Can Peptides Like BPC-157 Help Psoriasis, Eczema + Other Skin Problems? | Nathalie Niddam

I think bourberine is a beautiful thing and dihydro bourberine is even better. It's a modified bourberine which you need a lot less and works a lot better but it's not a G it doesn't take the place of GLP1 like you know GLP1s are the closest thing to a silver bullet when it comes to fat loss that humanity's ever come to. Natalie, thank you so much for joining me today. This is like for me so exciting to have you here. I've been anticipating our chat on peptides for the last couple of weeks. Well, thank you so much for having me, Jennifer. It's it's a pleasure to be here. Well, I was told by a very reputable source and our mutual friend that you were the best person to talk about things called peptides. And I will be honest with you, over the last couple of years, I have noticed a real uptick in our support inbox about different peptides that people have read about or seen be like kind of talked about on like in like different Facebook groups to heal skin issues and whatnot. And I honestly did not have a good answer for them because I really didn't fully understand all about them and how they could be used. So, I'm glad that you're here because I think first of all, we need to understand what exactly peptides are. So, can you give us a kind of like peptides 101 explanation? Of course. Um, so peptides are small proteins. I mean, in a in a nutshell, they are tiny little proteins and they're some people would say they're 50 amino acids or less. Some people would say they're 100 amino acids or less. There's, you know, nobody in science really agrees on everything. Um but definitely they're smaller proteins and we know that proteins run the show in the body. They are fragment they are typically fragments of proteins that are naturally occurring in the body. They've been synthesized in a lab as fragments and then they get when the ones we'll be talking about they can be reintroduced either by subcutaneous injection which for the most part many of these are off the table but some many of them can be taken orally. There are a lot of people right now working really hard at making them bioavailable across the skin and different ways, but because because they're they're proteins, right? You can't just pop you can pop some of them in your mouth, but most of them you can't because for the most part they'll just get digested like a protein. Oh. So there's exceptions. Yeah, there are exceptions to all the rules, of course, as always, but that's that's the general rule of thumb. And so what they do is they act as signaling molecules in the body. So many of them or all of them will have receptors of some kind somewhere and from the usually from the outside of the cell they will initiate different cellular cascades in turn inside the cell. Sometimes they will even signal genes to activate or deactivate. Um, and many times they'll signal um, they could just I mean there's there's a plethora of different ways that they basically trigger healing in many cases or repair. Uh, some of them are antimicrobial. So they're a very very interesting category of molecules because because they are native to the body in many ways they don't disable the body's own checks and balances system. So that you know so the problem with that is then that means a lot of people will run around saying oh well you know peptides they are so safe there is no way you could ever get into trouble with a peptide not true right I want to ask you about that we'll get we'll get to that I I just wanted to make sure everybody knows too when you said these the peptides are kind of produced in a lab obviously there is a production within our own body right so when we buy a supplement version or a supplemental version that was that's not derived from animals or human sources. Correct. Well, never from humans. Um, but if you're talking about biorulator peptides, which are a subset of peptides, so those are two to four amino acids long. So they're, if you, you know, if peptides are small, bio-regulators are minuscule. And bio-regulators work a little bit differently because they are so small. They actually get into the nucleus of the cell. They bind to the DNA and they activate pro they activate genes at a cellular level inside the cell. They're really cool. Now they can be extracted from animals. Okay. So would you need to know what animal it came from? If say you have like you know some people may have alpha gal so they're they're they can't consume a protein. Would you need to know from an allergy standpoint where they come from? No because there's no there's no animal protein left. Okay. Right. So, they've pretty much like they're so refined and it's such a process extracting them. You end up with a lot of signaling molecules. You end up with different amino acids. You end up with these proteins, but you don't actually have the the markers of the animal. Interesting. Well, that's good to know. I'm sure that will help a lot of people because we do have people who have significant like allergies and so that's always a question or concern that they may have. Um so sorry but but if they did and if they were concerned and and very worried and super sensitive they there are synthetic versions of the biorulators so they could opt instead to use the synthetic version instead of the extract. Do you find that the synthetic version is as potent as the It can be. It can be sometimes more potent. Oh, it's, you know, it's really interesting. It's different. It it works differently. Like in the in the bio regulator world, very often we talk about the synthetic biorulator um acting faster because it's just that two to four amino acid chain, right? Whereas with the extract, you're getting the two to four amino acid chain, but you're kind of getting a whole entourage, if you will, of other signaling molecules. So, on the one hand, they might take longer to act, but they but there's a narrative in the in the literature that says that they the effects might last longer. 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I I know there's like I was reading on uh the World Anti-Doping Agency that for example BPC57 is actually one of the 50 unapproved substances or it's a category of unapproved substances. Um and I was like, "Huh, this is confusing because you can go on websites and purchase these. So what's the deal with that?" Yeah. I mean, it's So I'll I'll play I'll play both sides of the fence. Sure. Right. On the one hand, probably with BPC157, it would be there would be a lot of people that would say there's not enough human research. There's not enough double blind placeboc controlled human studies. The truth of the matter is there's actually an increasing amount of human research. Like there are studies that show that it can be magical for Crohn's and colitis. Um there you know there's there there's a growing body of evidence in human research. the challenge is and it's and the the the athlete the whole performance side is a bit tragic right because you have in many sports you have athletes that are very prone to head injuries and certainly in animal studies BPC57 was shown to protect from TVIS which is you know like it's a tough one to rationalize it it is not a performance-enhancing drug in the sense that it's not like, you know, like the steroids that that athletes have been busted use. What is it? Steroids or whatever it was, the performance-enhancing drugs that they were using, you know, they could enlarge your heart. They could cause a heart attack. They they caused androgynous features to to develop like like all those all those things, right? BBC 157, there's none of that. It doesn't increase performance. All it does is it would help the athlete to recover faster between workouts, right? Because what it does is it helps with healing. It helps to trigger healing cascades for soft tissue and even bones in the body. So, you know, so on the one hand, you're like, well, you know, like they are research chemicals there. We don't have 100% clarity. We could we could know more. And on the other hand, you're like, if you look at the list of benefits, and then you look at some of the things that are approved for athletes to use, which are actually bad for them, you're like, you know, I'm kind of struggling here to kind of make sense of this. But, you know, hopefully that it'll change over time because I know in I think it was New Zealand, I want to say it was New Zealand or Australia, there was there was a rugby team that was using BPC57 because it was helping them to recover and it was helping them to train and they they got lambasted like they they got into big trouble. So, and and I gather they are able to test for VPC which is interesting because it doesn't stick around for very long. So, we'll talk about BPC in a moment. I think we should probably start with the GLP1s because obviously that's the thing everybody's talking about. Um, what exactly is this? I mean, obviously people know ompic and semiglutide and now there's like this there's a bunch of others. And my understanding initially was that it was a prescription drug, but then now I see ads to be able to maybe get it yourself on your like I don't I am so confused by this whole space. So can you share with us a little bit about what is this and how does it work in the body and anything else you want to throw in there that you think would be helpful for us? Sure. So so the GLP1 category was it actually has been around for over a decade, right? It's just that with the introduction of particularly OMPic and Wiggoi a couple of years ago what what the the code that the researchers cracked was that they were able to modify a peptide that is naturally occurring in the gut right so the initially they were able to modify it so that it would last a day and I think that's lagglutide what that then happened is they were able to modify it and I It's by putting a fatty acid on some somewhere on the molecule. They were able to prevent it from breaking down for a week. Oh wow. So they were able to extend its its its life to six days. That's a big deal. Now what it does and why it's a big deal is because of all the things that it does in the body, right? So number one, it acts on the um this the center in the brain that drives cravings and what a lot of people refer to as food noise, but but actually cravings in general. So for a lot of people who and and so you know, the approved use was for type 2 diabetes. Now it's for obesity. And so for a lot of these people, they often they can't stop thinking about food. They're always thinking about what's the next thing I'm going to eat, right? And so if we can quiet that down, it helps them to just kind of be calmer about food, right? Um, interestingly enough, that center in the brain also affects the drive, any drive. So it's being studied for people who smoke, people who drink, people who gamble, like that whole that whole kind of um that whole center in the brain that drives kind of cravings and that kind of behavior just gets calmed down. So that's pretty amazing right out of the gate. The next thing it does, it it helps to increase resting metabolic rate. So, which is basically, you know, what's your burn at rest, right? What people will often notice is that their resting heart rate goes up when they start to use these. Usually, after a couple months, it tends to resolve, but for some people, you know, you got to watch it. Your heart rate variability often tanks for people who are really obsessed with looking at their metrics. All of a sudden, they're like, "Oh my god, what happened? Like, I used to have this great HRV. Now it's horrible." So, you know, your heart your resting heart rate's gone up because your metabolic rate's gone up. Secondly, it helps to improve insulin sensitivity. Now, we're getting into really, really interesting stuff because a lot of your listeners, I'm sure, have heard about insulin resistance. So, this is where your body, your cells no longer respond to insulin to allow the glucose into the cell. So number one, you end up you're you're kind of like you're overfed and starving at the same time because the energy can't get into the cell. You're always exhausted and you're meanwhile you're accumulating fat. There's also a mechanism by which it helps to reduce inflammation and this is the one I know we're going to talk a bit about later and you know there's probably pathways that it reduces inflammation directly but also just by helping people to release extra weight. When you're talking about someone who's very overweight, we know that atapost tissue pre produces its own cytoines. So if we can get rid of the cytoine factory, we're ahead of the game. It also slows gastric emptying. So this means that your stomach contents are going to stay in your stomach for longer when you eat, which means you're going to get fuller faster, which means you're not going to want to eat as much. Now, we have some caveats here, right? Because most of us don't make enough digestive enzymes on a good day. And not that it suppresses digestive enzymes, but if you leave food sitting in a stomach for too long and there's not enough digestive enzymes, it ferments and now we start to experience heartburn or gird. That is one of the side effects that a lot of people experience. And it's probably because they weren't making enough enzymes to begin with and now they're still not making enough enzymes and they've got all this food sitting there. So very it's in my mind it's very important for people to be taking digestive enzymes with their meals and to eat small meals. So next in in slowing gastric empty hemping it actually slows gastric motility. Oh. So that's I've seen like um some people have ended up with almost like gastroparesis. It can happen. It's been very it's not common but it can happen. I you know I haven't read enough about those exact cases. I would suspect that it's at higher doses but I'm not sure about that. So I don't want to misspeak on that one. I haven't fully looked at everything. We definitely know that there's I mean we definitely see in in all things, Jen, that you always have outliers that are hyper sensitive to these to anything, right? So, some people get the worst heartburn on the planet. Some people get exhausted, like they just can't move. This is not a good thing for you, right? Uh some people get hyper constipated and these are people that were constipated to begin with as are so many people and now you give them something that slows down their motility even more. Well, it's like a flipping disaster waiting to happen, right? So all of these things have to be taken into account. Um it can drive nausea in some people. Again, generally speaking, if we start if people start at a low enough dose and stay at that dose for a good month before they increase it at all, most of the time people can get around a lot of these side effects. There's a couple of blackbox warnings that deserve to be mentioned, right? Because this is truly known that it can in some people cause pancreatitis, which is really ugly, right? That's like waking up in the morning as if somebody stuck a hot knife into your gut. Not to mention the fact that people who get pancreatitis are at a higher risk of pancreatic cancer down the road. We don't want that, right? And it also there's in the so now I like you know a year ago I would have said in the rat studies only they've observed an increase of thyroid cancer of a very specific type of thyroid cancer that really only happens in rats. Um, and a lot of people would have said, I mean, a lot of the people I asked said, well, because rats have much higher density of GLP-1 receptors on their thyroids than humans, but I've since seen a couple of articles that implied that maybe there was a little bit of a risk of increased risk of thyroid cancer in humans. So, you know, I would say that whether you go rogue and decide to order these things on your own or not, you want to sit and talk to a professional to understand what's your family history. Are there any factors in your case that may open you up to more of these side effects. Now, we've only talked about semiglutide. I know the new shiny kit on the blog. The good news is I don't have to repeat everything because they kind of do both. They do the same thing. Okay. Uh the new shiny kit on the block is tzepide and tzepide is a dual increeton which means it it's GLP1 and GLP so it works through two different pathways so what was happening with semaglutide is people's bo people were become they were hitting a wall and now we're talking really generally speaking we're talking about people who had a lot of weight to lose right and so as a result um novos developed a new drug called kagrilitide which they've developed specifically to stack onto semiglutide when people hit that wall. But Eli Liy in the meantime released Tzepatide which is known as Mongjaro which has fewer side effects and works better. Huh. Interesting. Interesting. That is and does not and and it does not cause the constipation that semiglutide does. So, I just I think I'm gonna ask you this right now and I think it's probably a easy yes or no answer for you because I know that people listening to this have probably read that bourberine is like mother nature's GLP1 alternative. Do you think that's true? No, I don't either. I mean, I don't think it's true at all. I think I mean I think bourberine is a beautiful thing and dihydroberine is even more better. Right. So, it's a modified bourberine which which you need a lot less and works a lot better, but it's not a GL it doesn't take the place of GLP1. Like, you know, GLP1s are the closest thing to a silver bullet when it comes to fat loss that humanity's ever come to. But if you come off of the drug, like let's say you get to your weight loss goal, can you get off the drug and not have the fat return or which thus, you know, has an inflammatory cascade and all sorts of things associated with it? Like is this a is this a decision that somebody needs to decide that could be like a lifelong thing? Not if they do it right. It's a really good question and there's not an easy answer. So, here's the thing. When you're on a GLP1, whatever whichever one is selected, you don't have much appetite. You're not that hungry. And so, there's two camps of people. There's the people who figure out that they can eat all the junky well, they can eat a lot of the junky things they used to love and still lose weight. And they're like, "Wait a minute, that's super cool. You're telling me I can have not as many as I used to, right? But I can have some donuts with my 700 calorie drink and call it a day and I can still lose weight. Oh my god, that is phenomenal. The bad news is that now you're not only are you underresourced from a micronutrient perspective, right? Because we have all these people walking around North America who are overfed and under and malnourished. Now you're underfed and malnourished. And so what happens and this is getting a lot this gets a lot of airplay also is that your body also in the absence of exercise your body sitting there taking stock. It doesn't have enough energy to go around. It's like what can we burn? It's going to it's going to drop the fat but guess what? It's also going to go after your muscle. So that's why you start people say muscle atrophy. Yeah. So I mean look a very very heavy person who loses a lot of weight will lose muscle. It's a thing like it's part of what happens. Will your will might your face get skinny? Heck yeah. You know, will it correct over time? Probably. Do some people lose weight in their face more than others because that's just how they're programmed genetically? Absolutely. Right. So that's that whole ompic face which thankfully the media has kind of let go of that. But but but ultimately the second group of people is getting good coaching and is being told here's the thing. You have a new job. Your new job is to eat protein first. You want to eat protein like it's your job. And then you want to eat m nutrientdense energylike foods. And what are those? Vegetables. You're going to want to eat like veggies. But if you don't have any appetite and you can only eat one thing, you're going to eat that protein. And then what you might do is have a green shake and you might have a red shake. You might have like you're gonna look for ways that take up the least amount of space in your tummy that are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck, right? And you might take a couple supplements to shore up your defenses. And you're going to go to the gym because you're going to challenge those muscles. You're going to give your body a reason to say, "We can't afford to lose that stuff." I mean, you might lose a little bit of muscle, but you won't lose strength. Yeah. Well, also too, as women, well, not just women, it in impacts men too, but as we lose muscle mass, as we get older, that's also bad for our bones. We need Exactly. Exactly. Like you could end up like super frail, right? Because now you're not getting the right nutrients. You're losing your muscle. You're losing your like Oh my god. And then you stop taking this stuff and you haven't built any new eating habits. You haven't built any new routines in your life. You haven't changed your lifestyle. And yeah, it's going to be the worst diet rebound you've ever been through. So, so we need to, you know, we need to use our heads. And I mean, there's studies that are coming out like, you know, there's always a headline somewhere saying, you know, it didn't matter what people did, they still regained the weight. And I'm like, you know, I'm calling BS on it. Maybe in cases of extreme obesity, right? because you have people who've got like they didn't get to be three or four or 500 lb overnight and it didn't happen for no good reason, right? And so for those people, there's a possibility that they may need to remain on a low dose maybe forever. I don't know like it it depends, right? But for the people the new crop of people that is so controversial, people who want to lose like and this is really like the menopausal community, right? Women after menopause, you look down one day, you're like, "What the hell? Who are you? I haven't changed anything." It starts before that. Perry menopause, man. Not fun. I'm like, 100%. Right. We become more insulin resistant. We like everything we don't sleep as well. Like, so everything just goes wrong. But for that population of people who are who are carrying this extra 20 pounds exactly around their middle, hello, it's it's incredibly useful. But what I've seen is for the women who do it well, they then come off of it. I mean, I'm one of those women, right? I won't use it for months at a time. And then sometimes, you know, I go through a period where I'm traveling too much and I'm not getting so I'm not I'm out of my routines. diet starts to slide a bit because you're never home and the whole nine yards. And so I might start using whatever I'm going to use at the smallest possible dose. And it and that requires me to kind of breathe and dial into my diet and dial into my exercise and dial into my sleep and use it as an aid to help to move the needle. And it's going to take a couple of months, but things are just going to start to resettle. And then once I get to where I'm happy, I might drop the dose to half a starting dose or a quarter or I might come off it completely for a period of time. And then so you use it kind of as a little gauge. But what you do is you make sure that you dial in that lifestyle and diet so that and you you know if you're not a person that likes healthy food, well, you better figure it out. Work with a nutritionist. Find ways to get what your body to give your body what it needs. Yeah. This sounds like it shouldn't be used just like you were saying it shouldn't just be oh I can eat my 700 calorie you know latte dessert. Yeah. Right. With with some like a muffin that's also probably 500 calories and like oh I'm good for the day. Like that's that's not that's not the plan here. Yeah. I mean that's probably too many calories right there. But but you you know you get the message folks. Like at the end of the day if you use it properly and I've known people who've gotten really nice results from like half a starting dose. And this is the other thing that happens is people get impatient and they just keep cranking up the dose and cranking it and cranking it and cranking it. And I think that that's where we're starting to there's a bigger risk of health risks, right? And so you want your minimum effective dose. You want to be patient. You want to go slow and steady wins the race because I will tell you that there is a point where the hypothalamus will reset your set weight. Right? We talk about this. We talk about how the brain wants us to be at a certain weight. Well, there is a reset that happens, but it takes time. It did not take you three months to get to where you are. It is not going to take you three months to get out of there. That's probably a good uh it's good to know that go like that's what I figured this is like how what should we go into this conversation because I have had most of the clients that have chosen to do this are menopausal y and some have had psoriasis and their doctor wanted to use it as a way to try to improve insulin sensitivity. I would say 90% have ended up with pretty intense GI problems from it. And were they given the semiglutide though or tzepide? I don't remember. I don't remember. So semiglutide I I mean I would guess it's most likely semiglutide. Most likely. I would think so because these are mostly people in the past. The most recent person I'm not 100% sure which option she was given. Um, but I I think having the pros and cons helps you make a decision about whether this is right for you rather than reading scary headlines versus reading headlines that make you believe that this is like an amazing like you said it's a close to a silver bullet but it's not perfect and there are issues and really we need to have good conversations about pros and cons so you can decide if it's really right for you. Yeah. The other big one I would say, and this sadly applies to many women in menopause, maybe because of all the bloody memes out there, is alcohol, right? You got to you got to let it go, girls. I know there's those really cute memes of it's wine time and it's like I don't like all the like I don't drink, so I don't I don't have it handy, but you got to let go of the alcohol because the other thing you want to protect is your pancreas. By the way, that's a that's a really interesting point. Yeah. And the alcohol is going to knock the daylights out of your pancreas and it's going to knock the daylights out of your liver. You want to clean out your system. And society, we need to evolve our our thinking around alcohol. And it is happening. Like it is I'm I'm amazed at the number of people I come across who have chosen their alcohol-free lifestyle. Like you know what ladies, we're at high risk of breast cancer. Well, if we stop drinking alcohol, that would take that risk down. Yeah. It wouldn't make it go away, but there's a definite link between alcohol consumption and breast cancer. Yeah. Um I did want to ask you be because obviously I know I don't have like all day to talk to you about this, Natalie, you're so fascinating because you know so much about this. Um there's two other I I I'm going to assume maybe they're bio-regulators, but you tell me. Yeah. um the BPC157 which we mentioned briefly and then the KPVs. So like can you tell us what those are because those are the two that I have aside from the GLP1 I've been asked about and so I thought you know you could kind of clue us in. So they are not biors they are they are peptides. KPV is pretty close to a bregulator because it's only three amino acids, right? It wasn't entirely off. No, BPC1 but but it's not a it's not epigenetic switch in the same way. BPC57 is a pentadapeptide. So, it's a 15 amino acid peptide. So, these are both signaling molecules. KPD is interesting because it's a fragment. It it itself is a fragment of another peptide that people have used mostly bodybuilders actually but even other people have used it called melanotan 2 and melanitan 2 is the Barbie doll peptide meaning that it stimulates melanin and so you can get a tan just by using melanotan like it will bring up your melanin um so before everybody runs around looking for melanotan thinking oh my god this is amazing it is amazing It actually has benefits for the skin. It can be protective. It It thickens the skin. It's antimicrobial. It's got all great stuff. But for all of us who were lifeguards when we were kids or spent too much time in the sun when we were younger, the first thing that's going to come up is your sun damage. So people start using melanin and they're like all of a sudden they're walking around going, "Oh my god, I freckles. Like what's with these spots? And what's with the freckles? Like oh my god. The the good news is that the background eventually catches up, but you do have to be prepared to walk around looking, you know, and and you can you can manage how the the tone, if you will, um by managing the dose and the frequency of use. Um but anyway, that's melanotan. Like I said, melanotan has antimicrobial effects. Well, KPV is that three amino acid sequence that's part of melanotan that actually probably does the most in terms of the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effects. So, it turns out that KPV is very very helpful for general inflammation for inflammation in the gut. It also has applications for inflammation on the skin. Um, so that's why I think but but the gut healing piece is really important to all the skin issues that you deal with in your practice, right? And that's why BPC57 and KPV are going to come up a lot because BPC57, even though we talked earlier about all the benefits it could have for athletes, its superpower and what it's really the most known for, well maybe second most known, is it heals the gut. It helps to heal a leaky gut. And so if we can do that, we can solve a lot of problems. And in your world, if you can get that leaky gut sealed, it just starts to calm things down. It doesn't solve everybody's problems, but it starts taking away some of the factors that might be driving an immune system into overdrive, for example, or, you know, certain things that are getting across the gut that could be driving skin issues. So, we do see sometimes when people use BPC57 for gut issues, if they had some skin stuff going on, sometimes we see a resolution of the skin issues. I appreciate you said sometimes we see because it's not foolproof. Well, no, because there could be a there could be another reason or you could still be eating the foods that's damaging the gut or or doing the thing that's damaging the gut. So, that analogy that I used on another podcast that you like so much. So now the good news is you've got a balor and you're bailing the boat out. So you're not sinking, but you're still taking on water, right? So the cool thing about BPC57 is it can help people to feel better even before they've massively made the changes they need to make. So we hope that they're going to feel better enough that they're going to say, "Okay, I want more of this. What do I need? What else do I need to do?" But it's not enough to just think, you know, it's like taking a PPI and continuing to eat all the crappy food that's giving you heartburn. Just change your diet. Use the PPI for a short time to calm down the inflammation so that your esophagus can heal, but for the love of God, don't think that you're going to live on this thing and have no consequences down the road because you're heading for a heart attack and broken bones. So, you know, if you're 20 years on PPIs, there are consequences. So with BPC57, you have a compound that's going to help to repair so much. So now it it kind of clears the way for you to say, okay, now what else can we do? And how else, you know, do we need to look at the microbiome? Do we need to look at in other inflammation? Do we need to look at the diet? Do we need to look at the lifestyle? Do we need to look at is there SIBO going involved? And you know, like there's there's a lot there's so many different things. But, you know, another cool thing that BPC57 does, it it helps with um the the esophageal flap. So, people who have heartburn often notice that their heartburn gets better. Plus, it's helping to heal the esophagus. Like, it's doing so many cool things, but we need to use it as leverage to then do the work and finish the job. Well, so this brings me kind of to my next question is like how to how do you even take these? Because obviously with semiglutide and the GLP1s, they're injections. And I've looked at some things online that have said, and you actually alluded to this, that because they're amino acid sequences, if you take them orally, they're just not they'll be broken down as if it was food. So do you find So that's my question. Yeah. So not all of them. Some of them get a buy, right? So, what do you think oral take so taking something orally as a supplement versus an injection like what's what are the better options especially with the BPC57 and the KPV? So, for gut healing, they both can be used orally. And as a matter of fact, there's a formula there's a there's a um there's a stack by one of my favorite supplement manufacturers. Um he's actually an Australian guy and I don't think he lives in Australia anymore because Australia, you want to talk about draconian? Australia made it that if you even sell BPC57, they'll throw you in jail. Like wow. Like they Yeah. Like they're they're very hardcore. So Australians this they're not going to find this. Don't even bother to look at. It's going to be really tough. But anyway, but this company, LevelUp Health, um makes a a stack called Ultimate GI Repair. It's an oral supplement. And in Ultimate GI Repair, you will find BPC-157, KPV, laurazzide, which is another peptide that seals tight junctions preferentially. There's another tripeptide, which I'm surprised isn't one of the ones that people are asking you about, GHKCU, which we'll talk about in a minute. And then it has tributerine, it has alkalutamine, it has zinc incarnosine. Like it had he basically took the the the the you know the bucket of supplements that you would want to take for leaky gut or gut issues and stuffed them into capsules. And it's amazing. It's not cheap, but it is one of the most effective gut healing supplements out there. Like I'll do 30 days a couple times a year just for insurance cuz we know between stress and bad food and all the things we and travel and sitting in airplanes. Um so that's so so BPC157 just so everybody knows is a fragment of a bigger protein that is made in your gut. So you make it right. KPV is naturally occurring in the body. So all we're doing is we're reintroducing it's like you know we're reintroducing a therapeutic dose. So for the gut definitely oral works and those supplements are available. We've got Level Up. Like there's a bunch of different companies that make them. And then he also has KPV on its own. He has BPC on its own. You know there's there's lots of different options for the injectable. So the injectable technically is off the table, right? The FDA has taken a position on this. They don't want compounding pharmacies compounding it. You know, the tricky thing is that, you know, when we're done with doing the research on the injectables, what's interesting about administering it subcutaneously is that it systemically it is much more effective systemically and that's where we see more of the muscular scalidal benefits um and even the brain benefits and the nervous system benefits. like there's a lot of different effects, but you know, at this point it's kind of off the table. When compoundingies were allowed to compound it, there were also there were ointments. So, there were creams that were compounded with BPC and KPV, which I think were actually would have been quite effective. Wow. For for skin issues. Uh BPC is really good at healing burns and healing wounds. Um so, you know, we we'll have to see what happens with that. Um, can I ask? But that's kind of the story. Can I ask too for somebody like myself who's like a perpetual 5-year-old and can't swallow pills, can you just take it in food or is that something that it's no no go? You have to take it encapsulated. Um, so that's a really good question with BPC. One way I've And it's funny, I was reminded of this recently. I actually have to ask this woman how she did. One way that I used to recommend people use it um orally if they had if they had upper GI issues, so esophag es esophagitis or heartburn where the esophagus is getting really damaged. Um I would have them put it in aloe vera and swallow it, right? Because you you know the aloe vera is going to soothe but then the BPC57 is in there. I don't know for sure that you I actually think you could technically because it's not a time release capsule. The BPC for sure is resistant to stomach acid. Um because you know that's where it comes from. And then the KPV I think is fine. The GHK is probably I I think most likely it would be fine. Interesting. I'll have to I'll have to do some investigation. I'm always curious because I have so many clients and I don't know if it's a thing because I've said it so many times on the podcast, but so many of the clients in my practice can't swallow pills or they can't take they're kind of like they hit a point where they're like I can take like three capsules and that's about it. And so we try well at a like Yeah. So, the BBC the cool thing about the ultimate GI repair, like I said, it's like taking eight capsules in one because the cool thing about peptides is they're we're talking about micrograms. So, they don't take up space. Oh, so they're only teeny. Yeah. Wow. That is so cool. This is a really I will say this is a really really fascinating topic and I'm like so glad that I had you here to talk about this because like I said it's like you see the news which is like these are wonderful and then other people are like these are horrible and all of these horrible things happen and these are magical and I'm like I don't I really don't know. And I think what we can I think what we can probably agree on is it's never that good and it's never that bad. or rarely, right? Generally speaking, there's a lot more nuance to the conversation. Generally speaking, the word that, you know, the answer people get from me most often that they hate the most is it depends, right? I just did a post on methylene blue. People are like, "Well, what's the dose?" I don't know. What are you using him for? It depends. Like, who are you? Right? So, it's it's it's there's a lot of art to this science. There's a lot of people working really hard at figuring it out and having really good results. Um, I do think that it might be interesting to take a BPC57 and mix it with a little bit of aloe and apply it topically and see if that is helpful. Um there's another company there's a company out there that makes a serum with just with one peptide and a couple of other herbals if you will. Um it's a company called Vitali Skincare and they make a serum called GHKCU. Um they make a medical grade so it's a 3% GHKCU. It is cobalt blue in color but GHKCU is the skin peptide. Now, it turns out the GHKCU is a three amino acid peptide and it it flips over a thousand genes back to their more youthful setting. It is incredible for wrinkles. It is incredible for it it stimulates the production of collagen and elastin. It's incredible for reducing scarring when somebody is healing. It helps heal the gut. It like it's anxolytic. Like it's, you know, every time I go looking for a paper on GHKCU, I find something new. But that one would be interesting. I you know the the woman who started that company, she has and it might be on her website like she had some before and after pictures of people who'd been burned and applied this serum and the healing is unbelievable. Wow. So, you know, in the case of your of your population of clients, you're dealing with two different things, right? You're dealing with an expression on the surface of the skin that very often is being driven by an issue in the body. But what if that I mean and I don't know for sure that that serum would help every one of them, but it might help some people because it's very powerful healing serum. Yeah. Well, I think one of the the things that I'm taking away from this conversation and I love that you shared that it depends is your most common answer because so many people today are looking for the one thing that's going to fix everything. And I I'm I I've just basically gotten to a point where I'm like, if you're looking for the one thing, you're not going to find it. And you're going to just find what you will find is chronic disappointment because there's usually not just one thing. Now, while yes, like I'm going to share some papers too in our um the show notes for this podcast because I was looking around for things that I thought, you know, would help people who are a little bit more science-minded and wanted to learn and dig more into this. And obviously you've got, you know, we'll talk about in a moment, you've got your podcast and everything, which is an amazing resource. Huge resource, by the way. You've been podcasting a long time. I have mad respect for that because I get what it's like to do that. um you know this paper did say specifically to the GLP uh one um receptor agonist just said they're pro-inflammatory cyto pro-inflammatory cytoines including uh TNF alpha IL6 IL1 beta suppressed by the GLP1R um in immune cells. So they feel like, hey, these could potentially help by boosting anti-inflammatory cytoines like IL10, which is nice, but it doesn't beget the question of what's causing the cytoine production in the first place. And so it's not a silver bullet in that while it might help your body, as you were saying, give you more runway, make it easier for you because you might have more energy, you may feel better, you still have to do the underlying work. that you know if your gut's a mess, if you have a worm infection, you've got candida overgrowth, you're living in a moldy house, you've got a lot of things or a huge amount of stress and nervous system dysregulation. Taking a peptide or bioregulator is not going to fix all of that. And I think I'm not saying that to be, you know, like to to say, "Oh, don't do this." But just to be honest, because we're so trained by social media to go, "Oh, if I just take this one thing, I'm going to get better." Yeah. No, I mean, look, you you absolutely have to deal with your environment. You have to deal with your lifestyle. You have to address your diet. All all the different things, right? And um and these can be extremely powerful tools. And I love that. I love that. Well, I I want to make sure everybody can find you because obviously you're on Instagram. I follow you there. I've learned a lot there. Uh you have your own website, natnitum.com. And then your is your podcast. Is it just longevity or is it longevity with Natalie Nidm? It's longevity with Natalie Nitum. Okay. So, they're going to find you on is it all podcast platforms or all the big plat all the platforms? All the podcast platforms they will find it on uh Instagram. I'm just under my name, Natalie Nidam. Um, and as you said, the website, um, and that's where people can sign up for the newsletter. And also I have a membership community that used to be called BSP for, and it's a long story, but now called longevity with longevity uh, community. So awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Natalie. I really appreciate it, and I hope you will come back sometime and we can dive. I feel like we just like scratched the surface and there's just so much more to talk about and I I love the fact that you're you're providing that balanced like there we have to have more balanced conversations. It does depend and I deeply deeply respect you for holding space for that in a world where it's really easy to just start getting into like these crazy promises and claims and all sorts of things. You're holding space for the conversation for people who really want to make an educated decision. and I love that. So, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Jen. It's been great. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this video, you need to tune in to this video next. Then, make sure to hit the subscribe button so you get notified as soon as a new episode drops. I'm excited to see you there and dive deeper with you on your skin healing journey.