Dr. Chris Shade on Peptides, Liposomal Delivery, and Supporting GLP-1 Therapy
Dr. Ben Weitz introduces the Rational Wellness Podcast and interviews Dr. Chris Shade, founder and CEO of QuickSilver Scientific, about peptides and oral liposomal delivery. Shade defines peptides as short amino-acid chains with signaling roles and explains how high-quality, small-particle, injectable-grade phosphatidylcholine liposomes enable intraoral absorption of water-soluble compounds like glutathione and certain peptides. They discuss BPC-157 for gut lining and broad tissue repair; KPV for inflammatory modulation (including Crohn’s flares) via NF-kappa B and cytokine control; copper GHK for extracellular matrix/skin and connective-tissue support (including Ehlers-Danlos); and TB-500 for more angiogenic, muscle-oriented repair, often stacked with BPC and GHK (“Wolverine Stack”), with cycling and empty-stomach dosing. Shade also covers Epitalon and Thymulin for sleep, telomerase/telomeres, and immune balance, and outlines protocols to make GLP-1 drugs safer using bitters, binders, Lipotone, GLP-1 Amplifier, and nutritional/mineral support, while noting GI, bile-flow, and muscle-loss concerns.
00:00 Show Intro
00:59 Guest And Disclaimer
03:02 Peptides Explained
05:01 Liposomal Absorption
10:28 BPC 157 And KPV
14:58 Cancer Growth Concerns
19:00 Copper GHK Repair
22:24 TB 500 Wolverine Stack
23:54 Cycling And Dosing
24:42 Natural GLP Support
27:47 GLP Drug Risks
30:29 Epitalon And Thymulin
36:05 GLP Safety Protocol
38:06 Quinton Minerals Explained
39:55 Wrap Up And Resources
Dr. Chris Shade is a Dr. Christopher Shade is the founder and CEO of Quicksilver Scientific, which has revolutionized the nutritional supplement industry with their innovative nanoparticles and liposomal delivery system, their heavy metal testing, and their detoxification protocols that have become the industry standard for many for eliminating heavy metals and other toxins. But this liposomal delivery system is effective for increasing absorption of nutrients, hormones and now peptides.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.
Transcript:
Dr. Weitz: If you’re looking for clinically useful insights, not wellness hype, then this is the place for you. Welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast, the podcast for functional and integrative practitioners who wanna practice with greater clarity and precision. I’m Dr. Ben Weitz, and each week I sit down with the leading clinicians, researchers, and lab innovators to explore the science, lab testing, and clinical reasoning behind modern root cause medicine. This is a show focused on practical evidence-informed insights that you can actually use in patient care Please subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. Please tell your friends and colleagues, and if you could give us a ratings and review on Apple or Spotify, we would certainly appreciate it. Finally, to access the show notes and the full transcript, please go to my website, drweitz.com.
Today, [00:01:00] I’m excited to be joined by Dr. Chris Shade for his sixth appearance on the Rational Wellness Podcast, and we’ll be speaking about peptides and whatever else Chris would like to talk about. Before we get started today, I want to share an important disclaimer. The information we discuss is for educational purposes only. These conversations are designed to help you understand your health better, ask smarter questions, et cetera, but they’re not a substitute for personalized medical advice. Every person is biochemically unique, your health history, your lab work, your individual needs. That’s why it’s essential to work with a qualified licensed healthcare practitioner, someone who can evaluate your specific situation, provide specific recommendations for dosing, et cetera, that are tailored to you. Practitioners like myself do this every day in clinical practice. Also, some of the supplements that might be mentioned in this talk today are only available through a practitioner.
[00:02:00] Now, if you do choose to take supplements without medical guidance, please at least make sure you’re using high-quality products, like from QuickSilver Scientific. And if you want to order from QuickSilver Scientific, you can use the promo code WEITZ10 for 10% off your first order at quicksilverscientific.com.
With that said, let’s jump into today’s podcast. Dr. Chris Shade is the founder and CEO of QuickSilver Scientific, which has revolutionized the nutrition supplement industry with their innovative nanoparticles and liposomal delivery system, their heavy metal testing, and their detox protocols that have become the industry standard for eliminating heavy metals, mycotoxins, and other toxins. Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Shade: Happy to be here, Ben. Number six, that’s awesome. We’ve been going a long time now.
Dr. Weitz: So, I always love our discussions [00:03:00] ’cause I know we get heavy into the science. So, let’s talk about peptides. Maybe you can start by explaining what the hell is a peptide?
