#14 Cooper Read, Digital & Social Entrepreneur, MAPS Advocate & Zendo Project Vol.

And it is now time for the gut check project. You were here with your host, Ken Brown, MD. I’m Eric Rieger. This is where you check your ego at the door because nothing’s off the table. What’s up Dr. Ken, how you doing? Let’s go. That’s I think that’s one of the first times or the few times that you use my title, their MD so I’m here with my co host, Eric Rhaegar. crna. Like that. I don’t know. I like to mix it up. As you can tell, I will do it different almost every single time

What? We’re on episode 14,

aren’t we? We are on episode number 14. That is correct.

So today, we’ve got a really cool guest coming on and I’m super excited about this. So one of the things that you and I have done and we’ve got a lot of feedback from people that have been writing In is that we bring guests on that we’re trying to learn some stuff from correct. And I think that almost every single episode I become more knowledgeable it is expanded my mind. And I think today is exactly where we need to be because we have somebody who’s a great storyteller that’s got some incredible experiences, and just throws himself out there. And that’s kind of that’s sort of how we’re kind of doing everything right now.

Yeah, if you’re new to the gut check project, I think that would you find that what Ken and I both want to do out of the guest is find a little bit about their journey that took them to where they are now. Because life is a journey, you’re going to find that you you’re going to be satisfied once you know more about yourself and how you’re going to know what you want until you kind of explore a little bit more around you. So

Exactly. So we have Cooper Read on the show today, and he is somebody who’s it really, it’s enlightening. He actually inspires me and other people around him and he just jumps in To explore different areas, different ways of health, and he’s gonna get into a lot of different stuff. But if you’re somebody who is kind of stuck in a rut
right now, this is your show, because we’re going to cover novel friend stuff that I think is actually something that can change both health and mind.

Yeah, absolutely. I think I think that Cooper has a great story of just being dissatisfied with where he found himself and decided to do something about it. So we’ll, I’m not going to ruin his story. But we’ll get to that whenever he joins us here in about it. It just so happens that he’s doing something about it in a field that I have tremendous interest in. And medicine is going that way. And I think that we will all be talking about this five years from now as how really to improve mental health without question without question. Real quick, of course, if you’re also new to the gut check project and even if you aren’t, you should always go to love my tummy calm forward slash spoonie. We’re on the spoonie network. So forward slash spoonie will give you our Tron teal try
and deal at a discount that you won’t find hardly anywhere else. So what is it about doctrine to that makes it so unique Dr. Brown,

so this is kind of exciting. This is my baby right here. And a little shout out to shivan Sarna, who is the head of the IBS CBOE SOS summit because probably much to her relief I finally got done filming my webinar for this
there’s a lot of experts on that is so nice. And we got a chance to one of the reasons why I was asked to speak on that summit. I mean, I’m looking at the at the other featured lectures and she’s like you’re the last one. You got to do this. Mark Pimentel did his I teach route it is we’ve got you know, Tom Osborne that did his and all these other people and Allison see Becker. She’s like you’re holding up the whole show.

Hey, you know, for those who are into kbd health and follow us and get the emails that we get every week that we send out, just be sure and tune in because what Dr. Brown is referencing is CBOE SOS summit if you’ve ever been
interested in why certain people suffer from gi distress, and they can’t quite to find the answers, that’s kind of what this whole summit is about. Not everything is going to apply to everyone. But there may be something in there for everybody who tunes in.

Yeah. And what’s super cool about this particular summit. And what Shivani has put together, is that you have people that have had different experiences doing different things, right. And my experience was in trying to find a natural solution for people that have irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, changing bowel habits. And that’s how we discovered otra until we have two trials, which have been published, and we’ve been out now for about three years. And the reality is we’re seeing the same clinical results that we did in those trials, which is four to
five people are going to get better if you have the classic symptoms of when you eat you bloat. Now, the other cool thing since we launched is that we have since learned through other scientists contacting us that the polyphenols innatron teal are actually extremely beneficial for you. They work on an anti aging level, there’s data to show that your lifting goes up, which helps get rid of old and aging cells, there’s data to show that you
increase nitric oxide to the muscles. So if you’re an athlete, so it’s really exciting. I started this journey to try and help people that were bloated that had bacterial overgrowth, and we just keep expanding and knocking down new doors. And that’s what’s so exciting about this otra until love my tummy.com slash spoonie putting code spoonie sp and y and you can also experience this so this is my baby show little support, at least cash in one coupon that’s that’s your mission. I want everyone to commit to cash in one coupon so that I know that people are at least realizing the importance of both get health and overall

health. If you don’t buy for yourself by for a friend or family member that may suffer from G issues. So, of course gut check project, like and share, like and share, like and share. Thank you for all of the new subscriptions. We reached out to our KMD health community for the first time this last week to introduce to them the contest, where we are giving away to at least five winners, the signature protection package of altran. teal, whether it be with KVD, CBD, natural flavor, or cinnamon, and keep those submissions coming, get a friend, get a family member to do the same, where you like and subscribe to get checked project either on YouTube or on iTunes. shoot us an email through going through kB md.com. I’m sorry, no KB Md health.com. And you’ll click on Contact shoot us an email. It’s easy. That’s all you have to do to sign up. And then in July, we will be drawing at least five winners so they’re probably going to be more so I’m gonna

make you check the science this time. Why do you call that the signature package? Why do those two things blends so well together CBD and I’m trying to

absolutely the great thing that you’re doing with CBD is that everything that you put behind this and this and I’m in if you’re listening through the audio only I picked up both the CBD and the Tron teal. You have real cases that have come through the clinic and we’ve shown improvement. So using this combination is what you’ve found
to be the most predictable, I guess solution for people who’ve had some type of inflammatory issue and I won’t go through all the different disease states but essentially combining the CBD with Antoine teal is the polyphenols that allow the CBD to even work better. How does it do? Well, there’s a little enzyme in there that degra dates are endogenous CBR cannabinoids like an endermite for instance name FA H. And good poly phenol intake actually prevents fGh from becoming overactive and eliminating the CBD from working word support. To work.

Exactly. So you’re kicking the science today, but that’s how can we call it the signature package that each make each other better. And that’s how come we teamed up to have the KB MD health CBD powered by it looks at all.
Absolutely.

So like I said, like and share gut check project. Thank you for all the new subscriptions this last week. That is, that is amazing. They told us it will take at least 20 shows and we’re doing it by Episode 14. So we certainly appreciate it. So now we’re going to move into Dr. Brown. What do you have on the news topic for today?

Well, so on news topic, first of all, I want to do a couple quick shout outs I am I am horrible with time zones, and we were going to have a fantastic doctor Dr. Gabrielle Lyons, she’s a medical doctor in Manhattan. She’s a
fitness expert, muscle centric protein expert. She did her graduate studies looking at protein she was going to call in and we’re going to talk about peptides because that’s my article that we’re going to talk about a little bit later. peptides and unfortunately she texted me He’s like ready to roll and I’m like, oh, timezone
difference. forgot about that. And so she is a doctor. So we couldn’t get her to that. But we’re going to have her on for a long show. Sure, we’re going to either bring her here, or we’re going to be able to do it. She’s, I think, due to have a baby pretty soon so i would i don’t want to have a new mom flying around like that. We could probably zoom her in but she’s super smart. And the reason why I bring that up is because we had one of our listeners asked something that was at and this is right in Dr. Lyons, wheelhouse. Oh is this Trisha is email Trisha called in and said hey, can you recommend a casein free protein powder? Now, coming up soon in a week or two, we’re going to have another fitness expert named Max Fairchild. He is super smart, a peptide expert. He formulates nutritional products. He’s going to be the one to answer that question. Trisha. We’re going to get that to you right away. I can look it up. But I just want to go with the people that have already done the homework. They’ve already tested. These are the people that have looked at all the formulations. We’re going to find the best one for you. So keep those questions coming in. Yeah, absolutely. And did you have anything to add to any of the shots? You were on an awesome podcast that just aired earlier this week? I was I was on the intermittent fasting podcast with Melanie Avalon and Jen Stevens. Yeah, I think this is the second or third time I’ve been on there.

going on. Yeah. Second time, I think.

Yes. Yeah. Second time. It’s great. We talked about fasting but a lot more than fasting. We talked about fasting mimetic diets, we talked about all kinds of different things. And I thought it was a great show and shout out to
Melanie, she’s got a new podcast, and I’m going to be going on that on the well I’m gonna go on it on the 24th I don’t know when she’s gonna publish it, but she’s got so she has a whole nother podcast, but that was really cool.
Check it out. Intermittent fasting podcast. And you can hear that episode and we talked a little bit more than just fasting. It’s those are two really smart people very, very fun people to talk to.

Now. That’s awesome. I did want to bring something up to you. I was reading a blog article from Chris kresser here recently and it reminded me some Do you remember a little over a year ago, there was this new message that was being pushed out talking about sitting is the new smoking. That’s right. So then we’re talking about a sedentary lifestyle. Well, if you remember, it wasn’t that long ago that you and I kind of laughed, but there’s a lot of truth behind what you eat. Oftentimes, you can’t necessarily out exercise it was someone said, You can’t outrun the fork, you can’t

outrun the fork. That was that’s a shout out to somebody that we do have to have on the show at some sometime named Todd Smith. He’s a bodybuilder trainer out of Omaha, Nebraska. He owns supplement stores and I heard him say that once I was like, I’m gonna steal that. Sure was.

There’s a lot of truth to that, you know, if you want to be healthy, a lot of it comes to where what’s your your food fuel source is? Is it healthy for you, and what does that translate to? So what kresser was able to
illustrate quite well is that if you’re sitting for long periods of time, throughout the day, you can’t really out exercise the day damage that you’re doing by sitting for this long

Say that again. So this came in a blog from Chris kresser. Who, who we know well, and we show up and he’s great guy. He wrote a blog all about sitting then

Yes, he did. And he referenced a handful of studies he basically put together he does a great job of always aggregating different things that he’s reading and pulling great information, make it easy for you to kind of consume but essentially showed that even marathon runners when they’re not actively training, and there’s other there’s other issues that may be going along with marathon running have long term inflammation exposure anyhow, but that aside, they’re actually more risk. According to some of these articles. He hasn’t therefore, coronary artery disease, because of the long periods of times that they’re not training, and they’re not running their marathons, they are sedentary. And that actually affects their metabolic rate from sitting so then you begin to dive a little bit deeper looking into sitting while working. If you go to an office, and you don’t, and you and you’re engaged with your computer. You’re having to type for long periods of time, you’re still sitting, obviously, you’re working and you’re working hard, but possibly examine what would it take for me to get a standing desk or something similar that will give you some variability. In fact, Robo Hendrickson has a new, a new product that he’s going to come up with robot that we had on from full bucket health. That’s right after

the show he was showing us he was working on a prototype to have some sort of portable version of that, so that you can get away from just sitting all the time.

Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s brilliant. And it solves a lot of problems. Of course, it gives you a portable office that you want to go but at the same time, you now have the availability to not be confined to sitting while taking care of work. Well, essentially, what kresser pointed out is sitting for 11 to 13 hours a day, and many people may say I don’t do that, and I get it more than that. And you may think that but you drive to work, and then
you put in six to eight hours of sitting, you wake up, you sit out and have a cup of coffee,

you’re caught up on whatever it is that you’re gonna do. You come home drive to work,

you may work out. But that doesn’t matter because now you can sit down to eat time, sit freaking out a little bit. And then you sit down to to maybe watch a program at home before you go to bed. That amount of sedentary non movement over time is an aggregate that you, you simply can’t out exercise according to these studies.

Well, it’s interesting because if you sit for more than six hours, it’s been shown that your lipoprotein lipase actually goes down. And that’s what burns fat, you can actually have a decrease in your bone mineral density leading to osteoporosis, and then ultimately, increased coronary events due to high blood pressure and coronary artery disease. Man when you stop and think about it, sitting is not very good for you. Yep. And if you look at how we evolved, we really didn’t do a whole lot of sitting. We were always kind of moving around. So let’s come up
with some ideas right now that we want everybody to at least try for the next week to sit there and do So when you’re put a timer on your desk chair, put a timer on your desk, think about if you can elevate your desk a little bit. There’s all kinds of different options out there for to do it. What if you’re a teacher? If you’re a teacher and you feel like that you aren’t engaging the students on a particular subject, maybe change the scenery, have a walking meeting. Don’t take the elevator if you can take some stairs. What else? Oh, I was just thinking that the for the whole teaching thing. Do you remember the meeting that we were at in Utah with baby bathwater? And one of the moderators before they even began made everybody stand up and shout Oh, yeah, brown. Yes, I just get the energy up, right. And just Get Everybody Moving. And then that’s how she said she starts all her podcasts like that. She makes her guests do that, just to get them up and ready, which is really cool. So anytime you
get up and do that, I think that elevating your desk, we walked around actually had a patient from Vera desk, the big company that does this chair, and we walked around my office and looked at different ways, different desks that we can do for the employees and I asked her Would this be something you would like, and they were all
unanimously really interested in that? And like Robo was talking about, he thought that it’d be really difficult in the beginning. But suddenly he’s standing for eight hours doing all his work, no big deal at all.

Yeah, no, that’s definitely true. Don’t you find the days that we end up having to pound away a lot of computer work, compared to the days that we’re doing a lot of scopes, are you doing a lot of clinic visits, I have more energy after doing all the movement throughout the day than I do when I’m once a once a month, twice a month. I just have to kind of pound that a lot of work on the computer. Those are the most draining days to me and I really didn’t move. I’m just sitting there paddling out on the computer and it’s,

it’s not enjoyable. Well, now. Let’s just throw one other thing in there. So people said that they sit all day then they come home. Yeah. And then they get on their computer, the blue light. Now you’re jacking up your circadian rhythm. Yeah. I mean, we’re really trying to kill ourselves. Yeah, like everything that we do in life right now is basically shortening our, our, our health time is really what it’s doing. We have We’re doing all these other things to try to correct it. But these are all easy life hacks that we can do get out, wake up. One of the greatest depending on what time you wake up, I wake up really early so the sun isn’t out. But one of the greatest things you can do to turn your circadian rhythm is get up, go for a walk on an empty stomach with sunlight, you convert the vitamin D, you turn on your circadian rhythm, you’re telling your brain we’re going to do this and it does a couple quick things. Number one, you get your body moving, you get out you get a little sunlight, and
you’re not waking up and immediately sitting down which is what a lot of people do. And you know what I’m I tried to do this so I wake up every morning really early. And I make my coffee in the French press and I got my little routine and having a routine is pretty important if we get like a lot of people like Tony Robbins and these people that say Arnold Schwarzenegger like really highly effective people. They all have a very specific morning routine chair, Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan all that I will sit there and Start drink a little coffee and then working on the charts. I took it one step further and I got a vibration plate I tried to stand on it and actually do my
charts. I’m like I’m I’m hacking this not sitting. Well as it turns out, it’s really hard to do computer work when your visions vibrating like crazy 32 oscillations per second or whatever it is,

you have noticed in those vibration plates are kind of interesting. But if you lock your knees out, man that that really affects my little skinny legs. It just takes them straight to the eyeballs. I can’t hardly see much anything.

Yeah, so just simple little hacks. That’s something that what we’re going to talk about in the next half hour is going to be another hack. I was listening to one of the greatest biohackers of all time, Ben Greenfield. He
talks about vibration plays, he talks about getting out there he talks about the getting some sun, they were talking about peptides, which is really what I wanted to have max Fairchild on and he’s going to come back on here in a few weeks to talk about peptides and that is another little hack. These are all things you can do that aren’t that aren’t that difficult to really make a big difference in your life. And offset some of the stuff. So if you’re sitting there stuck in traffic or if you’re sitting in your cubicle and every time you stand up your boss says sit down or your student teacher says Sit down. There’s ways to get around it. Just make sure that when
you have it under your control, you can do all kinds of stuff. We’re going to be talking with Cooper about different ways to engage with nature also, oh that’s that’s another little way to get your brain stimulated to get your circadian rhythm in track and all that

definitely and you know, these are these are things that if you’re a member of KB, MD health here pretty soon Dr. Brown has coming up with a system where we can start putting together some of these small tips that we’re finding out basically just amassing these studies and how you can take these into a practical life. I mean, if you’re just hearing this going, man, I work at x y&z i understand. It’s tough. It’s tough to make a change. But what we want to do is see if we can help people find easy modifiers to make those changes meaningful to you and and a little teaser and maybe have it delivered straight to your home, maybe have it delivered straight to your house.
There’s gonna be a little bit of news coming out about that over the weekend. So if you are on KB, MD health.com, and a member of KB MD health, look this suck no later than Sunday, maybe before but probably no later than the Sunday we’ve got a really, really, really cool announcement on something you’ve been working on for well over a
year,

well over a year with some really smart people out there. Shout out to Mr. Zell, of course, but there, I want to make a difference in my community. Sure. And I think this is a way to do it. And I’m really excited to start
implementing some of these things, meeting other experts doing all kinds of stuff would be Sony. And if you’re not a member of KB, MD health, it costs nothing. You simply go to KB MD health com pan down on the button on the poorly designed website that basically have no one to blame. But myself, and but we are working to improve it. We brought in we have an intern. We have an intern that started this week, we have someone who’s actually going to help us do stuff. Thank goodness Yes, thank goodness that we I had to find somebody that’s like half our age to do that.

I’m super excited to have someone help us get those things done and he’s he’s already off and running and and helping us with the redesign. So that will be great. Speaking of which, I need to address something, you know about the processor issue, right?

Yes.

So several of you and by several I mean a few hundred of you

have have had issues while trying to make purchases through the website on KB MD health and it is it’s truly no fault of ours. It’s two healthcare people trying to run a website. But the processor since we do process CBD sales, all the banks collectively have basically come up with new parameters that you have to be vetted and you have to have a right processor. They’re basically trying to prevent fraud. So for every reputable business, there’s about 20 that just aren’t and they’re trying to weed them out. So we’re, we’re, it’s it’s inconvenient for us
But we’re getting through it. And I’ve been kind of forced to handle it in the evening, some phone calls from some folks so that we can do some manual transactions. Not a big deal, though. And not all bad has come out of it. I’ve met some great people, some great supporters and people just have questions,

dude, no one knew like, I could totally see you good. No, it’s not bad. In fact, I’ve been invited to several weddings. Yeah.

I’m vacationing with the Robertson, whatever whomever they are, but I did get an interesting call. I guess it was three days ago from a gentleman from South Carolina. And he’s been watching the show because his daughter who lives in Houston, found found the gut check projects right and they’ve been sharing it back and forth and they like the episodes Well, he’s now a customer of KB, MD health CBD, but he wanted to tell me specifically about what CBD was doing for him and I don’t know if I went to full depth on this with you. But vago mediated pvcs. That was basically where he was coming from. He said that his Vegas nerve. And his interpretation of it was that over Vegas stimulation in even even in that I’m still trying to wrap my head around it but would elicit pvcs and and
throw him into a fit. Go ahead. I was just gonna say the Vegas nerve is a exclusively complex thing that runs from the brain all the way down. So we’re going to have a Vegas nerve expert, one of my patients. That’s his work as a PhD. He’s working at Vegas nerve stimulation and what it does and where it can go. So we can that’s that’s a whole separate episode, but I love the fact that he called in Why do you think the CBD helped him? I don’t know. It’s a really good question. His his interpretation was that something with the Vegas nerve whenever it wasn’t performing properly, he could have pvcs and then throwing himself into a fib. But something that he had found out is that using high quality reputable CBD dose actually prevented him from having a fit episodes that could last week between 812 hours. Tory he didn’t go into eighth anymore and he had the same experience so far with KVD CBD which I thought was great. And of course this is anecdotal I’m certainly not making a claim but this is what
he’s found utilizing that and he’s been in in conversation with his with his cardiologist to talk about that. But all that aside, I would like to dig in deep with with them of course the biggest nervous. It’s think Vegas is Latin for wanderer, and it’s a nerve it is the parasympathetic nervous,

right regulator. Yeah, because all the way down and regulate your gut as well. And it’s interesting because even in the CBOE forum, communities and things people really try and make some sense of it, they try and figure out
how to manipulate the Vagus nerve. We’re just going to bring one of the world’s experts on, we’re just going to do a deep dive real geeky scientific dive into it to make sure that your vagus nerve is healthy. The beauty of CBD It works like an adaptogen. So it just kind of goes where you need it.

The older you get, the faster time goes by, because that’s another half hour. So Episode 14. We’ll be back here after the break with Cooper Read in just a moment.

And we are now back for the second half hour Episode 14 gut check project. I am now joined on my ride by Mr. Cooper read digital entrepreneur and social entrepreneur. Hey, there Cooper

doing very well guys. I’m happy to be here.

So you’re also a MAPS advocate as well as the fun I’m going to screw this name up. Zendo Project volunteer correct?

Absolutely. As a no project and MAPS organization, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Oh yeah, I’m an advocate for that kind of push that but I really am a volunteer for Zendo project. Yeah.

What is Zendo project is

no project is a project it’s underneath the MAPS organization. They set up your in music festivals all around the world. And it kind of hold a space for people that are having difficult psychedelic experiences.

