Muscle Growth, Gut Health, and Skin Rejuvenation: What You Need to Know About Peptides

I love that you were this woman empowering other women to learn more about their bodies. You have your own podcast, obviously Long Jeopardy with Nat Nadam. And you really got into like educating about peptides, but in the right way. So tell me a little bit about how your journey started. Thank you. So which part? The peptide journey or the other journey? Well, I want to talk about how did you get involved in the space yourself? Like how did you get to health and wellness? So I mean, look, I've always been, I was the kid that read National Geographic from cover to cover. No. Yeah. And then I studied physiology in university. And then, and then I, so there's all these different pieces to me, right? So I studied physiology in university. I was a fitness instructor pretty much my whole life until, until probably, well, until I went back to school to become a nutritionist. And I had this corporate sales career in the middle of it all. But while, during the corporate sales career, I was always a fitness instructor. So that kind of kept me, and I remember when I left university, I was always like, I missed it. Like I missed learning. And so the fitness, being a fitness instructor always kind of gave me a little touch point, right? And then, and then the other storyline along this is that I come from a family that is obsessed with food. And so food's always been my thing. And so when it came time to reinvent myself about, I'm going to say almost 15 years ago now, I went back to school to become a holistic nutritionist. And at that time, it was when Dave Asprey was really coming up, Mark Sisson was coming up, Rob Wolf was coming up, like that whole cohort, even JJ Virgin was, was really just outside. Incredible. You know, hashtag goals. Yeah. She is literally cold. She has better arms than I've ever seen anybody, even in their teens have. Woman's amazing. To be clear. And so I kind of got into this biohacking thing, as I was going back to school to become a nutritionist, and I remember walking into nutrition school the first day thinking, Oh, are they just going to beat me over the head with like a stalk of kale and beat the whole thing out of me. And it turned out that my very first teacher was actually an anthropologist. And she went right into the whole paleolithic diet and all that stuff. So, so anyway, so that that's kind of how I got into it. And then I realized very quickly, once I graduated, it took a couple of years, I realized, you know, information is not what people really need. People need tools to get past their own stories, to get past as a coach and as a nutritionist. So Dave Asprey at that point, just announced his bullet at the time, Bulletproof Coach Training Program. So I was in that first cohort. And that I think is what really got me into the space. And, and I, you know, I went along and it was really a good coaching program. And then about, I want to say five, five and a half years ago, I was at a conference, my feet were killing me. I had to sit down. So I sit down and it was like one of those stages in the middle of the room. And this guy's talking about these things. And he's talking about, you know, well, I have this tan up here, but I haven't spent any time in the sun, he's saying. And you're like, how is that possible? Wait, what? And then, then he starts talking about this peptide, this peptide, and I'm like peptide peptide's a protein. What is he talking about? So he's talking about this one peptide that helps him to have a tan without sitting in the sun. Then he's talking about this other peptide, BPC 157, that magically helped him to heal and do this and the other thing. And then he talks about epitalon, which is a pineal gland bioregulator and how, you know, he shows the old people study where they lived longer, they were healthier, their immune system worked better, their bone density was better, their telomeres got longer. And I'm like, wait, what? So I tap the guy, I'm like, is this guy for real? And the guy in front of me turns around and goes, Oh, dude, this is the future of medicine. And that was the beginning of my long fall down the rabbit hole. Yeah. And that's where you got and you're like, that's it. That's it. So from there, I started the Facebook community that's now over 30,000 people. And then I, and I, but a year and a half, for about a year and a half after that, I started the podcast and that's it. There's a couple of things that you said that I'm really interested in. One, I just want to know what is your personal diet? Because obviously food is so big to you. That's such a good question. And I would say that my personal diet, I'm coming full circle. I'm going back to my Mediterranean roots. Oh, beautiful. I can't tolerate a lot of grains at this stage of my life. Like, I think that our tolerance for different foods changes depending on our, our life stage. But I, I kind of left the building a little bit. I'm embarrassed to say that even I like, you know, we all get influenced by influencers, even influencers. And, you know, I kind of got pulled, like I figured out very early that the bulletproof diet was not going to work for me. The ketogenic diet doesn't resonate with my physiology. I use Sephardic or Askenaji originally. I'm Sephardic. Okay. So I'm Mediterranean. Yeah. Right. And as a good friend of mine who's in this phase said to me, and she's Russian, she goes, but of course fasting doesn't really feel good to you, Natalie. You come from the Mediterranean. There's always food around, which doesn't mean I shouldn't fast, but, and I do, but with, with attention, right? And then I did a little foray into carnivore. That didn't go well at all for me. And so I'm learned that, you know, and I love, oh my God, I love my vegetables. It's like, I mean, my friends used to call me the veggie Nazi because whenever I would make a dinner, there'd be like seven vegetables on the table. You have to get it all in for your microbiome right over here. You need to have a little bit of everything. So yeah, so that's my diet. My diet is a very diet. Mediterranean diet. Rich in polyphenols, healthy fats, obviously balanced out. Yeah. Lots of more fish. I try, like, you know, chicken is tempting because it's easy. Yeah. But I don't, I'm not, I'm not convinced that chicken's the best food for us. And I love beef. Like, let's be clear. I adore like good ribeye. You want to really get on my side. That's your genetics though, right? Bone marrow, bone marrow and ribeye. Just a happy girl. But I try, I can't eat too, too much of it. So it's, that's my diet. You said something really important. And I, and I, and I think it's so important for our guests to hear this. You talked about how wellness is all about like undoing your programming of the stories that we tell ourselves and finding a better version of ourselves. And you and I speak about this in the DMs all the time, that we come from parts of the world where there's these trauma narratives and stories and people are scared of things. And I don't want to go back down that rabbit hole, but I do want to say the more I've healed my spiritual health and untold the stories that I've told myself, the better my physical health has become the happier people are like, oh, you're 42 and you're glowing. I've never seen you like this. I said, because I've started to be getting really comfortable with myself because I've started undoing the stories that we're not serving me anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And the stories that we tell ourselves that we don't even realize the stories that narrative