Peptide Optimization for Entrepreneurs

Winston Ibrahim

Thank you, Matt, Ramadan Kareem and likewise. You know, so impressed by what you’ve achieved in, you know, such a few short years of BioReset. It’s just such an incredible kind of thing to have witnessed happen and, you know, to see you help so many people and kind of push the envelope in so many innovative ways. I think this is really kind of the front end of the spear of everything that’s going on. And yeah, very excited to be here at the Peptide Summit. We’re very happy to be sponsors of the Peptide Summit through my company, Hydros. So I’ve had, you know, a long history as an entrepreneur and investor, you know, predominantly in consumer packaged goods companies and in various health and wellness businesses as an investor, and then working on my primary company, Hydros, which is a innovative water filtration startup. So a lot of people are familiar with a Brita and how absolutely clunky it is and hard to use. 

So we created a technology for fast water filtration, which will do what Brita does, but five times faster. And we’re able to put it in a variety of products. So bottles and pitchers, it’s very easy to use because we’re saving so much on plastic costs, we’re able to price parity with Brita and use very minimal packaging, so we’re making even less of a dent on the planet. And the goal is really to kind of, you know, make it sustainable and also kind of a pleasurable experience for people to kind of step away from single use disposable plastic bottles, and really kind of enjoy the experience. We think if people kind of enjoy the experience, if it’s enhanced experience, they’ll actually stick to that more often. 

And for our more discerning customers, we recently launched a glass version of our pitcher. It’s actually a prototype that we are hoping to launch at the start of the Peptide Summit and give everybody a discount on. It will be coming a little bit later because of what’s happening in China right now. But we can look forward to that. And then on the investor side, you know, I’ve just been very kind of impressed by what’s been happening in health and wellness and, you know, seen so many interesting companies. And I think, you know, what BioReset has done has really been, you know, incredibly inspiring and the type of results that you can get from this type of integrative care and using various regenerative compounds, be they on the stem cell side or traditional kind of vitamins in IV form. And then most recently very excited to have explored peptides with Matt’s help. And that’s just been, you know, incredible in multiple ways.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Hmm, awesome. Well, today we’re gonna talk about peptide optimization for entrepreneurs. Is kind of a crazy, it’s a crazy moment for entrepreneurs, you know. I mean I remember we were, you know, I felt like just running around the world and it felt like such a safe place you could go anywhere you wanted and do anything you wanted, and I was just different. But I think peptides probably are gonna be an interesting tool that now you can begin to use to sort of optimize your health and biology as we navigate sort of new and interesting times.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, absolutely, I think there’s a lot of potential there both from, you know, kind of an efficacy perspective and from a cost perspective. Because, you know, a lot of, kind of the more elaborate regenerative treatments are a little expensive and even if people can afford them, it might give them some sticker shock, they might have to have some serious motivation, peptides on the other hand could be incredibly effective and they’re not gonna break the bank. So I feel like they’re a great way for people to kind of get started. I’ve also seen, you know, a lot of the things I funded as an investor had been, you know, on the supplement side, which has grown massively as a business over the last, you know, 20 years, and my observation has been, wow, a lot of these things have become successful businesses. There’s, you know, some shakiness around the efficacy and we all know that kind of the efficacy of oral ingested products, even if they’re the highest quality, have a lot of bio availability issues. With peptides, you’re getting the best quality stuff in a way that your body will absolutely know how to understand with very high bio availability. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are adventurers, they’re not gonna mind, you know, giving themselves a couple of injections.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Mm, yeah, that’s probably true. What’s been your sort of most maybe dive into? What have you found most interesting as a person of the world kind of a, at a 1.0 level?

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, so I mean, my whole introduction into this came from you and BioReset, you know, down to my first NAD experience five years ago, where I think I actually vomited after the first NAD IV because I sat up too fast. So everything I’ve experienced has come from BioReset in, you know, that way. And, you know, a lot of it kind of seemed very scary or strange at first, but you can’t lie with the results, they’ve been incredible. And I think what’s so exciting about peptides is that you’re able to get really fast results in, you know, kind of a way that you wouldn’t, you know, expect from something so simple. So the way I can kind of, you know, describe it, you know, to anybody who might have some context is that there’s more elaborate regenerative treatments you can get that involve stem cells and stem cell growth factors that have profound systemic effects and you feel them, you know, multiple different ways across your entire system, and it’s because they’re kind of rewiring so much of your mitochondria or your anti-inflammatory pathways, you’re getting really profound epigenetic expression in multiple different ways that benefit you. 