Episode, story after story, one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on so bad is because I really do we’ve we’ve actually interviewed Dennis McKenna. Yep. Who was a godfather and psilocybin, there are in my world, there are now FDA studies going on where they’re looking at psilocybin for different things. And we’re gonna jump right into your history as soon as I kind of talk, but we always try and do in the shows, at least want to get through one academic paper to get everybody up to speed, at least on something, try to teach something. So they’re just yesterday, the US News came out with a report where it showed that us death rates from suicides, alcohol and drug overdose is reached an all time high. So I think there is no better time for somebody like you being involved with the maps to start integrating some of this stuff because we’re clearly not doing a very good job. We’re committing suicide more often we’re dying from opioids and all this. So what I wanted to get into on the friends a little bit is something called peptides. So I am not an expert in peptides. backstrap child is Gabrielle ally
and Gabrielle Lyons is that we’re talking about, but so I try to teach myself a little bit about this. And so I found an article on a peptide called BPC 157. So BBC 157 is a peptide chain consisting of 15 amino acids. So peptides are just very specific amino acids. And Ben Greenfield was talking that when does the peptide become a protein? Yeah, yeah. And it there’s, there’s really, you know, the experts in this can say, well, it gets really weird because growth hormone is still considered a peptide, but it’s really big. It’s a really big peptide. So think of that. It’s just very specific amino acids put together. So BPC 157, although it’s considered sun Vedic, it’s actually a protective protein which is found in the stomach. And it’s known for its anti ulcer effects. So they’ve known about that for quite a while. Dr. Lyons is the one who told me to start using it in my gastroenterology practice, and I’d never even heard of it. Nobody’s ever talked about that. So I’m super excited that I’m now getting into this aspect. So researchers have conducted numerous rodent studies that show that it does have
protective protective effects, but it also seems to extend beyond the stomach and intestinal tract. So BBC 157, has been shown to benefit also healing in the stomach, intestinal damage such as fistulas, and inflammatory disorders, but there is some anecdotal evidence to show that bone and joint healing also takes place. What I really wanted to get into is, in my practice, I talked about the brain gut access all the time. So I found an article researchers out of Croatia have done rodent studies looking at the influence of On the brain gut access, and this actually comes from 2016. And what they did is they looked at BPC 157. And over a very long period of time, they
tried to show how not only is it protective in the stomach, but it is very useful as a peptide in other areas of the body, specifically the brain. And it’s funny because their thought on this was the first I didn’t even think
about this when we talk about the brain gut axis and the first one to actually show that was Pavlov. I have lobby and respond. Yeah, sure. This Julian the dog ring a bell. Here’s it and then it turns on the intestines. Yeah, it’s a brain gut response. Yeah, it is. So we all have this. And so the main thing that BPC 157 does, it is a
growth like peptide. So it turns on genes that increase blood vessel growth and nerve growth. Since one more time because you’re everybody’s if you’re like me, you’re going what BBC 147 turns on blood vessels. growth and nerve growth. Wow, that’s wild. It is wild so wild So what they did is they looked at a bunch of different well brain mood issues and they specifically looked at these animals and said, well how does BPC 147 help with this? So I just want to go through and the articles really big and journey long. So I just want to go through a few things because if you suffer from any one of these, let’s start talking some peptides. Okay, depression. They proved that BPC 157 actually acts on the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems as well as the Gabba system. Remember a few episodes back we talked about how CBD can directly bind to serotonin, right? Much like an adaptogen. It’s almost like this is an adaptogen also, they show that in these animals, they induce depression and I don’t I never really get into how they actually do that. This with the animals I don’t know if they serve them with divorce
papers. Job are they are they yeah they fire Oh, whatever. It’s something you know my car sit

down for too long.

So they actually induced depression measured all these different levels and they showed that serotonin and dopin dammed up I mean and Gabba all came back to normal levels after being injected with the interesting 37. Okay,
super wild. How about this one alcohol withdrawal. They showed that it actually counteracted acute and chronic withdrawal as well as healing the liver in the GI tract.

That is very interesting, but it makes a lot of sense on why people can’t escape alcoholism. Oh, one step further. opioid withdrawal.

Oh, wow. I just got done saying you have death rates from suicides, alcohol, drug overdoses reach all time all time high. And what you’re going to talk about is some psychedelics that have have some great promise. I’m learning about this for the first time and I reading this, I’ll be an animal models, but it’s very hard to get FDA to approve human studies. We know that so the ant has to start with animal models. Sure. It showed that the opioid receptors would be downregulated after getting it so that they didn’t have that yearning where they were like demanding the opioids.

And that’s actually really impressive.

When it gets into disease states, multiple sclerosis, BBC 157 effectively counteracted the development of brain lesions and Ms induced mice traumatic brain injury. They actually stimulated nerve growth and decreased brain edema after inducing traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injuries, improved rat tail movement, after they in they cause the spinal cord injury. So basically, this is what I really consider a true life hack if it if it could, this can be put over that’s how I want to have these peptide experts on so I have not used it personally. I’ve Not giving it to my patients yet to them just discovering this. But when we start combining these different things sure to natural a meat Well, it’s a synthetic amino acid sequence. But these peptides, they’re really big in the
bodybuilding community and they’re really big in anti aging community, which sometimes I’ve always said that I felt like endurance athletes and bodybuilders know more about nutrition than any gastroenterologist because they manipulate the body through it. Sure. So, what we talked about here, and you’re going to carry the torch now, because what we talked about is some pretty cool stuff like we’ve covered stem cells, CBD, photo bio modulation, these are all easy to implement things that can make a huge difference in your life. So I was looking at this there are some Facebook groups that are that are really proponents of peptides and I was set a couple of emails on that

I got a question to have now like to write down whenever for max and just first to kind of think about because I don’t think that we have the answers specifically from the research that that we have, you know before so here
for 137. But what makes it synthetic? And is there a Is there a natural counterpart that does that? And the other one would be with all of the the advances or the disease states that we talked about we would benefit from what about peripheral diabetic neuropathy? If you’re talking about nerve generation and blood flow and angiogenesis or growth of blood vessels, then that’s that’s ultimately what ends up you got you got a poor guy’s got diabetic
neuropathy in his feet, and he’s sitting too close to a floor heater and burns off the ends of the ends of his toes and Can you feel it?

Yeah. Or or starts taking Lyrica or Gabba patent or something and you know, all those commercials don’t take the pressure of a head falls off tomorrow. But you know, I mean, all those things. So what makes it synthetic I had
to look this up on examine calm. It’s considered a 15 amino acid sequence. It’s only considered synthetic because the particular sequence has not been extracted the, in the exact sequence, it’s probably believed to be a large one that gets cleaves that works in the Seidel protective area of the of the stomach. So it’s only synthetic because they’ve not been able to actually extract it in the exact same sequence

possible that lives somewhere, even if only for a brief period of time that we just haven’t found it in its old form yet.

Exactly. It’s like many things that you know, you can. I’ve had this, I’ve had this discussion with different pharmaceutical companies where when you look at it, they’ll say, oh, it doesn’t get absorbed, but they’ll be like systemic effects. And the argument from the pharmaceutical companies Oh, no, but when you take our drug, you won’t see this in the blood. And my argument is, when you eat a steak, you don’t see steak in the blood. Yeah, right. You break down into an amino acid complex. And that’s, that’s, that’s one of the things that actually happens. To do pharmacokinetic studies, they say, oh, take this it in your blood doesn’t get absorbed. Okay, but why? Why are my feet swelling? Why? Why do I, you know, Brian I hurt or whatever.

Yeah, that’s it’s the whole pro drug to active component thing you know, it’s basically I’ve taken in this whole but this this isn’t what it’s going to do the action it’s when it’s broken down or assembled into something
else that it ends up doing whatever it is it’s going to do.

Yeah, totally. So, BPC 157. We’re going to learn more about it. And when we do have a real expert on about that, I’m just going to eat his brain and just or her brain, whoever the expert is, that’s gonna be messy.
That’s right now we’re going to get some we’re going to get some subscribers.

Welcome to the gut check project.

So speaking of messes, I don’t know while that is even a good segue really at all. So I think that we should go ahead and reconnoiter here and go ahead and reread reintroduce Cooper, Cooper Read. Like I said, he is a digital And social entrepreneur now but you found your your way there and a completely different career path and where
we probably may have crossed paths earlier before didn’t but didn’t really get to know each other. Right? Right. Absolutely. So born here in Texas

I was born here in Texas small town grew up in Paradise, Texas, tiny little, you know, I don’t even know if there’s a dot for paradise, but

it’s a little nowhere, here in North Texas.

Sure. And then what Where did you find yourself after you you left paradise? Um,

yeah. So I I felt left paradise I went travelling around for you know, I get I played a year of college baseball, Texas Wesleyan University in you know, then I went into Denton and got really into the arts after my baseball career was kind of over. From there. I decided I wanted to go into Performing Arts. So I went to Dallas got a degree in performing arts. And then from there, I got an opportunity to move up to Chicago studying comedy, you know, Second City in improvolympic up there

What I’m really interested in we’re going to spend the whole show talking about your your life

it was one of those comedy cards so I could just say offensive stuff and just blame it on my comedy

you can actually join the professional comedy Association it’s much easier to get into the Actors Guild yeah like 25 bucks you to the card so I was just wanting to do that whenever I whenever I offend anybody I’m just working on my set Yeah, right.

I don’t mean it just

kidding guys. This material anyways it from there. I became a father and came back to Texas and had to get a real job and quit bartending and doing comedy stuff on the weekends. I got into surgery technology got assert, became certified surgical tech and started my career in Denton and then moved to back home Wise County Decatur, Texas at Wise Regional. They’re specializing in neuro you know, spine and Branson orthopedics will look at

that orthopedic so you know, he worked with one of our former guests right?

Would that be Dr. (Wade) McKenna

Yeah, yes,

I absolutely worked with McKenna has several cases. Yeah, I have a very just so many fond memories of working with that guy. He’s so good, so talented, what he does and, and then his, you know, ongoing research and education for himself and just what he does. It’s just awesome. I’m a big fan of Wade McKenna, I’d like to give him a
shout out at some point. Say hello, where he said, Hi. Yeah, we’re actually huge fans also, when when he came on the show, I thought that was one of the coolest, if you haven’t had a chance to look at that episode, I don’t

know, whatever number

whatever it is stem cell cells. Yeah, there is something that you need to look at. Did you ever do it? Did you ever assist him in any of the stem cells would you do only just do the open cutting stajan

open cutting stuff, you know, and then he would get in and then you’d spin the plasma and stuff and re administer that, you know, once closing was done to help with the healing and things, you know, stuff like that after where he

was doing the in the nlr PRP experiments. He had his own centrifuge and he usually had one or two dedicated people there. There were just there was basically many lab and radio are right in the middle of the

assignment you know what while we were doing the case you know it’d be spinning the PRP and separating all that and then at the end of it, it was a you know, the assist job or whoever was helping, you know, close up the case. They would administer that for for you know, the healing process and regeneration that goes on.

That is really cool is he was into it. And of course, you had the other two awesome or those there have chronic and (John) Ribeiro Yeah,

so yeah, I spent lots of time working with Dr. Ribeiro, he’s he’s one of my favorite surgeons. He’s a great great physician and a great guy in general you know, just anyway, so those guys and then his first assist is our SIS Jacob (Mayberry) who’s been with him many many years. He’s one of my best friends and and super sharp guy and
also super fun. Another really good

another college baseball player (Texas Tech). Yeah, yeah.

