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Peptides for skin —are they a miracle breakthrough or just another trend in health and wellness? These tiny protein fragments have been making waves, especially for those struggling with chronic inflammation, gut issues, and skin conditions.
Over the past few years, I've been inundated with questions about GLP-1 medications and other peptides and bioregulators like BPC-157 and KPV. Clients and listeners alike have read about these compounds in forums, especially in connection with healing leaky gut and calming inflammatory skin conditions. But I didn’t have enough information to give them answers—until a trusted friend recommended Nathalie, who’s been researching and using peptides for years.
Nathalie Niddam is a holistic nutritionist, international speaker, and longevity educator dedicated to helping people live joyful and vibrant lives well into our 50s, 60s, and beyond. She shares strategies that range from health tech and ancestral health to peptides and bioregulators on her show, Longevity Podcast with Nathalie Niddam.
In today’s episode, we’ll sort through what’s fact versus fiction – what peptides and bioregulators are, how they work, and whether they live up to the hype.
We'll also tackle the controversy surrounding GLP-1 receptor agonists, like Ozempic, which are making headlines for weight loss and metabolic health.
If you’ve ever been curious about whether peptides might help you or worried about potential risks, this is the episode for you.
Or, listen on your favorite app: iTunes (Apple Podcasts) | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | Subscribe on Android
In This Episode:
- What are peptides, and how do they function in the body?
- The key differences between peptides and bioregulators
- Can peptides like BPC-157 and KPV help your gut?
- Why peptides could support both skin and gut health
- The role of GLP-1 receptor agonists in regulating metabolism and cravings
- Are peptides safe? What risks should you be aware of?
- How misuse of peptides could lead to GI distress or other complications
- The importance of combining peptides with proper diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes
- Can peptides help with conditions like mast cell activation or chronic fatigue?
- Real-life tips on incorporating peptides into a long-term healing plan
Quotes
“You want your minimum effective dose, you want to be patient, you want to go slow and steady to win the race.”
“GLP-1s are the closest thing to a silver bullet when it comes to fat loss that humanity's ever come to.”
Links
Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 Enhances the Growth Hormone Receptor Expression in Tendon Fibroblasts
Do We Have a New Psoriasis Drug?
Molecular effects of stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 on psoriasis
PepT1-Mediated Tripeptide KPV Uptake Reduces Intestinal Inflammation
A KPV-binding double-network hydrogel restores gut mucosal barrier in an inflamed colon
Anti-inflammatory role of glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists and its clinical implications
BPC-157: Experimental Peptide Prohibited (via USADA)
384: Peptides For Skin Problems: Do GLP-1 + BPC 157 Peptides Really Stop Inflammation? w/ Natalie Niddam {FULL TRANSCRIPT}
Jennifer Fugo (00:16.228)
Nathalie, thank you so much for joining me today. This is like, for me, so exciting to have you here. I've been anticipating our chat on peptides for skin for the last couple of weeks.
Nathalie Niddam (00:27.182)
Well, thank you so much for having me, Jennifer. It's a pleasure to be here.
Jennifer Fugo (00:32.1)
Well, I was told by a very reputable source and our mutual friend that you were the best person to talk about things called peptides and peptides for skin. And I will be honest with you, over the last couple of years, I have noticed a real uptick in our support inbox about different peptides that people have read about or seen being kind of talked about in different Facebook groups to heal skin issues and whatnot. And I honestly did not have a good answer for them because I really didn't fully understand all about them and how they could be used. So I'm glad that you're here because, I think first of all, we need to understand what exactly peptides are. So can you give us a kind of peptides 101 explanation?
Nathalie Niddam (01:16.768)
Of course. So peptides are small proteins. I mean, in a nutshell, they are tiny little proteins. And some people would say they're 50 amino acids or less, some people would say they're a hundred amino acids or less. Nobody in science really agrees on everything. But definitely they're smaller proteins, and we know that proteins run the show in the body. They are typically fragments of proteins that are naturally occurring in the body, they've been synthesized in a lab as fragments. And then they get, the ones we'll be talking about, they can be reintroduced either by subcutaneous injection, which for the most part, many of these are off the table, but many of them can be taken orally. There are a lot of people right now working really hard at making them bioavailable across the skin, in different ways. But because they're proteins, you can pop some of them in your mouth, but most of them you can't because for the most part they'll just get digested like a protein. There are exceptions to all the rules, of course, as always, but that's the general rule of thumb.
And so what they do is they act as signaling molecules in the body. So many of them, or all of them, will have receptors of some kind somewhere, and usually from the outside of the cell they will initiate different cellular cascades inside the cell. Sometimes they will even signal genes to activate or deactivate. And many times they'll signal, I mean, there's a plethora of different ways that they basically trigger healing, in many cases, or repair, some of them are anti-microbial. So they’re a very, very interesting category of molecules because they are native to the body. In many ways, they don't disable the body's own checks and balances system. So the problem with that is then that means a lot of people will run around saying, well, you know, peptides, they are so safe, there is no way you could ever get into trouble with a peptide. Not true.
Jennifer Fugo (03:35.214)
I want to ask you about that. We'll get to that. I just want to make sure everybody knows too, when you said the peptides are produced in a lab, obviously there is a production within our own body, right? So when we buy a supplement version or a supplemental version, that's not derived from animals or human sources, correct?
Nathalie Niddam (03:56.75)
Well, it's never from humans. But if you're talking about bioregulator peptides, which are a subset of peptides, so those are two to four amino acids long. If peptides are small, bioregulators are minuscule, and bioregulators work a little bit differently. Because they are so small, they actually get into the nucleus of the cell, they bind to the DNA, and they activate genes at a cellular level inside the cell. They're really cool. Now they can be extracted from animals.
Jennifer Fugo (04:30.498)
Okay, so would you need to know what animal it came from if, say, you have like, you know, some people may have alpha-gal, so they can't consume mammalian protein. Would you need to know from an allergy standpoint where they come from?
Nathalie Niddam (04:41.729)
No, because there's no animal protein left. So they've pretty much, like they're so refined and it's such a process extracting them, you end up with a lot of signaling molecules, you end up with different amino acids, you end up with these proteins, but you don't actually have the markers of the animal.
Jennifer Fugo (05:06.388)
Interesting. Well, that's good to know. I'm sure that will help a lot of people, because we do have people who have significant IgE allergies, and so that's always a question or concern that they may have.
Nathalie Niddam (05:15.246)
But if they did, and if they were concerned and super sensitive, there are synthetic versions of the bioregulators. So they could opt instead to use the synthetic version instead of the extract.
Jennifer Fugo (05:33.648)
Do you find that the synthetic version is as potent as the natural?
Nathalie Niddam (05:37.92)
It can be sometimes more potent. It's really interesting, it's different. It works differently. Like in the bioregulator world, very often we talk about the synthetic bioregulator acting faster because it's just that two to four amino acid chain. Whereas with the extract, you're getting the two to four amino acid chain, but you're kind of getting a whole entourage, if you will, of other signaling molecules. So on the one hand, they might take longer to act, but there's a narrative in the literature that says that the effects might last longer.
Jennifer Fugo (06:14.052)
So generally speaking, are these considered, both peptides and bioregulating peptides, I guess both little groups or camps, are they considered safe? I know there's like, I was reading on the World Anti-Doping Agency that, for example, BPC-157 peptides is actually one of the 50 unapproved substances, or it's a category of unapproved substances. And I was like, huh? This is confusing because you can go on websites and purchase these. So what's the deal with that?
Nathalie Niddam (06:49.196)
Yeah. So I'll play both sides of the fence. On the one hand, probably with BPC-157 peptides, there would be a lot of people that would say there's not enough human research, there's not enough double-blind, placebo-controlled human studies. The truth of the matter is there's actually an increasing amount of human research, like there are studies that show that it can be magical for Crohn’s and colitis. There's a growing body of evidence in human research. The challenges, and the whole performance side, is a bit tragic, because you have, in many sports, you have athletes that are very prone to head injuries. And certainly, in animal studies, BPC-157 was shown to protect from TBIs, which is, you know, it's a tough one to rationalize.
It is not a performance-enhancing drug in the sense that it's not like the steroids that athletes have been busted using, steroids or whatever it was, the performance-enhancing drugs that they were using. You know, they could enlarge your heart, they could cause a heart attack, they caused androgynous features to develop, all those things, right? BPC-157, there's none of that. It doesn't increase performance, all it does is it would help the athlete to recover faster between workouts because what it does is it helps with healing. It helps to trigger healing cascades for soft tissue and even bones in the body.
So on the one hand, you're like, well, you know, they are research chemicals, we don't have a hundred percent clarity, we could know more. And on the other hand, if you look at the list of benefits, and then you look at some of the things that are approved for athletes to use, which are actually bad for them, you're like, you know, I'm kind of struggling here to kind of make sense of this. But hopefully that'll change over time because, I think it was New Zealand, I want to say it was New Zealand or Australia, there was a rugby team that was using BPC-157 because it was helping them to recover, and it was helping them to train. And they got lambasted, like they got into big trouble. So I gather they are able to test for BPC, which is interesting because it doesn't stick around for very long.
Jennifer Fugo (09:29.946)
So we'll talk about BPC in a moment. I think we should probably start with the GLP-1s because obviously that's the thing everybody's talking about. What exactly is this? I mean, obviously people know Ozempic and semaglutide, and now there's a bunch of others. And my understanding initially was that it was a prescription drug, but then now I see ads to be able to maybe get it yourself, like I am so confused by this whole space. So can you share with us a little bit about what is this, and how does it work in the body, and anything else you want to throw in there that you think would be helpful for us?
Nathalie Niddam (10:11.054)
Sure. So the GLP-1 category actually has been around for over a decade. It's just that with the introduction of particularly Ozempic and Wegovy a couple of years ago, the code that the researchers cracked was that they were able to modify a peptide that is naturally occurring in the gut. So initially they were able to modify it so that it would last a day, and I think that's liraglutide. What then happened is they were able to modify it, and I think it's by putting a fatty acid somewhere on the molecule, they were able to prevent it from breaking down for a week.
Jennifer Fugo (10:56.15)
Oh, wow.
Nathalie Niddam (11:06.924)
So they were able to extend its life to six days. That's a big deal. Now, what it does, and why it's a big deal, is because of all the things that it does in the body. So number one, it acts on the center in the brain that drives cravings and what a lot of people refer to as food noise, but actually cravings in general. And so the approved use was for type 2 diabetes, now it's for obesity. And so for a lot of these people, often they can't stop thinking about food, they're always thinking about what's the next thing I'm going to eat. And so if we can quiet that down, it helps them to just kind of be calmer about food, right? Interestingly enough, that center in the brain also affects any drive. So it's being studied for people who smoke, people who drink, people who gamble. Like that whole kind of center in the brain that drives cravings and that kind of behavior just gets calmed down. So that's pretty amazing right out of the gate.
The next thing it does, it helps to increase resting metabolic rate, which is basically what's your burn at rest. What people will often notice is that their resting heart rate goes up when they start to use these. Usually after a couple of months it tends to resolve, but for some people, you got to watch it. Your heart rate variability often tanks, for people who are really obsessed with looking at their metrics, all of a sudden they're like, oh my god, what happened, I used to have this great HRV, now it's horrible. So your resting heart rate's gone up because your metabolic rate's gone up.
Secondly, it helps to improve insulin sensitivity. Now we're getting into really, really interesting stuff because a lot of your listeners, I'm sure, have heard about insulin resistance. So this is where your body, your cells no longer respond to insulin to allow the glucose into the cell. So number one, you end up, kind of, like you're overfed and starving at the same time because the energy can't get into the cell. You're always exhausted and meanwhile, you're accumulating fat. There's also a mechanism by which it helps to reduce inflammation, and this is the one I know we're going to talk a bit about later. And there's probably pathways that it reduces inflammation directly, but also just by helping people to release extra weight, when you're talking about someone who's very overweight, we know that adipose tissue produces its own cytokines. So if we can get rid of the cytokine factory, we're ahead of the game.
It also slows gastric emptying. So this means that your stomach contents are going to stay in your stomach for longer when you eat, which means you're going to get fuller faster, which means you're not going to want to eat as much. Now, we have some caveats here, right?
Jennifer Fugo (14:09.487)
Yes.
Nathalie Niddam (14:22.294)
Because most of us don't make enough digestive enzymes on a good day, and not that it suppresses digestive enzymes, but if you leave food sitting in a stomach for too long and there's not enough digestive enzymes, it ferments and now we start to experience heartburn or GERD. That is one of the side effects that a lot of people experience and it's probably because they weren't making enough enzymes to begin with, and now they're still not making enough enzymes and they've got all this food sitting there. In my mind, it's very important for people to be taking digestive enzymes with their meals and to eat small meals. So next, in slowing gastric emptying, it actually slows gastric motility.
Jennifer Fugo (14:53.153)
Oh, so that's, I've seen some people have ended up with almost like gastroparesis.
Nathalie Niddam (14:58.432)
It can happen. It's been very uncommon, it's not common, but it can happen. I haven't read enough about those exact cases, I would suspect that it's at higher doses, but I'm not sure about that. So I don't want to misspeak on that one, I haven't fully looked at everything. We definitely see, in all things, Jen, that you always have outliers that are hypersensitive to these, to anything, right? So some people get the worst heartburn on the planet. Some people get exhausted, like they just can't move. This is not a good thing for you. Some people get hyper-constipated, and these are people that were constipated to begin with, as are so many people, and now you give them something that slows down their motility even more. Well, it's like a flipping disaster waiting to happen. So all of these things have to be taken into account. It can drive nausea in some people. Again, generally speaking, if people start at a low enough dose and stay at that dose for a good month before they increase it at all, most of the time people can get around a lot of these side effects.
There's a couple of black box warnings that deserve to be mentioned, because this is truly known that it can in some people cause pancreatitis, which is really ugly. That's like waking up in the morning as if somebody stuck a hot knife into your gut, not to mention the fact that people who get pancreatitis are at a higher risk of pancreatic cancer down the road. We don't want that. And also, originally, a year ago, I would have said in the rat studies only they've observed an increase of thyroid cancer, of a very specific type of thyroid cancer that really only happens in rats. And a lot of the people I asked said, well, because rats have much higher density of GLP-1 receptors on their thyroids than humans. But I've since seen a couple of articles that implied that maybe there was a little bit of a risk of increased risk of thyroid cancer in humans.
So, you know, I would say that whether you go rogue and decide to order these things on your own or not, you want to sit and talk to a professional to understand what's your family history, are there any factors in your case that may open you up to more of these side effects? Now we've only talked about semaglutide.
Jennifer Fugo (17:37.357)
I know.
Nathalie Niddam (17:55.138)
The new shiny kid on the block, the good news is I don't have to repeat everything because they kind of do both, they do the same thing. The new shiny kid on the block is tirzepatide. And tirzepatide is a dual incretin, which means it's GLP-1 and GLP. So it works through two different pathways. So what was happening with semaglutide is people were hitting a wall. And now really generally speaking, we're talking about people who had a lot of weight to lose. And so as a result, Novos developed a new drug called cagrilintide, which they've developed specifically to stack onto semaglutide when people hit that wall. But Eli Lilly, in the meantime, released tirzepatide, which is known as Mounjaro, which has fewer side effects and works better.
Jennifer Fugo (18:34.512)
Interesting. That is interesting.
Nathalie Niddam (18:34.604)
So, kind of cool. And it does not cause the constipation that semaglutide does.
Jennifer Fugo (18:42.466)
So I just think I'm gonna ask you this right now, and I think it's probably an easy yes or no answer for you, because I know that people listening to this have probably read that berberine is like Mother Nature's natural GLP-1 alternative. Do you think that's true?
Nathalie Niddam (18:57.004)
No.
Jennifer Fugo (18:58.596)
I don't either.
Nathalie Niddam (18:59.391)
I don't think it's true at all. I mean, I think berberine is a beautiful thing and dihydroberberine is even better, it's a modified berberine, which you need a lot less and works a lot better, but it's not a natural GLP-1. It doesn't take the place of GLP-1. You know, GLP-1s are the closest thing to a silver bullet when it comes to peptides for fat loss that humanity's ever come to.
Jennifer Fugo (19:21.882)
But if you come off of the drug, like let's say you get to your weight loss goal, can you get off the drug and not have the fat return, which thus has an inflammatory cascade and all sorts of things associated with it? Like is this a decision that somebody needs to decide that could be like a lifelong thing?
Nathalie Niddam (19:44.811)
Not if they do it right. It's a really good question and there's not an easy answer. So here's the thing. When you're on a GLP-1, whichever one is selected, you don't have much appetite. You're not that hungry. And so there's two camps of people. There's the people who figure out that they can eat all the junky, well, they can eat a lot of the junky things they used to love and still lose weight. And they're like, wait a minute, that's super cool. You're telling me I can have, not as many as I used to, but I can have some donuts with my 700-calorie drink and call it a day, and I can still lose weight? Oh my god, that is phenomenal.
The bad news is that now, not only are you under-resourced from a micronutrient perspective, because we have all these people walking around North America who are overfed and malnourished, now you're underfed and malnourished. And so what happens, and this gets a lot of airplay also, is that your body also, in the absence of exercise, your body's sitting there taking stock, it doesn't have enough energy to go around. It's like, what can we burn? It's going to drop the fat, but guess what? It's also going to go after your muscle.
Jennifer Fugo (21:16.176)
So that's why you start to see muscle atrophy.
Nathalie Niddam (21:35.288)
Yeah. So, look, a very, very heavy person who loses a lot of weight will lose muscle. It's a thing, like it's part of what happens. Might your face get skinny? Heck yeah. Will it correct over time? Probably. Do some people lose weight in their face more than others because that's just how they're programmed genetically? Absolutely. So that's that whole Ozempic face, which thankfully the media has kind of let go of that. But ultimately, the second group of people is getting good coaching and is being told, here's the thing, you have a new job. Your new job is to eat protein first. You want to eat protein like it's your job. And then you want to eat nutrient-dense, energy-light foods. And what are those? Vegetables. You're going to want to eat veggies. But if you don't have any appetite and you can only eat one thing, you're going to eat that protein. And then what you might do is have a green shake, and you might have a red shake. You might have, like you're going to look for ways that take up the least amount of space in your tummy that are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck.
And you might take a couple of supplements to shore up your defenses, and you're going to go to the gym. Because you're going to challenge those muscles, you're going to give your body a reason to say, we can't afford to lose that stuff. I mean, you might lose a little bit of muscle, but you won't lose strength.
Jennifer Fugo (22:50.512)
Yeah. Well also too, as women, well not just women, it impacts men too, but as we lose muscle mass as we get older, that's also bad for our bones. We need it, yeah.
Nathalie Niddam (22:59.926)
Exactly, exactly. Like you could end up super frail, right? Because now you're not getting the right nutrients, you're losing your muscle, you're losing, like, oh my god. And then you stop taking this stuff and you haven't built any new eating habits, you haven't built any new routines in your life, you haven't changed your lifestyle. And yeah, it's going to be the worst diet rebound you've ever been through. So we need to use our heads.
And there's studies that are coming out, there's always a headline somewhere saying it didn't matter what people did, they still regained the weight. And I'm calling BS on it. Maybe in cases of extreme obesity. Because you have people who've, they didn't get to be three or four or 500 pounds overnight, and it didn't happen for no good reason. And so for those people, there's a possibility that they may need to remain on a low dose, maybe forever, I don't know. It depends, right? But for the people, the new crop of people that is so controversial, people who want to lose, and this is really like the menopausal community, right? Women after menopause, you look down one day, you're like, what the hell? Who are you? I haven't changed anything.
Jennifer Fugo (24:15.886)
It starts before that. Perimenopause, man, not fun. I'm like, gosh, what's coming?
Nathalie Niddam (24:25.366)
100%, right? We become more insulin resistant. Everything, we don't sleep as well, everything just goes wrong. But for that population of people who are carrying this extra 20 pounds exactly around their middle, hello, it's incredibly useful. But what I've seen is, for the women who do it well, they then come off of it. I mean, I'm one of those women. I won't use it for months at a time. And then sometimes, you know, I go through a period where I'm traveling too much and I'm out of my routines, diet starts to slide a bit because you're never home, and the whole nine yards. And so I might start using whatever I'm going to use at the smallest possible dose, and that requires me to kind of breathe, and dial into my diet, and dial into my exercise, and dial into my sleep, and use it as an aid to help to move the needle. And it's going to take a couple of months, but things are just going to start to resettle.
And then once I get to where I'm happy, I might drop the dose to half a starting dose or a quarter, or I might come off completely for a period of time. So you use it kind of as a little gauge, but what you do is you make sure that you dial in that lifestyle and diet so that, and you know, if you're not a person that likes healthy food, well, you better figure it out. Work with a nutritionist, find ways to give your body what it needs.
Jennifer Fugo (25:59.406)
This sounds like it shouldn't be used, like you were saying, it shouldn't just be, oh, I can eat my 700-calorie latte dessert.
Nathalie Niddam (26:09.646)
Frappuccino.
Jennifer Fugo (26:26.436)
Right. With some like muffin that's also probably 500 calories and like, oh, I'm good for the day. Like that's that's not that's not the plan here.
Nathalie Niddam (26:48.79)
Yeah. I mean, that's probably too many calories right there, but you know, you get the message folks. Like at the end of the day, if you use it properly, and I've known people who've gotten really nice results from like half a starting dose. And this is the other thing that happens, is people get impatient and they just keep cranking up the dose, and cranking it, and cranking it, and cranking it. And I think that that's where we're starting to, there's a bigger risk of health risks. And so you want your minimum effective dose, you want to be patient, you want to go slow and steady to win the race, because I will tell you that there is a point where the hypothalamus will reset your set weight. We talk about this, we talk about how the brain wants us to be at a certain weight. Well, there is a reset that happens, but it takes time. It did not take you three months to get to where you are, it is not going to take you three months to get out of there.
Jennifer Fugo (27:19.248)
That's probably a good, it's good to know that. That's what I figured. This is like, what should we go into this conversation? Because I have had, most of the clients that have chosen to do this are menopausal. And some have had psoriasis, and their doctor wanted to use it as a way to try to improve insulin sensitivity. I would say 90% have ended up with pretty intense GI problems from it.
Nathalie Niddam (27:49.474)
Were they given the semaglutide though, or tirzepatide? I would guess it's most likely semaglutide, most likely.
Jennifer Fugo (27:52.536)
I don't remember. I would think so because these are mostly people in the past, the most recent person, I'm not 100% sure which option she was given. But I think having the pros and cons helps you make a decision about whether this is right for you, rather than reading scary headlines versus reading headlines that make you believe that this is amazing. Like you said, it's close to a silver bullet, but it's not perfect and there are issues, and really we need to have good conversations about pros and cons so you can decide if it's really right for you.
Nathalie Niddam (28:33.472)
Yeah. The other big one I would say, and this sadly applies to many women in menopause, maybe because of all the bloody memes out there, is alcohol. You gotta let it go, girls. I know there's those really cute memes of it's wine time and it's, like I don't drink, so I don't have it handy, but you gotta let go of the alcohol, because the other thing you want to protect is your pancreas, by the way.
Jennifer Fugo (29:04.208)
That's a really interesting point.
Nathalie Niddam (29:28.492)
The alcohol is going to knock the daylights out of your pancreas and it's going to knock the daylights out of your liver. You want to clean out your system and, societally, we need to evolve our thinking around alcohol. And it is happening, like it is, I'm amazed at the number of people I come across who have chosen their alcohol-free lifestyle. You know what, ladies, we're at high risk of breast cancer, well, if we stopped drinking alcohol, that would take that risk down. It wouldn't make it go away, but there's a definite link between alcohol consumption and breast cancer.
Jennifer Fugo (29:41.966)
Yeah. I did want to ask you, because obviously I know I don't have all day to talk to you about this, Natalie, you're so fascinating because you know so much about this. There's two other, I'm gonna assume maybe they're bioregulators, but you tell me. The BPC-157 and BPC-157 benefits, which we mentioned briefly, and then the KPV. So can you tell us what those are? What is BPC-157? Because those are the two that I have, aside from the GLP-1 peptides, I've been asked about. And so I thought you could kind of clue us in.
Nathalie Niddam (30:14.766)
Yeah. So they are not bioregulators, they are peptides. KPV is pretty close to a bioregulator because it's only three amino acids.
Jennifer Fugo (30:16.476)
I wasn’t entirely off.
Nathalie Niddam (30:18.631)
No, but it's not an epigenetic switch in the same way. BPC-157 is a pentadeca peptide, so it's a 15 amino acid peptide. So these are both signaling molecules. KPV is interesting because it's a fragment, it itself is a fragment of another peptide that people have used, mostly bodybuilders actually, but even other people have used it, called melanotan II. And melanotan II is the Barbie doll peptide, meaning that it stimulates melanin. And so you can get a tan just by using melanotan, like it will bring up your melanin. So before everybody runs around looking for melanotan thinking, oh my god, this is amazing, it is amazing, it actually has benefits for the skin. It can be protective, it thickens the skin, it's anti-microbial, it's got all great stuff. But for all of us who were lifeguards when we were kids, or spent too much time in the sun when we were younger, the first thing that's going to come up is your sun damage. So people start using melanotan and they're like, all of a sudden they're walking around going, oh my god, freckles. Like what's with these spots, and what's with the freckles? Like, oh my god. The good news is that the background eventually catches up, but you do have to be prepared to walk around looking, and you can manage the tone, if you will, by managing the dose and the frequency of use.
But anyway, that's melanotan. Like I said, melanotan has antimicrobial effects. Well, KPV is that three amino acid sequence that's part of melanotan that actually probably does the most in terms of the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effects. So it turns out that KPV is very, very helpful for general inflammation, for inflammation in the gut. It also has applications for inflammation on the skin. So that's why I think, but the gut healing piece is really important to all the skin issues that you deal with in your practice, right? And that's why BPC-157 and KPV are going to come up a lot. Because BPC-157, even though we talked earlier about all the benefits it could have for athletes, it's super power, and what it's really the most known for, well, maybe second most known, is it heals the gut. It helps to heal a leaky gut. And so if we can do that, we can solve a lot of problems.
Nathalie Niddam (33:00.768)
And in your world, if you can get that leaky gut sealed, it just starts to calm things down. It doesn't solve everybody's problems, but it starts taking away some of the factors that might be driving an immune system into overdrive, for example, or certain things that are getting across the gut that could be driving skin issues. So we do see sometimes when people use BPC-157 for gut issues, if they had some skin stuff going on, sometimes we see a resolution of the skin issues.
Jennifer Fugo (33:27.534)
I appreciate you said sometimes we see, because it's not foolproof.
Nathalie Niddam (33:30.274)
No, because there could be another reason, or you could still be eating the foods that's damaging the gut, or doing the thing that's damaging the gut. So that analogy that I used on another podcast that you like so much, now the good news is you've got a bailer and you're bailing the boat out so you're not sinking, but you're still taking on water, right? So the cool thing about BPC-157 is it can help people to feel better even before they've massively made the changes they need to make. So we hope that if they're going to feel better enough, that they're going to say, okay, I want more of this, what else do I need to do? But it's not enough to just think, you know, it's like taking a PPI and continuing to eat all the crappy food that's giving you heartburn. Just change your diet. Use the PPI for a short time to calm down the inflammation so that your esophagus can heal, but for the love of god, don't think that you're going to live on this thing and have no consequences down the road, because you're heading for a heart attack and broken bones. So, you know, if you're 20 years on PPIs there are consequences.
So with BPC-157, you have a compound that's going to help to repair so much. So now it kind of clears the way for you to say, okay, now what else can we do? And how else, you know, do we need to look at the microbiome? Do we need to look at other inflammation, do we need to look at the diet? Do we need to look at the lifestyle? Do we need to look at is there SIBO involved? There's a lot, there's so many different things, but you know, another cool thing that BPC-157 does, it helps with the esophageal flap. So people who have heartburn often notice that their heartburn gets better. Plus it's helping to heal the esophagus. Like it's doing so many cool things, but we need to use it as leverage to then do the work and finish the job.
Jennifer Fugo (35:25.274)
Yeah. Well, so this brings me kind of to my next question, is like, how do you even take these? Because obviously with semaglutide and the GLP-1 peptides, they're injections. And I've looked at some things online that have said, and you actually alluded to this, that because they're amino acid sequences, if you take them orally, they'll be broken down as if it was food. So do you find, so that's my question.
Nathalie Niddam (35:53.89)
Yeah, so not all of them. Some of them get a buy.
Jennifer Fugo (35:55.382)
So, right. What do you think, oral, so taking something orally as a supplement versus an injection, like what are the better options, especially with the BPC-157 and the KPV?
Nathalie Niddam (36:09.848)
So for gut healing, they both can be used orally. And as a matter of fact, there's a formula, there's a stack, by one of my favorite supplement manufacturers. He's actually an Australian guy and I don't think he lives in Australia anymore because Australia, you want to talk about draconian, Australia made it so that if you even sell BPC-157, they'll throw you in jail. Like they're very hardcore.
Jennifer Fugo (36:42.512)
So Australians, they're not gonna find this. Don't even bother to look in Australia.
Nathalie Niddam (36:45.396)
It's going to be really tough. Anyway, this company LVLUP Health makes a stack called Ultimate GI Repair. It's an oral supplement. And in Ultimate GI Repair, you will find BPC-157, KPV, larazotide, which is another peptide that seals tight junctions, preferentially. There's another tripeptide, which I'm surprised isn't one of the ones that people are asking you about, GHK-Cu, which we'll talk about in a minute. And then it has tributyrin, it has L-glutamine, it has zinc carnosine, like he basically took the bucket of supplements that you would want to take for leaky gut or gut issues and stuffed them into capsules. And it's amazing. It's not cheap, but it is one of the most effective gut healing supplements out there. Like I'll do 30 days a couple of times a year just for insurance, because we know between stress and bad food and all the things, and travel and sitting in airplanes.
So BPC-157, just so everybody knows, is a fragment of a bigger protein that is made in your gut. So you make it. KPV is naturally occurring in the body. So all we're doing is we're reintroducing, we're reintroducing a therapeutic dose. So for the gut, definitely oral works and those supplements are available. We've got LVLUP Health, like there's a bunch of different companies that make them. And then he also has KPV on its own, he has BPC on its own, you know, there's lots of different options.
For the injectables, so the injectable technically is off the table. The FDA has taken a position on this, they don't want compounding pharmacies compounding it. The tricky thing is that, when we're done with doing the research on the injectables, what's interesting about administering it subcutaneously is that systemically, it is much more effective systemically. And that's where we see more of the musculoskeletal benefits, and even the brain benefits and the nervous system benefits, like there's a lot of different effects. But you know, at this point, it's kind of off the table. When compounding pharmacies were allowed to compound it, there were also ointments. So there were creams that were compounded with BPC and KPV, which I think actually would have been quite effective for skin issues. BPC is really good at healing burns and healing wounds. So we'll have to see what happens with that, but that's kind of the story.
Jennifer Fugo (39:33.668)
Can I ask too, for somebody like myself, who's like a perpetual five-year-old and can't swallow pills, can you just take it in food, or is that something that it's no-go, you have to take it encapsulated?
Nathalie Niddam (39:51.782)
So that's a really good question. With BPC, one way I've, and it's funny, I was reminded of this recently actually, I have to ask this woman how she did. One way that I used to recommend people use it orally, if they had upper GI issues, so esophagitis or heartburn where the esophagus is getting really damaged, I would have them put it in aloe vera and swallow it. Because you know the aloe vera is going to soothe, but then the BPC-157 is in there. I don't know for sure that you, I actually think you could, technically, because it's not a time release capsule. The BPC for sure is resistant to stomach acid, because that's where it comes from. And then the KPV I think is fine. The GHK is probably, I think most likely it would be fine.
Jennifer Fugo (40:50.256)
Interesting. I'll have to do some investigation. I'm always curious because I have so many clients, and I don't know if it's a thing because I've said it so many times on the podcast, but so many of the clients in my practice can't swallow pills or they can't take, they're kind of like they hit a point where they're like, I can take like three capsules and that's about it.
Nathalie Niddam (41:10.04)
For the day?
Jennifer Fugo (41:11.507)
Well, at a time.
Nathalie Niddam (41:13.318)
Yeah, so the cool thing about the Ultimate GI Repair, like I said, it's like taking eight capsules in one. Because the cool thing about peptides is we're talking about micrograms. So they don't take up space. So they're only teeny.
Jennifer Fugo (41:26.643)
So they're really small. Interesting. Wow, that is so cool. This is a really, I will say peptides and peptides for skin is a really, really fascinating topic. And I'm so glad that I had you here to talk about this because, like I said, it's like, you see the news, which is like, these are wonderful. And then other people are like, these are horrible, and all of these horrible things happen. And these are magical. And I'm like, I really don't know.
Nathalie Niddam (41:56.662)
And I think what we can probably agree on is it's never that good, and it's never that bad, or rarely. Generally speaking, there's a lot more nuance to the conversation. Generally speaking, the answer people get from me most often, that they hate the most, is it depends. I just did a post on methylene blue. People are like, well, what's the dose? I don't know. What are you using it for? It depends, like who are you? So there's a lot of art to this science. There's a lot of people working really hard at figuring it out and having really good results. I do think that it might be interesting to take a BPC-157 and mix it with a little bit of aloe and apply it topically and see if that is helpful.
There's another company, there's a company out there that makes a serum with one peptide and a couple of other herbals, if you will. It's a company called Vitali Skincare and they make a serum called GHK-Cu. They make a medical grade, so it's a 3% GHK-Cu. It is cobalt blue in color, but GHK-Cu is the skin peptide. Now it turns out that GHK-Cu is a three amino acid peptide and it flips over a thousand genes back to their more youthful setting. It is incredible for wrinkles, it is incredible for, it stimulates the production of collagen and elastin, it's incredible for reducing scarring when somebody is healing, it helps heal the gut, it's anxiolytic. Every time I go looking for a paper on GHK-Cu, I find something new.
But that one would be interesting. The woman who started that company, and it might be on her website, she had some before and after pictures of people who'd been burned and applied this serum, and the healing is unbelievable. So in the case of your population of clients, you're dealing with two different things, right? You're dealing with an expression on the surface of the skin that very often is being driven by an issue in the body. But what if, and I don't know for sure that that serum would help every one of them, but it might help some people, because it's a very powerful healing serum.
Jennifer Fugo (44:31.8)
Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that I'm taking away from this conversation, and I love that you shared that it depends is your most common answer, because so many people today are looking for the one thing that's going to fix everything. And I've just basically gotten to a point where I'm like, if you're looking for the one thing, you're not going to find it. You're going to just find, what you will find is chronic disappointment because there's usually not just one thing.
Now while yes, like I'm going to share some papers too in our show notes for this podcast because I was looking around for things that I thought would help people who are a little bit more science-minded and wanted to learn and dig more into this. Obviously, we'll talk about it in a moment, you've got your podcast and everything, which is an amazing resource, huge resource, by the way. You've been podcasting a long time, I have mad respect for that because I get what it's like to do that.
This paper did say, specifically to the GLP-1 receptor agonist, just said there are pro-inflammatory cytokines, including TNF-alpha, IL-6, IL-1β, are suppressed by the GLP-1R in immune cells. So they feel like these could potentially help by boosting anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL-10, which is nice, but it doesn't beget the question of what's causing the cytokine production in the first place. And so it's not a silver bullet in that, while it might help your body, as you were saying, give you more runway, make it easier for you because you might have more energy, you may feel better, you still have to do the underlying work. That if your gut’s a mess, if you have a worm infection, you've got Candida overgrowth, you're living in a moldy house, you've got a lot of things, or a huge amount of stress and nervous system dysregulation, taking a peptide or bioregulator is not gonna fix all of that. And I'm not saying that to say, oh, don't do this, but just to be honest because we're so trained by social media to go, oh, if I just take this one thing, I'm gonna get better.
Nathalie Niddam (46:44.846)
Yeah. I mean, look, you absolutely have to deal with your environment, you have to deal with your lifestyle, you have to address your diet, all the different things. And these can be extremely powerful tools within that.
Jennifer Fugo (47:03.608)
And I love that. I love that. Well, I want to make sure everybody can find you because obviously you're on Instagram, I follow you there, I've learned a lot there. You have your own website, natniddam.com. And then is your podcast, is it just Longevity or is it Longevity with Nathalie Niddam?
Nathalie Niddam (47:12.876)
It's Longevity with Nathalie Niddam.
Jennifer Fugo (47:14.832)
Okay. So they're going to find you on, is it all podcast platforms?
Nathalie Niddam (47:16.521)
Yeah, all the big platforms, all the podcast platforms, they will find it. On Instagram I'm just under my name, @NathalieNiddam. And as you said, the website, and that's where people can sign up for the newsletter. And also I have a membership community that used to be called BSP, and it's a long story, but now called Longevity, Longevity community..
Jennifer Fugo (47:51.84)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Nathalie, I really appreciate it. And I hope you will come back sometime and we can dive, I feel like we just scratched the surface and there's just so much more to talk about. I love the fact that you're providing that balanced, like we have to have more balanced conversations. It does depend. And I deeply, deeply respect you for holding space for that in a world where it's really easy to just start getting into these crazy promises and claims and all sorts of things. You're holding space for the conversation for people who really want to make an educated decision, and I love that. So thank you. Thank you for being here.
Nathalie Niddam (48:22.53)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me, Jen. It's been great. Thank you so much.
