Dr. Beck on Why Biohacking is Just Expensive Entertainment | DSH #1218

Summary

Digital Social Hour Episode Summary

Episode: Dr. Beck on Why Biohacking is Just Expensive Entertainment | DSH #1218
Release Date: March 4, 2025
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Dr. Anthony G. Beck, Creator of Balance Protocol and Biohacking Critic

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of Digital Social Hour, host Sean Kelly engages in a candid and critical discussion with Dr. Anthony G. Beck, a seasoned clinician with over 30 years of experience in integrative and functional medicine. Dr. Beck shares his insights into the burgeoning world of biohacking, offering a perspective that challenges the conventional hype surrounding various biohacking practices.

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Biohacking: Glorified Expensive Entertainment

Dr. Beck opens the conversation by expressing his skepticism towards the current state of biohacking. He describes it as "glorified expensive entertainment," highlighting the commercialization and often unfounded enthusiasm that surround many biohacking trends.

• Dr. Beck (02:06): "What I have found it to become is just glorified expensive entertainment."

He emphasizes the importance of personalized approaches in health, contrasting them with the one-size-fits-all mentality prevalent in mainstream biohacking.

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The Role of Social Media in Biohacking Trends

Sean probes whether social media is a significant driver behind the popularity of biohacking. Dr. Beck agrees, noting that while he supports the "buyer beware" mentality, the lack of clinical oversight in many biohacking practices is concerning.

• Dr. Beck (02:37): "But at the end of the day, everybody has their right to choose, you know, on what they want to try and do."

He criticizes digital marketers who often lack clinical training, thereby creating a disconnect between biohacking tools and individual health needs.

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Hyperbaric Chambers and Oxygen Therapy

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around hyperbaric chambers and oxygen therapy. Dr. Beck shares his concerns about the unregulated use of these devices, citing instances where improper use can lead to severe health consequences.

• Dr. Beck (00:59): "You can go look up the story of Tommy Cooper... And what happened in a hyperbaric chamber here recently on that."

He underscores the necessity of understanding one's biochemical individuality before engaging in such therapies to prevent adverse reactions.

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Methylene Blue and Supplementation

Dr. Beck delves into the popularity of methylene blue as a biohack. He explains its dual nature, highlighting both its benefits and potential risks when used without proper clinical guidance.

• Dr. Beck (03:50): "I've used methylene blue for decades. The thing is, it has its pluses, it has its minuses."

He draws an analogy to installing an engine in a car chassis that can't handle the torque, stressing the importance of compatibility between supplements and the individual's body.

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Critique of Gene Testing: The MTHFR Example

One of the focal points of the episode is Dr. Beck's critique of gene testing, particularly the MTHFR gene test. He argues that these tests are often misleading and don't provide actionable health insights as advertised.

• Dr. Beck (17:37): "Gene tests are a scam... They sell you the five. That's just, it's absurd."

He explains the complexity of genetic expressions and interactions, which gene tests fail to capture accurately. Dr. Beck emphasizes that possessing a gene mutation doesn't inherently lead to dysfunction without considering the broader biochemical context.

• Dr. Beck (18:03): "Not even close. So we'll talk about that one, Right?"

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Supplements and Personalized Health Approaches

Dr. Beck critiques the blanket recommendation of supplements without assessing individual deficiencies. He advocates for a data-driven approach to supplementation, where vitamins and minerals are tailored based on specific needs rather than generalized marketing claims.

• Dr. Beck (50:20): "If you're not deficient, why would you need more?"

He shares his methodology, which involves thorough testing and personalized supplementation strategies to ensure safety and efficacy.

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EMF and Other Biohacking Gadgets

The conversation also touches upon electromagnetic field (EMF) mitigation products. Dr. Beck dismisses the effectiveness of over-the-top EMF protection gadgets, labeling them ineffective despite their high costs.

• Dr. Beck (55:22): "They don't conduct. Neither do the patches, people."

He reiterates the importance of evidence-based practices over trendy yet unsupported biohacking solutions.

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Clinical Experiences and Patient Cases

Dr. Beck shares poignant anecdotes from his clinical practice, illustrating the real-world impact of unregulated biohacking. He recounts cases where patients faced severe health issues due to improper use of biohacking tools and supplements.

• Dr. Beck (37:42): "I've seen countless thousands of them. Really? That's my career."

He discusses the delicate balance required in biohacking, emphasizing that without proper monitoring and individualized care, the risks can outweigh the benefits.

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Conclusion: A Balanced Approach to Health

Wrapping up the discussion, Dr. Beck advocates for a balanced and personalized approach to health that prioritizes individual needs over trendy biohacking fads. He encourages listeners to critically evaluate biohacking practices, seek clinical guidance, and rely on data-driven health strategies.

• Dr. Beck (53:26): "You're a category of one... context, context, context."

He underscores the importance of context in health decisions, advocating for personalized care that considers environment, lifestyle, mindset, and nutrition as interconnected factors.

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Notable Quotes

• Dr. Beck (02:06): "What I have found it to become is just glorified expensive entertainment."
• Dr. Beck (03:50): "I've used methylene blue for decades. The thing is, it has its pluses, it has its minuses."
• Dr. Beck (17:37): "Gene tests are a scam... They sell you the five. That's just, it's absurd."
• Dr. Beck (50:20): "If you're not deficient, why would you need more?"
• Dr. Beck (55:22): "They don't conduct. Neither do the patches, people."
• Dr. Beck (53:26): "You're a category of one... context, context, context."

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Final Thoughts

Dr. Anthony G. Beck offers a critical yet constructive perspective on the biohacking movement, urging individuals to approach health innovations with caution and personalized consideration. His emphasis on data-driven practices and individualized care provides a counter-narrative to the often unregulated and commercialized world of biohacking.

For those intrigued by Dr. Beck's approach, he invites listeners to explore his resources and consider a tailored strategy towards achieving optimal health.

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Stay Connected:
For more insights and resources from Dr. Beck, visit his TikTok or explore his Amazon store.

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Note: This summary captures the essence of the conversation between Sean Kelly and Dr. Anthony G. Beck, focusing on the critical analysis of biohacking trends and emphasizing personalized, data-driven health approaches.

Transcript

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

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[Sean]

From oxygen chambers, you've seen people have issues with those.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. You want to just. Just for fun. Because, I mean, I do want to wake people up with some challenging stories. You go look up the story of Tommy Cooper. I wasn't involved in that one. And what happened in a hyperbaric chamber here recently on that. Damn. He's no longer with us.

[Sean]

Wow. From the oxygen chamber. Holy crap.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay, but I'm not scaring people because think of all the thousands of units that they're not having that happen. What I'm saying is, is this willy nilly trying all these different things. Okay, think of it this way. Okay? Hyperbarics. Hyperbarics with methylene blue. Hyperbarics with methylene blue under exertion. Hyperbarics with methylene under blue, whatever. With photobiomodulation and plus nicotine. See, it's all a different thing. It makes a different sandwich. You change the composition and you're going to have a different sa.

[Sean]

Okay, guys, Dr. Anthony G. Beck, creator of Balance Protocol and biohacking critic. Thanks for coming on today.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Man, oh, man, nice intro. Yeah. Just go right for the Juggler.

[Sean]

Well, it's good to have the other side on because I have on a lot of biohackers. And you're actually friends with some of these people too, right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And their physician. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean]

So it's good to have, I think, a little of both, in my opinion.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I agree. I completely agree. I. You know, back in the day, I've been doing integrative and functional medicine for 30 years. Right. So when I first started out, it was called the quantified self movement. It was all. It was way before was ever called biohacking. Or anything like that. And it was about quantifying you and then changing those things within you. That was what it was all. Now what I have found it to become is just glorified expensive entertainment.

