Take a deep dive with Kyal Van Der Leest, the brilliant mind behind LVLUP Health’s game-changing oral peptides.
We explore the harmful effects of toxic mold exposure and how to restore your body’s bioharmony. Learn the science behind LVLUP Health’s formulations and their transformative powers.
Episode Highlights
"Precursor ingredients are exciting because we can either bypass the bioavailability issues, or we can just support our body with what it needs to do it itself rather than just giving it a crutch." — Kyal Van Der Leest Share on XPeptide absorption varies by the form used. BPC acetate has about 20% absorption, while BPC arginate has about 90%. Share on XThe Benefits of NACET: NACET (N-Acetyl L-Cysteine Ethyl Ester) is similar to NAC (N-Acetyl L-Cysteine) but has dramatically better absorption. The ethyl ester group allows it to cross the blood-brain barrier. Share on XPodcast Sponsor Banner
About Kyal Van Der Leest
Kyal Van Der Leest is a Nutritionist, Naturopath, and Functional Health Coach turned supplement formulator.
He founded LVLUP Health to create the products he wished he could have suggested and used when he worked in clinics and supplement stores, and for his own use during his health journey and experimentation.
LVLUP’s formulations are a fusion of multiple health modalities – using what works, no matter where it comes from – LVLUP’s formulations target the root causes of health issues and work on a multitude of biochemical targets in the body, providing customers with products that actually work as promised.
Top things you’ll learn from Kyal Van Der Leest
- Discover the powerful compounds and synergistic combinations behind LVLUP’s formulas that support liver function, gut repair, allergies, and more
- How to improve absorption and bioavailability with specific peptide formulations
- The dangers of mold exposure and how to remediate the damages it causes to the body and cognitive performance
- Why the liver is the forgotten alchemical organ that determines overall health
- How peptides differ from anabolic steroids
- How precursors synergize absorption and bioavailability
Resources mentioned
- LVLUP Health Oral Peptides & Advanced Supplements (code URBAN saves 10%)
- Teacher: Ben Greenfield
- Teacher: Dr. Jack Kruse
Episode Transcript
Click here
Nick Urban [00:00:05]:
Hello, and welcome to Mindbody Peak Performance with your host, Nick Urban. Today, we’re discussing one of my personal favorite topics and one that has been making the in the health and performance realms, and that is peptides, therapeutic peptides, and particularly we’re talking about peptides that are orally bioavailable. Meaning, peptides you can take in capsule form And joining us today is one of the world’s greatest formulators who combines a bunch of different peptides to achieve specific benefits and effects throughout the body. I have a number of his products in front of me such as the ultimate GI repair, And these contain a host of some of the most popular peptides such as BPC 157 in the arginine salt form, KPV, lorazotide acetate, a bunch you’ve probably never even heard of. And what I like about his formulas is that he understands the necessary co factors and resources your body needs to make the best use of these peptides. So you’re not just flushing money down the toilet. So who is this mystery formulator? His name is Kyle Vanderlyst, and he is the mastermind behind a company called LevelUp Health. They are based out of Australia, and they don’t just carry peptides. but all kinds of other ingredients and supplements. In front of me, I have one called historesist, which helps quell the symptoms of allergies, and irritation in a natural way. I’ve got a K PV complex that has that with other important bioactive molecules I’ve got TUDKA for liver health, and as I mentioned, the GI ultimate GI repair. In this episode, we break down each of the formulas and a whole lot more, such as one particular ingredient that I’ve used to great success on days that I plan on consuming some booze to avoid the hangover and, more importantly, to reduce some of the damage it causes. And as a side effect, It even helps blunt the intoxication effect by upregulating 2 detoxification enzymes. Kyle, on the other hand, is a nutritionist, a naturopath, and functional health coach turned supplement formulator. He founded level of health to create the products he wished he could have suggested and used when he worked in clinics and supplement stores. and for his own use during his health journey and experimentation. Level up formulations are a fusion of multiple health modalities using what works no matter where it comes from. Their formulations target the root cause of health issues in work on a multitude of biochemical targets in the body, providing customers like me with products that actually work as promised. If you find this kind of thing interesting, you can check out the show notes atmindbodypeak.com/andthenthenumberone11. And if you find this kind of thing interesting, you can pick up some of his products and use the code Urban, which I believe will save you about 10% on your order. Level of health is also one of the Outliyr approved peptide vendors. because they consistently deliver high quality products without taking shortcuts. And so when you see a product listed on their site, You can be sure it’s going to work as well as that product and raw ingredient can. Okay. With that out of the way, sit back, relax, and enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Kyle Vander least.
Nick Urban [00:03:52]:
Welcome to Mindbody Peak Performance.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:03:55]:
Thank you, Nick, and thank you to Australian WiFi speeds for being terrible.
Nick Urban [00:04:00]:
Yep. And you told me a minute ago that it is early in the morning over there. It is about 7 in the morning. And although I usually ask this for the later in the day podcast, what are the unusuals or nonnegotiable things you’ve done so far today for your health, your performance, and your Bioharmony?
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:04:19]:
for the health performance in Bioharmony today, I have taken paraxanthine, a caffeine metabolite, which makes my brain work at as well as it possibly can, some nootropics to support acetylcholine like alpha GPC, CDP choline, and hubezanae is another one that taken as well because that’s in acetylcholine, esterase inhibitor. Mhmm. Guilidine monophosphate, and, yeah, that combined with paraxanthin, the support of dopamine. And normally, I have a very good routine in the morning, but I have a less than 2 month old baby. So All all of the usual non negotiables have kind of been thrown out of the window when you’ve got a newborn who you don’t wanna wake up in the morning or you don’t wanna use your red light therapy in the room. because it might wake him up. So prior to his birth, I used to get up and have a red light therapy say, session and then a gym session within, you know, the first hour or 2 of waking up in the morning. And I live in beautiful Sunshine Coast in Queensland where there’s usually a lovely sunrise, and I would get some sun in the eyes to sort of set the circadian rhythm. So that’s that was my usual, but at the moment, it’s kind of all over the place. So We’ll we’ll get back to that when the baby’s sleep schedule normalizes.
Nick Urban [00:05:36]:
Nothing like having a newborn to test what really are those non negotiables.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:05:42]:
Yeah. Well, I guess they’re not nonnegotiables if the baby has negotiable. So Yeah. But, yeah, It’s interesting too when you have a baby. You’re very heavily lean on Nootropics to get you through a day where you haven’t slept well and happily to have to report things like creatine and tyrosine. And I think there’s a precursor to creatine I’ve been trying called GAA, that’s been fantastic for brain health as well. So I’ve really been landing on those heavily, and they’ve been looking after me, which has been fantastic to to feel.
Nick Urban [00:06:15]:
Yeah. How did you settle on those? Because I’ve interviewed Sean Wells and Daniel of Drink Update about paraxanthin, and I’ve talked a bit about Nutropix AK, brain boosting supplements to simplify. But how would you settle on those specific ingredients to incorporate into your routine?
