← BETTER! with Dr. Stephanie Estima | Strength, Body Composition & Perimenopause
BETTER! with Dr. Stephanie Estima | Strength, Body Composition & Perimenopause
Your Peptide Guide: BPC-157, GHK-Copper, GLP-1s & Body Composition with Kyal Van Der Leest
01:17:07
Nutritionist, naturopath, and peptide formulator Kyal Van Der Leest breaks down the peptides that actually matter for midlife women — from BPC-157 (the Swiss Army knife of peptides) to GHK-Copper for skin-from-within glow-ups, to the real talk on GLP-1s that nobody's having. Watch the full episode at https://youtu.be/XFte5B2VzWI
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- [00:01]
A
I'll make it really, really simple. Oral peptides, for the most part don't work. I say that owning level up that sell oral peptides. 80% of your immune system is harbored around your gut lining. So if you're doing things like alcohol, antibiotic use, pesticides, glyphosate, all those things are coming in via your diet. They're directly opening up the barriers of your gut and causing inflammation of the gut lining. I would go so far as to say every autoimmune disease, if you are healing the gut, will have some level of resolution. And the consequences of taking the GLB1s are that slowed motility very commonly leads to bacterial overgrowths in the gut because the food is taking so much longer to pass through. It's a very annoying side effect of, yes, I've lost weight, but now I'm bloated and I can't digest things anymore properly. BPC is just so commonly known. It's on the tongue of everyone in podcasting and even media, a lot of celebrities. It can Kardashians or Zac Efron or whoever it is everyone's taking bpc.
- [01:09]
B
Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of better with Dr. Stephanie. It's me, your host, Dr. Stephanie Stima. And do you ever find yourself sometimes you're watching, you know, whatever you're watching, and a commercial comes on and it's about Ozempic or Wegovy or Tirzepatide or whatever it is, and you're like, hm, interesting. Did you know that that's a peptide? I. I think that many of us don't actually recognize that GLP1s, which is the talk of the town, the darling of peptide at the moment, is in fact peptide. And so what we are doing today is we are going on a little nerd safari on peptides. And we are going to be talking about peptides, injectable peptides. We are going to be talking about oral peptides, the differences between them, and most importantly, how to take them, what their benefits are and the mechanisms of action. My guest today is Kyle Vanderlist. He is a qualified nutritionist and naturopath and the founder, director and formulator of Level Up Health. And today we are talking all about GLP1s. We're talking about body composition, changes in perimenopause and menopause. We are talking about BPC 157, the Swiss army knife, if you will, of peptides, what it can do for the gut, what it can do for your joints, what it can do for your skin, hair and nails. We are talking about GHK copper for gut, health for skin, for hair, for nails and we talk about a lot of different peptides, which ones are appropriate to take as injectables, which are appropriate to take as oral, and then of course the differences between some of the pharmacological options of GLP1s versus something like a micro dosing option. I learned personally a lot in this episode. Peptides are something that I am learning alongside you and so I feel like this was a phenomenal conversation and resource for myself and I know that it's also going to be valuable for you if you are someone who is navigating some of the hormones, hormonal and body composition changes, the brain fog, the sleep, the joint pain, some of these things that can pop up in midlife. This is going to be incredibly value for you with some solutions for some of those ailments. So please enjoy my conversation with Kyle Vanderlist. There is a new darling in the supplement world and it is showing some incredible applications for recovery, muscle strength, endurance, joint health in degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis and even brain health with Alzheimer's disease. It is called Urolithin A and is something we actually already make in our guts but like most things it tends to decline as we age. Urolithin A is anti inflammatory and also has antioxidant properties and it is involved in recovering from workouts. So as our own natural production declines in midlife, the potential for inflammation, blood poor energy and poor recovery also increases. As a perimenopausal woman, I know that I am in a fight against time to preserve my muscle strength, my muscle endurance and my recovery needs are greater. I take Timeline's Urolithin A both in pill and now their delicious gummy form to protect against this. A serving size is two just delightfully delicious gummies which gives you 500mg which is the clinically relevant dose to get all of the muscle endurance and strength benefits, recovery, bone health and brain health. I am so excited to share that listeners of this podcast that's you now can get 20% off of your first timeline purchase. Head over to timelinenutrition.com better and use code better at checkout. That's timelinenutrition.com Better and use code better to check out to receive 20% off today. All right Kyle, I am so excited to welcome you to the Better podcast. We're going to be talking about all things peptides today and you're Going to be teaching, I know my audience, but also myself a few things about it. So welcome to the show.
- [05:06]
A
Thanks for having me on, Dr. Stephanie. And yeah, I love peptides. Have been loving peptides for over 5, 6 years now with Level Up Health. And yeah, my knowledge has grown in that time and I can't wait to share it all with yourself and your audience.
- [05:19]
B
Love it. And you're a naturopathic doctor from Australia, correct? Originally from Australia, yep.
- [05:24]
A
Nutritionist. And then realized, oh, herbs are pretty cool. So I went on to study naturopathy too and learn all nutraceuticals and found out about peptides with my first job after finishing nutrition, worked at a hyperbaric oxygen clinic. And people would come in taking all sorts of supplements and botanicals and these weird things called peptides that were what they described as the biggest needle movers in their protocols other than like the hyperbaric therapy itself. So I had to learn everything about them in that job and that's kind of where I got my start in the peptide field.
- [05:55]
B
So we've all heard the global, you know, the social conversation right now is around GLP1s. Of course we're going to talk about those today. But just as a back of the envelope definition, what is a peptide? Is it only coming from novo Nordics? Is it like, tell us what a peptide is. Is it endogenously produced? What is the structure of it?
- [06:15]
A
Yeah, so peptides can be both endogenous, so naturally produced or exogenous, meaning we take it, you know, injectably or orally. Both are mimicking what our body naturally makes it, be it an exogenous pharmaceutical, GLP1 like Ozempic, that's mimicking GLP1, which is naturally made in our bodies to regulate our blood sugar or our hunger or appetite. So simply put, they're a small chain of amino acids, Amino acids just being the numerical building blocks of proteins and the smallest piece of amino acids and proteins, they work bioidentically with our body because our body knows what they are. So if you were to take something like a BPC157 exogenously, your body knows what to do with it because it endogenously in the stomach makes this peptide for the purposes of healing the gastrointestinal tract and rapidly regenerating the lining of the stomach where it's made, it's made in the stomach acid. Because our stomach, the cells of our stomach, because of the hydrochloric acid and all the digestive enzymes to have a very high cellular turnover in There. So that peptides made our body to accelerate the healing and the turnover of those cells. And then naturally it will trickle down through your small intestines, through your large intestines, and have gastrointestinal healing effects naturally from your stomach juice. The difference between that endogenous BPC and exogenous is we're basically supplementing a BPC deficiency, so to speak. A lot of the factors in our life that contribute to leaky gut, be it glyphosate, alcohol, heavy metals, all the things basically strip our body, or our body utilizes and uses the BPC way too fast that we don't get it all the way down distal in our large bowel, where a lot of people's gut issues, especially the chronic ones, are presenting.
- [08:01]
B
So maybe you can also tell us the difference between oral and injectable. Because what I see now is it seems like there's a new website with, you know, scientific research, only peptides. And then, you know, there's more and more and more. And I feel like the quality control, like you just don't know what you're getting. So tell us a little bit about oral versus injectable. What are the benefits of each?
- [08:28]
A
Sure. So first point I'll address is they. There are vendors and online distributors popping up left, right and center selling you peptides. Thank you, Ozempic and Jaro, all the other ones for making them so popular and people searching them. But no, thank you because these people are just selling pharmaceutical ones. Like buying a GLP one should be not. Should not be something you really can do easily online because it's, you know, Novo Nordics property. It's a genuine pharmaceutical. It is not natural, therefore it should be, you know, a medicine. However, there are other ones that are naturally produced that don't fall into the category of pharmaceutical. They're kind of in this gray area where they're not completely natural because they're custom synthesized and, you know, made in a lab a lot. A lot of the nutraceutical industry is like that. But they're also not pharmaceutical. So they're in that gray area of you can buy them online as a research compound because a lot of the studies in humans haven't been performed on these things because there's not really a huge financial incentive for a natural thing to be studied. And yeah, because of that, there's so many people selling them now. And you get very varying quality control issues between the top players in the industry who do it right. They do the certificates of analysis, heavy metals and microbes testing and quantitative testing on their injectable or their or oral product. So the second part to that was oral versus injectable. Well, I'll make it really, really simple. Oral peptides for the most part don't work. I say that owning level up that sell oral peptides. I wish all peptides worked orally because my catalog of products would be in the hundreds rather than the dozens or the, you know, I think I have 11 products that have peptides in it total. And this is because there's a very select few peptides that can work orally. There are very clear barriers to delivering a peptide orally, one being the size of the peptide. Insulin. I'll use as an example diabetics type, type 1, type 2, whatever, have to inject insulin. If they could do an insulin pill, every diabetic would be taking it because of, you know, who really wants to be injecting it on a daily basis if they could get the same effects from oral health. It's too large of a, of a molecule. I think it's 52amino acids. Therefore when you take it orally, it'll get destroyed or broken down or even if one of the bonds in that 52Amino acid change chain breaks, it's no longer functional as insulin. So you have to inject it to have that full 52amino acid sequence intact in circulation having the effect. This logic applies to many of the peptides available on, you know, online vendors or if you look up what are the peptides like CJC 1295, ipamorelin, tessamorelin, the growth hormone secretag peptides, they are way too large to work orally, even intranasally, even topically. The only way you're going to get such a big amino acid into circulation to have the effects is by injecting it. The smaller ones like GHKCU or APV or BPC157, they have the opportunity to work orally. BPC is made in your stomach acids, so you don't have to worry like the other ones about it breaking down in stomach acid. Especially if you use a stable form called BPC arginate. It's been shown that it survives stomach acid for up to nine hours in stomach acid juice. And if you orally provide the peptides in a delayed release capsule, a lot of the issues that you have around the digestive enzymes in the stomach breaking down the peptides is completely bypassed because that capsule protects the peptide, the payload inside of the capsule and it's just released in the small intestine where the acid's not as big of a problem. And the proteolytics, the protein degrading enzymes are, they're still there, but they're less of an issue as they would be in the stomach. So you can get them to the small intestine, they can cross the barrier of the small intestine and enter circulation. So things like GHKCU in that capsule will work, or you could liposome it or something like that just to avoid the really big, big bottleneck to oral peptides working. And that's the stomach acid and those enzymes. If you don't want to worry about those two factors, just inject them. But if you don't like injecting, then you can choose intelligently peptides that will work and will absorb orally.
- [12:53]
B
Well, I have, I have two questions about that. One, I was talking with my AV producer before we actually got going, and it's like, you know, injecting is really a pain in the butt. Like, it's. You gotta, you gotta do your little peptide calculation. You gotta do the baristatic water. You gotta. And it's painful. Like in some cases it can be. You know, any. Anyone who has diabetes will tell you, like, they're, you know, you gotta find new spots, you know, because you're just, you're just constantly, you know, maybe you're bruising or maybe the area feels tight or tingly afterwards. So I wanted maybe you to comment on, on ease of use, like, you know, removing the barrier, let's say that way. But the other question I had was around cost. Because on some of these injectable, you know, I've been to these, you know, research only peptide sites. And I would say that the cost for injectables tend to be higher than the oral. I mean, they're still, I mean, I think there's still a, you know, there's going to be a fixed cost because I think peptides generally are probably, and you can comment this as a formulator more than I probably just baseline, they're more expensive to be able to encapsulate and to make sure that you're actually getting some product in there. But I would think that the injectables are more costly over time. Can you speak to either or both of those? Am I right? Wrong. Redirect me where you need to.
- [14:12]
A
You are right in the fact that it's a pain in the butt to be injecting it, especially if you're injecting them in your butt. The constant, literally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. When I was When I do the injectables like Melanitan 2, I used to do that. It was fantastic. I looked like I'd been in the sun for all year and didn't have to go in it more than twice. I did injectable BBC out of curiosity and found it didn't work any better than taking it orally. So that's why I tend to err on the side of I don't like the whole reconstitution process. I don't like the fact that if I get a tainted or an impure peptide, I'm injecting 100% of that impurity as an oral capsule. There is wiggle room. Like if you eat mercury or something like that, it's that bioaccumulation over time rather than that one off mercury intake from like fish and it absorbs it like 0.1% the mercury. And the same would apply for a tainted capsule. Right. We don't have that with level up. But if you were to take it from another brand and you're worried about like a mercury content or aluminum or LPS, then 100 of what you inject is going to end up in circulation and potentially cause problems. And all the benefits that you are hoping to get from that peptide might be completely mitigated by it being impure or contaminated. So that's the con of injecting. There are plenty of places you can get really pure injectable peptides and they are also making it easier by, by offering pens that are sort of pre loaded. You don't have to really calculate it, it comes pre calculated. But they are very expensive, those preloaded pens and they come reconstituted. So meaning mixed with bacteriostatic water or what are the. What other solution makes most sense for the peptide to be blended with? You're only getting a small amount in that pen and because it's already reconstituted, the stability of it is really short. So unless you're using it within sort of three to five months, then the peptides internal to that reconstitution are very likely to break down. When they are added to water, they become quite unstable versus if they're lyophilized, meaning not reconstituted, just still as the powder or is it or as a capsule where there's no liquid present, they have a lot longer shelf life for sort of between two to three years versus a couple of months. So that's the pros and cons price wise. I think they kind of work out sometimes cheaper for injectables but also then those pens can work out a lot more expensive for the convenience. So kind of in the middle of both of those are the capsules, where you have a milligram or microgram depending on the peptide dose per capsule. So you don't need to think about it. You also don't need to get over that mental barrier of here comes the needle and injecting yourself every day. And then all of the. Even for travel, too, like having injectable capsules for travel. You can maintain on your BPC or your KPV or whatever peptide it is without, you know, the whole TSA thing with needles and vials and all that while you travel. It can be a bit annoying. And the other thing we do with the capsules is synergize them with natural nutraceuticals like palmidolethanolamide or hyaluronic acid, which synergize with the peptide to get, you know, one plus one equals three effects.
- [17:18]
B
Okay, so lots of people come to me and to the show for. There's a couple of things that I think that the audience is coming here for. Body composition and recomposition, let's say how to strength train nutrition, certainly metabolic health, digestive changes that we see in perimenopause and menopause, joint pain. And so you mentioned bpc. So I think I want to actually jump there first, if we can. This is something that I have known about. Oh, gosh. For. I mean, I mean, I think that there's like a peptide renaissance right now. Like, I think that there's like this resurgence from Mozambi, like, thank you, Ozempic. But I also, I've known about BPC157 for, I don't know, decades. So talk to us a little bit about. So you mentioned that it's. It's produced in the stomach. Tell us how this helps with. And this is something, as a, as a doctor of chiropractic, I am very invested in is joint health cart. You know, especially in midlife, we start to see more osteoarthritic present. Like, you know, it's like that big toe. You know, you wake up in the morning and your feet are stiff or that big toe or that tennis elbow or that. That thing in your knee is just getting worse and worse and worse. So talk to us a little bit about what the peptide looks like and then the mechanism of action that it has. And I'd like to actually, maybe as you're answering this, maybe talk about it in the context of gut health first, because I think that gut health and joint health, like we cannot extract, drop, like those things are inextricably linked with each other.
- [18:47]
A
Yeah, 100%. It's a really good one to start in detailed conversation with because it just does so many things. If we were to talk about like a kpv, there's like one primary mechanism for how that one works. But BPC is the Swiss army knife of peptides. It works on the brain, it works on the guard, it works on, you know, joint pain, it, you know, it helps deep sleep as well. There's so many things it does because of the multi mechanistic benefits that it offers to people. Starting at the gut's a really great point because that's sort of naturopathically where I like to start with helping people, you know, deal with whatever they're dealing with. If you start at the gut, then usually by healing the gut lining, by sealing those tight junctions in the gut or preventing or treating or, you know, reversing leaky gut, you end up with the immune system regulating itself. Therefore your systemic inflammation calms down. 80% of your immune system is harbored around your gut lining. So if you're doing things like alcohol, antibiotic use, pesticides, glyphosate, all those things are coming in via your diet. They're directly opening up the barriers of your gut and causing inflammation of the gut lining. BPC is probably the top peptide for gut health because it does work systemically if you're to take it and act locally on the epithelium of the gut lining. So that is how it's going to help with immune health. By simply closing those junctions, by restoring the health of the cells of the epithelium and the colonocytes, we now have our immune system calming down our immune system and our systemic inflammation drops. Then our joint pain and our arthritic pain or any aches and niggles are going to subside significantly. My father personally has, he was a truck driver, a long haul truck driver and has a lot of arthritic pain in his foot from pressing the pedal all the time. He takes BPC six months out of the year. You know, I like to get people to cycle these things on and off. And that's an important point. Peptides work on receptor sites in the body. So if you're constantly hitting a receptor site, you have the potential for it to down regulate. So I like to get people to cycle things. Be it, you know, if you're taking testosterone, that's a perfect example, or a receptor adenosine for caffeine. If you're constantly hitting a receptor, you have the potential for downregulation. So all peptides should be cycled. And yeah, when my dad cycles bpc, his arthritic pain in his foot almost completely resolves. He gets, he reports like an 80 to 90% resolution for his pain there, but it doesn't, it will work on injuries like if he had a strain or a tear or a micro tear or something down there. The mechanisms for how it works are, increases angiogenesis naturally, not, not beyond what our body actually wants just to succeed. Important caveat, it upregulates fibroblast growth factor and it increases collagen synthesis and production. All those things are going to be phenomenal for, you know, triggering the healing processes in the gut or in your knee or meniscus or something like that in the gut lining. All those are super important, especially that collagen synthesis, like connective tissue, is basically what our gut is made of. So if we're taking something that's going to help with collagen synthesis and as well as the VEGF and the angiogenesis, that's oxygen delivery, nutrient delivery and waste removal, all are really important for the health of, you know, the organ or the joint or the gut lining as well. So that's primarily, primarily and mechanistically how BPC works for brain health too. Like those same mechanisms go into your, into brain health, but it also has neurotransmitter modulating effects. It supports dopamine and gaba. So you're more motivated but also concurrently more calm too, from the gaba. So that's why I really like it as a nootropic. It doesn't hit as hard as like a caffeine or some of the other brain things that you can take, but it's just a really good supportive compound to have.
- [22:42]
B
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- [26:38]
A
I would go so far as to say every autoimmune disease, if you are healing the gut, will have some level of resolution. How large that level is is really dependent on all the other things you do alongside of it. You can have a completely healthy gut, but if you're taking or eating or having something in your environment that's triggering your immune system's hyper reactivity, then no amount of BPC is going to fix that. Like if you're living in a moldy environment or let's just say you continue to eat gluten, it might be from a sourdough, an organic one, but it is the gliadin in the gluten that's sort of got your immune system confused. A lot of osteoarthritis, I believe is just because of glyphosate plus gluten together. It's not all of it. So I'm not going to universally say that's the truth, but a lot of people, I think the brain fog that you get from the brain, the, the grains too, is because the gut lining is directly impacted by the glyphosate and the gluten, it opens it up. And zonulin is the marker that they use that is pretty much directly related to gliadin. And in celiacs they look at zonulin levels. And the more zonulin you have, generally the more permeable your gut lining is. How grain becomes brain is. Zonulin acts on our brightness blood brain barrier as well. We get leaky brain, we get brain fog and you know, we feel Terrible. And that's happened to me in the past with mold. That does it as well. That's where you need nootropics. And BPC helped as well because it's going to help your blood brain barrier and your gut barrier, osteoarthritis and autoimmune diseases. You definitely always need to focus on gut health. There are other things you can take, but as a foundational pillar of your intervention, gut health is 100% needs to be, needs to be addressed. And BPC will definitely help with that. As far as calming down the immune systems, there's, there's plenty of other things you could, you could look at taking. It depends if it's a TH1 or a TH2 driven thing. You really need to work with a practitioner to figure out the other things. But just as a foundational, gut health is absolutely mandatory.
- [28:38]
B
So just because we're here, of course there's going to be a lot of women. One of the things that happens most often for women in their 40s, like late 40s, really is a diagnosis of autoimmunity. So there's lots of different types of autoimmune diseases. We just mentioned rapa, but Hashimoto's, thyroiditis, lupus, multiple sclerosis. One of the things that I can say, just having cared for many, you know, women with hashi hashis is this pervasive gut. There's, you know, maybe there's parasites, maybe there's, there's like the gut is just a complete mess. And so a lot of them will actually also talk about these hashi flare ups after consuming gluten. And that could be related to what you were just talking about, the zonulin, which is increasing the, you know, the payer's patches and just the permeability, let's say, of the, or you know, what we would call leaky gut. But it's like the barriers that are supposed to keep those junctions that are supposed to stay tight start opening up and then the immune system's like, hey, what's this? And certainly there's been some discussion around gliadin actually looking like when we look at the thyroid, very similar molecular structure of gliadin to the thyroid and actually also the cerebellum as well. So when we look at sort of the molecular structure of the cells there, they look very similar to gliadin. So you can very easily, if you start to create an immune response, let's say, where you're producing antigens against gliadin, it would be very easy to sort of See, as that accumulates, that your body can mistake your thyroid gland or your cerebellum if you have a leaky brain as gliadin and attack it. Which is why we see. You know, I had so many patients with Ms. In practice that were all. I never actually. I'm trying to go back into my brain Barn. I can't think of a male patient. I can't think of a male patient that had Ms. That I cared for. They were all women.
- [30:28]
A
Yeah. I really like the point you make it. The concept is molecular mimicry. And I strongly believe I need to look into this further. But I strongly believe almost all autoimmunity bar, Maybe like type 1 diabetes, is linked to some level of molecular mimicry. Like if you look at the reasons why the exponential explosion of autoimmune diseases. And annoyingly, when you get one, you tend to get another one if it. If it remains untreated or it. It cascades. So I strongly believe molecular mimicry can be case to casein, it can be to egg protein, it can be to gliadin, it can be to anything. And a lot of these IgG food sensitivity tests that people do show that your body is reacting to the. To the food. If that is persistent and pervasive. And your body is constantly. You constantly have ex. Leaky gut. Let's just say you've got elevated zonulin and elevated calprotectin and all the markers of leaky gut. And that is persistent for months on end, if not years on end. Your body is kind of trying to figure out why, why it is, you know, what is hurting it, what is causing this inflammation. And you will get an allergic response to the food. But again, that molecular mimicry base, very frustratingly, the sequences of amino acids that your body has developed an immune response to may look similar to something in your body. And I strongly believe we will look deeper into this and find that that link between what we're eating combined with having leaky gut causing or if not potentiating and making worse all autoimmune diseases.
- [31:55]
B
And so you mentioned that BPC157 is something that can't. You know, you said earlier, like, most oral peptides don't work, but you mentioned GHK. I wanna talk about GHK, copper, Cu. And you mentioned BPC157, especially if it's arginate. It can last nine hours in stomach acid. That's something that can very easily be taken orally to be effective because it's gonna. Is it gonna work locally? First on the gut. Like what needs to sort of cause I would imagine most individuals, including myself, like I'm starting to, you know, in the sort of vein of transparency and honesty, starting to notice some digestive changes in my late 40s now. I would imagine that if you are taking BPC and we'll talk about the cycling piece in a moment, but let's say you, you start on some type of regimen of BPC157 that it's gonna start to work locally in the gut first. Probably that's the primary, you know, where it needs to, where it needs to sort of be in abundance. And then we might, if we continue the cycle, then we might start to see some distal improvements. Let's say if it's the oa, the ra, you know, whatever it is that we're trying to, whatever it is that we're trying to target, whether it's, whether it's, you know, brain health or, or, or otherwise.