Dr. Shade: What is a peptide? Well, a peptide is kind of what proteins are… Proteins are made of long strings of amino acids, but short strings of amino acids are called peptides. And it turns out they have this massive signaling function in the body, signaling… A lot of the ones we use are signaling to turn up repair processes, which go down over time in people and they get weaker and weaker. And, you know, if you look back to, you know, what’s the peptide we’ve been using in functional medicine for freaking ever, it’s glutathione. So that’s three amino acids. Yeah, you know, it’s glycine, glutamate, and cysteine. And so we’ve been doing that delivered in intraoral liposomes, you know, for since 2011, 2012. And now we’re finding all these other peptides that have all these great signaling [00:04:00] functions. One that’s… Now, these can run from two to 50 acids. They’re called peptide-
Dr. Weitz: By the way, I just wanted to give you credit. Yeah. I just wanted to give you credit for the glutathione thing, because prior to Quicksilver coming out with the liposomal glutathione- Yeah I remember going to functional medicine conferences where we were told that glutathione cannot be absorbed orally, can only- Yep … taken, injected through IV. And and then everything changed with the Quicksilver liposomal deliveries.
Dr. Shade: Yeah. Yeah, and you know, it’s important to make a really good liposome, too. You know, using injectable grade phospholipids, small particle sizes that absorb right through the oral cavity and the upper GI. And yeah, that was a real game changer. And, you know, it was… I was trying to figure out how to get mercury detox to work without using DMSA and DMPS and you know- The glutathione system was core to that, and glutath- getting glutathione into the body was core to making that happen. And it’s been our number one [00:05:00] seller, you know, from then till now.
Dr. Weitz: By the way, how important is it that it gets absorbed sublingually? Is, it, that’s an important part, right?
Dr. Shade: Yeah, the intraoral is an important part. Really, we make liposomes for water-solubles and nanoemulsions for fat-solubles. The nanoemulsions are a little tougher, and they can go stomach, upper GI without getting disrupted much by digestion. But the water-solubles are a little bit more fragile, and so that intraoral hold is a really big one. And, you know, we, when we were doing pharmacokinetic studies around B12, we are seeing it in the blood in two minutes, and and that’s only through that intraoral absorption. And so it’s good to get some intraoral and swallow, do the rest. If you’re on an empty stomach, that’s best. If you’ve eaten something and you still need to take something, hold it longer in the mouth to get more of that before it mixes into the foods.
Dr. Weitz: So when it comes to the exactly what is the definition of a peptide, it… Is it really strict, or is it kind of vague?
I’ve seen some discussion, like HGH has 191 amino acids-
Dr. Shade: Yeah,
Dr. Weitz: that gets blurry … but it’s kind of a peptide, but it-
Dr. Shade: Kind of run up to about 50, and then- Right … above that we start calling it a protein.
Dr. Weitz: That’s what I’ve heard.
Dr. Shade: So, like, insulin is about, you know, the max. Insulin, you know, is around 40. The GLPs, they… I forget exactly how big they are. They’re in the 30s to 50s. And the GLPs, like, you know, Ozempic, Wegovy those are what really brought peptides to mind across the populace because they work so well. And then you get into, like, copper GHK, BPC 157, those are the ones that have really broad adoption.
And those are smaller ones. BPC’s 15, copper GHK is three amino acids with a copper. Things like thymulin is seven. And so most of you like to work into the two to 20 range, and those are the easiest to [00:07:00] wrap into a liposome and get in there. As they get bigger, you gotta monkey with it a little bit to get good encapsulation.
Dr. Weitz: So how is it that peptides can be absorbed orally? We’ve been told for years they have to be injected. What is exactly… Is it just the liposomal? Does it have to be made a certain way so it can be absorbed orally?
Dr. Shade: No it’s really the liposomal absorption. Sometimes there’s different salts that are a little bit more stable. And if you’re trying to absorb oral through the gut without the delivery, they might go to certain salts. But for us, it’s you wrap it in the sphere of phospholipids, phosphatidylcholine as your dominant one, a little bit of other phospholipids. But you wrap that sphere around it, and it’s a lipid bilayer membrane, and there’s a drop of water in the middle, and so you’re dissolving the peptides into there. Now, not everything is in there. You know, 30 to 50% is in there. The rest is on the outside. Now, with BPC and [00:08:00] KPV, there are sites within the GI where those work whatever hasn’t been degraded by the peptidases. That’s why it’s good to be on an empty stomach. But all the stuff in the liposome, phew, it’s gonna go right in and circulate.
Dr. Weitz: And exactly how are the liposomes constructed? Is it simply just mixing phosphatidylcholine with the peptide or other product, or does it have to be… H- how does, how do you get- Yeah … the liposomes constructed per se?
Dr. Shade: Yeah, you’re dissolving phosphatidylcholine either in an ethanol solution or dispersing it in water. You’ve got your active glutathione or other peptide dissolved in a water glycerin matrix, and then you mix the two, and the spheres spontaneously form and wrap around drops of water. And then you have a high-pressure homogenizer breaking those down to the small sizes that go intraorally. And then there’s specific ratios of [00:09:00] everything that make everything work, and we’ve done a lot of research on membrane composition and size, and we so… We know the sweet spot for getting it in.
Dr. Weitz: And that’s really one of the keys. There’s a lot of liposomal products- Okay … but a lot of them are not the right size.
Dr. Shade: No, and a lot of them aren’t the right membrane composition. Some people are just using pretty crude lecithins. So lecithin comes from oil processing, and it’s a mixture of phospholipids and waxes and all kind of junk that falls out of the oil when you put a little water into it. And so it comes, like crude lecithin’s about 15% phosphatidylcholine. And then you have these purifications that move it from 15 to 30 to 50 to 70 to 90, and it’s those 90s that we use, sometimes a little bit of a 65. And y- you know, with the crude lecithins, the, you don’t even know if you’re making a liposome.
You probably [00:10:00] even aren’t. You’re probably emulsifying the waxes and fats that are in the lecithin. So it’s much more expensive to buy these purified, In fact, we use injectable grade phosphatidylcholine from a pharmaceutical company in in Germany, and that’s what’s makes the real liposomes. And then even the shell of the liposome is a therapeutic. Just using phosphatidylcholine itself is a major therapeutic
Dr. Weitz: Right. So let’s start with BPC 157, which is one of the most well-known of the peptides.
Dr. Shade: Yeah, and so, a lot of these peptides are fragments of proteins that do things. And so BPC was Body Protection Compound 157, and it’s a 15 amino acid fragment from a larger protein that’s made in the stomach, which is obviously made to regulate regulate the [00:11:00] lining, the tight junctions of the GI tract, and also then has functions through the body, helping turn up repair. And these guys found it in 1993 some French and Belgian researchers, and started, you know, applying it to all kinds of things. They say there isn’t a body system you know, throughout… There isn’t a system throughout the body that doesn’t benefit from this. So it signals to turn up production of proteins and components in the extracellular matrix, and then in, into the tissues, like the connective tissues, into the…And even up into the muscles, and even, you know, throughout the body, even the eye. So it’s, you know, over time, this is going down. We know a lot of the things you make in the stomach, like intrinsic factor or those secretions, are going down through time, and different stresses on the body are turning those down.
So BPC is a great way to get that signal back up, be repairing the gut lining, being [00:12:00] repairing all through the body. So it’s really sort of a Swiss Army knife for turning things up. And then we have it alone, and then we have it in combination with KPV, which is a three amino acid fragment of melanocyte-stimulating hormone, which is the biggest inflammation control hormone throughout the body. But it also makes melanin. But the KPV fragment of it doesn’t do that. It only works on inflammatory processes. And so those, that combo is like- Most real doctors doing therapeutic use of peptides, that’s their favorite one because it goes and it blocks propagation of inflammatory processes especially like allergic inflammatory processes.
And when you combine the BPC and the KPV, you really shut down the inflammatory cascade in the GI, which is constantly breaking down the GI lining, giving leaky gut that brings endotoxemia into the system. And endotoxemia is the primary driver of chronic inflammaging through a mechanism called nuclear factor kappa B. And KPV is really good at stopping things at the GI lining so that you keep the GI lining intact, but then when it goes systemically, it’s stopping this activation of NF-kappa B, which makes all these inflammatory cytokines, including one called TNF-alpha, that come around and reactivate NF-kappa B. And so once that gets going, it gets looped, and the KPV just goes in and stops the loop.You know, it resolves inflammation in a way, you know, even more than SBMs and pro-resolving mediators do. So that’s one of my favorites. And then more on the sports side-
Dr. Weitz: All right. Hang on one second. Yeah. Let me stay on the BPC. Yeah. Should we… Should there be like two different forms of it? Should there be one form that’s better absorbed for the systemic effects, and you- should [00:14:00] there be another form that’s not well-absorbed so it stays in the gut?
Dr. Shade: Well, see, the liposome does that naturally anyways because it’s wrapping… Y- you’ve got it… You’ve got your peptide dissolved in water. You’re injecting the phospholipids, and they’re making all these little shells, you know, billions of them in there, but it doesn’t get all the water, and so some of the water has the free-floating amino acids. So when you take it, some does stay in the gut and some does go systemic. So you’re hitting both of those.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Shade: That’s I think why we get such amazing results with BPC, KPV. I mean, people with a lot of autoimmune issues are finding they don’t have to use as much of those immunosuppressants. Some people go off of them. And so it, it’s just been amazing on that front. And so, you know, people who are post-Lyme, post-COVID post… They have mold exposures. They have this hyperreactivity in the immune system, and it really chills it back out
Dr. Weitz: What do you say to [00:15:00] those who say that peptides like BPC that stimulate cell growth, tissue regeneration, blood vessel growth could theoretically promote cancer, especially the growth of dormant or existing cancer cells?
Dr. Shade: No, the only one that I say, “Well, if you’re worried about it, maybe stay away from it,” is TB 500. That’s a little bit more just pro-growth and angiogenic. The BPC is more angiomodulatory, and so it’ll bring up you know, when there’s damage and you need s- new blood in there to repair the damage, it does it. And otherwise, it doesn’t. And lowering a lot of these inflammatory processes that are being harnessed by the cancer is, you know, something that it’s bringing down. So there’s you know, there’s a lot of research out there with cancer, and the BPC and the KPV don’t. If anything, they’re helping the, to modulate the immune system and the inflammation to start working better against [00:16:00] it. So you know, and then, like, growth hormone promoters, you know, Sommorelin, Ipamorelin, Hexarelin, CJC, those you definitely stay away from. But not the BPC and the KPV, and not the copper GHK.
Dr. Weitz: Well, this is really a tension in the longevity research that’s existed for a long time. Yeah. As we get older, we know that things tend to break down. We know that the organs start to break down. The thymus tends to shrink. Yes. The muscles get weaker. The bones get thinner. And so we need a certain amount of growth, regeneration, stimulate new neuronal connections. We need that- Yeah … regeneration, but then too much could maybe lead to cancer, and that’s why we see debates whether or not you should eat protein or whether you should just eat vegan. You, you like eliminate all cancer, any growth signals, and you know, we have-
Dr. Shade: Yeah. And [00:17:00] people get very afraid, you know?
Dr. Weitz: Yeah.
Dr. Shade: It’s like- The C word stops all progress, you know? And, yeah, you have to be intelligent about looking into it. Now, if people are working, you know, against cancer, if they have a lot of risk factors, you wanna be careful with NAD and not overdrive NAD- Right processes. Sure. You wanna be careful with glutathione. And glutathione’s doing two things. It’s giving antioxidant help, and the the cancer cells need that, but it’s also immune regulatory and getting the interferons on and the things that are gonna help work on the immune system to knock back the cancer.
It’s… So it’s a balancing act, and you wouldn’t wanna overdrive either of those. But when those are underserved, then you know, your anticancer activity is underserved. And, you know, if people are going into a chemo, you definitely don’t wanna turn some of these processes up while you’re on the chemo- Sure you want the chemo to be cytotoxic. But then after the chemo, you [00:18:00] gotta get all this stuff out and you gotta repair the immune system. And I love the peptides like epitalon and thymulin. They’re just working after the immune system, make it work better. And, you know, they’ve done a lot of work with those in cancer and, you know, they’re only beneficial.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Okay. So you mentioned KPV, and this is something that’s actually used for inflammatory conditions like inflammatory bowel disorder, disease.
Dr. Shade: Lot for that. And there’s receptors for it along the GI that are only active when there’s inflammation. So it’s not like you’re driving anti-inflammatory activity all the time. If you have IL1B and IL6 up, you get this KPEP receptor, and then that, you know, responds to the KPV and activates inflammatory modulation. So-
Dr. Weitz: Can this be used for a patient with Crohn’s who’s having a flare?
Dr. Shade: I would absolutely use it for that
Dr. Weitz: [00:19:00] Okay. So let’s talk about GHK, which is a copper tripeptide.
Dr. Shade: Yeah, and that one is one that you naturally make in your body. It’s in the blood, and, you know, between your 20s and your 60s there’s about a 60% drop in it. And it’s a major regulator of cellular and extracellular repair. So you’ll see it in a lot of face products because it’s stimulating fibroblasts to rebuild the extracellular matrix.
So its application you’ll see, yeah, the, you know, to facial health, skin health, but wound healing, burn healing, anything where you need to build the matrix up it’s huge. But, you know, the matrix is the one thing that extends head to toe, and you look at, like, German biomedical medicine, like Pischinger’s work, that was all around the extracellular matrix. And that’s the thing that’s signaling across the body systems and organizing the whole body together in systems. And so [00:20:00] whenever you’re helping that, you’re helping the whole body. So that’s one that it doesn’t even need specific on and off s- off cycles. It can just be fed into the body all the time. And how your body makes it, your body makes GHK, puts it into the bloodstream, and it goes and binds some of the copper that’s on albumin or different sites in the blood and makes this copper GHK. And so, another place they use it a lot, like Ehlers-Danlos people use that a lot because they’re known for-
Dr. Weitz: Oh, really?
having
Dr. Shade: a lot of… yeah. They use that a lot, and they use so much that generally people get worried, “Oh, do I have to take it with zinc?” It’s not… These doses don’t have a massive amount. Oh,
Dr. Weitz: because they’re copper. The copper seems-
Dr. Shade: Yeah, maybe it’s a half a milligram in a good dose of GHK. But they use so much in Ehlers-Danlos they have to get pure GHK and add that in too so they don’t build up.
Dr. Weitz: What does that do for Ehlers-Danlos?
Dr. Shade: Oh, Ehlers-Danlos is connective tissue f- you’re not making enough, and that’s why they’re hyperflexible. [00:21:00] I
Dr. Weitz: see.
Dr. Shade: And so the more… And then they, because they have weak matrices they tend to get things like Lyme and other infections living up in the connective tissue.
And-
Dr. Weitz: And they also get gut problems like SIBO because of the lack of the integrity-
Dr. Shade: Gut issue …
Dr. Weitz: of the-
Dr. Shade: And so they’re taking a lot of copper for GHK … bowels and stuff. Sometimes they take so much copper that they take just pure GHK so they don’t build up. And you can do, you know, blood work on what your copper-zinc ratio is.
The only time I see it as a problem is when people are really copper excess, and then I tell them to load zinc for a while, then they can go back to trying the copper.
Dr. Weitz: And that product can be used topically as well, correct?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. Yeah, and we have a topical. We have a copper GHK serum, which has got cyclostreganol and clear curcumin.
The cyclostreganol works it’s a sirtuin activator, but it’s also a senolytic, and so it’s helping get senescent cells out of the skin so you can rebuild there. We also have one [00:22:00] that has light estrogen doses in it a little bit of estradiol and estriol. They call them lotus doses because in women, especially post-menopausal, they’re estrogen deficient in the skin, and then the skin starts to thin out.
So estrogen in women is responsible, and men, it’s responsible for the thickening of the skin. So there’s one with hormones and one without hormones.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. So, let’s talk about TB 500, which is a synthetic version of the active fragment of thymosin beta 4.
Dr. Shade: Yeah. And thymosin beta 4, they first found it in the thymus, but it’s throughout all the tissues, and it’s a big signal for repair.
And it’s a rather big one, so it’s hard to get in there. And so this fragment TB 500, is an active site of TB4, and that turns up repair processes. And we’re talking about, you know, BPC 157, a [00:23:00] little bit more at the matrix to tendon level, and then a little more into the muscle is, and a little more angiogenic, is the TB 500.
So people usually combine, and that’s what we did is combine BPC 157 with TB 500. Then if you add in some copper GHK, then they call that the Wolverine Stack. And so all the sports people are using that. I think the other Ben Greenfield, named that, and you know, they’ll use that for better recovery.
So my athlete friends tend- Yeah, we’ll
Dr. Weitz: call him the other Ben.
Dr. Shade: The other Ben. Ben number two. Thing one and thing two. But the sports people tend to do the BPC TB 500, and, you know, people working more on inflammatory processes, BPC KPV. But… And there’s no reason you can’t use both. You know? Like, BPC KPV in the morning and BPC TB at night.
Copper can go in there any time. Now,
Dr. Weitz: you like cycling- … visibly
Dr. Shade: water-soluble
Dr. Weitz: ones … you recommend cycling [00:24:00] these peptides, right?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. I do. I like, you know, you know, four or five days on, three days off if you’re gonna do it weekly. If you’re doing more of a campaign, you can do four to six weeks and then take two weeks off.
And just so the signaling doesn’t get lazy.
Dr. Weitz: And should they be taken away from meals?
Dr. Shade: Yeah, it’s best to do these on an empty stomach. Even, you know, 10 minutes before you eat, you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get pretty much all of it in. And like I said, if you’ve already eaten and you’ve forgotten, you know, hold it 90 seconds, two minutes, get as much as you can, swallow little bits at a time.
You’ll be absorbing even through all this area
Dr. Weitz: Right. So you have a product that’s a natural GLP-1 agonist?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. Lipotone, and that is a peptide blend f- it’s a fraction. You take nutritional yeast and break open their proteins, [00:25:00] and then you- you’re fractionating them by size, and this one fraction has a couple peptides in it that regulate leptin and ghrelin, so…
and cholecystokinin. So they’re modulating appetite and taking away a lot of the food noise where you’re reward feeding yourself, you know, little dopamine hits. So it’s like true hunger, but not too much. You eat, you’re done earlier, not just gorging yourself. And then it’s modulating cholecystokinin, and that is the feeling of immediate satiety and long satiety.
So, it can be used after doing GLPs. It can use as as a s- as a ride-along product with GLPs. And, you know, it’s just been really good. The data that the parent company making the extract, they got data on weight loss, and it was all muscle lo- I’m sorry, it was all fat loss with no muscle loss.
That’s the problem that you get with GLP-
Dr. Weitz: Right …
Dr. Shade: so much [00:26:00] muscle wasting, you get Ozempic face and Ozempic butt. This is, you know, it falls over. So we’ve made a lot of, you know, protocols for people to use some of these peptides along with their GLPs so they don’t have to go to such high doses of GLPs, ’cause th- those can paralyze the stomach.
They can turn down, they really strongly turn down bile secretion and and pancreatic secretions, and that could be a problem when you’re doing, like, 15, 20 milligrams of tirzepatide. With these other things, you could be like 2.5, five milligrams of tirzepatide. Then you’re taking bitters to make sure your bile’s flowing, the Lipotone.
Then we have one called GLP-1 Amplifier, which are all natural GLP agonists, and they turn up catabolic activity. In fact, they’ll turn up y- you know, they’ll put you into ketosis pretty quickly. In fact, that product’s had three names. It was first Keto Before 6, so like you could be- Oh,
Dr. Weitz: I remember that.
Dr. Shade: And then, yeah, and then, and now you can eat [00:27:00] carbs and get that benefit, and you could just metabolically switch every day. Then we called it AM- and the keto people thought it was too easy, so they didn’t like it, and so the AMPK Charge is what we called it for the cardio metabolic people. They’d be like, “Yeah, that’s great.”
And then GLP-1s came out. We called it GLP-1 Amplifier, you know?
Dr. Weitz: Has anybody ever looked into seeing if they take that product and then measuring the ketones to see if there’s really a measurable effect?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. Oh, yeah, we did that in blood. And, you know, sometimes people need, you know, two or three doses to see it right away if they’re not really well metabolically switched. But you can always get there where you’ll see ’em in the blood. You know, with me, you’ll see, you know, I’ll go up in the blood ketones over .5 millimole pretty quickly, you know, 45 minutes.
Dr. Weitz: And- what do you think about the GLP-1 drugs? Because at this point they’re just so overwhelmingly popular, it’s incredible. I think one out of eight Americans is currently on one, [00:28:00] one out of five has tried one.
Dr. Shade: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: And I’m really worried that if that many people are taking a drug we’re gonna start seeing some really severe side effects, and I think we’re already seeing it.
Dr. Shade: What kind of things have you seen?
Dr. Weitz: Well, I’ve seen a lot of gut stuff.
Yeah. Very commonly people get SIBO. I’ve talked to Dr. Pimentel, and he said trying to even test them for SIBO with a breath test is i- is impossible. I’ve seen people with eyesight problems. I’ve seen pe- patients with thyroid problems. Yeah … obviously the loss of muscle is a big problem. Yeah,
Dr. Shade: They’re getting malnourished.
A- and they’re paralyzing their their GI system. The SIBO usually flares up when you don’t have enough bile flow, and this is stopping bile flow. And so that, one of the problems there is it’s stopping detox processes ’cause the toxins are all going out with the bile. And so you’re breaking down all these depots of fat with the fat-soluble toxins, and you’re circulating those.
And so that’s why we have people doing bitters, [00:29:00] a binder in the beginning, and adding these other things so their dosages go- don’t get so high. So these people use in overwhelming doses, and then not eating, and metabolizing all their toxins into the blood, then you’re gonna run into the problems. A lot of these things will lodge in the thyroid and so it’s just inappropriate use of them.
I think in general we’re getting a lot more cardiometabolic wellness in our really fat populations, and so that part I think is good, but this whole, like, one-hit wonder thing that can get very myopic, and you’re not supporting the system, the whole system, and then you’re running into problems. You know, I’ve seen a girl lose 60 pounds, you know, who works for me, but she took all the other stuff with it and did it flawlessly
Dr. Weitz: Right.
So there’s a better way to do-
Dr. Shade: Yeah. Yeah, you need bile flow, y- you know, you need the bitters, you need
Dr. Weitz: I’m sure it’s gotta be stopping digestive enzyme release as [00:30:00] well, and-
Dr. Shade: Yeah. You need- HDL … other proteins and then the whole thing can work, and you need nutrition. And so, you know, multivitamins, multiminerals, make sure everything’s getting in there.
And when you know, you’re eating less, but make sure that you’re really getting balanced nutrition.
Dr. Weitz: Right. And
Dr. Shade: the
Dr. Weitz: first thing they give up is eating vegetables and the things you really need. Yeah. And protein and
Dr. Shade: Yeah, they’re eating crackers, couple fries. No
Dr. Weitz: So we have Epitalon, which is a synthetic peptide that has been shown to extend the telomer- Telomerase
the telomeres,
Dr. Shade: Yeah. Activate telomerase, and so we’ve been… People love that one. They feel good on that. It helps re-regulate your diurnal cycle, so your sleep cycles get back on much better. And it cross-regulates into the thymus and the immune system. So it’s usually used along with [00:31:00] Thymulin, which is a bioregulator for the thymus and immune system, and the Epitalon is a pineal bioregulator and working from that side, but they cross over quite a bit.
So those two traditionally were used like a bottle of each twice a year. I think you should do two bottles and really get it up and going. And we’re doing some testing now looking at telomerase activity and telomere lengthening, and, you know, what dose really is appropriate. There’s little controversy.
You know, the Russians got a lot of data around telomere elongation and the and they did originally with Epithalamin, Thalamin, which was a whole pineal extract, and then some people did some work like what’s really the modulator of telomerase here, and it’s Thymulin. And, Or I’m sorry it’s Epitalon, which is part of the Epithalamin extract.
And so, that’s the one that, that we’re [00:32:00] using. And yeah I’ll be excited. I found a good company that can do a lot of different assays on the enzyme activity, the whole telomere lengthening. So we’ll have a little bit more guidance on exact dosages there.
Dr. Weitz: Does that also help improve biolog- biological aging?
Have you looked at the- Well,
Dr. Shade: That’s what it’s, …
Dr. Weitz: the DNA methylation effects as well?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. That’s what we’re gonna look at more. We’re looking right at the telomeres, but we’ll look at the… We’ll start some more biological aging measurements. So the one study we did with biological aging and Tru TruAge Diagnostics was just around a detox program using Liver Sauce and Binder and a couple other things, and then AMPK Charge, now the GMP1 Amplifier with Binder. And we were able to get in three months, an average of one year drop-off of the biological age, and bring down the rate of aging quite a bit. So just [00:33:00] detox is able to do that. Now we’ll go in and work with the peptides see what kind of changes we can get from those.
Dr. Weitz: And you mentioned Thymulin. That’s another one that that you’re making.
Dr. Shade: Yeah. With zinc complex Thymulin, and that’s a thymus immune system bioregulator. You know, changes CD4, CD8 ratios. Gets those on so the… What happens is CD4s will go down, and then they don’t have… They’re signaling the CD8s, and the CD8s are going out and doing the killing. So one of the things that gets that ratio back on so you’re more immunocompetent against infections, it’s turning down… All of these are turning down inflammaging, that hyperactivity of NF-kappa B and the inflammatory cytokines that come from that. So it’s getting control over those processes, and that’s how we are when we’re young.
You know, an infection comes in, and we go and kill, and then we bring back if- the inflammatory process. When we’re older, we’re just sort of non-specifically inflaming. More of [00:34:00] these two TH2 processes that are more anti-H17, th- which are more of an allergic hyperreactivity, and we have less of this TH1 go out and kill. So the Thymulin and even the Epithelin are helping you shift back to that younger model of the immune system.
Dr. Weitz: Have you looked at doing one of those tests that Dr. Vasdani has? A lymphocyte map test to see the TH1 and the TH2 and the different parts of the immune system and see how it modulates it?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. We should probably do some of those. We’re kind of shopping around the different companies that have some of those tests. I should probably reach out to Ari and look at look at those and, you know, how well those work as we look at this profile of immune activity.
Dr. Weitz: And how does Thymulin compare to a thyroid glandular extract?
Dr. Shade: Well, thymulin is thymus one versus- Oh … thyroid one.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, I meant thymus [00:35:00] glandular extract. Yeah.
Dr. Shade: Yeah. So th- thymulin will be in the thymus extract. And so in fact, we looked with Dr. Shelley and Diane Goodnow about originally doing thymus extracts and putting them in liposomes when the pure peptides were more on the hit list, and now they’re more accepted. And these ones that were could be natural glandular extracts, we say, “Well, those can be supplements,” because, you know, Standard Process has been doing organ extracts and gland extracts for umpteen years, and so these are glandular extracts, but we went to synthesizing the main component. You know, I think there’s a call for doing both. And, you know, as we d- evolve these, maybe we’ll be getting liquid thymus fractions, adding in the thymulin, and making a product out of that.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. All right. Those were the main things I had on my agenda. What else did you wanna discuss [00:36:00] today?
Dr. Shade: No, I mean peptides and the peptides story was really the biggest for me. Yeah. And then keep talking, I always like to talk about companion products for doing GLPs and making GLPs a safe thing versus-
Dr. Weitz: So what would be the full GLP component,
Dr. Shade: Process? S- bitters, binder, the GLP-1 activator, Lipotone. That’s the best combination of things. And I do like, BPC KPV with that as, as well to make sure that the gut processes are on.
Dr. Weitz: Now, one of the questions some people have is, if I take something that helps my gut motility, will that counteract the GLP-1?
Dr. Shade: No. No, especially not motility ’cause that’s just, you know, people are getting constipated so you wanna move s- and then, you know, that’s part of that is, you know, part of the SIBO is that, so you’re trying to move that, you’re [00:37:00] trying to get the bile flow. Bile flow is rinsing and clearing the upper GI. SIBO is just that in the upper small intestine, you’re not supposed to have the bacteria-
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Shade: Yeah … and the fungus and stuff. And bile’s one of the things that is a detergent that rin- anti and antimicrobial that rinses that stuff away. So getting the motility and the bile flow, yeah, you might refresh your hunger ’cause you’re not all stuffed up in there, but it’s not going to just stop what was going on with the GLPs. It’s gonna keep those processes healthy so the GLPs don’t have those effects that you’re mentioning.
Dr. Weitz: Right. And then on top of that, making sure you’re getting the vitamins and the minerals
Dr. Shade: and- Yeah. Then yeah, I was gonna say, then we have people do Ultra Vitamin our liposomal nano-emulsion blend multivitamin, and you know, our Catalyzed Mineral Caps, so you’re getting all that, some Quinton for micronutrients.
And so yeah, you’re just r- really making sure you’re getting full [00:38:00] nutrition in there since you’re not taking in that much material, no, you’re not taking in that much food matrix.
Dr. Weitz: That Quinton is kind of an interesting product. Yeah. It’s s- minerals from the sea, right?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. That’s from an area of upwelling off the French Atlantic coast where it comes all the way from the sea floor, and so you’re getting, you know- Water that’s, you know, tens of thousands of years old coming up, really nutrient-dense from being along the, running along the trench near the, all the minerals along the sea.
And so it comes up, and there’s a phytoplankton bloom there. And I’m doing this because it comes up as a spiral. It’s like a vortex of water, and there’s a phytoplankton bloom. Above that, there’s a zooplankton bloom. And they reach down in between the two. They pull out the water, and they filter, sterilize it, and there’s all these compounds from the phytoplankton in there.
They’re also modulatory immunomodulatory. They help with lymphatic flow, extracellular [00:39:00] matrix, and you’re getting all 78 elements that, that go into human life. So, you know, your capsules of a multi-mineral are getting your macros, your c- copper, zinc, calcium, magnesium, a lot of these bigger ones, and then there’s all these trace elements, and you get that from the Quinton.
And they’ve been doing that. In fact, they would dilute that down to blood plasma salinity, isotonic with your blood plasma, and they were using that as a plasma replacement during the World Wars. And it was in the not the materia medica, but the, you know, the medical… it, it was in the medical system until the ’90s as an injectable drug, and- Huh
then
Dr. Weitz: they
Dr. Shade: threw it out of there, and now it’s been used as an oral. But it’s still packed sterile in those double-tipped ampoules. I know in Europe they still use it as an injectable.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. Cool.
Dr. Shade: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: All right, so anybody wants more information about Quicksilver [00:40:00] Scientific products, they can go to quicksilverscientific.com, and once again, use the code WEITZ10 to get a 10% discount off your first order.
Dr. Shade: Yep. And if you’re a practitioner, get a practitioner account, and that gets you into the education modules. We have a bunch of learning management systems in the back where we’ve got whole education modules on toxins and detox, an education module on hormones, and we have a new one on peptides coming as well.
And so there’s tons of material there. And then on social, Quicksilver Scientific is on Facebook and Instagram, most highest feed on Instagram. And Dr. Christopher, drchristophershade is another Instagram handle that’s more direct me as the thought leader and a lot of the different things that I do.
Dr. Weitz: And you guys have a conference coming up in the fall in
Dr. Shade: Colorado,
Dr. Weitz: right?
Dr. Shade: Yeah. Yeah called QSX, and that’s our national conference. It’s a day and a half of education. We’ll [00:41:00] be covering peptides, hormones and longevity. And we have a guy named John Senay who’s a great futurist entrepreneur, thinker, really thinking about, you know, how we move into the future, how we not just follow each other, but think about big, bold moves to move into the future, use AI to help organize our practices and, you know, h- how to get the best out of everything that the future is bringing us as practitioners and health coaches and doctors, you know, just to make it all work better. And you gotta break out of the thought streams into new thinking, and that’s something we’ve always done. I mean, Quicksilver, that’s what we like.
Dr. Weitz: Right. That sounds great, Chris. Thank you. Thank you,
Dr. Shade: Matt.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five-star ratings and review. As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine. If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition and want to prevent chronic problems and wanna promote longevity, please call my Santa Monica WEITZ Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111, and we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine. And I will talk to everybody next week.
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