103: Peptides, Hormones & Holistic Health with Dr. Tracey Stroup

Okay, so if you are one of those people who has heard about the peptide craze and is wondering about peptides, how they apply to you, how they could help you, and you have no idea where to begin. This was me two months ago, and then I went to the Annie Appleseed conference. And of course, I had heard about peptides before, but I had no education on them. Because if you want to learn about peptides, you got to go learn about peptides. Like, no one's teaching you about peptides. Peptides. And I had no idea what to do with them. And then I heard Dr. Tracy Stroop at the Annie Appleseed conference, and my mind was blown. And I got to learn all about peptides, how to incorporate them into my life, and I want you to be able to know how to incorporate them into yours. So I went to the source. I got Dr. Stroop to come and be on my podcast. So, Dr. Tracy, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. Besides the fact that I get to chat for the next however long with my friend.

Well, I am so honored to be on your podcast. Thank you for having me as a guest. And I know I'm a big fan of everything that you do and how you've innovated the industry with your amazing work. So, so appreciative that Annie Appleseed brought us together.

Yes. Well, thank you. Thank you, and that's very kind. Although, you know, truth be told, we're all out there fighting the good fight and doing good things. And so I want to start by just introducing people to you, giving them a little about your background, what you do, who you serve, who you help, and then I want to get into the pep talk.

Well, I am a naturopathic doctor by trade, so that's what I do. Now I have a telehealth company, as well as an educational academy for lay people and practitioners. So I would consider myself a chronic disease specialist. Now that you and I had been introduced through Annie Appleseed, I kind of tumbled into the cancer world when a very close friend of mine and my assistant who was diagnosed last year. So, you know, as I said at the Annie Appleseed, nobody is born a cancer expert. You kind of become one. You know, you're kind of, like, thrown into it all of a sudden. And I think your story, above all that I've heard, is amazing of how you entered into the journey. So in addition to that, I'm the chief health and growth officer of a tech company as well, and we innovate online stores for doctors So a lot of different hats that I wear, but my favorite one is educator. I love just to teach people how to simplify health, to get the best results and to make it doable. You know, I mean, I think we've overcomplicated health way too long. And I think, you know, adding simple things like peptides to your regimen that you're already doing can be an amplification. So I'm also a wife and a mom of two boys. God made me a boy mom, and I love it. And that's me.

We, we know all about being a boy mom.

Comes with the challenges.

Yes. You know, it's so interesting that you, you talked about simplifying because I think that so many people are so confused and so overburdened and told to do more and more and more. And oftentimes healing comes when you're doing less.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, isn't that the whole crux of why most people are sick? We're doing too much. You know, we have too much stress and too many obligations and that feeling of overwhelm and that just has a cascade of effects on the body. But most of the time, I tell people you can get 70% to where you're trying to get just by changing how you think, how you eat, how you live. All of those just foundational habits, right? Nutrition, hydration, movement, sleep, sleep elimination, emotional, spiritual wellness. That's the foundation that you need to build that house of health upon. You know, if you don't, you are just layering supplements and protocols on quicksand. So you can't out supplement or out medicate a poor diet. You can't out supplement or out medicated out medicate a poor thought process. So those are the biggest things that we need to be speaking into people's lives and that they have more control over this temple, you know, that than they think. And they don't have to continue to hand their health away to everybody and say, help me, help me. There's so many things you can do every day in your own life. Making small tweaks. You know, I hear people always tell me like, oh, I have this goal, you know, your goals change. My goals have changed through my health journey. Right. It's like every year I want to lift more or get stronger or run a marathon or whatever that looks like that that'll never be a goal for me. Let me recant that. I'll never run a marathon. But if it was a goal, I'm.

With you on the no marathon. My health goal that I Set for this year is that I'm going to by December 31st be able to do five pull ups.

Well that's a good goal. That's a great goal.

Did I tell you this story? I thought I was doing five pull ups. And I told my football playing 16 year old son that I can do five pull ups, really almost six. And he's like no you can't. And so I proudly take him into the gym and go to the bar and I proceed to do what I think is five pull ups. And like I rock it and I get down and he's like, it's great mom, but those are chin ups.

Oh my gosh.

Oh my God. I did not know that there was a difference. And he's like, now turn your hands around and try it again. And I couldn't.

Different muscle groups, right? So yeah, I started out in personal training at my degrees in exercise science and I used to tell people like chin ups and pull ups, whole different animal, different muscle groups, whole different animal.

Now I can do two and a half now.

That's good. Now you know, it's impressive anyway, even chin ups are impressive. So don't sell yourself short. I mean we compare us women at our beautiful ages to a 16 year old testosterone, you know, laden child riddled boy. It doesn't, it's not apples to apples. So I'm proud of you Dr. Jen, very proud of you, but thank you. Back to the goals, I love those. But really your health is built on habits. Things that you do every day even without thinking about it. It's good to have goals, but it's better to define habits. And so your habits are the sustainable thing. And I'm sure you tell your boys and I tell mine, the habits that you create today determine the future you have tomorrow and down the road. And so you can have goals of, you know, I want to go to the mlb, but it'll be the habits that take you there. It's the same thing with your health. You want a healthy outcome for yourself. You want to get over something, you want to, you know, rebuild from something that's built on your habits. It's a great goal to have. But once you get there, then what? Right? So you're going to have a new goal. So establish those habits foundationally and then everything else is just icing on the cake.

Yeah, for sure. I love that. So what are some of the foundational habits that you talk to people about and know that like you don't have to do this all at once? Right. Health grows Absolutely. And it grows from humble beginnings, recognizing where you're broke.

That's right. The chain breaks at the weakest link. So easy thing, you know, nutrition. People get into all kinds of specific diets. And while I do recognize that those are valuable and sometimes incredibly needed to get you therapeutically somewhere, I go with simple philosophy. Tree, ground, run, swim, fly. If it falls from a tree, grows from the ground, runs in a field, swims in the ocean, or flies in the sky. Organic, non gmo. Eat it. If it can reproduce life or sustain life, it will reproduce and sustain life in you. Box, bags, cans, bottles, packages. Those are processed foods. They are without living enzymes and probiotics. They are not life sustaining. They are calorie producing. They can also give you some energy, but they will not help you create mitochondrial biogenesis. Right. The ability of the powerhouse of the cell to split and create new and healthy cells over and over again. That's an easy thing that I tell my people. Like, we are created foundationally in Genesis from the clay of the earth. You know, God pulled Adam out of the clay. So therefore, anything that runs on it, grows from it, eats from it, our body will recognize. So at the end, we're just dirt and ribs. And I tell people, don't overcomplicate that. Like really just eat from the dirt. You know, build your body. It'll help. So nutrition, that's pretty much what I give the advice on. If we need to tweak more fat, more protein, less carbs, whatever that looks like, we can do that. But a lot of people just aren't eating foundationally. They're not eating real food. They're eating. 90% of what's bought in a grocery store is processed packaged food. And 40 billion tons of fresh produce are thrown away every year. It's so where we shop, right? So the DIY do it yourself movement, the home economics, that's coming back, right? They took away in school, you know, our home ec, you know, we don't learn how to cook anymore because we're a microwave nation and a fast food junkie. And even going out and eating at places that are supposedly healthy, it's still processed, it's still packaged, and it still needs preservatives. So eat at home, eat real food, eat organic, non gmo, as much as possible. We can get in that whole thing, but we're not. And eat from the dirt. That's what I would say. So that's nutrition. Yeah.

Unfortunately, that was a very intentional campaign that came about in the 1960s with feminism. And we Were given this messaging, this toxic messaging that we are too important to stay home and cook, that our time is better spent doing other things, joining the workforce, whatever it is. It completely devalued cooking and preparing and shopping and nurturing and all of that very intentionally, right? Like this was the food industry's way of getting you to buy their products because they sold you this mindset that you were too important, that it was a waste of your time to cook. Let me take that off of your hands. And that way you can do other things like get chronically ill and then utilize pharmaceuticals, the hospitals, you know, the medical system. I mean, it is an evil conspiracy. And when you. And when you recognize that, you're like, oh yeah, that's exactly what happened. And I guess I am a conspiracy theorist, because I really do believe that it, it was a very intentional campaign.

