Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:02]: This episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:00:04]: We always think that it's men having the heart attack, it's women. And so again, what's leading to cardiovascular disease? What, if anything, as women, can we reduce or remove that might be overloading our system?

Ben Greenfield [00:00:17]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:21]: I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:25]: And I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:38]: Dr. Melissa Grill-Petersen is somebody who knows a lot about peptides. And I get a lot of questions about peptides. I wanted to interview Melissa. Well, for a few reasons. First of all, she understands females and has a lot of knowledge about how many of these things that we look at in longevity medicine might be different for women versus men. She also knows a lot about this new peptide company that's kind of allowing people to get physician grade or super quality peptides, which is good because I think a lot of people are hurting themselves with peptides. And she's just kind of like on the cutting edge of all things anti aging.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:20]: She's actually the founder of the Human Longevity Global, the CEO and co founder of Peptide University. So she just teaches this crap to people and the head faculty at the Human Longevity Institute. Melissa, welcome to the show.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:01:32]: Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Love it.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:36]: Yeah. And like I mentioned, like, I know you're a woman, you specialize in longevity medicine. This might be kind of like a loaded question, but how do you kind of approach the idea of female longevity? Like, are there things that you look at that are different than what you might look at in men?

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:01:54]: Well, yes, loaded question. You know, first and foremost, women, we have hormones, obviously, as men do, that are really targeted by the effects of stress. And so when we begin to think through a longevity lens, how do we live longer, better? The way I first approach it is by way of health span. So when we look to say, how can we live longer with fewer side effects, symptoms, disease, symptomatology, it's always about an upstream approach. And so for women, we look at the cyclical nature of our hormones and we think, okay, we have pre, peri, postmenopause, we have ebbs and flows. And it is different as we chronologically age of what's happening, with kind of the levels obviously of hormone fluctuation, the demands of life, AKA stressors that are causing cortisol surges and different demands on the system. So I'm one of those people, Ben, that as we kind of start to talk, I can talk a lot. So I'm going to just kind of ease my way in and chunk it down.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:03:03]: The easy answer is yeah, there's a difference. And when I'm going to approach it, I'm going to first say where we at, where do we want to go? And let's look at the factors that are informing and influencing this human system. That's kind of step one.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:15]: Got it. Painting with a broad brush. Let's start with diet. If you have a woman and she comes to you and she says, okay, number one thing is I want to feel good as I age, maybe she doesn't want, maybe she's not like 50 year old, wants to look like she did in a bikini when she was 18, but she just wants to look, feel and perform well with age. Do you have any special way that you tackle the dietary component or a specific nutrition approach that just seems to work for a lot of aging women?

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:03:44]: Yes. So one of the things that we see that affects aging women the most is metabolic inflexibility. And I think that's really kind of at the root of so much that's exciting. Accelerating that rate and pace of biological aging breakdown that leads to a increased risk and rate of all cause mortality and chronic disease. And so when we start, you know, it's always about start with terrain first. And so I'm a big, my methodology is first understanding quality of inputs into the system is going to drive the output. Right. So we can talk all about fun things epigenetically, but when it comes to nutrition, I think the first place I start with is to say, okay, how do we get you into, Are you metabolically flexible? Three out of every four women are not, historically.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:29]: Does that by the way mean like they're, you know, they have insulin insensitivity and a lot of glucose fluctuations, don't burn carbohydrates. Well. Or what do you mean you say metabolic inflexibility.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:04:41]: Absolutely. So we are not using, we are not use creating efficient fuel sources. So there's carbohydrates, there's fat, two main fuel sources. Right. And so we are just not using either.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:55]: I don't, I don't know. There's, there's alcohol and.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:04:57]: Well, you're right, you're right. That's going to break down to it. True. I mean, you're absolutely right. We've got ketones. 100%. 100% when we think about that. Yes.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:05:05]: So historically when we're Thinking about what we're kind of taking in as our main, right, sources of nutrition. I love. Thank you for calling me out on that.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:14]: You know, the only reason I called you out on it is I see how many not to stereotype women love to sit around and drink red wine. So that's got to be a macro.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:05:23]: We did. It does have to be a macro. I like it. That counts. It counts towards it 100%. Oh my gosh. But when we start to kind of tackle it, I like to again go very common sense first. Like, okay, first, before we get into any kind of crazy fasting cycles, before we start to take too much away, it's going all right.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:05:43]: If we understand that There is a 24 hour light, dark cycle and we think about circadian rhythms and how they inform and influence hormones, especially in women, we're talking hormones. Women a little different than men, but we know how our hormones are going to rise. Like around 8am, around 1pm, around 6pm is when the hormone ghrelin naturally signals, girl, I'm hungry. So one of the first places I start with women nutritionally is to say, let's look at more of a circadian fasting window. Let's see how we can move you into metabolic flexibility. Let's get more efficient in how you are using what you're taking in. Before we even break down all the things to take in or not to take in, it's going, let's be more efficient with what is coming in. Let's stabilize blood sugar.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:06:30]: Because it is when the more we have those blood sugar imbalances, the greater we have that insulin resistance. And of course, this is going to not only drive the metabolic inflexibility, it's going to take us down that road of incredible metabolic syndromes, dysfunctions, PCOS, hormonal imbalances, all the things that women think, oh, it's just because I'm a woman. Well, no, it's the stress and it's what you're putting into your mouth, it's what's in your environment, it's what are the signals. So let's streamline. Can we look at three meals a day in the light phase of the day? Can we ensure that they're nutrient dense and just kind of keep it simple, Just kind of take a more balanced, macro approach. Proteins first, healthy fats, complex carbohydrates. That's kind of step one.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:15]: When it comes to the fasting piece. I'm curious your take on this. The idea that with some women it seems as though fasting can be stressful, can even cause a little bit of a hypercortisolic response that results in holding onto fat, bloating, water retention, et cetera. Even compared to, let's say men who seem to do better with longer fasts and calorie restriction. Is there something to that from an evolutionary, biological standpoint or sex and gender differences standpoint or anything like that that you know of?

