98: Ozempic: The Skinny Truth About Peptides

Lisa Beres 0:04

How would you like to improve your health and keep your family safe? You're listening to the Healthy Home Hacks podcast where we firmly believe in joining optimal health shouldn't be a luxury. Healthy Home authorities and husband and wife team Ron and Lisa will help you create a home environment that will level up your health. It's time to hear from the experts. Listen in on honest conversations and gain the best tips and advice. If you're ready to dive in and improve your well being and increase your energy, you're in the right place. All right, here are your hosts, baubiologists, authors, media darlings, vicarious vegans and avocado aficionados, Ron and Lisa Beres.

Ron Beres 0:48

Who wants to lose weight. And I'm seeing a lot of hands go up. At least I'm I'm visualizing a lot of hands going up. Now. What if you can do it quickly and easily with just a weekly shot? In case you've been living under a rock, then you've likely seen the incredible shrinking celebs. doning the cover of your favorite magazine or splattered across social media? What's their big secret? Injections, Wegovy or Mounjaro. These peptides are being posted as skinny shots and are showing up everywhere these days. Heck, listen, I just saw them at a small local spa and they were handing them out like candy.

Lisa Beres 1:30

The obsession to reduced one's waistline is real. But are there any downsides to the skinny shots? Or are there actually health benefits when it comes to peptides? Our guest today Dr. Suzanne Ferree is going to shed light on all of your burning questions, including the difference between peptides and pharmaceuticals, their safety and more.

Ron Beres 1:56

Dr. Suzanne J. Ferree specializes in performance and longevity medicine and is a leading expert in peptide therapy. Dr. Ferree promotes a healthy wellbeing through nutrition, exercise and industry leading expertise in the cellular efficiency of the human body.

Lisa Beres 2:15

She is the founder of vine Medical Associates and the Cellular Medicine Institute. double board certified doctor furies thriving practice treats executives and athletes from around the world and patients with chronic and unusual diseases, practicing cellular longevity and performance medicine. She has special interests and expertise in bio identical hormone therapy, metabolic medicine, neurodegenerative disease and human performance optimization. She also has earned advanced certification in endocrinology and peptide therapy. Which brings us to today's show.

Ron Beres 2:56

Yes. Dr. Ferree is an award winning teacher of medical students and physicians. Welcome to the show Dr. Ferree. Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 3:06

Thank you so much. It's so nice to meet you both.

Lisa Beres 3:08

Oh it's so nice to meet you too. We are so excited to have you. As we talked about at the top. This is a hot topic. And so I really want to dive right in. And the big question that we're really want to cover today is how can peptides improve life in ways that we don't realize? So Dr. Ferree can you explain ozempic and peptides for weight loss are they safe?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 3:30

Yes. So peptides are generally naturally made by your own body. So these are things very familiar to us like insulin, like oxytocin that we get when we deliver a baby so that we bond with our baby. When we get when we hug our partner, we get that release of oxytocin, that's a peptide. There's lots and lots and lots and lots of others that are being discovered all the time. And so we decided to capitalize, we the medical community decided to capitalize on the benefits of these peptides, and see if we could modify them in ways that would be beneficial for patients as well. So originally, the molecule semaglutide was de studied in patients who had neurodegenerative diseases. And they discovered, wow, these patients are losing too much weight. So let's shift our focus and use it in treating weight loss and diabetes and other metabolic diseases. So the biggest areas of growth for peptide discovery right now are in oncology or cancer research, and metabolic health, specifically in weight loss and diabetes. So the difference between or is it safe is the question that you asked. And the answer is, it depends. Okay. So what's available? What is semaglutide is actually a modification of the original GLP-1 protein peptide that is produced by your body in response to a meal, the molecule that was created is slightly modified so that it does not get rapidly broken down by the enzymes that typically would break it down. So it stays around longer. That's what we want there was you'd have to inject it every four or five seconds.

Ron Beres 5:23

Is it a synthetic molecule that's created? That's part of this treatment?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 5:26

Exactly. So semaglutide is the generic name for Wegovy and Ozempic. Ozempic is FDA approved for diabetes, Wegovy is FDA approved for weight loss. And the semaglutide molecule is what is the base of each of those pharmaceuticals.

