Latest / Ageless and Timeless Podcast® / James LaValle is an internationally recognized clinical pharmacist, author, board-certified clinical nutritionist

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James LaValle is an internationally recognized clinical pharmacist, author, board-certified clinical nutritionist · Ageless and Timeless Podcast®

0:09
Good morning everyone. This is Michelle Hughes from Ageless and Timeless. Today,
0:14
I have a wonderful guest named Jim Leaval, and those of you who know
0:19
me and know my podcasts for the last five years know that I'm a very
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avid believer in the American Academy of Anti Aging and that is the organization that
0:31
was founded, I think twenty five years ago by doctor Goldman and doctor Claps.
0:37
And doctor Goldman has actually been a guest on our podcast, so we've
0:42
been friends and acquaintances for all those years, and he has introduced me to
0:49
many wonderful podcast guests, including our guest today, Jim Leval, who is
0:57
on the advisory board for the American for A four M, which is abbreviated
1:02
to be called American Academy of Anti Aging or A four M, and he's
1:07
also the head of education. I think it's Jimmy, are you the head
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of Education for A four M? I'm the academic co chair for A four
1:15
M, and I also chair their International Peptide Society. Oh boy, okay,
1:22
well this is just giving us more meat on the bone to talk about
1:26
today. But yeah, so so he in that capacity, Jim, what
1:30
are your responsibilities. Well, I probably educate maybe three times more than any
1:37
other instructor there. So I have to develop curriculum, bring in new and
1:41
cutting edge information that our learners can take home on Monday and apply in their
1:48
various types of practices, and then you know, be on the lookout for
1:53
new and exciting therapies that are, you know what I would say, safely
1:59
on the leading edge, right. And in addition to that, I get
2:02
on stage a whole bunch. Yeah, one week and I was trying to
2:07
reach you at thirty hours teaching at a four M thirty hours and one weekend.
2:14
That's that's pretty well. I feel blessed that they think I can contribute
2:19
that much. So it's it's fun. It's a lot of fun. So
2:23
tell me how many years have you been doing that with a four M?
2:28
Probably twenty t plus. Obviously I've been in this field for I mean I
2:35
turned sixty four, literally for forty years now, right, forty years?
2:40
Well, so tell us what the differences are with the curriculum today and compare
2:47
that to the curriculum that you started with, and what's in other words,
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what has happened in those years that you've been an educator. Well, I
2:57
think there's just so much more understanding about the process of how do we stay
3:04
well? You know when when in the early days it was like, hey,
3:07
hormones right, if you get your hormones right and your growth hormone right,
3:10
that's going to take care of it right. And then we progress to
3:15
this systems biology thought process over the last forty years and which is very relevant
3:23
today, which is, you know, all of our body systems are connected,
3:27
and the more they're working in harmony, the slower we're going to create
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oxidative stress and metabolic inflammation known as metaflammation, which leads to inflam aging.
3:40
So I think what's happened is we've created a much more deeper understanding at the
3:46
cellular level of what needs to change. I will say the one thing that
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hasn't changed is that people need to take you know, people need to take
3:54
responsibility for doing the basics correctly. You know, of times people, you
4:00
know, well, I'll see practitioners get enamored with, oh, I'm testing
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DNA methylation. That's great, But what's the person's blood sugar? What are
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their stress hormones? Like, you know, are they showing signs of oxidator
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stress. So I think the constant thing I've seen over forty years is you
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got to build a great foundation and all this new exciting things that we're learning
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and relationship to centis and cells and atophagy, how our body cleans itself up,
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and how can we induce that that all gets layered right on top,
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right, I got to get those foundations down. So that's what I would
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say be the biggest shift. And obviously the advent of peptide therapies coming into
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you know, vogue the last ten years and developing all of those courses,
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that was that was it. You know. The interesting thing is because you
4:50
know, you and I have been I mean I've been a member of longer
4:53
than I even want to admit. But I was there at the very beginning,
4:56
not when they were in the garage so to speak, starting to conceptualized,
5:00
but after it became a real organization. And I what I was thinking
5:06
about is a lot of these doctors could be very elitist, you know,
5:11
at the least back then. I think today it have become much more democratized.
5:15
But but you being a clinical pharmacist very you know, and a clinical
5:21
nutritionist both, right, So you. You managed to gain this this credibility
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and position in an organization that, by nature is made up of a lot
5:34
of people who don't Don't get me wrong, I'm not denigrating, but many
5:39
of them are you know, believers that if you're not a doctor, you're
5:41
not you know, you're not, You don't have anything to teach them.
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And yet here you are the one that's taught them more than anybody. And
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and your background is not as a medical doctor. So how do you explain
5:55
that. I don't know, maybe I just got a charming personality. Well,
6:03
I can tell that you love to communicate you. Yeah, no,
6:08
I think honestly, I think that one when I went through pharmacy school,
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we had to learn everybody system, all of the pathology, every drug,
6:18
We had to learn how to compound. The college I went to, I
6:23
had to learn botanical medicine, so we took pharmacognity and then I was fortunate
6:28
enough to teach at the School of Medicine and the School of Pharmacy for eighteen
6:31
years at the University of Cincinnati. And I think, when doctor see that,
6:36
you know I've taught academically in you know, medical school environments that gains
6:44
a lot of respect. And then, of course my clinics were in Ohio.
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I work, I always talk to docs. I work with physicians all
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the time. My clinic and Ohio. Three physicians on my staff were always
6:55
collaborating. So the reality is, I think, I hope I put the
7:00
energy off, is that we all have something to contribute that. If we're
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talking about a receptor in the body and what can influence it, I think
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the pharmacist is as good as anybody because we study receptors more than anybody.
