Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2425: The Future of Telemedicine With Ernest Colling

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Ernest Colling, Founder & CEO of Transcend From high school dropout to CEO. His history, background, and how he got into the peptide telemedicine space. (2:24) The first surprises and opportunities starting a telemedicine company. (23:49) His first introduction to peptides, and the most impactful ones to him. (28:30) At what point did he know things were taking off? (34:52) Scaling issues encountered. (36:50) How do these compound pharmacies work? (38:12) A better quality of life with preventative medicine. (39:59) How has the cost for the end consumer changed? (42:19) Does every peptide have a name brand? (44:05) The motivation and meaning behind his foundation. (48:21) How EMDR therapy changed his life. (53:27) The importance and value of getting your blood work done to find your baseline. (54:51) Related Links/Products Mentioned TRANSCEND your goals! Telehealth Provider • Physician Directed GET YOUR PERSONALIZED TREATMENT PLAN! Hormone Replacement Therapy, Cognitive Function, Sleep & Fatigue, Athletic Performance and MORE. Their online process and medical experts make it simple to find out what’s right for you. Get your free Sample Pack with any “drink mix” purchase! Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water: Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump September Promotion: MAPS Starter | Starter Bundle 50% off! ** Code SEPTEMBER50 at checkout ** Mind Pump # 2245: Fix Your Sleep & Balance Your Hormones With Dr. Kirk Parsley Mind Pump # 2125: Heal Like Wolverine: BPC 157 with Dr. William Seeds Mind Pump # 2110: Ozempic the Miracle Fat Loss Peptide: The Truth With Dr. William Seeds Mind Pump # 2360: What You Need to Know About GLP-1 With Dr. Tyna Moore Transcend Foundation - United for Change Exercise 1.5 times more effective than drugs for depression, anxiety Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Ernie Colling (@ewcolling) Instagram Kirk Parsley (@kirkparsley) Instagram Steve Weatherford (@weatherford5) Instagram Jason Poston (@jasonposton) Instagram  

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Merchants Bank is a proud member FDIC. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump. All right. In the fitness and health and medical space, peptide companies and hormone replacement companies have exploded recently. This is like a big thing. Peptide sciences. I mean, remember GLP ones, like ozempic, those are peptides, but there's many, many, many peptides that do incredible things in the body and then of course we have hormone therapy which

is now much more accepted for longevity health well anyway we brought on this episode Ernest calling he is the founder of Transcend these are the leaders in that space these are the leaders in the legal peptide and hormone space they really run the show. In fact, we work with them. That's why we work with them. So in today's episode, we're talking about that whole space, that market, how it started.

And we talk about some of the peptides that he likes, that he thinks are the most important or amazing ones. By the way, if you are interested in peptide therapy for yourself, for anything from longevity to brain health, to muscle gain or fat loss, better sleep, libido, go to mphormones.com. There's real doctors there, this is real stuff. It's not gray market, it's the legit stuff.

You'll work with the pharmacy. Go to mphormones.com, they can also do hormone therapy. So go check them out. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Elementea. So Elementea is an electrolyte powder that you put in your water. There's no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and it has enough sodium. Most of them don't have enough sodium. Believe it or not, you need sodium more than anything when it comes to electrolyte powders.

What do you need it for? Muscle contractions. You need it for energy. You need to feel good, especially if you don't eat a lot of heavily processed foods. Anyway, go check them out, go through our link www.drinkelementt.com forward slash mind pump and you can get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. Also, we have some sales going on this month. MAPS Starter is 50% off. This is a beginner strength training program and then we have a starter bundle. This includes MAPS Antibolic, MAPS Prime and the Intuitive Nutrition Guide. All of that is 50% off. If you're interested, go to MAPSFitnessProducts.com and then use the code September 50 for that discount. All right, here comes the show. Ernie, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Yeah. So you found it and you run one of the largest telemedicine, peptide, hormone replacement companies in the world. We work with you guys, you guys crush it. I want to know a little bit about your history, how you started. Personal, right? Yeah, let's talk a little bit,

because you served in the military, and that's kind of the beginning of this road, right? Yeah, served in the military, just four years infantry, that kind of thing. And then there was a lot going on Kind of overseas at the time with a global war on terrorism and everything So I got into contracting and that led down to intelligence services So I you know, I continued to deploy and continued to go down range as they say and after about seven deployments over a 12-year period

I was pretty worn down body was pretty much toast and My wife's always been into fitness, you know she always you know wanted to compete and do those things and she started to do that when we had the time and I wanted to kind of keep up with her, you know He wanted to you know stay for pace and I just couldn't do it and we're talking months hiring coaches You know diets, you know working out two hours a day, you know six days a week you name it I did everything I could and I couldn't drop a pound. And I finally went to my coach and I asked him what we should be doing and he just said,

look, you need to get your blood work done. At some point at this point it's off. And I think when I got my test back, it was like 90. And at that point I was- And how old are you? I was 34 then. Yeah. I was really young. Leading up, it was really young leading up to this

Let's talk a little first about what led to this because um, that's obviously very low testosterone When you're serving the way you're serving in the military doing these deployments like what does that lifestyle look like? Because that is not it's not conducive to healthy hormone level. No, no, not at all I mean the environment, you know, you have that and you know, you're gonna have the stress So your cortisol levels are always up Your body's in fight-or-flight for most of the time you're doing, you know tons of Physical activity and it's just one of those things where you get worn down over time imagine Being on a football team and having a game every day, you know

And you just you're getting banged around every single day and there comes a point in time where you just you start to break and You're not banged around every single day. And there comes a point in time where you just, you start to break and you, you're not recovering as fast. You're not able to do that. But I mean, essentially that's what happened. It got down to the, you know, physical and mental stress. It just over a period of time, just breaks the body. Now, are you, are you numb to it when that's happening because you're surrounded with all your, your buddies and you're going through it all together. It's like, you just probably trained to just keep going.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just imagine with buddies, you're not, each guy's not like, oh man, I'm so beat up. I'm hurting myself. No one is saying anything. No one says anything, right? Not at all, for a lot of different reasons, right? We're guys, we're idiots and all those things.

But on the side of it too is the mission's really important. There's people out there that depend on you and you need to step up to that responsibility. And when you do that, that's why it's really important. There's people out there that depend on you, and you need to step up to that responsibility. And when you do that, that's why it's called service. It's supposed to be selfless. And you just put your body at the sacrifice of that, your personal life, all those things. That's why we like to thank our soldiers

and when they're doing what they're doing, because it is a sacrifice and it does take a toll. So, yeah. Do you remember when that started to happen? Like, you know, when, when you started to notice like, Oh, I don't know if my, if I can keep up with this because you did seven years at what point were you like, Oh, and then did that, did that scare you? Were you, were you like, Oh my God, I'm going to, I might be a liability here.