Lisa Beres 5:46

Hmm, okay. Interesting. That is very interesting. And then Mounjaro is a different one, right? That's a different peptide altogether?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 5:57

It's actually two peptides. Okay. It is GLP-1 plus a GIP, which is a slightly different peptide that's also produced in the intestines to help us with digestion and satiety or feeling full.

Lisa Beres 6:10

Okay, gotcha.

Ron Beres 6:11

Oh, interesting. So, you know, on a serious note, I have heard some peptide therapies have been linked to an increased risk for thyroid tumors. And some actually have a blackbox warning that indicates this. So is that true?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 6:24

So the research was actually done in rodents. And the only research that's demonstrated thyroid cancer risk was done in rodents, there has not been evidence of that in the research in humans to date. But that doesn't mean that the risk isn't still there. You know, we do all of our science on animals first, and then we move on to treating humans. And so thus far we've not had the numbers of humans treated, maybe at this point, so many people are taking it. But we haven't had the numbers of patients that are taking it in order to see that very small increase risk. So for now, we are not recommending that anyone who has a history of thyroid cancer use this particular product.

Lisa Beres 7:11

Would that be thyroid issues in general? Like if they have any other kind of thyroid? Not just cancer?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 7:17

No, in fact, oh, no, I have plenty of thyroid patients who take the semaglutide and they do just fine.

Lisa Beres 7:25

Okay, interesting.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 7:27

It's just the patience with history of thyroid cancer, not even a family history of thyroid cancer. It's just a personal history of thyroid cancer, that we want you to look for another option.

Lisa Beres 7:38

Okay. So we have a family member will keep their name private, for privacy. Who has type two diabetes who took Mounjaro? Am saying that right. Mounjaro? Yes. But had severe gut reaction, like really bad stomach pain? And obviously needs it for weight loss as well. Would you recommend that? I mean, you're not their doctor. But um, in that particular situation? Would it be like maybe one of the other two is a better solution? Or would they probably have the same reaction on either of the other ones do you think?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 8:10

Absolutely. One of the other two would be if it was my patient, what I would do is considered decreasing the dose significantly, even to the point where we might have to give it twice a week because the dose was so small, okay. But the other option is to give one of the other available peptides for weight loss. And liraglutide is one that brand name for that is Saxenda is the name the weight loss name for that for liraglutide. So there are lots of other options that are available. And you could switch to a different class or you could lower the dose significantly, the lowest available dose in most of the pharmaceuticals, you can adjust the it comes in click, so you have to click it up to the dose, you can actually start with just one click so in my patients, I will have them if they have symptoms dropped down to just one click and we may even do once every 10 days instead of every week. Okay, just at the very beginning to get them used to it.

Lisa Beres 9:11

Right, that makes sense. What do you think about this craze that's going on in Hollywood with everybody? You know, taking those epic just to lose weight? Do you think there's a danger with people that are really don't need to lose weight? They're just doing it to get like super skinny? Because we're obviously seeing that with a lot of celebrities right now.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 9:28

Right? So the big concern with people taking it that don't need to take it is the risk of catabolism or loss of muscle mass. Oh, so that's where we focus in our practice when we're treating patients with for weight loss. We are very focused on making sure that they're doing some sort of resistance exercise at the same time. And they're doing a high protein diet. So we've increased their dietary protein, and often when your appetite is decreased, you have to do that in a liquid form. So you would do something like a protein shake, or an amino acid shake, that would give you that extra protein. So you're not breaking down muscle, because muscle is what makes the curves of your arm look pretty. Yeah, it's what helps to create these wonderful chemicals called Myokines, that tells your body to behave in a more useful manner. If you are burning through your muscle, you don't have that signal to tell your body to behave more usefully. And so now the body begins to age more rapidly, because it's not getting that signal. So super important that you're maintaining your protein intake, while you're taking these kinds of medicines, and that you are doing resistance exercise, and we have a whole program at our office to focus on this, we're monitoring their muscle mass, we're monitoring their fat loss. So as long as they're just losing fat will continue them. But if they start to lose muscle, we're going to take them off, retrain them on the way maintain muscle mass, and then go back later, should they still need help.

Lisa Beres 11:05

So peptides, in addition to the weight loss is you said it telling your body to age usefully. So are there other benefits for I know we're gonna get into all kinds of things that peptides can do. But these particular brands that we mentioned? Are they also like anti aging, besides just the weight loss?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 11:21

So it's interesting that you asked that question, there is some research now demonstrating that these may have some anti aging properties, and it's specific to brain aging. And it's because of the way they work to help the cells to make and use energy more efficiently. So not just your fat cells, but also your brain cells, your heart cells, your liver cells, there are some really, really interesting studies demonstrating that that may be a beneficial side effect. Wow, is it the case at the doses we're using, I'm not certain. And one of the things that we will do in our practice with our patients is drop their dose way down. Once they reached their goal weight, we always make them set a goal at the beginning. Once they reach their goal weight, then we drop them down to the baseline level. And let's say they have a family history of dementia, because of its benefits in patients who had dementia at the very beginning, or at least in rodents who had dementia at the very beginning. We use this in that sort of situation. So we will if they have a family history of dementia, drop their dose way, way, way down and have them persist at a super low dose, not a weight loss dose, keeping an eye on their weight so that they're not continuing to lose weight in addition, right.

Lisa Beres 12:43

Wow. Now have peptides been around forever this use of it because it feels like we just heard about this within the last couple of years, maybe year. This the pharmaceutical versions has this been around? Or is this new?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 12:57

So what's fascinating to me is the daily injectable has been around a long time and the pharmaceutical companies believed that patients would not take the daily injections. And so when they came out with the weekly injections of the semaglutide, that's when we saw the huge uptick in patients taking this for weight loss.

Lisa Beres 13:20

Wow. It's exciting. It's an exciting new field. Now how do they combat fatigue a lot of people listening suffer with fatigue. It's such an issue right now in today's modern day world.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 13:32

So I actually would not think that these particular peptides would benefit fatigue. In fact, fatigue is one of the side effects that a lot of people experience when they first start using these peptides is they'll experience not only the intestinal symptoms, but also some fatigue, much like you might experience for you to go on a keto diet, that sort of keto fatigue that you get in the first couple of weeks. But there are lots and lots of peptides. In fact, peptides were originally discovered in the 1920s started with some other intestinal peptides, one called secrete and one of the first ones was oxytocin. So you're probably familiar with oxytocin as the love hormone. Yeah, that people secrete women, when they're having babies. They secrete it to help with bonding. Also, when you kiss her or hug your husband or your baby, you have a little bit more oxytocin release. And so that was one of the first peptides ever other famous peptides that we don't know our peptides are Losartan, which is a blood pressure medicine and Bacitracin , which is a topical antibiotic. Oh, wow. And there's lots of others. There's a whole new class of medicines for migraine that are really wonderful at treating migraine with very few side effects. Yes, and so. So there's lots of different things we can do right now with peptides. The ones for fatigue would be depending on what the reason for the fatigue is. So we have to of course, research that first. Do a bunch of labs work on Lifetime kinds of things first, and then we can work on your mitochondria. So often fatigue is related to mitochondria, especially if we're talking about post viral syndrome, mitochondrial disease, which is what we know people get when they get that sort of brain fog and fatigue. Often this is because your mitochondria have been affected by the virus itself, and by the immune system storm that happens in response to the virus. Okay, so, restoring mitochondrial function, if you remember from eighth grade biology, learning about the little power generators in your cells, those mitochondria need to be refreshed at some point often and so there are peptides we can use to help with that, too.

Lisa Beres 15:41

Wow, that's fascinating.

Ron Beres 15:43

Well, you would discuss peptides for spring break. Can you elaborate on tanning hangovers and libido boosters? At least told me about tanning. I think I need some help there. Thank you.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 16:01

So I have very, very pale skin. And this has been such a breakthrough for me to be able to actually go to the beach and stay on the beach without having to reapply sunscreen every 30 minutes, which is what I used to have to do. Now I treat myself daily for two weeks up to the trip. And then I can just put on sunscreen one time in the morning. And I can and I can stay fine all day long. It's so nice. To not have to constantly be thinking about do I have enough sunscreen on my all covered up? Is my hat big enough? Where's the sun hitting me? Yeah, so great.

Lisa Beres 16:40

Wow, I grew up in Arizona. I can relate. Yeah, I wish I had that when I was younger, I avoided a lot of burdens. So what about pricing? Does insurance cover these if they're for medical purposes? What if someone's using it just for weight loss? Are they paying that out of pocket.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 16:56

So insurance covers it only if your insurance policy covers it. So usually it has to be an FDA approved drug, which ozempic and wegovy and saxenda. And the liraglutide though all of those are peptides that are FDA approved. And so they should be covered by most insurances. Now a lot of them will have what they call step therapy, meaning that you have to have tried something else and not been successful with that before the insurance company will cover it. Or some cases they have a complete exclusion of the weight loss related medications. So that all depends on your employer.

Lisa Beres 17:38

No, gotcha and your insurance, okay. And was someone who I'm going back to that, again, because it's just so everyone's talking about this right now. Someone's using it for weight loss, they get down to their goal weight, then can they fully go off? Because you hear these rumors online that everyone gains the weight back after they go off? Is that true?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 17:57

So here's the answer to your question. Did the patient make a lifestyle change while they were doing the treatment? If the answer to that is no, and all they did was decrease how much terrible food they were eating, they'll still lose weight, but they're not going to be able to come off of it as easily as someone who made a lifestyle change added in resistance exercise added in vegetables and fruits and lean meat decreased their take of alcohol and other fatty type foods. If you're making a macros change, and how you are the portions of macro, have protein, carbohydrate and fat they take in your diet.

Ron Beres 18:40

Now all of our spring breakers have left the call, they've all left this podcast.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 18:57

They have left the room.

They're done, this is not interesting. If you've made all of those changes, than most of the time, you can come off of these medications, our patients have been able to come up with these medications very easily. But if you haven't made the changes, then this is probably something you're going to need to stay on if you want to maintain the weight loss. And so what I usually encourage people is have them commit to me to some sort of program that they're going to be following including a resistance training program.

Lisa Beres 19:21

That sounds like a big one. So they don't want to be doing cardio just like more muscle building weights. Yeah, resistance band.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 19:26

Exactly. Exactly.

Lisa Beres 19:28

Well that's interesting. So it sounds like a really good especially with people who are really obese and really are struggling with you know, getting started, you know, just getting them to the place where then you get motivated, right, then you're feeling better, then you're having more energy, you're liking the way you look. And then you're more inspired to eat healthy and change your lifestyle. Because I know a lot of people when they're really, you know, really overweight, it's hard just to get to that point, right? Because it's overwhelming.

Ron Beres 19:53

Have there been studies on how much muscle mass is lost during a period of time like for example, are you losing like 5% a year are you losing?

Lisa Beres 20:01

Not if you're doing your resistance band.

Ron Beres 20:03

I know, I want to do the resistance for that, but what do they battling? You know, there are a certain ages, obviously, we're losing muscle mass and less, we're working out more. Is there a study that says like, Hey, you're losing 1.5% every three months if you're on a peptide, or anything like that, so far, no. Okay.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 20:19

I can't imagine they would want to do that.

Ron Beres 20:21

Right, right. It's not in their best. That's a good point. So but, and that would depend. But is there a rough idea as to how much muscle mass is lost during this experience? Like, does it help to be really muscley? And you work out a whole bunch, then you're on peptides? And you don't work out? I don't know. I'm trying to figure out what the effect might be on someone who wants to become fit. And they've already been doing this for a long time, is it like twice as hard to get strong again, are they losing just like a small percentage of their muscle mass?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 20:48

So that's part of the reason why we monitor them the whole way along their treatment course. And so because I don't want you to lose any percent of your muscle mass. So if I start to see that you're losing some, I'm going to take you off of it. I'm not going to prescribe your subsequent month, because I'm going to say that this isn't safe for you to continue if you're losing muscle mass. So what we need to focus on is what are we doing with our diet? And what are you doing with your resistance exercise?

Lisa Beres 21:13

Well, good. Yeah, it's a good wake up call and a good way for people to start changing their lifestyle. Because you know, that's what our podcast is all about is a healthy lifestyle. And it always comes back to that, right? I mean, always comes back to your choices, there's no magic pill, you still have to put in the effort to make those healthy choices for your long term health. Is peptide therapy, the secret, would you say to a healthy anti aging regimen? And if so, how?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 21:39

I think it really is. And I would not necessarily include the semaglutide and liraglutide in this category. That's still out for debate. But there are several other peptides that I do think are very important for our anti aging purposes. We know that when people age, they lose all the hormones, but growth hormone specifically, we know that a decrease in growth hormone is associated with death from all causes. So there was a study that was done with human men looking at what their growth hormone level was, and how quickly they died and to see if there was any correlation. And there was a fairly significant correlation between low growth hormone level and deaths from all causes. So heart attack stroke, but also car wrecks. Oh, which was weird. Yeah. Well, so the question is, why is that the case? And what can we do about it, and so we can certainly give growth hormone, that's an option. But we instead could give the peptide growth hormone releasing hormone, which will allow your body to produce its own growth hormone. So the growth hormone that you can get exogenous lately, or by injection is one version of the 100 versions that your body makes. So if I can make your body make its own growth hormone, again, or just trigger a little bit of extra growth, hormone production, then you're getting that full panel, the full gamut of what your body needs for all the variants.

Lisa Beres 23:10

All right, that's amazing. Wow.

Ron Beres 23:13

Dr. Friel, what's the difference between peptides and pharmaceuticals?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 23:18

So peptides are the proteins that are made by your body, the FDA, or pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to patent a natural substance. So you it has to be slightly modified in order for them to patent it. Okay. So the peptides that our body produces, for example, GLP-1 is the natural peptide that's produced by your stomach, and then it's slightly modified to prevent it from being degraded by the enzymes, and that becomes liraglutide or semaglutide or all the other peptides that are available now.

Lisa Beres 23:52

Oh very good explanation.

Ron Beres 23:54

Other natural remedies that replicate or do what peptides do?

Lisa Beres 23:58

Yeah, like plant based peptide, is that a thing?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 24:01

There are definitely plant peptides. And so you could get your amino acids from a plant source, but you would have to specifically source them from a plant source. So that would be you would need to find someone who made them from a plant source.

Lisa Beres 24:16

Okay. Interesting.

Ron Beres 24:18

And at this time, you don't know of a particular manufacturer that does that, right?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 24:21

I don't.

Ron Beres 24:22

Okay.

Lisa Beres 24:23

Okay. Someone listening, start this big business. All the vegans need answers and anti aging too. Okay. Can you share with our listeners ways to slow aging and disease of aging?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 24:37

Yes, I think our number one thing is sleep. And our number two thing is stress. So I'm sure you've on this podcast, tons of information about those two subjects. Those are probably number one and number two, and over 40. You're hearing the being a broken record. Now. We all need to be doing more resistance exercise over the age of 40. With decreasing our cardio so much and increasing our resistance training because those Myokines produced by exercising muscle are so critical to youthfulness.

Ron Beres 25:11

Dr. Ferree give us a teaser as to what is this routine in general, for the regular person? What are some things that you suggest they do for resistance?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 25:19

So, I love a bar class. I love doing bodyweight exercises, even something simple. So I have several patients who travel. And so I'll have them when they're in their hotel room. They need no equipment. They do 100 Sit Ups 100 Push Ups 100 dips on a chair working the backs of the arm.

Lisa Beres 25:38

Right? That's great for triceps. Yeah.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 25:41

You got it. And 100 lunges and 100 squats.

Lisa Beres 25:45

Wow, this person does not have a business meeting to get to. They travel and staying all day in their room.

Ron Beres 25:53

It's another not sleeping as they're working out all day.

Lisa Beres 25:57

That's pretty turbo exercise. Is that every day? Yeah, that's in their hotel. That's just when they're traveling.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 26:03

You can do all of those exercises in 15 minutes, real 15 minutes. Oh, wow, someone who's very fit can do all of that in 15 minutes.

Lisa Beres 26:14

We gotta step it up Ron. I'm not doing that.

Ron Beres 26:17

Well, I can do the push up one. So I've been doing a push up challenge. But now I have to add these lunges and everything else. So I'm in trouble. That's gonna be.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 26:26

How many can you do?

Lisa Beres 26:27

You're doing about 100 a day,

Ron Beres 26:29

Over 100 a day for the whole week. But I didn't add the other five elements that Dr. said.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 26:37

That's great.

Lisa Beres 26:39

I use little hand weights, you know, and we have a peloton treadmill. So we use we do that and but now you're making me think like, we're over 40 Ah, gasps would you say anyone over 40 You've got 30 minutes, don't even waste your time on cardio, just grab those little hand weights or bands and do that?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 26:57

So the research shows you only need about 15 minutes of cardio, particularly if you're doing high intensity interval training. Okay, so run on the treadmill as fast as you can stop for a second, run again, as fast as you can stop for a second. You can use battle ropes you can use, there's all kinds of ways to do you can do burpees for 20 seconds and then off for 10 seconds. So it's that interval that makes a difference. And 15 minutes is what's required a day. Wow. The rest of your hour that you're at the gym should be doing resistance exercise.

Lisa Beres 27:32

Okay, that is so powerful. I mean, this is like, gosh, it was always about cardio, right? It was cardio, cardio, cardio, and now the pendulum has just swung. And because I'm seeing all these ads on Instagram about this, like, I'll show you how to get rock hard abs with eight minutes a day. And you're like, Okay, what? So that is really interesting. Yeah, thanks for sharing.

Ron Beres 27:56

Is it possible to target the root of anxiety and depression with peptides?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 28:01

So that's very interesting. Absolutely. What we're trying to do is figure out why the patient has the depression and anxiety in the first place. There's lots of things we can do to treat that. There are a few peptides that specifically work on depression and anxiety. There are several that were available. One is called pe22-28. They all have chemical names, because most of the research they have not been adopted by a pharmaceutical company. So they have numbers and letters name, but there's lots of them that are available that can treat depression, anxiety. In fact, they can work fairly quickly as well to improve depression, anxiety. There are several that have come out recently, the FDA has come out against a lot of the pharmaceuticals, I mean, against the peptides recently trying to keep them out of the compounding pharmacies. And we believe that this is related. There's lots of conjecture about why this has happened. There have been no reports of adverse effects, serious adverse effects using these peptides. But they are and this is not including Wegovy and Ozempic, of course, because they are FDA approved. But the other peptides that are available, many of them have been moved to category two as far as the FDA is concerned. So they cannot be compounded by compounding pharmacies. This does not prevent them from being picked up by pharmaceutical companies and studied and transformed into a pharmaceutical. So we're hoping that that may be what's happening. And we're also excited about some new peptides that are on the horizon as a result of these others not being currently available.

Lisa Beres 29:37

Oh wow. So what would connotates something having to go to a compounding pharmacy? Can you kind of explain that what what is the difference?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 29:45

Sure, anything that's not available at a regular pharmacy. So for example, right now, the semaglutide has been unavailable at a lot of regular pharmacies, and so the compounding pharmacies are then asked to step in and take over the excess demand helping to produce these peptides.

Lisa Beres 30:03

Oh, if they're not FDA approved, a regular pharmacy can't sell them but a compounding can. Am I getting that right or no?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 30:10

Not necessarily. So okay, for example, with the semaglutide. They've been on backorder I'm sure you've heard about and the supply and demand creates a whole lot of anxiety and a lot of hype, because it's in the news all the time. Yeah. So that the demand has been so high, and the ability to make them has been low. So the pharmaceutical companies have asked the compounding pharmacy to step in to meet the demand. So if you needed something, let's say you're vegan, and you don't want to take a capsule that's made from gelatin, you can ask a compound it and it's only available in a gelatin capsule from your regular pharmacy or you can ask a compounding pharmacy to make it for you in a vegan capsule. Oh, gotcha. Okay.

Lisa Beres 30:55

They can modify things like that. Okay, exactly. Awesome. That's really good. Now, how do peptides play a role in autoimmune conditions like MS, Rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto, thyroiditis and more.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 31:07

So there are several peptides that are available that work on the thymus gland and your thymus gland is the organ that helps control the immune system. So your immune response both to a vaccination, or to an infection, or to a cancer or other things like that. So the thymus gland orchestrates that whole thing. And there are peptides that it naturally produces, that we can give you exogenous li because as we age, we decrease our ability to produce those peptides. And so we can give you those exogenously, I can give those to my patients exogenously and they can respond, what does that mean?

Lisa Beres 31:49

What is exogenously?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 31:50

It means that you would, as opposed to producing it yourself, which would be endogenously, right? Exogenously means I would give it to you as a supplement or x outside of you. Gotcha. So, if I give it to you outside as an injection or as a medicine, then we can replace what your body is not making because of aging.

Lisa Beres 32:10

Gotcha. Okay. Wow.

Ron Beres 32:13

Interesting. Can peptide therapy treatment options be effective for health issues brought on by aging, like joint pain, weight gain and sleep issues that someone's listening doctor has not tried yet.

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 32:29

There are things that we can certainly do for sleep, there are peptides we can use for sleep, our joke around the offices, there's like, oh, my gosh, there's because your body's natural goal is to actually do all those things on its own. And so if we can just discover what the body's natural peptide would be that would help you with that process. And we can give that to you, when you're depleted of it. Certainly, genetics plays a part of genetic variants where you're making less of that, but also aging plays a part where you might be making less of that peptide. So if we can replace that with a medicine, that is that peptide, then we should be able to see reversal of that problem with sleep or the problem with weight gain, as you're suggesting. And so yeah.

Lisa Beres 33:17

Would you say this is the future of medicine?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 33:20

I think it's one of the big horizons for medicine, for sure. And many of these peptides are being created in the metabolic medicine, and the oncology medicine arenas.

Lisa Beres 33:31

Oh, okay. So this could be really breakthrough for cancer.

Ron Beres 33:35

What can someone expect to pay on a weekly basis not to put you on the spot? Let's say that our insurance does not cover this as a weight loss solution for themselves. Someone out of pocket for a month, saying I said a week earlier, but say a month? What would they probably spend just to get started?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 33:50

Just for the peptide for weight loss? Yes, they can spend anywhere between $300 and $1,000 a month.

Lisa Beres 33:58

They're probably spending that anyway, gym memberships and shakes and the latest fad of a diet or a I know anyone? Right? Well, that's amazing. Wow, this is really eye opening. I feels like it's going to take over so much of the medical industry, right? Because there's if it can cure some of these things, and a lot of those treatments aren't going to be needed anymore, right?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 34:22

It's very exciting. And I look forward to more and more human research to back up what we've seen in our clinical practices.

Ron Beres 34:29

Now, I have an odd question too. So back in the day in high school when I was lifting a lot of weight, really heavy weight and I was taking protein powders and amino acids at the time. Were those kinds of formulations. I know that I peptide were those amino acids that I was taking to build muscle mass. Were they indirectly creating a peptide? Am I thinking that correctly? Is that what was going on?

Dr. Suzanne Ferree 34:49

Absolutely. A+.

Ron Beres 34:50

Okay.

Lisa Beres 34:51

Dr. Furree thank you so much for being with us today. Friends. You can learn more about Dr. furies incredible services at Vinemedical.com. Oh and guys, don't forget to check out Dr. Ferree new book that just came out Counterclockwise: Using Peptides to Renew, Rejuvenate, and Rediscover. She created this guide on the use of peptides to alter your aging trajectory and live your best life. We will put the link in the show notes.

Ron Beres 35:21

And thanks for being with us today friends. We'll have all the links in the show notes at ronandlisa/podcast and join us in two weeks for another episode in get ready to uplevel your health. Bye. Bye fine.

Lisa Beres 35:42

This episode of the Healthy Home hacks podcast has ended. But be sure to subscribe for more healthy living strategies and tactics to help you create the healthy home you always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best content. See you on the next episode.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai