Different Life

Episode Summary
Peptides are gaining massive popularity in the world of health, fitness, and longevity. But are they actually effective, or are the results driven by placebo and natural healing?
In this episode, we explore a real-world case of using peptides for chronic plantar fasciitis and shoulder pain. The conversation dives into what peptides are, how they function in the body, and why they are becoming more mainstream despite limited long-term research.
We also unpack one of the most important concepts in healthcare and performance: outcomes matter, but understanding the “why” behind those outcomes is just as critical. Whether peptides are a breakthrough or simply one piece of a larger puzzle, this episode provides a grounded, practical perspective.

Key Topics Discussed
  •  What peptides are and how they function in the body 
  •  The role of blood flow and tissue healing in recovery 
  •  Real-world experience using peptides for plantar fasciitis 
  •  The difference between placebo and real physiological change 
  •  Why recovery is rarely driven by a single intervention 
  •  Cost, accessibility, and safety considerations 
  •  How to evaluate new trends in health and longevity 
Chapters with Timestamps
  •  00:00 – Intro and conversation on habits and learning 
  •  08:30 – Introduction to peptides and why they are trending 
  •  14:45 – What peptides are and how they work 
  •  22:10 – Personal experience using peptides for injury 
  •  32:00 – Placebo vs real results discussion 
  •  41:20 – Costs, safety, and where people get peptides 
  •  48:30 – Final thoughts and recommendations 
Notable Quotes
  •  “I don’t care what makes you feel better. As long as you feel better.” 
  •  “Just because I had an intervention doesn’t mean that was the thing.” 
  •  “It’s probably a combination of both.” 
  •  “Outcomes matter, but you have to understand why you’re getting them.” 
Resources Mentioned
Connect With Us Here:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WholeHealthSolutions
Website: https://wholehealthsolutions.life/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wholehealthsolutions.life
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholehealthsolutions.life
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whole-health-solutions-sports-performance


Creators and Guests

Host
Gary Donia
Gary Donia, MSPT is a physical therapist and Chief Operations Officer at Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. With more than 20 years of experience, he helps individuals and athletes recover from injury, build strength, and improve long-term physical capability. Gary focuses on identifying root causes, creating practical plans, and guiding people toward sustainable health and performance. In addition to his clinical work, he coaches high school and Legion baseball, applying movement principles to develop resilient, confident athletes. He lives in Townsend, Massachusetts, with his wife Jessica and their two sons, and is passionate about helping people build healthier, more capable lives both on and off the field.
Host
Peter Brouillard
Peter Brouillard, DPT is the Founder and CEO of Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. As a physical therapist and strength coach, he works with individuals and athletes to recover from injury, build strength, and develop long-term resilience. Peter takes a whole-body approach to health, integrating exercise, lifestyle habits, and performance principles to help people exceed their goals and unlock their potential. His focus is on practical strategies that create lasting change, not quick fixes. He is passionate about empowering people to take ownership of their health and build lives defined by capability, confidence, and meaningful progress.

What is Different Life?

Most people don’t need more motivation. They need a different approach. Hosted by Gary Donia and Peter Brouillard, Different Life draws on years of experience helping people navigate pain, movement, recovery, and performance — but the conversation goes far beyond health alone.

We talk about:
• Strength training as a life skill
• Back pain, mobility, and injury recovery
• Pelvic floor health and durability
• Sleep, stress, hormones, and energy
• Performance and longevity over 40
• Discipline, habits, and identity shifts
• Parenting and modeling health
• Relationship-based healthcare

We discuss these not as isolated topics, but as part of a bigger question: What does it look like to live differently, not just try to live better?
If you feel stuck in patterns that no longer fit who you want to become, this show is for you. Because better often keeps you in the same cycles. Different changes your trajectory.

Gary Donia (00:00.69)
All right, so I have two things to start the show with today. I came prepared for instead of an intro, I thought I've thoughts. Got it. Okay. One in between recording our episodes, we both stood up to walk to the bathroom. Yeah. And we both stood up like super old men. Yeah, you you groaned. Yeah, grow and I like you hobbled. I hobbled. It takes two steps. sat here for 30 minutes. And neither of us can stand up. So that was that's an observation. Yeah. And then two is a question.

And I do, is a question I have for you. We're almost 50. So I'm 15 days into the Lose It app. Doing pretty good. How many books have you read? Zero.

So last time I asked you to take my phone and download a book for me. No, no, no, no, no, no, You told me so you downloaded thing. sent you the I'm literally doing all of them like handing holding your head. I sent you the app. Yeah. Okay. Then you were like, please send me books to read. Just make an excuse. So you're like, please send me books. So I sent you literally like a list of 20 books. Right. They're all great books. And all you have to do is put them. Yeah. I sent you a note, like a shared note.

All you have to do now is put one onto the thing and listen to it. It can literally be three minutes on your car ride home. It's at least you've started. How hard is that? The barrier is that I haven't downloaded a book yet. Just download the book dude. I've never tried it. I don't know how to use the app. What would you tell me if I said like, Hey Peter, I know I asked you for my help and like losing weight and you told me to download the Lose It app. But I've done And I just kept telling you like, I just don't know how to press the button. can't like download Yeah, I don't know how to do it.

I have no excuse. It tells me you don't want to do it. I do want to do it, but you don't. Otherwise you would have. This is a weird thing. I genuinely, I don't believe I'm lying to you or myself. Like I genuinely want to do it. And I clearly haven't like clearly the work in my stupid head is too much of a barrier for me to actually do. Like downloading a book on. I know, I know it's super bad. They couldn't make it more easy than they're literally trying to sell you a product. They you press one button. It's like buying something on Amazon. Have you bought on anything on Amazon recently?

Gary Donia (02:09.202)
Oh, that's true. You have somebody else do it for you. true. Christina does. Yeah, I have no excuse. so what? they're even owned by Amazon. What book should I download today? All right. Well, let's, why don't you read off some books? I don't have the list in front of me. Okay. Actually, I just added one that I've actually never read. I saw that you edited it. I added one that says, is called Mastery. Okay, everybody. Gary's books for me that he thinks like I had, I asked him, just give me the top books that I should start with.

because it's gonna take me a long time. He says, the magic of thinking big, think and grow rich, how to fail at almost everything and still win big, grit, thinking in bets. I haven't heard that one. How to win friends and influence people, the seven habits of highly effective people, deep work, the infinite game, good to great, die with zero, let's go. I'm definitely doing that.

Leaders eat last the go giver meditations for mortals the inner game of tennis or mastery. So I heard I actually haven't read mastery yet. Okay, it's but it's by the same author wrote the 48 laws of power your freaking like devil voodoo. But I heard somebody talk about the other day said he said and it's somebody who I value their opinion that that book literally changed his life.

That was his quote. Mastery. And I was like, well, I clearly need to read it. Then I looked up like kind of what it was about or whatever. It's basically about what it sounds like. It's like, instead of being a generalist, like dive into like, and you've talked about how you enjoy like, well, this is how you view things you tend to focus really hard on like the one thing that you're trying to be. have like the one or two things that I work really hard at and everything else I know nothing about. was actually thinking about this this morning, not to get off topic. I want to get back to it. When I watch you interact with people, especially from like a sports perspective,

you have a lot that you can talk about that's relatable. And I'm just like sitting there and like, I, have nothing to relate to people. I just like, I was actually thinking in my head is like, many times have I told you you're unrelated? was, I was like, unless someone is interested in like really excelling at their health and fitness, just like, I'm a Renaissance man. I think I told you about this like back in high school when I, like when I had this friend who I thought was super funny and

Gary Donia (04:33.958)
He was also super smart. One of the smartest kids in my class. Yeah. in You have to tell me about this. That I remember thinking like, that's what I want to be because he could talk about anything to anybody and he could make it funny, but he could also sound smart. You know I mean? Like he, no matter who he interacted with, he was like, he was the guy in the room that everyone else wanted to talk to because you could, he made it easy for you, right? By knowing things about everything and also being able to make it funny. And I was like, I want to be that guy. So he became that guy?

he's probably still way better at it than me. I haven't talked to him in a long time, but I attempt, I try to be that guy. I like to know a lot of things about a lot of things because it allows me to do exactly that. Like in the field of work that we're in, we meet different people all of the time. I can talk to them about anything and I try to have some knowledge about anything. I mean, I had a whole, I had like a 30 minute conversation about Iran this morning with one of my clients and it wasn't like a political conversation. It was actually, I was telling her how I listened to a podcast yesterday.

where the guy, the guest on the podcast is an expert in the history of Iran. And what I loved about the podcast is he gave the history, going back to like the 60s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, just gave the history of Iran and sort of the political culture there and other cultures and other things that have happened that kind of led to present day. And it wasn't like a thing of like, yes or no, should we be, it wasn't any of that. It was simply, we were just discussing the history of like that particular country and the culture there and some of the things.