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:06:33]:
trial and error, like, if you saw my supplement pantry, you would see over a 100 random supplement ingredients and formulations all put together and It’s honestly just the biohacker in me if, like, something excites me. I’ll try it before. I even really look too far into it. And then once I’ve tried it and experienced how good it feels, I’m like, I wanna know everything about this. So Paris Anthony was one of those ones I did hear Sean Wells talk about. And in Australia, we can’t get the drink that you spoke about from him and the other guy’s company, but we can get a pre workout formulation that Sean put together for muscletech. And I tried that one out and just felt incredible and didn’t have the usual crash associated with high stimulant. things like cat bean or even the dynamine metabolite that he also ought to market. Those things sort of bring you up and then sort of you come crashing down to earth a bit later, but paraxanthin didn’t have that effect at all, and I felt really good from it. And, yeah, so far so good. I’ve been taking that for over a month and a half now and, you know, there’s not really been any downside to it. So, yeah, that’s why I really like that one. All the other ingredients too, like things like tyrosine. that’s pretty much a no brainer because well, it will help your brain because being the precursor to a lot of the neurotransmitters, but being an amino acid essential amino acid. You really can’t go wrong with things like that, so
Nick Urban [00:07:56]:
that’s why I like those. Yeah. And there’s a lot trial in there. As you mentioned, that goes along with it, I also have the kitchen cabinet full of hundreds of different powders, pills, potions, elixirs, And I found that when I used a form of, like, more bioactive tyrosine and acetyl what is it? n acetyl l tyrosine nalt it gave me a headache, and sometimes it worked great. But most of the time, it made me feel like a robot, so I steered clear of that. And then when I’ve tried it, In other formulations, maybe at a different dosage, much lower dosage, it actually doesn’t have those effects and has a nice uplifting effect instead. So Yep. A lot of trial and error associated with this stuff. There are some as well like l dopa, the the direct precursor to dopamine that Short term is fantastic, but long term can cause issues like dopamine, receptor down regulation. So I’ve experienced that one I’ve had issues with that thing. And I mentioned it before, but who bizzina is another one which,
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:08:55]:
again, like, short term, I’ve used it today. It’s fantastic. is in acetylcholine esterase inhibitor, but long term has a array of side effects that you kinda find out about yourself the hard way and even alpha GPC, one that most people use, I pushed that too high and had horrible migraine headaches. So Biohacking,
Nick Urban [00:09:15]:
you can thank us for doing this stuff to ourselves so we can share our experiences and go through things that hopefully you the audience don’t have to yourself. Yeah. That’s the way to do it too. To look to the safety data when possible and then also at the anecdotes because a lot of this stuff won’t actually have lots of robust data for years, if not decades down the line. Yeah. Unfortunately,
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:09:37]:
things that are natural tend not to be researched unless they can be modified to become patentable. And that sort of is the case with peptides, which is my big topic of interest is peptides are these amazing things that people are getting on the bandwagon of, but really without a whole heap of robust human research, And you can look at it one way. Like, I’m not gonna try something that doesn’t have, you know, 10 years of research behind it in humans, or you can look at it from the perspective of, well, am I actually willing to wait that 10 years to take something that can give me benefit now? and has, like, very little safety concerns because they found naturally in the body, and there’s no lethal dose been found for most of the peptides. I’m not gonna say all of them, but most of the ones, especially the ones I’ve used, there’s very, very, very wide therapeutic margin. Things like BPC 157, they found the lethal dose of that would be the equivalent of about $80,000 worth of BPC, and that was in mouse studies. So I don’t think anyone’s gonna find
Nick Urban [00:10:46]:
any toxicities with things like that. Well, we’re only a few minutes in. You’ve already touched on 2 of my favorite topics that is nootropics and peptides. So as we start to going down the rabbit hole that is peptides in one of your specialties, will you give us a interesting fact or tidbit about this world specifically peptides because that’s gonna be a big portion of our conversation today.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:11:11]:
Right. So peptides are amazing. They’re my one of my favorite compounds I’ve ever experimented with. But in Australia, where I live, they are kind of a dirty word. Peptides came to the forefront probably about 10, 15 years ago in Australia with professional, we call AFL Football. There was a club called Essendon, and they became very quickly within one season. They flipped from being, like, a low to mid tier team to 1 of the elite one of the best teams, and they got persecuted for taking peptides. At the time, no none of the authorities or the regulatory bodies knew what their peptides were, but all of it was very obvious that the players were on them because they were all covering really fast. They had they looked like absolute specimens. There was a team full of Biohacking athletes And their their muscles were bulging. They were, like, one of the top teams in a in the in the league, and the captain ended up being the best for the the whole league. It’s called he won what’s called the brownlow medal, which is awarded to the best player for the whole league. And, yeah, they all were on peptides. They were on the growth hormone created dogs that were on injectable colostrum or some I think it was that. And AOD that n t e obesity drug peptide, they’re on that one as well. So oh, NTB 500. And it wasn’t until it was looked into after the fact that they decided to ban peptides, but they all got in trouble. And, basically, the team and all the players took the peptides, got banned for the following season, and the cap the captain of the team who won the award for being the best player got stripped of his medal. because it was unfair and not in the spirit of professional sports to have taken those things rather than other teams and the league learning from how successful that team was in integrating these peptide protocols with all the other teams They just cut down the one team that did it and had great success. So that’s an interesting tidbit about peptides within My Country Australia. is most people think of them as cheating or as illicit substances and sort of categorized them in the same in the same breath as things like testosterone and anabolic steroids or or sarms, but they’re really not. Like, most peptides that we use in functional medicine are found within the body. There’s a few that are synthetic, but they are actually categorized as drugs if they’re synthetic. Whereas the ones that we use like VPC TB 500, epamoral, and all of these are found naturally within the body.
Nick Urban [00:13:53]:
Mhmm. Yeah. So that is a good place to start. And one of the distinctions I wanna make, you mentioned that they’re naturally found within the body, but so are exogenous or not exogenous endogenous hormones such as testosterone. So why are the peptides fair for use in sport whereas the other anabolic aren’t?
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:14:12]:
Well, I guess that’s a a debate, isn’t it? We could have you you could argue both ways too. Like, I could be devil’s advocate and say, yeah. We’ll why should someone have all of this extra BPC? And my argument would be to protect the player. Like, these people who are professional athletes, especially ones where there’s a real risk for head injury, deserve to have some level of protection. And the neuropeptides like dihexis, cerebral lice, and p 21, All these things should be almost used proactively or immediately after a head injury to protect the player from concussion and traumatic brain injuries and BP another one. So that’s a reason why you should. What a reason why you shouldn’t is well, it’s at a level playing field if nobody’s on it. And I think actually recently, as of November last year, BPC has been banned wider banned. So I’m pretty sure this debate where having has been had at higher levels. And people have decided that even though it’s found naturally within the body, taking exogenous and high levels of it is considered an unfair sporting advantage. So, yeah, I think the jury’s still out on, and and it’s up to everyone’s personal
Nick Urban [00:15:24]:
ethics whether these things should be banned or not, but you know, water has decided for black belts in contact sports and water tested athletes at BPC is a banned substance. Yep. I’ve been researching 2 articles that I wrote. 1 on the best and most powerful ergogenic aids, the ones that are sometimes banned by water, sometimes not, and then also on the peptides you’ve mentioned so far. And one big distinction I’ve seen between them between peptides and some of the other patients that are banned is that peptides are safe in super physiological dosages because the bug doesn’t have to quote, accept the changes. It can reject the changes. And because of that, they have much better safety profile, and they also help protect the player versus with anabolic steroids or something along those lines, if you are careless and don’t know what you’re doing, the consequences can be much more severe and life altering in a negative way if it’s not done carefully under the supervision of a practitioner.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:16:23]:
absolutely fantastic point. I completely forgot about the down regulation of your own hormone production and even like the associated risk of cancer if you’re using if you’re you know, using the wrong things. The other thing that’s really frustrating with it too is from a injury prevention standpoint, strengthening your connective tissue, you ligand ligaments and tendons and, you know, fascia with peptides would be fantastic. But instead, what’s allowed are corticosteroid injections, which have a direct catabolic effect on those connective tissue, and we’ve seen it time and time again. I think Kevin Durant in the NBA was a fantastic example when he’s Achilles Robshia He should have been on something to strengthen it. Instead, they just kept injecting in with cortico cortisone shots. and then had a horrible injury, and this is potentially the livelihood of that player for the rest of their life that’s been jeopardized by using one thing over another.