that's always running in your head. It is so powerful. So the, the decision becomes, are you going to use it for good, or are you going to use it to keep tearing yourself down? And I think that, you know, it's interesting. I think that getting in touch with those stories is just like keeping a food diary. And this is going to sound silly. But when I was practicing as a nutritionist, the most powerful thing I could get people to do was to write down what they ate every day. Because without fail, people would come into my space and say, I eat a clean diet. But you're like, what is your definition of clean? And so without fail, after a week, they would come back and they'd be like, I can't believe what I'm eating. Yes. Right. And so either they were trying to subsist on 600 calories a day, or they're actually consuming 3598 calories, not health, not, not going to work for most people. And it's the same as the stories in your head. And because we're not aware, we're not aware that we're like, don't look, oh my god, suck in your stomach. Oh my god, you don't look very good. Oh, you're doing that again. I can't believe I keep doing this over and over again. Why am I doing this to myself? And, and that negative shelter is a massive player in, in your physiology. Your subconscious is listening to every word that comes out of your mouth and everywhere that plays in your mind. And it is going to deliver on what you put out there. The what you speak you will become is one of the most powerful quotes. When I first heard that, I was like, it just knocked me back. Right? Mind blowing. If you know me, you know, I avoid sea-dwells like the plague. They're everywhere, even in snacks labeled as clean, organic or healthy. But the truth is they wreak havoc on your metabolism, your hormones, and make you super inflamed. That's why I'm obsessed with Prima, one of the few products I completely trust. Prima was created to push back against processed artificial foods and bring us back to real nutritional and ancestral ingredients that actually nourish your body. It's packed with 100% grass-fed beef tallow, grass-fed collagen and grass-fed whey protein, delivering bioavailable nutrients for muscle recovery, joint health and overall vitality without any of the junk. No to seed oils, no refined sugars, no artificial additives. And the best part is one of the few products that is certified seed oil safe. I always keep Prima stocked in my bag. It's my go-to post-workout between meetings or anytime I need an easy, high-quality protein boost. Getting in at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight can be really tough, but it's essential for building and maintaining muscle as you age or going through a fertility journey in your 40s and 30s like I am. And the flavor is delicious. Cacao, mocha, and salted caramel, you really can't go wrong. My favorite flavor is the salted caramel plus the Prima bars are sweetened with organic raw honey and only contain organic whole food ingredients. So you're fueling your body with real clean nutrition because you're part of the biohacket community. You get 20% off. Just use code iman20 at eatprima.com. Ditch the seed oils, fuel your body right. You will feel the difference, I promise. If you look back at your life, what was a time that you felt that you had an aha moment with a story that you had been telling yourself and it just was like really liberating to be unwrite that story if you've had a moment like that? I think I constantly have those moments. Right, because that's part of being human. It's part of being human. Part of being the human experience. Look, somebody just sent me a book. So, you know, as a podcaster, you live this. We have books coming in the door. All the time. Products and books and gizmos and gadgets. It's overwhelming. Oh my god. And so I get a lot of books and I don't know what it is about this book that caught my attention and what it is about this book that made me open it and start reading it. I don't even know that I could remember the name of it because this happened literally three days ago. You're going to DM me when you get back to Canada. I'm going to DM you. And this is a woman who is a, I think she was a science writer. And she starts the book by talking about, like, basically she talks about the war that she was at with her own body. Right. For you, for, I don't, I, having not read the book, I don't know exactly how long it was for. And, and how she finally was able to give up the war and make friends with her body and accept her body and nourish her body and build her body and stop trying to tear down her body. Like, in her, for her, the tear down was being a distance runner because it was the only way that she could manage her weight and restricting her calories because even though she knew that maybe she'd burn 300 calories on that run, well, if you eat another 300 calories now, you've wasted the run. And so she gets to a point where she's falling apart like a cheap suit because, oh, guess what? She is falling apart like a cheap suit. There's not enough nutritional to rebuild and to, and to recover. And she discovers body, not bodybuilding, weightlifting, and the idea of feeding and nourishing and replenishing. And it completely changes her life. And as I'm reading this, I realized, you know what? I'm still in that narrative. Yeah. We still are. I am. I am. You know, and I'm a ripe old age compared to this little chicken over here. And we don't realize how deeply embedded, especially as women, how deeply embedded that those stories are, those stories, that narrative, that discussion is that you need to be better and look at certain way. You need to look better. You need to be, oh my God, I'm not getting into those genes properly. I've got to get back onto this, whatever this that and the other thing. It's really interesting. And, and unfortunately, we live in a world and in a society that reinforces it every minute of every hour of every day, social media, especially 100%. And you know, I will stop short of saying, like, I will go to love your body. I will stop short of saying, I want to be respectful of everybody. But I don't believe, I believe that you have to get to that point where you are healthy, where your blood work shows that you're healthy, where you have energy, and you feel good, and you feel joy, and you experience gratitude, and you're not tied to this visual aesthetic of perfection. We don't have to be visually perfect because the reality is there's very few little of that going on, and it's fleeting anyway. But stop short of saying, you know, I can be, you know, yes, you're lovable at any size and in any shape. But are you healthy? Do you feel good? Do your joints hurt? Are you able to move with ease? Yeah. I think the quality of our life is determined by, for the minute we wake up, to the emotional joy that comes up for us, and how we navigate through our personal interactive relationships and how we navigate through life, like the true sign of health for me is, am I able to live pain free? Am I able to live disease free? Am I able to have meaningful relationships in my life? Yeah, I think that's what health personally for me has been, of course, being healthy and I check my blood work and all that stuff, but am I able to do those things? That's part of being optimized. Yeah, 100%. Can we live with ease? Correct. Right? And doesn't mean that life is easy. No. But it means, but can we move with ease? Can we experience gratitude? Can we give ourselves the gift of joy and gratitude without having some weird story about you're not worthy or you don't deserve it? I was going to ask you, percentage body fat in women, it's very different to men, right? So what should be 40 plus, so what should percentage body fat be in your 30s, which is considered healthy because I know some women go down to six, seven percent and that's really bad for your hormones. So anybody listening, if they're like, hey, we want to reduce body fat and increase muscle mass, what should be healthy in your 30s, 40s and 50s? So I don't have those numbers in my head. Okay. What I will say is be gentle with yourself, worry about the muscle, and the fat will figure itself out. Yeah. I mean, the more I started resistance trainings and, you know, weightlifting in my 40s, the healthier I feel. Yeah. So I have more strength. We have more strength, you're metabolically more flexible, right? Your body can now manage the inputs way easier. You get that ease that we're talking about. So I think it's a little bit like when you're driving. If you're going around a hairpin turn and you're staring at the wall, you don't want to hit, you're going to hit the wall. Yeah. If you're going around that hairpin turn and you're looking at where you want to be, that's exactly where you're going to go. So if you focus on the muscle and you focus on the building of the muscle and the strength and the flexibility and all of those attributes physically that is really what gives us that ease we're talking about, that's not going to resolve itself. What are the best peptides for muscle to gain more muscle mass for women and for men? Yeah. So that's a great question. You know, I will say this, as someone who lives and operates in this peptide space, I'll give you a few peptides, but I'm going to tell you that without the exercise, the diet, the sleep, the lifestyle, they're there to, if you're using them properly, they're there to bring more to the table to help you to give you an extra little edge, but they're not going to do the work for you. So most commonly the peptides that are, you know, bandied about and just to be clear about the, number one, I'm not a doctor. Number two, a lot of the peptides I'm going to mention are research chemicals right now. They are not approved by the FDA, so it's very much a gray zone, but let's raffle through a few of the obvious ones. The first category are the growth hormone secretagogues. Mm-hmm. Okay, don't, don't panic. It's a big word. I know, but secretagogues mean secret, right? So that means what these compounds do is they help you, they give a signal to your brain to secrete, to produce growth hormone. What happens as we age, naturally, is our growth hormone levels start to decline. What happens when we don't sleep? Our growth hormones decline. What happens when we're under a lot of stress, very often those growth hormone levels can go down. So what the growth hormone secretagogues really, their place in muscle building and they do support, growth hormone supports lean mass, growth hormone supports recovery from your workouts, growth hormone supports better sleep because it is secreted during sleep, which is why when you don't sleep you don't make or a hormone correct and you don't recover. So the growth hormone secretagogues can play a role as part of a holistic program to be used at night on an empty stomach. How many hours after you eat? I like three. Okay. And if you're using a GLP one, which we may or may not talk about tonight, today, then probably more because it takes longer for your stomach to empty. Okay. The reason why growth hormones secretagogues need to be taken away from food is that insulin and growth hormone work against each other. Oh. You can't have insulin present and growth hormone and this is part of the wisdom of your body, right? So we need to not be producing insulin and processing glucose. So carbs in particular are the enemy of growth hormone release. So that's the growth and there's, so the compounds you might hear people talking about would be CJC 1295. They've got super sexy names. I mean, I really, my heart just sings when I hear it. Ipomerellin is another one. There's another one called Tessemerellin, which is very close to CJC 1295. Tessemerellin was actually developed and is approved as a drug for people who are on a particular cocktail of HIV medications because that cocktail of HIV medications causes the increase of visceral fat. So this is the fat that surrounds the organs that is very harmful to help. Right. And in the research, they found that giving people Tessemerellin at one to two milligrams a day, which is a lot, helped in particular to reduce visceral fat. Which is a dangerous fat. You don't want to know. Which is the fat that really is bad for you. And so Tessemerellin, now people, you know, so here's the thing, like in the biohacking world, we have people taking CJC to Tessemerellin, Ipomerellin, and then they'll throw in a few more on top of that. And they're like doing 100 micrograms of this and two milligrams of that. So I implore you all, please work with a practitioner and get your feet around you. Don't do it on yourself. Yeah. The other thing about the growth hormone secretion, particularly the Tessemerellin CJC, is we see quite often we will see people who have an immune reaction to it. And so, which is not good. What is an immune reaction for people listening? Like how what it feels like. So first of all, when you use them at first, you might get a flush. Yeah. Okay. It'll increase in blood pressure. If you have blood pressure issues, you also have to be careful with this stuff. Okay. But what happens when you have a histamine response? And here's the most vexing thing about the whole thing. You could be using it for a month or six weeks or two months and be fine. And then all of a sudden your immune system is like, actually, I don't like you. No, not happening. It's like you can't sit with me anymore. No, I'm sorry. I'm off you. And so what happens when that goes, it goes off is you might notice and people often miss this, they're like, Oh, I must have gotten a mosquito bite over here. Oh, maybe I got a mosquito bite over there. Now, the mosquito bites start to get bigger. And what it is is it's a site reaction. It's at the injection point. That was happening to me. Okay. And I didn't know what the hell it was because I would inflame and swell. You just blew my mind. I'm sorry. And so the problem is that in some cases, the immune system eventually backs down. But I think in many cases, it does not. I woke up one morning with a golf ball over my knee. So it was not so good. So I don't touch the stuff ever. So do you take CJC still or not? I can't touch CJC if I'm not none of them. Okay. See your body's like, my body's that's a hard no. So that's so that those guys are great for muscle mass. They help to promote muscle and they also have some lipolytic effects, lipolytic being fat reduction. Okay. So and I will say that people fall into different categories. I've seen people be and this happens with every peptide. You have high responders. And then you have people that don't really respond as well. We don't know for what reason. So it works really well for men. Sometimes not as well for women. Our bodies are way more complex. Sorry. Well, I mean, we have four different hormone cycles a month. So like really? Yeah. And ipomerellin seems to work a little bit better for women. Okay. So that's, you know, there's more compounds in there. But in the interest of time, we're gonna stop there. As someone who's testing and I was retesting for what works for my gut, immune system and hormonal health, I definitely do not mess around with any probiotics that die before they even reach my gut. So this little guy just thrive is completely different. It is clinically proven to arrive 100% alive, survives antibiotics and even helps to heal leaky gut in just 30 days. It beats bloat helps with nutrition absorption and turns your gut into an antioxidant factory. And it's the only probiotic I trust and recommend to my bio hack it community. Check it out at just thrive health.com and use code bio hack it for a discount and enjoy another peptide that people talk about a lot for muscle is BPC 157 and TB 500 or thymus and beta four. So these two peptides, so there, so we have two actually three peptides here thymus thymus and beta four is a 43 amino acid peptide, it's quite large, TB 500 is a fragment of that BPC 157 is its own thing. So TB four, TB 500. Now very often people will use TB four and TB 500 interchangeably, but they're not the exact same peptide. Regardless, with BPC 157 and the thymus and beta four or TB 500, we have a combination that is very supportive of recovery after muscle damage. Okay. It's also very good for healing any tissue. So ligaments, tendons, muscles, bone, skin, very powerful Achilles healing. Every time I have a friend of mine's husband or boyfriend is torn there Achilles heal, they're like inject it right into the site. So you if you can find a physician that'll do an injection directly in there, which will not be the most pleasant five minutes of the day. I'm just here to tell you. I mean, in bunnies, it's reattached tendon to bone in some of the studies. It's really powerful. So those, so they don't, it's not like they promote muscle growth. But guess what? If you can work out really hard and recover better, of course, faster, you're winning, which it would be why their water banned, which doesn't make a lot of sense because BPC 157 also is neuro protective. It protects from TBIs. So BPC 157 is a superstar. It's neuro protective. It helps heal tissues. It helps heal the GI tract from the mouth all the way down to the exit. It is organ protective. So it's, it has shown really great benefits for the pancreas, for the kidneys, for the liver, for the heart, for like body protective compound, leaves no man behind. So that's those guys. People will talk about the Wolverine stack. The Wolverine stack will be BPC 157 with the thymus and beta four TB 500 and very often will include the growth hormone secretive guys. So those are the main players. There's also a peptide, which is a mitochondrial peptide called MOTC. MOTC helps with mitochondrial performance. The mitochondria are the little engines in your cells that make ATP, which is the energy currency of the cell. If every mitochondria in your body expired now, it would be dead. You in about 10 seconds, maybe five. MOTC is a bit more, it's a very interesting peptide. There are physicians that use it with their female patients around menopause, around weight gain. It can be, it's also can be really interesting for chronic fatigue syndrome, you know, but again, these are research chemicals. So we have to remember that these are not, these are not vitamins. You can't take them all the time. And frankly, you should be cycling them in and out. You have to understand how they work. You have to understand where you're cycling and you have to understand what you're playing with. And so I really, I cannot begin to tell you how crazy it makes me when people in these groups come in and say, so look, I just bought all this stuff. What do I do with it? You're like, excuse me? Or what's the peptide for? There's not a peptide for, I want you guys, the second thing I'd like you to really take away from this podcast is that if you decide to use peptides and we're going to talk about the oral ones that are actually less gray zone, they're a bit more researched. Well, they're just more allowed for whatever reason. And that is that peptides are an adjunct. They are the lifestyle, the lifestyle, the fitness, the nutrition, the dealing with inflammation, clearing toxins from the body. All of these things will give you more bang for your buck. So it doesn't, you know, BPC-157 for gut healing is a little different because if your gut is super leaky, and you're having immune reactions, the whole thing, sometimes taking BPC-157 and you can take it as an oral capsule, taking BPC-157, it can help people to, like if it can help to heal the gut a little bit, suddenly you start to feel better. You're not just bloated. You have more energy. Now you're like, okay, what's the next thing I can do? Yeah. I also want to just say, preface this by saying, like I, and you correct me because really you're the expert, peptides is not the first place to start. You start with the lifestyle. So if somebody is chronically sick, peptides are not the place to go to because unless they know what's going on with them, it might almost inflame things even further. The problem is if you're not working with someone who understands what's going on with your whole body, right? So there's a peptide called thymus in alpha one, right? Thymus in alpha one is a thymus peptide like thymus and beta four. They're both from the thymus. They're both immune influenced the immune function. Thymus in alpha one particularly influences innate immune system. Right. So this is the immune system that comes up when you get sick, for example. And in many people, they're th2 dominant and th1 is down here. And so with thymus in alpha one, it can help to balance it all out, bring up the th1. This can be magical. It can help to reduce inflammation. It can help with people with all kinds of immune dysfunction. But here's the thing, if you're heavily autoimmune, sometimes it can turn and bite you. So you need to be working with someone who understands where you're at. Thymus in alpha one may be your first step, but you gotta know, but it may not. And so I always take this approach with peptides, better the terrain, the cleaner the terrain, the better the peptides will work. And that's what I really tell people that you really need to work with a practitioner. You need to know where your levels are. You need to know where you are with your histamine reaction. You know, fasting glucose before you do anything when it comes to peptides. So it can be really personalized. When it comes to two other categories, I just want to talk about skin for women, obviously, is really important. So my favorite is GHKCU, which is great. Obviously, what are some of your other favorite ones for skin? Well, GHKCU is the skin peptide. Well, you know, so you've got all these formulas out there right now, which are BPC157, thymosynbeta four and GHKCU for skin. Like BPC157 for wound healing is magic. Yeah. As is GHKCU. Yes. What is it about GHKCU? So GHKCU kind of straddles the world between the longer chain signaling peptides that we've been talking about another category of peptides called bioregulators. So the bioregulators are tiny little peptides. They're only two to four amino acids long, and they actually act directly on your DNA. So they are epigenetic switches. GHKCU. So just to explain, GHK is the peptide. CU is the symbol for copper. GHK requires copper as a cofactor to be activated. GHKCU acts on over, I think it's about 4,000 genes on the human genome. And what it does is it resets them to a more youthful setting. So we talk about GHKCU very much for skin because it helps to with collagen and elastin. It helps with reducing scarring if you've had some kind of surgical procedure. But here's what a lot of people don't realize about GHKCU. It's also anxiolytic. It also has gut benefits. It also like it's anti-inflammatory. Like it and every time you go into the literature and type in GHKCU, there's a new study that comes up with another. So GHKCU could potentially be one of the most powerful, healthy aging peptides out there. Our levels, our endogenous levels of GHKCU when we're young are sky high and they start to tank. So is it possible that by replenishing GHKCU, we can slow things down? Now, one thing I also want to say about the growth hormone is, I read a study not too long ago from a bunch of scientists talking about how growth hormone goes down as we age. And there's probably a good reason for that. So when it comes to growth hormone, just make sure you're working with a doctor or practitioner because higher is not always better. Don't forget that the world we are living in is incredibly toxic. We have a lot of DNA damage and growth hormone is growth. It's going to propagate things. If you have too much DNA on board, damage on board, you could be growing things you don't want to grow. Absolutely. So be mindful. The GHK is really interesting because it's not boosting particularly. So it's modulating and that's where the bioregulators come in. And I was going to say for skin, we don't often talk about bioregulators, but what's also very important for skin is blood flow. So the blood vessel bioregulator is very important. There's a cartilage bioregulator, cartilax. Well, why am I bringing that up? Because collagen and elastin are really important to skin. The pineal gland bioregulator is always good. Gihalsis get better sleep, melatonin. I mean, those are the big players. And for somebody like me who's trying to do holistic fertility and going down this route, which ones in particular should I be doing for fertility? That's one I've never gotten an answer to myself. Nobody's going to give you a good answer because there's no research on it. What I can tell you is on the bioregulator front, so here's why bioregulator, I'm more willing to promote a bioregulator than a peptide is because what the bioregulators main objective is to normalize. So if something's too high, it's going to bring it down. If something's too low, it's going to bring it up. It's going to bring it up. Yeah. It's a regulator. And so we're looking for balance. Now, I will say, MOTC, there's been some research around fertility in MOTC because it's because the ovaries are incredibly dense in mitochondria. Correct. And this was the crazy research that I found. So your ovaries, essentially your oocytes, which are actually your eggs, they have the highest amount of mitochondria than anywhere else in your body. So it's 100,000 to 600,000 mitochondrial cells versus one to 5,000 in your tissue. And I was like, why is that I dug in more? It's because your ovaries, your oocytes, your eggs go on to create embryos, they're giving life. So they're the most mitochondrial dense place in your entire body. Yeah. So exactly. But the research on MOTC is not definitive yet. Yeah, of course. So I would be cautious. But with the comes to the bioregulators, which have been researched in Russia for close to 40 years, and now there's even more research happening, we have an ovarian bioregulator. We do. We do. Which one is that? It's the ovarian bioregulator. I need to look into this. Can it help slow down ovarian aging, essentially? Don't know. Okay, but that's, but it's going to be helpful. Yeah, of course. We've got a central nervous system bioregulator. We've got a pineal gland bioregulator that helps to give, to balance the entire endocrine system in addition to modulating melatonin production, in addition to lengthening telomeres, in addition to regulating the circadian cycle. We have a blood vessel bioregulator that underpins almost every single protocol you will ever see because making sure that the endothelium of the blood vessels is as functional as possible is going to be massively important in terms of getting nutrients to and removing these products. So I would say the ovarian, the adrenal bioregulator is really important. Most people who have adrenal fatigue in today as well. Well, and when you're working so hard on your fertility, like let's face it, your tiny bit, like got a few stressors happening here and there. Off-corbors. Just saying. Yeah. So, and what goes hand in hand with the adrenals? Maybe the thyroid, right? So why the bioregulator I'm easily speaking to about the bioregulator is because I'm not worried that iman might be hyper-hypothyroid because I know if the bioregulator's in there, if you're balanced, you're fine. If you're too high, it's going to bring you down. If it's too low, it's going to try to bring you up. Right. But we know that the adrenals in the thyroid are like hand in hand. Hand in hand. Yeah. Hand in hand and so many people miss that connection. They don't make that connection. Yeah. Right? If you're spending hundreds on skincare by ignoring one of the most powerful anti-aging tools out there, you are missing out my biohackers. I'm talking about red light therapy and bond charges, red light face mask. It has completely changed the game for me. Red light therapy isn't just another hype. 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Go grab yours now. Your skin will thank you later. And this is another thing, guys, when you go for fertility tests, most fertility clinics are not checking every single thyroid marker that you have. It's not just about T3 and T4. It's everything they need to check. And they also need to check your histamine levels and your fasting insulin, because when you have insulin resistance in your body, and you're not cycling out the insulin, which is why it's so good to obviously lift muscle, lift weights to gain more muscle mass, because that regulates your insulin response. It is easier to get pregnant once your insulin is in balance. Yeah, it's sensitive. And so that's why people are like, well, why do GLP1s work for when it comes to pregnancy? Well, because your body is not responding negatively to insulin. Yeah. So, but it's driving me crazy how a lot of these fertility doctors and clinics don't check for this stuff. They're not looking to fix your problem. They're just trying to be like, here's the money. They're trying to make you pregnant. Yeah, but I almost feel like... No, but without addressing the environment that is creating the difficulty. And they don't give you like, well, we don't know how he cycles, but I'm like, why don't you take the approach of helping women get to the root cause? Say, take the next two, three months, fix your insulin levels. Like, let's get your gut firing. Let's get your mitochondria plays such a big role. Let's see some lifestyle changes and then come in for your first cycle. They're just like straight to cycle. And each cycle of IVF that you do is anywhere from $15,000 to $35,000, $40,000. So I'm like, there's other things could be so much more cost effective and also maybe help women heal and get pregnant naturally. Well, and there's the financial cost of IVF. There's the emotional cost of IVF. Every time you're coast or that you're on. Thank you. Because every time you do a cycle, you're like, oh, did I get it? Did this form into essentially an embryo? Did it go through the phage TTC? And your hormones are doing the... Oh, completely. I'm all about taking like a holistic approach to fertility and figuring out like what works and how to make it work. There's some peptides that can actually make you more insulin sensitive. Which ones are those, by the way? Because there's a couple that I read that somewhere they have to be a little careful because if you are prone to... Oh, actually, you know what? The growth hormones for crudogarks can make you more insulin resistant. Okay. Okay. That's growth hormone, excess growth hormone. So they typically, but it can happen. 100%. In the bioregulator world, there's actually a... There's a bioregulator for the pancreas and there's a bioregulator for the liver. Okay. They're both going to play a role here. And where do people purchase the bioregulators versus the peptides? Like what's the go-to thing? Yeah. So let me frame... Let me quickly explain about the bioregulators. Yes. How you can get a natural bioregulator or you can get a synthetic bioregulator. Okay. One is not bad. One is not good. They are a little bit different. The good news is that the natural bioregulator, which is an extract from an animal, is basically classified as a nutritional supplement. The synthetic bioregulator is, with the exception of five bioregulators, where they've not... The scientists never really isolated the exact amino acid chains. They've identified the exact amino acid chain that is the heavy hitter because here's the thing. In the natural bioregulator, you have that bioregulator peptide, but you also have an entourage of other compounds. Right. With the synthetic bioregulator, you're just getting that amino acid sequence that is the big hitter. So the synthetic bioregulator, we would get from a research lab, typically, and it would be... Now, traditionally, it would be administered by a subcutaneous injection. We're now getting to the point where there's this crazed frenetic activity going on around these things. We can now use them transdermally. We're getting to the point where a sublingual application is being offered as well. Yeah, trochies. So the bioregulator, because it's so small, it can get into anything. Right. So it's becoming much easier to administer. The natural bioregulator typically is taken as a capsule. And what are you currently cycling in and out? So I, shockingly, don't use a whole lot of peptides. Amazing. I use bioregulators. I believe in using peptides when you need them. And what bioregulators are you on? GHKC. We all love that one. Which bioregulators are you on? I cycle through pretty much all of them. Okay. On like two, three months, windows and cycles. So I do 10-day cycles. Okay. And I create stacks. So I've got a membership community and I have a bunch of people with me where I write their year-long protocols and they're cycling through bioregulators. And what I try to do is, if somebody knows that they have metabolic issues, we try to lean into those a little bit more heavily, depending on what people have going on. But they're incredibly forgiving. And it is amazing. Some of the, like I've seen people whose liver enzymes were out of whack, whose liver enzymes start to normalize. I've had women who were hypothyroid who are doing all the other things. Please don't forget, they're doing all the other things. And they, and all, well, and selenium and iodine and all the things. And then, and they've been stuck and stuck and stuck and they bring in the thyroid bioregulator and sometimes it's the last piece that they needed. Right? So, you know, when you, when the way I describe bioregulators to people is imagine that the tread on the tires of your car is starting to wear thin. The bioregulator helps to restore the tread. It doesn't bring it back to that fuzzy tire that you bought home the first day. But it helps to restore the tread so that you're still, you're, it brings back a degree of function. I think another big thing in this community is, you know, there's so, it gets really expensive to over hack yourself. Like it adds up, right? So it's inaccessible to the average person. Correct me if I'm wrong to say bioregulators are not only obviously they work better and they're getting a little bit more research, but they're more affordable and pocket friendly than in peptide. They can be. Yeah. The other, you know, if you really don't have time, if you really don't have the funds for a bioregulator, I would invite people to consider the desiccated organ supplements that are out there. Who, what's your, you know, Dr. Josh Axe talked to me about organs yesterday as well in the podcast. What are your favorite organ brands? So I mean, I don't have a favorite. Okay. I know that there's ancestral supplements. There's heart and soil. Yeah, they're exhibiting here. And then I think, does Josh have an organ supplement brand? No, not right now, but he literally told me straight up have raw organ, like live, like, you know, have a raw. Yeah. And he said, if you chicken, I was to like cook it a little bit, but he's like straight, raw organs. And I'm like, why? And he's like, yeah, just that's a bit much. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you, I mean, great. Yeah. But you don't have to go that far. Yeah. I think that actually heart and soil has a female formula and a male formula. Yeah. They have a blood builder. Amazing. If you go and read the testimonials on those sites, it's amazing. Has, does Paul Soledunis still own it or he sold it because he's, I have no idea. Yeah. He started the company. I mean, he's amazing. He talks about a lot of this stuff on his taking organ meat and how it's like core to his diet. He's full-fledged MD and he talks about how his changes health in his life. Well, if you look at the animal kingdom, what do they eat first? They go straight for the organs. Correct. Straight for the organs. Most nutrient dance thing in the body. And there's that, and there's that ancestral health wisdom that says if somebody has a heart condition, we would feed them heart. Like for like, that's what Joshua talked to me about yesterday. If you have liver, then you go eat liver. If you, whatever you're working on is what you want to eat in the animal. So it mimics that in your body. Correct. People aren't talking about this enough, but I truly want to optimize your health. We need to be paying attention to EMFs. We are constantly plugged in surrounded by wireless signals, radiation, frequencies that our bodies have never, ever been able to handle at this level. Research has shown that EMFs can disrupt sleep, impact cellular function and contribute to long term health issues. 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Yeah, food is a non-negotiable. I would say the non-negotiable for me these days is really, it's trying to stay out of the more is better world. And bringing it back to what are the basics. And it's so funny, as podcasters, sometimes we record a podcast and it takes us back to our roots. I just recorded a podcast about molecular hydrogen, which reminded me all the reasons why before I was the peptide girl, I was the hydrogen girl. I'm like, oh my god, it is as foundational. Absolutely. As foundational to our health as anything else. So hydrogen's about to get back on the, on the, we can't do without this roster. But I think that, you know, the most important work I've done over the last few years has been the inner work. It's been managing that conversation. It's learning to be kinder to yourself. Yeah. And to, and to clear the clutter. I think that's so important that you said that. I think for me, that's been a really big thing is quietening a little bit of the noise. So I have like a monkey mind. So I was going, going, going, but also really stepping in and leaning into myself. And I always say the most work that the work that needs to be done is where you feel the darkest and scariest to go. And that's where you act, you need to run towards. So the things that scare you the most is where you run towards because that is where your journey truly begins. And when you face that stuff and you face yourself and you face your demons or whatever it is you call it, right? You, you feel almost like a weight has been released. And then you can actually start this flow state that they call it. It starts existing in your everyday life. 100%. I think that the scary things when you turn around and turn around and look them in the eye, stop being quite so scary. Yeah. Right. It's the, the anticipation, the fleeing, the, you know, the, the not knowing and very often, if you turn around and look at it, you're like, Oh, Oh, it's not that bad. It's okay. Yeah. You know, we can handle this. We can, we can move with it. We can deal with it. We can diffuse it. Like there's going to be different things for different things. Yeah. And that was a really beautiful way to put it in that different things. Yeah. I, I, I told you what you're saying. Our bodies are so innately intelligent. It's learning muscle memory. So once you face something and you develop a positive association with it and response, it becomes easier and easier and easier and easier. So that thing that you fear, that big dark elephant in the room stops feeling like that and a weight on your chest because your response to it changes and your outlook to it changes. And the fear goes away. Yeah. Right. Fears are big enemy. Fear and anger. It's two of the biggest things. What do you think your biggest fear that you've conquered to date has been? Obviously it's changing. You know, we're always overcoming different things, but what is your biggest fear you think you've changed? My biggest fear is the fear of confrontation. Really? Yeah. So, yeah. Yes. As much as people think I'm a super tough person, I love confrontation. When's your birthday? December. Oh, so you're sad. Yeah. So you're saying, yeah, it's uncountable to me. I want everybody to love me. I want to be friends with everybody and I can't stand confrontation. Yeah. And I've learned and this is through work I've done over there, even the last year. Yeah. That confrontation doesn't have to be confrontation. No. It never needs to be confident. I mean, occasionally you run across someone who's just a jerk. Yeah. But confrontation 99% of the time, that thing that you fear the most that keeps you out at night, you're like, Oh my God, I'm dreading that conversation. I can't believe I have to do this. If you approach it in the right way, which I'm by nature a diplomat, I can diffuse almost anything. Yeah. I think people need to get okay with having hard conversations and still hearing the other person out. You don't always have to agree on everything because you should not be forcing your opinion down someone's throat. Me, people where they're at, say your piece, but accept them for who they are. And I think you and I speak about this a lot on Instagram, right? Because of the things that have been happening in the world is I think it's crazy to me that we just think everyone should think like us and be like us and we've lost tolerance and we stop humanizing each other. For some reason, we just think we're better. And that's the disservice not only that we're doing to ourselves, but we're doing to humanity. 100%. Is it when you stop seeing the other person as a human being and try to understand for a second where they're coming from and just say, you know, we may not see eye to eye on everything, but I can completely understand and relate to what your human experience is. And I can have empathy and sympathy and respect for that because at the end of the day, I'm going to be able to meet you where you're at. And maybe I come around or maybe you come around, but let's have tolerance for each other. And I think social media sometimes makes us forget that because people sitting behind screens who just think they can say anything to you. And I'm like, what are you saying? Well, and you're forgetting, every people forget that at the end of the day, we're all after the same thing. We're after safety, we're after being loved, we're after like acceptance, like we all want the same things. I mean, there's exceptions to the rule. There are bad actors in the world. But even they have a baseline of wanting to be loved and accepted. Yeah, but they're lashing out. Yeah, they're so far off the train. But for the most part, most of the people you will meet, there's commonality. I actually spoke to a therapist recently, not like a body worker who's doing things to your body that are really uncomfortable. And so, but he never stops talking. So as you're, you know, he keeps your brain so engaged that you don't realize what's going on. And I'm like, and I know that he was treating multiple people with very different worldviews at the same time. And I'm like, how do you do it? Yeah, like, are you just playing me right now? Yeah, exactly. He goes, Nat, I find common ground. I find common, and I will always be able to find common ground with anybody. And that's what it should be about. And looking for that, I was gonna say, you're obviously a race in Canada, the healthcare system in Canada has become really draconian. Am I am I okay to say that? Yes. What the hell is going on? By the way, I love how people romanticize Canadian healthcare. And I'm like, guys, don't romanticize it. It is extremely draconian. Well, it may have been okay for a while, but it's the wheels have come off the bus. Yeah, we've they've run out of money. It's, it's not okay. Yeah, it's really unfortunate. What's happening? Is it gone as far as like, I've been hearing things, but I'm not Canadian. So I'm going to ask you that they're trying to even regulate supplements now. And yeah, okay, so talk to me about that, because I thought that was crazy. And I told somebody the other day, they said, really? I said, yeah, that's what I'm hearing from the Canadians. Yeah, the if you, you know, case in point, you try to buy in Canada, the supplement, like, you know, a professional brand in the States, if they're lucky, have a profession, have a website in Canada, it will be a stripped down version of what they're allowed to sell in the States. And they've and they're bringing in new regulations, where you have to have, you have to meet whatever criteria, but they've made it almost impossible to meet the criteria, or excruciatingly expensive. But why is that? Well, I think that there's that the I hate the big pharma narrative, but I think it's true. I think it's true. I think it's true. I think that big pharma in Canada is after the same thing that big pharma in the States is after. They have their closet. They need to keep people sick in the life. Right. And so when natural supplements come in, and they can couch it with lack of evidence or not enough clinical this or not enough that, but the proof is in the pudding. And clinical trials only will take you so far. The fact is that if you have a physician who has 20 or 40 or 50 or 100 experiences of clinical, yeah, in real life clinical evidence that says that this supplement or whatever the case maybe can help people's outcome. Why would we bring them into court and take away their license? Right. Exactly. I just think that statement, like it just annoys me so much because I'd like to, I mean, I'll just go there and say this. I was like, I have really strong stance on certain vaccines. And I said, you guys shoved a vaccine down people's throat. There was not one long-term clinical study done to see what the effects it was on humans, what it was on women who were pregnant. And there are studies and research now showing that soberts went up or miscarriages went up for women that were vaccinated versus women that were not. I was being different the other day who had her second kid was having healthy pregnancy, got vaccinated and her daughter is not having open heart surgery. And she directly says, my first child is healthy. My second child is having a lot of health issues. Same parents, born a couple of years apart. What's the difference? I got vaccinated when I was like third trimester. So at the end of the day, this narrative does not work because there's not clinical studies and research to say, Hey, I can back into everything that I'm giving you is what lines their pockets. And this is where the incentives needs to be unlinked enough. There has to be regulation around pharmaceutical companies. Well, yes. And what they've, the problem is that the conversation is not being allowed. No, they've shut it all down. Holistic practitioners cannot exist anymore in Canada. They're all like having to come out. The States isn't too far behind. The problem is that, and I just had this conversation with a physician on vaccines. And that is that instead of saying, taking a stance that vaccines are necessary or vaccines are bad, it's not even a choice. It's can we, can we study the people that are hurt by vaccines to understand what's going wrong, what went wrong? And because we now have, through AI, we have the computational ability to crunch data in a way that we've never been never had in fact. And so now we can start to say, we can, we can stop the argument of vaccines cause autism or they don't, because clearly they don't cause autism in all children. Well, by September, Bobby Kennedy just came out and said a couple of days ago, by September, we're going to know the baseline cause for the increase in autism and what's really going on. Because that's what they're going to do. They're going to like a data. I hope so. But, but it's just, it's about, you know, we've got to strip away this, this blinder attitude that's because that's driving an agenda. Absolutely. Honestly, is probably meant to be positive. Well, of course it's meant to be. Education is power. Knowledge is power. We need to have the discussions. We need to have those discussions. We need to not just look at one piece of the puzzle. We have to look at the whole puzzle and put it essentially together. Do you see yourself moving out eventually of Canada and moving where? I don't know. I don't know. I think it's complicated right now. I don't see the States as necessarily being a better place at this very minute. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, we have to see kind of what happens over here with healthcare over the next four years. Four years and beyond. It's a quality of life. It's more than healthcare. Right. There's a lot more going on. So I don't know. I can't, can't answer that. You know, the biggest thing, so I moved to America about 12 years ago, prior to that, I lived in London. I've lived in the buying stuff. One of the biggest things in this country, I mean, I'm a born American has given me so much, but it's a very divided place to live. And that kind of emotionally exhausts me because I did not grow up living in a place that I said, what's your background? What's your religion? What's your, where do you come from? And you have to double down on who you are. Cause I'm not used to this. So when things happen, they really unregulate my nervous system. Cause I'm like, what sort of world are you living in? And I didn't grow up that way. So until like us 30 years old, when I moved here and I'm 42, I didn't have this exposure. And all of a sudden my brain is like, what is wrong with people? And they write the most hateful things online and they say things. And I'm like, it's not about you versus me. And I've never had to exist in a world to be like, I need to know your race, your background, your this, that, to see if you're acceptable. I always just met people for people. You're there like, Joe's a person. I didn't like you as a person. And that's what the baseline was. And it feels like, I think America was always like this. I just think that we didn't have it on blast the way we do now because of social media. Yeah. It's, it's, um, we're not in a good place right now. No, we're going backwards. So let's hope, let's see, let's see what happens. I really hope at least these conversations are happening. We're going to be able to turn some of the things around, but I am interested to see how it affects health on such a big level. Obviously, this administration is really pro studying peptides, introducing stem cells, which is crazy to me. I think stem cells therapy should be available to people over here. We have to travel for it. What's your take on stem cells? I think that they're, again, it's, it's another new frontier. Right. Right. I mean, clearly they show a lot of promise. They can be fantastic for a lot of things. Um, I think that, that North America, like Canada and the U S is, they're a little bit missing the boat by pushing people to go, they have to go to Mexico or Panama or whatever. I mean, there's more and more stuff happening with stem cells in our systems now, but certainly not in the conventional system. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, I think they're very promising, but I think they're complicated. Yeah. I don't think it's as simple as just getting a stem cell in future. No, I did, um, stem and bill, court stem cells for my ovaries as part of this, but I have a fertility doctor work with a New York is five clinics in New York, and he had to have a clinic in Bahamas, but he's very specialized. It was in a random stem cell clinic. He is an embryologist and, you know, fertility specialist and he is very doing a research paper, an umbilical court stem cells and what they can do for women when it comes to fertility and also with men and pause. Yeah. No, I think, and that's where it's all going, because it's understanding that there's different products. There's your autologous stem cells, your exogenous stem cells from a different source. There's so many different aspects of stem cells that I mean, we're, I mean, we're on the cusp, right? I'm just learning all this. It's just a very exciting time. Are we good for time? How much longer do we have? Okay, fine. Oh yeah. I think he said five minutes, yeah, 20 minutes ago. Okay, perfect. So Nat, I've just loved having you on the show and where can people find you? Tell me, tell us all where they can find you. I mean, I know where to find you because I'm always finding you, but I am so grateful to have been on the show. I'm so glad we finally got this done. So people can find me, well, they can obviously listen to the podcast and longevity with Natalie Nittum. They can find me on Instagram at Natalie Nittum. I have a membership community. Basically go to natnittum.com. And you find everything. You can find it all there. There's a newsletter there. There's, and the newsletter, when you first sign up, you get like an eight, eight part series on lifestyle. Beautiful. And then there's a peptide specific newsletter. There's the membership community, all the things. I just love you. And I'm so glad we're friends. And I found you at that conference three years ago and I ran up to you. I pushed people out of the way and I said, can we take a picture together? Cause I'm a huge fan. I still have that photo, by the way. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for being here. It's been a pleasure to thank you for being you and all that you do. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into bio hack it. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a short review. It really helps us reach more listeners just like you. Follow us on Instagram at bio hack dash it for exclusive content and the latest updates. Remember your health is in your hand and curiosity heals.