The 80/20 Rule of Health: Peptides, Hormones, and the Science of Longevity

Introduction to Doctor Talks and the Guest 0:00

And that medication works in the central nervous system at the hypothalamus. Uh, it secretes GHRH, which helps your, your pituitary or anterior anterior pituitary, the front part of your surgery gland to secrete a normal, a natural growth hormone, which has, which we've had in our bodies, our entire lives at much higher levels when we're younger, which helps to, you know, with cellular rejuvenation and growth tissue growth. It helps with skin as well, keeping the skin nice and thick, keeping fibroblast activity working and keeping your skin thicker so that it helps minimize.

It does not cure sagging skin or any sort of wrinkles, but it can help to keep your skin looking more youthful. This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Hi, this is Ray Salano here with another edition of Dr. Talks Healthy Choices Dr. Talks podcast. You know, where we interview the leading influencers in this new age of medicine that focuses on your optimal health and really some common sense approaches to medicine. And that seems to be kind of missing today.

And today is no exception. I have a very accomplished practitioner here that has been around and He has a tremendous amount of experience, and he is a Harvard-trained physician, but he also has an amazing background in education, and he's got an MBA and a tremendous amount of master's of science. And he's been around and has some great outlooks on to what's the best course of therapy. And we're going to have an interesting discussion today on how to really buy back your health with peptides, hormones, and precision medicine.

And he's also been trained at A4M, the largest organization of integrative medicine in the world. So, you know, we have a great discussion here on how to really take charge of your health, especially for executives. And Richard, we call you Dr. Richard Hanley. I'd like to. Richard's fine. Well, we enjoy having you on our podcast today. We've been doing this for many years and we like to have a nice conversation of what is important for these high performers that are maybe trading stocks

Foundations of Longevity and Health Optimization 2:25

and trading securities and trading businesses, but they have to take care of their health. So maybe give us some tips that you've learned, some interventions that are science-backed that people can get started from. That's a great question. First of all, thank you, Ray, for having me on your show. It is an honor and a pleasure to be here. So thank you for the time. Your question is a great question. I hate to approach the concept of longevity with any one-off suggestions because it goes very deep.

The idea of just try this thing and that thing and this you know, this particular piece of machinery or this particular peptide or this, you know, particular medication, it's not the best way through to find optimization in your life from a physical and mental standpoint. It goes back to a very simple principle called Pareto's Principle, the 80-20 rule, where the majority of the work of getting you healthy is done in the things that are difficult to do and needing to do consistently over time. The things that we've known about that we were trained as children by our parents, get plenty of sleep, eat healthy foods, exercise every day, get some sunlight.

The basics, the things that really move the needle the furthest are those very basic things. And we could talk all day about each of those components, but that is kind of the base that we need to start from. and then build upon that piece by piece with regard to medications and peptides and whatever we may bring from our armamentarium to bear within the context of longevity. We have new tools at our disposal. Let me go back and talk a bit about my experience in medicine. I've been a clinician since 96. I graduated from a PA school.

My initial training and work was as a physician associate, physician assistant. PA in primary care, family medicine, occupational medicine. I did a number of years in emergency medicine as well. And so I've seen patients in every context coming to me at late stage with late stage, late stage disease. They're coming to the emergency room with, you know, MI or they're coming to me in my family practice clinic with early, you know, type two diabetes. And so having seen those disease processes in their early stages all the way through to their ultimate untoward effects, it's given me keen insight.

And the tools that we used to use and still use, much of them today, are a bit, I shouldn't say antiquated. Thank goodness we have great science at our disposal. We can provide medications that are very helpful with regard to diabetes, metabolic disease. We have metformin, which has been around forever since the beginning of my career. We're still using metformin, but it's interesting to see things like metformin used in a longevity protocol. Now, without having a diagnosis of diabetes or even pre-diabetes for that matter, you know, breaking out medications that have been around in my toolbox forever as a longevity medication.

which is interesting, and there's studies being done about that. There's a bit of controversy surrounding that, but that idea is real and it's in the Ezeitgeist now. My careers span 30 years and here we are talking about metformin in the context of how to stay young and prevent type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes. So to answer your question succinctly, I would say there is no one tool. It's a, it's a long discussion that would take us days to get through, but having that the foundation is probably the most important factor.

If that makes sense. Well, it does. And the fact that you've been around the world, should I say, and seen this, now you're coming back with all that experience. And it sounds like you realize that the inflammation disorders and all of them, and especially blood sugars and all these inflammatory markers is the place to start. They don't lie. even if you're talking to be able to give context to many executives, the numbers don't lie on spreadsheets and the numbers don't lie on blood tests. So, you know, whatever you can do or have to do to get those markers down and, you know, you mentioned metformin and there's Thank God there's so many more choices here and we can go into that a little bit later, but you have to start there.

But you know what you just mentioned? You mentioned the most inexpensive solutions, but also it overlaps as the most difficult solutions.

Personal Health Wake-Up Call and Hormone Therapy 7:10

So maybe do you have any maybe tips that you've been able to get people motivated to really wake up and realize this is a big deal. It absolutely is. It goes back to personal story, right? The most powerful way to describe this is through my own personal experience. I'm a 60-year-old gentleman, been around for a long time, and I was working in the emergency room back in 2010, right before I started my business overseas, working with the Department of Defense. We'll get into that later, perhaps. But the emergency room, as you well know, is very stressful.

It's a great environment to work in. It's exciting. The camaraderie is incredible. but it is a place of burnout. Make no mistake, every physician and advanced practice provider that I've worked with has described this on the ER as, you know, very high pace, but very right for burnout. And I was experiencing that as a clinician. I worked in the emergency room for a number of years and I felt that I was like, why, you know, and I saw it in the mirror every morning. I'm like, I'm feeling older, I'm looking older.

And this is kind of before, you know, we've been talking about, you know, longevity and about, I mean, it was before Dave Asprey and all the biohacking efforts that we've seen come forth. This goes back. And so I was kind of at a loss of what to do about this. And my, my cholesterol was also problematic. My mom and dad unfortunately have passed on, but my mom had a long history of heart disease. And I started to see the biomarkers in myself with regard to my cholesterol, my LDLC. We weren't measuring Lp little a or apo B at that time, but my, my LDLC and total cholesterol were elevated.

And that began to worry me. I exercised. I tried to get some good sleep, but I wasn't measuring my sleep quality. We didn't have the aura ring or the Apple watch. and so i didn't have any way to kind of gain that feedback but i i felt you know i was beginning to feel my age at that point i was in my mid 40s uh so yeah yeah mid 40s and i felt the inflammation that you're describing and the fatigue and i started to realize okay i am aging And so I sought the help of an integrative health practitioner group here in Southern California, Holthorpe Medical.

And they put me on, to be completely frank, I went on hormone replacement therapy back in, you know, in my mid forties. So we're talking 15 years now. And then also they checked my thyroid. I had Hashimoto's thyroiditis. I started a thyroid medication as well. And it changed my, I can't say it changed. It, it, it helped me to feel much better. I can't say that it was a miracle cure, but it gave me back the vitality that I felt in my thirties. Um, I was able to train better. I had better recovery.

And this is before we were using peptides. And so I was a true believer at that point, very quickly, uh, within the context of that, and then getting back to the very basics. Right. So, um, I was fortunate at that point in time, 2010. I had a business opportunity with a friend of mine from the military to go build a company overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa. It's a medical business doing occupational medicine. And so I went over there as a clinician, as a PA initially, just to kind of open up the shop there and see occupational medicine patients coming through the door.

And they were with a large US aerospace company. And so they were high achieving people as well. And I had to care for them and I did some of their primary care. Most of it was point of, you know, care, urgent care. But I did get into weeds a lot with them, which is amazing with regard to their primary care. And it gave me the time and the ability to focus on improving my knowledge set on how to improve health beyond the scope of my family practice training. I have a master's in family practice as a PA.

And my knowledge and curiosity grows so deep that, you know, I was able to learn a lot without having the biohacking, you know, the entire biohacking sphere. I just went deep on that with regard to A4M, reading as much as I could. I've voraciously looked at, you know, studies in Med that had to deal with all of this and was able to kind of shape shift. I helped as best as I could at the time with that knowledge. Well, you touched on what most people get their feet wet into this area of integrative medicine, is they fix the problems that are occurring.

Like you said, when you have extremely stressful jobs, Extremely or events that are occurring Your body is unable to handle it in your sex hormones and all your hormone levels Become degraded. So that's the first step is to be able to replace what's lost And the second step is to, at the same time, is to make sure the right fuel is going into your body at the same time. And that fuel is not only food, but also is sleep or regeneration. Unfortunately, that's sometimes just not possible. But to realize what people may not understand is when you have like the family history of unable to process or your body's ability to deposit saturated fats or inflammation into heart disease, it gets your attention that you have to be able to somehow fix both at the same time.

And one may be a temporary fix. And hopefully what you're seeing is you have to look at the whole person and dietary changes is critical even from the difficult.

Peptides, Semaglutide, and Growth Hormone Support 12:40

If you're in a high stressful position like that, unfortunately processed food and fast food and 20-style lifestyle, you can't do both, okay? I mean, just as you look at your super athletes, right? The ones that are very successful take care of their bodies to an unbelievable degree, and it's just like a race car, right? You're gonna take care of it. So I think that's the takeaway that you have seen, we have seen as well. Anything I know that you you had some work with some peptides at first and and maybe maybe you can give us, you know, maybe your approach if you had an executive that is coming that starting of your practice, maybe some of the tips or maybe the couple things that you want to make sure that they get started in this way, you know, makes you a little bit different than everybody concierge physicians in this in this space.

Yeah, absolutely. So just to be completely clear, I'm in the process of opening a clinic. I'm calling it Titan Arc. It's going to be for men and women to help them optimize their health. And I anticipate using both hormone replacement therapy and peptides in the context of this practice. So this is not medical advice in the context of this podcast. So I need to be clear there. And also the FDA is not sanctioned. You know, most of the work that we do with regard to peptides is experimental and or not for the use of like, you know, losing weight or gaining muscle that that's needs to be very clearly stated that everything needs to be prefaced with the fact that this is, this is like you mentioned earlier, the wild west.

Right. Yeah. So there's a lot of therapies out there that, and we, as a nationally licensed pharmacy, we actually give practitioners like yourself advice as to what is appropriate, what follows the rules in different states. And it is different, but there are so many options that are in your toolbox that you can use. Absolutely. Without being in a gray area. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I've been fortunate enough to have experienced some of the benefits. I've taken personally quite a number of peptides.

Sumerallin, CJC, BPC 157, TB 500. Yeah. BPC 157, I think I mentioned. So, yeah, and each of them have their benefits specific to various processes in the body. For, let's just start with, I guess, a cermerellin. It's a secretagogue, works in the hypothalamus. And it's an approved drug, so it's... It's approved, and it is one of the medications that we can actually legally prescribe here in California. That's correct, right? That's right. That's right, it is. Yeah. So, it's still available. FDA approved to be able to prescribe here.

And that medication works in the central nervous system at the hypothalamus. It secretes GHRH, which helps your anterior pituitary, the front part of your surgery gland to secrete normal natural growth hormone, which we've had in our bodies our entire lives at much higher levels when we're younger, which helps with cellular rejuvenation and growth, tissue growth. It helps with skin as well, keeping the skin nice and thick, keeping fibroblast activity working and keeping your skin thicker so that it helps minimize.

It does not cure sagging skin or any sort of wrinkles, but it can help to keep your skin looking more youthful. It can help with sleep as well. It does. Some of the deeper levels of sleep, it'll help. The one thing that we need to mention about that particular peptide is that you have to cycle on and off. You don't want to oversaturate the... I think it's five days on and two days off, right? Exactly, right. And then do it for a number of weeks, 12 weeks, and then take a month off. You may not know, but we make a special lipid particle technology chewable tablet.

with the drug that mimics an injection. So we're pioneering taking some of these injectable substances and putting them into lipid particle tablets that are patented processed. And we're doing it with testosterone. We've done it with vasoactive intestinal peptide and semerelin. And it's really, for people, We're trying to transition people away from injections if we can, but Summer Ellen is, you know, people sometimes may not like to inject themselves daily. So we have some firsthand accounts for efficacy.

So just throw that in there. That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm curious. So it's bioavailability is, how did you manage? So it's a nanoparticle, you said? It's the same pharmaceutical. We've been able to intuitively understand their blood levels. We've been able to see symptomology, maybe anecdotal information with practitioners and seeing the effects. We see an improvement in energy level, but sleep is the first thing that we see. So we definitely know where it's working for those patients because some people may not get results with the injections either.

So we have some practitioners like yourself that have been able to document it with their patients. So we do know that the technology works. That's great. Wow. Are you measuring it through IGF-1? Practitioners are measuring at IGF-1 levels like they would any other growth hormone. But usually, they're seeing all their other indexes in their blood tests change. Because they're doing it not by itself, but with proper hormone replacement therapy, with proper modulation of thyroid. But no matter what, we found If you have a leaky gut or having toxicity difficulties in the gut, none of the hormones will work.

So this is the thing that we've realized. We have infections in the GI tract. This is definitely going to downregulate all hormones. So what comes first? Do you put more hormones in or fix the gut? Right. Exactly. Yeah. BPC 157 is for the tight junctions, helping with that, as well as the, you know, the benefits that we see with regard to, you know, tendons and muscular repair and all that. Yeah. I've tried that and with great effect, you know, anecdotal, of course, some patients have tried it and there's no effect.

They see no benefit, but me personally, I had a pretty profound effect with a shoulder injury by using that peptide.

Gut Health, Regulation, and the Future of Peptides 19:45

Yeah, it's a, you know, if I could just give a little editorial on what is happening in the industry, we're really excited about the bright future of these therapies that practitioners like yourself feel comfortable, that are safe, they are being used by millions of patients now. We have some good evidence-based therapies that we feel that there will be a path forward that these will be available in the pharmaceutical pipeline like anything else, but more now than ever. Because there's more of a freedom of medicine, Right now, there's a lot of legislations that are being put forth.

We think that we have some great bills that are being pushed through the legislature right now to get the attention to reform the way some of these new age pharmaceuticals are being allowed. So we're very hopeful, but it's definitely better than it was a year ago. And so we have government that's listening, and it's not just in these peptides, but there's so many other therapies that have been scorned on because they don't They don't fit the traditional evidence-based double-blind trials. And who's going to do double-blind clinical trials on all these that have no monetary basis?

Because they're unable to have an exclusive. So unfortunately, the system for payback is not working. So we've got to put our practitioners, give them the choices that they found. So I think it's coming. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's exciting times for sure. Yeah, it's interesting going back to, you know, the evidence. There's tons of evidence, I think, in the literature with regard to these peptides before they were... Rehabilitating. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then you have a mountain of anecdote, right, that becomes evidence over time and physician experience with this.

And, you know, then it was, you know, the rug was pulled out from underneath us a few years ago with regard to that. You know, some for good reason. There were some cases that, you know, pushed that forward, that made it necessary to regulate it. But I think that they pushed that envelope too far. And I agree with you 100%. It needs to be pulled back, you know, in favor of physician control, you know, with good oversight and good regulatory frameworks in which we can prescribe these things safely and effectively.

