Why Peptides Are The Secret to Better Health and Longevity | Dr. Edwin Lee

Well, in my neighborhood, all my neighbors ring my doorbell and they have some type of injury, so they just point to where they need a peptide injected. So they point to their shoulder or to the elbow, their foot, their ankle. So I have, every day someone's ringing.

My doorbell to get a peptide shot. So Edwin, it's great to be here with you. We're at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium live and we're recording this podcast about a topic that I think is sort of captured a lot of people's imagination, particularly in longevity, biohacking space. which is peptides. And I don't know if the average person even knows what a peptide is, but we're going to get into what they are, but they're highly prevalent in the body. They're things your body makes to regulate almost everything that's going on. They're little mini proteins, essentially, that are the communication network of your body. And they regulate every single function from your hormones to your brain function, to your immune system, your sexual function, to tissue repair. I mean, it's quite It's amazing that we've kind of gone this long in medicine without really taking a hard look at peptides in a conventional way. Now, there are things that people know of as peptides that you don't even know are peptides, right? Like insulin is a peptide.

Exactly.

Ozempic is now the blockbuster drug of the day. and that's a peptide. That's a peptide.

Glutathione is a peptide.

Glutathione is a peptide, yeah. So there's a lot of compounds that we use in medicine that are peptides. There's probably over 7,000 produced by the body, right?

Actually, technically 300,000.

300,000?

Yeah.

Okay, I was off by a few thousand.

But we only understand a fraction of it. And outside in nature, there's, I think, I estimate about 6 million peptides out there.

That's incredible, 6 million.

I mean, a lot from venoms, from.

Animals, and not in human peptides, but other peptides.

Oh, yeah, dairy and... Yeah, it's really amazing. spiders and just interesting creatures. Nature has a lot of wealth of.

As a functional medicine doctor and in regenerative medicine, interested in regenerative medicine, I really love the idea of using bioidentical molecules to support the body to do what it's supposed to do.

Definitely.

So, the drug is essentially a new to nature molecule that interferes or interrupts or blocks some pathway in the body. and there's usually downstream side effects. Peptides also can have side effects when used at pharmacological doses like we're seeing with ozempic. But these are biomolecules that have we've evolved over millennia that regulate everything that's happening in our body. So they're getting a lot of kind of play in the longevity space to optimize cognitive health, to rejuvenate your skin, to help with tissue repair, to improve sexuality, vitality, longevity. so kind of take us from the top down. What are peptides? How do they work in the body? And how can they be used to treat disease, optimize this health and rejuvenate our biology?

You did a great explanation of peptides, but the way I explain to my patients, Mark, is that peptides are single molecules. They're miniature proteins, small little proteins that are made of amino acids. And unfortunately, the FDA has this arbitrary, just made a clarification that under 40 amino acids is considered a peptide. Over 40 is a biologic. And then over 100 amino acids traditionally has been considered a protein. So it's the length of basically how many amino acids are put together. And like I said, the body makes 300,000 peptides. We only understand a fraction of it. And anyway, it's really fun to read the research that's out there. and I explained that peptides to my patient is a signaling molecule. It's short acting and it's like a doorbell ringing, someone ringing your doorbell, that's a peptide and a reaction is going to happen, either your dog's going to bark or someone's going to answer the door. So if you give a peptide to basically help your immune system like thymus alpha one, that's going to stimulate your immune system work better. So that's a natural peptide produced by your thymus gland and as you know, Mark, It's thyroid and thymus. It's always, patients always get confused, but it sits like in your chest and between your lungs in front of your heart. And I have some- Sweet breads, if.

You like VL sweet breads, it's when you go to the restaurant, you chance your restaurant, they grade sweet breads, that's what it is.

Your thymus gland. I didn't know that. You didn't know that.

I didn't know, interesting.

I should order some sleep bread.

I wonder if eating it is actually good.

I mean, if you get any TA1 or peptides from eating it after it's cooked, I don't know. Well, they did a study, you probably read, that basically they gave human growth hormone and that form in DHEA and it improved the thymus. The thymus improved. It was only in men, so they were gonna do another trial, curious if it's women. But anyway, if the thymus gets healthier, your immune system gets healthier. So that's one key component. Have a healthy immune system.

So how do they actually work? Are they like binding to receptors and activating gene expression and regulating various kinds of gene networks in the body?

Some peptides are so small, like epithalin, it can actually slip through and go through the nucleus and interact with the DNA through the histone binding sites. And, some of these peptides were discovered by Dr. Kavaschyn, who is from St. Petersburg, Russia. He has probably 40 years of research of these wonderful peptides, and unfortunately, he just passed away. a couple weeks ago, so I'm really sad about that. I have so many questions to ask.

I need to get to ask.

And I did have the privilege to talk to him once, but anyway, to me, he's like one of the top scientists and he should have got the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Yeah, it's quite amazing.

But it also acts in certain receptors. So there's a group of receptor called the G protein coupled receptor. and most peptides interact with that receptor and basically cause a cascade event. And then basically it's like doorbell ringing and then you get a cascade event.

Well, it's like insulin. Insulin binds to receptors.

Yes.

So. And then kind of opens the gate for the glucose to go in the cell. And BLP1 agonists do a similar thing, like Ozempic.

There is a receptor, yes. Exactly. So it's a general class called the G protein coupled receptors. It won the Nobel Prize in medicine, the G protein coupled receptors.

Yeah, yeah, incredible. So they're about 150 peptides now out of the 300,000 that are being researched for medical applications, right? And there's over 80 peptides that are already approved by the FDA for medical use. What are the kinds of things that people should be aware of that peptides work well for, or maybe even better than traditional therapies?

Well, in my neighborhood, all my neighbors ring my doorbell and they have some type of injury, so they just point to where they need a peptide injected. So, they point to their shoulder or to the elbow, their foot, their ankle. So, I have every day someone's ringing my doorbell to get a peptide shot. But, I usually give BPC-157. which is one of my favorite peptides. It comes from her stomach, stomach fluid. And actually the history is kind of interesting about that peptide. It's, I really, anyway, I can go into that, but it was recently discovered like in 1990s in Croatia. Yeah. And anyway, I actually published the first human clinical trial and they patented a lot of research on animals, but I'm conducting two more human clinical trials, which is really exciting.

That's amazing. So BB-157, for example, is a peptide that the body produces. I'm assuming it's made synthetically in the lab by putting together the sequence.

They know the sequence of it.

So they sequence the amino acids and they put together that string of amino acids. It's synthetically made, but it's a bioidentical molecule.

Exactly.

So it's like making testosterone in the lab or making various molecules. And, and, and then BB-157, let's just sort of unpack that, because that's a very popular one. I personally used it. I've had a bicep tendinitis. I was, you know, doing some strength training and it kind of irritated. And I'm like, well, I'm just going to shoot some BP-157 in there. I did a couple of shots and it went away.

Fantastic.

And it was, it was impressive. And I've used it for other things as well and found them really. very effective for immune function. You know, for when I have, I had COVID, I, for example, use TA1 as a peptide. I use it in my patients. BB-1.7, let's sort of just unpack that for a minute. How does that work in the body when you inject it, for example, systemically in your subcutaneous fat in your abdomen, or if you have an issue in a particular muscle. Tendon tear. When you attend and tear, you inject it into that. What's actually happening?

Is it, well, for tendon tear, muscle tear, or even, like I inject in a patient's joints and they have a tear. What is interesting is that one classic study that was done is they had these rats and they cut the Achilles.

That sounds fun.

So poor rats. And basically one group has got PPC injection in their stomach and the other group just got placebo. And the group that got injected into their stomach, And a month later, they were walking again. And you don't see that in nature. When you have an Achilles repair, it.

Doesn'T feel right itself. It's going to be going together.

Exactly. This was the first thing that was shown. And that was like, wow, wow, wow. So for my son, he had basically, he was in high school, it was a cross country team. He had like six pack. He was just like born to run. He's developed basically an ITB injury, a little band, and he couldn't even run.

Your IT band, we call it, right?

Yeah. So he just could not even get, in and out of the car. And I told him, he was in ninth grade. I said, son, I can inject VPC into your leg. And he said, you aren't effing doing that. So I had to show him slides. And I showed him the rats. I had to show him core data. And he goes, okay, you can eject. And then literally, he was, I don't know, 15 at that time. He quickly recovered. And like a week later, he's running again.

That's amazing.

It's amazing. And so, It actually helps, there's multiple theories on how it can help, but number one, it reduces inflammation. It recruits your immune system to basically heal. But the one part is there's a receptor called the Fc-gamma receptor that activates your growth hormone receptor. So it's a pathway to help growth hormone receptors to be activated so that whatever growth hormone you have, you can actually heal faster.

So growth hormone is really involved in healing and repair.

Exactly. It's an anabolic hormone, but you need the receptors and that's what BPC-157 does. And there was a study that once they stopped it three days later, they still had high expression of growth receptors. So if you use growth hormone peptides with basically BPC and TB-4, you will heal much faster. So I have people I have so many patients who've had all these massive amounts of testosterone. I think they can all help heal faster too. Amazing.

So it works by helping for example growth hormone. There may be mechanisms actually we don't really understand yet. What you said in the rat was interesting is they just injected into the abdominal fat.

It's a signaling molecule. So it basically tells the body to-.

But they didn't have to inject into Achilles.

They did not inject even near the tendon.

Does it work better if you inject it near the site of injury?

It always does. work better. But that study was truly mind-blowing in the belly of the rat and the killing field.

That's quite amazing. And, you know, in some ways peptides are used to treat injury or illness, right? Like, for example, BP-157 or insulin. Ozempic, you could say, would be something that would be a semaglutide peptide that would be used to treat obesity or diabetes or to help with various things that it helps with. But many of the peptides are not really treating disease so much as bioregulators that regulate our bodily functions to optimize them.

Right.

And, my favorite one in regards to bioregulators is Epithalon. Yeah. E-P-I-T-H-A-L-O-N. And, that was discovered by Dr. Kaplan.

And so, for example, four amino acid peptides.

Four amino acids seem like, what would it do? Comes naturally from our pineal gland.

Yeah.

And as we get older, like our thymus gland, it will calcify and will shrivel up, and you lose melatonin and you lose epipthalin from the pineal gland. Ah. And when you lose epipthalin, what happens is your cells that are supposed to self-replicate get stuck in G2. So there's self-replication so if you want a new skin cell, your body basically can get rid of the old skin cell and then you generate new skin cells. Inside our body, we can generate new heart cells, new myocytes, new liver cells, new pancreas cells. But our ability gets less. Exactly, because we're losing Epitalon. And Epitalon basically turns on cell cycle. It's the peptide to make you younger. And I have patients who have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. Some of them have reduction of their medication or even get off their insulin. I have patients who basically their macular degeneration is improving. Their vision is getting better. So it's actually making you younger. But you can't self-replicate forever because then you have discovered immortality, which I haven't discovered yet. But anyway, far from it. I don't think I'll ever do it, but I'll ever find it. But anyway, I have patients that hurry up, Dr. Leah. so much time. But epiphen is just amazing. Just. I just love it.

I mean, it's something you take every day. Is it something you take?

No, Cavicin wants you to cycle it. And so I have made my patients, which is sad because the FDA has this on the chopping block there, too, in terms of banning peptides. But you can get epiphen spray, which.

Is actually nasal spray.

No, under the tongue.

Under the tongue.

Normally you have to inject it. The problem is that there's so many on the internet, but if you can get from Russia, the original one, Caviston.

Sure, there's not a lot of commerce going back and forth with Russia. Through China. Through China.

Yeah. Yeah.

The black market for peptides. Well, this one's a spray, and this one I trust, Dr. Caviston.

Yeah.

So these are, I don't trust the other ones.

It's Caviston's brand. so, so you mentioned, for example, sort of Epithalon as a bioregulator that controls our ability to self- replication, healing, repair. And so they're not like treating a disease.

Exactly. So you get it.

So what happens is insulin can treat type one diabetes. That's great. But not all peptides are doing that. In fact, most of them are not. They're, they're actually simply just enhancing function. Like, yeah, like, yeah, like PT-141, for.

Example, both, both thoughts at the same peptide, same time.

Yeah, that's.

For better libido, better sex drive.

It's actually approved for women.

Yes. Sexual dysfunction.

Yes. It has been FDA approved for that.

And it also works for men. Yes.

I have a lot of men and women on it.

So it increases desire. So does oxytocin. Oxytocin is actually FDA approved.

Is it peptide? It's a peptide. Yeah. It's FDA approved.

Yeah.

So oxytocin is the love molecule. Like I said, it's released when you're after sex or when you, you know, are. But there's a lot, there's a lot of other benefits. And my nurse practitioner, Becky Murray, is going to do a webinar. I host a monthly webinar, not as popular as yours. You probably have thousands, I have only 30 people following, but anyway. One day I'll be as popular as you, Markus. Well, let's see. There's no way. I mean, you're like New York Times best seller.

That's all right.

Well, no one bought my books.

I buy your book. Actually, you know what? I went on Kindle and it was free, because I think it's part of the Kindle Unlimited.

Really?

Yeah.

I'm gonna take it off Amazon.

I was gonna buy it. I was like, wow, Kindle Unlimited.

I got a no go, maybe 10 cents a year from Amazon. So let's kind of dive in a.

Little deeper around some of the use cases and where are you finding the top value for peptides in clinical practice and for patients? What are the ones you'd like to use? What are they used for?

Okay, number one that I just truly love is if you want skin GH Dr. Pickard discovered GHK and it's a natural byproduct. So, when you have collagen and basically breaks down, part of it is GHK. So, GHK can turn on your fibroblast to make more collagen and hyaluronic acid and make your skin look better.

You don't have to inject it in your face. You can just put it in your abdomen.

Well, we have GHK copper topical.

Tropical.

Yeah.

So I'm not that smart, not that good looking. I'm not, not a great athlete, but I have good skin, even though I don't, I live in Florida and I don't even use sunscreen, but I use.

Tons of GHK copper on your face.

Oh, yeah. Topical. I love it. Yeah.

And I tell all my. That stings like hell when you inject it.

Well, no, no, I'm talking about topical, but you can inject. And for my father, who has, who passed away recently with a very aggressive cancer, T-cell lymphoma, small bowel. He had a great life and he basically was told, we really have like 30 days to live, chemo radiation won't work. And I said, all right, Dad, you're like basically in a walker, I'm gonna give you some peptides. And so, I mean, for cancer, I mean, there's several different peptides that have a lot of clinical studies. So thymus alpha one, could help to.

Help your immune system fight cancer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As an adjuvant. We're not saying it's a cure, but.

You'Re saying it's a cure.

Oh, yeah, yeah. People, all the studies even in stage four, most of them shows basically improvement of what basically longevity, then reduction of mortality. So thymus alpha-1 has been used. You can use basically met and keflin, which I was using. GHK copper turns off Also, cancer genes. Epithalin can also do that. I told my dad, you,'re going to get some peptides, and I already drew it up. My dad goes, I don't want them. He's like, come on, dad. He goes, I don't want to. I said, it's too late, dad. Mom is going to inject you anyway. You can say whatever you want. We got eight great months with that.

That's amazing.

So he went from literally from a walker to walking two miles a day, regained his weight, and-- that's incredible. all through peptides and better nutrition, too. Yeah.

Amazing. So, you know, so kind of going down again into this sort of the rabbit hole of, like, what are the best use cases? What are the top peptides in your, in your toolkit?

Right.

For example, I know, like, my best supplements are magnesium, vitamin D, fish oil. Like, those are my go-to right. Probiotic. What, what, what are the, in your.

I would say number one is I love BPC-157. You can take it orally. People with reflux, it tightens the LES junction. I have some people get off their reflux medicine.

That's the bottom of your esophagus where the reflux happens. Yeah, where it comes back up from the stomach. And there's not many things that tighten LES junction. Yeah, that's the lower esophageal sphincter. Yeah, like a sphincter at the bottom.

Of your esophagus and that's loose. That's what comes up, you got reflux, and all that. That's impressive. But, BPC has FYI, I have people taking it and I inject peptides in their elbow and a month later they reinjure their elbow, but they go, I've been taking that BPC, my shoulder, I can sleep much better. So, it can improve your entire body. So, I call it the Wolverine peptide, so you'll get younger.

So, you can grow back.

Yeah, so you can say Wolverine peptide. some people. Maybe 157.

That's the topic of your list. So we talked a bit about that, and it's great for injuries, for trauma, for tissue repair. And, and I think it's, I think it's, it's one of the ones that I tend to rely on because I think it really, personally, it's helped me, and I think it helps a lot of patients.

What, what other, and there, what other peptides are. I love thymus and alpha one because as we get older, our thymus gland shrivels up and we're trying to basically help help the thymus gland. I mean, your immune system get healthier. And as you know, Mark, you know, you got to have a healthy immune system because once it goes down, it goes to two ways. It goes to cancer, right, or to infection.

So, yeah, we got immunosenescence, which means the aging of our immune system, which is why when you're older, you get more infections, you can't fight them as well. You die of pneumonia. You don't respond as well to vaccines. And you get, you know, looking at COVID, the people who are elderly have the higher risk of death. And So I think you're talking about a very important phenomena that we don't really have a good treatment for with traditional medicine.

So generally I tell my patients to use like 250 micrograms of thymus on for one, like once or twice a week, just as... Not daily. You can use daily if you're sick, like higher doses. Like if you have a cough or flu. Yeah, my wife, one day she goes, when she gets sick, it's like, It's a nightmare because I don't know when to drop the kids off. Do I give them lunch money?

Do I, where do I pick them up?

You own the playbook for, I just listen to the Uber driver. So yeah, I don't, I mean, so when my kids were younger, my wife, I took everything, the C, the D, the zinc, you know, silver, I'm coming down with something. And I said, she goes, you, have something else? And I go, yeah, yeah, in the fridge, I have the thiamine for one. So I gave her, remember this, clear way before COVID probably 2016 or something like that. So I gave her about one milligram of thymus alpha one. Next morning, she was perfect. I said, thank God. Because if she was sick, I wouldn't know how to handle the case.

We don't have the cure for the common cold, but if you take this, if you start to feel sick, when you get that feeling, I think I'm getting sick and you take it, it can be profoundly effective.

Oh, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. What else besides TA-1 and BP-157?

I love Epithalon. Then generally we do five milligrams sub-q daily for like 10 days. If you skip a day or like the weekend, you forget, that's okay. Just make sure you finish the vial. So one vial will have 55-0 milligrams of Epithalon twice a year.

So you just do it twice a year? Yeah, twice a year. So like 10 days, twice a year. It's kind of a reset for your longevity.

And I have people like For me, when I was doing it, it's amazing. My sleep, I was on melatonin every year, higher and higher, higher doses. And do you know, epitalon turns on three genes of your pineal gland to make melatonin? And my wife goes, how come you're not taking melatonin anymore? I said, I don't need it. I can sleep without it. So it can reset your pineal gland and help you sleep better. So I love epitalon because as we.

Get older, and you mentioned the, the Russian version via the nasal spray, but you can also take it. Not nasal, it's under the tongue.

Under the tongue. But you can also do it through.

Injections with 503A compound pharmacy prescription.

Yeah. Amazing. And, and the, the, the problem is that most people, when they hear this, they're going to get addicted to epipthalin. Do not use it every day for the rest of your life because you're going to stop the magic in terms of self-fulfillation. It will eventually like the hay flick theory, it's going to stop in terms of it's no longer going to work.

Just because a little bit is good doesn't mean a lot is better.

Exactly. So yeah, just be patient and don't take it every day of the year because it's going to eventually stop working. Now, you know, the other thing that.

Sort of happens as we get older is we end up with hormonal changes, you know, lower testosterone, we have, you know, lower growth hormone, we tend to lose muscle, we sort of age as a result of changes in our hormonal environment. And what was interesting, a lot of these peptides can be involved in regulating hormone function.

Well, yes, there are, in regards to women that are done with, they're in post-menopause or finished with menstrual cycle, sometimes I tell them, you may start your period coming back. And if you get pregnant, please mention me because I want to be famous. inquire because I can't be famous like you, so I have to go the other route. So anyway, yeah, it's amazing. They go, my period was gone five years ago and I was coming back. So I don't know how long it's going to keep on going, but they've, in the animal studies, using which peptide? Epithelin.

Epithelin.

Yeah. So, ovarian function gets better.

So it works not just on the pineal gland, but also- Other organs. Maybe the hypothalamus can help the heart. there.

There's, because it turns on gene expression, which is interesting. There's certain proteins that get kicked off and things work. So, epitalon is like, to me, that's a good one. I love it.

People are using other ones like kisspeptin, which is for testosterone.

Yes, kisspeptin 10, it's may work like anadrol to help with testosterone function, but yeah, those are peptides that may or may not work in men. It's, it's confusing because the data was IV and they would do it like 24 hours and per body weight. And it's hard to convert that to how do you do it sub Q. So anyway, I have some, some guys with some better testosterone level with using kisspeptin.

And then there's the whole growth hormone. category of supportive peptides like Tesamorelin, Semorelin, CJC-1295, and GHRP-6. Can you talk about those and what role they have and what they do?

Yeah, there's really interesting in terms of growth hormone peptides.

So.

I just want to start off with out of all the side effects of all the peptides, that class has the most common side effects.

Interesting.

So it may infect about 20% of patients and they can't take it anymore. They really get welts in their injection sites and then some people really get really bad rashes and it's this entire body. So I warn them that, you know, if you see a welt just growing, growing to stop, you're developing antibodies to it and you're not gonna be, even if you stop and retake it, like, like six months later, it's going to happen again. So, your body doesn't like it. Now, everyone, I have some people on for five, six years and no reactions and doing well. So, they're all very slightly, they're very similar, but there's two receptors in the pituitary gland. There's a ghrelin receptor and then there's basically the growth hormone receptor. So, these peptides can interact to either one. and like you would do CJC-1295.

Which.

Is part of the growth hormone. It's like part of the active part of the growth hormone that activates the pituitary gland at the growth hormone receptor. And then ipamorelin basically interacts with the ghrelin receptor. So in combination, you have a higher level of basically growth hormone release.

And what are the consequences of having that higher level of growth hormone release?

Well, this is the controversy about growth hormone. Does growth hormone make you younger or older? The literature is all over the place. I am doing a study on that, which is because I could show you literature on both sides of the, but generally growth hormone is considered the fountain of youth. But if you overuse it, I think it's bad.

It accelerates aging. I agree, yeah.

So I think in little use and not bodybuilding use, I think you'll do fine.

So these compounds, you sort of hinted at it a little bit, but they are powerful biomolecules like Ozempic, for example, or semaglutide. We're finding that in the doses that is being given for weight loss and for diabetes at two years plus, we're seeing significant side effects like increasing bowel wall thickness, small bowel obstruction, pancreatitis, and other things. and so these are not completely risk-free compounds. So how do you navigate the issue around safety? You think, oh, they're natural compounds. It's safe. I could take them. And people are playing with them.

Yeah.

So let's use the semaglutide or Ozempic or Wegenero with Trizapide, which is. And there are others. That's the bone. Just got FDA approval for. there's trezopate for weight loss there. But the thing is that I was kind of the king of the GLP-1 way before the movie starts. I wish I got the hashtag SkinnyPen, but anyway, I don't even do social media, so I don't even, you know, I'm not on Facebook.

So are you recommending semaglutide to your patients before Ozempic was the big deal?

Refuse. I have patients basically, you're stuck. They go, I just need a little help. and then we work on lifestyle modification. I want you to basically really work on physical activity, get your steps in, get a high intensity interval, let's clean up the diet, and maybe use it sparingly. I'm okay with that. Maybe three months a year, like during the holidays, they know that Thanksgiving, Christmas, too much temptation. And then after that, they go, okay, I'm fine. So, if you can taper off or maybe use it sparingly, I think perfectly fine. There is a product that's called CaloCurv. It's a natural herb which actually activates basically the bitter receptor in the small intestine and it releases your natural GLP-1 and CCK to inhibit appetite. So, I have some of my patients, I go, let's see if you can use this and get off your... Yeah.

I mean, there's a whole set of ways of naturally to raise GLP-1.

Right.

Whether it's certain compounds, for example, Hemin, Tariribuckweeds works in the liver, you test them with these taste receptors to increase Gp1, various kinds of polyphenols and other things can help. So it's definitely not just the drug that can do it. But there are concerns around side effects. If you tend to use these things improperly, if you don't have proper guidance, if you don't understand the risks, you can get it anybody, as you mentioned, like you said to the growth hormone analogs or you can end up with maybe other untoward side effects that you're not even aware of. So what are the kinds of things that people should be worried about or concerned about with peptides?

Well, I think in general peptides are generally very safe and efficacious. The ones that are concerned are the growth hormone releasing peptides. and MTC, I did see one person that's for the mitochondria to make it for better energy. I've had one with anaphylactic and I had another doctor friend, he's a co-founder of Clinical Peptide Society. He also saw one anaphylactic reaction. So, just got to be careful. They're rare side effects, but medications like even taking aspirin, you can get anaphylactic.

Yeah, I agree. guys taking aspirin, almost bled to death in his stomach. So, yeah.

So.

This field is really just exploding, but at the same time, there's a lot of pushback from the government, the FDA, to try to regulate these in ways. And one of the things that sort of I caught earlier that you said, which got my attention, was that there's not a lot of human clinical trials. A lot of the data you're talking about is animal studies.

Well, not all peptides. One of the peptide I just published was on thymosin alpha 1. And it's open access, so you can find it. It's the comprehensive review of the safety and efficacy of thymosin alpha 1 in human clinical trials. So there's 11,000 patients worldwide that have been in on human, I mean, clinical trials on thymosin alpha 1. And basically it's been safe. no, efficacy based on those drugs. I mean, efficacy, most of them basically improved. I mean, they were doing studies like hep B, hep C. Now there's newer drugs and all that, but back then they had nothing. So they were using thymus alpha one and for chronic hep B. And this is like interesting. If you look, go back in history and you read it and it's like.

Well, you know, there's better ones here now.

But yeah, yeah.

Well, I remember saying in China during.

COVID that, yeah, they've studied on TA1 and covet treatment. And some studies shows that reduce mortality. Unfortunately, One compound pharmacy got this whole peptide upset with the FDA and it was the compound pharmacy advertised that there's a cure for COVID.

Oh, wow.

And then you say cure to the FDA with COVID Yeah. Oh, you're gonna be shut down. That's why they were upset. So that was one of the reasons why it's on the banned list. But it has been approved as an orphan drug in the 70s. And when they did first clinical trials, children born without thymus glands. And they, they even FDA goes, let's get this going. Let's see if we can help these children. And they are, it was remarkable. It saved their lives.

Yeah.

So this is before thymus F1, the precursor of it. But anyway, it's like, hey, it's safe. It's around. It's, it does. So that's why I wrote the paper to basically show it to these attorneys who are going to eventually file lawsuit against FDA about this.

Yeah, well, it's a whole problem. Often, we find that supplements or things that really work well tend to be regulated in ways that are confusing to me because they work, they're safe, there's a long history of use, there's plenty of evidence, and they're bioidentical compounds or things that the body makes or uses. And, I just find it sort of striking that maybe I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but there's, seems pushback maybe from pharma to kind of try to reduce access to certain compounds because they work too well.

Well, I have theories there too, but anyway, I just really want for people out there, especially your group, is to get on to savpeptides.org, and hopefully you'll have that on your podcast there. And, it's really quick to sign the petition. send it to your friends and family. We need more signatures and it's grassroots and I go on every lot of radio shows and podcasts and we get a little blip after the podcast.

That's great, yeah, and I think it's important, Edwin said it's important, you know, we want to be able to have access to compounds that can support our health and we have to be used judiciously, they have to be prescribed by a physician, you have to be under someone's care, that's what they're doing. But in that context, they should be available to be used. And what's happening now is a restriction on that use. So if you go to savepeptides.org-- not.com.org-- savepeptides.org, you can basically sign a petition and that will help to the FDA to perhaps reduce their restrictions or potential ban. They're not banned yet. There's a proposed ban. So I think we're going to still see it's being fought. There's a lot of legal cases going on about this. In terms of a few other use cases, one of the things that happens as we get older and often a big problem for people is energy. We lose energy. And one of the fundamental things that happens as we get older is our mitochondria don't work as well. We don't produce energy from food and oxygen as well. So basically our engine starts to slow down. And then we see, obviously, you see a two-year-old running around, bouncing off the walls and full of energy and you see like a 92 year old and they're moving super slow. And a lot of that has to do with mitochondria.

Oh, yeah. Mitochondria dysfunction is huge.

So talk about why the importance of mitochondria and what the use of peptides are in helping to improve the function and health of the mitochondria and how they work.

So, as you mentioned, mitochondrial function is critical for optimal health. And we check in our office NAD levels. So I say Nancy Apple Dog because it's nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And it's not something you can really.

Check easily in a regular lab. So use a special lab.

Yeah, it's Genfinity Lab. Genfinity Lab. Yeah, it's a finger finger stick. And it's J-I-N-I-F-I-T-Y.

Okay, we'll put that in the show notes, everybody.

But Genfinity Lab to check your NAD levels. Is that something you can order yourself? You have to go through it. I think you can order yourself. Okay. And basically, it measures your white blood cells intracellular NAD levels. So, it's a finger prick test. There's like five whole circles. And if we draw your blood a little extra, we'll just put it on this and we let it dry. And there's the little droppers you have to do. But we send it in bulk rather than one at a time because things get lost in the mail. So, anyway. But the thing is that my wife's NAD level was low. It was, anyway, 20, not optimal, and I was 30, a little better, but I always had more energy than my wife. And, so I told her, let's try this product that has N M M. So I tell my patients like Nancy, Michael, Nancy. And it's, it stands for big chemical work, but it's a precursor of NAD. So a month later, we rechecked and she went from 20 to 40, I went 30 to 50.

Amazing.

And it's amazing 'cause I like to ride. I'm not a professional cyclist, but anyway, I like to ride with younger people. Yeah, you keep up. Yeah, I try to keep up. Did you do better?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, there was a group ride, they go, oh, you're so young. I go, no, I have a higher NAD level.

So this is like the enhanced Olympics then, right?

Exactly. So, you know what? All the athletes are taking NMN to improve their energy, but you can measure it. And the second thing, I mean, for mitochondria, that's not a peptide. no, it's a supplement that the FDA has now banned on since March of 2023 against Amazon. It was available for over 10-15 years. David Sinclair.

Yeah, it's still available, but it's through.

Physician'S office, but not on Amazon. So it's harder and harder, but I think David Sinclair is making a drug. So yeah, yeah, it's a shame. It's natural.

Yeah, exactly. So NAD, you're talking about how to optimize even NAD with another peptide.

No, it's anapetide. It's a B vitamin. But the other thing is, what I'm trying to do is, in conjunction with that.

Yeah.

Is that you gotta optimize sleep, too. So I think epipthalin can help with better sleep. And you'll get your REM up. And, you know, a lot of people have Adrenal fatigue, so you gotta, you gotta get that deep sleep, REM sleep up and get good, good quality sleep. So it's not quantity, it's also quality, but. anyway, there is a peptide. Since we're talking about peptide, it's M-O-T-S-C. M-O-T-S-C. It's a mitochondrial peptide.

Yeah.

And it just basically turns on the mitochondrial work faster. And for when I've tried it, the first dose is like, okay, feel good. Second time I tried it, I was.

Like, and the third time was, damn, this is great.

So is it something you use every day long term? No, I. I do it interventionally. So, but I, you know, there's so many different compound pharmacies that make it. Um, and the problem is I, I'm a wuss when it comes to injection. And if it burns, I don't like the burn. Yeah. And then the ones that I were using never burn. And then we, they don't really, they have to stop. Taylor made, you know, stop making it.

Yeah.

And we had to go elsewhere. And I just, so I prefer IV pushes. If I get an IV of nutrition, I also do a Moxi push and it doesn't burn at all. It feels yeah, but I do it intravenously because most MTC burns and I'm a wimp was. I mean, I can go in cold water. I love cold plunge, but I don't like to burn.

Could you use it every day?

If.

Well, you're supposed to. You can do the protocol is 10 milligrams once a week or five milligrams sub Q twice a week. You could go a little further if you have an event like your, your, your. trying to like, yeah, run faster. Like, you have a marathon coming up or something like that. But in general, just once to two times a week.

And, and are there any risks to it?

Well, one, like I said before, I did have one patient that developed anaphylactic reaction, and she was, she, thank God she was by, she lived by herself, but she had a where with all to basically knew something was wrong. So she was in Arizona. She ran outside. Thank God her neighbor was there. She said, call 911 and she collapsed outside. And then she basically like a month later goes, can I try it again? No, right? Never. But she goes, I lost so much weight. It's so good. So that's another benefit with MTC.

It helps with weight loss.

Yes. Speeds up metabolism.

Yeah.

Converts your white fat to brown fat too.

So it increases energy production and burning, right? So increases your metabolism literally. The other, there's a few other mitochondrial peptides like SS31 and human and can you talk a little bit about how those work, what they do, how they're used?

Yeah, SS31. Yeah, so SS31 is another interesting mitochondrial peptide that can help. I kind of explained to my patients that, you know, as you get older, it's like your underwear, you wear that same underwear over time, you lose that elastic. So your mitochondria gets weak and SS31 kind of snaps it back in place. so then basically the, you know, the electron chain where you produce all the ATP and energy, basically it's better formed. So if the confirmation of the mitochondria doesn't work, it gets weak, then that's why your production gets weak. So it doesn't speed up the mitochondria.

But it helps basically their structure. Exactly. And what about humanin?

I haven't used that yet. Have you?

A little, yeah, a little. Okay. So I think there's, I mean, there's, like you said, there's 300,000. I don't know how many of them are on podcast.

I get on podcast and always someone wants to stop me. I was, what about blah, blah, blah, blah? I never heard. So then they'll go one hour talking about giving me a lecture. Yeah, yeah. So, I don't know all the peptides.

So the question really is, you know, when you're seeing a patient, and we talked a lot about, you know, peptides. We're, everything's going to be in the show notes here. So people can learn more about them. We're going to put links to the studies you mentioned. We're going to be links to save, save.

Yeah. And if you can donate, too, that'd be great. It's time to get a phase one.

Clinical trial for BPC 157.

Yeah. So if you've got a few million.

Dollars to do some research, I don't think it's millions, but just, no, no, it's important. And I think, you know, even twenty dollars will help. And the more research that we have, the better off we're going to be to understand these. But, but they are kind of exciting, exciting new therapeutic in medicine that I never really learned about except insulin. And, and I think that they help across a range of, of human functions that tend to decline as we get older. So they seem to be sort of an adjunct in longevity. And a lot of people in the longevity space are using this. You know, what are your sort of top longevity peptides?

Well, number ones, I think that one.

That one, you mentioned twice a year, 10 days reset.

Right.

The pineal gland.

Exactly.

Okay, got it. And in terms of the, the kind.

Of second would be thymus off for one for your immune system.

Yeah, those two, yeah. So there's some heavy hitters, there's some powerhouse peptides that are kind of go-to for you that are part of your standard practice. But when someone comes in to see you as a patient, you take their medical history, how do you sort of begin to think about, you know, which are the right peptides for each person and how long to use them and how to give them? And it just seems like, you know, we don't really know how to do that in medicine.

Well, what I do is when a patient comes to see me, we actually, it's a pretty extensive morning visit when they come. And we, we do so many different tests. And we're looking for DNA damage. We're looking at your genetics. snips. And we're also looking at leaky gut. We're looking at many different, many different things that most conventional doctors don't check, like oxidative stress protocol to see if you have cell membrane damage. And so anyway, the thing is, we, I had this foundational triangle of health, and a lot of people have different versions of it, but it's hormones. leaky gut, fix your liver to remove toxins, sleep, exercise, and then in the middle is nutrition. So, IV nutrition also. Try to get that balance and then later add peptides. I don't do that first. I mean, unless- so, like phase two. Yeah, two or three, just add more or something like that. But, unless they have an acute injury.

It'S like, okay, let me inject.

And, so, their immune system's down or they've got an injury, there's things you'll pull out. So, occasionally I'll pull out, but generally I We do have biological age too in all our patients. So anyway, I look at the intrinsic age and later I have to tell them you're older than your chronological age or younger and they always say how do I get better? So I'm publishing another paper and I just don't have time just but we submitted a paper to be it's being reviewed and I'm trying to get that open access quickly. And so it's an interesting thing. I'll just tell you Alzheimer's patient, 80 years old, could not finish a sentence. And in a year, his cognitive tests significantly improved. He started 2%. He was like, failed.

Yeah.

And now he's trading stocks, he said, and his biological age reduced by eight years. And his telomeres increased to size.

But is he making money on the trading stuff?

Yes. But the beauty, I'm not gonna tell you what the protocol is, but wait for the paper because the paper has to be published first. I don't want to personally.

Oh, no. Okay. Interview me next time. Okay. We'll link to it eventually in the show notes. I'm dying to know what that protocol.

Was because you're talking basically about reversing cognitive decline using. I know. I'm really excited about that X price.

Because I think I'm going to submit it.

This is just one case. Yeah, but I have other cases.

Yeah.

Oh, I have several.

Yeah.

I am busy in my practice. Do you want to maybe share also.

A little before we get into some of the case studies? Do you want to share a little bit about the peptides related to sleep? Because there's a number of peptides that.

Can help improve sleep.

And, there's over 70 million Americans who have some type of sleep disruption, trouble.

Falling asleep, staying asleep, I think the best one, honestly, I'll just start with that. But, there are other peptides there. But, I mean, I mean, I've used DSIP, Delta Sleep Inducing Peptide, and Ryan Smith and I were doing it at the same time texting, oh my God, my sleep's so good. Because we both struggled with sleep, but then eventually stopped. It was like Tachyphylaxis, it stopped working. Yeah. And we were doing it every day and then figured we had to put it back down to like three times.

A week or something like that.

And then- so it's DSIP. Yeah, I stopped using that. EP- Thalons. phenomenal. Over time, you're, you're, you're, because you're generating, you're turning on three genes for melatonin production. So it's phenomenal. So over time, you're not going to require some sleeping. I have people that are saying, OMG, I am sleeping great.

So that's your topic.

And it took me three years because I was doing it twice a year. And then on the third year, I was, I was doing it just to get my biological age down.

Yeah. that's amazing. Are there any others that are helpful for sleep?

CJC 1295. When I first took it, I forgot that it burns like you, not burning injection, but you feel like you're on fire. And I remember injecting and it's worse if you drink alcohol, if you have wine. So I had wine and then I injected and I felt like I was on fire, but I was a little drunk, so I fell asleep quickly. But I had a brief moment of empathy of women going through hot through menopause. I'm getting hot flashes because it's like, if this is a hot flash, just shoot me because I can't survive.

Yeah.

This is terrible. Yeah. So. But then I slept like a baby. So is that something. Is this something. Five days a week.

Five days.

You don't want to burn out the pituitary. So I. I have a peptide class. We teach Healthcare providers, and I have a class March 16th. It's almost.

It's almost sold out. But now, is this a curriculum? Is this a. Something that a Healthcare provider would sign up for and. Is it a multi-part course?

That's a one-day introduction to peptides. But, we teach seven new peptides. It's in case FDA takes things out. And, anyway, it's exciting. It's on clinicalpeptidosociety.com, if you're interested. I'm a co-founder of it. It's going to be in Orlando March 16th.

So, it's an in-person seminar.

Yeah, in-person, not Zoom. I had someone from Beverly Hills sign up and they I thought Zoom, it says right there. So, personally, say the website against clinicalpeptidesociety.com. I'm a co-founder of Clinical Peptide Society. We're going to put down in the.

Show notes if you're a practitioner, you want to learn more, because it's hard to learn about this stuff.

Yeah, you're actually, I remember you called me. I did. Like, what the hell about these peptides? You know what Mark said? He goes, teach me peptides in five minutes. I said, Mark, I can't do that. Just read my book. Give me that cheat sheet. He goes, I don't want to read the book. Give me that cheat sheet.

I want the GCH.

So I mailed them the book. You read it and you're really good. I'm like watching it. It's like, you're evolved. I'm learning.

I'm learning. I'm like, I'm a sponge.

I like learning stuff. So, three to five minutes. This is like, that's my life. Not fair.

But I was looking for, because it's hard to get is like a cheat sheet. Okay, here's the dose of the peptides, here's the frequency of the peptides, here's.

The use case, here's how to mix them up.

Here's the amount of units you get.

We teach that in the class. And then we do offer like essential knowledge, it's not a certification, essential knowledge of clinical use of peptides. So you have, there's a test and there's a certification kind of thing. Yes, but we don't call it certification, we call it essential knowledge. Yeah. Because we worked with AMMG, Age Management Medicine Group. We would love for you to come and speak there. Sure.

Yeah, I think this is such an important thing.

I'm on a planning committee.

Okay, got it. I can give me a pitch now to go give a talk.

I'll be in November.

I mean, someplace fun and beautiful. No, it's definitely an option.

It'll be Utah. Utah.

Oh my God, I live there.

Oh, cool. Salt Lake? I don't know, exactly one.

Okay, Park City. That's close enough to Salt Lake.

Yeah, close.

Okay, so that sounds good. The other thing I kind of want to hear from you is, you know, there's an issue around cost, right? These are not cheap.

Right.

And so, you know, people might be listening, get excited about it, want to try it, and then they go look it up, and it's like, so expensive.

Well, what's expensive? It's all relative. I mean, so what's. I mean, I mean, some patients, it's investment of their life and their health, and I have people of all different backgrounds and. when it comes to their health though, I mean, it's like there's not many alternatives when you come to see me.

You usually failed everything else.

Everything else.

So it's hundreds of dollars sometimes for fibromyalgia.

I mean, but the thing is it's trying to get you from A to B and then over time, you know, if you use it sparingly, it's not.

So they're sort of like kind of to fix things and get you healthy and then you can use them as sort of maintenance intermittently.

If you lose weight or, you know, things get better and so it's, it's, it's, it's a, I give you the path to get well. Yeah, it's up to the patient to follow the path.

Yeah.

And I'll always be in business because they usually fall off the path.

There you go.

Never short. A lot of my patients do. I'll try better.

Yeah.

Now, if we do a good job in fixing the food system and maybe dealing with a new way of thinking about chronic disease, we might, we might have a reduction in business, I hope, but there's going to be sick people for a long time. In terms of case studies, can you share a few kind of highlights from your career? You mentioned the Alzheimer's case, you mentioned your son with IT band, you mentioned yourself a few times. I've certainly had a few positive experiences myself, patients.

Well, I've had one woman who slipped chasing her grandchild on carpet and her shoulder popped out. got worked up and they said, you need a shoulder replacement. So she said, I want a second opinion. And she drove like two hours to see me. She used to live closer, but she wanted to see me. And she had five tears in her shoulder, super spinatus, infraspinatus, the labrum tear and two other tears. So I said, let me inject with ultrasound guidance. and she could not even put deodorant underneath her arm. She could not, wow. That she was limited. But she didn't want to have surgery because she wanted to try this alternative way and there was no one to take care of her.

Yeah.

Her husband passed away so she didn't have anyone to help her after soldier surgery.

Yeah.

So each month she came once a month and I've told her five times her movement with these peptides, I've used BPC and thymosin beta-4. That's it. No stem cells, no exosomes, no growth factors, no peptides. I knew where the tears were and I basically injected there. And each month it just got better. By the third month, it's like you could see significant improvement. By the fifth month, I was telling her I probably have to inject your good shoulder because you're going to realize the damaged shoulder is going to get so well. So a year later, I mean, she did come back, she goes, you know, my good shoulder, I mean, the one that you injected, it was like it's super young and she likes the golf. She goes, you, got to fix my other shoulder.

That's amazing.

So it's amazing. Yeah. I mean, it's regenerative. And I gave a talk for you.

You just gave her once a month in the joint, BP157 and TV4.

So I gave a talk to traumatic brain injury to Mark Corden's workshop to healthcare providers. And Rob was talking about peptides to help the brain. And I kind of got off label. I was talking about some of these interesting cases. And there was a retired Air Force orthopedic. He was like a captain in the Air Force, and he got up, put finger in my face. And he was at, he goes, damn you, you're going to ruin the orthopedics careers. And I say, yes, me by myself is going to ruin all these orthopedics. No, you can be educated and offer this to your patients.

Of course, yeah.

So I'm excited. There is a doctor that graduated from Dominican Republic and he found me and he goes, let's, I want to become an orthopedic surgeon. and I need to get something published. And my dad's an orthopedic surgeon and it's like in Miami. It's like, oh, so we've been talking, we have two clinical trials. He needs to get IRB approval. I don't need IRB approval. I don't have anything to prove, but I think for your future career, you should get IRB approval. And I told him once some sites you can go to and hopefully we can get this quickly approved and start to study.

That's amazing.

Because one is we're going to do MRIs before the knee injury, like ACL, and then do a month into the knee for like three times, like once a month for three times, and then six months repeat the MRI. Because I did a study published and it was just subjective people recall and say, do you feel better? Yeah. But I mean, orthopedic surgeons want see. Yeah, yeah.

For example, heel and meniscus that's torn.

Yeah, my mother had a partial meniscus tear. And I actually, I flew to Pennsylvania because she was getting, I couldn't figure out how bad it was. And when I saw the airport, it was like, oh, Houston, we have a problem. She couldn't even turn, like 180. It was like just really slow. And so when I got home, I injected her.

And then it didn't have to go in any joint or just in the joint. It has to be in the joint.

Yes.

You could try around, but the best is in the joints. It's easy to, I mean, anyway, for me it's relatively easy. Yeah, yeah. But the thing is that, I injected to like, then later, like that was October and then Thanksgiving, I was there injected. So I flew back to Pennsylvania and then Christmas time I injected. And I mean, Christmas time she didn't.

Need a third injection, but she goes.

Since you're here, just inject me. So my mother is now a peptide junkie. And for osteoarthritis too, would it help? Yes, it can help with it. It can help with it. And they did studies in animals with arthritis. They induce arthritis in the paw and gave BPC and it has reduced the-.

Does it regrow cartilage?

I think you can regrow, you do need the stem cells.

Yeah, stem cell issue. So last thing I want to sort of just touch on the sourcing and finding peptides and finding practitioners and safely doing this. it's a bit of a wild west out there. So people are getting it off of unregulated websites and you don't really know what you're getting and there's not really there's risk to it. So how do you sort of find the right practitioner and use the right compounding pharmacies to find the right peptides?

Well, on our clinical peptide society, we do have practitioners who've taken the quakes, they passed their test.

So they've had training.

They have training. So anyway, they basically have the central knowledge on how to use peptides and they basically do a lot of peptides in their practice. So you can look at per state where they are located. And anyway, I don't know all the doctors in America or, but I do know some people that I deal with. We usually, I mean, there's only about 20 compound pharmacies that are 503a that produce sterile injectables.

503A, it's like it's good for human use and it's regulated by the FDA.

Exactly, state inspected and all that.

State inspected and you can be confident in the compounds that are coming from those.

And they check for basically third party inspection for basically any mold or bacteria.

Do you list those on clinicalpeptidesociety.org?

I don't even know all the 20. I have several, but I'm going to use, but I don't know all 20. I mean, to me, I know most of them, but don't know all of them, but I don't list it all there, but I will give you a personal list. What I use.

Right.

That's what you're asking.

So, basically you have to find someone who understands the science behind it, who knows how to use them appropriately. For example, what you're sharing is, you know, some of these you only take for 10 days, twice a year. Some of them you take you know, you take periodically or you take- I'd.

Love for you to take my class. Yeah, I can get you the next level.

Okay, great. I'm coming, I'm coming. So, I think this has just been such an enlightening discussion. I think, you know, people can learn more about your work by going to clinicalpeptidesociety.com, definitely sign the petition to savepeptides.org, and of course you can check out Dr. Lee's books, the Fountain of Youth with Peptides, and his new one called Is that the one?

That's the newest one.

That's the newest one, yeah. So, this has really been a fabulous conversation. I've learned a lot and I think while not everybody can easily access these compounds, it's something to kind of explore, particularly if you have certain conditions and issues that really respond well to this. So, we talked about.

And, not all peptides are injectables. There are peptides that you can take by mouth.

Yeah, orally.

Orally. there is a booth here at this show called Health Gevity, and it's only through doctors. So, they have an account with Health Gevity. I'm kind of helping him kind of with that journey. So, we're kind of, I get no royalties.

Yeah, so, I think they help the gut healing like BP157 and other.

So, yeah, I hit some pretty cool products there.

Yeah, well, Thanks for your dedication in this field, for educating all of us, for writing the book, for teaching the courses, for fighting the fight against the FDA. I really appreciate it.

I feel like I have all of us flag up the mountain.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for what you do and hope everybody loves listening to this podcast. And thanks for coming in to our pharmacy.

Yes.

Thanks. Pleasure.

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