Peptides 101: What They Are, How They Work, and Which Ones I Take

Join Hot and Fit Over 40: Thrive in perimenopause and keep the weight off for good

Are peptides the future of healing… or just another wellness trend?

What’s the difference between NAD, BPC-157, and GLP-1 medications like Ozempic?

And are peptides actually safer than traditional pharmaceuticals?

In this deep-dive episode, Kristen unpacks everything you’ve been asking about peptides from what they are at a foundational level to how they’re administered and why they’re generating so much buzz in the functional health world.

Tune in to hear:

• What peptides actually are and how they differ from proteins
• Why proton pump inhibitors may damage gut health long term
• How BPC-157 supports injury and gut repair
• What NAD does for mitochondria and energy production
• Why GLP-1 drugs can harm metabolism when overdosed
• The difference between GLP-1, GLP-2, and emerging GLP-3 compounds
• How to think about peptides for perimenopause
• Why delivery method matters more than you think
• The importance of cycling and washout periods

-Quicksilver Scientific Facial Beauty Serum: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/krowell You can get it here with my discount

-Quicksilver Scientific Copper GHK+ Facial Serum w/ Cycloastragenol: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/krowell You can get it here with my discount

-Peak Wellness Peptides: https://peakwellnesspeptides.com/ use discount code GOLDEN

-Peptide University: https://mypeptideuniversity.com/ 

Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@energeticallyefficient

Connect with Kristin:

Work with Kristin: https://energeticallyefficient.com/book-now/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristin_rowell_

Website: https://energeticallyefficient.com/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Talking about all the methods of administration of peptides. You can do intravenous. There might be an intramuscular injection that a doctor could give you. You could do a subcutaneous injection. You could do oral peptides taking a pill. You could do the oral liposomal where you squirt something under your tongue. You could do liposomal where there's a patch. But the one that I forgot to tell you about, which I can't believe because I do use this one. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Energetically Efficient Show. I am your host, Kristen Rowell. And today we are talking about one of my favorite topics, certainly of late, and that is all about peptides. Okay, so I got into peptides several years ago. And if there's one thing that I get questions about, probably more than anything else that I'm doing right now, it's what is my peptide regimen? Why am I doing certain peptides? And more importantly, what are peptides and are they something that I need? So I'm going to talk about peptides here from an overarching 10,000 foot view. I'll get a little bit into the weeds, but I want to make sure that I'm sharing at least kind of all of the basics about peptides. So you can decide for yourself if this is something that you actually want to learn more about or if this just isn't for you right now. So why don't we start with talking about just generally what peptides are? So the way to think about peptides, and this is why I like to contrast them to let's say regular pharmaceutical medications. So with regular pharmaceutical medications, and I'm talking, let's say a cholesterol-lowering medication, or let's say a high blood pressure medication, or let's even say something that's over the counter, like an anti-inflammatory, like an advil. Part of the issue with those kinds of medications, even though they may be beneficial for specific purposes, is they have a systemic effect in the body. So for example, even though an Advil may reduce inflammation when you take it, it also has other downstream consequences, such as it's going to really affect your gut lining and it doesn't do great on your stomach over time, just by way of one simple example. Or if, for example, you are prescribed something like a proton pump inhibitor. And in this category of drugs, I think of things like tagamat, prevaced, those kinds of tamp down the stomach acid drug. There are consequences to that, especially when you stay on them long term, which has never been approved by the FDA, yet doctors still prescribe those things long term, anyways. Do not get me started on that topic. But that will have systemic effects on the body. For example, it's actually going to dramatically harm your gut lining over time. It's going to cause you, in many cases, to have an inability to really manufacture and create your own stomach acid because you become so woefully deficient in stomach acid when you take PPIs for a long time. So that's just two simple examples of systemic issues that may be caused by taking either prescription drug or an over-the-counter drug. And I always need to say this disclaimer at the outset: I am a functional nutritional therapy practitioner. So it'd be out of my scope of practice to ever advise anyone, client or not, to not take pharmaceutical medication that was prescribed to them. I can't interfere with any of your pharmaceutical medication. And I would never try to. But part of what I consider my role to be, especially with my clients, is to help give them ammunition and information and education so that they know what to ask their doctor the next time they go into the clinic, the next time they're prescribed something, for example, the next time the doctor's talking with them about a course of treatment, my clients are more informed, more educated, and more knowledgeable about really what they're supposed to ask. And so I intend to do that with my podcast as well. So if we think about pharmaceutical drugs, like I just mentioned, as far as systemic in the body, peptides are really different because peptides are super specific. This is one of the reasons they are cutting edge science and that we're so excited about them. So they really are, I should say, short chain amino acids. So where we think of proteins, which are long chain amino acids, and you know how much I love protein and talk about protein. And the reason that we eat protein is that we get things like essential amino acids from them. Peptides are simply short-chain amino acids. And many of the peptides our body already produces naturally. Now, there are peptides on the market that are natural peptides. There are peptides on the market that are pharmaceutical peptides, which is part of the reason the topic of peptides gets confusing. But when you think about what they are, I want you to think about them simply as a short chain amino acid as compared with a protein, which is a longer chain amino acid. And so when proteins are large and structural, peptides are short and functional. Think about peptides almost as a key going into a specific lock. And I'll use one example, and I'm going to talk about this peptide a fair amount because it's something that I was introduced to many years ago and I currently am taking. But there's a basic, I'll refer to as quote a gateway peptide. When people get into peptides, they say, Oh, have you heard about the peptide BPC157? Okay. Now, what BPC stands for is body protection compound. So BPC157 is a fantastic peptide for someone who has just recovered from surgery, for someone who's trying to recover from an injury, from someone who has systemic inflammation and is trying to get rid of the inflammation in their body, from someone who, let's say, a woman in perimetopause who's dealing with frozen shoulder. By the way, guys, frozen shoulder is a massive common symptom in perimetopause, if you did not know that. So BPC157 can be used for a variety of different inflammatory conditions in the body because it really acts as a repair molecule or really a repair messenger to say we're deploying the repair molecules over to the site of injury and we're working on it and we're really cleaning it up and we're getting all our tools out and we're gonna heal it, and the person's gonna feel a lot better. So the first person I knew of was a gentleman that I knew at the gym many years ago, and he had found a functional or integrative practitioner who had prescribed him at the time, BPC 157, to help him heal from the use or rather overuse of proton pump inhibitors for many years. So this was a gentleman who was, I'll call a victim of the Western medical system, where sometimes doctors, if they don't know what to do with your indigestion or excess heartburn or those kinds of issues, they'll prescribe PPIs and then they'll keep prescribing PPIs and keep prescribing PPIs because actually this prescription of PPIs often will make the heartburn condition worse because more times than not, and I spent a lot of time studying this in nutritional therapy school, I've talked about this on other podcasts, but more times than not when you have heartburn or when you have indigestion or you have symptoms like that that you would think are caused by too much stomach acid. In other words, you might think that heartburn is too much acid coming up into the esophagus. Actually, that symptom as heartburn is a signal that you don't have enough stomach acid. And then unfortunately, Western medicine is going to provide you or prescribe you a proton pump inhibitor that's going to tamp down that stomach acid even more and get it to the point that you don't have any. And then it creates all this downstream calamity in your body and your digestive system is a mess. So if there's one thing that I want you to take away from this podcast episode, other than just peptides and all the amazingness that they can give us, it's that proton pump inhibitors truly are not to be prescribed for more than a few weeks at a time. That's actually consistent with, I'm pretty sure it's the FDA that has said they're only for two to three weeks at a time, yet there are tons of doctors that prescribe them to people for years, unfortunately. And if you're interested in learning more about that, I'm gonna put a book right up here. It's called Why Stomach Acid is Good For You. And it was written by a really smart Western medicine doctor and a very smart PhD who explained how we got here as a society, why Western medicine doesn't understand this, and why big pharma has really completely corrupted the traditional system so that people think they need PPIs when when they actually oftentimes really truly need more stomach acid. It's very sad. But this book is really good if you want to learn more about that. Okay, so back to peptides. So, in a circumstance where someone had, for example, been prescribed too much proton pump inhibitors and it started to really destroy their gut lining, their esophageal lining had probably been damaged over time, their stomach lining had been damaged over time, it probably was starting to infect their intestinal integrity. They certainly were in a situation where they weren't absorbing their nutrients as well, undoubtedly. And because you don't have enough stomach acid, this person was more likely to get sick more often because your first line of defense against any viruses or pathogens or bacteria or any sort of pathogen coming into your body is stomach acid. Stomach acid is truly your first line of defense, you guys. So if you don't have enough of it, there goes all sorts of alarm bells in your immune system. And we know that our digestive system is very tied to the immune system in terms of how often you get sick. So, body protection compound or BPC157 might be a peptide that someone would be interested in if they were going to try to heal something like a digestive distress gut lining issue. It may be something they might try if they just recovered from ACL surgery. It may be something they might try if they just had any sort of injury or fall or sprained an ankle or anything where they're like, I want to heal faster. And if I can get BPC 157 into my body, I could do that much more quickly. You know, an anti-inflammatory pill like Advil, even if it was prescription Advil or ibuprofen rather, prescription ibuprofen will tamp down the systemic feeling of inflammation. So it might alleviate the pain, but it's not doing anything to actually heal you. So this is why peptide therapy is so exciting, because it's healing molecules going into your body and really getting at the root cause and going to the site of the injury rather than just tamping down the symptom. Okay, so I'll just stay on BPC 157 for a minute because a related topic to this is, and this is something that I want to get into in this podcast. Okay, if I was to take that, Kristen, what are the methods of administration? Or how might I get that in my body? And this is where it gets a little convoluted because there are ever-changing FDA regulations on these things. And of course, I would say with my conspiracy theory brain and my sinister brain, it's because these things actually work to heal people. And sorry to say, but big pharma doesn't really want you to heal. So there's a lot of regulation that comes out. We saw a lot of this during COVID. We saw a lot of noise around the fact that people shouldn't take quote unquote ivermectin when ivermectin is the most prescribed generic drug in the world, and the inventor of ivermectin actually won a Nobel Prize for his invention of it. So there's just a lot of confusing information because people oftentimes believe what they're fed in the mainstream news when really what I am here to share with you is what sort of cutting edge and fun uh additional research and molecules of healing and of cutting edge science could might be available to you. So I bring up the FDA regulations simply because injectable peptides, it goes back and forth as to whether there's something that you can actually get. However, there are other methods of administration, and there's a lot of conflict on the internet as to whether or not these other methods of administration are as effective, maybe more effective, or at least equally effective as injectables. And my answer to that is it truly depends on the peptide. So certain peptides you could take just orally in a pill, and they're gonna do wonders for your body. Certain peptides you can take intranasally, okay? That means you're actually like what people would think of as some kind of nasal spray, you're just gonna ingest them through your nasal cavity. And there are actually certain peptides where that might work better. The delivery mechanism of getting the peptide into your body that way may be better than an actual injection. You also may take peptides liposomally, and it might be an oral liposoma delivery. And so what I mean by that is you might squirt these peptides in a liquid form under your tongue. So that's another way that they may be put into your body. And then there's also peptides coming out in like a patch form. So think of a nicotine patch or something else like that. You know, I always have this on me, which of course isn't a patch, but it is a continuous glucose monitor. So you may have peptides that are delivered that way. So that's a new way in a patch form that peptides may be delivered. So just kind of going back to this, because I want to make sure I summarize for you what the different methods of administration are. And I have some notes here to make sure I didn't miss any of them. So that would be our injection. And I'm gonna talk just for a moment about the subcutaneous injection. This is the one that seems to be very convoluted when it comes to FDA regulations. So one day they're fine. You can do subcutaneous injections, you can get those prescribed, you can get them through a compound pharmacy. And the next day, the FDA seems to be really lobbied by Big Pharma and doesn't want to allow subcutaneous injection peptides to be prescribed or to be allowed by a licensed practitioner. So that's the whole sticky wicket of those. You also could get them intranasally, like I mentioned. You also could take them orally in the form of a pill. You also could do an oral liposomal where you're squirting some kind of liquid under your tongue, and then you also could do them liposomally through a patch. So the two ways that I did not talk about, which I do think also bears mentioned here, is intramuscular injections. So this is something you would really only have done by a licensed practitioner. Nurses are great at intramuscular injections, of course, different doctors. There may be peptides that can be administered that way. And then the other one, which is the way that I first started doing peptides several years ago, is through an IV. Okay. This would be an intravenous, meaning a long drip, like you would get if you go and get a Myers cocktail or some sort of other vitamin IV bag. If you go to an IV center, if you've ever seen people doing that, that would be an IV and you can have peptides administered that way. So now that I'm talking about IV, I want to talk about the initial peptide that I started taking. And this was, I'm pretty sure I started this in 2018, but it might have been 2019. It was sometime before COVID. Doesn't matter. In any event, it was several years ago. And at the time, there was a lot of research coming out about this particular peptide, and I decided that it was something that I wanted to try. So I'm going to talk about this peptide for a little bit, and I'm just going to tell you and warn you that the name is very long, but I know that you've heard of it. And that peptide is called NAD. Now, NAD stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. Long name, doesn't matter. You can just remember NAD. I did my first NAD injection at a clinic in the Twin Cities called Lifespan Integrative Clinic. So again, I was living in Minneapolis at the time. It was several years ago. And the reason I chose to do NAD is I had been doing a lot of research on the at that time through listening to various podcasts and taking various online courses from a lot of different providers. And I was very curious about the molecule of NAD simply for its energy and anti-aging effects. So before I go any further, I just want to tell you what NAD is because a lot of people are confused saying, okay, is that something that, you know, my taking that it's a foreign molecule? Is it something that was drummed up in some sort of lab? The good good answer is no. And what's exciting about NAD is you already have it in your body. Okay. And in fact, if you had no NAD in your body, you would be dead. You have to have NAD to live. So nicotinadenine dinucleotide is a co-enzyme that essentially helps with energy and cellular repair. So it really truly is like an anti-aging molecule. And I think of it in terms of how do I get better cellular health? How do I really improve the strength and condition and just overall health of my mitochondria? How do I have more energy? How do I make sure my brain is working better? How do I make sure my metabolism is humming along at the best pace possible? And so that's really what I was learning about back at the time about NAD. And I thought, I'm gonna go try this. Now, when I did my research, I was like, wait, how long does it take to get this IV? And the answer is you're not gonna believe this, it is a three-hour injection. So my very first NID load that you call it when you get your first NAD IV took three hours, and that's 500, so 500 units of NAD. And forgive me that I can't remember if it's milligrams or micrograms or in any event, whatever the units are that are administered, I had 500 of them going into my body, which takes three hours. If you get a thousand of them, that takes six hours, okay? That's a six-hour injection. And just a quick sidebar on the peptide NAD, for those of you who are curious about it, for those of you who have been affected by or plagued with any sort of addiction, for those of you who have family members or loved ones who have dealt with addiction, NAD is fantastic for overcoming addiction. So actually at the Lifespan Integrative Clinic, where I used to go when I lived in the Twin Cities, and actually I still visit there when I go home, they have an addiction protocol. And this can work for alcohol, this can work for heroin, this can work for cocaine, this can work for all sorts of drug uh rehab. You come in and you get an NAD injection for six hours every single day for two weeks, and people will tell you, I don't even, I'm not even addicted anymore. I don't know what it is about that molecule, but I have no more addiction. So had I known about this when I was married, or had this been something that was a thing back then when I was married, I would have encouraged my uh husband to try it at the time, but it just wasn't something that was known about way back then. So for anyone who's dealing with any sort of family member with addiction, personally with addiction, please, please do your research and see if you can find somewhere that does NAD addiction and treatment recovery because it sounds like it's been very powerful for many families. Okay, that's a sidebar about NAD. So for me, I took NAD, it was a three-hour injection. I will be honest with you, when you get the injection, it doesn't feel great, guys. It just doesn't. While you're getting the IV, I don't know how to describe it other than you sort of feel like you have the flu, which doesn't sound amazing, but I was willing to take that um beating to my body because I knew that what came on the other side of it was going to be increased energy, anti-aging benefits, etc. Cellular repair, mitochondrial health, all of the things that I just mentioned to you. And just by way of some research that I did before I started recording, so NAD, they refer to it as an essential coenzyme found in all living cells. Guys, it's in all living cells, okay? It's in your body. But like many things over the age of 40, hello, I'm there, I'm almost 50. Like most that most things, when we get over the age of 40, the molecules decrease as we age. Obviously, hormones decrease as we age. Obviously, creatine in the body decreases as we age. I've done other podcasts about all this. NAD is one of those molecules. So putting it back into the body is an anti-aging strategy in terms of your mitochondrial health, your energy, overall cellular function, of course. So if people tell you they can take NAD in an oral form, they're lying. You cannot get NAD orally. You can get the precursor to NAD, one of the precursors. So precursors to NAD, in other words, molecules that in theory will help your body make more NAD on its own, are NR, which is nicotinamide riboside or nicotinamide ribose is one of the two. I can't remember if it's riboside or ribose. I think it's riboside, or nicotinamide mononucleotide. So remember, I said nicotinamide adenid dinucleotide? Nicotinamide mononucleotide is a precursor to NAD. So if you see any of these fang dangled supplements out on the market between Elysium basis, true niogen, there's a regen one that I took for a while. I've taken oral NAD before, and I think oral NAD can be effective for people. It's just a lot slower to get your NAD stores up. So what that means is when I did my research back then, I did injections once a week for I believe six weeks. It might have been every other week for six weeks, but I did like four to six injections. I don't remember exactly how many it was. But the reason that I did that is because it was described to me is that it's like jump starting the battery in a car. So you have to, when you jumpstart a battery in a car, you put the cables on. And of course, you start you have the other car started and you rev the gas until the other car is going and you know that it's finally started. And then you take the cables off and then you can drive the car away. So jumpstarting the battery in the car is like the NAD injection. And then once you can drive the car away, that's like taking the oral precursors to NAD. So because I was over 40 when I started the NAD injections, I wanted to make sure that I had all of my NAD stores back up before I started transitioning to the oral form of NAD. So I just want to tell you guys about the story when I took my first NAD injection because it was wild. So, like I said, it's not comfortable. You kind of feel like you have the flu, you kind of feel like you're writhing in pain. It takes the full three hours. You could push it faster than that, but the faster you have the IV go, the more uncomfortable it is. So the way that I always know if I'm getting my NAD stores totally topped off and to the top of where they need to be is I can push the IV a lot faster. So I've done the three-hour injection now in as fast as 45 minutes. And if I can push it in 45 minutes, that tells me my NAD is probably good. I'm probably good. When I'm really depleted on NAD, the three-hour injection takes the full three hours and I'm pretty miserable the entire time. So you might feel like you have diarrhea. You might feel like you have the flu. You might feel like you want to vomit. You might feel really, really nauseous. You might feel like you need to eat something. You might feel just out of sorts. I remember there was a client of mine who walked into the clinic that I was at getting the NAD injection. And I had on my blue light blocking glasses because I just didn't like all the blue light in the clinic at the time. I was in a coat with like my winter clothes on, and I was, I was like this, just like writhing in pain in the chair. She was like, oh my God, Kristen, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, just getting my NAD. I'm miserable. And she thought it was so funny. But here's what's crazy, you guys. The second the IV comes out of your arm, you feel great. You literally feel great. It's just while the NAD is coming into your body because of the way the molecule works in your system. So it's just a really odd thing that I warn people about because it might be uncomfortable while you're getting the NAD injection. It doesn't mean that anything's wrong. And the morning after that I had my first NAD load, I got 500 units of NAD. I got on the treadmill the next morning and I truly felt like someone put a new battery in me. I I can't explain it. I was running at 9.0 miles per hour, feeling like I was running at 6.0 miles per hour. It was so crazy. I the only way I can describe it is I felt like I had a new battery in me. And so if people feel like, oh my gosh, I just have very little energy. I'm so sluggish. I don't know, you know, why I just feel this way. I'm in my 40s. I just, I used to have a lot more energy. NAD might be something that you want to try. So I recommend that you do it through a licensed medical provider. I went to a clinic where it's actually administered. Nurses give it to me, doctors give it to me. And that was the way that I chose to do it. I will say, and people can do their own research. Of course, I'm not a doctor. I can't provide you medical advice, and you're not my client, so I can't give you specific advice for your body. But I would say, based on my own research, I would say that NAD could be contraindicated for certain for someone who has active cancer or for someone who's very concerned that they might have cancer. If I was in that situation, I would not do NAD. And the reason I say that is NAD helps with cellular growth. And so far, the research seems to indicate that it's indiscriminate in terms of which cells grow. So if you have active cancer cells or have active cancer, I don't think NAD would be for you because it could help those cells to grow. And obviously that's not something you want if you have cancer. So just note that about NAD in particular. Now, what I do with NAD, instead of going in and getting an IV all the time, is I might just inject myself with 50 units of NAD at home in a subcutaneous injection right in my abdomen twice per week. So NAD can be easily administered at home. I just do 50 units in like a regular insulin syringe or something like a person with diabetes would use as an insulin syringe. And you can just inject it right yourself. I just do it pretty slowly because otherwise I feel nauseous. So I inject about five or 10 units. I just wait a few seconds. I inject about five or 10 more in the same needle that stays in my skin. And I just do it very slowly so that I don't feel sick after I get that injection. Okay, so that's NAD. So I want to just go back to several points about peptides because I've given you some examples of BPC 157 and I've given you some examples of NAD, but I want to talk just more about overall categories of peptides because I feel like this is where people can get really confused because they think peptides means only GLP1s. And while GLP1s are certainly a category of peptides, in fact, you guys, the P in GLP stands for peptides. So they are peptides. GLP1s are just one category of peptides. BBC157 is not a GLP1, NAD is not a GLP1, but there are GLP1s that I'll talk about as well. And there's a GLP1 in a microdose form that I'm gonna try at some point coming up. It's actually not even, it's it, I guess I'll call it a GLP. I'm not gonna call it a GLP1 because it's a GLP combined with a GIP and one other glucagon type compound, and it's very new on the market. And the FDA is terrified of it because it's really like a mitochondrial support peptide that can really help people heal at a cellular level. And of course, sorry guys, but Big Pharma doesn't want you to heal. It's just facts. Okay, so I'm gonna talk about seven categories of peptides because this will kind of open your mind to think about what are all of the ways in which peptides might be used and how might I consider using them in the future. So repair and recovery is one. And I would put BPC 157 in this category. There are several others in this category, but then there's immune health and healing. So that's another category of peptides. There's energy and performance, and I would put NAD in this category. There's cognitive health and mental performance, which is an interesting category. There are peptides like Celank in that category. In fact, if I was concerned, or if I had any family history of, which fortunately I don't, but if I had family history of Alzheimer's or dementia, I'd be looking very carefully at some of these cognitive performance peptides, and I'd be considering them as an adjunct to all of the other biohacking and longevity tools that I used to avoid Alzheimer's and dementia, which of course are things like not drinking alcohol, getting enough sleep, eating a really well-formulated low carbohydrate lifestyle, maybe even eating a ketogenic lifestyle, engaging in fasting practices, et cetera, just so that I was going to ward off Alzheimer's and dementia. There's also the category, of course, of metabolic health and weight loss, and GLPs would be included in that. There's a whole category of peptides around sexual health, kisspeptin being one of them. Melanitan 2 can be used to increase sex drive, which is fascinating. But melanotan 2 also has a consequence of really tanning your skin a ton. And in fact, I've read stories if you overdo melanitan 2, you truly can like turn purple. And that is not ideal. We do not want to be a smurf. So I would not recommend that people do melanotan too. One of the peptides that I'm taking right now is called melanitan one. And so I'll talk about that one in a little bit. And then category seven would be longevity, anti-aging, and beauty. I also realized as I'm telling you guys this, I always want to make sure that I'm giving you all of the information. One of the things I forgot to say when we were talking about all the methods of administration of peptides. So remember, I said you can do intravenous, so you can get an IV. There might be an intramuscular injection that a doctor could give you. You could do a subcutaneous injection, meaning just sort of in your abdomen, in your butt, in your thigh, wherever you want to do a sub Q injection on your own. You could do oral peptides taking a pill. You could do the oral liposomal where you squirt something under your tongue. You could do liposomal where there's a patch. But the one that I forgot to tell you about, which I can't believe because I do use this one, is topical. And there's one peptide that I very, very, very much recommend in the topical form. And I talked about it in my skin health episode. And that is GHKCU, which is a copper peptide, which is excellent for your skin health. I put that on this morning after I washed my face, and I swear it's one of the peptides that's contributing to just better elasticity in my skin, a dewier look in my skin, and just overall better skin health. So I can't recommend that one enough. I'll make sure I put a link under this podcast episode to the particular one that I use from Quicksilver Scientific because I absolutely love it and I can't say enough about it. And the other thing is, I also am currently injecting GHKCE right now, but I have to be honest, I'm a little concerned, just on my own, about getting too much copper in my body because we never want our copper zinc balance to be so off. So yes, I'm also taking zinc, but you know, just like anything that we take, you guys, just like eating well, just like drinking a lot of water, just like which I have right here, just like drinking a lot of water with electrolytes, whatever, anything that's good for you, you can overdo. And I want to share with you a little story right now because I think this might even be true recently for me of peptides. And this is where I'm going to get into my current peptide stack. And what I mean by that is you're not gonna believe this, but two nights ago, I went to bed at 7.30. Okay, that was a Thursday night. Now, I'm very busy. I'm running two businesses. I have no business going to bed at 7:30. I have too much to do, frankly. And at the same time, I was in this position around seven o'clock where I was like, I mean, I literally could not keep my eyes open. And I thought, well, this is really weird because I'm in one of my phases where I am on coffee. So I had a little bit of caffeine that day, not like a crazy amount, but I had had caffeine. It's not like I'm in my cleanse, I'm not currently detoxing, it's not like I was withdrawing from caffeine. I literally could not keep my eyes open, and I thought I just have to get in bed. So I went to bed, and not only did I go to sleep, but I slept until past my alarm, which went off at five something, and I didn't get up until after six. And I thought, this is crazy. But the worst part about it is because I wear an aura ring, so I track my sleep all the time, I only had 20 minutes of deep sleep, you guys. There is nothing that pisses me off more than sleeping for like 10 hours and only getting 20 minutes of deep sleep. If I sleep for that long, I better, your girl better had two and a half hours of deep sleep. Like literally. So to wake up after going to bed at 7:30 at night and be so tired, I was so angry. And I thought, okay, you just gotta let it go. Move through your feelings about it. You gotta let it go. And you've got a lot to do today. It's a Friday, you've got a lot to get done. Okay, so then Friday, which was yesterday, because today's Saturday, this starts to happen to me again. And I thought, what is going on? It it was 4:30, five o'clock, and I was like, I am so tired right now. I had a meeting on Zoom from 5 to 6:30. I thought about canceling the meeting several times, and I thought, no, you just gotta honor your commitment, go to this meeting. So I go to the meeting, I tell the person I'm meeting with, I just want to warn you, I'm exhausted. I could fall asleep in this chair right now, no idea what's wrong with me. And you know, most people would be like, Oh, Kristen, you're probably sick. I have no metrics of being sick. In fact, my readiness on my aura ring is like, you broke through the roof, call an architect, you're super recovered, you're healthy. Yet I was exhausted. So I say this because last night, meaning Friday night, I'm such a grandma, just wait for it. I went to bed at 6 30. 6 30. When, unless I am like COVID ill, something like that, have I ever gone to bed at 6 30? Never. Couldn't identify it. All of a sudden I wake up and I'm like, oh my God, is it morning time? And I look at my phone, it's 10.19 p.m. I've been asleep. I'm like, well, I guess you're just sleeping the whole night because I was still exhausted. So I sleep until I don't know, 5 a.m. this morning when I was up. And the more frustrating part is, once again, only 20 minutes of sleep. Not happy about it. So I did have coffee this morning because I needed it. And I share all of that with you because either one of two things is going on. This is just my my belief and my intuitive hit about this. Either I'm my body's responding to maybe I'm doing too many peptides right now because this is the latest part of the week, and I did them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So I have not done any today other than my NAD, which I only do twice a week, anyways. So it's either that or it's something going on with the planetary energy because I have a major meditation mastermind coming up tomorrow, and I am so sensitive to energy that my body often engages what we refer to in the spiritual world as pretz. It's like my body knows what's going to happen energetically before we even get there. And that also could be because we have this massive, massive eclipse coming up on February 17th, and my body may be just feeling sensitive to that. But guys, I I can't go on going to bed at 7:30 and 6:30. Like not when I'm running two businesses. It's just not okay. It's not the vibe. So I'm telling you that because even I, who is playing with and experimenting with peptides, may have to just back off again. What I'm going to do because I'm traveling next week is I'm doing a complete washout and I'm not taking any of them. And I think my big takeaway from this, what I would recommend to you is if there's any peptides that you want to play with, just start with one. Like I did way back when I did. Just start with something like NAD. Start with one, start with BPC 157. Maybe you decide to microdose a GLP one. So I'll get into a little bit of that here in the podcast. But I think part of my issue is that I'm doing too much at the same time because I always say one of my defaults in life is go hard or go home. So when I ran my first race, like on the road running, my first race wasn't a 5K. Nope. Wasn't a 10K, wasn't a 10 mile, wasn't even a half marathon. My first race ever getting on the starting line was the Chicago marathon. So that's just kind of how I roll. When I wanted to try plant medicine, okay, I didn't microdose something, I didn't just dabble. I went down to the Costa Rican junkle and did ayahuasca three times in one week. So I just am wired to say go all in in the deep end of the pool, or don't do it at all. And so I'm just sharing this with you because when it comes to peptides, don't do what I do that did this last week, which was to take too many. And I'll just tell you what I took. So this week, I took each day Monday through Friday, probably too much. I took a BBC 157, TB500 combo. Now I will say BBC 157 should be taken every day. It's an everyday peptide, five days on, two days off, five days on, two days off. And you might do an eight-week cycle of that. But TB500 really should only be taken once or twice a week tops. And since I have the blend, I was like, well, I can just take it every day. Probably not the right move. Okay. Then I took Melanitan one because I'm like, let's just see if we can get this Norwegian skin a little tanner. So I just thought I'd try it. That one I think is fine. I took the GHKCU, the copper. So I'm like, okay, is this a signal that maybe because I'm doing the topical on my skin as well, that I got too much copper? So I'm in that inquiry. I also took KPV, which is another anti-inflammatory peptide. And part of my issue here is I have this nagging glute maximus piriformis issue that I am really desiring to heal. I'm doing chiropractic care, I'm doing PT, I'm doing energy work on it, I'm doing all sorts of things because I want to get back to longer running this year. And so I thought maybe if I do some of these anti-inflammatory peptides, I can really bring down the inflammation in my glute maximus and my piriformis. So that's part of my intention. And then I feel like there was one other one that I didn't mention. Let me just count. It's five melanotan, G H K C U, VPC 157, and TB500, um, KPV. Oh my god. Oh, Mot C M O T S C. That's an energy one for the morning. So I tried to take these in the morning. That's why I was so confused about being tired. And then I do NAD Tice a week. And then I purchased this other one that I will do a whole podcast episode about you guys, because this molecule I am so excited about. But it's also scary because the FDA is very scared of it. And so they're trying to not allow it to be on the market. I've gotten my hands on some because I'm an affiliate for some peptide companies and I trust these peptide companies. I'll put information about them under this podcast. But I was able to order some that I'm going to reconstitute for myself at home and try this particular peptide that is in the GLP1 category that I promise I'm going to talk about in a little bit. So I just want to go over those seven categories again, just as a reminder. And I'm reading from my little notes here, which are repair and recovery, category one, immune health and healing, category two, energy and performance, category three, cognitive health and mental performance, category four, metabolic health and weight loss, category five, sexual health, which is category six. Sorry, I did my fingers wrong, and longevity, anti-aging, and beauty, which is category seven. So all of those are different categories of peptides. And I recommend that people usually just start with one, as evidenced by what I've had the last week with all of this exhaustion. And I'm tying it to either my peptide stack or the energy. And I'm just going to do a washout next week and see if that goes away. So in the repair and recovery peptides, I mentioned the BPC157. Uh, GHKCU would also be considered in that category, which is interesting, the copper peptide, but I would consider that more for like the skin health and then the TB500, which I mentioned. That KPV, which I mentioned, is an immune health and healing peptide, along, of course, with BPC157. Energy and performance peptides would be MOTS C, which is that energizing one that I'm taking. And then another one, and I should mention this, I haven't talked about this peptide yet. I did some research a handful of years ago. This was well after I started taking NAD. And I thought, and you guys are gonna laugh because you're like, Kristen, you are the last person on earth who needs a peptide to help you build muscle. I agree, guys. I agree. But I thought, okay, I always like to do stuff on my own body as an experiment. And what if this is something my clients are interested in taking? And I was at the time having several different men who were hiring me who were curious about some of these peptides. And I thought, okay, well, I'll just get the one that kind of is sold to women and try it. And it's a combination of something called CJC1295 and ipamarelin. So CJC1295 helps with human growth hormone, which is part of the reason it helps build muscle faster and ipamarelin as well. And they say if you take that combo, it can help with fat reduction, it can help with muscle building. I was sort of starting in the thick of my perimenopause journey, because this is a few years ago now, and I was like, okay, I'll try it. So I bought it. I did the bacterostatic water, figured out how to do it. And one of the benefits of this peptide is when you take it, you take it at night, and you literally within five minutes are like, I mean, you just you get knocked out. So I probably need this peptide again. So I actually could get some real deep sleep since I'm not getting it right now. However, this peptide, I guys, I did it for maybe four days because I was so hungry. It was horrible. I was like, I'm gonna eat myself into like my 600-pound life because it made me so hungry. Not what I want, not the vibe, not what I need. So this is why I tell people like, do your research or work with a provider who can actually get you peptides from a compounding pharmacy or who can hold your hand and help you with respect to the incredibly complex, sticky wicket of peptides online. I'm not gonna go into all the details of how you can get peptides online in this particular podcast. Number one, because I talk about that in some of my higher-level programs. And number two, because it's way too detailed to go into in this. And number three, because of the changing FDA regulations, it's just not something I want to put out there and have a risk of being shadow banned because it's not, that's not interesting to me. So I will talk about that in my upcoming course, which is called Hot and Fit AF Over 40. And we start that in the spring here in the next month or so. So if you want more information about that, you can click on the link below this video. But more importantly, if you want to join my free masterclass that's on February 24th, I would love to have you for that. And that is the um top three mistakes that I see women make in perimenopause and how you can stop making those mistakes and turn your body into a fat-burning machine. So I'll put a link to the free masterclass underneath this video as well, where we'll dive all into perimenopausal mistakes. I want to transition now into the metabolic health and weight loss peptides because it's probably why you guys are all here. Everyone wants to learn about GLP1s. Everyone wants to understand what are these molecules, what do you think about Ozembic? What do you think about Monjaro? What do you think about WayGovi, et cetera, et cetera? And I'll say that my opinion on these molecules has changed as I've learned more information. So I will say that I am not a fan and do not support and do not like Ozembic as a drug, pharmaceutical drug. I do not like WaGovy, Monjaro as drugs, the pharmaceutical drugs. And the reason I say that is they are, in my opinion, extreme overdoses of the molecule that they are comprised of. So semaglutide is the molecule that makes Ozempic. Big pharma cannot patent semaglutide. Okay, it's a peptide that's not patentable. This is why the con there's so much controversy around bioidentical hormone therapy because big pharma can't patent estrogen. They can't patent testosterone, they can't patent progesterone. Those are bioidentical hormones in your body. So if you want to get those, when you start taking hormone replacement therapy like me, you have to go to a compounding pharmacy that'll make those particular compounds for you in a certain dosage so that you can ingest them or apply them into your body topically or injectably or however it is that you take them. So peptides are the same way. So what did Novo Nordists come out with when they came out with Ozempic? They just patented the administration device, meaning the pen and the actual dose, so that they could make millions, if not billions, of dollars on this particular drug. But what's happening is it's causing damage to people's bodies over time for two primary reasons. The number one is if these patients are not strength training or eating adequate amounts of protein. And I've heard horror stories from some of uh people on Ozempic where they're like, I get fully eating two peanuts. You know, it's just not enough food to be able to feed your metabolism. So your body is naturally going to strip away all of its muscle. And then you're really in a, I'd say, diseased state because you don't have enough lean muscle tissue on your body to be able to age well, build you, you would also can't build bone, and you've really tanked your metabolism. So now, if you used to have a resting metabolic rate, I'll just say for an average woman, if your resting metabolic rate was, let's say 1400 calories a day, now because the use of Ozempic and stripping off so much of your lean muscle tissue, your resting metabolic rate is probably like a thousand calories a day or 900 calories a day, meaning you will gain weight far more easily when you eat normally now because your resting metabolic rate has gotten so low. So this is why I get so concerned about those medications, because they are an overdose of the actual medication, which causes a loss of muscle and a loss of bone. The second reason I get concerned about those is because they do cause effectively a paralysis of sorts of the digestive system. They really slow gastric emptying and the transit time, which sounds like it might be a pretty innocuous thing, but you guys know I am all about detoxification. And how is one of the primary ways we detox through our feces. When our fecal matter, when our bowel movements move through our large intestine and out the body, we want those to move through our intestines in a certain period of time so that the toxic, toxic sludge in our fecal matter isn't reabsorbed by that organ, or you're just becoming twice as toxic as you were before you got rid of it. So my concern with the overdosing of these medications is that it causes people to say, okay, now I don't even have a bowel movement every day. Now I'm not evacuating my bowels as regularly as I should be, which is terrible for your health. So from my perspective, semaglutide is not the problem. Ozempic is. And so semaglutide can be microdosed. You can do a very, very small amount of semaglutide through a compounding pharmacy or through various places online where you can get it if you learn more about reconstitution and how to do this through a provider. And I talk more about this in my higher-level courses, but you can microdose that particular compound and have anti-inflammatory benefits, reduction in food noise, eating less so you can spur a little bit of weight loss. Still have enough of an appetite to eat your protein, still have enough of an appetite to be able to build bone. And then, and then obviously you have to be um strength training with that in order to build bone and to build muscle, but it's not this extreme weight loss that results in a lot of muscle loss. So semaglutide. Is considered GLP1. The second compound, again, this is in the Mongiaro Wagovi category, I believe both Monjaro and Wagovy, it might be one of those. Forgive me. But the compound that they use is trzepatide. Okay, again, it's an overdose of that compound. But we consider trzepatide to be something called GLP2. So where semaglutide is GLP1, trzepatide is GLP2. And all that means is that semaglutide is a single agonist, and trzepatide is a double agonist. It means it's a GLP and a GIP. So not only is it glucagon-like peptide, but I want to say that the GIP, and I'm going to double check this, I think it's glu is it glucagon-inducing peptide? I'll look for it after this and I'll put it under the video. But in any event, it's a combination of a GLP and a GIP. Okay. So that's what we call trzepatide GLP2. That I actually have used now with a couple of clients to see if just microdosing a small amount can help not only with food noise and with a little appetite suppression, but also just in terms of this boost in their metabolism to help accelerate fat loss a little bit further. And I'm specifically only using this with a couple of my clients who are women in perimenopause because I wanted to try it with them. I haven't tried this with any male clients yet. I'm talking to a couple of male clients about it, but I wanted to try it with women in perimenopause because I do think that a cycle of a peptide like this that you use in, let's say, an eight-week cycle, can be very beneficial for inflammation reduction, for reduction of food noise, and for getting you through what can be a very confusing and difficult time of life, which is perimenopause. I'm not saying every woman needs this. I'm not saying every woman should take this, but I do think in certain circumstances it can be very beneficial. And then the third um GLP, let's call it, in terms of this category of metabolic health and weight loss, I mentioned there were three of them. So it's semaglutide is GLP1, terzepatide is GLP2, and then this new GLP3, or what we're calling GLP3, is the one I just personally ordered. And I'm going to try at some point, and I'll talk all about it online because I want to be transparent with you guys, is something called reteratride or retatutride. The nickname is RETA, R-E-T-A. And there is a lot of controversy about this particular peptide right now. Number one, because it has not been FDA approved yet. And I think that has less to do with the fact that it's good for you than more to do with the fact that Big Pharma is terrified of this because if a lot of people took it, it could really, really heal people. They're saying that it could have effects as good as like preventing against cancers, causing fat loss, helping with muscle building, warding off dementia. Like they're saying it could have so many downstream benefits in the body that it sounds like it's going to be a really controversial thing to bring to market. But I was able to get my hands on some and I just want to try it and then report publicly what I'm noticing. Do I notice a reduction in food noise? Do I notice that I have more energy? Do I notice anything else in terms of my metabolic health, my um cravings, my fat loss, my muscle gain, anything like that? Do I notice I'm stronger in the gym? What is it that I'm noticing? And do I notice a different um gain with mitochondrial health? So I will report back to you guys once I start that. I don't think it's going to be for a while yet because I just want to do a little bit more research about it. And I don't want to just blindly take something and not really understand what I'm getting myself into. I will also say when it comes to the injectable peptides, which that would be one of them, a lot of people are scared to do injectables on their own at home. And to be perfectly honest with you, the FDA has sort of banned a lot of these as injectables. So you either need to get injectable peptides through a practitioner who can compound them for you. And I have resources, of course, that way, or you have to be really, and I'll say it, it's only in a research laboratory setting that these peptides are to be used. So even if you were to go and now, under the current uh guidelines, if you were going to buy peptides online, you actually are agreeing that you are not gonna inject them in humans, that they're for research purposes only. So research peptides is really the only thing that's available in an injectable form if you're just buying them online and not getting through a licensed practitioner. So there are still ways to get them. They just have to be done through a licensed practitioner instead of online. So hopefully that makes sense. I know that can be confusing uh because the guides are ever changing. So I get a lot of my uh education about peptides is because I last year in 2025, I joined peptide university and it's really put on by some of the best clinicians who are using peptides in their practice, who want to learn more about peptides, who want to understand how they could use them in their patient population, how certain GLP ones can be microdosed, how they might consider some of these cognitive enhancement peptides for patients who are worried about Alzheimer's, worried about dementia. There's there's peptides that can be used to support and minimize symptoms, for example, of ADHD or other things like that that people are dealing with from a brain health standpoint. So I basically want to conclude this podcast by saying that there is no shortage of ways that we can use peptides. There are so many different categories of them. And as more uh comes out in terms of what is available in the general public, I'm really hoping that these restrictions right now on Reteriatride don't last very long and that this is something that people are going to be able to do because if I have uh good luck with it or good results with it or feel really good taking it, then it's something that I'm gonna want to encourage others to do if that's something that is allowed. And so I uh will leave it at that for you today. I hope that this has been informative. I hope that you've learned something about peptides. I will share more about my personal stack as I change it going forward, because if you follow me on Instagram, I've shared a little bit about my peptide stack on there before, but I'm gonna be changing that up in the next few weeks here and we'll let you guys know as I do that. So if you have questions about it, please put them below this video. I'm happy to do a peptide episode part two for people who have more questions. And until then, thank you for being here. Thank you for watching the energetically efficient show. And until next time, bye bye.