And it was a great conversation. We had a great conversation because she was also interested in that kind of thing. And so, yeah, I'd like to have you. It's not a it's not a you're just really hyper focused on the things that you really enjoy the most for you personally. The things that you enjoy the most personally are like family, like relationships, whatever. And you're really good at those things. And you don't really deviate outside of that because you don't think that you have time to or you don't want to. It's a time thing. It's time thing. You have to give time to me. I like to give time to, guess, more things in you.

broader from a learning perspective, broader learning. think that you honestly, so I think that you also learn faster than I do. And I think that you retain more. So then so then therefore you have a broader knowledge. I think that I like drill hard into a thing. And then that's my locus of understanding. I'm about to read a book called 1929. Why is 1929? Because you want to that's when the stock market crash was supposed to be a really, really good book by a guy that I really find interesting and super smart.

Gary Donia (06:59.654)
It's like 600 pages of like history, but I can't wait. It's going to be so great. Like I'm going to learn so much about that era. And I think when you learn about the past, it better helps you understand the present. Yeah, sure. Because the, you can see trends that are coming, maybe. Yeah. The trends repeat themselves and you can see the way people reacted to certain things in the past and it makes the, it makes the present and the future not so scary. Right. So for instance, like the way people reacted to the start of the internet is the same way people are reacting to the start of AI.

And when you can see the end of everything, it's the end of everything, but it's not right. It wasn't then. It's not now it's, it's, you know, sort of allows you to be those things become less sort of scary when you have some kind of reference to put on it and you're able to think back. Every generation is always a new thing. Yeah. Like you can connect it. Like we've talked before on other podcasts and just together about like raising kids in the day of like the telephones. Like when I was a kid, MTV was going to kill the youth.

The devil. didn't. Wasn't like the devil. was the devil. Everyone was afraid like, oh my God, this is so scandalous. And this is going to be the end. And then it was video games, right? And it still is video games to some degree, but we moved away from video games. Now it's social media. Every generation, a parent or somebody has somebody they want to blame for like their asshole kid who can't behave, right? Like it's somebody else's father or whatever. it's, and they're always worried that this is going to be the end. then they create like a whole kind of scene, right? So it's

By understanding the past, you can connect the dots to the present and the future and then also have some context to be like, well, wait a minute, I've seen this before and even if I didn't, the world has and this is what happened. I like that part of it. I think it gives me peace of mind in a world that's not peaceful, right? Yeah, I agree.

So if I were you, mean. So what book should I download? I'm on the search menu. So what I mean, what are you most interested in? I don't care. Do any of those resonate with you? I feel like I'll just go towards something that I like, which is stupid. I want to do something that. You should do something you like, otherwise you're not going to want to do it again. Fine, die with zero. Yeah, perfect. That is an amazing book. And it's not about like what it sounds like it's supposed to be about. It's not about throwing all your money away before you die so your kids get nothing.

Gary Donia (09:16.974)
It's the opposite of that. It's about enjoying it while you're alive. think earlier today, we were talking to your wife about buying a new truck and when you walked out of the room, she goes, well, things have changed. Because historically, you would have just wanted to like squirrel away like all of the money. now you're telling her, please do the thing that makes you happy, but be responsible. You're not just giving her a one. like Jesus Christ. It always comes off the predicate of like, just be responsible financially.

Yeah, let's make it. Yeah, but please enjoy yourself. like, you know, and she was like, she kind of looked like she looked at me, I looked at you. And she goes, I get the feeling you two are just screwing with me. I don't understand like what's happening. And I was like, Stace, I was like, genuinely just wants you to be happy. And yes, you guys are probably in a little bit different place financially, even when you met for sure. Like you guys have done worked really hard. And so he's backed off. I go also he spent a lot of time with me. And I've taught him how to calm down. Relax, relax. Yeah.

But anyway, we should probably get onto the show. So I downloaded it. What'd you get? I was zero. So that's there. So you'll start listening on the way home today. Today. And then have no excuse. I mean, if I don't, there's something wrong next week when we, there's definitely something wrong. yeah, something extra. Yeah. Next week when we, when we revisit it, I'll ask again, I'll ask you how the book was. You won't be done yet. How the first chapter. Yeah. And, set, we've, mean, we've, you do this with people all the time, right? What would you tell somebody that's starting a new health journey? You would tell them,

just start with a little bit. Don't bite off more than you can chew, so to speak, right? Like do one little thing that you, know, so don't think you have to finish this by today. It's like a couple minutes on the way home, a couple minutes on your drive back tomorrow, and then maybe you get into it and they're like, now you want to listen to it a little bit when you get home or at night or whatever. Like start small, your way into it. All right, so today we're going to talk about you. God, why? Just back off.

