EFR 873: The Best Predictors For Living Longer - V02 Max, HRV, Follistatin and Gene Therapies with Jay Spall

00:01 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:04 - Jay (Guest) So my transformation, my diabetes was reversed overnight. And to lose 120 pounds, get off of SSRIs, get off of fentanyl. So for me, folostatin, enabling me similar results to you, where my endurance went up, like my VO2 max went up after doing full statin. Really, the reduction in inflammation for some people can result in a cognitive performance boost.

00:31 - Chase (Host) I can't stop Like my endurance is through the roof. I literally find myself third, fourth set, banging out more reps than even the beginning. My ability to like, maintain body composition in terms of weight and even free fat mass to muscle mass, given the months now that my training lifestyle has changed because I had a kid.

00:50 - Jay (Guest) Hello, my name is Jay Spall. I'm a biochemist by training. Welcome to Ever Forward.

00:55 - Chase (Host) Radio. Today's episode is brought to you by my partners at State and Liberty. Guys, listen up. I got to talk about something that we all have struggled with, or maybe currently still struggling with, and that's finding clothes that actually fit. See, if you work out, you know the deal Shirts are too tight in the shoulders or too baggy at the waist. Dress pants feel like a straight jacket for your legs Not anymore. That's where State and Liberty comes in to save the day. They make athlete-tailored dress clothes designed for guys who lift, built with stretch, breathability and comfort so you look sharp without feeling restricted. Whether it's for work, a night out or a big event, their gear moves with you and actually fits like it should. And here's the best part as a partner of the show, they're passing the savings on to you. You can get 15% off of your order when you head to stateandlibertycom and use our support code that's code ever forward at checkout. You're going to look good, you're going to move better. You're going to love how you feel and how you look. I've been rocking state and liberty for years, whether that's a casual jacket, t-shirts, more formal wear I actually have two of their tuxedos. Anytime I'm a groomsman or going to a wedding. I look my best, feel my best and I'm not sweating through it like I know a lot of the other guys are. State Liberty is built for athletes made to perform. Stateandlibertycom checkout code EVERFORWARD.

02:26 Hello and welcome back to the show. I your host, chase shuning, army veteran wellness entrepreneur and certified health coach, and today I'm bringing on the new homie, the mad scientist, jay spall, from mini circle. Now, jay is not only a new friend of mine, but he is an extremely intelligent individual and I had the pleasure of joining him, like you're going to hear us talk about, and a handful of other curious guys, human optimizers, very longevity and biohacking, forward thinking individuals. Several months ago, back in October 2024, we went down to Cabo in Mexico, to one of the mini circle clinics to undergo this procedure that Jay and I are gonna be diving into the folistatin. Folisatin is a morphogenetic hormone which improves tissue composition and extends lifespan in healthy mice by as much as about 33%. It has marked effects improving the felt sense of well-being and has been shown in early human studies to increase bone density and muscle mass, decrease body fat and to reduce the epigenetic clock age the quote biological age.

03:34 Now, this was a personal choice. I was very intrigued by the data and the science that I did in my personal research before deciding to get the treatment, and you're going to hear exactly why folistatin can have profound benefits for anyone and everyone that might choose to receive it or just dive deeper into the world of peptides and biomolecular therapy. We are on the cutting edge of science and research and I'm so proud to bring you this episode because I have personal experience with it. Now, going on seven, eight months, I can firsthand tell you I have the endurance of someone probably half my age. I remember training like this years and years and years ago.

04:21 I cannot stop my stamina. My endurance is so noticeably improved. I actually look down on my watch, I track my workouts and I'm going 10, 15, 20 minutes longer than usual. I am not getting fatigued at the end of my sets of reps. In fact, usually at the last set I'm going even a few more reps just as easily as I did at the beginning. This is all my personal experience and my personal choice, but I am so grateful for the opportunity to have partnered with mini circle for this full of statin gene therapy. And uh, I'm going to shut up now and let my man, jay Spall, who is way more intelligent on these matters, dive deep into the science and also share his backstory and why understanding just what makes us tick and how to tick better is so important to him, and how we can think, move, perform, be better today but potentially add a lot of quality years to our life. Welcome to the show.

05:21 - Jay (Guest) I had a spinal injury when I was very young and we were immigrants for I'm an immigrant from Pakistan, so we came to US just but my leg was numb, my left leg, my foot, was numb. Didn't know what was going on. This was like degeneration and discarnation, that kind of happened from an injury, and over the years it just got worse, worse, got to a point where I couldn't feel my toes. So you know we're a poor family. Go to a county hospital, go there. They in within a few months. You know they do a surgery and it was an intern who did the surgery. Was a major surgery L4, l5, s1, discectomy laminectomy they did on me. S1, discectomy laminectomy they did on me.

06:03 This is in 2004, before, like the opioid awareness, you know, before physicians became very aware that hey, this is a problem and people became aware. So had a surgery. I'm a kid and they send me off, they send me home with pain medication. And that was yeah, yeah, yeah, opioids narcotics yeah, yeah, yeah, opioids narcotics. Yes, controlled medication.

06:27 Um started with all pretty similar cocktail to what you got on, but started with hydrocodone, percocet, you know, hydromorphone methadone, you know it's just a cycling process of all these. Um got on these and within like a few months, you, you know, started having other side effects. Oh, my stomach is not feeling good. Go to the doctor and he's like, oh, there's some proton pump inhibitors, you know, for your stomach. Well, you know that few months go by and I'm you know, I'm not giving exact timelines, but this was a trajectory, you know.

06:59 Other few months, like having sleep problems, you know, and the doctor's like, well, there's some Ambien or Lunesta. Like having sleep problems, you know, and the dog's like, well, there's some mbn or lonesta, you know. Well, you know, a few months later I'm anxious and having trouble in school, like, oh, well, let's give you some benzos, and some time goes on. Like the doctor's like, I think you're depressed, everything you're describing you're depressed. Well, here's some ssris. Uh, oh, the ssris aren't working now anymore. Well, let's add a booster, like well, butrin. So before I knew it, you know, a decade, 15 years had gone by and I was ballooned up to 358 pounds at my peak, immobile, depressed, uh, just barely surviving, you know on this crazy cocktail of medications yeah, yeah, they're just giving you to like.

07:48 Mask another problem, mask another problem exactly to western medicine, traditional western medicine, band-aid approach, you know, not getting to the root and just they just want to get you out and get you fixed. Uh, yeah, so, yeah, so, uh, I had, ultimately, I had come to a conclusion I'm going to die, because I was being told that pretty consistently. You know, I was full on diabetic, my A1C was like hovering around nine, my liver was failing, my kidneys weren't in good shape and I had pancreatitis. Uh, and the doctor was like you got like six months to live. You're not going to live a very long time. Went through this crazy process in a hospital in Vegas in an ICU, got admitted for pancreatitis, severe pain, and my nephew was being born and congratulations on your newborn, thank you.

08:43 - Chase (Host) Shout out Dini, baby. Yeah, he's probably not listening. He's probably pooping his pants somewhere. I hope he listens one day.

08:49 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, but I think you this will resonate very well with you, because a pivotal moment to my life was my nephew being born. I had accepted. So my sister was pregnant around the same time. Uh, I was in the icu, I had accepted and there's a spiritual component to the story too. I had accepted that I'm the leaf that falls and he's the new one that sprouts and uh, that's beautiful man.

09:16 - Chase (Host) I like that a lot yeah, so I I mean it's kind of morbid but beautiful.

09:19 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah, I had kind of like you, you know, let it go. I had given up hope and I had this experience where I fade away, essentially die in the hospital, in the ICU. And you actually did, didn't you? Yeah, yeah.

09:34 - Chase (Host) Like they brought me back Flatline. He's gone.

09:36 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah, I just remember just fading away. They brought me back and I'm wobbly. You know, time has passed like minutes. I don't know if it's half hour, I go to the bathroom. I'm wobbly. You know, time has passed like minutes. I don't know if it's half hour, I go to the bathroom, I'm wobbly. I called my father and I asked him how's my sister, how's the nephew? And because I was surprised that I'm still here and he's like, oh, he's good, he's healthy Something clicked in my brain and that it was like a download or something he was clicked in my brain and that it was like a download or something.

10:07 He was born. Your nephew was born while you were going through this process in the hospital. Yes, yeah, exactly. And as soon as I found out zane was well, I just something clicked in my head and I was like this is not my time and I'm, I'm going to live. And so transformation. It was that period to six months. After the December 2018, middle of 2019, I had lost over 120 pounds. I was I'll. I'll share some photos with you. After I was just a completely different person.

10:40 - Chase (Host) I've seen them a few. I remember from oh yeah, you may have seen them.

10:44 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, it was just a very drastic uh transformation that I went through. Most of the people in the company that I was then part of they ended up wanting to become my clients. Like, how did you do this? My diabetes was reversed overnight. So that was the story. And in that story there's a lot of detail.