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:07:49]: I actually don't. I would imagine that there probably is. I could sit here and get intelligent with saying, well, as we think about just our ability, fertility issues and how we need to really store, we need to be able to be efficient with what's coming in so that we can go ahead and keep a, you know, be fertile and childbearing. But I think in today's modern age, when we kind of look at what's happening, fasting has become, it's such a. Yes, it is incredibly effective. Rather, when we look at, from a longevity standpoint, we look at caloric restriction, we look at the benefits of decreasing some of that calorie intake. But we've gotten to a place where we are fasting for these elongated periods of time. And it is more of a stress on the female system because as we're kind of again looking at those hormone fluctuations, we need certain nutrients at certain times of the day to be more efficient with just our energy expenditure kind of bringing it back to metabolic flexibility.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:08:52]: And so it's in the way we're kind of evolving and using it. It's almost like we're working against ourselves. The more we get into some of these crazy fasting windows when we're trying to help ourselves, it can have a short term game but a long term negative impact on the system.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:07]: Yeah, for me, kind of like a combination of research and then just anecdotal experience working with clients. What I've settled on is that premenopausal women, especially lean active premenopausal women, they seem to not do well with regular fasts that are longer than 12 hours, as opposed to a lot of lean active young men who seem to do okay with 12 to 16 hours. And I'm talking about this from a fertility stress, HRV strength performance standpoint. And then postmenopausal women seem to do okay with longer fasts, kind of similar to men. So it seems to kind of like change across the cycle.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:09:49]: And as again, as we're more in those childbearing years versus non. Right. Like the need for more nutrient dense food. And it is to your point, again, like if we can bring it into more of that circadian window and really think in a balanced, stay moving kind of with those cycles of nature versus trying to be so hard against it. We're working with our body versus against it and it just brings. The way I think of it, Ben is almost like race car driving. And so I'm just like when we have so much metabolic imbalance right now. And again, whether it's busy schedules, I'm getting up, I'm getting out the door, I'm racing with the kids, I'm stuck in traffic, I've got too many demands on the system.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:10:28]: I'm scrolling all the time, whatever. All the load onto the modern woman system is because she's not just able to stay in the tribe and raise the child. She is literally wearing all the hats, going out and working and coming home and raising the kids. And so the demands on her system are much more extreme than they were, you know, a hundred years ago for sure. And so all of a sudden it's like when, when we, we get into this place where we're out of sync and out of balance because, you know, and I know your listeners know cortisol is going to be a great driver of metabolic inflexibility, of weight gain, of glucose dysregulation, of insulin resistance because we're constantly surging cortisol, we're constantly dumping glucose and we're not. It's always as if we're in that kind of state of fight or flight, so to speak. And so from that standpoint, if we can use nature, if we can use our natural clocks to kind of catch a break so we don't have to work against ourselves, but we can work with ourselves. And we just look to going, all right, if I get up and I delay my coffee and I get a nutrient dense breakfast, I really get heavy protein, I get some really good healthy fats and I give myself some complex carbs, I don't try to keep it all away.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:11:50]: I nourish my body and I do it in time with when those hormones want to naturally cycle. I'm already in more of a, you know, I'm in a more metabolically active state. I'm better able to utilize what I'm taking in. I'm in a more fat burning state. So we're fuel efficient and. But most women are skipping breakfast, right? They're doing a lot of caffeine, maybe they're eating a little bit of lunch, a larger dinner and too much wine. And so we're kind of inversing the way the body wants to naturally use the nutrient. And so when we kind of hold off food until later and later in the day, you know, by around 2 o', clock, insulin coming online, we're naturally moving into more of a fat storage cycle.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:12:33]: And so now we're sitting down, we're eating heavier meals, we're spiking our blood sugar, we're postponing digestion, we're interfering with sleep cycles. And so we really end up flip flopping, especially as women, like the time that we need to restore and rebalance. Just like how we set ourselves up at the day, the beginning of the day determines how healthy and effective we're going to be throughout the day and into the evening. So we can do well by starting earlier, better.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:02]: It's so much different than a lot of the advice that I think men, especially in the meathead bro bodybuilding culture, the advice they tend to get. So what I'm not hearing from you is get up, suck down a cold brewer, pre workout, hammer that morning exercise session and then maybe have a whey protein smoothie while you're driving to work. What you're saying is get up, fuel yourself with nutrient dense foods, forego the caffeine if you've become dependent on that, to jumpstart your body and then eat when it's light outside, include a lot of nutrient density, maybe have your glass of wine, but try to at least taper off the calories as it's starting to get dark outside. And I mean, to me that sounds like a pretty good life and a good approach. There are some women who are going to want to kill you though for saying delay the coffee.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:13:52]: I know, ladies, listen, listen. And here's the deal. Now, Ben, you have an audience that's incredibly many of your listeners are optimized. And so when we're optimized we can take a different approach. But it's again, if we think about when we're coming from a place where three out of every four women predominantly are in a metabolically inflexible or deficient state, overweight, obese, type 2 diabetes, PCOS, they've got some type of hormonal imbalance, right? They, they can't do what the optimized woman can do. We have to approach it and be a little gentler and kinder to ourselves. And yes, of course, then we've got as we are, you know, pre menopause is where peri is. We're still in our, our childbearing years, we're cycling.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:14:39]: And so as we move throughout the month we have different hormonal, you know, demands also of when we're needing to eat, when we can be a little leaner on kind of that, those nutrients coming. And so, ladies, don't shoot the messenger, but the reality is, listen to your body. And I think that's the unfortunate part, Ben, is that we listen to amazing shows like yours and we hear so much advice and we somehow hear the information that's really fit for men, and we somehow think it's supposed to fit us. And so when it doesn't quite fit, then we're like, oh, I must be. I just got to try harder. I got to, you know, like, I've got to go in more, I've got to work hard. I got to do more. And it's like, like, no, no, no, no, no.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:15:23]: Actually, the feminine essence, like, we are made to be soft. We can still be strong, we can still get out, we can wear all the hats. But it's not about always being in a dominant. It's going, can we learn to receive? And receiving begins within how we receive ourselves, with how we promote self care, how we nourish ourselves, literally. And so a lot of women that come into our programs, you know, they come because something isn't quite right. And they are doing all the things and they are taking the peptides and they are doing the fast, and they're doing everything they hear on every podcast, but they're like, but it's still not right. And 9 times out of 10, when we just go, let's just take a step back, let's just. Let's just take it a little, make it a little easier and listen, hey, there's nothing wrong with doing it that way.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:16:13]: And if it doesn't work for you, okay, go back to doing it the way you were doing. But if what you're doing is working, then keep doing it. But if it's not right and if you're experiencing some level of imbalance in your system or you're just going, I'm good, but I feel like there's more, then I want to just invite especially the women to get a little curious and to lean in and to know that your body's incredibly intelligent and it is nudging you if you just will listen.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:41]: And I just want to come right out and say it. Sometimes what you need to hear is not what you want to hear. Meaning I will have some women who come to me for coaching and I up their fat intake. I tell them that their goal of 12% body fat is mistaken and that they should instead be at around 20% based on their morphology and their characteristics and their build and their hormone levels. And I'll shift them to like a high fat diet, lifting heavy weights, more calories and a goal of increasing body fat percentage. Like, I will literally have women who have to be talked down off of the eight pack, abs ripped, low fat, get up, morning fasted workout type of scenario. I think that the message is getting out there, but I don't think that pop culture and even magazine covers still do women many favors when it comes to setting expectations about how a woman should eat and train and look versus what's actually good and healthy for longevity.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:17:41]: I agree 100% and I think because of it, again, there's so much what's reinforced to us doesn't necessarily make us feel like it is safe and okay in our system to feel accepting and to even enjoy. Like every day I think about it's okay to be, I want to be strong and soft. And for the longest time as an athlete it was strong, strong, strong, rough, rough like get, you know, and then it's like. But also as a woman, it's strong and soft. That's kind of how the body is designed. Even if we think about the changes of how we're going to hold weight, when we are going to have a child and what's needed and what's necessary. And so it's interesting. I mean there's beauty and grace in all of it.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:18:27]: I think beauty is exhibited in beautiful strong muscles and not quite 12, it's in 12% body fat. But to your point, that's not necessarily healthy for a woman. So getting her back in a more ideal state is for long term. And that's when we kind of move into thinking longevity, you know, so we can do these really intense, fast workouts, we can get super lean, we can really push this physical form in amazing ways. Which, especially as an athlete, as a high performer, that's, that's just rockstar status yet. Then when we start to move chronologically, you know, and I'm now in my 50s and I think of things very differently than I did in my 20s or 30s. And you know, now I have a raised sun and it's like, so we kind of move through these different phases and then it's like, well, I want to continue to look great, feel great, have maximum levels of vitality and aliveness for another 50, 60 years easy. So how do I need to think about that? And so the way I trained 20 years ago is not how I'm training today.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:19:26]: And so I think that's also important that we get to. We have the opportunity to lean in to our own health journey and we get to play with it and have fun with it and realize it is personal, it is precise. You know, I think it's one of the things I love. Even as you mentioned in the beginning of the work we do with peptides. And there's so much we want to lay in with lifestyle. And then when we're able to lay in like other tools in the tool belt that get a little more precise and individualized, it's to me, it's. We are, we are creating an amazing human experience if we, if we choose to.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:02]: Man, If I trained 20 or tritrained today like I did 20 years ago, we wouldn't be talking. I'd be off in my spandex, hunched over on a triathlon bike somewhere, getting ready for an ironman, because I used to think that's what was healthy. Okay, so peptides have come up a couple of times. But before we get to the sexy, for many people, kind of like more fringe area of supplementation, which I think peptides would fall under the category of what about just general supplements that you think are pretty good for women? I know creatine has come up over and over again. I think JJ Virgin has kind of made that popular to her credit. And I think creatine's great for women. I think it held the status of being a male power strength athlete supplement for a long time. And a lot of women now are feeling really good on 5 to 10 grams plus of creatine.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:20:53]: I think that again, taking it back, still kind of coming into the root is looking at just cellular health. And so I feel like a lot of women, I do, I think creatine is getting so much to your point, really good awareness these days. And it is just, it is an essential. It's in the toolbox. We cannot underscore the importance still for women, especially of our bees, of our magnesium, of our zinc, of our CoQ10, of our. We already said creatine of our omega 3s. I mean, it's like kind of getting some of those foundational nutrients in real quick.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:31]: What I just heard from you, just so we don't knock people out with too much alphabet soup, like all the vitamin B, CoQ10, D/K, et cetera. You just listed a lot of that can be had from a good women's multi. And then we mentioned creatine. You mentioned a fish oil. So some algal or Fish Omega source. That's good. So we've got those that would basically be three if we were going to try to consolidate.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:21:57]: Absolutely. And I mean, and I think again, depending on now to me, I still think it's worth looking at some labs for this. But you know, going ahead and bringing in potentially DHEA pregnenolone as an upstream, especially as we're in our mid-30s and on if we've got high stress. So even looking at what's happening with our hrv, our recovery scores, if our body's under a lot more like we can take a little bit of upstream preventative hormonal optimization, I think becomes really important. And melatonin is got so many phenomenal effects not only to helping with sleep, but immune effects overall for the system, I think become really great.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:37]: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I just did a huge podcast on melatonin, then found two studies yesterday in young athletes showing that melatonin taken the night before competition results in significant increases in anaerobic performance, power and strength. Which is crazy because a lot of people think, oh, it's just like the thing that makes you sleepy the next day. But it turns out that in athletes taking some the night before competition even seems to have some benefits.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:23:02]: Yeah, there's so much that is, I think that just wanting to come forward in the research with melatonin, there's a lot more out there that bears looking at for sure.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:14]: And by the way, it was 6 milligrams for those of you who are wondering what they use for the the performance studies. Okay, so it sounds pretty basic, but also test. That's the same thing I say with supplements. But you could at least do something to help out with hormone precursors, like maybe a DHEA, pregnenolone, and then omega, multi, creatine. And then we get to this whole world of peptides. And I know there's a lot out there. Whenever I ask a question about peptides, I never want my guests to just have their eyes glaze over with, where do I even start? But let's say specifically staying on the track that we're on right now. Melissa, for women, what peptides seem to do a really good job just across the board for general health, longevity, body comp, et cetera.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:01]: For women.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:24:02]: All right, so I'm going to kind of keep with a little bit of this thread that we've been chatting with. Again, if we think fundamentally that as women, I'm just going to kind of connect some dots for a moment. As women, we have a greater tendency to have cortisol surges, imbalances. Again, as, as we're chronologically aging, we're seeing greater predisposition to glucose dysregulation, insulin sensitivity. So if we think upstream to down and we just kind of think of the story this is telling about what's going on and how, how this ultimately can be affecting, you know, our steroid pathways, our sex hormones, how it can be affecting thyroid adrenals, kind of all the things that as a woman might go, oh, I think it's my thyroid. Oh, I have adrenal fatigue. Oh, I've got an autoimmune. Like the things that we do know that women are dealing with, you know, 80% of autoimmune cases are women.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:24:53]: You know, after the, after postmenopausal, four out of every five cardiovascular issues are in women.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:01]: So to clarify, in postmenopausal women, if you are comparing them to that same age demographic of men, four out of five women or who are having the cardiovascular events.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:25:13]: We are at a four to five time greater risk. Let me be very clear with that. Yes, greater risk, greater incidents. Thank you. On.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:20]: Okay, that is still profound. Okay, got it.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:25:23]: Absolutely. And so we always think that it's men having the heart attack, it's women. And so again, what's leading to cardiovascular disease, it's kind of rooted in this. And I'm just using metabolic inflexibility now as more of a term just to give us this place where we're having this very pro inflammatory state in the body. Lots of cortisol, lots of glucose imbalance, lots of insulin, all that stuff that's leading to, again, hormonal imbalance. So now when we think about peptides, so, and even backing up, so we looked at food, we're talking circadian rhythm. Can't say enough about proper sleep. And we kind of already touched on that.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:25:56]: So step one, what's happening in the outer world, what, if anything, as women, can we reduce or remove that might be overloading our system. And whether that is food, whether that's a toxic relationship, whether that's, you know, staying up way too late. On with blue. And I know your audience should not have any blue lights on. I'm sure they're not. But just saying, you know, just a reminder, best practices.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:19]: I mean, unless they're trying to shift their circadian rhythm forwards and they're little biohackers trying to do something like that.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:26:25]: Yeah, exactly. Smart strategy. So once we think about kind of foundational best practices and we go, all right, again, strategy for long term, and we go, what molecules can come in? So when with women we do want to be looking at hormone optimization, but I like to actually start with peptides and first before exogenous hormones. Because peptides, as I know your audience is aware, they're signaling molecules and so they are naturally occurring in the body. Yes, we're taking them exogenously but they work to, you know, just to mimic that, that natural signaling to increase that effectiveness in the body.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:03]: So to clarify, you could take growth hormone for example, or you could take something that would increase your body's own sensitivity to or production of growth hormone hormone.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:27:14]: Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, so an example and one that I really like for women actually is Tesamorelin. It is FDA approved and that one is going to help with not only with signaling, it's a growth hormone releasing, you know, a stimulus. So it's an analog that's going to go ahead and tell the brain, tell that pituitary, let's release some growth hormone. And so that's beautiful. So that's going to be really important in helping to increase lean muscle mass. It's going to help us from a longevity standpoint with burning the belly fat, with helping us to utilize glucose better. But I think even before I look at growth hormone is especially in women, I'm thinking something like Kisspeptin.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:01]: Now real quick just with Tesamorelin because I'm often asked about this because it can impact lean musculature, fat loss and growth hormone. A lot of people like it as a morning pre workout for those effects and it also has some appetite suppressive effects. However, people often ask, well what about the idea that a growth hormone precursor or so called secretagogue could help with sleep at night? There are a lot of people who sleep better on Tesamorelin and Melissa, you're the expert here but I've actually found that in people who want that growth hormone effect which you usually aren't doing all year long, this is something I would have a client do two 12 week cycles on during the year, for example of about 5 days on 2 days off. I will usually recommend something like Tesamorelin in the morning and then something else at night that also causes a little bit of a growth hormone release. Typically Ipamorelin with CJC is one or I think the best growth hormone precursor for sleep is Sermorelin.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:29:10]: Yeah, nice. Okay. I like it and I'm with you. So yes, when we are thinking about growth hormone is when we take it in the morning. To your point. Exactly. We are going to get those gains from it. When we look at when it's naturally pulsed, it is also coming online very naturally at night.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:29:27]: And that is going to help us to go into deeper sleep. And so it's interesting, you know, I find that these molecules is kind of finding which one is working best for which person. And for women, we find a lot of. I'm going to say really clearly, it's kind of a 50, 50 split. So I'd say 50% of my women love it for sleep. They get amazing sleep and they're like, I'm taking it at night and this is my jam. And others, they're like, it disrupts my sleep. I'm very sensitive to it.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:29:57]: And it's really interesting because it's not having a massive IGF1 surge. Like, so when we look at these growth hormone options, it's kind of all right, what's creating a load, what's impacting potentially Cortisol and or IGF1 in a way that again, it could impact overall cortisol blood sugar levels. And so that's some of the things that can happen at night. So I like what you're saying about Sermorelin. That's an oldie but a goodie, right? That's one of the OGs. And so I think that. But it's always for what reason? And so I, I do like the idea of bringing it in the morning, but I, it's very personalized. So I, I'm going to start women more at night.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:30:39]: If we're wanting the really to go ahead and get deep sleep. For a lot of women, we need that. But I might even back up before I start them at night on that. I might go ahead and do really some pineal gland activation. I might do something with a pitalon, you know, and bring in the Tesamorelin in the morning. To your point.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:58]: Now, I know you're just about to talk about Kisspeptin, but before that, you also just mentioned Epitalon for the pineal gland. Tell me about that.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:31:06]: So this is really a molecule that's got some of the best research from a longevity standpoint in what it's doing with activating telomerase and how it's helping to shorten. What do I want to say? Not shortening. It's helping to lengthen or slow down. Slow down. I couldn't get my darn word out.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:28]: Decreased telomere shortening, something like that.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:31:30]: Slow down the. Yes, the shortening of telomere length. Thank you so much. So, but what's happening with this specifically is yes, it is really great for helping to really rebalance kind of the, that circadian rhythm. And it's doing it by way of the pineal gland. And so when we look at some of these molecules and this kind of gets us a little bit into the bioregulator category, which maybe we'll talk a teeny bit about as well. But these can get very tissue specific, gland specific, organ specific. And so it's almost regenerative in nature to it.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:32:05]: But by helping to work with restoring this circadian balance, it's helping to promote just deeper sleep, increased melatonin production, a regulation over cortisol in the morning. And it's really because that pineal gland is helping to govern really what's happening with, with this circadian cycle. And so it's just really targeting the activation of that within it.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:30]: Okay, so withEpitalon, if we're talking about something like Tesamorelin or growth hormone peptide being something one might cycle during the year, I'll tell you exactly what I do right now. I do 12 weeks, five days on, two days off, Tesamorelin in the morning, Sermorelin or Ipamorelin at night. I do that twice a year and that's going to vary from person to person. That's what works for me. And then something like Epitalon or Epitalon, you look at some Russian research and they're doing just like two 10 day cycles a year of a high amount. Other practitioners have other approaches, especially for your patients and the people you work with. How do you recommend cycling or using epitalon?