- [33:02]
A
100% correct. Yeah. Taking them orally like a GHK does work. GHK is three amino acids long. So if you can make it survive the stomach acid and the digestion, it's small enough to very easily kill adult in size on that, it's small enough to pass through trans cellularly between the, the, the cells of the small intestine and get systemic effects. It will also work locally like it depends on. This is called pharmacokinetics. Where you want the thing to go, right? Ghk, you can take, you can take it as a top locally on your skin, all those collagen networks that it helps with synthesis, it modulates something like 900 favorable longevity genes as well. So it's fantastic for stem cell activation both on your skin and in your gut. Like we have stem cells in our gut which need activating to then go into restoring the gut lining. So if you did take it topically, that's a fantastic anti aging ingredient. Probably the top one as far as all peptides go for skin health. If you take it orally as a liposome, we have it as a liposomal GHK and that is to get it into circulation and to be influencing the longevity genes. Helping with the health of your cardiovascular system and getting it into circulation is the important part about why we liposome it. It's also protects the peptide a little bit, but primarily it's the kinetics of getting it into the body. We also have it non liposomed and that is to have it work locally in the garden gut. The liposome Will basically prevent it from getting, you know, acting locally in the gut because the fatty acid envelope gets, it gets absorbed via. I think I've forgotten the mechanism the, the micelles or the Lysol. Yeah, got it on the second guess that gets it into circulation versus the ghk. We want it to work locally, that's why we don't liposome it in our ultimate GI repair formula, but we do liposome it in a standalone mime which is more for, I call it skin within because we combine it with hyaluronic acid which is fantastic for hydration of the skin. It's part of collagen network synthesis. You need your collagen, you need your amino acids but also hyaluronic acids naturally produced. And it's yeah, fantastic ingredient for plumping the skin and bringing in moisture. It's hold something like 20 times its weight in moisture. So it's a fantastic ingredient that even if you just took hyaluronic acid alone without anything else, you would notice improvements, especially the high molecular weight form, you would notice a skin within improvements in your, in your skin health as well. So. But synergize with GHK is like a magic combination for skin health. Like the GHK influences the collagen network synthesis, the pro longevity genes, the stem cell activation, while the hyaluronic acid sort of synergizes with all that as well. So that's why in that formula I have it like that. I'm probably going to bring out some more skin products. I know I'm going to in the next couple of months, so stay tuned for that. But, but for now, yeah, you take an external GHK serum which I don't sell, you're getting it externally whilst taking the liposomal one, you're getting it internally. They meet in the middle and you've got the best of both worlds if you really want to focus on skin health.
- [36:02]
B
Well, now you're talking my love language because this is something I mean I know I love, I will. My first love is biomechanics, joints, tendons and muscle. And then my second love come to love skin, hair and nails. So you were talking about GHK pairing it with high hyaluronic acid. So I recognize those as topicals for the skin, as you were saying. But now taking it orally can also improve, you said like, you know, skin from within. So you're improving the collagen, I'm assuming improving the collagen and elastin sort of synthesis for. And is this the Pharmacokinetics. Is this why you put it like you liposome it so it can help. You mentioned the non liposomal form will help in the gut. So what does GHK do in the gut? Because again the gut is also related to your skin as well. So what does it do in the gut locally when it's non liposomalized? I don't know if that's the right word. You know, it's not liposomal. And then when it is, how do we. And maybe this is just such a dumb question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. But how does it get to the skin? Is it because there's receptors there? Like how do we know if we put a liposomal capsule around it that it is going to get to the skin eventually?
- [37:11]
A
Well, getting nutrient delivery to the skin is not too difficult. Like we can see when we flush, like how well ox well vascularized. Most areas of the body are comparative to like a connective tissue thing for example, or cartilage. You basically have none for that. So it's not difficult to get nutrients delivered to the skin from within, from below, provided it has got into circulation. So that realistically is the biggest challenge is if we didn't liposome it, the GHK would probably only have about a 15% bioavailability. Like systemic absorption. That's not a problem. Like a lot of the best gut healing ingredients, like let's just say curcumin for example. Without bioperine, curcumin only has a very low bioavailability by itself of like 1%. But for the most part you're going to get downstream benefits of the anti inflammatory effect of curcumin because it is saturating, it almost stains the lining of your gut. Gut because it's acting locally, kinetically like 99 of it. Not absorbing is actually not a problem because it's working on the gut lining within the lumen, calming down the inflammation of the gut lining. And then you, even if you don't do these advanced mech delivery mechanisms, you are going to get benefits of curcumin by calming down the gut inflammation. And you're depending on your microbiome too. They can ferment the curcumin and release metabolite. Yeah. So the exact, exact same mechanisms. Why you'd want it to work in your skin, your gut lining, I call your internal skin. Like what's going to be good for here is going to be good for your gut, good for your face is going to be good for your gut by regulating the gene expression for fibroblasts and the youthful profile, There's a study from Pickett and Vasquez called human tripeptide GHK and prevent prevention of oxidative stress and degenerative conditions and aging. That's a fantastic read. It just. Just talks about all of the longevity genes that it helps transcribe and activate. It's phenomenal. Like it is the. The holy grail of GHK studies for people. The stem cell proliferation too. Like as I said, you got stem cells in your gut, you got them in your skin, you got them everywhere. Anything that's going to help the proliferation and activation, it does it epigenetically rather than it being something like a stem regen or an actual stem cell thing. Yeah. So it interacts with receptors on the. I believe it's internal to the cell. Yeah, so it activates the receptors internal to the cell, modulates your genes internally like in the nucleus and then cascade after the fact the effects of it. It might only last a couple hours, but those gene expression effects are going to last weeks, if days, hours, weeks, depending on which one is activated. But just by the amount of genes that it favorably expresses and helps modulate. That is very deep mechanistically how GHK works and why. If it's working on the colonocytes and pterocytes of your cells, it's going to have similar effects to your skin in the collagen synthesis and the supporting of the healing. Basically, our gut needs healing. Our skin always needs healing. It's being damaged and so is our gut. So anything that supports the healing process reduces inflammation and helps the collagen synthesis. And elastin is going to help pretty much every tissue in our body that is dependent on collagen.
- [40:21]
B
If getting a good night's sleep feels like it is a second job, then this is for you. I have been building a simple night ritual with AGZ. This is the melatonin free nighttime drink from AG1 that's designed to support restful restorative sleep. So you can actually wake up feeling refreshed. It's an easy mix that you can sip it cold, room temperature or as I like to do warm. I like to think of it as cocoa with benefits. Hits what's inside is clinically studied key ingredients like magtine, which is magnesium, L threonate, saffron, L Theanine, ashwagandha tart, cherry juice extract and valerian. This is a blended formula to help you wind down in the evening. Sleep well and Wake up without any grogginess. There's no added sugar and it's NSF certified for sport with third party testing, which I personally love for quality and safety that I'm used to with AG1. Flavor wise, you've got chocolate, you've got chocolate mint, and you've got mixed berry. I personally warm up the chocolate mint like a nighttime hot cocoa and it's chef's kiss. Pair it with your AG1 in the morning. And now you've got a morning and evening system that supports the two pillars of health that we're after, nutrition and sleep. Without adding any more complexity to your day, head to drinkag1.com forward/stephanie to get a free frother with your first purchase of AGZ, that is drink ag1.com forward slash Stephanie. I want to pivot slightly and talk a little bit about body composition because I know that a lot of women, especially as they reach sort of late perimenopause and into the para and into the menopausal transition, we lose, I mean, we lose estrogen. Of course. It goes down to about 1% of, you know, what it once was. There is a steady decline, certainly in testosterone. And then a lot of women will notice. So with this hormonal decline, they will notice sarcopenia. So they, if they're not being strategic and they're not strength training, and even if they are strength training, we can see loss of muscle. A lot of women will complain about this. We'll say waist, like their waist is disappearing. This like thickening of the waist, this like increase in visceral adiposity or this increase in adipose tissue that's located kind of ectopically through the, through the belly, which is not typically where women tend to store fat. We typically, under the influence of estrogen, store it in the lower half of our body. So it's like, you know, thighs, butt, you know, whatever. And then when we're in menopause, of course, that fat distribution changes, even though someone might be following a good diet and strength training. So what are some of the peptides that we might consider that can help with those? We'll call them unfavorable body composition changes. And how can we, how do we know how to choose, you know, how do, how do we know how. What peptides and when and actually have to come back to make me make sure I come back to the cycle question, because I want to come back. You mentioned it briefly, but I want to come back to it. How do we know, like, where to start? Like which is the one that we start with. And then of course, maybe this is a conversation about GLP1s here as well, because certainly as we get older, even though we don't necessarily realize it, we are becoming more sedentary. Right. So we just are sitting more often. So the caloric intake might be the same, the caloric output might not be there. And then you layer on top of that hormonal derangement. We can just say that is menipause, that is menopause can be catastrophic and devastating for a lot of women. So talk to us about how we can think about using peptides as a way to augment or to improve our body composition, both from an adipose tissue perspective and a muscle preservation perspective.
- [44:09]
A
Yeah. So off the bat, out of the gate, there is no peptide that you can take that is going to be like a DHEA or a progesterone cream or something like that. These things are going to be more powerful. And I'm more inclined, if it's a hormonal issue issue, to lean on the nutraceutical ingredients like wild yams or you can even use if there's too much estrogen, if there's not enough cortisol. It really depends on what the pattern looks like. There's a lot of nutraceuticals and even pharmaceuticals that can certainly help women during menopause better than peptides. However, the weight gain, let's just be real. If you gain some weight and you're not liking the way you look, you're very strongly going to consider a GLP one that's like you can't even turn the TV on without being advertised by it. So let's look at GLP1s. The three types are the single agonist, so zempic. The second one is a dual agonist, which is tirzepatide. And there's retatrutide, which is a triple agonist. You can get the first two relatively easy now. And the third one you can also find from online vendors for now, until the big pharma take that away from them too. But yeah, essentially these ones are going to shut down appetite. If you are taking them, you will lose weight. It's pretty, pretty easy to do so when you just don't have any food cravings and you have really impaired, I should say by design, but slowed gastric emptying and slow motility, you feel fuller for longer. It also basically shuts off your hunger signal if you do it too, too strongly. I'd strongly suggest people listen to Dr. Tina Moore, if your podcast with her or her own podcast on microdosing GLP1s, I believe that is the best way to do them. If you're going to do them rather than going in and doing the full high dose at the start, you'll get fast results, but it'll come at a consequence. And the consequences of taking the GLB1s are that slowed motility very commonly leads to bacterial overgrowth in the gut. Because the food is taking so much longer to pass through. The bacteria that ferment the food that you've consumed are going to start fermenting higher and higher up in the small intestines rather than being quite low down in the, in the large colon. So when you end up with bacterial overgrowth, that kind of throws a big spanner in the works for your metabolic and your overall health. You'll end up with leaky gut. That's a big problem for people who do take GLP1s and that's why you might see a lot of bloating and stomach distension. It's a very annoying side effect of, yes, I've lost weight, but now I'm bloated and I can't digest things anymore properly. So that's a big consequence of that. When women are going through menopause, the adrenals are under tremendously more stressful because of the ovaries, essentially not tapping out completely, but they're putting the burden now on the adrenal glands. So supporting the adrenals with natural desiccated adrenal glandular is really beneficial, I believe. I don't know if you focus on the adrenal part a lot, Stephanie, or you more focus on. All right, let's support estrogen with like an estrogenic or phytoestrogen to sort of supplement, you know, with a, a plant, plant based. That's going to have similar effects. Things like soy can be beneficial. I would normally not recommend people have soy unless they're in that point. Unless they have really low estrogen. Oh, actually I'll, I'll derail myself a little bit and say when the estrogen drops in women, that's when they're incredibly likely to get connective tissue injuries too. Like a body. Bodybuilders, 100% bodybuilders who go on estrogen blockers end up pulling a, tearing a muscle or having a connective tissue injury because they've blocked and tanked their estrogen levels. Their joints become. The lubrication of the joints drops. They end up look like skeletal. The skin de plumps and has, you know, you can see basically the bone in their face. So definitely supporting estrogen during that time and making sure that, you know, nutraceutically you could take things that naturally support estrogen levels, but I could say short term there's definitely things like DHEA creams or progesterone, not progesterone creams, but there's other things that you intake that can support you during that. As far as peptides go, there's nothing that will help your estrogen or your progesterone levels, just frankly putting it that way, but supporting your connective tissue. So you did can get away with the loss of estrogen without getting an injury or some. If you in the gym, like you should be doing the strength training, you don't want to end up with an injury that can put you on your, on your butt for four to eight weeks, depending on the severity of it. So. So having a BPC or a TB500 peptide or TB4, which is another one that's probably equal to, if not better than BPC for musculoskeletal and connective tissue repair, it's often combined with BPC is the TB4 and they call that the wolverine stack. So those ones during that time period is like your insurance against injury. I'm not saying it can't happen when estrogen's lower, you're really in a vulnerable position. So don't go for, for PRs on squats or deadlifts, but definitely maintain that strength training and takes take things to support the joint health and muscle health during it.
- [49:20]
B
Back to this discussion around microdosing versus standardized dose of whether it's a single double triple agonist, whether we are looking at GLP1s, et cetera, where do you land? Or what is your understanding of the evidence. And maybe you can even draw from, from clinical practice as well, if that's relevant in terms of what is better for the patient. Like I tend to be like, first, do no harm. Low and slow, typically better like you actually gain more momentum from going low and slow than like, you know, hard and fast typically. And you can extend that to many, many areas of life like you can expect. Extend that into fitness, right? If you go all like balls to the wall and you're doing like seven days a week in the gym, like the next week you're not gonna be able to walk and you're gonna hate it. You're not gonna go back back. I'd rather you go two days. So talk to me a little bit about maybe your philosophy around microdosing versus like some of the standardized dosing that is that is currently available for patients.
- [50:17]
A
Yeah, I really like this discussion. It is one that I've had a few times before and I always analogize it like I would trt. There's always the right dose for the right for each person. If you were to take exogenous steroids in a bioidentical level, then you're going to get all of the benefits of having high testosterone just the same as if you were to take a micro dose of GLP1s. You might get all of the benefits of having, you know, all that. The signaling of glp, the, the weight loss without the side effects. There is a sweet spot to doing these. The mainstream dosing that you get from a doctor who's not well versed in it, I believe for most people is too high. I believe you will lose weight faster than if you did it micro dosed. However, it will come at the side effect of that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth issue which then leads to leaky gut which also again, like if you're just simply not eating and you don't have any appetite, I don't believe that's healthy either. You should have some but like a reduced appetite because you still are going to need your micronutrients and your macronutrients need to absorb properly too. So it's like kind of like if I was a bodybuilder and I did the highest amount of testosterone, I'm going to gain the most amount of muscle. Just like if I did the highest amount of a GLP1 I'm going to lose a heck of a lot of weight in a short amount of time. Asterisks at a huge side effect. The other thing that I spoke about when I was on Tina's podcast is when you are losing weight fast, that can really overtax your burden because your fat is a storage organ for toxins. And when you liberate really fast, your liver can become very overburdened. And those toxins, if you are no longer having fat, if you no longer have fat on you will store, will either be dumped into your gut or reabsorbed or store in fatty organs and you can actually have a lot bigger issue on your plate.
- [52:01]
B
Brain, say brain.
- [52:02]
A
If you have toxins in your brain, that's going to absolutely nuke your ability to, to think and be coherent in your thoughts. But I'm not going to fear monger here, but I really feel like detox is so important because the breast tissue is fatty, is fatty tissue. And you look at how much breast cancer is out there, if you have a huge amount of, of fat that you're losing all the metals, all of the endocrine disrupting things that your body has stored in the fat to protect you are now liberated and can store there or they're store in your, or if you're a man and the prostate's pretty fatty too, there's a lot of challenge that the modern life has presented us with toxins and fat is the solution to them. The short term sort of. We'll put it in the cupboard and worry about it later.
- [52:43]
B
Let me just encapsulate it to protect the rest of the body from it. And I think that there's almost like a knock on effect where you just, it becomes this vicious cycle where it's like, okay, we're just going to sequester the, the, the toxin in the fat here, but we're going to, as we are exposed to more and more toxins, we're going to create more and more fat to be able to sequester so that we can protect the rest of the body from it. So I think that that's also potentially at play too in midlife where you have this, you know, you've had 40 or 50 years to accumulate to be exposed to all the things like you know, not to get on my diamond encrusted conspiracy tin foil hat on, but like on the chemtrails and all the, you know, the schedules and all the things, right? And like the environment and the lawn fertilizer. And I think there was just a report that came out a couple months ago now people who lived near golf courses had a much higher incidence of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease because of the spray. Like, because the lawns are of course so pristine on golf courses because they're constantly being sprayed for weeds. Meanwhile, my mother in law is like dandelions and she'll pick them and she makes them into a tea. So you know, different, you know, different cultural maybe. You know, I would say and this is just like love to my ex Greek mother in law who I just adore. Like she loves dandelions. Like and you know, it's a, it's a taunt and of course maybe you can speak to dandelions as a naturopathic physician as well. But it's, it's a, it's a diuretic and it's, you know, wonderful. It's a blood, you know, wonderful as a tonic for the blood, et cetera. So we in. In the. In North America tend to look at dandelions as these disgusting things that we would never want on our front lawn. And then, you know, you go to Greece and Italy and they're like, oh, my God, we're gonna have tea with this. So it's. It's interesting to see culturally how we sort of view, you know, quote unquote, weeds. Right?
- [54:32]
A
Yeah. One final closing statement to that is the Ozempic face that people talk about. I believe strongly, like, if. Even if I'm not, when I'm heavily detoxifying. When I lived in mold and I was pulling it out, doing sauna and hocat, and I had Ozempic face without having taken Ozempic. And that was because of the toxin burden. Really dark circles under the eyes and really gaunt in the face and just looked like crap. And respectfully to myself, looked like. So that is what's happening to a lot of people when they have not done anything right their whole life and then just jump on a Ozempic, trazepatide or retatrutide, lose the weight fast, and then they look really unhealthy in the face. I think we probably all know someone who's done that, or a friend of mine who lost weight really fast. He was on intermittent fasting, keto diet, but not saunaing, not detoxifying. Also looked like that. So that's a really important caveat that detoxification pathways, nac, glycine, what else? Glutathione and then binders as well, to catch it once your body's removed. It are so important for people on a GLP1 journey or. Or even irrespective of GLP1s, people who are losing weight fast and have never detoxified need to focus on that because you might be just pushing the problem down the road.
- [55:42]
B
Right, well said. Let's talk about mold in terms of gaining weight, which many women are sensitive to. You know, I live on the east coast in Toronto, Canada, where we have. Have the most humid summers. So it's just like a, you know, it's a chocolate factory for mold. It's like, this is the perfect environment. This is a perfect. So anything along, you know, the. The Pacific Northwest, like all the way down the coast, you know, you go down to la, there's so much mold. And then I would say the same is true on. On the east coast as well. Or you're on a lake, let's say. The way that the Way that my city is, you're going to sort of bring in the humidity from the water, especially in the warmer months. If you're, you know, live in a place that has four seasons and then it's just a, like there's just mold everywhere. So talk to us a little bit about mold in terms of its impact, I would say systemically. And then, you know, a lot of women care about, myself included. Like, I. If I've been exposed to mold, that's going to impact the way that I think we were. I was at a conference a couple months ago and the. It was so obvious that the hotel that we were staying in was just like encrusted in mold. And I, I was so clogged up in the more my sinuses, my face. I had to sort of gouache on my face because my eyelids, like, I could barely open my eyes. So talk to us about mold, what it does to the body. And then are there peptides or are there protocols that you might think about that we can help to improve that as well. You mentioned detoxification through sauna, nac, glycine, et cetera.
- [57:11]
A
Yeah, I could speak about mold for a whole two hours. Pretty much. It's been the thorn in my side living in humid environments. Queensland is like the Florida of Australia where I lived. And for three years of trying our best dehumidifiers, it was just this uphill battle that we never were able to win. So we moved away from moldy environment to New Zealand. Happily, however, what, what it does to your body, it directly, it makes you hungry all the time. Like it breaks your satiety signaling in your brain. Very frustratingly, you end up with complete blood sugar dysregulation. Whenever the molds in your body, that triggers an inflammatory cascade, but it also triggers hunger. And your blood sugars end up on this roller coaster where they're up and down. And then you carb crave, crave carbs. And then also antidiuretic hormone gets thrown out of whack too. So you're losing salt all the time. And when you lose salt, you're thirsty all the time and then you sweat. You can actually tell if you wear like a dark cap or something. A good sign that you have might have some level of mold exposure is if when it dries, you see that salt ring around the brim of the hat. That's a really good way of saying, showing people that you're, you're, you know, leaching minerals. And often the. One of the biggest causes of that is mold exposure. The other thing that can happen with that antidiuretic hormone being thrown out is you might touch electronics and get zapped all the time. That's another sign that you're leaching the minerals too quickly through your skin. Happened to me and I thought I was just, you know, becoming a bit psychically in tuned and you're like, I'm
- [58:36]
B
just an electric personality and that's why this is happening.
- [58:39]
A
Yeah, exactly. But no, I was just being exposed to more mold. So nice little reality check for me there.
- [58:45]
B
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- [60:01]
A
But yeah, mold causes brain fog. Horrible, horrible, horrible brain fog. A lot of the mycotoxins that you will breathe in from black molds or whatever mold species it is are small enough, especially the spores or the fragments of the spores are small enough to go directly to your brain. And when they're in there, they cause absolutely horrendous brain fog to the point where I could barely remember, like my full name or the most numbers I could remember sequentially were like three or four. And then I have to have to go back all the time. It was horrible. When I first got into podcasting, I was living in Malden. I had to take every nootropic, including ones like erasetams or wines main all, all of the things, heaps of caffeine just to function at a baseline level because the mold was so inflammatory to my brain and affecting my neurotransmitters horribly. I also gained estrogenic weight. 0linone was one when if you do a mycotoxin test, which is a urinary test for mold that your body has been exposed to and excreted. Very good, very good screening tool for, for individuals wanting to know what mold species is affecting them and what you know, what is actually in their body versus you could do an air sample and you know it not actually be entering your body or a problem. So Sierra Lenone is highly estrogenic and not like the good type, more like the really bad types, the 16s and the fours rather than the two type of estrogen. And it, it has a really strong binding affinity for the estrogen receptors that are associated with weight gain and mood irritability as well. So not the, the beta ones which are really beneficial for muscle, muscle sparing. So yeah, mold has a absolute magnitude of negative effects including excessive histamine. So histamine and estrogen and thyroid and, and even stomach acid are all interlinked and it basically knocks down all of those things, all those systems, your thyroid will start to suffer. Gut health is absolutely decimated. Having GI repair when I lived in it, I thought man, this product's not working that well anymore. It used to be better and no, it was just my environment. There's no amount of peptide, BPC, KpV, which is the anti mold peptide. But you know, it can only do so much in the wrong circumstance. There's no amount of product that I could take that could remedy my leaky gut when my mycotoxin levels were to almost 100 times the safe level according to the testing. So getting yourself out of those environments is pretty much the only long term solution to fixing all these problems. Otherwise you'll just be playing whack a mole and constantly have to be on an antihistamine, a DAO or a GI like our GI repair product to be fixing your gut. But these are just you know, putting tape on the hull, on the, on the ship rather than, you know, getting it to shore and fixing it properly. So. So yeah, mold is becoming a big problem because of building practices in America. There's no standardized practice for encapsulating the house in like plastic to prevent the timber underneath getting mouldy during construction. A lot of people are cheaping out on that using cheap materials too. And you get a brand new house delivered and then the internals are already rotting with mold as well as like plumbing practices that's the old school one. I had a leak and now my house has been never been the same. Dave Asprey got started into biohacking because he lived in a multi house. So. So he. His whole brand, his whole life has been. Has stemmed from having to recover from the brain damage that mold caused him when he was living in it. So mold affects so many more people than they realize. And depending on the levels of it, it might just be one of those reasons why you feel like your energy's gone to, you know, gone down 20, 30% or if you're in it really bad. Like you can be bedridden and have SIRS or mast cell activation syndrome and feel like just almost like you're dying. So. So mold's definitely something near and dear to my heart because I've suffered through it and I've coming out the other end of it now. But it takes a long time to get rid of it too, unfortunately. That's why I made a lot of the products in Level Up Health's range is specifically for me. And then if other people need it too, like the Hista Resist was my life jacket while I was in it. I often take it when I'm traveling. If I have a room with mold and I have a huge histamine reaction, I have that product in my shelf complete liver complex. I created it. It was the. It's the combination of every nutraceutical ingredient that I use when I was clearing it out of my system once I'd moved. So nac, with a upgraded form of NAC called NAC ethylesta N A C E T. That one gets into the brain, so that actually increases glutathione levels in your brain, which I found to be really, really beneficial for lifting the brain fog and, you know, helping my brain determine detox the mold toxins that got into it. What else did I take? I had to create a test booster because as a man and a woman too, like, it absolutely throws your hormones out of whack. And my testosterone dropped down to low 300, low 3 hundreds, high 2 hundreds, which as a man was not good. Especially one in my late 20s at the time when it happened. So I made that test natural testosterone booster to bring that back because it, you know, when a man has low testosterone, they don't really feel like a man. And they're their worst version of themselves. They're grumpy all the time, they're irritable, and there's just no motivation either, because low testosterone usually means low motivation. And I just felt like a guy who was getting fat and not motivated and it was horrible position to be in. So thankfully I'm out of that and have developed products to help people with mold illness. Essentially half of the range that I developed, even the, the weight, body composition one was to help me get rid of the fat that I gained when I was living in mole too. So. So level up and mast cell activation, mold illness people we are working to, I work together to create products for them. That's like a little side thing that not many people know about it. So. And then yeah, fix the gut after it. If gluten and glyphosate and and alcohol create punch holes in your gut. I always say that mold brings the Stanley knife, the box cutter and just rips it to, to shreds. So you, if you're taking GI repair or you're on a gut healing protocol and it's not, not resolving, not getting any better, definitely look to mold as well.
- [66:00]
B
I want to come back to cycling. So you had mentioned that you don't think that in the same way that if you had caffeine every day we would downregulate either the sensitivity of the receptor or the density of the receptors as a whole. So when we are taking peptides, whether it's. Well, the question will be oral or injectable, I would assume it's the same. What is a do we do? We do a cycle. If you know, we take it consistently for four weeks and then take a break. Is it, you know, couple days on, couple days off. How do we think about cycling it so that we don't change either the sensitivity of the receptor or the overall density of receptors that are available?
- [66:38]
A
Yeah. So I'm really conservative when I give this information out to a broad population. I say for every two months on, you'd want at least two weeks off. Like a one month to one week ratio. If you need to take it for three, four months, months consecutively, then take four months off at the end of it. There's no sort of. You have to do five days off followed by two. Just so long as you keep that sort of ratio of the 4 to 1, then I think that's a pretty conservative way of making sure you don't cause that receptor down regulation.
- [67:05]
B
So one month on, one week off. And how would that translate into. You said five days on, two days off. Is that if you're looking at it
- [67:13]
A
for a week, you can do that. You can, you can definitely do that on a week by week basis or you can just do the full month and then take a week on, week off after you've done the full month cycle. Or people with ibd, they're a huge portion of our customer base and now our following, they might need to do three months consecutively on it just to really bring down all those inflammatory markers. And there's a lot of healing that needs doing in the gut with IBDs, Crohn's and colitis for example. So three months on, maybe three weeks off at the end of the three month period. So there's no, you're not going to ruin those systems. Kind of like if you end up having way too much caffeine, yes, you've created the problem. But with, with, you know, just a bit of time off, eventually you'll be able to, you'll be able to get back to normal. Find your, find your baseline again.
- [67:57]
B
That's really nice too. I, I personally like five days on, two days off because the two days are typically the weekends when my routine is a little bit wonky. Anyway, it's not the same as it is during the week, but I, I would assume that just depending on the severity of the condition. You know, like you said, if it's an IBD or someone is really looking to help with, you know, know gut dysfunction, joint pain, arthralgia, etc, then maybe there is a longer protocol. But then you know, as you said on the other end of it, like if you're on it for four months, you're off it for four weeks or you're on it for three months, you're off it for three weeks on the end of it.
- [68:30]
A
So very strong caveat that really depends on the peptide you're taking too. Like a glp, one is not follow that dosing protocol. It hangs around for a whole week, roughly. That's why it's a week between it. That's why it's a pharmaceutical versus a natural thing. They modify GLP glucagon like peptide to last a whole week. Therefore it's a pharmaceutical. Depending on which ones you take, like bpc, kpv, a lot of most of the ones in level up health's range, they only last in circulation three to four hours before they're completely broken down and eliminated or just used as the amino acids of which they're built, the cascade effects last significantly longer, like 12 to up to 48 hours sometimes. So you don't need to worry about overdosing. From that perspective, they're incredibly safe because of how quickly they're broken down because they're natural. But yeah, the receptors themselves, they are going to be hit for three to four hours once those peptides are in circulation. So it's really, really conservative for me to be saying that you need to cycle them because you know, they're only, if you take it once a day, you're only really hitting Those receptors for 4 out of 24 hours, best case scenario. So I'm just being very conservative saying I don't want to cause issues, I don't want to cause harm. And cycling is a very simple thing you can do that realistically makes the product and the peptides last longer in your, in your cycle as well if you don't take every single day.
- [69:48]
B
So yeah, yeah, your, your philosophy is after my own heart. I tend to be very conservative. I tend to like to do enough, you know, it's like the minimum effective dose. Right. I like to do enough to elicit change, but I don't want to overdo it because I know that my tendency personally is to overdo it. So if it's like, if you gave me the option, I would work out 10 times a week in a seven day week. But I know that obviously I'm going to break my body down, I'm going to get injured. So you know, I'm, I'm, I'm more conservative there. So I do appreciate that if we are, if someone is listening and they're like, all right, I want to try this, maybe I want to try the oral route versus the, you know, the injectable route. Tell us about level up, where we can find the products and I will say I can, you know, as a personal endorsement, as a, you know, we talked about BPC157 because it is my favorite. It's something that I take, take almost all the time. And the GI Ultimate Repair, like those two products, for me, I mean, I don't know if they're your hero products, but for me they are your hero products. Those are two of the best formulated things that I have come across for GI health. I have certainly noticed a difference with the GI repair when I'm on it and then the BPC 157, I sort of take it, I take it semi regularly. So I'm trying to keep a couple of, you know, old injuries at bay. So I really, really do love it. It's fantastic. Plastic.
- [71:08]
A
Yeah, you, you hit the nail on the head there. Our flagships, they're our hero products. GI Ultimate GI Repair is the number one because it has four peptides. So anyone who's interested in trying oral peptides. You're basically covering all basis and you're trying them all in once and it's pretty much a no fail for people noticing benefits asterisks. Unless you're living in mold and you're, you know, in a relationship breakdown or something that's breaking your gut down faster than you know, the GI repair is able to sort of help fix makes it. BPC is just so commonly known. It's on the tongue of everyone in podcasting and even media. A lot of celebrities, the Kardashians or Zac Efron or whoever it is, everyone's taking BPC just for, you know, the, the tool, the Swiss army knife of effects that it has on the body, be it brain, be it gut, be it connective tissue, be it distal or local injuries. It's. It's phenomenal. And most people will get benefit from that one too. We have a lot more specialized ones like lorazatide. We have that as in GI repair but also as a standalone. This one's a lot more simple in that it just works on one mechanism, Zonulin. It antagonizes zonulin, prevents that leaky gut from getting worse. KBV standalone, that's like the anti mold peptide. We have that also. It, it's the anti mold peptide because it's in the shoemaker protocol if anyone in CERS or MCAS community should know who that is. But yeah, it's a fantastic anti inflammatory. We have TB500 as these fragments that work orally. Just so many different peptides. Any ones that we could make work orally? We do. And we have Neuropeptides as well as two products that utilize peptides for brain health. Neuroregenerate and Neutropept. I made them after the mold to try and get my brain back. And Nutripept is basically all the things I took to get my brain working again when I absolutely needed it to when I was brain fogged from all the molds. So yeah, that's, that's the range level up without the ease. LVL up health.com their website and Instagram and yeah, we have heaps of things and we're bringing out even more and expanding outside of the peptide realm. Unfortunately, because of the popularity of GLP1s, there's a lot of regulatory scrutiny and payment providers and challenges to serving these products. And frankly speaking, all of the, you know, we mentioned at the start of the show, all of these vendors coming along not doing things right are kind of ruining it for the ones who are doing it right as well. So, so expanding with products like Hormone Harmony, the liver complex, into the just nutraceutical and less in the peptide is sort of my goal for 2026.
- [73:35]
B
And do you deliberate? So obviously you deliver to the United States. Is there any countries that, like I was saying to you before, we primarily have an American audience, but certainly there are Canadians that are listening, there's Europeans that are listening, there's, you know, ocean, you know, all the commonwealth, anywhere that, where English is spoken. This is where, where you know, this podcast is. Is there any restrictions or places that you do not ship to?
- [73:58]
A
We as a rule ship everywhere and we put the onus on the individual to figure out if their country is going to seize it or impound it. Impounds the wrong word, but you know what I mean, Let it in or not. So Australia are really strict. I was an Australian, I'm now a New Zealander and they basically made it a prescription only medicine. So it's like a 50, 50 chance it'll arrive there. New Zealand's the same situation. Canada's better. America's fine because it's a local shipment for, for them. Different countries in Europe have different rules. Some are as strict as the Scandinavian countries, just not even allowing most supplements, let alone peptides. But then there's other ones that just don't care. So it's a really tricky thing. And you know, a quick Google or a ChatGPT before you order would be, would be called for, definitely. But yeah, the peptides unfortunately are this gray area thing from both. You know, they're not pharmaceutical, they're not naturopathic. But also who owns them.
- [74:49]
B
Right, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, okay, wonderful. Okay, so that's really good to know because we often get questions from our international audience like, I know this is such a great product, but it's only available in the United States. So it's good to know that you ship everywhere. But we, I think that there's a nice caveat there, like ChatGPT, you know, figuring out whether or not the country will, will let it in. I mean, sometimes, I mean Canada's pretty good. I would say sometimes, sometimes not.
- [75:15]
A
But I would say when there's no postal strikes. Yes.
- [75:17]
B
Yeah, when there's no postal strike, those strikes. God damn the postal strikes. But yeah, when there's no postal strikes, it's not a problem for the most part. And then I would say, well, I shouldn't comment, I shouldn't comment on Europe. There's a couple, there's. We've had people from different European countries that are like, no problem, I came. No problem. And then other ones that are like, you know, we can't get it here, we can't get it here in the UK or whatever.
- [75:36]
A
I'll go as far to say Austria almost criminally charge you I think for one of the peptides that we stock. So we've already blocked, that's like the only country we block in Europe. So yeah, just be a little bit careful with these. These aren't just like ordering off iHerb. These are different for depending on your own government. So that's like, yeah, definitely something you'd want to make sure you're doing. We, we again, we try and give the product to you. We will try, we will send it, but if anything happens, it's, it's kind of on you. Unless it's one of our mainstream non peptide based ones, which we know are fine. BPC is definitely on on governments and regulatory bodies like not the FDA but your country's equivalents list now, unfortunately.
- [76:14]
B
Okay, well, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I have learned a lot about ghk which is very exciting for me and even more about BPC157. I wasn't aware of all the things that we talked about with the dopamine and the gaba. So thank you so much for your time and your, your focus and, and thank you for putting these products out into the world.
- [76:34]
A
Thank you Stephanie. Thanks everyone for listening in and yeah, I hope everyone got value for from it.
- [76:41]
B
Hello my friends. Welcome to the afterparty where I tell you what I really think the good, the bad, the ugly about my conversation. And of course, in case you don't know what the after party is, this is my moniker for menopause because we're all going to get there if we are so lucky to be able to age into menopause. It's like the after party, right? And everybody wants to be invited to the after party. So here you are in the after party of the show and I have just finished recording with Kyle and we just went on this Peptide Nerd Safari masterclass and I think that this is, I think this is a really relevant topic now. I mean you really cannot get through. You know, I was just talking with my AV producer, you. We could not get through the World Series without having, you know, 30 Ozempic commercials. And you know, if you watch football or hockey or whatever, you know, whatever it is, you're getting all of these, you know, commercials on weight like the mounjaros and the Trezepatides and the Ozempic and ask your doctor. Not actually realizing that those are in fact fact derivatives of peptides as well. Like they've been pharmaceutically manipulated, certainly so that they last longer than it would in the human body. But peptides are everywhere. And so I think that having a grounding conversation around what are some of the, we'll call them gateway peptides that are going to serve most people and give people some benefit, I think is really useful. So personally, I really loved the conversation that we had around BPC157. As I mentioned the conversation, I've been aware of this for many, many years, maybe even decade, decades at this point. But really understanding the mechanism of action, I really loved when we were talking about increasing angiogenesis and fibroblastic growth factor and collagen synthesis. So having this really profound. I've always known it as a peptide that can positively influence joint health. But knowing, you know, I think he called it the Swiss army of peptides because it, it really just goes, it can help with brain health, it helps with gut health. If you actually look at Kyle Line, BPC 157 is literally in almost every one of his formulations that have peptides in them. So I thought that that was. I thought that that was really interesting as well. And then of course love language. You know, my second love after biomechanics and muscles and tendons and ligaments and joints, of course, is skin and hair and nails. So really had a wonderful understanding of both taking ghk, copper and hyaluronic acid internally in addition to, you know what I know to be true, when you put copper, ghk, copper peptide topically and hyaluronic acid topically, of course it helps with hydration and it helps with collagen synthesis, elastin synthesis. But it's really lovely to know that you can also take it internally and have it not only help with gut health because like he was saying, the endothelial lining is basically skin inside, but also that's going to, like locally will help the gut, but then sort of distally it'll get to the skin because of the profuse blood supply. So really, really love that.
- [79:40]
A
That.
- [79:40]
B
And then our conversation on GLP1s, man, you know, I. I can get a little bit of blowback sometimes for speaking my mind, and I will always speak my mind and also have a servant's heart while doing it. So if I'm wrong, I always want to hear why that is. And so I have in recent months talked about my concerns with Ozempic and some of the other, you know, GLP ones that maybe are available in when we're taking them without thinking about strength training and nutrition and exercise and yeah, totally got some blowback on that. But I think, you know, as I've said, like two truths can be true. Like you can take a peptide like a GLP one because of menopause or because of your situation or because you need to lose fat or whatever it is. And, and you also need to do some of the other things that I am huge proponents of that just simply, there will just never be anything that will equivocate to exercise point finale. Like there's just like full stop. So enjoyed our conversation on GLP1s. And also, oh my gosh, I almost smacked my forehead when he was like, you know, when you slow down the gastric emptying, especially if you're on a higher dose of some of these GLP1s, you're going to get this fermentation of bacteria because the food is not moving through the gut as quickly. So of course you're going to get bacterial overgrowth. So that leads to SIBO and sifo, like small intestinal, bacterial and fungal overgrowth, which are very complicated and often cause so much havoc on our digestive system, which changes in perimenopause. Anyway, like I've said very, you know, transparently, like I'm starting to notice some changes with, especially with the protein. Like, you know, I, I, I take in somewhere between 150 to 170 grams of protein a day and I need help. I now, because if I don't take digestive enzymes, if I'm not, you know, if I'm not taking things that are going to help with my digestion, you know, if I'm not taking probiotics and I'm not having the right foods, then yeah, there's some, there's some distension and there's some discomfort there. So which is a change, which is kind of a recent change for me. What else did I love? I loved. Actually, one of the things I love the most. He said it earlier on in the conversation. He said, oral peptides, most of them don't work and I'm in the business of oral peptides. So I was like, oh, I really like that honesty. You know, I really, I really do like it when people are not just, how do you say it? Like, just, I don't know what the right word is in English. It's, sorry, it's failing me Right now, this is like my perimenopause brain. But, you know, when you're just sort of like, selling your product without any regard for, like, maybe this isn't right for me. It's like, no, it's right for everyone. I can't stand when people do that. So I really loved how measured he was with that. So I really, really appreciated that about him. And I, you know, I learned a lot. I don't like Peptides are not my primary focus. I'm certainly lear learning alongside. I'm reading. I'm certainly going to be reading Picket and Vasquez, the paper that he mentioned. So I'm learning alongside with you so that I can, you know, experiment on myself and read the literature and also share with you some of the things that work for me and what don't work for me and what the community is talking about. So I hope that you also found this very valuable. If you did or didn't and why, please let me know in all the places because I look at all the comments. Comments and certainly take them to heart when warranted. So with that, I bid you adieu and we will see you next time. All right? All right. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and I must give you the obligatory legal and medical disclaimer here. This podcast, Better with Dr. Stephanie, is for general information only and the advice recommendations we discuss do not replace medicine, chiropractic or any other primary health care provider's advice, treatment or care in the consumption of this podcast. There is no doctor patient relationship that has been formed and the use and implementation of the information discussed are at the sole discretion of the listener. The information and opinions shared on this podcast are not intended to be a substitute for primary care diagnosis or treatment. In other words, guys, be smart about this. Take it with a grain of salt. Take this information to your primary healthcare provider and have a discussion with him or her to make the best choice. That is for you. Remember, I am a doctor, but I am not your doctor, and these conversations are meant for educational purposes only.
- [84:11]
A
Sat.