I totally believe that. If you go back to Genesis and you look at God's design for culture, you know, man and woman get married and procreate and they work equal partner. And I can't remember the Hebrew word word used for partner in the Bible, but it's used several times that even God refers to himself as a partner, as something that somebody can't do on their own, but needs somebody else to do it for them. Almost like filling the gaps, right? So God created Eve to be an equal partner to Adam, to build their home, their family, their culture. And that was the way people farmed. Women worked in the home, men worked in the home, on the farm. Nobody worked outside of. Outside of the home. Nobody. Not women, not men. So it wasn't like this whole feminine movement for women to work outside the home. The work outside the home came from the Industrial revolution after the war, where we left our homes and went and built someone else's dream, rather than our dream at home. For our enterprise, where we grew our food, harvested our food, you know, cooked our own food, and we were self sustainable. We gave away that. Right? So I absolutely agree. Feminism, you know, that entire movement was intentional, not only to get women out of the house and away from the nurturing, but if you look at Satan and what he tries to do, it is to break the family unit. And if you can do that, if you can deconstruct it in any way, he is going to get his little needles. Because if we look at the great Father in heaven, right, He's a father. And so the father is very important in the household, you know, and that really matters. Because if we can demoralize masculinity, if we can make men less and women up and it's not more or less in that partnership, but when we do that market wise and women are like, I am woman, hear me roar and I can do everything you can do. We weren't meant to do everything men should do. We were meant to do what God designed us to do, which was be what men can't do. We're better nurturers. We have different ways of looking at things. When you raise your sons versus how your husband raises the sons, right? Different but equal, but great. So we have to stop like this comparison. I mean, we could go all day on these podcasts, but we have to stop this comparison. It's the death of joy. And it's fine to work outside the home. You work outside the home, I work outside the home. But it's our companies, our family companies, right? We build our companies and it's a family effort and where you need to step out and do things, your husband steps in and takes care of stuff and vice versa. That's how it should be. We should be building our households. Very important.

I can't help but think when you said comparison is the death of joy and this is a huge problem across the board, right? It's comparing yourself to your neighbor. It's comparing yourself to someone else's cancer journey. It's comparing yourself to someone's health, to someone, to things that they have. It's all of it, right? And it really is the death of joy. And it goes right back to the ten Commandments. Thou shalt not covet, right? You're not supposed to want what someone else has because what someone else has is what they were meant to have. And you are your very special Jew you, your very special you on your very special journey, right? And, and I, I love that comparison is the death of joy. Because we, we're specifically given inst. Not do that.

And I, I haven't thought of that. But I love that you brought that up because that is nail on the head. You know, God's laws are protective love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, forbearance, you know, all of the fruits of the spirit, including self control, which is at the bottom. Because if you have love, you have joy. If you have joy, you have peace. If you have peace, you have patience. If you're patient, you're kind. If you're kind, you're generous. You know, you don't need to have control on top, which is what the world tells you. Like if you just get control of this, you'll have all these Things. No. God says, if you have love of the journey in life that I've given you, you'll have joy in it. If you have joy, you'll be peaceful. If you have peace, you'll be patient, kindness, all that stuff. So his laws are protective, and we don't look at them that way. We look at them as binding. And that's what somebody in the feminist movement, no offense against that, if you're a Christian. I don't mean everybody. Some will say, like, you know, the Bible's misogynistic. It's not it. I mean, it's because they never read it. I, I, hands down, asked people constantly. I'm like, do you understand God's prot. Women in the Bible? Do you understand God's, you know, his covenant for men over women in the Bible? Like, they, if they, if men keep allowing this, you know, emasculation of selves, they'll stand for it. Like, they'll stand before God for it. They gotta, like, step up. So it's a huge thing. You're right. It started from the home. Now we're here. We got big ag. Then they said, women, you're not smart enough to teach your kids. Then we sent them off to school, so we had big education. And then from the indoctrination in there where they're told not to trust parents, that, you know, all the things that we're seeing today and we can get into all those subjects and then they're taught, like, to eat school lunch and have breakfast at school and not have cooked meals and go long hours without eating snacks and not have water all day and all the things. Then they get home and they're obligated to go to sports or whatever. And so it's sitting for eight hours, no activity, in front of screens with bad food. And then guess what happens? Well, we need the third little trifecta of Satan, which is big pharma. And so not that pharmaceuticals don't have a place in a space. And if you're on them, that's. I'm not saying that is a bad or good thing. I'm just saying it's not a lifestyle thing. You know, we've taken an allopathic model that is for acute trauma, and we're trying to make it into lifestyle medicine. And square peg, round hole just doesn't fit because most of the people that are guiding you towards health only make money on your disease. So if you get better, they're out of a job. So it's kind of a conundrum. And for people to invest in this disease management every month, what they call a health insurance policy, which it's not. They are just throwing money, waiting to get sick for when they do get sick, to get a pharmaceutical repression that will just make them think that they feel better, although the underlying condition is still there, but now they don't have symptoms. So the physical discernment of your body, your God given discernment, that something's wrong, I have a symptom, is just as powerful as your spiritual discernment. We just have got really good at dumbing it down and not paying any attention to it and saying, well, I don't want to be sick, I don't want to suffer. Although suffering and sickness is in the Bible and God says for a reason that it brings you closer to the, you know, blessed are the meek. You know, don't grow weary where you are weak. I am strong. There's so many examples, including the whole book of Job that is in the Bible about suffering and how it brings you closer to faithfulness and obedience. But we don't want that. We want quick and easy. We want to feel good. We want the tree of knowledge, we want to know how to fix it, how to get out of it. And so this is a really good conversation because when it comes to chronic disease, when it comes to suffering, most people will do whatever they can to get out of it fast, fast, fast, rather than being in it with, with the Lord and working through it, allowing God's great design for the body to step up and heal. And not that we are the great healers, we are just a person that God put on the earth to point in the direction of him, to say, he is a great physician and he has given us all things here and we can use them to create this homeostasis in our body that your body will come back to God's natural design. We have to remember that the prince of the air, Satan, right, he, he rules the air here so our bodies will break down here because he's, he's the prince of the air. I mean, if you are stuck in a toxic chamber full of bad chemicals, you're gonna break down. Well, that's what we are here. You know, this is just temporary. So we have to remember where we live, that our bodies will naturally break down because of it. But if we abide in what God said in the garden about what is very good, I've created all things here and they are very good, we have a better chance of maintaining and attaining health than, you know, Trying to do all the hoop jumping and magic trips, tricks of symptom repression, with taking copious amounts of pharmaceuticals that are just destroying us.

Sorry, yeah, but. And what you pointed out is that, you know, we are essentially farming out our health to people who don't know how to create health, that have nothing to do with health. Because our medical system, the, the people who are in charge of the medical system, doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, you know, the, the providers, they are not trained in health. They are trained in symptom management.

All of them, across the board, diagnosis and pharmacy. Yeah.

Diagnose, prescribe, diagnose, prescribe, diagnose, prescribe. And we've been conditioned to think that health is the absence of disease, but that's not it at all. Right. Health is true, is true and optimal function. And as far as diseases like cancer are concerned, I mean, what we have to remember is cancer is not a surgery deficiency or a chemotherapy deficiency or a radiation deficiency. Not. That's not it.

Right.

They may be necessary evils. Your proverbial sink is overflowing. You have to mop up the floor. So, you know, if you have a metastatic lesion to your bone that has caused a pathologic fracture and you are suffering, I get it. Radiation is the quick solve to get you out of pain. But you have to figure out how to turn that faucet off. Because again, radiation isn't the solve. It's a temporary band aid to get you out of pain so you can take a deep breath, figure out what's happening and why it's happening. And so often our diagnoses are wake up calls for us, they're messages for, for us saying, are you on the right path? Because if you have disease, if you have dysfunction, you're probably not. Now we are living in a very imperfect world. That is certainly true. And dysfunction is an environmental disease. But how, how can you evaluate your environment and change it so that you create one that fosters health instead of disease?

That's taking a good look at your habits. Right. But you're absolutely right. There is that acute trauma and temporary relief that people do need. That is where the radiation comes in. Maybe the pharmaceutical, you know, and there's a lot of off labeled meds too that are being used that we hadn't thought about before. And they are changing pathways. But the underlying core is the habits that you build beyond that treatment, beyond it and even before it. So prevention comes before and then healing comes after. So nutrition. Right. Hydration is another one. Drinking enough water, drinking pure water Clean water. You know, a lot of people didn't realize the fluoride issue. They thought it was conspiracy, thought we were crazy, tin hat wearing, crazy people, right?

Yeah.

Until RFK came out and was like, oh, yeah, it's a neurotoxin. We're going to take it out of water. And I'm like, I've been saying that for 20 years. You know, I was like, congratulations. But I've had my Berkey forever with the fluoride filter. So that's really important. Not just that we're drinking water, but that we're drinking clean water. Because the amount of medications that are found in water, the amount of fluoride, chlorine that destroys the thyroid, all of these things, right? Movement, the whole go big or go home, it's not necessary. Our bodies are designed to move. That's why we walk upright. We sit way too much. And I talk about this a lot with cortisol. Like when you're an animal and you're out in the field and there's a lion and a cheetah and there's a zebra out there, the zebra sees them and obviously is going to go into fight or flight. All the blood's going to leave the digestive system and go to the muscles. They are not going to rest and they're not going to digest. They're going to run. We as humans, we do that all day long, sitting behind our desk, and we're stinking, thinking, and we're worrying and our cortisol is pumping, except we're not running, we're sitting. And so we're getting fluctuations with glucose, we're getting metabolic disorder and we're sitting, so movements.

And our immune system is turned off because if you are going to get eaten within the next 15 seconds, you don't need to fight off the common cold or anything else.

That's right. So here, our immune system, our digestion, our assimilation, all the things that make us live healthy and well are null and void all day long. So I tell people, get yourself a little walking pad, put it under your desk, stand up and walk. When you're stinking thinking, if you're in a stress response and you just got a bad email from your boss, like, move, go for a walk, clear your head, get out in sunshine, God's nature, get away from the emfs. I mean, even you and I like podcasting right behind these computers all the time. It's a lot. So.

But I hope if you're listening, you're listening on your walk outside with you know not AirPods.

We hope that you have like the not AirPods headphones. Old school. Old school. Movement is not just calorie burning. And in fact those that preach calorie burning or calorie cutting like 1986 called and want your diet plan back, please give it. So it's really about lymphatic cleansing. Movement is detox, Movement is stimulation for thermogenic rising and we know circulation, oxygenation so it's cleansing and clearing of the body. It increases endorphins, so many beautiful things just by moving. Now some people have mobility problems and they can't move. That's where you can get vibration plates, do anything, lymphatic massage just to get tissue and function moving. So nutrition, hydration, movement and then sleep. Praise the Lord. Like people don't sleep, they don't go to bed, they get stuck in doom scrolling. They have all of that blue light coming into their brain. Their little pineal gland can't produce melatonin. You are a big advocate for melatonin for anti inflammation. That's one of your healing. That's right. And so right that's our healing hormone. And so we can't produce growth hormone, we're not sleeping. Well people wake up multiple times during the night, on and on and on. And so at that point you're not creating growth hormone, you're not creating melatonin, you're not healing, you're not reducing inflammation and you wake up the next day and you do all the same things. You eat bad, you sleep bad, you think bad, you move bad, everything bad. You know, what are we going to do? So sleep bed, seven to nine hours solid. If you're not sleeping you can eat all the kale you want and work out every day. You're not going to feel good and you're not going to recover.

So yeah, if you're not sleeping, you're not healing.

So nutrition, hydration, movement, sleep elimination. You know I talk about poop a lot with people and just eliminating things from your life, from your body. Right. So outside in, inside out elimination matters. That also includes people that detract from your energy. The soul suckers. The people that are negative nellies. I get it. Some people have bad days and that's okay. But if you have that one friend, when you look at the phone and they're calling you go oh gosh, that's a soul sucker. And they're parasitic. You just have to watch your healthy boundaries. You have to make sure that you are taking care and taking time and so you want to eliminate, you know, the external products that are going to be toxic to you, including people, and the internal toxins that you need to get out of your body. And you probably have talked about all these, like if you're not in a bowel movement every day, you're not detoxifying. If you're not urinating three to four times a day, you're not detoxifying. If you're not sweating, you're not detoxifying. You know, even emotionally crying. And you do a tear test, you probably can tell a lot about tears and people like, you know, your pathways of elimination. The bowls, which are the bowels, the urinary, the lungs, the lymph, the skin, all need to be open so that you can eliminate. And especially when we look at skin, the amount of makeup we put on our face, the stuff that we do to ourselves, everything. We walk out of the bathroom with over 200 chemicals on us already that we've put on or in our body. Just starting out your day. So take a look around your house, take a look around your life, see what things you can change. And again, these are just one day at a time. I usually tell people in each of the categories to change one thing. Pick, you know, what's your weakest link? If you're eating, you know, box cereal every morning, how about we get organic cereal? How about we take one step, take the chemicals out, then let's move to whole food. Then, then, then right. It's like just a migration and then emotional and spiritual wellness. I mean the facts are, and I know you probably saw these stats with recovery and cancer and I know Dr. Goodyear talks about it a lot, but people that believe in God and pray their well being through treatment, regardless of what they're saying, is substantially higher than, than people that do not so really important. It's also really important for us to have daily regimen where we're decompressing. De stressing. You know, if you have a tendency to worry a lot, know that about yourself. You can't always change your circumstances, but you can manage this vessel and change your response. I always tell my clients, you don't have to respond to everything. You don't, you don't have to respond to that really mean post on your really mean comment on your post. You don't have to respond to someone's negativity. You don't have to respond, but you choose to. And when you choose to, you choose to step into the ring. I was like, so sometimes stepping into the ring is the Wrong thing, sometimes it's the right thing. So those are the things that I work with my clients first out of the gate, just talking to them about what are you eating, how are you sleeping, how are you living? Like what's going on? It gives me better insight as to what are we going to do next. Because sometimes someone's life is just so overwhelming and then they get a health issue. Right. And we can address that health issue. But if I make the protocol too overwhelming, life takes over and they don't do the protocol. So I work on their life as well. And that's a big part of health and healing, I think.

But I love that you brought up that people who believe in God and pray have better outcomes. And it's because you know the story that you tell yourself. Manners matters, the words that you use matter. And people who believe in God and understand that God really just wants a relationship with you and put you here with great purpose. And when you understand that, you have a tremendous amount of self value. And the people that have self value talk to themselves differently.

Absolutely.

They tell their story differently and they understand their purpose differently.

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Back to our show. I think the number one predictor of how long you live is how long you think you will live. And if you think that, you know this, whatever this is, is going to be your demise, it certainly is going to be your demise. But if you see your purpose, and sometimes your diagnosis is to remind you of that purpose, I know, for my, for myself and my story, that's absolutely what it was. It was to remind me of my purpose. And when you see your purpose and you recommit to it. I know in Judaism, every single year, we reengage in our covenant with God. Every single year, we say again, okay, God, I hear you. I hear what you want from me. I know what you expect from me. I may not have been perfect life last year, but I am going to recommit to our relationship. I'm going to recommit to myself, to my purpose. And we talk about our relationship with God not as a circle, because we reread the. We reread the Chumash, which is the written Torah, every single year, right? But we're not really rereading the same thing. What we are, we're not a circle, we're a spiral. And every year we're getting a little closer to God. And every year we are being a little better, we're committing a little more. We are drawing in. And that's really what this is about. It's to remind us of our purpose and to continue to pursue that purpose. And you don't have to change the world. Like, you and I are definitely overachievers, and we took that purpose thing to the nth degree, but it doesn't have to be that way. And my, my job on this earth is no more important than yours or anyone else's for that matter, right? Like my friends with five and six and seven and eight kids. Guess what? Their purpose is to raise really good humans. And they're doing it right. And so I think that we, we all need to stop looking around so much, right? And just say this, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And I'm doubling down on my commitment to that. And believing in God is, is a lot of it because there's your instruction.