We just talked about you, we're gonna talk about you. Actually, I'm gonna use you as a, I need one of your fancy words right now, like a pretext or whatever. We're using you as an entry way. The preface. A preface, thank you, into a broader topic around the idea of peptides. Got it. So anybody who might be interested in health or longevity in particular, which is the thing now, everyone's kind of getting into longevity. It's all over social media, it's all over everywhere.

Gary Donia (11:40.946)
And one of the things that probably keeps coming up and up and up is peptides. like, just, just for an example, give me in a name of one peptide, just give me a name of like not like, give me the actual like business name. business, you know I mean? Like the no yum. the person who sells it. no, no, no. Like they call it something. actual peptide, the actual BPC one five seven. Okay. Like seriously, what the fuck? Yeah. Like these people couldn't figure out. That's pretty bad marketing. Like, you know, like imagine if I was Dempic was called BP one five. They would sell none of it.

Who would buy that? This is all the meatheads. We're like, go to BP, woodfights. But this is how I view it as a normal person. That wasn't the meatheads. That was like the nerd scientist that just came up with like... Like Huberman and like those guys? No. First of all, peptides. No, but like any seller of a product would come up with a better name than that. I think they like the That's why they call it the Wolverine Blank. We're going to get to that. Because the name of the episode I didn't tell you actually is called Peptides.

or placebo. sure. Dash. Let's ask the Wolverine. So we're to get to that. But I guess what I'm saying is because it has these weird letter number names, I think it makes it even more confusing. So people to understand, well, what the hell is it? Is it safe? Should I take it? What would I take it for? Like, what is all this? If it's going to make me live forever, what's the science behind it?

The reason I ask you is because like you've started to take one or two or three. I don't even know how many do you take in your cocktail? The cocktail was two. PPC 157 and TB 500, which is a very common. Those are my favorite too. love those. It's like TB 12. Yeah, those are the great, the greatest. take those and like seven more. Those are the most common one for like guys my age. Okay. So what I want to know, like, so let's start with just the story of

Like why? Like why were you taking it? And then let's get into some of the other stuff like, okay, what do we know about them? Right? Like, do we know are they safe? Not much. Right? Do we know if they're safe? Do we know if they work? Do we know if whatever? And then we'll come back to you and get your experience of, has it helped? Yeah. Right. so let's just start like, well, why are you taking it? Like, why did you decide to do this? Yeah. So it's on, it's in the healthosphere.

Gary Donia (14:07.514)
Right? Like you had said, I think you made that word up. Definitely made that up. It's in that, it's not like longevity, like, you know, healthcare space. It's not standard medicine, right? It's kind of in that like, you know, underground supplement type of thing. It's not quite FDA approved, right? So there are companies figure out how to sell it. A client of ours, anything that's not FDA approved is for me. I'm a big fan of, yeah. You know, I won't even eat.

meat that isn't like gone through governmental protocols. want like arsenic thrown on there just because it's been a pretty good time. I want my meat bleached or I'm not eating it. I want mine mooing in the woods. Yeah, I'm the opposite. want for some reason the government oversight, even though I know it shouldn't, gives me like peace of mind. Yeah, because probably from a young age you thought, this has been like stamp of approval. Yeah, they told me it was fine. It was a food pyramid. Food pyramid was like eat lots of carbs. was like, okay.

eat lots of cereal. So, okay, so go ahead. So it's a client of ours had just mentioned, it was literally an offhanded thing. Like, Hey, I'm interested. Do you anything about peptides? And I was like, no. And he's like, well, I'm interested. have this number. I'm interested. Okay. I'm like, why don't I do a little research? Number of like a person like that was sorry. So a number of a person that works at a local company that's selling peptides, whatever. And so I just told him I would do a little research for him as we tend to do with our clients. Right.

But we generally won't recommend anything unless we've done it ourselves. Exactly. So for me, you know, I love to be a human pincushion. Experiment of one. So I contacted, I a very peripheral search. I mainly wanted to know, is this thing going to hurt me? Is there going to be side effects? Yeah. And so like at the dosages at which they're recommended is essentially like no side effects for these two particular ones. And so I was like, okay, fine. So

I guess I'll just give it a go. did you have like a underlying reason why you like for instance, like, yes, they're meant for something, right? They can be meant for like tissue healing or something like that. So you were monitoring. Yeah. So these two in particular, like are meant for tissue healing, recovery, repair, improve, like gut repair, gut health, stuff like that. Yeah. I had just, I was thinking through, was like, what do I really have? Well, I had this like plantar fasciitis on my left foot that had been just kind of brewing for a while. yeah. I know all about that. Yeah.

Gary Donia (16:30.226)
It's on the tail end. mean, Jesus Christ, I've been doing this for like a year. Yeah. Yeah. So was like, it was on the tail end. was like, okay, let's see if this can like have an effect on that. Okay. Um, and then just, had a little ongoing thing in my shoulder. It was whatever, but it was just like one of those. I had two things. was like, let me monitor that. soft tissue-y things. So that was going to be your, like your- My experiment. How you were going to see if you've noticed any kind of like result. So we'll come back to sort of the results. Okay. Like what the hell is a peptide?

Like, you know what mean? Like, I think most people probably don't even know what this thing is. They just hear it. Yeah, sorry. a protein that your body produces. I mean, it's similar to hormones in that it's a signaling agent. It tells your body what to do. And so in particular... Is it like a, is it below the level of a protein? Do you know what mean in the sense like, does it turn into like a, a amino acid turns into I think a peptide is literally a protein. It's an actual protein. I think so. I'm not an expert on this. Like at all. Yeah.

It's not like I am with hormones. It feels like you should have been before you started pumping it into your Yeah, sure. I wanted to know if it was going to hurt me. Nope, it didn't. So, it's a signaling agent. So, tells the body what to do. We produce them naturally, right? Much like we do hormones, right? So, much like with testosterone, much like with estrogen, our bodies produce these hormones. If you give it to them, then they will do more of the thing that it's supposed to do in your body, right? So, much is true with these peptides.

They're like the underlying signaling agents that tell yourselves what to do. And so in particular, these ones are aided in vascularization. So they help the body create more vessels, right? That supply blood to an area, especially blood to the area of a perceived injury. And so we know as physical therapists that soft tissue injuries, especially like fascial or tendon or ligament related are hard to heal because they have very poor blood flow. So the idea with stuff like this is as you get older, if you have these chronic long-term irritations,

if you can revascularize the site that is trying to heal, then you can kind of get that last kind of repair process going on. Right. And pretty much everything we do in the world of physical therapy when it comes to tissue healing is trying to do that. So whether it's like massage, even exercise to some degree, stretching, ultrasound, shockwave, dry needling, you name the thing, it's all kind of working under the same premise. So I looked it up real quick.

Gary Donia (18:50.514)
so we wouldn't sound like morons. We should probably do that. So peptides are short chains of two to 50 amino acids linked by peptide bonds serving as fundamental building blocks for proteins and acting as a signaling molecule in the body. That all sounds super fancy. It's like a form of, yeah, it's amino acids. Yeah, so I was wrong. So they're not fully formed. So they turn into a protein. It's a step between amino acids and a protein, right?

and they regulate essential biological processes including hormone release, immune function, muscle growth, and skin collagen production, et cetera, et cetera. So people are using this for all kinds of stuff, right? And you're using Yeah, so that was a broad concept. So there's many different types. This was a two, so I took two of them, and they were promoting essentially the broad umbrella of healing. Right.

You know what happens with this kind of stuff? happens is, something like this, because it's not FDA approved and because it's new and because everyone's talking about it, especially popular names in longevity, like people like Peter Attia or Andrew Huberman or something, and I haven't listened to all their stuff, but I know that they probably have. Mr. Rogan. Yeah, Joe Rogan. People start to talk about it. It becomes this thing that a lot of rich people start to do.

Right, get on these like really big cocktails, because they can be expensive, right? Like a peptide, what is a normal course of peptides Yeah, none of them are based on insurance, and so, yeah, so it cost me 300. 300 for For like six weeks. So six weeks, right? And so that's just, many people are taking like multiple versions God, yeah, like dear Lord, like I went on the minimal, like what is the thing that I can just try that doesn't have side effects, that's not gonna cost a fortune?

And different peptides cost different amounts of money. And this is a very normal one. So you could easily go down to rabbit holes, spend thousands of dollars every month. so I think there's even one guy who's basically trying to live forever if you're who that guy is. His name is Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson. think he's big into this stuff. So he sold PayPal. Not sold PayPal, I'm sorry. He sold a company, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And he basically does experiments on himself, but in a very scientifically rigorous way where he is the experiment.

Gary Donia (21:02.866)
where he's monitoring essentially his biological aging. Yeah. And his peptide is one of the things that he's been so big. So he's spending a ton of money on this. So I think what happens then all the wealthy people start to do it, right? And then because they're doing it, then the common folk are like, well, wait a minute, are these rich people going to live forever? Why don't I get any of that? And then we start to get interested in it, we try to figure out what's going on. filters down, it costs less and less and Yeah, the more people do it and whatever.

