← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Awais Spall: The Real Reason Your Skin Lacks Radiance—And How to Fix It
00:59:51
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- [00:00]
Amitai Eshel
Foreign where we explore cutting edge strategies to help you achieve radiant, youthful skin. I'm your host, Amitai Eshel, and as always, we are here to simplify the science behind skin health, biohacking and beauty so you can look and feel your best. Today we have a special guest. Awais Spall is actually his second appearance here. Awais is a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and the founder of Integrative Oasis, where he combines ancient Ayurvedic principles with the latest biohacking technologies, including peptide therapy, to help his clients optimize their health and also their skin health. With a background in formulation chemistry and a deep knowledge of Ayurveda passed down through generation, he actually learned it from his grandfather. Awais has made it his mission to guide others through the power of peptides, bioregulators and personalized medicine. In today's episode, we are doing a deep dive into the fascinating world of peptides and how they can revolutionize your skin health. Awais will share his expertise on the different types of peptides, their regenerative properties, and how they can enhance your skin's youthful appearance from the inside out. Whether you're curious about the role of peptides in collagen production, healing or overall skin rejuvenation, you are in for quite a treat as always. This podcast is brought to you by Young Goose, a company that I co founded with my lovely wife Anastasia, which basically is the world's first biohacking skincare company. But really what it is, it is topical skin optimization. But in any case, get ready for a deep dive into how modern science meets ancient wisdom to optimize not just your skin, but your entire body as a whole. So let's get started. Okay, welcome again, away Spa, to the Biohacking Beauty podcast.
- [02:30]
Awais Spall
It's amazing to be here for a second time.
- [02:33]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, you know, it's. Not everyone gets the second time, but. But a ways. So as we discussed offline, we had an idea of doing something a little bit more constructive to our audience because you are a true wealth of knowledge through obviously your practice, Integrative Oasis. And you are the person that I send people to if they have questions about peptides, if they want, you know, if they, if they need any kind of health optimization that is accompanied by a trained professional. And what we wanted to do this time is kind of run through your top choices as far as like skin health, age reversal, whatever you want to call this. So I'll leave the stage to you and let's start a discussion around that.
- [03:22]
Awais Spall
Amazing so that's where all those smart people are coming from. I was wondering.
- [03:26]
Amitai Eshel
No, that's not the ones that I sent. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
- [03:31]
Awais Spall
So amazing. So, yeah, they appreciate that warm introduction. And yes, I'm. My practices focuses on a lot of functional medicine, integrative medicine really. I'm passionate about the microbiome and peptides and a lot of people have an interest in peptides and they want to do often peptide protocols and oftentimes it's just the most efficient way to do a lot of things clinically. So, yeah, I'm happy to start, start the discussion, first of all.
- [04:03]
Amitai Eshel
So let's start the discussion, I think, you know, around skin, Skin health and rejuvenation. Okay. I think we should kind of separate between, hey, what can I do that will improve the, like, the appearance of my skin, different types of appearances, you know, like color and texture, etc. And then there's also the, hey, I want to recover from, like, you know, whether it is a traumatic event or like, you know, a facelift, you know, any. A laser, whatever that is, how do I kind of maximize my results there? So maybe we should start like, as far as, like standalones, what are some of the things that you're aware of that within the, within the, you know, the peptide realm. And we can also talk about like, microbiome interactions with, with different things that you recommend that would really show difference in skin quality.
- [04:53]
Awais Spall
Right. So I think one thing I like to think about is what are the sort of clinical limitations to someone's skin health, Right? And what do I see clinically in my practice is a lot of hepatic stuff, a lot of liver issues leading to inflammation of the skin, leading to, you know, issues with fibroblast production, leading to issues with collagen synthesis. Right? So those are sort of clinical considerations that are really, really important that need to be resolved, right? Like someone can have Ehlers Danlos syndrome and have be hypermobile and the collagen can start to appear a certain, certain way. It can start to look very, very elastic and it can start to lose the rigidity and tightness that we want, right? In those types of situations, we really want to be targeted in our approach to figure out, well, what, what's causing that breakdown of collagen, right? Is it a microbe? Is it a toxin? Is it something else? Is it a, is it some sort of orthomolecular thing that we need to, to address? So it's all about figuring out like, like ruling those things out. First and kind of like, you know, we. We spoke about this the last time is really from a microbiome perspective, thinking inside out. So really starting with that core and understanding that we have to fix the roots of the tree first.
- [06:19]
Amitai Eshel
By the way, even if you talk about like the demand for collagen as a whole, because it is true to say, hey, you know, your. The cartilage in your knees, although, you know, demands collagen, it is a different type of collagen. The one that you have in the face. Gut, actually pretty similar, but gut, even like things like your eyes and your nails and whatever, they place a demand for the building blocks that your skin's collagen needs. You know, anything that places demand on vitamin C would. Would affect how collagen behaves and. And et cetera. But I think so. So to your point, first of all, we want to make sure that we are not kind of dividing our resources to a million different ways. Like if I have permeable gut or if I have you mentioned hypermobility, which. Which places a lot of demand on like collagen repair, et cetera, and scarring, obviously. And again, maybe like RA that's flaring up or something like that. All of those things would. Then your. Your body would prioritize those rather than just creating, you know, a beautiful, you know, skin texture or whatever.
