Living Libido Loca! Supercharge Your Libido at Any Age

and I notice a lot of women, once they get to a certain age, or even, even younger women, it's like their libido just shuts off. It's like they could care less about having sex ever again in their whole life. They love their husband. They feel bad for—

Maybe.

I know. I know. Sometimes, well, if there's an interpersonal issue, that's a whole nother deal, but You know, the women that, that I sort of select for these types of treatments are the ones that come in and they're like, I feel so bad for my husband. You know, he's such a great guy. I just have no interest. Absolutely less than zero interest.

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Hello, it's Dr. Kenton Holtorf with another episode of the Peptide Summit. Today we are honored to have Dr. Valerie Phillips, and she's going to be talking about how to turbocharge your libido. So, uh, stay tuned. We gotta all find out how the heck we do that, especially as people get older. I know women don't talk about it too much. Men don't either, actually. But Valerie, thank you so much for being on. And exciting topic. And so really appreciate it. So Dr. Valerie Phillips, she's a native Angeleno, or Angeleno, who started studying medical arts as a teenager at a magnet school. She studied biochemistry at UC Davis and subsequently pursued research in neuropathology.

At UC San Francisco.

She also volunteered at the Berkeley Free Clinic at the Native American Health Center in San Francisco and became a healthcare worker there, delivering limited primary care services to the underserved population of the San Francisco Bay Area. She decided to pursue her long-term interest in Eastern and alternative forms of medicine by pursuing a naturopathic medical degree at Bastyr University in Washington. The education was a perfect blend of Western scientific medical thought combined with herbal traditions from across the globe, nutrition, physical medicine, and many more disciplines. I mean, they really bring in kind of everything, which is nice, you know. And I think really that is the way of the future. And I think a lot of these, like, hospitals set up an integrative alternative whole department and they have a regular doctor and a chiropractor. You know, and a masseuse or something like that. But, and they're really trained to, and they go through all the same rigorous scientific training, but really look, uh, body as really holistic as a whole. Where I think the big problem with standard medicine is that everything's separate.

You go to gastroenterologist for this, you go to a neurologist for this, you go to integrative, but it's all connected.

All right, so again, thank you for being on. So what got you interested in— well, maybe that's kind of a weird question— what got you interested in libido?

Uh, yeah, and thanks for having me. I'm really excited to do this. It's really fun. So my practice looks a lot like a holistic primary care practice. It's predominantly in this little, you know, cow town up a couple hours north of LA. And so I do a lot of female hormone restoration, female hormone balancing, women's health, that kind of thing. And the way I tend to do it is my ladies come in for a monthly shot. So, a lot of times, once we get the hormones balanced, it's sort of like, how's it going? How was it? Maybe we adjust the doses a little bit and then we talk about, anything, anything that's concerning them. And I notice a lot of women, once they get to a certain age, or even, even younger women, it's like their libido just shuts off. It's like they could care less about having sex ever again in their whole life. They love their husband. They feel bad for— maybe. I know, I know. Sometimes. Well, If there's an interpersonal issue, that's a whole nother deal. But, you know, the women that, that I sort of select for these types of treatments are the ones that come in and they're like, I feel so bad for my husband. You know, he's such a great guy. I just have no interest. Absolutely less than zero interest. Yeah.

And do you find that people may not, women may not say anything because they think it's normal because none of their friends have libido? Yeah, you know, it's like, well, everyone else has the same problem.

Yeah, yeah, they figure, oh, I'm old, I'm married, it's, it's fine. But then some of them are not old and some of them do bring it up, or I usually ask about it, you know, because in my hormone protocol, yeah, I'm giving them testosterone and I'm asking them about their, you know, their energy and their muscle mass and their sort of vim and vigor. And they, you know, I bring up libido and they're like, zilch, zippo, nothing ever. And then sometimes their husbands come in. I see husbands too. The wives like make them come in and, you know, and they, they tell me about it, you know, and it's a good because yeah, you're comfortable.

You can tell like, you know, patient comes home like, and, uh, do you have a lot of libido?

Okay. Uh, yeah, you just bring it up. I find people. Are not against talking about it. In fact, a lot of men come in as well and they're like, you know, erectile dysfunction, libido dysfunction. I don't know what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Big time.

It's not huge, maybe that's all the sense.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah.

So once their testosterone is sort of optimized for them, you know, not everybody tolerates testosterone very well, you know, but some—

can, can you talk about testosterone? Because I mean, so many people, they— okay, men, testosterone, women, estrogen, right?

No, I typically blend in testosterone in their protocol as long as they're not, you know, like me. Like, if I take any testosterone, like, yeah, it's good for my libido, but I then I grow a beard and it's like, mate, but then kill, you know, like the Black Widow or the praying mantis.

But you can just braid your beard like the Taliban or something. But it's also that ratio, right? If you have high estrogen, like you look at, you know, young girls, they have high testosterone, but they don't get all the facial hair stuff because they have high estrogen. And when you have the low estrogen, your SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, goes down. So all the testosterone you get becomes free. And so it's much more potent. So it's that ratio, right? A lot of times things are ratios.

Yeah. And especially in postmenopausal women, their estrogen goes down and the relative testosterone is high, and then they grow a beard, but then, you know, they still have no libido because they have no estrogen, you know.

Yeah. It's a combined effect, correct?

Yeah. And in general, I try to do hormone protocols as complete as possible as I can get the people to do, or however much they they tolerate. I often am adding in pregnenolone and DHEA as well, just to kind of COVID all the bases. But so, you know, people come in and I've covered all my hormone bases, you know, like this one lady, super healthy, postmenopausal, feeling great on the hormones, losing weight, but just month after month, no libido, no libido. And I'm like, increasing the testosterone a little bit, see if that works. They come back, nothing. Zilch. Zippo. And then, she was the first person that I tried PT-141 on.

Can you mention, just talk a little bit more about what PT-141 is?

Right. So, PT-141 is fascinating physiologically. It's a fraction of the melanocyte-stimulating hormone, which is part of a big hormone system called the proprio-melanocortin system, which I've been calling unofficially the Naked and Afraid system because it's got all the things. Basically, it's a big prohormone that separates out into all these little hormones, which is everything that you would need if you were Naked and Afraid. Did you ever watch that show, that reality?

I would not be doing that.

I would not be doing that either.

I can't stand bugs.

Yeah. For the, for the listeners who don't know, it's a show where they take two people, and I've only seen one episode, but I assume it's like male and female just to kind of get the sexual tension going. Yeah. And they drop them naked and afraid into the wilderness, or just naked, maybe. I don't know how afraid they are, but they're naked in the wilderness. They have to like build shoes out of leaves and like, you know, I don't know, build shelter. And they're exposed to the elements. They're always getting like crazy sunburns and exposure things. They have to find water. All they get is one bag and one tool. And so the proprio-melanocortin system, basically it will give them ACTH, adrenocorticotropic hormone, which will kind of boost their immune system and keep them kind of, you know, keep them going, you know, I guess in, you know, running from bears or whatever, survival hormones. And it gives them lipotropin so they can burn fat for energy as they're foraging for foods. It gives them endorphins so that they can, I guess, you know, manage any kind of pain or injury and maybe feel a little bit better about, you know, being naked and afraid. And then it stimulates melanocyte stimulating hormone, which darkens the skin and protects them from the sun exposure. Protects the underlying dermis from like free radicals so that it, they don't get skin cancer, hopefully. And it also, melanocyte stimulating hormone also stimulates the libido and also stimulates weight loss and, you know, the immune system of skin.

Melanotan-1, Melanotan-2.

Right. So.

Is the Barbie doll peptide, right? Exactly.

Malibu Barbie peptide.

I had said Malibu Barbie.

Yeah, so without tan lines.

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You get tan, you lose weight, and you—

what's the last thing?

You increase your libido.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, but the negative to it is that if you're young, like that stimulating melanocytes It's great. It's a nice even tan, protect against skin cancer. But if you're older, it tends to bring out like age spots. And when I took Melantan 2, I'm kind of ADD. I'm like, this isn't working.

And then all of a sudden I am so dark.

People are like, what the heck are you?

You know? And I'm like, what the heck?

I can't, you know, because you can't stop. And you stop and it keeps going. I looked like some foreign, like, no, what the heck.

So it'd be interesting. Looks like you're wearing blackface or something.

Oh, it was, it was like totally different feature of like people.

Like, that's so funny. Yeah, I experimented on it with myself as well. I found it worked great for libido stimulating stuff, but I also was a little bit concerned that I was getting like kind of weirdly dark as well. I mean, I kind of stopped after 3 doses because my makeup stopped matching and I was like, oh no, I'm going to buy makeup or whatever.

Yeah, no, PT-141 doesn't do it nearly as much, but it can. And, uh, one other very well-known doctor was telling about one of his celebrity patients and he's like, you're, you're making me You know, dark, what's wrong with you?

He's like, no, it's not that I'm giving it. I'm like, hey, no, because P2-1-41 is a part of it.

I noticed it for sure.

Yeah.

And it's not as potent, but then there's KPV.

And also these are very anti-inflammatory, which is great. I don't know if I use P2-1-41 for inflammation, but I actually used it for neuropathy and weight loss in one of my patients.

And she already reported, I think she's been on it maybe a week or two, and she was texting me today saying that her feet feel much less painful and numb and she can walk now.

And is she having so much sex that she—

actually, it didn't work for her libido. I think having to do with the fact that she's got an untreated dental infection. And, you know, I find that things like that can confound your libido. You know, if your cortisol system is, you know, yeah, yeah, because of that, or you're in pain or whatever.

And there's, yeah, another fragment, tries a KPV, which is even more anti-inflammatory, but doesn't have the monocyte stimulating aspects and seems to also help with weight loss and lower inflammation in the hypothalamus, which reduces that insulin resistance and appetite has to do with. I think, yeah, the biggest problem with like PT-141, I think is nausea, right?

Nausea and cramping. That's what finally kind of turned me off of it. The first time was fine, but then the subsequent times I was feeling flushed and crampy. But my patient that I was just talking about, she got flushed the first day, but then was fine after that and is feeling great.

It tends to go away, that it became approved. Right.

All right. By Lisi.

Yeah. How much is it a month for that?

I don't know, because I have never considered prescribing it. We don't do authorizations. I know it's going to be a rigmarole. And plus it's an auto-injector of 1.75 milligrams, which I find to be a little bit restrictive because if somebody is having symptoms like nausea, cramping, flushing, I might wanna drop the dose down to 1 or bump it up to 2. And my population of, it's only approved for premenopausal women. And my population of premenopausal women with low libido is like fairly, fairly limited.

Yeah. And it's like thousands of dollars and their copays more than you can get it for from a company.

Yeah. But it's cool that it's FDA approved, I guess.

Yeah. And, um, oh, just get back to like, so hormones, and I think so many women are told hormones are bad, right? Right. The bad hormones are bad. The good hormones are good.

Exactly. You know, it's all that is based on the Women's Health Initiative, which used, you know, a really, really inflammatory form of estrogen orally, which I never give anyone estrogen orally.

People, yes, men, the worst that they use. And it's— it was the most poorly designed study too. And so it's, it's nuts. I would rather have, you know, 100 studies that aren't perfect, but then they say, oh, you need this big trial. Those are never perfect.

They're far from perfect, you know?

Yeah. And plus the protocol they use is, is not used by any functional medicine doctors that are experts in hormone replacement. And that's the study that's influencing doctors all over America. You know, there was a similarly big study in Europe where they used bioidentical estradiol, they used bioidentical progesterone, and they did not have the same studies. And the European women are not as— they're doing better than the American.

And, you know, I did a review of all the literature on bioidentical versus synthetic, of the bioidentical hormone debate. And looked at every study head-to-head shows that bioidentical hormones are safe, lowers the risk of breast cancer, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, while synthetic hormones, especially synthetic progestins, then you add an oral synthetic to that, it increases clotting factors. And if you look at the Women's Health Initiative, they knocked off most of the people in the first year. Probably from combination of the oral estrogen going through liver, increasing clotting factors, and the progestin increases clotting factors.

Yeah.

And that's when they all died from a heart attack was the first year.

Yeah.

And people and doctors don't get the difference. And even the literature calls it progestin, progesterone, and they'll say, or estriol, which actually is an estrogen that prevents cancer. They say, oh, it's like they're trying to ban that.

Yeah.

And even the drug companies say, oh, there's no study.

Well, wait a minute.

Your company has it approved for sale in Europe. Is that what you're saying? There's no, there's no studies in America, you know, but anyway, it seems kind of political or financially motivated and it's, God, it's strange. It's strange.

Okay.

Where were we? I always get off on a tangent. Right.

So, right. And I, when people are concerned about cancer, I give them your article. I think that's a really thorough article about hormone safety and generally, you know, peop— as long as people don't have an existing cancer, I'm not brave enough. I know that there's some oncologists that actually use, or maybe used to use, high doses of estrogen to create apoptosis, but that's not anything that I would feel comfortable doing.

And so Uzi Reis has a book out, or it's about to be out, about, you know, estrogen, giving estrogen with cancer.

Yeah.

And this whole estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor is so oversimplified. And in general, if you want to prevent breast cancer, take progesterone. If you want to get breast cancer, take progesterone, you know?

Right. Yeah.

But it gets confused in literature because they call progesterone progesterone, you know?

Yeah. Huge difference. Huge difference. Patentable. Profitable progestin, regular, normal.

But yeah, so just, I just want to have a, you know, to tell women who their doctors, they go to HMO doctor, whether it may be, oh, don't take hormones. Okay. You're going to increase your risk for dementia, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, osteoporosis, autoimmune.

I mean, all, all these things.

And they're giving birth control pills out Oh, by the handful, which is like the worst.

And your quality of life is going to be worse.

You're not going to live as long. But they say, oh, you don't need it.

You don't need— well, no one needs anything, right?

People come to me, you know, postmenopausal women or perimenopausal women come to me desperate. They feel horrible. You know, sometimes they can't even do their jobs.

Anymore because the doctor goes, oh, you're just getting older. And the doctor probably feels worse than they do. That's why they don't treat.

I mean, the mood disorder issue is depression too, dramatic increase in depression and anxiety and sleeplessness. How can one be expected to be functional in this day and age where you have to do so much just to stay ahead? If they can't sleep, they can't stop shouting at their, you know, partners or children.

Relationships, you know.

Yeah.

Or it's like postpartum depression. They have all these things and, you know, you have these huge levels of estrogen, progesterone, then it crashes and you wonder why they're depressed. I mean, you give them estrogen, progesterone, thyroid, the majority postpartum depression dramatically improves. Instead, they're giving them— they don't have a Prozac deficiency. Exactly. Like, fix this other stuff. And 9 times out of 10, you're going to see people go, Oh my God. You know, because postpartum depression is scary.

Yeah. Like, I'm depressed.

I got this beautiful baby, but I don't feel it, you know?

Yeah. And a lot of people, once you start them on hormones, they say, oh, it's like night and day. I feel like myself again. You know, which is—

I get so many texts just from like friends and even people work with, oh my God, I'm a new person, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. It's very rewarding.

And so you like to do—

so there's so many ways to do it in general. I'll let you speak, but like, you know, you can take oral.

The problem with oral synthetic estrogen is going to really increase clotting factors and cause a lot of inflammation.

I never give oral synthetic estrogen.

I know. I'm just saying in general. And then oral bioidentical, not as bad, but it's still going to increase clotting factors. But yeah, so if you give the estrogen, you know, a different way, topical or shot or pellets or, so just all that shit.

So I don't do pellets for estrogen because first of all, I believe that estrogen should cycle up and down. You know, if, if I can, I like to do the shot because it cycles and it kind of mimics the natural cycle and there's different. Molecular cascades that happen when estrogen is rising and when it's falling. And I think that that's wonderful to do with progesterone as well. And at testosterone as well, kind of, you know, women are used to, we're designed for all these fluctuations and we're trying to sort of keep it as natural as possible.

Yeah.

Got to tell me, right?

Exactly.

Just kidding. Just kidding.

So if people can't or don't wanna do the shots, Then my next go-to is the topical estradiol formulations, like a 1% oil, and they just put it on the wrist and go like that. And that seems to work okay. But a lot of people forget to do it, you know? And so they get these unnatural or like inoptimal fluctuations. The same with the progesterone. I like to do progesterone orally if possible. Uh, you know, it's great that Prometrium is bioidentical except that it's in peanut oil and sometimes that's a problem.

And it's expensive. You get a compound in for so much less. And, and yeah, I like oral progesterone.

And there's, you know, then there's another debate over saliva testing versus serum. But I've had a number of people come in like on transdermal.

I think progesterone should be taken orally as the opposite of estrogen is that you get much higher serum levels. But the people who do saliva testing argue, well, the tissue level is higher. But I've had some people with endometrial hyperplasia on transdermal progesterone. So I'm a little, I dunno, biased, but yeah, there's two camps and they all have evidence behind them.

Yeah. And Mike, I'm squarely in the blood testing camp. I just think that I, I've seen too many saliva tests where you just have crazy unnatural spikes, probably because of gum disease. You get just a touch of blood and then it's just astronomical and people get worried about that. And blood isn't perfect either.

You know, there's no perfect test. I think that's a great point. Every test is a piece of information.

Yeah.

And I don't understand, like, so many doctors I see, the patient will come in and the doctor keeps doing the same test that's abnormal, but they don't do anything about it. Like, Why did you run the test? They go, it was a false positive. Well, why did you run the test?

You know, yeah, mostly I go by symptoms, but I use the test. Yeah, I use the test as sort of like a touchstone baseline, you know.

And kind of also on that is certain women that, you know, what's optimal is let's say you get an athletic, thin like small breasts and small hips, athletic, they're not going to need much estrogen.

Yeah.

You know, they're going to feel better with testosterone because they grew up with low estrogen, high testosterone, where more of a full-figured woman grew up with lots of estrogen and you have to probably give her more to make her feel better.

Yeah. You know, hormone protocols should be individualized. That's why what I tell people, if, you know, they're looking for a doctor or they're moving is like, you'll know that the doctor is a good hormone doctor if they're gonna individualize the hormone protocol to you and how you are feeling. You know, cuz some people need more estrogen, some people need more testosterone, et cetera, et cetera. Some people need really low doses of everything. Some people do great. Oh my gosh, I, I started using these Biomatrix products, which is like a supplement product, which is really high concentrations of estriol and progesterone. And I have this one lady who just does 2 drops a day and she's like, night and day, it's perfect. You know?

Yeah. And you use Estriol routinely or no?

I do try to use Estriol routinely. My, my practice is insurance-based, so a lot of times people are financially restricted and the insurance will sometimes, oftentimes pay for the shot, which is estradiol. But I try to encourage people to also get the topical estriol if they can. And I explain that, you know, traditional formulas are 20% estradiol and 80% estriol because it kind of rounds out the protocol.

I think is— and that was based on Jonathan Wright's literature, which I think was totally wrong. But, you know, we'll use typically 50/50. And because if you use too much estriol, it blocks the estrogen receptor. Estrogens, great. A lot of, for like urinary tract symptoms and things like that. But yeah, so just kind of like some biochemistry behind it. There's in general two estrogen receptors, A and B. So A is going to basically stimulate growth and kind of stimulatory. B is going to like suppress growth and cancer. Now estradiol is balanced, right? So it's kind of, it's neutral. You get Premarin, which is horse ester that has a quinolin in it, which is a known carcinogen, by the way.

And it is—

stimulates that A, so it's just grow, grow, grow, grow. And then estriol is a selective B, so it's going to dampen any, you know, excessive growth. So, you know, combining estriol and estradiol, now you get more, but if you do too much, it's basically you don't get the activating effects of estradiol.

So, so we found 50/50 in general is good. I think the 80/20 I've seen, we've had the, you know, people are just on huge more and more doses because it just doesn't work. And I don't think that's good either.

You're just getting massive doses of this ratio that's, you know, not all of that was done with topical creams, which I don't use topical creams at all, you know. So it's hard to really gauge the percentage with the way I do it because the estriol is topical and the estradiol is a shot. And so I just kind of modify it until people feel good.

And you get a lot of aromatase in the skin. You get, you know, it's like, it's like when giving men testosterone, especially overweight diabetics, you know, they're doing these testosterone creams and it upregulates in the skin the, uh, the aromatase, so it converts it all to estrogen. Yeah, so you're giving them estrogen basically, and they're getting man boobs and they're gaining weight and it's making them worse.

I'm not a big fan of testosterone creams. I almost never prescribe them.

I— we've really got away— shots are the way to go. And I really like the non-aromatizable testosterone, uh, like Nandrolone, which will not convert, especially even a shot with testosterone for men that are diabetic or overweight, they're going to make a lot of estrogen. So you kind of titrate, or you can do stuff to block the estrogen. But I figured just do a different testosterone. But everyone has their own— like, it's like baking a cake.

I said, what chef— how to bake a cake?

Exactly. I've never used— I've never used the non-aromatizable ones. I usually just do an estrogen blocker if it seems like that's what's going on, or I try to get them to lose weight, you know, primarily. And, you know, hopefully that'll be a good synergist as well.

Yeah, getting them like blocking the estrogen is, is key. You don't want— no, you know, zero estrogen, but because you need it for brain and bone and all that. But, you know, you want to keep it in that healthy range.

Yeah, I like to see it between 20 and 30 optimally.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do a lot of HCG diet to try to like get the adipose tissue off, or, you know, you're taking HCG away. Yeah, I still seem to be able to order it though.

So it's— and everything takes a while there. Yeah, sad.

We got to keep— we got to keep—

uh, kisspeptin, which will stimulate.

But, uh, yeah, PT-141, you know. Seems like if you do calorie restriction on PT-141, it's almost as good. And then you'll— they'll get a, you know, chubbies, mature, good— what? Chubby, that's a technical term. Scientific term.

Or even we're finding is that, you know, even things like BPC, Delta Sleep, Epitalion, you know, where if you get someone good sleep, they start losing weight, reduce inflammation in the hypothalamus because that's what causes insulin resistance and leptin resistance. So, so as you know, leptin goes up when you gain weight, go back to the brain, hypothalamus, and tell the brain, hey, we got too much stored fat, start burning fat, lower appetite, increase metabolism, increase thyroid. But if it's blocked, the body's going, I'm starving, I'm starving, I'm starving. So lowers metabolism, lowers your thyroid. Increase your appetite, tells the body to store fat, you know. So for a lot of people, we lower that inflammation, then they start losing weight. And so the melanocortins, whether it be HPV, D-141, melatonin, do that as well. So does Delta Sleep, BPC, things like that. So, uh, I can't say enough about Delta Sleep.

It's so hard to get people to sleep, you know. I would do just every natural thing on the product, on the market, and not get any traction with like certain of my hardcore non-sleepers. And once I started using Delta Sleep, it's like, uh, so effective. It's amazing.

You talk about that for a second.

Yeah. So I used to work with this orthomolecular psychiatrist in Washington. So he had this whole protocol for people who are ramping up on into a manic episode or into a psychotic episode. And he would give them Xyrem, which is, you know, GHB, which roofies. And he got into a lot of trouble for that. And he had to like spend $100,000 to defend his license. Cause I guess they thought he was just like selling it to date rapists or whatever.

Approved for fibromyalgia, you know, and it's approved.

He should be able to use it, but maybe it was the fact that he was a psychiatrist or that he was prescribing it a lot or that he was, you know, an alternative type of guy.

I don't know.

But yeah, so I, and I obviously can't prescribe it. I never even tried. And so I've been looking for something as powerful as that to kind of bring people down.

It is a strange drug.

And, uh, it is kind of dissociative.

It's, it's weird.

That you could do some weird things on it, but it is saved the lives of a lot of people. So we were like regional pain syndrome, they couldn't sleep and one person's, but people tend to get enuresis or some people, they pee the bed. But I know one patient who just puts the diaper because it's worth it because she gets sleep.

Yeah. And it doesn't last. It's got a short half-life. So you wake up the next day and you're not groggy.

And it's strange. It's kind of like you're supposed to set alarm, wake yourself up and take it again. It's like the old joke in the hospital, wake you up to take your sleeping pill. But there's a reason for it because it allows you to go into deep sleep.

Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to Ambien and the other sleep aids, which sort of—

Oh, those like Ambien are, I think, bad besides from Ambien texting. And we had, One patient on Ambien knocked on the neighbor's door naked, asked if they can use the jacuzzi. I think Cody didn't remember, right?

But, uh, man, those stories, hilarious. I know they're not funny to the person.

Yeah, but you have to laugh at it. But it could be dangerous. You go driving and, you know, people cooking and things like that. But yeah, the epitalon, which is a pineal hormone, stimulates melatonin.

Right?

But really works, it works over and above, it lowers the inflammation, it actually will fix the secondary tertiary hypothyroidism. So it can reset the thyroid and it also seems to fix dysfunctional deiodinases. So it increases T4-T3 conversion, decreases T4 reverse T3, but that combined with Delta sleep inducing peptide, And those secretagogues, not like a sleeping pill where you fall asleep, it more, it gets your, after a couple of weeks, your body starts able to get into deep sleep. You fall asleep and then adding some sort of growth hormone, either growth hormone, adding the secretagogues like CJC, ipramoralin, AOD, which is a fragment like that combination. We've had just remarkable results of people that don't sleep. Like I'm. Well, I had Lyme and my whole life. So I never, I never slept. And that has helped me tremendously. And it's interesting about weight. I mean, if you don't sleep, you don't lose weight. And I've done a couple of projects where I'm a procrastinator and I'm like up for like almost 2 days. And then I know that the next day I'd gain like 8 pounds, you know, it's just bad. And I feel like I've aged like so much if you stay awake that long, you know. So sleep, I think, also has to do libido because you're tired, you haven't slept, you know, that's the last thing you need, you know.

Exactly. I think it's really cool. And then it sort of correlates with the ancient Ayurvedic philosophy because they, they have this whole system, which I think is really cool where it's called the transformation of the dattus or the tissues. And so they give you like a blood tonic, which is kind of like an adaptogen like ashwagandha or something like that. And they say that it gets in your blood and then it goes to your muscle and then it goes to your bone and then it goes to your fat and then it goes to your sexual tissues or the, or your chakra. And then once it's in your sexual tissues, then you can transform that into spiritual tissue. So it's kind of like this idea that if your whole, if all your tissues are healthy, like the sexual part of you is like a meta function of your whole body being healthy.

I think it is. I think it's like being young and vibrant and healthy.

Like, you should have a libido. If you don't, there's something wrong.

I think stress, right, is a huge thing. Sleep, exercise, mitochondrial function, you know, arterial, you know, and cardiovascular health. Neurotransmitter health. I mean, there's so many things to it. Yeah.

Well, plus all the psychological stuff, you know, and, you know, once you get your— if you take, say, ashwagandha and your cortisol can then drop, then your hormone synthesis can then shift from stress hormones to sex hormones, and you can be a little bit just more balanced.

You know, everyone's evolutionarily, if you're stressed, like, oh my God, you're going to be attacked by saber-toothed tiger.

Like, think like, mm, I'd like to have sex right now.

You know, it just doesn't go like that. And I think people are just stressed to their limit, you know?

Yeah. And they might also have like suboptimal activation of their proprio-melanocortin system because according to that system, you know, it's activated by stress. And it should increase your libido. But there's something that is not functioning that way in our society. I think it's because our stress is of a particularly—

and I think it's constant because we're not made to be like, what is it? We're on our phones. We're like, oh, someone text me, someone text me. Like, I don't even, you know, growing up, I didn't have— we didn't have computers. We sent letters. You'd send off a letter, wait a week, you know. Now it's like, why have they texted me back? Why have they texted me back? You know, and you got traffic, you've got, you know, 10 things going on. You got, you know, kids running around. You got— it's like, I think everyone's just ready for the circuits to break, you know.

All the biotoxins in your brain.

Oh, and then, you know, you got Roundup, plastics, pesticides, BPA, all this stuff.

Toxins.

They're neurotoxins. And yeah, you get mold. And for instance, kind of like neurotoxins, I found, you know, I started stuttering so bad that I couldn't— wouldn't carry a cell phone because I couldn't say hello, you know. And I was actually to go to a stuttering clinic, which actually happened to be one of the— my buddies on my residency rotation stuttered, brilliant guy. but he just worried about stuttering and he started a stuttering clinic in Irvine. I was going to go, then I read an article on aspartame and then it showed neurotoxin. I went off aspartame 2 weeks later. I didn't stutter.

That's amazing.

If I get like, I know I switched from Starbucks to Coffee Bean and they put like in their sugar-free stuff, one was Splenda, one was aspartame, and all of a sudden I start stuttering again.

That's interesting.

But, and it's hard to get off of. It's like Diet Cokes. I was like addicted to them because they're excitotoxins.

Yeah.

They're toxins. And that's just what they say is good for you. Just of all the stuff that's, you know, that's so interesting.

I, uh, I had this one patient who all she ate was Greek yogurt and she would take aspartame packets and pile them high like a mountain on top of the yogurt.

It's addictive.

Yeah. I would, I was, it wakes you up way more than caffeine.

Oh my God. She was intolerant of dairy too. You know, I did the food sensitivity testing for her, got her off dairy. It took like a year to get her to stop taking aspartame, but she was di— she had been diagnosed with bipolar. You know, and just all that excitotoxins. And then she went through like an early menopause.

Oh my God. Even bipolar.

Wow.

Yeah. I think the, you know, the hormone deficiency combined with all the excitotoxins really was behind what like was a serious mental illness for her. And now she's, she's stable. She's fine. You know, it's amazing.

Yeah.

And I was drinking 8 liters of Diet Coke a day.

Oh my God. You know, I have patients like that. It's so funny how addictive it is. It's crazy. It's like the high fructose corn syrup has the same type of metabolism in the liver as the, as alcohol, except you never get drunk.

Yeah.

So bad.

That, that's, it's in everything.

Yeah. And so you find the hormones play a big part. With, so do you fix kind of hormones first and then go to like peptides?

Sometimes, sometimes I consider hormones a little bit, a little bit more foundational than peptides, probably just because they're less expensive and my population is kind of a little bit lower income. You know, I'm like, let's see what happens with the hormone.

Everybody knows what they are. They don't know what peptides are.

Yeah, exactly. You know, so, you know, if the hormones are there. Then I might go to peptides as the next step, or I might try to use, you know, an ayurvedic adaptogen herb for a while. But I haven't been too successful with those, so I'm jumping to the— to the peptides a lot more these days. I'm really excited about one I just— I haven't used yet, but I'm excited to use, which is VIP, vasoactive intestinal peptide. Apparently great for biotoxins, like mold toxins, as well as vaginal restoration and all sorts of things. You use that one for?

I'm not impressed with it.

And it also increases Th2 inflammation.

So there's reasons for and against, but there was a big critique of Shoemaker's work. He's brilliant. Not the nicest guy ever, but, but, uh, So, but where I give his HLA antigens, there's no data to show that this makes you more susceptible or— and a lot of stuff, it's kind of like he goes from here to here, you know. And there's a lot of things that vasodilator peptide does, you know, but it also has its double-edged sword a little bit, you know. Or like with the, with the strata incontinence, that amazing BPC just oral will eliminate stress incontinence in a huge percentage of patients.

You know, I'm addicted to BPC. I can't, I can't live without it.

Yeah.

And we've talked so much about on the summit, but because it does so many things and I worry that people are gonna go, oh, it's like snake oil. It does everything. When I give all the studies too, it's like, does this, does this. And I get comments like, oh, what is this? The new, you know, miracle thing. Well, Here's the literature, you know, it worked really, really fantastically for me.

I had this hand pain that I did all sorts of things for, you know, I inject ozone into it and I'd wrap it and I took all these things. I did a whole mycoplasma treatment and it was like, okay, it got better. But then when I met you and Lori gave me a bottle of BPC, the next day it was 90%.

I hear that all the time. Yeah, it's like at conferences we'll just say, or I don't know how many times it happened where the head of the conference won't let us, like, well, you can't do this. I'm like, here, take some BPC.

So you're limping, they're like, you can do whatever you want, you guys are awesome. But sometimes I give it to people and it doesn't work. And I— you were telling me that Candida is a maybe a confounding factor to BPC.

Oh, it's actually very antifungal.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I don't know. I, I've been trying doing a Candida sort of protocol and then retrying it again if it hasn't worked in the past, you know, but I have some people with, with such severe joint dysfunction that it seems like, you know, I have a couple people where I'm at walls with and I'm just trying.

I mean, do they have degenerative joints or?

I have this one guy who, who broke his ankle while rock climbing and it was like hanging and he had to hike out. Yeah. And he had to, uh, I was doing ozone injections and et cetera, all sorts of things. And it would help a little bit. Then he got an ankle replacement and then everything.

Ankle replacement?

Ankle replacement. Yeah.

I haven't heard that in a long time.

Yeah. And I think it was appropriate for him because there was just a lot of hardware and the hardware was sticking out and it was just, ugh, it was a mess. And so the ankle is maybe doing a little bit better, but he, he now has some sort of autoimmune uncharacterized inflammatory disorder. In all the joints, the shoulders and everything. And, and, uh, the problem is, is it from the implant? I don't— the, the shoulder was hurting before the implant, but the ankle hurts so much that he wasn't talking about the shoulder.

I would check a cobalt level. Uh, some of these will give off cobalt. You can check. But yeah, for like these autoimmune things, like, yeah, maybe had a latent infection, you know, look for that. But in terms of autoimmune, we have a couple talks on that where, you know, thymosins, uh, TB4, TB4 frag, thymosin alpha 1, EPC, all great, epitalon, melanocortins, uh, you know, lowering mast cell, you know, it's that immune modulation and, you know, and checking his immunity. So his immunity is probably way the Th2, Th17 way up here, and the Th1 T-reg down here. So if you can snap that back, oftentimes— did he get diagnosed with anything, or is it nonspecific or mixed connective tissue disease, or—

uh, no, all the rheumatology labs came back negative, but he's got, you know, what looks like a latent mycoplasma infection.

Yeah, there's usually some infection driving this abnormal immunity. So with a lot of these peptides, if you can moderate the immune— so the other ways to do it too, ozone, great, low-dose altrexone, you know, even zinc, you know, high-dose vitamin C, flavonoids are huge. Bicetin is kind of one of my favorites. And there's like IVIG I love, but it's so expensive now and no one can get approved. But yeah, so there's this— I would check, really check his immune system. So I really like Natural Killer Cell Function from Quest. Look at that Th1 and then C4a and human tensorin growth factor beta for the second part. And maybe also check his immunoglobulins, immunoglobulin subtypes. And then through Quest, you can do the lymphocyte subset. And if he's really screwed up, that will be abnormal and really show. So if he's having like, or, you know, is it migrating joint pain?

No, it tends to be fixated in the elbows and the shoulders and the ankle. I also find that sometimes food intolerances can cause systemic inflammatory reactions.

And I mean, the gut is just sets everything off. And that's the problem. Everything's a vicious cycle, right?

Wow.

Yeah. And where he could have 5 things, but as soon as he gets 7, now he gets symptoms, you know, or it's like if someone has Lyme, I think they can go their whole life without having symptoms, but it's when they get stress and toxins and mold exposure and their hormones start dropping there, they get older. So their thymus drops and it's multifactorial, you know, and then, so it's kind of like, well, what's the cause? Then they get reactivating viruses, which makes it worse. So, well, is that really the cause? No, but now you may have to treat it. You have to treat all these different things and they get immune activation of coagulation. So they got fibrin all over the place. So nothing works. It doesn't get in there. You know, oxygen takes, you know, usually 2 seconds to get in the cells. Now it takes up to 2 minutes. So you got to clean that out. So, you know, everything's so multifactorial, multi-system. Which is the big weakness of standard medicine.

Yeah, you have to kind of do everything. And people come in and sometimes they're like, well, I want to try one thing at a time and see if it works. And I'm like, well, that's one way to do it. But actually, try everything is a lot better.

And I talk to patients and I'm like, you're right, I get it. You want to know what works. I'd rather have it work and then go back and figure out because Well, sometimes you do treatment A, doesn't work. Do treatment B, doesn't work. Do treatment C, it doesn't work. You do them together, it works.

Yeah. You actually need A, C, D, and E, you know?

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's not easy. And I think more and more it is. We're seeing so many multi-system illnesses where, you know, you go to this doctor, he fixes this little part or tries to, and they just and, or they come in with 22 diagnoses, you know.

Yeah.

Think you got 22 separate, you're so unlucky, you got 22 separate diagnoses, or is there something underlying it, you know?

Exactly. Exactly.

What's it about? You treat a lot of mood disorders. Tell me about that.

Right. So I find mood disorder is really related to the hormones, you know. I mean, every woman who has PMS, which I'm assuming is a large percentage of women.

It's true.

Sorry to out you ladies, but no, it happens.

PMS, I'm just sick of you. So redundant. Breathing in and out and air. Just constantly the same thing. Get in.

No, it's horrible to experience it too. And having been on both sides of the issue, you know, I know that when the estrogen's dropping and it's creating all these inflammatory cytokines and your liver's dealing with all that estrogen, and if you have low progesterone at the same time, you will become cranky. It's like everything is irritating. And, uh, you put on a little progesterone or whatever, and it's like magic goes away, you know?

Yeah. Um, in my house, break glass for emergency, it's progesterone dart.

Just kidding.

It's a joke. I don't want to, I get PMS myself, like, you know, but, uh, and the one study showed that is study on PMS women. They looked at their thyroid through TRH testing, so much more sensitive, which the endocrinologist said you don't need anymore. But they found their TSHs were normal, actually a little lower. We think their thyroid was higher, but it was either all low or like 90%, and they all responded to thyroid treatment.

Oh, women, right?

Depression is huge. You know, like, of course you're going to be depressed if your body isn't working, if you can't get out of bed, if you're so sluggish.

Yeah.

You can't function. Of course that's depressing.

Yeah. And like you said, you said thyroid, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, the STAR report, largest study ever done on antidepressants, compared all the different antidepressants and had like algorithm. This didn't work via this. They found T3, straight thyroid special, not T4, which is Synthroid, T3, the active hormone, giving that was a better antidepressant than antidepressants with less side effects. And it worked regardless of their baseline thyroid levels. So it had less side effects, it worked better, it also didn't stop working after a year, uh, which most antidepressants do. Another study had bipolar patients, 135, that were treatment-resistant. They tried on average 14 different medications without any, without any change. They gave them all T3, again, regardless, didn't matter what their— were they hypothyroid, were they— I don't know if it's exact numbers, but it's approximately, it was like 80% responded and 25% total resolution of symptoms.

Yeah. T3, especially the sta— sustained release T3. I eat that all the time. It's fantastic. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing that really compares to that. I mean, you don't have a Zoloft deficiency in general, you know, I think a lot of cases it's being used to mask an underlying really important deficiency, which is thyroid, which is gonna be more important for your long-term health.

Yeah. I just got asked to, set up a drug indication for time-release T3. And I don't know, people have— it's a problem is the endos are so against it because they don't know anything about it. And like the problem with compounded is that they use too much time-releasing agent. So for anyone with any gut issues, which so many people we see, right, it can go right through. So they go, well, compounded doesn't work. Well, they're kind of right. Because the formula that's used is not correct. So we actually did— oh my God, all our staff got time-release T3 at different doses, and we analyzed it all. We came with the formula where you need much less time-releasing agent, works so much better. So yeah, you could build your whole practice on just T3. I mean, it fixes so many things. And then you add some hormones on top of that and peptides. We went from, you know, we treat the sick of the sick. Well, good or bad, I mean, it's tough, but we'd love to have just some thyroid patients and, you know, some hormone thing, but you master those and you can get the sickest patients better. And we were like with the Lyme patients, I know myself, so I really figured out to give back. And, you know, with myself, it's like antibiotics more and more and more and more. We must be giving more. And like, you know, I did like antibiotics, 7, 8, 9 at a time at 3, 4 times a dose I'd never give a patient. And 3 and a half years later, I give dude IV, I'm not any better. And that's when I went searching and found peptides. And if your immune system's so low, it doesn't matter how many antibiotics you give.

Yeah.

Can't lower it enough for your immune system to take over.

Yeah. Lyme is so tricky. Such a smart—

And when I say Lyme, that includes so many other things, right?

It's like, it's rarely just Lyme. You got, you know, Babesia, Bartonella, the infection going to the Noah, Rickettsia, viruses, mold, you know, all those things.

In Chinese medicine, they call it like a goo disease. It's just sort of like this, just gumming up parasitic sort of, you know, drag you down into the muck, generalized stuff.

And parasites are huge and you know, studies like on Hashimoto's showing HHV-6, they have biopsies, active HHV-6 in the thyroid in like 80% of people with Hashimoto's, but it wasn't in the blood, wasn't found in the blood. Also Parvo B19. So interesting, Stuppy, he's a gastroenterologist, Dr. Stuppy in LA, did a study on parasites. And he looked at what areas throughout— he was like a 40-year practice where he gathered all this data, published it, and looked at what areas. You'd think it'd be the lower socioeconomic areas. It was in all the high socioeconomic and Beverly Hills, like, you know, Santa Monica, the nice areas.

And we're like, what could it be?

First off was cats. Or, you know, or sushi.

Sushi.

Yeah. And I think that's probably the number one thing I think of. So I, uh, if I eat sushi, I bring Alinea with me and take it with it. But yeah.

Uh, have you ever done any of the parasite therapy, helminth therapy?

No, I'm, uh, yeah. So basically what she's talking about is you you take these and it modulates your immune system. And for instance, you look in, like, third world countries, they don't generally get autoimmune disease, um, because they have particular parasites that modulate the immune system.

And gentle parasites that don't create— hopefully don't create a large parasite burden, but they upregulate T regulatory cells, they increase the gastric mucosa. It's such a hard thing to get your mind around, you know. Oh, I, Michael, I did it for myself because I wanted to see if I could reverse my food sensitivities. 'Cause I couldn't eat sugar. I couldn't drink alcohol. I would get ill if I did either of those things, which is pretty limiting. No Thai food, you know, no business drinks, whatever. And it worked. It worked fantastically, but it took me a long time to sort of build up the courage to be able to do it, you know?

Yeah. It's like the old days, eat the tapeworm.

Yeah.

And I do worry about, you know, parasites and, you know, basically mast cell, but it seems to work.

Like we'll use bee venom on some patients, which I've seen it work fabulous.

You know, I've been wanting to use bee venom. I haven't, I haven't gotten a good source of it yet.

Maybe I'll, yeah.

Yeah. So, and then that was the thing, like I had powder and I'm like, I'm not comfortable weighing this out. And, you know, and there was a story I read, I forget where I read it, but this woman had terrible, I think it was chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, you know, and could barely walk, but she went outside and just got attacked by killer, those killer Africanized bees, stung, almost died, but she didn't. And then all her symptoms were gone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The, uh, the orthomolecular psychiatrist that I worked with, he, he was a beekeeper and somehow he had gotten the bee venom into a syringe and he had mixed it with lidocaine. He wouldn't tell me like how he, you know, I assumed they sting some wax, there's an extract or something, but it was some kind of trade secret. I wasn't letting it on.

Oh no, we have the dosing and the key was, yeah, that you got to buy from reputable source and the dosing is, is key. But yeah, we have and we started using it, but just kind of, I don't know, we just kind of stopped for whatever reason. But we can certainly get it.

It, it works.

It's just picking the patient that it works in, you know, or LDA. Do you like low dose allergen?

I haven't done too much of that stuff yet. You know, I'll do, you know, low dose naltrexone and I'll try to kind of you know, shift the immune system that way.

Yeah, but I love the low-dose allergen, and it probably reduces significantly or eliminates, like, 60% of allergies in 60% of people. It works great. But once again, it's like getting so hard to get because they're restricting it, and no one's had ever any problem with this. So basically, you have low-dose and medium-dose foods and then inhalants, and then you add beta-glucuronidase to it, and then little tiny shot. And then you can kind of tell which one they react to by how big their little welt is and see if they don't have anything, they probably is not going to work. But then you only do it, you know, like 2 months later, you can't do anything sooner. And actually your low dose, you can kind of do a little extra to make it medium dose. Then like 6 months later, and then. You know, every 6 months or every year. We've had tremendous results in some people, but it's just like a little tool in the toolbox. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds, sounds like a good one.

And, uh, someone comes in, uh, with low libido. What's your kind of approach?

Well, first I want to rule out all the other things that could be confounding their libido, you know, like sometimes people have low libido because they have some kind of, you know, chronic urinary tract infections and they've got pelvic pain, you know, that sometimes pelvic pain.

I mean, yeah. And I don't think that's uncommon, but again, women don't want to, or, you know, just dryness because they're on hormones and yeah, you know, it's like, get away from me. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. They instinctively are like, don't touch there. And they might not even be aware because if you have a urinary tract infection that's low-level chronic for long enough, it just becomes your new normal, you know. And some of those infections don't show up on cultures. Maybe they're Mycoplasma or something, they're not growable.

And they're in biofilms.

Yeah, exactly. So I try to address that. Some— I'll go into gut dysfunction, you know, if you're chronically— I have this one patient who She would like to want to have sex, but she has chronic kind of explosive diarrhea. She has a— she's had her colon removed and, you know, all sorts.

That's not sexy, you know.

You don't feel sexy when that's, when that's happening. So we did the food sensitivity test for her, and she took out— she actually eventually, you know, sometimes it takes people a while, took out some of the foods and it kind of firmed it up a little bit and she was able to kind of, you know, at least think about it and, you know, she's on the road. But yeah, anything that's in the sort of lower jiao there, if it's dysfunctional, it's gonna be dysfunctional. It's all part of the same, you know, pelvic bowl, you know.

Then of course, you know, the normal thing, floor dysfunction where people get or post-coital pelvic pain.

Yeah.

Horrible.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I like the, uh, my new thing, favorite thing for pelvic floor dysfunction, or at least laxity is called Perifit. It's like this little device that you can put in. We used to have these big sort of biofeedback devices that we would use to increase it, kind of an assisted Kegel. you know, we called it the boyfriend. It would talk to you, be like, squeeze now, and you'd squeeze. It'd give you like a little shock. But this, there's one you can buy for about $100, and you can play a game with your pelvic floor on your, on your phone. You know, you like squeeze and then the butterfly goes up and—

In the ear while you're driving?

I don't think so. You have a Tesla self-driving car, maybe you could.

But when I hear pelvic floor dysfunction and there's, there were lectures and I'm forgetting the, the doctor, but Lyme, huge. And I remember when I kind of had that, when I had Lyme, I would gear up hard to wait too much inflammation. I know this guy that had this problem. How's that? And after urinating, it would just, ah, crap. And it was just like the most excruciating pain, you know? And so, and covered Lyme and the Babesia, blah blah, went away. But yeah, so a number of lectures on that. I wish I remember the doctor, but that's what she specializes in.

Is that because there's, uh, some urinary tract infection?

Yeah, it could be.

It's there, it's, uh, whatever in the muscles. I mean, I used to get cramps like crazy everywhere, you know.

Is that just more more sensitive.

Like if I would turn like this, I'm like, back with this lovely cramp, or, you know, which I think was from like poor mitochondrial function, not enough energy. Muscles are like a bear trap. They need energy to relax and then snap back and then need energy to close.

So, oh yeah. Mitochondrial dysfunction is so important for everything. I've been using a lot of Poly-MVA IV. I've been very, very impressed with it for liver disease. Energy, mitochondrial function, just, you know.

Now, you know what, we haven't even— I don't think anyone's mentioned PolyMVA. And it, you know, people have talked a lot of the mitochondrial peptides, but PolyMVA, which people think of, yeah, cancer, you know, but it's really a mitochondrial booster. And the problem is with like alpha lipoic acid, CoQ10, I mean, they go in, they're gone. And the poly-MVA tends to stick in there. Yeah.

So, uh, we super boosted alpha-lipoic acid. I've been very successful with it with diabetic neuropathy.

Uh, makes sense. Makes sense. Diabetic neuropathy is a mitochondrial problem. It's a oxidative and mitochondrial problem, which goes together. When the mitochondria get dysfunctional, they pump out, you know, reactive oxygen species. They pump out all these oxidative substances. Yeah. And then peptide-wise, PT-141. Yeah.

Yeah.

I have never seen it not work really. I'll tell a quick story. I hope this, but so we've been doing this stuff forever and we were talking about hiring him, but went to dinner a couple of times and we talked about PT-141. He was all, let me try it. And he was getting up there in years and kind of shaking and like, had some in my car to give it to me. Dropped the first vial on the ground, broke, and then he got the next one. But, and so we saw him again a couple months later, dinner party.

We asked his wife, well, how'd it go?

She's like, oh, it was okay. And then we ended up talking to her like a couple hours later and she had a few drinks. And then we're like, so you said that really didn't make an interest. Well, let me tell you, he was riding me like a horse all night. Kept going and going and going. And we're like, whoa. And you know, she's like 75 or 80, I don't know. And we're like, whoa. Yeah. And so, uh, it was funny. So it matters when you ask them.

It works so well in men. I think it works better than Viagra because it gets that central nervous system.

Oh yeah. When Viagra doesn't work, I've never seen it not work. Yeah. Some people nausea is an issue. It tends to go away. But also the pigmentation issue is an issue for some people. Now, depends on how often they take it.

Less so with melanin than Melanotan 2, but still significant. Yeah.

And some people have no problem.

Yeah. A lot of people love the pigmentation issue.

Yeah. If you're younger, you get a nice smooth tan. But for me, yeah.

Yeah.

So you'd be able to use it. I wouldn't.

We'll accuse you of doing blackface.

Final thoughts. Well, what's your take-home message for doctors and healthcare providers and the general public, laypeople watching this? What do you want to tell them?

Just that libido is an important issue. You know, if a woman or a man or one, one half of the partner has absolutely no libido, it can de— destabilize a whole relationship. You know, it's huge. You know, I have people that are happily married except that they don't have sex ever and they tolerate it, but they're not happy.

You know, I think that's way more common than anyone knows. Yeah.

Yeah. And really, you know, as functional medicine doctors, we're here to enhance quality of life. We want people to be as happy and as functional and live the life to the fullest. You know, that's what we're here for.

I mean, that's what we're kind of made to do, you know, and you think when you're young, that's like all you think about, you know, and then it's just like, oh, forget it, you know, forget it.

I'll die before ever having sex again. But yeah, it's amazing, the awakenings. I just, I keep thinking about the first person I used it with. Where when she came back in after having used it, she just had this happy flush to her face.

You know, she had funny how it just shows, right?

Yeah.

If someone's happy or you can almost see like from a distance, you can't even like see their face very well, but you can see if someone's happy or not. You also kind of see how old they are without even seeing them, you know, but that glow that like What's going on?

You look, uh, like something good's happened.

Yeah, I was so impressed.

And she had to have a cat.

Yeah, right.

She hadn't had sex with her husband for 10 years, you know, and all of a sudden it's like a whole renaissance in their relationship. So fantastic.

Well, I bet he was happy, like, what, what's going on here?

Exactly, exactly. I have a lot of happy husbands in my practice.

Nice. Have you got a lot of, uh, Thank you gifts.

Oh my gosh.

I keep all my cards.

I can imagine some funny ones.

Paintings and little sculptures and just like, it's rewarding.

That's nice. That's nice.

So you're changing lives. That's, that's what we're here for, right?

That's awesome.

Trying to be a, you know, a beacon of light a little bit, as much as possible.

That's great. Hey, well, thank you so much. This was very enlightening. And I think, uh, approach the subject that's a little uncomfortable for some people. And, um, and, but it's, it's something I think that affects so many people. And even the ones that don't talk about it, like, what's our—

my marriage is fine, you know.

And, but I think it's a problem, and I would think the majority of marriages, from my point of view.

But I think people— I don't know, my experience is that people want to talk about it once you bring it up. They're like, oh, thank goodness you asked about that because actually it's a big deal, you know?

Yeah, it is. It is. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for taking the time. And, uh, I think it was great information and thank you for helping all these people and change their lives. And, and you've changed probably so many lives.

You have no idea, you know, maybe I hope so.

Awesome.

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