So generally speaking, when you were asking about like, it safe? What was the answer that you got? Yeah, I just got like basically with these two in particular, there's no side effects at this dose. Like at the normal dose that I was put on, there's just no, there's no known. And have you noticed anything? Like you've had zero side effects. no, yeah, nothing negative. Is it injected? Uh-huh. Yeah. It's into like. Is it the only way to get them? It's subcutaneous, yeah. Okay.

subcutaneous mean just under the skin. Sorry, yeah, into the skin. Not into the muscle. Right. And prior, I assume knowing you the way I know you, I'm guessing you did some research on this like beforehand in terms of like, efficacy. So selling like, does it like actually work to do the same? The stuff that does? So what did you learn from the research? is part of the problem is there actually any that says like, it heals tissue? Yeah, so so because of because of the revascularization effects, so legit does that.

It literally signals the body to create more vessels and blood flow to these areas of injury. Yeah. So yeah, then you just have like rates of healing that are better. And we know as physical therapists that as you get older, the body tends to get worse at healing. And this is part of it, right? Yeah. Your body doesn't do as good of a job of revascularization. Right. And so if you can maybe do it like you did when you were 25, you tend to heal a little faster. So it's not preventing you to get from getting hurt. It's maybe it's just like,

helping you heal faster than what you do naturally. In your 40s and 50s and so on. Is this something that you think you are now having done it, and we're gonna talk a little bit about your experience, but just in general, is there something that you think you might recommend to other clients?

Gary Donia (23:10.738)
or TBD. Yeah, it's one of these things where I had no side effects. I also don't know that it did anything. I'm a big skeptic. Do I technically have less pain in my foot? Don't jump to gun. Don't reveal. have something on this. I may or may not. I have something on this. Just in general, your initial thoughts. Yes, maybe then this question might be a little too early because... You're telling me how to do my job? Yes.

Because I guess I'm not 100 % sure. let's come back to that question. I heard you say something the other day, which is what brought up this episode. And I'm not like putting you into either one of these categories. Okay. Right. I'm just genuinely curious, like what you think. So you went for a five mile run over the weekend with your friend. Okay. Correct. Yeah. You made this statement in the gym the other day. I did. Okay. ran five miles.

it's like the fastest or something that you've ever you've done it was like 830 730 it was the fastest this season this season yes okay my feet have never felt that like never haven't felt this good or something you said something about my feet and I know you're referring to your planar fascia they didn't hurt it's the first time that my feet didn't hurt after a run after a right like I can wear these shoes you're wearing like your nike's or something and you're trying to get rid of your brooks that you know for whatever reason that's not

point of the show, but like, I'm just like, you're trying to go back to the Nikes and my feet don't hurt today. And I heard it from across the gym. And I go, here we go. But Mr. Peptide, I didn't talk about it. You didn't say anything about it. But I knew, I knew in my head, I was like, Mr. Peptide is attaching his peptides to the fact that his feet don't hurt. And maybe it's true. And so what I want to know genuinely is after having done it, and I'm giving you a hard time, like I always do, I don't know the answer and I don't

and I know you well enough and trust you enough to know that you would be smart enough to be skeptical around the placebo effect. So and placebo doesn't mean you're faking it. Placebo just generally means something feels better because of some sort of intervention, whether it was like a real intervention or not. doesn't matter. be a sugar pill. It could be anything. like if you then felt better after you took the sugar pill. Correct. Well, it didn't have a mechanistic change on the tissue to help it feel better. So technically that's a placebo effect. Yeah.

Gary Donia (25:28.274)
but you still felt better. Correct. And that's all that matters. That's all that matters. And that's all that matters. What's the outcome? That's the most important thing. I sometimes people attach placebo to faker. Like that person is like faking it. Placebo comes with a very negative word. It's a very negative connotation. So you've been doing it for how long? So it was like two months, so eight weeks. Okay. So eight weeks later, what have you noticed? So you had no side effects, which is great. Have you noticed any improvements in either your foot or your shoulder and then to what degree and how much do you think is this?

the peptides versus just normal healing. So the foot is definitely better. I don't have any pain in my shoulder. I also know that my foot was getting better. Yeah. And it was, this was on the very tail end and it was progressively, albeit very slowly improving over time. you never really know. really able to run like without pain. Yeah. was. Yeah. So I was running. Yeah. Right.

and then I would like limp around for like a day afterwards. Sometimes you would come in like really bad. Yes, so technically again, my foot has never felt better. Since being injured. Since being injured. Like a year ago for Christ sakes and my shoulder definitely feels better. I'm just always highly skeptical. Just because I had an intervention doesn't mean that that was the thing. I know that it definitely causes the effects that I've told you about.