7:13
And then, you know, but I don't get up there and try to
7:15
tell them how to do a surgery. I'm not worried about trying to tell
7:17
them how to do a physical I'm up there trying to teach them about the
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biochemistry of the body, what nutrients influence it, what type of drugs influence
7:27
it, how they can apply that in their practice. And I think the
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last thing is I'm really never too busy to answer a question. So when
7:35
people come up to me or stop me, I always make sure that I
7:41
make time for them, because you know, that's what they're there for.
7:46
They're there to learn, and anything I can do to help them, that's
7:48
great. Yeah, you Actually I've watched all of your lectures and you know,
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you make it, you make it fun naturally, and that's you know,
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that's a pretty daunting task when you talking about something to see this one's
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body, one's health, and you can make it into something that is one,
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you know, very believable, understandable, and even a little bit entertaining.
8:09
So I want to give you a kudos for that because even another Lakerson
8:15
watching you is fascinated. What what would you say if your favorite lecture that
8:22
you're doing today not my favorite lecture today is it's all about, you know,
8:26
the metabolic inflammation and it's global impact on your body. How the concept
8:31
of we build this model of not being resilient. So, whether I'm working
8:37
with special forces folks or first responders or people that are you know, professional
8:41
athletes or just folks everyday folks that are pushing hard, we all come to
8:46
a breaking point. And then how does the body begin to unravel? What
8:50
are the paths that start to crumble and then lead to chronic illness? Right,
8:58
So, whether that's you know, environmental burdens the trigger, or mold
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exposures the trigger or not in a sleep too much stress, not eating right,
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micronutrient depletion, vector's viruses, whatever. But how does our body,
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how does our body take us away from the vitality we deserve and the homeostasis
9:18
and health we deserve as we age, right, we're all going to die.
9:22
I just want to look fantastic when I get put in my casket.
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I want I want people going, wow, that is one good looking ninety
9:31
year old, right, yeah, or maybe one hundred and twenty year old,
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because I'll take that too. I'll take that too. And it's you're
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still vital right, that's right. I'm with you on that one. So
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what let's dive into that the favorite speech and really get into more of the
9:50
details of what you are dissecting for people so that they understand how to be
9:54
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health and longevity. Sure we can do that. I actually could pull up
10:46
a slide. You know, it goes over it if you want to do
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it. Love that. I know we talked about that and I asked you,
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so thank you for remember, yes, please do that. And we're
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talking now about the metabolic code. This is ours step is just how do
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we get there? And then I'll show people. I can show you how
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we develop the metabolic code. So this is kind of the model of metabolic
11:11
inflammation. So if you look at the top, it says you get damaged
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cell debrieze, irriton chemicals, pathogens, or intrinsic cell defects, meaning your
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genetics, You get a bug, you get exposed to mercury, something causes
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you to trigger inflammation in your body, and inflammation is generated in order to
11:33
correct it. So I'm creating inflammation to correct the problem and then once the
11:41
problem's eliminated, you're supposed to switch off the inflammation and then you go back
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to healing or what I call homeostasis. The problem is is that when we
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get stuck in the red, I've got chronic exposure. I didn't get rid
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of the mercury. I'm under chronic stress. I'm not sleeping good, I
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have ATNA. You know, I'm crashing midday. I've ruined my cortisol curve.
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Whatever the reason, these are the things that start to happen. One
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thing that was not mentioned on this graphic. You start to make bad after
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lipids, so you get people making more oxidized cholesterol and bad actor lipoproteins that
12:22
lead you towards more risk of heart disease. The next one is you start
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to lose muscle. So if you look here sycopenia, you start to lose
12:30
your muscle, and muscle is the currency of aging. The more you can
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hold onto your muscle as you age, the better you're going to age.
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So as you create inflammation, you lose muscle. As you create inflammation,
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you start to see iron stores that are adequate in most cases, but they
12:46
people don't make enough ferretin Ferretin helps you to make feromportant. Feromportant helps you
12:54
to make aerythropoetin, which is going to make you be able to oxygen eate
12:58
your tissues better. But when you're metabolically chronically inflamed, you don't make ferratin
13:05
from your iron, so you'll lose that. And what's the normal ferretin level
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for a blood result? Yeah, it'd be great if it was one hundred,
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would love it to be one hundred, but it should be minimum of
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seventy five. And that's classic. That's like the number that even conventional medicine
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says, Hey, if you're under seventy five, probably need to replace some
13:28
iron. But the problem is you may have adequate iron, but you just
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can't convert it to ferretin because you're chronically inflamed. The next big one,
13:37
and obviously this is big for a lot of reasons. You know, one
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or two people in our countries either insulin resistant or diabetic. You know when
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you're when you make more inflammatory compounds, you you're you turn on TNF alpha,
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which is an inflammatory compound, You turn on toll receptor four, you
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turn on interluken six. What's the what's the net result of those inflammatory cyto
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kinds doing that, your insulin receptors don't work well. So now what happened
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is your glucose goes up and your insulin goes up. Insulin is the most
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inflammatory compound your body makes. It's needed, it's essential. When it's too
14:16
much, you gain fat. It's part that you start to put more marbling
14:20
in your muscle. So instead of you being horse meat your five A five
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wagu right, Yeah, a lot of fat in net muscle. And then
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the next piece that happens as you start to lose bone because you don't remodel
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bone. So we've got an epidemic of people with osteoporosis and osteopenia. It's
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not just women anymore, we've got men as well. In addition to that,
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we've got the next issues are neurogenesis. So I can't I'm decreasing the
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ability of me to renew my neurons. But before you go onto that,
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let's just stop for a second. The glucose norm should be what I like
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to tell people, between seventy five and eighty four, good, okay,
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all right, and then if it for every point above ninety, it's a
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nine percent risk of being a person with diabetes if you look at the latest
15:16
study. The previous Kaiser study was six points for every point of eighty four.
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So if you have a ninety five blood sugar you have a sixty percent
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risk of being a person with diabetes. And what about the the insulin that
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should be under five or five or over. I love insulin being five or
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less. Yeah, okay, So a lot of people to know these things
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because you know, if they've done their blood work, they can check against
15:43
their results and know what work they have to do. So okay, absolutely,
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absolutely, super important about getting glucose and insulin right. Number one thing.
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It's going to aid you and kill you quicker because all people with bad
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glucose regulation end up with heart disease. That's diabetics pre diabet always end up
16:00
with heart disease. And the A one C that score should be. What
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if it's five to three or less, I'm happy the closer it is,
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the five the better, but I'll take five point three. Okay, good,
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yeah, right, So the next so the next thing that happens everybody
16:19
now is complaining and being foggy headed and pushing a thought through jello it's because
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as you're chronically inflamed, you up regulate your microglial cells in your brain,
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and that means you're going to start to destroy your neurons. You literally,
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when the glial cells activate, you burst with oxidative stress. It goes and
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damages the neurons. The neurons break down. As they break down, they're
16:44
releasing compounds that go back to turn on the microglial cells. And it's this
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vicious cycle of neuronal destruction. And so neurogenesis has to be protected if you
16:56
want to live long. The very last piece to this puzzle is, of
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course mitochondria biogenesis goes down, and why is that important? Your mitochondria the
17:06
powerhouses of every cell in your body. And when which there are trillions right
17:14
exactly, you got to have it. And here's the thing. When people
17:17
got sick, like when it's interesting we talk about COVID. So when people
17:22
got COVID, what we're finding out now, for example, people end up
17:26
with diabetes and insulin resistance. And it's interesting because it follows this model where
17:34
you got a vector, the inflammation didn't get resolved, and now you have
17:41
insulin resistance. They have mitochondrial deficiencies. There's a bunch of papers published on
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that's why long haulers stay so fatigued because they can't restore their mitochondria. And
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I'm just using COVID as an example. Is a vector it happens. This
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can happen due to over working out too hard, like I've got obviously as
18:03
a CHEO science officer for lifetime, I review a lot of people's you know,
18:08
you know information, and of course I work with pro athletes and teams
18:15
and all five major league sports as well as top bodybuilders in the world.
18:18
Literally, so it so it's it's not just the person that's sickly that this
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happens to. You can overtrain yourself into it. You can overfast yourself into
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it. You know, you can, you know, and that can create
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this. So anyway, this sets up that process and I just want to
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show you just a couple how this progresses. Right, So, the next
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thing that happens as you have chronic inflammation, your gut lining over here is
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velvety smooth. As you have chronic inflammation, you get gut permeability or otherwise
18:56
known as leaky gout. And this is an electron microscopy human gut. Right,
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this is the picture. It really does get leaky. And these are
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the sillia of the of your brushboarder. Solve your intestine. One cell layer
19:11
thick protects the lining of your intestine and the content of your intestine from your
19:15
bloodstream. And so when this isn't good, you start to create problems.
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Now, let's progress it. Oh my gosh, when I get bad bugs
19:26
and my gut gets leaky and I release a lot of this lipopolysaccharide, bugs
19:32
are dying in my gut, I release the lipopolysaccharide. Lipopolysacharide floats around in
19:37
your body and attaches to every tissue in your body and triggers inflammation signaling.
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And that's why when I talked about the progression at a four M, it's
19:48
this understanding of where do things start, Where is the biggest problem? And
19:56
for the longest time, you know, you go get a very big lab.
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I'm sure you've seen this, Michelle. You got this stack of labs
20:03
like this, and that docs writing notes on it like, hey, this
20:06
needs to be better with an up arrow, this needs to be better.
20:08
You know. Oh, this is a smiley face. This is an unhappy
20:11
phase, right, But it's all manual. What we did, you know,
20:18
just to kind of go through that is, we went and developed the
20:22
metabolic codepath pathway, which is metabotyping people. So what we did was we
20:29
created networks, so one network talks to another network talks to another network.
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Why do we do it to make it simple for people to understand all of
20:40
the various chemistries that are going on in your body. So if you notice
20:44
adrenal thyroid pancreas is the relationship between cortisol, insulin, and thyroid hormone.
20:49
And then you have gut immune brain. You know, the guts connected to
20:53
the brain through the enterret nervous system, and either the gut or the brain
20:59
can influence the immune system, which then influences that relationship. And then these
21:04
could stack on each other. If I'm under a lot of stress, tryad
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one, i could get a leaky gut. So the whole purpose of what
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we did was to try to make it easier to understand the complex nature.
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There's forty thousand algorithms behind this that looks at people's labs, looks at their
21:27
symptoms, looks at their biometrics, and then takes all that data and places
21:34
it and accelerates it into these five buckets. And the net result of that
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is it ranks them from highest score to lowest score, and the highest score
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this is the metaflammation index. And so it only makes sense because you know
21:53
what happens people go in. And one reason I did this is a lot
21:56
of the docs I was teaching an a four m to ask me to do
21:59
it. I am not a tech guy. I mean I had to write
22:03
all these algorithms and I just you know, it took a long time to
22:06
put this together. But and it's and this is actually being taught at George
22:10
Washington School Medicine. Fourteen weeks of their integrated Master's program is all on our
22:15
approach to metabolic physiology and and so that which only I think we're the only
22:22
program that's taught in a medical school and an advanced degree program. So the
22:27
point to this is is if you target the things that are the most messed
22:33
up in a person, typically they're going to start to feel better. And
22:37
if we can get somebody to start to feel better, and I know,
22:40
I mean my clinic in Ohio saw three to four hundred people a week doing
22:42
all personalized medicine right. And the biggest thing I found is if I can
22:48
get them feeling better in the first four weeks, I got a good chance
22:55
that they're going to stick with me. So what do you find you find
22:57
is the most common complaint and difficulty people have. I mean, I'm pretty
23:06
sure I know what the answer is, but I want you to tell us.
23:10
Oh, by far, people are tired, overweight and can't think clear.
23:17
Yeah, you know, they can't break through their weight loss, which
23:22
is the miracle of GLP ones. Right, if you use them responsibly,
23:26
change people's diets, get them to exercise, Maybe use like a secreteagg like
23:33
surmalling that helps release your own growth hormone to keep you lean while you're losing
23:37
weight. I think you can. I think they're fantastic, But a lot
23:41
of people end up not being able to lose weight. They diet, they
23:47
exercise, and not a pound comes off. And that's because their chemistry is
23:52
so ground into this metabolic inflammation model, so it's glucose or it is all
24:00
their guts permeable, so they've you know, you have a little candy that
24:03
they're gass either gloated. They feel tired after they eat and then after that
24:07
it's kind of like, well, are you at the age where your hormones
24:11
are starting to fail? Are your hormones out of balance? Are you maybe
24:14
a young person whose hormones are already starting to fail? I mean I have
24:18
a lot of young men with sub three hundred testosterones nowadays, which I never
24:22
used to see that, you know. So you know, so I think
24:27
that you know the net of this, and this is how this model work.
24:30
I thought i'd just show it to you. Yeah, So this is
24:36
a fifty eight year old executive chief wellness officer for a fortune fifty company.
24:41
He has self reporting fatigued, he has no medication or supplements, and he's
24:47
not overweight, all right, So what did we do? We looked at
24:51
his chemistry and he has a flattened cortisol curve. And it turns out when
24:56
you're no longer making a circadian rhythm of cortisol up in the morning, down
25:00
at noon, down at for really low at bedtime to kick in your melotone.
25:06
When you lose that pattern, you're at a three hundred and thirty three
25:11
percent increased risk of heart disease, treatment resistant depression, and neurodegenda disorders.
25:18
Well, that let just to stop that for a moment, that that is
25:22
something that is so important for people to understand because stress is the greatest they
25:26
say it's the greatest killer. Right, But people take that and they,
25:30
you know, it's just a euphemism after a while because they don't know how
25:33
to really make a difference with that statement of truth. But you've just said
25:38
something that you know, it's just mind boggling three hundred and thirty three percent
25:45
chance of mortality if you do not get it under control. So the next
25:51
question, obviously, is how do you do that? Well, I mean,
25:55
so I'll do that in light of everything going on with him, right,
26:00
because that's how we want to you know, kind of think of this
26:03
from assistants biology approach. Obviously, he's burned himself out. He's no longer
26:07
producing enough cortisol. I don't like using the term adrenal fatigues. It's not
26:12
a real it's a marketing term. It's not a real term. More like,
26:18
you know, maybe it's adrenal failure or hypo cortisolism. But the but
26:23
the bottom line is he's crashed his cortisol. His blood sugar is up.
26:30
So he went through a period of time where his cortisol was up, and
26:33
now he has trained his body to really need glucose, so now he's insulin
26:37
resistant. His magnesium pools are suboptimal, and you need magnesium for managing stress
26:44
and managing your glucose. So then let's see what happens next. He also
26:51
is making small lipid particles, so if you notice over here on this advanced
26:56
lipid panel, he's making all the bad actor lipid. So all the cortisol
27:00
and glucose and insulin is causing him to move down the road towards heart disease,
27:07
even though he's normal weight. He's a shelf chief wellness officer and you
27:12
know, meditates and does all the good stuff, or at least be used
27:15
to. And then he also because as your cortisol is diserupted and you're making
27:22
a lot of glucose and insulin, you make more adrenaline and that means your
27:26
kidneys are getting less blood flow. So his creatinin is going up. So
27:33
this is a guy who he's worked himself to the ground. His glucose has
27:38
gone up, his lipids are going bad, and now his kidneys are taking
27:41
the run of it. And then let's look at the next thing his testosterone
27:48
drop. So this particular study cortisol, testosterone, and coronary artery disease a
27:56
perspective of evidence from the character Pilly study. So what this is basically showing.
28:03
So the way we modeled the metabolic code is we string together all this
28:07
information like a you know, a set of pearls to kind of figure out
28:12
where do you need to go first. So how did we string the pearls
28:15
on this gentleman. His cortisol's off because of his HbA access being you know,
28:22
hyper arouse due to stress. His glucose is up, his mag is
28:26
up, he is down, his homo systeine's up, his lippets are disordered,
28:32
his lipoprotein little way, which is a big marker for aging, right,
28:37
that's one of the biggest and in his creatin in's up and his testosteronees
28:41
down. So we've just strung all of this stuff together. But where do
28:45
we start to your point, we got to start with getting his stress response
28:49
back. So how do you do that? It's different depending where people are
28:52
at. I'm a big believer. I love box breathing for people. So
28:56
if you start with non medicinal things, box breathing three to four minutes,
29:02
two to three times a day. You know, on your exhale, you
29:04
know, box breathing is four seconds in hold, four seconds, four seconds
29:07
out hold, four seconds. On the exhale, you're thinking of, I'm
29:11
going to get rid of the stress of the day, right You're breathing out
29:17
the stress, and then at the end of those three minutes or four you
29:22
want to be grateful for something. Oh, I love this. You know.
29:26
I heard you talk about box breathing, but I had never encountered that,
29:30
And it's kind of crazy that I wouldn't have because I'm so passionately involved
29:34
in No other guest has ever mentioned box breathing, So where where does that
29:40
come from? And why do you know it works well? When you breathe
29:44
like that, you're creating a rhythmic breathing that drops the diaphragm and resets the
29:48
parasympathetic nervous system. So it's you know, it's different than meditation. It's
29:55
an active exercise to reset parasympathetic tone, drop your diaphragm, and oxygenate your
30:02
blood better. Because most people are shallow breathing, their carbon dioxide levels are
30:07
elevated. They are lactic acids elevated, and so they don't really get good,
30:11
good strong breasts. The other thing they can do is they can resort
30:15
to using like the parasitpathetic tone stimulators, the nerve stimulators that you can hold
30:21
on the you know, on your nerve and you can stimulate it to reset
30:26
your nervous system. Another option if you've got to go to the next level.
30:30
And then of course, you know, if you're somebody who is stressed
30:36
in craving sweets and carbs. I'm stressed and when I get home from work,
30:42
I hug my potato chip bag before I open it up. I don't
30:48
eat a cookie. I three cookies. And after the three cookies, I
30:52
look at it and go, I really don't like partial rows. I'm gonna
30:56
eat a few more cookies. Right. That's that means that you have comfort
31:02
food cravings and we need to reset. You're a denison serotonin and serotonin receptors.
31:10
I love Relaora for that r E l O r A. It's a
31:12
branded ingredient. They really like it. It works great if you're a perseverator.
31:19
Now you know what's that Go ahead, I'm going to ask you what
31:23
if just to stop me from What about along with Laura, what about the
31:29
lcine and gabba. Well, I was just going to get to the inine,
31:33
because so Laura is specific for stress eating. Theanine is really good for
31:40
people that perseverate. You know, they're anxious and they perseverate their list makers,
31:45
they can't stop getting off the stress wheel on their head. But they're
31:48
not necessarily craving food. So theanine is is basically an anti glutamate agent.
31:56
If blocks glutamate GABA levels come up your brain, dopamine comes up in your
32:01
brain. I like Gabba, I love Holy Basil. I think all of
32:07
them are great for taking if you're feeling stressed, if you have to get
32:13
your cortisol curve up in the morning, at noon, and if you're not
32:16
anxious, I like using New Zealand adrenal cortex extracts and I'll give those in
32:23
the morning and I'll give those at noon to help boost that up to repair
32:29
the individual, and then once they're feeling better, I want to move them
32:34
more like an adaptogen, you know, Rodiola, cortise EPs, sazandra and
32:39
why you know, why are these adaptogens so important? Well, what I
32:44
learned in pharmacognity back at the University of Cincinnati because we had to take pharmacognity.
32:50
Since the beginning of recorded medicine, in all cultures, the most valuable
32:59
herb in every reculture has been an adaptogen. Mm hmm. And and think
33:04
about that. So that means since we first started recording medicine, protecting the
33:12
response to stress was the most valuable piece of that culture's medicine. What do
33:21
we do though, We have people run absolutely at break next speed until they
33:30
break. Yeah, and then they tack and xanax and prozac. That's that's
33:36
our adaptogens, right, So we need to start thinking about keeping people strong
33:42
and not just uh hey wait wait when you break, we got a band
33:45
aid to put on that bullet hole. Right. So you're saying all this
33:50
because we started this conversation by saying that the biggest killer is stress and that
33:54
this is the one thing that if we get that under control, the others
33:58
are going to start to be a lot more, a lot easier to manage.
34:04
But if you don't get to stressed first, then the rest of it
34:07
is going to be almost impossible to change. So you're exactly right, I
34:13
mean, that's exactly it. I'll give you a good example. You know
34:15
how many people do food allergy tests. Yeah, a lot of people do
34:19
food allergy tests. I like them. I do ones that are advanced.
34:22
They test four categories of reaction. But you'll work on a food allory.
34:27
You'll work on somebody's gut forever if you don't recognize if are they somebody that's
34:32
stressed out, anxious, or have their cortisol curve disrupted, Because as soon
34:37
as your cortisol's off, you release interluken six, those of the enteet nervous
34:44
system and then the tight junctions of your gut. Yeah. Right, that
34:49
is so fascinating. So you didn't mention gensing. You include that as one
34:54
of your adaptih. I love gin Singh. In fact, we've so we
35:00
created and Ginsinicide R three nasal spray about a decade ago, where it's pure
35:07
gin cinicide R three from Mayer Jin Singh and amazing for cognitive capacity and repair.
35:15
We now have been able to put it in and can I do a
35:17
lot of research and you know, development on product delivery. Now it's in
35:22
a chewable tablet, which is really exciting. That was called synapsen. I
35:27
love Jensingh. I like. I mean, you know you've got you know,
35:30
Ashburganda, obviously it's got some value to it. But I'm a big
35:35
fan of the Jinsingh family because they gin cinicide in Manchurian and Korean gen Singh
35:42
do fantastic things for our body. So I'm a big fan. Okay,
35:45
good, So I don't want to get stuck on the stress too long so
35:51
that we don't get to the other very important issues, which sure part of
35:54
the books that you've written. So okay, so let me finish this slide
36:00
is to show you how the metabolic code works. So the way this works,
36:04
we know you're under stress. Yeah, we know you've got low testosterone,
36:09
we know your but sugars up. But where this is leading you is
36:15
to try AD three. You're going to become a vascular path and it's going
36:19
to lead you to heart disease. So what do we fix today? Are
36:22
we worried about Hey, we got to get your lipidge right. No,
36:24
you got to go back here and fix the stress, fix the blood sugar,
36:28
get the testosterone back, and eliminate that arrow to that future heart disease
36:32
risk. So this is all about measuring how far are you away from your
36:37
optimal health. It's not about diagnosing you with heart disease or diabetes. It's
36:42
what systems of your body are on a line. Then as we align them,
36:45
are all these labs coming into line regressing metabolic inflammation. So that's kind
36:52
of the whole concept of metabolic code. Now this is really important. I'm
36:57
so glad that you did this. And can you tell us on the METAVO
37:01
code You mentioned HPA. That's that's hypothalamus pituitary adrenal. Correct, that's right
37:08
on our viewers to know what that was hp A. And then Jim the
37:14
uh is it always true that if your stress levels are compromised that your testosterone
37:20
will be low for the most part, So when test when when when free
37:25
cortisol is high in your butt stream, you inhibit gadata troping releasing hormone.
37:32
So if you're a man, your testosterone goes down, and if you're a
37:37
woman, your estra diol can go down. Okay, well, yes,
37:43
about a woman's testosterone would that the effective that would go down to We see
37:46
a lot of women with low testosterone, you know, the professional woman,
37:51
working hard, being a mom, participating in the church group, you know,
37:54
I mean being super women, right, right, and uh, you
37:59
know, at the end of the day, if that testosterone drops or sex
38:01
drive goes down, or self esteem goes down, as the hormones start to
38:06
alder, you know, they just you know, they lose a little bit
38:09
of that zest for life because they're just working so hard for all these other
38:14
facets of their body that they kind of leave their potency and their desire on
38:20
the table. Correct, it's the sacrifice, right, which is unfortunate.
38:24
Yeah, and their syclopamia does because they're shot. Drone is low. Their
38:30
muscle mass is going to be lowered as well, and they can work out
38:34
as much as they want, but they're still not going to build muscle if
38:37
they don't have the hormones. So that's right. And you see that even
38:40
in figure competitors because I work on figure competitors too, is that they train,
38:45
they're training really hard, they're dieting, they're just pushing their body to
38:50
get to that competition, and then after the competition, it's hormone mayhem.
38:55
Yes, yeah, you know, and that's the that's a big issue,
39:00
right, same things for man, So same thing happens. Can you multitask
39:06
with the cures well. For example, while you're working on the cortisol and
39:09
the stress levels to bring them back into alignment, can you also be recommending
39:17
that the patient do injectable testosterone or trophies or in other words, it can
39:24
be rubber delivery system. Sure. Yeah, no, you can multitask absolutely.
39:30
In fact, I think that the biggest challenge, and that's why we
39:37
developed the code was multitask, but don't give them a bag of twenty things
39:43
to do. That's exactly where I was going is how do you prevent overwhelmed
39:47
when there's so like that gentleman, the wellness director, he has so many
39:52
things to address. He could be, you know, get just completely frightened
39:59
and run away. He gave we gave him six things to do good and
40:05
he came out of it fantastic. I mean, four weeks later he's like,
40:09
I can't believe I'm much better. I feel we worked on It's got
40:13
a little bit his stress response. We gave him a botanical to kick his
40:16
testosterone up because he was low. But he wasn't really bad and uh,
40:22
you know, and and he did really well, you know, supported his
40:25
adrenals, got them coming on back on board and that was it. I
40:30
mean, I think that's the biggest challenge is And look, I've been in
40:34
this so long. I've seen what happens. People go to a seminar and
40:37
now everybody that they see has that whatever was presented at the seminar, that's
40:45
what everybody's got. And it's trying to get away from that thought process and
40:51
get back to where is this person's chemistry moving in time? Right? Well,
40:59
I think if people use the metaphor of a pyramid and recognized, just
41:02
like the food pyramid is supposed to help us to make good food choices,
41:07
the pyramid the metabolic pyramid, although you did it in little triangles, but
41:10
you know the same idea that you have to build a foundation. I'm a
41:15
developer by careers of background, so you know, I understand the metaphor of
41:21
building a house, so that you have to have a strong foundation before you
41:24
can start putting up the walls and of course finally the root. And so
41:30
here you are you're creating that strong foundation is getting your cortisol and your fight
41:36
or flight stress response in order, and then from there and because that affects
41:43
so many other things as you pointed out, I mean it goes into the
41:46
gut, it goes to the brain, and the gutt and the brain access.
41:50
I mean, the whole thing is interrelated. This is the miracle of
41:52
the body. I think. And I was telling one of my last guests
41:58
about doctor Sears, Barry Sears. I remember him. He was the first
42:02
one. I was in a partnership with him. I was on his advisory
42:07
board for some new business he was creating back about fifteen twenty years ago,
42:14
and he was the first one to bring up the term inflammation. And at
42:19
the time, and you remember this because you've been him doing this for forty
42:22
years, that term was not accepted. People didn't know what they were,
42:27
you know. They he was like a pariah at afour M even he couldn't
42:31
It was the one place he could actually get his point across, he told
42:36
me. But most of the other doctors thought he was crazy to talk about
42:42
inflammation. If you remember, the whole zone diet was based on inflammation.
42:47
So what you're talking about now, that's very commonplace. I just wonder in
42:52
forty more years, what's going to be the common place. What do you
42:55
think will be the thing today? That's kind of avant garde. Yeah,
43:04
that's a really good question. I mean, I know, back when I
43:07
wrote the Cracking Them Out about Codebook two thousand and two, I was talking
43:10
about inflammation and leaky gut, and I got absolutely ridiculed by conventional docs.
43:21
Leaky got the same school is very sure you're sure your gun there's cracks in
43:27
your gut. Well, I just showed you that electron microscope. There are
43:30
cracks in the gut. The science caught up with it. Yeah, you
43:34
know, I think that I think what's going to be one of the big
43:37
big evolutions is right now, peptides are considered somewhat controversial, although insulin was
43:45
the first peptide in nineteen twenty three to be badies, so it's not that
43:50
new. But I think we're going to think of peptides is just a natural
43:54
part of what we do for our health over the next forty years. Right
43:59
now, it's like a little bit of a tug of war with FDA and
44:02
what, you know, what's going on with availability. So I think that
44:07
that's going to be one and I think we're going to get a deeper understanding
44:10
of you know, my my colleague, that's my chief medical officer doctor Andy
44:15
Hayman, who that talks a lot about you know, the impact of mold
44:20
and water damage buildings and the eternal environment that you live in has a dramatic
44:27
effect on chronic inflammation in your body. I think there's so much we miss
44:34
on where we live. Indoor air quality is huge. I just think nobody,
44:40
nobody deals with it exactly. I have an air purifier for them and
44:45
my you know, I have a four bedroom home and I have one in
44:49
every bedroom and even one in my office. So this is really important.
44:52
I mean, it's something you have to watch. You know, you have
44:55
to make sure you change the filters, and you know, it's a it's
44:59
a responsibility, it's work. And the same thing for water, you know.
45:02
I find I have so many wealthy friends who do not invest in a
45:08
water purification system, and this just shocks me. I could not agree with
45:14
you more. So that would be another one I think in the future,
45:19
because the water is not going to get better, It's only going to get
45:22
worse, I think, And the air is only going to get worse as
45:25
we've seen what's happened in the last twenty years with toxicity in our world and
45:30
the pesticides and the herbicides and all the totally and how do you feel.
45:37
Let's let's segue to peptides because that's an important subject. And I know you've
45:42
written a book called Peptide Manual, right, the newest book, and you
45:46
book on the peptide bioregulators, which is something I'm very interested and I'm sure
45:52
my viewers are if they know doctor Bill Lawrence who was on my show and
45:57
I'm on in his clinical trial. So I'm very interested in hearing what you
46:00
have to say. So unfortunately they just flashed me. Though we only have
46:05
five more minutes, so I want you to try to condense. I know,
46:08
well, I know I'm going to have to have you back, So
46:10
that's okay. We'll make this part one and then we'll do part two.
46:15
Awesome. It us your five minute or less dissertation on peptide bioregulators and peptize
46:22
and why we should be looking at them as an alternative to improving our well
46:29
being. Yeah, it's pretty simple. Peptides are in compounds that our body
46:32
produces to help us self regulate, to help us heal from that inflammatory state
46:38
to the healing and homeostasis state and That means everything from regulation of the immune
46:44
system to hormones, to how our mitochondria function, mitochondrial respiration, making energy,
46:51
healing, connective tissue, and bone. We have all of these signal
46:55
substances. Peptides amino acids make up peptides. A big enough string of peptides
47:04
become a protein, so peptides can be as small as like KPV is a
47:09
peptide amino acids put together in a special way to help your body manage TNF
47:15
Alpha. Bioregulators are also basically peptides that you get from. Look if you
47:23
were into gland nutrition, gland therapies, I like thirty five forty years ago,
47:29
I was using New Zealand gland extracts, a order extract, liver extract,
47:32
adrenal extract. They all contained these signal substances and peptides that you would
47:42
ingest you would get the benefit of betterhealth. So, whether it's a bioregulator
47:46
extracted from a natural compound or it is synthesized peptid, they're signaling our body
47:54
to restore either homeostasis or to get us to reverse some of the aging processes
48:01
that were undergoing. Right, so that brings up a good question. Do
48:07
you feel that you have to inject or can you take oral or can you
48:10
do a combination of both. I think it depends on what your goal is.
48:16
I know we're we've been working on a delivery system that we're pretty confident
48:21
will deliver a lot of peptides orally. So I I've already you know,
48:24
done trials with it. Do you think that you can do it that way?
48:29
I think you can deliver them through the skin, and I do think
48:31
you can you can inject them. What I try to discourage people is don't
48:36
inject ten peptides four times a day. Yeah, yeah, because you know,
48:40
it's that old story and whatever it was worth doing is worth overdoing.
48:44
And I just am not not there with people. You know, hey,
48:49
I'm going to take this, I'm going to take this. I'm gonna inject
48:51
them into Just look at the key things. You need some show oral availability,
48:58
and I think that's great. Like we have a you know, a
49:00
BPC that we've created in a liposomal tablet technology. We have a worldwide patent
49:06
pending on all drugs and all nutrients with a solid state liposome that keeps the
49:12
particle size under one hundred danimeters and is stable for four years, which is
49:16
a big breakthrough because liquid liposomes are unstable. They agglomerate over time once you
49:22
manufacture them. So anyway, that's kind of a you know, I think
49:27
it's you just want to feel Do I get an effect? I took something
49:31
early. Did I get an effect? Did I see a difference? Well?
49:35
The one question I had about the oral approach is that if the gut
49:39
is in dysbiosis and it's not or we have leaky gut as you've discussed today,
49:46
would you ever get the benefit of these oral peptides if your gut isn't
49:52
healthy. Depends on the delivery. Once again, if you do it in
49:57
a liposome, solid state, delivery goes through the my cells and it you
50:01
know, it gets absorbed regardless if it's just a regular capsule, probably reduced
50:07
absorption. Yeah, And just for people know BPC one fifty seven that that
50:12
Jim just referred to, that's the peptide that you can use orally. It's
50:17
comes from your gut. So it's actually better to do orally if you're trying
50:21
to address issues with your gut. But if you're using it for our joints
50:24
and muscle and other injuries. It's probably better to inject it and right into
50:31
the site where the trauma occurred. Is that? Is that how you would
50:36
do it? I used to say that, and I just had another case
50:40
of a tennis elbow where they're injecting BPC. We had them use the liposomal
50:45
BPC tablet with some UH with a chewable liposomal kerkhuman and I completely got them
50:54
out of pain in about five days, whereas the injection wasn't working. But
50:59
I'm a big fan of the injection. I've seen it work a bunch of
51:01
times. But now the FDA has taken that away. It's a Category two
51:07
So now you could use BPC as a dietary supplement as long as it's in
51:10
its dietary supplement or natural form. Okay, yeah, so it's kind of
51:15
made a little bit different. The only people using it now are buying the
51:19
stuff that's not for human use or research grade. And I don't really promote
51:23
that, you know, I just don't think y's you know, they don't
51:25
have the same strictness. So what is Because I don't want us to run
51:31
out of time without doing two more things. One is to ask you what
51:36
would would you consider your greatest achievement in your life thus far? Raising my
51:42
son Ah. I love that I should have said professionally, but that's okay.
51:49
But if I do it professionally, I would say that I won the
51:55
Clinician of the Year for the Natural Products Association BIG, the big you know
52:00
group that does expo, which were elevating the standards of integrative medicine across the
52:06
US, and then being named Clinician of the Year for an Educator of the
52:10
Year for a four M and you know, being kind of there, you
52:14
know, just you know, I'm not an awards guy. I just work
52:17
because I love what I do. But those were nice achievements to be recognized,
52:22
and I love being able to invent things, the new technologies that we
52:27
work with. But I'd probably say those are the biggies. I mean,
52:30
you know, I would say all the patients have helped heal. But you
52:34
know that goes without saying. And I and I when I look at you
52:37
and I say, you say you're sixty four, I mean I look at
52:39
you in earlier so you know, I would never have guessed that, but
52:44
I would have probably said forty four. But you know the fact is you've
52:47
worked very hard to stay looking as vital as you do, and you're and
52:52
it's not only the appearance, that's your your attitude and your energy. So
52:58
I would you know, if somebody were asked me, what's the greatest achievement
53:02
that Jim Levell has had, and you know, asking an outsider looking in,
53:07
obviously I would say all the patients and of course and all that,
53:10
But the important thing that I see physically is that you've remained. You've done
53:15
what your goal is in life, which is to stay vital and live every
53:21
day to its fullest because you never know what's right. So okay, I
53:27
really appreciate that, but I never say anything I don't mean, so I
53:30
really want you to know that's genuine. And the last question before we get
53:35
to our wonderful gift that you're going to provide is what who in your life
53:40
has been the most inspirational? Who do you look at as a mentor.
53:49
My biggest mentor was doctor Alexander Wood. He started the Ontario College of Nature
53:52
Pathic Medicine. He was a chiropractor, started the Ontario College, had a
53:58
degree in psychology. He taught at Medicine Week in Bodenbaden. He was a
54:05
founder of the Occidental Research Institute, and he really taught me how to look
54:10
at the body in a system's biology approach way back in nineteen eighty four,
54:16
and he was very much ahead of his time. Taught me a lot of
54:20
requids theories and taught me homeopathy. I mean, he was just amazing.
54:24
You know, God rest his soul. He's passed, but he was my
54:28
biggest by far, biggest influence. And one last question, when have you
54:35
made a mistake in your life that you regret that you wish you could do
54:38
over. Wow? I wish I had more confidence in myself earlier in my
54:49
career, even though on the outside with all the books published and everything else,
54:54
it was, I didn't feel I was good enough. I was afraid
55:00
to get out there and really share. And I think that was a big
55:06
mistake. So now I'm making up for it. I'm, you know,
55:07
doing social media and having fun. You're prolific and you've helped so many people,
55:14
not only patients, but people who are you looking at you online and
55:20
learning from you and then shaking that to their doctors. You know, to
55:22
challenge them or ask them questions. Okay, so before we go, why
55:28
don't you tell everyone what wonderful gift you're going to give to our viewers today,
55:31
because we always love our guests to give something that they want, that
55:36
they feel is valuable. So go ahead. Well, we talked about bioregulators
55:39
and you're really interested. And I've got a nice little ebook on bioregulators that
55:45
I can post up and people can download it. So it's a nice,
55:50
very nice ebook that I use in our Peptide Society training. Actually, so
55:54
it should should be something that they'll enjoy. So can we get a link
55:59
on that so that our letsus can put in our podcast when we when we
56:06
post it. Oh, absolutely, I'll have it. I'll have it sent
56:08
to you. We'll get it taken care of, all right, absolutely,
56:13
all right, Jim, Well part one was amazing and thank you so much,
56:16
and I want to just invite you back and we'll probably it off to
56:21
be next year because we're completely booked, but we will make this happen and
56:25
if that's good for you, as you know, by then you'll probably have
56:30
written five more books, knowing you, I have two more coming out.
56:32
Yeah, I got two coming out. Yeah, at least we have two.
56:37
And we didn't even get to Blood Never Lies, which is another one
56:39
of your wonderful books, and I read so enthusiastically because most people know that
56:45
when you get your blood results until you meet with your doctor, and sometimes
56:50
that's very cursory. But you know, many times you're just like, okay,
56:53
what does this mean? You know, and you just dissect all of
56:57
the biomarkers of your blood work and make it so that it's easy and better
57:04
to ask questions when you are in front of your doctor. So thanks again
57:07
for writing that book. All right, well, we'll say goodbye and thank
57:12
you again for a beautiful time together. And you take care. Thank you
57:16
so much. All right, bye, bye bye