- [07:26]
Awais Spall
Yeah, 100%. Those. Those root cause things are just super important. And trying to inject a ton of skin peptides or other peptides, it doesn't make sense when you have those. Another one to add to that. That list of clinical considerations that you provided could be like a high level of reactive oxygen species from viral disruption of some kind and long Covid. Exactly, exactly. And similarly, a vascular issue resulting in that. Right. Like a coagulopathy, a blood congestion or something like that.
- [08:02]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so let's say we ruled out chronic lingering conditions that are taxing the system. Let's say we ruled them out. I mean, I think this is a rabbit hole we can get into. Like, obviously you need to go to like an integrative, holistic, whatever you call it, like dental. Dental office. Need to make sure that, you know, we mentioned like, oxidative stress. We need to make sure, like, you know, we don't have like metals in our mouth, whatever. There are many things there that we want to make sure that they are aligned. You got to get your blood work down. Everything. We can talk about metabolomics, like later, which obviously we both. I think we should kind of have a podcast about Metabolomics separately. But let's say we ruled them out, that the person is living a healthy life, wellness oriented life. Not everything is perfect, but they're kind of on top of things, monitoring liver enzymes, whatever you want. Now what decisions can they make around, you know, around peptides, around things like that that are going to make a difference in their skin, obviously short term, but also long term. How do you, how do you build like a, like a peptide protocol for life that will provide optimal performance in your skin?
- [09:11]
Awais Spall
That. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think even with a question like that, there has to be a little bit of a precision medicine approach. Even if we're at the framework of the problems have been ruled out and, or healed and, or addressed, we still need to understand that person's unique genetic and genomic profile to see kind of what are the gaps that we can address and fill. Right. But that being said, now actually to pause on that, for some people, they're going to need a little bit more repair. Right. And certain genes that are related to collagen production and repair and you know, I've done a little bit of work with professional athletes and sometimes they'll burn through collagen really, really fast and it'll show up in their joint health. And we have to supplement higher levels of collagen, which isn't healthy or normal for the average person or the person who's able to sustain collagen production. Right. So. So in those situations, we may want to have something like TB500 to be supportive of them. Right. So. But I think for most people in general, the king of skincare peptides is ghk. Cu. That's GHK with copper. And I'm also. So I'd love to kind of talk a little bit about the biochemistry of that.
- [10:39]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:41]
Awais Spall
Really, really interesting. And I know, you know, your listeners are super into probably this peptide if they've heard of it. And I think it can be helpful to understand that biochemistry a little bit. And also what are the normal protocols and then what are the fringe rabbit hole protocols that are just ridiculous and insane? And I've seen, yes, I've seen some people like accelerate their skin.
- [11:08]
Amitai Eshel
Yes, yes, yes. I would say just the way that you said it, by the way, should intrigue people because you called it ghk. Yeah, you had a nice pause there and then you said cu. People don't realize that the peptide is ghk. You know what I'm saying? Like people don't realize that is a copper bound Peptide, because When people get IVs of it, they actually get only GHK, for example. Just as an example. So, yeah, let's get into that.
- [11:35]
Awais Spall
Absolutely. And the copper component is really important. There was a period of time where when peptides were prescribable and I was working with people that had prescriptions and then they couldn't, some of the pharmacies couldn't fill GHKC you, so they were filling GHK only without the copper bound. It's not the same. The results are not the same for skin healing, but by far not even comparable. So, you know, number one with GHKCU is it's, it's really helping with collagen production. It's in, it's activating TGF, transforming growth factor beta 1. And that can be a little bit confusing for some people who are coming from the mold world or the, the, the chronic inflammation inflammatory illness world. And they're like, wait a second, isn't that a bad thing? Because that's often measured to say that there's immune inflammation and. No, it's not there. We're looking at different sort of things when we're measuring that and we're talking about activating this, but it is, and it's still part of the immune system. It's an immunogenic response. And then Also along with TGF Beta 1, we're also improving fibroblast activity. Obviously, fibroblasts increase the extracellular matrix proteins like collagen and elastin. And also this is where the functional work is important, where we want to have that healthy extracellular matrix environment, which is a big topping talking point in integrative medicine. And you know, integrative medicine, adjacent biochemistry. But actually GHK can help to clean up that environment as well, the extracellular matrix environment. And then obviously there's the discussion around MMPs, the Matrix, Melano proteinases and wound repair. You know, we can, we can just go down the list. But another one that I think is really important, and especially right now in this age is a vegf, which is vascular endothelial growth factor and the supporting, in the production of nitric oxide.
- [13:42]
Amitai Eshel
Okay, that's a great, great, great point. Yeah, let's stop before we get into vasculature. Let's get, let's talk for a second about that intracellular matrix and why that is important because, and we see it, by the way, with resveratrol, sorry, with spermidine, a lot of what we need to do in medicine, and I'm sure people are sick of hearing that. I know I am, unfortunately, is get out of the way. Right. Let the body heal itself, et cetera. Although it is correct as a blanket statement, a lot of the times they get out of the way is like literally, you need to get out, you need to get hindering components out of the way. You need to distill a positive signal by reducing the negative signal. When there is a lot of interference and a lot of taxing on the system, the system is not going to ramp up its activity, so to speak. So maybe we can, you know, focus for a second and a half there on, on the extracellular matrix there.
- [14:42]
Awais Spall
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, what you just said around you, you framed the discussion around vitalism, essentially, which is that the human body, which is a belief and a debate, that is the human body 100% vital and able to repair itself or is the only thing that we're doing removing the bad stuff and just allowing it to heal.
- [15:03]
Amitai Eshel
Or we're Brian Johnson and we're saying the body's trying to kill itself, you know, which I obviously disagree with, but.
- [15:09]
Awais Spall
Yeah, exactly. So those are the two extremes. We'll call one vitalism. We'll call the other. Brian Johnson. Right. So in that sort of framing, I think a lot of integrative medicine was very near vitalism, close to almost a pure vitalism. But I think from what you just said there around the extracellular matrix, I think we're moving a little bit away from that. We're like, sometimes it just, it just doesn't happen. Right. And when we look at like the work of Robert Naviao around cellular metabolism. Cell danger response. Right. He's done a lot of work around mitochondria and how mitochondria response responds, has this CDR cell danger response that's triggering this broad cascade and sort of affecting energy on, on a very grand global level. When we look at some of that work, when we, we see the relationship between what's happening inside the cells and, and outside of the cells in that extracellular matrix space, we see that there's sometimes even with just glucose metabolism and sort of the new. So much research happening in cellular metabolism, where that space, that extracellular space can get kind of messy and it, it needs some more repair and that can sometimes affect directly endothelial health, you know.
- [16:32]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [16:32]
Awais Spall
And health.
- [16:34]
Amitai Eshel
Yes, yes. You're tempting me to go into vascular health because what you just described about the mitochondria, I call it splayed state right now, the terminology changed to an elongated Shape of the mitochondria. But I would say, you know, you mentioned MMPs, especially MMP2, which is driven by cortisol. And you mentioned glucose metabolism, which is, which is what drives glycation or advanced glycation end products. These two things in my opinion. First of all, these two things, even if we zoom out of the extracellular matrix, they are driven by our, by our connection with our human environment, by our perception. And obviously that's where we get to a more I would say spiritual discussion. But the discussion around mental health and obviously, obviously also don't consume sugar, blah, blah, blah. But also your mental health will also affect heavily your, your, your expression of ages of that of that metabolize of or that end products of sugar metabolism, of glucose metabolism. So although I just want to mention that this is something that obviously the better. I call it the American President effect, where American presidents age within four to eight years. If you know Donald Trump, they age like two decades. Right. And that is because of those type of stressors. That's really cool. But to connect to what you are saying is you mentioned mitochondrial state and then you mentioned again vasculature, which is crazy that you can connect the dots so well because what happens is when we have mitochondrial dysfunction, we cannot create nitric oxide properly. Actually we are dependent. So nitric oxide in the mitochondria is a byproduct of energy production when we cannot, or actually it's a negative byproduct. But when we cannot expel it, it binds it. Actually your body tries to use it like oxygen because it has oxygen in it, oxide. And we get more mitochondrial dysfunction. We actually create more free radicals, cellular death, et cetera. But at the end of the day, we cannot even expand and create blood vessels. So. And I think this is the next frontier of skin health alongside other systems. By the way, again, like you mentioned the liver, kidneys, etc. The health of your vasculature is the next frontier in the health of our supporting systems, let's say. And skin is one of them. So let's talk a little bit about GHKC and vasculature. How does it, aside from what we said right now, how does it. Again, how does it communicate directly with neovascularization or endothelial health?
- [19:21]
Awais Spall
Yeah, so what you just summarized really well there, and that could be a podcast in and of itself, cellular metabolism and the, and the relationship of our skin to cellular metabolism. And I mean there's. I almost wanted to go down the lactic acid and the new Research around lactate. Yes, yes, yes, like that rabbit hole. But we'll, we'll save that for another time. So as far as vasculature is concerned, angiogenesis is concerned. Copper peptides can stimulate veg f vascular endothelial growth factor. And notice how I said copper peptides. That copper is important. When we remove that, we remove that effect on vasculature and what that does is that allows better blood circulation to flow to the skin. And you know, so, and again we want to make sure that there is, we're reducing fibrin as we're doing this because alone GHK may not be anti fibrinolytic enough. So it may not be able to support that blood circulation enough. But when it is able to, when we reduce that fibrin and then support this, we can have that bet, we can improve circulation.
- [20:39]
Amitai Eshel
And then how would we, how would we do that? How would we reduce fibrin?
- [20:43]
Awais Spall
Fibrin, of course we want to address those. If, if there's a core issue where there is fibrin. Like for example women with PCOS often have higher levels of circulating fibrin and fibrin. Just to explain it for those that don't know it's a factor in the blood that can slow down healing. It's kind of, it has some clotting like effects. And from a peptide perspective one of the most efficient interventions is Thymosin Beta 4 or TB500. And the best way to actually stack that to reduce and impact fibrin is actually to take an oral fragment and the injectable at the same time. That's, that's been found to be the most effective in reducing fibrin.
- [21:30]
Amitai Eshel
I wonder, is there any research around microdosing GLP1s and fibrin?