Nick Urban [00:17:19]:
Yeah. And there are plenty of debates about this online, so we can direct people there if they wanna pursue those. Instead, we’re gonna focus on your background now and how you got involved with this because I don’t think you were a professional athlete that was risk in getting banned from using one of these peptides?
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:17:36]:
No. I wasn’t professional athlete. It would be quite fun to be one, but, no, I worked at a hyperbaric oxygen clinic that did actually have interactions with those players. That’s why. I’m so knowledgeable on the topic. They as I said, they’re a team full of biohackers. They did all the peptides. They also did cryotherapy hyperbaric oxygen therapy and all these fantastic things, and that’s my background is a studied nutrition, human nutrition, and my first job after graduating was working at that clinic. And the clinic was a fantastic trial by fire. It was combination of professional athletes like Novak Djokovic and a heap of the Australian open tennis stars would come in and do hyperbaric oxygen to prime their body prior to their events. And then on the other end of the spectrum, it were the chronically ill people, though, a lot of cancer patients, a lot Lyme disease patients, autoimmune disease patients who would come in. So it’s interesting with biohacking. What works for athletes also works for chronically people because fundamentally, you want to enhance the mitochondria and cellular health and hyperbaric is fantastic for that. And pretty much every single one of the nootropics and supplements that we use sort of long term are are going to help Almitochondria and help out efficiency and energy production, things like Methlan Blue. That was a really good one that I used a lot when I was in the hyperbaric oxygen facility. But, also, while I was working there, I was got really interested in natra naturopathic medicine. because I’d sort of learned the nutrition and the the precursors or the building blocks for all the neurotransmitters, all of the systems in the body. But interesting to me were the botanicals and things like adaptogens, I think all the herbal extracts, Ashwagandha, all these things were really fantastic at synergizing with the new with the nutrients. So while I was working at that clinic, yeah, I also started studying naturopathic medicine in Melbourne, and it was fantastic. working there while studying because you’d learn something in nat nat nat natropathy school. And then later in the day, you’d go into a clinic and it would be, like, direct directly relevant what you just learned in class to a patient who is presenting in the clinic. So, yeah, working there combined with the clinic director who was just a wealth of knowledge and very hugely formative in my learning. He had he had because it’s been taken down, but he had a website that had over 300 pages on all these different ingredients and substances, which can help with different diseases, including peptides too. So he introduced me to them at that clinic. And there was I believe it was co it was called Como Compounding, which were a branch of tailor made, which were one of the biggest peptide companies in America, they were directly over the road from where I worked. And one of the one of the doctors who worked at that compounding chemist would come over in consult with the people who came into hyperbaric oxygen clinic. So peptides were used in that clinic, and that sort of where I got my introduction to them. And but it was always very difficult to get these peptides because it was at a compounding chemist. You needed to have a adopters consultation. And for me, I just wanted to try these things. I didn’t actually have a medical condition or medical need to have these. So I looked elsewhere. I looked overseas. and tried to import them and found it impossible to get them through Australian customs. So I looked from within, and there are there were there was one company doing BPC, and I reached out to them and ended up taking over that company’s product They went away from making it themselves and just went into manufacturing, and now they’re my manufacturers for it. And so I run level up. who sell BPC capsules and a variety of other peptides and and ever expanding range of supplements that are basically products that I wish I had to use with people when I worked at the clinic and, you know, was helping people as a naturopath.
Nick Urban [00:21:51]:
Yeah. Well, you have some very interesting formulas over there at level of health, and I wanna dig into those because I think people who have heard peptides, and I’ve mentioned them previously on the show, they’re usually injectables. And that might be great for some people, but others just don’t wanna go down that whole rabbit hole and have to go through that. So let’s talk about some of the different formulas you created and why and you created them and how you came about choosing each of the different ingredients because a lot of your products have multiple ingredients that seem to synergize together.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:22:30]:
synergies is the word. That’s exactly what I’m going for. We learn about it in naturopathic school synergy between all the different herbs where on one mechanism that overlaps with another one. So using that philosophy and applying it to the peptide based products was how I how I put together these formulations. But I really wanna quickly touch on what you said start was oral versus injectable peptides because that’s something I don’t know if your audience had heard this before, but most peptides, almost all of them, will get degraded by stomach acid. That’s sort of the point of stomach acid and pepsin in the in the stomach is to break down protein When you eat a steak, you want that to work. But when you ingest a peptide, you don’t want that to happen. There’s certain peptides that can withstand the stomach acid, BPC being one of them. A lot of the other ones that are are all have to be, like, empirically coated or have some sort of buffer to prevent the breakdown of the peptide, all the ones that level up cells are capable of withstanding the stomach acid. There’s some fragments of plumbers and beta, t V4frag. That one can survive. I would sell that in Australia but I don’t wanna go to jail because that’s a band run here. But, yeah, BPC as the arginate form has about a 90% survival rate passing through the stomach and preventing it from getting degraded by Pepson, which is a proproteolytic
Nick Urban [00:23:59]:
enzyme made in our stomach. let’s define what peptides are just to make sure everyone’s in the same page. That way, these might these terms will make sense to them. And then also, I notice with BPC, I see that it comes in different forms, and you chose a very specific form. Why is that? Yep. So peptides are just short chains of amino acids, less than 50 amino acids long. Any bigger than that, it’s a protein.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:24:24]:
And peptides, there’s thousands of them within the body insulin being probably the main one that everyone knows about. insulin insulin is another perfect example of a protein peptide that doesn’t survive the stomach acid. That’s why diabetics need to inject it. That’s why most peptides that people use, they do need to subcutaneously inject it. I’ve done that before in the past with a few different ones. I’ve played around with Melanitan and looked like a bronze god. But also had, as Ben Greenfield says, when he tried it, uncontrollable erection. So be careful if you’re trying the melanitin or now the MSH derived ones. Yeah. The form that of BPCI use is BPC arginates. There are 3 forms. There’s sodium BPC. There’s BPC acetate, and there’s BPC arginate. There’s might be more, but there’s the 3 that I reckon make up 99% of all the BPC on the market. VPC acetate is commonly what people use and inject because it doesn’t survive the stomach acid, but if you’re injecting it, that’s not a concern anyway. and it’s also 8 times cheaper. So some some brands use this orally expecting it to work if you take it in a capsule, but at best, you’re gonna get about 10 to 20 percent absorption of that peptide. So they not trying to trash talk any other brands. But usually, if the price is low, it’s because they’ve used that form. The prices that we have for it are they are what they are. I can’t you can’t go any lower if you use quality, the the correct form of the peptide. So if you use something like VPC acetate, you know, you you you take 1000 micrograms. You’re probably only gonna get 200 micrograms of active actually make it through the stomach lining. versus if you take a 1000 micrograms of BPC acetate, you’re likely gonna get above 900 micrograms, so 90%
Nick Urban [00:26:19]:
of it go through. Yes. Melantan is a great peptide to keep your skin safe if you’re exposed to a lot of u UV, but it does have some side effects. I can confirm that from personal experience. And then on the BPC side, I’ve talked to a number of people that have reported they got no benefits or virtually zero benefits. out of it. And I suspect it’s because they were price shopping for the cheapest the cheapest product possible, not knowing that the form of this peptide actually matters tremendously for taking it orally.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:26:49]:
Yes. It does. The other thing that people need to be aware of too is orally, it will act on the GI track first before if you’re taking b p c cut to heal a distal injury, say, like, golf is elbow or you’ve got some wrist tendinopathy or something like that. It will it has the potential to help with that condition. But if you have chronic gut inflammation or leaky gut, then
Nick Urban [00:27:15]:
95
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:27:16]:
to almost a 100% of it will probably get used locally in the GI track before it even has the chance to act upon the distal site. You can overcome this by, like, mega dosing it, taking, like, three times the recommended amount because that sort of, like, super saturates the system, and then it’s not gonna all get used in the GI track. So it will end up in circulation. And then, hopefully, being a peptide that works almost intelligently at finding places where it needs to go. It circulates, and it’s not gonna act upon areas where there is actually no purpose for it to act upon. If there’s no need for this peptide, to do anything. It just circulates until it’s broken down by hydrolase enzymes. But if you do have a distal side of injury getting a supersaturated dose sort of like maybe a 1500 microgram dose would be what I’d suggest especially if you’ve never used it before and you have underlying gut issues. Seems like in that case, it might make more sense just to use BPC
Nick Urban [00:28:18]:
via injection and maybe even combine it, stack it with TV 500,
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:28:23]:
TB 4. Definitely. Yeah. I I wish I could say that taking it orally would work as efficacious as someone who sells it orally, but I’m not gonna lie it. If you inject it close and proximal to the side of injury, then you are gonna have better outcome than if you take early because you’re taking out the variables of how well it’s gonna survive the stomach acid and then how much is gonna get used by the gut as we mentioned.