So it's plausible for sure that it had an effect. And also because just the passage of time, I was getting better anyways. So it's probably a combination of both. And this is like probably a, well, if I have the question, other people probably have the question. They're not injected like into the area that you're injured, correct? No, so I it right into my stomach. So it's literally, the protocol is super simple. I just go one side of my stomach the next day, the other side of my stomach.

and then I just go back. So it's a systemic thing, so theoretically it would have effect on all tissues in your body. It happens everywhere. It's not a targeted corticosteroid where you put it at the site of injury. You put it in the body and it gets into the blood and it gets everywhere just like you would an ibuprofen. So your shoulder's feeling better and your foot's feeling better.

Gary Donia (27:41.49)
What about the rest of your body? Have you noticed anything else? It's general, let's just say like aches and pains. Like we're both getting a little older. know, we've talked in the beginning how we both stood up and like, yeah, like whatever. Have you generally noticed like anything else? Or have you noticed like, you sleeping better? Are you doing as anything say I feel great. Like physically, like physically speaking, I feel great. In fact, when I, when I better than before starting the peptides, when I go for runs down the hall, I often run down the hall. There is, it feels more athletic. Like,

because like right away I'm not warmed up. does not look athletic at all. It looks smoother. feels smoother, right? There's not like little giddy up get going. little bit of thing, right? And so like that's because of less pain. What about, have you done anything athletic outside of here? You know, like you often will play a pickleball or something. that's right. You play pickleball. That another thing actually. that was part of the reason why I said that is because Sunday night, so.

Not only did I go for a five mile run the fastest I ever did Sunday Yeah, I then played pickleball with one of our clients for two hours Yeah in my like flat shoes like in my like not supportive shoes and I felt great the next morning Hmm, so that's that's something that was the first time I done that in a long long time like like done an athletic like Running back and forth as I tell all of my clients

I don't care what makes you feel better. As long as you feel better. Yeah, and it felt great. Right? So some people we have, go to chiropractors. Some people go to get acupuncture. Some people do peptides. Like I don't really give a shit. If it works for you, like awesome, like let it work. Right? And if it's something that I feel can help my client, like for instance, we're going to be trialing shockwave at our clinic tomorrow. And you know, I have my thoughts, my general, I'm generally a skeptic like you, like around all things. I know there's some good, some okay research around it.

Right? Because there's a lot of snake oil, dude. People are just trying to sell you shit too. Like we're going to run our own internal study on it. Right? And then we're going to make our own determination. But in general, even if it doesn't do anything at all, like 10 people that we tried on tell me it helps them and they feel better.

Gary Donia (29:45.926)
Awesome. We're getting it. Like you know what I mean? because they and we won't even know if it's not doing anything. I mean, it does a thing. We know that it mechanistically does a thing. but we don't know if it's doing the thing that it says it's we're not going to have like blood samples or any of that. Sure. No, it's just anecdotal evidence. Are they getting better or not based upon their report? And that's all that matters in the end. And so, okay, another question. So this your cocktail was called the Wolverine, which is super obnoxious. Super lame.

You are you're already super hairy like a little bit. This made it worse. Did it make it? I was going to say that's not good. I have any effect like on your skin. I know you've been paying a lot of attention to like skin care. Oh, that's interesting. Have you noticed anything with that? I mean, I haven't just like I don't study your skin. I know you you more. think it actually has collagen increasing effects, like at least the blend that I was on. Yeah. And I am slightly more plump.

Oh good. Have you, are you planning to do another, like do you, how does this work? Like, do you go on it forever? Do you, do you just do it first? Like a, I don't know, call it a cycle. Cause that makes it sound like steroids, but you know, like do you do it? You actually go on it like a cycle. And the reason why is because your body produces these peptides and much like your body produces hormones. We're going to use the opposite right now. If you give exogenous hormones or peptides, which means outside the body from a vile. Lots of words. So if you give yourself. Okay.

a thing that your body already makes, you have this down regulating effect that your body will stop making the thing because it senses that you have it, right? So if you never go off of a peptide blend, then your body will stop regulating it. And then if you go off, you're kind of out. Okay. So so the way that this works is, or to answer your question, am I going on it again? Yeah. The way that this protocol works is you essentially have the loading dose, which I completed in six weeks. And then you have a maintenance dose that you go on that is like a very low level.

amount for I think three months. And then you completely cycle off. And then you allow your body to reset its ability to build those peptides. And then what happens is, is because you've done it over this like five month period, you've had quite a bit of like a revascularization effect in some of these areas. And so your body still benefits even if you're not on the peptide. Because

Gary Donia (32:02.13)
your vessels aren't going to just go away. They don't just retract, right? The new vessels that you built into your body that bring blood flow are still going to be there and are actively helping you. So the idea is that if you can build up this like resupply of blood vessels to these areas, you cycle off, you look at your body, you resupply its own peptides, and then you can like recycle back on it's like after like, I don't know, to be honest with you, like another three to six months. And so that's where I'm at in the phase. so I think so- to pay each month.

Like you're paying like not each month, but each time that do it. So I paid one like $300 payment. Yeah. And then the next one will be the same. Yeah. And then that will like, that will be like a cruise dose for the next. let's just say for you, if you were going to continue this over the course of a year, what would the total out of 1200 probably the year, it's not horrible if it makes you feel better. If it makes you, so that's under the, of course, of course, like dear Lord, if it makes you feel better and it makes you more athletic, I mean,

It's interesting. We'll see. mean, I'm in a very, the beginning phase of this, but I got like a little meniscus thing going on. I see what this podcast was for. Let me take out my supply right now. think you can help help me out? But do you think, so I don't know again, I haven't looked into the research myself. Do you think, so, so meniscus injuries historically heal slowly because of poor blood supply. it's different than soft tissue because soft tissue is

directly vascularized. Yeah, it's interesting. It's a good question. Do you think something like this or do you have any insight into whether it can help with things or for people that might have either like a bone like arthritis or cartilage, you know, non-soft like I guess are technically some version of soft tissue, but you know what I mean? Like things that are like that your typical soft tissue. I do not have insight on that. I can tell you we're going to find out right after we're done talking. Yeah, I'd be curious because I, you know, I'd be open to that.

to try and that if it could help like this thing go away a little quicker. It's getting better. your foot was getting better. It's just getting better at like a slower rate than I would like. But I also have plenty of clients who it's the same thing. It's like, okay, like I'm getting better. Everything's going fine. But like I wish this would just go faster. Like a typical human in today's world. so that's how it's described is it's supposed to aid in healing and recovery. So this blend in particular is used by a lot of athletes.

Gary Donia (34:24.22)
to recover from surgery or just like from like if people get a surgery to just aid the process of recovery, like you recover quicker because that healing process happens at a greater rate. This is a normal thing in which people use it for sure. Okay, so for you, is it peptides or placebo? I'm gonna go with it's peptides.

and my body was getting better anyways. So I don't think it's like purely like this magic, like, yes, I'm better because I did a thing, but I think it had a benefit for sure. So there's enough there to, there's enough there to have some credence to it, to, give it another experiment. then just before we wrap up, then going back to the question I said, like, would you recommend it to a client? I think we decided to save that for later. It's kind of like the creatine argument, meaning like creatine doesn't really have,

I would not recommend peptides in general because I don't know enough about them, but I would recommend this blend based upon my experience in my initial research of it that I think it did a good enough job with no side effects that if they wanted to try it to help heal something that's been nagging them, I think that's probably a good idea. right. And I just have one more question just for the sake of the people that are listening that maybe are thinking like, I want to try this. Where does one go?

to get peptides? Because don't think you just show up at your primary care and say, please give me some peptides. Or do you? Like, I don't know. No, no. So you often go to these like health and wellness places like, so for instance, a functional health doctor, functional health doctor, you also have like, literal like peptide clinics popping up, you have to make sure that you like vet these places, because you don't want to make sure that they're not like getting them off the black market and so on and so forth. Because I'm an FDA regulated, right? It's kind of like the last year, like what is the vetting process? Like, what kind of degree do they have?

I guess you ask them where they get their sources. Usually it's like a nurse practitioner or a doctor that's prescribing it or something where should they be getting it from? Like some reputable lab or something? Yeah, so like a compounding pharmacy. Compounding, yeah. Something like that. So if you have questions to ask, where do you get this from? And then it's like, so it's like often like places are associated with like aesthetics. It's something, you know, like the skincare, hormone health, med spas, stuff like that.

Gary Donia (36:33.202)
So there's like a couple of places locally that you can get that are pretty reputable so well local to us We have an international audience. Oh, excuse me. Yes. Yes, Northeast, Massachusetts Many millions of people listening all around the world. That's true. Excuse me. don't to be too hyper local. Yeah Okay. So all right. Perfect. That's great information. Thank you for sharing and I think that's it. I'm gonna see ya