I think it'd be really good for the public. Stay tuned. That's what we hear about. I mean, check out our website, Healthy Choices Doctor Talks. And I also post our website, pdlabsrx.com, for all the most up-to-date information as to new breakthroughs and new products that are being able to be offered in the marketplace. We're definitely staying very close to it. We're nationally licensed in the entire country. So we are able to patch through all the regulatory requirements. So we can, practitioners like yourself, they can give us a call and we can be able to give you some suggestions.

Fantastic. I appreciate the time today. It's been a pleasure and hope to talk with you again. Yeah, and also in closing, I know you've given us, you're just starting your website, your business. Do you have a website that you have available that people should say coming soon? It's coming soon. Yeah, it's in the works and a landing page. So all of that is in the works still. So the business is burgeoning. Very, very new. But my legal team has got all the documents finished in this week. So it's all coming together very quickly.

In California, you have to be very careful on how I pull this together. My training is that of a PA and MD. So I have a degree, but I am not a licensed MD. I'm an executive. MD. So I have to work within the regulatory frameworks specific to my PA licensure. So to be very careful on how I put myself out there, that took some time to figure out. And so I'm super excited about it. I'm looking forward to building it here in California and expanding beyond California. Very nice. And we'll be situated in Beverly Hills, downtown Beverly Hills.

Launching Titan Arc and Closing Remarks 24:15

And a lot of my practice will also be in telemed. So Yeah, I'm super pumped about it. Have you subscribed to a website? Because by the time this our podcast gets published, it may be may be live. And if you have it available, you can definitely announce it here so that it's. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be titanark.com. So there we go. I have a feeling you're going to be extremely busy because the demand that we see all the time, people are calling us all the time. Do you know somebody in California? Do you know somebody that you can trust in California?

Do you know somebody? So I think that you've been very successful in your life and I have a feeling you're going to be extremely busy. I hope that's accurate. And I also understand that you've got an expertise in film as well. Yes. Yeah. I've had led this dual life again, late bloomer. I've had a fascination with it all my life, but, and have been a dabbler as a hobbyist up until, you know, my forties are raising two kids. My kids are fully grown now. So I had to put that, that, that passion on hold for a long time while I raised them.

Uh, and then once they were up and out of the house, I went back and got a film degree at MFA and film from Mount St. Mary's university here in Los Angeles. and began to produce feature films, did a bit of acting as well, studied some acting and kind of scratched that itch, if you will. Had a couple of movies that were acquired by Lionsgate and Sony. So that was a pretty cool experience. I'm still doing some filmmaking. It's a part-time endeavor for me. I don't have time to do it full-time. I've made my living in medicine, thankfully.

It's been an amazing experience to be able to do both now at this later stage of my life. I've got a film coming out next month called Teacher's Pet. It'll be premiering here at the Dances with Films Film Festival in Hollywood at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood and Highland. So we're super excited about that. Great cast, great crew. It was a fun experience. I hope to do more movies. But my primary focus right now is building this practice, getting it up and running, and helping patients feel better, particularly men and women my age who are looking to optimize their ability to work effectively, be stronger, better, faster, and just happier human beings because they've optimized the biology that they've been given.

So, yeah, I'm super excited. Well, I'm going to make a prediction. You're going to come across one of your patients as a big influencer that wants to make a documentary on longevity medicine and is going to engage you into coming up with a one-of-a-kind documentary on the course of therapy for longevity medicine that will just, and probably Lionsgate will pick it up. So we'll see. Maybe a year from now, we'll see what happens. Yeah, I'm a newbie in this space, so I got a lot to learn, that's for sure, but I'm open to that.

Well, we look forward to having you back again, and check out our website, pdlabsrx.com, and our podcast, Healthy Choices on Doctor Talks, for new and innovative therapies, new breakthroughs, and as we interview some of the most thought-provoking influencers in this new area of longevity medicine. and we'll see you next time on Healthy Choices Doctor Talks. Thanks again. Appreciate it. All right. Take care. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected. Stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.