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There's this emerging market because there are so many of us who are in our late 30s, 40s, 50s, who were previously fit and had it all dialed in. And then suddenly all the things that work just stop working. What do you do then? I think this is where peptides enter the conversation. Your brain is wired for deception, but here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be rewritten. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen? Peptides are something that are now all over Instagram. And I think mostly what people hear about and immediately think about are things like semaglutide or Ozempic. But I just wanted to go on record here and say that there are so many different peptides and I think part of the Ozempic skinny culture that we've been pitched on Instagram, in particular with celebrity and Hollywood culture, it makes these seem like an inherently bad thing or like a cheat, something that's somehow hacking but not actually solving a problem. So I really felt called to do this episode because ironically, it is actually solving a root cause of the problem. And when I got in touch with some people that I know and trust, that kind of opened up my eyes to this. I went on a deep dive journey, as I do with trying to find out for myself. I've never been somebody who just kind of hear from one person be like, yeah, sure, sounds like a great idea, let's do it. I typically have to really dig into the data and research it myself so that I can figure out where I stand on the issue. So you do see both sides of the coin. People that are very pro peptide and then other people that are very anti and in fact use a lot of fear tactics around it. If you use Ozempic, you're going to go blind. Or if you use Ozempic, what was the other one? The blindness. And then the other one was like cancer growth and tumors. I think the reality is peptides are an emerging area of medtech. In many cases, they are not FDA regulated for human use. So obviously we're throwing that caveat out there. But I think this is where I go with it. And I think many people that follow the show are probably on board with me. Although I just went on my Facebook and somebody took the time to write me a bunch of really nasty messages because I was wearing a maha boat or maha hat on my boat. I think that's what they were so mad about. But they went on this whole rant about how disgusting A person I am because I was wearing a maha hat. I was on my boat, wasn't even thinking about it, was just wearing a hat because the sun was in my eyes. Happens to be a hat that I have. And fundamentally, yeah, I do think we need to make America healthy again. Does that mean that I personally ascribe to all of the people's belief systems that are on board with it? No. Do I think that some of it's a money making front? Yeah, for sure. But is it the best hope we've got right now? Probably also, yeah. Anyways, I think people that follow the show are generally on board with the idea that plot twist things can be FDA approved that are actually very bad for you and detrimental to your health. So I'm certainly not the type of person who puts too much stock in what big pharma or big academia tells me is safe because they've told us a lot of things were safe that are in fact clearly not safe. I'm not going to lie to you. There are aspects of some of the microdosing treatment protocols that we're talking about today that are of course they're legal, but they're not FDA approved for human use. But I think this is where I kind of extend the question to you, which is really a rhetorical one that's just meant for you to contemplate on your own, is how much does that really matter? How much does the FDA approving of it actually make you feel any sense of trust? Because for me, it's about 0%. Let's start off by discussing what is a peptide and also what is a micro dose versus a regular dose. Let's first start off here. Peptides are short chain amino acid sequences. Essentially these, when input into your body, help your body get the signals of what to do so that it starts to do these things for you. So think of it like a knock. So it's knocking on something that is dormant or not functioning correctly and it's giving it that knock. So it's like you probably need to kick into action and do this thing that you're not doing. When we're talking specifically about microdosing, microdosing is when we're talking about just a very specific, specific, lower than standard dose knock that is actually just telling your body that it should be doing something that it's currently either not doing at all or not doing enough of. Micro dosing by definition is taking a lower than standard dose of either some peptide or a GLP1 or a GIP receptor agonist. Like either semaglutide or Ozempic or Tirzepatide or Manjaro. And typically, if you're using a full dose, these are things that are typically FDA cleared for things like diabetes or obesity. But in clinical trials and research in creating these compounds, it's been discovered that they have a variety of other positive effects as well. The goal ultimately of these type of peptides is to maintain appetite, control weight loss. There's metabolic benefits here. And when you are focusing on a micro dose rather than a full dose, you're minimizing any possibility of side effects, but you're also ensuring that your body maintains its own GLP1 production. So you're not creating dependency. You're literally creating that knocking effect where it's knocking on something to show it, where a system is not in optimal function, where it may need more of something or may need to start creating something. So an effective microdose is typically less than 0.5 milligrams weekly if we're talking about semaglutide, and if we're talking about tirzepatide, it's even under 0.25 milligrams weekly. So the once a week dose that we're talking about, in many cases microdosing is occurring over the span of three to six months. I know what I'm currently doing is recommended at six months and then you take a month off and I'll be going through my whole protocol with you toward the end. And I think it is important that with anything that you're introducing to your body, there's a titration process. So you're starting starting off with something small, making sure that your body is doing well with it, and then slowly building up to whatever that typical micro dose would be. Microdoses minimize side effects by creating lower peaks that are going to reduce any of the GI side effects that can come when you're microdosing peptides that are like a GLP1 or a GIP and GLP1 agonist like tirzepatide. These are typically reasons that people may just kind of stop use because their guts tend to get a little bit dysregulated in the early phases. But if you're doing a microdosing protocol, this is far less likely to happen, especially if you're titrating. There's also a reduced risk of dependency. Like I said, we're knocking and we're helping the body get the signals for where it's not currently functioning optimally. But we're not Putting in so much that the body has to stop producing it on its own. Because really we want to support the body in being able to maintain this on the. On its own and actually restore the function rather than completely take over the function. And of, of course, if we're doing microdosing, typically this is far more cost effective than taking a big dose. Microdosing also gives you something called a training effect. The training effect actually is what helps your body self regulate. If we're looking at all of the data that's looking at microdosing protocols, of which I really love Dr. Tina's work. So Dr. Tina T Y N a shout out to Kira, who turned me on to Dr. Tina. She's fabulous and she does such a great job of really breaking down all of the science and the data. So obviously the microdosing side of this is something that currently the FDA has not touched for humans. But the idea is emerging that microdosing actually encourages metabolic and appetite regulation, but it also decreases inflammation markers, which for me is one of the primary reasons that I actually even started a peptide journey in the first place. I was diagnosed with lupus when I was 23, and for the better part of 23 to roughly 37, I had it very much under control by diet alone. After I had my last two babies, that was certainly not the case. Everything that worked for me before suddenly stopped working. And it didn't matter what I ate or how much I worked out or how much I restricted. I just literally kept gaining and gaining and gaining weight. And all of my previously under control lupus symptoms slowly started to creep back. Suddenly I was getting rashes, I was getting muscle spasms, my eye would start spasming or go blurry for weeks at a. Again, nothing that I had previously done that had worked beautifully was working. So eventually I got to a place where I got so frustrated, and I'm surely my husband was frustrated too, because you know when you try something and you get committed and you do kind of these short sprints of trying and nothing works. Eventually I started to go into just a little bit of apathy about the whole thing. And of course, my husband's wonderful, and he would just be like, honey, you look beautiful. I don't even know what you're talking about, but I'd be looking at pictures or videos and be like, you don't know what I'm talking about. Literally an entire podcast episode was had with my double chin. What do you mean you don't know? Like, how could you not see this? And I Think sometimes when you're in relationships and you watch somebody change slowly, it's like watching a baby become a toddler. Because you love them and because you're with them day to day, you don't notice these changes. But if you were to really go look at pictures, suddenly you're like, dang, you're right, I do have love goggles on. You've gained a lot of weight. So I think I got to this point where my husband was just like, you're so miserable, you have to do something. Diet's not working, working out's not working. We have to do something. It just so happens that I Kira put the bug in my ear about peptides when I was in Burlington for the Somatic Movement Practitioner graduation. And then I just really started to go down a rabbit hole. And again, a lot of what you see on Instagram is the very weight loss ozempic fear based messaging or you see kind of the muscle bros with their peptide stacking and it's like all these craz words. So you're like, what the hell are they talking about? And how do I know if I need that or not? So there's kind of these two camps like heavy weight loss and then obviously these muscle bro peptide stacking where you just immediately get the sense that it's a precursor to steroids. They want to take steroids, but this is the way to take steroids without taking steroids. Kind of leaves some of us health conscious women that are perimenopausal in this kind of middle group where we're like, that doesn't really appeal to me. But that's not necessarily what I'm going for either. Not bulking season for me. So what about me? And I do think that there's this emerging market because there are so many of us who are in our late 30s, 40s, 50s, who were previously fit and had it all dialed in and then suddenly all the things that work just stop working. What do you do then? I think this is where peptides enter the conversation as a problem solving tool for metabolic dysfunction but inflammation and autoimmune disease. So I'd like to really focus today's episode primarily on autoimmune disease. Although toward the end I will go through a variety of different peptide compounds and what they are for and how you can properly stack because there are certain ones that have certain actions that might not apply to you. So before you even consider starting a peptide journey, one of the things that is certainly worth taking a look at is that obviously like anything when something starts to blow up, there become some like shady black market dealers of peptides. And we certainly do not want to be in support of that because ultimately you are injecting something into your body. You do have to know where that came from and know that it came from a reputable source. So one of the things that has happened here is that compounding it at a compounding pharmacy is, that's not illegal. Although there are certain companies that created things like WeGovy or Ozempic that are certainly they're now engaged with the legal system, I think, to try to shut some of this down because essentially they have a patent for something. And my understanding of this is that the industry started to grow so fast that they created this temporary ability for compounding pharmacies and to help support them in manufacturing because it had grown faster than they could grow. So there was this temporary restriction lift on something that was a patented formula. And now it's kind of open to everybody. But now all these compounding formulas are obviously making it. A legitimate compounding pharmacy is considered a 503A or a 503B FDA registered facility. So you want to make sure that wherever you're sourcing them from, and I'm obviously going to share with you my source and how I do this and how I stack my protocol. But these are the only facilities that are going to be FDA registered and this means that they keep very strict laws around purity and stability protocols. So you definitely just hear me loud and clear. Do not go looking for the cheapest black market peptide products. That is a nightmare. Do not do that. You don't want to be injecting that into your body. So you do want to make sure that you're going to a reputable source. When we're looking at microdosing peptides, we do want to make sure that you are starting at a low dose and going slow. At the end of the episode, I will divulge every peptide that I'm on and what the stack is and what the titration is. But again, it is something that you want to go slow because we want to train the body. This is that training effect. We don't. If you're here listening, this isn't Hollywood. I want to get skinny for this event. This is. I want to heal my body at the root so that I can feel like myself again. Which means that you're not going to be doing it in one week or two weeks. This is something that we're also trying to look at with longevity. And I Think one of the coolest things about introducing peptides in this training effect is that you do put your body into this sort of synaptic plasticity. So it is so important that as you are engaging in a microdosing peptide journey that you are actively shifting certain habits around food and exercise. Because when you have these peptides going in, you have this increased ability to rewire. So whatever you are really focusing on when you start peptides, it's more likely to take root and become your new operating protocol. So this is something that I have noticed very quickly in my journey, things that if you caught the last episode on emotional eating, my entire awareness and relationship with food has wildly changed. My diet is so fuel based right now and it's not restrictive in that I feel like I'm lacking on something. But it's, it's organized, it's easy. I don't feel this push pull where I'm like, oh, I'm doing this. But I secretly wish I was eating a donut or had pizza. All of that is gone for me. I feel probably the best that I've ever felt since I was really in my, you know, late 