Solocast: Unleashing the Superhero Within. How I Found My Second Peak 20 Years After Olympic Retirement. A Deep Dive into Peptides, Health Optimization, and Autonomy. EP 012

Hi guys, welcome to another episode of the Stephen McCain podcast. This is going to be a solo cast episode of a speech I gave this year at the World Peptide Congress. It really illustrates why I do what I do and it's my journey from being a professional athlete to getting really unhealthy and living a reckless life in my opinion for a number of years and then turning it all around finding biohacking and really committing myself to the last 14 years quitting drinking, finding peptides, working with functional medicine doctors, doing all these things to really rebuild myself. And I hope it's somewhat inspirational for you and I hope it also gives you a little bit more insight into who I am and how much that I really love and subscribe to these things that I talk about on this podcast. So I hope you enjoy it.

From the pommel horse to the global stage, stephen McCain has established himself as a Titan in the world of gymnastics. As a two-time Olympic gymnast and a world champion silver medalist, he's not just defined by his accolades but by his unparalleled commitment to the sport. His global footprint in gymnastics is inspiring. He has showcased his talent on almost every continent except for Antarctica. But Stephen's prowess isn't confined to gymnastics alone. He's a talented actor in films, television and commercials. Beyond the glitz of the arena and the silver screen, stephen's heart beats for a noble cause. With a keen interest in the human optimization and performance journey, he is dedicated to advancing health span. He champions the idea that individuals can harness their optimum health potential at any age. Today he is 49 years young and Stephen stands as a testament to this belief, consistently challenging conventions about aging and its perceived limits To kick off peptide world crong as properly. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our first speaker, stephen McCain.

Thank you so much. Thank you All right, this is so exciting. She rewrote my bio for me and I think she did a way better job, so thank you for that. Are you guys excited for this? Are you guys excited for this? Come on, man, this is cutting edge stuff. I have personally had a love affair with peptides for 10 years and it was pretty underground when I first got into it. So I mean to have some place like this where you can go and get a state of the art education unbelievable. So I would like to take you on a journey with me of my history and how human optimization and regenerative medicine and peptides have changed my life. And so, in order to do that, we got to go back in time a little bit, and I used to be a world class athlete. I spent my whole upbringing dedicating everything to the sport of gymnastics. It's kind of my nature, my personality. You're going to find out that when I get into something, I tend to rabbit hole on it. Two-time Olympian Hall of Fame and Ducati got to compete all over the world. Phenomenal career film, television commercial that's Adriana Lima from the Victoria's Secret's model, in case you were wondering. And then just to give you an example of the kind of stuff I used to do. Let's watch a high bar routine. This is one of my favorite apparatuses. 

Pretty cool, right? I mean, I'm 20 years retired. I can look at it now as a fan. So to me sometimes it's like Jesus, how did I learn that stuff? And so look, an amazing career. But the hardest thing that I ever did in gymnastics I'm going to be doing it was retire. This was a massive rug pull on my lifestyle, my discipline. I lost all of it. I had no purpose. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't love anything and I was pretty abusive to my body. I was eating whatever I wanted, sleeping whatever I wanted. I started smoking cigarettes, drinking almost every single day, waking up with a hangover almost every single day. I was pooffy. I had brain fog. It was not a good place. Five dark years Just felt like garbage. So I had gone from being one of the best in the world at something to feeling terrible, and it all kind of came to a head one night after I had hung out with a friend at a bar. I came back, fell down and collapsed, drinking so much, and my fiance at the time woke up to her shaking me and I was vomiting all over myself and I remember looking at her and thinking she's crying. But why is she mad at me and I was totally paralyzed and in that moment I had this out of body experience. It was literally like it just sucked back and I was watching the whole thing with 100% clarity, totally sober, and I just saw what was happening and I literally said to myself oh my god, I'm killing myself. And in that moment I thought I don't want to die, I want to live. And that moment changed my life forever. And I woke up the next day and I said to myself I don't want to just live, I want to feel like a superhero again. I want to feel like I did when I was an athlete. I want to live that way for the rest of my life. That's what I want to do. I want to be the non-professional athlete. And so I quit drinking, still sober, almost 15 years. That was really good, thank you. By the way. Clearing the air allowed me to really address a lot of stuff with my dad and all this stuff and it got me, I think, to be more of a stable person and I realized a lot of my domestic success was built in the fact that my coaches were my proverbial father. So it was very interesting and then I got into. It was right at the beginning of the whole biohacking movement. I had a friend of mine that had Lyme disease. He had all these supplements and needles and all this stuff everywhere and I was like Jesus and she said, listen, everyone waits till they get cancer. They get something. She said people should be doing what I do right now and I said I'm in. So I came into this whole movement, this new health biohacking movement on a rocket ship, started working out again, trying every protocol which eventually led to a longevity-based workout where I feel awesome, I'm supple, I'm strong, I'm metabolically fit. My diet I personalized it. I tested it with my blood. I really pinpointed what diet worked for me, I tracked it and supplements were a part of that. I've basically tried every damn supplement there is in the world almost, and then I've learned to sort of architect that with certain people, like Sandra Kaufman's approach to becoming a longevity or anti-aging supplement protocol, biohacking gear Spent a ton of money on things that look we're bound to Earth, right, we're affected by heat, we're affected by cold, we're affected by oxygen, we're affected by energy, we're affected by light. So a lot of these biohacking tools use things that like natural elements to manipulate our physiology and it just allows you to be able to get a better return on your investment of time and energy in your health pursuit. Testing we're right now in the time of personalized medicine, right, you have to prove what you're doing is working. If you're not, in my opinion you're a thing of the past, right? So for me it was testing my sleep and my exercise. I mean, obviously some of these slides are pretty old no one uses 23 in me anymore but blood testing, testing, my brain dexa scanning, all of that stuff. And then there was two books that sort of changed the trajectory of my approach. Now, I don't necessarily recommend this book it's probably a little bit outdated but I read this book and it made me realize what functional medicine doctors do and how they optimize hormones and really look at the health of the body from a biomarker perspective, like of blood, like real optimization. And so I ended up reading this book and I found myself an anti-aging doctor. I was getting I was 39, getting close to 40, you know and ended up optimizing my hormones, really learning to read my blood labs and, most importantly, finding out what was my weakest link. So this is how I looked on the right and this was my cholesterol panel at the time very high LDL particle count. I had very small particle size of LDL, so the LDL was not breaking down, it wasn't being cleared, and I had lipoprotein associated phospholipase A2, which is an enzyme that becomes elevated when you incur arterial inflammation, so I was most likely accumulating plaque. I did a carotid artery scan confirmed I was getting plaque, and so this was a multi-year process of getting these numbers back in line. If I wouldn't have, if I wouldn't have read that book, if I wouldn't have gotten to work with a functional medicine doctor, gotten out of the traditional sick care system, I wouldn't have known this. By the way, I was on one of those ketogenic diets and I thought, oh, just look at me, you know. And the doctor told me he's like we never see anyone that looks like this, that has these levels. By the way, these diets can be dangerous. So you know you don't want to just do things willy-nilly. You know that testing is paramount these days. The other book I read was this I found this guy he went by the name Dr X in Europe and excellent researcher, not a doctor actually, but he was kind of like who I was, but maybe 15 years older and he really got me thinking about peptides and exploring peptides. And I went all the way in and I came to this conference, watched it, learned from Dr Seeds, took his courses. I was even had been in his office hours before asking questions, read every book I could get my hands on, you know, worked with a lot of different doctors and stuff. It's kind of my peptide rabbit hole. Just some pictures of my life with it, but profound, you know. And now I've rolled that into like sort of like a longevity calendar. The calendar will run me. It's time for this protocol. So, you know, the comeback had, in my opinion, at age 44 or 45, had been complete. I had accomplished what I really wanted to do and I can tell you these things work. They do. You do not have to be an Olympic athlete. I just took an Olympic approach to this stuff and had a lot of thirst for it, right, but this happened. I was tested once again. I was working on a Nike commercial with a two-time Oscar-winning director. Him and his director of photography were world-class. They did the Revenant, they did Birdman, alejandro Gonzalez Inarito, and we were doing some amazing stuff. And the assistant director whispered in my ear hey, can you come in Tomorrow? We want to do a whole other day of shooting with you. And I was like man, I'm feeling like I feel like I never retired, you know like mid-40s, and I'm like I'm like a rock star again. And I was just about to tell them I think we've done enough. The flooring isn't really that safe. And I kept going and I tore my Achilles and I was furious at myself for letting this happen. Furious, 999,999 times out of a million. I never would have made that mistake. And I thought you people pleaser, you idiot, what did you do? You can tell how much I respected my physiology and I remember my therapist as I was seeing some guy about this because I was so upset. I never played the victim, but I was really mad at myself and he said Steve, listen, the Achilles story has stood the test of thousands and thousands of years. Talking about warriors that from the Greek times that had their Achilles torn, that's it. They were decimated, they're done. That's why it's lasted this long and that really helped me. But here's what happened. I went after this like I was an Olympic athlete. I threw the kitchen sink at it and what I did is I stopped asking for permission. I stopped looking for others to tell me what to do. I had all the information loaded in me. Called up my anti-aging doctor. I said I need to go on growth hormone right now. I want maximum healing capacity. I came home from surgery, started injecting right above the Achilles tendon with healing peptides. I started using massive amounts of essential amino acids to rescaphal that tendon. Blood flow restriction, all the things. And in five months I was running and that was the fastest they had ever seen. And the place that I rehab was where Kobe Bryant, conor McGregor top people in the world go to and I had broken the record. So again, these things work, they work. You know, it's very exciting to me, so, like when I look at all this stuff. You know my story and I think about making recommendations to people. And you know again, six months from now, recommendations could change. A year from now they could change. But after making these slides I thought, eh, this is what I feel about my journey. You know, first of all, you got to make up your mind Somewhere in there. You got to tell yourself I want to make a change right, I want a result. There is an entire quantum field of medicine that exists in the brain that we don't fully understand. But when you decide you want something, or something is at risk if you don't make a change, it does something right. And then the second thing I always think about when all this stuff are like health, if you just optimize for fitness, you have to optimize for sleep, you have to optimize your diet, you have to optimize your stress. Exercise is stress, resiliency, right. That's what you're learning to do. I mean it's always to people like just really make like the skeleton key, the master. Switch your fitness. Focus on that. There's an athlete in all of us and if you can focus on trying to optimize the fitness you really will take care of so much more. Why? Because fitness positively affects every single tenant of aging and the more you're in shape, the more you can pump those channels. So it's a positive feedback loop, right? It's fascinating how powerful exercise is, and I'm so glad that we're finally starting to realize that. I mean, just take a look at how in shape Dr Seeds is when he comes up here. I tell him every single time I see him you look like a 60 year old gymnast. It's amazing. Then obviously, I don't gotta tell you any of anyone in this room. Get out of the sick care system. This is what I always tell people. Get out and start working with doctors that can help you right, and then focus on the thing that's gonna kill you first. Who cares if all your organs and your entire body can live to be 125. But you've got this one cholesterol thing that's gonna kill you in your 80s. Optimize that. That's your weakest link, that's your bottleneck. Go after that, like your life depends on it because it does right, and then finally learn to use peptides. You know, I mean, that's why we're here, you know, and that's not just some little cherry on top because we're at a peptide conference. I mean, these things are powerful. I will tell you this about peptides. This is my personal opinion on peptides People vastly overestimate what peptides can do and, at the exact same time, people vastly underestimate what peptides can do. It is your job to solve that riddle In your practice with your patients. Figure that out, and so that's my story, and I have a podcast. If one of you would like to be on the podcast, feel like you have something you want to share. I'd love to hear it. I'd love to hear your stories Reach out to me. I'm going to be here all day. I'm going to be watching the presentations because I want to learn this stuff and because we are a peptide conference. I have one last story that I want to share, and it's part of that taking ownership of this information that I've learned on this journey and really putting it to use. My fiancee during COVID. She ended up experiencing her or ring was telling her something's going on with your pulse and she started experiencing rapid heart beating. She couldn't sleep anymore. I felt like somebody was sitting on her chest At rest. Her heart was racing like she had been running and it wouldn't go away and it was very scary and I suspected it was her thyroid. We found an endocrinologist in Beverly Hills and we ran some labs and she had thyroid antibodies and they diagnosed her with Graves disease. And so we were on telemedicine with this doctor and I said just explain to me what's happening, just tell me the mechanisms of action, exactly what's going on here. And he starts explaining it to me the innate immune system, the adaptive immune system, inspiring all your control. And I start thinking I've heard this stuff. I've heard this stuff in Dr Cede's courses. I've heard it. And I said listen, are you familiar with peptides? He said I know of them, but I don't use them. I can't help you with that. I said, listen, well, I know how to use them. And I said would you be willing to do all the blood tests, because I don't know exactly what we're testing for, I don't know the labs to run for this, but would you be willing to let us do this and use, supervise and try this? And he said yes. So I got her on a three-month autoimmune protocol with peptides and in two and a half months the labs came back. She didn't have Graves anymore, and so the doctor was like you could tell he was so perplexed when he was looking at it. And you know, look, I'm not a doctor. I was a pre-med at UCLA and I dropped out because I wanted to be an Olympian. But when push comes to shove and things matter, like they're going to ablate and take out part of my fiance's thyroid I'm not asking for permission, and whether or not it was grave disease or not grave disease, there's a good chance that if she was in the traditional health care, she wouldn't have all of her thyroid right now. Right, that's the truth of the matter, and so this stuff is important. We need people to be educated in this field, and that's why I'm so excited to see the growth of this industry but, more importantly, the growth of this type of peptide knowledge, because what's fascinating about what Dr Seeds and his team have done is they've democratized this information. They've allowed someone like me who I'm not a doctor to be able to come in and be a part of this and really learn this information and take these courses and have it change not only my life, but the lives of people that I love and care for, and so I'm hugely grateful for this organization. And my final little piece, my cherry on top of all of this, is that with I saw on the banner there was a live better, live longer, live better. And I thought about that before I came Literally to myself. I said this is about living longer, this is about living better. And then I saw it on the banner as they were like same thing. But this is also about not having to give up something that you love, and if I want to do gymnastics and I want to be able to do this stuff at my age, then I am going to do it. Right, you don't need permission to do this stuff. This stuff works. So that is my story and I appreciate you listening, and I will be here all weekend. If you want to ask me questions, please come and talk to me. I love this stuff. Thank you everyone, thank you.