Heal Your Gut and Look Younger using Peptides, with Dr. Edwin Lee

Bpc157 oral and then the KPV. If you have people with gut issues, those two combined in one peptide, same price of one is amazing to help the gut heal.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great and feel freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

And I'm Dr. Ed Levitan.

Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast.

Where we empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, emotional, social and spiritual lives.

Hold on to your hats.

Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. Wendy Trubo, star sighting at Levitan. I know he hates when I say that, but he's never here. He's here today. And today we have a really cool guest. We have Dr. Edwin Lee. He's an endocrinologist, author, international speaker and the founder of Institute for Hormone Balance in Florida in 2008. He's board certified in internal medicine, endocrinology, diabetes metabolism and has completed special training in regenerative and functional medicine. He is a co founder of clinical peptide Safety and also started a not for profit organization and is the author of many books and the latest one is the Fountain of Youth with Peptides. And just as a disclaimer, this is not medical advice today. This is simply opinions. Take it as you will and consult your doctor. So Dr. Lee, welcome. We're so excited to have you here today.

Oh, thank you guys. Thank you for inviting me.

Yeah, so I want to just start.

By, you know, this is Ed's podcast today.

I'm a fanboy, so I really admire your work and all the things that you've done contributed to forward this medicine. So I'm super excited to have this conversation. Yeah, thank you for coming on board. It's really awesome.

So we're going to talk about peptides today.

Well, peptides are interesting. I mean, most doctors don't even know that they're using peptides. Like insulin actually was classified as a peptide. And most doctors never even thought of insulin being a peptide. But the FDA in around 2020 kind of changed the definition of peptides, generally under 40amino acids. Peptides is a small little protein that are really amazing. They can turn on your body to self heal and to make you younger, to turn on fibroblast cells to make more collagen to help your immune system. So there are many, excuse me. There are many amazing effects that peptides do. There's not one peptide does it all. So there are peptides for beauty Peptide for hair, peptide for better mojo, better libido. We could talk about that. And there's peptides in terms of immune system. And unfortunately, the FDA is making it more difficult. So if you can go to. I don't know if you have that. There's a. If you. That link that maybe you can share it with your.

Yep. We could put everything in the, in the show notes so people can find.

It, our QR code. But if you go to Clinicalpeptidesociety.com or Savepeptides.org There is a link to basically just save peptides. Just basically, it's a petition, which I founded. We have over 8,000 signatures. We're close to 10,000. I started this like five years ago, so I don't know when I will hit 10,000, but we hit 8,000 like two days ago, so I'm super excited.

So talk to me about how do peptides. I know people talk about peptides for lots of things, but what our listeners really care about is feel freaking amazing. Live long, live well. And don't get all the stuff that all their friends are getting. You know, let's avert cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease, degenerative diseases. Let's avert all that stuff. So how do peptides play a role in that?

Well, the first peptide that I teach a lot of my healthcare providers to start off, and this is very simple, if you want to look younger, you want more collagen, and you want to basically help your dermis of your skin to get thicker, it's GHK Copper, and it's a topical cream. You can. It's used in, like, probably over a hundred different cosmeceuticals sold, like at Neiman Marcus and other stores, but they only have a small percentage of GHK Copper. But what's amazing is that you can put GHK Copper on your thigh. And before you put it on, they did a study to they biopsy the thigh to see how much collagen there is. And then one month later, after applying it, a cream to the thigh, it actually increased collagen by 70%.

Does that make my thigh, hypothetically speaking, look less fatty? Or, like, what does that do for me as the end user?

Well, that's a lot. I mean, you're. I mean, the GHK Copper that I use all the time, and I'm in the Florida heat and sun and I don't use even sunscreen, but, you know, I abuse my skin a lot. I mean, I know I'm out there on the water, sun is reflecting, and. And I use GHK copper religiously. I just use two or three pumps every morning, and my wife uses it too. So I like. I like our GHK copper that we have. I use a compound pharmacy that. That formulates it. And so it's. Anyway, it's. It's a topical thing that if you want to use a systemic, then you have to do injection for your whole body. But that's a little hard to get because the FDA is restricting that. But a lot of my patients who've used it, they say, omg, my body's getting younger. I used it on my father who had cancer. He passed away a year ago. But it actually turns out it turns off cancer genes. It's really amazing. MIT and Harvard did a study called the Connectivity Study, and they want to see, out of 1300 different molecules, which one was the best in terms of turning on your protective genes and turning off your cancer genes? The number one was ghk. And GHK is actually natural. So when you have collagen and your collagen breaks down, it's GHK. So GHK is a peptide. 3amino acid peptide. It turns on your fibroblasts to basically make more collagen and helps that dermis to get thicker. The thing is that as we get older, we have less ghk. So as you get older, you need to balance your hormones, and we call that hormone replacement therapy. Now we have peptide replacement therapy because your immune system goes off, your skin goes off, everything goes off. So that's the whole thing, is we're just replacing some of these peptides that naturally are higher, like oxytocin. A lot of women have issues with anxiety, and oxytocin is the oldest peptide out there. It helps women contract, but oxytocin can calm you down. That is a beautiful peptide.

What are your other favorite things? The GHK is one. Everybody wants to lose weight, so there's the peptides for weight loss. What about hair growth, brain health? Talk to me about all that stuff.

The peptide that I really love is. The number one peptide that I love is epithelin. It has tons of data. Epithelium comes from our pineal gland, and so it looks like a pine cone. For a long time, people thought that that was a window for spiritual health or for spiritual world. But the pineal gland secretes melatonin and also epithelin. And epithelin helps with. We call cell cycle. So if your old skin dies off, you can generate a new skin cell, but also you can generate other parts like new muscle cells. And you can generate, believe it or not, just new liver cells or kidney cells or pancreatic cells. So the problem is that as we get older, our cells kind of get stuck and they cannot self replicate, whereas epithelin kind of kickstarts it so that you can get a new cell, a new kidney cell, hopefully a new pancreatic cell. So I have some people with mild kidney failure or they're having problems with their pre whether like type 2 diabetes. And some people even get off their insulin. Not type ones, but they're type two diabetics. And I've seen people, their kidney function gets better and I have people with their pancreatic function gets better, their back of the eyes get better. It doesn't make everything better, but a lot of things get better. So epithalin is critical. If you can do it two times a year, it's phenomenal. Epithelin is also really interesting. It actually turns off not all the cancer genes, but can turn off a lot of different cancer genes. So that's been studied in animal studies.

So I'm thinking I have a patient that is Otherwise healthy, about 50 year old patient that has his kidney creatins up. You're saying that that's something that potentially epithalin can make a difference with?

Yeah, if they have. There's a couple things. With early kidney failure I would use a special probiotic and it's called Renadyl R E N A D Y L and it actually it's a probiotic that eats up extra nitrogen waste. So when you have much protein, protein is bad for kidney failure. And people just like when you're in dialysis, they limit your protein intake. But with early kidney failure there's two things is that you need something to take rid of, get rid of that extra nitrogen waste. So I see people's creatinine improvements with Renadyl. So R E N a D Y L I would recommend go to the specific website that sells it. Not on Amazon, there's a lot of copycats on that. And the second thing is I recommend sodium bicarb because when you get older you don't your muscles and your bones buffer the extra acid. So when you have an acidic diet, if you lose that buffering zone, then your kidneys get a hit. So take sodium bicarb like 500 milligrams a day. You can go even higher to 1,000 milligrams or 500 twice a day. That can help protect the kidneys there. Then the third thing is I would use epithalin and I like to use, if you can get the injection, 5mg sub Q daily for 10 days in a row and repeat every six months. But people with really bad kidney disease, I actually do that more aggressively every two months just until the kidneys get better and then space it out.

Do you recommend those people go on a plant based diet to minimize their animal proteins? If the protein's so toxic for the.

Kidneys, yes, but not many people want to. That's a big change for a lot of people. So I say try to reduce your protein intake if you can, but if you be more plant based. But I can't push them to be all plant based because that's, that's a little too radical for them. But if they eat a little less, a little more, a little less animal protein, more on plants, that's actually healthier and more healthy fats, that's healthy for the kidneys.

And what would your third favorite peptide be? I feel like this is picking children. What's your first and your second favorite child? All of ours are our favorites, just for the record.

So the one that I'm going to go to the FDA, I think December 4th, I had to get my plane ticket to fly to D.C. anyway, it presents the safety and efficacy data on TA1. I published a study earlier this year. It's called the comprehensive review on the safety and efficacy in humans in clinical trials with Thymus and Alpha One. I tabulated over 11,000 patients in clinical trials around the world on TA1. It was absolutely safe. So I don't think they've seen this data. That's why I want to go out there to present it. But the thymus gland actually shrivels up. So there's two peptides or a couple peptides from the thymus gland. One's thymosin alpha one, the other one's thymus and beta four. So they work differently. But thymus and alpha one for the immune system. Thymus and beta four, it's for a couple things. It reduces inflammation but also helps with the neurons with myelination. But the thymusen for one, I really think it's phenomenal for the immune system.

Both those peptides though have been banned, right, by the fda. Is that correct?

Well, it's like the one you think. Yes, both have. I think we can save TA1 and alternatives TA11, which is actually a 34amino acid peptide, but I think we can. It's category two, meaning there's not enough safety data and they want to review that. If it gets to category one for the 503A compound pharmacy, then they can compound it legitimately so they can do it all day long.

So what's the second one that's not. Okay, so TA1 is right now restricted. What's the other restricted one?

Thymosin beta 4TB.

Thank you. Okay.

It's because it's over 40amino acid and they basically said anything over 40 is a biologic, so you need a biological license to produce it. So. But anyway. So there are a couple places that giving out. I'm not giving out. But anyway, that does Dynasty and Beta 4, even though they know it's on the band list, but they're just still making it.

Should we talk about BPC157? Just because it's so popular and we use the oral. Oral is still easy to get.

Yes. That's another favorite peptide of mine. You can get that. It's not on the chopping block there. It's the injectable one. So BPC157 oral. I just started my wife on that yesterday with kpv. She has a little gastritis, so it's going to help with tightening the les junction so she doesn't get reflux. But it also can help heal ulcers. And then the KPV is. We have a peptide that's together. So two peptides for the price of one kpv. Not many people know about that, but it's a derivative of another peptide called Alpha msh. But KPV really reduces inflammation and it's great for the gut. So those two are like. If you have people with gut issues, those two combined in one peptide, same price of one is amazing to help the gut heal.

Are there any other safety considerations people should think about when they're taking peptides?

There are a few side effects, like the growth hormone peptides, generally in class, maybe 5 to 10% has a rash to it or some of them you flush or something like that. But they're not any severe adverse effect like heart disease or stroke and things like that. But it's certainly very well tolerated. I'm collecting numbers and I think honestly, there's over a million peptides prescribed in certain peptides over the past five, six, seven years. And it's been generally relatively safe. You may have some minor side effect like injection site rashes or overall, I mean, later get, you know, a bigger rash or something like that or itchiness, but it's only very well Tolerated. But the growth hormone peptides tend to have issues.

If people get rashes, is that an indication to stop or is it okay?

No, they're, they're becoming allergic to it so you have to stop it. They're, it's, their, their immune system is. Don't like it so it's just going to get worse.

So it's more, I know like some of the growth hormone like the ipamorellin, cjc as the FDA has recommended not continuing.

Yeah. So we're going on October, end of October to the FDA to debate about or discuss about hypermorelin and also kisspeptin 10. And I think AOD are the three peptides and then there's hydroxyprogesterone and some, some amino acids can be talked about. But I'm, I'm personally, I'm on this task force to kind of say peptides. Mine too is TA. One other one's ARA290.

So I, I've had some really good success with the ara.

Oh, I love it.

Yes, it's, it's, it's been actually for some people, besides the price point, it's been really amazing. Oh yeah, neuropathy.

Yep, exactly.

So talk to me about when, when I mean we go to compounding pharmacies, but people who are listening, who may not be patients of ours or yours, if they want to use peptides, how do they, what the, what should they be looking for and how do they access it in a way that's, that's clean? Because we joke in our home that Jeff Bezos is my boyfriend and he sends me everything I want because anything I need, I just go to Amazon, I buy it and I get it. Right. But not supplements because they have not temperature controlled warehouses. There's a lot of knockoffs. A lot of the products have been found to be fake. So obviously not Amazon. But where do people go for peptides if they want them?

Well, first of all, I know a lot of people shop, which I tell all the doctors that I train do not go for research purpose only. On the website. There's peptide science and they look great and legit, but it's for research purpose only. I mean for a doctor, they can lose their license if someone dies. There's, there's no, no one can protect them because it says for research purposes only a million times before you purchase it. So it, you don't know what's in it. And I've had, I've heard stories that people have checked the substance and it's totally different. What they got. So that's the wild, wild west. So anyway, if you go to a Clinical Peptide Society, you can see people who've passed the certification test. And we have basically, I think, every state. So you just click on that and you'll find hopefully one that is close by and you can actually contact them and get established and get peptides legitimately through a compound pharmacy. So I do have two nurse practitioners, but one's really into peptides a lot. She's helped publish a lot of studies with me, and her name is Morgan Burns, and she's kind of really. She's into wellness and she knows how to balance hormones. And so if you call my office, I'm basically closed. My office. Seeing new patients. I mean, it just. I just can't see any new ones, but Morgan can. So this is amazing.

So where do people find out more? Is it. Do they go to the Clinical Peptide Society?

You can go clinical peptidesociety.com or savepeptides.org or savepeptides.org to sign the petition. And anyway, it's great to have a patient who used a peptide and put a comment. There's some doctors who write comments or there's patients who write comments. I actually wrote a book on all these peptides, so chapter two, I talk about hair growth. So anyway, but go read the book.

Read the book.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, if you want to get the paperback book, people can call my office, say, hey, they listen to the podcast. We'll give you the special price of basically $20, like 50% off. It's retail $39.99, so you can get it for $20 and then you pay for shipping. We only ship in the US So if you're in Canada or Mexico or Europe, we don't ship outside the.

You're out of luck.

You're going to get the Peptide Sol.

Yeah. But you can get on Amazon the electronic version, the ebook version, so you can get that. So some people like to. Electronic version, but yeah, of course.

Dr. Lee, I just want to really. Again, thank you. Like, you've been not only a pioneer, but you've all the time and effort and energy you put into helping the rest of us practice and provide good medicine and really make a difference for people that are cross our paths in our lives. And it's. It's truly a pleasure to meet you. It's. It's an honor to have you on our podcast and we definitely will want you back.

Thank you very much. Well, thank you for this time. And I appreciate that you can spread the word on signing the petition. So if you can put that on the back end, that'd be great, 100%.

We definitely will. So, Dr. Lee, thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Feel Freakin Amazing podcast. We'll put all the links in the show notes and for the listeners. This stuff works. Go try it well with your doctor.

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