Peptides Unlocked: Weight Loss, Muscle Growth, Libido, Mood, Longevity & Chronic Inflammation – with Dr. Lori Gerber & Ryan Hewitt (Weaponized Body)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: There we go. All right, we are live. So let's see how many people jump on here. We'll get started right away. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Sounds good. All right. [00:00:12] Speaker A: And then people will just kind of join as we go. All right, Lori, we're going to get started. So, Laurie, I want to welcome you to this webinar this evening on the future of modern healthcare and performance, specifically as it pertains to peptides. I want to welcome everybody who's jumping on live. With us, we have Dr. Lori Gerber from my. Dr. Lori Integrative Medicine. And I'm excited to have Lori on tonight because of this topic, peptides. And Lori told me that she's been actually using peptides personally for eight years, so well before most of us even heard the word peptide. And she's been educating about peptides all over since the year 2020. So Laurie is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to this topic, which is why I wanted to have her on this webinar today, because there's all kinds of questions, there's all kinds of misinformation, disinformation, great information. And I just wanted to help distill that for, you know, clients, practitioners, just everybody that really is intrigued and interested in this topic. So, Dr. Lori Gerber, welcome to the webinar. [00:01:24] Speaker B: Thanks so much. I'm so glad to be here. Another day of education, right? [00:01:29] Speaker A: No doubt. Can you just start with, like, real quick, like a minute or two of just like, who are you and, you know, what's. Why are you passionate about peptides? And what's. What's one of the big things you want people to take away today? [00:01:43] Speaker B: So I think, like most of us in this industry, we usually started out because we had something wrong with us or we just had a passion. So I've been practicing functional medicine now for almost 15 years. And when I came out and started family practice for a year, I realized that it just wasn't for me. And I knew that going in, I think. But I never really found a path that took me towards healing that matched. So I ended up in this functional medicine space, really, because I got sick. I became allergic to a ton of thin skin, fruits and all kinds of issues. Autoimmune, thyroid, and really just found answers in a 4M actually integrative health. And that's really what led me down this path of peptides eventually because I was constantly looking for the newest and the greatest. And 15 years later, about 10 years ago, I think is really eight to 10 years ago, I really started getting involved in peptides and Getting advanced training on them and then obviously they've blown up over the last year and two years or so, here we are. [00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt I resonate with that. I mean, the reason I got into, you know, peptides, regenerative medicine and hormone optimization was my own journey as well. Just with my health and how complimentary it was with some of the, if you want to call them alternative practices or you know, with, with all of the, I guess you could say like corrective work that I do. So, so let's start with big picture. Lori, could you just share with people like, what are peptides like in the simplest terms? Like, and how do they work in the human body? [00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean, peptides are pretty easy to explain. I call them messengers or sometimes light switches. They're really just little pokes in the body. So they're small chains of amino acids which are the building blocks of protein. So if we think about proteins as being these long, itty bit like long chains, peptides are tiny ones, just tiny little chunks of the peptide and they're, they're messengers. They literally just tell the body what to do. So they don't really replace anything, they don't put anything back. They really just force the body to do stuff and they remind it how to function optimally. So I, in my patient population, I usually liken it to a light switch. Either turning on something, turning off something, or maybe the dimmer, you're nudging it. And that's really how they work. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Not placement. [00:04:00] Speaker A: I love that. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:02] Speaker A: And I think that's what a lot of people are worried about because they think about like, oh my God, if I take these, do I have to take them the rest of my life? Right. But it's not that as you're saying, they're, they replicate natural signaling, like to stimulate or to dampen, like you'd said. So why are peptides all of a sudden everywhere? Like, what caused this big sort of explosion of, you know, this concept of peptides? [00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think like most things in, I guess in life in general, I think social media just made it explode, to be honest. When things work or when people feel better, it tends to make it to public knowledge social media, in our case these days. So I honestly think that is the main reason that it's finally blown up. I mean, they've been around for a really long time. Right. The Russians made them in the, during the Cold War and they, we knew they worked for a long time. It's just manufacturing them and getting them to the mainstream population has always been an issue because they're not technically patented. Right. You can't put a label on these and sell them usually with pharma. So they're helping people, they're feeling better, they're leaning out. So the hype is there obviously, but the science is actually real. Like I feel like the hype just brought it to the forefront. [00:05:17] Speaker A: So you're saying you don't think this is like a fad or a trend? You're saying this is genuinely like the future of healthcare? [00:05:22] Speaker B: Oh, it's 100% the future of healthcare. There's no doubt in my mind that these Peptides and what they're able to accomplish by literally turning things on and off, I mean that's what we all strive to do with our genetics. Right. We want to turn things on and off. [00:05:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:36] Speaker B: So yeah, I don't think it's a fun. [00:05:38] Speaker A: Yes, you touched on something about like, you know, manufacturing and all that, the difficulties of getting that to the mainstream. So maybe touch on, like why aren't people hearing this from their general practitioner or primary care physician? Like is it lack of education or like lack of insurance driven like awareness of this? What, what is it? [00:05:59] Speaker B: Probably all the above, you know, in reality. And I was a primary care physician so I feel like I can speak pretty freely about the constraints put on you by in your PCP world and you have a certain number of minutes to see a patient, you are very limited by the information you're allowed to provide. Right. Because you know, you can't provide information that might not be FDA approved and that might not be on the guidelines of what you do according to your like family practice board, if you will, for fear of being shut down, really. So, you know, that is, I think the primary reason. I think at this point a lot of providers know about it, they just don't have the education, which is why I teach a lot of it. And they don't have the time to go into with patients nor do they really get reimbursed. Insurance companies are not going to pay you for your time about talking with Peptide. So that's the unfortunate part about insurance driven health care and maybe also maybe the litigation system in our country and how really we can't. It's not really about what's best for the patient all the time. It's what's making the most money and what falls within the box. [00:07:06] Speaker A: Right, Follow the money. [00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that should be a big theme tonight, I think. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. We don't have to get Too deep into that. [00:07:13] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. That'll be private conversation. [00:07:15] Speaker A: I know. I'm curious to know, like, do you foresee in the future this being like, like standard of care and peptides will be part of like routine medical practicing or is this always going to be something you're going to have to seek outside of, like your, your general practitioner's counsel? [00:07:35] Speaker B: So I actually fear the day that it becomes general medicine, to be honest, primarily because of the cost associated when it becomes a prescriptive and it become taken over by pharma. I think, like most things, a lot of these will become mainstream. For example, GLP1s. Right. We know, we know those brands of diet medications. And the problem when GLP1s came out was the price was prohibitive and the dosing was extremely stringent. Right. So you couldn't adjust dosing because people are afraid of giving patients control. Really. So that's my fear, is that some of these will. They know they work and they will get put to the market, tested, FDA approved and then put into a pharma. I do think it's coming. I don't think it's coming with all of them. There's so many and they are coming so rapidly. I don't think it will ever be all mainstream. [00:08:35] Speaker A: Sure. [00:08:35] Speaker B: And AI has come up with so many more. It's crazy. So I don't think that it will ever be completely mainstream. I think it's gonna be trying to get ahead of the curve, to be honest. [00:08:46] Speaker A: I've heard there are some clinical trials happening, if I'm not mistaken, with things like BPC157, TB500. Yeah, so, yeah, I think. [00:08:54] Speaker B: And their IRB sanctions, I mean, they're, you know, official studies. So you have writings on the wall, right? [00:09:00] Speaker A: No doubt. [00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:02] Speaker A: So I want to get into the exciting stuff, you know, talking about like specific peptides and like some of your favorites and my favorites and ones that maybe you've experimented with and have a lot of clinical experience with, you know, seeing patients and you know, we talked beforehand