Nick Urban [00:28:47]:
Yeah. So walk me through your ultimate GI repair formula. I have this and I just started taking it recently. What is in it and how does you choose what to add in terms of ingredients, and what are the
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:29:00]:
differences the changes users can expect to see? Yeah. Or So that one’s my pride and joy and level up bestseller now because it has a combination of 3 GI healing peptides. First one being VPC, which I’ve mentioned before. The second one’s KTV, which is interestingly a frac a it’s under the same category as Melanatan. And then in the fact that it’s derived from MSH, melanocortin stimulating melanin stimulating Bioharmony or melanocortin can’t remember exactly, but MSH fragment. There are 2 others. One’s called p 1 PT141. There’s melanotan 1, melanotan 2, and KPV, they’re all under the same sort of system for increasing MSH. And KTV is an orally bioavailable one that has anti fungal, anti candida, and immune regulating effects. And it also is being studied quite comprehensively at the moment for things like Chrome IVD, like Crohn’s and colitis. 1 of 1 of the 2, I can’t exactly remember which one, but it’s being studied quite heavily for that and having pretty promising effects. And the 3rd peptide in that formulation is called the razotide acetate. ATonedouble01 is the peptide code for that one. And this one has basically unlike the other 2, which are pretty pretty multimodal in their effects. Larazotide only really has one effect, and that’s a zonulin antagonist. And for anyone in functional medicine, that’s, like, exciting, but for the layperson that might not mean anything. So I’ll explain what the zonulin is and why we’d wanna antagonize it or stop its effect. Zonuline is this little protein that gets made in in response to things like gluten or glyphosate exposure, and its purpose is to increase permeability of the gut. And too much of this is a bad thing. Like, a short term amount is good because it increases the absorb of things from our diet. But if too much of this basically leaves the the the gates open, so to speak, in our gut. And when this happens, then things like bacterial endotoxin, which is very inflammatory, can enter. heavy metals or the things that in our in our gastrointestinal lumen, all these things that really shouldn’t be entering circulation have a chance to enter circulation. And then when they do well, basically, our body can enter a state of chronic inflammation where it’s con constantly trying to deal with this influx of things that should not be within. And Zonulin is kind of the gatekeeper. The increases. It breaks down tight junctions. and the tight junctions are like the Velcro between the cells of our gastrointestinal tract. If you break the Velcro, then you know, you’ve got no integrity there, and you only got 1 it’s only 1 cell thick l l g i tray aligning a valve of our gastrointestinal tract. So that’s where all the other natural compounds in the GI repair come in. They’re sort of more supportive with the nutritionals, things like tributrin is that is a form of butyrate, which is the fuel for that that cell layer in our epithelium. If you provide it the fuels the fuel source, which normally things like dietary fiber will break down into butyrate and then feed it. But if you provide it directly, then you kind of take out the microbiome, you take that out of the equation and can really help nourish the epithelium.
Nick Urban [00:32:37]:
Yeah. One thing I was curious about is with the what was it? The lorazotide acetate, so that reduces levels of zonulin. I always thought that you just wanted to crush Zion and keep it as low as possible, not considering the fact that if you completely reduce it, then you’re gonna be inhibiting your ability to absorb nootropics. So some level is a good thing, but I have a feeling that most of us have 2 high levels of Zonulin through lifestyle and diet rather than the opposite.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:33:08]:
Yeah. Exactly. It’s a very weirdly skewed bell shaped curve. Like, only a very little amount is kind of what we need. versus the amount we actually have, which you can test for this. You can do fecals on your own test to see where your levels are at. You can do serums on your own tests because Zonuline doesn’t just stop at the gastrointestinal tract in the in the tight junctions. When it enters circulation, it kind of has effects on any of these barriers we have, including the blood brain barrier. There’s a lot of research that Zonulin basically reduces the integrity of the blood brain barrier. And when that happens, then that’s when things like brain fog can occur. And a lot of you do not want things like, like, a Polysac ride entering your brain. I can tell you from firsthand experience with mold that that does not lead to good effects at all. So Light brain barrier integrity is really critical to proof for preventing any of these toxins that have been absorbed either from the diet, like if you’ve got levels high levels of heavy metals, for example, you do not want a broken down blood brain barrier because then then they have the potential. to accumulate in fatty organs, the brain being one of them. And so inhibiting Zonulin will basically allow those tight junctions to reform. If you it basically binds lorazotide binds to the same site that zone neural and wood. So by inhibiting it and jumping in jumping in the seat, so to speak, that Zonulin was going to, you don’t have any effect. And then things like the BPC can work to increase epithelial growth factor, VEGF, all these other factors, which are very important for healing. And you basically I I, analogously, describe Larazotide as if your gut is wounded, Larazotide are kinda like the stitches, kinda like the staples on the wound. whereas the BPC is the thing that sort of heals it in the KPB and then the other naturals like Quissitan. Quissitan has a ceiling effect on the gut. zinc carnosine. The carnosine portion of the zinc is very anti is a very strong anti inflammatory, and the zinc is really important for the the gut lining as well as well as the skin, which is kind of our external lining. So all of the ingredients that are included in that formulation are to your leaky gut, essentially, and that’s why it’s called the GI repair.
Nick Urban [00:35:31]:
When I was looking through the ingredients list, I immediately noticed that you use different forms, the more expensive forms of Zinc, and you didn’t just use Zinc. I was a little worried. First, when I saw Zinc, but you actually balanced that with copper too. Yeah. Yeah. The zinc to copy copper ratios is something that initially when I formulated it, I didn’t have the copper, but I also didn’t anticipate people with IBD chronic
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:35:54]:
auto immune disease would be taking it constantly. I kind of formulated it for people only really with leaky gut So if you were to take such a high dose of zinc for a month or 2, you’re not gonna throw out your ratios in that shorter period of time. But I had people taking it for people have been taking it for almost 2 years, like, on and off. And that higher level of zinc would has the potential to throw out your ratios. Luckily, I think most people don’t tend to be skewed in the direction of high zinc to low copper. I think it’s usually the opposite. So as a lower level for risk for the lay public because think Zinc has kind of been depleted out of the the soil a fair bit with farming practices. And copper tends to be one that people kind of are low in as well. I think both of them are things that people can definitely help. But the ratio of zinc to copper in that is pretty well balanced now that if you were to take long term. We really shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Yeah. And I would agree with you, except until recently, I think that the layperson didn’t supplement Zinc. But due to immunity issues over the last couple years,
Nick Urban [00:37:01]:
a lot of people have been just taking an isolated form of zinc without any copper. And so there’s a lot of side effects that are becoming more popular such as hair issues because of the imbalance ratio of zinc to copper. And there’s a doctor Morley Robbins who talks a lot about the importance of that ratio and seems like we’re going the wrong direction. So even if people aren’t taking as high doses and as often with the ultimate GI repair, it’s nice to have that safety buffer in there. Yep. Yep. Morley Robinsburg is definitely something that influenced my decision to put the copper in there. Uh-huh. And, yeah, interesting.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:37:37]:
I didn’t actually consider how much is probably taking prophylactically to prevent them from getting what we are enduringly called the spicy cough in Australia.