That’s kind of how I feel for peptides, but peptides are just so much simpler to use and you can use them at home and travel with them, and there are fraction of the price. And so you can use them more regularly. And I think that is what’s really great because, you know, we all know that the real mission for so many people who are coming to this Summit is to spread wellness in a very profound way to as many people as possible as really a crisis we’re facing as a society, as, you know, a world, and how can we get more of these powerful tools into people’s hands? And there’s a limiting factor for a variety of reasons into, you know, these more expensive regenerative treatments. So I think the first peptide that we experimented with was TB-500 or 400, it’s the one that’s for wound healing or regenerative stuff. And I think, you know, I have a minor exercise issue or on tissue tear and it wasn’t, you know, terrible and we thought about doing, you know, exomes and you suggested, you know, just doing an injection with BPC or with a TB-500, and to my surprise, it completely fixed the entire issue, you know, instantaneously, kind of on par with what you would experience with an exosome injection, but obviously for, you know, a fraction of the price. 

So that was kind of very interesting kind of seeing the effect of that over a couple of days. I remember kind of at the start of the pandemic, your office sending me a bunch of Thymosin alpha one and my whole family and, you know, my dad and my mom injected themselves with it regularly for a long time, I did as well when I felt like I was going down with something which wasn’t COVID, but it definitely, kind of accelerated kind of the passing of a cold. I think, you know, another one that’s been very profound that I’ve really enjoyed using is MOTS-c. You really feel kind of an energetic buzz on that, kind of on par with NAD+. But in a way that’s a little bit more kind of, you know, systemic and calming where if people are familiar with NAD, they know that it’s a fantastic, therapeutic, but it can give you kind of an edginess, you know, if you’ve used it you feel a little, kind of too wired sometimes. You know, I gave a shot to an old colleague late at night and he was up all night and wondered if it was like some kind of, you know, caffeine thing or something. MOTS-c is all almost like exosomes from like a mental clarity perspective and energy perspective, but you don’t feel wired. So those were some of the kind of early experiences.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

So then the, it’s interesting, the TB-500 is interestingly as a fragment of the thymus and beta-4. And, when we first found out about peptide TB-500 was when an early sort of branded version, that’s the 17 to 23 fragment. And, you know, initially people had been taking BPC-157 and thymus and beta-4 and so we started switching to using the fragments of the thymus and beta-4, the one to four and the 17 to 23 with BPC, and for somebody as a pain injector like me, you have an idea of how effective, like, if somebody has pain and you do a nerve block with numbing medicine, all the pain goes away. Then for the most part, it recess pain a little bit, but for the most part, that pain all comes back. And so then, you know, I had my close friends, this is years ago, like you, that I would, you would have like, it was kind of interesting, like you had a trainer and the trainer would find a problem that had been there for a long time. And then we started injecting peptides and then one by one, those problems would go away and not come back, and then that was a profoundly helpful thing for me, because it would be like, you know, I think at the time you would had been getting manual therapy, I don’t know, like multiple a week, I think.

Winston Ibrahim

Like three times a week and after the kind of exosome hydro-dissections and, you know, placental matrix hydro-dissections, you’d given me, those had gone down significantly to maybe like, you know, once a week. And it was surprising because the peptide hydro-dissections or the peptide injections we didn’t even do, hydro-dissections with them were so effective that they were on par with that, and we were able to kind of stamp out the remaining issues, you know, so quickly that, yeah, I haven’t seen, you know, Bob and probably in like 10 months. He just messaged me the other day, he’s like, you know, you still have like 12 sessions you paid for like three years ago, we should really figure out how you’re gonna use this.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Bob is an amazing practitioner, by the way. You always find the best people shut out.

Winston Ibrahim

Amazing, but, you know, as somebody who’s very busy and kind of a workaholic and has a lot of interest, you know, if I can get away not spending an hour doing, you know, manual therapy, I would rather not do it. And it’s not because he’s not an amazing therapist, he is, he works with Governor Newsom and his whole family, it’s just, you know, people are busy. I’d much rather get a quick solution. And I think that’s what’s so appealing about what you do, Matt, and now the power of peptides takes that to, you know, an even further extent.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Now, the interesting thing for people to hear is, is that for people running around and then, you know, and getting themselves into little injuries and problems, then, you know, to the traditional experience that we were doing was kind sort of more expensive, regenerative medicine, and so we’re doing stem cells and we still do.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

