Ozempic and other GLP-1 peptides are well known, but did you know they can help with depression and pain, not just weight loss? Dr. Krkic and Angela, NP discuss all the options at @zellifestyle. We also discuss the type of patients who wouldn’t benefit from cutting edge research and should be able to thrive from simpler lifestyle hacks. Transcript below:

What are peptides and why does everyone on the internet want you to use them? I’m Nick Angelis. This is the Ascend Health Show. I’m the owner of Ascend Health Center in Fairlawn. And to answer that question I just asked, I have Angela and Dr. Krkik from Zel Vitality. How are you guys doing today? I’m good. How are you guys? Doing pretty good. Yeah. So, no one knows us, but this is actually our second show today. Yeah. And we accidentally talked about this a little bit. Yeah. But we can carry on from where we left off. It’ll confuse everybody in the audience. And that’s kind of what the show is for. That’s all right. Just puzzling people, me rambling, you cutting me off when you have something to say since I’m mostly here to pick your brains and vice versa. Awesome. So, most people think of peptides as GLP1s. Hey, I can finally lose some weight and maybe I can still have cookies. Yeah. Uh, but there’s a lot more to it. I I guess we can talk about that a little bit. There is another show I’ve done with KMI Wellness. They’re in Burton and Streetsboro about some of this weight loss because I always hate you think after 64 shows or so I would repeat myself. Sure. Um but talk a little bit about the GLP1s and then some of the other things that peptides do.

So peptides are small amino acid chains that our body already has. Um insulin’s a peptide. The GLP1s are peptides. um they are signaling molecule chemicals telling your body to do something. So we have seen with our patients some awesome things come out of GLP1s. Um one of them is food noise. Obviously they’re able to lose a little bit of weight. Inflammation is a big thing I think that most of our patients see right away that they have an improvement in inflammation. So joint pain of course when you’re losing weight like they start to have less problems or pain. Okay. And inflammation, I mean, if I had to say one thing that Ascend Health Center treats, it probably is inflammation. Typically, neuroinflammation resulting in anxiety and depression, but a lot of our treatments, even the TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is an electromagnet that uh stimulates your neurons. It helps with depression. It can overstimulate them to help with anxiety or OCD. But often the root cause is inflammation. Not always because depression is very complex and it can have a variety of causes but particularly for that subset. It’s almost 100% of patient I know inflammation is like the start of chronic disease right like

so all of Americans we have like this chronic disease state that most of us are in typically it’s from diet and stress but those things cause the inflammation which ends up causing other problems. So um peptides are really great. There’s a lot of peptides that are helping with inflammation. GLP1s is just the one that I think everybody knows about right now, but we’re learning more and more on different peptides to do different things. So, yeah.

And I am familiar with peptides, but I try not to remember any of that for this show because then you’ll have me talking about it with my amateur version of It’s a lot.

It’s a lot to know. Dr. K is like the peptide guru. Like, he knows the ins and outs. He’s definitely into it, been using them. So, um he’s a great resource. Yeah. It’s amazing when you say to a patient that I’m like the guinea pig for what I’ve tried to give you. So, it’s like I’m experimenting on myself first before I give it to anybody else. But, you know, peptides are probably one of the easiest, safest things that you can controllably inject in your body, right? Um, with supervision. Obviously, we teach patients how to actually do a subcutaneous injection. Sure. and with a little insulin syringe needle and uh yeah they’re already something that your body God has created in your body. So these are sequences. Most individuals are not going to have any symptoms other than maybe a little in where where we put the sting where or sometimes you know you’re pushing fluid under a little bit of fat sometimes it swells up a little bit or you get a little rash or not a rash but like redness. So they’re super super safe and I love them personally because we’re kind of in this world of optimizing uh your body. It’s kind of like you’ve heard of the word biohacking. Biohacking now is like such a it’s a fun thing because people are experimenting. It’s important to exper experiment with good quality products. So before you uh you know get something from China that doesn’t have standards of stability and safety. Absolutely. Regenerative medicine is the future. So, you know, we’re trying to learn as much as we can about all of the peptides that are on the market, obviously, um, and get them into our patients hands safely so that we can help regenerate and repair your tears or your meniscus or your rotate, like try to prevent some of the surgery, right? So, um, get you out of pain, get rid of some of the inflammation and regenerate your own healing. Yeah. Well, you guys mentioned inflammation. So there there are a a lot of ways we could monitor inflammation C reactive protein in in the body to see exactly how much inflammation do you have in your body. But it’s interesting I just recently uh learned I don’t know if you know this galactin 3 is a measure it’s a protein a carbohydrinding protein that’s actually released in the bloodstream and it can be measuring inflammation systemically but it can also measure inflammation in the brain Nick. Okay. So, when we talking about mental health, right, there is amazing research now and it’s easily accessible. Galactin 3 can be measured and you can see what you’re doing to your brain. Even it was interesting a doctor mentioned at a conference I was just in on this uh this past weekend that even some of the athletes that are overtraining are risking galactin 3 increase and they’re actually their mental health declines because of neuroinflammation measured in micoglial cells the immune cells of your brain and I thought it was like mind-blowing that we overtraining doing something too much can increase uh systemic inflammation.

When I started Ascend, one of my thoughts was J.R. Smith needs what we have here. He was on the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was nuts all the time. Yeah. Yeah. He was he was pretty much burning out. But you’ll see that where the physical abilities does not match the emotional maturity of these players. And and that is a risk often with biohacking is that you’re trying to do so much for your body and you’re focusing so much on I need to be in perfect health that your mental health is deteriorating because of that obsession. It’s rather ironic, but I mean speaking of irony, so are injecting a GLP-1 when you think of all the medicines that you can inject to uh sort of suppress your immune system. I mean that’s really the only part of pharma that’s growing right now. Yeah. I mean I was on Tremfya myself injecting myself every six weeks so I could work in a hospital without breaking out. That’s wild. And it is something too in in that realm of pharmacologics where uh I often tell patients especially in when they have autoimmune issues, no try some natural things. Go to a place like zeal and sometimes you can cycle through every few years they’ll come up with some new drugs that may help you and then you may realize nope standard American healthcare still is doing nothing for me. Go back to a more functional approach. So, I think that’s an important thing for our patients to learn, too, is that uh your philosophy of health doesn’t matter. Meaning that whatever works and makes you feel better and your labs are better, that’s what you need to go with. So, if it’s going to your doctor and you pay a $20 copay and they see you for 5 minutes and you’re better, amazing. If it means you need to go to a place like Ascend of Zel where we’ll spend more time with you and some things may be, in our case, some things may be covered by insurance, some things are self-pay, you know, it all depends on what results are we getting, right? Sure. Yeah. Otherwise, again, you’re doing what I do where I get a terrible groupon. Like, I have a discount, but this food is terrible. Right. Right. Yeah. So, I love that about being in the insurance model because we don’t have these regulations and time constraints that we have to kind of like follow when we’re in that type of healthcare. So, it really changes things when you like have that time. So there’s no rush and you really get to know them, your patient. And yeah, you’re exactly right. Right. Like can you can see your primary care and bring me labs that are going to be covered with your insurance if they’re not covered with us, whatever we have to do to get you better or feeling better. But well, that is kind of our philosophy at Ascend. So a lot of times, uh, patients will like their therapist or their psychiatrist, but they need to get better. So, we operate more as a referral place, which is of course why I do all these shows where you can stay with the person you like. We’ll also help you get better. They’re still in charge of you, but so we can help them and get you over this hump or whatever. And it helps it also be a more temporary relationship. So, the problem with health is that as you get sicker and sicker, you add more and more specialists. And then over time, all of your effort, all of your time, all of your thoughts are related to your health, right? So even if you did get better physically, the mental fortitude that you need to get through the day and be healthy and wait, am I sadder? Wait, are my joints hurting more? Do I need this? Like people end up a mess even if we’ve actually cured the physical issue. Yeah. Cuz their job has been now being sick, right? And going to appointments and that becomes their reality. That’s their perception and and it’s their identity being taken care of by others. So um and that’s something that we struggle with at Ascend. So sometimes we’ll deal with it where especially we don’t do very many pediatrics but you asked me about that earlier. Um so sometimes we’ll do a very targeted approach and we’ll time it with the end of summer break or Christmas is coming or your family’s go on vacation. So we’ll give you all this attention. We’ll try all these things and then we let you free so that you don’t become an adult who’s so used to the the health care system that any issue and you’re off to see your doctor. Right. Yeah.

And I think that’s like what I love about us is we’re becoming a community for our patients. So whether it’s with us like with you referring out um or just putting them in front of like our other providers, right? You know, I can say something but if they hear it from Dr. K, it’s different or if they hear it from Dr. Amanda, it’s different. So it’s really nice to have all of us in like the same area so that we can work together and they’re getting the best out of all of us. Right. That’s important to know because it is one of those things. Somebody might connect with you, Nick, much better than they connect with us do or somebody and they might not. That’s another reason for this show. They like, “Nope, don’t like him.” Great. We save all of us save some time. And it’s okay. I mean, we’re it’s we can’t please everyone. But it’s almost important to know that if you are willing to be helped and you’re looking for a relationship with somebody that is willing to help you, then it’s like magic. It’s it’s like the compliance goes up with patients. It’s easier on the practitioner. Um and you don’t have to we don’t have to work so hard and the patient doesn’t have to work so hard when there’s that trust component in it. And then you know with peptides regenerative medicine with uh biohacking there’s some really amazing tools that we can use out there because we’re all aging. We can’t avoid death. Yeah. It’s just it’s just how do we spend time statistically in America most people in their late life in their final years life final quarter of the sprint are going to have risk to develop Alzheimer’s disease Parkinson’s disease dementia it was interesting a big study just was released at the A4M convention that they took Microsoft I don’t know how it was involved but it was pretty it was pretty big they asked AI and all the data that Microsoft held and social media platforms or what are people searching the most right now if they’re under the age of 50 and it was interesting fact people are researching how to avoid dementia. It was the top research because what’s happening right now, we’ve never seen dementia this prevalent in the in people over 40. I mean, people developing a dementia over 40 from a long COVID, their immune system wasn’t functioning really well. And it’s amazing to see. Yes, we’re waking up because that’s important. You know, I’m in you might be in your 40s. You have parents that you’re taking care of right now. And it’s like so detrimental to see your loved one that took care of you. Now you have to wipe their butts, take care of for them. And it scares the crap out of me. I don’t want to do this for my kids. I don’t want my kids to take care of me. And a lot of it is cellular aging. So I do a lot of anesthetic work with colonoscopies, endoscopies. There’s a huge increase in colon cancer in people my age. And they finally cracked some of the code saying, “Nope, because of our lifestyles, because of the way we eat, all of our cells are aging quickly. So that’s why we’re seeing colon cancer in 30-year-olds that we normally see in 70-y olds. So it’s probably similar for dementia. Absolutely. And this is still related to peptides because that’s what they are. They’re anti-aging compounds in a lot of Absolutely. Yeah. Your body’s producing them when we’re young and we’re in our 20s like Yeah. We’re healthy, we’re active, like we can recover quicker. Obviously, yeah, we’re getting older. Everything slows down. And I think the dementia thing, I mean, there’s all these new statistics out there that like 70% of women in my age group will have dementia or Alzheimer’s. So, um, it’s a big part of our reality as we’re getting older and we’re seeing it even more so now. So, um, it’s scary. Yeah. Well, which peptides help with that in particular? And as a disclaimer again, don’t go buy this off the internet. Everything we talk about ketamines and regenerative medicine, come and see us. We’ll clear you medically. None of this really works if you go to some online pharmacy and do it yourself. Like there’s no group. If it works well, then you need a professional. If it doesn’t work well, you’re wasting your money anyways. So a quick little disclaimer there. Yeah. I mean, Nick, what are some of the things that you can do? There’s a lot of things even just like talking about growth hormone. So what is growth mom? It’s a hormone that we have abundance when we are young. That’s why we recover. Your child falls at 5 years old. Next thing you know, their bruise is gone. But each decade growth hormone declines by 15%. So let’s do some math. Like by the time you’re 40 you’re at 60% decline of growth hormone. So all your recovery systems are dampened down. So peptides like there is a peptide called tesarelin which is a growth hormone analog growth hormone releasing peptide. There is peptides such as surelin uh CJC hyperarilin CJC 1295. Have you heard of these before? Yeah. So these are all peptides that stimulate natural growth hormone. Now that we can relate that to decreasing dementia at risk just by that because growth hormone is going to cause better sleep, better recovery of muscles, less inflammation, less inflammation. When you sleep better, your brain recovers, right? Yeah. Absolutely. So there there there’s so many components that these peptides will do um streamlined down the stream down the stream because it’s not just okay you take a bro releasing peptide and all of a sudden you know you’ll have all these benefits but down the stream give them some time minimum of 3 months of utilizing these peptides we’ll start seeing really some amazing results. These peptides are so small, they’re able to get across like your cellular membrane. So, we’re able to like really target different parts of your cellular function. So, um I think that we’re that’s what we lack with like typical standardized medicine. We can’t get to that cellular level. So, um that’s where the peptides are really awesome. Think of the pills that help you with toenail fungus. They’ll destroy your liver in the process because it takes so much medicine to get to that point you need it, right? So I mean that’s the way we use ketamine. It releases glutamate in the brain. Uh it can be a neuroinflammatory neurotransmitter but it’s basically repurposing what the body’s already making. This leads to like BDNF or uh releasing neurotropic factors. There’s a lot of and peptides are the same way where they start a chain reaction right that the body then completes which is important I feel because um when you use these type of methods the body takes over. Oh yeah. It’s it’s the opposite of what you see sometimes with poorly done hormone replacement or a lot of medicines like benzoazipene stimulants opioids with bar like oh you’re going to do this for me that’s fine I don’t need to do anything right we’re going to shut off now it’s very difficult to restart that yeah you can’t ever really restart it after it’s turned off like that I think um I really like GHKCU it’s another peptide you know all of the women in my age group were all getting Botox and the lasers and the resurfacing and the hyperpigment pigmentation like we’re vain, right? So, we’re paying all this money, but this peptide is kind of what re like reboots your collagen level and helps with your hair, skin, and nails and hyperpigmentation and fine lines and wrinkles. Like, it’s not like a miracle, but I mean, it’s something that we can do to prevent our aging on the outside a little bit. So, not only are we regenerative and healing your tears and, you know, from our old age, but we can try to, you know, make you look good and feel good, too. So, I think there’s just so many awesome things with peptides. Yeah. And I just thought of this. Does it help at all? So, if a patient’s like, “Well, I wonder if peptides would help me.” Is there any connection where they could start? For example, in our office, we use some glycine. Uh, we use a lot of amino acids because some of them are very useful. Tarine in in some cases. Um, is that a like a baby step or is it just not really relevant since peptides are so more complex than just an individual amino acid? I feel like we’re dealing individually with patients. So, I we can go slow. Yeah. I mean, there’s so many like nutrients there um neutrauticals that can be cohesive in like actually helping the peptide work better. Okay. So, it’s still it’s not the fix. It’s not like one injection is going to fix it all. So if you’re not providing the food for your cells, no matter what peptide you’re signaling, the cell doesn’t have the the energy to do this function. So it is cellular level medicine. Is that how you use like I know you you you all do some IV nutrition therapy. Is that part of it? Like that’s get you the actual nutrition so you can definitely that’s where we spend a lot of time on like lifestyle changes like what our expectations are like for protein intake because we want these things that we’re adding in to your lifestyle whether they’re peptides GLP1s neutrauticals supplements we want it hormone replacement therapy whatever we’re doing your body has to be ready for that peptide that treatment. So, if we’re fueling our body with just junk or dehydrated, we’re not we’re just going to be like kind of banging against our head like the wall. We’re not going to see the results. A lot of women have thyroid issues, underlying thyroid issues, and they can’t lose weight, but their standard doctor isn’t looking at all of their lab work or we add hormone replacement therapy in, but your thyroid isn’t functioning. So, we’re not getting the results that we need. So, we do have to look at you like cohesively. And there are times that we have to say you’re not going to get results until we fix this other issue. Yeah. I personally love IV. I mean I travel when I travel I get an IV before I go. Yeah. Okay. So that tells you some it’s very important because you’re going to be exposed to new viruses. You’re going to be exposed to dehydration altitude if you’re traveling in the airplane. Um so your your IV therapy is amazing. You don’t have to go to the hospital anymore to obtain an IV. And your IV at the hospital is going to cost you 3,500 bucks. Exactly. And so now you can glad to talk to your insurance company. Prove it. And so like we do some vitamin C in our IVs, a lot of immunity, zinc, B12. Um we have like a glow one, a migraine one, magnesium. Yeah. Great. Um so it’s really a quick way at getting the nutrients in and preventing the dehydration. So and I think so we do some IV vitamins at our clinic. A lot of times it is for patients who are doing the ketamine infusions where I can tell maybe they had an eating disorder or some issue where I’m like, you know, the the ketamine works by letting up parts of your brain that aren’t usually active, but that’s also going to require some vitamins and nutrients to get the most out of it. And there are some patients where I feel it is a gimmick like, oh, this won’t do anything for you or like, well, we’ll try it once. You feel better? No. Okay, forget it. Forget it. So I think that is one of the advantages of having a lot of different options is that so you don’t have to you know it’s not oh every patient is a nail and this is a hammer and this is what we do here. So especially with IV it is controversial in some cases but again it often speaks for itself. It really does. I mean I had an immunity boost like I was getting sick. Mhm. We did it and I was fine like literally the next day. Like I was like okay I feel so much better. You know sometimes you just need a rinse out. Nobody drinks enough water. you know, we never drink enough. You know, we got to like kind of rinse out a little bit. So, and it often is the electrolyte. So, that is the one advantage of IV fluids that I’ve had patients like, “No, I’m drinking so much wine.” Like, yeah, you don’t have any potassium or sodium or anything left for all of these cellular functions that will make your brain feel better. And that’s what I see on most lab work really at our office, you know, cuz a lot of our patients are pretty healthy. It’s a dehydration thing, you know, so you’re like, you’re just not getting enough water. So, it’s like when you can see it in black and white, it’s it’s pretty awesome. I mean, who wouldn’t concentrate on water when it’s, you know, 70% of your body? Yeah. You know, it’s like we need it, but um they don’t understand, you know. Yeah. Do you have any other lifestyle hacks? Like we just mentioned, drink more water, occasional IVs, cuz what I believe in a lot of times is also having a kit. So, I was just listening to a podcast about masso activation syndrome. And one of the things they said is like, no, you have your kit, you have your chromolin, you have your H1 H2 antagonist. So when you feel something coming, you prepare for it and then it’s not like, “Oh, I need to go to the ER. Oh no, I’m having a flare.” So it takes some work, but in a lot of cases, especially with complex diseases, if we can teach patients how to prepare your kit, so to speak, um that helps a lot of problems be minor conveniences instead of sudden emergencies. Sort of like you get your oil changed when you’re supposed to in your car. I feel like um my biggest thing is like your sugar intake. We don’t realize how much sugar we’re taking in and how detrimental it is. So if you can just like cut that Starbucks out or make one small change, it can really lead to big steps. So um just every day at a time, one step at a time, little changes lead to big results. And that’s not controversial either. Like there’s conversations like, “Oh, is this fat good for you? Is this a healthy?” But everyone knows too much sugar bad. Yeah. Like there’s enough info out there. Yeah. You know, yeah. you you shouldn’t feed don’t feed your kids before the age of five any sort of like artificial sugars like cane sugar like sucrose all the os and if it’s one main ingredient is sugar don’t feed it to them so like one of my favorite uh like hacks in the world is really your nervous system if you don’t regulate your nervous system and modulate your nervous system it listens every cell listens to your nervous system it’s kind of like the code in your brain you Can’t separate the brain from your body. You can’t. It the thoughts are the language of your brain. I love this. Your feelings is the language of your body. When your body continues in the feeling stage, you have no control. Mhm. You have more neurons in your gut than you do in your brain. Well, it’s they talk to each other. And for me, I I think for healthwise, if you can go and meditate and try I mean, heck, it’s just practicing meditation, it can downregulate your nervous system, so you’re not staying in that sympathetic nervous system. So next time you’re driving and somebody flicks you off while you don’t have to fight that battle, right? You stay in your state of calm and collected because every cell is going to listen to that. So like in intentions for the day setting your intentions right with starting with gratitude is one of my favorite new things is I will say all the things first thing in the morning what am I grateful for right and if you have never tried that before Nick just say random things I’m grateful for having a cup of water cuz you’re going to run out of ideas eventually grateful for this hot water that’s just like soaking me and washing me this morning your cells will listen to to that thought and amazing things will just unveil themselves throughout the day. So, cuz if you think about it, uh no one makes money off of you if you’re content, right? So, everything in our culture is meant to make you outraged or right, very impulsive. Yeah. And and consumptive like we are a society of consumption and somebody has tapped into that so well that I laugh at it now because I see it everywhere. Oh, it’s it that was a thought of somebody to for me to purchase that. I’m just gonna say no. Yeah. And it feels so good. Yeah. Because it’s almost like how you’re not supposed to go shopping when you’re hungry. A lot of times I try to get patients in our clinic before they’re desperate. I was like, look, this will cost you less money, less visits. If we can capture before you’re desperate because of course, yeah, we’ll pull out all the stops. We’ll try to fix you. But a lot of times I try to think of that way like because some of the things we do ketamine infusions the patients can’t we try to get them so they can go farther and farther without treatment. Um and it is a case of no if we can get you content then sometimes uh the analogy I use all the time unfortunately probably many times on the show too is you have a chocolate cake in your fridge and you’re not on a diet. You’re not obsessed about it. Yeah. You can walk past it. Exactly. So teaching that contentment is so helpful. And sometimes it we teach it by oh you could get better if you could do this but it’s the holidays it’s kind of busy just come back in the new year and there’s like a freedom for the patients to realize yeah this really doesn’t fit my schedule. So not the idea of like suppressing your health but being in charge of it because I’m not in survival mode you know I need to spend more time with my kids instead of this appointment. So just that ability to kind of take control is just so empowering. I feel it is it really is. So we’re almost out of time again. Again, Ascend Health Center, we’re in Fairlon. Uh we do psychiatry, some pain management, we have therapists, nurse practitioners, me as a nurse andist zeal. Now to be in Hudson, you’re opening up in Fairon. You’re in Talmage. Yeah. Direct primary care, saunas, cold plunges, chiropractic, acupuncture. We kind of have everything in one spot. Amazing. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. It was fun. Absolutely.

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