Yeah. My second to last deployment, um, I had switched to a different agency and it was, um, you know, one of, I was just kind was just kind of like at a main base, how they put it, like a larger one. So I had an opportunity to have kind of a regular routine on things and, you know, I was trying to just do the daily job and all this stuff and one day I kind of woke up and my back was seized and I was done, you know, I was not able to really get out of bed and that's not where you want to be when you're in the middle of a combat zone. So, turns out that I blew my back out

and it was totally done. So, I couldn't recover from that as well. And the one more deployment after that and it was too risky. At any point in time, I could, knee could go out, shoulder could go out, back could go out. And it seemed like once something happened, you know, it just had a chain effect. There was just something else, another injury, and it just kept prolonging

and harder to recover from. So for me, there was definitely having a single injury, but for a lot of people too, it's just not being able to recover from their last injury before getting another one and seeing that happen over and over. And it's cumulative. Yes, definitely. So this may be really a naive question, but I've heard you say deployment and I heard to recover from their last injury before getting another one and seeing that happen over and over. And then it's cumulative. Yes, definitely. So this may be really a naive question, but I've heard you say deployment and I heard you say contract work.

What's the difference between the two of those? Not really much. So a deployment is a deployment, right? It's just going down into like a kinetic environment. So we were doing combat operations, whether that was Afghanistan, Iraq, which were my two areas. I went mainly as a contractor, which was not military, but working for the military. So they hire a private agency, you work for the agency, but the government paid. Yeah.

Got it. Yeah, 110%. So there just wasn't enough people in service for what we were doing. They had the expertise, so the military had to go to outside expertise to bring that in. Wow. And are those typically different types of jobs? Yeah. Okay so explain that. Yeah so I mean it could be anything from you know the people that work on the vehicles to the aircraft to you know people that are in intelligence services which was my side of it. A lot of people in computers it just it really depends. Most of it is all of the support functions. There's not very many that are on the

Like we call outside the wire or kinetic where they're actually engaging in, you know combat types operations You'll get a lot of security contractors, right? But that's not their primary focus. They're not there for that They're there to move people and equipment around So they're not like on that like okay, we're gonna have you guys attack It's basically you're gonna protect these people over here, but you're still seeing oh, yeah Yeah, I mean you're so they're gonna shoot at you no matter what yeah They don't really distinguish between any of that. Yeah Wow And so how long did you were you US military and then how long were you with the con with this private organization?

Yeah, so four years military one term and out But there was like another eight nine years after that that I was doing the contract and oh wow long time How did you hurt your back? Cumulative, over a period of time. Oh wow. I was involved in one or two IEDs over the years, convoys and things like that, so that certainly didn't help.

And then obviously, being an infantryman, even young, you abuse your body pretty good, but at the end of the day, when I was on my second to last deployment, it was literally like just getting out of bed. It was just enough things over time that it just, it was done. That was the day it decided to go.

Do you have a single standout, like scary moment of all your years? Oh yeah. Tell me. Yeah, so November 8th, 2004. I got to do it. Oh God, you remember the date. Yeah.

You know it's bad when someone's like, no, it's this date. Exactly. Yeah. It was one of my first contracts, and I was doing private security, and we were running convoy security, which meant we were working with an Iraqi company that was moving weapons and ammunition for the Iraqi National Guard at the time. And Fallujah was going off, so there was a lot of high kinetic activity in and around Baghdad and to the west of Fallujah. And it just so happened that the load that we were taking, the vehicles we were escorting

that day had nothing but RPG and AK-40, like a lot of explosives and rounds like that. And we were going through a route in central Iraq that was basically they call it the Sunni Triangle. It was a pretty dangerous area to be in. And we didn't necessarily have the same kind of support and infrastructure that the military has where they have got close air support, medevac and all those other things.

When you're private contracting, the one thing they don't tell you is it's you, and the people you're with, and that's what you got. The panic buttons and bringing the military into the rescue, that stuff wasn't really established when I was doing it. It was pretty early, early days. But to not make it too long of a story, it was about 12 hours of constant contact. Oh, wow. And it ended up at the later part of the hours of the day that we ended up getting into a fatal funnel.

We got hit with an IED. Our rear vehicle got destroyed. All the other vehicles had to take off, because obviously they don't react that well to bullets. So the only vehicle that was left was mine at that point, because the other vehicles had to go off with the trucks that had all the weapons and ammunition.

So we had four or five minutes of basically just us and you know, people trying to keep alive and trying to keep the other guys off of us. So it was an interesting day to say the least. Wow. How does, you know, not to fast forward too far, too far, but you guys, you have a foundation, right, for, okay, and so this is, I mean, one of the motivations is you served and you went

through a lot of this. Yeah. And we'll get to that because I think personally, the value that you guys provide with the peptide services, some of the peptides that are good for things like inflammation of the brain and helping people deal with some trauma, just the physiological effects of it. I mean, it's just absolutely profound.

How does, when you go through something like that, how long does it take for you to feel like you kind of, I mean, does it take a week, two weeks where you're like, okay, I can kind of get back into my groove again? Well, there's no time to stop, right? So I mean, as soon as it's over and done with, it's over and done with, and then you go back to work. It's always the stuff that happens afterwards.

You know, it's when you get home and you have time in the process, that's when it's really going to hit you. And, you know, I think being cognizant of that now and just knowing that that was going to happen and, you know, being aware of my situation, for me personally, I could tell when I was starting to have a little bit of an issue with it, you know, I'd just be hung up on an event or, you know, being aware of my situation. For me personally, I could tell when I was starting to have a little bit of issue with it, you know, I'd just be hung up on an event

or, you know, have like a loop or a memory that would be continuously, you know, going on. And when you're doing that, you're kind of obsessing on, you know, something negative. And that's where the mental health issues and the breakdown starts to happen. At least that's where it was for me. So personally, being able to get on like a,

the peptides and the hormones and things like that, first things first, when you regulate and you balance out the hormones in your body, the emotions are not so severe. So the lows aren't as low, the highs aren't as high, you're a little bit more in homeostasis. When you're physically able to get up in the morning and have energy and just do your things through the day. It was a lot easier then to go into like a therapist and do something like EMDR where I could actually go and then deal with my issues because I'm not now dealing with pain

and brain fog and all the other things that came along with it, the fog of war, the day afterwards. Getting that kind of to subside so you can then get treatment actually made a big difference. Well, yeah, because low testosterone, you don't have to have any trauma. Low testosterone will cause, in men, quite reliably anxiety and depression. Oh yeah.