Nick Urban [00:37:47]:
Oh, I love it. And then I also saw you added sodium bicarb into that. Why was that? Yep. So I described
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:37:55]:
some of the ways that peptides get broken down in the stomach. And pepsin is the proteolytic enzyme that breaks down protein. It begins as pepsinogen, which is the inactive form of this enzyme. And then in the presence of lower acidity, so whenever you normally consume consume protein, the acidity drops in hydrochloric acids produced. But bicarbonate is acidity buffer. So by putting it in the capsule, it sort of like creates a protective acidity buffer layer around the peptide to prevent the pepsin to the pepsinogen to pepsin conversion, and therefore protecting the peptide, making it even though the BPC form is pretty already as it is pretty bioavailable and protected against acid. By adding that buffer to it, it kind of protects the other 2, which normally need to be empirically coded and you need to be pretty careful with how you prepare them. But by just using the bicarbonate, the capsule inside of the it kind of just protects it and prevents that enzyme from breaking the other 2 and the BPC down.
Nick Urban [00:39:02]:
Okay. Yeah. And I I know that with coffee, people who have sensitive stomachs, a lot of times, like to add some baking soda to their coffee to help buffer the acidity So if you’re gonna be consuming something that’s acidic or a meal that might have might be at high in acids,
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:39:19]:
Would you wanna consume this with or without it? That’s a good point. I’ve never considered that or been asked that. I guess it’s more to do with the protein than it is the acidity of the food because even coffee comparative to your stomach acid at a base is gonna be less acidic than your hydrochloric acid in your stomach. It’s more the protein consumption that I advise people to stay away from. So if you’re taking it, The real bitter sweet part about the formulation is the high dose sync can cause nausea for people. So I say, oh, you just take it with food, but with the nuance of don’t make make sure that food’s not a big chunk of steak or a big piece of protein because then the protein’s gonna increase the amount of pepsin in there and reduce the efficacy a little bit. But if people do get their nausea, which can happen and has happened quite a bit from the high dose of zinc, either half the dose will take it with some fats or some carbohydrates.
Nick Urban [00:40:13]:
And then another one of yours that I saw that was fascinated by was the history set. A HISTA resist. That’s what it is.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:40:21]:
Yeah. HISTA resista. No. HISTA resist. That’s basically a product that I created when I was living in chronic mold. as is the new one that I have released called Complete Liver Complex. These products were made from necessity, really. Histamine issues usually have a root cause, which history resist immediately doesn’t address unless that issue is, you know, you genetically don’t make much of the DAO ends on? Kyle, let’s rewind then a bit because I think this will be important to understand about your backstory about
Nick Urban [00:40:53]:
you said that you had mold several times now. So let’s get into that, and then we can go back to these products to show how they supported you throughout.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:41:01]:
Yeah. Sure. Unfortunately, I lived in mold. I moved house and the house I moved into had really, really bad water damage. just for people’s reference, you if you check the moisture content of the walls, which you can use, which you can do with a tool that’s pretty inexpensive, you should find it below 10%. And then, you know, the cellulose, which is essentially what most walls are made out of is fuel for mold. You need the 2 combinations of fuel, so the food and then moisture. And the walls we had were 30% moisture content, which is basically just perfect environment. Combined with the humidity of the environment that I lived in, the whole house was just riddled with mold. And within two months of living there, my energy went from 9 out of 10, 10 out of 10 most days down to about a 3 and even a 2. And then what happens to the body is chronic fatigue. That throws out your hormones as well. Men sort of lose their libido your brain the brain fog was atrocious. Like, I like doing podcasts and speaking, but I just had no confidence to do it. My verbal fluency was not nonexistent. I couldn’t complete sentences. And then I was also left with this state of dissociation where I was basically in survival mode. I wasn’t really thinking ahead. It was just about the here and now, and that was very taxing mentally. And that you can test where your levels are molder at. And I tested mine, and I was like, I think twenty times over the upper end of the reference range for mycotoxins. You can do what’s called a mycotoxin test, or you can do an organic acids And I did both of those and found that, basically, my levels were just horrendous in aflatoxin. There’s ocotoxin and Xeno Vion and all these other things. And I’d suggest people don’t learn about mold from me, learn from Doctor Evan Brand. He’s the one who basically say if I buy when I was living in this situation. Hardlining every like, the whenever I had the mental function to actually retain information, I listen to him or I’d go on a walk and get out of the house by the water and listen to his podcast and really help me get out of that mold. essentially creates a state of chronic histamine intolerance. So all the foods I used to love like my slow cooked bone broth bone broth and slow cooked meats were causing horrible reactions in my body and bloating and leaky gut too. Like, mold is probably one of the worst things for your gut lining. When you look at things like glyphosate and gluten, they kind of don’t even hold a candle to what mold toxic can do to your gut. If they punch holes in your gut lining, then mold toxins kind of, like, rip, like, a stanley knife ripping, like, your gut lining. So most people who live in mobile will have bloating and GI upset, and it’s almost incurable as well while you’re still in there. yeah, kinda have to remediate if you can or change your environment, unfortunately. I wish I had really simple solutions like, oh, I just take this or just do that. but mold is really a tricky one to get on top of, and it was only moving and actually disposing of most of our porous possessions that allowed us to finally get our health back after that. Pretty intense. But from that, you know, every every doc moment has a silver lining to it. So, like, I learned hell of a lot living in that situation, and that’s sort of where history of this came in. because I essentially, all of the products essentially are me not wanting to take 8 products at once. And the history of this was I was taking Seeking Health’s DAO by itself. I was taking EMIQ by itself and all the all the mast cell stabilizers and just put them all in the one product that really helped me as sort of like a life jacket while I was still in the situation I was. And a lot of people genetically have issues with histamine. They don’t either create much of the DAO enzyme, which is the main enzyme in our body. which breaks down histamine and clears it out of our our body. They also might not make much of histamine and methyltransferase. So all of the there’s basically 3 pathways for clearing histamine and getting it out of your body. And history is just essentially just supports all of those pathways and was a life jacket, as I said. And I will also note, I had basically unlimited supply of GI repair being my product while I was in the mold. And, unfortunately, it’s