[Sean]

Yeah. You know, do you think social media is a major reason for that?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. You know, but I love the buyer beware thing. But at the end of the day, everybody has their right to choose, you know, on what they want to try and do and things like that. And, and that's why I'm just now trying to come out to the space because I'm a clinician, I'm not a digital marketer. Most of them are in that space. And so what I want to do is just give, bridge the gap and give people a balanced understanding that hey, listen, those are tools but you need to do them in the context of something. And that something is always the individual. You have a unique story, a unique biochemical individuality, a unique genetic status and all those come into the symphony that makes us who we are. And so when you're just trying all the different things from, you know, copper filled pyramids and you know, it's just, it's and you know, different lights and gadgets, gizmos and dongles and pills, potions and powders, you really should do it based upon something. In other words, track it, get data. That's. Now I'm saying, when I say data, I'm talking about scientifically, you know, supported data before, during and after. So you can make adjustments as opposed. I'm going to try this like all the rage now is methylene blue. Everybody wants to just get.

[Sean]

Yeah, that one's hot right now.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

It is. I've used methylene blue for decades. The thing is, is that it has its pluses, it has its minuses. The problem is people try it without even knowing what their body has the capacity to respond to what it does with its biochemical pressure in the first place. Right. That's like I like to talk in pictures, I'm a southern boy. So that's like sticking an engine in a, you know, Fast and furious car and not knowing if the chassis has the ability to take the torque. Right.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So you can put things into the body that do things for sure. And there's a range of molecules, but that presupposes that your body has the capacity to receive. And it's called chemical pressure because I think everything in terms of this is my woo woo. Energy, frequency, vibration, but not like what most people might think that terms are. But you have to know if Your body has the ability to deal with what that's going to do with.

[Sean]

Yeah. So measurements important.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

That's it. And that's the differentiator. And that's what I specialize in helping people do. And this is why a lot of the biohackers and the performance specialists and things like that are literally come to me is to quantify those things and to help them increase performance. And now, of course, everybody's getting on the longevity buzzword. You know, I was board certified in anti aging and you know, regenerative medicine back in 08. So I've been in that space for a long time. Lecture and I train other physicians and all that. And the reason why I share that is because we've been doing it for a while. It's not new, but it might be new to certain people. And I want people to embrace, you know, mind expansive things because I'm certainly not a conventional guy. I'm not an alternative or holistic guy either. You know, I like medications. I think there's a lot of medications that do wonderful things. But my point back to the thing is that you have to know how you're going to be able to particularly respond to one of these particular therapeutic models that you're trying to do or some of these therapeutic molecules themselves. That's it. It's just that balanced understanding. Do it with proper data. We do that in everything else we do. We do it with. You test your equipment here. People in the marketing space, they do it with their Facebook ads and all your key performance indic. So I try to talk the language a lot of these CEOs and corporate types do. And I said, well, what are your. What's your KPIs? What are you monitoring? Well, I just heard this was that, you know, and the nicotine patches and the things. And all of a sudden I'm going, yep, all those are great therapeutic molecules in the context of the individual. Right?

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So that's really what it is, Sean. I mean, I really want people to understand that one point that's the first critical message, you know, is that you're a category of one and you need to know what you're dealing with inside of you. Right. But yeah, biohacking is really.

[Sean]

It's gotten out of control, man, those nicotine pouches. So when Dave Asprey came on the show, he gave me a pouch. I started going dizzy during the episode.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

There you go.

[Sean]

Well, I'm just like, I don't have a nicotine tolerant.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So now you just absolutely made the Point of what? That last little diatribe I made was exactly right there. It's characters like those that are not clinicians, they're brilliant marketers, absolutely brilliant markers. And they just and people. And they have top of mind awareness, they have followers and they have people that say, okay, well this person says this and you know, but here's the thing. The litmus test, I want to teach because I'm not telling people, hey, just believe me either. Nope. I want people to learn to critically think and to go, okay, well, if somebody ever says try something on the basis of what? Because in science, whenever we're doing a clinical trial or something, we have inclusionary and exclusionary criteria to get the sample population. Now, sidebar. Oftentimes that's skewed to whatever result they want to get because somebody's paying for it. But you try to homogenize the people based upon certain criteria so you can control for what you're trying to do. And that's why it's generally testing one thing. So these people who are recommending things like nicotine patches or methylene blue or NAD or whatever the fads are of the day, they don't give any inclusionary or exclusionary criteria. They don't first ask you. It's just like going to a chiropractor and not getting a physical exam or X rays or something like that first before they start, you know, cracking, stacking and whacking.

[Sean]

Right, right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And you get your, you know, anterior order or something. But so at the end of the day, it's that. That right there is what I see all the time. But you learned a lesson. The cool thing is, is I'm not going doom and gloom. You're gonna be fine, you know, and it's not going to, you know, kill you, but it can harm literally. And I can show you. I just three, four days ago, I had someone, they were talking about doing the cold plunge because everybody's loving the cold plunge. The biohacking thing. Hot cold therapy, well, that's a different thing. I love hot cold therapy. I do it contrast wise, but you're never going to catch me jumping into an ice bath or a cold plunge. It doesn't work for what my autonomic nervous system is, but I had somebody, they tried it, they went full blast and jumped in there and he got locked up instantly.

[Sean]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Wife had to drag him out and he had complete, not complete paralysis, but his muscles were locked up for two weeks.

[Sean]

Oh, my gosh. A cold plunge.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yep.

[Sean]

How cold was the water?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I didn't get into that with him.

[Sean]

Because some people go insane with it, like Wim Hof, there's ice in there.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yep. And I get all that. And some people can tolerate it and I don't. People say, I don't say don't do it. I think that there's a way to have a balanced way of getting into it by starting with lower extremities first in cold things. But most of the time you don't need to do that. So we started throwing all these terms around like cold shock proteins and heat shock proteins, which are true, but those are influenced by other things other than temperature. They're even influenced by fasting and stuff, which is another thing we could get into. But the thing about it is cold has its place. You know, being a naturopathic doctor, the background of that was started with Monsieur Knept's water therapy. They would blast cold water at people. So the origins of where I was clinically kind of trained is based on water. Right. Or Baleo therapy, where you actually get into baths of different chemical constituents. So it's there, that's the take home. Those things are fantastic modalities. They have their place clinically. But why I'm a critic of the biohackers is because they're just telling everybody to do it because it does these supposed things. No context of the individual who's doing it, no data before they start it, no evaluating what the body's response is during or what are the consequences after of all the systems. I mean, doesn't that make sense?

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So for me that's what it is. I'm not saying don't do these things. I'm not saying they don't have clinical merit. I'm saying that you need to find out about your biochemical individuality, the status of your biological terrain, what is your environment, your lifestyle, your mindset, your nutrition, all those things. And that's what happens is. And I can see that, I see it all the time. Listen, we were just saying off camera, if I'll just go and say is generally whenever they have these conferences, usually a couple of days or two or after Burning man or something like that, they call me because hey doc, this happened to me. I did this. I might have partied too much. So I see it. I have a lot of skin in the game and I see what these things can do. But I also hear all the bad stories which are never going to be published. No one's going to put those out on social media.

[Sean]

It would harm their business Correct.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah, so that's the part. So if you're one of those people, feel free to reach out and I can help you recover. Because that's the other good news is I'm not saying all doom and gloom, oh, you're going to die if you do these. I'm saying, no, try them out, see what you're going to do. Most of the time it's not that. But if you run into trouble, you know, we can help you recover.

[Sean]

Yeah. You know, which one of these tests do you think are bs Because I've taken a lot of health tests. I've taken blood, I've taken the gene test.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Taking urine tests.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Sure. Well, here's the thing. The term test, right, is it's like saying automobile. Okay, well, I have a nice little Vespa, you know, 350, that's an automobile. You know, a Hummer's an automobile. Right. A Tesla is an automobile. So tests. So just want to clear terms, you'll see. I like to put in terms and ask questions, you know, along the way. So all of them have a premise, a place. The problem is, is there's no one single test that gives you the data that you need. Okay, You've got saliva, blood, poop, urine biopsy. There's a lot of different tests. The problem is, and your audience can probably catch this right away, I get picked on about all the time. I'm very wordy, Irish Southerner. So he laughed, he just agreed with me on that. But the thing is, I want to give the due diligence to it because I only have a limited time to really instill people with these concepts. And so what I want to do is say what testing is there? Just like in cardiology, we have tests, in neurology, we have their tests. In gynecology, they all have different specialty tests and you could do a ton. And I have high end patients and people around the world that have flown me to their homes in different places and all that stuff. But I really like, you know, regular folk. But the thing is, is they want to do a whole bunch of things. They love all that. You don't need all that up front. So before I answer the thing about the test, Tests are great. I have an unlimited battery available to me in them. But then their order of operations matters. There's certain things we don't have to test up front because I know that universal precautions and things that we're going to do that when start dealing with air, water, light, sound, EMF and food in people's Lives are going to adjust those values so much it doesn't even matter to get them at the first place. The inflammatory markers, you know, homocysteine and CRP and all that kind of stuff, and some of the inflammatory markers, we're going to move those so greatly up front. I don't test those there, right? But as far as those that are bs, well, there's a big adage out there now of gene testing. And the reason why is because the market, everyone is vying for everyone's attention and people want answers and they want it now. And the number one complaint that I have from everybody that I see is I'm so confused. I'm just so damn confused. I don't know who to believe, right? Everybody contradicts things. A study will say this. And that is true. I always say my patients have been my greatest teachers and I love them. And my clinical experience over three decades, 50,000 patients has taught me a lot through the lives of them. And sometimes it doesn't coalesce with what some of the scientific literature says. So my stories to everybody else are anecdotal. That's the lowest level of evidence on the evidence, period. And I recognize that. But who are you going to believe? Your mama or. So you have to balance it. And I'm not saying I have all the answers, right? I'm not what I call an ikea, I know everything, asshole. But. And there's a lot of that. I'm always growing. Every situation is different with every patient. So we're not just going to test all these things. And so we have a limited amount of time and people want to access people's as revenue. So they're going to do something like a gene test and the narrative will go a little something like, listen, you do this one test one time in your life and you never have to guess what you need to supplement for, right? Okay, that is patently false and it's a lie because genes cannot tell you that at all. Not even. It's so amazingly not true. I was flabbergasted when I started seeing patients come. I'm so out of the social media stuff. Not one of the talking heads really. Patients came to me with it and I was like, what in the heck is this? I was like, why is he saying that? And I knew right away what it was. You know, I've been doing genetic SNPs since 2008. I have my report. I even look at it when pulled it, you know, it's pretty funny. And all my things human Genome Project really didn't release its stuff until, oh, five started O2. But the point is. So, like, gene tests are a scam, I hate to use that word, because people say these words out there, you know, snake oil salesmen or scams. I'm funny with the terms because believe me, you know, I've had my fair share of people throw at me because I challenge conventional.

[Sean]

Right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

But my point is, and to answer your question more directly, the gene tests are because a gene codes for an enzyme that makes a protein, and oftentimes they're of the same name, but that does not tell you if that gene is even in expression or not, and even if it is in expression, it doesn't tell you to what avail or what consequence or in what consequence of the gene that comes before it or the one that comes after it that it relies upon. So you can't do a test for five genes, okay, out of over 20,000, and you're looking for what's called a single nucleotide polymorphism, a snp, not a gene break, we can use the word mutation if we want, but when the Genome 1000 project after that went on, you know how many SNPs we have found? 650 million.

[Sean]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And that's the number, 650 million SNPs. And you want to tell me that some test of five is going to tell you what you should supplement? That's. It's just, it's absurd, it really is. There's no other way to clean that up. But then of course, there's the pills, potions and powders that are the fix.

[Sean]

Right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And that monthly subscription. So it's a brilliant business model for the person doing it, but not for the patients that are left behind because of it.

[Sean]

So is there any truth to the mthfr1 where basically they're saying you're allergic to fortified enriched grains? Have you heard of that one?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah, but that's not true at all. It is not supported by the scientific literature or my personal firsthand clinical experience at all.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Not at all, not even close. So we'll talk about that one, Right? So the mother Effrogene, the mthfr, everyone gets that. Why? Because it has a fun name, Right, See, it's, you know, no one wants to talk about, you know, you know. Well, let's talk about one. Well, here's the one that's very similar, so let's get into it, because I don't want to, I want to be mindful of the time, so, Mthfr okay, is a gene that codes for an enzyme that has a job. Every single person, every home sapien has the MTHFR gene. So there's no having it. See, that's the other tool is to tell you you have it, you have something, you have Hashimoto's or so I call it, the name it, blame it, claim it, tame it, game. And so if you. Oh, you have this gene mutation. I have the MTHFR gene mutation. My methylation is solid, absolutely perfect in every way, shape and form. And I'm not being arrogant, I just know, because I know the nutrients that govern it. So the word is, correct me if I'm wrong, if you get this thing. So this is the marketing shtick, is that if you have mthfr, it's bad and then. Or dirty, dirty gene and then it's. So in other words, they're assuming that it's not performing or can't do it. I hear it being told that if you have mthfr, you can't methylate.

[Sean]

Yeah. If you have. So there's red and yellow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So that's. Yeah, right. That's the combination. If it, if it's homozygous or heterozygous.

[Sean]

Right. So they're saying if both parents pass that down, it's red and you can't process it.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

If you can't methylate, you'd be dead.

[Sean]

That's crazy.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So that's the first litmus. And again, don't believe me. You can't put into chat beat GPT, because ChatGPT, you know, whatever you think.

[Sean]

ChatGPT is inaccurate when it comes to this.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

It's incredibly inaccurate.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

What I can give people is literally, because I train physicians mostly, that's what I do. I teach them this method clinically because they're tired of the medical model that doesn't work. So I train other docs. And the thing is, so I have all these tools and I build these charts, personal charts, so that way I can teach them these things, complex things into simple stuff, and I'm more than happy to give it to anybody who wants a copy of it. Okay. And what I did was, is I showed that MTHFR is determinant by the genes that precede it.

[Sean]

See?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So in other words, you have dietary folates and synthetic. Oh, my God, synthetic. That term cracks me up because it sounds real sinister. Folic acid. And then that it has to be received, it has to come through a membrane, so you have to have a receptor for it first. There's a Gene for that one. Okay, so what about that gene? What about the folate receptor? Then it has to go through a series of conversions. Primarily, the one is called dhfr. Okay, so that one no one looks at, but that's the one that's converting folic acid. MTHFR is not converting folic acid to 5 methylfolate or 5 tetrahydrofolate. It's not. So that's not even the gene that does what they're saying it does. It's the dhfr. And look it up. You could see this is not like I have proprietary knowledge of it. It's there. And then. So there's a step there, and there's a couple other ones that are involved. And then that hands off this form to MTHFR. But what. And here's the drop. Okay? MTHFR is B2 or riboflavin dependent. So if that MTHFR has a potential decrease in efficiency in doing its job because of either being homo heterozygous yellow or red on the little test, the correction for it, the support is not throwing in more preformed 5 methylfolate. And that's what the people who sell that gene test do, is they sell you the five. And the thing is, it's B2. And look it up is MTHFR is what's called a prosthetic, because, remember, all these things are electrochemistry. Folate is a construct of an amino acid glutamic. Okay. So it's a vitamin with an amino acid backbone. Amino acids are literally just electrons, right?