And irritability. People think testosterone is linked to eight, rage, or whatever. Yeah. The truth is, in the studies that I've seen, I mean we're not talking about these super physiological, like, you know, pro-bodybuilder doses, but these are men within ranges. When they're low they're more prone to outbursts

of anger than they are when they're high. So it's you're far more irritable and just angry and anxious and depressed, no trauma. So you throw trauma on top of that and it's just the absolute. So what you're saying is I mean for people listening it's pretty profound. So you fixed the physiological hormone profile, now it makes things easier to deal with. Yeah, and that's how I tie it into the foundation, right? So, you know, just from a personal experience, you know, wanting to be able to share that with other veterans, that was kind of the whole,

you know, thinking behind starting the foundation, was to be able to use our medications and protocols and do the same thing that I did personally for others that were in need. So when you went on testosterone, you started with that, how did you do that? Did you go to general practitioner? Did you go to a... I tried to go to a general practitioner and I tried to get the blood work and all those things done and you know, they were like, oh, you're too young, you're 34, you don't need that right now. What year is this

right now? When we're talking about this? That would have been 2014 for me. Yeah, 10 years ago. Yeah, 10 years ago. That's crazy. Yeah, I know. It's so wild that they were like that. So you couldn't, so what'd you have to do then? So I got referred to an endocrinologist, of course, which meant I had to wait another like three months just to get in to see the person, then get a lab, you know, done. And I didn't get all the lab markers that I wanted. I just got, you know, certain specific ones around testosterone to determine that I was low. And when I was low, even that low, her concern, because it was a female physician at the point, was that I may have used underground steroids in the past or something like that, and that

she didn't want to treat me because she thought I would hurt myself or harm or abuse me. And I had never been on any of that stuff in my entire life you know I was always in a situation where you could be tested or something like that and you know obviously you're not gonna take a bunch of needles with you when you're going over my god how pissed are you you have to be fun this to the VA yes no no this was all private care also how would you use what trippy how would you abuse what they give you when they give you X amount well it doesn't matter though I mean just I mean what basically what he's saying is that she assumed that this low testosterone this guy

Steroid cycle. Yep, and was abusings and then I'm just helping him out with that's crazy Yeah, cuz I mean I was a really good shape back then. I mean, that's all I did was work out you know, there wasn't much else to do, you do. So I came in and I was real fit. And she made an assumption. So I eventually went back to my coach at the time I was working with. And I told him, he's like, oh, you need to go to a clinic, this clinic.

And it was a company similar to what Transcend is, but at a local level and more brick and mortar than telemedicine. And it was great. I saw the doctor. He explained everything to me, put me through all the processes, explained the blood work and the markers and how it all worked, why I was probably having some of the mental issues along with the physical issues and why that would subside when I had

all the therapies. And he was right. But then COVID hit. And that was one of those moments where a lot of businesses that were smaller, or niche, or boutique, they didn't all survive. And he decided to get in stem cells and just didn't want to do the hormone replacement stuff

anymore. So he literally shut down the shop. And for me, that was really my only outlet. So out of necessity, we went ahead, me and a couple other guys, and founded a different clinic at that time. And then we all split off and went our ways, and Transcend was born from that. So how'd you done your own research previous to meeting with that coach in terms of peptides,

hormones? What was available for treatments and all that? Or how did you really get interested in it? I had no idea at that point in time. I know, I didn't know what I didn't know. It was really just to fix you, right? That's all you're thinking. Yeah, so and then I think that was the biggest problem because we I didn't have the education I didn't know what to look for. I didn't understand why my body was doing what it was doing and you know through the process of going to find the solution and then getting on the therapy. That's what got me interested. When I actually woke up after eight or nine days

of being on therapy and I just woke up and I was like, oh, I'm not exhausted. I'm actually able to get up and enjoy a cup of coffee and play with my kids and I can understand what's going on around me. It doesn't take me two hours to wake up, to get in the office and be productive. It was subtle but very quickly I realized the quality of life had greatly improved.

And then, you know, finding out there's other products that do other things, and that's when I got into peptides and started to understand, you know, their value, what they can do. And for me, it was a no-brainer. It was a matter of, you know, how do I platform the information? I wanted to focus on education

and then focus around social media and tying it together with telemedicine, and then a focus around social media and tying it together with telemedicine and then obviously introduce our followers to that. We should talk a little bit more about the symptoms that you had experienced because this is kind of a guy thing, but also you can compound that with if you're checking all the right boxes. This was me, right? So I'm a fitness guy and I got the, you know, one of the top fitness podcasts.

I'm working out, eating right, taking supplements, doing the whole thing. I took a hormone test because we were offered a free hormone test from another company that said, we'll give you guys free hormone test, just whatever. And I went along with Adam and I got my test back and my testosterone was in the floor and then it all made sense. But what I did during that period of time was I just grinded it out. I just disciplined and just pushed myself and just showed up and just...

And then when I went on testosterone, it was like someone turned the lights on. It was quite profound. So that whole time, you were just probably the same thing. Yep. Just moving forward. Yeah, and probably causing more damage too, right? Because you're compensating for your performance when it's going down, so you're going harder. And what you're doing, you're just breaking down your tendons, ligaments, muscle fibers, and you're just not recovering. So you're just literally breaking yourself.

So what were the differences? You had more energy, you felt better. What else did you notice? How was your sleep? Sleep was great. That was the first thing I noticed was sleep, quite frankly. It was sleep and then the brain fog. And then I think every guy notices, you know, if you start getting older, libido starts diving and everything else. And then all of a sudden you wake up one morning like, hey, I remember this. You know, I know what this is like. This is great. You know, I think that was a light. There's like a four, there's like a four or five month period when you first get on TRT where the libido is super

high. It starts to come down to normal high. But I remember that first four month period I was like, uh, I don't know, man, my wife is like, maybe we should go back to low testosterone. But then it starts to work out. This was really out of necessity for you then. Very much so. Oh wow. So I mean, did you, did you approach it with that attitude? Like did you go into this with like kind of a chip on your shoulder or just like you were frustrated with how they kind of treated you?

And it was like, oh yeah, definitely. Massive need and, oh interesting. And I'm glad it happened that way to be quite frank because one of the things that I focused on when we actually, you know, started the company was having somebody there to be a concierge, to be hand holding, to explain all the information that I didn't get in the process that I didn't know. So just from having that experience, I filled in the gaps because I didn't get and the process that I didn't know. So just from having that experience, I filled in the gaps, because I didn't want someone else to go through that. But see, this is so interesting, Ernie,

because you must have done some high level stuff in the military or have some kind of background that didn't make this seem so, like for me, if I'm going to start a business, the last thing I'm going to do is go into a space like it seems so complex. You had telemedicine. Yeah, oh my, I don't even know the first thing. Starting a supplement company is pretty easy.

Yeah, the regulations that you gotta go through. Yeah, did you have any previous experience that helped you or were you just like, I'm doing it, I'm gonna figure it out? So, long story short, high school dropout, all those things. So I went back, got a GED, got military, and then over time, ended up getting a master's in business.

So I had a really good understanding of the business concepts, how to run a business, how to start a company. And with the military, having the discipline and planning and understanding organization, managing people, all that stuff, fostering a good culture, the basics were there. And then the desire and the understanding to bring this type of product out to everybody so there was a better quality of life was more about the desire than anything else. So everything that I didn't know, I just filled in over time as quickly as I could. One thing I didn't do was give up my day job.

So I literally had two jobs, the company and what I was doing during the day for about a year. We first started Transcend. What were you doing? I was in IT and it was e-commerce and that kind of stuff, which makes sense when you're a virtual platform. I was just going to say. I took that experience and all that stuff started to tie together. That's when all the military and IT background and everything kind of just…

By the way, the timing of this is a bit serendipitous, right? Because before COVID telemedicine was, couldn't, wouldn't be possible in this way, right? 100%. COVID happened, they changed the laws to allow people to do virtual appointment, which still remain. We're stable. Yeah. So they repealed the part of the Ryan Act, which allowed controlled medications essentially to be shipped across state lines. And there's some other nuances to it. That's at a very high level what had happened. And when we were able to do that and then come up with a HIPAA approved platform where

we could talk about medical issues over telemedicine, those two things really opened the door and allowed us to do it this way. You glossed over something that I want to go back. What happens in your life to be the kid who drops out of high school, then becomes the guy who goes and gets his masters and starts a big ass company. Like, uh, it's a, it's a stupid story, but uh, I blew up a toilet in high school. I, you know, I got in trouble in high school. And then cherry bombs or what? Yeah. Something. So just being an idiot teenager,

doing idiot, teenager things. And yeah. And is that why you actually went into the military is because you get, you get kicked out of high school and then, so you, I got, I got kicked out of high school and actually went back and, um, I went back and became an athlete. I was a wrestler and ended up becoming like, you know, captain of the team and all that other stuff and ended up being a junior Olympic wrestler and all that kind of stuff. This all makes sense. Yeah.

Wow. So, you know, it was, I've had an interesting life to say the least, but yeah. Wow, that's wild. Okay, so you get into the space or you start to get into the space, any surprises? What were some of the first things you saw that you were like, oh, this is not what I thought The fact that there are so many different laws from state to state, you know I kind of thought when it came to control medications, it would be one of those things where It'd be pretty fair across the board and it's not not at all

So the licensing and to understand that malpractice rules and demnification, you know Just I'll haul it all is state to state. That was probably the most difficult piece was really understand how to do this so it would be done above board. There wasn't any gray area or issue because you're going to have a hard time, you know, getting patients or physician to work with you if you don't really know the rules of the game. So do you have to go from state to state to state?

And understand every single state. And then get approved in each state type of deal? How does that work? So, the pharmacies have the dispensary licenses, so they're the ones that have to have that part as far as the medications go. But from the clinical side of it, the physician has to have a license in each one of those states. And then, you know, each state has a different requirement as far as

blood work or what qualifies a doctor-patient relationship. And that's really the key and critical piece to it is being able to legally establish that physician relationship with the patient and making sure that that's above board. And then the rest of it, that's just potentially with the state regulations as far as what medications can be shipped across the state lines. That's got to be almost impossible to find too before telemessing.

Why would a doctor have 50 states under their belt to be able to do... Yeah, how many? So this must have been like a post-COVID like doctor jumping on it type of thing. Yeah, it was. And literally we started the company right when COVID hit. So I mean, it was kind of born at the time where those things were starting to happen. You know, and we used a medical director that, you know, was a professional medical director, did have licenses at all 50 states. And it was one of those things where, you know, I had to introduce them to our practitioner and they had to have, you know, prescribing guidelines, contracts drawn up that

explained that they could work under these licenses for this specific type of, you know, clinical work and it was very complex and very layered at first. And then over time, you know, when it became more popular and a lot of physicians were getting licensed in all 50 states for these telemedicine platforms. And as laws relaxed, the complexity was reduced and it was easier to bring it to scale. So it took time. Yeah, so when you were looking at it,

did you see lots of opportunity as well? Because personally, so I had no interest in starting a company in that space. However, from the outside, when I'm looking at the data, I don't know how many decades, five decades, testosterone levels dropping in men across the Western world on a pretty consistent basis, you know, okay, hormone therapy is going to be,

this is going to be a thing that everybody, I mean, the majority of men, unless we figure out what the hell's going on. A lot of people are going to need treatment. Yeah, this is going to be a thing that- It's not going away. Yeah, that's going to be around for a while. And then the changing attitudes around testosterone and the data coming out, you know, because it used to be, you know, just not that long ago.

Testosterone is a performance enhancing drug, right? Very much. Yeah. And obviously we got our start kind of in the bodybuilding industry because, you know, we went through and talked to the athletes. We knew that those who were interested in fitness were also going to be interested in their health. And the stigma behind a lot of the medications being hormones was one of the things we wanted to clear up. We felt that we could prevent injuries and death in the bodybuilding industry if people

would use the medications in the right way and understand how they should be used. There were too many coaches that were out there that were just pumping athletes full of medications for no rhyme or reason. They could have been on stage a lot longer and had a lot better aesthetic look and had a better career had they done less of those medications or used peptides and lose some of those hormones.

That was one of the things that we wanted to target. That's really what we did first. I think that got the name of the company out of the basement and kind of onto the limelight. But as we started doing that, it started getting talked more by influencers. And that was like a whole different piece of it too, was now you've got social media

where people don't have to be an athlete in order to be famous. And you don't have to necessarily have a lot of knowledge to be famous, if whatever reason it is what it is, what it is. So, um, that was another opportunity that I saw and I wanted to utilize and then kind of take those platforms and move it towards education and getting things to have the right conversations for the right reasons. And that, that really changed the industry, I think.

When did you become privy to peptides? Cause we're talking testosterone right now, right? When did you start to learn about, the first time I heard about peptides was eight years ago and I had one of our, we had Ben Pekulski on the show and he goes, hey, what do you think of peptides? I had no idea. So I don't know. I've never heard of them. That was the first time I'd heard of them and then I didn't hear much after that.

Not until maybe like three or four years ago where you started to really start to hear, like, yeah. Yeah. So when I first went on hormone replacement therapy, the doctor that I was with, he had been utilizing peptides and he kind of gave me some basic information about it. But I didn't get on at that point in time. They were very, very, very expensive. Even 10 years ago, the price points were far different

than they are today. As those medications became popular, the price points were far different than they are today. As those medications became popular, the prices have gone down. For me personally, at that point, I had to wait until the time where I could afford to actually use them. I was very interested in a lot of what he had told me. For me, it was the GHPR, the growth hormone producing peptides, the ones that help your body naturally make it, release it, and reset your circadian rhythm. The way that they work with the hormones in tandem and just the results you get, it's

absolutely amazing. It's literally life-changing. So, you know, the intrigue was there, you know, the knowledge was there. It was a matter of, you know, financial means at that point. But as soon as I had those and I did go on the medications, you know, I was hooked. You know, at that point, I couldn't get enough information on them and I was dead set that we were gonna start the company. So it was.