11:03 And to lose 120 pounds, get off of SSRIs, get off of fentanyl, you know, for a decade I was on, same as you, on the fentanyl patches and that was a brutal process, you know. So getting off all the pharmaceutical stack, and in that journey I figured out a lot of interesting facets and now very popularized biohacks. But at that time, you know, five, 10 years ago, these were a lot of these things were not very popular, not very well known. So over, you know, the span of next few months, few years, this really evolved into my career because I developed, I had, I was very passionate about the subject, you know, for me to get healthy from debt, you know, to come back, I essentially had to master certain subjects, you know, and in that process I just started converting to how do I help others with this?

12:02 So I ended up becoming a consultant, essentially a coach, you know, but from, like, my background's in biochemistry, chemistry, so you know I kind of like leverage that that I'm a scientist. I will just I'm not going to be a medical doctor, but I will coach you and oversee some of the processes to get people healthy. So I did that in LA for a handful of years, evolved into the peptide space, you know, consulting for some stem cell clinics, just coming up with interesting protocols, iv protocols, and then the latest venture, hall you and I linked up mini circle gene therapy, something I'm just absolutely obsessed with. But that's, in a nutshell, been a little bit of the journey.

12:43 - Chase (Host) I think what I'm hearing in your story as well that I can relate to is there's a really powerful way that fear can influence, can be a catalyst for taking our life back, for taking our health back, and for me that was one of the big reasons why I got so passionate about health, wellness, before even my injuries and recovery process was seeing it. In my family, I've got type one diabetics in my family. My grandfather was for lack of a better term raging alcoholic and died on our couch from just, you know, heart failure. No shade there, but just truth. And then also my father, who lived a more or less healthy life, active life, but for whatever reason, God, the universe, decided.

13:28 You know, hey, here's a terminal illness, here's ALS, lou Gehrig's disease, and he had an 18-month span of diagnosis when he passed, and so when he passed away in 2005, that was really kind of a catalyst for me of fear of seeing disease but going okay, if there's anything that I can do in any form to ideally prevent that or just give myself the best fighting chance possible, then I'm going to do it. That, coupled with being really humbled and going through those injuries, just gave me this next level motivation, and straight up, it was fear, and I think people overlook fear, the power, the influence, the positive aspect that fear can have for taking your life back. Was that on the table for you and, if so, how did you really harness fear to literally get your life and your health back?

14:20 - Jay (Guest) Man, I love how you articulated that and how you connected that. I think about this often. Actually, the point you brought up about fear. You know fear is a very strong motivator. You know the fight and flight response that animals have. You know this is the root is fear animals have you know this is the root is fear. You know you're fearing something. All of a sudden you get this surge in your body of neurotransmitters. You start making more energy. You got essentially run away from the line, right, that's what we're talking about.

14:56 So I definitely did use fear a lot, but one realization I have had in the last six, seven years is you can use it but it's not sustainable. So, using it in the pockets when you do have to run away from the lion, when I was dying and I needed to change something drastically overnight, right, like, come to Jesus moment, fear you can leverage fear. You can use fear to take, you do, a major leap. But sustain sustainability. You know, to be able to sustain the positive benefits you need, you need love. You know that's the root emotion which I do my best to operate by and drive everything you know in business relationship, also self-love, right, that's something I had to learn and this is what I also heard you say that I want to kind of elaborate and get into. This is one of the subjects, areas where I have a lot of good connection and similarities with a lot of the veterans and you're a veteran yourself and that's emotional resolution. That is very, very underrated when it comes to health, but so many of our, so much of our health is tied to our emotional well-being and when you are in a bad cycle, whether you're addicted or whatever kind of health ailments you have you part of your betterment journey. There's a deep emotional connection. Until you, emotionally, you can get off the opioids, you can go through the withdrawals, you can do a lot of these things, but until you emotionally resolve some of the traumas and some of the PTSD, you can get stuck in a loop right, and I'll give an example on this to elaborate a little bit more.

16:49 One of the areas in science that I'm really fascinated by is how digestion is impacted by stress. So it's a it's. It can become a negative feedback loop where you're more stressed Now your digestion is bad. The gut brain connection, you know, now your digestion is bad, your brain is being impacted poorly. That leads to more stress. Now you're more stressed, now your digestion is worse. So you have to kind of uh addressed a lot of these facets and it's a dynamic approach, you know. So you want to medit pharmaceutically, address it. You want to change your lifestyle but also resolve emotionally.

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19:36 So well said. Could not agree more. And that, ultimately for me, was when I prioritize emotional intelligence and just acknowledging emotions and feelings beyond just like oh, this is what I do to feel my best. Any other feeling other than this, I don't have time for that or it doesn't serve me. No, no, no, no. Like true healing and true power. And your true power and your true health absolutely comes from welcoming those less than pleasant feelings and stepping into the shadow. Work Absolutely To learn what they're there to teach you Emotional resolve, absolutely. Yeah, kind of spin off question there. What do you think it is about? Fear that keeps people from taking action? Because fear is there, we could all be going through the very exact same health scenario we get an injury, we get a chronic illness, disease, whatever. Some people use the fear as a catalyst for change to take their power back, and others just let it wash over them and they stay stuck there. What's the differentiation there?

20:38 - Jay (Guest) I think the differentiation is not very large. You know, it's essentially the same response that you're having, whether it's temporary fear or sustainable, like consistent fear, right? I think what happens in a lot of these scenarios is people get very used to, they get addicted to the response their bodies like it's a nervous system addiction, you know? Uh, there I did some Joe Dispenza work many years ago and that's one of the components he talks a lot about in manifestation and how do you make a change? And you do have to break the cycle because we can get addicted to fear. You know it's like if you, once the fear goes away or that item resolves, you may just recreate it over and over because you get used to of how you can operate in a state of fear.

21:30 So reframing your motivation is is, I think, is a very, very good idea. Because fear we are not supposed to constantly be running away from a lion. That happens and you know the different, fascinating difference between humans and animals is humans are one of the rarest of animals that actually remember getting chased by the lion. Animals are, you know, the deer is going to the same lake. You know, half an hour later, an hour later, when they were chased by a lion when they were chased by a lion.

22:07 A few minutes ago, you know. So we're more dynamic you know.

22:13 - Chase (Host) So then I got to ask man, I'm sure there were a lot of things, but what was the first thing, as we we kind of begin to go down this journey of of the optimization and just like again the mad scientist that you are, was there a thing or a couple of things that you lean to first, that you really felt like this is going to get me out of this rut, this is going to help me lose the weight, get my sleep back, reduce inflammation, but also with that longevity component? Was there a thing or a couple of things? What were they? And also why, what made you gravitate towards them and how did you implement them?

22:47 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, what a great way to put that question. Definitely that is a question I get asked. Probably I've been asked maybe thousands of times in the last half decade. Here's a relatively okay articulation, you know. Here's a relatively okay articulation, you know. And my response Hormone optimization was one of the first things I addressed. Hormone optimization and diet those were, you know, before I got to anything else, I realized that that's something I have to do, One of the things that for both females and males, but specifically for males, that is important for audience and people to understand, and I know you're very well versed in hormone optimization and your wife does that work as well. When somebody is overweight, it's another negative feedback loop. Because you're overweight, now you have lower testosterone. Because you're overweight, more of have lower testosterone. Because you're overweight, More of the testosterone is getting converted into estrogen. So now you have a higher probability of staying overweight and getting worse and worse. So breaking that cycle was very, very critical for me and I chose to do it exogenously. And then the dietary component. I mean what?

24:04 - Chase (Host) Yeah, hormone therapy, testosterone replacement therapy? Yeah, yeah, do it exogenously. And then the dietary component. I mean what? Uh, yeah, hormone therapy testosterone replacement therapy.

24:07 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah.

24:08 - Chase (Host) So I took exogenous testosterone, injected testosterone, once or twice a week, which I think not to interrupt, but I think this is a very important point for someone to pick up on. This is a critical realization in your health journey and a critical realization for anyone in their health journey of when and where and why. Um going straight to that might be a better option for you. At the time you run through your hormone panel, you realize your t is low, your free t is low, your sex binding hormone, sex binding hormone globulin that's my fault.

24:43 - Jay (Guest) It's high, it's high, yeah, you know.

24:44 - Chase (Host) So, like you're hormonally, biochemically, the odds are against you now going straight to trt therapy. Hormone therapy can really solve that problem or put you on a path to solving that much more quickly, I would say to some degree, than what we know to be true, through diet, exercise, sleep, dialing in a few things there. Um, why did you go to hormone therapy? First, because I know that you, like you didn't stop there use that as a way to like really kind of jumpstart things coupled with diet, exercise and kind of radical lifestyle modification.

25:18 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah, you nailed it. This is it's. You got to weigh the odds right and I'm I couldn't be more aligned with you. This is when you have a shit card and you're in a bad spot, when you're overweight you're. The probability of you dying from that is very, very high. So it's about you know risk management and doing solving this problem radically and essentially overnight, very quickly, can be actually, in the long run, very, very beneficial for the health.