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay. So they have a certain configuration and they literally fold. I don't want to get too sciencey. I've been. Okay, Beck, don't go. You lose people. Sorry about that. So in other words. But I want people to know why it's doing what it's doing. So you have this form of folate that gets handed to mthfr, but they never tell you where MTHFR gets the methyl group from. It comes from the serine glycine cycle, another amino acid duo. So it gives it the carbon hydrogen construct, attaches it, and then sends it up. So you've got homocysteine, and then it hands it to. Because it's got to go through methionine synthase, and then cyan synthase hands it off to MTH, and MTHFR says, okay, hey, give me that backbone. If B2 is there as a prosthetic and serine gives me the methyl group, bam. Now I can turn that back into methionine they don't tell you that in the stuff. They just go, oh, you have mthfr, snp, you gotta take this supplement.

[Sean]

Yeah. And I've seen them tell pregnant women not to take folic acid if they have that gene break.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Right, okay, well, if I could respectfully. See, that's the thing, words matter to me. There's no gene breaks. There's no such thing.

[Sean]

Right, but that's what they say.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Well, they're incorrect. That's what I'm saying. That's my claim. It's not broken and there's not a break in that gene. Then you know, you get me started. There's even what are called indels. Right. Insertion and deletion things. That's a whole nother part that none of these people talk about. And that has everything to do with everything. Like the BRCA1 gene for women, breast cancer risk and stuff like that. That's an indel. So there's so much more. These people, they have no idea because they're not clinicians.

[Sean]

Right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

They're not.

[Sean]

They're marketers.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

That's right. And brilliant at that. So I. Way better than me. You know, they're multi bazillionaires and I'm not. And that's okay. I'm hating them. I just want to clear the record. Right. You know, I care and love for my patients and my clients. Right. Because I don't practice medicine, I don't diagnose or treat illness, I educate and so folic. To say, don't give folic acid to pregnant women, sometimes that would be incorrect. Because see, if you drive a bunch of folic acid into a pathway and you run them through multiple gene SNPs which people aren't looking at, and you put too much chemical pressure on another SNP in the absence of the nutrients that control it. You know how we always say, well, magnesium is needed by everybody. Over 300 enzymatic reactions. That is correct. Was actually more than that. Even though there's no list of all these 300. We all say that. But this, what I'm talking about is a magnesium dependent pathway. Magnesium is involved, Zinc is involved, B2 is involved, B6 is involved. There's a lot more to it. So vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids are what control these SNPs. So that's where I play. I functionally look at those and we get all the gene SNPs for free.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And then we correct them. And then guess what? Stop the supplements. I own a nutraceutical Company. Okay, I have mine. It's not private label. I literally own my own facility and my own machines and my own formulation. There's a big difference. And I'm bad for business because I say, stop taking it, but it made me feel better, but it wasn't because of the thing. So then now you feel better because you're taking that. So in order to defeat me. No. Let your divinely created self be able to take over from there. So folic acid has tens of thousands of studies in the literature of its safety and efficacy. Yes. You can create troubles in those who do have multiple of those SNPs one or more by pushing too much folic acid on the pathways. So they are correct in saying that I don't like to use the fear mongering terms of it's toxic or gallatin stuff. Because you know what else, Shawn? Methylfolate will do it too. I see it all the time. People being injured by taking methylfolate because they were told to take it only because of the presence of the SNP when they were not deficient in it. And it causes something called folate trapping. People can look that up. Folic acid can contribute to it. Methylfolate can contribute to it. Plus, if you've also been suckered by these same gene test people, it says you also need to take trimethylglycine, which is another part of the pathway just before homocysteine, that adds that same group. So boom, you start pushing on all this TMG in, you start pushing in methylfolate and what, everything's supposed to just magically be great? There's a consequence to that. Your body cannot always process it. Some people are fine. So I'm not fear mongering or being duplicitous. I don't want people to think, well, you're just trying to scare people. No, I'm not doing that at all. I'm saying, hey, what if I could show you a lab that you can do before, during and after and see. And that's what I do. It's a marker called formin aminoglutamic acid, or figlu, that is the functional marker for folate metabolism and it's substantiated in the scientific literature and it's repeatable. And I do it in the urine. So that's part of a urine lab that I do. So we take a look at that. And yes, if you have excess of FIG lu, that is a functional deficiency in folate, we should add some in. So what do I also do? I test mthfr why? Because that helps. So what is it useful for? Because that's what we really want to know. Right. So I take a look at MTHFR because I want to know how I can dose the patient. Because it's like, do you try to put your head out the window at, you know, 100 miles an hour and take a breath? You can't do it. 10 miles an hour, you can do it. So what the, what the gene SNP does tell us and helps us with clinically is how to give them that correction in a way that doesn't cause the adverse reactions. And we do that same thing in medicine too. When it comes to certain drugs, your SNPs have a play because they have to clearance them, your cytochrome P450 system. And we look at those SNPs too. So that's the difference. And sometimes that's hard to explain. Of course, this doesn't pan well in a quick little video or a snippet. It takes a lot of explaining. So that's what it is. Okay, so folic acid is a problem for people who do over consume it because of all the fortified foods that do include it. Yes, I agree with my colleagues in that and I call them my colleagues. Okay. But the context is that doesn't mean it's bad, prima facie. It's not. The reason why it was added to the food supply is because so many people didn't get it. They didn't have availability of dietary folates. And then you have the whole camps of plants are bad. And the plants that have the folate, that isn't the folic, synthetic folate are the same ones that they like to demonize for anti nutrients, which is another ridiculous.

[Sean]

I haven't heard that one.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Oh, you haven't heard of nutrients? Yeah, anti nutrients. So oxalates, lectins, phytates, and these are all things that are plant protective chemicals because the plants.

[Sean]

Oh, I've heard that, yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

To eat them, that narrative. Well, the, the problem with that is, is. So then that scares people to not eat the plants because they're scared of oxalates. It gives them stones and all that kind of stuff.

[Sean]

Right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

We can go down that rabbit hole too.

[Sean]

I saw, I think I saw Paul Saladino talk about this.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. And he's incorrect. Oxalates are anions and the body forms them from proline to hydroxy proline, which comes from animal product. The vast majority of people that I've seen who have oxalate problems, that electrochemistry in the body had a lack of dietary plants.

[Sean]

Really?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. So it's just the opposite my clinical thing. So what I have people do is go look at it. Okay. I say go look up oxalates or oxalic acid. Hydroxyproline. And where does hydroxyproline come from? And you'll find it comes from animals.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay, so. But I'm not saying animals causes people to have kidney stones or oxalate problem. I'm not saying that plants will not give you stones or oxalate problems. That's not what I'm saying. I do not speak in absolutes very often. Sometimes I do.

[Sean]

It's hard to give absolute health advice to everyone.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And the reason why you can't, like, I can tell everybody, don't drink your urine. Okay. Why? Because I test thousands of markers in that pee and there's no dangum way anybody needs to be drinking it.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

It's absurd. And I have an entire library on that urine therapy. I've been around a long time.

[Sean]

I'm going to set up a debate for you with my urine expert.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Let's do it.

[Sean]

I'll set that up. Jonathan Otto. Yeah. He drinks his urine every day.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yep. Okay. Now he might do fine. There's people who live in India and Sao Paulo who drink that water and in Mexico. But if we went down there, we'd probably have a trouble. So, see, there's context. Okay. But again, that's another individual who is not a clinician. They're a digital marketer. They host supplements, summits and funnels and they've gone to all the different conversion and they've gotten in there and become passionate about it. And I'll threaten. Okay, go ahead. I'm not going to go. Oh, my God. Don't be having that stuff either. I don't do that. People are their own boss. But that's. The whole thing is in urine. There's too much stuff in there that is the waste product of the stuff. Now, can we grab stem cells from the urine? Yes, but they don't tell you that the person. So. Yeah, but you have to get those stem cells out through a very specific process that cannot be done in home.

[Sean]

Right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So does urine have compounds in it that could be beneficial to healthful. It does. So see, I agree with that. But that doesn't mean anybody should Just you see the context. That's all I really want to have people try to understand. And that's how it is with genes. It's how it is with supplements and all these other kind of things. And you know, the folate issue with, you know, plants are bad for you. It's just, it's crazy. I've never in my career known of any physician. I've trained hundreds of them, thousands actually, to ever have any patient die or have comorbidities directly connected to an excess consumption of plants, really, or animals. I don't believe the vegans who say, oh, meat's bad for you too, and it rots in the gut and it causes cancer. That's just as absurd.

[Sean]

Brian Johnson's saying that right now.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Well, Brian Johnson is what?

[Sean]

He's a vegetarian, right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

No, no, I don't know him personally. Okay? I know of his story because he's all out there and people brought it to me. But he is a non clinician. Right. He's a extremely wealthy individual who has the time and stuff that most people watching this show doesn't do, doesn't have. Okay? And that's him. And look at all the other things. So you can do some crazy things if you're doing some other things. So you can afford to do that. Okay? If you make a million a year, you can spend a million a year. You can't spend a million and a dollar. You see what I mean?

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So those, the vast majority of people who don't have all the 200,000. Now it's 300,000 hyperbaric, you know, machine because you know, Damon Johns was talking about the new one. Now this one's 300,000 hyperbaric machine.

[Sean]

They're 300k now.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Well, the ones that the ultimate human.

[Sean]

People are telling, holy crap.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And you know, I have a $40,000 light bed. Okay. So yeah, so I'm don't, I'm not, I don't want to come off, not a little bit bougie. Okay. But I would never do that because, you know, we literally every topic you hear in Biohack and stuff like that, I definitely have a profound amount of insight into and stuff. You gotta understand that's the world that I'm in and I don't tell people not to do it. Yes, I have a bunch of well off and famous individuals, but that's not everybody. And we have to work with them differently. See, their story is different. What they want to do, what they have access and the capacity to do is different than everybody else.

[Sean]

I pay for an oxygen chamber membership in Vegas.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah, but see, again, let me. Can I just apply this to you? Did you do any data collection prior? Are you doing during or are you, Are you measuring Your monitoring.

[Sean]

So I actually did. So I got a brain scan at Amen clinics, and they recommended to do some oxygen. And I'm gonna get another scan in a year, see if it worked. Right now, I don't know if it worked.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

That's good data. Okay.

[Sean]

But.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So then here's what I would do. I would say, what specifically is oxygen doing? What are you attempting to do with that?

[Sean]

I had a tbi.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay, so you had a tbi. So what is so. And that's a subspecialty of mine, by the way. I'll name Rand because I love him to death. Dr. Mark Gordon. He was at that conference. Okay. He and I have some mutual patients, one of which. And him has been on, you know, Joe Rogan's podcast three or four times. Andrew Marr, he tells a fantastic story, how we saved his life. Now, I'm not mentioned because there's politics and things. That's okay.

[Sean]

Mark's been on the show, by the way.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yep. And love him to death. He and I have lectured at a lot of places together. I know.

[Sean]

Solid guy.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

He is solid guy. His daughters and everything. It's a beautiful family. The thing is, though, is our patient named their twin sons after both of us.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay, so it's Beck.

[Sean]

You really impacted that family. That's cool.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Of course. But the only reason why I share that with you is because I do want to impart to the listeners that just because I'm not out there doesn't mean I don't know where I'm at, because there is a. Well, what about this guy? I don't know everything, but I know how things work. And when it comes to tbi, Mark Gordon, that's his hits, his specialty. I was one of the first doctors that helped go through his thing, and I actually lectured and taught those doctors inaugurally for that thing. So I'm very familiar with tbi. Okay. So just want to establish that hyperbarics and oxygen and different modalities are great. But here's the thing. All of that puts pressure on your biological terrain. Your vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids. If you are not evaluating those sequentially and at the same time, you're missing data. Because all that. I'll give just one example. One of them is it puts the responses on our phospholipid bilayer, on the membranes of our cells and of our organelles, not just the mitochondria. Mitochondria gets all the love these days in the biohacking world, but no one checks the biomarkers. Of the mitochondria I do on every one of my patients.

[Sean]

Yeah. I've never heard of someone doing that.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

That's what I do. Even if somebody comes into me for psoriasis or toenail fungus, I don't care what it is because I don't treat diseases. I'm going to look at those markers. But back to your thing. The membrane composition has everything to do with it. What is your percentage of omega 6s, omega 3s, and your fatty acids, the sterols and the fatty acids that basically combine to make the membrane. And then now you have all the proteins that go through it and all the channels and things that these hyperbarics and oxygen therapies and cryos and all those external energies put on it. But no one looks. Well, wouldn't you want to know if you have hypo or hyperpermeable membranes? What if we're gonna start pushing more anions through there? Can it handle it? And on its way through, Is it gonna create more reactive oxygen species? What pushing oxygen pressure does?

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And so. But here's the thing. And I'm not scaring people because I'm not doing what I'm saying. I don't like people doing. I'm going. A lot of people can handle it until they can't. Until something pops. And then they don't ever come back and tell that story. They come to somebody like.

[Sean]

Yeah. You never hear that story.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Nope. I've seen countless thousands of them. Really? That's my career.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I'm the fixer. Damn.

[Sean]

From oxygen chambers. You've seen people have issues with those.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. You want to just. Just for fun. Because, I mean, I do want to wake people up with some challenging stories. You can go look up the story of Tommy Cooper. I wasn't involved in that one. And what happened in a hyperbaric chamber here recently on that. Damn. He's no longer with us.

[Sean]

Wow. From the oxygen chamber. Holy crap.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay, but I'm not scaring people because think of all the thousands of units that they're not having that happen. What I'm saying is, is this willy nilly, trying all these different things. Okay, Think of it this way. Okay. Hyperbarics. Hyperbarics with methylene blue. Hyperbarics with methylene blue under exertion. Hyperbarics with methylene under blue. Whatever. With photobiomodulation and plus nicotine. See, it's all a different thing. It makes a different sandwich. You change the composition and you're going to have a different sauce.

[Sean]

Yeah. There's A lot of they call it health stacking. Right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. Because it all sounds cool, but what if we took every herb and spice and put it into all the soup at once? Every single one of them. Now we've lost the. We've lost the dish. So if I always will say I'm lovely and delicious, that's why health is. I always. Because I was a chef for 12 years, I love food. So I love. I have to meet. Me too. I mean, food is not the enemy. It is.

[Sean]

Food is life.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

It's. Oh, gosh. It brings people together. Right. And that's my other philosophy on that. Just real quick is that, see, food also brings with it something non tangible but energetic. And that's conversation and laughter, connection and community and all that mindset thing that has a huge impact on your health. How you eat your food, where you eat your food, who you eat that food with, all puts on an energetic signature to it.

[Sean]

No, I agree 100%.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay, cool. So see how that's a person's story. There's some people that are just at home eating alone, and it's helpful, but they're sad and they're miserable. So that's my big message, is to never forget that you are a category of one. I call it context cubed. Right. You know, like real estate, we say location, location, location. I say context, context, context. And I don't want to be confused for being wishy washy or not giving a straight answer, because I want people to know that there's layers that make the person. There's parts of their story. That's why I say your environment, your lifestyle, your mindset, and your nutrition. It's not just one, it's all of them. But you can focus on one and you can have some great things happen.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

But when you don't and you get stuck or confused or you made some bad choices, I'm here to help you. And so when it comes to these things, this is what happens, is people have great intentions and of course, they turn to social media. I'm all over social media. You know, my greatest followings are on Tick Tock. I have a tick tock habit.

[Sean]

Let's go.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I really love it. Got 80, 000 followers. No, it's not the ones, but, you know, my wife does it too. It's. It's a lot of fun. She beats me all the time.

[Sean]

I'm banned right now. Tick Tock. If you're watching.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Saw that. I was gonna. I was gonna tag you on.

[Sean]

I get banned once a week.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I love it. They came after me a few times. I always got mine back, though. So stay in there.

[Sean]

They hit me for medical misinformation all the time because of my guests.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's a tough world. But see, my thing is, I don't believe in any type of censorship. I think all the people who are selling all the different things that I'm critical of, I don't want them banned, I don't want them silenced or anything like that. I'm gonna go, that's them. And here's what I say. And then you decide for yourself.

[Sean]

That's how I treat the podcast, too. I have on all sorts of perspectives.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah, you really do. I mean, I've followed you for a long time, and I like that. See, that's what people need. Not doom and gloom and sadness. And they're killing us, and they use all these terms, poisoning us, and it's messing up people's mental health. It's incredible. I see lots of that. They're like, doc, why should I even effing care? I give up. It's everywhere.

[Sean]

Yeah. Doctors must be really feeling this right now.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. But then the other thing is, is they. But the trouble in the conventional allopathic space is they. That model doesn't afford any time with the patient. You get 7.6 minutes to bill your $32 to their insurance because somebody ever paid for it. So they have to. They have to. Patient stack.

[Sean]

Right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay. There's no time in the clinical encounter to go over these questions that people come in with a stack of stuff, which I tell patients to do. I was like, listen, you got to have these questions answered. But then now there's this other trend, is that people just taking their. Their blood work and putting it into chatgpt and spitting out what it means.

[Sean]

Wow. People are doing that?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yep. And they're saying, well, I got better answers than my doctor, and I'm going, okay, maybe. But then now what? And then I saw what they said. Well, and this is where the rubber hits the road. Well, then he goes, well, what do you do with that information? It's always, what do you do after you get some data?

[Sean]

Right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay, you have the data. But then, now what does it mean? And equals is a whole. That's the biggest difference. Okay. So you can have information but not know how to deal with it. Deal with it. Okay. I could give you a map. And you don't know what country it's in. You're not going to know what's up. So then ChatGPT split, spits out, ready for it. Man, this holistic medicine, whole list of pills, potions and powders and I'm going, oh my God. So see, that's the problem. It's doing the same thing where it aggregated its information from that people do. I was here, I'm here in town and I'm a very famous person I'm working with. And he just saw this doctor, nurse practitioner and she looked at, did some of these labs and some great labs, okay? I love CBCs and differentials and chem 14s and cholesterol panels and all kinds of fun stuff. But if you're gonna go that route, there's other markers that you should be putting in there. And I understand why they don't pull them.

[Sean]

Costs more for them.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

That or insurance doesn't reimburse them for them because we all, you know, but this, this individual will pay for anything, okay? He's got, you know, he's, well, fine. But the practitioner doesn't know to pull these. But the answer because functional. Because listen, I'm in functional. I've been a functional medicine guy since the beginning, okay? And they all the ones that they know me, okay? I'm not, not happy with those universities and I have and people, these educating bodies are crazy because they teach this broken model. They call it root cause, but it's not root cause, okay? They're going to tell everybody the same thing, okay? They're going to use terms like inflammation and leaky gut and adrenal fatigue and all kind of stuff that don't. They don't really exist in reality. Those are marketing terms.

[Sean]

Yeah, I hear a leaky gut every day on Instagram.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

There's increased permeate, intestinal permeability. But leaky gut is a marketing term. That's why you don't see it in the scientific literature referred like that.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

See, always look for the term because it imparts something. But we can come back to leaky gut if you want. But chat GPT. Spit it out. Spitted, spit out. Sorry, Mom. So the thing is, she always used to pick on me for doing stuff like that. See, I'm not perfect. So the thing is all these herbs and supplements and that's the fix. I remember back in the day there was this book that was in all the health food stores called the Prescription for Nutritional Healing by Phyllis and her husband. And that's what it did. Everybody would go and they say, okay, you have X, Y or Z, so you call it something. Soon as you name something Then now you'll take ownership of it and then you say, I have it. Then we need to blame it on something and then now we need to tame it with something. So they give all these pills, potions and powders and ChatGPT did that too. So I really want to caution people for sticking your health information into there. Now, guess what? I'm not saying don't do it because then now you can. You can on your own free time and dime, get those answers that the medical model can't provide you in the clinical encounter, because number one, they can't because of how they practice. I help doctors free themselves from that model so they can give their patients those times, but I don't blame them for that. But then now you can go in and just differentiate with them and partner with your healthcare provider. Okay? Now they're limited on what they can do in scope, okay? Because that world is the side that has the. What do I want to say? I want to be kind of. In other words, they have the ability to imprison people. Yeah, see, so they have the police state powers in only one part of it. That's why it's not a good thing and it needs some work. Okay. But there's no, you know, holistic, functional, integrative or anything like that police force that enforces that one. See, so only one realm has the ability to cuff and stuff people or take away licenses and all that kind of stuff.

[Sean]

That's true because the supplement space is a wild, wild rep.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

It's crazy. Yeah, it's 100 billion a year annually.

[Sean]

Yeah, I saw you talk about that on Bradley. $118 billion.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

It's like, oh my gosh, I thought it was way less and I thought I was going to say, so I quoted that less. But at the end of the day, they're needed because how else are we going to do it? Because food's not going to have it always. And people, we need to get results. So we rely upon these bottles to be able to do that.

[Sean]

I've heard. I don't know if this is true. Some guy said you can't eat enough vitamin D3 anymore, you have to supplement it.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

That's not true at all, really. First of all, we shouldn't be eating vitamin D3. It's called the sunshine. And if you don't get the sunshine, you get UVB radiation. And I teach patients how to make their own lamp. It's so easy, it's crazy.

[Sean]

Oh, those desk lamps, right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Well, no, I mean, I actually. Because I Love photography. I have a studio too. So actually I get a tripod and a thing and reptile bulbs. Right? Which. There's preferred ones, some that are better not because we're talking how much uva, uvb? I don't want all my dermatologists, you know, colleagues to freak out because they don't like that either ways. Or you can buy a spurdy. Let's. Let's name drop. Okay? You can spend $400 and get one. That's fantastic.

[Sean]

It's the one everyone in New York City has, right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah, it's great.

[Sean]

Seen that one.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Like, I don't want to put it on my face or my body. So I. Cause like in my room, in my house, I've got all my stuff and I have my spurdy sits on the floor and I. Five minutes and I just put them. I just put it on my legs.

[Sean]

It's not bad.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Lower legs, that's it. And boom, shackalaka, it goes. And I live in Florida, but, you know, I'm 53. My wife's 17 years younger than me. I want to be youthful and look good and be strong and healthy as well. And I don't want to get all leathered up. You know, there's something about Mary kind of stuff, you know, looking like sausage.

[Sean]

You see that in Florida.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Oh, my gosh. It's bad, okay. And it's. It can be an issue, but that's how you want to do it. That's the way it does it. Because, see, what's really cool about vitamin D, see it as a gene too, you know, and there's, you know, the VDR receptor, But guess what? The same person and people who talk about that, that's not even in their gene test.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Here they are, huge advocates of vitamin D, but they're not even looking at the VDR snp.

[Sean]

That's crazy.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

You see what I'm saying? That's. I'm like, wow. And then here's the thing. But then the also narrative is there's a receptor and every cell of the body for vitamin D. That's how important it is. Well, yeah. Well, guess what? Right beside it is its. What's called. Its heterodimer is the rxr, or the retinol or retinoid receptor. A vitamin A receptor, because you can't. Vitamin D, it's a shared receptor and they both have to be dealt with and activated. Okay? So vitamin A is just as important as vitamin D. They do different things. But the problem is this. The body at any given time has approximately about 5,000 IU in circulation, and that's what it's able to deal with. And you start pushing in 10, 20, Dr. Berg and you know, and even my colleague with me aforementioned, he pushes a large number. Okay. I like vitamin D. It's fantastic. And yes, we do orally supplement it when it's clinically necessary. But the thing is, when you take it orally. Yes. You have to go, oh, got to take K2. You don't have to take K2 when you get it from the sun. Ain't that interesting?

[Sean]

That is very interesting.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So just see, I want people to critically think for a second. Okay? Why isn't everybody doing. Because you can get it from food. But, yes, if you push in a huge bolus of this pro hormone and it's going to force this chemical electrochemical pressure on the body to do something, it can go awry in the absence of K2. So, yes, you should include K2 with it properly ratioed. Okay. Certain micrograms to it. And yes, there's supplements for that. And that's great. But everybody shouldn't do it. See that? I could tell you how beautiful. We could sit there and talk about molybdenum. We could talk about manganese, we could talk about B3, and everybody. Oh, I want to take that. I test every one of my patients for all of those. Functionally, there is a marker. Some are in the blood, some are in the urine. To determine how the body is using the amount that you're consuming now in real time.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And if you don't, then we just supplement a little bit while we increase the food source. See, that's what they're called, supplements. Supplements are not food. They're supplemental. To what? To food. And a lot of the foods that are great for that, people demonize, depending on what camp you're in. Liver is nature's multivitamin. Yeah, but I'm not eating liver.

[Sean]

Okay, you're not liver king out here.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

No, sir. Will I take desiccated liver capsules and everything at times? If it's necessary, sure. But you see what I mean? You got the capsules that have all the dehydrated vegetables and fruits in them and the berries. And I'm going just. In physics, you can't. It's equivalent to 11 servings. If you took 11 servings of anything and then cryoed it and turned it into powder, you couldn't fit it into a capsule. So that's a marketing.

[Sean]

Yeah, that one never made sense to me.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

It's not true. But yet they do it. It's part of their shtick, but people get away with it. So it's the same thing with vitamin D and K2. Yes, it's a very useful molecule compound together and it does certain things. But now where I differ from a lot of people is what is deficient. But see, check this. Most people were saying, just take it anyways. They go, well, you need a fish oil supplement, you need magnesium and you need vitamin D and K3, K2. And I'm going, isn't that funny that they just give it to everything?

[Sean]

Yeah. If you're not deficient, why would you need more? Right?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. Why are you using, you know, tell me the brand. But why are you using this brand one? Why aren't you using one of the other ones that starts with an R? What about the one that starts with the Y? That looks better? I have the old fashioned, you know, Elvis Presley microphone from Shure. That's my style. But not everybody needs the same thing. It depends upon the environment that you're in. This studio is not my house studio. Right. So using as an example, you can't just give everybody the same supplements. I think that's just, it's reckless.

[Sean]

That's what I realized when I tried to copy Brian Johnson. I was taking 30 a day and I felt like shit. Yeah, that was the worst I probably felt.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. See what I'm saying? See if you have the data, you can determine if you need it or not. And then what I call quantify, qualify, measure and monitor. Q square, M square. Take it for there, look at what you're trying to modulate and then when it gets there, stop.

[Sean]

Yup, that's where I'm at now. I only take what I'm deficient in now.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And your genes cannot tell you if you're deficient in anything.

[Sean]

Yeah, no, from blood test, I mean.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay. I just want to make sure, you.

[Sean]

Know, not the gene test.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay. Yeah, because genes can't do that. But they're sold to tell you that.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

The DNA company, all these people, they have these great things, they're all started by marketing guys. They've never seen a patient in their life. They're not clinically trained. But that's okay. There's no, you know, you can have the knowledge. I don't care about that. The truth is the truth, no matter where it comes from. But part of the thing is understanding how it applies to the individual who's different than everybody else. That's my message. And I know how everybody Tends to have this frustration of who to believe. Okay. And I'd rather say don't believe any of us. Look at the information, get some data, and then ask some questions. Who's going to be here to serve you in that regard? And it shouldn't, you know, you don't want to need to go try to be superhuman for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay. And telling everybody you need to do all these things, any of that homogenized stuff is crazy. I don't do any of those. I take one supplement and I make it.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay. And that's all because I'm cool. Because I'm maximizing how I eat and feed my body. And those four factors. Environment, lifestyle, mindset, nutrition. I'm gold. I don't. I don't have to. And that's what I want people to get to, is to where they. They don't need us. They don't need the supplements. They don't need the doctors. They don't need the consultants and the coaches.

[Sean]

That's impressive. As someone who owns a supplement company.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I know. And people like, yeah, but. And believe you me, I've been invited into the cabal.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I've been invited into the mafia, and we've had legal interactions, and I've beat them all. Wow. Okay. Because the truth shall keep and make you free. And I won't stand for it. My character is my most valuable possession. Okay. Until my dad passed away, he said, son, until I'm gone, that's my name. Okay? And so I'm passing that down to my daughter, that same thing. I'm not going to do the marketing stuff or lie or say, well, now you have inflammation. And I'm going to say this $8,000 detox. And by the way, you should drink your pee. That's crazy, right? So it's all over. We have to joke about it a little bit. I'm not mad or angry at those people. I just see them for who they are. I'm just going to give a different message to people and say, hey, if this resonates with you, reach out to me and we can talk and I can help point you in the right direction. It might not be a good fit. I might not be the one for you, but I want to educate, motivate, and inspire. That's my job. That's really what I want to do. And I know people are inundated with these things and the biohackings and it is cool, man. Don't get me wrong. I have all the equipments Because I play with them too, because I want to have skin in the game, okay? But there are certain things that are just. I'm amazed that people don't quantify them, you know, like phones and stuff. There's not an EMF sticker that you can put on anything that's going to block or mitigate EMF at all.

[Sean]

Really?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

That's a fact. It can't. I have an entire course I give every patient who goes into program with me. It's over 60 hours where I get into air, water, light, sound, EMF and food. And I literally show them how. I've tested them all. And I show you how to do it too. And not the way that some people would just do some smoke and mirror stuff, but it can't. Now, placebo is a powerful thing, which is why we account for it in science and in medicine. It's that powerful of a force to do a randomized, controlled trial, placebo controlled. We have to account for it because it is so powerful. And what I do, as I said, but use that as a wonderful motivator of how amazing it is your mind. The mindset does.

[Sean]

That's crazy because some of these EMF stickers are like 3, 400 bucks.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Did you know that I bought the text, the eight, and they're horrible. They don't do what they do.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

They don't conduct. Neither do the patches, people. All the rage of and all the MLMs. And it's, it's. It's a marketing model that I respect for its brilliancy. Okay. But yikes, right? I work with a lot of MMA fighters and Spartan athletes and these kind of people and different people who want to do different cocktails of sauces and stuff. Okay? I work for them. My patient is the boss, not me. And if they want to do those things, I say, well, that's your choice. I'm going to give you my advisements. Okay. I suggest we look at these things. So if you want to do a control burn, we can do it. If it's vanity based or whatever, or performance based like, Doc, I don't care. This is how I make my money is on stage or in the field or what I'm doing. I even have, you know, I do a lot of pro bono work for the military, special forces. Right. I was just talking about that. Okay. And they write about me in the books. And it's. And it's. And it's really cool and humbling. Okay. And they wanted to do some of those things because their job causes them to call upon that. I get it. But I say, well, let's at least do some quantify, qualify, measure and monitor so we can deal with what we deal with. If you overdo something, we're gonna have to fix it. Okay. I'm like a pit crew. Okay. But you gotta go out there and win that race. Okay? I know. Just give me a little bit more boost. Okay. So I don't judge or do that. The patient, whatever. But at the end of the day, there's certain things that have an edge and other things that don't. And you can try these different things. And if you're not working with someone to evaluate what you're doing, you're wasting your time and money and just making it worse and you're going to pull the effort lever. Okay. And I've experienced that in patients lives more times than I'd like to admit.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And it's frustrating up to an including of them no longer being living.

[Sean]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Okay. And that's the frustration which bring. I'll tell you the story I talk about with Brad was, you know, my patient Mike Day, He's a Navy Seal, shot 27 times, blown up by a grenade. Okay. He was, you know, the U.S. sOCOM Care Coalition, they gave that case, you know, to me because their people couldn't fix it. So they gave me Mike and his wonderful wife Brenda at the time, and we embarked on it. And he didn't like me. He talks about it very candidly. He couldn't stand me. And in his book Perfectly Wounded, he talked about that. But fast forward, it's a great story. Unfortunately, Mike took his life some months ago. This is coming from a guy who told me I saved his life and I still work with his. Matter of fact, I could tell this story. So anyway, people get so frustrated and tired of how they're treated and whether they're a model. And then in life, things change. That's my point of sharing the story. And it does choke me up. It's obvious, because it's a wonderful recovery story. It's brilliant. It just goes to show you how bad things can be. But you can really do some fantastic stuff. And it humbles my life and I like to share that story. But at the end of the day, and it was funny because the Dev group people, SEAL team guys, they're very tight and they're very suspect of people. You know, there's a lot of stolen valor and stuff out there. You know, one of my very close friends was on the show. You know, Doc Parsley and matter of fact, he's the one who, you know, contacted me, let me know, you know, what happened with Mike. And then I called, you know, Anyways, I don't know how to tell her. See, I'm very transparent, man. I'm just real in that. And I just want people to know. But these stories, they affect my life, and I learn from them. And I just want to caution people. Right. The world is filled with all kinds of things. In Mike's case, he just couldn't stand what the care to vets have become and the absence of it and where the country was going. And despite the fact that we did so much with his health and gave him his life back. And then years later, you know, he just makes a decision. It's tough. And I don't want other people to have that either. Right? Because people are like, oh, the microplastics and all these other kind of things. And I asked her if I could tell the story if ever I mention it. So Mike's wife was Brenda. Okay? Her and her daughter are still my patients. I'll still take care of them. It's just the legacy. And not even about a year ago, whatever. She didn't want to bother me. And so. And again, she said I could tell it, so. Love you, Brenda. She went to a doc, she lives in Virginia beach, tested her vitamin D and said it was low. So they started giving her 10,000 IU rector completely rocked her world. And so she called me out of desperation and said, doc, you got to fix me. And I go, what happened? I go, oh, boy. You see what I'm saying? So that's just one relative to that just came to me, you know, I mean, the thing is. So these things have their place, but they also have other potential detriment. Right?

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

So the take home is exactly what we've talked about, right? Biohacking and stuff like that is cool, it's fun, it's entertaining, but it suffers from a very debilitating fallacy, and that is they're not properly, you know, quantifying things.

[Sean]

Absolutely.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

And then they're not given any inclusionary, exclusionary criteria, and there's no support when it fails for you. You can't go back to the booth and say, hey, this happened to me. You can't call them up and say, your methylene blue did this, or your hyperbarics did this, or your zapper did this, or it didn't do this. And I'm like, you can't. It's over.

[Sean]

No, it's over. I took 10,000 IU of D3 once. I thought I was going to die. It was crazy.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

See what I mean? Thank you for sharing.

[Sean]

No, it felt so bad. Like I almost went to the er.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

But there are those. Right? Let's play with the thing. Almost went to the er. So they'll say, oh, it's fine. I take it in thousand every day. Exactly. So what does that prove? Biochemical individuality, your uniqueness. Okay, but I just asked this. If someone's ever going to tell you to take something, I want you to ask them, what is it going to do specifically? And then how are we going to track its effect? And when do I stop? When do I get off the highway?

[Sean]

Right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

What is the inclusionary, exclusionary criteria? If they can't do that? Well, then I would suggest that you not do it.

[Sean]

That's why I'm not a fan of trt. Because once you're on it, I mean, it doesn't look like you could get off pretty easily.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

No, you can, but. Yeah, but that, that does that too. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, there's other things we could do. You don't have to do it. You know, enclomiphene is a wonderful marker. I mean, a molecule, you know, but you got to measure the markers with that. You don't have to take the shots all the time.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

You know, and that's what's fun, I think I talked with Brad is the common things. So, like, I've laughed here recently because I had this conversation with somebody who was on the carnivore side who, of course, you know, doing testosterone injections. And I talked about how funny it was that they were injecting themselves with seed oils.

[Sean]

What?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Someone's doing that.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Well, of course what testosterone is in. It's either in sesame, cottonseed or grapeseed.

[Sean]

In trt.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yeah. Testosterone, the cypn. Your violets are oil based, right?

[Sean]

I didn't know that.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I know. See, people don't. They don't ask.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Now I don't have any problem with it. I'm not going to go down the seed oil thing.

[Sean]

So you're not antisetol?

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Not in the least.

[Sean]

Okay. There's a lot of people that are.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Yep. Because it's the new trend. It's sexy. Okay. But I use organic, non gmo, cold pressed.

[Sean]

Right.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Canola, grape, all of it. I use avocado, I use beef tallow. I render down my own pork fat from bacon. And I clarify that I love all of them. See I eat a varied and diverse diet. I don't. My thing is, is if it doesn't make you crap your pants, vomit, intoxicate you, or give you an adverse reaction, you can eat it, all of it. These stories of plants not wanting us to eat them. Well, I don't think cows want bolts in their head either. Okay? So it's silly. It's all food. It's all consumable in the proper context, in the proper amount, proper combinations for the proper sources for the proper person. That's all I do, is I give people a roadmap from point A to point B of how to do that, and that's what I do. That's what Balance Protocol is. It's a framework to navigate, and you can have the trip of your life. That's the cool thing about it, and that's what I help people do. And all these things are great in place. I think that type of spring water, there's a fantastic spring water, okay. But I don't want to, you know, pay 5 to $10 a bottle for it. I have a system in my house, and I make it myself. Anybody can do it for less than about 400 bucks. Wow.

[Sean]

Because these reverse osmosis systems are like 10 grand, some of them.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

No, sir.

[Sean]

Crazy.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

You can go to my. My TikTok at balance protocol, and you can go to my list. My Amazon store, and there it is. You know, you can go there and build your own. Your own inline remineralizer. And then I have, of course, an entire course on water and how to make all your own. Like, literally, I can deformulated that water, and I can show you how to make it on your own.

[Sean]

Wow, that's cool, man.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Add some fuzz to it if you want. So I'm a big educator on it. I mean, I hope this translates to the audience. I mean, I might be a little bit, you know, out there in some things, but the message is I want people to be happy, get their. Get their mental health together and to stop being scared by all these things. Because with. And I really let. You really appreciate you letting me just kind of let it all out. But the thing is, is all these content creators, they all start with, stop doing this, and you know, oh, my God, watch over this. And now they got another. It's it. Fear sells. I'm very boring. Might as well say, hey, guys, let me show you how to do well. You got to get a hook on your TikTok. I'm going. I just. That's not me. I'M not. I'm a clinician.

[Sean]

I'll get you there.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

I'll get you there and I'll take any type of tutelage I want that you'll get. I mean, I want it all is what I was going to say. You know, it's one of those kind of things where it's everyday people, man. I mean, you know the people that at these conferences, they're loaded. They're loaded, okay? And they have this and this, this is their country club. This is what they do. Okay. But for everybody else, you know, of all ages and demographics and I've got country, you know, patients from countries all over the world. I can help them with information and guidance. That's what I do is I'm a consultant, okay. And I'll show you you and how to find out more about you and help guide you on what you want to do not tell you have to do this.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

No scaring stuff. Yeah, I'm a teacher.

[Sean]

We'll link your stuff below. Man, next time you see this guy, he will be debating a urine therapist. Thanks for coming on, man.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

Fantastic. Appreciate you for having me.

[Sean]

Awesome. See you guys next time.

[Dr. Anthony G. Beck]

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