But, you know, I was profoundly impressed and was early with doing these hydro-dissections. And I did some peptide, a bunch of peptide hydro-dissections also I think with you, but then COVID happened, and then all of a sudden everybody was like, oh, like my country’s closed I can’t see you until next year what can you do? And so then we started coaching people on sort of pinching a little subcutaneous tissue and then showing them the different locations in the body that they could do that. And then suddenly people became empowered to be able to do things that are low costs that are, you know, we’re putting, and I think that this is something that entrepreneurs can use, but I think that this is something that is going to disrupt healthcare, you know, at a worldwide level. If you just think about pain and you’re talking about, some of these are I think, very safe approaches, and then suddenly then you don’t necessarily have to come in. Some peptide show up to your house and then you start to do injections and then that pain goes away, it’s pretty interesting.

Winston Ibrahim

The pain goes away and there’s so many other tail benefits, you know, from just kind of general cognitive function and kind of executive function, impulse control, the ability to get over kind of jet lag or you know, kind of burnout. And I think the real magic, and this is something that I think you also deserve quite a lot of credit for is the ability to kind of knit all these therapies together as a cohesive protocol. So using the kind of right balance of traditional regenerative techniques to manual therapy, to CBT if that’s necessary to, you know, peptides to things like NAD and the right kind of vitamin injections, I think they all have their place, but I think kind of fusing them and knitting them in is very interesting. 

And I think it goes beyond pain, I think it goes to kind of intrinsic healing in a lot of ways. So I remember during the pandemic, my mom burned her hand on a stove and, you know, got some kind of cream from some doctor, some thing, and it was kind of helping a little bit and you sent us some BPC-157 injections and one little injection near the side. And I’m not an expert at injection, anything more than kind of in a subcutaneous belly fat and gone within like a couple of days, just like completely healed over. And, you know, she’s like 65 and relatively healthy, but still, right, like that was incredibly fast.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I’ve had that happen. I can’t tell you in pandemic, maybe everybody was cooking more. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had that happen. And the BPC-157 is a really incredible for burns. And we’ll be put it on topically. I would make up creams at the house just with creams that we had and put it in topical. But then injecting it subcutaneously if there was a burn and then you could come a little bit of ways and inject. And I experienced that so many times, and so many times when Barbra burned herself cooking.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, with all for sweet potato roasting, I can imagine.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Shout out to Barbra.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, shout out to Barbra. And, you know, even for like more benign things, like, you know, I think a lot of people experience during the pandemic, kind of a lot of pent up energy, particularly early on and, you know, particularly if you’re wired that way. And I know I was kind of overtraining, over hitting my total weight set and, you know, I found BPC-157 incredibly effective for kind of just addressing systemic soreness, right? And, you know, helping to heal kind of tissue and TB-500 as well, but BPC-157 in particular, you know, as an injection seemed to be even more impactful, also kind of notice an addition in kind of muscle mass and not like an insane except, but clearly noticeable increases in kind of muscle mass and kind of muscle tone as well as kind of base coordination seem to have a slight elevation. So there’s some really interesting kind of things there where these aren’t quite like, you know, magic powers, but it’s like, man, this is kind of, crazier than you would think it would be for something so simple.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, the, you know, it’s interesting that you mentioned the NAD because in a way, everybody with big infections and, you know, what do they call that? Chronic fatigue syndrome.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

But then probably a lot of people that are healthy are somewhere on that spectrum. And so a lot of entrepreneurs out there and particularly the harder and further that they go, will be somewhere on the spectrum of immune problems. And somewhere on the spectrum of having energy problems. Because in general, one of the first things that happens as we age, whether or not we have infections is we start to have mitochondrial dysfunction. And so then, you know, we were very early in the, you know, conversation on NAD and, you know, everybody was… And so I love that, I’m always gonna love that you threw up the first time you did it. Everybody, and at that time everybody was so exuberant about it and sort of trying to do it fast too.

Winston Ibrahim

Right.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And so, but, you know, now we have so many people that with NAD, they’re just taking the NAD with an insulin syringe and injecting just like a peptide and smaller amounts. And then, you know, I don’t know what you felt like, but when you combine NAD with mitochondrial peptides, I find it works way better. And so then the ability to sort of manage and kind of optimize energy, plus when you start to throw in some of the cognitive enhancers then not only things the light come on.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, absolutely. So I think you’ve touched on some really great points there for kind of like what happens when you kind of overwork yourself and kind of how that kind of hits on kind of a general trajectory with cellular aging. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of causes for kind of NAD depletion and mitochondrial dysfunction and it could be kind of exogenous, kind of, you know, consumption of narcotics or whatever, and too much alcohol, which can be, you know, a thing you see with entrepreneurs. But I think, you know, the more generalized problems is people being workaholics and kind of being overstressed and kind of burning themselves out, and that is a pattern that people get used to when they’re young and then they hit a wall, and, you know, what I have found to be particularly effective a, you know, kind of having kind of a holistic health practice and a good diet to kind of begin with, and I’m sure a lot of the stem cell stuff that we’ve done has laid a good foundation, you know, beyond that. But combining things like NAD and MOTS-c and FGC, and then-

Matthew Cook, M.D.