25:56 The reality is I came to a lot of these conclusions. It was a process. I had tried so many things and failed relatively consistently, you know. So I I learned, got my ass kicked in many, many areas and just learned and evolved some of this information over time. So even the dietary the way I approach my diet was actually also very aggressive, something that you typically don't want to do in your normal lifestyle. It's not good for longevity or optimization. But as a 358 pound you know, young adult, I'm in bad shape, you know I'm going to die.

26:39 So what I opted for, I also weighed the odds. What I opted for, I went on a four ingredient diet and this is not medical advice that I'm giving people, but this is the decision I made to solve the problem as quickly as possible. So get on testosterone, manage my hormones. And second was go in a full ketogenic diet and basically I had consumed really horrible fats and wasn't mobile, wasn't active for a very long time in my life while I was on opioids. So the strategy was I'm going to get most of my calories from healthy fats. So I was eating ribeye, butter, salt and bacon, so really kind of going carnivore slash keto.

27:21 Carnivore slash keto diet and I knew that I was digging into it. I know there's people the jordan petersons of the world, a lot of other doctors that are, uh, full carnivore dr sean baker, yeah, yeah, but you know I knew I walked into it kind of knowing, for this is not sustainable for me. You know, I don't want to ever end up in a position where I can't. If I accidentally have a vegetable, I'm going to have a reaction Right. So I made a conscious decision that you know what I'm going to do it for one month.

27:52 In 26 days I lost 47 pounds A lot of it was water weight you know, and then after that I slowly started introducing other foods, you know, and I wasn't fully in deep ketosis the entire time. I was, you know, accidentally messing up, you know, once a week. So I was. It was kind of like a cyclic ketogenic diet.

28:11 - Chase (Host) I would say yeah.

28:12 - Jay (Guest) So it's just naturally. You know, in one month I had lost half of the weight and then the rest of the weight I lost in the next five, six months. The funny thing is and I'm very transparent with people about this, because I had the injury, I actually lost a hundred pounds with that, with no exercise. The only thing that I did was walking because I had to. I couldn't really exercise. It was in a lot of pain.

28:38 One of the other interesting things that people who haven't experienced being overweight I'm a scientist. I can kind of talk about some of the nuanced details and experiences and I, you know, I'm in this position where I can speak about it In a way. Not a lot of people who've gone through this journey are in the position to speak about it or have the scientific background to be able to articulate or even catch some of the details. One interesting thing with overweight people when they're going through this weight loss journey is fat stores a lot of toxins and in the process of losing weight, you know, when you're just shedding pounds, you're not feeling great. You know you don't know what toxin, how these chemicals that are stored in your fat are coming out, what they've, you know, mutated, transformed into you know, so it's.

29:35 It can be challenging. There's a gentleness you know as much as I love the David Goggins pocket of approach of like stern, you know like you know very aggressive and hard, but I do also like the gentle approach that with some of these individuals, because I went through it there is. You got to have grace and gentleness. It can be very defeating to throw somebody right in the gym into you know an intensive exercise schedule.

30:03 - Chase (Host) So you can get results with a lot of different things when it comes to your health, especially when it comes to weight loss, but ultimately, in any good coach, any good clinician, any good dietician, whatever, would tell you the same thing it depends. It depends on the person. There's a huge humanization and emotional component to it. But also number one thing is always adherence. If we can't keep you adherent, get you adherent to it, then it might work in the short term. But man, I've seen it more times than not it's just going to come back again. You're going to get defeated. You're going to realize I can't keep this up. So if you don't develop a plan that keeps you adherent along the way, then, like, that's not, that's just a short term change to a long-term problem, that's just a short-term change to a long-term problem. That's going to come back. Yeah, what if I told you that there's an essential fatty acid you're probably missing out on one that could actually help you live healthier longer? Well, meet C15, the first essential fatty acid discovered in over 90 years, and the science behind it is truly game-changing. In fact, studies show that C15 strengthens our cells, supports long-term metabolic, heart and immune health, and even helps regulate sleep and mood. Basically, it's the upgrade our bodies have been needing. I've been using it, loving it every day, pushing two years now. It has all but replaced any essential healthy fat in my supplement drawer. I take one teeny, tiny vegan capsule every day and it has replaced the many giant, big, potentially stinky, smelly fish burpee fish oil that I used to take, and it's just so much easier. Life is so much better now with fatty 15. I've been using it, loving it and I truly feel the difference. So if you're ready to give your body what it's been missing, head to fatty15.com, slash ever forward to learn more and grab your 90 day starter kit with an additional 15% off of that kit. That's F A T T Y one fivecom. Slash ever forward to save an additional 15% off of their already discounted 90-day starter kit.

32:09 So, like I mentioned at the beginning of this interview, I flew to Mexico with Jay, to the mini circle facility, and while this was only about a three hour-ish flight, when it comes to travel, if I am on a plane, I am not messing around with feeling anything other than optimal, because you know that awful feeling when jet lag hits you like a massive truck your brain's foggy, your body's confused and you're staring at the ceiling at 3am wondering why you ever booked that last minute flight or red eye flight or crossing time zones, like you're an international man or woman of mystery. That's why I want to tell you about Flykit, an all-in-one jet lag solution. That's honestly kind of genius. And no lie ever since I started traveling using Flykit, I have not had a lick of jet lag. I'm talking flying to Mexico, flying across the country, or even using it on my international flights.

33:03 I wake up back in my normal routine. See, flykit uses your personal health goals and your circadian rhythm, powered by AI-driven protocols, to dial in the perfect timing for key supplementation meals and even sleep. So, instead of crashing in your hotel room or sleepwalking through that big meeting, you will feel refreshed, clear-headed and actually ready for the trip you just took. If you want to learn more, head to flykitcom. That's flykitcom. You're going to learn more and say goodbye to jet lag for good. That's because their patented supplement protocol limits inflammation, boosts your energy and adjusts your circadian rhythm on how, when you prefer to wake up and when you prefer to go to bed, no matter your time zone. It also includes unwind glasses. Engineered for travel, flykit's glasses block 99% of disruptive blue light, protecting your circadian rhythm to improve sleep and speed up recovery. All waiting for you inside of your fly kit. Use my code Chase at checkout to save 15% off of any kit that's F-L-Y-K-I-T-Tcom. Check out code Chase C-H-A-S-E to save 15% this needs to.

34:22 - Jay (Guest) It needs to evolve from intervention into a lifestyle and other. If it doesn't do that, then it's just going to keep. You know, like I, I was in that loop. You know, uh, approaching all these different things. You know, uh, hormone optimization too, or trt I did a few times before like really sticking with it, uh, because you know the interesting thing with testosterone also is when your t is very low you kind of don't have motivation to go seek the a doctor or a clinic to go get it. So it's like a bad kind of place because you need a little testosterone to get up, to go figure out how you're going to get more testosterone right Things. The great thing for people now you know that are listening and following this journey is things are easier now. There's a lot more awareness around these subjects, the accessibility, you know the time. You know 10 years ago you'd go to a doctor and if your testosterone levels were at 200, you know they're like they're not going to prescribe, you're fine, you know.

35:26 So now you know there's coaches, the work you did, the work I did your wife. You know these clinics. People have help and information available now.

35:37 - Chase (Host) Yeah all right. So let's take us back to, uh, the first things you were implementing, where you went to hormone therapy, testosterone replacement therapy, uh, and addressing significant dietary and lifestyle changes. Then what did you get into? Was this just kind of like Pandora's box to okay, now I'm losing the weight, I'm feeling better, I'm assuming, getting better sleep, my mood's better, the motivation's coming back, and all these things that are catalysts for again adherence and building your lifestyle for change. Um, was it then? Okay, what are these peptides? What are these other biomarkers, longevity factors that I am becoming interested about, and how can I manipulate them? Um, did your goals change like what was kind of like next step?

36:19 - Jay (Guest) yeah, next step was feeling better, because I was not feeling good even after I had lost the weight, so I wanted to feel better. A lot of it was associated with not just the weight loss but being addicted to opioids. You know the withdrawals, and the withdrawals can last a hefty duration. So one of the best things that I did during that period was interventional IVs NAD IVs. Okay, so NAD IVs, uh, uh, have you ever done one? Yeah, yeah, there, as you're familiar, somebody who's going through withdrawals, um, and some brain challenges. Nad can be critical.

36:58 - Chase (Host) That probably was not a fun, uh, half hour experience.

37:02 - Jay (Guest) I got the first NAD IV I did. I was in such bad shape it took five and a half hours to do. Five and a half hours to do it was brutal. It was a gram IV. I did Myers cocktail before, but you know, in the last half decade I've probably done like 200 NAD IVs and I got to a point where I could do an IV in nine minutes.

37:25 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I'll burn through them, which is a testament. You know. This is where I think a lot of people get a bad rap or bad taste in their mouth, literally with NAD or any kind of IV, because you go through them and you're like this is supposed to help. Or you hear people your doctor is supposed to say this is going to help, but especially with NAD. I mean the more discomfort, generally speaking here you experience in an IV drip with NAD. It means your NAD receptors are just like fried and just completely non-existent, and so your body's having to just completely rewrite its system to receive these like cellular boosting longevity, just enhance it, like everything. Nad is so important. But so it's a good testament for people to kind of go like all right, I'm receiving it, I don't like it, but that means that it's working. Yeah, it's working.

