Biohacks
Carnosine – Miracle Supplement?
Wondering what the hype is about Carnosine? Should you be taking it?
Peak Human is unfettered innovation. That value is based on our lifelong belief in continuous learning. Dr. Sanjeev Goel has spent decades acquiring knowledge from the front edge of medical innovation and now shares his insights with you.
Welcome to the Learning Center.
Wondering what the hype is about Carnosine? Should you be taking it?
Many of you have heard about celebrity athletes using the latest cutting edge treatments to heal from injuries and recover quicker. You might be wondering what they are getting and does it work? Now many of those treatments are now available to you. One such treatment is PRP (platelet rich plasma). It is gaining a lot of popularity with everything from healing sports and overuse injuries to helping with hair rejuvenation for make pattern baldness. So what exactly is PRP? PRP treatment involves taking the your blood and spinning it down such that the platelet rich plasma is extracted. Then that is injected or applied to the area that we want to treat. Sounds quite simple doesn’t it? So I’m sure you are wondering if it was so effective why isn’t it being recommended and offered by all doctors? There are a few reasons for this: The results from the studies on the effectiveness of PRP are mixed. More on this in a future blog post. This is likely related to the fact that there may be individual factors that make you more likely to respond to a PRP treatment. At this moment we don’t know what those factors are, but you can improve your chances of the treatment working for you because ALL PRP is NOT THE SAME. Here are some questions you may wish to ask your medical doctor: 1. How comfortable are they with injecting the area you want the PRP to get into? Whether you’re getting PRP injected into your knee, shoulder or onto your scalp make sure the practitioner knows how to do the procedure and has done it in the past. 2. Are they using any method to activate the PRP so it is more effective? Depending on the tube the PRP is collected in and how it is extracted this will determine how effective the PRP is. Are PEAK PRP Protocols include specific things that we do to activate the platelets so that they are ready to perform their action of healing in the body. 3. Are they using any specialty system that ensures that the plasma drawn up is platelet rich and not platelet poor? Depending on the tube that’s being used the layer of serum that is separated may be platelet rich or platelet poor. be sure to inquire that the clinic is actually withdrawing platelet rich plasma for your treatment. 4. Are they recommending or providing any other adjunct treatment such as specific peptides or stem cells to enhance the effect of the PRP? PRP is just one method of activating cells in the body. At Peak we implement other modalities to make the PRP treatment much more effective. To learn more or work with us to get you to Peak 100x now – fill out our quick new client intake form. Contact us for a consult on how PRP can help you.
“Fasting while Eating” would seem to be an oxymoron and until recently I wasn’t aware that this is an ACTUAL thing. BUT IT IS… The health benefits of Fasting are well established in the scientific community (and will be reviewed in future posts here). Even with such a preponderance of evidence, doctors have been leery of advising fasting because of the concern that adherence to this practices are quite difficult – many people do feel weak, tired, have headaches and could run the risk of malnutrition or electrolyte disturbances. There are many different times of fasts: Time restricted Feeding – abstaining from food from 8-16 hours per day. Intermittent Fasting – abstaining from food for 16 hours to 2 days. Periodic Fasting – abstaining from food for greater than 2 days to 21 days. Fasting Mimicking Diets – eating a diet that mimicks a fasting state for 5 days. Let’s skip right down to the 4th type – the Fasting Mimicking Diet. Researchers led by Dr Valter Longo have devised a 5 day meal program what they claim provides all the health benefits of a 5 day fast but allows the participant to consume about 750 – 1000 kcal per day. The FMD diet being sold by Prolon has some good research behind it. In a nutshell, the research study published in Science Translational Medicine (randomized and prospective crossover case control groups ) showed that participants that completed 5 days per month x 3 months (total 3 – 5 day fasts) of the Prolon fasting mimicking diet had lost fat, preserved lean body mass and their all their metabolic biomarkers improved (lipid, insulin growth factor 1, glycemic). Furthermore, fat that was lost was primarily visceral (around organs) and abdominal and the good thing was that lean body mass was preserved. This seems obvious – eating less food will result in weight loss – the good news from the studies was that the weight lost was primarily fat not protein (muscle). But there really is one other big benefit that appeared in a study conducted with mice. Researchers noted that their was a decrease in the size of their livers during the study which rapidly grew back again once the fast ended. What appears to be happening is that the lowering of Insulin Growth Factor – 1 (IGF-1) allowing the cells to renew themselves – getting younger in the process. It appears that fasting kicks the body into a state of rejuvenation by activating our stem cells. This is probably the mechanism behind why caloric restriction extends lifespan is all animals from the fruit fly to humans. Faced with a scarcity of resources the body continues to remain youthful and not age BUT once we expose our bodies to an abundance of food and are past our optimum fertile stage of life (40+) the cells of the body send a signal to begin the decline that we notice as aging. That’s a much longer discussion for another day… The Peak Human Labs team has now had over 20 people go onto our Peak Human Fasting Support Program that includes the Prolon FMD kit. All of our participants have lost fat (about 2 lbs per cycle) and everyone has noticed feeling more energetic after the 5 day program. To learn more, I recommend reading “the complete guide to Fasting” by Dr. Jason Fung with Jimmy Moore. Send us a message if this article helped you (bepeak@peakhumanlabs.com) and I’ll arrange to get a copy of the book shipped out to you. June 30th – the Peak Human team is now signing up the first 50 people to join us on our next Peak Human Fasting Program that starts this month. Be Peak Now..
To be honest I was a bit sceptical when I first heard the idea about using blue light blocking glasses to improve sleep. I was reading the latest book by the BulletProof guru, Dave Asprey and his explanation for why this is a critical biohack that he uses in his life. Then last year, during the Toronto Biohacker Summit that I hosted with the Biohacker Summit folks from Europe I met a bunch of other educated people who were sporting these yellow/orange tinged glasses in the evening!?!?? Sunglasses at night? I wondered if it was the “cool” factor. So the premise of the health benefits of blue light blocking glasses is that blue light sends a signal to your brain through receptors in your retina. That blue light tells your brain that it is daylight so exposing your eyes to blue light in the evening will suppress melatonin secretion by your pineal gland. Melatonin is the hormone that is released by the pineal gland in the brain in the evening to prepare your brain for sleep. So do these glasses work? In my experience and those who have tried them – all of them have noticed that they find it easier to fall asleep. Whether this translates into a deeper and longer sleep – that’s an interesting question that I am testing with the use of an Oura Ring that I just ordered. I’ll keep you updated on my “experiments with truth” on this topic. If you want to experiment with me on how these glasses improve your sleep – send me a quick note to bepeak@peakhumanlabs.com and I’ll arrange to get a pair out to you.
You may have seen a bunch of websites on the internet promoting a category of supplements called “SARMs” that profess to help you build muscle and lose fat rapidly. In the gym, it is commonplace to hear about people using these performance enhancers in place of the traditional substances such as anabolic steroids and growth hormone. They do work when used properly but can still pose a risk if not monitored or dosed safely. Before we discuss these new compounds, let’s talk about Growth Hormone – which has been used ubiquitously in bodybuilding and anti aging medicine circles up until 5 years ago. Chronic use of growth hormone eventually leads to tolerance and unwanted side effects due the prolonged stimulation of the cells of the body. Likely prolonged overuse – could cause your own growth hormone production to down regulate the receptors in the body to become irreversibly less sensitive. So there are problems…. So what about these new compounds? One of these supplements is called MK-677. It is a peptide that are known as Growth Hormone Releasing Peptides (GHRP). GHRPs stimulate specific receptors of the cell of the pituitary gland to cause the cell to release Growth Hormone. Research has shown that this increases fat loss and muscle gain. Generally, the use of GHRPs are much safer than using Growth Hormone. But MK-677 still carries some risks – it is quite effective in increasing your own growth hormone release. But prolonged use can permanently down regulate the receptor on the cell making them less sensitive to your body’s endogenous Ghrelin (your body’s version of GHRP) production. So if you are taking MK-677 – it is best to only take it for a few months at a time before cycling off it. The other issue to be aware of is that many of these compounds available on the internet may have contaminants or may not actually contain what’s advertised. Buyer Beware. Consult with a trained doctor in the use of peptides before you use these types of compounds. If you are using Growth Hormone and want to come off it – you have options to do this and move onto a safer method while still getting benefits.
Are you in Peak Sex condition? Listen to Peak X Labs Podcast where Dr. Sanjeev Goel talks with Celebrity Matchmaker Carmelia Ray about what options are available to be at the top of your game in the bedroom. What is the causes of Erectile Dysfunction? What about low libido in men and in woman? What type of testing can be done and are any treatments effective? All this and more (including enhancing the size of the penis) are discussed candidly.
I’m sure you’ve wondered and heard from others about whether DNA/Genetic testing is worth it? Will it provide you with information that you can act upon? If not, is it even worth it? I felt the same way for some time until I had a chance to look at the more advanced DNA testing that is available today. Firstly, with regards to whether you would want to know if you are at higher risk of say Alzheimer’s Disease if you can’t do anything about it. That’s changing… We don’t think anymore that these are illnesses which we can’t prevent or at least delay with lifestyle and medical treatments. So there may be benefit now, even knowing about those illnesses which seemed better to not know about in the past. The second big argument against DNA testing has been about whether it really is accurate. Critics have pointed out (rightly I believe) that in most cases a singular gene variation doesn’t provide the full picture of your risk to get that disease. For example, for a complex disease like Diabetes – there are likely many genes that interact to determine your risk for it. So, with many common tests (like 23andMe for example) you may given a high risk for Diabetes based on a particular gene variation that you have but unless you check for all the major genes that impact that illness, it is difficult to get an accurate picture of your risk. Which brings me to where DNA testing is going now. Some of the more advanced DNA tests should be more accurately labelled “Functional Genomic tests” as they look at a bunch of genes and how they work together in a person. This gives a much more accurate picture of what is happening in your body. It also tells how how we can intervene to change gene expression or act on the proteins that the genes create (epigenetics) in order to change their function. There are a number of Functional Genomics tests are there but I really like “the DNA company” test. Use the code “SGTEST” to get a discount. When we get your result – I’ll go over it with you. If you are interested in watching me get my functional genomic results from Dr Mansoor (from the DNA company), please click play.