FGL.

Winston Ibrahim

FGL.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Winston Ibrahim

And doing a little bit of ketamine and doing that like once a week, because, you know, you’re getting kind of a systemic reset of your whole kind of stress system, and you’re getting a profound kind of uptick in neurogenesis, right, in dendro-urbanization, and all these things are kind of synergistic in kind of empowering different pathways. I think the other thing about NAD is that, you know, I know when it was so in vogue, people were kind of overusing it, right? And I was probably guilty of this for a period of time as well. And I think, you know, in general, you don’t wanna overuse the same cellular pathways because you’re gonna degrade their use for almost anything, right? It could be, you know, a basic oral supplement, if you overuse it, you know, even infrared saunas, right? You do infrared saunas, you know, every day you’re gonna lose the HCH pump that you, you know, get from doing it, you know, twice a week, right? And just doing it twice a week, very intensely, right? If you weight lift every day, you’re not gonna get the benefit, in fact, it’s gonna hurt you. So I think having kind of other tools in the toolkit that can kind of provide, you know, meaningful, measurable benefits, but they’re hitting different pathways, it’s kind of like rotating workouts or rotating, you know, different things in your diet so you don’t build up toxins, right? And I think that’s really, really interesting. And then being able to occasionally combine it and get all the synergistic effects at one point, that’s another really powerful expression of this therapy.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I’m yeah, I love everything you said. I’m actually happy you mentioned the ketamine because one problem that I’ve seen is, is that I, you know, we take care of a lot of people for major crazy trauma. And so then from the anesthesia perspective for drug resistant depression and anxiety, we started doing these protocols where you do a series of six ketamine treatments, and you can do those at home with a lozenge, or you can do those in an office with an IV or with a subcutaneous or intramuscular needle.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

You know, I’m hearing of more and more people who were doing that on a continued basis and I think that there’s a moderately intense as susceptibility to addiction. So I encourage people to, if you’re going to use ketamine as a strategy for anxiety and depression, do that for self limited periods and then take a break.

Winston Ibrahim

Yes, yes.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

But then interestingly, the peptides, because they can give you energy and then particularly the mitochondrial peptides. And so like the SS-31, MOTS-c, umenin. And so then these peptides that can have this impact of giving you more energy, can make you feel good. And so if you have a little bit of more energy and then plus, or minus NAD and then cycling on and off of those, so you’re not committed to those, that actual makes you feel really good. And then if you feel good, you have good energy. One of the things I noticed, and I’ve noticed this for like everybody in my life, and you would be kind of a perfect example of like one of the people that I know in my life, that’s like the least addicted to anything. Like, you know, and I think that, that in part is, is because if you have a healthy lifestyle, then basically it’s easy to make great choices around all of that stuff.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, and I think, you know, say, you know, like the ketamine experiences at your office are incredible, particularly, you know, combined with kind of this layered approach, right? I’ve noticed, you know, because I think I did my first ketamine experience, you know, with you guys like three or four years ago. And it was profound, it was far more profound than I thought it would be, right? And I wasn’t, you know, looking for treatment for anything in particular, but I think, you know, if you have kind of a busy and aggressive kind of lifestyle, you just build up kind of a lot of trauma in general, you know, from stress and it just cleared kind of the tape. And I think, you know, when we subsequently did it, it was on the back of an exosome IV with an NAD IV with the whole, you know, set of regenerative therapies and with a grab bag full of peptides. So the bio regulators and, you know, the FGLs, the MOTS-cs, you know, the SS-31s everything, and it was a really incredible experience. I felt like that particular combination that you guys came up with was just really impactful and kind of driving that experience. 

