Hormone Optimisation And Peptides For Men And Women With Jay Campbell

Lisa: Hey team, welcome. It's Pushing the Limits. Today I have a super interesting character for you that you're really going to enjoy his insight. I've got Jay Campbell. Jay, welcome to the show, fabulous to have you.

Jay Campbell: Lisa, thank you so much for having me. I am humbly honoured and privileged to be here today, so let's rock this.

Lisa: Oh, this is going to be amazing. So you are the guru of, well actually, quite a lot of things: peptides, testosterone therapy, men's health, women's health, training. So there's a lot of rabbit holes that we can go down today. You're the author of, I don't know how many books, I've lost count. You've got Metabolic Blowtorch and testosterone optimisation and all these fancy names, all your amazing books, and you have an incredible podcast yourself. A legend like you, you're like me, you're in your 50s. I'm 55, I think you're a little like a baby brother.

Jay Campbell: I'll be 53. I'll be 53 Saturday.

Lisa: Oh, you're like a baby brother then, you're still little. But you're actually ripped, you're fit, you're strong, you're powerful, you're running a big team, you've done amazing things with your businesses, supplements and all sorts of things. So Jay, tell us, how did you get here, and where did you come from, and were you always so amazing?

Jay Campbell: Thank you so much. Again, I'm humbly honoured to be here and graced by all of that amazing introduction, so thank you. As the oldest of nine kids, I was always kind of like a hard charger, leader, but I wasn't really truly walking this health optimisation path until the, quote unquote, depending on how you look at it, the unfortunate at the moment, but obviously the very fortunate circumstance of getting kicked in the testicles while I was playing in a men's basketball league when I was 29.

Lisa: Yep.

Jay Campbell: And then suffering classical hypogonadal symptoms within six, seven, eight weeks later, and then just going to an insurance sub-reg doctor, who then recommended me to a world-renowned Harvard-educated endocrinologist. And again, as I always say, there's no coincidence, only synchronicities in the universe. He decided that he would run my labs and find out that I had 180 total testosterone and like no free testosterone levels. And he could see that I was a pretty good athlete. I didn't have the physique that I have now, obviously, using therapeutic testosterone and hormones and all the other things that I learned about, but I was still in good shape. And so he told me he could put me on testosterone and he would have me, as his exact quote was, "right as rain," within eight to 10 weeks.

Jay Campbell: And so eight to 10 weeks came back later and I felt literally like a god, and he wanted to take me off, and I was like, there's absolutely no way. I mean, why would I ever come off of this? So at that point, I was about 30 and a half, and the next 10 years, the next 10 to 12 years, I just became an insanely voracious student of everything that you could find. So this is going back to literally 2000, and again, of course, this is really the advent of the internet coming online and information being crowdsourced and collated.

Jay Campbell: And I usually tell people, by the time I was coming close to 40, 41, people would see me and they would marvel at my impressive physical stature, and they would ask me, they're like, "Wow, what do you do?" Because at the time I wasn't in this realm, I was a digital marketing sales guy and I was actually ascending the corporate ladder as a highly paid or accomplished wage slave. But when people would ask me, I would always tell them straight to their face — I think by now, I have no filter — and I would say, "I'm using therapeutic testosterone." And so that would always be met with, like, "Oh, steroids," or, "Wow, fascinating, tell me more."

Jay Campbell: So I was in a place where I wasn't coming off of this and I wanted to learn and learn and learn. And so when these people that would question me about why I would do it, who were interested, eventually they won me over and they were like, "You've got to write a book." And so I got to a place where I was like, well, I'm not a trained medical licensed person, I don't have any credentials. Let me ask people what would be the risk, because at that time my wife, my current wife Monica, and I had a residential real estate company in Southern California and it was modestly successful, growing. It was going to get a lot more successful ultimately, but I didn't want to do anything to throw that off. And so I thought, well, if I write a book, you know, right now —

Lisa: Yeah, you could be in trouble, damage —

Jay Campbell: Yeah, my private career. So anyway, I wrote an email to Rick Collins, who's now a very close personal friend, the famous attorney in sports performance and steroids and sports and all that stuff. And I asked him, I said, "What would happen if a non-medically licensed person wrote a book on therapeutic testosterone?" And by the way, I also sent him a white paper, because I wanted to put it out there. And he had read it. He was an amazing guy. Literally, I was a nobody at the time and he responded to me in like a couple hours. And he said, "Look, there's a risk. I'm not going to lie to you. If a senator gets a bug up their ass about you, then they do an investigation into you and it's found out that this, that or the other is going on, who knows." And he's like, "That's why guys pay me to keep them out of jail." So I was like, I can't do this, there's too much risk.

Jay Campbell: But I also sent the book, or the white paper of the book, to Nelson Vergel. And Nelson — I always say standing on the shoulders of giants — I mean, Nelson had written the first book on therapeutic testosterone. It was Testosterone: A Man's Guide. And he was writing from an angle of, he had HIV, which at the time was a death sentence. We didn't have the therapeutics and the adjuvants that they have now for it. So those guys, if they had that as a diagnosis, were using therapeutic testosterone and anabolic steroids and growth hormone, pretty much anything they could get their hands on to survive.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah.

Jay Campbell: He also had written, or was a co-author with, another guy, a doctor by the name of Michael Mooney, and they had written Built to Survive. So both of those books were kind of like the books that I had read in my search. And so when I sent the white paper to him, he didn't respond to me. I sent it the same time that I sent it to Rick Collins. And then all of a sudden, four months later, out of the blue, in the middle of the night, he responded. And he was actually back in his native country of Venezuela dealing with all the instability and the turbulence in Venezuela. But he said, "I don't know who you are, but this is profound stuff. You have to publish this. Men deserve this information."

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: And so he was like, "Call me," and he gave me his number, and I did. And pretty much a year and a half later the first book came out, which was The Definitive TRT MANual, at the end of 2015. He really helped me, coached me on writing the book and making it so that it was a lot less bro and much more clinical and acerbic. And truthfully, to fast forward to now, since then I've written, as you said, a lot of books — seven other books, or eight total books — and I've met amazing researchers, physicians, people in this community, biohackers and whatnot. And I've just been really blessed. Obviously I'm a good communicator, and I was in the right place at the right time, as testosterone and therapeutic adjuvants like peptides and growth hormone and hormones and all this stuff, biohacking, really just started taking off.

Jay Campbell: So a lot of people look at me as kind of an OG biohacker. I really was doing a lot of this stuff, testing on myself, doing a lot of meticulous research. And the only thing that we had back then, Lisa, was underground forums where everybody was anonymous, nobody had their name. I always joke, there's a lot of people — and again, not as many people are willing to be as authentic and transparent as I am — but there's a lot of people who are very famous now and their names are in the community who probably had a handle like my handle. And so when we get together sometimes, you find out who they are and we're like, "Are you so and so?" Because nobody ever wants to admit who they were when we were talking on these underground forums, because that was all it was back then.

Jay Campbell: But anyway, that's the long-winded version of your question of how I've gotten to here. But I've always been very fascinated by the human physique or the human body. When I was a little kid, I would look — even when I was an athlete growing up, I played basketball, baseball and soccer, and I was very, very good at basketball and soccer — but I would look at people, black, green, yellow, purple, male, female, and I would just look at their anatomy and their physiology and I would be truly fascinated on why some people could run really fast and then other people could jump really high, and then you had other people that just had a combination of quick twitch where they could move fast and jump high. And so that stuff always fascinated me. And I would always be able to — I don't have any idea why — but I would always be able to look at people and I could just tell you how explosive they were, how they could put mass on, if they were skinny fat, what needed to be done. And again, I knew this stuff before I knew what I'm talking about now with you today.

Jay Campbell: So sometimes you just have to think, I think a lot of us are just really ancient souls and have had many, many events where we've been in bodies many, many times and we just learn things and then you just have this perception. It's like a perceptional acuity of being able to observe things.

Lisa: Now, that was a rollercoaster ride, that was really interesting. And you know what, the elephant in the room, there were so many men struggling with testosterone deficiencies, hormone deficiencies, and we're dealing with an obesity epidemic. I think it's about 70% of the American adults are overweight or obese, when it used to be something like 10%, you know, back in 30, 40 years ago.

Jay Campbell: Check this statistic out — and I was just doing this in a presentation. You nailed it, but it's worse, because over the age of 40, it's 77% of male and female adults are obese, not overweight, obese, by the BMI.

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: So think about how insane that is in the United States. Just to think — my wife and I talk about this all the time. I remember going to pools in Vegas or other destination places in the mid 2000s, the early to mid 2000s, and you barely saw fat people.

Jay Campbell: And now everywhere you go, people like us are mutants. People stare at fit people in airports and other locations, because it's so rare to see people that are actually in shape. It's insane.

Lisa: Really, you get these extremes now, you get the super—

Jay Campbell: Exactly. But it wasn't long ago where you saw the norm, especially in destination locations, were fit people. I mean, the norm is not more than 20 years ago, because I remember going to pool parties in the early 2000s and there were a lot of fit people. The average person going to a pool party in 2004 to 2007, or 2003 to 2008, was fit. And now you go to a pool party in Las Vegas or Florida or Monaco or Ibiza or any of these places and almost everyone is fat. It's disgusting. And it's younger people, obviously — we're not talking people our age, we're talking people in their 20s and 30s.

Lisa: Yeah, and it's sad. The thing is, it's a medical problem — well, it leads to medical problems, put it that way. It leads to your hormones going south for a start, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, cardiovascular risk. All these things go up exponentially when you have excess body fat. And understanding that hormone picture is an interesting one. So when you've got a lot of fat tissue, you're making a lot more estrogens, for starters. And what happens to a man's testosterone if he's obese?

Jay Campbell: He has none. I mean, literally, they have none. And that's the conspiracy — I have my tinfoil hat over there if you want me to put it on. I really do actually, the guy that owns the tinfoil hat company in England is a really good friend of mine. But the truth is, it's a combination of modernisation and some form of an elite conspiracy, because nowadays we can't really say it's not, because we're looking around, right?

Jay Campbell: And you have the whole trans movement, you have all the insanity. And look, I'm very open about this, I look at everything from a biological perspective and a nature perspective, and the trans phenomenon, however you look at it — and I have no hat in the ring, I don't care what people think or say — but at the end of the day, it's all based on a lack of testosterone in utero. So what is happening — and again, this is from modernisation, right? Chemicals in the environment, plastics, fluoride in the water, birth control in the water supply. All these disrupting chemicals are in all the freshwater tributaries, aqueducts, streams, everywhere, in every continent. Maybe not as much as where you guys are, but pretty much everywhere else. And the truth is that both male and female embryos do not get enough testosterone in utero.

Jay Campbell: And again, I always tell people, because they're like, "Dude, you're just a testosterone guy, now you're talking about anthropology." I'm like, no, the difference between men and women is the level of testosterone that they're exposed to in utero. Women have less and men have more. And so if you look at the people coming out today — and I'm saying mostly now under 30, under 35, probably all of them, both men and women — are physiologically malformed. Most men look like women. They have a lot of regional estrogenic fat deposition in their hips and their shoulders. They're very, very compressed, spinal concave. They don't have strong mineral density. It's insane what is happening to the species. And this is not a conspiracy theory — go out anywhere in public in any westernised world and look around.

Jay Campbell: And then on top of that, you have women who think they're men. There's like no estrogen, because again, the same thing happens: when you give a man less testosterone they become more emasculated; if you give a woman more, it's the same thing. So in utero, the exposure to testosterone is so low that all these kids are coming out and they're confused sexually, and obviously beyond that, because that's the anthropologic viewpoint, you also have physical issues, and that's what you're seeing.

Jay Campbell: I was watching this the other day on Instagram. I saw this amazing video reel that somebody sent me about the NBA basketball players from 25 years ago and the NBA basketball players today, and look at how skinny these kids are. They look spinally skinny. I mean, it is insane what is happening, and again, it's all due to a lack of testosterone in utero.

Lisa: Yeah, and then add on that toxins and all the other crap and processed food.

Jay Campbell: Right, but that's what the result is. You've got 35 to 40 years now of birth control in the global water supply, and we know that all those things are horrible. Dr Anthony Jay, in his groundbreaking book which I have over here somewhere, Estrogeneration — he told me this back in 2018, and again, the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, were suppressing all this data — but you could put a male fish in any place in North America and within one year the male fish was female.

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: What was happening? And again, it's human population too. Why are men so weak? Why are men so estrogenised or emasculated or feminised? It's insane. Most men can't make eye contact with another man under the age of 30. You have the whole incel movement, where you've got literally 50% — this is insane statistics, and this is from a doctor's lecture that I was just attending last week — 50%, you won't believe this, 50% of men between the age of 20 and 30 in North America and Canada in 2022 and 2023 did not have sex one time.

Lisa: Wow. 50%?

Jay Campbell: 20 and 30 years old.

Lisa: 20 and 30, they're not even having sex.

Jay Campbell: But again, if they have no testosterone, they have no desire, they have no libido. And it's not just desire and libido and sexual function, it's energy, right? Again, what makes a man masculine? The energy of testosterone. So when you have none, and you have no energy and you have no desire and no libido and no craving, why would you have sex?

Lisa: On top of that, and video games that they're all addicted to, because they can get that instant gratification in the world that we live in now with the screens. So it's blown everything up.

Jay Campbell: A lot of doctors will talk about kids coming in — they don't even have money, these are kids living with their parents — and their parents are saying, "Look, my son is emotionless, he has no motivation, he does nothing but sit in his house and play video games." And so these guys will take their lab panels, and I am not kidding you, Lisa, I've had some of my docs tell me that they've seen men with less than zero free testosterone.

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: Less than zero. 19 years old. You can't clinically prescribe them testosterone, you can give them HCG or clomiphene and some of these other drugs to try to stimulate LH, but it's a mess. Everything I just told you — it is a mess in our society today, global society, at least in first world countries. Probably not as bad in places that are less modernised, but all the modernised places are just decimated.

Lisa: Yeah. And then you've got — I know the story from the birth control side, on what it's doing to women and the stuff that's coming out now. I was on the pill for decades, for God's sake, and I was unable to have children. I also was this crazy-ass ultra endurance athlete who wrecked themselves hormonally as well, from other stupidities.

Jay Campbell: Yep, everybody that does that does that. It's part of the thing. But that's part of your lesson — or not lesson, but that's your journey, so you can teach people now not to do that, right?

Lisa: Yeah, but it also wrecks your microbiome, changes the perception of who you should be going out with, the way you choose your mate. There's just so many — thyroid — we could go on with what the pill does. And I'm not against the pill in the right place and the right time, but with full consent, knowing what you're getting into.

Lisa: And with testosterone, the other thing — I've done a lot of work in brain rehabilitation and after brain injuries and things. I think it was 60% or so of people are going to have hormonal issues after brain injury. Microbiome — they're going to have leaky gut, I think it was 60%, within hours of a brain injury. And then the other thing was the high levels of pituitary gland dysfunction, basically, that's not being picked up. And so there are a lot of our rugby players and things like that running around that have got problems in this area. Anyone who's in those contact sports or had concussions, they need to check their hormone levels. And then we've got women in their 30s already, their progesterone's low and things like that, and the anxiety and all of that that comes along with that.

Lisa: So hormones are a huge thing. I'm on hormone replacement therapy and have been for a few years. I'm a genetics practitioner, so I know what my genes do with my hormones, right? And so I keep an eye on things. There's the Women's Health Initiative that came out in — when was it, the 80s?

Jay Campbell: The WHI destroyed hormonal optimisation for women, bad.

Lisa: Yeah, it was absolutely horrific, and we're still undoing it. And when I'm talking with my clients and stuff, they're like, "Oh, but the initiative said that it would cause cancer." And it's like, well, hang on a minute, that was a fraudulent study and it was synthetic horse urine, etc, etc. There is the nuance of that conversation, however. There are certain genetic predispositions towards things, and you need to know what you're doing with them, and you need to get in shape and all the rest of it to go along with that whole process, right?

Lisa: And with men — I've had clients, and I can't prescribe hormones, so we have to get a doctor involved. Sadly, we can't prescribe hormones, even though we know more about it than most of the doctors do. I know how to read the stuff, at least. But when they go and then they get given something that's powerless — I remember even with my father, who's unfortunately passed away, he was getting testosterone from other sources, shall we say, and then I was worried about his liver and things like that, so I took him to the doctor and we got testosterone creams, and it was just powerless. He started to lose weight, he started to decline, and he was in his 80s. So that was actually the wrong thing to do. I didn't know at the time, I was trying to protect him, but it wasn't strong enough, it wasn't powerful enough.

Lisa: What are the best delivery methods for testosterone for men who are looking to get testosterone, and what should they be looking for in their labs?

Jay Campbell: Yeah, for sure. And just to go back to what you were saying about the WHI, because I don't get a chance to talk about these kinds of cool things all the time — the WHI was the biggest disaster in the history of the world.

Jay Campbell: It was the biggest disaster in the history of the world for women, because as you just said, most 60-year-old women and older do not think that testosterone optimisation applies to them. They think that it will cause cancer. Again, all the WHI, Premarin, and equine estrogens and all this nonsense. It is so sad.

Jay Campbell: I talk about this all the time with various physicians and stuff. I don't talk about it on my podcast as much as I would like to — maybe you and I can talk about it deeper when you come on. But the reality is that that initiative destroyed more marriages than maybe anything ever previous to it, because so many women could have literally maintained their sexual activity, maintained vaginal moistness. All these things that happen to women because their hormones are not optimised anymore led to disastrous societal repercussions. I've had who knows how many conversations with men in their 60s and 70s who said, "Yeah, my wife couldn't have sex anymore, and it was like, what were we going to do?" It creates so much — a lot of people obviously don't get it, and they start cheating and they have arranged things and all this nonsense. But none of that would have had to happen if that didn't happen. So anyway, I wanted to say that to address your point, because it's still mind-blowing how many aging women are still afraid of optimising their hormones because of that.

Lisa: It's literally mind-blowing. There's so many of them, and it's all obviously in First World countries.

Jay Campbell: But to answer your question, there's really two delivery systems. There are literally right now, this is 2013 — there's 13 accepted delivery systems by medicine, depending on where you are globally. There's now four oral formulations for men. Every single one is completely and totally worthless. We should talk about them though, because when I say worthless, I mean in relation to getting a man to where he's optimised. I don't mean taking a man who is 160 to 190 or 220 or whatever total testosterone, and a free testosterone of 5 to 10, to 325, and their free testosterone to 15. Now, in the clinical space, they say that's good, right? Because we took them from subclinical or deficient to a normal range.

Jay Campbell: And again, this is important for your listeners: the normal range, the standard mean deviation — so the top and the bottom of the ranges — are being compressed. And the reason they say they're being compressed is because it accounts for obesity. As we know, the fatter you get, the more insulin resistant, the more metabolically deranged, the less you have hormonal machinery that is optimised or even functioning normally.

Lisa: Yeah.

Jay Campbell: And so, again, the average doctor is just trying to take a guy who's 170 to 190, or even 225, to 350. But as you and I know, as you dealt with with your dad, somebody who's used to working with a thousand-plus, or 40-plus on free, who now is at 300, is still feeling like dog.

Lisa: Yeah, like they have no energy, they don't feel good, they feel less than a man. I mean, it's horrible.

Jay Campbell: But that's where the average person is, if they're lucky enough to get to work with a physician to hormonally optimise them. I never say the word "replacement," even though a lot of people still say that, because why would you replace a hormone that is escalating as you age? It's about optimising.

Lisa: Good point.

Jay Campbell: So you're going to have to provide levels that get them to where they feel good. The late Dr John Crisler, who gave me a lot of information and taught me a lot of stuff before he died in 2019, he always would say that there was a twofold goal of hormone optimisation therapy — and this is for men and women — and that is happiness and balance. Do I feel good? Am I living in a state of joy? And do I have any side effects or symptomology that was bad? And if you didn't, it didn't matter where your lab ranges were. He would always argue that some people could be at 500 and 25 on free and feel amazing, and other men would have to be double that range in total and double that range in free to feel amazing.

Jay Campbell: So again, you can't look at laboratory measurement numbers and actually gauge whether or not that's effective. And that also applies to men who want to ask you or me or people like us, "What's the perfect range, dude? Tell me what I need to be at. How do I get my lab ranges there?" It's like, no dude, it doesn't mean anything. What matters is your symptoms and your state of being. Again, do you feel good, and are you absent symptoms and side effects?

Jay Campbell: So back to your original question: there's only two accepted delivery systems that truly work in almost 99.9% of men, and that's obviously injections, and then the transdermal 200 milligrams per gram of cream. And there's three different formulations — actually there's four formulations now, because there's one called Androus, but it's like an HRT or TRT base, and it's basically made out of yams. But it's a 200 milligram per gram compounded cream, and it's placed on the male scrotum in the morning, and sometimes at night, depending on that individual and how much they need to titrate it. It's a four- to six-hour half-life, so it's a very, very fast-acting half-life. But the perineum skin at the base of the scrotum is literally eight to ten times more absorbable than any other place. And by the way, there's now nine scientific studies on this. But that's where you place it.

Jay Campbell: Now, when I was coming up — I've been on therapeutic testosterone optimisation now for close to 24 years — at first, when I was experimenting with different delivery systems, they would tell you to put the cream right here, to put the cream on the inner thighs. All of those places are suboptimal from an absorption standpoint. And it wasn't until Dr Keith Nichols and other people in the late 2017, 2018 went hardcore with everybody who was in the testosterone community, telling people that, "Hey man, you don't need to inject yourself. It's invasive. You get scar tissue over time when you're constantly injecting yourself. But you can use it on your scrotum." And I was against it, because I had been on injections for 17 years and I was like a hardcore injection guy. But he got me to switch, and ever since then I've never gone back to injections.

Lisa: So would that apply to — Jay, just briefly, for a woman who's taking testosterone cream, which I do — and when I get my ranges back I'm still on the lower end, and I've doubled the cream and I've done the thing, but I'm putting it on the thighs. Because women need testosterone too, ladies. This is really important for our sporting performance, our muscle mass, our bone density, all of those things, energy, assertiveness, all of that. So mine was in the gutter when I measured it a few years ago, and I went, oh — because from a genetics point of view, I already had a lot of testosterone, I was a muscular build. There's varying degrees that we all have and are born with. And when you study genetics, the length of your femur actually, Jay, gives you a representation of how much testosterone in utero you received.

Jay Campbell: Right, okay. That's right. Also the finger size, yeah, all that.

Lisa: Yeah, so I had a fair amount in utero, I was athletic and all that sort of stuff. And then in my late 40s when I started testing for this stuff, I went, oh shoot, in the gutter. But I still struggle with the cream, and that's all I can get here for a woman. I'm talking about doses much less than you guys, right? But it doesn't seem to be getting in properly, is sort of the upshot of it. Should that be also in the genital area for women?

Jay Campbell: Yes, it actually should. So for women — and literally my podcast I had this morning was with a gal from the UK, amazing, she's got a spermidine supplement, and we were talking about hormone optimisation. I'll get back to the man stuff about injections in a second, but to share with you what's important: the problem that we have in medicine today is that because of the environment — you're a perfect case of this. You're not getting the ranges you would like to get, you probably don't feel as well as you would like to feel, you're in a country that doesn't have the formulations in the place that you optimally need them. The same goes on in the United States.

Jay Campbell: And what I mean by this is that even though we may have the correct formulations for men and women, the doctors are still governing their patient therapy by the standard mean deviation ranges, and all those ranges are a farce, because they're not designed for men and women undergoing hormone optimisation. You can't extrapolate the data from quote-unquote normal people and, to be honest, non-healthy people. So at the end of the day, they're compressing our values when we're on these hormone optimisation agents into these ranges, and the ranges have no bearing on a hormonally optimised man or woman.

Jay Campbell: So the problem is, when you talk to the smart doctors that do know how to do this, they still will say to you, "Hey Jay, hey Lisa, it's not your medical licence that's on the line. We're being governed and regulated by state medical licensing boards, and if they see our patients' ranges too high, they can call us in and throw us up in front of the state medical licensing board." So it's a real disaster. Because, as I was saying with the other lady that I was doing a podcast with earlier this morning, the best doctors know that they have to work to the patient's interest, which is again: does the patient feel good? Does the patient feel well? Does the patient feel like, "I'm optimal, you've got me optimised"? And if they do, you usually have to push the levels way higher.

Jay Campbell: So why I'm saying this to you is: you need your levels higher, you need a higher dose, you need higher levels. It's not a matter of where the numbers fall on the paper of the laboratory evaluation. It's again, do you feel good, and is there an absence of symptoms and side effects? And if that's the case, it doesn't matter where your levels are on the piece of paper. But the problem is that to doctors it does, because they're worried about being —

Lisa: Yeah, especially if your numbers look so high. So you really have to find a doctor, and obviously where you're at, there aren't —

Jay Campbell: It is, yeah, doctors that really understand the nuance of this. And I always tell people this, especially in the States, and thankfully now a little bit more is coming into Canada: if your doctor has not been optimising hormones for 10 years, find another doctor, because they don't have the knowledge or the experience to do this. But look, I'm here to tell you, it is easy for men, it's not as easy for women. There is no cookie-cutter, templatised version, because women —

Jay Campbell: — are so N of one. But my wife is now using an oral formulation.

Lisa: Oh wow. So there are oral formulations over there that actually work for women?

Jay Campbell: No oral formulation will ever work for a man because it's not strong enough.

Lisa: Not strong enough, yeah. And it has to pass through the liver.

Jay Campbell: Remember, orally formulated does have to pass through the liver. Exactly. But low-dose concentrations that are effective for women, it can absolutely be taken orally. They have lozenges, they have capsules.

Jay Campbell: But to get back to — and we can cross-sect this — with men, the other delivery system is injections. And the problem with injections is, and by the way, sadly there are women taking injections and that's not the right thing to do, we can talk about that. But at the end of the day, you have to mimic the body's natural production of testosterone if you really want to be successful with the injection protocol. It has to be often, and it has to be usually relatively around the times that testosterone is highest in the male and female body, which is usually in the morning, somewhere between six and eight o'clock in the morning, which is usually when testosterone has a peak.

Jay Campbell: But the truth is that you have to inject every other day or daily. Now, most people are not going to inject daily because it just doesn't fit their life-work balance. But the happy medium is every other day. When you inject once a week or twice a week, you cause a massive problem, and especially over time you damage the HPGA axis, right, the hypogonadal axis. Because when the hypogonadal axis doesn't see testosterone being pulse-released like every day or every other day, which is what we do when we maximise shot therapy, it slows down everything.

Lisa: Because it's like dealing with a spike and then a drop.

Jay Campbell: Yeah, crazy.

Lisa: It's like a spike and then a cascade. And that's terrible for men. Some of them are once every two weeks or once every six weeks, some of them.

Jay Campbell: Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean that's the insanity. There are endocrinologists talking about two shots a month. They'll give them a shot on the 1st and the 15th, or the 15th and the 30th. It's insane. But the truth is that most men who have those protocols have come to live in the world of, like, the first three days I feel good and then I feel like crap for the next seven to 10 or whatever.

Jay Campbell: But the truth is, I literally talked to a guy yesterday, a professional MMA fighter. If you follow MMA, you know who this person is. Obviously from a confidentiality perspective I'm not allowed to talk about him, but he's a pretty famous guy. And he was telling me that he literally feels like absolute dog crap. And the reason he feels like dog crap is because he's been taking two shots a week — I mean, two shots every seven to 10 days.

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: For seven years. And up, down, up, down, up, down. He was telling me that he has crushing brain fog. And his levels, when you measure them, are not that bad, right? He's again one of those guys who's in the normal range. But I told him, I'm like, look man, seven to 10 years, your hypogonadal endocrine system is used to, like you said, the up, down, up, down, up, down. So your brain is not functioning as well as it would. And I told him, very seriously and very truthfully, you can literally change without even increasing your dosage by going to everyday injections for the next two weeks. Watch what happens to you. And he was like, man, I don't know if I can inject myself every day. I'm like, you don't have to, bro, but I'm just telling you, if you do, it's going to be night and day. Your brain, your endocrine system will be rehooked up. You'll start working again, everything will start working again.

Jay Campbell: So I just had this talk with this guy two or three days ago, and I hope that he does it. I can only tell him what to do, but at the end of the day, this is what you see in a lot of men that are on therapeutic testosterone, because they're just not doing it at the frequency necessary. Because we are 24-hour circadian beings. When it comes to light, when it comes to hormones, when it comes to sleep, when it comes to food cycles, we need to put everything in that circadian balance.

Lisa: Yeah, I think it's really important. And then you've got the cypionate, all the different types. What are the types? Which one is the better type — the enanthate, whatever?

Jay Campbell: So that's a great question. Five years ago or seven years ago — six or seven years ago, I can't believe I've been doing this for so long now — it was like six or seven years ago, we were in the debate of what ester was better than another. Was a faster half-life ester like propionate better than cypionate or enanthate, that had shorter half-lives? And then we really started looking into the pharmacology of testosterone and we realised — and this is all really in the last couple of years, especially with the new oral formulations, and now they even have — I mean, if I went through them all you would laugh, but they actually have a snort version. I forget what it's called, but it's this doctor in Miami. He's been on my podcast, he's a smart guy, but I don't agree with him. It's the same thing: they get you from 180 to 290 and these guys are having nosebleeds and they still feel like crap, and you're calling it successful because you're testing them in the normal range.

Jay Campbell: But at the end of the day, we now know that testosterone is testosterone, right? So it doesn't matter what the ester is, what the half-life is. The bottom line is get your testosterone in your bloodstream and do it as frequently as possible, because the more frequent the administration, the better the brain and the endocrine system and really all biological system functioning senses the natural aspect of it.

Jay Campbell: So if you were injecting every single day with testosterone — and by the way, even for a female, it's just somebody would have to compound the right dosage, because normally women who inject are getting too much, because the formulation is too much. I once had a guy tell me that he was trying to get a five milligram per CC formulation, which would have been amazing for injections, because then you could have done like a half a CC every day as a female and get the perfect amount. But it's never been made. I'm sure there's probably underground concoctions out there, but the bottom line is that no pharmacies or compounding pharmacies are making it.

Jay Campbell: But as long as you're getting testosterone injected daily or every other day, you're going to feel like your body is pulsing natural testosterone at a high enough level to make you feel good. But again, like you said, the average endocrinologist in every country in the world is literally administering it twice a month. They have no idea what they're doing, and all their patients feel like absolute dog crap.

Lisa: They all feel like — and then they blow up and then they shrink, and then they blow up and they shrink. I've seen that too, where they put on four kilos and then lose four kilos.

Jay Campbell: Yes, there's literally a website — I want you to look this up, not right now, but look this up at some point in the next couple of days so you can laugh. It's called testosteroneaddiction.com, and it's these people in the Midwest, the flyover country of the United States, who have been literally butchered by quack doctors.

Jay Campbell: One of the things we should mention that we didn't talk about is pellets. Pellets are the biggest scam in the history of medicine, because a pellet is not bioidentical. In fact, it's the leading formulation in the world for doctors, and that is because they make the most money. And they brainwash these people, saying, oh, you're afraid of injecting yourself, so just come into my office once every eight weeks and I'll implant it in the back of your ass or your hip or whatever it is.

Jay Campbell: And it's a scam because — and only the smartest people in testosterone optimisation know this — there's never been a single randomised control study done with pellets. And the reason for that is because science knows that pellets are an inefficient delivery system. They know it sucks. It will not cleave. People that are the butchers, who are not trained surgeons, are inserting these things in people's bodies. They don't even know what they're doing. I have a desktop folder which I wish I could show you — I'd love to share a screen — of people who send me pictures of their extrusions, which literally are failed insertions of pellets that are infected. They create abscesses. I mean, you cannot even believe how insane it is.

Lisa: They do that? I mean, they're cutting the back of their buttocks or their hip? By the way, the sub-Q injection is nothing, really. It's not too bad. Come on.

Jay Campbell: But I mean, can you imagine how crazy people are just at the thought of doing a pellet? Like, who would do that? It's medieval. The doctors aren't even trained in cutting your skin, who are doing these things. And it's such a scam. Now it's such a big high-level business that the pellet manufacturers have created these tools to get it in, to pop you with a pellet. It still hurts, but it's just insane.

Lisa: And then the other thing is, what about — they don't absorb, right?

Jay Campbell: They don't absorb right. So you have people who go on these things for one year and they're like — because I've had them come to me and they're like, you're wrong, you're absolutely wrong. And I'm like, okay, come to me in two years, come to me in a year and a half. And every single one of them who's ever done it for longer than a year literally is like, holy crap, you're right, it stops working. Duh. The body is smarter than the pellet. You can't just insert a pellet into your skin and not think that at some point it's going to stop working. And it does. They all fail. Every single person who's ever done pellets, it eventually fails. And then they show you their scars, right, their surgical scars where they have all these insertions. It's literally insane.

Jay Campbell: So yes, subcutaneous injection is harmless, it's relatively painless. Some men, truthfully and unfortunately, they get bumps under the skin, right — cellulitis, they call it, whatever. But again, it's a small price to pay to feel a million times better.

Lisa: What about the scrotum cream? The thing is, a lot of people can't get it.

Jay Campbell: Like just like you guys, they can't get it. The country doesn't manufacture it, there's no compounding pharmacy that makes it. That's a big issue in Europe right now. They come to me and they're like, how can I get a doctor to prescribe this for me? And they're now working — a couple of the docs in the States are now working with specific compounders overseas, internationally — but it's a fortune. To get it made in the States, so your listeners know this, in the States it's 160 bucks for three months.

Lisa: 160 bucks, so cheap.

Jay Campbell: It's cheap, yeah. But internationally, to get a cream for 90 days is probably like $700.

Lisa: 1800 bucks. Yeah, it's crazy. Over here we're so stuck, because that's the other thing I wanted to talk to you briefly on — peptides. But before we leave the testosterone, what about the prostate hyperplasia, the cancer risk, all of that sort of stuff? What's your take on that?

Jay Campbell: It's all nonsense. There's absolutely not a single clinical study that has ever been done — and there are thousands of clinical studies done — that's shown testosterone to cause any issues with the liver, any issues with the kidneys, any issues with the heart. In fact, we now know prostate, same thing. We now know the latest science shows us that it's actually a testosterone deficiency that causes prostate cancer. So when you don't have any testosterone, you're likely to get prostate cancer. And then the same thing with the heart. Cardiovascular inefficiency or weak cardiovascular walls and cardiovascular architecture is caused by a lack of circulating testosterone, which again is simple to understand. You're going to have inflammatory diseases and diseases of ageing when you don't have optimal levels of testosterone. So everything that they once previously thought about testosterone causing this, that and the other is usually the opposite of it now. In fact, this is insane, but testosterone, prostate cancer — stage four prostate cancer — they're using what they call supersaturation doses of testosterone.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah, BAT therapy. Apoptosis of the tumours. I had a prostate cancer person that I was working with and we were looking at it, because — but it's only in America, these high doses, and then low, and then they alternate with the ADT therapy. And yeah, they're still researching it, and the doctor that I was working with in America was really keen on it, but we couldn't do it. There was no way in hell any doctor here would touch it.

Lisa: And the same with, when we're talking about bioidentical hormone replacement for women, or optimisation as you say, people go, oh, what about the cancer risk? I can tell you, you need to know your genetics, in my opinion. You need to know how you're methylating, you need to know that, you need to get your body in a better shape so that you can cope with these things. But not taking hormones is also a choice that leads down a road towards not so good bone density, brain, heart, skin, hair, gut lining — all of these things are going to go south if you don't have enough of your oestrogens and your progesterones and things. So you're making a choice either way, and whether there's risks on the one side or not, there's risk on both sides, probably is the answer.

Jay Campbell: Always risk. I mean, there's always risk. I always tell people, look, man, you could get hit by a bus when you leave your house today, you know what I mean? So it's like, what's more important, feeling optimal, or being in fear of feeling optimal and so not attempting, taking the minimal risk or the minor risk? Again, the risks of living the life that you and I live, the optimised life, are so much less than people who don't, who just eat normal diets, don't exercise, don't get out in nature.

Lisa: Yeah, it never balances.

Jay Campbell: And the other thing is too, some people will say, well, financially, I can't afford that, I can only afford my copay with my doctor. And I always tell people, if you cannot — I don't care what your income level is, whether you make $50,000 a year or $50,000 a day — if you cannot afford to spend five to $10,000 a year on your personal health care, it's because you have your principles inverted. Because this is what's very important for people to understand: if and when — and again, most of these people have these events — when you have a massive incident like a coronary heart attack, it causes medical bankruptcy. It does. Very people literally go broke.

Lisa: Yeah, they go broke. Yep. I've seen it with rehabilitating my mum back from aneurysm and stroke and cancer. It's unreal. Literally cost me a house in the last two years keeping her alive.

Jay Campbell: Yes. And that's what people don't understand. They're like, oh, if I have to take testosterone, but the side effects or whatever. It's like, you don't understand, you can't afford not to do these things, because if major medical illness, you're done.

Lisa: Yeah, you are financially done if you're trying to save your life at that end. And the funny thing is, what I find bizarre is that people, even when they're faced with their own mortality, will still hang on to their bank account and their flash car instead of prioritising. And I'm like, man, sell the flash car, get rid of the house, you're dying, you've got to do something now.

Jay Campbell: And I've had people literally — this has happened at least five or six times in the last five years — who were worth a lot of money, and they pay me a lot of money to give them a 60- to 90-day programme, and I literally laugh in their face. I send them their money back. But I first tell them to their face, like, how long did it take you to get the $50 million to sell your company? Oh, all my life. And I'm like, okay, so, and now you're a flaming dumpster fire with 35% body fat and you think I can give you a 90-day programme? Like, bro, what are you living in? But that's going back to what you're saying. These people spend so much time aggregating things, building their business, becoming quote-unquote successful as they define it, and completely take full, total advantage of their physical vessel. They do nothing. They're slobs, they drink too much alcohol, they do no exercise. My wife coined this phrase probably 10 years ago and I use it every second of my life now: most people do not take care of their health until it's gone.

Lisa: Yep. And then it's a hell of a lot harder road back.

Jay Campbell: Well, what can you do? You're not going to do anything. You cannot tell a morbidly obese person that they can lose 100 pounds or 80 pounds in a year. Now, I know, and you and I both know, that it does happen, people do do it, but they are supreme outliers.

Lisa: Yeah, small chance to do it. It's going to take a long time and you've got to completely change your lifestyle, and as you know, most people won't change their lifestyle. And it takes — you've got to do a lot of inner work and all of that sort of stuff. And it's knowledge, right? Like my mum, before she had the aneurysm and the stroke, she was 108 kilos at 5'3". She was way overweight, but she was eating the food pyramid, she was going to the gym, she was doing the thing, but she prioritised her kids. Everyone else is more important than me, you know, that type of person. Now she's lost 50-something kilos, she's in my house now, she's on a keto diet, she's got all her supplements. She's sitting there eating her supplements right now. But life's strict. I have to go harder — the closer you are to the cliff, the stronger you need to be with your foot on that brake. So I have to go hard with her, and if you're a little bit younger you can get away with more. But I think just having these conversations, optimising yourself.

Lisa: Jay, before we wrap up, I did want to touch on peptides, because you're the peptide king as well, for sure. We struggle to get any peptides down here. My mission in life, one of them, is to get peptides into New Zealand. To get a peptide company in New Zealand, that would be amazing. That's my dream. Because I get them for Mum — I'm very creative in the way I do things — but it's super expensive, it's risky. And one of the companies that you endorse, actually, they're top-notch, they're good. What's the name of them? Limitless.

Jay Campbell: Limitless.

Lisa: Limitless, yeah. Because they've actually said that they will send down here.

Jay Campbell: But I was going to ask you about that, what happens? Because when I owned my company, which we sold, I couldn't get anything into New Zealand. We were selling, obviously, a peptide-based hair product, and then we had some face stuff, and every time we tried to send stuff to New Zealand, they would seize it. Customs — is it the same now?

Lisa: I've managed to — I have a supplement company, I bring in anti-ageing longevity supplements from all around the world, and 90% of the time it gets through and it's allowed. But there are certain things that are not allowed. So if it's on the list, you can't. And we can't get peptides. The only way I can get peptides is working with a doctor here that will sign them out and do all of that, which is a drama. And you don't want to be buying them from black sites that you don't know what the heck they're about, right?

Jay Campbell: No, no, no. You can't do that.

Lisa: You've got to be really, really careful with these things. So you're wanting the good stuff, you want to know where to get them. But the peptides are the future of, well, like in America they're already the present, although the FDA is doing their best, I think, to shut things down, because they like to, don't they? Anything that works.

Jay Campbell: Anything that works.

Lisa: And could actually help people, we can't have that. We do have a couple of orally available ones, like BPC-157 and TB-500, the thymosin beta-4 fragment. So I have those in my range, because they're okay. But we can't get them generally. But I think things will change, so I've been educating people down here on different ones. What are your favourites? So give me your top five. If you were giving me five peptides that were top notch for different things, what would they be? Would they include the GLP-1 agonists?

Jay Campbell: Yeah, I mean, it's a hard question to answer, there's so many of them. I would say usually, like I say, well, what's your primary goal, right? So if it's fat loss, my five best ones would be ipamorelin, tesamorelin, obviously the GIP/GLP-1 agonists like tirzepatide, which a lot of people know as Mounjaro, and then the mitochondrial stimulation or mitochondrial optimisation supplements like 5-Amino-1MQ. There's other stuff coming into the marketplace soon, but it's like you said, it's like, what can I get, what can I access?

Jay Campbell: But basically, that would be from a fat loss standpoint. From a healing standpoint, obviously there's TB-500, there's BPC-157. Thymosin Alpha-1 is amazing. I don't go anywhere in the world without taking Thymosin Alpha-1 with me. You can also use LL-37, which is an extremely powerful antifungal, antipathogenic agent that you use when you get really, truly sick. And then there's also — what's the one, I'm drawing a blank right now — but the one you would use, VIP, vasoactive intestinal peptide, right? So VIP is a profound peptide.

Jay Campbell: That helps for clearing sinus infections.

Lisa: Oh wow.

Jay Campbell: SLCO, right? So you can actually inject VIP or even nasally inhale or snort VIP when you have Covid. I mean, these aren't things that they can say in medicine, but believe me, there are doctors out there that are using them with their Covid patients, especially end stage, people that have really serious sinus infections.

Jay Campbell: Cognitively, there's Semax, there's Selank, there's Cerebrolysin, there's Dihexa. There's some amazing cognitive restoring peptides or enhancing peptides. I always tell people that you've got to be cautious with cognitive peptides, because you want to save them if you have brain illness, if you have a brain injury, if your mum or your dad has early onset neurodegenerative disorder like Alzheimer's or ALS or any of those things. That's when you want to throw in Cerebrolysin. But a lot of people unfortunately, they're not smart and they want to take peptides to increase their brain power, right? And it's like, you might get a little bit of an improvement, but nothing is going to improve your brain power more than living insulin controlled and optimising your hormones. Most people that have cognitive decline as they age have a testosterone deficiency.

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: It's that simple. They just don't have the brain power, they have brain fog, they feel like by two or three o'clock in the afternoon... I'm always like, get your testosterone levels looked at, because all you have to do is optimise your testosterone and your brain speed's going to increase. DHT is also very instrumental in cognitive improvement.

Jay Campbell: For people our age, the anti-aging peptides, the telomerase expressing or enhancing peptides like Epitalon, the bioregulators — there's a couple of other of the bioregulators too — those are great. You're not going to notice anything from taking them, right, but you will definitely improve your cell mitosis and just basically optimise for longevity, increase the production of telomerase to extend your telomeres. And then what else would I want to recommend?

Lisa: Yeah, actually I've just had Bill Andrews, a telomerase scientist, on, talking about telomeres and activating things. That's really interesting.

Jay Campbell: So what did I say? I said anti-aging, healing, fat loss. Melanotan — let's talk about melanotan. So Melanotan I is my favourite peptide, right? I mean, my skin colour — I was a white-bred northern European dude, and I started using Melanotan I in 2009 and my skin is dark now. When people see me, especially my family, they're like, what did you do to yourself? Did you like permanently tan? I'm like, no, this is from using long-term, low-dose micro doses of Melanotan I. It absolutely darkens the skin pigment.

Jay Campbell: Now, what people don't know and they should know is that this also is a powerful protectant against UV burn and UV radiation damage.

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: Because whenever you strengthen the melanocortin receptor complexes, you enhance the production of melanocytes, and the more melanocytes that you have, the more protected you are from the elements, especially the UV burning of the sun. So I can't really burn anymore, and I'm way darker than I used to be, than I was 20 years ago, 15 years ago. I stay pretty much relatively this level of tan year round, and I use a micro dose — I'm using like 20 micrograms maybe twice a week.

Jay Campbell: Now the other thing, and I've written about this — and again, this is just anecdotal, I have no studies to prove this, although I feel like I could if I really wanted to go down and dig deep — but it also enhances consciousness. So when you're taking a regular dose of Melanotan I and you do inner work, meditation, contemplation, introspection, whatever, grounding in nature, you will feel way more connected on the morning that you inject melanotan, especially if you do it pre whatever your inner work is. And I know that it's been instrumental in my spiritual path and my spiritual foundation and my spiritual acceleration, because I was never this open and this connected when I was pre-Melanotan I. But once I started using Melanotan I — and of course at the beginning I had no idea — but I really got into...

Lisa: Interesting side effect.

Jay Campbell: Yeah, I really got into seeking out alternative historical timelines, getting into esoteric studies. I mean, now that's my passion. What you and I are talking about is cool, but if you really want to get me going...

Lisa: Well, this isn't you on fire.

Jay Campbell: You talk about densities and quantum physics — I mean, I just did literally an eight-hour webinar the last two nights talking about all this. We had a lot of people watching, so a lot of people are becoming attuned and in tune to these kind of things. But that's really what my jam is now.

Lisa: Have you worked out where we're going when we die? That's what I'm trying to work out. Have you got an answer for me?

Jay Campbell: Well, physically your body dies, but your soul is energy, and your energy cannot die, right? The laws of thermodynamics prove that energy cannot be contracted, it just constantly ever expands. So if we're energy beings in physical bodies, then my guess is — it's really not a guess, but it's like — we're continuing our evolution or our journey. And whether or not we come back as a human again, I think is an option. I think you can probably come back in different ways, but the energy of you and Jay and Lisa is permanent, it's infinite, it's ever expanding. So it's just how we look at it, how we define it, but we're so much more than these bodies.

Lisa: Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah. But we can keep these bodies in good shape as best we can while we're here, right, so that we can stick around a little bit longer and look after our loved ones. Jay, you've been absolutely fabulous today. You're so much fun to listen to and so full of beans, so full of energy and just positivity. So really, thank you for all the work you do. Really excited to have connected with you and I can't wait to maybe meet you if you come down here, and you're promoting Kaïkū Curb, which is actually something we should briefly talk about because that's a product we can get here in New Zealand.

Jay Campbell: We definitely can, and we will meet. Like I was telling you off air before the show, I'm definitely working on coming over there at some point, probably this year, if not this year, then early next year, but sometime. I would assume this year.

Lisa: Well, I'm trying to work on — my dream is to get a longevity conference down here. I haven't got it under way yet.

Jay Campbell: If you do that, I'll come for sure. I'll be your first person, just make sure you invite me first.

Lisa: Oh, sounds good, Jay. Well, thank you so much, Jay Campbell. You've been absolutely fabulous. Where can people find you? There's a peptide cheat sheet that everyone has to go download. If you're into peptides, go and get that for sure.

Jay Campbell: So the easiest way — I have a website that we built for when I go on podcasts. It's literally jaycampbell.com/freebooks, and they can get access to all of my previous books with the exception of the last two, but we do give the first two chapters of Optimize Your Health with Peptides, and then the newest book, which is 30 Days to Shreds, which is definitely a masterpiece on fat loss using the latest and greatest tools and gadgets like GLP-1 agonists.

Lisa: Yeah, exactly.

Jay Campbell: So yes, it's all there for free, but it's jaycampbell.com/freebooks. And then they can find me on social media at @jaycampbell333. And people ask, what is 333? 333 is the angel number, which is the connection between master teachers in spirit...

Lisa: Wow.

Jay Campbell: ...and us in mind, body, soul.

Lisa: Ah, beautiful, beautiful. Jay Campbell 333 — that's absolutely wonderful. Thanks so much for your time today, Jay.

Jay Campbell: Thank you so much, Lisa. Appreciate coming on.