20s, early 30s. So there is so much to be gained from going on a journey like this, but there are other counterparts that have to come with it. This isn't just like a, you're going to take the injection and obviously do nothing else different in your life and everything's going to be magically better. No, this is something that supports and gives you that knock, knock effect so that your body kind of wakes up to where it's out of balance or where it's not producing things correctly. And then you support it with the proper habits, the proper nutritional tweaks. And then literally things change so quick it's unbelievable. So let's start by going into what specifically is tirzepatide. Tirzepatide is the one that I am currently taking. It's a dual agonist peptide and it works on GLP1 receptors but also GIP receptors. So GLP1 is a glucagon like peptide 1 and a GIP is a glucose dependent insulinotropic polypeptide. These are incretin hormones which are naturally released from the gut in response to eating. Tirzepatide mimics them to influence insulin secretion, glucose metabolism, appetite and inflammation. So I just want to say when I tell you that all of my symptoms have shifted in a matter of three weeks, I mean literally all of them, every single one of them. And before I Go into exactly what the mechanisms of action are. For Tide, I just want to say I'm just going to be totally real with you. You guys know that I also own a business called Tight Club, which is a holistic body sculpting business. And I've been doing a lot of over the last year on my lymphatic system. I historically have very compromised detox pathways. This tends to be something that piggybacks with autoimmune dysfunction. So my lymphatic drainage is a total nightmare. I've done so many different things to try to support it. And if we go all the way back to the summer before last, I actually had. If any of you have followed my journey, I actually had amazing results. Taking happy juice from Amare for a long time. And I did. I, like, lost 19 pounds. I was feeling amazing. And that was all fine and good until I did a parasite cleanse. If I could go back in time and I would have been like, don't do it. It's not that parasite cleansing isn't good or should be done, but it is. My body could not handle this parasite cleanse and in particular, the way that it was done. So I had actually reversed a lot of these symptoms. I was feeling great, is finally starting to, like, lose some of this inflammation. Lo and behold, do this parasite cleansing. Because if I say I'm gonna do something, I really do it. I did it the whole way and the whole time, my husband, bless him, you know, he. At first. Because I did this in a group. So at first, in the parasite group, everyone's posting pictures of their parasites coming out, if you catch my drift. And he's like, oh, God, why is everyone posting these pictures? And I was like, I don't know. I'm like, checked out. I'm not even really in the group. So then, lo and behold, one day, he goes, babe, it happened. And I was like, what do you. What do you mean it happened? He's like, it happened. I now feel compelled to share my picture. And I was like, oh, my God. Meanwhile, I just want to say, obviously, tmi, I had none of this. So I kept thinking, like, why is everyone else doing this parasite cleanse? And literally they're passing all these crazy parasites. And then I got nothing. In fact, if anything, I could barely even go to the bathroom. Here's why. And you take, like, in these parasite cleanses, you're taking, like, binders and bowel movers and all these things. I got so backed up. And then I realized, like, I'm so Committed to doing this parasite cleanse. Because I committed to it. I said I was gonna do it, but I think I'm swelling. So then I start looking in the mirror and I'm like, oh my God, I'm like really swollen. And then I start to realize I'm so focused on what I committed to that I'm really kind of ignoring the subtle signs along the way that my body is in grave danger. And I'm not. Not. I'm like potentially killing parasites, but I'm not able to pass these things out of my body. So this starts this toxic inflammation overload that unfortunately chased me for about a year and a half. So a year and a half after this, like, every bit of progress that I'd made, I went completely backwards over this one damn parasite cleanse. Now let's go back to a few months ago and even like up to frankly, like three and a half weeks ago, which is crazy. I'm at a tight club session with Tiffany Gormley, who's amazing, and I realize I've got the early signs of lipedema and lymphedema. And I'm. This is somebody. I've been fit forever. Like, abs fit. Never had to worry about anything. Maybe not always having a six pack, but something six pack tangential. So for me to all of a sudden look at my body and be like, I literally have lipedema. How did we get here? I sought collecting on my thighs. I saw it collecting on my stomach, I saw it collecting on my arms. And I was like, what? Where did this come from? So I have her do a session on me. We're working on it. And I remember in that moment, like feeling like I was gonna break down and cry. Like something has to shift here. I'm. I'm at my wits end. If I keep just trying the tools that I have, this is going to keep getting worse. Because I had gotten to the place where, like, my legs had taken such a drastic turn with lipedema that it was felt like literally daily it was getting worse. So I finally pulled the trigger on tirzepatide and let me tell you, my legs look fabulous. I have abs again. Literally three weeks. All of that inflammation gone. Literally gone. Because here's the thing, and this was what was so frustrating. I wasn't overweight in terms of fat. Like, it was not fat. I was working out, I was eating healthy. There was no. I was in a calorie deficit. None of those things mattered. It was water retention inflammation. And the second I solved this underlying Issue, boom, gone. For so many of you, the issue is really not that you're fat. The issue is that you're inflamed and your body is not functioning the way that it should. So it really doesn't matter how much you work out or what you change in your food. Some of this is not going to go away unless you address that underlying mechanism. So Tirzepatite's mechanisms of action are that it enhances insulin secretion when glucose is present. It suppresses glucagon, which reduces your blood sugar levels. I'm going to give you a little hint on this. After the fact of something that did happen to me that I will pass on to you so it doesn't happen to you. It delays gastric emptying, which promotes. Promotes the feeling of feeling full. It reduces appetite through control of the central nervous system pathways. It improves insulin sensitivity and fat metabolism, and it decreases your inflammatory markers like CRP IL6 over time. I can't wait to redo my blood labs, because I'd had my labs done in February, March, and when I got them, it was a sad, sad day for me. I remember sitting next to my doctor and he was like, so, so, so much good news, but also some really bad news. Basically, like, all of the things that he thought he was looking for were not there, but a lot of the things that were there were really profoundly affecting me. One of the main ones was endotoxemia. So remember, let's go back to that initial scenario of where I do this parasite cleanse, but my drainage pathways are compromised. I basically have just been, like, living in my own poison for a long time because I actually am so inflamed that I can't actually detox myself. So one of the things that this has already done, if you've listened to some of my previous podcast episodes, the other thing that I'm absolutely in love with and raving about is my healing sauna that I have in my house. I was at Dave Asprey's biohacking conference as a speaker. On my way out of the conference one day, this adorable girl from Hawaii runs after me. She's like, oh, my God, my sister's your biggest fan. Please come over to my booth. So I go over to their booth, I check it out, and it is this sauna that's portable. It has little chair in it. It's kind of just like this little one, man, that kind of goes like this, and you zip into it. And when I tell you this sauna has changed my life, it's like profound. It's now something that I have been doing daily. And if you are like me, you are, I'm a busy girl, I have a lot of stuff going on. So for me to try to plan to go to a place that has a sauna that's never gonna be consistent, or every other sauna I've had, you've to turn it on like an hour to an hour and a half before you wanna get into it. Otherwise it's not even hot. And a lot of times I'm a mom of four, I run eight businesses, I don't have the ability to really plan that far in advance. If I have 15 or 20 minutes to get into the sauna, it's this random happenstance moment in a day that I have to seize the opportunity right away. And guess what? Now that I have healing sauna, I literally go there when I only have 15 minutes. It's only 15 minute cycle. You turn the timer on and it heats up immediately. Like from the second you zip in benefits are happening, you don't have to wait. It happens right in that 15 minute cycle. And when I first started, remember because I started this around the same time that I started my tirzepatite journey, I got in there and I could not sweat at all. Talk to the owner who's amazing and he was just like, listen, the more you do this and the more you focus on your detox pathways, you're going to start to sweat right away. But right now you're not sweating because your detox pathways are compromised. And I started to have this kind of burning sensation in my calves he was talking to me about, he's like, literally the ambient temperature isn't hot enough to burn your calves. So it's really just highlighting that those are areas where your circulation is compromised. So start the tazepatide, start doing healing sauna every day. Sure enough, like four to five days in, all of a sudden, two minutes in profuse sweating, no more burning sensation. And you guys, I'm the kind of person where I don't know if this happens to you, but my limbs, as I've gotten older, they get so cold and if I touch my skin, it'll stay white for a while. The blood flow is completely restricted and compromised. All of that gone in one week. Was it just the healing sauna? Was it just the tirzepatite? I think honestly it was a combo and it is something that is now my every single routine. Fifteen minutes in that puppy, I sweat all of a sudden. My lymph is not collecting. I actually like all those areas where I was having kind of those like lipedema spots gone. I'm like actually starting to get my muscle definition back. I was in the gym lifting yesterday and I was like, damn, girl, you've got abs and quads. Thank God. Because I was starting to think that maybe they would never come back ever again. I might just like be the Michelin man with lipedema for the rest of my life. So just want to emphasize if you go onto the show notes, it has the link for you to go to Healing sauna. My code, BG heal h e a l gives you 200 off if you put it on the Healing Saunas website. They do work with Klarna for payment plans. I'm telling you, this is the best sauna ever. I will never use anything else. I'm completely sold. I'm so glad that I bumped into them because it's totally life changing and I think the combination of doing that, doing things like body gua sha, which I'll also explain when I go through my stack at the end of the episode, and the tirzepatide seemingly overnight shift for me, which is incredible because I really was feeling like I might be stuck like this forever. So let's shift gears and talk specifically why tirzepatide helps with autoimmune disease. Because tirzepatide is a preferred treatment protocol over semaglutide for people that are struggling with inflammation and autoimmune disease because it works on both receptors, the GLP1 and the gipsy BE. So with autoimmune diseases, the reason tirzepatide is so profound is that it does lower chronic inflammation. And this can actually be seen in your blood markers, which is part of the reason I'm so excited I'm repeating my labs in three weeks. Everyone I know that has an autoimmune condition like I do, when they went to repeat their labs done, everything was back to normal. Everything was back at a normal range. So if you just think about it, if this was just simply something to like get skinny and wasn't actually treating the underlying factors, your lab shouldn't change. You should just be thin. But what's actually happening here is that all of the mechanisms are getting restored in your actual labs are showing either a positive trend or complete healing. This also improves your gut immune axis. So GLP1 has a protective effect on the lining and integrity of your gut. So this actually helps support and heal leaky gut. Your brain Isn't broken, it's running. An old code break method is a system that maps your neurological patterns, decodes your emotional distortions and rewires your behavior fast. No talk therapy spiral, no getting stuck in your feelings, just logic based rewiring. In 20 weeks or less. Head to breakmethod.com and see what your brain is really up to. I actually add in one other peptide that I'll talk about at the end that does also restore your gut lining because as you've heard me talk about on previous episodes, that is certainly something that has been compromised for me. Which is why the better part of my adult life I have not been able to eat any grains or gluten. Just like immediate problems, whether it's rashes, muscle spasms, migraines or blurry vision, I have an extremely compromised gut. So this does actually help repair that gut lining. It also reduces immune activation via fat loss. So visceral fat is metabolically active tissue and it actually gives you signals that if you're not decreasing that visceral fat, your inflammatory, your inflammatory signals are actually going to increase. So as soon as you start reducing visceral fat, all of your inflammatory signals start to decrease. It also stabilizes your glucose and your cortisol. I specifically call this one out because I did notice if I look back at the trends of when things with my body have gone really haywire, it almost always is tied to high stress, which ultimately can be linked back to high cortisol. So this actually is going to be working with your blood sugar swings which increase cortisol and it actually stabilizes your immune system. So this has profound effects on things like rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's and lupus. So, and I am now officially a living testament. Complete symptom reversal in three weeks. I literally just, I'm in the middle of my fourth week right now of tirzepatide. I also want to look at pcos. PCOS is so common these days and PCOS often gets misdiagnosed as something else. And PCOS I think has become a bit more of a broad label these days. Before, like I, I worked with a lot of clients in the nutritional and wellness space about 10 years ago. Back then to get diagnosed with PCOS there had to be very specific symptoms that had to do more with almost producing excess androgen hormones. So excess male hormones. Now it's become a little bit more of a broad strokes label, but it's affecting more women than ever. And lucky for you, tirzepatide Also supports healing from pcos. So women with picos typically experience insulin resistance, high androgens, irregular ovulation, weight gain and metabolic dysfunction. So tirzepatide, as we know improves insulin sensitivity, it promotes weight loss loss, regulates appetite and cravings, but it also supports your hormone rebalancing. So this actually supports estrogen to testosterone ratios, which actually can help restore your period regularity and fertility. So I say this one because I know so many women who have been struggling with PCOS and now may have waited toward the later years of their 30s to try to have kids. And now you're struggling with infertility. I think you know what might be a supportive tool? Telling you if I could shout it from the rooftops and tell everybody tirzepatide. Now I mentioned that there are also some other peptides that I've been stacking specifically to support my leaky gut. One of them is BPC157. So the full name of it is body protecting compound 157. So this is a 15amino acid peptide that is derived from gastric juice. It's remarkably stable and resistant to enzymatic breakdown. This helps repair tendons, muscles, ligaments, bone, GI tract, thank goodness, and even corneal and central nervous system tissues. So there are a ton of studies on this. Again, this is not something that the FDA regulates for human consumption, but you know how I and likely you feel about this. It also exhibits strong cytoprotective and anti inflammatory refactoring effects that may hold key benefits for multiple sclerosis and ulcerative colitis. Anytime tissue starts to get degraded, like with multiple sclerosis, it's the myelin sheath is what starts to get degraded. So any sort of cell or muscle sheath or bone or ligament will be supported by BPC157 to actually regrow one of the concerns about BPC157. And again, I have read a bunch of studies on this and I do not think that this is is. It's not something that I personally am worried about. From the studies that I've looked at, there is some concern that anything that helps growth potentially can prompt tumor growth because ultimately tumors are cells that don't stop growing. It's something that doesn't have a stop sequence. So I think the concern here is that if something supports growth, that it could potentially affect tumor growth. Like I said, there are a variety of studies that I encourage you to go look into on your own. But from what I have found, I don't find any of these studies That I have looked into alarming enough that this is not something that I would readily try. In fact, it does seem to be relatively benign and safe. So I have just started adding in BPC157, and I've also added in a few others that I'll go into in a moment. One of them that I have not yet added in, but I know many people that are adding this into their stack. In particular those who spend a lot of time in the gym that are focused more on muscle growth is CJC 1295 and epamorelin. These are growth hormone secretagogues. They are peptides, but they're typically used together to boost your natural growth hormone. And typically we're doing it this way because obviously we know people do take growth hormone and steroids. Those can elevate cortisol and prolactin. These two help support and stimulate growth hormone without elevating cortisol and prolactin, which are ultimately things that you don't want to do. This benefits you by supporting lean muscle mass, strength gains, lipolysis, so the actual breakdown of fat, and it improves your body composition. It also simultaneously enhances tissue repair, collagen production, joint recovery, sleep quality, and cognitive clarity. There are a lot of studies on this one as well, and anecdotally, these are all very much supportive of healing with, again, autoimmune, chronic disease, and in general, weight loss concerns. There's another peptide that I am really excited about that again, I haven't added into my stack yet because I'm trying to go very methodically through this. But. But as I've lost a lot of weight, I've been very aware that as I've aged, my skin elasticity has also been compromised. So this is something that I plan to start taking in about six weeks to help boost my skin elasticity. So this is ghkcu. It's a copper tripeptide. It's a naturally occurring tripeptide that chelates copper. It's found in plasma, saliva, and urine. And with natural aging, these levels in your body start to decline. So if we are adding this peptide in, we're stimulating collagen and elastin, which is ultimately why I want to do it, to boost my skin elasticity. It also helps with blood vessel and nerve growth, and it promotes skin repair and fresh matrix remodeling. So for somebody like me whose fascia and lymph has been severely damaged by years and years of chronic inflammation and weight gain, now as I'm starting to lose that weight Some of my actual matrix needs to be repaired. So whether it's collagen, fascia cells, other tissues, I need to return that collagen elasticity for my body to actually look the way it once did before I gained all of this weight and inflammation. So this one is in particularly used for cosmetic use. You are able to now also get over the counter peptides where this is something that's put in a cream or a serum, but it also is something that you can inject like all these other peptides that we're talking about. So let's take a look about overall concerns because I do want to set the record straight because I do think on Instagram there's a lot of back and forth of people again trying to lead with very fear based messages and then people that are obviously huge proponents without looking at any of the potential risks. So I just want to remind you these are not purely weight loss drugs. This is not about losing weight. Weight gain is often a byproduct of something else deeper, being broken or not functioning properly. So. So I would only recommend looking into peptides if you want to actually start to solve some of the underlying issues rather than just get skinny. I wouldn't ever do this just to get skinny. I want to actually see physical evidence that my biomarkers are changing, that my blood work looks healthier, that I physically feel better. Because to me being thin and fit is nothing if you feel like crap. So this should be more focused on wanting to physically feel better and heal your body from the inside out. And as a byproduct of that, finally look on the outside the way you want to feel on the inside. So if you are listening to this and you're like, I don't really need to lose weight, why should I do this? Main things that I would consider would be if you struggle with insulin sensitivity, that would be something worth taking a look at if you know that you're prone to inflammatory response. This is another thing that again, this isn't necessarily about weight loss, it's about addressing those underlying issues. Hormonal signaling. If your hormones are imbalanced, this is a great way to actually get your hormones rebalanced. Also, there are cardiovascular protective elements that have been part of these trials. It does actually start to protect different tissues in the body. So even at low doses, peptide use can provide stable energy, hormone balance and long term it supports healthy body composition. So I know many of you on Instagram here all the time now. It used to not necessarily be this front facing, but now it Seems like everyone is talking about how skeletal muscle is the number one signal of longevity. The more skeletal muscle you have, the more lean muscle mass you have, the longer, hypothetically you would live. So body composition really matters, and it shouldn't just matter from the perspective of vanity, body composition is ultimately a signal of what's happening underneath with your underlying mechanism. So we want to be getting to those underlying mechanisms rather than just focused on the physical results that you want to achieve. Because when you restore healthy function in the body, one of the outcomes of that should be that you start to look better. And certainly I can say that that is what happened to me. Some people have been kind of turned away because of how certain people have talked about the nausea and the side effects. I can say for sure the only time I ever experienced nausea was the very second day that I ever took my first dose. And I do think some of this was psychosomatic, because one of my mentors in this let me know, like, hey, you know, if you're gonna feel anything, it's probably only gonna be the. The first day. And part of me was like, oh, I wish I didn't hear that, because now I feel primed. So I can't really even to this day tell if I was primed to be nauseous that first day or if I truly was was nauseous that first day. But ultimately, that first day, I did experience some level of nausea. But from that first day after taking my first dose on, I have had so much energy. I've been going to the gym and lifting, and I've been doing lifts that are far heavier than I ever would have been years ago. And I feel amazing doing it. My joints don't hurt. My guts feel great. Maybe for the first time in, like, four years. I'm not perpetually bloated, which feels great. Being bloated is probably one of the worst feelings in the world, and that is just completely gone. I don't have cravings for food. I feel full. When I eat. I'm able to eat exactly what I need. Nothing more, nothing less. And I'm telling you, for the people that are afraid of the nausea, there are some simple ways to prevent this. And it is. You just don't want to go to that high dose right away. You want to titrate your way up, and you want to make sure that you are supporting with dietary goals with, you know, drinking a certain amount of water, electrolyte packets. But here's the other one that I think is super important and the type of Tirzepatide that I take is blended with B12. For this reason, if you blend with B12, it does buffer all the GI side effects. So I, the microdose that I take is tirzepatide and B12. And honestly, if you are like me and you've got an autoimmune condition, typically you're very deficient in B12 anyways. So B12 would have probably made me feel energized and great anyways. But even better that by pairing the B12 with the Tirzepatide I'm able to mitigate some of my GI side effects. Another thing that you hear that I think often is very fear mongering is that they cause muscle loss. It is true that if you take this medication, you do absolutely nothing. Yes, eventually it will start to eat away your muscle. But the whole idea here is that when you take this, this, you want to maintain proper protein intake and you want to go to the gym. So you want to maintain the skeletal muscle that you have and in fact continue to build, because you can continue to build muscle when you're microdosing Tirzepatite. And certainly I have, and I've seen many people that do, but you do have to be conscientious about your protein intake and making sure that you are strength training. So I have adopted both of those while taking Tirzepatide and I have noticed unbelievable results in a few weeks. Weeks. Another issue that people throw around on Instagram is obviously this idea of becoming dependent on it, which hypothetically, if you're micro dosing, that is exactly what we're trying to prevent. We're trying to train your body and you want to be doing this in cycles. So this isn't just something that you're going to be on at the same dose for the rest of your life. You want to cycle on and off to see what your body has kind of resolved on its own. So for example, with mine, I plan on doing this for six months and then taking a month off to see where my body resets back to. And then from there, if it feels like my body is still starting to pull back to some of those old symptom patterns, I would start off with maybe a quarter or half of the previous dose that I was on and keep moving from there. So ideally, when you're doing something like this, you, you do want to have phases where you start to understand what your body's new homeostasis is. You wouldn't want to just be on something like this this forever. But certainly you want to be on it long enough for you to actually create new neural pathways and new habits and new behaviors and reset your body to this new pattern and new rhythm. And from everything that I've talked about with people who are experts in the field, typically six months, especially in microdosing teres appetite is where you want to be. With that any less, your body is very likely to likely default back to old patterns. Another thing that you hear on Instagram all the time is that this is just a shortcut. You're just cheating. Oh, that's just Ozempic. This is actually quite the opposite of a shortcut because it's actually addressing the underlying issues. So this is something that is actually altering the mechanisms that are causing the outcome or output of weight gain or lipedema or cellulite or whatever the issue is. So it's not a shortcut. It's something that you're doing to address the root cause while also hopefully supporting yourself with nutritional and weightlifting goals that become daily habits. This is what I have been doing myself. So right now I am on a tirzepatide and B12 compound that I take once a week on Saturdays, first thing in the morning before I've eaten any food. And I started off at 25 units, so I think the full dose is 0.5 milligrams or micrograms. And I started off at 25 units. It tells you to take 50 units, but I started off off a little bit slower because I know that my body can be really sensitive to things. And I kept myself at 25 units for the first two weeks, and then I upped it to 50. So I've only been at that 50 unit, which is the full micro dose, for two weeks. And I've already lost literally 15 pounds. And all of my symptoms have turned around. So it literally, you know, I know there's no magic pill or magic injection, but certainly at this point, this feels like it, because every single symptom that I previously had is now gone. One thing I will remind you of, and I earmarked this earlier on in the episode. One of the things that I did experience is because I'm eating so clean now and I'm no longer having any sugar cravings. I did have this one day where all of a sudden I was overcome with intense anxiety and I was, like, sweating, and I was just like, what is wrong with me? And thankfully, angel, who is our video producer here, just got this prophetic hit and she's like, do you think it's low blood sugar. And I was like, oh, my God, maybe it is low blood sugar. And sure enough, I went and pounded a Gatorade and felt a million bucks. So now I've been paying attention to making sure that I am eating enough of foods that would support my blood sugar, because you can. Now that I'm so focused on being able to kind of meet my macro goals and it doesn't feel restrictive or challenging, it's actually easy. Now I'm realizing that I probably was spiking my blood sugar a lot. And with introducing a GLP1 and GIP, it's going to naturally lower that. So I am not eating enough. So it's lowering something where I'm likely not eating enough of that. So now in the morning, I'm drinking an electrolyte drink first thing in the morning, and then I'm having one in the late afternoon. And that has completely solved any of this problem. Keep in mind, a lot of electrolyte drinks that you might reach to don't actually have sugar in them. So make sure you pick something that has a good, healthy quality sugar. Another thing that I've done, if I don't have access to that is drinking some water with a little bit of real salt. Salt and a little bit of maple syrup that has done basically the same thing. So literally just by adding that a couple times a day, I've never had that again. It was one random day where surely my blood sugar was a total mess and I was not trending in a good direction. But as soon as angel called that out and I took care of it, I was like, oh, my God, I never would have thought of that. But that's what it was. So I'm taking those two right now. I also just started last week taking BPC157 to further support my leaky gut. Because at the end of the day, it would be great if I didn't have to eat crazy restrictive for the rest of my life. It would be great if I could actually have a bowl of white rice or eat sushi. Like, that would be great. I would love to be able to do that, just to be able to kind of live my life and be in the moment. But up until this point, I really can't do that without having a cascade effect of other symptoms. So I think where I'm at now is I'm starting to feel so good and regulated that if I can start to repair my gut in the background so that maybe one day if I want to have sushi, I Can have sushi. That sounds like a great idea because I would love to be able to regain that flexibility in my life because I have not had that virtually since I was 23. So. And I do, I do love the idea that, you know, with BPC157, I'm taking it three times a week. So you kind of space it out that, you know, with relatively. No, I don't, I don't think with that one I've had any side effects whatsoever. I'm little by little starting to notice like any of my joint little aches and pains literally gone. I, I heard this from people and I was like, really? I don't know, this sounds hard to believe, but literally gone. I tore both my ACLs when I was 19 years old and fairly, you know, most of my life I've had fairly painful knees that I just kind of dissociate from and try not to think about it. But this is really the first period of my adult life where my knees don't. So if something can one day help me eat a bowl of rice or sushi and make my knees not hurt, sign me up. So I ended up. I did a lot of research on different companies and I think those of you that know me know that I actually very much care about what I support, what I do. Which is why when I say I really think healing sauna is the future of saunas, I mean it. From the founders of the company being absolutely kind hearted, brilliant people to the product itself. Like, I would never recommend something that I don't personally use and love. I would just never do that. I have way too much moral conviction. Example would be like with Happy Juice. When it stopped working, I was like, yep, I don't know, it just stopped working for me. But I will say my entire process of starting to microdose peptides through this company which is called lemd. So it's E L L I E M D. I'm putting my link in the show notes. I would love to support you in your journey. Everyone that signs up and does the whatever protocol you pick, there's a variety of different protocols which I'll go through in a second. If you go to my link which is just lemd.com busygold you'll be able to pick any product that you want. They have amazing products too that even cross over into sexual hormones which I know for a lot of women that are in perimenopause, sometimes your libido just kind of drops out and you don't have it anymore. I would encourage you to to explore all their products. I can only attest for the ones that I have personally taken, which are the tirzepatide B12 microdose and also the BPC157. But I am adding in the copper peptide in about six to eight weeks because now that I have lost so much weight, I do really want to support that skin elasticity so that my body actually looks back to normal. Right. So that Humpty Dumpty is put back together again. Because I do feel like to some extent that's this journey that I've been on the last, you know, few weeks and even obviously the last four years is I just really got to a place where I didn't feel like myself in my body anymore and I hit a wall of trying everything that I knew and nothing was working. And then finally this worked. So if you have any of the symptoms like I've described or you feel like you've hit a wall, I would highly encourage you to take a look. LEMD is an unbelievable company. I've been in touch with the CEO. I love their business model. I love how they're supporting particularly women. Men are welcome too. But I do love that their business model and focus is very much centered around perimenopausal women who are having the same exact issues that I've been having. My process with them from start to finish was amazing. I will say my husband went a different route and he's been microdosing peptides more the like muscle bro peptides and all of his stuff came and he's sitting there like a chemist trying to like measure and mix things. All stressed out by it. Everything that you get from lemd, it comes out pre measured and ready to go. Single use needles for everything. It's so easy. And if those of you that are listening are afraid of needles, let me tell you, I don't like swallowing pills now that I have done the injections in my stomach. I would way rather take an injection in my stomach over swallowing a pill. That's how easy it is. It does not hurt. There's definitely a secret sauce to doing it. And obviously when you sign up on my account, the LEMD BusyGold, I will support you in your whole journey and I'll give you all my tips and tricks that worked for me including how to do your first injection. Because I will say that first time obviously is a little stressful. You have a lot of questions and I feel like if I had somebody just kind of preemptively answering these questions I might not have been stressed out that first time because it's really one of the easier things ever. It's such an easy delivery mechanism. So everything gets delivered to your door, everything's pre measured. They give you little single use alcohol packets for everything. And it literally just couldn't be easier. You get a three month supply, you put your two months just in the back of your closet. And whatever month you're using that vial, once it's open, you just have to keep it in the fridge, but it's in a childproof container. So I just keep that childproof container all the way in the back of the fridge. And to be honest, it's so childproof that I frankly could barely open it a few times until I realized there was a clear trick to it. And now it's no problem. So I'll also give you that trick. So if you've been struggling like I have been, I just want to say a lot of Instagram has made, I think some of the messaging around this feel like you're cheating or it's a hack. And I just want to say point blank, from digging into the research and taking it myself, that couldn't be more factually false. This is the first thing maybe in my entire lupus journey that has addressed some of these underlying symptoms in a way that I actually gives me hope that I may actually be able to lead a relatively normal life, because I've been able to mimic a relatively normal life through very restrictive dietary changes. But I have never been the kind of person that can just eat pizza and be like, cool. I know Britt was on here before. Britt's the skinny little ripped little thing and she could eat whatever she wants and she doesn't have the problems that I have. If I even looked at a glutenous pizza, I'd get fat and break out in a rat cash. So I don't want to live my life like that anymore. I would way rather heal some of the underlying issues that make it so that I can't do those things. So to me, this is almost a compliment to the previous episode that we did on emotional eating, because in some way it's shown me the subtle ways that I was still experiencing cravings and eating emotionally because it's gotten rid of that and now food really is just fuel. But it's also shown me a pathway to where I may actually be able to get myself back to a place of freedom where I don't have to be so restrictive about food that I can't just Live and be in the moment, because everything's about balance. And I think when I was at Dave Asprey's biohacking conference, one of the lectures that I gave was about how people can be so focused on trying to cheat death in the pursuit of longevity that they miss out on actually living their lives. And I do think that there's. There's some element here to that, which is, how much of your life are you trying to restrict and lock down on so that you can either look a certain way or feel a certain way? I think there's another pathway here to support the body and its underlying mechanism so that you can look good, feel good, and actually have a little bit of freedom, because that isn't available to everybody. There are, of course, those people that can do what they want, eat what they want, and feel and look great. But. But I, for one, have never been one of those people. And I'm starting to feel every day like that might be more and more possible. So if this episode spoke to you, and you know somebody who's been struggling with autoimmune or pcos or just perimenopause symptoms that they feel stuck, please send them this episode. I would love to support you. I am such a proponent of this. I can't even. I cannot even tell you how much better I feel. It almost brings tears to my eyes because I really was feeling completely at the end of my rope. And every time I looked in the mirror, I felt like crying. I hit a place where I was leading a training for one of our other companies for booty. And I came in in my PJs, and I went downstairs to go change, and I put on shorts and a sports bra, which, like, if you know me, I've lived my whole life in shorts and a sports bra. But I look in the mirror, just, like, catch one glance of myself leaving. And I'm not even a crier, you guys. I broke down in tears, and I was like, how can I? I can't go lead this training. Like. Like who? I can't lead anything. Why do I look like this? Who am I? And I literally felt like a stranger in my own body. And sometimes we have to come to a breaking point where we say, enough is enough. This is ridiculous. And I'm glad that I got to that breaking point so that I could dig more into the science and not the fear and not feeling like somehow I was, like, cheating the system by going to support my body with this. And I just can't even tell you it. Was the best decision that I have ever made and I'm loving the way I feel. And I will certainly be continuing to learn more and more about peptide microdosing, and I will certainly be continuing it in my own life. So I hope this episode helped uncover a little bit about what's going on here and perhaps opened your eyes to not the really divisive messaging around this, but what actions it can actually do that can profoundly impact some of the mechanisms in your body that are either failing or not functioning optimally. Because we weren't meant to have to live in a constant state of chronic disease and autoimmune issues, we can actually heal from the inside out and you're not cheating by finding a solution to the mechanism itself. So I really hope that I get the chance to support you in this journey. Hit me up on Instagram if you have questions. Please join our decoded community. I'll be hosting another Q and A there as well. Well, happy to answer any of your questions. And again, anyone who signs up on LEMD busygold to start your peptide journey, I will be supporting you personally and I would love to be included in what you're doing and help answer questions that I know I had along the way. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope this was eye opening and maybe shows you another side of peptides that isn't just the Hollywood skinny chic and how it can really benefit people who've been struggling with chronic sauna conditions. And I'm just so grateful for you guys spending the time with me. If you have any questions about either LAMD or healing sauna, reach out to me anytime. All of my codes and links for either of those two. Two things are in the show notes and the last thing I did say I would mention is I have been loving Body Gua Sha. It's something that we do naturally as part of the Tight club sequence, but I've added it into my nightly routine. So right now my routine is obviously, you know, I take my tirzepatide and B12 every Saturday morning and then basically three times a week I'm taking that BPC157. Also in the morning I just have it marked on my calendar. I don't like to take two injections in one day so I tried to segment them out. So I'm never taking my BPC on the same day that I take Tirzepatide and I use healing sauna every single night and when I get out of it I immediately put my body oil on. I do My body, Gua Sha, I get my legs, I lay down in my bed, you know, put the legs up so you can kind of scrape down like this because I don't know about you, but you know, when you get older, you tend to collect fluid in your legs. So I literally will lay flat, keep my legs straight up and I do my whole sequence that way. And I can't tell you, my legs finally look like my legs. You know, for a long time I was like known for my legs. And then I look at, look at my legs in the mirror and I'm like, who is this body? This is not mine. So it feels good to have my legs back. And I will say just that triad of the peptides, the healing sauna, to actually help support my lymphatic system and my mitochondrial health and obviously just my detox pathways. And then this body, Gua Sha, it just. My body has literally never felt better. So reminders, if you're starting, reach out to me. I want to support you. But 30 grams of protein every single meal, non negotiable. I don't care if it has to be a protein shake, but you have to get 30 grams of protein every single meal. And you need to do some sort of weightlifting or resistance training to maintain your muscle. I'm doing a weightlifting program right now that I'm absolutely in love with and I actually am going to reach out to this person to see if she wants to build some content for Booty tv because she's fabulous and her content right now is not the highest quality, but she's so talented. So I'll give you a little bit more information on that in a future episode of what I've been doing. But this is the first time I've actually really enjoyed weight training and a lot of her focus is on fixing rib cage flare, which you've ever seen me in any of the Booty workout videos. I have crazy rib cage flare, always have. I also have two extra floating ribs. So I've been really trying to refocus on my intercostals, my ribs and trying to kind of redraw my core muscles back in so that I have just a stronger foundation because I have a lot of hypermobility and then I've got a lot of areas that are over strengthened. So. So this routine has been amazing. I've been doing it three to four times a week and I'm just getting great results. So happy to share all the things. I'm not here to gatekeep, I'm here to pass them all on to you. So thank you for joining me for this episode. Please reach out anytime. I would love to support you in your journey and answer any questions that you have. And I will see you all next time. Bye. Your brain is wired for deception. But here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be rewritten. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen?