The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
121. Dr. Matt Cook: Reversing Age with Peptides, Stem Cells & Gene Therapy
Tue, 10 Dec 2024
From expedition doctor dreams to pioneering gene therapies in Silicon Valley, one physician’s radical approach is rewriting the rules of human optimization. In this interview with Dr. Matt Cook, a former anesthesiologist turned functional medicine pioneer, we uncover the revolutionary treatment pyramid that’s transforming how we approach longevity, from daily biohacking routines to stem cells and gene therapies. Could his three-tier approach be the key to extending not just lifespan, but health span? Watch to find out why some of the world’s top health experts are calling this the future of medicine! Connect with Dr. Matt Cook: Website: https://bit.ly/4g5zbW4 Instagram: https://bit.ly/3D4hDer Facebook: https://bit.ly/3BxtAIV 00:00 Intro of Show 02:33 Dr. Matt Cook’s Journey from Anesthesiology to Functional Medicine 09:22 How to Be in Your Most Optimal State 15:09 Peptides as Treatment for the Immune System 21:10 Peptides on People with ADD/ADHD 24:19 Types of Peptides and Their Functions 26:30 Peptides for Cognitive Function 30:53 Stem Cells and Exosomes Benefits 37:06 Are Gene Therapies Safe and Beneficial? 43:50 Connect with Dr. Matt Cook 45:21 Final Question: What does it mean to you to be an “Ultimate Human?” GET GARY’S WEEKLY TIPS ON HEALTH AND LIFESTYLE OPTIMIZATION: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E BODY HEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF YOUR ORDER: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - 91 ESSENTIAL MINERALS PER PINCH! 10% OFF USE CODE "ULTIMATE10": https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa ELEVATE YOUR WORKOUTS WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN STRENGTH TRAINING EQUIPMENT: https://bit.ly/3zYwtSl THE COLD LIFE - BOOST RECOVERY & WELL-BEING WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST $50+ ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y PARKER PASTURES - GET PREMIUM GRASS-FED MEATS TODAY: https://bit.ly/4hHcbhc SHOP GARY’S TOP-RATED PRODUCTS & EXCLUSIVE DEALS: https://theultimatehuman.com/amazon-recs Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Connect with Gary Brecka: Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 SUBSCRIBE TO: https://www.youtube.com/@ultimatehumanpodcast https://www.youtube.com/@garybrecka Download the “Ultimate Human Podcast” on all your favorite podcast platforms: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What inspired Dr. Matt Cook's transition from anesthesiology to functional medicine?
The most impactful peptides are this category of peptides that are immune peptides that tend to stimulate or regulate the immune system. Wow.
You think even more so than growth hormone peptides and healing peptides, these are the most impactful.
We're designing peptides as a strategy that will address every organ system.
What does a journey like that look like from whatever state that I'm in now to where I'm really optimized and setting myself up to live a life of longevity, anti-aging?
You've got to pick the low-hanging fruit and you've got to start with...
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Brekka, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. And we are very, very blessed to have a good friend of mine.
He's somewhat of a mentor to me, probably a mentor to a lot of physicians in the functional medicine space, an anesthesiologist that became a functional medicine icon. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Cook. Thank you so much.
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Chapter 2: How can we achieve our most optimal health state?
I'm delighted to be here and even more delighted to hang out with you.
Yeah. Yeah. We had a great morning. We did our functional medicine morning. We did the biohacking morning. We did breath work this morning. You showed me some really cool new techniques too for actually creating. Before we did red light, we did red light, steam and sauna, cold plunge, breath work, and breathing.
And after the breath work, you showed me a really cool technique for creating a vacuum in your thoracic and abdominal cavities to actually help drain the lymph, which I want to talk about at some point during the podcast, because I love to give people these tips that they can use that cost absolutely nothing, but could have a profound impact on the trajectory of their life.