So I actually don’t think people need to do ketamine for very, you know, kind of long. I have the lozenges that you guys, you know, I think got for me and what I’ve done is like, every couple of months used like a fraction of a fraction of the amount, you know, to solve it, you know, under my tongue. And that’s kind of like it, right? It just gives you such like a bump. The other kind of totally random thing that I’ve kind of noticed that just powers a lot here is cryotherapy, in particular, cold plunges, which are very accessible and there’s a lot of devices and I’m so glad you guys are using them now. It’s such an incredible way to kind of upregulate kind of mood and positive neurochemicals from norepinephrine, dopamine. And those effects kind of lock in your brain. And I think all the peptides and these other therapies kind of have accelerated that. So I think a lot of kind of aging and kind of deterioration, you know, can come from kind of losing that neuroplasticity in your brain. And particularly, if you’re gonna be kind of creative with your mind and, you know, kind of problem solve, which I think is kind of the core function of any entrepreneur, right? In any field, you’re a problem solver. You have to be creative. 

You need to keep that neuroplasticity, right? We live in a complex world, as we age, we need to get more flexible and more adaptable and picking up new technologies, new ideas that are coming out, you know, all the time. I think that’s very powerful. And I think some of these physical kind of related, you know, therapies, the BPC-157s, the TB-500s, help from like maintaining your physiques. So if you have come off of an injury or something, and you were limited by physicality, you have that kind of embedded mentality in your head and it’s kind of a lingering trauma that even if it’s not present it’s there. And it’s a self-limiting, you know, factor for your mind, and it’s holding you down. Once you can get over that, and you can actualize that by doing something physically hard that you haven’t been able to do in a long time, that instantly kind of reframes the situation, right? You’re now the winner in that story. And I think that leads to kind of downstream success, right? And so I think a lot of these things are tools that help people reframe their stories and kind of own, you know, their kind of journey in a very powerful way. So it’s almost that psychological empowerment is as important as all the multiple factors of epigenetic expression that are happening under the surface.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

100%. How many, and I think cold plunge is something that helps give you that story. Because if you get in there and then that first 20 or 30 seconds is hard, and then you stay in and then you keep staying in, then basically it’s like, what happens for me is I go, oh, and then I kind of get into my breathing, and then once I’m in that state, then basically I’m fine. Like I’m basically fine the rest of the day.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, no, it’s very powerful. And it’s interesting, I’ve noticed that combining kind of coal plunges with subsequent injection of like a MOTS-c and then, you know, meditation can be very powerful. Because you’re getting kind of a lot of hits where you’re getting the norepinephrine, the dopamine. You’re also simulating the hell out of your vagus nerve. And so if you’re somebody who’s kind of wired with too much energy and has trouble sitting down like me, you know, trying to just sit down and meditate can kind of be, you know, an obnoxious experience. You don’t really wanna do it and you’re not gonna do it well. But if you simulate your vagus nerve, you’re changing that sympathetic, you know, parasympathetic tone very quickly, and then the MOTS-c is upregulating kind of the cognitive, you know, and the calm sense, and then you can, you know, actually meditate. And so you’re reinforcing those neural pathways in multiple positive ways.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

How many days a week would you say that you cold plunge?

Winston Ibrahim

Probably, five times a week. At least I think, you know, I’ve learned that doing it seven days a week is actually not… Like everything again, you can overuse anything. And even if this is like, you know, a totally natural therapy, you know, it’s just, I think it’s nice to give a break. You don’t wanna saturate yourself. You want it to be continually hard, you don’t want it to be to the point where you have to keep on increasing the intensity and intensity that much more. I know that there’s some people who game just like for how fast can I do my NAD, you know, IV who would game, you know, okay, I can stay in, you know, a negative whatever X ice bath with ice floating on it for five minutes. That looks great on Instagram. You really just need 30 degree water. It doesn’t have to have ice in it. And honestly you just need 30 seconds, but doing a minute or two is probably good. I have found it to be more effective to be, you know, in there five times a week and just submerge for a minute or two. It really resets kind of your whole system, it gets sort of workout, you know, kind of soreness. 

I combine it with BPC-157 injections for that, very effective combination. Throw in some red light and throw in some, you know, of these other kind of things like astaxanthin and, you know, the typical other, you know, the therapies in you’re really on a good trajectory. So yeah, it’s the combination of all these things, but then interchanging them, you know, and be able to be flexible with them. And I think that’s an important part of the kind of protocols that BioReset has developed. You guys are kind of rotating your clients around multiple things that are constantly kind of, you know, enriching different pathways, epigenetically, and neurally, so that they’re getting distinct, profound benefits, but they’re not overusing any one thing. And I feel like a lot of places will just pound the same thing again and again and again, and while that might be effective for a while, you know, I just, I don’t know what the long term positives are from that.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

There’s no, nothing in biology is pounding you with one pathway again and again, all the biology is this diversity. The, if I had, if you asked me, like, if I only had one thing that I could tell you to do, and I only had one thing, you know what I mean? Like pick one peptide or one anything, I think I’d probably just give you a cold plunge.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, and I do it every day, but then there would be, there probably would be one or two days where for one reason or another I’m in a hurry. And so then on those days, I will like literally just walk out and then dunk in that thing and then get out and go.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And then I will do a lot of, probably the minimum I ever do is two minutes. And then almost every day I’ll do three to five minutes. And then I do just find… But my favorite cold plunge, you know, we went with all of these kind of world changing sort of entrepreneurs that were interested in climate. And so we went to Antarctica recently and we’re on this boat and you kind of, you come into the, you come to this sound and the mountains basically go like up like three to 5,000 feet straight up. It’s just, it’s everywhere and there’s gigantic icebergs. And so then you go down and they wrap a thing around your chest just tied to a rope, and so then I dove into the water there. And so-

Winston Ibrahim

Oh man.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

You dive in and you come up and then you come up and basically you’re swimming around with these icebergs and this seals in the water, I mean, it was crazy. And so then they were like, swim around, swim around. And so then I swam around for a minute and a half or something like that, and I was out, you know, you’re out swimming around and then you start to feel yourself. And I, ’cause I have a lot of experience in cold, so then you start to feel yourself, oh, my arms are getting kind of heavy. And so we swam back, but it was the coolest cold plunge of all time. Thank you, PE the people at Atlas and everybody, and wow was now is amazing.

Winston Ibrahim

No, that sounds incredible. But that’s exactly the sort of, you know, kind of, you know, intermittent kind of environmental stressor. And I think kind of the difference, between what we have now and what we had kind of, ancestrally as a species, we were exposed to these acute stressors. We evolved for that, right? And those are actually good. You know, that whole kind of, aphorism, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s built for those acute stressors. What we have in modern society that’s so much more insidious is death by a thousand cuts. And it’s, you know, chronic stress and it’s poor nutrition and poor bio availability and all of this stuff kind of piles up, right, over time. And so you need to be very cognizant, you know, as soon as possible in life to kind of get ahead of that curve. And even then, you know, there’s just kind of a weight on you, right? And, you know, it’s just, there’s too much around it. 

So you really kind of increasingly need these kind of out of the box solutions, which aren’t really that out of the box, right? I mean, most of these peptides they’re found in your body, right? They are, you know, in your gastric tract for BPC-157 or, you know, floating around your blood or in, you know, your heme, right? So yeah, this is just kind of a natural evolution, I think for, you know, humans to conquer the new terrain of modern society, right? We’ve always been good as the species of developing new tools and systems to help us get to that next frontier. And I think this is just the natural logical progression of things that we need in order to kind of continue to push that envelope because it’s not natural to live under biofluorescent lights and it’ll never have temperature kind of inversions or eat processed foods and even the best of us, right? I mean, you know, if you’re traveling at an airport in the middle of nowhere, and this is your only meal, Del Taco, what are you gonna do, right? Like, you know, you might try the machito version, but it’s still Del Taco.

It’s not that great for you or, you know, if you’re like me and you have to go to China and, you know, meet 10 different suppliers and it’s customary to get drunk with every single one of them and you’re just going in a fancy car from one meeting to the other where you’re gonna eat the same, you know, kind of rich food and then have multiple shots of, you know, grain alcohol, and you have to do it, right? And then you have to go out with them that night and have karaoke and you do this for three or four days in a row, I mean, you’re gonna need something to get over that, right? So, you know, if you’re gonna be an entrepreneur, you need to have kind of that resilience and flex and that breaks for everybody sooner or later. And I think these modern therapies kind of help you resist that break point, they give you that resilience and that snap back that you couldn’t have any other way. And, you know, it’s been very impactful for me. I think, you know, the other thing, you know, that we should talk about is just how impactful what you’ve done has been for my dad, who had a very traditional, successful business career on Wall Street, you know, ran several companies, saved the company during the financial crisis, turn it around and exhorting his health for his entire life. You know, thought it was bullshit. You know, maybe it’s why I’m into health. 

