Peptides & BPC 157 with Dr. Edwin Lee | The Pursuit Podcast

okay welcome everyone for another episode of the podcast today we have a special guest today we have do Lee um thank you so much for joining us today and like taking time out of your day to talk about peptides and everything cool about peptides um this all started really from us uh seeing a lot of injuries and MMA athletes and even Jiu-Jitsu players and like athletes and we noticed that they were on peptides like oh that's cool and then I actually had a bad injury last year and I actually tore part of my cartilage behind my KNE capap and part of my quad tendon and I was struggling for the first week and it was pretty tense it was the first time in my life where I had a knee pain where I was like okay it's not going away with rest I had some buddies who were on peptides and I hopped on some peptides specifically BBC 157 in one week I had full range of motion he so well and I could start my rehab process so that's what started all this interest imp peptides and then you start looking around Orlando of like okay who's who's the expert on peptides and everyone kept on pointing to you so um it's a blessing to have you on and thanks again for taking time out of your day for that we're going to put an intro to your bio and everything in the description below but uh you know you can start us off basically what what are peptides and where where do they come from here Ron uh by the way I I wrote a book on peptid so a lot of information that we're going to be discussing is actually in the book but uh let me show you the picture of the book and um it's called the Fountain of Youth with peptides and uh love the title love the title so you can uh get it through my office uh or through Amazon um this the electric electronic copy of it but the hard cover copy is only sold in my office you can't get the hard cover copy through Amazon so um anyway peptides are like I tell my patients all day they're small little proteins uh they're made of the same thing with proteins amino acids and we have 20 different amino acids so um if you link up 20 different amino acids you have a peptide a peptide could be two amino acid long it could be you know 10 amino acids but uh in general it used to be like over 100 was considered protein and under 100 a peptide but the FDA arbitrary um drew a line in the sand said under 40 and it's not based on science it's uh yeah anyway it's they just drew that Line in the Sand and um anyway uh so most peptides are generally small but there are some peptides in the 45 amino acid range but anyway U peptides are are really like signaling molecules they like for your injury when you use bpc um it helped you recover faster because it rang the doorbell of your body to help your immune system to heal it so um it turned on search um production of your fiberblast cells to make more uh type one collagen so it can heal those micro tears it can help with the blood flow so you have better circulation to that area it also can help with the neural damage the the nerves that are damaged so it can basically help with the lining of the nerve the milin sheath so bpc157 um is nicknamed as U it's well I'll tell you the nickname but what it stands for is body protection compound 157 and it's nickname as the Wolverine peptide that's a great name for it like superhuman healing powers I love that so yeah so you probably watched The Avengers and all that yeah Avengers and X-Men that's awesome I'm going to start using that so you and the Wolverine peptide nice so where do peptides come from I get that question a lot whenever I start talking about it and someone asked me I was like that's a good question I know they're made in a compound pharmacy correct but where do we get them well bpc naturally is uh from our human uh stomach fluid so um it was isolated in like 1990s uh by a guy in Croatia and he has published a lot in animal studies um and some really phenomenal studies he's done was the classic one he did was he uh took a um I always want to say rabbit but it wasn't a rabbit it was a rat Achilles and he completely severed the killes and then he had another group of rats that he completely severed the Achilles so they had a group that they both had their Achilles severed but half the group got bpc other half got the control just basically sailing and he injected bpc in the not even near the Achilles and one month later he was able to see complete resolution of the um healing of the torn that's awesome so that was decades ago yeah like I can't remember the publication but yeah it was like 20 plus years yeah so that's why a lot of athletes you know they they read that and and a lot of I I just heard this this is I haven't verified but someone just told me I think the special forces are using it but it's not FDA approved so um this is um something that I'm try to hopefully there there's a war on peptides with the FDA I just got back from DC I heard that you're trying to do some research to help save that and keep it going yes I I am doing that too and also I just got back from Washington DC on December 4th and it was an unfair fight but just kind of tell you a quick update on it um that there was a lawsuit against the FDA and the the compound pharmacy is called axus and they're in they're in Texas and they they basically said look you're you're this is this is like enough is enough you're violating all your even bylaws and you're just like going crazy you're not even following your own steps so they they actually went in front of the judge and they decided to settle and they said okay we'll we'll discuss this at the FDA meeting on some peptides that was uh on that lawsuit and so they had a meeting like end of October and December 4th so I went to the December 4th meeting um in front of the FDA and it was not a fair meeting because of the loss the settlement they didn't they the FDA had the upper hand so it was not not an even uh discussion and it was unfair so they had one hour to discuss the evidence which wasn't 100% correct and because I read all the literature on thus Wan and uh anyway um I asked for 30 minutes they only gave me three oh man and it's like how much can you talk in three minutes so anyway the bottom line is uh that we got denied um for this for that peptide thus Alpha One for it's called the bulk drug substance um and uh but the good news is there's a new Administration coming in town I was GNA say I was like yeah yeah I mean he's RF RFK you know uses peptides and we shall see what happens like by February and maybe this nightmare will go away but in the future bpc um to save that you we really need to do clinical research so I have two published papers on bpc one's on knee pain and one is on interstitial citis so um you can Google Scholar yep and type my name or or just say bpc for knee pain and bpc foral STIs and you'll see you should see the article there yeah couple I'm sorry I have a couple IRB approved trials that I'm doing now nice it it's it takes time it takes a lot of money it's it's painful to do but it takes 10 to 15 years to put out a high quality randomized control trial but even if you put out some case series and some lower level research and get the ball rolling I don't know anyone else really doing it at least around Florida yet that they're fighting for peptides and stuff like that so yeah I think next year will'll be interesting to see what the new Administration whatever his person's beliefs or thoughts are for RFK but he's Pro peptide so it'll be a positive change on that hopefully we'll see um so ju just to clarify are peptides from animals in the gastric juices or is it human or is it can you use animal peptides and put them in humans um that's a loaded question so um the bpc157 is U derived from it was discovered from Human gastric fluid and um but uh the way they make these BP like these peptides um they have to they need a peptide synthesizer so um depends where it's how it's derived um some be some of these amino acids are derived from animal Source others are from plant source so it's a little confusing um you know you have a machine called the peptide synthesizer you put amino acids one in and out comes a peptide nice Tak 30 it takes 30 days it's not like it's like a microwave you you oh wow it takes 30 days to form the peptide wow you got to clean it and and it's just it takes time it's not a fast process so generally the countries like India and China they they they can make a lot of they have huge like peptide synthesizing machines and they have Vats of it so um then you have a middleman that gets it and then eventually gets to FDA registered site and uh if it's clean and all that then it can be released uh so it it does go through some um testing and you really want to get it through a compound pharmacy through a 503a compound pharmacy so you need a prescription because they're checking for endotoxins they're checking for basically you know uh make sure it's the right thing it's not U you know something that's uh sold on the internet you don't know what you get on the internet yeah so I mean the thing is that yes you can buy peptides off internet but they're not safe and I tell my patients you can get that but I wouldn't use it and because you don't know what you get so I know they're out there and there's no regulation and so they always say yeah we have certificate analysis but if you can print out any pie of paper say this is what we have so I mean it has to be third party verified and uh even the FDA doesn't trust those things they want to trust it themselves yeah so that's the whole thing is I mean how clean is it and uh the thing is that uh it is generally made through um basically through a a peptide synthesizer I was hoping that the newer technology it' be um basically made in like with eoli and you just basically modify the eoli and basically the bacteria and it just basically produces the the peptide U and then that's like called Rec convenant uh DNA therapy and how growth hormones made and all that but uh apparently it's too small these it's not that big of a molecule so they I don't know why they don't do it but with becomin in therapy so so what other classifications of peptides are there I mean you have like BBC 157 I'm sorry if I mispronounce it like simlin and that class is a growth hormone increaser right what other tools or whatever mechanisms are they going with peptides besides to that's interesting um no one ever asked me that so in my book I talk I have uh 13 chapters and kind of go through like peptides make you younger peptide for um to help your sex drive growth hormon like peptides the heling peptide bpc the tanning peptides there's tanning you said tanning peptides yep that that's yeah that's really that's FD everything it's in my book the FDA has but anyway um there's Miracle growth for the brain and protecting your DNA for your immune system so I would say there's um I only have what quote 13 13 14 13 chapters in my book but uh the thing is um to answer your question there are probably hundreds wow so you also said younger does it actually like mess with the telmer length also like genetic wise or is it just like healing and Recovery no there's a peptide um um called Epi thalin uh Epi t a l o n and epitalon when we give it injection uh wise which is hard to get I don't think I can get it anymore I had a group of my patients that we measure their biological age and everyone basically reduced their biological age um and uh I haven't looked at the telr lengths but apparently in Russia they did a study and it showed it it increases the teler length um so um it I don't want to complicate things but you kind of asked the question about is an animal derived so there are a whole classification called peptide bioregulators which is pills they're very small there's only three to four amino acids all developed in Russia those are animal derived those are cows that are um now they basically I mean you got to be careful where it's derived I mean where you get it from but um the ones that Dr cavison basically um worked on they was generally produced in Belgium so they use the organs from the cow and then get the peptide for that and then you swallow it so if you need better brain health you swallow that so the answer your question initially is it animal derived or non um the answer is it depends so hepti bioregulators uh are really kind of also the future um it's not really talked about and the difference between peptide bioregulators and peptides this goes a little deep is the peptide bioregulators are smaller they're like generally two to three or four amino acids and they can turn on your DNA um to make um to turn on your let's say protective genes or turn off your cancer genes I would just about to say I was like wow if you're going there I was thinking cancer but yeah good yeah whereas um the bigger peptides like peptide bpc157 and thymus alpha 1 bpc157 is it's a 15 amino acid peptide thymus Alpha One is like 28 amino acid so it cannot get into the nucleus but but it can actually they they they ring the doorbell and they they can basically do their effects but it really they we call it epigenetic effects um pep fire Regulators turn on genes turn off genes that's what they do whereas peptides like rings the doorbell and if you want better immune system it can help that if you want skin look better it can do that so but uh they work totally different that's why we we have a peptide um class that we teach doctors it's an eight hour course and we teach nice let's get back on with bpc157 so from my understanding it kind of heals from a macro level and a micro level of of of an injury is there any like growth hormone regulation that's also affected by that or you already talked about like when you're injured it helps from you know helps heal with like fiber blast tissue and the whole recovery process is there any growth hormone that's involved with taking like BBC 157 or is it just with the healing process well they did a study um to look at the mechanism of sorry of bpc157 and uh so the thing is that uh it been shown to that it increases the growth hormone receptors uh so three days after stopping bpc sorry um if I turn off this beeping sound then you can't hear me uh so three days after stopping bpc it's you can still have high density of growth horm receptor sites um so it also there there's a there's also another pathway that bpc works uh with that growth hormone paway it's called a fax fax pyin pathway but anyway it just generally help helps uh if you give a little if you can get higher dose of growth hormone with bpc you'll even heal faster that's so good yeah nice so a lot of things that you see online is the modes of taking it um what is the preferred way to take PBC 157 is an injection versus oral do both of them work which one's better what are your thoughts on that uh the short answer is injection is always better if you can get to the site of injury that's always the best if you can get into the joint if you have a joint issue um versus you know sometimes people don't need joint injection if it's a muscle tear um and um anyway um like generally if people come in um we either I inject or a colleague of mine injects um and after that then we say um the next day take the bpc pills so we we have the the bpc pill with u with arginate the original patent and we ask them to take it one pill twice a day and then after a month U maybe switch to one a day uh but U if your injury is healed then you can stop you don't have to take it but I have people have been on it for about eight years the pill and they look younger every time I see them nice that's awesome yeah I because that's one thing I was like so in rehab and with a lot of medicine tissues don't have good blood supply like your cartilage intervertebral disc your meniscus and I always wondered if you know could you consume something orally and does it even get to that tissue so does like BBC 157 work great for extra capsular injuries muscles tendons ligaments but does it still work really for those tissues that are inra capsular like your meniscus your ACL your articular Cartage your intervertebral disc so you're saying that if someone has an intra capser one the injection is going to be the best bet for them correct because you can get inside the capsule inside the joint right and it still it will still work intracapsular even though no blood's getting to that that's fascinating stuff yeah I mean today I had a patient that um a friend of ours um my my son my two boys uh grew up with this um with this anyway he he's coming from um a really uh prestigious School in California he just flew in this morning and he injured his knee playing um football on Mid October and then he had his surgery at a top Hospital in California and um we were supposed to go skiing together in Switzerland but since he had his knee operator I don't think he skiing but I just saw him in my office and uh they're leaving tomorrow to Europe and I said let me inject you with bpc so he is he had surgery like November 18th so he's basically almost a month out and his knee he says he we did ship him some bpc he did his subq injections near his injury his uh basically on his uh left um like thigh next to his knee and uh he did 13 days of it then switched to Pills and he says he's walking faster without crutches with you know compared to his other people going back to the you know he sees in the waiting room because everyone had the same operation you know about the same time so U and there's less inflammation so uh I injected bpc into his with also little tb4 uh in articular into his left knee and uh I suspect that he's going to even recover faster with that so nice yeah so you're G have what's interesting is like almost stem cells versus peptides going forward and regen medicine and stuff that I have a patient right now he's a retired physician he's like in so many years we're going to be having computers and do this I was like you know what the future of Orthopedics is I was like I guarantee you it's a combination of what I'm doing plus treating you systemically from inside like stem cells PRP and peptides and then he was like what are peptides and I started talking to them about it and stuff like that but like it sounds like there's going to be competition like what's better peptide stem cells like Pepes are doing a lot yeah we offer all three in my office we offer like the start off with the peptides because it's the least expensive and then stem cells is the medium price um and then exosomes are I think are the best um these are basically the avatars of the stem cells so exosomes um that's derived from the umbilical cord oh they're they're probably a thousand times faster in healing wow like I I mean I mean the prices do pay like three 3400 or you pay 4,000 yeah I know people that are going to Tana Mexico to get stem cells and they're getting stem cell injections and then stem cell injections again and they come back and do rehab and I'm seeing some change stuff but man if you're doing all three and that third one what was the third one you said exom nice exosomes are I mean my favorite um and umbilical cord um tissue mesal stem cells release these exosomes this is the problem with stem cells is you don't know if it's going to take a body could rejected and in the healing power of the stem cells they release exosome so imagine they release peptides but they they they're different they can release peptides but they release like microrna to help heal you faster I just rebuild circulation your tissue I mean it's amazing what exos do is there any is there any precautions is there things that you're seeing that you have to screen patients for before you put them on peptides or something like bbc1 157 yes if you have active you're undergoing active cancer therapy let's say you got recently diagnosed with some unform you know some bad cancer and you know you're going chemo radiation we we don't you we stop all regenerative peptides just but there are peptides for cancer so yeah um like I treated my father who had stage four cancer and he basically was given nine actually actually not nine months he was given one month to live and they said they can't do anything with and he had a blood cancer so I came um he had a battle obstruction and surgery they found the cancer and they say it's a t-a and um so they go surgery chemo um actually chemo radiation won't work so I I gave him four different peptides and he went from a wheelchair to walking one mile every day regain his weight and he we got nine extra beautiful months with him and then my mom got scared thought the cancer was you know you could see it growing went back to the oncologist oncologist was shocked thought he was dead and they go well why don't we try radiation and it's like I wasn't there at the meeting but it's like just in December this isn't going to work and uh that just opened up his surgical wound and uh he just he passed away quickly after that but the thing is that um you know we don't live forever that's that's part of life but the thing is um anyway there are peptides that can actually help as agant therapy it's not really is there any side effects of bbc7 I mean I know that some people complain of a stomach ache sometimes but are there any side effects well sometimes it depends on the buffer that they use in the solution and they may be allergic to that but by itself bpc is safe uh um so I really I mean I've seen one with a rash but I think she she goes she was allerg after that she basically it's like she wants to take peptides but I think it was really that there there something in the preservative that should was sensitive to yeah what the current research are you doing right now great question um so I have a ongoing study with orthopedic surgeon and he has um basically uh for knee surgery um it's every other person who consents to do this study will get the peptide bpc at the very end of the surgery before closure and they will follow up for several months to see how um their recovery is um so and then he is also doing shoulder surgery too so just not only knee but shoulder so it just be at before he pulls the laparoscope out he injects the bpc into the joint and then I mean Aaron Rogers I'm sure you heard of that case where he TS Achilles last year the NFL quarterback he ended up coming out afterwards and saying that he was on peptides and he recovered so fast and was able to run at like six months so it's like these muscle skeletal injuries that used to end people's careers now they're returning in in six six months to 12 weeks is and going back and running already it's fasinating stuff because that's where my brain goes next is wow how is anyone doing this combining Orthopedic rehab or Orthopedic um treatment for muscle scill injuries in combo with with this I don't know anyone doing it yet but that's where my brain goes I could get I think uh there are some football uh programs I I heard Nick Sabin um really does not want their uh players to undergo the knife because they don't recover and they're not the same afterwards so he's very I have never confirmed it but I've heard that he is a proponent for reject with medicine so and I heard a lot of professional players use a lot of peptides and stem cells not stem cells exosomes um especially the NFL so that's I mean I have colleagues that are working with regen medicine physicians already and they'll take someone who has a label tear and they'll do stem cells plus PRP injections and with rehab are able to heal it and prevent surgery needed and get function and everything back and that's why I mean like this is the next step of where a lot of Orthopedics are going to go the combination of these three things plus standard care we could be getting people better faster even to the average person the average person that has like a calf strain or these common muscle Scuttle injuries if you combine PT solving the root cause plus put in one exosomes or even like peptides that's the future yeah so you get it um yeah it's it's a no-brainer and it's just set I think we're hopefully the new Administration will uh continue to let us use some natural peptides so um yeah I've been losing a lot of sleep because of this war on peptides but uh I have another study that I'm doing um and that is uh it's in several clinics so uh the FDA really wants a followup on safety and efficacy so they don't trust the doctors filling out the forms so um when a patient consents in my office to do it um to be in this one month study um everything's on their phone there's a QR code uh there's a questionnaire and they get asked the same questions uh two weeks at Baseline two weeks and one month after injection and uh it'll be collected and it'll be independently reviewed and all that so it's it's a it took me a lot of money and over probably a year and a half to get that study uh on I mean to to get going so I have several different clinics um that use a lot of peptides that are really excited to be in this study uh to be a study site yeah you have to you have to team up with someone locally like get team up with a professor a statian at UCF so they can do all the stats and the write up and everything and you just do the clinical work and team up that's what we've done in the past when we have a publication of team came up with a UCF professor and let them I'll do the the data collection and the lit and the lit review but they can do the write up and all the stats and team up with someone I I do it all do you really that's impressive well I'm not a great writer but I have a team of people to correct my grammar but uh any um but is there I mean the thing is it's um yeah it's yeah it's it's that's great that you can do it that way but anyway um yeah it's I I I I don't mind sitting down and writing the paper so yeah so is there anything that you find that peptides or bpc by7 doesn't work on like has it not worked poorly on certain cases certain diagnoses or like autoimmune disease or is there anything that it doesn't work on well bpc will not touch autoimmune um it's not going to reverse um uh I mean I mean if you have a cataract or a big prostate I mean it's it's not going to I mean it will it's primarily muscle skeletal it can help you look a little younger with turning on the fiberblast cells for your collagen it helps heal ulcers and fistulas uh but uh it can help heal leaky gut but it's not going to basically um how about like heart disease does it help restore like endothal or even heart heart disease anything like that um it can help with some circulation but I don't think it's the major thing with that there are other um anyway but it's interesting um you it there is a kind of a product that I like that's not a peptide uh to help with endothal function but um that's this is the product called material sill um a r i have it right here I take it a r t r o s i l and um anyway it's it has a special Japanese seaweed um that's been shown to improve the endothelial glyco calic and uh I have a lot of my patients take that ni it's not a peptide but yeah so what type of patients and diagnosis do you primarily see at your office is it orthopedic slash I getting I have a wide range of surprises that come to see me um actually um I have some ALS difficult patients there Parkinson's uh I have early dementia demented patients that are really doing phenomenal uh we're doing something called therapeutic plasma exchange removing the bat stuff out of their plasma um I mean we we have I I have patients that just want to be healthy get off some of the medicines U so they there don't want to be on Pharmaceuticals and sometimes I can reduce some of them some like a few I can reduce all of it but uh yeah there are um some difficult patients I have but some challenging ones I I can't fix everything but I'm trying I mean always learning I don't know that's awesome I think you're doing some really Innovative stuff and this is some really cool stuff I look forward to meeting you in in person talking on this and kind of seeing what the future is regarding Orthopedics SL rehab and if peptides is that future if not some of the other things let me tell you a funny story about U I was at a meeting uh at Dr Mark Gordon's U I'm teaching peptides in his traumatic brain injury and I actually now Mark Gordon uses peptides but because I the class of well the lecture I did kind of helped him learn all these peptides but there was a retired um let's say colonel from the uh United States Air Force he was at orthopedic surgeon and he was in the back of the class I was talking about some peptides helping the brain work better and I kind of went off tangent I talked about muscle skele issues and how I you know how I helped heal ACL tears and shoulder issues and rotator cuff and he got up and pointed his finger in my face he says damn you you are going to ruin the careers of orthopedic surgeons he was really serious about it and it's like like look I'm not I I think orthopedic surgeons should learn yeah these peptides and give it as an option rather than just give them steroids I mean it's it's just steroids and if that doesn't work it's like okay let's do surgery give them an option of you know like we talk about simple things peptides you know you can for exosomes and that doesn't work then surgery surgery will always be there I mean people will always need surgery and uh the thing is that it's I think people would love their orthopedic surgeon to offer something more than just steroids I agree doing what's best for the patient and not even that can you get him even better faster that's a huge option right there so I mean it's doing what's best he wants to be sick you know and disabled for for a long time well perfect I mean all this stuff was great stuff I know that you have to go we got a we got the fab five questions really quick and then I'll I'll get you out of here so the fat the fab five questions what is your favorite restaurant in Orlando oh that's a tough question um so I'll just say a top of my head um um oh there is the dragonfly um because I love their miso Cod U that's G and the crab fried rice so dragonfly nice there you go that's off of restaurant road down in Dr Phillips right yeah on yeah San Lake Road yeah okay um what book are you reading right now oh interesting I have it right here I am I'm tting my uh son he I'm saying hey why don't you consider um this is a it's it's kind of a cartoon book about biology and uh they the two two women they have some great YouTube videos and uh um it's it's not you know college level but I just wanted him to kind of get the basic steps so I'm quickly going through that one yeah and what is a what's your favorite supplement that you're on right now probably say peptizer bbc7 I think no actually epen e p i t a l o n yes I use Epal that's my favorite pep type nice that's good because I'm also I'm trying to my family has a bad history of heart disease and diabetes so I'm trying to prevent it but I've been put on to the like cacaa and Coco flavanols and looking into some of that stuff too right now so um two more how many hours of sleep do you get a night about eight I'm a six to eer As Long As I get between six to eight I'm doing good I'm functioning good good good good quality sleep if I start getting like four to five I start start dragging by Friday so I'm going stick to sat Saturday morning I may be up at 5: for a bicycle ride and I may do 80 to 100 miles so but then I'll take a nap afterwards but generally I get eight hours of sleep it's just the roads are quieter less traffic yep I'm a morning guide too so what's one thing that you would go back in time and tell your 20y old self oh myself yep uh since it's on podcast I've better not say but anyway maybe at the bar when we meet I'll say but oh let's see instead of going to medical school I'll just become a a landlord and build a nice commercial building so oh there you go you don't have to work so hard yeah yourself it is very interesting the common answer is about Finance of some sort of Finance because we were not taught Finance or managing money or Investments at all in school and undergrad nor even like PT school so that's a very common answer it's some sort of Finance stuff so anyway perfect I know that you have to go thank you again for taking time out of your day much appreciate it we will be in touch and thanks for uh talking talking some pep ties with me sure take care yep you too we'll see you see you bye bye