For my guests that don't know you, I mean, you're a medical doctor, but you started your career as an anesthesiologist. Can you talk a little bit about your journey from anesthesiologist to functional medicine practitioner? Because I don't think anybody ever starts out in functional medicine.
Right. Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. Yeah.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What role do peptides play in treating the immune system?
So I... I thought I was going to be an expedition doctor and go on big journeys. And I needed to be in a field where I could take six months off and go to Everest. Wow. And so I went into anesthesia and started doing that with the idea that I could be in a real technical with a lot of physiology. So I was really interested in physiology in medical school. And so it was... doing that.
And I got really lucky that the year that I got out of my residency was the year that ultrasound basically came onto the market where we had portable ultrasounds that we could use. You're really dating yourself with that. You're around for the invention of... That was born in 1842. But that's why I'm an anti-aging doctor.
They didn't even have television back then.
It was like horse and buggy.
But...
And so then when I was in my residency, we basically would use a nerve stimulator and we would use landmarks to know where a nerve was. And then we would go and then we would touch the nerve, which would sometimes hurt a little bit, but then the person would be twitching. And we would turn the stimulator down to know that we weren't in the middle of the nerve.
and then put numbing medicine around those nerves. And so basically, I was doing nerve blocks, running surgery centers, and doing basically surgery for sports medicine. But I started to realize surgery was not the panacea for healing athletes that we thought it was. And so then I began to get skeptical. And so almost right away, I started becoming a functional medicine doctor. Wow.
And so I studied Qigong and Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and got board certified in functional and integrative medicine. And so I was on this kind of 12-year journey of a little bit of a schizophrenic life of living like this super straight Western medicine injection job and then kind of an alternative. And so I would work in the mornings.
uh in the surgery center in the afternoons and then um in the afternoons you were more western medicine qigong ayurveda exactly these are some of the oldest medicines in the world i think ayurvedic medicine is the oldest form of medicine in the world and super super advanced super advanced stuff and so then um and then what happened about halfway through uh i came home and one day barb goes oh guess what i found out what you're going to do for the rest of your life
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Chapter 4: How effective are peptides for cognitive function?
Exactly.
That sounds like something my wife would do to me. And I try to sell it as like a pause. I bought you a three-day vacation by yourself.
So, and when I got, I showed up, I had already been doing ultrasound-guided injection basically all day for the last... Because what my old job was, I would put the brachial plexus, which is all the nerves that go to your arm asleep, and then we would do shoulder arthroscopy, but we wouldn't have to put the person to sleep. Ah, okay.
And so then when we found out that there were other things, next thing you know, we're putting dextrose, followed by PRP, followed by peptides, stem cells, exosomes, and all of the regenerative things that we now inject around nerves. Right. And then as soon as we started doing that, then all of a sudden the awareness sort of came out of regenerative medicine.
Chapter 5: What are the benefits of stem cells and exosomes?
So we started injecting ligaments, tendons, fascia, nerves, and joints. Wow.
And what were you injecting them with at that time?
So at the very beginning, we were doing the injections with PRP. And what PRP is, is if you do a blood draw and you take and you isolate platelets in the blood and then those platelets, you can concentrate them and inject and they've got a lot of growth factors. Right. Eventually then we started to move up the ladder of regenerative medicine to better and better products.
And so now we have a wide variety of different products that we inject with. And we can inject those not just into joints and nerves, but also we can put them IV. And so we combine that with glutathione and vitamin C and all of that stuff. So there's a systemic approach and then a local approach.
Hey guys, I'm really excited to announce this. Perfect Aminos has gotten a serious upgrade. They've added nucleotides, the building blocks of our nucleic acids, DNA and RNA. And this is important. We know essential amino acids are the building blocks of protein and collagen.
Having all the essential amino acids in the correct ratio is necessary for complete protein synthesis without the caloric impact. But if we want perfect protein synthesis, we need to look at the process of protein synthesis itself. Because if the process is faulty, we won't get the correctly made protein, collagen, fibrin, or the red blood cells in our bloodstream or our muscles.
We can even stop creation of specific proteins, which can affect us in so many different ways. Our DNA and our RNA are what direct protein synthesis, building new proteins. If our DNA or RNA get damaged from toxins, harmful bacteria, or just plain aging, we get faulty protein synthesis. So cells, enzymes, and hormones are less functional and we get premature aging.
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Chapter 6: Are gene therapies safe and beneficial?
By adding nucleosides and nucleotides, the building blocks of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, our cells get exactly what they need to help repair faulty DNA and RNA and improve the process of protein synthesis itself. This is next level science and you need to try these. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
You know, we've had some really fascinating conversations over the last few days, and I appreciate you being willing to come and actually stay in the unit with me and spend so much time. We're off to Honduras here soon for some really interesting gene therapy injections. But, you know, one of the things that I really found fascinating about our discussion is that, you know,
I was talking to you about how do you walk a patient through from where they are to being good, to being better, to being their absolute best? Because I think that a lot of people think the presence of health is just the simple absence of disease. And I think the functional medicine doctor
would take issue with that and say, it's not just that you're not in a dizzy state, it's that you're in your most optimal state. So for someone listening to this podcast that is really interested in going as far as they can possibly go within the limits of evidence-based medicine, What would a journey like that look like? What would, you know, would there be testing in the beginning?
And then would you progress to some of the biologics, peptides? What does a journey like that look like from whatever state that I'm in now to where I'm really optimized and setting myself up to live a life of, let's call it longevity, not aging?
Okay, that's a great question. And I feel like I'm doing that here because we're doing all of these fundamental things. And so... You've got to pick the low-hanging fruit, and you've got to start with the easy, low-cost things to do, which is super healthy lifestyle, perfect diet, and then all of the lifestyle biohacking things that we're all doing. Like what we did today. Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly. So that's the foundation. And I think that it's probably a year... curriculum to learn how to design your life so you create the space for all of that stuff and as i was i was saying to barb we basically feel like we got we we live the perfect lifestyle and then i go carrie's better at biohacking than we are yay
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Chapter 7: What does it mean to be the 'Ultimate Human'?
You actually said that to me at the coffee maker this morning. I was like, I'm feeling pretty good on the top functional medicine experts. I like your biohacking, Pat. I think you got me.
Yeah, you beat me. And it's amazing here. But so then the next thing is, where are we starting? What's our baseline? You need a before and after if you're going to say, what's the best place we can go? You've got to have data. Mm-hmm.
and so then um i'm i'm part of a team that we're developing an ai platform and then we're going to do all labs wearables and then track all modalities that are done so we're tracking peptides stem cells exosomes and then every other intervention gene therapy that people are doing to really know how people are doing we need to have heart rate variability and you know my issue is i basically started to have
the amount of data that i used to get i could kind of i had it all in my head and then now basically i get a pile this big it's from five or six different countries uh and i don't have access to your wearables I don't have access to all this data. And so nobody's able to pull this into one central place. So one, we've got to organize that and then track that longitudinally over time.
And then basically, you use basically language modeling to understand labs and data and conversation. And ultimately, that's going to be an assist to a consult. And then ultimately, that's just going to be sitting here doing a consult better than
than a physician because they can weigh so many different independent variables.
Exactly. And so then the other part of it is, If you look at the big pharma companies, when they're trying to determine effectiveness of their drugs, they use a quantitative model. And so we're using a large quantitative model to turn that lens of looking at all of this data in terms of effectiveness of stem cells, exosomes, peptides, regenerative medicine, gene therapy.
And so then now you're tracking all of that.
and then what then we're going to learn a lot we're going to learn exponentially more than we've ever known in the next five to ten years i would agree with that and what's exciting is as all of this data comes in because of artificial intelligence and the capacity to take large pools of data and create an actionable result you can for the first time sieve through it and really create something that's
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