And why I started investing in health and wellness businesses is because he wasn’t into this at all. And then of course he gets cancer and, you know, he’s made a stunning recovery in no small part, thanks to your help from this cancer put on, you know, a huge amount of muscle mass, lost a bunch of fat, and he’s exercising more than I am, right? I mean, he’s climbing that mountain in Marin County, like every day he’s using his calor machine. And he’s on all these protocols, right? And he’s done multiple verses at this at your office. And I think for him in particular, what’s interesting is the ability for him to use certain peptides where he couldn’t use things like NAD or stem cells yet, because we’re still worried about how that might be an angiogenic to a degree. 

And obviously there’s some peptides that have angiogenic properties, but there’s others that can give you that mitochondrial function and anti-inflammatory and immune system upregulation that could help your white blood cell, you know, kind of go up or the efficacy, if your white blood cells and scouting for a cancer relapse, right? Like the thymus alpha one, or like, you know, some of these MOTS-c, you know, kind of products, that can really help him get to that next level. And then, you know, kind of, at a certain point in time, add in the next layer of things. So I think, you know, the fact that you can kind of, you know, create a protocol that’s fitting for somebody with his set of circumstances and have him kind of evolve to be kind of continually more healthy and now to the point where he can maybe access things like NAD and exosomes very soon, that’s just incredible.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

The, yeah, I didn’t know we were gonna talk about him, but he’s one of my favorites of all time. And, you know, as for me, I would say, you know, part of the role of darker is being a teacher and an evangelizer. And so then, you know, nothing could make me happier because I knew him when he was just vaguely interested in health. And so then, you know, I’m pitching ideas about, you can actually do this, I’m pitching this idea, oh, it is actually not that hard. And then it… And I like to talk to people in the business community about saying, oh, like, this is one of those things that we’re just gonna project manage. And then, and they kind of begin, they kind of understand that, okay, somebody’s gonna help us project manage this, and we’re gonna work on this, and then the side effect of that’s gonna have a diverse amount of things. And then these things is actually work. And then, you know, and he is somebody who really kind of embraced that, and there’s really nothing in the universe that really makes me happier than that.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, no, it’s been incredible for him. And, I think, yeah, the peptides are just lifesavers to him. Because he can’t use so many of these other things because of that angiogenic fear. So I think there’s so much versatility and diversity to peptides. I think, you know, another one that’s very interesting is this, your office send to me slightly before the holiday season, which was really very great timing for, you know, kind of overindulgence, the Sermorelin I think.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yes, a growth hormone.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, yeah, and kind of what that can do for, you know, because the way I felt it was kind of, you know, pumping energy kind of similar to what you feel from a sauna. So I guess that’s kind of, or a Vespa, so that’s, I guess the HGH effect. So you feel kind of that pump, but you also notice kind of particularly, you know, kind of shocking being very inactive and kind of overindulging, even for my modest taste during the holidays. You know, wow, I didn’t have any impact on like weight or kind of a body composition at all, and that was super interesting. I hadn’t, you know, kind of expected that level of kind of efficacy from just a few injections, but it was very, very powerful. And I kind of also noticed a little bit more kind of efficacy on the exercise recovery front, right? You know, I guess that’s the HGH as well.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

So then what happens is that there’s like this, you know, people used as an antiaging strategy to take growth hormone, and then we found out, oh, okay, there’s this one called tesamorelin, there’s one called CJC and there’s another one called Ipamorelin. And then people will use combination of those, but then they tell your brain to either secrete more growth hormone or release it, and then that will then have effects that are more balanced. And so almost everybody that had been given growth hormone has kind of evolved into that. The side effect, the CJC, Ipamorelin is that you’ll sleep a little bit better. Tesamorelin is really great for body composition change. And so it’s kind of perfect that I gave that to you at Thanksgiving.

Winston Ibrahim

Right, right.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And so then let’s do something to fix the fat gain before you have to take it off in January.

Winston Ibrahim

Right, right, right, that’s perfect.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

But then those are interesting because then, you know, one strategy is to take the, take something sort of most of the year and then cycle on and off with tesamorelin.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And I think, for kind of body composition, you know, issues, especially for people who are, you know, kind of less inclined to physical activity, but who are just kind of sitting at a desk all the time or kind of engrossed in something or traveling, you know, it could be very hard to kind of, you know, not be in kind of bad habits, right? Depending on your situation. I mean, I’m fortunate that I have a lot of flexibility, but some people don’t have a choice and they’re constantly engaged in client meetings. And I talked to a guy who is the head of research at Morgan Stanley for many years recently, and he was telling me, “Yeah, when I left Morgan Stanley, “I was the fattest I had ever been “because I was just going to Wagyu steak restaurants “in every town like three or four nights a week “talking to clients,” and you know, if you’re in that sort of position, what can you do? Or, you know, I have a friend who I’m sending your way, who has a very kind of important sales job for a major tech firm who has the same problem. He’s been traveling for years, has done kind of a lot on his body and he’s used the pandemic well, but he’s got some lingering issues. So being able to kind of slim down and keep the negative effects of that body composition, because that systemically kind of hits you more and more, right? It’s another drain on mitochondrial function. And I think, you know, it just accelerates the deterioration, right? It’s like a Jenga tower and you’re pulling out more stuff. You wanna be doing the reverse, you wanna be adding stabilization, right? At a point where you’re most prone to fall apart and prevent it from falling apart.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

You know, that is so good. This is so good. I always tell people, entrepreneurs find me when they’re 54. That’s like crazy, it’s like every single time. And like, I even hear somebody, I go, in my mind, I go, I bet they’re 54.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And then I go in and they’re 54. And that’s just when the constellation of stuff starts to hit us. And so then you go, oh, okay, let’s actually sort of look at under the hood and so then it’s almost like looking at a car or you could think about it as a company. So we’ve got energy, mitochondria. We’ve got immune system, we’ve got detox, we’ve got our actual structure, we’ve got diet lifestyle, all of these pieces. And then basically what happens is, if you can embrace optimizing all of those things and then basically get everything working, then that means you’re gonna be able to delay finding me. But you’re not gonna have any big problems.

Winston Ibrahim

Yeah, or when, you now, I know when we met I was healing from kind of a very nasty thing, which was requiring all these kind of body issues and kind of body manipulation therapies and so forth. But it was fortunate, it was before I was even 30 years old. And I think that’s given me an incredible and unfair advantage ahead of a lot of people, right? And I think kind of the way that I’ve seen it is, it’s a source of resilience to kind of be able to use these things, but to use them sparingly.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

It’s a journey and a balance to sort of learn, to sort of manage that. I will, you know, I was telling somebody, I said, I actually, if you come through a fairly significant trauma at a young age, it’s actually huge opportunity. Because then you end up picking up all of these skills and tools that sort of support you in terms of your ability to manage. And so then what happens is once you have those skills, then when things happened to you in your 40s and 50s and 60s, it’s like, oh yeah, I know how to manage this, I know how to manage that. The people who have some of those traumas hit them later in life, a lot of times it’s a little bit overwhelming ’cause they didn’t pick those skills up.

Winston Ibrahim

Yep, yep, and they don’t know kind of where to go or what to do. And yeah, no, hopefully, when you kind of hit something like that early, you can integrate such a holistically, healthy lifestyle that you can build that kind of reservoir. I think there’s a really great kind of term that you used at one of our kind of dinners with Bob of kind of baseline resilience, right? And kind of raising that threshold of baseline resilience so that kind of problems just kind of don’t hit you, right, in the same way. And if they do, you’re just pulling down from a reserve and then you can top off that reserve, right? But you’re never hitting a core kind of issue where you’re in a danger zone, right? So I think the kind of really interesting thing is raising people’s baseline resilience is such a high degree that they can shrug off all these hits and then they can use things like peptides to kind of keep that level of optimization. 

And then, you know, for kind of more honorous situations as they can arise, buyer reset is equipped with kind of more elaborate kind of toolkits to kind of deal with those as they come up if they come up. But hopefully, they’re a lot easier to address if kind of that resilience is a lot higher. So that’s what I’ve kind of seen is my biggest takeaway and the biggest opportunity is just to constantly be focused on, okay, what are the low touch ways that I can raise my baseline resilience? And I think, particularly as we start traveling, again, things like peptides become a big part of that equation. Because, you know, I don’t have access to my cold tub if I’m at a conference in Miami for five days and I have to be at some set of meetings from 7:00 a.m. to nine o’clock at night. And if I’m traveling even more constantly than that, as I’m sure I will be very soon, you know, you need these kind of simple, easy and very powerful interventions that you can use on the fly that are calibrated to you.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

100%. And so then I’m looking forward to that, because, you know, we’re gonna, medicine, this is gonna have a great opportunity to evolve and grow with everything that’s happening. And, so then I’m looking forward to watching your success and your progress as you’re out there and I’ll be learning from you and learning with you.

Winston Ibrahim

Likewise, likewise. Well, thank you so much, Matt.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Thank you, it’s an honor and I’m so grateful to have you as a friend, thanks.

Winston Ibrahim

Likewise, take care.