a metabolic dumpster fire, you can lose 25 to 30 pounds of pure body fat in 30 days. But all of those books can be found on my website. It’s jaycampbell.com/freebooks, and we give you access to all my previous books as PDFs for free. Then, in those two most recent books, we give you the introduction in the first two chapters. Then, of course, there are links to purchasing on Amazon, but it’s jaycampbell.com/freebooks.  Then I’m on social media everywhere. @JayCampbell333, which is The Master Teachers.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and keep staying passionate. I love your energy, especially just with getting people healthy. It’s so important. being a trailblazer for hormones and peptides.

Jay Campbell

Thank you so much, Jen. I appreciate it. Thank you for your passion in this interview today. It’s been great.