Peptides and bio identical hormones 

excited to be doing this Light Effect Live with Dr. Caroline Williams. Thank you for all of you who are joining us. Um, super excited to have her here tonight. We have an interesting topic because peptides are all the rage right now. Um, everywhere you turn, if you're in the health industry at all or keeping up with health or looking for a way to, um, optimize your health, you're probably looking into peptides. And so we're super excited about this call tonight Dr. Caroline and I have access to a couple of different amazing peptides, GHK copper peptide and AHK copper peptide. But we're kind of going to chat about those and then just some of the benefits of peptides overall. So, Dr. Caroline, please come. And Dr. Caroline is with Native Sun Nutrition, so you can look her up. That's her Facebook page as well as her website as well. So welcome, Dr. Caroline.

Hello. Thanks for, thanks for having me, Nikki Lea McCutchen.

Yeah, absolutely. So what would you like to start with tonight?

Well, you know, the last few times I've started with how I learned about this technology, and I learned about it 2 years ago. It's interesting. My anniversary date was just a few days ago, which snuck up on me. I didn't realize that had that much time had gone by. It's hard to, hard to believe. And it's interesting because of the people that I have introduced, you know, it's like last week I said that I had 200 people, a little over 200 in my extended family where this technology is concerned. And it ended up, it was like, I, we had at one time we had over 600, like I think like 642. And I think there's still like 435. Now active. And so isn't that kind of crazy? I was just like, wow, just from the people that I told, um, that's kind of what has taken place. So it is pretty amazing how, you know, this works, where you can see how many lives that you influence just with the few people that you knew. Um, originally I introduced it to about 35 people, and so that's kind of what exponentially. It's now expanded to 600 people in 2 years.

Yeah, that's amazing. Super exciting.

Yeah, so it's pretty awesome. And, um, and I think it's just a testament to how amazing this technology is. 600 people, um, you know, like, that doesn't happen unless you have something that's changing lives. And having an impact on people's, you know, overall health.

Yeah.

And they're having an experience with it. And so that, that's what happened to me. I had an experience with this and, um, mainly around— I was trying to solve a problem for a patient, um, that was having a significant sleep challenge and had for many, many years. And so I— my typical tools would not— did not work for him because he just couldn't be consistent. And then I happened to be meeting with a rep for those tools I normally use, and then I was just at a loss. So I just was like, hey, do you have anything else? You know? And then she introduced me to this. And so it's pretty incredible. So yeah, so the, the company that makes this technology, well, they've been around for 20 years. Interestingly enough, it's kind of crazy how they've been around for 20 years and I never heard anything about them. And I just learned, you know, 2 years ago about them. It's kind of crazy.

Absolutely. Yeah. I thought the same thing.

Yeah.

I was like, how do I not know about this?

Right. Yeah. I think it's part of it though is like we're moving into a new era of awareness where, you know, uh, people are embracing new ways of looking at things and new ways of thinking about things and understand that Um, ultimately it comes down like everything is really energy and, you know, frequency. And so that's becoming more mainstream, you know, interestingly enough. So it's kind of right in line with that. And, um, but anyway, yeah, so this, this technology has been around for 20 years and, um, I think a lot of people recognize the name phototherapy. In, in today's world, not necessarily, which is just another way of saying light therapy. Um, they might not be familiar with what's called photobiomodulation, but that's a term that we use for like when you see that nature, it's how like when we're out in the sun, that when the sun hits our skin, that that stimulates us to produce vitamin D. Right, right. That light exposure activates our own vitamin D production. And so this technology does something similar except for different things. So you had mentioned a few peptides, GHKCU, which is pretty interesting. Like, there's just all this information that has come out about different peptides that do different things, and You know what's interesting too is like I have been friends like for many, many years with a professional athlete that used to live in Vegas and he was telling me at one point how he would— he was like he would come to Vegas to get his peptides. And I was like, oh, and that was kind of before it became all the rage. So I thought that was interesting. And that was actually, I think, before I knew about this technology as well. So he knew about peptides. Before, you know, most other people, probably because he's a professional athlete. But, but yeah, so it's interesting. So yes, so GHK-C is very popular now in terms of what it does, and it really helps with collagen production, and that can help with improving wound healing. It can help improve the body's ability to heal all kinds of injuries. Needless to say. Um, and also you can help you look younger, obviously. Um, and it activates your own stem cell production, which is pretty incredible, um, because of what stem cells can do in the body. So that alone is just an incredible, um product. And then there's another one that you mentioned, AHKCU, and that one is also one that stimulates— or that stem cell production as well, but it works a little bit differently. It can help with repair as well, but it really helps with improving or changing body composition. So they can both, in my opinion, help with protein synthesis, but The HKCU is really kind of known for help improving performance, like, you know, like physical performance, balance, endurance, like I mentioned, body composition. That's the one that's kind of known for that. And it really can help with— they both actually, in my opinion, can work together to help with strength. But they did do studies on the HKCU CU and how it helps improve bone density. So that's really interesting too. So that's huge. Yeah.

And even like the recovery time and the removal of lactic acid, right?

Yes. Yeah. And actually that one, I feel like there's another one that really is good at that, and that's the carnosine.

Mm-hmm.

The carnosine's really good at the lactic, dealing with the lactic acid that you, um, kind of your body creates as a result of the activity. That carnosine is good for that.

Carnosine is a master antioxidant, right? Versus a peptide.

Yes, right. It's not a peptide, but it still really helps deal with the lactic acid. Like, you know, yeah, I— that's the way I think about that one for sure.

Yeah.

But yes. And so it's pretty incredible because I mean, a lot of the peptides we hear about in the marketplace are ones that typically you inject. And people are buying the peptides and they're injecting them. And so there is somewhat of an invasive nature to that. And there's, you know, it's— it can be a little pricey as well to do it that way. I really like that this technology can just increase your own production of those peptides within your own system. So that's pretty incredible. And so it's super easy and you can do it every day., and you just apply it. And, um, it's a phototherapy patch, right? And it, it basically is activated by your own body's light and, um, energy in a sense. And so that activates it, and then it sends, um, a message into the body to stimulate the production of these things. The different ones do that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there— so with an injectable, is there also, um, a potential availability for other things being in the injectable and, and not just being straight GHK copper peptide?

I would expect to a certain extent, yeah, that's true, um, that, that there is. I, I can't say it's— I don't offer that in my practice, so, you know, I'm not super familiar with the injectables, but it would make sense from a storage standpoint, that there would probably be some other things in there, right?

Potentially stability as well, right?

Yeah, right. Yeah. They also have topicals, which I think that's good for the areas that you're applying it, but it's not— it had, in my opinion, is, you know, I haven't seen it necessarily have a systemic effect. With a topical, right? And you know, right, it's going to benefit you locally and that's great. You know, as far as like if you want a, a skin cream that's going to help stimulate, you know, collagen production, but you really want to do that systemically.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think Lauren Piccart was the one who found the GHK copper peptide over 50 years ago, and most of his work was done through topical. Is that correct? Do you remember?

You know, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would make sense for back then, you know, that that would make sense. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I'm all for combining things for sure. Like, you know, I think it's totally fine to, to apply a topical, but you really also want something that's going to help stimulate your collagen production internally so that, you know, you can get the benefit from the joint you know, joint health and joint repair, and also cardiovascular, because I think a lot of people don't realize, like, your internal vascular system, a lot— cardiovascular disease, right, is dependent on or the result of a breakdown of the tissue internally. And so you would want to be able to repair that or at least maintain the health of it. For sure.

Yeah, it's interesting because I guess I wouldn't have necessarily put that together, but the breakdown of the tissue needing— and that is collagen. So needing collagen to repair that.

Yeah. And I mean, I know that very well because, you know, with my training and the tool, like I said, the nutrition and the tools that I have, that's all about giving your body what it needs so it can maintain the health of the collagen that exists and also provide your body what it needs so it can produce its own collagen. And so, and one of the main reasons for that is for cardiovascular health, you know. So yeah, that's kind of a known thing in my industry, and a lot of people don't think of it that way. A lot of people just think of cardiovascular health or issues with it being related to something that's causing damage, and there's some truth to that. But it's also, does your body have what it needs to be able to repair when there is something that happens, right? Right. Body. Yeah. Yeah.

And quicker, faster repair is huge.

Being able to recover quicker. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And yeah. And just, you know, again, the body's designed to heal itself. It's just, it doesn't have what it needs to be able to do that. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. We certainly wanna avoid things that cause damage, but it's, and you know, if we make a concerted effort, certainly we can. You know, there's definitely things we can eliminate, but it's, you know, you can't get rid of everything, right? You have to walk in the world and go outside and, you know, do these things. And so you have to have a strategy for when you are exposed to like oxidation, for example, things that are oxidizing that do damage. How, how well is your body equipped to repair that? Offset that, the effects of that, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And so if we're talking— yeah, if we're getting back to peptides a little bit more and talking about how just different peptides, so they can support better sleep and more balanced energy, which we see with our technology as well. And how would, like, peptides— so I think— so we have a technology also that is related to the peptide in the liver that reduces inflammation, but I know we were kind of before the call talking about how that would then help regulate hormones and manage stress better. So can you dive into that for us a little bit?

Yeah. So there's another— well, let's just say like a patch. There's another patch the company makes that it basically modulates cortisol and reduces inflammation as a result of that, reduces stress. Activates the side of the nervous system that aids in rest and also can help with digestion in a sense, right? We call that the rest-digest side, the parasympathetic. So this one does that. But when you think about hormone regulation or balance, this gland plays a huge role in that, and that's the adrenals. Right? So the way that that works is, you know, if you have less cortisol production because your stress is lower and you have less inflammation, right, which is again, your stress will come down as a result of that, then you're going to have more resources for sex hormone production. And I have other tools that help with that too. Like ashwagandha is really known for that. Ashwagandha basically helps modulate cortisol as well and helps stimulate your own production of DHEA. And then again, you have more resources to go towards making sex hormones rather than adrenal hormones in that situation. So this patch would do the same. It would contribute to that as well, for sure.

So yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And like you said, having the availability of, instead of it being an injectable, having your own body be working the way that it was already designed.

Yes, yes, yes. And, um, your innate intelligence is running the show, certainly always, but, um, we want it to work within the parameters that it was designed to, as opposed to— there's just so many things that people are doing today that they're taking things exogenously in a way that makes it really difficult for the body to regulate. You know, we want to stimulate the body's own production of things, right? Instead of— a lot of times when you take things exogenously, let's just take hormones. When you take hormones exogenously, your, your own production— not only, not only is your own production going to slow down, but the gland that makes that hormone will atrophy over time. It will literally shrink.

Yeah. And super interesting because I was considering taking a bioidentical and, you know, when they, when they give you the label or what you're going to get, it just says progesterone or whatever it's going to be. It doesn't give you any of the additional information. I don't think most people know that, you know. So I had to call the company And there, there are a list of ingredients, but when they're giving you, you know, the form or scan the QR code so you get more information about what you're actually, you know, putting in your body, they don't actually list that list of ingredients on anything. So I had to call the company to find out what else was in that list of ingredients. And even though this was a bioidentical, which if that's the way you're going to go, you know, that's definitely the best way, you know, the route go. But then when you look at the list of ingredients that was in there, there were multiple things that I mean, if that was in a food, and obviously I'm taking this exogenously, if that ingredient was in a food, I'm not going to eat that. So why in the world would I take the bioidentical with it having that list of ingredients? But I don't think people realize that there's still an additional list of ingredients even when it just says progesterone. So you actually have to call the company that makes it to find out what that list of ingredients is.

Yeah. Yes. And then again, it's interesting because I feel like maybe it's not common knowledge that after menopause or after we're not making sex— women are not making sex hormones via their ovaries anymore. Everything switches then to the adrenals so that you, you still can make progesterone, you still can make estrogen, but it's just all made by the adrenals along with, you know, adrenal hormones. And so, you know, the adrenals are having to kind of deal with like, where does— where do the resources go if you're under a lot of stress? Stress at that point in your life, those resources are going to go to make adrenal hormones, not sex hormones. So you really want to help at that point in your life start looking at living a lifestyle where your stress level's much more manageable, um, and really doing things to support the health of the adrenals, even going— getting up to that point. And any tool that you have at your disposal to help with that, I would consider. You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then that goes back to, again, having the technology that we have that would then support the, you know, the parasympathetic nervous system.

Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And it's, it's a, it's about finding that balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. And, and a lot of people are way too much in the sympathetic. They're just in that too much and not enough, right? There's not a balance in the nervous system where so many people are concerned. And, um, yeah, and then that, that just can lead to a whole bunch of issues and problems, um, you know, not just what we were talking about with just hormonal imbalance, but also challenges where potential— like, it, you know, your potential for autoimmune dysfunction increases when that's the case as well. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing how much the stress affects every single thing.

Yeah. Chronic stress just has such an impact on, you know, a person's overall health for sure. Especially like over time. Right. You know? Yeah.

That, yeah.

It's cumulative, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So if we're addressing peptides that then support cognitive clarity and immune function, we know that GHK copper peptide, you know, can also do that. So what are we looking at when we're talking about cognitive clarity and immune system?

You know, it's interesting because again, like some, some of these different peptide stimulating patches can do a multitude of things, not just one thing. But if you combine them with some of the others, I think that's where kind of the magic happens personally, because you just mentioned immune function, right? And so, so much of our, our immune function is affected by stress, right? And so again, if you have something that can help reduce the stress, and reduce the inflammation in the body, that's just going to have a huge impact on, you know, immunity, basically. Because like one of the— I always tell patients one of the number one things that suppresses immunity is stress.

You know, absolutely.

Yeah. And so, you know, That's why it's so important to find things that can help your body adapt to stress or manage stress. I, I get that it's hard to sometimes change a person's lifestyle right away where you, you can change all the demands that you have and maybe, you know, some people are having financial stress and that those things don't always go away instantly or right away just because you wish them away. Right. But we do, you know, we do have tools to help people manage stress. And the effects of it. Yeah. And so that's where, you know, the more empowered you are about, you know, those types of resources available to you, the better off you're going to be. And it's relatively easy. And I, you know, it's funny, I was thinking today, just thinking so much about, I've just heard some stories lately of people that are challenging, you know, they're, they're going through a challenging time and they're suffering and it's just like, they do not have to, you know what I mean? But I just think they don't, they don't realize, they don't realize that, you know, they could do so much better. Yeah. They could just be doing so much better and feel so much better. It's just being willing to, you know, try something different.

Right. And so even like with when we're thinking about, you know, the peptides, even like, and we're talking about stress, that's also directly related to even gut health. And we know that GHK copper peptide can also support the gut health as well.

Yeah, yeah. And also the, the other one that we were talking about with the cortisol modulation, because stress has such an impact on gut health for sure. So again, I would say it's a combination of those two together. Um, the one that helps regulate and modulate, right, helps regulate the nervous system, modulate cortisol as well, as well as the JHKCU copper peptide, um, technology as well. Both, both are really great in combination for sure.

Yeah, and that's really amazing when you think about how many— the combination of those two together, how many things that it helps to your body to have the tools then to bring it back in balance and really ultimately at the cellular level. And then those peptides allow our body to accelerate the healing that we would not have had, had the peptides not had the support or the stimulation to work the way they were designed.

Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting, like, if you think about the one that we were talking about earlier, the technology that we're talking about earlier that helps regulate and activate the parasympathetic, what do they call that? They call that the rest-digest, right? So there you go, right? It's rest is going to help your body repair and regenerate. And of course, you want the digest side activated when you're eating, when you're eating.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So I think that kind of says it all on that one.

But it's, yeah. Yes. For sure.

Really incredible.

Yeah.

I think like, you know, there's so many people, like I said when we started, how many people, you know, it went from 35 to now over 600 in 2 years. That's crazy.

That's crazy. Yeah, absolutely.

Because, because it's so, it works and it's so impactful and yeah. And, you know, we're just trying to get the word out.

Absolutely. Yeah. And, and something is not going to grow that fast or have that many people utilizing it if it's not working.

So. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's, yeah, exactly. That's my point. Yeah. That's my point. Yeah. People are are not gonna be taking it or using it— not taking it, it's not— you don't have to take it other than just purchase it. Put it on. Yeah, right, put it on. Um, yeah, which is pretty incredible, right? Um, and apply it, we should say that. And, um, yeah, for sure. And it's worth a try. It's worth you trying it and giving it enough time for it to effectively, you know, work for you. I mean, that's also a consideration, but yeah, and the, for what it can do, the investment is really minimal in my opinion.

Absolutely. When you think about all the things that we just mentioned here tonight, like the number of even like medications that I can think of that people would have to be on to try to, uh, eliminate a symptom. I mean, that could be, you know, 10, 15 different medications just in the things that we mentioned tonight to try to mitigate some type of symptom. With what we're talking about, really, we've only— well, I guess we mentioned carnosine as well. But, you know, with, with Aeon and then activating GHK copper peptide, those two things, you're, you're not even taking anything. You're putting them on your body and going on about your day. So there's no contraindications with any medications people might be taking because all it's doing is supporting homeostasis in the body.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, you mentioned not having to take— or you mentioned potentially having to take, you know, a certain number of medications to like have this kind of benefit. But if you don't have to take those medications, you're also not harming yourself in other ways. Absolutely. Because there's no medication that I know of that doesn't have a shadow side to it where it's causing problems elsewhere.

There's none. Absolutely.

That I know. Yeah, you're trading one thing for another.

Absolutely. Well, and even with the bioidentical hormones, I mean, the whole point was that is that thinking that you're getting something that's going to be plant-based and more natural, identical to the hormones you already have. Well, then you get a list of ingredients that have nothing to do with the hormones that you already have. So, you know, it's still synthetic.

And the other shadow side of that also is then your glands that make those hormones atrophy. Really? Like, do you really want to shrink your hormones? Because I mean, your glands and those glands, like, it's not even just the gland that makes that hormone. It has an upstream effect to your pituitary. So, you know, if you're taking testosterone, men are taking testosterone, or women are taking, you know, progesterone or estrogen, again, you know, the downstream glands are certainly going to atrophy, but you can, you're also going to have an effect on your pituitary function, interestingly enough. So a lot of people are not aware of that.

Yeah, it's really important to know.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, I know what you're signing up for. And a lot of people end up getting off the hormone replacement at some point because of how it's affecting other aspects within their system. And, and then of course, you're— there's a trade-off during that time. You can bring your glands back, but it takes time to do that. You have to allow for the time that it takes to kind of get them to come back. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Fabulous conversation tonight, Dr. Caroline. It went so fast.

It did. It did. Yes. Do you want to share with, like, how they get more information about—

Yeah, absolutely. So our educational site is called patchtheway.com, P-A-T-C-H-T-H-E-W-A-Y.com. And then, of course, you can always get a hold of Dr. Caroline at nativesunnutrition.com and her Facebook page is the same. And then my business page is Embrace Optimal Health. You can also do embraceoptimalhealth.com as well. So we hope you all had just a fabulous time as we did getting to learn some things tonight and talk about all this great information that, that most of us, if like I said, if you're looking to optimize your health, you are considering peptides, you have looked at peptides, or I didn't even expect us to talk about bioidentical hormones, but that's a huge conversation today as well. So just some fabulous information. So thank you so much, Dr. Caroline, for being on here with us tonight.

We really appreciate you. Thanks, Nikki Lea McCutchen. Yes, we'll see you next week on Tuesday at 8.

Yes, on— yep, Tuesday on the Native Sun Facebook page, we will be back having a conversation as well. So hope you all join us then.

All right.

Thank you so much.

You have a good night.