Now which ones have been personally the most impactful for you? I know you've tried, I imagine Dihexa would be something big for you, what else? What are the ones that have really improved you? Oh wow, Testimone is probably one of my favorite ones all around just for general health and wellness.

That's a growth hormone release? Yeah, that is. And it does so much more than that too. It's great with weight loss. It's good for your skin. It's going to help your natural growth hormone to be released, reset your circadian rhythm. It's a really good medication. So that's one of my favorites BPC 157 obviously for for healing the Wolverine peptide My absolute die-hard favorite will never give it up is dihexa It just if you're somebody that has a high profile position and you have to be on all the time This is a medication for you. You've I remember, yeah, I just remember connecting with you on that. Like when we first met, because, um, it was like what I was seeking for so long

because of just constantly hitting my head against other people's helmets. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I just remember being in class and being super brain fogged and just not able to really have like clear focused thought and, uh, was always frustrating and even the start of this podcast was really difficult for me to, not able to really have like clear focused thought and was always frustrating. And even the start of this podcast was really difficult for me to communicate. And so, you know, I've been trying a lot of different options. CBD has been one of those.

It's sort of had a little bit of impact, but dihexah has been tremendous. So I imagine there's something there because all the, you know, IUDs and stuff like that you were around, I'm sure that will cause concussions. I remember when we talked to Dr. Parsley, he was like, that's like getting hit in football, and you getting hit in football. So there's probably a reason why though you both feel that as like one of the most impactful ones, for sure. Yeah, 100% too.

And the other side of that is those types of concussions and impacts will also damage your pituitary gland, which will also throw your hormones off. You won't be producing the testosterone. So it's kind of a vicious cycle. So you want to make sure that you're getting your base hormones right, but then peptides for when you have the cognitive functionality type of issue where you want better clarity, that's when the peptide comes in. You get your baseline and then that's the optimization part.

What I find interesting about a lot of these, like for example, the ones that raise growth hormone, though, you know, people say, oh, it's like taking growth hormone, you know, you're doing, no, you'll take it, it'll get your body's growth hormone levels up to where you might have been, let's say you're 18 or 19. Yeah. Not, you're not going to be, it's not like a bodybuilder taking 10 IUs of growth hormone. Right. Not at all. So it's very different. So because your body has its own governing, you know, kind of limits on how it

responds to peptides because these peptides are mimicking signals your body already reads. Right, yeah, you hit it nail in the head. It's a signaller, right? So your body's gonna receive that signal and it's gonna make what the body needs. If the body isn't creating the signals it used to, then obviously your levels are gonna drop. And that's over time what we experience and we just, it's so subtle over the years you don't even realize it.

But then when you go on a peptide and you reignite those, those signallers and you start recreating some of those chemicals in the body like growth hormone, it doesn't take very long for you to be like, oh wow, this is how I used to feel when I was 20. This is why, this has to be why there's no side effects, right? Why we're not seeing any side effects with peptides

and why it's not like a SARM or a synthetic hormone or something like that. Or like a drug, right? Because a drug is designed to like force your body to do something, whereas peptides already exist in your body. So it recognizes them, already has safeguards. So no protection.

My body's not gonna make four times a growth hormone. It did when I was 18. And also whenever I hear these things, it just confirms what I was saying about these two is that it, like it seems that if you're deficient in an area is where you really notice the impact on it, right? Where I, like, I, I like Dyaxa, like I noticed a little bit, but I don't have the same impact that I hear like from someone like you guys, which makes sense because you guys probably,

that's an area where your body... Super deficient. You had her bell rung pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of repair. Motzi was that for me. So I must have had... So Motzi helps the body utilize glycogen and the mitochondria work better.

I took it and it was profound. I know other people take it and they're like, eh, I kind of noticed it. So it's almost like if your body stops making it or needs it, you'll notice these massive changes. Motzi did that for me. Have you taken SS31? No. All right. We gotta we gotta get you on that one Oh god, don't start Two purses today how's this later's always now have to two purses because the other one is not big enough Is it similar to monsters? Is it is it it's similar they work in different fashions

As far as the scientific breakdown of the medication, I'm gonna avoid going to that Similar to Monsi? It's similar. They work in different fashions. As far as the scientific breakdown of the medication, I'm going to avoid going into that. I'd save that for more of somebody in the pharmaceutical background. But the way that it provides energy in the body, it's one of those medications that is really, really, the bioavailability there is high.

Awesome, awesome. OK, so Transcend now is the biggest in the space. So I won't go into details, but it's big. You guys are crushing it. At what point did you know, Oh, this is, this is gonna, this is taking off because you're obviously working on it. You're dealing with all the regulations. You're dealing with all the red tape, probably making no money. And then there's probably a point where you were like, Oh, okay, we got something.

Who was your biggest influencer you got to start working on the app? So I have to give credit to two of them. So Steve Weatherford and Jason Post, and they're the first ones to give us an opportunity. And we started the company right at the end of 2020. And in 2021, April, there was a FitCon event that was happening in Dallas at the time.

And we decided to go down, one of my partners and I, and we got introduced to Jason and to Steve. And we had conversations with him a little bit prior to that. But by the time we left, we had all hit it off pretty well and we were able to sign him on as affiliates. And then within about a month, it was real clear that this was definitely the way to drive the information. Definitely a way to get, you know,

our company brand out there and to get the education. And, um, you know, I think it was like 90 days later, I quit my day job. So that's the turning guy. You got those guys on and then boom. Was it running at that point? Did you start turning a profit? Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. I w we were very fortunate. We were profitable on day one. You know, the way that we had set up the fortunate. We were profitable on day one. The way that we had set up the company, we were profitable. We started it in the basement with no overhead.

It was a few of us. Then we were very careful in how we self-funded everything and brought everything. We didn't want to have any sort of outside influence on the company where bottom lines became the highest priority. If you're in a service industry, then you need to focus on that and hone your skills and make sure you're doing it the right way. So for us, as we were getting ready to scale

and we were coming up, it was also about making sure that we were doing everything to the best of our ability. And once we felt we had that, then we brought on the influencers and really started pushing. This has happened so fast for you. So, and I love to talk to somebody that's scaled a company to the size that you have. Were there like clear things that happened

at like each marker? Like I always tell people that there's a huge difference between scaling something into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, then into the millions of dollars, and then the tens of millions of dollars. Like each level presents like different obstacles and challenges. Can you recall like what those were at those different miles? Like you know obviously day one is getting into the thousands of dollars and then

moving on like what each obstacle has presented for you? So the biggest transition was going in from that hundreds of thousands to millions a month and that was just the absolute scale of the operation having enough people that were trained and could respond to this volume of calls and the volume of patients and then keeping that quality. There is no doubt there was probably a period of three months that after our first fitcon and we had influencers coming on, I couldn't hire people on fast enough. So it was a big lesson to learn that if we were going to bring people on and we knew we were going to scale, it was we hired first, trained first, made

sure that we communicated with the pharmacies, made sure that they had the inventory and the expertise, and then we would go ahead and find out and bring the affiliates on and then scale the company up to our capability where before we had went the other way and it was a lot harder. So talk about these compound pharmacies because what's interesting about this is that these peptides go by their generic names. So they're not, a good example would be semiglutide peptide, brand name Ozempic, but it's the same, same exact compound, semiglutide, Ozempic, Ozempic is 10 times more expensive, semiglutide is just basic.