about some categories, so maybe I'll introduce some categories one by one and we'll talk about, you know, your favorite ones and you know, clinical applications and such. So let's talk about brain and cognitive health. You know, I'm very interested in this being a chiropractor. A lot of people don't realize that a lot of the benefits of chiropractic aren't just musculoskeletal back and neck pain. There's actually a lot of really Great benefits and research backed benefits of chiropractic and optimizing the nervous system. So you know brain and cognitive health is something that I you know am fascinated by. So what I want to know is like which, which peptides are improving cognition, focus, memory and just like overall brain performance that you're seeing. [00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah, so there's actually there's a few and when we talk about cognition and maybe attention or regenerating nervous tissue, there's two that come to my mind most and cerebralysin is one of them. Just like it sounds like cerebralysin, you're basically repairing the brain. You know, you're creating like a repair signal and you're supporting those neurons under stress. So a lot of our concussive patients or neurodegenerative so like nor degenerative diseases. So I'm sure you get a lot of those Ryan age related memory stuff. I do really like cerebralysin for that. It also helps with mitochondria so just the energies of the cell, you know, just making sure it works. Well the other one is dihexa and dihexa again post concussive is probably one of the biggest things that I use this for. So you know even in I've actually used it in kids as well. But learning issues, memory issues, brain fog, your women that are menopausal that just progesterone just isn't enough. I use Dihexa with quite a bit. And the other two that I'll talk about really briefly is C Max and Salanq. I love to call them my double S's but think about them like one for anxiety. So Celanx is for anxiety and C Max is for like energy and focus. So if you can just make them really, really simple. C Max again great for that menopausal female that might have like brain fog and or men actually low T men not getting that brain clarity that they need out of their testosterone. I really like C max. Attention, learning, ADHD, working memory, cell anch, almost 100 anxiety, generalized anxiety, acute anxiety. You can use it in a pinch. Like you can use it if you're having an anxiety attack. It works pretty quickly or it can be taken preventatively. I use it for a lot of my women at night too to help sleep. Overactive brain, Very cool. Yeah. So those four in really basic terms I would think of two more like brain and recovery and the other two more like your anxiety and focus. [00:12:10] Speaker A: And how are these, these ones specifically out of curiosity, how are these administered? Are they like oral, injectable Inhaled. How are they administered? [00:12:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so Celanx and C Max both come as an injectable. There used to be nose sprays out there, but unfortunately right now nose sprays are kind of off the table for the most part. For Cel Ank, which used to be a really good one, especially for acute anxiety. I'm hoping that comes back. The reason it's off the table is it really penetrates the blood brain barrier, which is great. Right. But, you know, right now it's not available to us. So the other two are mostly. Well, cerebral lysine is injectable and the Dihexa is usually capsule. So the nice thing about Dihexa is it can be taken as a capsule. I have seen it as an injectable as well, but I actually do it as a combo capsule. Most commonly, a little bit of everything. I know. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And those are ones you don't hear about as much. I would say you're hearing about more of the, like, I guess, the healing peptides, the weight loss peptides. But these are interesting. You don't hear a lot about these, but very exciting stuff when it comes to that, like adhd. I see a lot of people with that. Post concussion is really exciting to talk about too, because I can't tell you how many post concussive patients that are struggling still after the fact with things like brain fog, headaches, inability to concentrate, focus, things like that. [00:13:40] Speaker B: And if you get them early, like, the neuroplasticity is real. Right. So you can really start to work on that. And I love selling. I mean, cellink, to me, has been one of the best drugs to get people off of, like, their anxiety meds, you know, their benzos. It's been. It's been pretty spectacular. I have to say. I do miss the nose spray because it was a nice, easy, you know, adjunct. But the women that know that it works and have kind of got an idea of how often they need it are really able to still do the injectable. So it's successful. [00:14:09] Speaker A: So it sounds like. Yeah. So some of them are almost like prophylactic and then others are like actual, like, as needed too, huh? [00:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, you can do it. A little bit of both. Pretty cool. [00:14:21] Speaker A: What about body composition and physical performance? So obviously, like, there's a lot of people that are excited about or want to know more about, like, fat loss, muscle building, performance enhancements. This is how my foray into peptides was a lot of stuff. Go figure. Yeah, I treat myself like a. Like a lab rat when it comes to this stuff. But yeah. What are, what are your favorite ones? I think we're going to spend a little bit of time here because this one is extensive. But let's talk about like fat loss first. Like what are, what are some of your go to fat loss peptides for patients? [00:14:56] Speaker B: Honestly, as a guinea pig, you probably know this even better than I do, you know, because it's like you, when you play around with them a little bit yourself, you kind of see what works better and what doesn't. I so I always say that there's orolins, right. O R E L I N because it's just the easiest way to explain them. And all the orolins are basically going to do one thing. They're going to stimulate growth hormone. And they all work a little bit differently. I would say they have nuances. And I think that's probably the hardest part of what we do in this part of the peptide world is figuring out which one of these works best. Best for different people. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:34] Speaker B: Correct me if I'm wrong, but like. [00:15:35] Speaker A: No, absolutely. [00:15:36] Speaker B: I know your exercise people, especially men, probably like Tessamorelin, Epamorelin combo, the best, right? [00:15:44] Speaker A: Like, yeah, it works on both. So you're hitting on like growth hormone releasing hormone peptides which like you're saying is stimulating actual like the precursor to growth hormone release. But then there's also the growth hormone releasing peptides. Right. Which work on that hormone ghrelin, which is that hunger hormone. So yeah, it's a little interesting. [00:16:04] Speaker B: Well, and you just hit the nail on the head, right? Because when you hit the garland, what happens? You get hungry. [00:16:09] Speaker A: Hungry, exactly. So may not be so good for people that want to lose weight. [00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Women hate that. So I would say that's the nuance to this. It's your Tessamorelin, really. It does a good job of visceral belly fat. It's a really nice job. And actually I see a more bigger improvement with metabolic health like insulin resistance and things like that with Tesla, Tessamorelin, Epamorelin I think is a little gentler. It's that ghrelin receptor agonist. But it can make you a little hungry. So you get the kind of good with the bad. It has a very low side effect profile and when I'm checking labs, I don't see as much cortisol rays on those people. [00:16:48] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. [00:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, Epimorland tends to be a little bit chiller and Samorin I would say is a little older school, but it has a, has a more. What they say is it has a More natural pulsatile growth hormone release. So it actually increases natural pulsing of your growth hormone as opposed to. And actually that can make you pretty hungry too. I have seen that make people pretty hungry. [00:17:11] Speaker A: Have you found that? So I found that people that are taking Sermorelin I find have the biggest sleep benefits because the direction is typically, you know, an hour before bed or so. I find the Somorelin people get way better sleep than any of the other ones. I don't know about your experience. [00:17:29] Speaker B: No, 100%. I think Somorelin does a better job with sleep. I think it's due to the natural pulsatile nature of it. And they take, if I have them take it at night, they'll get that nice growth hormone pulse which helps them to sleep and has that cortisol regulation. So yeah, I would agree with that. And I used a lot of Samorelin obviously when Epamorelin and Tessamorelin weren't available to us. And I. So I had a lot more experience with that for a while. I think for women specifically though it, they didn't do as well as my men, which I thought was interesting. [00:18:00] Speaker A: That is interesting. [00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So they just didn't notice the difference in the leaning out that they wanted. [00:18:06] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:06] Speaker B: Whereas they're getting that effect. [00:18:10] Speaker A: And let me ask you this. So with those specifically. So the growth hormone releasing peptides. I know for me, I just did a podcast on this last week talking about what's called IGF1. Right. Insulin, like growth factor. So that's one of the. Yeah, it's one of my core hormones. I'm measuring on everybody. Do you use lab results to drive your decision making on what peptides you're going to use with them? [00:18:31] Speaker B: I just had this conversation with someone today, so yes and no, I would say I look at symptoms and labs because I don't always see growth hormones specifically. I don't always see correlate when I put these back on board and then remeasure growth hormone. I don't always see the difference. I almost think it's not sensitive enough the lab testing. And again that's, that's, I'm not a lab person but that's, that's my theory behind it because I, even if I have you take it before the labs, the amount that it goes up is, is minimal. Right. So I'm wondering if we're just not measuring it sensitively enough. IGF1 I think is a better indicator of need than growth hormone. [00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:18] Speaker B: So that's what I, I agree with you. I look at that more. [00:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And then also IGF1 having to convert or not convert, but be stimulated by. By growth hormone attaching to receptors in the liver. You could say that. You also have to have a pretty good functioning liver. Right. So there's a lot that goes into that, I'm sure. [00:19:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I do a lot of liver cleanouts, actually, before I start peptides. [00:19:41] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. [00:19:41] Speaker B: So that's a good borderline high ALT or ast, even if it's not over, if it's just on the high end and I look. Or if they're on a lot of other stuff and I'm like, you know, you're on tests, you're on, you know, other things that are going through the liver. Like maybe we should just do like a light liver cleanup supplement or a liver detox before we start. Yeah, yeah. [00:20:03] Speaker A: I could see how that could benefit, you know, the conversion, you know, get more out of the peptide that you're applying. [00:20:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:09] Speaker A: What about like CJC 1295? Do you use that one? [00:20:14] Speaker B: So I used to use it a lot more than I do now. I think more because of availability. But I loved cjc. You get a. According to patients, they get better. I like it for recovery. That's really where I hear it the most. Again, you can tell me what you. What you see. I mean, I like it synergistically with the Epamorelin or the Tessa Morlin. I think it works better together. But it's supposed to have a longer half life than some of the other ones. So when it's. [00:20:48] Speaker A: Yeah, you'll see the. The drug affinity complex with it. Right. So you'll see no DAC or dac. [00:20:53] Speaker B: So exactly. [00:20:54] Speaker A: When you have the dac, that means it's got a longer half life, Am I correct? [00:20:58] Speaker B: Yes. [00:20:59] Speaker A: So the difference would be like, hey, we use this one twice a week versus we're using it like twice a day. [00:21:05] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. [00:21:06] Speaker A: So if you're not a fan of like poking yourself multiple times in a. [00:21:09] Speaker B: Day, you can try the dac. Exactly. Yeah. And it. Obviously it comes down to what you can get and what's compounded out there and the combinations that you can find at any given time, too. But I. We used to use CJC 1295 all the time, especially when pharmacies were making it. And we could get it, you know, commercially from compounding. We would do a lot of CJC 1295. [00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I just saw that one start to come back from. A couple of the pharmacies are bringing that back. So. [00:21:35] Speaker B: Yeah, agree. [00:21:37] Speaker A: Let's talk about a couple other ones for like maybe fat loss. I don't know how much you want to get into like, you know, the, the GLPs, the GIPS. And maybe you could talk a little bit about one that people have questions about. And people are asking me about this and I'm like, I'm like, I have no experience with it, but maybe you do. Is the, the GLP3 or what people are referring to as the. What's it called again? [00:22:05] Speaker B: I can't say it. [00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah, R. Tide. Right. [00:22:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:08] Speaker A: So, yeah, so can you hit on those? And I guess that's a whole webinar in and of itself. [00:22:13] Speaker B: It is. It is. I. So I've tried it. I will tell you. I've tried it personally. [00:22:18] Speaker A: Which one? Which one did you try? [00:22:21] Speaker B: Okay, say it again. I can never say Red, a true tide. I think Red, a true tide. I keep. [00:22:25] Speaker A: I might be saying that wrong. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Red, a true tide. I did not see a huge difference from tirzepatide in my experience. Got it. My experience that and it's very expensive still. I find it to be too pricey. It's priced compared to the alternatives. I have not gone that route yet. I know lots of people that have. So from a practical experience and clinical experience, I can't really speak to a lot of patient use on it. But in theory it stimulates three. It does. It stimulates three receptors instead of two. So in theory, and according to the data, it should create an additional fat loss component, more so than Tirzepatide. But you also have to remember not everything is about insulin. Right. So and, and the speed with which the gut flows and serotonin. So I, in my opinion, if you're gonna spend the extra money, and this is just me, kind of, I would rather stack another peptide. So if I'm going to do a GLP one, I'd rather stack it with one like an epamorelin, tessamorelin, or I'll stack it with AOD 9604, which we didn't talk about, but it's a fragment that does a really good job with belly fat breakdown. Right. It doesn't raise any growth hormone too. So if you're worried about that growth hormone stimulation. So I would rather that than switch for the price point difference. [00:23:49] Speaker A: So it sounds like you're using mostly GLP1s and the tirzepatides. Right. So how do you distinguish which one you use for who? [00:23:57] Speaker B: Yeah, so one, it comes down to stomach and gut because semaglutide does really slow the gut down a lot more than tirzepatide. At least in my experience. [00:24:08] Speaker A: I've seen that too. [00:24:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's. And it has a lot, much higher side effect profile. So when you're talking about someone that maybe doesn't have a lot of insulin resistance, but they're perimenopausal, they're andropausal, they're like hormonally challenged and you know that their sugars are going up inappropriate times because they have to be. Because they're gaining weight in belly areas, I tend to lean more towards the tirzepatide. If they have high sugars and their insulin is high and I think they can tolerate dropping those sugars, I'll use semaglutide. So I actually will look at it two ways. Whether or not they have gut issues to begin with. I'm usually trying to stay away from the semaglutide. [00:24:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I told. [00:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah, like I try to distinguish between that because really they both do a great job. It's just someone or someone that's like low blood, like low blood pressure, maybe older. I'll stay with the Tirzepatide because I know that they're not going to tolerate the semaglutide. [00:25:07] Speaker A: Right. And not to get too far in the weeds about those, but as far as like your expectation of someone who's going to do a 90 day trial of let's say just Tirzepatide, for example, what's the expected weight loss and how are you managing and minimizing any of the so called side effects that people are talking about? Like what is the, like what's the reality of, of what they should be concerned about? [00:25:31] Speaker B: Okay, let's take that. Well, I'm a really slow starter with my, my glp. So meaning I don't go, I don't double every week. So I tell them first six weeks, four to six weeks, you might not expect to lose much like you might lose the first couple of weeks like just because of water loss and eating less. But don't expect huge losses in the beginning because I'm a big believer in getting them used to it. Because once you get used to the drug then you can advance it and really you have a lower minimum dose that you need to lose weight. So where you're doubling it every week or every two weeks. Yes, you get used to it. But now your maximum concentration for effective weight loss is very high. I like to keep it as Low as possible. So you know that that's my thing. So I wouldn't say more than two or three pounds every couple of weeks. Yeah, two weeks or so. I think that's reasonable. If you're more than that, they're not eating. And that's part of what we teach, is that you have to eat. And I'll actually decrease their dose if I find out they're not eating. Really? [00:26:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:33] Speaker B: Like, if I see weight. Yeah. I mean, I'm a pretty big stickler with that. We won't refill it early, that kind of thing. Managing symptoms, gut stuff, diarrheas. I mean, diarrhea is really just making sure they don't eat a lot of fatty foods or large meals. That's the biggest thing with that, because the gallbladder and the liver, primarily the gallbladder, just doesn't like it. So our pancreas, rather, and gallbladder don't like it. So when you're doing that, it actually wants to try to break it down real quickly, and then your stomach just dumps it. Right. So it just doesn't like it. The constipation part of it, it's really. There's a couple things. Spreading out the dose really helps. So more than seven days, 10 days, two weeks, lowering the dose really helps. Obviously. Water. Lots and lots of water. Every once in a while, we'll have to use something like a stool softener or prescriptive. But for the most part, if they're low enough dose and they start slow enough, we'll do a gut protocol. So we'll do like a digestive enzyme calming stuff, calming gut powder to try to get it to go through. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:39] Speaker B: And then sugar. Like, honestly, sugar. If they're bottoming out, it's because they're not used to hypoglycemia. And I have them put a little fruit juice in their water, hard candy in the side of the mouth, things like that. Just the first couple weeks to try to get them through it, because that's us. It's like going keto or not eating carbs. The first six weeks, it's the same thing. [00:27:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So it sounds like you're starting really conservative, almost like the microdose approach. [00:28:03] Speaker B: 100%. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. With people, which I love that. So. And also making sure that you're, you know, pounding into them, that you got to get enough protein in. And I. I'm sure you're a big stickler on making sure they're lifting weights. Right. [00:28:16] Speaker B: And. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Keeping all that, you know, valuable skeletal muscle on their body while they're trying to burn the desirable tissue, which is the adipose or the fat tissue. [00:28:25] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I actually use a cool product that is a plant based peptide with a lot of my females. It's the ingredients called Pepta strong, but it actually helps to build lean muscle and it has creatine in it as well and some branched chain amino acids. But it's a great adjunct. So I, for a lot of my women that are on it, I will ask them to do that at least for the first six to eight weeks so they don't just atrophy away. Yeah. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Cool. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:54] Speaker A: Did we miss any? For muscle building and performance, there's so many. I know there's a lot. We don't want to get too far in the weeds. [00:29:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's, that's the main, the main ones. I think we're good. [00:29:06] Speaker A: So let's talk about like hormone and sexual health. Obviously, like the hormones get a lot of the. They get championed for this, you know, the testosterone and estrogen, um, so like the BHRT and whatnot. But there are peptides for hormone and sexual health, if I'm not mistaken. Right. So I'm curious to know like which ones like support testosterone, estrogen balance, libido, sexual performance, things like that. [00:29:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like this is like a really quickly expanding category. It's interesting. When I first started, there was really only, like we only use hgh. You know, we would use a little. Or not hh, hcg, sorry. And to stimulate testosterone production in men and women. You know, we used to use it for dietary purposes. Now honestly, one of my favorites is PT141. That is kind of cool because we can use it in male prostate cancer patients too, because it has. No, these don't have any hormone stimulation. Unlike most of the other erectile things. Right. They're all trying to make you have a higher libido by stimulating testosterone. This works on the brain. It's on the arousal center, your desire center. So blood flow to the brain, It's a melanocorton pathway, libido arousal. And for women, half a woman's problem is mental. And all know this. Half. [00:30:26] Speaker A: Are you serious? [00:30:27] Speaker B: Three quarters. All right. We can't get there. [00:30:30] Speaker A: Understatement there. [00:30:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. So it's not about the testosterone. Sometimes it's about like your actual desire, the actual libido, which I really like PC 141 for that. Men and women, to be honest. [00:30:45] Speaker A: And is that, is that a daily peptide or is that something you do. [00:30:48] Speaker B: Here's another one that used to be nasal spray. You still can get a nasal spray of this one. [00:30:53] Speaker A: Okay. [00:30:54] Speaker B: It is still available. So we can get it from compounding pharmacy still. But this can be done as an injectable. I tell people to do it three times a week. Okay, do it three times a week. See how you do. If you know you're gonna have sex or going away, something like that, and you want to do it 30 minutes before sexual activity, go for it. [00:31:12] Speaker A: Got it. [00:31:13] Speaker B: If. Because it really does have like kind of an overall mood boosting capacity to it. If you find that it's not working like that, we can combine it with other things which I don't think you and I talked about with something like oxytocin, which is a nasal spray which stimulates the brain too. It's actually the master. One of the master hormones. [00:31:32] Speaker A: Love hormone. [00:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. These are called the Eros hormone or Eros spray. Eros. [00:31:38] Speaker A: Okay. [00:31:39] Speaker B: I love oxytocin for. Especially for women. So I'll combine them and see if that'll work too. I don't love doing this every day. I think one, it's expensive. It's one of those stacks where you don't want you. There's a lot more important ones, I think out there. So that's how I use that. And then, oh, Kiss Peptin would be the other one. And Kiss Peptin works similarly. We. We kind of call Kiss Peptin the bonding one. I don't know if you've ever heard that, Ryan. Like, they call it like bonding, emotional bonding hormone. Maybe that's why it's called Kiss. Actually, I never thought of that till just now. But it does work on the top of the chain, so. Meaning it's going to stimulate from the top down. So your LH and your fsh, all of your. Your hormones, that kind of. I call it the master regulators. So it's not going to directly stimulate your testosterone and all the other things, but it's going to work on getting your body to make more of its own. [00:32:33] Speaker A: So that brings up the question of, like, do you ever have a preference to use peptides before you prescribe, say, hormone replacement? [00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah, 100. If they're younger. [00:32:43] Speaker A: If they're younger. [00:32:44] Speaker B: Okay. Just they're still childbearing years and we're trying to preserve sperm and testosterone production. 100%. Yeah. [00:32:51] Speaker A: It's nice for. Nice for women especially, I think, to know that, like, there's options out there that aren't, you know, more hormones that are Going to suppress your natural production. You know, there's things out there like this. [00:33:02] Speaker B: And so, I mean, women are scared of testosterone. Let's be honest. It gets a really bad stigma. They shouldn't be because we all have it. One tenth of what men have, but. [00:33:11] Speaker A: More than they do. Estrogen, right? [00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah, no, 100%. So, you know, but I think that there's. You don't have to go on a SSRI or antidepressant, you know, because you're. You're frustrated with. With sexual. You know, they do it all the time for, like, pmdd. Right. Well, what happens to your sex drive. [00:33:29] Speaker A: When you go on that crushes it. Yeah. [00:33:32] Speaker B: Right. So, all right, fine. Maybe you want to stay on that for pmdd, but let's try a peptide to get your arousal center back, and then maybe we can whittle away some of the other stuff, you know, with other things. But I love. I love peptides for women and men for arousal. I think they're a great. And you. I don't know how long you've been doing hormones, Ryan. A couple of years? Five years? We all have those patients that go on hormones and don't feel better. [00:33:59] Speaker A: Oh, 100%. [00:33:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Women included. And they're like, why don't I have my libido back? I like my husband. Like, I still love him. And it's not all about. Not all about testosterone. [00:34:10] Speaker A: Not always hormone. Exactly. That's right. [00:34:12] Speaker B: We're all a little crazy, right? Some more than others. [00:34:16] Speaker A: Cool. Yeah. That's category. I didn't know a lot about that category, so it's very cool. [00:34:20] Speaker B: I actually love that category. It's growing. [00:34:22] Speaker A: You can tell. Yeah, it really. [00:34:24] Speaker B: Well, I do. I deal with a lot of women that want to have sex, so. [00:34:28] Speaker A: Oh, that's good to know. [00:34:29] Speaker B: Goes without saying, but yeah, it's one of my favorite. It's one of my favorite categories. You like the muscle building. [00:34:34] Speaker A: I like the love doctor. [00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:34:36] Speaker A: You could take the sex patients. [00:34:38] Speaker B: Fine. I'll do that all day long. [00:34:40] Speaker A: Nice. [00:34:40] Speaker B: As long as I don't have to give exercise advice, I'm golden. [00:34:43] Speaker A: Some Kegels. Yeah. So here's some Kegel exercise along with your kiss Peptin. [00:34:46] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [00:34:48] Speaker A: All right, let's move to. If you want to. Unless you have anything else to add to the sex category, but immune system and inflammation, like peptides relying or that you rely on most for, like, immune resilience, controlling inflammation, that kind of stuff. Like, talk about some of those. [00:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah, no. So this actually kind of became My somehow became my thing after Covid, but I was really the hormone girl for a lot of years and then opened a COVID testing center. And fast forward, post Covid, everyone was not getting better, right? We have all these long haulers and I already had a lot of Lyme patients being where we live, right? So this really became actually thymus and alpha one years ago, became a pretty big part of my practice. And then it kind of dropped off the map for a long time due to the FDA and stuff. So to me, the thymosin products are probably some of the most proven functionally active products that work in, especially in this category, because you're, you're. I mean, anything that stimulates the thymus gland to work more optimally, enhancing function of the immune system, it's going to help everything. Kind of like working on the gut, right? You work on the gut, everything else gets better around you while you work on the immune system. It takes the pressure off the rest of the body. So if someone has underlying infection, underlying disease, thymus and alpha and thymus and beta, like, have been game changers. And they're just two different ends of essentially one big molecule. But if you think about it, one, let me do this the right way. One stabilizes the immune system, so it optimizes the immune system, right. The other one brings the immune system into heal and recover and repair. So TB500, which is thymosin beta, which we kind of couple a lot of times with your growth hormone stimulators, because why? Because it helps with healing and recovery. So you build up muscle, you have all these micro tears from lifting heavy, and then you go and you do this TB500 and it makes everything better. And then you have your thymus and alpha, which gets people that are chronically sick better. So, so think about them in a little bit of a different way. And that, that's kind of how I like to break them down. So thymus and alpha enhances T cells, immune surveillance, gets rid of any kind of chronic infection that you can name Lyme or otherwise. It helps with that mold, anything. Thymus and beta think about more supporting new blood vessel growth, healing, migration, wound healing, tissue repair. So that's how I kind of break them down. [00:37:25] Speaker A: Oh, that makes sense. I didn't know that actually. So that was one of the questions I had, was like, when do you. Like, what are the indicators of using each and the difference. So is there now that brings up maybe the opposite question. Are there. There are patient groups that you avoid using, like these kinds of Peptides with. [00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah, So I actually was thinking about that when we were getting ready for today. And in all honesty, the only time that I might not use thymus and alpha, probably specifically is if we know that there is a possible underlying lymphocytic process. So like a lymphoma or something like that, because you're enhancing T cell function, you're enhancing immune cell activity, making it more overactive. I can't think of a reason, though, in general, unless there was something acute like that, that I would not use thymus and alpha. Really, I can't. I mean, thymus and beta is almost so benign that I think it helps almost everybody. And again, it's that signal switch. Right. So it's not going to do anything if your body is not capable of it. So you can put it in there. And if your body's not capable of healing, like if you're so sick that it's not capable of healing and recovery, or if you're in the icu, you know, and your immune cells just aren't there, you know, or you're. You're. Maybe you're septic and you don't have the capability to create that response. It might. It might not do anything. So I really can't think of anybody that I would almost. [00:38:53] Speaker A: Yeah, so it almost supports all of your, like, it's a supporting or like amplifies your. Your healing abilities, essentially. Yeah, yeah. Which is why that one, the TB500, you hear that combined with BP157 a lot. [00:39:07] Speaker B: Right. [00:39:09] Speaker A: Because of that complimentary, like, immune role. When you're talking about healing, I don't think a lot of people realize, like, you're talking about the immune system. Right. The immune system is responsible for all of those healing and repair mechanisms. So TB500 being one of those, go to peptides. That's so useful. And it's one of the most widely used, I think. Right. And it's got a very long history also. Very safe. Right? [00:39:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:35] Speaker A: So is there any other ones with the immune system? [00:39:39] Speaker B: LL37. LL37. It's really. Think about that like an antibiotic, really. I mean, it is really antiviral, antibacterial. It does support wound healing really well, but it's really broad spectrum. So I don't use. This is like a newer one for me. LL37, I would say it's been around for a while, but I just started kind of playing with it a little bit. And because it's good for molds and fungus, so for my chronic mold people That I just can't get where they need to be. I've started to kind of thinking about using LL37, but it's a defense, it's a defense mechanism. So again, it was one of those ones that kind of when the FDA did all of their, their bands, it wasn't around for a while. And LL37 has slowly started to come back. So I really started to look at that again as possible. It's actually really good for lung and, and other like skin barriers, like gut lung skin, mucosal membranes, healing stuff again. [00:40:41] Speaker A: Yeah, well let's, let's stay on that wavelength there with like healing and regenerative medicine. So what about like skin aesthetics, anti aging? Like let's get into some of those peptides, some of the ones that maybe a lot of people have heard of. Like, like copper peptides, those types of things. Like what are ones that are effective for like I know a lot of women and men now these days are interested in like skin and collagen repair, like want to look younger, hair growth, stuff like that. [00:41:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I think ghk, copper, and we were talking about this earlier, is a really, really long track record actually. A lot of data, a lot of studies on copper, a lot of cardiovascular studies on copper and the benefits from an anti inflammatory perspective. So it actually, it's known to stimulate collagen and elastin tissue. So great for the skin, right? Great skin anti aging benefits. So but it also helps to remodel scar tissue. So like when you're talking about like wound healing, again, it helps to remodel it. I've seen acne scars get better with this. Yeah, I've seen. And hair growth. I've seen really, really great studies and results in my own practice with using PRP or exosomes and hair and microneedling them in and then actually giving them copper over top of it and then giving them copper to use at home. Whether it be because it can be taken a lot of different ways. It can be under the tongue, it can be topically and then injectable. We have the injectable combinations. Usually it's glow. We call it the glow peptide combination. Which again goes back to stacking those peptides. Right. With good stuff. Usually it's I think epamorelin. And what is it? It's epamorelin, copper and TB. Yeah, yeah. Or B. No, sorry, BPC. It's BPC 7TB 500 and copper. [00:42:28] Speaker A: That's right. [00:42:29] Speaker B: So I love copper. I think copper is one of the underrated peptides out there. Because it's also antimicrobial. I mean, just like silver. So just think about how good copper. We make everything out of copper. We make copper pipes, you know, we know that copper is good. [00:42:47] Speaker A: So you needed to make red blood cells, right? [00:42:50] Speaker B: Yeah, you need it for red blood. You need it for everything in the body. [00:42:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:42:54] Speaker B: So that's one of my favorites. And then we already talked about TB500, which has a really great benefit for skin and inflammation too. We talked about the wound healing benefit and I think the other two. And probably one of the unsung heroes of this talk is probably epitalon and melanitan, which are two other ones. Epital on, it's kind of one of my favorites. It's a mitochondrial peptide. [00:43:19] Speaker A: Okay. [00:43:20] Speaker B: But what that means is you're actually making the DNA stop getting shorter, so you're stopping the little tails. Nobel prize winning science, by the way. I don't even remember what year that was. But the telomerase, the enzyme that cuts down the DNA, you stop it from getting shorter and you can prevent the aging of cells. So, you know, there's a lot of data out there on astrologers which is a supplement that stops mitochondrial or stops DNA tails from shortening. But they. Epitalon does the same thing. So we cycle it a couple times a year. So you don't take it all the time. You cycle it. Usually it's like a 21 day cycle. Epitalin actually, I think is only once a year. [00:44:04] Speaker A: That's once a year. It's a once a year peptide. [00:44:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Just to prevent the shortening of your telomeres. Yeah. So sometimes I see it twice, but usually I believe, and I'm trying to think right now, most of my patients only do it once a year. When we talk about MOT C in a little bit, that's a couple times a year. But I. It's one of my faves. And then there's melanitan, which you can take over Melanotan if you want. Not. Not one of my favorites at all. [00:44:34] Speaker A: No, that one gives you. That one gives you a tan. Doesn't. [00:44:40] Speaker B: Does. Melanotan, just like the word implies, is a synthetic peptide that stimulates melanochordin receptors to give you a tan. The problem with that, actually, there is some talk of increased libido with this too. There is some data out there, but there is some talk of what happens to that melanous site stimulation and whether that can cause mel. Mel. Melatonin increase and can cause melanomas or any kind of Skin cancer. So you're. You can get over tanning and get unevenly pigmented. I don't know. I don't see a huge market for melanitan. It's not really my favorite one. [00:45:18] Speaker A: It doesn't seem natural to be able to inject yourself with a peptide and get a tan. It just seems a little. I, I'd rather go through the effort of getting some sun, but. [00:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, agreed, agreed. Yeah. It's not my favorite one, but people talk about it with this particular world, especially bodybuilding. Right. A lot of bodybuilders talk. It's a very popular one in that world and it can provide UV protection. So for someone who's maybe really pale or albino, I shouldn't say albino because they can't make melanin. But right on the border of. I guess it would assume some protection. But other than that, very cool on. [00:45:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the, the telomeres. Right. So that's your, your aging. You can measure those to, to see how old you actually are metabolically. [00:46:04] Speaker B: You actually can measure them. And I, Yeah, I, I have done it once. It's pretty interesting. Yep. I can, I don't know the company that does it now, but they. For. I think they got bought out, but they. It's about. I probably did it about almost 10 years ago. That's probably about how long the data came out for this Nobel Prize. [00:46:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it was like 2009 or something like that. [00:46:23] Speaker B: Was it. Did you look that up? Do you remember that? [00:46:26] Speaker A: It's somewhere around there. Yeah, I might have looked it up. [00:46:29] Speaker B: Because I definitely didn't look that up before we got on here. I think it's 2009, but something like that. It's got to be. [00:46:34] Speaker A: At least I remember when it came out. It was a big thing and then it just kind of died out. But I think the peptide has brought it back into popularity. [00:46:40] Speaker B: It died out really because it's hard to measure. One, it's expensive. Two, you can't feel it. Right. So you can't feel the aging process. Right. It's too slow. And also proving efficacy, I think was really hard. You know, what does it do by not your DNA is not aging well, what is what. What happens when your DNA is not aging? Are you getting less cancer? Are you getting like what's, what's that causing? So the downstream effect is just hard to measure. [00:47:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:10] Speaker B: So. [00:47:10] Speaker A: So let's talk about gut and gut metabolic health. I know you're really steepen the knowledge of the gut. Right. So it's one of the things that you like to really help people with. What, what are some peptides you're using for like gut permeability issues like IBS inflammation? I know this is such a rampant problem, like so epidemic. So many people have gut problems. So I'm curious to know like what are your go to peptides for this? [00:47:36] Speaker B: I mean there's one obvious one that probably everybody on this podcast probably already has heard of, but BPC157, which is why it's being studied now in, in clinical trials, back trials because it is so good at gut inflammation healing. [00:47:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:53] Speaker B: I mean that's where it comes from. Right. That's where it's, that's where it's made. So, you know, it goes without saying that that's probably my mainstay. I will give it both oral and I, I will, I will do it both. Especially if it's someone who's really bad. I've had patients that were getting ready to go get resections, go on this and do really, really well and not need colon resections. Severe. [00:48:14] Speaker A: Really? You prevented colon surgeries with this? [00:48:17] Speaker B: Yes. I will tell you it is not impressive for inflammatory bowel disease. It's pretty impressive, honestly, that with ozone, if you really want to know. Really awesome combination. That is probably one of the best. Who gave me balloons? [00:48:29] Speaker A: I don't know. Somebody gave you balloons? [00:48:31] Speaker B: I love balloons. Yeah. So I think that like BBC 157. The fact that. And it makes me very sad that it might actually go into traditional medicine. [00:48:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:42] Speaker B: I hope it helps more people. I really do. And I hope the way that they dose it makes the most sense. But orally, there's some really good products out there. I use one by Health Jevy. They make a really great product and they come up with a lot of plant peptides too. So a lot of my plant peptides are all through them and like I said, I'll do it. I. I am as well. And that is done so a little differently than we do injectables for pain. I will start off five days a week and then I'll actually back off of it and I'll have them stay on it. I don't always pull them off and cycle. [00:49:16] Speaker A: Got it. [00:49:17] Speaker B: Or I'll just do orals with it and to go and see if I can go off the injectable. But I find that to be really helpful GLP ones like we talked about earlier. Some of my. Also some of my favorite for inflammatory bowel disease, microdosing, for any, any kind of bowel disease actually, even, even ones that have slow gut and constipation because a lot of that is inflammation in the inside. Like I always say, think about a pipe and the pipe getting thicker and thicker and thicker on the inside. Well, that hole gets smaller and smaller and smaller and that's because of inflammation. So if we can like literally take the inflammation out of the pipe or Roto Rooter it, we can actually make it go through more easily. So sometimes constipation is not, not lack of motility, its lack of space. [00:50:02] Speaker A: Right. [00:50:03] Speaker B: So anyway, I love the GLPs for like really low dose spread out for anti inflammatory dosing. [00:50:11] Speaker A: Well, I don't think I've ever heard that of any MDs using GLPs for that specifically. So that's pretty cool. [00:50:17] Speaker B: And it's always terzepatide. I don't really do it with semaglutide unless it's cost prohibitive to somebody and they have to. [00:50:23] Speaker A: Right. [00:50:24] Speaker B: Just because it has a lower side effect. For me. [00:50:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that was the one I want to talk about. [00:50:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, go for it. You want to go ahead. You want to lead in? [00:50:32] Speaker A: No, I just, I, I, I've experimented with this one and it was for more or less. So here's what I did. So af, I went, I took a trip to Mexico and I actually ended up with the Mexican flu. And for it was literally like six, seven days. I just was not doing well digestively, like just, it was bad. So I happened to have some MOT c and I did a pretty significant milligram dose. It was like, I think it was, yeah, it was like half the bottle of peptide anyway. It was like a one milliliter. It was like one, I think it was like one milligram that I took. [00:51:08] Speaker B: Okay. [00:51:09] Speaker A: Anyways, so, so I did a higher dose and literally the next day I was completely fine. It was amazing. I don't know if it was like I finally gave myself enough time to heal or, or if the MOT C really improved my mitochondrial function and just kick started all of the things that needed to go on hyperdrive to get me better. I don't know. But I had a positive experience with it and I was wondering, I was like, do you use this for gut health or do you use this when people are run down and sick or just lack of energy? [00:51:37] Speaker B: That's probably more like it when they're run down and sick. So if someone's run down and they've, or they've had long term gut issues and I know their immune System is just trash. Their mitochondrial energy has to be just in the toilet. I will throw on a cycle of MOT C and it's more common than not that I throw it on, especially for long term patients or if they come into me like super, super acute, like you. Right. Like, all right, let's hit you. And I actually, I'll do a longer course. It's usually about seven, anywhere from seven to 21 days depending. But that way they get a good mitochondrial repair, especially if we're trying to repair their immune system in the long run. And their mitochondrial energy. But I mean, MOTSI has so much benefit in general. I mean, makes insulin work better. It helps with fat burning, cellular energy mitochondria. Just think about all the cellular energy, guys. Like all the electron transport. It just gets better. NAD utilization gets better. Such a big buzzword right now. Exercise performance recovery, like at MOT C to me is like, like does everything. [00:52:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:46] Speaker B: Like you can make everything better. [00:52:47] Speaker A: Oh, I know, totally. That's why it's such, I think a big, I guess a lot of people talk about it, right? Like, you know, mitochondrial enhancers like NAD, like you said, or NMN or this MOT C or Slupp 332, you know, there's a few out there, but yeah, I think, I think we hit a lot of peptides. I just wanted to get, you know, some good information out there about the different ways that peptides can be used and in different situations, which I think is so cool, I think to kind of like get towards wrapping up the webinar. I know there's a lot of great questions that people have about like, what are the clinical considerations as far as, like, how would you get started on peptide therapies? Like, are you starting with lab work with people? You know, is this something you go off just, you know, conversation and you know, a consult and then giving them the best course of action. Like, how do you, how do you approach that? [00:53:40] Speaker B: So I don't know, I might be a little bit crazy in my. Maybe overachieving, but I personally think that if we're doing something that's on the cusp of or the fringe of medicine, that we probably should be looking at numbers. And you know, I. It might not. We might not know what we're looking at yet. That's part of the problem, right, Is like, you know, we've been doing this not as long as probably the rest of medicine has been doing that, traditional medicine. So I think it's always like evolving on what I'm checking But I'm not a big fan of just going, getting peptides and starting them and then not having anything to back it up. Or at least checking in with patients every three months or so and seeing how they're feeling and changing their stacks. We talked about IGF1 and growth hormone. I'm still kind of on the fence about the growth hormone checking. I think IGF1 has more clinical relevance. Yeah, I check a full thyroid panel with all the markers. I want to see what their metabolism is doing and how these things are changing, that insulin, metabolic panel, things like that. So I know again, where are they at with sugars and then like inflammation markers? So I check a lot of weird ones. I check TGF beta, TNF, Alpha IL6, MMP9, ANA, CRP, a lot of cytokines. Right. Things that. Markers of inflammation out there that don't know what they are. But really we're looking for things that are inflammatory, fibrinogen. Because what happens when your AA comes up positive? They send you to, like a rheumatologist and they work you up, or if you're lucky, or your doctor says, hey, you have an ANA that's positive and we're not doing anything about it because you have no symptoms. [00:55:19] Speaker A: Yeah, let's watch it. [00:55:20] Speaker B: It's not really normal to be fighting your own neutrophils. Right. Like, that doesn't make sense. So, you know, I like to see if we can reverse that stuff. And I think that's really important to have markers that you can measure. What else? Obviously sex hormones, Testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. I'm always checking iron levels, ferritin, making sure you have the necessary precursors to make stuff. [00:55:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So needless to say, lipids. Yeah, needless to say, you. You're getting, like, a comprehensive understanding of what's going on. Yeah, I love that. [00:55:53] Speaker B: Of course, doing it if you're not going to. [00:55:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So obviously you're using that to guide a lot of your clinical recommendations and whatnot, and also measuring progress, it sounds like. And of course, your recommendation is, you know, the same as mine is, like, have, you know, have data to guide and. And have like a clinical professional to help guide your decision making. So not only is that important to make sure you're doing the right thing, dosing properly, but also when it comes to sourcing peptides. I really wanted to hit on this with you. So what are the most important questions patients should be asking before, like buying peptides and getting them? [00:56:31] Speaker B: Well, let me just tell you, I've gotten three 16 year olds come into my office in the last two months asking for growth hormone stimulators. So I think this is a really important. Because they're, they're buying them online. Yes, I know, buying them, they're using them. I have a 16 year old and a 24 year old, so I can identify with what they're seeing on Instagram. It's just, you know, one, where they're getting it from a research grade, which we can talk about in a second and two, they're doing it unmonitored. And for someone that's younger, I really want to stress this. They should still be making growth hormone, right? Their body is capable of making this. They just want to get jacked in taller. Well, fair. But genetically speaking that may have a consequence. So, and, and they're not thinking about that, those consequences, they're going to shut off any like are they going to slow down their own growth hormone production? I don't know that answer. And so anyway, that's a little tangent. So I, this is really important to me because there are manufacturing facilities that are verified, right. You know, they're good manufacturing practices, what do we call them, CGMPs, right. And they meet very strict FDA guidelines, sterility quality standards. So that's really important. You're buying sterile compounds from a. And I don't know anyone remembers the early 2000s, but that's where all the compounding regulation started because sterile compounds were coming up dirty and giving people meningitis. So you know, for me I would say, you know, caution, cautionary tale. You know, you don't want to be that person that ends up with a dirty batch. Forget the quality of it. Right. Might just be trash, but you know, it could be non sterile. They should all have documentation. They should have certificates of authenticity, batch lot numbers. I mean if you ask the companies that we get them from, they can give you a COA on any single lot number that you buy. And they should all be reconstituted with sterile water. I've seen you see people doing it with. Not sterile water, tap water. But yeah, like this is big. No no's. I, I've seen, I've seen people do it with normal saline actually really accidentally, which isn't going to hurt you. But again, you're not doing it with a provider. So you should really know that, you know, normal saline is just going to denature some of the proteins, not all of them, some of them will be okay, but the oral ones don't like it. So you're going to Denature them, they're going to turn into a gel and then you're injecting something that's going to make you hurt Niche and everything else. So I think that that's really two of the biggest things is purity, potency, all the additives. A lot of these companies are adding things to make them dissolve better. And a lot of what we call excipients and binding agents, which are not great, ask me because I'm allergic to almost all of them. So you know, if I get a bad one, I know. So yeah, I definitely don't recommend buying them anything that says research grade. You know, these are all facilities that are the ones that you should be getting them from. It has to be given. Given by prescription essentially. Yeah, I need to call it in. [00:59:50] Speaker A: I think that's such like, it's such an important topic. That's crazy that you had 16 year olds walk into your office. I had a friend of mine who was like, hey, my son, he's in college, he's got like cystic acne and he's seeing TikTok videos of other college kids going like, hey, check this out. I got this copper peptide. It works amazing. Look at my skin. I'm beautiful. You know, get go to my link in my bio and it's, you know, a research grade peptide company that gives them a kickback. So just for those of you that don't know like this whole world, but there's, you know, there's, I don't know what you want to call it. Somehow it's legal to sell peptides as long as you say that it's research grade. And anybody from the public can buy these and they give you a little kit which Dr. Laurie was referring to like bacteriostatic water which is, was it. There's it's alcohol, right? It's benzoyl and there's a certain percentage of benzoyl alcohol to keep it sterile, to keep the peptide like live when you reconstitute it or like mix them together. And of course like there's all kinds of pitfalls. There's like, where's the peptide from? Like are you mixing it properly? Are you dosing it properly? Is there impurities? Like there's a lot there. So having like a clinician guide you to do this is really smart and really worth spending the money. If you're looking to get into this, you know, type of, if you want to call it regenerative medicine. Right. Or proactive. Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. Because there's not enough people talking about that. I think it's really critical. So let me ask you this before we wrap it up because I know there's definitely going to be some clinicians on here as well for doctors, nurse practitioners, like chiropractors, any practitioners that are wanting to learn more about peptides. Like not just safety but like courses like how do you learn more? Like how did you get hands on training and where do you go from here if you want to get into this world? [01:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah, so actually I, I started a course so I have a course to learn more peptides about peptides. It is on my website. So just mydrlori.com, you'll see the courses there. I have a peptide one, but I also have all the modules. Basically a full integrative medicine protocol that we call real three. I do think that there are some good advanced trainings at a 4M and that kind of thing that you can go to as well. So I don't know. I definitely don't think I'm the beyond end all of hormones. I think that mine is probably a little bit more personalized and we give you kind of implementation protocols whereas if you go to some of the bigger ones you're just going to kind of get the rapid fire like we did tonight. The course that I do really helps you implement and for everything from consent forms to basically figuring out ordering sheets so you know that is available. We're also providing some discounts and stuff tonight which we'll get to. And then honestly there are a lot of groups out there that do like think tank type stuff too. So I do encourage you to get involved in that because honestly what I learn is from other providers too. Right. So we really just bounce a lot off of each other over the years. That's actually part of the reason I started my training because I wanted to get a group of like minded people together to really start to go over cases and stuff eventually because this is, that's the only way we're going to get better at this. Right. I mean it's. No one's spending the money to do huge mass research studies on it because we're small people, we don't have pharma behind us, which is totally fine. Yeah. So I think that honestly doing, doing that and, and starting slow, picking two or three that are your like go to. Don't start with like everything because you're never going to know what's working and then just pop them into your patient population. I think that's the easiest way to Start. [01:03:37] Speaker A: I love that. Maybe I'll wrap up with a couple rapid fire questions. If anybody has any questions they want to submit. Do you Want to ask Dr. Laurie? Put them in now. But I'll ask a couple. While we're waiting for any questions to come in. What is a peptide? We didn't talk about. Or that we should. We should have talked about that. We didn't hit on that. [01:03:56] Speaker B: We didn't. Yeah, maybe kpv. [01:04:00] Speaker A: Kpv. Tell me about that one. [01:04:03] Speaker B: Gut inflammation. Really good to add on to BPC157 with pea what's pea it's another kind of anti inflammatory for the gut. So you can actually. Or KPI, KPV, PEA and BPC 157 together and helps with the immune system. So it actually is good for derm stuff too. Believe it or not. It's a really good. Yeah. So kpv. I mean I love MOT C. I'm always going to go MOT C. I do too. [01:04:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. [01:04:32] Speaker B: I don't know, maybe I just like saying MOT C. But it is one. [01:04:35] Speaker A: Of the cooler sounding. A lot of them sound like Star wars characters. Like what's the most overhyped peptide out there? That's just trash. [01:04:45] Speaker B: That's easy. Melanitan. Yeah. I hate it. I hate. I. I mean, let's see. Is there any other one that I really just don't like? I mean for a while I think SIND for me went out of favor for a while. I feel like it's coming back for me just because I really like the Tessa Morland EPA Moreland combo. So much better. [01:05:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:13] Speaker B: But I wouldn't say it's hyped. I would just say kind of they got better at it. Yeah. [01:05:20] Speaker A: Did you see that? They have an orals. Tell me like oral Samorlin. What do you think about that? [01:05:25] Speaker B: I haven't used it much yet. I have a couple people that are beta testing it right now that actually are not getting it through me. And interestingly enough, it's one of my friends. [01:05:32] Speaker A: Kendra's getting it through you. [01:05:34] Speaker B: Oh, she. Well, she's the only one. [01:05:36] Speaker A: Oh wow. Okay, so we'll have the only one. [01:05:39] Speaker B: He's the only one because I had one other guy who was. We were thinking about doing it and he actually gave it to him for free actually because they wanted him to test it out. It's from another company. So I. To. To be determined. I don't know. I don't, I don't have very high hopes of it. Absorbing really well. But has she given any feedback? [01:06:01] Speaker A: She wants more. So I think she likes it. She said it's helped her recovery. So I mean. Okay, yeah, she's have good results. So she's doing it, refilling it again. [01:06:10] Speaker B: So it's reasonably priced. I mean, I don't. [01:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not. [01:06:14] Speaker B: I don't think it's that bad. So you know, if you guys let's. How about we do an update. We'll do an update on. Or else Moreland. I'll have to keep you posted. [01:06:22] Speaker A: Well, I think that brings up like maybe one last question. Like tell me the difference. So you see oral peptides out there and you see injectable peptides. Like what's your opinion on one versus the other? I know that there's some that like are sold as oral peptides that are actually somewhat effective, but most aren't in from my, my understanding. Like what's your thoughts about that? [01:06:46] Speaker B: Okay. So I think they're just really hard to get past the GI system and that's really the end of discussion. I mean it, it. There's very. They're small, right. They're broken down really, really easily. They're labile, so they have to be surrounded in such a way that they're protected like with a, with some kind of lipid bilayer or something. Right. So there are a couple. Like I said. Healthevity, I think is one of the few companies that does a decent job about with coding their peptides to try to make them survive the, the stomach specifically. I, I think that if you really want good results, start with injectable because. And get it to where you want it to be. And if you get less or much less absorption when you go to oral, then you're going to be okay with it because it's still more than you had at baseline and you already got the big bolus. I, I see them probably going more nasal spray. [01:07:37] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. [01:07:38] Speaker B: Than I do oral because they're very, very small. Maybe even like, I don't know, maybe like an underarm roller. Like I can see them like somewhere on thin skin. Maybe even vaginal delivery. Like for some of the. Yeah. [01:07:53] Speaker A: Mucosal. [01:07:54] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just see the GI being a big problem. [01:07:59] Speaker A: Right. 100. Which is what I was expecting you to say, which is why you hear just like it's. If it's not injectable, it's pretty much not doing anything. You're not, you're wasting your money. [01:08:08] Speaker B: But yeah, there's multiple exceptions to that. I Think, but like sublingual copper. [01:08:13] Speaker A: I think, yeah. And the nasal spray. [01:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think I actually do like BPC 157 orally if it's Health Javity. But I like it with the peak P. V. Like, I like it as. [01:08:23] Speaker A: I actually have not seen that combo. That's. That's cool. [01:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it's on my website actually. Oh, Health Javity obviously has it too. It's their. It's their product. [01:08:31] Speaker A: So I do have a question from Adrienne. So it's a question about your courses. Do they go over clinical and non clinical applications? Um, and she just said she ran her third round of MOT C and is a huge fan. So. [01:08:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So short answer. Yes, we go over cases. So we do have cases. And actually with my. All of my programs and we've kind of evolved these over time, but there's so many updates and peptides specifically that we're actually recording an update this weekend. So you get all the updates for a year. So if you buy the module, anything that gets updated, however, I need to get it to you. Whether it's sending in an email or updating it on the. On the portal, you'll get the updates for the year. So we'll do cases, we'll do new ones that come out, we'll do any FDA changes because that just keeps happening, things like that. So the first module is mostly going through all the peptides with cases. So you will have the clinical at the end. The one that I'm recording now is a lot of the new FDA guidelines, a lot of the new formulations. I'll do a lot more quicksilver topicals, sublinguals, things like that. And it'll have a lot of the word. I'm looking for new clinical applications, for example, infertility, things like that. So we'll start talking about a lot of those things because I'm getting a lot of questions about that stuff too. So. And of course, you know, I don't do a lot of infertility specifically, but I can definitely provide that information from my colleagues. So getting that information together to record. But you get the updates for a year. Yeah, so. [01:10:07] Speaker A: Well, I think, I think this is a perfect time for you to talk about your offer because I know you wanted to offer clinicians specifically who are interested in learning more about peptides, who would be interested in your courses, what kind of offer do you have for them and then also for general public who would want to work with you. What is the offer as far as how they would get involved with working with you, Laurie. [01:10:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no worries. So we. I'll start with the practitioners. So we have two discount codes. So the first discount code is off a single module. It doesn't have to be peptides. It can be any of them. That's teach 150. So it's $150 off a single module. And then we have a $500 off the whole kit and caboodle. So all six modules that says that's teach 500. So if you forget them, we'll pop them in, I guess to the recording and we can send them out. [01:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah, Everybody on this email who signed up for the webinar is going to get a post webinar email and all of the promo will be on there with the codes. So. [01:11:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And then for you guys that actually want to be stackers like us, you can stack up. I love it. Let's stack up. So I just started stacking peptide calendar for my patients so that they don't get confused. Super fun. But you can sign up on my website. So it's [email protected] and you fill out one of the intakes on the wellness, there's a male and a female one. And we're offering $50 off of a lab. So you're like a simple lab. So if you have labs, you can bring them. So if you need like basics, it's $50. If you use a hundred dollars off of a full panel, meaning like a comprehensive soup to nuts, everything. And then we're actually offering three free months of membership. So we're offering you. Our membership's only $50 a month for our peptide program. So if it's only peptides, we're pretty reasonable. And you're getting three months for free, so. [01:11:54] Speaker A: Amazing. [01:11:55] Speaker B: That's pretty sweet. [01:11:57] Speaker A: I just got a tagline. Well, if you want to steal it. [01:12:01] Speaker B: We really got to make it together. [01:12:03] Speaker A: Don't be a bio slacker, be a bio stacker. [01:12:06] Speaker B: Oh, that's good. [01:12:07] Speaker A: You like that? [01:12:08] Speaker B: I do like that. Actually. I think I read a lot about on online. What was that? Was I reading? I was reading something to get ready for today and it said said bio. Would it say bio hacking is now becoming bio stacking? But I like yours better. Bio slacker. Yeah. Nice. [01:12:29] Speaker A: All right, Laurie, is there anything else we didn't cover that we absolutely need to cover before we wrap up? [01:12:36] Speaker B: I honestly think that we just need to remember that these are sterile. Like I. That's my biggest thing with this. This stuff is like when people get them online and they're just using sterile products, injecting them into their body, that we just need to remember that we need to do it with control and conscience and under guidance. I think that's really the biggest thing we can take away. When these three kids came into my office, which I don't treat a lot of children, so it was a really kind of eye openening thing. Social media is making this like a very, very big deal, which I'm obviously appreciative of because it actually helps business. Right. But it needs to be safe, it needs to be legitimized, regulated appropriately. But I mean they move the needle for people. I mean they definitely make a difference and it's a long term difference. Like you have to. This is a game of, this isn't a quick fix. This is a game of like three months plus. Right. Like you have to stay on them for a little while. I think that's the only thing we really didn't talk about is longevity. Like you really do have to give them time to work. [01:13:35] Speaker A: I love that. [01:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:37] Speaker A: Amen. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, I think they're not like the easy button quick fix. They. I like to tell people that if they're not willing to put in the work as far as making lifestyle shifts to, to that align with their goals, whether it's fat loss, whether it's with muscle building, improving their immune function, if they're not willing to change their behavior and also add peptides, then they're just going to waste their money. Because these are, these are called optimizers for a reason. Is you can't optimize bad physiology. [01:14:09] Speaker B: And optimize eating trash. [01:14:12] Speaker A: Yeah, you can't optimize yourself if you eat like a trash panda, as Lily would say, so. [01:14:17] Speaker B: Oh yes, very true. [01:14:20] Speaker A: So yeah, I mean that's why this works so well with people that are wanting to put in the work, the effort, spend the time, energy and money, you know, into getting results. So yeah. Dr. Laura Gerber, thank you so much for joining us tonight and donating a generous hour and 15 minutes your time. I know a lot of people will get a lot of benefit from this and everybody will get a recording from this webinar as well as well as an email with all the generous offers. So I appreciate you. [01:14:44] Speaker B: Balloons too, guys. I appreciate balloons. Made my night. [01:14:48] Speaker A: Love it. Thanks, Lori. Talk soon. [01:14:50] Speaker B: Welcome. Thank you.