38:09 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, absolutely. Nad was my next step, which was really helpful. I did five NAD IVs back to back. That was a big. It got me a lot more energy. You know, I was very uh, I was well before I started the journey. I was very defeated, as I shared with you, and then after, you know, I lost the weight and as I'm losing the weight, I was motivated but I was very deflated. You know like my energy levels were very low. So nad was a very, very good boost. It reset some of my you know, some of the items in my brain. So I started to feel better and the evolution was, you know, very quickly I evolved into peptides oral peptides, injectable peptides.

38:54 I got absolutely fascinated by peptides. Just looking at, you know, bpc-157. I had some sleep problems. I was looking at D-sip, delta sleep inducing peptides. You know, yeah, delta sleep inducing, it's a peptide you can take. That will, you know, can do. Is delta wave? Uh, exactly, can double your deep sleep. Not really doesn't necessarily help with your uh rem sleep, but can double your deep sleep. You know, uh, there's always a uniqueness to a lot of the modalities we're talking about, even the gene therapy that we're going to talk, uh, there's always a uniqueness to a lot of the modalities we're talking about. Even the gene therapy that we're going to talk about, there's a biochemical uniqueness that individuals have, so some people may not respond but others respond really well.

39:35 So, yeah, I went down the rabbit hole with a lot of these peptides and, uh, slowly started using them and added them to my life. I found a functional functional doctor in San Diego that I started working with who was a lot more aggressive. You know like, a regular doctor would never recommend human growth hormone, you know like, but this doctor was like no, no, no, with the things you're dealing with, what you've gone through, I actually want you to do a relatively high dose for a few weeks of it. That will heal things. So, one by one, started essentially moving through the body. You know things that have been damaged and kind of like creating a system where I'm prioritizing improving something before the next thing. Right, can't tackle everything at once, right? So what you can by having a good lifestyle, but the aggressive interventional approach you got to stage gate the process.

40:28 - Chase (Host) So that's the only way you're really going to ever know what's working for you.

40:32 Yeah, I think that's an important point to highlight as well right now, because there are so many eyes on the longevity and optimization and biohacking, you know, enhanced wellness, wellness, dynamic wellness scene right now of light therapy, peptide therapy, cold plunging, sauna working outs. I mean, you name it, you open up instagram, you're going to see all of it. I think this is where it gets messy for a lot of people. It's because they see these people that, excuse me, that they're probably trying to get to some form of lifestyle, physique, energy, whatever, and they see them do all these, that they're probably trying to get to some form of lifestyle, physique, energy, whatever, and they see them do all these things. So they assume I need to do all these things, but then it might not work for you. But also, you don't really know which of those things are working for you and which are not. So I love this kind of calculated again speaks to your kind of you know more scientific background of. Let's start, I need an aggressive change to my life. So I'm going to jump to an aggressive thing, but then I'm also just going to wait and see if that's working and if it's for me, and then onto the next thing.

41:34 So what was the next thing? And then, how did you know where to go? I'm kind of fascinated by like your stepping stones of like hormone therapy nutrition peptides. Like how did you know, was it? I'm kind of fascinated by like your stepping stones of like hormone therapy nutrition peptides. Like how did you know? Was it through what you were finding and other people similarly in your health path? Was it just through research? Um, was it like cutting edge stuff that you were kind of testing ahead of time? Like how did you know which aggressive thing was the next thing for you?

42:00 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah, good question. Um, when I was addicted to the opioids and after, you know, having that experience in the ICU in Vegas where I died, came back, I made a conscious decision in that moment, you know, realizing that I'm going to live control of my own health. Uh, and I did. So what I did? This event that I shared with you happened end of December, uh, 2018. Uh, I took January 1st to January 7th off and I managed my pain myself. Uh, very drastic measures. Uh, this is uh. The story can get long, but it's a pretty interesting component of the story. I went to my insurance wasn't letting me get off opioids. They were like we'll put you on methadone because your insurance was not letting you get off opioids.

42:56 The pain management doctor and the department there. I had asked him numerous times I don't want to be on fentanyl anymore. They said you're going to die if you get off fentanyl. You've been on it for so long. So what we can do is we can put you on methadone. Are you familiar with it? Mmt, methadone maintenance programs? Usually they put heroin addicts, or you know people in my scenario, on it, and by that point I was all too familiar with the opioid, uh, side effects and uh, just the bad effects one can have for being on them consistently. So I was not wanting to make a commitment to go on MMT. So I, you know, had some money saved up. Uh, uh.

43:42 I went to a doctor, essentially like a con. I later learned, because I was not in that world, essentially a concierge rehab doctor that celebrities would go to, you know, to like privately take care of their addiction. I ended up with one of these doctors and, uh, the doctor was like jay, you're on, you've been on opioids very long time, you're on fentanyl. Um, this is gonna look rough and it's gonna cost you more. Is there a way? You, because he was dealing with the addicts all the time. So is there a way you can get on heroin. You know that was the way you can get on heroin. He's like I would not give this advice to, I would not say this to anybody else, but I know you, I know who you are. Is there a way you can go from fentanyl to heroin?

44:26 And I'm shook, I'm like what, what? You know, I I don't. I don't come from that world. You know, uh, did some digging, did some research. Long story short, I ultimately did get some heroin. I came, did some research, came up with a protocol, uh, and purified it, made little vape cartridges, uh. And I only shared the story transparently with people to not take this things in your own hands, but also to understand the power of you know, discipline and figuring things and wanting to get better. You know, I'm sharing this, uh to hopefully be able to inspire people that, no matter how far down you are, you can come out of it.

45:11 - Chase (Host) So lack of a better description, here you were basically microdosing heroin.

45:16 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah. So I got off the fentanyl and went on to dosing heroin. I wasn't microdosing for one week because, as you probably know somebody who's an opioid addict, they're in a pretty consistent state of withdrawal yeah. And they're withdrawing the whole time. They're on it because your tolerance for opioids goes up within. It's going up immediately and within two weeks your tolerance is at a point where your doctor is not able to give you consistently more opioids but you need more and more and more your receptors are fried, so from january, the the the long answer to your question.

45:55 So january 1st to january 7th I did this. It's where I managed my own pain, uh, but just, I wasn't in withdrawal this week because now I was in charge of my dose.

46:08 - Chase (Host) So why did you get your health back?

46:09 - Jay (Guest) I did heroin For one week for one week to get off of fentanyl. So during this one week, because I was actually pain free for the first time in a decade, my brain like lit up and opened up. My creativity was like flowing again. In this one week I clocked in maybe a thousand, you know, publications, articles, books, and I did not read things.

46:40 I've read everything in a very selfish manner. I did not read things to digest everything, to get a full. I was reading Could this be helpful for me? Glancing over it. If it was good I would dig into it, otherwise I would move on. So I went through an insane amount of text during that one week where I read about hormones, I read about different diets, I read about Ayurveda, I read about gut optimization and in that one week I came up with a hierarchy and a plan which I've already shared a portion of it. First was hormones, second was diet, third was, you know, interventional IVs, gut optimization, peptides. So I basically executed roughly on that plan in the next year, man I knew some of this stuff.

47:29 - Chase (Host) I didn't know a lot of these details. That's crazy. Like, uh, I mean one I want to say like props to you for, first of all, deciding to use fear to your advantage but also deciding that, like you have the ultimate say-so in your health and in your life. Ultimately, that's what it takes If you want a radically different life, if you feel like your health is nowhere near what you want it to be or what it could be, or if you're unfortunately suffering physical pain, mental pain, if you've been given these prescription medications under the guise that this is for your betterment, like no, a lot of times no. So you have to make these radical choices to make a radical difference in your life. I also want to say that there's a high level of restraint here.

48:21 What you're doing, I think, is not common. Also, it might not even be recommended for a lot of people, but to know your edges, basically, and to really have, and or begin to develop, a really heightened sense of being in attunement with your body, it's like, okay, this thing that I wanted to change is changing. It's better. Okay, let me stop, this is working and let me just kind of you know rein things back in. And then let me get more dynamic, not just go from one problem to the next problem. One, you know, putting one bandaid on for another, or getting even hooked on, you know, heroin. Okay, so then we're going through all these things, making a lot of these radical changes. It sounds like things are kind of settling a bit for you. You're losing the weight, you're getting off a lot of these medications and narcotics and heroin, um, and now I'm assuming, kind of getting into a lot of the, the peptides, and you know understanding more about gene therapy stuff yeah, yeah, so, uh, one thing also worthy of noting for people is the technology for addiction, specifically around opioids and opioid addiction, opioid withdrawal.

49:28 - Jay (Guest) It is in a drastically different place now than it was, so people definitely don't do what I did. I was in a very unique sort of circumstance, in an interesting time working with a doctor who knew my background and ended up down that path. But there are a lot more solutions now, a lot more reasonable solutions now and compounds available that can help people fight opioid addiction at just a lot more efficiently. It's still difficult, but you know it's more digestible now on how you can tackle it, so that was worthy of noting. Yeah, uh, after that, you know the ivs, the peptides, and uh, I became very interested in uh, gene therapy. Um, which is what, by the way? Can you?

50:20 - Chase (Host) kind of define that?

50:20 - Jay (Guest) yeah, yeah yeah, absolutely so. Um, I'll actually connect it to peptides. So you're familiar with BPC-157. The first peptide I ever took.

50:29 - Chase (Host) I think a lot of people are familiar with it. Unfortunately, right now it's no longer available. Well ish, we'll say, but am I understanding?

50:38 - Jay (Guest) correctly.

50:39 - Chase (Host) The FDA pulled it.

50:49 - Jay (Guest) I know a lot of compounding pharmacies and hormone health optimization companies. You know you couldn't get it. You can't get it for a while.

50:52 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah, it's it's been challenging for two year.

50:53 - Jay (Guest) Uh, uh, yeah, there's an addendum. Uh, yeah, yeah, there was an addendum because somebody in, I think, texas pharmacy, a pharmacist, just called in and complained and uh, they basically banned 10 of the most, 10 of very popular powerful peptides that people and even physicians have like gotten, you know, went on their radar and they started working with patients and helping people. They basically kind of disappeared. You can't get them through compounding pharmacies. There's still research channels and research peptides that you know an individual can go through to acquire these. There's still ways, work with a professional on getting them. But yes, so I will segue this into talking about gene therapy, but I'll use BPC as an example. So BPC, you know it has a relatively uh, a convenient half-life uh where you can inject it daily. You can inject it even twice a day and get a pretty good amount of benefits out of it. Uh, human growth hormone is another one you know that some people are familiar with. That's another peptide on the cusp of being a protein, because larger uh has about a 20 hour half-life. So these peptides proteins pretty convenient to consume if they have a good half-life. Folostatin, on the other hand, is a protein that has a very quick half-life. It's extremely beneficial, has been well-researched for about a quarter century. People in the longevity research loved it. You know it has some great muscle building, fat loss benefits. However, for consumers, so very challenging product to consume because you can't take it all early, you have to inject it and even if you're fine with injecting it multiple times a day, you can't maintain steady plasma levels for it because the half-life is too short. It's about 45 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the individual. So you're essentially becoming a human pincushion. If you want to get on this compound, you're injecting it throughout the day. Not sustainable, not feasible for consumer.

52:59 This was one of the inspirations for development of this gene therapy, which is essentially a small circle DNA plasmid that has a code on it. The code corresponds to the said item that we want expressed by the cells locally that are transfected. So, in layman's term, instead of having to take a full statin or BPC or one of these compounds of interest exogenously, continuously, the way you do them is you put their code, their corresponding code, in a DNA. This, uh, whatever the code corresponds to, in this case full stat, and three, four, four, uh, you know, for a period, for a duration like up to a year.

53:54 Uh, and that's the. You know, that's the gene therapy tech that I'm working with. Uh, part of this company called mini circle, so easiest way to look at it is essentially a delivery platform and folostatin is one of our first target genes because of you know, the short half life and it just seemed like a perfect candidate and fit for a platform like this. But we are working on other gene therapies, clotho being the next one, which is very sought after in the biohacking community for cognitive boost, can up an individual's IQ points in the range of five, 10, maybe even higher. So that is not released yet, but that is the one we are allocating a lot of resources towards man wow geez, so we're.

54:49 - Chase (Host) It's like we're getting to the limitless. You know you can. You know I'm being very loose here, but you know there's something we can take a pill, an injection that can boost iq can literally make us smarter, think faster, think better, improve yeah, yeah, you know, the limitless stuff is uh do you hate when people say that is that no, no, I don't no, no, I don't, and it's not a far fetch either, it's uh.

55:14 - Jay (Guest) I've gotten to experience, uh, different versions of, like the limitless feeling you know, modafinil probably being one of them very early on a few decades ago. Paracetam I've always been obsessed with this space. I just had a shitty car dealt to me where I went in the other direction, but I've always been fascinated by this paracetams. And then, as of late, there was a peptide called cerebral lysine that you know. A lot of these items, uh, either compounded with something else or even just by themselves, did lead to a feeling of like this limitless. So, yes, we are definitely evolving and graduating technology to a point where we're becoming more and more limitless. I do actually like the language, because I believe in dreaming big and being extremely ambitious as an individual, as a company, as a scientist, as just like a visionary. You know you want to dream big and even if you can accomplish, you know, a small percentage of it, you know you're making a lot more progress than being conservative.

56:21 - Chase (Host) Absolutely, man, and that's what Everford Radio is all about. That's the whole reason we're here is it's a really unique area. I feel, through your story, your work and what Mini Circle and the whole team is doing, and also what I've experienced being a patient of this process, is really bringing heightened attention, awareness, to a key area of our well-being to help me, help us, live a life ever forward. Um, I want to kind of bring it back to the, uh, the folistatin. This was the procedure that I had done. This was the. Is it safe to call it peptide protein? Protein?

56:55 - Jay (Guest) the way you want to look at it. Uh, uh, so people can understand you. Amino acids are the building blocks for peptides. You put a few of the amino acids together in a chain or hog or whatever formation they become a peptide.

57:10 They get to become a peptide as the peptide grows. There's some other scientific details around this too, but essentially it's amino acid, peptide and protein. Gotcha, yeah, protein is all the machinery in the body. All the DNA gets replicated. Rna gets All the machines and the factories. They're all protein. Your muscle is protein, peptides are a lot of times signaling molecules in the body and amino acids can also be. Yeah, yeah.

57:38 - Chase (Host) So again I want to bring it back to fear because actually what caught my attention most when this was presented to me was the pretty, pretty stout clinical evidence of things like Alzheimer's, dementia, neurological disease, multiple sclerosis, als. And again, you know I've shared with you and my audience knows, you know, my father's death and that ALS, that diagnosis, it's not hereditary. You know I've been tested for. You know my father's death and that ALS, that diagnosis, it's not hereditary. You know I've been tested for it, you know, but it's something that's still in the back of my mind.

58:08 Fear drives you know what if and so when I saw again through my own research and what you all presented, some really stout evidence showing its effects and, dare I even say, thwarting or just what we know it can do to put the body and the brain and the neurological system in a position to be much more resilient against things such like this, um sold me. On top of that, it was, you know, great to see a lot of the evidence and personal experience from other people going um mood cognition, I think I even saw something like libido, but you know, body composition, building muscle. Um, people like ben greenfield, I know who's public about it, you know, kind of putting on, I think like 10 pounds of muscle, then I think he got up to 11 or 14 maybe.

58:54 - Jay (Guest) Okay, I know 11 for sure but, he may have, it may have gone up.

58:58 - Chase (Host) But you know, as someone you know had the time, I'm 39 years old and stepping into the next phase of my life. Beyond the fear aspect, that's what was very appealing to me and, as someone who has been on TRT, I ran TRT low dose for decent dose for about 14, 15 months. I've now been off of TRT for close to two years. Oh, wow, yeah.

59:19 - Jay (Guest) I did not know that. Yeah, that's pretty fascinating, yeah, and I actually have some questions. I'm curious and I think people would also like to know you're getting off protocol and are you managing that with ATG and clomiphene?

59:33 - Chase (Host) Yeah, so I went on because I was. I was 36. I just turned 36 and it had never been more difficult for me to get my ass to the gym. I was sitting on the couch trying to motivate, motivate myself, just to go to the gym. This is something that I love to do. I was getting again defeated because I wasn't going as much as I wanted to. I had no real reason. I didn't have kids yet. I had, you know, build my own schedule. I wasn't seeing the same results, my body composition. I was struggling so much more just to keep what I had built for the last 10, 12, 15, 15 years of strength training.

01:00:06 Um, and so I went on TRT, uh, my T levels, my free T, my total T was like 500 something. Um, I forget what my free T was at the time, but basically I went on. Uh, I titrated up pretty quickly. I think it was like like point Ah, shit, I don't even want to say cause I'm gonna forget it, but it's a very, very conservative dose went on for about 14 months. Um had amazing results strength built muscle, motivation, drive, like. But also like straight up, like libido became a problem, like I was. It was just through the roof.

01:00:37 It was too much it was like too much to handle so I I titrated down um began to also get some unwanted side effects um some like breakouts.

01:00:46 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, I was really hot.

01:00:48 - Chase (Host) I run hot all the time anyways, but I was just like really hot all the time and no, like chili pad or eight sleep or anything was solving the problem.

01:00:55 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah.

01:00:55 - Chase (Host) So anyways, but then also my personal health goals changed. I got that back and I found the motivation and got my rhythm back, got my mojo back. But then my wife and I decided the motivation and got my rhythm back, got my mojo back. But then my wife and I decided we wanted to start getting pregnant, we wanted to start our fertility journey and you know you'll hear and read a lot of different things about TRT and that. But I wanted to give myself as much of a fighting chance as possible. So I titrated down. I just I think about maybe like two months, I just like lower dose slow taper, slow taper, and then transitioned into Clomid.

01:01:28 - Jay (Guest) Okay, it was Clomid or so Clomiphene or N-Clomiphene, do you remember?

01:01:35 - Chase (Host) I'll have to double check. Okay, I can ask my wife. But yeah, I believe it was. I believe it was N-Clomiphene.

01:01:44 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, I believe it was was in clomiphene. Yeah, I believe it was in clomiphene. If it was in the recent and this is important for people to know, when you have a choice and going through, if somebody's going through this process, work with a doctor, of course, but lean towards and talk to the doctor about N-clomiphene.

01:02:01 - Chase (Host) Yeah, Typically it's just much better with lower estrogenic peaks and side effects, yeah, which I had a great experience with. I was able to transition off of TRT entirely. It was like a 90-day protocol Was still able to maintain like mid-700s testosterone and I felt great. I was able to get back to my life and then we began our fertility journey. Now we have an amazing, beautiful son. But then I say all that because I remember what it was like to be on T, the drive, the motivation, just you know I like to be active, I like to lift heavy, but I also like to bounce back from recovery and have reduced, you know, bounce back from injury and reduce recovery time and all these things and that really sold me as well. So that was my reasoning for going through the folistatin injection. Are my reasons common? And you know my personal experience? I'll say my benefits, reaping the benefits.

01:02:53 Now, what's been like five months almost six months, six months, yeah, like my lifestyle has changed. I just had a kid, so like I'm not getting to the gym or training the frequency as much as I would like to or am used to. But I will say this me getting to the gym Now I'm living my active lifestyle Um, I can't stop. Like my endurance is through the roof. I literally find myself third, fourth set banging out more reps than even the beginning. I will have to stop myself myself, which could be a problem, could not be a problem, but endurance, strength, endurance incredible.

01:03:31 I'm really, really surprised by as much as my lifestyle has changed with last couple of months of poor sleep. Eating is wild. I highly doubt I'm getting adequate protein, but just my ability you know all again because I had a kid my ability to like, maintain body composition in terms of weight and even free fat mass to muscle mass. I'm just amazed by I like there's no way that I should not be like a little bit softer or not as dense or just, you know, not able to still lift as much as I am now. Given the months, now that my training and lifestyle has changed, are all these kind of similar effects that people might experience? Or, you know we're kind of seeing with full of that.

01:04:12 - Jay (Guest) Yeah well, thank you, that's one of the best feedbacks you know.

01:04:18 - Chase (Host) I can't stop working out. Yeah, that's one of the best feedbacks we could ask. Once I get in, like I got it, my wife has to call and get me out of there. Yeah.

01:04:25 - Jay (Guest) Thank you for sharing that and, firstly, I'm stoked that those are the results you're getting. I had very similar results myself and a lot of people are having very similar set of results.

01:04:38 - Chase (Host) One other thing I'll say. I probably put on, I'd say four to five pounds, and I haven't done an in-body but I would definitely say muscle Like four to five pounds of muscle in about five months.

01:04:50 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, definitely would recommend do a DEXA scan. Yeah, I could be wrong now because things change so fast, but DEXA is a little bit higher accuracy than in-body.

01:05:01 - Chase (Host) Yeah, it's a gold standard.

01:05:02 - Jay (Guest) Yeah yeah, do a DEXA scan because you may think you've only added four or five pounds of muscle, but the reality data is kink. I'm always pushing people to gather more data. You may actually have added more because you might have gone through a recomposition right, lost, you know, added some lean, lost some fat. So you asked me two questions. Is it one? You asked motivation. Are other people drawn towards full statin gene therapy because of similar motivations? I think the set of motivations are different. You know, I've seen people in my life. You know some in their 20s have done the therapy my father's in the therapy, my father's in the therapy, my mother's done the therapy Right. So I've have personal experiences now in my life of just decades. You know a full range of different age groups doing the therapy, so the motivation definitely varies. A lot of the publicity for mini circle gene therapy that we got was from the likes of Ben Greenfield. You know Dave Asprey, netflix documentary Brian Johnson.

01:06:15 - Chase (Host) Yeah.

01:06:16 - Jay (Guest) Brian Johnson doing it Exactly so a lot of.

01:06:20 Same company. Yeah, we're Mac and Walter who got interviewed, and Dr Ryan were part of mini circle. They're the founders of mini circle, Mac and Walter, the, the. The motivation for these influencers, biohackers, was longevity. You know they're a lot of them view. Brian Johnson looks at it as a sport. Essentially this is his. You know bread and butter. He wants to live forever. He doesn't want to die. So that sector of people got drawn towards full statin for its longevity benefits. Other people you know I, my approach towards longevity is like I really care about not just living longer but also the quality of my life, Like I love pickleball. So for me, folostatin, enabling me similar results to you, where my endurance went up and I had some interesting positive benefits that we don't know have been quantified as a result of full statin. Directly, like what?

01:07:24 uh, like my vo2 max went up after doing full statin, really and but you know, I don't know if all statin is going to up your vo2 max, but I recovered faster, I had more endurance. So now I was playing pickleball two, three times more per week. So it's the compound effect, right? Fulostatin does not necessarily give you a cognitive boost. There's no direct correlation. But the inhibition of myostatin and nactivin can reduce inflammation in an individual right. The reduction in inflammation for some people can result in a cognitive performance boost because the inflammation in the brain drops and now you have a.

01:08:08 - Chase (Host) So I didn't notice anything like that cognitive boost or enhancement, but I think it's fair to point out like cognitive uh, awareness, uh, and decreased inflammation and nutrition. All these things were already a very big part of my life and lifestyle for years, so I didn't really go into it with that being a need.

01:08:28 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah and yeah, what you're bringing up is a very valid and a fair point. Just depending on the unique circumstances that individuals have and where they are in their health journey, there's a uniqueness to the benefits they will experience. Right, you were almost like an ideal kind of candidate for doing this sort of gene therapy because things were very dialed in your life. You were very focused on your health and paying attention Typically when an individual like that does the gene therapy full statin gene therapy because they have a pre-established baseline. Like you were working out, you knew how many reps you could do in a set exercise. You had an established baseline right Just now the perception of your and this is very transparently telling people everybody may be having very positive benefits, but the perception and how you receive these results and your brain perceives them that is an important component of the journey.

01:09:30 So people with established baselines can usually differentiate the positive benefits a lot more than somebody who doesn't have that. I see you so publish in a study. But some, a lot of people did report this increase in resiliency or feeling of wellbeing. Even for myself it's almost like. For you too, it's like a little bit of a cheat code right, you've been able to get in this process of you having a kid and you know, sleep being compromised, workouts being compromised you've been able to keep up a little bit more.

01:10:24 - Chase (Host) That's a huge point. That's a huge point. I've I've actually thought about this a lot because straight up, I think, a couple months after the procedure, um, I was kind of going I was telling my wife, I was like, yeah, I think I feel something. You know, my workouts are getting better. But kind of you know, maybe, what I was hoping for with this process. This procedure was just like seeing crazy results.

01:10:47 But when I really took a step back and I got very real with my situation, I was like, you know, sleep is getting way less, it's getting a lot more interrupted and this is even, you know, before the kid. Um, just that life change coupled with where I was like professionally and you know, you know busy season with work, it just I was like Chase, it doesn't make sense that you're, you're just way that you're feeling, and also like your weight, your body, just it doesn't make sense that you're able to maintain this given this situation. I mean, even with all my background and years of experience, like you know, you've got a really strong foundation and health. Like you can give and take a little bit more, I think, than the average person, but I'll say, okay, this has got to be it, it's got to be the full. It doesn't make sense that I'm able to maintain what I'm able to maintain and also have this level of resilience whenever I am able to get back active again.

01:11:43 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, there's the muscle retention. A lot of times the muscle gain is a result from how well you are retaining the muscle you already have. Right, the way full statin works is you retain your muscle better, you retain your muscle better. Uh, you retain your muscle longer. So, uh, the bang that you're getting out of uh each minute of exercise, uh, is a little bit higher when you're on full, yeah, and so, uh, but all all the results that you're having, they track very well, uh, just talking to people and looking at how they're responding. But also, I've done full stat multiple times. My own experience too. One interesting one some of my friends did full stat. I think I was talking to Dave Asprey. Maybe he also reported the same thing. It's like we were, we were running, you know, on the treadmill or doing cardio, but after doing full stat and there was like the feeling of I don't want to stop.

01:12:47 - Chase (Host) And you kind of said to me you just want to like keep kind of going.

01:12:50 - Jay (Guest) You know, it's like a almost a desire for physical activity when you're in it, just going up. So this is all ultimately.

01:12:59 - Chase (Host) You know, looking better, being stronger, having more muscle, being leaner, I think is uh, and having this uh desire for activity more, who's resulting into feeling of better well-being, right, but I mean, ultimately, it also goes back to what I was talking about earlier of when you can have that feeling about what you're doing, whatever your exercise or activity level is, or activity of choice is, when you can have that level of I love what I'm doing, I love the feeling like literally the physical feeling of it, and I want more of it again in a healthy dynamic.

01:13:34 That's adherence, yeah, and so I think it's huge for anyone to be able to have or to get back is what is going to keep you well for as long as possible. Which leads me to my next question. We're talking about longevity. I mean, I think, qualitatively and very high level. That's it. When we talk longevity is what can I do here and now, today, when that is going to compound, that's going to keep me adherent to things that I want to do, that I can do for as long as possible? How can we really measure or look at longevity when looking at full of statin?

01:14:09 - Jay (Guest) yeah, yeah, really really good question and I'm very happy you asked that question. Uh, the answer is not very good for this question because the technology to measure longevity is evolving at a very rapid pace. New algorithms are coming out, new companies are forming the companies that are already existing that are doing biological age testing. They're just evolving at a very rapid pace, at a very rapid pace. So we are very actively involved in looking at all the companies that are doing biological age testing, epigenetic age testing, just looking at them and seeing you know what we think is the best way to clock in the results. So at the moment, you know we were working with true diagnostics, true age tests. That was a very good way, kind of, to measure, at least for the time being.

01:15:05 - Chase (Host) Uh, and we'll go through real quick, please. How do we measure that? What are the like, the biomarkers, what are the tests to look at?

01:15:10 - Jay (Guest) yeah, there are, you know different companies are looking at different things, but at the most basic level, uh, I think the best answer would be telometer length. You know, that's one way of looking at it. Some people are looking at methylation pathways, but it is not my area of expertise. But in a nutshell, what I will say is that area is evolving very rapidly and soon, you know, there will probably be a variety of tests that will be very good indicators and the company will probably. We may have an official stance in six months or a year that this is the test that we're recommending, where you can really clock and gauge your longevity or epigenetic improvement.

01:15:55 - Chase (Host) You know also you hit it, you hit on earlier VO2 max now is strongly being looked at in terms of longevity, along with HRV. We're finding people in their 80s, 90s, even centenarians, as this new kind of because we didn't really measure that before.

01:16:10 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, HRV wasn't really a huge thing. Nobody measured it yeah.

01:16:12 - Chase (Host) Or VO2 max. We're not getting an 80-year-old on the treadmill to run through a VO2 max test. But now we have different tests and different ways to measure that. So now, but you know, these are things that we can now measure now to see if there's a an acute short term improvement and again compounded over time. We know it's going to eventually. I mean, who knows, really we'll see in a couple decades, but like that is going to be, those are going to be measurements for longevity yeah, yeah, uh, but you know I want to make sure I give the very accurate information.

01:16:40 - Jay (Guest) As a scientist, you know it's, it's my duty to not, you know, if it hasn't been studied and quantified and recorded and published, you know I'd have to give an asterisk. You know that this is some intimate details that we're sharing here. These are not published. So the markers you are talking about, like HRV and these improved VO2 max. That's my detail that I shared. It hasn't been recorded that this will improve VO2 max but theoretically, you know with what I'm laying out that, oh, because my recovery improved and I was stronger, it adds up. You know that's one adds up. You know that's one.

01:17:23 Second, I think one critical component of the question you asked in this answer that's important for people to understand don't one can get really caught up in biometrics Like I have an Oura ring, I have an Apple watch, I had a bio strap, I had the whoop. You know you can go keep going down this path and get very obsessed with it and completely lose sight of the connection with your body and how you're actually feeling. How well are you maintaining your relationship with your romantic partner? How well are you maintaining a relationship with your parents, if they're alive, or your siblings? Are you being authentic at? You know your work, your career with yourself.

01:18:04 So I think it's very valuable to clock in you know, like do a longevity test or a biological age test, get your epigenetic tested, look at your aura ring data. But it is very critical to make sure the foundation of your life and health is in the right place, and I don't think there's a biometric that is going to. I guess an HRV could be. One could make a case that you know. If your HRV is high, your relationships most likely are in a good place, you know.

01:18:39 - Chase (Host) I ran a self-test a couple of years ago. First and foremost, I've talked about this. I did a whole podcast about it. The thing that moved the needle the most for me to increase HRV was microdosing psilocybin. I did a two-day-on, one-day-off protocol for a month and then within three months, my HRV increased 40% and it stayed. I'm talking like getting up into like the 100, 110, 150. Oh wow, that's incredible. From like my baseline was like around 60. And how were you measuring it? Uh, through whoop, okay, and I I had a couple years of whoop data baseline hrv data before going into that okay okay and then tracked it for the next three months.

01:19:14 I've got months of data on it, yeah, so that was huge. But also I ran this other self-test when I began to really dive more into the qualitative aspect, through what you're talking about, of relationships. I noticed I was going through a period in life, because of work, where I was not prioritizing, I wasn't keeping, you know, dates with my wife or having fun or just relaxing, detaching, going out outside and getting with friends, and I would measure on weekends. I would look at my HRV of weekends when I would stay at work or like not go outdoors and not be with people that matter to me, and every time and I could go do this, I could go to the beach, be with my wife and friends and we could be drinking alcohol. We could be not drinking whatever.

01:19:57 Anything that could seemingly typically decrease hrv would be considered a bad thing. Um, if I was doing it with meaningful people and having fun during that time, my hrv like shut up. It was crazy. So it's just a really interesting point. Yeah, you know, n equals one here, but there are seasons of life, you know, even long stretches kind of like with you. We need a drastic change, of a very specific quantitative way to change our life. But qualitative measures matter just as much, if not even more, I think, in the long run personally.

01:20:30 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah, and it's the balancing act right, like we are, and that's why I'm really enjoying this conversation too. I feel like, on the one end, we're talking about like gene therapy, like at the forefront, you know, of, uh, cutting edge technologies, and on the other side, we're trying to make sure people are aware, like are you assessing your relationships? Where are you?

01:20:57 matters yeah, it all really matters. Uh, and that's the journey I feel like we've been on and it's, it's very, very exciting. But I think you can change the n of one to a higher number. I would definitely say not just with myself, but a lot of people in my vicinity, in my network, they see their HRV spike go up with either microdosing, with psychedelics or even doing like a plant medicine ceremony. So there is more awareness definitely getting around this subject on how it increases your HRV. I've definitely seen it with myself. I also conform to a school of thought that the company, the human relationships, they're critical and nothing essentially is bad. Even we spoke very poorly about, you know, fentanyl and about all these compounds. Everything can be used very therapeutically. It has its pocket, it has its niche. So even if you even alcohol, there can be a pocket with your partner when it can actually be therapeutic for the relationships. It's all on how you use it yeah, you know, I agree.

01:22:14 - Chase (Host) Um, kind of getting towards the end here, man, I do want to. Can you dive in a little bit for us on? You know, what does the research show?

01:22:21 - Jay (Guest) what does it really show is clinically evident when introducing folostatin yes, so uh, the research was on uh folostatin, the actual protein, and a lot of the early on research was uh, basically inhibiting or fully knocking out the myostatin, you know, gene. So that's the pictures. When people are doing uh research on folstatin, some of the early pictures you see of, like this uh bull, dog, bull or a dog like fully jacked or very muscular, that's when you're fully just knocking out, like just myostatin and activin, the uh, this is, this is not that. But you know this is all coming from that lineage of research. Yes, so the clinical evidence, the to try to be very accurate here, lean mass increase, uh loss in fat, uh this body going through a recomposition benefit and then some epigenetic age, you know, performance or rejuvenation boost.

01:23:27 These three are probably the most accurate way of describing the benefits of folstatin. After that it gets a little bit hazy. You know you want a lot of data to back it up, but there definitely is data, could be data that's indicating that you can have bone density improvement, your inflammation can drop and you can have ancillary benefits. Those can get a little bit challenging to track where the research is right now. But the three benefits that I gave you, those are we can definitely say there's a clinical data on them. You know that even predates mini circle, the therapy slowly turns itself off within about a year period.

01:24:06 - Chase (Host) I was gonna say this isn't a like a lifetime commitment thing.

01:24:09 - Jay (Guest) You know, it has a has a lifespan yeah, yeah, and that's that's very worthy of noting that this is a transient, temporary gene therapy. A lot of the gene therapy historically, the way it was done, a lot of it the way it's still being done. It's usually done with a viral vector and they're going in and modifying chase's permanent dna, so it's a permanent edit that's with you for your lifetime. The way mini circles gene therapy works is it's transient, it's temporary. That kind of is a highlight of what adds to the safety profile of the therapy, because you're not making a lifelong commitment. You're doing it, it's in you for about one year period and it slowly just tapers off and wears out.

01:24:56 - Chase (Host) Okay. So I think that probably begs the question these results that me personally, I'm, or anybody experiencing, do they all go away in one to two years? Or is it just a way to kind of ramp up our ability to like, get to that next level, even maintain our level of wellness, body composition, resiliency, so that we're we have a higher fighting chance to keep it as we progress? Or do we just constantly need to get this again?

01:25:22 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, you, you, you nailed it. You nailed the essence of the answer already, the way you want to look at it, as it's like it's topping off a tank. You know you're you're definitely strengthening your foundation, one of the things you know. I'm very happy with doctors like Peter Atiyah and a lot of other doctors who are in the community, yourself included. You talk about muscle a lot. You know muscle is a very undervalued piece of real estate in the human body that is very associated. You can't get out of a chair if you don't have muscle. At a certain age, sarcopenia is a real thing, right? So gaining muscle gets harder and harder as you age. So that's a huge benefit, even if that's something that's not sticking.

01:26:09 Just getting on full statin for a year and adding, you know, some more real estate, some more muscle in your body, that's something that's going to be beneficial for rest of your life right now. On that note there, definitely this boost period you are experiencing. It doesn't entirely go away when the therapy is, uh, out of your body, because if you're getting, if you're healthy, right is you strengthen your foundation? Some of these benefits will stick with you. But that extra cheat or kick that you do experience that does go away because your full statin levels will normalize, but it's not like you're automatically your body's getting a signal that, oh, full statin is gone. Let's go back to the old baseline. So if you maintain your positive habits, like you know, if your calories are met, your resistance training is there. You should be able to maintain it. But it does get harder to maintain it without the full statin.

01:27:10 - Chase (Host) And full of sudden. We naturally create this, our bodies naturally produce it. Am I hearing correctly and this is just a way to like boost it?

01:27:18 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, man, you're great're great at this, you're. You're asking all the perfect questions. Um, folstatin fst344, it's biological, so everybody has it, uh, but people don't have usually enough of it, okay, uh, and it drops. Uh, it's probably dropping as we get older. So this is a a biological, you know, protein that's existing in the body.

01:27:42 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I mean, I have to assume it's something you know like hormones, like hell, collagen. Once we reach these kind of, like you know, decade markers you know 20s, 30s plus Everyone knows a lot of this stuff just naturally declines.

01:27:57 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, that's a really good point naturally declines yeah, that's a really good point. And I think the mainstream there's not a lot of attention around this one subject that aging is not linear. Not many people are talking about it. People generally, the scientists in the longevity space, people who are doing the research they're very familiar with it. But aging is not linear, as you pointed out. You know you can be certain things in your body. Certain levels are dropping, dropping, dropping, but then comes like a two-year period. It's now you're going from, like you know, uh, 60 percent down to 20 percent.

01:28:32 You know, this can happen with your hormones, this can happen with your nad level, this can happen with a variety of things in your body. So that's why it is very critical. So your lifestyle may be sufficient now and the things you're addressing now are good, but you may need to do some. This is where full statin really really shines right for people who are doing everything in their lifestyle and have really really good approaches and you're kind of maxed out. You know you're maxed out. You're like what can I do next? You know. Then you know you've done all the peptides, you've done rounds of stem cells. Well, gene therapy really kicks in after that. That. You know that's something where you can definitely get a huge edge stem cells is kind of next to my radar.

01:29:21 - Chase (Host) I have not done any stem cell therapy. I had a guest on last week, dr shout out, dr joy calm I did cells with her last week no shit, okay, amazing. Um, really got me curious about stem cells.

01:29:35 - Jay (Guest) You know both uh, both of those items like peptides and stem cells. They're low-hanging fruit when it comes to injuries and recovery. It can be tremendously beneficial. You can imagine that's one of the things. We didn't really touch on my back. How did it? I wasn't able to walk for so long because of this back injury that I had as a kid, so I deployed all these interventions to actually fix my back. Also, uh, getting my lower spine and uh, lower back injected with different things and stem cells has definitely been uh, uh. Dr joy kong, the most recent doctor did you do?

01:30:17 local or was the iv? Uh, I did both. Both, okay, I did both. Uh, even did a brain protocol to open up. Uh, did an iv, did an iv?

01:30:28 uh, mannitol, mannitol iv to open up the blood brain barrier and then followed it with cells to get them I'm definitely obsessed with optimizing the brain, so I've done a few few different interesting protocols to get the cells to the brain, to optimize the brain. So I definitely love Joy Kong. Yeah, she's fantastic. We also did this and ended up sinking in for like two and a half three hours while I was doing all of this. So I think I'll do we'll do a podcast together as well.

01:31:00 - Chase (Host) Amazing, you know. Well, jay, I feel like I could just keep going with you, man. Maybe that's a full of satin Again. My endurance is just, it's all of it.

01:31:09 But you know, also I want to highlight one other point before I get to my last question, and this might've just been unique to my experience, but the group that we went down with and just like the approach that you and many circle and this whole, you know community is small community had to, this experience, I think, should not go unnoticed.

01:31:29 Just it was such a great experience to connect with other. In my experience it was just a bunch of other guys which I don't have a lot of these days, you know so just kind of like that tight knit male community, you know, a lot of guys were in committed relationships, were married or were were, you know, trying to take care of our lives and our businesses and our bodies and starting families. So I think it was just this really all encompassing, dynamic approach that was ultimately this, you know, this crowning jewel of the folistatin injection that just really re-centered, qualitatively and quantitatively, a lot of things in my life and I'm very grateful for the opportunity that Mini Circle has presented for this experience, and now we're here to like shine a light on it again. So just thank you.

01:32:13 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah, you, you very welcome and thank you for bringing that up. So people are aware you know, typically when somebody's going and doing the gene therapy, they're going by themselves or they're going with their family. It's a very quick, easy process, as you know just one shot, uh, what we did, uh, I do a lot of the partnerships, influencer management. You know, uh, getting people in a group together. So John Beer, who introduced us, you know, love John the legend.

01:32:44 - Chase (Host) Yeah.

01:32:45 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, yeah, from Jack Taylor. He assembled, you know his. You were part of this group that he proposed. Let's go do it. Juan Leha, eric Leha, carl Kingsbury, you, john and myself, and it turned out to be one of my favorite trips of this sorts that I've done.

01:33:04 - Chase (Host) I did uh kyle's podcast a few months ago I listened to a great yeah and we sunk in.

01:33:10 - Jay (Guest) It was an absolutely great experience. I've been connecting with juan and eric. Uh, I'll be working out on it. Uh, soon, soon, when I move to Austin. So that was a very beautiful trip.

01:33:23 - Chase (Host) I loved it. Thank you again. Thank you again. Yeah, thank you Well, the last question I ask everybody is to help us understand how you live a life ever forward. You know, through your lens, your biochemistry lens, your foliocetin lens, your just personal lens. Those two words ever forward, what do they mean to you, man?

01:33:41 - Jay (Guest) lens, your full of satin lens, your just personal lens. Those two words ever forward, what do they mean to you, man? Uh, doing my best to operate in a frequency of joy, yeah, yeah, I I believe. Yeah, if I can uh remain in the frequency of joy ever forward, uh, I feel like I'm golden. I have accomplished, you know that means I'm healthy. I've accomplished, you know, my mission.

01:34:05 - Chase (Host) I'm at peace, I was expecting a peptide, but that's surprising.

01:34:11 - Jay (Guest) All the, all those things fall under that right, like if, to achieve a, a state of a frequency of joy consistently, I have to tackle my health and you know, under that is peptides and good diet and good relationship and good sleep and pickleball.

01:34:30 - Chase (Host) You know, I tried not to talk about it too much, because I can just love pickleball.

01:34:34 - Jay (Guest) I love pickleball. I played seven hours on Sunday, five hours on saturday I've never played.

01:34:41 - Chase (Host) This is actually was on my wife and i's list to do pre-baby. Um, definitely had to connect with you here soon once you get down to austin, because, um, I know they got courts galore. Yeah, it looks. I'm uncoordinated as crazy. Tennis is a joke for me, but I feel like I can handle pickleball a little bit, yeah it's.

01:35:01 - Jay (Guest) Look, it's a I believe it's a longevity sport because the the strain on your uh joints is very minimal. Uh, you're kind of hovering in zone two, zone three, cardio, uh, 80 percent of the time, a few times you'll go to also indicator longevity yeah zone two exactly, and you know the the studies that showed that tennis was like the top sport.

01:35:25 Uh, one of the reasons why it was a top sport is the social component of it. You're always playing with somebody. With pickleball, you're playing with more people, yeah, you're usually playing with three other people and you're closer together. So for me it actually satisfies everything. I look at life through the lens of pickleball many times. You know it's like it gets me moving, it gets me happy. You're outdoors, I'm outdoors in the sun. You know I get to develop a unique relationship with all these compounds on how can I perform like what is is BPC doing for me? You know how is full statin enhancing me? So it's just, it's a lot of fun.

01:36:05 - Chase (Host) Well, where can my audience go to connect with you, learn more about Mini Circle? It will all be linked in the video description box and podcast show notes, but you know right now where can they go.

01:36:14 - Jay (Guest) Yes, minicircleio is our, uh, our mini circles domain, and feel free to also directly email me at J at mini circleio or dot clinic. Uh, yeah, that's my email. Feel free to directly contact me or go to the domain. Awesome man, well all right?

01:36:33 - Chase (Host) Well, I guess I'll see you either in the pickleball court or maybe back in Cabo again in a few months. We'll see, yeah.

01:36:38 - Jay (Guest) Yeah, fantastic Thank you so much for having me.

01:36:42 - Chase (Host) For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode's show notes or head to everforwardradiocom.