GLP-1s, Stem Cells, Red Light & Peptides: A Longevity Doctor Reveals What Actually Works for Women

Today I'm joined by Dr. Amy Killen, a board-certified physician and leader in the field of regenerative medicine, female longevity, and anti-aging. And today we're going to dive into how women can slow aging, the peptides that actually work, when to start hormone therapy, whether red light lives up to the hype, and the truth about stem cells. Dr. Killen, for women who are in their mid-30s, who are thinking about hormones and longevity, what are some of the first things that you recommend that women that are younger start with to be more proactive?

You know, one of the first things is I think just knowing what your baseline is. You know, when you're right, you know, you're young 30s and you're pretty healthy, it's good to get some baseline labs to see what those numbers look like for you when you're healthy. Because then if things are trying to change as you get a little bit older, closer to 40, then you'll know where you're coming from. So that, you know, checking your hormones at baseline, including thyroid as well as your sex hormones, checking your inflammatory markers, your lipids, you know, your, your blood sugar, making— seeing where you're starting from so you can kind of navigate the next stage a little easier.

Yeah. And I think sometimes when you're in your 30s, you think, oh, I don't need to know my thyroid, or I don't need to know my cholesterol. And well, of course thyroid plays such an important role in pregnancy for women who are still trying to get pregnant, but it couldn't be more important for being able to track those patterns. Is that what what you advise? Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, you know, it's also important to know that there are a number of things that you just don't feel, that you don't see. You know, women, you may be starting to have bone loss in your 30s if you're going to go— if you go into early perimenopause, you know, maybe you're 35 and starting to go into perimenopause, and we see bone loss, you know, years before your periods actually end. And so it'd be great to get a DEXA scan, for instance, look at your bone density, see where you are, and then in the next few years, you can track that and make sure that you're not losing weight, you're not losing bone mass as you get older and start to get closer to that transition.

And then from a nutrition and supplement standpoint, is there anything that you recommend?

You know, I think everyone is different. Certainly there are some core kind of supplements that I lean on. I love creatine for women. I love, you know, omega-3 fatty acids in some form. I think magnesium is great. I have supplement company myself and I put some blends together of things I really like, but I don't think everyone needs the same thing. But I do think, you know, at least knowing what you're getting in your diet. And if you can't get it in your diet, then adding it as supplement makes sense. But I, I always lean on diet first if you can for, for your micronutrients.

And I heard you talk about how even just mild elevations in fasting glucose can accelerate aging, which I think is a really important thing for women even in their 30s to understand, because you don't have to be diagnosed with prediabetes in order for that to, to be a concern.

Yeah, absolutely. When we look at all of these, you know, diseases like diabetes or, or high cholesterol, we have to remember they exist on a spectrum. You know, there's the disease where we have a number that says you're diabetic, but then before that you're pre-diabetic, and before that you're kind of getting closer to pre-diabetes. And we know that, like you just said, with, with blood sugar in general, lower is better. Obviously there is a, there is a bar. You don't wanna go too low, but lower is better because too much sugar in your blood, even if you're not diabetic, can accelerate aging in your skin, in your hair, in your blood vessels, you know, kind of all over your body. Yeah.

It makes so much sense. So getting proactive labs done on an annual basis, do you recommend more frequently than annual?

At, at least annual. If you have things that are coming up, symptoms, concerns, then certainly more often, uh, is needed. But at least once a year is great.

So at least once a year, DEXA scan in your mid-30s, maybe even earlier than that. Thinking about nutrition for decreasing blood sugar imbalances and supplementation. A lot of the ones that you listed are Definitely supplements that I'm an advocate of, and I also completely agree with the testament to it needing to be personalized to you. But I think that's a great place for people to start. So I'm interested in hearing about your personal journey because you started as an ER doctor and then you, you know, moved into this world of regenerative medicine and longevity space about 11 years ago. What prompted such a major career change for you?

Yeah. So I was an ER doctor for 10 years, board certified in the ER, and worked in, you know, big, big ERs in different cities. And towards the end of that, I had my 3 kids within 2 years. So I had twins and then I had another one 20 months later. And when my third was a week old, my husband moved out of state for a job. And so I was left at home with these 3 kids and I was still had to, I was still working in the ER. So I had to be at work at 4 in the morning in the ER. And so, you know, I'm sleeping 3 or 4 hours a day. Like stress is high. I'm chugging Diet Cokes and Monsters and I'm never working out. You know, I'm just like, I'm the picture of health as you could imagine. And that's over time. I realized that if I didn't make some pretty big changes in my own life, I was gonna be a patient in the ER, you know, in the next 5 years with some kind of chronic medical problem or anxiety attack or, you know, mental illness or something that could have been prevented if I had made some different choices. So I started learning about how to get myself healthier and my family. And then eventually I left the ER in about 2013.

And did you notice first the change in your own health where you had like drastic improvements in your own health when you left the ER and started going into this space?

The biggest thing was when I started sleeping a full 7 or 8 hours every night, it changed everything for me. All of a sudden, I wasn't craving as much, you know, sort of bad food. I was more able to exercise. I lost weight, I lost body fat, which at the time I did, I felt like I did need to, easily. But I felt like sleep was the big missing piece that I didn't have for more than a decade. So when that fell into place, I was just, I was a different person. It was amazing.

Yeah, I can't imagine the combination of being an ER doctor and having 3 kids under the age of 20 months.

And my husband was gone, so when he came home, you know, he kind of wanted to— he'd come home on the weekends and he wanted to like relax and hang out and like, you know, enjoy the weekend. And I was like, no, you, you're like the parent now. Like, I need to have some contact. There was some conflict there for sure. We didn't have a— we had a rough spell there for a little bit.

Yeah, I could imagine. That sounds very rough. My kids, we had 2 kids in 1 year and they're now 1 and 2. And just like hearing that sounds like so much worse than what we've lived through. So, um, I could only imagine. So you dove into this field of regenerative medicine, anti-aging, longevity, and functional medicine. For my audience who's really used to functional medicine, can you explain how regenerative medicine differs slightly from functional?

Yeah. I think of regenerative medicine as using various modalities to try to get your own body to repair and regenerate itself. So we think of it, we use things like stem cells or growth factors from stem cells commonly, but really regenerative medicine can also use other things like red, like red light therapy or shockwave therapy. Anything that's sending signals into your body and getting your own stem cells, your own cells to repair and regenerate faster is considered regenerative medicine.

Okay. That's so helpful. Can you share about your mom's experience that has impacted how you're starting to think differently about hormones? You are, you know, a pioneer in hormone therapy. You have a course teaching other practitioners how to prescribe hormones because you feel like they're such an important part of women's health. But I love the personal story that you have with your mom and the journey that she's gone through in the last few years that has really like awoken or woken you up to how important this is.

Yeah. So I've, you know, I've been prescribing hormones since 2013 to men and women, and I've been a big fan for a long time. But in 2023, my mom, who at the time was in her late 70s, she fell at the gym while she was walking on the track and she broke her hip. She was osteopenic, even though she'd been on estrogen prescribed for me for about 10 years prior to that. She'd had, you know, a decade off of estrogen because of the Women's Health Initiative and the fear around hormones and things like that. So she— her bones were not super strong. She broke her hip, she had to have it replaced, and eventually she was sent home from the hospital. And her doctor, who was like an internal medicine doctor, was looking at her medications. She only took estrogen and thyroid, like she's very healthy. He sees her estrogen and he takes a big red marker and he puts a big X in it and is like, you don't need this anymore. And he took her off of the estrogen that she'd been on for 10 years. I didn't know about this at the time. We had a lot of other things going on with our family, but Long story short, she then kind of went through like this estrogen withdrawal where she was waking up 4 or 5 times a night to try— had to go to the bathroom. She's on a walker. She can barely get, get there and back. She's having like really bad urinary incontinence, you know, all these horrible symptoms from being off of estrogen. And, you know, we got her back on it. It was, it was okay. And she's, she's doing better and she's okay now. But watching her go through that and seeing, you know, hip fractures are no joke. Like, you know, women, who break hips at that age, 25% of them don't last a year. They die within 1 year. And so I just think that there's such a gap in medical education and what, you know, doctors' understanding of hormones. So I became even more kind of excited about talking about these hormones and educating doctors specifically.

Because you've seen the ramifications on an individual basis. Mm-hmm. And what it's done to your family. Cuz when you, when I think most people don't realize how significant that is when you talk about 25% of women don't live past the first year after a hip fracture. And yet it's so nonchalant that women will say, oh, I was diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis. And then you see other conditions that people are diagnosed with where, you know, there's so much more education around where they understand the significance of it. They take it very seriously. But I don't think that we're to the point of that with osteoporosis and osteopenia. And we're so far from understanding the role of hormones and the connection between osteoporosis, cuz my mom actually was diagnosed with osteoporosis 2 years ago that she's now reversed into osteopenia, but she had to advocate so hard for herself and her doctors told her basically like, this is a waste of your money and time, all these things that you're doing. And, you know, going on hormone replacement therapy when you're almost 10 years after not having hormones on board. It's the, the fearmongering is, is really still so pervasive.

It is. And I think that the key messages are that first of all, osteo— osteoporosis, as you, your mom demonstrated, is reversible. It is not one of these things that we have no control over. So that's something important. It's reversible with hormones and lifestyle and, you know, things like that. And also just that, that, yeah, like you said, the fear that women have of hormones, you know, we know that bone actually does respond to estrogen even if it's been 10 years since menopause. If you, you know, this one of the organs that actually is very sensitive to estrogen therapy in a good way. So you don't necessarily have to be in that 10-year window to respond well to it. So that's an important message, I think, for doctors and for women as well.

Yes. And then when it comes to vaginal estrogen, um, can you talk about why vaginal estrogen can be so important, especially when you're speaking to some of the symptoms that your mom was experiencing?

Yeah. I like to say that all adult vaginas need estrogen. All of them need estrogen. So if you're not making it yourself, then you should be taking it. And that's kind of like, that's, that's all. Vaginal estrogen is really important for keeping the pelvic floor healthy. And that's not just, you know, making sex less painful, although that's part of it. It's also, you know, keeping the microbes and the microbiome healthy so you don't get urinary tract infections over and over again. It's helping to prevent the urinary prolapse, you know, the bladder kind of falling down. It's preventing things like urinary urgency, having to go to the bathroom over and over again. But, you know, even if it was just preventing urinary tract infections, that's something else that, you know, that kills women. Like, women die of UTIs and sepsis all the time. Nursing homes are full of people like that. So I tell women, you know, whether you're 35 and you're breastfeeding for several years and you're low estrogen from that, or you're 75 and you're low estrogen from that, vaginal estrogen is an excellent, extremely safe, very inexpensive tool that you can just take 3 days a week and it makes a huge difference.

Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that because even after I was— when I was breastfeeding and postpartum, newly postpartum, I had a few recurrent UTIs that I was like trying to do as many natural things for and then ended up taking antibiotics because the one had gotten so bad. And I asked my doctor about vaginal estrogen and said that I wanted to start it. And she told me that I was too young, that there was no correlation and that I didn't need it.

Yeah, that's— it's one of those other kind of things people aren't taught. Women, you know, there's a lot of times that women are in low estrogen states. And if you're in a low estrogen state for very long, then your pelvic floor will notice and you'll start to have potentially, you know, vaginal dryness, pain with sex, UTIs. And that could be, like you said, post— it could be breastfeeding, post, postpartum. It could be that you are training, you're overtraining, or you're training for something and you've stopped having periods. So you're amenorrheic for, you know, several months. And so you're not having that estrogen in your body. It could be from, you know, stress sometimes even can cause kind of hormonal imbalances for both estrogen and progesterone.

Mm-hmm.

And then certainly perimenopause and perimenopause, those hormones become erratic and that can happen as as early as 35 and still be considered normal, even earlier if you have pre, you know, premature ovarian insufficiency. So anytime you're having vaginal symptoms like, you know, lots of, uh, like lack of lubrication or pain with sex that's just starting, or UTIs that are flaring up, it's worth at least thinking about, do I have enough estrogen?

And can you talk about why that connection between estrogen and the pelvic floor is so important? Because we see women even in their sixties that have ongoing SIBO and other things. And so often, you know, low strength in their pelvic floor or imbalances are a factor in that where we'll refer them to a PT in order to get a pelvic floor assessment because of how much that can impact the gut microbiome long term.

Yeah, absolutely. Estrogen is one of, you know, the estrogen and your immune system are very tightly in sync, and it has— estrogen has many positive benefits in the female immune system. In fact, it's the, the female immune system is quite strong. It's generally kind of considered to be in younger women stronger in many ways than men's immune system. But estrogen's a big part of that. And a lot of that goes to barrier function. So in, you know, keeping the gut microbiome healthy, keeping the vaginal microbiome healthy, even keeping the skin microbiome healthy, estrogen has roles in all of those things. So when you lose estrogen, then we see a shift in the types of bacteria in all of those places to less beneficial bacteria. And then from that you can start seeing increased infections like UTIs or, you know, leaky gut or things like that that then can have downstream effects, you know, including SIBO or autoimmune disease or any number of chronic inflammatory issues down the line.

And I just thought of a question that I've been pondering for the last few weeks. But so often when we— I've worked with thousands of people over the last 11 years in functional medicine, and the number one question that we ask in our intake forms is, when was the last time that you felt well? And the most common answer that women give is is prior to having kids. Is there a connection between anything that we just talked about or something that is triggering, you know, a thought that you're like, oh, this is probably why?

You know, I think it's probably multifactorial. I don't know the answer to that for sure. I don't think, you know, estrogen, as long as you're having normal menstrual cycles, usually estrogen is doing kind of what it's supposed to do in terms of going up and down. It's when you start having the cycles get interrupted, um, that generally, or late perimenopause, that estrogen becomes problem. But certainly, you know, after having kids, there are so many things that are happening all at once. There's the lack of sleep, there's the increased stress, there's the, you know, all of the things like that. The relationships change in your life, and all of those things can independently affect your hormones in your body. So I don't think— I mean, certainly you can get back to the regular cycling, and that's important, but I don't think we even know probably the effects, um, of how kids affect hormones kind of in a micro way.

Yet. Yeah. It seems just like there's so many various stressors on the body and then you're also having to deal with them with sleep deprivation and yeah, you know, overstimulation and, and all the things. And then I have a lot of clients and even friends who have low progesterone even in their mid-30s, early 40s. And, um, a lot of them are typically like high achieving women that are likely overexerting themselves. But what are the most common causes of low progesterone? That you see even in younger women?

So stress is a big one. You know, over-scheduling, over-training, stress of any sort, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, can essentially tell your brain to reduce progesterone production. You know, the hormone production— you're making cortisol, but then you eventually kind of stop slowing down on the progesterone. The stress also can reduce ovulation, which is another reason that progesterone goes down. When you're not ovulating regularly, whether it's from stress or over-training or something else, then you lose the cells, the corpus luteum that are left over from the release of egg. Those cells are what make progesterone in the second half of your cycle. So if you're not regularly ovulating, then you're not making enough progesterone. And then you'll start to feel that. And that may be felt as things like increased PMS. You may have, you know, headaches or pain or, you know, raging before your periods. It may be increase or decrease in the flow of your periods. It may be migraines or headaches. I mean, there's any number of things and including things like infertility, anxiety disorders. All of these things can be triggered because of low progesterone. And then low progesterone can be triggered by any number of things, including stress or lifestyle.

And so then what are the most common interventions that you would recommend? Progesterone in the second half of your cycle?

Yeah, progesterone. So, you know, it'd be— it's, it's great to figure out what's causing it, certainly. But as you're doing that, you can also take progesterone during the second half of your cycle. So from ovulation day through until your next period starts. So, you know, about that 14-day period in the luteal phase can be really helpful for kind of supporting that progesterone as you're figuring out what the cause of it was in the first place. And then, you know, starting out working on all the basic lifestyle stuff, sleep and stress and, and exercise, like all of those things that seem like the kind of the soft, the soft medicine, like those are really the things that are going to tend to shift your hormones back in the right place as you're also ruling out other things like thyroid disorder or, you know, other hormonal disorders.

And from a nutrition side, I would also add that we do see it typically in women who are underfueling, that they're not getting enough calories, which is leading to the increase in the stress burden. Are there any, um, biohacking devices or things that you are seeing that you feel are fairly effective when it comes to improving central nervous system dysregulation?

You know, I— people ask me this a lot, and I, I tend to be someone who is more personally in favor of like just going out in nature and going on a long walk than I am like hooking myself up to a bunch of devices. The only thing I'm really regular with is I do like red light therapy a lot. And I think for me personally and for my patients, I feel like there are the mitochondrial benefits, which we know about for skin and for the body. But I also think that there are some mental, emotional, like to me when I use it, it makes me feel like I'm kind of gone into like a, like a, you know, meditative state for 30 minutes. Like it's amazing for the brain. So I like that a lot. But there are a number of other devices out there, like the Apollo device that you put on your wrist. There are vagal nerve stimulators. Yeah. Stimulators of various sorts, anything that is going to induce that parasympathetic response, that, that rest and relax response from the nervous system is, you know, theoretically gonna be able to help with, with hormones eventually.

Yeah, that makes sense. I, I feel like central nervous system dysregulation is the most common theme that I'm seeing pop up in conversations because it's so easy to control the food that you're eating, but it's so much harder for people that are, you know, super regimented and high achieving and trying to just do all the things with their lives on top of having kids and all the things that can really impact health in so many ways. Yeah, when you—

Agree.

You talked about red light therapy. Do you see any changes on your wearable devices that indicate changes in stress signaling, HRV, when you're doing red light?

I haven't been wearing my devices because they're, I've lost them recently. But so I've gone a little period without them, but I don't know, I can't say for myself personally, except that I do know that there are studies with red light therapy and blood sugar, just applying like red light therapy to the back actually decrease blood sugar after eating meals compared to applying a sham light, which is kind of interesting. They did a like kind of a, you know, controlled study on that. So we have evidence for reducing blood sugar. I don't know about the other things for myself, I do it. I literally do red light therapy every day, but I haven't been tracking with my devices for a while.

That makes sense. And then how effective is red light therapy for skin health? You're also— you're an expert in so many things, but one of the other areas that you are also an expert in is skin health. And you— I heard you say on a podcast, are you 49?

I am 50. I just turned 50 last month.

50. Happy birthday. Wow.

Thank you.

New decade.

I know, I know. I'm a little nervous, but we're doing it.

You look amazing. So I'm interested from a skin health standpoint, what does the research show on red light therapy? And do you feel like that's contributed to, like, how young your skin looks?

Well, thank you. I do think that red light is great for skin. We haven't— there's a lot of studies on red light for skin. And the way that it works in the body in general is the red light and the near-infrared light, which is looking at about 600 to 1100 nanometer wavelengths, is really great for your mitochondria. Essentially signals your mitochondria, those, those power plants in your cells to make ATP. And that is, you know, energy for the cells. And so we know that from skin research, applying the red light, you know, consecutively, usually it's 20 to 30 minutes at a time, can improve things like skin barrier function and hydration and, you know, small wrinkles and things like that. But there's more even research in the skin literature about using red light after— for healing purposes. So like after laser therapy or after microneedling therapy. In one of my clinics, we do a lot of regenerative— like I do regenerative facial injections with stem cells and exosomes. And I use red light therapy for, you know, afterwards for those patients and have them use it at home as well to help hasten healing and increase stem cell recruitment in area— in those areas. So I think it's a great tool. I don't think it is the only tool. Certainly you have to kind of stack, stack tools in the skin to, to make them all work together. But red lights are one of my favorites.

Wow. It's so interesting that you're using that in your clinic. And also, you know, before you go out and buy the expensive red lights and other things, of course, nutrition, hydration, as you said, plays such a huge role in improving skin health, getting those phytonutrients, blood sugar balance, all those things that can really improve the appearance of skin. But I do think that it's so interesting about red light. Do you have a brand of a red light that you recommend?

I don't have any relationship with any companies. The one I personally use is by Saluma, which is a kind of— it's like a port. It's like a one that you can wrap around your face and it's easy. I've also used Cozy, which has been really good too. I have a couple of different panels, but I— and then I also like red light therapy caps for hair restoration. Supplementation as well, and there's several companies for that. So I have red light all over the place around my house.

Do you have red light bulbs in your house, or do you still use regular light bulbs?

I don't have red light bulbs. I do have a lot of windows, so I am careful with, you know, I— it's interesting, people talk about light, and one of the things that we see out in the world is that, you know, the increased use of LED light, which is, is great from an energy standpoint as far as like reducing energy costs, but the LED light doesn't have those red wavelength in there. And so a lot of people aren't getting the, the red wavelengths, which is really important for mitochondrial health, like I said. So, but sunshine, getting sunlight instead, or adding red light on your own can both be helpful to kind of mitigate that. I have a lot of windows, you know, in my houses and, and just kind of rely on outdoor light for a lot of my day when I can.

I love it. I love it. So red light, there's a lot of research for skin health, for mitochondria, and is there a specific protocol that's like, the research shows doing it for this amount of time. Like, for instance, I do it for 10 minutes in front of my red light panel, but I'm wondering, like, is 10 minutes enough? I also have a red mask, but I don't do it as consistently. So is it worth doing— stacking that in later in the day?

It really depends on your device. I mean, every device, you know, they're powered differently, they have a different number of bulbs or light sources. And so some devices, 10 minutes is all it really recommends.. Some devices are closer to 30 minutes. I tend to see 20 to 30 minutes a day as kind of being the most studied thing that I'm looking at. But there's a bunch of different ways to do it. I would say, you know, a little bit of light is better than no light. Like sometimes I'll do like I'll blow my hair dry in front of a red light panel, but it only takes me 5 minutes. But that's okay. Like, that's 5 minutes I didn't have if I wasn't doing it.

Yeah, I love that habit stack. Okay, now moving to another area of the with the biohacking expertise that you have, can you— I haven't done any information or interviews yet about peptides. Can you give us a high-level overview of peptides? What are they? And what are your— what's your stance overall?

Yeah, so peptides are just short proteins. They're just proteins with just a short number of amino acids instead of being long and folded up like regular proteins. They're just a little string of amino acids. And you, you know, you make peptides all over your body. And the ones that are being used, you know, in clinics like our clinic are the same kinds of peptides that you're making in your body. So for instance, one of the most common one is BPC-157. All these peptides have this like alphabet soup of, of names. So they're a little bit confusing, but BPC-157 is probably the most popular one out there. And it is made by your own body in your stomach acid. And it's important for gut health and gut function, but it also has function in terms of like muscle healing, tendon healing, ligament healing, you know, musculoskeletal health in your body. So that, that one can be taken orally, like as a pill for gut health, or it could also be injected as to help with improving with healing after injuries or sports performance or things like that. But there's a whole bunch of different peptides out there. Some of them are FDA approved, like the GLP-1s, which, you know, we use for weight loss, like Ozempic. That's a peptide. Some of the peptides are, you know, more fringe and not FDA approved and not any— they're on lists that you shouldn't use them. So there's kind of varying degrees. Degrees of gray in the peptide space.

Okay, so BPC-157 is definitely— it's like, you know, been in the field of functional medicine even for a long time with using for people that have chronic ongoing gut issues. What are your thoughts on some of like, what are the peptides that the people in the biohacking world are taking for weight loss that aren't GLP-1s? Because I'm seeing a lot of— people in biohacking talking about various peptides that they're using to help with weight loss.

Yeah.

But they're not GLP-1s. They're— are they compounded at a compounding pharmacy?

Yeah, a lot of them are compounded. Um, there's a couple of different ways to go. One of the things that we do at Humanaut, which is one of my clinics, is we'll pair a GLP-1, which is going to help with, you know, fat loss, weight loss. We'll pair it with something that helps to increase your own growth hormone production. So that that is favoring maintaining muscle mass and even like losing like some of the visceral fat, the inflammatory fat, but not, you know, kind of helping you preserve muscle while you're losing fat. So for instance, we'll pair like Ozempic or Acemaglutide or something with something like Tesamorelin, which is a growth hormone secretagogue. It increases your own growth hormone production in the body. And that actually, Tesamorelin is actually an FDA-approved peptide that you can get from a pharmacy, a pharmaceutical company, or from a compounding pharmacy. And there are a few other ones like that that are growth hormone secretors. I like those. There are some other peptides like, like AOD-9604 or Tesafensine, which are, are, can be helpful for weight loss. I don't think that they're as helpful as the growth hormone secretagogues and the GLP-1s.

So as an MD, you are very pro-compounded pharmacies, is that right?

I, I am, I've, yeah, I am pro. I, I do think that you have to always be careful with any kind of pharmacy, but I do like compounding pharmacies and I also like pharmaceutical, you know, products if they're, if they're good. I like whatever's good and whatever's safe.

I feel like people can like bucket themselves into these worlds of like MDs don't like compounding pharmacies. Yeah. Because they're more, you know, like the claims around them not being FDA approved and other things. And then, you know, like more holistic doctors being anti-prescription. So I think that it's great that you are open to basically, like you said, whatever works. From a GLP-1 standpoint, can you give us just like an overview of what you're seeing in your clinics with using GLP-1s and the effectiveness of them?

GLP-1s are fantastic drugs. I mean, are they being overused? Probably. But I also think that they are— they, they do more more for the human body than almost any drug that we have in terms of potential benefits. And certainly there's the weight loss benefit, which we know about, but they can also really help with metabolic health. So they can really help with blood sugar regulation, with improving insulin sensitivity. They can help with your lipids, they can help reduce visceral fat, which is that inflammatory fat. They actually, you know, they have receptors all over the body. And so where's the studies, you know, for reducing cardiovascular disease, reducing kidney disease, reducing all of these things, are really impressive, cancer potentially. But the question is, are they beneficial just because you're, they're helping you lose weight and it's causing all those other things, or are they also beneficial in people who are normal weight? And we don't know that for sure yet. That's so like in my practice we do use, you know, we do like the microdoses as well as the normal doses for weight loss in my clinics. And, and certainly have a lot of great patient stories, you know, whether you wanna just lose 5 pounds and improve your metabolic health or whether you wanna lose 30 pounds and improve metabolic health. health, I do think that there's a role for these drugs, but we do have to be a little careful that we don't use them too much.

And are you seeing side effects popping up like in your actual clinic?

Yeah, sometimes. I mean, certainly nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, like that's very common, especially when you start the, you know, start those medications. Starting with a very low dose, even like below the manufacturer dose can help a lot. And just going up very, very slowly is, is beneficial. And then also, you know, just real world things like, you know, when you're eating your meals and making sure you're staying hydrated and, you know, things like that. The— I haven't seen any, or, or I can't at least think of many serious side effects. Like, you know, the things that you worry about from the animal studies are like thyroid cancer or pancreatic disease or things like that. And those are really not common in the way that, like a real-world setting where we're really not giving high doses to most people.

And I think it's also important to just highlight how when you're on a GLP-1, that it makes all of the nutrition and lifestyle factors that much more important in order to, like you talked about, maintain the muscle maintain your muscle mass, help to improve your microbiome for your own production of GLP-1 so that you're not continuing to have to increase your dose in order for them to stay effective. Because I have seen clients who come into us because they haven't been approaching, you know, like their nutrition from a blood sugar balance, anti-inflammatory lens, and they're not doing the strength training, and they have to continue to increase the dose in order to continue to see improvements in their actual weight outcome. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that giving a GLP-1 without, you know, lots of nutrition counseling as well as looking at body composition closely over time, whether that's with DEXA scans or, you know, InBody or different devices where you're measuring, you know, visceral fat as well as muscle mass over time, I think that that is, that's not good medicine. And I also think you're right, we, we need to support these GLP-1s. And when we do with like, with supplements that maybe are either probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, things to help gut health so that you're continuing to make the things you want to make. And then I also think that it's just, it's important to know that, you know, depending on why you're on medications, if you're on it for because you're obese and you're trying to lose weight, you may have to be on these medications long-term to maintain it. But ideally, for people who are a little bit healthier weight, you're not taking it forever. So making sure that you are teaching those habits is really important.

Okay. And let's talk about stem cells. I'm interested, you're also an expert in stem cells. I don't understand how you're an expert in as many things as you are and how you have as many companies as you do. There were so many different places that I wanted to take this interview because of how much expertise you have in so many different areas. But I would love for you to share a high-level overview of stem cells, how you're using them in your clinics, and what you see the most effective outcomes for.

So, yeah, so I've been using stem cells in my clinics since 2014. And, you know, if you think about what we're trying to do with stem cell therapy, it sounds, you know, it sounds crazy. But all we're trying to do is get your own stem cells to be more active and to act like more youthful versions of themselves. So you have stem cells are all over your body. They are responsible for the upkeep of all the tissues in your body. But as you get older, your stem cells become less responsive, which is why, you know, when my kids were little and they'd cut their arm skateboarding, they would heal in like 2 days versus me at 50 when I cut my arm, it takes me like 2 weeks to heal. That's because I have 50-year-old stem cells and they have, you know, 10-year-old stem cells. So what we're doing with stem cell therapy is we're taking either stem cells or other growth factors that are, that come from stem cells or like exosomes and cytokines and things like that. And we are injecting them into places of the body to help try to repair and regenerate those areas. So for instance, I do a lot with skin health. I do a lot with hair health, and I do a lot with sexual health. in my clinic. And then we also will do these regenerative injections for like joint pain, neck pain, back pain. My partner does that. But we're really just trying to kind of talk to your own cells to get them to act like more youthful versions of themselves.

When you say sexual health, you mean like increasing libido?

No, more in improving the health of the, like, the genital structure. So I use— I'll inject into men, into penises, into women, vaginal wall, clitoris, trying to improve for women, for instance, improve sensation, blood flow, lubrication, things like that in the area.

Okay. So interesting. And then how long do people need to do the stem cell treatments in order to see outcomes?

You know, it depends on what we're treating. You know, sometimes we just do a single treatment and within 3 or 4 months they are starting to notice benefits. Sometimes it takes more than a single treatment. And, and you know, in my clinics we don't treat systemic diseases, so we're not treating things like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or, you know, MS or things like that. So we're not doing like the big doses that you have to do multiple times. We're generally doing a, a decent-sized dose, but maybe just one procedure, or maybe you do it, you know, repeat it in 6 months kind of thing. But a lot of people see benefits after just one treatment.

And when you say benefits, can you speak to what the benefits are that you commonly see? Obviously depends on what you're using it for, but based on the examples that you gave, like what are true benefits that people would see from just one treatment?

So for skin, for instance, we'll do— I'll inject these regenerative factors, stem cells and other things. I can inject them into the skin or I can also apply them after microneedling. Usually I do both. And over the course of like 3 to 6 months, we'll see improvements usually in skin texture, tone, color, kind of evenness, blood flow. So you have like a better glow, hydration, which is really important for older women. Reduction of fine lines and wrinkles over time. So just improvement in skin quality. It's not, these things don't help so much with volume. So they're not going to help you, you know, have the big fluffy cheeks or the big lips, but they do help with the skin quality. 'Cause you're really just getting your own skin to become more active. With hair, we can see improvement in hair growth or health of hair if we do it to the scalp. And then with sexual health, again, we're trying to improve blood flow, sensation, lubrication, and, you know, hopefully sexual experience. Yeah.

Wow. It's so amazing. So have you used stem cells on, on yourself? I'm assuming.

Yeah. I can't do these sexual injections on myself, but I have definitely done— but I definitely do. I usually will inject myself, my skin at least once a year. Sometimes I'll do microneedling twice a year and apply them topically. I try to do about every 6 months, do something to myself. But I have a lot of videos of me, like, you know, injecting myself. And it's a little crazy, but I tend to be able to do it as long as I, you know, take some deep breaths and go for it.

I actually was looking at your YouTube, and I think that the first video that came up from like 8 years ago was you doing PRP on yourself. Yeah.

What's so funny about that is I did it on myself, and it was a video of just kind of, you know, how to do it. And I got all these comments from people who were not doctors, not in medicine, that were like, hey, I'm going to make this in my garage. So, can you tell me what the ratio of the, you know, of this. And I'm always like, no, no, no, no, this is not a garage thing. Like, this is, this is like a medical procedure in a doctor's office. But I guess I wasn't clear in my videos about that.

That's hilarious. I love how like that the experimental lens that you as a doctor are so open-minded to since, you know, it's not always the most common, but it's obviously why you've gotten to be such a, a prominent leader in this space because of, you know, all the things that you're, you're constantly experimenting with. So from a skin health standpoint, like, I'm gonna use myself as an example. In the last— my, my son and daughter are a year and a half and two and a half, and we had them within one year of, um, they're Irish twins. So almost, you know, obviously you have twins.

Aw.

Um, and understands, like, there have been so many nights in the last year that I'm embarrassed to say that I was like, if I wash my face, this is a great win. Um, so that's where I'm at with my skincare routine. I've never gotten Botox. I, you know, it's like pretty minimal, but I am getting to the point that I, I have more energy. I'm actually sleeping through the night. And so I am thinking about like, what are the most effective ways to improve my skin health? So for someone like me that's just starting out thinking about some of these proactive ways to support skin longevity, what do you— is— how often do you recommend something like microneedling? Like where do you recommend starting?

Yeah, I would start with the basics, obviously the lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, you know, exercise, all of that. And then make sure you're wearing a good, uh, sunblock during the day. I like mineral sunblocks in general, like zinc oxide, titanium dioxide. Um, 'cause even though I think the sun has many benefits, it is also the number one cause of skin aging in, you know, just from the UV exposure does affect the skin. So sunblock every day is important. I also like like, if you just can choose one or two things as far as skincare, I like a good retinoid in the evening. Retinoids have tons of data for improving skin health and regeneration. And then some sort of antioxidant serum that you would apply in the morning before skincare. So that's something, you know, maybe it's got like NAD precursors or vitamin C or vitamin E or resveratrol, you know, all kinds of different antioxidants. And then also making sure you're getting enough antioxidants in your diet. It specifically. And if not antioxidants, then things like hyaluronic acid, which you— it's harder to get. It's kind of hard to get from food. Astaxanthin, like some of these sort of skin healthy ingredients from food is also a great thing to add as well. And then when you're ready to do procedures, microneedling is great for anyone probably over, you know, of any age that's an adult. It's super easy, minimal downtime, and it doesn't, you know, it can, it can move the needle to kind of keep the skin quality healthy. It's not going to make you look crazy or anything like that. So it's a good starting point, I think.

Okay, great. And then there's— then you do PRP on people. And can you talk about the benefits of PRP?

Yeah, PRP is just taking your own blood from the patient and centrifuging it, so spinning it and isolating the platelets in the red blood, you know, from the red blood cells. And we're injecting the platelets as our— as part of our serum. Because the platelets act like growth factors and can help talk to your cells to get your cells to increase collagen and elastin and these things that kind of make your skin look more youthful. So PRP is kind of like the first version. When you think about regenerative therapy, it's like the lower version. It's been around for a long time. It's very safe. It's very easy. It's done everywhere. And then above that is when you start thinking about the other stem cell therapies, either using stem cells from yourself or from other products like, like placental tissue, etc., exosomes, things like that. But PRP is, is very accessible and very safe also.

So at 50, can you share like how often you're doing each of these things to make your skin look so good?

So I don't use PRP too much because I have— I tend to now when I do it, I usually use some stem cell variants, you know, stem cells and exosomes. I'll usually do that about twice a year.. And then I also will do that with microneedling and injections. And then I will also try to do some kind of laser treatment, usually at least once or so a year for like dark spots and skin tightening, like a non-ablative laser or a, like an IPL or BBL. And then sometimes if I have— I haven't done it in a little while, but I'll also do things like other types of heat therapy, like Ultherapy, which is a skin tightening that you do kind of as a maintenance. Sense, maybe I'll do that every couple of years. And then I also, I've also used fillers, Botox, like I've, I've just, I've used, I haven't had surgery, but I've done all the other things.

So you do a combination of it all?

I do whatever I can get my hands on. I feel like it's going to work. I have done it. I've done most of it.

Amazing. And then for someone, you have clinics that this is, this what you do in the Longevity Franchise clinics that you Yeah.

So, we have clinics called Humanaut Health. We are currently in Austin and Palm Beach, Florida— Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, opening in Dallas pretty soon. And, I'm the chief medical officer for that. And so, we have— it's basically a full-service longevity clinic. We have memberships for various different levels depending on kind of what kind of services you want. We do a lot of hormones. We do peptides as well as lifestyle coaching. And then, we also have in-clinic services like like IV nutrition or hyperbaric oxygen or, you know, ozone therapy or all kinds of different things in the clinic to try to help, you know, kind of support longevity and health.

So amazing. And then for someone that doesn't live in those areas, how do they find something? How do they like find a place that can do the things that you just talked about?

I mean, I think that there are, there are more and more of these kind of centers popping up all over the place in the last couple of years, more and more clinics that do a combination of these things. I think I get, I get asked a lot for about hormones, you know, where do I find a hormone doctor? And at this point there's so many people out there that can do hormones. If you, you know, just search for bioidentical hormones or body identical hormones near me, and usually you'll get a bunch of people, a bunch of hits, and then ask friends and family members and things like that, you know, if they've gone to anyone. There's a lot of telemedicine companies also doing it, but there's more and more coming out there. I think the hardest thing is that a lot of the companies that are out there are doing a lot of diagnostics, like a lot of blood test, but then they don't do the care for afterwards. You get this like long report with all the things that are wrong with you, and then you're like, okay, now what?

100%. I also feel like what's happening in the hormone space is what started happening in the functional medicine space a few years ago, where people saw a lot of opportunity, financial opportunity, and then just exploded with people who aren't necessarily experts in the that aren't like doing it because they're passionate about it and like doing as much of the actual training to become, you know, like certified and qualified in the area. And it's like just very watered down. Like, I feel like that's started— that started happening in functional medicine a few years ago, and I'm seeing it in the hormone space now where people are like advertising that they do hormone replacement therapy, but then like clients of ours, they report such crazy symptoms because they're on improper doses of the hormones. And it's likely because these practitioners, like, as they're seeing the increase in opportunity, are like just jumping in instead of having the clinical expertise to be able to really create amazing outcomes.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's hard because, you know, and we're, we're working with this ourselves. Like, we wanna scale Humanaut, this, this clinic. But in order to scale, you have to kind of simplify a lot of the things and make it something that, you know, that, that can be scaled. And so, like, with hormones, for instance, you know, I have I have this, this whole provider course for how to prescribe hormones, but it's like, you know, it's a 9 or 10-hour course and it's a 300-page guidebook that goes with it. So like, how do we simplify that in a way that doesn't degrade the quality of the care? And that's something that we're, you know, working on ourselves as well. So I get it.

I'm so excited that you launched that course. I feel like it's such an important thing because even myself, like when I didn't see you at Eudaimonia, but when I was at Eudaimonia, I was at dinner even with a group of physicians and they were like talking. One of them was talking about how they want to to be able to take a course to learn more about, you know, like how they can improve their hormone protocols because of having some information, but like not enough. And so I feel like the fact that you've launched that, the timing couldn't be better.

Yes, please sign up. I, it took me like literally like 2 years to make that course. It was, it was the, I don't, I never thought it would take that long, but it, it is a lot. But I did put kind of everything that I've learned from like traditional allopathic training integrative medicine training, functional medicine training, you know, Neil Rousier, who's a very kind of different viewpoint. I kind of took— I've taken all these different courses and I kind of tried to put the best of it into one course. So I don't know, I'm not sure how it did, but we've gotten some good reviews so far.

I love it. I love it. And your 10 years of experience doing it, you know, you can't really like compete with 10 years of experience because I feel like that's what makes you such a good clinician when you have enough reps in to be able to really create, to see what works and what doesn't, because it's not so black and white like the research sometimes makes it seem.

Yeah, for sure.

And I've interviewed a number of OB-GYNs who are very anti, um, bioidentical hormones. Can you explain why you're pro-bioidentical hormones? Because I think that this is important.

Bioidentical just means the hormone that we're giving you is the same chemical structure as the hormone that your body makes. And it kind of was started as like a kind of a marketing term because back early back in the early 2000s, most of the hormones that were out there were what we— what are termed synthetic, although that's kind of a bad term, but essentially they're not identical to what your body makes. These are the ones made from horse's urine, like Premarin, you know, things like that. And so you had people coming out with, with these bioidentical hormones. But really, you know, whether we call them bioidentical or body identical, the most important thing is that the hormone chemical structure matches what your body made. So your body makes estradiol as the main estrogen. You should be taking estradiol in most cases if you're taking it. Same with progesterone, same with testosterone.

So the argument against bioidentical is that, like, what's the primary argument against it?

You know, when, when I first started doing hormones, the argument was that most bioidentical hormones were made by compounding pharmacists, like in compounding pharmacies, and that the traditional kind of allopathic doctors didn't like that, and they didn't think that they were any different than the hormones that they were giving, these kind of synthetic hormones. So they were like, poo-pooed. Now, 20 years later, now most doctors who give hormones are giving that bioidentical version. They're just not maybe calling it that anymore because some people equate bioidentical with compounding, even though in my mind it doesn't matter if it's from a pharmaceutical company or compounding pharmacy. It's the same chemical structure and that's what you're looking for.

Okay, that makes sense. Dr. Amy Killen, you are such an amazing expert in, like I said, so many different areas, and I am such a fan of all of your work and how progressive you are in all the things that you're building to help continue to improve longevity, hormones, anti-aging, everything for men and women. Can you share the places that people can find you and benefit from your work?

Yes. Well, first of all, thank you. I thank you for having me on. Um, I am very active on Instagram at Dr. Amy B. Killen. And then I also am active on— I have Substack that I'm very active on. I have multiple different companies, but my website, dramykellan.com, is probably the easiest place to find all of those things. My clinics, my supplement company, which is called HotBox, my, like, the clinics where I work, as well as the ones where I oversee the other clinicians. So dramykellan.com, and sign up for my Substack as well.

Yeah, everyone's talking about how great your Substack is.

Yeah, thank you. I just wrote an article today on testosterone tips for women that's free. So if you haven't read that one, it may, may be good for information.

I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for being part of the Being Brigid Show, and thank you for all the work that you're putting out into the world. Thank you for tuning in, and I will see you next time.