Peptides 101: What Are Peptides and Why Is Everyone Talking About Them? with Carey Howe

Sebastian Rusk 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. Hey, how's it going, Seabass? Excuse yourself. Excuse yourself. Excuse yourself. Let's try that again. Carey Howe, welcome to the show. I don't know who this sea bass guy everybody keeps uh referring to. But anyhow, anyhow, um, longtime friend joining me on the show today, Carey Howe. I've known Carey over 25 years, was my first friend in California when I moved there in 2000 with my Oldsmobile and a brand new baby. That's right. Yeah. Been going, been running for the water.

Carey Howe 0:59

We took a minute.

Sebastian Rusk 1:02

So I wanted to get you on the show today because, well, a couple months ago, you got me on the peptides because that's what all the cool kids have been talking about, and all the great benefits and health benefits. And of course, the internet and you know, you know, NBC Nightly News and all the headlines, peptides aren't FDA approved and yada, yada, yada. However, there's a lot of things that aren't FDA approved, and we're still consuming those. So I wanted to have a conversation today about hey, hey, how you got started with all this, but then really helping people better understand because I find myself on a daily basis not being able to answer the question, what's a peptide and what do peptides do? I'm like, I don't know. I just feel really good, and I know there's a tremendous amount of health benefits, and I've got dear friends that are that are taking them and and and on them. So let's back up for a minute and let's talk about how you actually got into this world. Because there's a lot of peptide noise happening on the internet these days. And I'm, you know, we want to, we want to uh better uh inform people and help them better understand exactly what's really going on with this world.

Carey Howe 2:03

Yeah, um, that's a obviously a very, very good question, right? Um, so I got into this because I, you know, realistically, it was when my mother died, you know, in 2010. I started thinking about health in a whole different way. I started questioning, you know, whether the, you know, the treatments she took for chemotherapy and all these things were so were good or not. And anyways, you go, you go through this rabbit, you go down these rabbit holes, and I was taking some hormone therapy as you age as a male, you know, you want to take a little testosterone, and you start learning about these things, and um, peptides happens to be one of these things that um if you're in search of you know your health journey and and you know wherever you are in that journey at the beginning, or you know, peptides are gonna come up. They're just everybody talks about them, right? And so, you know, you have to learn about it. Um obviously there's peptides for everything. There, these are short chains of amino acids that your body produces, anyways. It's just the peptides are awakening the signals in your body that that produce those results, right? Or produce those things to happen. So it's not really putting something into your body like a medicine that that is affecting you in in some sort of way. It's really just awakening a signal pattern that your body already has, but maybe due to age or or or whatever the case may be, um, overuse, you know, overstimulation, whatever these it happens to be, that the signals are awakened and they're running like they would normally, you know, in your younger state, right? And so um they're literally peptides for everything. Um, you want more energy, there's something for that. You want to have better recovery, there's something for that. You want to have better cognitive thought, there's something for that. Um, the the unfortunate thing in the peptide world is that there's just a lot of misinformation and over information everywhere. And and then the other underlying thing is that, you know, nine out of ten people trying to take peptides probably can't tie their shoes. You know what I mean? Like they're just not, they don't get a lot of the stuff, right? So um, you know, where my journey started and where it is today, you know, very different. But I started along a peptide journey. I I started taking them myself. I I got in contact with a guy that was a diver who was injured and recovered from his injury. And um, I was interested in that same sort of recovery from an injury, and it just led one thing led to another. And I started discovering and learning and asking questions and going to my doctor and uh talking to other doctors, um, and which have ended ended up in me opening up our own wellness clinic and our own clinic here in uh San Jose, Costa Rica, right? So that's kind of where it began. But you're um, you know, what you'd said uh you don't have to be a peptide expert to to sort of go out there and get some good advice from someone who gives good advice to sort of know what you need for your particular situation. As in your case, I believe, you know, you feel really, really energized now with just NAD, right? One simple peptide really helped your whole energy level. Correct? Yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Rusk 5:27

And so you don't uh I don't require as much sleep either. Usually I'm an eight hour, eight-hour guy. If I get sick six and a half hours, I'm still you know pretty good. And it's the one thing that I noticed people say, oh, it's like it's no, it's not like drinking a Red Bull type of energy. And to your point that it's already fueling your body already produces NAD, is that correct?

Carey Howe 5:47

Correct. So um your body already produces NAD. It just stopped signaling it as well as it should um way back when you were younger. I'm not going to be an old man, you're a very young man, but uh um you know, things don't work as well as they used to, and and these kind of help those signals rejuvenate, you know. So uh just like for energy, there's something for cognitive thought, or there's something for um recovery from for your muscles from workout. Those same things work for uh recovery from a um an injury or a cut. These things work very good um also for pre and post-stem cell treatment. People have really bad injuries and they use stem cells, but um you got to get your body in shape and ready to accept those stem cells. And with peptides is a great way to do that, along with hyperbaric chamber and some other things that that are great to do as well. But um peptides are one thing in a host of things that you have to look into in your fitness or wellness journey. The basic things, it's not a magic pill that that, hey, I take this peptide, I can uh drink like a fish and not sleep at all and party like a rock star and and my life's gonna be great, right? No, that that's not what it is. But if you're looking for a wellness journey or fitness journey uh or just trying to improve your health altogether, you're gonna have to eat right. You're gonna have to sleep uh correctly, you're gonna have to um you're gonna have to do some certain baseline things that make it so that the peptides will work as well as they can, right? So um peptides will work even if you you're mistreating your body and why not. They they typically will work, but they work a lot better if you're sleeping well, you're rest you're you're recovering from um workouts well and doing all these things correctly, eating well, you're you're gonna um the you're gonna benefit from them much more than you would if you weren't doing those things.

Sebastian Rusk 7:55

What's the what's the big difference between like uh these GLPs for weight loss and peptides? I believe GLPs are a form of a peptide, correct?

Carey Howe 8:06

GLPs are a peptide. They're just going after your glute your GLP one receptor, your glucagon receptor, or your GIP receptor, right? There's another two receptors. There's five sort of GLP receptors, and um, there's new peptides coming out every day that that, well, not every day, but you know, all the time that um that go after these receptors. And these are the things that give you satiency, like make making you feel full after you're eating. That signal is faster to your brain than it than it normally would. When we typically eat, it takes 10 to 15 minutes for the signal from our stomach to go to our brain to say, hey, you've had enough, bud. And this makes that signal happen faster. It's it's really something your body already does, it's just making it happen faster, right? And so the GLPs uh and and 80% of the peptide business is GLPs. So it's no wonder everybody focuses on these things. Weight loss is the number one thing people go after, right? Um, but this is probably one of the areas you need to be the most precautious, right? These are if you're overweight, you know, obese or um and looking to lose weight, you probably should start out with tests, blood tests, DEXA scans, make before you do any peptides, right? And um the GLPs just happen to be very very successful with helping people who've had problems with eating disorders and um and overweightness, thyroid problems. It helps them get through those problems and and sort of begin a new relationship with food for no better term.

Sebastian Rusk 9:49

Yeah. And they've seemed to that that seemed to introduce the world to the what peptides uh are. I think that um, you know, when I was first started getting curious about it, my my my biggest misunderstanding, I was down there visiting you guys in February, was like, I need to get completely healthy across the board, eat good, work out, limit any type of, you know, intake of uh fun uh before I can start peptides. And that that was a big misunderstanding. While all those things are very important to do to get the best results from it, you can also simply, like I did, go get your labs, send your labs into you guys, have a doctor review all of them, and then you guys formulate a peptide protocol based on what my lab results were. And I actually went with that, and you know, so far, so good. I think we're, I don't know, I'm I'm a good two and a half months, and I think maybe August, maybe even more than that while time flies when you're having fun. And I just feel, feel good. And I find that the better, you know, if I eat like shit and have pizza and uh, you know, fuck a couple, two, three, four, five tequilas over the weekend, you know, I'm probably not gonna feel that awesome uh come Monday morning, lethargic, lazy, tired, etc. But if I'm on the program, as we would refer to it as, you know, high protein diet, eating good, eating clean, working out, getting sleep, integrating peptides into that process just adds that entire overall experience of feeling better, feeling healthier. And then of course, I haven't done it yet. I'm about to do it this week. Get the first round of labs back. And the first round of labs after you've been on a protocol for a couple months, really start to help you better understand exactly where it's at. And that leads me into the next thing I want to talk about is labs. This isn't your typical, let's go to my general practice MD, let's test nine or 10 markers and let's find out. You know, that can be okay for an initial, or if you go to Quest or a Lab Works or whatever it is, but like going to your doctor, they're testing for very little things. There's all kinds of unique, um, new advanced um ways of getting your labs done. In fact, I've got one with um CyFox right now. I'll put a link in the show notes here. You can click on it. There's a promo code too, you can check it out. You take this little device, doesn't even have a needle, and you put it in your right arm, you press the button, it takes about an inch of a vial of your blood, and you throw it in a uh cooled uh package uh via FedEx back to them. And in about 48 hours, 24 to 48 hours, you've got like 65 biomarkers telling you everything, plus, you know, advising you on what's what. So I'm stoked to hear where that's all at. But let's talk about, you know, get getting labs done and blood work done prior to doing this and what that looks like during the peptide protocol as well.

Carey Howe 12:45

Yeah, that's and super important, right? Um, what you monitor will improve. That's the sort of number one rule, right? And anything you do, right? And so you definitely want to know where your baseline was where you started, which we like to do with every um patient uh or client. And um certainly, you know, 60 months, 60 days into it, you want to take another look at your markers. And you just mentioned something that's super great that's coming out. A lot of these places are coming out with the um, yeah, you know, the the patch, you heat your your arm up, you put the thing on, it takes a little uh vial of your blood, you send it in 48 hours later, you open up the app, you got your all these biomarkers that are are necessary. And I believe most of them have like a membership where you join for a year and you can do one of these tests every 30 days, you can order different things in the tests. You know, if your doctor says, hey, we want to concentrate on this area, let's do these other three tests on your next lab. And, you know, the the world is changing as far as how people take ownership for their own health. And and what you said there, you're really just taking ownership of, hey, the only person who's gonna make me healthy is me. The only health insurance is me ensuring I'm healthy. And um and so so so the world is is privy to having all these nice new devices and and whatnot that we really didn't have five, ten, you know, three years ago, really. And so, you know, you should always be monitoring your blood for sure. And if not once a year, um do even your DNA markers, right? And and see that these are things that help you take the right vitamins, these are things that help you um do the right protocol, these are things that'll tell you if you're doing something you shouldn't be with your type of blood or or whatever it is. So it's very, very important to monitor um your blood, that's for sure. And um definitely also ADEXA scan, your your biomarkers for your body composition. Like one of the beautiful things about um one of the GLPs that you lose weight from, it's uh retrutide. And this uh helps your visceral fat. So around your organs and your liver, these are this super important to longevity and health, right? Not just for losing weight. So there's this whole other side to many of these peptides that are that are used for, let's say, just weight loss. Someone is overweight, they use it for weight loss, but then they find out from their scan, wow, well, my fatty liver's gone away, you know, from years of two, three, four, five, six tequilas on any given day, right? And so um, so those are really beneficial things that you can use with the blood markers, right? And and um, I highly recommend what you just mentioned is um belonging to one of those uh clubs that you can get your marker. You know, there's different levels of membership. You can do four tests a year, one test a month, whatever you can add on different things, um, depending on what your focus is on your health, right? And the other thing that helps that is that you don't want to go at this blindly. Sure, you can upload that to Claude or Chat GPT and and you'll get what it gives you. But it's always good to have a uh a physician or doctor go through it with you and say, hey, you know, we should this is within range, but it's high, you know. Uh maybe we should concentrate on this. This is what we could do, you know, maybe eat these kinds of foods, take this vitamin, you know, always optimizing your health from the markers that are right there in your blood and your biomarkers, right? Super very important, and it's gonna help you um be a more healthy version of yourself, right? Yeah. And and so I love it, man.

Sebastian Rusk 16:45

Well, I just wanted to have this conversation to really, you know, help people understand, you know, what this world's really all about. This is just the beginning of where it's also been thinking about it, considering, etc. I know that you're readily available uh to answer questions. So if you're listening to this right now or watching the replay of one of the live broadcasts of the recording of this, just shoot me a DM. I'm happy to make a personal introduction to Carey and his team, answer any questions that you have and see if it's a fit for you. If so, figuring out how to get your lab squared away and find out what may be a good fit for you. Again, this is not medical advice. I'm not a doctor. Carey's not a doctor. Um, we're just in the health and wellness uh interest space of what's going on here. I know BioVantics has been great for my peptide journey and can can be for yours as well. So if you're listening to this, you're like, man, I really want to talk to this guy, just shoot me a DM on Instagram or Facebook or wherever you're hanging out, and I'm happy to make an introduction. Carey, uh, good to see you again, man. Uh, thanks for all your help with all this uh peptide uh stuff on my end here. Really enjoying uh the results from it and excited to see it just continues to get even better and better. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Carey Howe 17:51

Um, just what you said, you know, we we we we're in the business of getting people healthy and we really enjoy hearing the stories like yours. And, you know, we answer the questions that maybe doctors have avoided for so long, which is they're they're worried about giving you a prescription and and and everything else. We're worried about are you doing well? Are you performing better? Are you sleeping better? Are you feeling more energy? And and these this is why flocks of people are going towards this type of health and wellness. Um, you know, it's no secret that the industry's growing hand over fist every day. Um, but thank you for having me. Um, obviously, there's um a lot more to this than just we can cover in a short conversation, but it's always good to talk to you, my brother. Um and uh hopefully uh we can get you on uh a couple more peptides, get you optimized even better, huh?

Sebastian Rusk 18:42

Yes, sir. Well, we'll have to have another conversation when I come down and visit you guys here in uh in uh in a in uh towards the end of the year. Uh it's always a good time down in Costa Rica. A little pure vita, never hurt anybody.

Carey Howe 18:53

Nobody ever hates coming to visit me here, I can tell you that. They might hate visiting me, but not where we're at.

Sebastian Rusk 19:00

Hey, thanks again, my brother.

Carey Howe 19:02

All right, my brother. Ciao. Have a good one.

Sebastian Rusk 19:04

Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. We're sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.