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:33:13]: Yeah, typically we start with looking at the twice a year protocols. However, it really depends on mild, moderate, severe and complexity. Where they at, where do they want to go, what are we dealing with? So again, when we're optimized, a twice a year protocol is really great. If we've got somebody coming in that sleep is a key issue in their metabolic dysregulation, they're not sleeping well, they're not recovering where, you know, their HRV is tanked. We're just not able to build up that resilience, so to speak. Then we're looking more at a quarterly protocol and especially kind of year one. And so we'll cycle that in and still we'll do the, we'll do the 10 day, in some cases I'll do a 20 day protocol, give them a 10 day off and, and then wait, you know, a third, we do a, wait another go to a 90 day cycle and we'll repeat it again.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:02]: Okay, so if I have severe sleep issues, you could say something like, okay, so once every quarter, we're gonna do a 10 to 20 day cycle of Epitalon, specifically to support your pineal gland. Yeah.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:34:12]: And when we're looking, even as we're chronologically aging, I mean, in some of. So Kavanaugh's work is, who really did a lot of the original studies with this. But there's a gentleman, Dr. Bill Lawrence, in Atlanta, that's kind of carried on his work. And in a lot of their protocols, they. I mean, they're keeping their participants because they're, they are higher up in their chronological age. A lot of the people in his studies are definitely later, 60s, 70s, some are in their 80s and 90s. And they're specifically looking at this molecule in these protocols to reverse that biological age.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:34:48]: And so they are definitely keeping them on longer. And again, the benefits are we're not seeing a risk to doing it at least four times a year as we would need to.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:59]: Yeah. And this Epitalon protocol I know came out of Dr. Khavinson's research in Russia. I think he passed last year, hopefully at the ripe old age of something like 260. So we can all take him to be a credible person. But the thing with the bioregulatory peptides, you briefly touched on this. My understanding is they each target a specific organ. So you could have pinealin for the pineal gland or Testalon for the gonads or whatever.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:28]: And a lot of these came out of his research also. Where do those fit into the picture for you? And the reason I ask, because I think about this a lot and I hear this a lot. People like, oh, there's like 40 of them or whatever. How do you even figure this out? And are you just like swallowing big handfuls of capsules and injecting needles all day? How do you kind of navigate the world of bioregulators?

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:35:49]: I actually love bioregulators with peptides. So a peptide is going to be 2 to 50amino acid bonds in length, and a bioregulator is really going to be 2 to 4. A peptide is going to be pleiotropic. It's going to be cell signaling. Sit on that cell. A bioregulator is going to go into the cell and it's actually modulating genetic expression. So think of it almost like an epigenetic switch. And so bioregulators are part of our regenerative toolbox and they are specific to targeted end organs or system or tissue.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:36:24]: And so what I love about this is. And there's 21, there's 21 main ones. The beautiful thing about it is that again, a lot of the original research, at first, these were done via injection. And however, the way that the delivery form, they are equally as bioavailable in an oral delivery form. So today, what's in the marketplace is oral, very easy to take, especially if anybody's got a fear of needles. And so these play well with others. They play well if we're on any type of conventional pharmacological therapy. If we're bringing them in, whether we are looking to correct, we are looking to repair, to rejuvenate, to optimize.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:37:00]: So here's how I think about it. I'm going to first bring them in. If I've got a specific area, I do a workup. I'm looking, I'm like, all right, where are our imbalances in the system? Right? Where does the system need greater support? And can we layer in the bioregulators to get right into that targeted area and be part of that support protocol? As we move into more optimization, I'm thinking of them from a longevity standpoint. I'm looking at them in more of a regenerative lens. So I am thinking like, okay, body's constantly building up, tearing down, repairing, rejuvenating. Let's keep moving in a cyclical manner. With women's health specifically, I start to think about what are some of the issues that we see a higher rate of, right? What are women coming in with? What are they dealing with? And I know I'm kind of jumping around a little bit because we can come back to Kisspeptin and hormones, but if I'm going to thread a needle, a lot of women, not only are they coming in and they're hormonally imbalanced, a lot of times we're looking foundationally at gut, so we might be looking at some peptides that are going to start with the gut terrain, right? And then as we're kind of working on cleaning up that terrain, we're looking at mitochondrial health and mitochondrial efficiency.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:38:15]: So then I'm thinking about more peptides and supplements that are going to go in with that, as well as circadian timing, right. And maybe ketones. There's also what's on the end of the fork. We're working with that. And so then the next thing that we're really seeing a lot of is as we start to move into hormones and what area Specifically. So are we having fertility issues? Are we having. When we think of hormones, are we talking sex hormones, Are we talking endocrine systems like thyroid adrenals? So now I might actually bring in my bioregulators to target some of those. So if I'm doing a protocol, let's say I'm going to do kisspeptin.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:38:55]: So Kisspeptin is going to go ahead and be that early signaler for luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone, which is what's going to help to increase the production of estrogen and progesterone in women. It's also going to help to increase testosterone in men. And so it's. And it's phenomenal and kind of resetting the pathway for a more optimal, you know, kind of natural hormonal signaling. So depending on what the imbalance is, depending on what I've been dealing with, I may very well want to do a protocol like Kisspeptin with if all of a sudden I want to bring in ovaries, right. And I want to bring in blood vessel bioregulators so that I'm bringing extra support to those end tissues or pathways that are going to help as we are working upstream on the hormone signaling pathway.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:51]: Okay, got it. So what I'm hearing, especially when it comes to the bioregulators and the fact that there's 21 of them and it can be confusing, is you will get on a call or have a visit with a patient and say, okay, we want to target hormones, cardiovascular and let's say, like fertility, for example. So then you would pick and choose off the shelf specific bioregulatory peptides that support that a few different peptide support compounds like say, Kisspeptin and Tesamorelin and Epitalon, maybe if sleep was part of the issue. And then you would combine that with maybe some of the things that you talked about for the gut and the metabolism, like ketones. I don't know about the gut.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:40:33]: Let's back up. And I mean, we would be so remiss. And yes, you're right. You just did a perfect synopsis. But let me not miss the big elephant in the room, which is freaking GLPs. So, I mean, that is. So that's such a key component of just about any protocol for women's health. It's fundamental.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:40:53]: Whether we're using it for weight loss or we are using it at a lower dose and we are doing it in a more, again, metabolically optimized way, we can use them in different doses. Different strategies, different timing based on what are we seeing in the system and what do we want to drive the system? System too.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:09]: Yeah. And when you say GLP1 agonist, Melissa, a lot of people probably just think appetite fat loss. But the emerging body of research, I mean you used the word pleiotropic a while ago. It does not refer to anything related to ballet. It means system wide effects. So when you look at GLP agonists, you're seeing cognitive benefits, cardiovascular benefits, blood sugar regulatory benefits, metabolic benefits, of course the body composition and the appetite control benefits. I mean, I'll come right out and say it.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:41]: I interviewed Dr. Tyna Moore about microdosing. It was on my radar for a while and I've settled into a triple GLP or a triple agonist Retatrutide. I microdose 12.5 mgs of Retatrutide. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Now it's a baby dose that doesn't give me nausea. I still eat like a horse frankly. So for me the appetite suppression doesn't kick in so well just because I eat a lot of food. But I take it as a preventive like a lot of people take like a baby aspirin.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:11]: I've just seen enough evidence and once like the, what's it called, there's another one coming out that's like a five part agonist. I'll probably switch to microdosing with that after that comes out and move on from the triple Retatrutide. But these things are so beneficial.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:42:27]: They are incredibly beneficial. And I love Retatrutide for so many reasons and I love Dr. TYna Moore's work also. I really appreciate everything she's out there doing and kind of the early adopter to helping people to understand we have different ways that we can dose these. If we really look at the literature, we really look at the beneficial effects and that's the whole thing about peptides. It is not a one size, fit fits all and they're not a supplement, they're not a medication. We don't get on and stay on all these forever and ever. Amen.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:42:59]: That's it. There's, there is intelligence to it, how we're going to cycle it and again I always say for what reason? What's our end target? And that's going to inform and influence our decision making process. Right. Like so, so different doses for different outcomes. But one of the things I love about it so much Ben, especially for women, is if we kind of go back to this driver of cortisol and it, and it might seem too simplistic. And I know we've beaten the drum of it at different times, you know, just kind of at large in media. But I feel fundamentally like women, we just don't get it. We don't understand how much we are holding in our systems, whether it's traumas, big T, little T's, it's the demands of life, but the amount of cortisol that is constantly at play in larger, not only larger doses, but beyond when it should be surging, there's that natural decline.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:43:57]: We kind of look at, again, the pulsatile manner of how cortisol is supposed to work in the body.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:01]: Right, right. You want that big surge in the morning for accelerating sleep drive. But yeah, if it's still that high at 11, there might be some issues.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:44:10]: Exactly. And so what I love about Retatrutide is that. So if we think about this every time there is a stress event, you know, like, okay, we're stuck in traffic like this email can, whatever, like a thing happens that stress is. Stress is stress to the brain. It's similar, equivalent to about 24 grams, like a candy bar's worth of, you know, glucose being dumped in to the bloodstream to handle the stress event. So I've got fuel in the system to fight or flight. And as women, because we are now more than ever wearing so many hats and we do have. We are stretched quite thin and we're trying to be it all and do it all, we are just a cortisol surging machine.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:44:53]: And so we have constant glucose dumping in. And what's so phenomenal about raditrude diet is really the effects of having that extra, that triple agonist, that glucagon, that is going to help to really slow down the amount as well as the receptivity of how it's utilizing. Right. What it's doing with those with glucose and with how it's breaking down the triglycerides, how it's putting us into a more lipogenic. So we have become. We start to use fuel really efficiently. Obviously we're not dumping as much. We are steadying it out.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:45:30]: It's kind of like we got a smooth burn rate. So we just, we become so much more efficient and then that's less of a stress on our system. And it's just. It's magic. It is so freaking good. I love it. I also take a low dose, I take it twice a week. Just again, really more for the longevity effects for them, not, not for weight loss.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:45:51]: I take it at this point But I love it for weight loss. I mean, the research on it for weight loss is outstanding and it takes less time and you get a greater result, you know, and then we can move to lower doses for more of a, of a maintenance, if you will. If you want to call it that kind of proactive approach to metabolic health.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:08]: Yeah. I took a standard dose of Ozempic once just to see what it was like. I'll do things like that just to kind of know what it is that a client is feeling when I'm talking to them. And I'm like, gosh, I've been telling all my clients to eat more protein and calories and get in the gym more. But I'm nauseous when I sit down in front of my favorite ribeye steak or protein smoothie. So I have no energy when I go to the gym to do anything except walk and do some crunches. And it's one thing to say eat more protein and get in the gym. And it's another thing to feel like you're going to throw up when you have protein.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:39]: I have no energy when you walk into the gym. This is why I'm a huge fan of the microdosing strategy.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:46:44]: Absolutely. And you know, and it's interesting, there's so much, it's, it's funny right now there's so much heat coming about microdosing. And that's B.S. it's like, then let's not even call it microdosing. Let's just call it the lowest. It's like, what's the lowest effective dose? And if we think therapeutic dose. Yeah, what's the therapeutic dose? It's like, so let's not get hung up on words. It's understanding what's going to work best for the body.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:47:05]: And one of the things, Ben, that as you know, I mean, here's what I don't know if people know enough of is that if we're taking Ozempic or Wegovy, okay, that's been, that's been engineered differently than if we are getting a raw sourced research use molecule and you know, or even, even when it was being compounded at pharmaceutical compounding groups. So if we're getting it by prescription, it has been engineered in a way that creates a slower breakdown, so to speak, of that peptide in the body. Because these GLPs, they last for minutes.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:42]: And when you say by prescription, you mean you go to your doctor, they prescribe it, you go to Walgreens, you pick it up. Preloaded pen.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:47:48]: Exactly, yeah. So if you're on one of the exactly prescribed preloaded pens. There you go. You're getting it the FDA approved version of it from a pharmaceutical company. Those have been engineered to have a longer shelf life. Okay. If we are getting it just again a pure research grade, we are getting a pure molecule somewhere other than it's not engineered in the same way. It's not designed to stay in the system longer, to stay active in the system longer.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:48:21]: So it makes sense that if we are dosing it a smaller dose more consistently. We are. First of all we're not going to over, you know, we're not going to over saturate the receptor sites. We are going to have a better, more natural the way it naturally signals in the body type of response. We're going to feel better, we're going to have greater results and it makes more sense. It just makes so much more sense.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:47]: What does speaking of pharmaceutical company versus say working with a doctor who has access to a compounding pharmacist to get the efficacious dose for you. What's kind of like the regulatory landscape look like right now, especially for peptides?

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:49:04]: Yeah, it's a little messy, as I'm sure you are aware. And so first and foremost it actually really kind of all the upheaval started back in 2023 when a good amount of peptides that had up until that point been quite available through compounding pharmacists all of a sudden got recategorized and basically said hey, there's not enough data, we don't know if they're safe for use. And so they kind of got shelved. And really unfortunately what that means is that up until that time doctors could go ahead and write a prescription and use a compounding pharmacist to fill that prescription. And it didn't have to just be a GLP, it could be a BPC, it could be a Tesamorelin like they could go ahead and fill it for MOTs-C like all sorts of different molecules. Well, when the list shifted, basically what that meant is now the compounding pharmacists can't fill that script. But what's also been so interesting is especially because of the GLPs, the consumer has gotten more interested in peptides than, than ever before. I mean half of the doctors that come to Peptide University to study with us, they're coming not because they're just like I never learned about this and my patients and my clients are asking me about it, I gotta figure it out.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:50:26]: So it's really the consumer demand that's really driving more and more practitioners to say, I gotta get up to speed and I've got to learn this, I've got to learn it quick and I've got to know how it works in conjunction with the other types of protocols and, you know, just treatments that I'm delivering to my patients. And so now as clients and patients are coming saying, I want this stuff, the doctor now can't get it from their trusted source where they got it before. And so it has turned more and more people to say, well, what's trusted? And so there's three main areas. There's kind of the, the, the delivery form, that supplement, it's like, it falls kind of in the category of nutraceutical. So there are a small amount of peptides that are orally available, bioavailable, stable.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:13]: Yeah, like an oral BPC-157 capsule, something like that.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:51:17]: Absolutely. So we don't have many, but we've got a few. And what's happening right now, as a side note is that people like a lot of the scientific labs, everybody's getting really inventive on delivery systems. So that's the big thing going, okay. If we can't get it through the compounding pharmacy and the patient, the clients are so seeking it out, they're wanting it. Doctors and clinicians are trying to figure out how to get it to them safely. The next category is compounding pharmacists. So there's still certain molecules we can get through the compounding pharmacist, but fewer and fewer as far as peptides go.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:51:49]: And so then this third area, which has been a bit of the wild, wild west, but there are some really exciting options kind of coming to market is around the research use only category and, and that's kind of in black market for a really long time and everything. Not everything. Most of research only is coming from Asia, specifically Hong Kong. And not to say that's bad or good or otherwise, but the unfortunate part is kind of like what we heard happening on Amazon forever. With supplements, there's no regulation, there is no oversight, and you don't actually know what you're getting.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:25]: Oh my gosh. There are even people like buying supplements from a company with like, you know, expired shelf life than turning around and selling that same brand on Amazon. Like, it's crazy. Like I always tell people shopping for supplements on Amazon, don't assume that's the manufacturer's actual product, comma. Also don't assume that it's, you know, that it's anywhere near the quality of what you'd be getting from the manufacturer.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:52:48]: Absolutely. And it's, you know, because we have a lot of peptide companies come to us and they kind of want us to look at their stuff. And there was this one, and again, I'm not going to throw anybody under the bus except to say that because of what was going on when the shortage had stopped with the GLPs, a lot of compounding pharmacies had to dump their supply because they weren't going to be able to sell it anymore. So other research groups picked up that supply at a discount bargain and they started to resell it. And all of a sudden all these stories from everywhere, people going, this doesn't work. This is crap. Or this is like, you know, why is this, why is this literally turning into an opaque thick white paste?

Ben Greenfield [00:53:29]: Or worse yet, worse yet, I have had it started happening about 10 times a month. Instagram messages, comments, direct messages, texts from friends. I injected this peptide. I'm in bed right now. I feel like crap. I've had this like histaminergic like reaction. I've got diarrhea. Like people are getting these meant for human research only peptides now from all the different websites that are available and guilty as charged.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:56]: I did that a few times. I never got sick. But I don't recommend any of those websites anymore if you can get access to a clean source. Because so many people are just injecting and getting lipopolysaccharide contamination ineffective peptides, peptides that are fabricated incorrectly. It's a big problem. Like you said, the wild, wild west.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:54:18]: It really is. And I think that there's, you know, so there's a couple of interesting trends that are happening right now. And there's only a few leaders kind of, you know, just really out there, early adopters to say, we have got to come up with a solution because it's clear that there's a consumer demand, it's clear that there's a clinician interest. And they're all kind of, everybody's coming together to say, we want this stuff, we want to learn about it. We want to know how to deliver it safely, effectively, reliably. And we don't like when the FDA made this change and all of a sudden we can't get it through the compounding pharmacy. The only person that really hurts is the end consumer, the patient. Because we don't have, like, how do I know where to go get the right stuff? So now what we're seeing is, like I said, advanced delivery methods.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:55:07]: So is there A different way besides just an injection. Are there different ways we can get this so we can have safe ways of delivering? That's step one. Step two is US made. Can we get it, can we start to get the IP here on US soil? Can we, can we get it in places that are FDA registered? Can we ensure that there's good manufacturing practices? Because basically what a 503A, what, what a compounding pharmacy is going to go through is they are under regulatory guidelines of how they're supposed to formulate that, that script that they're going to fill. Right? So it's like it means it's gotta be clean. What's on the bottle is in the bottle. There is no strange excipients like you're not like you are going to get a quality product that is safe and effective for you dosed appropriately. We don't have that through research only.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:55:58]: So you know there's, I'm really, I am honored to say I sit on the board with a company that's coming to market in such a profound way and I think they're being disruptive in the right way. They're coming out with total transparency. They do every, most of their product is here in the US and or in Germany. They are FDA registered manufacturing labs, clean, pure third party tested, high certificates of analysis. And so what I think they're going to do this particular company, I don't know if I'm allowed to say their name or not.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:31]: You can say it because I found out about them too six months ago. I'm on their board now and that's where I'm getting my peptides. The company is Vesalius but the peptide arm is called Peptual. Like P E P T U A L. And should people be like okay, where do I go? What do I type in? What's my code? A couple of things. First of all I will put details on it. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/ Womenpeptides that's what the shownotes are for today's show. BenGreenfieldLife.com/ Womenpeptides but and this is kind of related to the quality control piece.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:03]: You can't just go add a bunch of peptides to your shopping cart. You have to do a teleconsult with a doctor first.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:57:08]: Yes.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:09]: And that which is, which is honestly kind of important.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:57:12]: It's really important. It just is because I mean literally I spoke at a conference last week and I had and they, and I was there, I did a presentation on peptides and bioregulators and this. And Vesalius was there with Peptual. And so I'm like, I'll answer questions at the booth. So everybody's like asking, asking, asking, and they just want, they do, they just want to fill their shopping cart, they want their product. And I'm like, hold on, let's take a step back. You know, like, again, it's great that you hear like, oh, this could help this or this. And we think that's the thing I need.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:57:44]: But the reality is, is that we want to make sure it's safe, it's effective there. You don't want to just come in and start taking 20 different things at once or even eight different things at once. These are signaling molecules. They work in a really innate manner with your body. So let's take a few minutes and talk.

Ben Greenfield [00:58:03]: There is a reason that one of the populations that just kind of dicks around with this stuff dies early deaths of things like heart attacks and cancer. And that's the bodybuilding industry. They do exactly what you just described. Like, hey, let's just inject this and more is better. And I'm going to get on Deca and three different growth hormone precursors and secretagogues and testosterone. You do need supervision. And like you mentioned, not just that, but also delivery mechanisms that work based on the peptide nasal spray patch, liposomal formulation, capsule injection. Like, there's a lot of cool delivery mechanisms coming down the pipeline.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:58:40]: There's a really exciting delivery method that they're bringing out that's going to make utilizing this stuff so, so simple, so easy. It's just like. And these molecules, again, they're small, they're intelligent, their safety profile is increasing. Incredible. It's like in some studies there's over a thousand times the normal dosage and there's still no types of side effects. So I mean, again, these are naturally occurring. And to have, I think what's so exciting about peptides in general, what I love about it and why they're not going away, right? They're a. They're naturally occurring in the body.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [00:59:14]: We have over 300,000 of them that we already know about in the body, right? It's like they're there, they're part of how we communicate. And so the understanding that they can actually allow us to do more than just manage a state, but they really can drive an outcome. So we have tools in the toolbox for correction, for restoration, for rejuvenation. It's like for a regenerative approach. And so then when we come all the way back to kind of where we started. From a longevity standpoint, this takes us. Ben, one of the things I teach our practitioners all the time is, you know, as consumers and practitioners, we've all been taught for so long to focus, to beat the drum of the problem, and to think about, oh, I don't feel good, I have a symptom, I've got a problem that needs to be fixed. So we're always thinking about a problem that either has to be fixed or managed.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:00:04]: And so we'll do a thing, we'll either fix it or we'll manage it. But the healthcare model only takes us into this management state or this idea of, okay, you don't have the problem anymore, and that's what we think of as homeostasis. But what none of us understand, and thank you for being such a voice in this, but what practitioners get to do a better job of understanding is that our job. And what I'm saying is healthcare 3.0, it's no longer about just managing and treating symptoms and problems. It's actually about optimizing the system. So, yes, three out of every four people are going to have those problems. Let's get them to baseline, but then let's actually work with the intelligence of the body to create resilience, to create rejuvenation, to increase strength, vitality, aliveness, capacity. Because the innate design of the system allows for that if we know how to give it those signals, give it that support.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:00:58]: And so I think where healthcare is headed, where small molecules are going to be such a supportive element in this overall path and trajectory forward, is there's always going to be a certain level of treatment and management. Because, yes, I'm not dismissing the fact that we have a large amount of disease, we have a large amount of sickness in our current healthcare system, but it doesn't have to continue to be that way. And when we look at molecules, we look at what's available, and we look at delivery systems, safety, efficacy, this hunger, this desire for people to say, I don't want to just keep beating the drum of the problem. I actually want to get better, be better, and live better today and for as long as, and longer tomorrows, and keep going and keep going. And I think that's where we're at.

Ben Greenfield [01:01:43]: I think about fitness 3.0, kind of like how you say medicine 3.0, like you can look at a knee as something that you rehab after an injury that you let happen because you didn't have injury prevention methods in place. That's 1.0, 2.0 is you can strengthen your knee to rehab it after an injury or to even prevent an injury from occurring in the first place. And then 3.0 is you can get your legs as freaking strong as possible. So you can just go for the rest of your life and not have to worry much about your knees at all.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:02:12]: Completely. Exactly. Such a beautiful analogy. And fits right in.

Ben Greenfield [01:02:17]: Okay, so two last questions. Vesalius's Peptual arm, where people get peptides, I kind of gave my bastardized description. But basically people can go to the website, they get on a call with a doctor, the doctor is able to then advise them about which peptides they need. Maybe somebody's already, maybe somebody listening to the show and they're already coming in like, hey doc, these are the five peptides I'm actually super interested in. They can kind of mix and match with the advice of a physician as they go through that system.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:02:46]: Yes, absolutely. And as of right now, and I believe this is going to be ongoing, it's a complimentary consult. So you're not even charged to sit down and have that conversation with that doctor, which in and of itself is disruptive and wonderful. Because they really want to get, they want to be able to get these molecules to you, but they want to make sure they're right and appropriate for you. Also, once you've had that consultation, it's kind of like it's good for 12 months. Meaning they've done a baseline, they've gotten that foundational information. So if you're wanting to go back in and fill your cart, you don't have to sit down and talk every single time. But as the script, so to speak, would change, then there's the opportunity for obviously for additional conversations.

Ben Greenfield [01:03:28]: Got it. And these are all like you were describing, USA or Germany, screened, pure, clean, non contaminated, not from some fringe research website.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:03:39]: Yeah. And to make, in case I didn't make my point clear enough, is that really and truly the way that they are bringing these products to market are in alignment with FDA guidelines, as if you were going to go to any compounding pharmacy, any pharmaceutical company, they are following the same, same standards and practices that a pharmaceutical company has to follow. And so that's when I say they're being disruptive, they are putting everybody else to task. So they're going, okay, for everybody else that's saying research only, step it up, step it up. Like we have to do better because people want this. And the, all the bad press is the black label stuff. The like I don't know what I'm getting but I'm going to try it and maybe it'll work. We don't have to, we don't have to risk our health to get the gains anymore.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:04:20]: Especially with Vesalius and Peptual.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:23]: Inject and pray. Okay, so, okay then another question. Peptide University.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:04:30]: Yes.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:30]: What is it? Does it have a football team, first of all? And what is it?

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:04:34]: I think we need to have one. I mean, come on, we had some frats, I mean some sororities. It is a good time. Mypeptideuniversity.com so this was actually kind of birth. So yeah, I own Human Longevity Institute. We had a Peptide certification course over there that became so popular and it was in such demand. Everybody kept going. We want to go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:04:57]: So basically Peptide University was birthed. We are in our, we're not even in our full first year yet, we're six months in and we have such an amazing robust community of clinicians, practitioners, prescribers, non prescribers, clinical researchers, biohackers, educators, veterinarians. It's like anybody that's wanting to come in and actually understand what these molecules are, how they work and as a clinician, when, where, how and why would we use them, you know, because again, from chronic sickness up to optimization. And I think one of the things I'm most proud about is that what we really do is at the heart of it. It is a membership community. It's a community, peer to peer community where our members can come in and sit down with our chief medical officer, sit down with our adjunct faculty. We do case reviews, protocol assessments, we take their questions from the field. And so we're getting so much data in from all these practitioners in the field, we are able, real time to support them, to hear, to look at dosing, to look at protocols, to fine tune.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:06:01]: And we're going to be conducting a wide, wide grouping IRB study soon for practitioners to come in through my Peptide University. So it's just about getting the education out for everything, small molecules, regenerative solutions out there and then helping clinicians really to feel confident with being able to go out and utilize these with the clients and patients that they serve.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:26]: Well, I might have to go make myself a login for that, but also I have coaches who do coaching under my system. It's called the Triumph Coaching program. We should talk offline. I'll email you later on, but it would be cool to actually get some of my coaches into that to start to study up on peptides because we get so many, many questions and I tend to be pretty good at self educating myself but sometimes it's nice to have a portal.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:06:51]: Listen, I'm going to tell you, you were one of my, I mean like I've been doing this for a long time. Well, you've been doing it longer I'd say for me 10 years in clinical practice looking at using these molecules, you know. But I've learned from you, you know. And that's one of the things at Peptide University we're not just trying to bring in, it's not just doctors only. And what I mean by that is we are bringing in people that have been using these in different arenas not to pull the data together. It's like when we know better, we do better. Larger data sets help to inform so many potentials and new decisions that we can make.

Ben Greenfield [01:07:29]: I'm very, very good at telling you what doesn't does not give you explosive diarrhea. So that's great. All right, so show notes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/ WomenPeptides. W O M E N Peptides, or wherever you're watching this video. I'll also include links to Vesalius, to Melissa's Peptide University and her website so shownotes are going to be juicy. Thank you everybody for watching. And Melissa, thank you so much.

Melissa Grill-Petersen [01:07:58]: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you.

Ben Greenfield [01:08:01]: All right folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Melissa Petersen signing out from the balance the of live show. Have an incredible week to discover even.

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