- [21:34]
Awais Spall
I don't think there's, you know what, I can't speak on that because I don't know if the, the research on microdosing GLPS has just moved so quickly. But yeah, I'm not entirely sure if there's a research on that yet. But I wouldn't be surprised because I think some of those anti inflammatory pathways that we, some of that reduction of ros, I actually don't think we fully understand the pathways that are involved with GLPs in that microdose contact being so effective in like ROS and inflammation reduction. But I actually think it is quite possible that they may have a, a big impact especially again it's precision medicine. If that person would be benefiting from microdosing GLP anyways, right. Like, I would not benefit from microdosing GLPs. Right. I don't. That is not support that. GLP support is not something my body needs. I'm a slimmer guy who doesn't like, get that hungry very often. So that would just not be good for me. So. So, yeah, so that's kind of going back how fibrin would be addressed and then you really let GHK do its magic.
- [22:45]
Amitai Eshel
Okay. Yeah. One of the things we do topically to support that is actually use neuropeptides, which. Which have a feedback loop to reduce the static noise of inflammation and have been shown to reduce fibrin. For example, most people would know a peptide called Argirelin or hexapeptide 8. But although great, there is a lufacil, which is a different peptide, again, neural peptide still, which is stronger. And we actually use them in combination topically. I think without it, GHKCU is, is actually extremely overhyped. But topically, topically, I always say inject it, but that is. I love, I love your anecdote there. So what would be a substantiated protocol that you have seen used for and create results over and over and over again, like without people's. Because there are some wacky ideas around GHKs, but like what. What is the protocol that you have seen produce favorable results?
- [23:50]
Awais Spall
Totally. So some of the clinical protocols were dose kind of low and you know, some biohackers took it upon themselves to, if you dose a little bit higher and, and to help us discover a safety profile of dosing a little bit higher. So some of the protocols have been like 2 milligrams a day. But a lot of what I've seen is like 4 milligrams a day. It's pretty powerful and pretty effective for a normal person. The younger you are when you do it, the more you're going to notice it. You know, the 27 year olds, the 25 year olds I know that have done GHK, even between the 2 to 4 milligram range dose, in two to four weeks, everybody is like, what's going on? What have you done to your skin? It looks so hydrated, it looks so clear, it looks so buoyant, like there's something that's changed. And then when we go to someone who's in their 40s, in their 50s, it takes a little bit longer or a higher dose to get to that effectiveness. Now, I don't know what the term wacky or extreme means, but I think the protocol I'm about to share is kind of both wacky and extreme, but it works really, really well. And I'm sure you've heard of this, but it's the one milligram, ten times a day for five days. Right, like that, that classic stack. And I have had only a few people that I've worked with do that. And it's never something that I'm like, hey, you know, not that I'm ever, you know, giving medical advice, but it's never something I'm like, hey, go do this. You know, become a human pin cushion. Right? Yeah. But for the people, the few people that have had the discipline to inject themselves 10 times a day, it's pretty insane what happens in those five days. It's like, it almost feels like they, they shed a whole layer and their skin just becomes transformative. It looks like they did like a few rounds of Botox without effects. So it's, you know, so, so powerful. And then you follow that up for 2 milligrams for two weeks after that. And so then you have like in two to three weeks in like a 19 day protocol. And if you can stomach that, it's extremely efficient and effective.
- [26:17]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, definitely. That's kind of what I was wanting to talk about. And then are you doing a one to one ratio of, of rest basically, or how would you prevent the receptors from, from being detained, from being attenuate attenuation of response?
- [26:36]
Awais Spall
Absolutely. So for the, you know, 1 to 2 milligram dose ranges, they're usually like 30 days on, 60 days off, something like that. So for this, if you're gonna go this hard and this intense. My thing is you kind of want to go 60 days off after this because you have, you, you've used a lot of those receptors of, you know, maybe you got a lot out of it, maybe you had a movie role coming up and you wanted to look really fresh for that or a modeling shoot or some kind of a big interview or appearance or something. Right. So that's why we needed to speed it up. And then I do believe that, like 60 day rest period after that.
- [27:17]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, understood. What about, you know, there are some companies, like Level Up Health, I think they're called, that have oral G, they have other oral peptides, but specifically they have oral ghkcu. Is that effective? If so, would someone be able to use that interchangeably with the injection? How does that play into effective regimen?
- [27:44]
Awais Spall
You know, the, the oral can still have some fibroblast activity, but the Reese all The research I've seen on orals now, now there's some, there's some fascinating pro drugs that are being developed, right. Like for the listeners, you know, I can think of liposomes as a form of pro, a prodrug, right. Like an encapsulation where we were wrapping it in some kind of a lipid to increase absorption and, or sort of make the, make it a nano emulsion where it's absorbing through the mouth and the bloodstream. Right. And like, I don't know if we're allowed to, to say this but there's a very popular company that's going to be releasing liposomal peptide soon. I think we all know, a lot of us know who that company is and we'll see that in the market very, very soon. But as far as just the orals go, I find that they almost work differently and on different things and you know, I may use them clinically more for some of these things. So I think I have a hunch that oral increases superoxide dismutase more and peroxidase more and it has that sort of glutathione like antioxidant detox effect. So it's very effective as a combination anti inflammatory. But for our skin health, I just think that some of those, those change and those reactions are being used up in the gut and they're not really making it into that far.
- [29:19]
Amitai Eshel
That's what we see a lot with oral. Right. Like whatever you would want at the end of the day to affect soft tissue has almost always direct application to your gut and obviously vice versa. Like the king of, or the king of peptides. I know, I know. You know what I'm going to say. BPC 157, it's natural inhabited, if you would is your in is your bio like it is gut existing peptide that we are saying this is the signal in the gut to repair your gut lining. Let's see what happens when you inject it. And lo and behold, it also is a signal to repair other soft tissue.
- [29:56]
Awais Spall
Yeah, absolutely, yes, absolutely. It's, it's, yeah, it's gut versus injectable. It tends to have a very, very, a different effect. And I, and even for energy I find that has a different, a different level of effect when we do injectable. Now there's some people that have, I've, I've seen this argument that if you sort of prepare the receptors with injectable, can you then switch to orals and have an efficacious response? More efficacious than if you just started with the orals and, and there's some anecdotal data that seems to point in that direction, but I don't think we have enough data for that.
- [30:38]
Amitai Eshel
I think you're right. I think we're not there. And I would agree with you that I would be skeptical. Hey there.
- [30:51]
C
This is Amitai, co founder and CEO of Yungoos and host of the Biohacking Beauty podcast. I wanted to take a brief moment to share something really special with you, our dedicated listeners. At Young Goose. We've always been about more than just skin care. We are about cellular care. We believe in not just addressing the signs, but truly diving into the very source of skin aging. The reality is, as time goes on, our skin undergoes damage and this damage damage accumulates gradually leading to those signs of aging we all see and know very well. But what if we could hit the rewind button? What if we could delve deep, not into the layers of the skin, but into the life sustaining mechanisms of our skin cells? That's exactly what we're doing at Young Goose. We're pioneering a renaissance in skincare by employing principles from regenerative medicine. By rejuvenating and restoring the cellular functions, our products aim to rewind time, gifting your skin a youthful, vibrant glow. And for our Biohacking Beauty listeners, we have a special treat. Head over to Yongoos.com right now and use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first purchase purchase. Discover the magic of truly transformative skincare. And hey, because we value our returning customers just as much, use podcast five on your subsequent purchases to get 5% off. And the best part, the discount discount can be combined with subscriptions and our already discounted systems. So why wait? Dive deep into the realm of regenerative skincare with Young Goose and let your skin. Thank you. Remember, it's not just skin care, it's cellular care. And now back to our conversation.
- [32:56]
Amitai Eshel
Okay, so we talked about ghkc, which is. Which is obviously the lowest, the low hanging fruit here, but, but there are other peptides that are extremely, I mean, extreme. I don't know where to continue, to be honest, because I mean, let's just mention I think it's, it's a, it's worth a mention. Melanotan. I don't know if you think it's worth a mention, but it's, it is going to affect your skin.
- [33:19]
Awais Spall
Yeah, absolutely. I think a better transition to Melanotan is maybe starting with TB500 so we can a little Bit of a discussion around, what do you call it, this frame, the discussion around fibrous fibroblast and fibrin that we spoke about.
- [33:38]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [33:38]
Awais Spall
And then, and then we can talk about that. So I think with, with a TB500, one of the big thing that it's doing, if you just looked macroscopically, is again, it's working as an anti inflammatory. Well, how is it doing that? It's modulating pro inflammatory cytokines. Right. And we see pro inflammatory cytokines increase with age to some level. And that has an effect on skin. So of course that has a greater effect on irritated skin, like autoimmune skin conditions. And we also see it having an effect on fibroblasts. We see it helping the migration of carotenocytes. Again, I think one of the big things is that VEGF component and also the element with the collagen fibers as well and just supporting the rebuilding of collagen.
- [34:39]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. I wanted to get back to TV 500 and I think we should, when we talk about recovery from assault, I'm just going to call it assault.
- [34:47]
Awais Spall
Right.
- [34:47]
Amitai Eshel
But I completely agree with you. One of the interesting thing about TB500 is its ability to, I mean most of the peptides that we're going to be talking about, we really don't need to let, to let them know where we want results.
- [35:04]
Awais Spall
Right.
- [35:05]
Amitai Eshel
That's true for GHK. It's true for GHK, CU. It's true for TB500 or TB4 thymosine beta 4 thymosine beta 500. However, someone is going to be sourcing this now. So within that framework, we mentioned that what other peptides would you say are affecting our fiber or not even fibrin affecting our response to everyday collagen loss? I mean we could mention any type of growth hormone increasing peptide here, but I don't know if we have more specific ones we want to cover.
- [35:40]
Awais Spall
Yeah, absolutely. And I actually think from, you know, from TB500 to growth hormone is a good framing. And then we can go back to Melanotan because it's working on some of those really unique receptors. So, you know, a lot of people will go on growth hormone peptides not for their skin health, not for even thinking about their skin either to get stronger in the gym, to gain muscle, to restore energy. Right. Or to restore, help restore pituitary gland rhythms that were disrupted from even like sinus infections we know can disrupt pituitary gland rhythms.
- [36:19]
Amitai Eshel
So which on its own, which on its own is going to improve your skin because you're going to get better sleep.
- [36:24]
Awais Spall
What's that?
- [36:24]
Amitai Eshel
Which on its own, if nothing else, you're going to get great skin because you're going to get better sleep.
- [36:29]
Awais Spall
Absolutely.
- [36:30]
Amitai Eshel
Better circadian rhythm.
- [36:32]
Awais Spall
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, my first experience with like celmarel and acetate, like 12 years ago, I mean, I slept, I slept like nine, 10 hours a night. It was, it was insane. But it was restorative but, like, almost disruptive in some ways to sleep that much. But yeah, again, you know, by increasing the growth hormone secretions, it doesn't even matter what combo you're taking. Cjc, Eppo, Morellin, Tessa Morellin, Epamorellin combo. Right. We always want that combo in place. And those are the two combinations that I found to be most effective.
- [37:08]
Amitai Eshel
The old CJC and then Epamorelin or Tessamorelin.
- [37:11]
Awais Spall
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And the older thing that we used to say was Tesla Morellin helps decrease vascular, sorry, visceral adipose tissue VAT more effectively than the other combo. I don't necessarily think that's true. I think people will have a different response to different combos. I've responded better to CJC than Tessa Moralen. Right. And that might be because I don't really have much visceral adipose tissue. Right. I don't, I don't know why that is, but that just, that's just a pattern that I see. And, you know, growth hormone increases fibroblast activity. We see certain protein pathways like the GAK STAT pathway, which seems to have a regenerative effect for the skin. Right. And then we know that IGF1 is going to be regenerative, really, really important for its effect on tissue and the promotion of collagen and the proliferation of, of fibroblasts. And I think one of the components that just from, if, if we zoom back out from the science and just look at like. Well, what do people notice in their skin when they do three months of this GH secretion peptide blend? They'll often notice that their elasticity improves and the skin structure improves over that period of time. It looks a little bit tighter, right? It's like thicker.
- [38:40]
Amitai Eshel
Thicker maybe.
- [38:41]
Awais Spall
Absolutely. A little bit thicker, yeah.
- [38:44]
Amitai Eshel
And there is data that, you know, a lot of people ask me, obviously I have a lot of friends that are rah rah jiu jitsu guys. But then they come to me one on one and they're like, so I have wrinkles around my eyes. What are you, you know, what is a skin care for men? And I'm telling Them, you know, there is, it's the same thing if you, if anything, men have 25% on average, more collagen, which comes down to more androgens, basically.
- [39:14]
Awais Spall
Interesting.
- [39:16]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. But a lot of it is the, at the, at the end of the day, it is the kind of intersection between vasculature and anabolic state that you are in more often, the state of growth that you are in more often. So when you talk about gh, when we say gh, just as a side note, we're talking about growth hormone, we're not going to referencing GHKC. So GH and IGF1, which is maybe the, you know, the grandfather of things that are going to snap you into an anabolic, a building state. These two have to have an impact on skin thickness, cellular turnover, skin barrier integrity, et cetera.
- [39:58]
Awais Spall
Right, right, yeah, absolutely. I think that that data, that anecdotal data that you provided speaks for itself. I think sometimes, you know, growth hormone itself gets a bad rep through bodybuilding and people, you know, maybe some listeners may be like, I know some people that do a lot of growth hormone and we're not seeing that effect on their skin. Well, that's because they're hyper aging their skin with Trenbolone, you know, Cremobalone and some of these other anabolic steroids. So they're almost. And also I do think there is some dose dependency to that pathway that you just explained. And I think when we go above a certain dose with a GH peptide or you know, hgh, human growth hormone itself, like once we get above like the, the, the 5, 10, maybe 15 IUs, I think we start losing that elasticity in exchange for, you know, the, at the anabolic effects.
- [40:58]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, certainly. Great. So, so again, speaking on. And, and obviously there are other growth hormone secreting peptides, but I think you're right. I think for this discussion the most, the ones that people should be looking at are like cjc, Hypermorelin, slash, Tessa Morelin. And now we're going to talk about something that increases growth hormone as well, which is Melanotan.
- [41:23]
Awais Spall
Yes, absolutely.
- [41:25]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. So Melanotan and there are two types of melanotans. Right. So what is kind of the difference between like Melanotan one and Melanotan two?
- [41:34]
Awais Spall
Right, right. So one of them is historically gets you more tan than the other one. Right. And yeah, the, you know, they're also called Alpha msh, right. Alpha melanotype stimulating hormone. They're analogs of alpha melanotype stimulating hormone. And you know, it was famously said that one of them melanoten one gives you a ten and boners. Right?
- [41:59]
Amitai Eshel
Yes.
- [42:00]
Awais Spall
I remember when it was just becoming popular. You know, you would go to like the early peptide research conferences and you would see like that super jacked doctor that has like the weirdest tan. And that was like a trend. And they were, they were just like using a lot of, a lot of melanotan. Well, you know, Melanotan, it's binding to the MC1R receptor on the melanocytes which is located in the basal layer of the epidermis. It's a, it's a G protein coupled, coupled receptor and it leads to melanin production. So it also does have a really big effect on the immune system as well, like in that in between cascade. So you know, melanotan 2, which you know, in my experience is the, is the safer form of melanotan. I don't know if you would agree with that. Yeah, but it's in, in that cascade we see various immunologic effects and we obviously know that MSH as a hormone plays a really important role in inflammation. It's often discussed in the mold illness world as well. Right. I will often check MSH levels in people. And then there was certain theories floating around that for can you be more prone to certain types of inflammation if you have lighter skin because those pathways are not getting activated. And then without getting you the tanning effect can melanoten to be helpful. So I do think that there's, there are various ways that that can happen. But I think going back to the skin health, I think it's profoundly anti inflammatory and it's also helping to repair those melanocytes.
- [43:57]
Amitai Eshel
Yes. And now that is, that is an incredible point because obviously there has been a big discussion around zombie cells.
- [44:07]
Awais Spall
Right.
- [44:07]
Amitai Eshel
Or senescent cells. In the longevity anti aging skin health world, obviously there are companies dedicated to lowering zombie cells or senescent cells in the skin. We have had a product for a long time doing that. But what people don't know is that the number one cell that goes wrong and becomes senescent is actually your melanocytes. And that not only that, they are the most prolific at sending inflammatory signals throughout your system, whether it is to your immune system, which you've referenced a second ago, to your brain, to your other types of skin cells, like you mentioned fibroblasts, but other ones as well. And really the melanocytes are the big culprits in the zombie cell skin health discussion. And no one talks about it because Obviously they are not affected by reduction of superficial senescent cells. They, they are the way that we measure their impact on the skin as a whole in skin science is by things like tyrosinase or basically post production of molecules, post and pre the interaction with melanin or melanocytes. So that's just saying it is 100% very important. The health of your melanocytes directly correlates to the health of your skin and how it looks.
- [45:41]
Awais Spall
Absolutely. And I think one other thing to add to that discussion is what is the role of melanocytes in protecting against UV radiation? Right. You know, the best, you know, skin care, and I'm not sponsored by Yung Goose, but the best sun protection sunblock that I've ever used is the Young Goose sunblock by far. And I'm a darker skinned guy, so I see no white cast with that product. But for, from a UV radiation perspective, our melanocytes have a role. And if we think about just skin care as a whole, Brian Johnson is right that UV is probably one of the things that is aging our skin faster than a lot of other things. So it should be, should be addressed. So kind of the rebuilding of melanocytes through the MITF pathway and that signaling and then you know, TRP1, TRP2, those biochemical processes are really, really important because that's sort of your natural protection against that type of cellular stress and the various immune responses that can come from that cellular stress as well.
- [46:56]
Amitai Eshel
Yes, there is no such thing as a cellular, as a solar callus, unless you're talking about the increased expression of melanin. Anyone who is, who is talking, giving you some nonsense about the solar callus is misinterpreting our adaptation. But, and that is something that is important to understand is that the darker we are, we need to take care of other things like vitamin D synthesis, etc. So it's not, there's no, there's no perfect answer here like that. Let's be like as dark as we can because we're going to protect our skin. No, we then need more UV in order to generate, you know, in order to generate vitamin D3. So there is something to say about that.
- [47:43]
Awais Spall
Yeah, absolutely. And then. Yeah, and then, yeah, there's various other processes with the sunlight helping in the production of melatonin as well. Right? Yeah, the, actually it's not just the, the cholesterol, you know, vitamin D synthesis. It's also you need more sunlight for these various other mitochondrial and cellular processes as well. So then you end up at the same place. So you do just kind of need to protect your skin as well. But you know, in the, generate, in the, the support of our melanocytes by using something like melanotan to. Right. We can end up increasing that regeneration. We can end up repairing some of those cellular processes so that they may work better and then our skin can look better along with various other immune, positive immune effects as well.
- [48:39]
Amitai Eshel
Got it. Fantastic. I think because we're, we're, we were, we were mean, we were meaning to keep it short and as usual that's not my strong suit. But let's talk, let's ditch the discussion about I would say like insult driven repair and support. We'll do it, we'll do a follow up episode for that. Let's take a look at other ingredients, other components that you would think are positive as I would say standalone, I don't mean as in isolation. I mean without the need to introduce injury to the skin. What are some other peptides components that you see driving skin health?
- [49:19]
Awais Spall
Right, absolutely. So in that, like in that list of just top peptides for, for building that powerful skin stack, one I would add into that right afterwards in terms of efficacy is KpV. KpV is just three amino acids. Lysine, proline and valine. Right. It's a, it's a very small chain. It's very anti inflammatory. People know it's popular from a mast cell stabilization, histamine reduction perspective. Right. And when. And it kind of just stops there. It also has antifungal properties as well. And people often see it as a treatment peptide for you know, stabilizing mast cells and or you know, acute skin inflammation. But I love this discussion because we're talking about the biochemistry of salutogenesis. Right. Of optimization. Right. So what happens if someone wants to up, they have good skin and they take kpv. Right. So I'm an example of this. I have pretty good skin. I take care of my skin and I do all the protocols and what happens when I, someone like me takes kpv. So it's, it's blocking again those inflammatory cytokines. And even in that glutogenic state of optimization, it can be beneficial to block some of those very lightly block some of those inflammatory cytokines like nuclear factor kappa beta. And it also helps to support again keratinocyte migration, fibroblast activation. It improves the tight junctions between skin. And that tight junction obviously helps with what's called leaky skin. Right. And sort of skin permeability which is really, really important. And there's this whole other tangent I'm not going to go down, but I'm just going to tease a little bit because it's very, very relevant. And in the mold world, there's been a big discussion around this bacteria that's in water damaged buildings called actinobacteria or actinomyces. And there's some research that Dr. Richie Shoemaker is pointing towards where topically it can penetrate and enter the bloodstream and wow. To some crazy inflammatory cascades. And as this research is sort of just opening up, one of the first things I'm exploring, since I do end up doing a lot of work with people that are affected by mold and water damaged buildings, is, is the Pino process worsened when someone maybe has a presentation of leaky skin? Right. And the diagnostics for that I think are going to evolve. And I know that you're, you're cooking something up for, for that, you know, skin testing and you've been thinking about that. But yeah, hoping to repair that junction. And then this discussion around, like, well, how does something like kpv, is it just the immune cascade in which it's helping to repair that tight junction by removing those insults, or does it have to do with the way that it's helping to regulate macrophages and mast cells in releasing histamine? Or maybe is it even in its slight antifungal properties where it's sort of regulating or modulating the mycobiome and that's having an effect on the tight junctions of the skin? I'm not sure about, like, what those pathways are, but I just, I'm just seeing it work in that sense.
- [53:04]
Amitai Eshel
Well, I'll give two anecdotes about that. One is when I got my eyebrow completely opened up and went to the ER in like, I don't know, 11 at night and got it glued, like really badly. You recommended the VIP I ordered. Sorry, kpv. I ordered some KPV from you and we, we had it in a, in a nose spray, which I would spray actually on my, on my cut. And the results are ridiculously good. Like, no one even believes I had, like, I show photos of it and people cannot believe that. And that's something we're obviously going to discuss in our episode about assault mitigation. The other thing is shout out to Ben Greenfield emailing me about someone that has this steroid withdrawal. Steroid withdrawal, thank you very much. I wanted to say testosterone withdrawal. That would not have been the same thing. Steroid withdrawal and One of the recommendation was. Was kpv, right?
- [54:04]
Awais Spall
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It seems to, it seems to be very reparative for people dealing with steroid withdrawal. And just to, to discuss that a little bit because it's relevant. Steroid withdrawal is when you've been, you know, prescribed hydrocortisone or high dose budesonide or some other type of steroid either in your sinuses or your skin or oral and it's becoming very, very hard for you to detox and the skin becomes dependent on it, but it tends to degrade over time. So something that I've seen with the sinuses a lot more than with, with the skin because I don't, you know, I haven't seen a lot of those really severe skin clinical cases, but with the sinuses I have seen KPV reverses steroid.
- [54:51]
Amitai Eshel
Wow.
- [54:51]
Awais Spall
Which is just incredibly. That's a big, big, powerful result, you know, because this is where like we're not just talking about repairing and optimizing, we're talking about a very complex condition that it doesn't really have a lot of hope in through the conventional approaches. Because people, just a lot of these people, they, they, they live and they die with a steroid prescription for their entire life and the system gets weaker and they get prednisone face, Right. Moon face. The fat accumulates around the cheeks and the face gets bigger and they feel unattractive and they're putting on body fat and things like that. So. Yeah.
- [55:32]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So let's talk about honorable mentions, things that we, you know, we didn't get, didn't reach the top of the list, but we should mention them. What do you think?
- [55:44]
Awais Spall
Yeah, so one of them that I think we weren't able to talk about too much is, you know, BPC157 for skin. It's the king. You know, people forget about the king sometimes because they're doing the nuanced approaches. But in your stack, don't forget about BPC 157. It's always going to be powerful and helpful for just a multiple things and two pathways that it works on that maybe the other pathways, the other peptides don't is tumor necrosis factor alpha and interleukin 6, which we know is very relevant. Both of those are very, very relevant for various autoimmune conditions. And then some other ones that we didn't get to talk about too much is Vip, which has, which again is used in the chronic illness world quite a bit for stabilizing the immune system and helping Actually to regrow brains and something that I've been really, really interested in lately, looking at these biochemular biochemical pathways is top down processes. Right. Like of course I'm a big microbiome person and the microbiome influence influences the brain. Right. The brain also influences the microbiome. But there's a lot of processes, you know, and earlier in this discussion that you mentioned that are top down their brain to body. Right. So I wonder with vip it's, it's, it almost has like a niacin like effect and a flushing effect and possibly a detox effect. But, but I've seen some data with brain MRIs that VIP can help reverse gray matter atrophy.
- [57:27]
Amitai Eshel
Wow.
- [57:28]
Awais Spall
Which obviously is just huge because then where someone could develop early neurodegeneration when they have gray matter atrophy. And this is very, very common right now with a lot of the auto things people are dealing with and VIP helping to regrow that does that powerful brain signaling effect downstream through HPAT activation and regulation help the skin and help the skin repair tight junctions and have better signaling and automatically naturally through T regulatory cells do some of these things that these peptides are doing. Right.
- [58:07]
Amitai Eshel
I'm sure, I'm sure it does. I mean one of the things, and we'll finish with that. But, but one of the things that I want I try to talk about as much as I can about you know, taking care of your skin and again going back to senescent cells is that senescent cells in the skin, whether it is, you know, immune cells, different skin cells. We mentioned melanocytes, what they do actually they hijack the skin brain axis and affect your HPA teeth. So hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access there. So and then obviously we get into all of the cortisol effect and everything that we talked about before. But listen, always we are going to immediately when this is done, let's schedule another podcast at least another one because we have a lot to go over and I adore you, I adore the work that you are doing and I want people to get as much of you as, as I am allowed to provide.
- [59:10]
Awais Spall
So beautiful. It's always so fun discussing with you. Amitay. You are just, just the, the, the way you go into the science and, and the biochemistry. You know, I think it provides such a fun discussion for everyone. So always so much fun to be here and looking forward to the next time.
- [59:27]
Amitai Eshel
Amen. Thank you. Thank you guys. Bye.
- [59:32]
Awais Spall
It.