So it sounds like you had a great environment right there Did something happen where you just like said screw this, you threw down the the trocar whatever it is. Take off. I

walked out or what happened?

So I really, I wasn’t I wasn’t happy or fulfilled after a certain amount of time. You know, I like I said, I was in Chicago studying comedy and all this stuff. And then I was like, Okay, well, I gotta get a real job, raise a
family do that sort of thing. So Jacob Maybury invited me, you know, to He’s like, hey, maybe you should come check, uh, you know, follow Roberto and I in a case, and then see if you want to go get certified, see if it’s something you want to do. And so I did that audited a day with Ruth Ribeiro at Bridgeport. And then from there, I was like, Okay, I’m going to get certified and do this for a while. And then, you know, several years go by, you know, about four or five years, and I start to just kind of check in with myself and realize that I’m not not happy, you know, my home life. I’m looking back on it now. Might be a little bit of depression. You know, I had all these great things going on. I had a good job. I was in a happy I like the people I was working with. But you know, there was just I was tired. Sure. antig

You didn’t have a creative outlet

I didn’t have that outlet

you did you know if you did the performing arts then comedy you’ve got that brain that needs to constantly be stimulated like that

right right and so when in surgery became so monotonous so roboticle you know, doing the same things and you know I I rose up to be you know, really good you know, in the in the spine and neuro area and then in even that, you know, for a while I’m like I’m helping people you know, with spines brains, I’m working on that. That’s awesome. That’s exciting. I love it. But after a while, I just knew that I wanted like my heart was calling me to like be out and about and go moving shaking. And then but as my health started deteriorating as well, with like, with
like the the fatigue, and the depression, and I started gaining weight. And really was the unhappiness with the weight and all not really unhappiness with the weight but just like the not being fulfilled and being unhappy, plus the weight gain. I had to really check in with myself and figure out what was going on there. So started taking steps to get healthy.

So look Let’s look at that what how do you think that you ended up becoming unhealthy in that environment because unfortunately, we see a lot of people in healthcare. And I think there’s a lot of reasons for it, the hours, it’s the stress, the shift work, all different kinds of things. So our health care providers sometimes are sacrificing themselves without even realizing it, to try to help other people. How do you think that process happened with you?

I mean, I agree, I think that’s what it was, you know, like the, the long hours the, you know, it’s physical work, you’re on your feet, you know, 812 hours a day.

That’s good thing, though,

that that’s a great thing to be moving. But once you know, the long hours and just you know, exertion with the mental exertion as well, you know, going in the emotional, you know, you’re working with people you’re trying to save lives here, you know, and so, they take their jobs very seriously. So mentally, physically long hours, that also

go but do you say that standing in one spot, you know, whatever you’re working as the as the technician, you’re oftentimes especially difficult case you’re holding a pose for a very, very long time while something’s being articulated. Something’s being cut out. And you really are sacrificing a lot. You get aches, pains, etc. You probably

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Just this holding these, you know,

position. Yeah. And then you want to move. So I’m just thinking back when I was a med student where we had to do that. Yeah. And you’re like, I remember at University of Rochester, we’re doing a gunshot wound like 2am and
you’re holding these retractors and you start getting fatigued start shaking surgery starts yelling at you quit moving the field. You’re like, trying, yeah,

no sweat.

Hope it’s not gonna fall into the sterile field, you know? Yeah, there’s all kinds of distresses. Yeah, that going on?

Yeah, for sure. But I think that, so over a long period of time, I think that that, that weight a lot on me, just with the stress that goes on with the environment. And then and then just so you know, not not being out and being active as much and being indoors. So putting in those hours and You kind of hit on this in the past, but what was your interpretation of maybe this is an institution of health that I’m in. But make no mistake, it’s an institution. And it’s an industry. What did you think about the hospital industry? where you’re supposed to be delivering health? And then maybe some of the execution of some of that? As It Is it rolled out?

Right? And that’s where it Yeah, so, morally, I saw some things that didn’t sit well with me, you know, being in that industry, right? Sure. I saw that, that you have the patient that becomes like, kind of someone that’s
there in the middle, right. And you have for me, and a lot of cases, you would have the insurance companies, you know, and the doctors kind of going back and forth, and it becomes more of like a number, you know, the patient
becomes maybe a number versus like, hey, let’s really figure out what’s going on here rather than like walking in and being like, okay, who’s who’s insurance what, you know, what’s the insurance here, you know, in so that for me is like, it was just it was one of the minor things, but it was one Things caught my attention, you know that, like, it’s where the health care system is, for me is like, it needs to be more focused on, you know, the patient and patient health and the patient well being, rather than, you know, worrying about, you know, the money parts and the insurances. And I know that that all plays a very important role in it all, for sure. But it just kind of seemed like the the patient was kind of being put to the wayside. And just, you know, and so that was, for me, one of the indicators, like, I don’t know, if I want to stay in this, you know, for and make it a career.

Well, I know that the three or those that you referenced, Roberto McKenna, and have rhotic they all were incredible patient advocate. The hard part I’ve seen, I’ve seen them struggle with it, too. It’s like, how can I deliver this service? And can you know this? A lot of times, it’s not even, can I do this without insurance? It’s, do I even have a place to allow this you tried to do a charity case here recently and almost got blocked when you’re trying to give up your time. And that kind of stuff gets in the way. When you’re like, Look, I’m just trying to provide a service who needs it? And we get others who are able to basically start. So

yeah, unfortunately, it’s super complex. And we have developed a system that is an organism that feeds on itself. We have developed a system where well, like Chris kresser talks about all the time. Yeah, we are trying to fix the end organ thing and trying to and then people have figured out how to make a profit on it. Right? And I
remember listening to Peter attea, a talk one time where he’s he was a cardiothoracic surgeon, I think, because he really felt like he was at the bottom of the hospital and people were lobbing eggs. Yes, trying to catch the eggs is like, why don’t we quit throwing the eggs out the window of that. And that’s kind of what you’re getting at where your mind I can see that you are very in tune to your feelings, nature and everything. And that’s
really cool that you took a step back and what, wait a minute, this is not for me, right? I’m not gonna be able to solve it. So sharing with the hospital ministration or Yeah,

Paula Six you know, I, I was working, I was editing blogs for a guy who’s really into sustainability named Rob Greenfield. And when I was working with him I was like, man, how do we like I would love to try to take on the medical industry and just the waste that they produce anything like this so I’ve like had the ambition again the thought like How can this happen? But then again, you know, it’s such a hue there’s so many things that are going on with it but but yeah, it’s something that I can’t solve but I took a step back and said, Well, this I would
love I know what’s going on but I’m gonna take a step back and do what’s best for me. And so that led to me I did take one last hurrah as a travel surgical tech went traveling took some contracts the you know out of state to kind of see you kind of where my mind was on that and then we’re both not just wise counsel

problem Yeah, yeah.

Was there it was there a straw proverbial straw that kind of was like you know what, this this is the part that is just non negotiable for me or was it just kind of everything together it

kind of it you know, it was all it all kind of came together and it was where I was in life. And it was just kind of felt like a time to move. Move on. I love the people that I work with. And you know, I was I enjoyed my time doing that. But at the same time I was I was ready for more I want to be fulfilled. I wanted to I needed a challenge. I need a challenge. Hi, how old

is your son at this time?

So I have a daughter, daughter, she’s eight right now. So back then to whenever I stopped all this, you know, she was five six. Yeah,

yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, really. So I imagine that you you left there for much more lucrative investment banking type thing.

Yeah, so quite the opposite.

So what I did is I took the little money I did have and I purchased a school bus and converted it into a camper and then spent the rest of the money on Christmas gifts for the family that year. And then yeah, converted that school bus into a camper and went roaming around in the mountains of New Mexico and a little bit of Colorado and no plan. No plan really other than I wanted to get into travel like I’m like, now’s the time to do it. Want to
figure out a way to make a living, you know, traveling so what do i do i get the school bus converted and I start inviting people on these adventures of the mountains to kind of take an adventure, you know, pay for the gas, give me a little extra and I’ll show you a great time have connections in New Mexico and Colorado and you know, various other places in Texas. So that was my first kind of entrepreneurial thing.

How would people find you on social media?

Yeah, utilizing social media, I started I became a part of this group called superhero Academy. You can find them superhero academy.net or anywhere online, to get a really good thing going on. So I started learning about social entrepreneurship and just how to utilize you know, Facebook and Instagram and YouTube to make a living right to to put yourself out there that brand yourself, right and so this was back in 2015 or so that I started in
2015 2016. Anyway, so I started, that’s how I started. That’s how everyone knew. Like that’s that’s where I was posting this with my close community, friends and family. Facebook and you know that’s where my first few customers came from. So it went from there you have a long bus or short but it was kind of a short bus. It was like when it was an old well it wasn’t it was a 1998 Thomas and it was one of the shorter versions it wasn’t the long one but it wasn’t necessarily like a short bus I there was like one of those like mid weird, like big block. Yeah, tweener. Yeah but it was like good a big and blocky and but it only had like 67,000 miles and it was a diesel when I bought it from a kid that was moving down to Texas a&m and had it for his buddies to go fishing in and I paid 4300 bucks for it and I was like this is a little nugget of gold right here.

That actually sounds pretty awesome.

Unless you had like it like your first few guests ended up being like serial murder or something. Or you buy your Jason there’s a guy and a machete Come on. Yeah,

what’s your trash bag? So

he probably would have lightened up on one of my trips.

We had a good time. And it was that’s what it was about though it was about getting out and finding yourself and exploring and being out in nature, and also just the travel experience and the cognitive effects it does have on
the mind. And just in in just how healthy it is, I think I think a lot of our health starts at our you know, in our mind our thought process and our brain. So that’s what I wanted to show people. Hey, get out do what you love, but also here’s a healthy way to do it by getting outside and pushing yourself challenge yourself. Let’s go skiing. Let’s go snowboarding. Let’s go kayaking. You know, let’s go hiking up in the mountains. Oh,

that’s really cool. So that’s actually the stuff you do it was almost like it was like an adventure bus.

It was an adventure bus. Yeah, that’s

what it was absolutely Jeremy problems with that. That 98 diesel in the in the cold ever fire now.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, no serious problems. Um, there was a couple of mornings, or there were a couple of mornings where it was just like slow to start. But usually fire right up, man. This thing was a beast. It was it just ran and ran and ran and I think part of it Because it had low mileage and it was just kind of getting broken in, you know, like a diesel diesel engine to run forever and ever and I’m just getting broken in but now I fired right up in the mountains. Yeah,

but that is the exact opposite of the job that you were doing as a surgical techniques act opposite.

Yeah.

Just real quick before we have 30 seconds to break, but Okay, did you feel that the moment you begin to engage with people on a personal level that suddenly now you’re starting to feel an elevated mood versus always seeing patients that were asleep?

Absolutely, absolutely. And that was my favorite part of actually being in the surgery is like, you know, communicating with those patients before they were when I went under, and then yes, when I moved into and started talking with people one on one, that was where I really started thrive.

We’re gonna wrap up this lat this half hour and join Cooper again for the next hour, but we’ll be back here in just a moment. And that’s not where his story stop seemed a bit

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and we’re back for our number two Episode 14 gut check project. Check your ego at the door nothing’s off the table. We’re joined today by Cooper Reed, digital and social entrepreneur and of course a maps advocate and a volunteer for the zendo project. We will get to that in just a moment. But let’s touch base again in case you forgotten. Love My tummy, calm slash spoonie get your discount on our Tron teal today. And the big challenge for everybody want everybody to commit, buy a bottle for a friend or family member, use that code. Use that code everybody’s a winner there. And don’t forget if you really want to win. If you really want to win, subscribe and share the gut check project. Go to go check project on YouTube to get your project tech channel. Search for get checked project on iTunes subscribe, then all you have to do is go to K BMD health.com or gut check project. com. Connect with us, let us know that you did it, you’ll be entered. We’re going to draw at least five winners in July. It’s five winners and what are they gonna do? They’re going to get the signature protection package which is altran teal and kBm de CBD one month supply, no cost to you enter as many times as you want. Of course, we’ll just see what happens how many times you can subscribe. So, but we’ll we’ll go that route. If you’re new to go check project we are hosted on the spoonie network. And there’s an amazing array of shows out there that Dr. Brown and I both have tried to take in as many episodes as we can everything from family meal is Chef Mark Conway to No buts
too big that’s just with one team. That’s with Elisa Shakespeare and of course, the great chef Patrick measures on this channel also. So tune in to the spoonie network. If you ever want to learn a little about food. It’s not just gut check project on here talking about new innovations in health and new approaches. It is also a lot about
food and food science and improving the way that you eat. We’re just trying to make this is about making everybody better. And we’re listening to Cooper talk about some really cool, brave changes in his life. He saw that his health was heading in the wrong direction, pivoted and got that bus camper and started doing things. So you
started discovering nature and things. So one of the things that I like to do sometimes with Eric, is I’ll ask, I’ll ask him philosophy quotes, and if he can remember the philosopher who said it, so here is the philosophical quote of the day.

Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.

Reality is wrong. Dreams are for that. That was what Tupac was. Did.

Tupac was a philosopher man like he you know like say what you want about it but I know a lot of people love him but man he’s got some content he’s got some content

new to the game. Wow straight to the hip hop repertoire. Nice nice Cooper right Welcome to the show.

And heard one of the other episodes but that’s good. That’s actually good. Yeah,

that’s good. No, normally it’s it’s it’s little Wayne.

I was gonna do a little Wayne one today but i don’t know i think this is pushing the boundaries on it. So

it’s not it’s not it’s not solid cheese and lasagna.

lasagna is there’s there’s a whole website dedicated to little Wayne quotes. wish to none in a wheelchair. Call that Virgin Mobile. Oh my god. Yeah. Yours wrap that in

a truth man?

Well, I just like to how, at what, at what point are you going to maps.org then you say Listen, I need to write some music. Just like put it all in the cup. Mix it up with some. Yeah, whatever it is lean. Yeah, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna write some crazy stuff so

well hey, we we left off last half hour. You were talking about the bus ride. You have any you have any experiences in the bus that maybe didn’t go exactly as planned? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh,

yeah. I had a couple of know the one that sticks out the most though is we were in Taos, New Mexico. And it had been yells or whatnot. Love to Oh, man. It’s my favorite. So we were we’d been there for about a week or so I was with my brother and my friend Amy. And we were just having a good time up the mountain some other friends were over an angel fire. So we like met up with them got on the mountains. And then it was time to go home and we
came in on this like really sketchy like Mountain Trail. And then it were just like I was like, I’d been there several times. And came in like the normal way. But for whatever reason the GPS like was like, we’re going to go this direction and I was like,

save you two minutes.

Yeah. And I was like, okay, cool, we’re gonna go this way, the back way in. And so naturally, like when we left like there was a hit, there had been snow and, and you know, the temperatures dropped to about, you know, zero while we were there. So when we’re heading out, I’m like, I’m gonna go back that direction and see what happens. And it was not a good choice. We got up we got we’re going up hill on these frozen roads, you know, and this is Charles is all dirt You know, this is just rocks and dirt. And I’m like, I knew I knew was sketchy going up, but I’m like, you know what, I’m just gonna go with it and see what happens. And no, yeah, we start sliding, you
know, and I can’t get it under control. When I am trying to press the brakes. At one point. We’re just kind of on this incline

on this bus.

I don’t even know honestly. I have no idea that

flinstone

really cold

yeah I didn’t know we were just sliding and back back back we back you know we kind of almost kind of we’re going off of the mountain side a little bit it wasn’t like a steep drop off but it would have been something that could not have gotten out of so I tried to like steer it back and I just as I was sliding backwards are turn the wheel I turned the wheel and got it like just perpendicular with the road and then tried to pull out but even even turning and trying to get out of it it just made the situation even more and I going into the bank of the road what is everyone saying on the bus and everyone well after a lot of silence silence for a long day like in you
know in the home of the engine going and you know, everyone just quiet like what like why did you take us this route? Like we understand your about adventure but like this is not for us. And you know, like I said my brother is just back there. shaking his head like I don’t know how we’re gonna get out of this

you brothers? Like I don’t understand how you got insured for this

exactly No, let’s just go anyway so we go into the bank in the nose of the bus is stuck into the side of the road and the snow and all that so we had to get the city officials or the Rangers I think that the park rangers showed up in this big old snow plow monster truck looking thing comes out and they tie chain on and yank us out and get us going back the opposite direction back to the Safe Road do they trail you just to make sure you made it
down? Yeah, yeah, they did. They did because the rest of Luckily though, it was all like downhill you know, so just kind of easy cruise down but, but that was a sketchy moment because like we almost went off the mountain of backside then we crashed into the bank on the other side. So

so when you were following this

snowcat thing didn’t have a bumper sticker that said if you can read this, you’re an idiot.

Might as well

you know, yeah, I don’t know, man, it was just like, I’m gonna try it. I’m gonna go with it. Let’s see

about that. That’s not I would not do. I mean, I would only like, go and like the most I totally admire you from doing that. And I think that is what’s so cool. You left this career, you jumped in both feet and you start
pushing your boundaries. Exactly. Including that that’s why haven’t even having these, these events that you got through and you became a little better for it. That’s what if you’re on the fence on something and you’re
worried about failure, failure happens.

I like how you brought along some innocent people for you.

Yeah, yeah, they’re great friends. And, yeah, they’re their friends. They I don’t know why, but they came with me and they all lived a story, you know, tell their own versions of the story. So you know, that’s what I’m about experiences. Right. You know,

I would love to hear their versions like everybody’s screaming.

Just got quiet.

The curtain behind me to sit down That’s awesome. Yeah,

yeah. But that was kind of the most sketchy moment being on the side of that mountain not be able to get up and get out of there. Yeah, but other than that, though, has a lot of fun.

So after that, you I know that you you had the bus, New Mexico and Colorado, you then and told me that you had moved to taking a trip down to Mexico, right? I did. Is that right after this? Or that was Yeah,

shortly after I Really?

Yeah, it was a little bit after I wanted a change of scenery had been hitting the mountains hard. And it was, you know, February or so. I was like, I was something tropical. Sounds nice right now and I had the freedom I created the amount of freedom from you know, I downsized a whole lot in the process of moving careers and changing careers you went and minimal guy, you know, like downsize from a house to a spare bedroom and the bus. So anyway, so I had some freedom, and I was like, I’m going to take a trip down to Mexico. I did a garage sale to raise
a little bit more funds for that, and took $176 with me and spent about seven weeks down in Mexico, all around the Riviera Maya region. From a slumber Harris and Cancun down to Playa Del Carmen down to to loom back up. Yeah.

Just on that money

just on that money hold on that money. Now I did have like a had a savings account. And so I bought a one way ticket for 82 bucks when I went down there, and so I didn’t buy a returning ticket back until, like, a few, like several weeks into that trip, you know, but I had savings account for that plane ticket back, but I just went with $176 cash and that’s all I used end up getting a couple of jobs while I was down there, staying in hostels. Using couchsurfing. com or people open up their doors to travelers all over the world need a place to stay you get in a pinch, like you can get on this you can get on this website app and someone there’s always someone that
will let you in and crash on their like on a pallet on the floor or spare bedroom or the couch. So couchsurfing.com and hostels is how I afford a lot of that stuff. Yeah,

you want to be good friends.

Oh my gosh, man. I met people from all over the world. I made great friends. There’s a guy down there. Right now now the cello, Fernandez and so he comes from a long line of fishermen down there that that specifically lived
on Eastern O’Hara. So he sold mo Harris is a tiny little island right off again, which is beautiful. It’s gorgeous. It’s so good. It’s so great. And so he comes from a long line of fishermen there. And so he was one of the guys that I use on couchsurfing.com. And he just hit it off buddies. He taught himself English by playing American video games and watching American film. So, so that’s how he learned English. And so anyway, so now he’s got his own like little tour guide boat and he takes people out on adventures for snorkeling. He’s also a whale shark diver. And so in June or no, July, July, I’m hoping to go down there and catch up, catch some whale sharks.
not catch them but hang out with them during the waters down there. Yeah, so jello was one of the great you know, great friend who I go down there and visit all the time now. And then people from all over the world, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina, mean people like I met people, we made these connections while we’re all They’re traveling we’re all just kind of relax and in that travel zone, that travel spirit, you know, and, and so you meet people all along the way, all walks of life. And so I have people who invited me to their homes all around the world after connecting with him while traveling said, Hey, anytime you’re in our part of the world come hang out.

So first what what were the kind of the the job? What were the 10 years of some of the jobs that you had down there?

So I have a background in bartending and restaurant management as well. So there’s a part of Eastern Harris down Hidalgo that’s a little bit more tourist, but it’s got a long line of like markets and restaurants and cantinas.
And so I found myself bartending for one Cantina and bar restaurant. And then another one I was a host, they’d like that I could speak English and talk to the English speaking tourists. So I would get people Hey, you know, how’s it going? Where are you from? Come on in dry the food you know, yeah. So doing things like that. And then for like, one job we got as kind of like the beginning of Like the digital marketing, like kind of side of like trying to make money doing that

you’re doing that you were just doing the digital marketing just to get yourself out there and say, Hey, can I give you this amount of money to go do hop on the bus and do this? Sure. So you just went down there and

yeah, so I was like, I was doing a lot of blogging and blogging and stuff like that, trying to be like one of those, like travel influencers, if you will. So, yeah, so then while I was down there, you know, got funds got a little tight. And so there was a little spa company that brought up you know, are like a massage company, those little those huts are on the beach. And so they were wanting to grow their business, and they we just ran into them, like at a Cantina or something like that. And as it will, can you build out a website and we’ll you know, we’ll pay you like, you know, so my friend Amy and I, my my friend Amy, who went who was on the crazy bus experience. Crazy and she’s a trooper, and she met me down to Mexico, she had a week to spend so she came down to Mexico. And so we helped build out this little website for a little massage company and that was kinda like the first you know, a little bit into digital marketing they

one of the first ones In their geographical area to have that

I mean for their in their niche and their like their spa their their their massage hut. Yes but you know there are like there were other restaurants that

you know I don’t know if you follow them actually follow them this is there now Massage Envy.

Envy yeah I don’t

man Yeah, no but yeah that was what another way that I made money doing that for

just like out of curiosity Did you market to people that were going to be potential tourists like so they they know that they’re going to book travel to that region so now you’re you’re putting their website in front of those particular people rather than just the local right absolutely

yeah and so that’s I have a friend who’s down there, you know, Sean petty with everything easler.com he he’s a former family member of mine, but a guy wanted to help him out but also we wanted the experience of And so I knew that I had a huge group of You know, Friends of family here in Texas that needed to discover Isa mo Harris and
so putting Sean on putting these other businesses on sharing the experience on my you know, my branding and my trying to influence travelers and then hope in hopes of getting sponsorships and, and other gigs at hotels and hospitals around the world. And I was kind of like my hopes and doing all that. And that’s, that’s where a lot of the why that’s the sky data. But yeah, I was trying to get people to come down and kind of influence the ISA and just really influence travel in general.

Well, that’s awesome. Because you were benefiting the island. You were benefiting the people coming down there. We’re learning you’re helping the locals. Absolutely. I think that’s great. That’s a very rewarding and fulfilling thing. Yeah, absolutely.

So that’s what you did for work. What was your downtime like there?

Oh, man, downtime was paddleboarding and kayaking and just hanging out the hostels and meeting new people. Sure. When I mentioned the family from Argentina like they, they scooped me up and they I just spent the whole day
with him. I met there so there were three siblings. No, there were four siblings, four siblings. I met them at a hostel called Polka. Do you ever go to East Mrs. You got to go to poke? Nah. It’s like one of the oldest and
one of the largest hospitals in Central America. So we’re hanging out there having drinks, and I end up running into the brother, the brother. He was my age and we start talking. He owns a hospital down in Cordoba, Argentina. And so he and I hit it off, and he introduced me to his sisters. They’re on holiday with their father. And they’re, they’re staying gone for like eight weeks or something like that. They’d already been through like Central America, central Mexico, and we’re just kind of traveling along. We spent that night together. They’re like,
hey, in the morning, meet us at the beach. You can meet our dad. So I went and met Kochi, the dad call him Coco Kochi. And he doesn’t speak speak a lick of English whatsoever.

What was the dad thing?

Where was he staying at the time I think he was at the hotel room at their like their hotel room.

So they so they were staying in the hostel by choice.

They were hanging out hostile because there’s this big like open bar.

There’s a huge beach bar out there. So people come to party there. But there’s also like a lot of rooms and beds, forced to stay. Like it’s one of the party spots, you know, of the island. And so that’s where we met. But then, you know, they all end up staying at their hotel there. I don’t know. I’m not sure which one they were at. But yeah, that’s where he was hanging out next morning, I met him spent the day on the beach with them. And then by the end of it, they decided to invite me down to you know, the next couple stops which happened to be like Playa Del Carmen and to loom and so they just took took me with them, like said, Hey, come on, we like you. You want to travel with us and go down experience more Mexico. And I was like, I looked at my you know, check my wallet like,

Sure, let’s go.

This isn’t gonna be good on the phones, but I’m gonna make it happen and we’ll see what comes of it and had a great experience

with it. We realize well, I noticed that that sibling never finishes or food I’ll just like clean up

Right, yeah, they were super hospitable. Like, and that was that their culture? Really? You know, I didn’t I don’t know one of the things I observed about their little families like anytime they had anything to drink anything like to eat, I just passed it around to every single member of the family. I’m like, that’s really cool. They just like share it with everybody. You know, like I grew up with like a brother and a sister, you know, family of five and it’s like fend for yourself, man is my theory. This video I say that part of culture was cool.

Go to the was actually where my parents met my mother. Wow, my mother’s Argentinian. And so one of the things that they do as a culture is they have something called mapa, which is a T did they do that?

Yes. Yes,

that is cool. It’s, you have what’s called a bumbling and then you put this not that t which is a tea full of polyphenols, and they think that that’s one of the reasons why a lot of the Argentineans at least traditionally that’s what they would do. But what they would do is you pour it in and you have this metal straw, and then you sit the water out but then you pass it on to the next person. Okay, everybody It’s a community t that everybody sucks out of the same straw. And it’s it’s the culture of coming together around this one thing

that is awesome and they really cool man.

Yes, yeah, so you know and then there so a lot of Argentineans will go to a semi Harris and so that’s where I started seeing and I was like I talked to one guy he actually a guy who ended up putting some dreadlocks in my hair. Mosquito It was his name was his name. He always had one and he was like really cool intricate design. What do you call How do you say it the Bumble Bumble and so his was like really cool. So I approached him and found out all about it it was a tea and so yeah, the they share it they just like yeah, you know, you’re here with us your family we share will share everything with Is there a particular time of day? I’m not that I it was kind of random from what I

know. So it was like almost

like coffee time. You know, it’s kind of like centered around like that those

really quick little story about Argentina. Sure. My friend Russ ironically called in his father died of ALS. We did a show Talking about that about stem cells and all that helping with that. Well, Russ and I were invited down to Argentina when I was a medical student. We didn’t know what we were getting into who was inviting us or anything. And we went down to hospitality Eliana and wellness Iris, and we show up, and we’d had made no plans or anything a family invited us there were there were patients at university, Nebraska. And so this is classic Russ, we get in there were like, should we wear white coats, which we were like suits and he’s like, yeah, let’s just
go suit. So we go in and then the residents came up to us. They’re like, Oh, we have American med students. And Ross doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish and he goes to the chief resident. He goes, what do we do it? He goes, I think we’re going to go do a liver transplant. He’s like we do liver transplants in Nebraska. We did fly to Argentina to watch other people do it. Yeah, true. Then Russ puts his coat back on and goes, tell them this is straight like this is exactly what he said. He goes, tell them we’re here to evaluate them for an exchange program. And so inspiring I tell the guy that the guy goes, Oh, Santo Santo mexi. We know, guy shows up. And on his card, it
just says heaven boss, the boss took his right to his office, filled up a mop day and said, let’s have some fun. And that was how the next two months went where it was just like, you know, just that one moment where Russ just
went, yeah, we better.

We didn’t do any work.

I love it. I love that man. That’s a great.

That’s immediately the way to bond is to get them out there out and share it. So we shared it with LFA.

What a cool tradition, man. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. So you’re down. You go down and you travel with them a little bit further south. And then then how many weeks in? Are you on your seven weeks day?

Oh, that was really early on. Oh, I was pretty early. I was like my first couple weeks down there. I met them.

So it’s really hard for you to make friends obviously.

Yeah, right now. Yeah. And so like so part of the reason that I ended up using couchsurfing. com and And really spending a lot of time in the hostels was because I had a cousin that was down you know that she used to live down there and she would sublease her place out when you know she would she would sub sub lease her place out and come back to Texas to to work and then like for like a week or 10 days spend the rest of her time on East LA well she’s like yeah, well I got this place you can come crash if you’re gonna come hang out. So I’m like cool if replaces Dave’s cousin Great. Well, they get their wires crossed miscommunication with management and the leasing people. And so it turns out like if she ends up leaving to go back and stay in Texas for a month this time.
So she’s like you have to place yourself and so am I great. And then like the day after she leaves and gets back to Texas she’s like so I’m so sorry. But there’s been a mix up with management and they’ve booked out the the
Airbnb or brb or whatever it was booked it out for the rest of time that you’re there. Except for like a couple days here in a couple days there. So being like pushed out, my my comfortable little like cool spot is going to be hanging out. You know, for a couple of months, yeah. And having to be out trying to figure it out like couchsurfing.com hospitals. So, yeah, that’s that’s kind of how that happened. But

that was out there. And it was you blogging the whole time. Like if we started a following at this point,

yeah, absolutely. Like I did a couple of I did a couple of stories about what Hidalgo Avenue has to offer, kind of like to kind of allow the there’s a flow, there’s a flow down there when you start hanging out in the nightlife. You know, they start off at one place and go to another just kind of like as as things closed down and slow down. You know, there’s this kind of slow when you guys talked a lot about that. And so just really quickly after a few of these blogs, and you know, taking pictures with it. I got a pretty good following, like out of nowhere, it just kind of took off. What helped though was my friend Sean with Isa Harris, calm, he, he shared it on his he shared one of my blogs on his Facebook page, and so got some traction with that and like within A month or so I had like 750 subscribers like out of nowhere on my blog. So yeah, so so that’s where I really started getting into photo journalism and, and blogging.

This gives us some really good background on you. You’ve got a very interesting past, but now we’ve got about 45 seconds. But now we’re going to get into some really exciting stuff where you expanded everything. And now
we’re going to talk about the maps, which is the what is map stands

for the multidisciplinary Association for psychedelic studies? Yep. So I’ve got into that. Just said, with all the new research coming out from Johns Hopkins, I kind of rabbit holed into YouTube and found out a whole lot of cool stuff through Paul Stamets and Dennis McKenna, and Terence McKenna, and really got into the effects of psilocybin on the brain.

This is amazing, because this is very parallels what you did when you went down to Mexico, basically, and I was kind of curious, but people probably followed your blog because they wanted to know about that. Yeah, and then engaged and now you’re, you’re basically just functioning as a new blog for a new level of tourism. believe that with the last half hour here in just a moment.

So unfortunately, we’re listening to music. Yeah.

goes on like just Yeah,

like it. This is this is Cooper impromptu dancer. Yeah, here’s nothing. So, Cooper read, we’re going to continue the story. So we were we left. We’re in Mexico, you’re down from there for seven weeks having an incredible experience. It sounds to me like meeting new people. And what I was hitting on the bottom of the hour was that it seems like people probably followed your blog because you were engaging them in something that they knew they didn’t know enough about, but they wanted to explore and that kind of led to what you’re doing right now. Is that right? Kind of a good?

Yeah, absolutely. So with with the way that travel affects You know, our consciousness and our mind. It’s such a powerful way, it’s just stripping of the identity, really, you’re, you’re in this place where you don’t speak the language. You’ve never seen the scenery before. So everything is new, your senses are heightened, you’re just taking in all this information, right? And so that’s fascinating to me, the consciousness that at that aspect of the nature of reality, and you know, how we all you know, how it works together with our mind. And so that led me into reading more articles about consciousness and things like that, which led into the expansion of consciousness and altered states. And so, in that, you know, going in that realm, I found psilocybin mushrooms and LSD and DMT psychedelics

in the the knowledge of them or you just started dabbling, I

started well, the knowledge of them the knowledge I had a little bit of previous dabbling in, you know, early 20s with it, which completely changed a lot of things in a positive way. Some of my experiences. So with having those experiences, and then now having the knowledge behind it in the studies and the research that’s coming out now, or, you know, started in 1994 with Johns Hopkins, I started just absorbing a lot of that information in that content online and found like Paul Stamets, you know, Dennis McKenna, Terence McKenna and just kind of, I was
also going through you know, how I talked earlier about wanting to be out in nature. So I found myself out in nature a lot just for meditation, meditation purposes, and just kind of, you know, health reasons. And then I started noticing mushrooms around you know, like a lot a lot more than I’d ever really realized, you know, it kind of come into my, my awareness and so then every time I look around, like man, there’s mushrooms and they’re everywhere. And there’s so many different kinds of them too.

Isn’t that funny? Because we talked about that NLP that’s like a, that’s a neuro linguistic programming once your brain opens up to you will notice Absolutely,

absolutely. That’s like they have you know, people play with this. One of my good friends plays around with this about parking spots. Yeah goes to the grocery store. He like well, he has his word that he uses. But he does
this go into the grocery store and just like for open parking spots close to the store, so he didn’t have to walk very far. But he every single time like he finds a place anyway, so once you’re aware, it starts to show up in your reality. And so I started seeing mushrooms everywhere I started kind of falling around and learn more
about how they spore and so you know, you you’ll see, you know, you know, in a mature like a little group, you’ll see your ring, you know, like the they call them fairy rings or like there’s just rings of mushrooms because that’s how they spore and so I really just got into it. I wanted to find more mushrooms. I got several like books on field guides and figure out which ones are which, you know, identifying the species. And in learning a lot
from Paul Stamets on that, you know, he’s like the leading guy on mushrooms worldwide, edible mushrooms of any kind like whether there is a fullback colleges. These are full blown, like mycologist he’s got a lot of great stuff out there. I think he’s been on Joe Rogan wants or wise to so you know that’s anyways he’s got a lot of good knowledge and he’s got this whole YouTube channel as well anyway so I started lives really absorbing a lot of his content based on his his love and passion for mushrooms and mycelium kind of bled over into me because I found myself out there amongst it so much. So I started even like doing prints you know like taking this the sport
Prince and figuring out okay, is this poisonous? Is this edible? So what you do so you can take the caps of mushrooms, you know, yeah, just so you know, take the cap and you can lay it down on some foil or some white paper and just kind of put it like the gills down you know like the top of the cap up and the gills down and leave it there like over night and you can remove the cap and then find out we managed stains a certain color like orange, purple, brown, and based off the sport prints and what color it is, you know if it’s like edible poisonous, you

know that

you’re reminded me something that I completely forgot and in Gainesville, our boy scout troop or our Cub Scout troop did that. Yeah, and it was forgot all about it. That’s, that is really, really interesting.

Yeah, those are a couple of ways to identify them and that’s one of the main ways to do it but also you can pick it up. And if you want to find you know, psilocybin, you know, mushrooms, which is the magical kind, the way
that they bruise when you pick them up, you can pinch their stem or like their caps and if they bruise You know, that’s the the silicon molecule and it bruises bluish purplish. That’s how you know you’ve got something that’s
magical.

And that one so anyway, spotted. A quick pivot. Sure. Snoop Dogg? Yeah, so unfortunately, he had a his pig. Snoop Dogg. Oh, yeah.

Cowley I can’t believe I’m going to screw up it Snoop Doggy, Dogg.

Snoop Dogg. The head little miniature pig

is sorry Murray. Rip Snoop hog

man and ended up eating the death count. A death cap. Oh, right. Yeah.

I’ve had well, Russ lost his dog. Yeah, to doing the same thing. And so I’m curious how animals, they don’t have some sort of defense. On on that a fair

that pig would not. I mean, it just, I think whenever you have a pig in captivity, even if you’re keeping it as a pet, they’re going to eat more. They’re going to be less discerning in terms of what they choose to eat. I read that since then. So it just saw mushroom and rather than try to figure out if it was right or not, I think it’s went

through it didn’t have any foil, and it didn’t

get back there in the lab and you know, studied a little bit.

No, but in all seriousness, is that does that happen in the wild? I mean, I get that like in captivity, we probably bred out some of these instincts. But do animals eat these poisonous mushrooms in the wild?

Usually, it’s very rare that it happens. I you know, I think that they have they know, you know, they know something and they whether it’s the smell that the mushrooms are giving off or something they sense but doesn’t happen in the wild but not very often, that I’m aware

of. It’s almost always a domesticated dog. Or another pet that ends up consuming the the toadstool or the yap or something. Yeah, okay. I mean it just I think you just kind of lose it

you know this is one of those things when I’m going to see mushrooms everywhere Yeah, I just have never really thought about mushrooms.

Yeah, well it’s like this kind of a good time of the year you know like when with the rain you know it’s hot for several days and then we’ll get some rain and then those things will pop up everywhere. So this is a good time
of year and also in late September is also a great great time you a year round here in Texas to find mushrooms of any kind

while you’re doing this research and you’re reading what led to you to say okay, there’s more to it than me just doing identifying and and and however you’re mapping I know you didn’t go into becoming a full night colleges
but obviously you were drawn to those who were what, what took you to that that space and what did you want to application and we’ll just,

it was so fascinating to find out what mycelium does you know mycelium, which is the organism that fruits the mushroom what you see with mushrooms is just the fruiting of you know of the organism much like Apple is the tree the trees organism the fruit. mycelium is the fungus is the organism that fruits as mushrooms so mycelium acts as is like underground network almost like you know a vast internet system for the plant kingdom. And so there are signals being passed cross this mycelium and it really resembles like brain, neuro pathways as well. And so just finding out that they are they are communicating and protecting each other be all this stuff.

I did. I did not know. Yeah, so I’m just looking at a picture here where it really shows this vast network underneath the ground.

Yes, absolutely. So through the soil like the, you know, the it’s all through the soil. And so they are they are communicating the plants are communicating through mycelium, you know, and all the other mushrooms and mycelium
are communicating in this vast network. And so they’re protecting their warding off you know, other weather plants that could be encroaching or animals or whatever, but it’s a sickness. And so learning about that and what it’s doing and Paul Stamets did an experiment with like toxic waste. They just like bunch of toxic waste. And there was an issue. I can remember exactly where it was. But it was a like a building or industrial something. They had this big pile of like waste and trash in it was toxic. And so what he did was, he fermented in place some of these spores of this specific type of mushroom. And it grew like crazy in a decomposed this toxic waste in this
trash and ate it all up. So not only like you know that you have these mushrooms that are good to eat and good for us, but you have these mushrooms that are decomposing the waste and then and then toxic stuff that we can’t hardly get rid of. But these mushrooms are eating it and bringing it down back to organic matter.

Am I yeah, yeah, I think that was that long ago, you mentioned to me that they’re looking to basically take plastics that we can’t recycle. And then you put them into and they they function as fungus. Compost files. Great. Absolutely right. They just turned they returned into the earth. The way that we need them,

yeah, they’re starting to break down plastic or they’re starting to discover that they can break down plastic and really just hard, you know, stuff that you think man, that stuff’s going to stay in a landfill forever. But mushrooms are like showing to decompose them.

If they were able to do something or discover some of that movement whenever they thought they’re predicting, you know how long a plastic grocery bag would last in the landfill. And it says they started doing you know, the soil sampling. They’re doing these long cores, they’re pulling it out. They started discovering where they knew plastic bags and plastic material where they’d been broken down into not plastic, trying to figure out what had happened. And there happened to be fungus, and mostly related to mycelium and various types of mushrooms that it helped break that

down. absolutely fascinating. I had no idea

what the world of mushrooms are just so fascinating. And then there. They Paul Stamets really thinks that mushrooms are going to help solve a lot of the problems that are going on right now with dark waste and all this that you know a lot of things, health and the environment is just so like it’s just best opportunity that machines are starting to like show and prove that they’re capable of so many things. Thanks. I

had the feeling that when chef Patrick hears this, he’s like, of course, mushrooms are fantastic. He’s a chef, he has his own cooking show. And he’s, you know, I would just take the mushrooms Oh, what are we gonna do? portabella? What is it gonna be? No idea that this other whole world exists?

Absolutely. Yeah. And so learning about all that, and just becoming fascinated with how it works in nature, like its its purpose in nature. I thought, well, you know, there has to be a purpose, right, that it has a
psilocybin and we have psilocybin receptors in our own brain, you know, in our brains. So, you know, nature. You know, it all goes hand in hand. So I was like, there’s got to be something here. Right. So let’s figure out a
little bit more about like the the psychedelic side and the psilocybin side and what that does, and the experiences that that, you know, that’s going on there

is that is that curiosity, what led you to maps?

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So that’s exactly what led me to maps because their research, you know, starting in 1994, and it wasn’t their research. I’m sorry, about The research that started in 1994 at Johns Hopkins University,
just there was just so many profound learnings from that experiment and the in the patient’s going on to have, you know, weighed like almost no depression about I think 76. So then they checked back about a year later, and the anxiety depression was almost non existent. And then about 85 or 86% of those patients said that that was the most profound and meaningful experiences of their life or one of the most profound experiences of our life. So
learning a little bit about that. And just kind of what was going on there led me to discovering the maps organization, multi disciplinary Association for psychedelic studies, and they are raising money there are nonprofit to continue the funding of psychedelics,

is this the organization that Tim Ferriss vault or he pledged a million dollars?

I think so I think Tim Ferriss did it and Jason Silva is a big advocate for him to. I don’t know if you guys know who he is, but he’s he’s a really big advocate. So if you want to learn more about like, what they do what they’re doing with maps, you can, you know, follow Jason Silva and I’m not sure I’m not sure about Tim Ferriss, but he might be

podcast. On the podcast, he said, I will commit to donate $1 million this year to this research, but it seems like this would be the place the place

to do it. I think it is. I mean, because they’re the they’re the forefront of it. It was founded in 1986. And they’ve been really just kind of pushing forward with this research for all these years. And they, they’re right now they’re doing MDMA studies, and they’re having huge success with it and patients with PTSD. You know, like veterans and whatnot. And so like they’re in phase three of trials right now, and it’s will probably it looks like it’s going to be passed for therapeutic use very soon.

just looked at it this morning. Bree actually brought up if I knew if they had made any movement in that area, and we just happened to Google it and you’re exactly right, that happens to be very recent headlines with Trying to reassign the scheduling of MDMA. So it can be moved to, to research specifically for PTSD and depression.

That’s the molecule in ecstasy in St. George’s correct?

Yes. It’s really interesting also, that you’re talking about what Max is doing to fund research, because I believe and I could be mistaken, but I believe that you have to institute where Dennis McKenna works and founded, they do a lot of research specifically around psilocybin. Usually they do a little bit of other stuff as well, but most notably a psilocybin. And we were talking about this earlier, whenever you talked with Dennis, he illustrated, they’ve got a long term running study where they’re still over 91% success rate of curing people of their addiction to smoking.

So, you know, this is the reason why I’m so excited to bring you on is that you don’t come in with this PhD in this agenda. You just found this journey. And you just discovered this and now you’re impassioned to share it and to to voice this. So for me Buddy, please subscribe, share and anybody that struggles with addiction, smoking,
alcohol, drugs, opioids, or if you battle anxiety or depression, there’s hope. I really think that we’re going to be able to use these in a controlled environment and make a ginormous difference.

Yeah, without question. Absolutely. That’s what it’s all you know, that’s what’s all coming down to. And so, you know, we have the decriminalization of psilocybin mushrooms, magic mushrooms in the Denver area in Denver, and
then in Oakland, also, shortly after Denver, Oakland, California, decriminalize mushrooms, too. So people are starting to become aware and realize that, you know, it’s not as, you know, Syria, we shouldn’t focus, you know, like the policing of it. But also, as more and more research comes out, you know, the, the positive health benefits that have come along with these with these medicines, so I like to call them medicines, you know,

yeah. Did you ever so one of the things that I listened to a TED talk and they were describing that it’s one of the few times that you can be Most people describe a positive reaction as a self the first time they became self aware, because it’s almost impossible for our egos to let us dissociate, look at us in a very self aware kind
of situation. Once you can do that, then you’re able to, or this is what some people have theorized that then you’re able to control the thoughts. It’s easier because you’ve seen yourself in a different way. And you’re like, No, no, I’m actually in control. A lot of times when you have anxiety and depression, you feel that you’re at
the mercy of this, of these mental health issues. And did you have it? Do you ever do it? high dose and find the self awareness aspect of it? Absolutely.

Yeah. I, I’ve had several experiences. And so Terrence Terrence McKenna talked about if you’re going to do it, you know, you’re gonna take the risk of doing it. You know, this isn’t something you do with you know, with the guys and the gals like hanging out and going to parties and going to the beach or whatever. This isn’t like a recreation Fun type of thing. This is a therapeutic meditative MIT, you know medicine, so do it by yourself in the dark. You know, close your eyes and no, no extra your stimulation going on. And so that’s the way that I chose to do it. But following you know, so obviously you guys know Terence McKenna. is Dennis my brother, right? Yeah. So So I, he, i a lot, I saw a lot of his content. And so I wanted to do it. Okay, this one’s Terrence is going to say, I’m going to give it the test and experiment it. So I’ve had several those experiences were by myself, you learn so much about yourself. That’s what comes to the forefront is your subconscious. You talk about, you know, our ego, you know, like, that’s what we’re constantly we’re living off of and living through most of the time, right? But then when we have these experiences, you know, our subconscious what’s going on under the surface comes to the surface. And so you, you really get to sit with it and see what’s going on internally. And like you said, remove yourself from this room. It’s a new perspective. Right. And so you do a lot of self discovery, self journeying, and you come away from it totally like, it’s almost like a cognitive cleansing as well.

cleansing, that’s a great term.

Yeah. And that and that’s what happens, you know, that that’s what they’re they’re saying happens because, you know, the brain lights up, you’re using all the different parts of the brain. You’re you’re dealing, you’re you’re dealing with stuff that you’ve maybe been suppressing, you know, that come out, and it could come out in a challenging experience. You know, what people call bad trips, whatever, you know, that could come out if you don’t allow it. But if you sit and you allow yourself to deal with what’s coming up and go through that experience, and go through that trip, you just kind of surrender to that moment. It passes and you learn something about yourself,

people, they that are very skilled in meditation. And if they really get to the point where they can do this, they will experience something very similar. If you go through a very this just and then I remember reading that they’ve done that functional MRI is on people where they can look and people that are very skilled at meditation, their brain lights up in a very similar way with somebody. So it’s almost like fast forwarding yourself to an
area where you can achieve that without 10 years of therapeutic meditative exercises. And absolutely, yeah,

yeah, I’ve seen those graphs in those charts, you know, the brain and it’s actually easier. Exactly right. It’s, it’s instead of, you know, meditating in a cave for 80 years as a mother.

I always had this image of like some sort of cartoon where some guy comes out and he’s just like, I have done it Nirvana. Like 20 years old is like

everybody knows God man.

No longer angry at my father.

there’s a there’s a friend of ours Hollis, who has a think either two or three times signed up for it’s a Silent Retreat. It’s a minimum of 12 days and there’s a protocol where you do not do any talking. You try to avoid
complete eye contact for a solid 12 days and I believe that he said he’s got experience with various psychedelics as well and in a very reflective fashion trying to find you know, Hollis and he’s very, very deep thinker, super deep thinker, super smart just like one of these really Uber successful people but self aware and he says that the style that this repeat the schedule is meditation. So meditation, meditation, meditation, food, mild exercises, but meditation, and that it’s outside of that level of reflection back on upon himself and what he wants out of life and he’s a very calm and calming presence is Hollis and he says that it’s it’s basically mushrooms.

The the closest thing that I can come to something like this as I went to a very tiny, small religious college, it was a Lutheran base, cause my mom taught there so I went for Free and super tiny, the a business professor of mind you the whole religion thing is the reason why it was interesting was hosting a guided Yogi in theory of
meditation, where he would guide you through it. He was a big proponent of it. And so I was like one of the only science students that showed up and there was probably like, 60 people on the first night, and ended up being
like three hours long. And the next night, it was like 20 people, and the next night it was like for, like, four of us. And it did it for like weeks and weeks. And it was you. It’s a stepwise process. I mean, it’s we’ve now
I understand why true meditation, because you have to be ready to accept these skills. And what happened is that a couple people would like wake up, bawling and run out of the room. And then I would talk to them later and
they’re like, Oh, my God, I had to like deal with my abuse and Uncle sexually abused me or whatever. And it just came and just right in the face. Yeah. That’s, you know, that’s exactly what you’re talking about. We have
stuff that we’re trying to suppress and run away from and when you turn and look at it, then you can gain control of it perhaps easier said than done.

Yeah, it takes work it is practice that’s why they call it practice, you know, meditation, it’s a practice and I started off doing like six minutes you know, just sitting underneath the tree just to get outside and sit under
a tree and I started with six minutes and then worked my way up to longer but it’s a practice it’s difficult

so so Cooper for somebody like me that just kind of you know, I mean, I’ve got a lot of issues so I was just kind of like jumping all in. Oh, you’re just throwing some high wasco maybe some Ibogaine. How about a little LSD, some MDMA and then just finish that off with with that with it. You said skullcap.

So that’s that’s just Tuesday.

Tuesday, right? Yeah.

No, but they do they I remember listening to some podcasts and may have been Chris kresser, where he had a doctor on discussing this where he went to a retreat in New Mexico, where they did a guided psilocybin experience, so that you have people that if you start to go into a bad place, that they walk you out of it. Absolutely.

Yeah. And so there are several there’s a network of under ground guides out there to help people with these journeys because they they are so passionate about the health involved, and just the results that they see that they they take that risk, but they’re underground and there is a network of these guides out there, but that’s you.
Absolutely. Unless you are, you know, well versed in meditation, or psychedelics. You want to find a guide. Honestly, that’s the safest way to do it. Fine, I don’t I don’t know how to do it. Exactly. I’ve never found a guide. I’ve always just kind of done my thing. But did like I said earlier, this isn’t like a party drug. These aren’t these aren’t something that’s recreational and you should go out and party. On, this is something that you it’s like it’s therapy, you know, it’s inner work is it’s dealing with the, you know, some of the dark stuff, right? It’s dealing with that and facing it, so that you can move on and have a better quality of life. These guides help through that process. You’re going through it and they’re kind of talking you guiding you through it, you’re having your own experience. But if things come up, you’re able to kind of go into this guide, and the guide is there to listen to hold, hold space, and to navigate help you navigate your own journey through that. So it’s
fascinating.

I like that you brought up the fact that you said that you’ve you’ve kind of educated yourself on how you have maintained your journey and, and it’s obvious that you’ve taken the serious tone of you want it for the benefits of the self reflection and the therapy. And something that’s really popular here recently, we’ve even had patients who talk about when they come in for the kaleidoscope so the GDS is have you ever heard of micro dosing? And that was something that we brought up with Dennis McKenna. And he said He’s not necessarily sold on the advent of just micro dosing, that if you don’t cross the threshold of having the deep experience that actually the micro dosing is, is simply just not beneficial over time. Is that something that you’ve run across as well? Yeah.

So, I think that there are there are several benefits, you know, to micro dosing there are you get the medicinal qualities of micro dosing as well. So micro dosing is taking a, you know, a smaller a smaller dosage, you know,
probably around like, anywhere from a 10th 10th of a gram or half of a gram, like really small doses of these mushrooms or LSD, just doing tiny doses, and they, rather than taking a full blown like large dose rehab, the spiritual or you know, psychedelic experiences so micro dosing is just a way to get the benefits you know, of the medicine without having to go and like not be able to talk to anybody for six or seven hours. Sure. Shut up in a way but but micro dosing it I think that there are benefits to taking a smaller doses just because there are like, there are neuro regenerative aspects and qualities of psilocybin and mushrooms. And so I think that you can get benefits from them. But I think as far as the therapeutic, you know, the true therapeutic I think I agree with Dennis McKenna on that you have to pass that threshold, you have to go on that journey. You have to go there.

Yeah, he was all about that. He just basically said, micro dosers.

Another topic he brought up to though was that nature nature once again wins. And that is that there’s there’s nothing inherently wrong with occasional LSD to get to this point. However, psilocybin and tillison are not shown to have the possible heart effects that that long term use and exposure to LSD can produce. So then, it’s not
going to be anybody much more experienced than he and his brother and I believe it is Brother passed several years ago but turns most

Yeah, probably

2001 2001 he passed away

and that that exposure though long term with psilocybin they still not shown that there’s any long term detriment to its exposure so there’s there’s ways to way things out in Mother Nature always seems to know the way we say this all the time keeper the Mother Nature seems to always do things better.

drug companies try and isolate one little aspect of and say oh, we’re going to be able to get a patent on this is your date FDA approval and now this is going to be this and they’re gonna try and do it was all silent guarantee it? They’re gonna try and do something like that. Right now look at the treatments that are going on for depression. Do you realize that depression alone is such a burden on that organism that we started the show with, which is the health care burden, depression leads to so many things if we could fix that one thing in my in my lifetime, if we could do something to help that CBD BPC 157 psilocybin, whatever. Game Changer?

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Well, Cooper where can people find you now?

You can find me on social media and on Facebook Cooper Read our ad on Instagram as well Cooper underscore underscore Read our ad. I’m indicator working as a you know a marketing director and content creator for real estate agent out there so I get to go fly drones around and create content videos around that. So yeah, that’s what I’m doing.

We totally died. Well

it’s underground.

What’s up? How much time do you have today?

that’s gonna do it for Episode 14 of the gut check project. Thank you all so much for tuning in. Like and Share like and share go to go check project dot com to let us know that you’ve done that can.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me, guys.