I don't know how people do it without faith. When you go through trials and tribulations, you know, I mean, without having something to press into or rely on besides self, you know, because sometimes, like, just relying on yourself becomes so burdensome and heavy when you're going through something hard. So, you know, we talk about God refining with fire in, in the Bible and he does that because he wants to separate out the impurities. He wants to create the purification. He wants to see his reflection in that shining, precious metal, which is us. And you know, I always say I wish God would refine with butterflies, but that's not normally how it happens. So. But I just had this conversation with, you know, my friend this morning about her journey and I was like, I know in my soul that this is going to take you into helping so many other people because it just refined who she was as a person. And it's beautiful to watch from the outside. She's going through it from the outside. I'm like, wow. But I hope someday she can look back as you do and say, I was blessed by this really hard thing because when God redeemed it, he gave me double just like job. So pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah, it certainly is. And what we all need to remember is that everything is from God, right? The good and the bad. Right? So when people say things to me like you're pretty or you're smart or you're this or you're that, it's not me. Like everything I have is from God. And we have to remember our wins are from God. And the people that don't believe in God often cite like when bad things happen to good people. Right. But it's all from God with a purpose and a reason. Right. And so, yeah, he's the author of the story. Okay, so we're 36 minutes in and haven't even talked about Peptides. Like such is, such is. The thing with, with, with my podcast is that, you know, we could go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole. I knew God was going to, to come up a lot because we are both God fearing women. Not in a bad way, in a good way. Let's, let's not call it God fearing, let's call it God loving women.

We have reverence for the Lord. Totally.

Yes, yes. And before we move on, because we are going to move on, I just wanted something came up for me when we were talking about the pharmaceutical companies and curing cancer. Like that's never happening because they would lose the customer. So it's not a goal of theirs to ever cure cancer. And something that really, really bothers me is that, you know, all these people give all really good money to these research organizations who are allegedly supporting breast cancer research or any kind of research. And it's not a solve because it's never going to be a solve. They're not looking for a solve. And I know that, that sounds really cruel, but it's true. Like, why would they want to cure you, right? It doesn't. It doesn't benefit them in any way to cure you. And if they ever did come up with a solve, which doesn't exist because it's not like breast cancer is one disease and we find this one thing and we're going to cure it, or colon cancer, or lung cancer or any kind of cancer, right? It's not one thing. It's your thing. Whatever, whatever led you to this place is, is going to inform how you're going to get out of it. But that there's never going to be one thing. And there's no benefit to them solving this issue. There's a benefit to them delaying, right? Like, if I can create a situation where I can delay it, I'm not going to cure it. Why would I care?

There's no money in healthy people, right? So they always say the race for the cure. Why don't you race for the cause? Let's start there. We'll create it, right? And we go back to nutrition, hydration movement, sleep elimination, emotional, spiritual wellness. Yeah, it's the cause. Yeah. You know, it's from our stand thinking to our poor, from driving through the fast food. But you're right. So these organizations, they're just money grubbing, you know, for research that tells us what you and I already know. That you know, if you eat right, think right, move right, poop right, sleep right, pray right, I'll do all these things right. You probably won't end up with the diagnoses, and a lot of people will do 90%. But then they forget about that emotional mental part and the impact of stress and trauma on the human body. And that again, is where God comes in, where you can just lay it down, you know. So I agree. I don't know why people continue to donate pink ribbons and all that stuff. And you know, Dr. Goodyear always talks about, why do we declare war on cancer? He's like, these are your own cells. They just have lost their way. Why are we declaring war on ourselves?

No, we don't want more war.

We want peace.

We fought for long enough. This is here because of the fighting, because of the disruption, right? So we don't want more war. That's the last thing we want. That whole war mentality completely is created, is a narrative created for this system, right, to keep us sick so we.

Can do the kill mentality and, and go and kill the cancer. Well, we have to remember that it doesn't discriminate from cancer cells to healthy cells. No, we kill ourselves. They're all your cells. Your body's not like, these are all George and over here's Bob. And when we get rid of Bob. No, it's like everybody is George. This is just kind of George with the flu and he's sick. And so the chemo comes in or the radiation targets, and it doesn't matter if you're healthy or not. It's going to wipe you out. And your only hope is that you have an underlying good mitochondrial ability. ATP and stem cells that are going to come back and rejuvenate you. And if you have not changed your habits, if you have not changed the cause, the nutrition, the hydration, the movement, the stage sleep, the elimination, whatever the trigger was that turned it on, if you didn't change that, that's why we see reoccurrence. That's why we see it come back. And it might not come back in the same place because there's no tissue to grow there anymore because they destroyed it. It'll come back somewhere else. So that's the whole seed theory. Like, we talk about the seed and soil theory, that the same types of cells, which is why we see specific cancers, come back. Like, if you start with colonial, right, it usually goes to liver and lung, same seed. So if.

But to be clear, that's not someone having liver cancer, right? That's the colon cancer seeding into the liver because it needed a new place.

To grow stem cells, right? When we do treatments such as chemo, you alter stem cells are like unidentified cells. They just. They come out and they're like, all right, where do we need to go and what do we need to become? But if they have been assaulted and they have a mutation now, they just become a bat cell. So we have to remember that the body is here. It protects you. If it didn't protect you, you would just automatically die. That's what would happen. Like, you would get a virus or bacteria and boom, dead. The immune system flags. It will mutate cells in order for the body to look at them and say, bad, bad, kill it. Let's create apoptosis in that cell because it's not healthy. The problem that happens with cancer cells is that they're like a zombie cell. They don't heal, but they don't die. And so you don't have this apoptosis, and they just keep finding a way to live. Because they are your cells. They want to live.

So in survival mode.

So we come in as Practitioners. And we figure out, like you were saying, how do we oxygenate, how do we create a starvation pathway for those cells? Because they actually get more receptor sites for things like sugar, those are GLUT4 receptors, and more receptor sites for things like iron, because they're trying to live. And so we come in with protocols that your healthy cells will get what they need, but your cancer cells may not get everything that they need, although they're still your cells. And it's not a cure, it's not a treatment. It's a pathway for your healthy cells to find homo stasis again and for these cells to do what your body should naturally do, which is eliminate them. So different approach of how we're looking at the whole person, the whole system and all of the neat things that we can do now with supplementation. And you know, even Dr. Goodyear and all those guys working with off labeled medications and what you guys do in your practice. But so many things. And you know, people get scared of stuff like that, doctors especially. But the law is the law and it does state that if something is FDA approved, you can use it. So you don't have to tell somebody why, like you can just use it. And that. That is where we got all tripped up. Because they were like, you know, let's talk about Ivermectin.

Right?

Oh, it was, it was for river blindness. It was for this. And you know, it's horse paste. And actually it wasn't for animals initially. It was for river blindness, and then it became a parasitic protocol for animals. So they're calling it horse paste. But it's FDA approved. Like you can use it.

Like it's crazy and has been for many, many decades. Right?

Yeah. So.

And, and a safety profile in billions of people.

So it's just funny how these things over here are like alternative. And the standard of care in the cancer industry is surgery, chemo and radiation. That's the standard of care. And it's not care, because if you look at somebody, it's had surgery. And I don't mean any disrespect to anyone who's had surgery, because that's a very hard thing to go through. But.

And we all know that everyone makes the best decision they can with the information that they have at the time.

Talking about the system not giving them the right information. Right, right. Their body's changed, it's different. So there's a constant reminder if they've gone through chemo or radiation, it's a drastic protocol where they're very sick. Most of the time. Why do we call that care? If something makes you sicker, how is it caring for you? That, that is just for me, logically, I'm like, it's like, well, visits for kids at a pediatrician's office. I'm like, if your kid's well, what are you going for? Like, it's such an oxymoron.

