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Women's Health, Hormones, Peptides, NAD and More! w/ Dr Amber Krogsrud - Connecting Minds Podcast Ep21
199 Plays4 years ago
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mwJTZRLlLoE
Get this episode on your favourite podcast player here: https://christianyordanov.com/21-dr-amber-krogsrud/
On this episode of the Connecting Minds podcast we welcome Dr Amber Krogsrud.
She shares a TON of her insights on women’s health and using peptides and other supplements such as NAD to address health issues and optimize wellness.
This episode is obviously super-informative for women but is also essential listening for guys who have women in their lives and they care about their health!
Links to Dr Amber’s resources and social media:
Free Peptide Playbook PDF: https://www.peptideplaybook.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/doctorambernd/
https://www.instagram.com/peptide.rx/
Facebook PeptideRx group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/peptiderx
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctorambernd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-W8bUg4xyYgRYN-S0EvFvA?view_as=subscriber
Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctorambernd
If you like this episode, you may also like:
You NEED to Know About Peptides! w/ Jean-Francois Tremblay - Ep19:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEIhnSLemug
Audio: https://christianyordanov.com/19-jean-francois-tremblay/
Mental Well-Being and Functional Health w/ Brendan Vermiere - Ep03:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua_lAa5crjg&ab_
Audio: https://christianyordanov.com/03-brendan-vermiere/
Links to Christian’s book and social media:
My first book Autism Wellbeing Plan: How to Get Your Child Healthy - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084GBBDL9
Website: https://christianyordanov.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/christian_yorda
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBu5V9XLVnr-Mlh8etxiG4w
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristianYordanovCoach
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christian_yordanov/
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Connecting Minds podcast. My name is Christian Jordonov, your host. Thank you so much for joining me today. On this 21st episode of the podcast, I have a conversation that I'm going to share with you with Dr. Amber Krogsrud. She is an expert in women's health and she shares a ton of insights on this episode related to
00:00:25
Speaker
women's health issues in general, how to use peptides, which is something I'm very excited about recently, to address those health concerns and to optimize health. We also discuss other important things related to health, mitochondrial function hormones. We discuss supplementation, including a great supplement called NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, which can do amazing things in the body.
00:00:54
Speaker
So I think this episode is not just essential listening for women who care about their health, but I think if you're a guy that has women in his life and you care about their health, it's always good to learn a little bit more, do a bit more research how to keep the women in your life that you love healthy. This is why I really enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Krogsrud and
00:01:20
Speaker
will certainly be applying some of her advice and insights as much as I can. I really hope that you find this episode informative and interesting like I did. Let me know how you like it. Don't forget you can watch the interview on YouTube. And finally, please share this episode with a friend or a loved one if you think it may be useful to them. Once again, thank you so much for joining me on the Connecting Minds podcast.
00:01:47
Speaker
I really appreciate you investing your time and without further ado, here is Dr. Amber Krogsrud. Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place.
Hormone Issues and Peptide Therapy
00:02:17
Speaker
These thought provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons. So come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov. Today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we have Dr. Amber Krogsrud. Amber, thank you so much for joining us today. Awesome. It's good to be here. Thank you, Christian.
00:02:44
Speaker
So the topic of today's conversation will be women's hormones and peptide therapy. So there's a lot of ground to cover, but I thought just to, you know, we'll probably appeal more to the female audience. So let's start by setting a little bit of context. What are some of the most common hormone dysregulation issues that you see in your practice and what are some of the factors that cause or contribute to them?
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's a broad question, but we can dive in in terms of a lot of the women that I see. So I'd say one of the larger populations that I see right now is autoimmunity. It's a lot of women with autoimmune conditions. Even there's actually a risk of post-viral load from COVID or any other virus that you can have a higher risk of some autoimmune activity in the body.
00:03:42
Speaker
essentially the immune system begins to attack self-tissue instead of foreign pathogen. So that's a big one for women, especially with periods of time in their life where they're going through massive hormonal changes.
00:03:56
Speaker
I also see a lot of women with PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and typically those women, there's a lot of environmental factors, potentially hormone exposure from plastics, from the environment, really cleaning up their environment is important.
00:04:16
Speaker
And then I also work with a lot of women who are on birth control, getting off of birth control, women who are going into menopause and having a slew of symptoms, a lot of insomnia, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, a lot of chronic fatigue that I see in women related to hormones. So we're tracing that back to, you know, what's really going on inside the cell? How can we support this woman and her body to
00:04:46
Speaker
function appropriately and that's really where the peptides get really exciting and are the forefront of medicine for addressing these sorts of disorders, these sorts of symptoms in a way that is actually helping the cell to function better. You can talk more about that.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, so cool. I was going to hold off before getting to the peptides, but let's get straight into the peptides. I think most folks right now don't know about peptides, at least whomever I speak to so far is not aware. So can you give our listeners a little bit of an overview of what peptides are and how you use them in your practice to help out your patient population?
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So there are some fairly new piece of medicine. So there's probably a lot of people who haven't heard about it. And essentially, we use these peptides in medicine. Most people have probably heard the word peptide from their collagen peptide supplement, maybe their skincare product that has some peptides in it. Some of the hair loss treatments do as well.
00:05:55
Speaker
And so that's probably where most people have heard that word peptide before. But essentially what a peptide is, your body uses a lot of signaling. 24-7, 365, we're using hormones and peptides to signal different processes in the body. We want to either build or break down. We want to digest our food. We want to utilize that to build other tissues. So what happens when you eat a piece of protein
00:06:25
Speaker
say a piece of chicken, that's a protein that breaks down into all these peptides, which are just chains of amino acids. So you can think about boxcars in a train that are all connected, and those are all amino acids. So we have any different number of combinations of amino acids that we can make, different chain lengths that can produce a different signal in the body.
00:06:53
Speaker
And that's essentially what peptides do. They signal different pathways in the body. So we can use these for signaling a healthy immune response, which is really relevant right now. We can use them for signaling some of these repair hormones when somebody's injured, when they just got in a car accident, when they come on a surgery, when they got on a bike accident. We can use some of these peptides to help their body repair faster.
00:07:23
Speaker
We can also use some of these peptides to turn back the clock a little bit. We can boost things like growth hormone, boost some of these chemicals in the brain that help us learn. With memory BDNF, we have peptides that are intranasal form that can help with cognitive performance. So there's really, I'd say there's probably a peptide that addresses almost any concern or relates to specific tissue that we're trying to
00:07:51
Speaker
help to function better and to help the cell to, we're really working on cellular efficiency, helping the cell to work better when it is under stress, under pressure, under viral load. So yeah, quite a broad explanation, but there's a lot of uses for these peptides.
00:08:12
Speaker
So, how do you, let's say you have a patient come in, let's say, post-menopausal, let's say you do a comprehensive hormone test like the Dutch, and let's say all of her estrogens are, for example, very low, maybe close to the bottom of the post-menopausal range or even lower than that. How would peptides
00:08:38
Speaker
compliment the overall protocol you would prescribe to that lady. Great question. Yeah. And I'd love the Dutch test. It's great that you know about the Dutch test. Yeah, I love it as well. Yeah. So peptides work really great in tandem with bioidentical hormones. In fact, peptides are very bioidentical because your body makes all the peptides that we utilize therapeutically. They just are in decreased levels. So
00:09:06
Speaker
Yes, for brain and hormone tests, we find out what the hormone levels are, looking at estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, rhythm, cortisol curve, and seeing what's happening there. So that's really pillar one. Testing gut function, all of the basics.
00:09:23
Speaker
And then once that's optimized, then we can add in, I would say pillar two is adding in things that can boost our repair capacity, boost, uh, regeneration of skin collagen as we age, boosting, uh, hair. A lot of women complain of hair thinning with age or graying. And so there's definitely some things that we can help the cell to repair and regenerate, to really create those healthy tissues. So.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, we always look at the hormones first and assess what's happening there. There are some peptides that can be used very strategically for fertility. They can boost the signaling in the brain, so that pituitary gland, which is the master control of all of our hormones.
00:10:14
Speaker
It can help improve the function of that. For men, we can use this peptide called gonadirelin. We also use that in women, sometimes for fertility, but it signals that pituitary, it signals LH in a woman that we're trying to promote conception or who wants to have a
Peptides for Sleep and Hormone Regulation
00:10:35
Speaker
baby. So there's definitely options that can be really helpful in that process, yeah.
00:10:42
Speaker
Actually, can we segue for a second about fertility? I know the question asked was about a postmenopausal woman, but so gonadorelin, what other peptides would you use if a client came to you or a patient came to you wanting to either reverse infertility or boost fertility prior to conception?
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a combination of peptides called CJC1295 and ipamerylline, and those two are often combined because they're more effective together than they are apart. And so they do improve IGF-1 levels, not above what your body can produce, but they do optimize what your body can produce. And we know that there's
00:11:31
Speaker
better fertility outcomes when your IGF-1 is at a sufficient level versus really low. So that's one thing that can decrease as we age with stress, especially as women get closer to 40, their IGF-1 level will drop substantially. It's really a challenge, too, when a woman has an existing autoimmune condition.
00:11:54
Speaker
right, autoimmune thyroid or any sort of autoimmune issue that's going on and she's trying to get pregnant. It's a whole different consideration. So we might add in a peptide that helps with that immune regulation component before she conceives. So, and how that would work is it's going to not be an immune boost and throw her immune responses through the roof, but really,
00:12:21
Speaker
regulate and modulate what's happening. So produce the appropriate amount of T cells and B cells that recognize pathogen and spare the self. They don't attack their own thyroid. They don't attack their own GI lining or tissue. So in a woman without immunity, looking for fertility, we're going to really address immunity. That's a huge piece. So really
00:12:46
Speaker
It's very specific to the woman, her concerns, what's happening in the body at that time. There's other amazing nutrients, things that we can use like DAGA, N-acetylcysteine, glutathione, zinc, selenium, these fundamental nutrients that you need to conceive as well.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, actually I did want to ask you about how would you use DHEA? Would you just use it as a, let's say if hormones were low, you add that and just as a, you know, the body will then know whether it wants to convert it to estrogens or testosterone. Is that kind of the reasoning behind DHEA? Yeah, so you can test the DHEA level. It's a precursor to testosterone.
00:13:40
Speaker
It's not for use in everyone, but we refer to it as kind of an anti-aging hormone. And women who are low in that, especially going into menopause, their brain tends to age faster. They experience more decline. Sleep can be an issue.
00:13:59
Speaker
DHEA is just an overall, it's kind of a, it'll turn into testosterone, it'll turn into other metabolites, like on the Dutch test, but it's not to be used in everyone in a fertility situation where testing those hormone levels, DHEA included, and optimizing that if it's not at the appropriate level.
00:14:20
Speaker
And what would you, so let's say you see a woman in her mid-20s, let's say early 30s, and you see low testosterone there. Would DHEA be the first sport of call? What would you make of that test result and what would be like some potential ways you would treat that? Yeah. So I like to start with, depending on how low it is,
00:14:50
Speaker
I like to start with some botanical options that are a little bit lower, usually cost point, easier intervention to add in things like mocha. We can add in an herbal blend that will boost their testosterone levels. Adding in more protein, some of those healthy amino acids, getting them weight training, getting them sleeping through the nights, a lot of those fundamental pillars.
00:15:19
Speaker
We can also use something like an Adorelin in a woman to boost testosterone. If she's very low, we can boost that. The, the trend that I do see quite often in younger women is that they're having higher testosterone levels than ever. And men in their twenties and thirties are having lower testosterone levels than ever. So PCOS usually has that high testosterone picture.
00:15:47
Speaker
but women in their fifties and sixties, often they drop off and testosterone is the age. So that's really a concern for them is how can we, sometimes it's bioidentical testosterone if we're really low and we're headed into menopause. And if it's a younger woman, typically I go the botanical route or we'll add in some sort of peptide in a low dose.
00:16:08
Speaker
But I think it's safe to assume that before you do that or concurrently, you really focus on improving sleep, improving the diet, reducing toxic exposure, supplementing things like that, correct?
Sourcing and Availability of Peptides
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah. One of the really critical things that some of these peptide therapies address is, for example, the peptides that boost that growth hormone response.
00:16:37
Speaker
We take them fast at night. And what happens is that most women, many women have insomnia or difficult sleeping through the night. And we can introduce something like that. CJC, hypermorellin peptide, they get deep Delta wave sleep, restorative, reparative sleep. That's when hormones regulate your body can make them more effectively. So,
00:17:04
Speaker
Typically the picture of high chronic stress sleep deprivation is a downhill for most women's hormones, natural production of hormones. So of course we need to make sure that we can help them cope with stress, that elevated cortisol response. And then if we can get them sleeping really deep through the night, we know that their hormones are gonna be made more efficiently as a result.
00:17:30
Speaker
Is there a place for that DSIP deep sleep or their Delta sleep inducing peptide or would that be like a short term strategy? Yeah. Yeah. I actually just did a post about this today. So the DSIP has a lot of benefits. I use that in, and this is less relevant now, but before COVID I had quite a few people who were doing this international trips from United States to Asia and back and switching time zones.
00:17:58
Speaker
And DSIP is really phenomenal at adjusting that circadian rhythm. Yeah, it also has some other protective effects, so it can lower some inflammatory levels. It can help with the cortisol response in the body.
00:18:15
Speaker
That's a big piece in actually regulating the circadian rhythm or the sleep cycles. When is that cortisol spiking? We want it to be in the morning and not later on in the day. One big problem with the peptides and what I noticed, I was on your website before,
00:18:35
Speaker
We started a call and I saw that you actually have, you carry a few different peptides that are in the oral tablet form. A big problem with peptides is that most of them seem to be, first of all, you need to inject them subcutaneously, but a lot of them are only sold for research. How do you source your peptides? Is this going to improve for folks out there? What's your take?
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah. That's also a very timely question. So there is, uh, I only use compounding pharmacies to source the peptides. It takes about a half a million dollar machine to actually test them. So they have to make them test them and then ship them out to individual. So it's a prescription, right? To send that out.
00:19:27
Speaker
you work with a practitioner, but there is a huge black market for peptides. There are, you know, on these online distributors. A lot of them are shipped in from China or other countries where they've been sitting on a shelf and they're not tested appropriately. But that is oftentimes somebody's first introduction to peptides is finding them at an online retailer. Nothing wrong with that. But there is a kind of a quality issue there. So,
00:19:55
Speaker
So yeah, that is changing in terms of regulation. The FDA in March of this year of 2020 changed some of the regulation on many of these peptides and where they can be produced, turned a few of them into biologic drugs so that they can even be produced by a compounding pharmacy. And so yeah, that's the main thing is we really want to source them through somewhere we know
00:20:24
Speaker
what we're injecting into our body. I know you and I really pay attention to what we put in our body, food and supplements, sleep. And so same applies with anything that you inject into your body. You want to make sure that it's not going to be a not effective. Cause I have seen that some of the ones that are bought online may not be as effective. Um, but also you don't want to have a situation of
00:20:53
Speaker
infection or sepsis trying to do it from home. Yeah. Yeah. Well, to be, to be, see, this is one thing I, I'm not even sure if there's any compounding pharmacies in Europe. Do you know of any, or because I just can't seem to find any. Yeah, that's a good question. That is the big problem. And I've had clients from other countries reach out to me about where can I get these in my country?
00:21:20
Speaker
And the issue is sourcing. And I think that'll begin to change. It's fascinating because the whole peptide industry actually started in Europe. That's where a lot of their research happened in Russia. A lot of these athletes were using them for performance. And that's why they were winning all these competitions because their performance was so much better. So back in the 1980s, there was a lot of research in Russia. And even in Europe, Germany, on a lot of these peptides,
00:21:49
Speaker
dates back to then for athletic performance. And then we realized, oh, they do have some other benefit therapeutic use. And we've since done research and a lot of these other using them for fertility, using them for deepening sleep, improving longevity.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah. You see, that's the thing. I'm a little bit, how do I say, a biohacker. I'm not too risk averse. So I found what I think is the best company in the UK and I got some, to be perfectly honest, I got some research grade peptides. I would never recommend anyone listening to this or a client of mine or a family member or a friend. I'd never recommend them to do that.
00:22:32
Speaker
But I'm a little bit out there and I don't want to do it though. That's the thing I would love to... The problem with ordering stuff from the States is you have to pay import duty and they can get held up with customs and with peptides, ideally you want them frozen as quickly as possible and stuff like that.
00:22:52
Speaker
I would love maybe keep in touch if you learn of any developments in Europe or in the USA. If we can find a way to kind of get them over to Europe, I'd love to kind of collaborate there because I'm sure there's a lot of people that could benefit. Yeah, I agree. I think the sourcing is the concern and I'm working on a couple other developments and
00:23:16
Speaker
other countries to improve that.
Dr. Krogsrud's Personal Experience with Peptides
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing. I also saw you have NAD patches on you carry them and we can talk about that a bit later. But I just realized that I'm a little bit absent minded today.
00:23:32
Speaker
I realized, I didn't really ask you, what was your kind of experience, your story with peptides? I know I saw your talk on the Peptide Summit and you were talking about how you got CJC and Ipamorrelin, that was kind of your first four. Can you tell the listeners what was your experience with these peptides? I know these growth hormone releasing peptides, they can do a lot of amazing things for a person of any age. So maybe can you give the listeners
00:23:59
Speaker
what your experience was and why you were so passionate about them. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a valuable story to include. So I'll talk about the CJC hypermorellin, but I really want to go back to the time that I was very sick and when I used the peptides to restore me back to health. So this was towards the end of my training in medical school and
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah. It says around the time I was taking medical boards and I had pretty severe brain fog. I had a lot of skin issues. I had eczema as a kid, but it resurfaced due to 12 years of chronic stress. I had gut issues. Um, yeah, the brain fog was probably the worst because when your livelihood revolves around your brain function, it's a scary thing when you can't think and plan.
00:24:54
Speaker
And so I actually, I did some lab testing and I found out I had a Candida gut infection, which is a very common thing to happen as well. And a lot of individuals with chronic eczema and psoriasis, oftentimes they do have
00:25:11
Speaker
some sort of candy to overgrowth or gut overgrowth and they don't know that that's driving the skin issue. So I figured that out and I used a lot of natural medicine, gut restore protocols, leaky gut protocols, detoxing, sauna, kill, bind, sweat protocols. And I actually,
00:25:36
Speaker
I made some progress, but it wasn't until I found the peptides that I made leaps and bounds of progress.
NAD for Mitochondrial Health
00:25:42
Speaker
So I did three different peptides in a row. One was called LL37, which is actually researched to wake up the immune surveillance and kick Candida albicans out of the gut. Very successful for that.
00:25:56
Speaker
And then I used another peptide, which we mentioned called thymus and alpha, which is an immune regulator. I had really low immune surveillance in the gut, like nothing was happening. So I had to support my immune system so that it could respond and kick out the bad guy. And then what was the other one? Then I used LDN, which is called low dose, low dose naltrexone by another name.
00:26:22
Speaker
And that's also an immune regulator. So I like to use LDN or thymus and alpha. The other amazing thing that happened for me is I was down to eating very few foods. Everything would flare and trigger me at a lot of food sensitivities because of all the stuff that was happening in my gut, a lot of histamine responses. My immune system is out of whack, responding to everything I ate.
00:26:46
Speaker
The peptide protocol, those three in a row, my food sensitivities completely disappeared. That's amazing. Yeah. And so, and the skin, my skin cleared up, my gut cleared up, my brain function improved dramatically. And it was the peptides that really moved the needle for me in terms of reversing all of that. How long ago was that? That was about two and a half years ago.
00:27:14
Speaker
No, yeah, so that was fairly recently. And yeah, and so that was the major turning point. The other piece that really helped with the adrenal fatigue post-med school was working on mitochondria and using NAD and some of these therapies that support brain health and restoring our body's ability to make cortisol in appropriate amounts. That was also a game changer for me after sleepless nights and a lot of stress
00:27:43
Speaker
Fatigue. Yeah, good segue into the... Okay, let's kind of go down a little rabbit hole here. So can you explain to folks what NAD is? And maybe there's NR, nicotinamide riboside, there's NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide,
00:28:04
Speaker
And can you explain folks what is NAD and these two NR and NMN, these supplements, what can they do and what are the benefits? And maybe you can weave in the mitochondria story. I know a lot of folks would probably be interested in that. Yeah, absolutely. So NAD, it's a
00:28:24
Speaker
It's a co-factor. It's something that every cell in our body needs. Essentially, you have the cell, and then you have all these different parts of the cell that help it to work appropriately. And one of those machines inside the cell is the mitochondria, which produces energy, ATP, that keeps our muscles fueled all day long, our brain cells going all day long, and NAD, or that
00:28:50
Speaker
form of B3 is really important. So it's a form of a B vitamin, B3 vitamin. It is. Yeah. Form of B3, vitamin B3. And it essentially keeps that process churning so that we're continually making ATP to feel our brain cells, our nervous tissue, our muscles. Those are the two tissues where we really find a lot of mitochondria, 10,000, way more than any other tissue. So when mitochondria start suffering,
00:29:23
Speaker
lack of sleep, high stress lifestyle, environmental exposures, EMF, processed foods. A lot of these kind of stressors on the body can really tax those mitochondria. Any sort of oxidative stress, which is many things that we encounter, can damage those mitochondria. So we think about antioxidants. We think about adding an NAD to keep the mitochondria healthy and alive, functioning and producing energy all day long.
00:29:42
Speaker
And why would that happen?
00:29:54
Speaker
But what happens is some of the symptoms that you might experience if your mitochondria are working at less than 100% capacity is typically the brain fog, which is what a lot of young people experience. It's gonna sign number one. Fatigue is a big one. A lot of my fibromyalgia, patients, chronic fatigue syndrome patients, anybody with adrenal fatigue, we're thinking about, okay, what can we do to help their mitochondria?
00:30:24
Speaker
to work normally again. And this is also relevant to men's hormone health and women because all of our hormones are made in the mitochondria, our cortisol is made there, our progesterone, estrogen, right? They're made in specific cell tissues in men versus women, but the part of the cell that they're made in is actually the mitochondria.
00:30:53
Speaker
So we need to focus on how can we help our mitochondria to make those hormones appropriately? And NAD is one thing to improve that. So there's a few ways to get NAD. You can get NAD intravenous, sublingual. You can get these patches, which I only learned today. And then there's these NR and NMN precursors. What do you think is kind of the best
00:31:21
Speaker
way to get the NAD and what's kind of, let's say, I want to say most value for money, most cost effective. Because I think with these anti-aging, mitochondrial boosting strategies, we also have to be cognizant of the price because you want to do this pretty much for life. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. So I would say the least accessible for most people is the IB form.
00:31:46
Speaker
Anytime you do an injection or an IV, you're gonna get way more bioavailability, meaning you're gonna get most of it. If you take anything orally by mouth, has to be digested, go through the GI tract, the liver's gonna rob some of it, you never get 100%. So if you're thinking about bioavailability, any sort of injection, even the patch is gonna give you better bioavailability. The IV is probably the most expensive, the patch is substantially less expensive
00:32:15
Speaker
A box of those is about 300 and that's six patches. Each patch is what, $50 and you get the dose that you would get in an IV or more. And that lasts for about a week, right? Yeah. So most people will have them do a patch a week as a maintenance. If we have somebody who has cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, they have MS, they have ALS.
00:32:44
Speaker
have a chronic degenerative disease, we're going to up to that dose and, and frequency because we want to really help them feel better. So yeah. And then I would say, uh, there's also utilization. Uh, one of the ways that you could take an ID is also intranasally. Yeah. So you can get this blend is called synapsin. It's a trademarked blend of three different things. Usually it's NR.
00:33:12
Speaker
which is the precursor to NAD. Then you have methylcobalamin B12 and RG3, which is red Korean ginseng. So it's those three combined that protect the brain, protect against neuroinflammation, could potentially be amazing for even brain function in children, possibly. So that's available widely in the U, I would say widely, it's available in the US. It's something I prescribe,
00:33:40
Speaker
to anybody experiencing brain fog, poor mitochondrial function, also mycotoxin exposure, because that can negatively impact the brain and cause a lot of brain fog and protects that brain tissue.
00:33:55
Speaker
So yeah. What about if, because I actually did a bit of research today into NAD. I can find in Europe that is, you know, it's again, it's just, it's so, especially in Portugal, it's so difficult getting stuff from, from the States. So I found sublingual NAD and intranasal.
00:34:21
Speaker
But NR and NMN are a little bit more common in this. They seem to be a little bit more cost-effective. What's your take on those two compounds? Are they much less effective? What would you advise? Yeah, so it's kind of an example similar to how NAC or N-acetylcysteine turns into glutathione.
00:34:43
Speaker
NR and NMN and your body will turn into NAD. So if you want to get the most active bioavailable one, get the NAD. Although NAD is, if you just slathered on your skin, nothing happens. And it's not bioavailable transdermally other than through a ionophoresis patch, but
00:35:05
Speaker
My preference is to use straight NAD in places where we can't get somebody an NAD IV, NAD patches, or the NAD intranasal because pretty much you have to have refrigeration required for all of those.
00:35:20
Speaker
So shipping anywhere is difficult. Uh, using a sublingual form is, is better than nothing, I would say. Right. Or even there are some capsule forms, but I think sublingual is even better cause it's absorbing it in the mucosa, getting in the bloodstream. I'm in my practice, I'm steering away from using a lot more of the capsules with the exception of
00:35:45
Speaker
a few peptides that are available in capsule and actually work that way. Most of them are not available in capsule and are not effective in a capsule form. BPC is kind of an exception to the rule. KPV is another one that they're kind of sister molecules that help with gut health. So those are capsule forms. But any way we can use an intranasal, we can do a transdermal, we can do an injection, especially for these chronically ill patients that likely have
Patient Motivation and IV Therapies
00:36:15
Speaker
got absorption issues, that's gonna be way better, way more effective.
00:36:20
Speaker
By the way, what do you tell? Like, let's say you have a patient come in and you tell her, okay, you know, six to eight daily supplements, maybe a couple of subcutaneous peptide injections twice a day. What do you say to people that are a little bit averse to, you know, nevermind the injections themselves? Well, a lot of, you know, people I speak to are very much like, well, you take 10 supplements, you take 15 supplements a day. How do you kind of bring them around to this side of the fence as it were?
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah. So there's a specific, I'd say there's a lot of individuals that reach out to me because they're interested in optimization or feeling better. I would, you know, there's that timely quote that says, if you don't make time for wellness now, you have to make time for illness later. And so the goal of all of this is to
00:37:14
Speaker
put more life into our years and for some of us to expand our lifespan, but we don't want to be ill for the last 30 years of it. We want to be thriving and healthy. So that that's what I would say. It's an, it's an investment in you and that's a self worth. That's a understanding of the value of time and money and energy and life and health. Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, people spend more money on their cars than themselves. Their iPhones too. Yeah, exactly. Clothes and other crap that we don't need.
00:37:52
Speaker
Okay, so some of the best things right now that we have, the cutting edge is peptides, NAD or it's precursors. What other awesome stuff do you use in your practice? Do you do like intravenous vitamin cocktails, any other cool stuff you use?
00:38:15
Speaker
I do. Yeah. I'm trained in IV therapy, so I was doing some in-home and in-office IVs during COVID that are specific for immunity. You can do the NAD that way. Sometimes I'll just add in a little bit of NAD because NAD is also, or mitochondria are involved in the antiviral response. Yeah. So NAD, NR, and n-men are also recommendations that I give to post-COVID syndrome patients.
00:38:44
Speaker
on purpose. So yeah, these ever gonna be available, like, like, will I ever be able to order some, I don't know, like a Myers cocktail, intro, you know, maybe a person intravenously injecting themselves is not the best idea. But is there ever gonna be like another way for us to get these just shipped out and self administered? Do you think?
00:39:10
Speaker
The IVs, yeah, are a little bit harder, but I would say the, why the peptides are so exciting and cutting edge for me is that there are therapies that can be administered from home. And many of these can have a dramatic health effect, positive changes for somebody in a commitment of one minute to two minutes a day of an injection. Very easy to do from home. So yeah, I think that
00:39:38
Speaker
The peptide world is really bridging how can we put medicine in the hands of people so that they can take care of themselves, teach them how to use it, put them on the right protocol for their body and their specific health concerns. But yeah, the peptides, you actually can infuse some of these in an IV. I have a good friend who uses a lot of thymus and alpha, uses thymus and alpha in IV
00:40:08
Speaker
to get people out of wheelchairs from fluoroquinolone toxicity, so antibiotic toxicity. So these can be really powerful because they help the cell to function better whether you have a chronic illness or you're looking to just feel better, live longer, improve quality of life, brain function. They can have the optimization effect and they can also have the effect of helping chronic pain or chronic issues. Yeah.
00:40:37
Speaker
So if someone is looking to optimize, how would you psycho, let's say, CJC, Epimorelin, would you do like three months on, three months off? Would there be a little bit more complex? Yeah. So typically when somebody reaches out to me and we talk about a peptide protocol, I have a bit of a formula that I follow. So if they come to me and they have any sort of immune dysregulation, and sometimes they don't know that they have immune dysregulation,
00:41:05
Speaker
For example, a Candida gut infection could be an immune dysregulation issue, even though it looks like a gut issue. Any sort of autoimmune condition, a lot of times people with severe allergies, asthma, any sort of food sensitivities, that's an immune dysregulation issue. Cancer is even immune dysregulation issue. There's a lot of things that fit in that category that people don't really think that are so related.
00:41:32
Speaker
Focus number one, step one is to address the immune system. That's usually thymus and alpha. It's usually looking at the gut, adding in either injectable or capsule BPC. And then if that's not an issue for the person, then we kind of move on to stage two, which would be more of our optimization protocol. Okay, so that would be the three months of CJC, about 10-week protocol where we have them injecting
00:42:00
Speaker
five out of seven days a week fasted. And so that's...
00:42:05
Speaker
an amazing one, especially if the client comes to me and hormones is the goal. We're trying to optimize hormones, whether they be in menopause or they're a younger person, they're an athlete, that's a phenomenal one. If somebody comes to me and they just got in a massive accident or they're healing from surgery, we really start with the repair peptides, because that's first and foremost is to help them heal. And so I'm using something like
00:42:32
Speaker
BPC and thymus and beta. It's a beautiful combo for up relating that repair in the body, especially of connective tissue and bone and a muscle tissue. So it depends on the needs of the patient, but, uh, and, and what's going on. What are their goals? Where are they at in their health? Some people have all of the things optimized and they come to me for that next thing that will get them to the next level as an
Peptides for Fitness and Recovery
00:42:58
Speaker
athlete. And some people come to me really chronically ill.
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It seems like from a lot of the research I've done, I even got Dr. Seed's peptides protocols book. Awesome. It's pretty cool. I'm looking for it. Yeah, it's right there. Yeah. It seems like a mixture of BBC 157 with either Timeless and Alpha
00:43:22
Speaker
one, or Thomasin beta-4 is a great just for most, even if it's just for anti-aging, I think it's just to kind of, the body will know what to do with the peptides. And then
00:43:37
Speaker
followed by, I don't know, in some cases, maybe concurrently with a CJC growth hormone, releasing hormone and peptide. I think it just seems like those four have so many different uses, be it autoimmunity,
00:43:56
Speaker
just anti-aging, even just getting jacked. If a guy or a gal wants to just put on a ton of muscle, lose a ton of weight with intermittent fasting, this is kind of what I've been using CJC with Ipa in the morning to do like longer fasts, obviously in the evening. And I'm noticing now you do deadlifts and two days later, you're like, I can deadlift again. And before it'd be like five, six, seven days, you can still feel some pain.
00:44:23
Speaker
So I think these are incredibly amazing. But here's another question I forgot to ask. So the mitochondrial function, how do you actually determine whether someone needs a bit extra support? Now, my personal preference is the organic acids test from the Great Plains Lab. They have a ton of fatty oxidation mitochondrial markers. What's your kind of go-to test to diagnose?
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I do note test. That's the best way. Oftentimes you know from somebody's past medical history and when they tell you about their lifestyle and they, one of the telltale signs in terms of symptoms, cause there is the lab test though test, but a lot of times the symptoms will tell you if they have chronic fatigue, if they have fibromyalgia, if they have some of these long-term
00:45:17
Speaker
cellular degeneration components, the mitochondria is the first to be hit. So, so yeah. Um, but when somebody feels extremely fatigued after a workout, the workout takes them out. That's a, that's a telltale sign for me that they probably have some mitochondrial fatigue because you just beat up the muscles for an hour or however long their workout is. And, uh, and, uh, you know,
00:45:43
Speaker
Without extraneous factors, that's not a three-hour workout or like an NFL workout or anything. I think anybody would be tired after a certain amount of time. But if they do a normal daily activity and they're beat, they're exhausted afterwards, that's one of the things that I assess because many people feel energized after they have a workout and they're ready to go for the rest of the day. But the opposite effect is probably related to mitochondrial decline.
Resources and Community Support
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of people, they're so used to feeling crap that they think, oh, you're supposed to be tired at the end of the day. You're supposed to be tired after this and that. But no, actually, maybe no, we were built where you can not eat for like five days. And then if you see an animal, you can run after, sprint after it and try to kill it and eat it. This is how we're built. You're not going to collapse. So I think I love what you're doing is because
00:46:36
Speaker
You can address really complex, chronic, horrible issues, but then once that person is at baseline, you can kind of elevate them to the next level. That's why I love talking to and associating with folks like yourself. Ambar, I want to be respectful of your time, so a couple of questions before we go.
00:47:01
Speaker
I know you have your peptide guide. Is there anything you want to promote that the listeners can learn a little bit more about peptides, check out your stuff, any blog posts or anything for the beginners out there?
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah, there's lots of places that they can connect with me and find out more. So they go to peptideplaybook.com. They can put their email in and they'll get sent that peptide playbook, which is just more information about peptides, specific ones. A lot of the ones that we talked about today are in there. And then there's also a Facebook group that I have for questions, anybody who's utilizing peptides and wants to share their experience or ask questions.
00:47:46
Speaker
And if you look for peptide RX, recreate your health or just search for peptide RX, you'll find it on Facebook. And then I have an Instagram page that has a bunch of posts about different peptides and how they work. They can also find me for a peptide consult if they don't know anything about peptides and they want to learn and they want to talk to somebody who's a practitioner, create a protocol. Even if they are in another country, we can still create
00:48:16
Speaker
kind of a plan for them to work through that with peptides. And they can find that at dramber, A-M-B-E-R-N-D dot com. You can book a consult there.
00:48:29
Speaker
Yeah, we have all those links in there. And so would you even be able to, let's say someone in Europe, would you be able to get the stuff compounded in the US and sent to them? Would that be possible? It's possible. It's the shipping that's the trouble, but we're going to change that in the next five to 10 years. There will be countries that are opening up availability and sourcing for these peptides.
00:48:54
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully, because this is like, honestly, I get excited a lot about the different things. I'm that type of character that I'm constantly excited about something. But this, I've never been, I don't think I've been excited about something like this for a long time. I think this is going to be an absolute game changer. Let's hope that the pharmaceutical industry doesn't have other plans because
00:49:19
Speaker
I think what people need to know is that these things are not patentable. That's why they're because a lot of people will ask, why isn't it mainstream? Why does my doctor not know about it? It's because they're not being promoted because they're not patentable. So there's no profit there to be had. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Big pharma can't turn him into a drug himself. Exactly.
00:49:38
Speaker
Yeah. Amber, one final question. Now, needless to say, probably your peptides are one of your favorite kind of tools to stay young, to stay healthy, to maintain your longevity. But what are some other supplements, biohacks or other tools that you use to promote longevity, stay healthy, et cetera? Yeah. Oh, wow.
00:50:03
Speaker
I, so I have a red light sitting right next to me. Oh, nice. And I left a sauna. I think those are two passive, easy ways.
Personal Health Practices and Cognitive Enhancement
00:50:14
Speaker
You can be reading a book, listening to an audio book or doing anything while you're, while you have a red light on and it boosts mitochondrial function. Okay. So, uh, the sauna is phenomenal for detox. I feel like my skin is better when I do that.
00:50:32
Speaker
Yeah, exercise, getting the heart rate up, but also that heart rate variability and then bringing that breath back down. I try and meditate every morning. My day is entirely different when I do that. And sometimes I'll do it with my partner. We'll do that in the morning and it just changes the entire course of the day. So much research on 10 minutes of silence and how that can impact
00:50:59
Speaker
all these factors, stress, chronic disease, sleep, immunity. So that just some of this, the most basic, free, simple, accessible things are some of the most powerful things you could do. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, yeah, I have, I have, I think I might have the exact same red light, actually use that absolutely every single day. It's definitely one of my favorite. Any supplements you will use that we didn't discuss other than, you know, NAD and things like that.
00:51:28
Speaker
Ooh, yeah, I actually, well, since I have it sitting on my desk, I take a lot of things that are for cognitive performance. So sometimes I'll take some of the peptides like C-max or Cilank for, they're an intranasal for cognitive performance, but I really like Qualias. They have a, this is a mitochondrial blend. It's one of the, it's expensive, but it's one of the best that I've found. So I do take some supplemental mitochondrial support.
00:51:54
Speaker
B vitamins every day. I've tried that quality supplement. I've tried a few others. They're really good stuff. By the way, the reason I ask is not just for my own curiosity. It's because I am trying to get the people in my life, especially the women in my life,
00:52:17
Speaker
to take more supplements, to take their B vitamins, to take their NAC, glycine, creatine, things like that. So I think one of the best ways is to get folks, super knowledgeable folks like yourself on that when you share a part of your daily practices, I think you're setting a good example for other ladies out there, other humans out there, not just ladies.
Conclusion and Resources
00:52:41
Speaker
So yeah, really thank you so much for your time, Amber.
00:52:45
Speaker
We have all the links in the show notes. Folks can reach out to you, join your Facebook group if they want to. Thank you once again for your time and let's stay in touch. Let's stay in touch, absolutely. Thanks, Christian. Thank you for listening to Connecting Minds.
00:53:14
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found it interesting, illuminating, or inspiring. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianjordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.