a good product, but it didn’t fix my gut issues while I was still in there. So that’s a nuance that people need to know. And a lot of the time when people say they’ve tried the product and it didn’t notice anything and they still got problems or I worked and now I’m back to where I was. you know, you you obviously assess their lifestyle and diet, but most of the time people who come to peptides are already pretty optimized because it’s sort of like an end thing. You don’t really get into peptides before you get into diet. But usually, like, nine times out of ten, people have some level of mold in their environment. which is rendering the product or less effective or just completely non effective, which sucks, but it’s a reality. And Luckily, like, history, as this did save my butt while I was in there and managed to still function. Thank you. Thanks to that one and g r repair, but yeah, mold is definitely something I’d encourage people to look into if they’re just not getting anywhere with their health. Dave Aspiry is one that I think most of you are already would know he mold his was essentially the form the formation of bulletproof like him having horrible brain fog and basically neurod iteration at a young age because of all the mycotoxin that was exposed to is what allowed him to basically drive him to form bulletproof, and I don’t think he’s with them anymore. But, yeah, that whole business and his, basically, his whole life stemmed from dealing with chronic mold, so it’s a big one. Yeah. Mold is one of those things that
Nick Urban [00:47:02]:
it seems like it there’s so many different symptoms it presents as. and it’s so difficult to remediate and go on with your life that I just, like, hope that that’s not some people are dealing with because of, like, how disruptive it is. But and I I I’m a little bit paranoid about running with these panels and, like, oh, yeah. Actually, I have mold in need to address this too. So I’m like, I haven’t done them, and I feel like it’s probably a good idea because of the places I’ve lived. And I’ve also heard that same those same remarks from people that have had mold that as long as you’re living in the same place, you’re still getting exposed on a regular basis like that. all the products in the world aren’t gonna outweigh the effect of the repeat exposure.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:47:45]:
Yeah. Well, the problem here isn’t so many different systems like it disrupts your sleep, you don’t make as much melatonin. And when you don’t make melatonin, then your adrenals get just dysfunctional. And then when that happens, your thyroid starts to go out. And when your thyroid goes out, you gain weight. And then when you gain weight, you tend to exercise to try and balance to lose that. But exercise didn’t actually have any effect for me. I lost strength in the gym. I had no endurance to even walk. My lungs were messed up and You get guard issues, and it’s like a cascade and a a a downward spiral that the only real way to break that spiral is to move out of it. And for people who are living in it or suspect, go on a holiday somewhere that doesn’t have mold and see how you feel. urination, frequent urination is a very, very big red flag that I hear quite often, you know, waking up in the middle of the night 2 or 3 times to urinate. That’s and kidney issues is all mold. My dad is still living in mold, and he when he’s out, he’s he doesn’t pee all the time and feels better. But when he’s in, he’s like, waking up three or four times in the night to pee, and like, yeah, dad, that’s mold. And you can get really good UVC filters. The UVC being UV is destructive in any molds spores that come in, hit the UVC light, and get destroyed by it. So that’s a really good way to do it. And air filters? — expensive air filter. Yeah. But the UVC specifically is the gold standard because we did have the HEPA filters. But I could send you a photo of our HEPA filter that had mold growing in the filter. It was that bad. So, yeah, UVC filters are the way to go, and that definitely helps reduce the burden on the body. It’s better than nothing, but, again, comes back to that. And interestingly, I said it before, like, Molds are really great teacher because you know, you wanna once I got out of that environment, I’m like, okay. I need to get this out of my body as quickly as possible. And that’s when I form that’s when I basically formulated liver complex to support all of the body’s phase 2 clearance of this of this toxic byproduct and use things like what your binders or activated charcoals, charcoals, electrolyte, bentonite, all those things that are pretty powerful. And when you’re pulling them out, you can feel very bad, but, you know, just give it time and trust the process, and then you can get out of it and come back feeling better, and there’s a lot at the end of the tunnel once you’re out of mold. Yeah. I wanna talk about the liver complex in a second because as I told you, previously a couple months ago. The liver is one of my favorite underappreciated
Nick Urban [00:50:14]:
organs. But for those that have allergies, whether it’s seasonal or it’s an intolerance to food. I know that DAO is sometimes used people who can’t handle alcohol. Would the HISTA resist product deal to help people in all these situations?
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:50:31]:
For allergies, definitely, it’s a very it’s as I said, it’s a life jacket not a not a a cure. But if you’re if there’s allergies, if there’s pollens or there’s air pollution, that’s not really something we can get to the root cause of unless you just completely up and move and get out of that environment. So it’s a fantastic way of dealing with with those issues. it stops the mast cells, what’s called, degranulation. Degranulation from mast cells is when they release all of their histamine into their body. And the purpose of that is to actually get rid of the thing that’s irritating the body. That’s why we get things like watering eyes and all of our first line immune responses, mucus production, cough, all those lovely symptoms. It’s for a reason, but the reason if the reason’s pollen and you’re just reacting to it, then better than taking some over the counter pharmaceutical that has a list of side effects. You can take something like DAO and all of the quiz eaten and PEA and Mudiolin and these, I think, bromeline and skull cut. These are all things that will basically reduce the threshold at which your muscles destabilize and release histamine. That’s why they called Marcell stabilizers and then take the DAO as well, the enzyme to clear the histamine within your GI tract, and that reduces your overall circular or a histamine burden. So, again, this is reducing. But it’s not fitting the problem. You really do need to be able to release histamine. It’s an important immune response, but it’s just lowering that threshold, giving you more wiggle room before you actually experience symptoms.
Nick Urban [00:52:12]:
Yeah. That’s always a a good thing that to remove the source before you try and mask the symptoms.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:52:19]:
Exactly. because you can fall in the trap of just being what’s called green l allopathic medicine instead of just using drugs to fix a problem. to address a a symptom. You just use naturopathic or botanicals, but you never actually address the root cause of the of the problem. Yeah. When I was looking into some of the traditional
Nick Urban [00:52:38]:
solutions to allergies, I discovered that they inhibit acetylcholine oftentimes, and they can reduce levels in the brain, and you don’t necessarily want that because that’s the neurotransmitter associated with all kinds of important things, such as learning and memory.
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:52:52]:
would hysterezists do the same thing? Histamine itself too is a neurotransmitter too. It’s it’s what modafinal increases, and often when I’ve taken that, I’ve noticed my eyes start to to water, but it’s sort of a different histamine receptor it works on. But, yeah, I don’t think it increases drowsiness at all. get comparative to other things. I’m trying to think of the ingredients in it. I don’t think any of them particularly are acetyl impact to acetylcholine. I could be wrong. And if I am, I’ll let you know. But, yeah, compared to the pharmaceutical ones, like, don’t know the the generic brand names of them, but they do have that side effect. But I don’t think these supportive nutrients that your body actually does need for these enzymes would have that effect. Mhmm. Okay. Now on to liver health. Why are you a fan of the liver? Of course, it played an important role in your journey. And can you elaborate on that? Yeah. So liver health is probably one of the most important things. Secondary to gut health, I think the 2 are very strongly interconnected. If you’ve got leaky gut and you’ve got, like, a polysaccharide coming in, then that’s directly gonna have issues on your gut if you’ve got all of the bacterial fragments, you’re increasing the the burden of the liver. And I think at the moment with the world we live in, the liver doesn’t need any more challenges. It’s already working as hard as it can. We need to give our livers a break and all of the supporting nutrients that needs things to support phase 1, the intermediate area phase and phase 2. The these are the 3 main ways in which deliver clear stuff. We don’t really detop by going on a juice cleanse. Like, sure that might reduce the amount of things that the body has to deal with if all you’re dealing with is a bit of bit of sugar and some polyphenols. But It’s more the amino acids that are actually really supportive for the liver, especially phase 2. Like, in deliver the 1st phase phase 1 is usually very highly bioregulators at the moment because phase 1 is up regulated by toxin exposure. So if we look at the world we live in with all these fragrances with all, like, mold, preservatives, any any pretty much pick your poison. There’s plenty of them or these toxins coming in drugs Things like caffeine even, certain things like grapefruit, they these will increase phase 1. And we kind of are always stuck close to a 100% with how fast our phase 1 is going, which unfortunately creates a back log in the intermediary phase. The intermediary phase is the conversion of the toxin to a more fats sorry, more water soluble version in which the body tends likes to put on a bus, so to speak, put these toxins on a bus for excretion. That’s called conjugation. And conjugation is how we get rid of them, get them out of our body. because if we don’t get them out of our body, they’re gonna continue to be a problem. But the issue that’s happening, as I said, is phase 1 is basically stuck on a 100. we get all of these intermediate metabolites. And the intermediary phase is like a reaction that occurs in which the the toxin is converted. And during that reaction, we tend to have a lot of reactive oxygen species and inflammation that’s caused within the liver. usually things like glutathione, selenium, vitamin, and all the vitamins like vitamin c, vitamin a, vitamin e, they all help quench this inflammation that occurs. If we are having a a nourishing diet for these fat soluble vitamins and all of these anti accidents, things like PQQ as well. NRF 2 activators like your brassicas, they really help support the elimination of that inflammation that occurs. But we also need to support phase 2 because it’s it’s kind of like we need to balance out our phase 1 and 2 to get them out of their body. And there’s 6 ways in which the body gets rid of toxins. These are called the conjugation pathways. This is getting a bit nerdy for people. If you don’t study functional medicine, then this might not be particularly all that relevant. But if you support all of these as amino acid conjugation, there’s glutifying conjugation, glucoronidation, acetylation, and methylation. Methylation is one that people it’s a buzzword at the moment. methylation, you might have MTHFR defects and inability to methalate properly. It’s not the end of the world for the liver because you do have those 5 other backups. And I think they’re really good in built contingencies because if we relied on one pathway, our liver would be cooked pretty quickly. So there’s, yeah, if we support all 6 of them, which that’s pretty much wise by formulated complete liver complex, to provide something for every one of those Phase 2 conjugation elimination pathways. And, yeah, methylation is a big one. I think it takes care most of the livers burden and a lot of the really nasty things in our body. And that’s where, basically, b vitamins,
Nick Urban [00:57:58]:
trimethyl glycine, and Sammy all come in. support methylation. And this is one of the few products I’ve seen that has an ingredient called, or I guess, abbreviated
Kyal Van Der Leest [00:58:07]:
NASA, n a c e t. Why did you choose that one? Yeah. NASA. That’s one of my favorites. The reason I like that is a lot of people have heard of knack, especially in the last few years being a very important thing for spicy golf. But NASA is a really unique form of of an acetyl cysteine. It’s got an ethyl ester group on the end, which basically means it will it has a way better absorption than usual. I think I can’t remember the exact statistics on above. I believe it’s, like, ten times better absorption than regular So you you can get away with a lot lower dose, but the ethyl ester group also allows it to cross the blood brain barrier and get into your brain being basically supporting glutathione levels within your brain because it’s not just in your on your liver or in your circulate in your body where glutifiers made. It’s made in pretty much every cell in the body. So by using this form, the benefits of this product, which is designed to help the liver sort of be go extend way beyond the liver and have effects everywhere in the body. Because if you’re supporting glutifying, which is a what what a lot of cofactors do. There’s glutathione conjugation, which is one of the ways we get rid of these metabolites. But, also, the recycling of glutathione is so important and There’s plenty of products out there that directly provide you Glutathione. You can have it liposomalally. You can have it as s acetylglglutathione. And you can just have it as reduced grid of iron as well. But they sort of run into the issue of absorption. and intracellular absorption too. So it’s one thing to get it into circulation, but then getting it into the cell is a challenge that needs becomes well. And I always think that it’s better to provide the precursor that your body can use, like things like NASH NAC is the precursor for glutathione, and that’s why most people who use it. But the NASA form is, like, upgrading NAC, and that’s why that’s in there as well as regular NAC. So, you know, you’re getting the best of both worlds with that.
Nick Urban [01:00:08]:
There was another one another ingredient in there that’s also a standalone product you have I will see if you pick up my hint from this from my own description of it or my own experience with it, and that is on my 21st birthday, I was living in Spain a bunch of years ago, and I wanted to celebrate. So I looked on Alibaba for this ingredient, and bought a kilogram of it to help protect my liver and protect my brain and body against some of the ravages that we’re going to result the day after. Do you know what I’m I’m pretty talking about? Oh, a kilogram of it. How many drinks did you have? I didn’t use a kilogram of it, but I had to buy it, and they didn’t sell it in smaller quantities. So I had to go off of Alibaba and get it a huge thing of it And it’s probably still partly there at my host mom’s house, but it was a lifesaver, and it’s now becoming a quite popular ingredient in all kinds of products.
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:01:05]:
Yeah. So we’re obviously referring to DHM dihydroamyracitan. This is put in the formulation to basically protect people from ethanol, acetaldehyde, all the byproducts, and the negatives of alcohol consumption. Like, I’m a firefighter. I I love my health but I’m also social and drink occasionally. And I have it as a stand alone product, but I also have it in the Liver complex because When I was exposed to mold, mold one of the issues with mold and the so byproducts of of having mold either colonized in your system, or in your body. And even candida too, you do end up with a level of acetaldehyde in your body, which can make which can contribute to the brain fog and making you kind of feel a bit like you’re drunk without even having drunk any alcohol. And that’s definitely what I experience in the peak of my mold exposure. So the d h m is in there to basically help people if mold is a factor. As I said, this product was made for me when I was in mold, how I was gonna get it out of my body and stop stop the issues that happened with my hormones as well. But, yeah, the DHM is just this awesome ingredient that I think is going to probably become one of the most popular ingredients around the world when you consider how many people drink and end up with hangovers. Like, it just makes sense really. And the way it works is by supporting the enzymes that convert ethanol to acetaldehyde to acetate for secretion. These enzymes are adhandaldhand yeah, DHM just increases the activity of these enzymes, but it also is a direct antioxidant to and helps deliver.
Nick Urban [01:02:51]:
Yeah. And when I was researching back in I guess this was, like, 2015, there wasn’t tons of research around it. There was a lot more and there’s a lot more now than there was back then. But this is one of those ingredients that I took, and I actually noticed a strange effect that’s reported by some people around the Internet, and that is that it actually felt like it sobered me up while I was drinking.
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:03:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. I have just got a heap of it in. So I test drove it on 2 weekends ago with my Mother-in-law came and stayed, and I drank 3 days in a row. She probably thought I was an alcoholic, but I was just experimenting. I promise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had way more drinks than I like, have been ever able to have, like, not barring, like, my twenties when I was stupid and ended up vomiting. But, yeah, it’s incredible when I took that combined with the liver complex, you know, helping with glutathione and then taking up a big dose. The dosages on DHM are important too because there are products out there that have it in it. They don’t disclose how much is in it. But the amount you need, because of its porb bioavailability is high. You need minimum of 1200 milligrams. Depending on body weight, I would go as high as 2000 milligrams, so two grams of the stuff to actually get the effects because some formulations have it, and I’ve seen, like, a dose being 350 milligrams. And I really don’t think you will feel any better for having that small of a dose, and you’d probably still end up with the hangover, which that’s why you take it to prevent getting a hangover. So, yeah, being cautious of how much you dose in certain products as well, I’ve seen on the market are 350 milligrams. And then that’s 30 capsules at 350 milligrams of capsules. So to actually get it, you might only get, like, 5 or 6 serves out of the whole bottle. So yeah.
Nick Urban [01:04:40]:
Yeah. It’d be interesting to see if someone comes up, like, a liposome or a Phyton or some kind of way of increasing the bioavailability. of it. I believe it’s called it’s, like, in raisin t extract or something like that. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah.
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:04:54]:
It’s interesting with these things that are low bioavailability. Like, NAC is one of them as well. That’s why NASA is great because we’re increasing the bioavailability. But, usually, with things with low bioavailability, that’s where you see dosages above 1500 milligram like, above a gram to 2 to 3 milligrams, I think. creatine even has pretty low bioavailability. That’s why we get pretty high doses with that. And I’m really excited about a precursor to creatine. Any of these precursor ingredients get me really excited because we can either bypass the bioavailability issues like we have with glutathione, or we can just support our body with what it needs to do it itself rather than just giving it a crutch. in the direct product. And Guanadinoaceticacid, g a a, is the precursor to creatine that’s really got me really excited, and I’ve been experimenting with that one a lot lately. And the reason I like that is basically the same reason I like NAC is because GAA can enter the brain as well and increase creatine levels in your brain, and that is anotropic effect as a hydration on your brain effect That is pretty profound as well. So combining NAC with GAA and things like PEA, which is a fantastic anti inflammatory, These are going to reduce inflammation, increase brain health. And I really think are going to be a huge part of future neutropic formulations, but Also, creatine monohydrate is the most studied supplement in the world. Like, if we can improve that or they have already improved it with GAA, I think that’s gonna have huge implications for sports performance industry and for pre workouts and all that sort of stuff. So Having tried it, I’ve definitely noticed an increase in my strength, reduction in fatigue, but also back to liver health, like, creating, a lot of your methylation or your method donors go to creating creatine. So, like, taking creatine itself either as monohydrate or any of the other forms or taking, like, a zonal creatine we’re seeing, for example, is a really good way to spare your metal donors so they can go into methylation for all of the other factors that’s required for liver health. The nuance to GAA, I need to say, though, it being a precursor to create a team. It does use methyl groups. So if you are taking GAA by itself, you need to be taking your methylation co factors like your b 36912,
Nick Urban [01:07:26]:
Sammy, or trimethyl glycine, or even just take creatine as well with And that way, you won’t be depleting your own methyl groups. Yeah. I find that form of creatine especially interesting because I am a non responder to normal creatine monohydrate. I’ve been using it on and off for over a decade and notice pretty much no effect other than I might gain pound or so of water weight, but I wish the data is so compelling. I wish I actually felt a noticeable increase, and I still take it pretty regularly regardless, but I think this will be an interesting
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:08:00]:
one to experiment with. It will be. I’ve got it coming in an upcoming product that’s why I’m so well versed in it. So once I’ve got that out, I’ll send it to you to try. Awesome. Yeah. And then you’ve mentioned a couple other things that we don’t have time for today, such as PEA,
Nick Urban [01:08:14]:
there is an ingredient on your site called terkesterone, I believe, it’s pronounced. And there we didn’t even touch on Nootropics today, so I hope at some point when you have some more formulas ready to go, we can have another one of these and chat about some of the other fascinating ingredients and formulas people can look into. But for today, we will start to wind this down. And if people are interested in connect with you and trying some of the level up level up health products, how do they go about that?
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:08:45]:
Instagram is probably the best place to connect to me. I have Facebook, but pretty much refer people to just go to the Instagram on that. Otherwise, my website’s levelofhealth.com. And, yeah, that’s really the only 2 real ways to reach out to me, and I don’t actually work with people because I’m so overwhelmed with formulating and running the business, but there’s a heap of practitioners mainly within Australia, but it’s expanding who do work with LevelUp Health products and are seeing really good effects. So, yeah, shouldn’t be too long before they’re easily available to the American audience. Apologies to anyone who orders. It does take a couple weeks for the products to get over to America, unfortunately. Geography is can’t really work around geography too too much, but Yeah. Thanks for having me, and, yeah, we’ll be happy to talk about all those other ones on upcoming podcast. as well as all the other products I’ve got in the works. I think my backlog is about 15, so it’s just a matter of prioritizing which ones I do. we spoke for the show about neuro REGENERATE, which is gonna have all these brain peptides once that one’s up and up and actually exist existing as a product. Can’t wait to send that to you to try as well. That will have things like diaxor, p 21, and a few other ingredient which should help with neurodegenerative issues as well as be a kind of
Nick Urban [01:10:11]:
over the top nootropics I guess you could put it that way. Beautiful. And you did agree to give Mindbody peak performance listeners a special discount if they choose to buy through the link that’ll be in the show notes below or use the code Urban. And that gets them what? 10% off their orders. Awesome. Thank you for that. Before we sign off, I have a couple more questions for you. Mhmm. If the if there was a worldwide burning of the books and all knowledge was lost, and you get to save the works of 3 teachers. Who would you choose and why?
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:10:46]:
This might be a real, like, modern answer, but, honestly, Ben Greenfield’s books, his biohacking bible got nothing limitless as the book, was it? Mhmm. I might be wrong. Yep. That had that is, like, the encyclopedia of everything that I’ve learned over the last 8 years. So We’re saving Ben Greenfields work. That definitely, for sure. I really like Jack Cruz’s work. He was pretty formative in my years of education learning beyond supplements because he doesn’t really push supplements too much. So he really Kyal in the environmental aspects of health. You know, this the importance of the sun and earthing. So his work will save will save Doctor Jackson. And Even though he doesn’t have a book, I really need to save the work of my mentor Malcolm, who was the director of the hyperbaric oxygen clinic I worked at. He’s been doing this for 30 years, and he’s had his fair share of challenges against regulatory bodies, but he’s helped thousands of people. So Yeah. I gotta tip my hat to him and hopefully, he he exists and, yeah, continues doing the good work. So those are the three people. Definitely.
Nick Urban [01:11:55]:
Alright, Kyle. And what is the one thing or one of the things that the level of health tribe does not know about you?
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:12:05]:
or what they don’t know about me. I don’t know. Maybe that I’m just an a new dad that I am obsessed with NBA Basketball that my purpose behind my business is to honor my mom who passed cancer. And everything I do is basically to help people who have been in who are or have been in a poor state of health. Like, I have been, like, my mom was and to try and give people hope with products that actually work rather than pissing money away or using poor quality products or under dosed or you know, we during her challenges, we spent tens of 1000 of dollars on products and just threw everything at it. And it was really challenging to navigate the whole supplement industry especially when there’s certain companies that don’t do things right. So my philosophy behind everything I do is dedicated to her and, you know, helping people better themselves and hopefully get on top of whatever health issue is alien them.
Nick Urban [01:13:12]:
That is the perfect way to wrap this one up Kyle, thank you for joining me today on the podcast. It’s been a pleasure hosting you and chatting about some of your products, your formulas, and the ingredients that have your attention these days.
Kyal Van Der Leest [01:13:25]:
Thanks, Nick. We overcame the poor Internet quality and time zone differences, and I’ll thank you for having me. And we made it work.
Nick Urban [01:13:32]:
Alright. I’m Nick Urban here with Kyle Van Der Lest signing out from mindbodypeak.com. Have a great week, and be an Outliyr.
Nick Urban [01:13:42]:
I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and hit the thumbs up. I love knowing who’s in the 1% committed to reaching their full potential. Comment 1% below so that I know who you are. For all the resources and length, meet me on my website at mindbodypeak.com. I appreciate you and look forward to connecting with you.
Connect with Kyal Van Der Leest & LVLUP Health
This Podcast Is Brought to You By
Nick Urban is a Biohacker, Data Scientist, Athlete, Founder of Outliyr, and the Host of the Mind Body Peak Performance Podcast. He is a Certified CHEK Practitioner, a Personal Trainer, and a Performance Health Coach. Nick is driven by curiosity which has led him to study ancient medical systems (Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hermetic Principles, German New Medicine, etc), and modern science.
Music by Luke Hall
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