So it is an oxymoron. And I mean again, farming out our health to providers that don't know how to create it. So the whole healthy visit at the pediatrician, I mean, it used to drive me insane to go to, to go to the pediatrician and to have my children see people who I look at and they are visibly not healthy. And I'm like watching this woman ask my kids if they're eating their fruits and vegetables. And I'm looking thinking, well, are you eating yours?

All right. Did you go through the fast food drive thru on your way here?

Yeah. Like, is that a bacon, egg and cheese I saw on your desk before we walked in here today? Because, like, I'm just saying, and, and I, I, I don't want to seem so judgy, right? Because it, it, it is what it is. But, but we have to do better. Like we, we as, as medical professionals, as providers, we have to do better and we have to walk the talk. Like, I don't tell anyone to do something that I'm not doing myself, right? And it's not because I love it. Like, believe me, I'm not getting those five pull ups in because it's what I love to do. I'm getting those five pull ups in because I am going to be strong. I am going to maintain my muscle, I am going to maintain my health because it's important and because metabolic health is the keystone to health, right? And in order to have metabolic health, you have to have muscle. And if we screened for metabolic health with the same vigor that we used mammograms or colonoscopy or whatever else we're doing for screening, this world would be a different and better place. But the thing is, most providers don't even know what that looks like or what to do about it, right? They only recognize failure and they don't recognize you until you fail. So if you have elevated fasting glucose, but you're not officially diabetic yet, what do they say? Come back next year, we'll recheck it.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. We, we wait to get sick and we normalize reactions as markers of growth in children. You know, take them to, well, visits, and little Jimmy gets his series of injections and all of a sudden gets an ear infection. And that's just normalized. Fevers, normalized. Skin issues, normalized. Colic, normalized. Like, same thing when they go through treatment, right? Oh, we know that if you get chemo, like, you're going to lose weight, your hair is going to fall out, you're going to be sick, and it's just normalized. They're like, it's just part of it. Yeah, I'm like, if people come to me and I'd be like, hey, you're taking these supplements, your hair is.

And your hair is going to fall out. And actually, most people don't lose weight during chemo. They gain weight because it's so inflammatory.

Well, it's just interesting, right. Until they start working, wasting. But if I said that to somebody, they'd be like, you're crazy. But that's a standard. Yeah. Are you out of your mind? Standards. Unfair. So just when you put it in perspective, if you just step back and you say, let me just say this out loud, like it's. It's crazy. So anyway, I just. I just think again, we're off track. We haven't even talked about peptides. I know.

Hey, hey, Dr. Tracy. What's a peptide?

Okay, let's start. Well, peptide is. Yeah. So peptides are chains of amino acids that are naturally occurring in your body. So when you eat a protein, whether it's a vegan protein that's put in the right combination that contains your amino acids that you need, that gets taken into your body, or a whey protein from an animal gets digested down to these amino acids, and then those amino acids get rearranged into peptide chains. And so what makes them a peptide is there more than two amino acids in a chain and less than 50. Now they're kind of cutting that down a little bit to less than 40. Because if you look at insulin, it's a 50 peptide chain, but it's a peptide. Right. So a lot of people don't realize that insulin is a peptide. So these peptides, they're what I consider bridges. They have specific functions and in the body, and they will bind to receptor sites in your cells. And this binding actually will trigger signals that just give you all kinds of biological responses. Probably one of the best known peptides is insulin, that we know that insulin triggers the utilization of available glucose or sugar in the blood to be pulled into the cells so that your body has energy. And that's what insulin does. So anything from 2 to 50, that's a chain of amino acids. And these are usually created in different parts of your body, like your pancreas, your gut, etc. And they're very natural, but when you don't have enough of them is when you run into problems.

So let's talk about the group of peptides that it has been the most talked about in the last couple of years. Okay, so let's talk about the GLP1s. This is the ozempic and mounjaro. And what, what is a GLP1? Let's start with that.

Yeah. So GLP1s gips, and then there's an enzyme called DPP4. Those are a group of incretin hormones that are created in your gut. And they control pathways not only with glucose availability and utilization, but they also control neurodegenerative issues. So things like your body's ability to create good, healthy synapses between neurons in your brain, neurotransmitter, transmitter, communication, etc. They also are in the cardiovascular space, so regulating heartbeat, inflammation, vascular integrity. They are also in the metabolic when it comes to chronic inflammation and controlling inflammation. So GLPs, GLP1 and GIPS, gastric inhibitory peptide, those are those incretins that work on all pathways of metabolic health, brain, cardiovascular, weight, you know, even prevention of disease. It works in everything, and it also can work in pain and hormones. So they're not just reserved for weight loss. Now, what happened a few years back is from the studies that were done on gastric bypass, they found that bypassing, taking a part of the small intestine and bypassing that first section, the duodenum, it would stimulate the body to produce GLP1s. And by bypassing that section, and so they realized that when people got gastric bypass surgery who were diabetic before, had some sort of metabolic diagnosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc. Within two weeks after that surgery, from just the increase of GLP1 production from that surgery, all of their symptoms went back to normal. All of their numbers, they were no longer diabetic, they no longer had high blood pressure, they no longer had any of the things that they had walking. Two weeks, they didn't lose any weight, it was just two weeks. So they.

Yeah, so it wasn't from the imposed anorexia. Right. It was from the GLP1.

So they realized that, hey, there's something to these little hormones that if we can get them producing in the body, metabolic issues go away. That's where it all came from. So from that they now please understand gastric bypass as it was done before and even now does have long term issues with microbiota disruption. That's your probiotics.

Yes. We are not encouraging people to go out and have gastric bypass.

I'm just letting you know this is where the research came from. So from that point they realized that GLP1s and GIPS were necessary peptides, incretin, hormones that controlled metabolic health in people. So they have been in use, especially GLP1s which is semaglutide, which is what is known as ozempic in the pharmaceuticals. And just to be clear, peptides are not pharmaceuticals. They're not classified as pharmaceuticals. They don't know what the classified them as because the FDA can't regulate them because they're kind of naturally occurring in the body and they don't really act like drugs, but they're not food. So they're kind of in this gray area and everybody is scrambling to get a hold of them. So with the onset of Ozempic and Wegovy and Zepbound and all of that, there was two sides to it. You had a people that use peptides in their practice for a long time and they watched this hit the market at an exorbitant amount that was abusive, was such a high dosage that had never been done before long term. They did a short study for weight loss with semaglutide and found that the participants at a certain amount lost weight within a certain amount of time. That was kind of the study. So they took that amount and they put it out to the industry and said use this for weight loss and here's what you inject. And while people started to do that, they were also having side effects because they were overdosing them with this peptide that had been used safely for 50 years prior to this. So semaglutide has been on the market for over 50 years with no side effects, with no issues, used to reverse renal failure, used to reverse cardiovascular issues, used to reverse neurodegenerative issues, used in the treatment of diabetes without any issues because it was used at the correct dosage. It there wasn't this industry goal for weight loss right now with who who.

Was using it, who was using it for renal failure and cardiovascular disease and dietitian integrative practitioners.

You can look the studies up.

It's been on the market, yeah, but not. But not mainstream doctors because they know.

No education there, but there were studies done. It's like they knew that because pharma couldn't capture that market and say peptides are ours. Why would they put it out if they can't make any money? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But how, how have they captured it now? Because now you can't. You can't get them from compounding pharmacies anymore. Now they're only available as Ozempic or Wegovy or Manjaro or whatever. So how are they doing that? Because. Are they changing the structure? Because I, I thought you can't trademark a molecule of nature. And this is a molecule of nature. How are they getting around?

So it is. So think about insulin. When it first hit the market, it was derived from pig pancreas. Right? That's what it was. For big pharma to actually scale it as it was needed for the 34.6 million people that have diabetes in our country, they had to synthetically produce it.

Most or all of which is totally reversible.