So how do these compound pharmacies work? Are they FDA regulated? Like what's the deal with that? So they're FDA inspected and they're using FDA approved sources for API or the raw material for the medications they compound. So the FDA comes into 503As and 503Bs and it's depending on the amount of volume, essentially they're pushing on batch size of those medications, which is the designator.

But the pharmacies work the same way as any other pharmacy works, right? It's a physician-driven prescription, but with the compounding pharmacies, obviously they're doing everything through mail, you know, through shipping, and they're dispensing to multiple different states where a regular pharmacy is just gonna be, you know, B2C local.

Or the other way is you have the massive big pharma companies that are manufacturing on the mass scale and then obviously supplying the smaller pharmacies that go to the patients. With us, the whole model is different. You come to us, talk to us first. We get a design around what you need and then we tell the pharmacy what to make for you. So it's a completely different process and it also gives the patient the ability to have control over what's going on in their own body and what's a priority to them. That's one of the biggest things we hear when we have a new patient come in is, you know,

my physician wasn't listening to me or I didn't know my options. And when they're done and they've gone through our process, their priorities were heard first and we were able to fulfill whatever it is they needed by having access to those meds. What's interesting too is about with your space, is as I've watched it, it started catering largely to bodybuilders, fitness fanatics, then it went to, and then maybe kind of along the side of biohackers.

Biohackers, definitely. Now it's really moving into like longevity, health, preventative medicine, which I feel like, you know, a lot of fitness and health moves through those channels. Because now you're hearing people who are not fitness financiers, they're not bodybuilders, they're not biohackers, but it's like,

I want to feel better, I want to play with my grandkids, I want to play with my kids, I have autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation, this peptide helps with the inflammation, or I have the skin disorder. So now. This peptide helps with the inflammation. Or I have the skin disorder. So now it's looking like it's starting to go kind of mainstream in that direction. Yeah, mainstream into preventative medicine.

I mean, I always kind of coined the term that it's just a better quality of life. So I mean, you're definitely going to have, you know, anything that you had symptomatic wise, for the most part, you know, you can improve your situation. I can't say that it cures or does anything that is a miracle. It's not that, but it's definitely going to improve your quality of life for whatever

symptoms you're having. And I think that's enough for most people that when they have that access and they're able to control that in their own priorities, that it becomes very appealing to them. So the more people that find out about it, obviously the more it moves in that direction. And I think there's a bigger role for it to play in the future. I've always looked at it when you talk about large corporations and wellness programs

and how this will fit into the mainstream healthcare long-term, I think as a supplemental kind of a piece to these healthcare plans, it's always gonna be something that will have a spot in the space. You know, you can have healthier employees, healthier patients, you know, less claims, you know, and that'll bring down obviously costs for companies and healthcare companies,

but yet they're still collecting their premiums. So, you know, everyone's essentially benefiting it from it and there really isn't a downside if it's done right. In other words, insurance companies will get their premiums But they'll have less claims. Yeah insurance companies save money Yeah, and I'm sure that money and that'll you know provide opportunity for discount for those companies that are working with them, too So, you know, there's a way for even if they're you know paying less and even if the you know Premise were to slightly drop if you you you drop those claims by even three or 4%,

that's billions of dollars in the industry. So I mean, there's plenty of room to play with that. Speaking of cost, just in your time of being in the space, how much have you seen for the end consumer that change? What was it like when you first got into it? Like, I mean, you mentioned you couldn't even afford the peptides, like what was it like some of these things, and then where is it at now in comparison? So where do you see it? Well?

Five ten years ago. It was super expensive I mean you couldn't have even gotten a month supply of medications for like less than three thousand dollars pocket, you know now you can especially you could spend $3,000 and have six months worth of medication and that could be multiple medications So I mean it's probably about a third to two thirds less, depending on what peptide, because obviously they, you know, medications kind of go through different evolutions.

Sometimes, you know, they get mixed with other medications or one will get restricted by the FDA or something new comes out. Anything that comes out as new is always gonna be more expensive. But the tried and true meds probably are base 10 or 15. They've come down anywhere between one to two thirds. Yeah, I'm trying to think,

I think one of the best that's out there is BPC-15. Oh, definitely. It's probably- I call that the creatine of peptides. Yeah, right. It's probably one of the most researched. It has so many different applications. Anybody and everybody I know that's used it swears by it.

Where was that at price-wise, say five plus years ago, and where is that at today? You remember? It's probably in the 200, $300 range. I would say it's probably about half the cost of what it used to be. Oh yeah. That's great, and it'll continue to drop

as the market continues to grow. It should, yeah. I mean, one, you scale up any kind of product like that, the cost of manufacturing comes down. And when that cost of manufacturing comes down, at least in our space, you're going to pass a certain amount of that onto the customer. Does every peptide have a name brand version of it?

We talked about Zempic and Simaglutide as the base. Not all of them. Because a lot of them, they weren't always brought to market, right? So a lot of them, they weren't always brought to market. So a lot of them had research or were used for different reasons. We might be using it not even for whatever it was originally created for.

Diex is a really good example where it was Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, what it was originally intended for. But it, cognitive functionality and just overall brain health, we we saw the benefits for it so we're still utilizing that but it wasn't brought to main market ever. So that's the reason why that is because Ozempic has been brought or semi-culti has been brought to the main market branded as Ozempic. Don't you find it I felt I think this is so... Good old medication pens. I think it's so fascinating to me that and I'm just as guilty of this, going to ride a four night quill and I buy the fucking night quill brand when

the safe CBS, the CBS brand for the exact formula is $3 cheaper right next to it. Like we were so trained. Well we're so trained that people don't know that Advil's ibuprofen or you know that time. I know. And I, I know better. I catch myself doing that and I go back and I'm like what am I doing? Is there any other crossover? Because I know Ozempic is probably like the best example of like if you have like a general practitioner, like they would probably have heard of that. Versus like I still find people when they go into their general practitioner asking questions about peptides and they're just oblivious. Oh, yeah, it's not something that they're going to learn about in a normal med school. I

mean they really are not going to go over these kind of medications. Is there any movement in that direction? Anybody voicing it? So longevity or regenerative medicine, it's really an emerging market and I think as it becomes more popular you're going to start seeing people specialize in it. I could see it becoming a fellowship and then eventually probably touched on in med school. Eastern Europe was far ahead of us with this for a while because the Russians studied a lot of these for their athletes and for their soldiers and you know so a lot of these were discovered in the 70s. Yeah very much. I mean we're 50 years behind them. So when the news, when Ozempic came out hit

mainstream news, what did that do to you guys? Because that must have been, that was like some massive awareness all of a sudden around peptides. Yeah, it very much was. And when people realized that we had the product, they started asking about it. But I mean, it definitely had a massive impact. I mean, there's companies that are out there now that are just doing the weight loss and they're just doing semi-glutide. For us, it definitely had a positive impact. But we've become, like I said, more focused

on preventative medication, that there's so many other things that we're treating and working with that weight loss is probably already a focus. And it's already been something that we've been utilizing with other medications, like Tessmorin. Another medication, that one was actually brought to market for AIDS. It was originally Agrifta. So Tessmorinlin, another medication, that one was actually brought to market for AIDS.

It was originally Agrifta. So Tessamorlin's its generic name. But you know, we- Just to stop to help against muscle wasting from HIV. Muscle wasting and then to help attack the visceral fat around the organ. I always thought that's why they prescribed testosterone for AIDS patients was for that reason.

Was for the muscle sprain. Part of the reason, yeah. Part of the reason, yeah, Part of testosterone and other steroids, but tessameralin was specifically for visceral body fat, so body fat around the organs and muscle wasting. And it was shown in studies to work really well. That's what it was used for. That was the thing I noticed about the tessameralin

was that, and I've experienced actual growth hormone too, both of those, whenever I am using that, my body fat percentage, I just stay, I'd say, I don't know, 2% leaner. With everything being the same? Everything being the same. Diet's the same, training like- By the way, that's significant, but I want people to understand that it's not a replacement for exercise and diet.

No, no, no. But 2% with no change is still amazing. I mean, that's exactly what I've kind of narrowed it down to. I would say the same. And it just, and I've had times where I've fallen off taking it and I also didn't look like I'm carrying about an extra percent or two body fat just from that. I mean, you said it right there, you notice it, right? So it's obviously enough that you can feel and see a difference and that's where you

want to be, right? You don't want it to be anything more than that at that point because that's where people start abusing medications and things get worse. You want it to be able to be regulated in your body and do what it's supposed to do but not have those adverse side effects. And that comes back to being a signaller and just telling your body, hey, this is what you need. This is why I love what you're doing with your foundation because when you're dealing with, so your foundation focuses on helping vets, right? Veterans, first responders, law enforcement, firefighters. Here's why I like peptides because other other medications, I mean not always, but there's

often a potential for abuse. And when you're dealing with people with PTSD or people who work, these are very stressful. I mean you picked categories of like stressful jobs. And if you give them other medications, you may run the risk of dependencies or other types of issues or side effects that could cause more depression and other stuff. Meanwhile peptides like the the risk of abuse is like you can take as much as you want your body will only get so much of a signal you know and that's that. Yeah, so how tell us about your foundation and then tell us about the the I guess the peptides that are most helping these individuals.

Yeah, so absolutely transcend foundation, we founded that about a year after the company was started. Like we said, for firefighters, first responders, law enforcement, veterans, and just having veterans in the company and myself, we've kind of focused in that area a little bit harder, I think just from our own personal networks. But a lot of things we're seeing,

a lot in the mental health space. And that kind of goes back to my earlier conversation about if you can give somebody hope, make them feel better, and they don't have these physiological issues, that they can handle the psychological issues a lot easier and a lot better. I think now being able to explain that to the people that are coming from the foundation as we get them on protocol, they get excited because they understand that that makes sense. If you don't have the energy or you can't even focus on with your therapist or the person you're talking to and your emotions are hard to regulate, how is therapy going to do anything?

So we focus a lot on that and that comes with just your base hormones with testosterone and those kind of things. As far as other medications, the BPC-157 is obviously for all the injuries that we see, Dihexa for all the cognitive issues that we see. The rest of it is really dependent on the patient, just on what they need. I would say the three I was referring to with testosterone, dihexa, and BPC are probably the most significant. But we'll use TA-1, thymol, and L-1 for somebody that's got autoimmune issues or other inflammation

in the body. And we'll use a different form of BPC in the capsule form for somebody that has gut issues. There's a lot of different options that we have. How does someone use your foundation? So like you have a veteran, how do they go through your foundation? I'm assuming you guys provide them with care and medicine.

So free medications, free care for any of the veteran firefighters, law enforcement that are in need, right? So we have to prioritize because there's a lot of help, a lot of people that need help. So we'll go through and we kind of, you know, the individuals that come to us will assess them to the best of our ability. It's similar to the VA almost where you have to go through like a rating process. Obviously ours isn't nearly as much red tape.

It's a lot quicker and a lot faster, but we have to put a lot of thought and intent when we bring somebody on from the foundation side. Because we bring them on, we're bringing them on a patient for life. If they need testosterone, they're always going to need testosterone. We're always going to need to account for that cost. We don't want to bring on a patient from the foundation side and then have a funding issue and not be able to carry them on. So right now the way we've been doing it is we call it like a mesh network where we've partnered with four or five other charities that focus in other areas, whether they're

financial, spiritual, they're working on the mental health area specifically, and then we have the physical side of things. So, you know, we'll just work with them on their patients and then send them ours that we have. That's kind of how we have to do it at the moment until we can, you know, scale that up. It hasn't caught up to the size of the company yet, so. That's awesome. So, you guys have seen good results? Definitely. Oh, yeah. We have a ton of testimonies. You know, I don't want to go through everyone else's personal stories, but I feel very comfortable saying that we've helped people stay alive.

You told me a statistic earlier, and I know that this has been such a problem that our own government has really taken notice. In fact, the research around psychedelic therapies for mental health, the reason why they kind of allowed the regulations to loosen was specifically because we were losing more soldiers to suicide than we were to battle. 22 a day. 22 a day that's the statistic you said. Yeah 22. That is absolutely terrible that's incredible. Yeah it is I mean you see them in the most impactful areas in the military too so a lot of the special operators and the tier one guys, those are the most effective.

They've seen the most combat. Um, but at the end of the day, you know, anybody who's gone over and done enough deployments and had enough, you know, you're going to have issues at some point in time. And, and dropping the stigma from getting help and being able to say that you have PTS, you know, PTS is something we refer to now, we kind of drop the D from being a disorder. We want PTS to be looked at more as an injury than something that is long-term for life.

That's permanent, right? Yeah. And it doesn't have to be permanent. You know, it's more of a perception than a reality if you treat it the right way. Ernie, would you mind if I went into yours a little bit, because I know you said you went on hormones, you did peptides.

By the way, the data shows a clear connection between inflammation and things like depression and anxiety, so physiological. So obviously there's emotional stuff that's there, but when you throw inflammation on top of it, you're just making everything much worse. So you went on these things, lowered the inflammation, hormones are up, feel better, then you did therapy. You mentioned one called EMDR. I've done that.

How was that for you? For me, it was beautiful. Um, you know, it took a little bit of time for me to start noticing it. But, um, you know, within a few sessions I started to, you know, feel less anxious. I wasn't focusing on things the same that I used to in a great way. I wasn't fixated on an event or an issue, you know, just the, uh, the trauma response, emotional response to an actual issue or an issue, you know, just the trauma response, the emotional response to an actual issue or an event, you know, it kept getting lower and lower over time, which is what the

therapy is supposed to do. I did it for a little over a year and a half, you know, I don't know, 10 years back, and then a few years ago I went back and got a tune-up, so to speak, just to, you know, be a double kind of a hit on it. But it's been great. I haven't really had any second thoughts to a lot of things that used to drive some dark times. Wow. And you're a dad now. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Definitely. 14-year-old daughter, eight-year-old son. Yeah. That's awesome. You actually get to see him now, so it's nice. Good for you. Yeah, it's exciting.

So do you think the therapy would have been, what would have been like for you without the testosterone and peptides? Were you just so tired and so that you wouldn't have the energy to even try? I wouldn't have the energy, but the other piece to that too is self-medication, right? So a lot of the veterans are people that are in these situations that are turning alcohol on drugs and substance abuse. And if you're focused on that and the other issues and you're not focused on your health

and getting things balanced out chemically in your body, then the other part of the therapy isn't gonna do it. I have to add to that. A study just came out, in fact, I was gonna bring this up on our show, that exercise done properly was twice as effective, this is a new study, twice as effective as antidepressants for just the typical

type of depression that people will experience and seek treatment for, that's profound, that's proper exercise. Now, things that can help you get to exercise or help the effects of exercise have got to be at the top of the list. So, when you're walking around as a man with 90 total testosterone, I mean mine was at 230 okay so I was like more than double yours is still low. But I know what my workouts felt like and I did it just because I'm just a fanatic and disciplined as shit about it but I know what my workouts felt like. So you know somebody's walking around who's not like a fitness fanatic like I was and 90 testosterone you ain't gonna

you don't want to do you don't want to and 90 testosterone. You don't want to go workout. No, no. You want to go home and go to bed. You don't really engage with people the same way. Your energy levels are low. It's just a bunch of problems, but being able to get on testosterone was such a quick boost of energy and change physiologically that it didn't take but a few weeks before I did want to go back and work out. And then you can use all those skills of discipline that you learned. Exactly.

I mean that was the thing that I noticed when, I mean I went through that through this show, right? So there was a, what, two and a half year period there where I came off of testosterone and I was on this mission. This was before my knowledge about peptides and anything like that. And I was trying to get it up naturally.

And it was so weird to be considered a fitness guy who I had no drive to go work out. And that was, getting on the hormone therapy of everything, that mattered the most. Like, just having the drive to wanna go to the gym made the biggest difference. And I think there's a lot of people that don't realize. Then you get the compound effect, right?

Now the workouts are consistent. Exactly, right. And then it all, then it snowballs. And I think there's a lot of people that, one, I think that, because men are terrible about going into the doctor and even getting blood work and checked out. And it wasn't like I wasn't functioning in life.

I was still going about my day, working, doing everything else like that. You know, my problem was with it, Ernie, was that one of the biggest side effects of low testosterone that'll get a man to finally ask for help is low libido. That'll get a guy to go, okay, fine, I'll go see the doctor. My libido was okay. Like, I was still okay.

So it's not every man that gets this crushed libido with low testosterone. Now I had low energy, I had the anxiety and all this stuff, but that's what made me think that it can't be testosterone. I'm still feeling okay. Well, let me ask you, how is it after? Oh, I mean, I told you. Yeah, man, yeah.

Yeah. And even when it's settled, I'm back to my younger self, right, but. Exactly. But yeah, for men listening, it doesn't have to be like all those symptoms. It could be three of them. I mean, you could just have anxiety all of a sudden. I talked to somebody who listens to the show who said I got my testosterone levels checked because of your show. My symptom was just anxiety out of nowhere.

It was like I was never an anxious person. All of a sudden I'm anxious before meetings, I'm anxious before I'm in traffic and I'm just getting anxious. I don't know what the hell is going on. Decided to get a hormone panel and my testosterone was on the floor. Well the one thing people should be doing anyways is before they're even having symptoms or any issues, you should begin your blood work done anyway. You have a baseline and you can tell that way. If you are symptomatic, you can understand if it's placebo and just a circumstance of life or is there an actual issue?

When I met my wife, right? She, I was 29, she was 30. And I remember her mom had, and she's the youngest of four kids, made all the kids before they were even 30 years old, go get their full panels done. So they had a baseline. Yeah. So I actually had never heard anybody tell their kids to go do that. And I thought that was really interesting, but it makes total sense. Like, cause you think, oh yeah, I'm fine. I don't need to go do any of that stuff right now. But yeah,

but then when you get a little bit older and you're trying to figure out what your baseline is, like that's, and it's so unique to each person. Right? You know, someone like that. That's the other thing is you could have two men can have testosterone levels that are different, but within range, one can have symptoms. Yes. The androgen receptor density plays a role.

So your general practitioner doesn't know this. And it manifests differently. You just said, like, you notice like, I didn't have any sort of anxiousness or anxiety or anything like that at all, but I, low drive and libido, I mean those were the two for me. Libido and drive were just crushed. Yeah, and your numbers, they're not gonna be the same for anyone either, right?

So you could have a testosterone level of 600 and still feel like shit. Or you could have a testosterone level of 450 and feel amazing. It just, it's so independent. It's so, you know, personally based. How many people many people on the foundation do you guys have, do you know? As far as patients, we have just about a hundred patients right now. That's awesome.

We've given back about 1.5 million in the last 18 months. That's amazing. That's awesome. Is there a place people can go to apply for that? Right now there isn't. We've been working strictly through our own foundations and connections So we could kind of keep quality control and all that on it. I think You know when I have more, you know bandwidth ability to bring in some more influencers in the veteran space and Work strictly for the foundation where we can bring in some donations and donation revenue for the foundation and we can grow it a little Bit more we will. But right now we've been really focused on making sure

that we're getting the clinical side of it right and understanding it and making sure that we understand the community's needs and wants and tying all that together. And we're pretty close to where we feel comfortable at, but we wanna make sure that we have that right first. Awesome, awesome, Ernie, this has been great, man. I can't say I appreciate you guys enough.

Pleasure seeing you, dude. Yeah. Excited for this year, too. Stand up people, it's one of the reasons why we met with you, it's why we work with you. Using a great resource. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you.

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