Type 2, right. You have about 1.2 million that are type 1 1. So let's just talk about them. Even 1.2 million is a lot of people. It's a lot of pigs. So instead of going and trying to harvest this natural peptide, you can create a synthetic peptide which has real amino acids in it, but they synthetically put them together with peptide bonds and they create them in a lab, and at that point, it's a synthetic. Now, because of the classification and the action of these things, they're not drugs. So it's like stem cells. Think about stem cells. If you go into an office and they take your fat tissue and create stem cells from it, that's not a pharmaceutical. But if they go and they take stem cells from a fetus or whatever, that's a pharmaceutical, it's different. So they're trying to figure out the classification now. Right now they have some peptides as research only, which scares people because it's like, shouldn't be consumed by humans, shouldn't be consumed by animals. Because the FDA doesn't approve proof to the fda. I don't care what they say, but they're beneficial. And then you have other ones that are category two, and those are the ones that the FDA is kind of like. Hold on. These kind of act like drugs, and we want to look at them with the potential that they're going to be classified as a category 2 drug, which means compounding pharmacies now can't just compound them like they used to. So there's this whole regulatory thing that's swooping over that practitioners that use Peptides should really be fighting against. You do not want to lose control of such a valuable product.

I know, but I feel like it's already happened.

So, you know, with peptides, you. I mean, if you look, there's all kinds of online peptide distributors. You can get them. You know what I mean? You can totally get them. And they have tremendous benefit. It's really sad because I think what Ozempic did was made everybody hate semaglutide. And so everybody was like, oh, people that do that are cheating. Well, here's what I tell you. If GLP1s are produced in your gut and GIP are produced in your gut, semaglutide is just a GLP1, no GIP, no DPP4. Yeah. So let's say a person doesn't produce GLP1s at the metabolic rate that they should. They start becoming overweight, obese, cardiovascular disease they're getting.

Which does happen with age, right? I mean, don't we get less efficient at producing this just the same way that we get less efficient at absorbing our protein as we age?

Not even just that. If you have any type of gut issue, you're not producing GLP1s. If you are on a gastric medication, you don't. You don't produce GLP1s like everyone else because it is produced by the L cells of the intestinal tract. And if you have inflammation, leaky gut parasites, candida, heartburn, digestive issues, you're on ppi, you're on an acid reducer, you're on anything. You're not producing GLP1s at the amount that you should. So what happens over time is people get inflamed. Which fat cells get bigger and smaller? You don't get any more or less. Some die and some regenerate. But it's not like we are gaining more fat cells. I always tell people, you're not fat, you're inflamed. Your fat cells are an immune system. They're an organ. They have vessels. They produce adipokines, which are proteins that get thrown to the blood. Those signal the immune system to do something, to send fire trucks to the fire. Interleukin 6 TNF Alpha. We heard of those during COVID Where are those produced from your fat cells? So people that were metabolically challenged, people that had diabetes, people that were overweight, they succumbed quicker because they were already in a cytokine storm. And then you added the stage was set. That's right. So metabolic dysfunction begins with the production of GLP1 and GIP. So if you are deficient in those things, you can't produce those things, you are on the path for metabolic dysfunction, cardiovascular diabetes, cancer, obesity, neurodegenerative disease, you're on the path. Those five pathways are what GLP1 and GIP work in. So if I said to you, Dr. Jen, you're deficient in iron and vitamin D, what would you think you should do?

You would think that you should take iron and vitamin D or get increased sources of.

So what I teach people is if you are deficient in GLP1 and GIP and you can get that into your body, not at the overdosing amount, not to lose weight at copious amounts too fast because that's unhealthy for anybody, but to put it in at the level that your body can utilize it for those five pathways of health and you can get off medications, cardiovascular balance your blood sugar, potentially prevent cancer because you have optimal levels, because that's what your body does. If I said that to somebody and said this might be a good idea for you, in the meantime, I am talking to them about hormone health, gut health, foundational nutrition, exercise, muscle as medicine, keeping all of that up. Because when you strength train, you are pulling glucose into the cells without insulin, which is really important because insulin is catabolic. It builds, build your butt, build your muscles, but it's not still builds. So anytime you have insulin released into your system because you're eating something, you're building. So if that's happening over and over because you're eating a lot of sugar, you're going to get fatter, you're going to get more inflamed, right? So if I said that to somebody, we're going to work on all these things, but a tweak of GLP1 would be something that you should get. Why is that cheating? You're not cheating if you're taking vitamin D until you can go out into the sun and get copious amounts, you're not cheating by taking iron. If you're not eating enough protein and iron loving foods and being able to metabolically assimilate it, it's not cheating, it's supplementing. So it's unfortunate that the awareness of peptides was brought on by the abuse of them by certain people in the industry that probably had no business putting their hands on peptides. The positive of it was it brought awareness back to the peptide game and that there's another thing that we can do as practitioners to help people and that we finally understand the value of the gut in the production of GLP1s, GIPS and DPP4 in the prevention of dis ease of the body in those five pathways of metabolic disease. I cannot emphasize enough for people to eat right and get their gut right. Food is medicine. It is either the best form of medicine or the worst cause of disease. It's no joke. It matters. It matters what it's made from. If it can reproduce life, if it's gmo, if it's loaded with glyphosate, what. With every bite you take, you are either creating a cell or destroying one. So if you get anything out of this podcast, work on your gut. Work on your gut and get that right so that you can start producing your own GLP1 and GIP that is the problem. And some people are just metabolically broken. I mean, they do all the things you ever hear the people and do everything. They do everything. Yeah, they can't get weight off. And it is because at some point the body's like, I just can't anymore. And so why is it bad that those people could do a peptide that might prevent them from having cardiovascular incident down the road? Why is that bad? Why is it cheating? You'd rather that them, out of principle, be like, no, I'm not doing it out of principle. And then potentially have a heart attack later? Like, I don't know. If there was something handed to me that I knew I needed, I'd probably take it, you know.

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And what we need to understand is this is not a pharmaceutical in the way that we think about pharmaceuticals. Like this is a naturally occurring protein, peptide. Right? Because it's not right. It's not long enough to be, to.

Be a protein, I guess over 50 is a protein. Under two amino acids is what's called a bioregulator. And bioregulators are short chain peptide infused, but they actually can signal the DNA to make a change. So they're very strategic. I love bioregulators. They're very specialized in the class of what we call short chain peptides. But they regulate gene expression, restore cellular function, enhance recovery, like they do all these things. So while they're natural, peptide based bioregulators are very strategic on how you use them. So yeah, I like bioregulators.

So I'm just curious, what dosing do you think about in terms of what is, what is safe for replacement, what is appropriate for replacement, what is appropriate for long term use and what dosing were people talking about where they were being given these whopping doses and having some pretty serious side effects.

So when you get peptides, they can be lifelies or unlifely, which means reconstituted or not. So you either get a powder or liquid in a vial if it's compounded. And so depending on what milligram strength that is determines how it's reconstituted, how much bacteria water you're using to make it into a liquid, which is that that's what you use for the injectable. So with that said, it depends on what's your milligram dosage, what they were giving. And it's the big question is like how much, right? It's so individualized. I have seen people that are doing 15 IUs of Tirzepatide weekly and doing great, and people that are doing 40 IUs and doing great. It's very individualized. My whole thing of what I always encourage people if they're working with practitioners is, is to individualize. It's really about starting low, slow at the minimal amount and working up. If we're talking about things like semaglutide, tirzepatide, or now what's called retatrutide. So Semaglutide is just GLP1, tirzepatide is GLP1 and GIP and then retatrutide, the newest one. And it's a trifecta. It's GLP1 GIP and a glucagon inhibitor, which that is going to. It supposedly has the least amount of side effects, the least dosage that you need, etc. So they keep trying to enhance the formulation, you know, so that less is more, which is how it should have been. So individualized matters. And you can't just do a peptide on its own. These are strategic. Like, if you. This is why they needed such a massive dose for Ozempic is because people weren't changing their diet and looking at their hormones and making sure their thyroid was balanced and lifting, maintaining their muscle mass so that they didn't waste. And so when you overdose, if you took a whole bottle of vitamin C, Dr. Jen, you wouldn't leave the house tomorrow. I guarantee it doesn't make vitamin C bad. It's just, well, you cook too much, right? You gotta go right out the back door and you're gonna be like, oh, that was a good cleanse. But it doesn't mean vitamin C should be taken.

I love these people that are talking to me about constipation. I'm like, how much vitamin C did you take? I took a lot. I'm like, well, you didn't take enough because there's no one that can escape the real effects of a lot of vitamin C. Do that.

Make sure it's buffered, guys. So we're not saying. And don't blame us if you're in the bathroom, but it is a good cleanse. Yeah. And, you know, so the point to that being is when people were taking too much and they weren't doing the other things to support, they would waste. And if they had inflammatory markers in places because of starvation, because of muscle wasting, because of the things that were happening, you know, other markers went up and it was dangerous. I agree. It was dangerous. No one should be doing that. So you have to have the total picture. And if you are somebody using, you know, Ozempic or whatever, and Dr. Tina Moore talks about this a lot. You know, Ozempic done, right. She had a whole course on it and just talks about the fact that she herself had.

I'm interviewing her tomorrow.

Wonderful. She's going to be.

She's amazing.

Go off left and right on all of this. Because she did the research, she was one of the first to come out and be like, hold on, this is good. And so I hope people, like, tune into that, because she's the foremost expert, I would say, on doing the GLP1s and GIPS, the best. And she had tremendous receptors, tremendous results for herself because she herself had a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. And I mean, just her inflammatory markers came down. She's strength training. She feels great.

So she looks like a different person.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, and she took a lot of slack. But guess what? Here you are, two years later, she started.

I know.

And she was right. So, you know, kudos to her and the people that stepped up. But even like Jim Laval, I mean, his, his peptide book is wonderful. He's been a big proponent of peptides just in general use. So you have to remember there's all different types of peptides. I know that the weight loss peptides get a lot, but there's more than just GLP1s and GIPS. If you want to enhance your body composition, you can do ipamorlin, you can do Semarlin, you can do CJC epitalion. Like all of these will help decrease visceral fat and help you maintain muscle. BPC157 is so easy. It's an oral form that anybody can take. And I call it like the multivitamin of peptides because you make it in your gut. It's used in everything. It can help promote growth hormone in some people. There's tons of studies on it for gastrointestinal issues and overcoming those. So it's a beautiful peptides, helps with skin, helps with hair integrity. It's called the Wolverine peptide because it helps you rejuvenate and regenerate cells. Anti aging would be the buzzword I guess you could use for that. So peptides are beautiful. There's neurological peptides like C Max and Celan. You know, C Max was studied for post ischemic events, Alzheimer's, dementia. You know, it also helps with any type of depression. You know where Celanq is kind of the opposite peptide that helps with anxiety. So a lot of people will take those in conjunction. They'll do C Max and Celan, and they can be injectables or nasal sprays. So it's important to understand that some peptides have to be injected, like insulin. You can't just take an insulin capsule because the gastrointestinal juices will break the peptide down. So you have to inject it. GLP1s are a great example of that. They have to be injected because of the.

Well, there are some oral. Like there's oral semi glutide. Now do you think it's not a worthwhile endeavor?

It would take a lot to get past. Now there Is a new science, right. That protects the peptides through the juices called snack. It's like so fulcerine, something salt. I can't remember all the fancy schmancy word. But a lot of the oral peptides will have that in it to get it through the gastrointestinal system. Just, just. I'm not saying anything's better or worse. First you have to go with what your client and patients want. You know, if they, if they're not going to inject, they're not going to do it. So oral is good. You know, some people are afraid of needles. Although most peptides are injected with, you know, sub their subcutaneous needles. But for some people they're like no. And that's okay. So that's what different delivery systems are for. You can do transdermal peptides. I always joke around. There's rectal peptides and I said if GLP1s would have came out as a rectal peptide, it probably wouldn't have had such a market.

Oh, no way. Right.

So nasal, injectable, oral, you know, and the injectable is sub Q. It's not in the blood, just so people are aware. And then you have other administration pathways, you know, rectal, transdermal, etc. It just depends on the peptide itself, you know, the half life of it through the gastrointestinal because they're not cheap. So you want to make sure when you get it in, you get it in and, and then it's making a difference for you. Right, right, right. So BPC can be injectable or oral. The way that I recommend people, you know, advise that people look at using it would be if you have gastrointestinal issues or something systemic, you could take it orally. If you have a localized tear injury or whatever, you know, it's best used as an injectable at that site because it's like I said, it's the wolverine peptide. So you know, there's rejuvenation peptides like that. Epitalion would run into that, that's like a longevity peptide. There are peptides for body composition, which I hate saying weight loss, so I say body composition. Things like semaglutide, you know, tirzepatide, retatrutide, cjc, ipamorlin, sermorelin, those would fall into those categories. Your neurological peptides, things like Celan, C Max. You could also use cerebralysin, oxytocin. Oxytocin is our feel good hormone. Right. It makes us more physically touchy. That's why your oxytocin increases after you have a baby because you want to snuggle that baby up, but it also increases libido. So if we look at people that are challenged with cancer or have gone through chemo, you know, look. Look at what they suffer, right? Gastrointestinal issues. They also can have, you know, just neurological issues. Chemo, brain. You know, that's where your neurological peptides would come in. Just rejuvenation in general. Things like BPC would help overall, just to help with recovery. And then for people that have had surgeries, you can have what are called beauty peptides like ghkcu, which is a copper peptide. That is a cream that you can do topically, usually compound compounded. And I usually tell people to use the little microderm, you know, roller. So you just roll that over your skin and then you apply your peptide. People use it as an injectable, especially post surgery. It can help with recovery. You could also do BPC at that point. So just thinking about that journey with people and one of the easiest ones to use in conjunction with treatment or, or even by itself. And so I always talk about in conjunction or by itself because I don't judge anybody's journey through this path. Like, it's not my life. And, you know, I'm just here to be like a vessel of hope, right? We want to make sure that we're supporting people in meeting them where they are. Hopefully they get the right information to make that informed decision. But not always the immune modulation peptides like thymus and. Or, excuse me. Yeah, thymos and alpha one. That's a big one. And there's actually a lot of studies on thymus and alpha one because of its ability to enhance T cells. It helps with overall immune response, it helps with infections, it helps modulate inflammation. So it's often used just to strengthen the immune system. But you can look at the studies in conjunction with, with chemo or radiation or even by itself. And all of these peptides you can take just as a layperson. You don't have to have anything wrong to go through a rejuvenation protocol with peptides. I mean, that's what regen medicine is all about. All these regen doctors, you go to them and they have peptide series where you can get IVs right of nutrition, like Myers cocktails or glutathione or NAD or whatever that like, looks. Looks like. But then they're also on this side doing BPC and epitalion and CJC with ipamorlin. And they have this whole rejuvenation protocol, and that's the real anti aging that the movement's based in. It's really about getting the peptide bridges for the right signaling. But again, you gotta have something for them to work with. You can't put them into a void of fast food and chemicals. You've got to put them into a nutrient dense body. That's why I say they should be tertiary in a protocol. Your foundational health, first your supplementation and then your peptides. If you put the peptide in first and it doesn't have anything to work with, that's where the problem of overdosing comes to get the effect. And that's what we saw with Ozempic and, and you know, wegovy and those things. So done right, as Dr. Tina would say, with the foundations built around it, you get great results. And that, that goes for any peptide. They should be secondary or tertiary in a protocol. If people are throwing peptides at you out of the gate and haven't talked to you about changing your life and what you eat and how you think and doing some supplements, they're probably just trying to get a buck out of you. So.

Yeah, that's just another drug dealer, right?

Yeah. So, yeah.

And you know, for me, I have started to incorporate it into my cancer protocols, but I'm incorporating it at the end. Right. So we've worked together for six months. We are optimizing your diet, your movement, your sleep, your environment, your detox. We've, we've covered all of that. We've worked really hard on your gut health. I know that you are committed to lifting weights twice a week and you're avoiding alcohol and you've made these changes. And then the last part of the conversation is, okay, like, would a GLP one now benefit you? Right. Because it's not your crutch, it's your enhancement. It's the bow on top. It's not the package.

Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, at that point you're, you've already fixed the gut. They're probably producing enough. Right. But maybe not. And some people do remain metabolically broken. I mean, I know I've worked with people for years and did all the right things and they're doing all the right things and they just get to a point where they're stuck. And that's when you have that conversation. Yeah.

And I, I also think that there is a crossover with menopause girl and. Yeah. And that, I mean, I, I think it's near impossible to be metabolically healthy when you don't have hormones. And so much of the breast cancer conversation is about getting rid of hormones. And. And we really leave these people quite broken. And though we tell them that they should be grateful to be alive, it is very hard to feel grateful when you can't think and you can't move because everything hurts and you've gained weight and your breasts are deformed or absent and you have no libido. Sex is unrelated, unwanted, and painful, and your gut isn't functioning the way that it used to function. And really nothing is functioning the way that it used to function. And it's so hard to feel grateful when all of that is happening. And that is where we leave most women, which is why I am so committed to offering women hormone replacement after breast cancer. And there is mountains of data to prove that these women do better. Oh, yeah, they do much better.

Well, old school theory, right, of hormones and being dangerous and, you know, I. I think we discussed.

Yeah, because God had it wrong.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I do understand that they naturally decrease with age, but it doesn't mean you don't need estrogen. Of course you do. It may change the way that you receive it, like estrone from the adrenals or whatever that looks like, but you still need it. And so we see decreased bone density and osteoporosis and osteopenia, because women are just not taken care of in our industry when it comes to hormones. I mean, think about it. Go all the way back to teenage years. You know, you had a regular mensis. What they do. Oh, put you on the pill, put.

Them on birth controls. Yep. Let's mansplain it to your body.

We are manipulating your hormones at the most, the most crucial time that you're developing. It's crazy.

Yeah.

So when it comes to weight gain and hormones, I mean, one insulin resistance. Right. We're seeing that. But why insulin resistance? What is that? It's metabolic dysfunction. Because estrogen upregulates GLP1 receptors. So your estrogen starts going down, your GLP1 receptors start going down. It's a safety response. So women tend to have higher GLP1 activity during, like, the follicular phase of. Of their menstrual cycle. So progesterone. Right. It can blunt some of the GLP1s and some of the insulin effects. So, you know, if you have low progesterone, you're gonna have cravings. So all of this stuff matters. And so women become, you know, memory issues. They start gaining weight, their blood sugar becomes unstable. They're getting hangry, they're reaching for the candy just to try to regulate themselves.

And even in men, cardiovascular disease, and.

Even in men, when they have low testosterone, what is it created by insulin resistance? Normally at the core, you know, we have to remember that even ED is a sign of insulin resistance. Migraines are a sign of insulin resistance. So if we look at the pathways again of where does GLP1 GIP fit, it's those categories, cardiovascular disease. Right. So in men, when they have blunted GLP one response, it's because of insulin resistance, Testosterone is starting to fall. And so literally, when men receive testosterone therapy, TRT, you know, or even women, their GLP1 activity increases. You can't segregate the body. You can't just do one thing, give one peptide, not look at hormones and move on. That's the problem that happened with the onset of this overdosing and it went like this real fast. Then everybody else came out and hated semaglutide, hated tirzepatide. I really think it was like something that the pharmaceutical industry tried to do. They wanted the hatred, they wanted the people to cry out and say, you got to regulate this, protect us. And what happened? They did. Yep. So congratulations, y'. All. Yep.

Be careful what you ask.

Exactly. Right. I always say anytime the government makes a law, we lose a freedom. That's kind of what happens.

That's so true. Amen. I, I just want to lastly ask you, although obviously there is no, you know, across the board recommendation, but are there specific peptides that you do think about in the cancer population?

Yeah, thymus and alpha one for sure. I think across the board that probably has the most research that people can go and feel comfortable about it, know that it's not going to interact with things that even oncologists are familiar with. But, you know, then I would say for those that had conventional treatment, you would want to utilize peptides based on what are your long suffering issues? Do you still have brain? Do you still have scar tissue? What's going on?

So what is the role of Thymus in Alpha 1? Like what, what, what benefits does it bring?

Activating T cells? So we know the, the role T cells in modulating the immune system against activating natural killer cells and all of our immune systems to create that apoptosis.

So it's kind of a wake up peptide for your immune system.

Yeah. There's other ones like lo37 that can be used. Not as much research on that, but that one is antimicrobial. It Also can be immune modulating. It really protects the, the body against things like bacteria and viruses. Now if you know that maybe the diagnosis you have is bacterial or viral based, you know, there's, there's lots of research on Epstein Barr with thyroid, there's research on Epstein Barr with prostate. So if you know that or suspected or that's what your practitioner suspects, then LL37 would be good. BPC 157 hands down, easy supports gut, reduces inflammation. There are some studies out there that said it can help with chemotherapy associated damage, aids in recovery, you know, all of that stuff. So those would be some of the ones and then I would do the other ones based on what are you seeing? Like, like you, like if you suggest, you know, GLP1 obviously that's for a reason. You looked at their metabolic function. Something is off. You are thinking in your mind like maybe this is metabolically driven and you wanted to nip it in the bud and be like let's just enhance your metabolic like forever. Right, let's just do that. Whereas some people might have more of a viral implication, you know, so there's always more than one way to dis ease And I usually tell people, people there's usually more than one way out. So kpv, that's an interesting one that I like. That's a lysine, proline and valine amino acid trifecta. It's three aminos so it's, it's small, right? Because we know bioregulators are two. This is a three amino acid peptide. Really strong anti inflammatory properties. This would be good for like gut related. It's a lot of studies on colitis and IBS and Crohn's and if you look at those things going prolonged, right. That's where you get associated bad cells and polyps and, and things like that. But really great for gut. I use KPV oral in my protocols when I'm dealing with somebody with like systemic fungus. And we know that there's a lot of cancers associated with high fungus, fungal, you know, or high parasitic. So you know, I can't say these are going to cure or treat anything but they're great support for the body, for your body to re establish balance. But definitely thymus and alpha one, definitely bpc. Those are two that people could implement. Ask your physician about, talk to your doctor about that. Obviously you, I always encourage people like, like you know, your doctor's goal most of the time is health for you, you know, keeping them in the dark on things that you're doing isn't always the best avenue. If you have a practitioner that is open to having a conversation with you about your own body, you know, some doors are closed. Some doors are closed, but, you know, there's always teaching moments. I feel in the industry that somebody might learn.

Absolutely, Absolutely. And, you know, maybe your, your practitioner wants to listen to a podcast like this where we are starting the conversation and opening the conversation and educating and certainly this is not medical advice and shouldn't be construed as medical advice, as no podcast it should be construed as medical advice, but it is opening the door to understanding that there are other options out there that can absolutely, positively make a difference for you, but that they are just a small part of the picture, as these are small protein chains. Right. This is just a small part of the picture and that those foundations that we spent the first hour talking about, that is what is the most important.

Agreed? 100%.

Dr. Tracy, where can people find you?

My website. It's just my name, Tracy Stroup. Nd as in naturopathic doctor dot com. So easy peasy.

Amazing, Amazing. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I. I always enjoy our time together. It's always fascinating. And today did not disappoint. And I look forward to many, many, many more conversations between us. And I hope all of you enjoyed this conversation. I don't know how you couldn't. I have like 17 pages of notes with things like health is built on habits and food is medicine. Eat right and get your gut right and all the things about foundational health. I mean, I could just go on and on and on. I can't wait to put all of this together. And if you liked this conversation, then make sure you like it. Share it. Give us a comment. Share it with someone who needs to hear this. And I can't imagine that you don't know 20 people who need to hear this and know that. I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen.