Joint Health Solutions: The Truth About Osteoarthritis

Nick Urban [00:00:05]:
Let’s face it. We all know that injuries suck. Not only do they impair your ability to enjoy each and every day, but they can also Hold back your longevity, your health span, and your body’s ability to repair and regenerate. What if there were some solutions that have been around for a long time? I’m talking molecules and substances and therapies That can be quite cheap and also very effective at keeping the body young and working optimally. That’s the case. And today, we’re joined by a double board certified physician in physical medicine, rehabilitation, and antiaging regenerative medicine. So she specializes in exactly this stuff. Her name is doctor Elizabeth Yurth, And she has over 30 years of clinical experience and continues to stay at the forefront of orthopedics, cellular medicine, Regenerative medicine and the future of aging.

Nick Urban [00:01:14]:
Doctor Yurth is the cofounder and chief medical officer at the esteemed Boulder Longevity Institute. She’s the cofounder and lead educator at Human Optimization Academy. She’s a medical adviser at OHP Health Mind also our guest for this episode. Hi. I’m Nick Urban, the host of the Mind Peak Performance podcast. And if this Mind of thing interests you, you’ll wanna check out A previous episode I recorded with doctor Suzanne Turner, episode number 55. You can access that at mindbodypeak.com/ five five. And on that one, we also talk a lot about orthopedic injuries and how you can, quote, bulletproof yourself against them and bounce back quickly.

Nick Urban [00:02:05]:
For this episode, all of the resources will be in the show notes at mind Body Peak slash the number 141. And if this show is interesting or helpful to you, I’d appreciate you to go over to wherever you’re listening to it. Give it a thumbs up, a 5 star rating, or whatever you think it deserves, because that’s how I continue bringing you thought provoking guests like doctor Elizabeth Yurth. Alright. Without further ado, let’s bring her in. Doctor Yurth, welcome to Body Peak Performance.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:02:38]:
Thank you for having me, Nick.

Nick Urban [00:02:40]:
It’s great to meet you, and today, we are going to discuss all things under the realm of sports medicine, orthopedics, and a whole lot more. But let’s start off today with something controversial about your field of expertise.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:02:55]:
So I think that that’s gonna have to start you out for you guys to understand a little bit my history. So I came from a very traditional orthopedic world, which is not a very usual way to get into what we do. Right? Most Socks come from maybe an internal medicine background or an ER background who’s due more of this, biohacker or functional medicine, but and orthopedics is Probably the bastion of people who are the you know, these are guys who just fix things Mind then that’s then everything’s fixed and cell is better. So I’ve I’ve known that practice for nearly 30 years. And probably about 10 years ago, I was like, Jesus. All I ever do is kinda patch people up, and they never really get better. Like, they kinda get better, you know, but they’re never cured. Everything still sorta hurts after you fix it.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:03:35]:
And, you know, and then that group of people who all you do is watch them kinda deteriorate over time because I was in practice long enough to have the same patients for years years years. They would just kinda keep getting worse and worse and worse over time, and then you replace their joints, and then another joint goes, and that’s sort of the realm of it. Right? Mind so I started to realize there was a lot more that we were missing in orthopedics than than just, okay, you have an injury, and we Nick the injury, and then all is well. And And so I started to kinda explore how did, you know, health and nutrition and hormones and all the things that are involved in joints actually make a difference and getting people healthy. So I kinda went back, and, you know, this is when this type of medicine was kinda just getting a start 18 years ago, honestly. And, you know, the a four m, which is now a big huge collagen, was, like, 500 Peak. And, you know, and so it was really a small A small group, and so I went back and got my ageing through a four m, which is the American Academy of of Antiaging Medicine, Mind, and And then said, okay. Good.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:04:32]:
I’ll just combine this to my orthopedic practice, and I’ll be able to really help people now. And then I realized that was impossible to do in the insurance world setting because I had 10 minutes. There was no way I was going to be able to actually tell people everything they need to know, so I went back to kinda going, well, I’ll just sort of fix them and send them on their way Or not fix them and send them on their way, but it was really frustrating. So we, 17 years ago, then opened this clinic, Boulder Longevity Institute. I actually did both practices. So I went to my orthopedic clinic in the morning, and I’d come here in the evening and do what I thought was actually real medicine. And I actually would try and get some of the orthopedic patients. So I’d say, you know, listen.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:05:06]:
I can actually really make you better if you come over to see me there, but that’s, you know, not insurance based, and, and so people were like, well, you know, if I’m okay, but people Kinda gradually got into it and realized, wow. I I am getting better when I when I go over there and and see this piece. And so I started to focus a lot more on That kind of medicine. And then really it wasn’t until about 3 years ago now that I actually said, okay. I can’t wear both the hats. I feel like I’m doing a disservice to these people all day long. And so I combined the 2 practices under this roof, Boulder Longevity Institute. We still do a lot of orthopedics, but we really do it on a lot more of a regenerative medicine fashion And a, you know, how do we actually take somebody who has injuries and make them so they actually get better? Because, yeah, we always think, okay, well, you tear your ACL, you fix the ACL, it’s all good.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:05:53]:
And I can tell you from my own experience, I’ve tore my ACLs four times. So avid skier, I tore each of them twice, didn’t even fix them the last time. Actually, I tore tore 1 again and didn’t even fix it. I was like, screw this. This isn’t working for me. And when you look at ACL injuries, most people will tell you tear your ACL at 18, fix it, all is good. 75% of those people go on and develop arthritis. Well, at a young age, by 50 years old, they have arthritis.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:06:18]:
So we’re not doing something right. Right? There’s something that’s not right. So even if we fix your broken bone Or we put back together your torn ligament. You don’t go on in most cases. Some people do, But most cases, people don’t go on their merry way and do fine. So I really started to learn what happens in joint injuries And try to actually treat the fact that these joint injuries are actually creating a systemic issue that we need to address from square 1. So just like and that all this arthritis that people are ageing, right, and everybody’s like, oh, I just you know? And I get this all the time, and you probably hear this too, Nick. You know? Oh, well, I played football, so, of course, my knees are bad, or I ran, you know, marathons, so, of course, my hips are bad.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:07:02]:
So it’s really the biggest, most controversial thing. We don’t wear out our joints. We don’t. We joint, you know, if you guys think code you use your brain too much and it wears out Or your heart too much, and it wears out. It’s not the case. And joints are not any different. In fact, great study that came out last year that looked at sedentary people, And the biggest risk factor of getting arthritis was sitting on your couch doing nothing versus the people who were exercising in a very high level of running every day. So what we learned is that osteoarthritis or wear and tear of joints is not a wear and tear disease like everybody will tell you, And it’s the same thing that you’re addressing with all these other processes that you’re talking about.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:07:41]:
How do we protect the brain? How do we protect our hearts? How do we protect our muscles? This is all systemic processes that we have to get under control, and that some of us are genetically inclined, unfortunately, that when we have an injury, That it will stir off this inflammatory cascade that doesn’t shut off normally. It sort of stays up. So perfect health, perfect case, everything’s good, you’ve got perfect genetics, you’re eating perfectly, your your health is perfect, you’re exercising perfectly, you hurt yourself, And we see this cascade of inflammation. Right? That’s supposed to happen, but that should last a few days, and then your body comes in and starts promoting anti inflammatory things. What we know is in people who have injuries a lot of times, instead of that anti inflammatory stage happening, the inflammatory stage just stays, And it stays, and it stays, and it stays. And that’s what progresses these joints after an injury into developing osteoarthritis and that progressive osteoarthritis. And it’s why really and such a controversial topic because even in the functional medicine world, I see my colleagues not really paying attention to joints. Right? They they’re like, well, you should just go see the orthopedist about your joints, and they’ll they’ll address everything else.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:08:53]:
This is a systemic issue. Let’s get you healthy, but they won’t really, look at joints that way. And, you know, and so I think we have to really start teaching that this is a pathologic process even when all factors are equated for, like age and exercise level and diet and whether you smoke or not. If you have osteoarthritis, You have a 5 time higher likelihood of cardiovascular disease. So we know that this is a systemic disease process going on, And it’s why if you replace a hip, all is not well. Right? Sometimes you need to replace a hip. It’s just too far gone. But what happens Nick, that person 2 years now who needs their next hip replaced, and a year after that genes their knee replaced, right, because we have not treated the systemic disease process.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:09:38]:
So that’s really been one of my goals is because I’m I’m coming from this from a such a weird world of orthopedics to functional medicine or health focused medicine. You know, it’s not what orthopedic doctors wanna hear. It’s a whole lot of money in replacing the hip. So the fact that you can avoid it, it’s not really a cell, Cell liked thought among the medical community. And it’s very funny, I actually left my old practice because, you know, I was trying to kinda really actually treat people well, And I would get labs on them and do all this stuff, and and I’d been in that practice, you know, almost 30 years, and my Younger partners came to me and said, listen. Why are you getting labs on patients? I said, well, because that is really how you can figure out if you can get people better. They said, you know, we don’t do medicine here. We do orthopedics.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:10:21]:
At At that point, I thought, you know what? This is is is not working.

Nick Urban [00:10:24]:
Well, doctor Yirth, that begs the question. If the first line should not be to replace These or necessarily even do some invasive procedure, what is your approach to get the body out of that inflammatory state and into a state where it can heal and regenerate?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:10:41]:
We now saves actually have a pretty good handle on what’s going on in osteoarthritis. And Just like rheumatoid arthritis has elevations in certain inflammatory proteins, what we call cytokines, so it’s osteoarthritis. They’re just different. And what we found is that in people who have osteoarthritis or sometimes even after a joint injury before it’s progressed to osteoarthritis, Had very high levels of a couple of things. 1 is something called interleukin 1 beta. So this is one of the inflammatory cytokines that’s also associated with other diseases, including cardiac disease. So much higher levels of insulin loop in 1 beta, both in the joint but also systemically. They also have higher levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, which is cell in almost All bad disease.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:11:22]:
Right? So tumor necrosis factor alpha is elevated Mind other inflammatory disease processes, rheumatoid arthritis, things like that. So it’s another inflammatory cytokine. But they also have super elevated levels of some of these what we call degradative enzymes, Nick called MMP 3 and one called ADAM. Those enzymes, they’re like the cleanup crew. So let’s say there was a murder in your house, right, and you now had to have somebody come Scrub everything down, right, and get rid of all the mess. So let’s say you hurt your joint, and these guys gotta come in there like, okay. There is a lot of trash here. We gotta clean it up.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:11:57]:
Well, that’s fine. What if they keep cleaning? So now these guys in your house keep scrubbing your floor. Right? They’re, like, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing, and What happens now, there’s no floor. So it’s exactly what happens is you see these elevations of these enzymes, MMP 3, 80 AM, these depraved enzymes, and they just stay up. So now they’ve cleaned up some of the trash that’s gone on, like you tore your meniscus, but they’ve also started to clean up the meniscus itself and the underlying bone underneath, is why we’ll see bony edema and things like that in these patients. So we realized we had to do a few things. We had to block interleukin 1 beta. We had to block these degradation of enzymes.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:12:34]:
So there’s a few ways of doing that. 1 is if somebody has like a very acute injury, so even if I’ll send them to surgery to fix the injury, I’ll sometimes follow that With injecting the joint with something called alpha 2 macroglobulin or A2M. So A2M is this little protein that you have floating around That actually is your rescue. So it it it’s there to now say, oh, too much cleanup. Let’s get rid of you guys. So it floats around. This is everywhere in your body. If you got a heart attack, it’s gonna be there.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:13:03]:
If you hurt your joint, it’s gonna be there. If you have a wound, it’s gonna be there. H u m says, okay, guys. Time to turn off. Let’s get the rid of the cleanup crew. So this little molecule, which almost looks like a little Pac NMN, comes in and binds off these degradative enzymes and this interleukin 1 beta, And it gets rid of them back into your circulation and eliminates them. A lot of us have lower levels of alpha 2 macroglobulin, or We just don’t have as good circulation as some places, like our spine, for instance, or certain joints just don’t have as good a vascular flow. So the A2M can’t really get there very well.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:13:34]:
So you can actually take it out of the blood. So we basically take a bunch of blood from somebody, and we have a filter that can filter out the size of protein. So it’s exact size of protein. It goes to it takes about an hour to filter out this protein, Nick you very carefully siphon it off. So you basically filter out this little protein, and then you take it and you inject it back into that joint. It turns off the inflammatory cascade so people code now initiate a healing process. And The company who makes the a two m, who has studied a two m the most called Nick actually did some some research where they actually had, At one of the universities, they did where somebody had an injury like an a an ACL reconstruction. They would inject a2m right at the time of surgery, people feel it so much better.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:14:15]:
They heal faster. They didn’t go on to develop progressive restrictions in motion and things like that. So we know that a two m’s a big player there, so that’s something you can kinda do acutely. But what about your people who have, like, kinda now arthritis all over? It’s not so chronic. It’s more chronic stage now. Right? Now they potentially have arthritis in a lot of places. Both their knees are kinda bad, and there’s not really an acute injury. So how do how do we systemically Lower these bad things.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:14:41]:
It was a very cool drug that hasn’t made it to the US yet. It’s in phase three trials here, so, hopefully, it’ll be available in another 3 years. Remember, it takes a really long time for things to get through the FDA in the US. So one of our goals I I belong to this This sort of, research faculty group that we actually look for things that have been proven safe and efficacious in other places, and then we try and figure out how can we get them. So this drug Xylasol has been ageing used since it got approved in Australia in 2019, and it basically was considered a cure for osteoarthritis. It works that well. It had significant improvement in pain. Like, 80% of people had dramatic improvement in pain.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:15:23]:
And the year long follow-up, People had improved cartilage height in their knee by about 25% and disc height, whereas the placebo group had lost cartilage height. So this drug, Xylosol, which generic is called Pedicin Polysulfate, is available here in the US, It’s available as an oral medication used for bladder inflammation. It’s called Elmeron. So the the drug is already approved here. It’s just not approved for this purpose. The problem with the oral drug is twofold. Number 1, you need to dose it quite high for the bladder inflammation, and at a high dose over a long period of time, it was associated with Eye problems, some damage to the retina. And the other problem was it just didn’t seem to be particularly effective for joints When it was ingested, it was great for bladder inflammation.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:16:13]:
It’s actually great for a lot of things. It’s great for gut. It’s great for bladder inflammation. It’s great anticancer genes. It’s great for heart, But it wasn’t so great for joints. What they found, however, was by injecting it, just not even into the joint, but subcutaneously, A couple of times a week, it did really well for joint health. So basically, because the drug was available in the US, we could have a compounding pharmacy make it for us Into a injectable drug, and we can have people just self inject. We teach them how to do it twice a week, and they can maintain that for I mean, I’ve been on this stress for 3 years.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:16:46]:
I could tell you my my knees, which are end stage arthritis. I have, you know, bone on bone arthritis don’t hurt me at ACL, and I went from, you know, needing knee braces to do any kind of hiking or skiing like that to being able to do pretty much everything without pain anymore, and that’s after 3 years on drugs. So it seems like it just keeps getting better and better and better. Now if we go off the drug, will things go back to where they were? It depends on the person. I don’t have the greatest arthritis genetics. If I look at my dad, he had horrible knee arthritis. I know that when I’m off this drug for a while, I start to get a little bit of achiness again. So I probably am somebody who Always just making too much of these inflammatory cytokines, too much interleukulin beta, too many of these degradation enzymes.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:17:24]:
So I just stay on this. Its safety profile is excellent. It’s been around as a drug since 19 eighties, so it’s been around a long time. So it actually has Pretty long safety profile. It’s been around 3 years in Australia, so saves profile actually looks really good as long as you don’t dose it at a very high dose for an extended period of time. The dose we need for joints is minuscule. So it would take about 80 years of using this drug on a regular basis for 80 years before you would ever reach the doses that equate it with any of the eye stuff. And maybe we’ll need it that long, but we also don’t know that the systemic injection form has the same effects on on retinas.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:18:01]:
This drug actually has been used in the veterinary population for horses. Horses get all the good stuff first, racehorses, And and for quite some time. So I went back and looked at racehorse’s eyes and saw none of this. So, basically, we saves a pretty long safety profile of this drug. The cool thing about penicillin, though, Nick, is that there’s now studies showing it as an incredible antiviral agent, as an incredible anticancer joint, Reverses atherosclerosis because all those diseases are linked to some of these same issues, high your liquid beta, high bigger data than enzymes. So now we actually made our company pharmacist make it into a little oral pill form for other issues, for gut, for Antiviral prevention. That was a better antiviral than almost any antiviral out there, including our most recent virus. And the Interesting thing is that you could do a tiny little whereas the Elmeron is 500 milligrams, and a 25 milligram dose showed all the benefits, Perhaps maybe not as much for the bladder inflammation.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:19:01]:
So for my patients who I won’t I’m treating systemic things, I will just use a small oral dose on them To treat for viruses and cancers and gut stuff and things like that. For my arthritis patients, I have them do it as an injection twice a Peak. You know, and and our patients get pretty proficient motion it, and they feel and I will tell you that 80% of people get significant Improve Mind not minuscule. And it’s not just pain relief. Right? We know we are regrowing cartilage. And then all of your listeners are really familiar with peptides Peptides will go a long way there too in terms of aiding healing. You know, we have the basically what we kinda consider the Wolverine peptide group, which is BPC.

Nick Urban [00:19:37]:
I wanna get into the peptides in one second, but one thing I wanna underscore you just said that I think is really important to highlight is that not only does That protocol relieve the pain, but it also helps regrow the cartilage. Because I could take a pain killer and I could rid myself of the pain, and then I could go on nice long hikes, I’m not doing my body any favors. The pain’s there for ageing a purpose. It’s giving me an alert, a warning that something’s not right. So the fact that it regrows cartilage is very important Right.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:20:03]:
Yeah. Remember, we’re treating the cause of the pain. Right? We’re not just you we’re not just blocking pain reception where or pain perception. We’re limiting the cause, which is these very high levels of these inflammatory cytokines. And that’s why it’s so important to treat osteoarthritis systemically too because remember I said, again, saves you that fact that You’re you know, do not ignore the fact that people with bad joint pain will likely have cardiovascular disease as they age. Don’t ignore that. They have higher risk of cancer, independent the fact that it might not be exercising, things like that. It’s completely independent of that.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:20:34]:
So you have to think of this as a systemic disease. So not only is it imperative to yeah. Yeah. Hell, it’s great. We’re regrowing cartilage, and we’re helping pain. That’s all great. Right? But We also need to address the fact that there’s something wrong with people who have arthritis, and we have to address that or the other consequences are not are are going to happen. Know, that’s why joint replacement is you know, sometimes you know, I have patients who are too far gone.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:20:56]:
A joint replacement’s going to be amazing for them. Right? Their their their hip is Stress, and their life is changed by joint placement. But I’m not going to say, okay. You’re cured now. Right? That was, yes, we’re fixing the fact that your joint was Completely trash. We can give you a new joint. You’re gonna destroy all your other joints. You’re gonna still have cardiovascular disease unless we treat the systemic cause in the 1st place.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:21:16]:
So we have to go back to thinking like this like you would do every other disease. Right? The worst thing we do to people with arthritis so in every other country, People over the age of 30 are not allowed to have a knee arthroscopy. It is the number 1 bread and butter surgery here. Because when you go in there and scope the knee, what do you do? You’re stirring up all this inflammation. But here’s what happens. Somebody goes in with a knee pain, the doc goes, oh, you know, your The meniscus is a little damaged. We’ll just go trim that up and clean the joint up a little bit, and all will be well. It’s equivalent of somebody with Alzheimer’s coming in and go, Just go cut out those bad pieces of your brain.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:21:51]:
You know, it’s just stupid, and people who have knee arthroscopy We’ll get a rapidly worsening progression of their arthritis a year or so after that even if they temporarily feel better. It’s a really bad Surgery for people to do, and yet it’s the number 1 surgery, orthopedic surgery code here.

Nick Urban [00:22:07]:
What do you do in that situation then? Like, what if your doctor recommends that arthroscopic surgery? Do you just Push back and say won’t get a second or third opinion?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:22:14]:
And from your Mind or third opinion from Peak doctors is probably gonna be the same. So number 1, you need to go look at the literature And look at the literature that shows, you know, that it is not a surgery that’s beneficial. And and then you need to look for doctors who treat joint pain in other ways. Yeah. So you need to find somebody who is well trained in this. You know, there there are some there, you know, there are a lot of people, I think, doing regenerative approaches using things like stem cells and platelets And exosomes and things like that, the problem is hand in hand with that. You also have to treat the systemic problem. I do a lot of regenerative therapies.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:22:46]:
I do platelet fibrin matrix mixed with exosomes. I do all sorts of cool stuff for regenerative therapies. If I do not address the systemic problem at the same time, those aren’t gonna get better. They’ll temporarily feel better, and

Nick Urban [00:22:58]:
that’s it. Yeah. And the systemic issue that you’re referring to is the inflammation.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:23:02]:
It’s the, yeah, the high levels is very specific inflammatory cytokines and these bad enzymes. So it’s not just these inflammatory cytokines, it’s these degradative enzymes. So Since depredated enzymes are equally the problem. MMP 3 is a bad enzymes. And when it’s elevated, it creates all sorts of problems.

Nick Urban [00:23:18]:
Are there, like, budget friendly ways of addressing both of those? I mean, the the protocol you mentioned a minute ago, I think that might work. But are there other things people can do? Because like you mentioned, a lot of the cool regenerative therapies like PRP and exosomes and v cells and all those things are Awesome, but they’re also very expensive.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:23:37]:
Right. Right. You know, I think that’s where penicillin comes in as a pretty cost effective Motion. It’s much less expensive than doing those regenerative therapies. Yes. It’s going to be ongoing, but it’s not a horribly expensive drug. You know? I mean, it it may cost you A couple $100 a month, but, you know, so ongoing, but it it really and I have a lot of patients who don’t need to do it forever. Like, we’ll put them on for 6 months.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:23:59]:
Like, I’m doing well, and I’ll take them off while. And as our pain starts to increase a little bit, we’ll go back on it. So it’s not something necessarily therapy something has to do forever. URBAN for me, it works better. I just stay on it, because I’d feel better on it. And just the nature of my disease is bad enough that I need it, but not everybody does. So I think that’s a really, really useful option because even when you’re talking about things like, yes, Exosomes and peptides, they’re pricey, and they’re harder and harder to get. Right? It cell get FDA approval.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:24:26]:
You know? I’m not sure when, then I don’t know what insurance will do with it. They’re After just knee osteoarthritis, so insurance will likely start ageing for for knee osteoarthritis at some point when it passes FDA approval, And it will. They’re they’re fast tracking it through. There’s no reason it won’t. So it will get FDA approval. And, You know, motion and then question is cell insurance actually cover it or not? You know, as all of these insurance based things are, will it just get more expensive? You know? It’s like Ozempic Mind semaglutide, Manjaro, those those drugs. You know? Then everybody just jacks the price up. Nobody can get it even though insurance pays for it.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:25:00]:
But, you know, so but I think it will be more accessible to people as that as the drug comes more to the forefront. If you guys just Google Xylosol made by Paradigm Pharmaceuticals, It is really a compelling drug.

Nick Urban [00:25:13]:
You were also the 1st person I saw to talk about FG loop peptide, and that is, I’m sure, along the big list of peptides that you’re interested in and or using in practice.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:25:26]:
So FGLUE loop peptide is, really good for brain function. So it’s really helpful for the for For brain, it it got a little bit pushed to the wayside with some of the other peptides like Cell and CMAX, which which are a little easier accessible, a little less expensive, and not injections. They’re nasal sprays, so that’s, you know, that’s nice. FD loop peptide got sort of pushed by the wayside. I think we’ll see it make little bit of a comeback because it’s not on the FDA list of peptides we’re not supposed to use anymore. So I think we’ll actually see FD lube. We sort of looked at it as a substitute for some of our Nootropics that we all might have less access to, but it is a very interesting peptide in terms of treating really Brain disorders, especially things like, you know, cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s Mind Parkinson’s, but really as a nootropic peptide as well, it can be very useful. Again, a little A little harder to access, but but and and a little bit pricier than some of the things like CLink and Cmax.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:26:24]:
I think from a perspective, if I’m gonna use a nootropic, I still like, like, Clink CMax a little bit better, which are, you know, our nasal spray nootropics from Russia. I I think they still For the you know, like, people like you who are just trying to sharpen their brain, I still think they have a little bit more of a dramatic effect, but I will say that I’m not and I use f g I’ve reserved f g root peptide a little bit more for my cognitively challenged People. I haven’t used it as much in my super healthy group people I’m starting to use it a little bit more again. So I think I may you know, that’s one of the things where you sort of have to trial and error things in different dosing and, you know, and use it long enough to sorta get a sense Is am I going to like it as well or not as we get back into using it? When it first kinda came into favor, we sort of used it a lot, and then it got sort of pushed Pushed by the wayside. I think we’ll see a comeback of it a little bit now.

Nick Urban [00:27:11]:
With the regulations around peptides changing, it’s frustrating that a lot of the great ones are now being banned or at least put on hold in terms of the ability to acquire them above board, and I know that Cmax ACL Cielanc were big ones. I I really like those, and Bumbers Cell got go. Mind, also, for your work, I’m sure that BPC157 and TB 500 and a bunch of the others Are it gonna be a bit harder to procure now?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:27:39]:
Yeah. I the good thing about BPC and, TB 4 is that they can be taken orally, and they do work not quite as well as systemically when they’re done as an injection near near the site of injury, But they will still be available or orally. So it’s orally because they can be considered a nutraceutical given orally. So, basically, they can they can get by the FDA, so we’ll still have access to those 2. I think you have to dose it a little bit a little bit higher, and probably it’s not gonna quite as good for, like, acute injuries, things like that, but, but at least we’ll still have access to those. And even for most of those peptides on the list, There are other good alternatives. You know, there’s therapy you know, when you look at things like CJC and epimrile, which are also our main stage treatments for things like growth hormone Deficiencies, those are great. Is there options? Yes.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:28:27]:
There’s Somerol, and there’s Tesamiran. There’s still things that are on that list or off that list that we can use. So we have a lot of workarounds for ageing. You know? So I think we were a little less devastated when we sort of thought through our our world a little bit. I think it’s one of those things where you you these things that always that you just Standardly used, and and and there’s a lot of other good options out there. So, you know, number 1, we’re continuing our battle against the FDA on this. Actually ageing with an attorney who’s won against the FDA about 8 times. And you guys who are listening, just go to savepeptides.org, Sign the petition there.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:29:00]:
Put your stories in because that’s gonna help us to go from a political realm to kind of continue to fight this battle because peptides really are, you know, incredibly beneficial for healing and recovery and helping people with diseases that nothing else treats, like mitochondrial diseases and things like that, and all of Our long COVID ers and, you know, and long COVID injuries.

Nick Urban [00:29:21]:
Yeah. Clearly, we’re both fans of peptides here. And From your descriptions, the fact that you have an attorney helping to hopefully get them deregulated, that makes a compelling case for your desire To incorporate them and keep them incorporated in your practice, can you describe how it is that you use them, whether it’s the ones that have been semi banned like BPC or it’s TA or any of the other ones.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:29:47]:
You know, you you you always talk about bioharmony, which I love that word, you know, as post the biohackers because, honestly, our our bodies are really, really good at at being well. They really are. We do a whole lot to f them up, but they’re pretty good at being well. And the really cool thing about peptides is they’re they’re super homeostatic. Right? Our body makes most of these peptides, And so they actually are treating the body to help itself get well instead of saying, oh, I’m gonna throw a whole bunch of this 1 supplement Mind, and that should get rid of all my oxidative stress. You know, we want things that are more balanced or homeostatic. Right? And that’s where peptides are so so beneficial. It’s because they really don’t It’s not like, you know, these people who are saying, okay.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:30:26]:
I heard resveratrol is the best thing. I’m just taking massive, massive resveratrol. And, you know, you need oxidative stress. If you block all your stress. You’ve done a bad thing. There’s this very delicate balance in the cell, and when you screw it up that’s why I cell my motion, I don’t leave them on any Mind of course of of supplements sort sort of a few basics on a regular basis. I cycle them through. So peptides allow us to actually work In a much more homeostatic balanced fashion.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:30:50]:
We’re not screwing up 1 pathway at the expense of another, and so that’s really why I love them. And I cell lots of times from just an overall performance longevity state, I will cycle through groups addressing different things that happen to us, right, As we age. So if you look at things that decline as we age, one of them is mitochondrial function. So if I need to Get mitochondria Health. What do I do? Well, lots of things you can do. Right? Eat right, sleep better, do cryo, do sauna, But some people are still challenged, you know, exercise. So let’s say I have somebody who’s so so done that they I’m trying to get them to exercise, and they literally, Yeah. They walk 10 feet, and they’re exhausted.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:31:33]:
Right? So what do I do with those people? That’s for things like MODSC, Which is a, you know, which is a mitochondrial peptide. What what happens when we exercise is we stress our mitochondria And we cause more mitochondria to perform. And body’s like, oh, need more mitochondria. But what if I can’t stress to that point, or I’ve lost so many mitochondria at this point From viruses or diseases or states or just aging. Right? Cell lost so many mitochondria. So my belief is replace the things that we lose. So We’re gonna we’re losing mitochondria. Let’s a few times a year, 3, 4 times a year, let’s give a little course of Podcast c.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:32:07]:
Let’s replace those mitochondria. And I may do that more acutely if somebody’s coming to me with Obvious mitochondrial damage, but even in myself where, you know, I’m just getting old is is basically replaced 4 times a year. I go through a mitochondrial protocol for 6 weeks, I’m replacing mitochondria. What else happens? We actually lose our thymus gland. So thymus gland, where baby’s huge gland sits in our chest, You do an x-ray of a baby’s chest, massive thing. Also, a huge tumor in their chest. As we when we hit puberty, our thymus gland starts shrinking. So by the time you’re my age, it’s a little fatty nub that’s not doing anything.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:32:40]:
But the sinus gland is really important, and the body sort of thinks, oh, The reason the sinus gland sort of shrinks down is because the body thinks, okay. After puberty, I don’t really need all this stuff anymore. I’ve trained the immune system. All is good Without really the understanding that, number 1, we’re gonna live this long or be exposed to all these stresses. So if I really so, like, the really So crazy biohackers are trying to to transplant thymus glands. Right? They’re trying to get thymus glands from babies and transplant themselves. They’re eating sweetbreads To eat thymus glands, well, let’s just give back the peptides the thymus gland makes. So you wanna course through courses of thymus in alpha one, thymus in beta four To try and replace the thymic peptides.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:33:19]:
So, basically, now I’m going through a cycle. 6 weeks. I’m gonna do make sure I’m replacing the thymic peptides. And then BPC, which is another, you know, body protective compound, which is made by our gut, which is another peptide that declines as we age. So we have remember, these are all things that we make naturally, But they get lower as we age. So if you guys say I’m gonna replace things like hormones as we age, why should we place the peptides as we age too? So then I’ll cycle people through using a combination of BPC, Thymosin beta 4, thymosin alpha one. So, you know, maybe a 6 week cycle of mitochondria, then maybe a 6 week cycle that gonna really focus on immune function and thymic function, and that’s gonna be that That course. Right? When you look at growth hormone, there’s always sort of a, you know, it’s cell battle between the IGF high, IGF low people.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:34:01]:
Right? We know that Low IGF people, live a really long time, but they are pretty frail and not really how I wanna live. You know, they have no muscle mass. They’ve Break genes is a whole tribe that has very low IGF, and they live a long time. They don’t get cancer. They live a really long time, but they’re super frail, and they can’t do much, and they have poor cognitive function as they age. So this has to be a balance there. Right? So I do think also replacing growth hormone, and we use we use peptides like CJC, NMN, which are gonna be less available, but now Ceramarell and Testimarell. And, again, you can cycle those too.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:34:33]:
Right? So we’re kinda going through highs of IGF and lower IGF. Our bodies are always designed to be this up, down, up, down, up, down. Right? That’s that homeostasis. So in all cycle courses, we’re all trying to balance out the growth hormone levels. So now I’ve I’ve and so I’m kinda thinking I always Urban to work my patients kinda seasonally that sort of you’re gonna be your mitochondrial cycle, your your immune function with thymus motion. Let’s get your Punetary function with growth Bioharmony. And then twice a year, I have them hit with the pineal glands, another gland that goes away as we age. So pineal gland’s your big circadian rhythm detector.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:35:08]:
Right? So one of the things that happens when we age is pineal gland calcifies, And it doesn’t regulate light, dark cycles very well. So even if you have somebody perfect, they’re they’re in the light all day long, they’re, you know, working outside, and then they go to their dark house at night, and, You know, they’re living out camping all night long. Great. Do they still stay normal as they age? No. Because the pineal gland isn’t there to actually interpret those messages very well. So what I’ll do, and that’s why old people, when you look at them, lots of times their their circadian rhythms are really off. Right? They’re they don’t sleep well at night. They fall asleep during the day.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:35:40]:
The circadian rhythms are off. So we’ll do things that do a circadian rhythm reset cell, Epitalin, for instance, pineal function, and you’ll do, like, High dose 10 milligrams, 10 day Mind dose of Epitalin to or apitalin, however you wanna say it, to basically replace pineal function. So where I come from when I look in these peptides is What’s the body losing? How do I give back what the body does Mind cycling that? NMN I’m a big believer in always cycling things through to keep homeostasis. Now I will use peptides acutely as well. So for instance, I tore my rotator cuff completely, about 2 months ago and had to have it all reconstructed. So, am I every day, I can be PCT before into it. Yes. You know? So I’m gonna be using this acutely if there’s an acute injury as well, Or let’s say you just got out of the hospital or you just had Code.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:36:26]:
You’re gonna hit mitochondrial function really hard right then. So there is gonna be times you’re gonna use these more acutely as well, right, or Or based on what we’re seeing on laboratory function. But if NMN perfectly healthy performance people where I wanna just keep them alive to a 120, I’m still gonna be cycling those peptides on a kinda regular basis. Again, there is options even with some of the loss of some of those peptides. There is options in each of those realms, so there is something to substitute for every one of those peptides I talked about.

Nick Urban [00:36:49]:
Yeah. When I would travel, I used to bring some Cell 37 and some TA one with me, and I kept that in my bag. And if I ever felt the slightest bit of anything Coming down with anything, then I would just I’d I’d start those, and I would never get hit with a full whatever it was.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:37:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, LL 37, is one of the antimicrobial peptides, and it’s what’s called a cacylicidin, and it’s preserved across every species. Even 1 cell organisms have l thirty seven. So we know it’s really critical to life, and it really is able to fight off infections. Even if you have, you know, a resistant bacterial infection, Cell Nick can help Treat them.

Nick Urban [00:37:25]:
Okay. So we have some information about peptides now, a little bit about sports and injury. What about, like, on the prevention side? Like, what do you do? Do you have any Protocols or practices you like to prevent injuries from happening in the 1st place? Because I know that I had certain friends growing up that were Magnets for injuries seems like they would always be getting a different injury of some sort, 10, 20 by the time we even graduated high school, and then we had others that never got injured. And so there’s, like, a huge difference, and I don’t think it was just genetic.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:37:54]:
Yeah. I think genetics do play a role there. I think people there’s differences in collagen, You know, function Mind, you know, and and so I do think genetics do play a role in that injury stuff, but what else plays a role? Obviously, the Mind of exercise training you’re doing. So I think lots of times we we become very sport specific to our training Mind and that ignores certain things. You know, you you gotta always be making sure you’re including balance Training, flexibility training, all those pieces. When I look at a lot of our athletes now, the flexibility training Nick not there. I think everybody should be doing yoga or something in in terms of the flexibility Mind balance realm because I think, you know, we’re we’re we’re we’re not ageing even especially our younger arthritis. Right? Mind that code, they just go to the gym and lift heavy weights.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:38:31]:
That said, I also think you need to lift heavy weights, because that’s also a hugely important piece. You know, exercise, if you can have 1 pill that cures everything, it’s exercise. And and and and if you wanna bias which exercise, it’s strength training over cardiovascular training. Both are important. Strength training is more important. So I think you have to strength train. I really think, from my own experience as somebody who would be one of those, you know, injury magnet people having torn my ACLs recently, you know, tearing my rotator cuff, You know, and you would think at this point I would’ve learned this, but I haven’t, is that recovery is critically as critically important as the exercise itself. There’s this little conversation that we have to listen to in our brain.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:39:11]:
You know? And, you know, you can use your tools. You can use your Oura rings and things like that. It says, okay. Don’t work out today. Take it easy today. You know, those things I think are helpful, but a lot of it is literally, honestly, just knowing that recovery is equally important to the exercise. And I I do think we we all sort of you know, all of the people in this Mind of biohacker world are a little bit obsessive. Right? And probably where we fail ourselves a little bit is getting too obsessive with things, exercise being one of them.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:39:37]:
But I will say that when you look at collagen function, I I used to be a dancer, and so I used to treat a lot of dancers. And, Mind every dancer has dysfunctional collagen. The only way you are that Flexible is to have dysfunctional collagen. So those people need higher doses of vitamin c. They need higher doses. They need collagen Nick of vitamin c. They need so they need to actually be addressing that. Given this little lecture to these dancers, and, you know, almost, you know, whether, you know, they’re straddled out legs or laid behind their head Mind things like that.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:40:04]:
You know, they’re just unduly flexible, which is great for dance, But it also sets you up more for injuries to ligaments and things. So and, you know, there are multiple different disorders when you look at the Cell gene. There are multiple different disorders that that make the ligaments, and tendons a little dysfunctional. There’s also a big plate of hormones here. Right? So, like, in that young age when you’re in high school and you’ve got these kinda hormones kicking in at these weird, sometimes super you know? You know, I have a my I have 5 kids. My youngest is seventeen So he’s at that age where, you know, certain testosterone is really just starting to kick up a little bit. You know, they’re and he’s, you know, super tall and gangly and, you know, muscles are haven’t caught up yet, but it’s testosterone’s really kicking in. Right? And yet there’s when you look at those those kids, there’s not the stabilization between the testosterone and estrogen levels being being stabilized yet.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:40:53]:
And when you don’t when you have some it’s it’s like my bodybuilders who, you know, do a squat Mind both their patellar tendons ruptured. If there’s too much testosterone, not enough estrogen, then you will snap a tendon. And so I think there’s a big piece to, you know, hormones there as wellness what’s going on with hormones. And that really starts to factor in as we get older too is that hormones play a big role in injuries both in men and women.

Nick Urban [00:41:17]:
Anything else that you’d recommend taking prophylactically, like maybe MSM or peptides, or is that overkill?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:41:25]:
If you can afford to doing peptides on a regular basis, I think, again, cycling those peptides cell BPC and Thymosin Beta 4 is really, really helpful to joint protection. So I think that that is is definitely, you know, beneficial. I’m not sure MSM is all that helpful. I think the data’s a little bit mixed on that. I do have some patients who love it makes them feel better, but I don’t know that the data is really there on it. I think some of the basics, you need D3 with k2, 10,000 IUs a day. You need magnesium. So I need you need those very basic things.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:41:54]:
Then if I look at at, you know, sort of the more kind of out there things in terms of of injuries, Are you familiar with fatty 15 and and omega 3? Yeah. So fatty 15, which is omega 3, actually, it’s some really interesting data to support it in injuries as cell. Whereas omega 3 fatty acids from fish oil don’t seem to have the same benefit to joint health and collagen Health. Fatty 15, which is a a 15 chain carbon, actually seems to be really, really critical to cartilage and collagen formation. And so they’ve done some really interesting studies looking at these 15 chain carbons as as a very important piece. So I have all my patients now on at least 1 fatty 15 a day For that EPA, omega 3 EPAs. And, actually, I’m using a lot less of the fish oil now and a lot more fatty 15 after the data has come out just showing how much oxidative stress you can create sometimes With fish oil being oxidized either in the jar or in your Body. So I’m using a lot more Fatty 15 in that realm.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:42:52]:
The other thing is, Everybody should be on creatine. Creatine is both skeletal muscle protective, but also brain protective. So everybody needs 5 grams of creatine a day, especially if you’re exercising a lot and working out a lot. You know? And then you’ve probably read about Tori now, which is kinda coming in as one of the newest newer in the antiaging cell. And I’m pretty compelled by the data Mind it NMN joint health as well. So I think taurine I I’ve sort of started adding that to my regimen as 2 grams of taurine a a a day. I think the data’s pretty compelling on taurine. It at least Really does seem to modify some of the, it’s one one of those more homeostatic agents in monitoring oxidative stress.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:43:31]:
So if you’re taking your omega 3 fish oils, you’re taking fish oil as fish oil, then you should be taking taurine with it to try and avoid its oxidation because oxidized fish oil is More bad than good.

Nick Urban [00:43:43]:
Yeah. That’s actually one of the ingredients that I use in my evening drink I make. I’ll use glycine. I’ll use some magnesium Glycinate powder, I love the taste of glycinate powder. Well, uniform magnesium. I’ll use, what I say, taurine, glycine, magnesium, a little bit of potassium, And a couple other things, and I find that it’s a very nice, mellow evening wind down.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:44:05]:
Like That’s a great that’s a great combination.

Nick Urban [00:44:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. Creatine GABA levels gently without any inconvenience.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:44:11]:
Right. Yeah. Without him being hungover the next day.

Nick Urban [00:44:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So What are some of the other molecules and things in the longevity sector since Boulder Longevity Institute’s one of the big names? I’m sure you’re up to date on all the the stuff going on and the things that are most important to keep our eyes on.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:44:31]:
Well, I think so much of it still comes down to basic, but I will tell you, you know, this big sort of focus now we have on NAD, and we all know NAD is critical. Right? We know Levels, decline as we get older. We know that it’s a absolute critical molecule for ATP production, but I think we’re doing it the wrong way. And so we’ve been doing a lot of research on this because the problem with NAD number 1, people are doing things like NAD infusions. And for those of you who are doing them, you know, that’s your business. Good because maybe everything I’m saying is wrong, but, you know, we know NAD itself can’t get into the cell, and, you know, So there’s no receptor for NAD to get in the cell, so so you really are getting maybe some in some Health mostly genes to the liver and maybe gets a little bit of production up, but it’s really not worth massive amounts of money. So the precursors, like NR and NMN, Why are they good or bad? Well, number 1, they can get into cells, so that’s good. They actually get into the mitochondria where that they’re beneficial where they’re beneficial.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:45:33]:
But the reason our NAD levels decline is not really that we make less NAD. They did a great study with what’s called a CD 38 knockout mouse Where when they got rid of the degradative enzyme for NAD, mouse NAD levels were fine. So it’s not that we really Drop making NAD. It’s that we increase the enzymes that are degrading NAD. So, basically, now you’re filling the bucket, you’re You’re taking your NMN and NR, but if you haven’t blocked the degrading enzymes, and there’s a few of them, there’s CB 38, there’s NMNT, and then down the road, there’s something called Called NNMT. So basically, you you fill in this bucket. Right? There’s a hole in the bucket, and now that hole is sort of just draining all this Water out onto your floor and ruining your wood floor. So people are doing all this.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:46:20]:
So if you’re taking NMN or NR, you’ve got to block these enzymes. So So you have to you have to use a CD 38 blocker like epigenin, you know, and and that probably Health, but you also have to remember that we have no idea where when the bucket is full. So remember we talked about that whole redox balance. You have to have a balance between reductive and oxidative stress. And because NAD is one of our biggest electron donors, if I keep feeding it in, I actually start screwing that up. You know? And that too much energy state It’s not a good state either. So what the body has done to salvage that is it upregulates an enzyme. Now this enzyme, which is called NNMT, further down the chain, It’s really upregulated primarily in cells you don’t really want to be Health happy.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:47:05]:
Cancer cells, senescent cells, fat cells. So when there’s all this excess energy, the NNMT upregulates Mind it starts forming number 1, it forms 1 MNA. That’s a salvage molecule, and that’s actually a good molecule. So one Nick acid is a a really helpful thing, but it also feeds into all these cells that are like, great. I I have tons of NNMT. I’m gonna steal this and make my own NAD. So if you’re overfilled the bucket, you’ve now just said your fat cells, your cancer cells, and your senescent cells. Not what we wanna do.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:47:33]:
So, really, the better way is not to take even the precursors, but to take something that blocks NNMT because that’s where That drain is going down. So what we’ve been trying for the past 2 years to get is a molecule called 1 NMN, and it was only made by a company in Collagen. Mind they would not sell it to the US because they wanted to bring it as a drug to the US. They wanna bring it as a pharmaceutical to the US. They were trying to go to the pharmaceutical hoopla Yeah. It’s a pharmaceutical because it is that powerful as an anticancer agent, as an anti obesity agent, as an energy agent. So they thought they could get it through as a as a FDA approved drug, and they thought that’d be the better way to go. But, you know, we sort of met with them.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:48:15]:
Like, listen. That’s stupid. It’s gonna take you 17 years to get there even though you’ve gotten your 1st couple trials It’s gonna take you too long to get there. We’ll help you bring this as a supplement. I promise you, you will do better because we have real smart people in the US. The problem is Europe is very different. People don’t buy supplements Cell when their doctors have them, so they didn’t get I said, you got a savvy group of people here. We’ll we’ll teach people, and this is a much better supplement.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:48:36]:
Nick 2 years, but we finally have one NMN Stress the customs where it was stuck for a very long time and brought to US, and, a company of called called Longevity, launch has has kinda brought it over. So what 1 NMA does this is a really good thing. It acts like NAD, so that’s that’s a good thing in of itself, but also blocks NNTMT, So let’s see. NAD stores come back up, and we’ve blocked all the NNMT that’s going to the cancer cells and the fat cells and the senescent cells. So now we block this enzyme that’s so bioregulators in all those cells. So NNMT is being researched very heavily. They’re looking for NNMT blockers For for treating cancer, so we have this really good one here now, and, you know, and, hopefully, pharmaceutical company will be made the right choice. I think they did.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:49:23]:
So this is gonna be really cool, and I think it’s the by far the much better way, and I think we need to what we have to do now is retrain people that What’s happening with NR and NMN, and I you know, that’s gonna be a hard a little bit of a hard battle because people are very married to Mind their NAD infusions. But I I could tell you that you will feed cancer eventually if you keep throwing NMR or NR and NMN and NAD into the mix not knowing what you’re doing on the downstream put pathways. So I think that’s gonna end up being a really big talk. We’re gonna have All of our patients taking it because those are the bad things we don’t want to have happen Peak people getting fat and their bulk is just controlled, URBAN, Senesence cells. So I think that that molecule is gonna be a really, really promising one. And then I ageing the the other thing we’re gonna start seeing more of is using really, IV exosomes guided to places that we want them, like, so using transcranial ultrasound to guide so you run IV exosomes, and then you code Target them to certain places. We’re doing this with a machine called a NMN wave for joints where you can use an acoustic wave that very interesting attracts stem cells so you can track. Could run the IV exosomes, get systemic effect, but then target them to certain saves, even the brain.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:50:34]:
But so transcranial ultrasound, so I think we’re gonna see this more guided exosome kind of therapies Going on, we’re sort of really targeting them to very specific places to treat these very specific diseases. I think that’s gonna be Mind big in the role of the next year too. But, you know, I think, you know, new molecules, fatty 15, 1 NMN, super cool molecules that we need to keep an eye on, and and start and, again, you’re sort of bucking, you know, so we’re fatty 15 struggling. Right? Is the they’re they’re bucking that everybody needs Fish oil, well, maybe not. Maybe we need more fatty 15, not fish oil.

Nick Urban [00:51:04]:
It’s funny. I was just talking to doctor Chris Rhodes The other day about 1 MMA, and I was like, why don’t you just use this? I was like, well, we can’t use it. It’s doesn’t exist commercially, so it’s cool to hear that that’s now that problem is being solved. And then, also, I just recently recorded a video on the downsides of NMN and NR and all of those. And it’s funny that you mentioned that I’ve asked you mentioned that, and you know more about it than I do, but I just saw that as, like, something that people are not thinking about the potential

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:51:32]:
consequences. Right. They’re not thinking about the consequences.

Nick Urban [00:51:34]:
Yeah. It’s cell higher dose, more is better.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:51:36]:
Right. Exactly. That’s a very more is better thing, and more is you know, in general, we way do too much of that with our supplements and everything else, we the more is better thing is you know, that’s why I like your whole ageing, Bioharmony. The body is really designed to be in harmony. It doesn’t take a whole lot To get it to get it back, and you don’t have to be throwing bill billions of antioxidants and billions of this smaller doses. Cycle through is the way to go.

Nick Urban [00:51:59]:
Yeah. That reminds NMN, do you use or are you, you know, interested in bioregulators?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:52:05]:
So I do use bioregulators. You know, I was a little reluctant to jump on the bioregulator bandwagon, probably because all the research comes out of Cavinson’s lab. Right? And I was like, okay. How much do I trust the research of the guy who makes these? You know? And now they’re trying you know, Phil Mickens with ProFound Health is trying to kinda more legitimize them Biohacking with doctor Campbell, and, and even that data, I’m a little bit suspicious of just because the way he’s conducting that study is a little bit skewed. So I I I’m I’m not a 100% Convinced. I wish I had more data, but I’m willing a little bit now. I’m experimenting with them, because I I think they They make sense. I just would like to have more you know, I’m I’m very scientifically minded, and I really would like to have more independent data.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:52:52]:
So I’m kinda doing my own little stuff with them now with patients, just following things I’m working on to see if I’m getting progress on it or not. You know, access has been pretty tough on the bioregulators too, you know, because of the more they come from Russia, so that’s been a little difficult. So ProFound Health has been out for a while, so those have been a little bit harder to access, but I do think the bioregulators probably do have a place.

Nick Urban [00:53:13]:
Yeah. I haven’t had to use them yet. I like the idea of them, and I’ve been looking into them, and Every time I go to pick up them and actually test them myself, they’re out of stock, so I can’t actually do it anyway. Or I can find, like, these sketchy websites Right.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:53:26]:
I’m not. I’m not. And you’re like, how are they getting them when when the main guy who can’t can’t get them NMN my motorcycle?

Nick Urban [00:53:31]:
Yeah. I’m like, I’m not gonna take my chances with whatever’s in these capsules, but I like the the theory of them. It sound it sounds promising.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:53:39]:
When you look at that more kind of Bioharmony thing, right, they’re working at a very base level to kind of, you know, sort of help reregulate things. They they make sense. I I you motion, and and Cavinson’s got some very compelling data. It’s just it’s all Cavinson’s data out of Russia. I I just don’t know how much to believe.

Nick Urban [00:53:56]:
I forget the doctor who’s trying to recreate that here. I think it’s doctor Bill Rollins or something, but he’s

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:54:01]:
Bill Campbell.

Nick Urban [00:54:02]:
Bill Campbell? Okay. Yeah. He’s trying to run something here and

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:54:05]:
That’s what he and this and this his study is being so what he’s doing is he’s basically using Because you have to buy the bioregulators, which are expensive, and he’s doing the cycle bioregulators Mind then using, true age tests on them to see that their, you know, their their true age numbers are decreasing. All the people who are doing it are pretty much very high end people who are doing a whole lot of other things as cell. But because you have to buy these Mind it’s ending up you know, it’s it’s expensive, expensive realm. Most people I know who are in it are either doctors, so it’s it’s it’s tagged a lot of physicians into it, so it’s a pretty skewed population that you’re using it in. And, you know, I just saw an interesting, study on the the, like, the true age test where doing it 5 days in a row Vary the true age by about 5 years. Like, from one day to the Nick, it was, like, 5 years difference Mind then 3 years difference and then 6 years difference and then, You know, so I I I’m not I’m not sure that very, like, little things that we’re doing the day before the test aren’t very much Because your DNA made flushes could be very, very, you know, very collagen. And so I’m not sure that you know, in the multiomics test that they’re doing now is It’s better, but even that, I’m I’m not absolutely convinced that that data isn’t is giving us all the information it should. It’s probably the best we have, But I’m not sure it’s everything we need.

Nick Urban [00:55:20]:
Yeah. Doctor Yurth, that’s my issue with a lot of the lab testing in genes, like blood work. You check your testosterone after 1 night of really bad sleep.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:55:27]:
Or how much you exercise, what you ate. Right. You know? I have that conversation with my patients all the time. Like, I you know, this is when the guy who’s testosterone was obviously low. And then, you know, so I got him on testosterone, and then, you know, and then one test that was good, and then his doctor did another stress, and and, you know, it looked horrible. He said, oh, the testosterone’s not doing anything for you. Stop it. I’m like, what time of day did you go? What did you eat? What did you exercise? It’s it is hard.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:55:50]:
It’s hard. You know? If you exercise a lot, your creatinine level will look high, and so People will say, oh, your kidneys are failing you.

Nick Urban [00:55:56]:
You think that someone would ask me if I had exercised that morning or the night before or

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:56:00]:
something like that? Protein you ate.

Nick Urban [00:56:01]:
No. No. Yeah. Joint none of that.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:56:03]:
Injuries are not good. Stop eating protein.

Nick Urban [00:56:06]:
What about your approach? If someone came to you in their, say, Twenties or early thirties and wanted some guidance on longevity, what they should look into in research. Where would you point them versus someone who’s in their, like, say, seventies or eighties?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:56:20]:
I will tell you I’m a big everybody works with me. My office is young, and we’re really trying to push this work because, honestly, You know, I wish I’d known when I was 20 what I know now. Right? But the, you know, the whole code, the earlier you can start this this Journey, the better off you’re gonna be. The less accumulation of damage you have, less you’re trying to reverse. If you look at the studies on rapamycin, for instance, You know, the studies were very compelling. You should start rap mice in your twenties, you know, at least by 30. Right? Much younger than we would thought. But if you look at the animal stress, Mice did much better when it was started earlier rather than later.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:56:54]:
So can we prevent that damage, that senescent cell damage burden? Because it starts accumulating Mind your twenties, Start getting more senescent cell damage. So probably, I think by 30, you should start thinking about something that’s actually getting rid of senescent cells. I actually think rapamycin is a very valuable tool because, you know, Well tolerated. It doesn’t cause a lot of side effects, so so I ageing that’s important. I also think that we need to be really Get these people looking at hormones at a much younger age too because we see so much hormone dysfunction. And it might not be that everybody needs to put on hormones, right, but they may need things to try and modify that ACL least To be aware of it. Right? So using things like Kizpeptin or in clomiphene or things like that on young guys who have these low Nick the twenties, and that doesn’t bode well for your future. And we’re seeing a lot I mean, women’s progesterone levels start dropping mid twenties.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:57:40]:
That’s why it gets harder and harder to get pregnant as you get beyond 30. So, you know, when we look at hormones, I would say you need to know hormones earlier. You also need to know how you’re metabolizing hormones at a young age because that’s the key to whether you’re gonna get cancers or not. Right? So we we sort of recommend young people get a DUTCH test, this dried urine test to complete hormones, which Looks at how the hormones are metabolizing in your body. So if you’re a male and you have a lot of hormone put into 4 hydroxyestrone, you’re likely gonna develop prostate cancer with time or a woman breast cancer. So I want people to know how their metabolism is working. I think people should know their methylation genetics. I think they should know their MTHFR genes.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:58:18]:
So I think at a young age, you should know that because you should modify. That’s a huge, huge problem. And, you know, so if you have a defected methylation gene, you’re gonna really need to focus on How can I up my methylation? I need more b vitamins. I need more creatine. You know, I need more choline. So I think that the that’s really important to start knowing these things Mind early on as well as cardiovascular stuff. And I don’t give a crap about what your cholesterol is, but I do give a crap about what your you know, you know, we know that cholesterol between 20250 is optimal, But, you know, what is your APO b is, and what is your APO b a motion? Mind do you have high myeloperoxidase? And do you have high, cell because those are things that are gonna kill you. You should know that early because that cardiovascular disease is starting in your twenties, not your fifties when you’re symptomatic from it.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:59:01]:
So I think people do need testing at a young age. They need to be aware of what’s going to get them Mind how can we start intervening early on those processes.

Nick Urban [00:59:09]:
Mhmm. You’ve mentioned Genetic or genes multiple times throughout this interview, what’s your relationship with that? Do you use any genetic testing and Analysis in your practice?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [00:59:21]:
So we have, and we’ve, you know, we went through a really big like, what everybody did with the whole big everybody was Getting tested, you know, either had their 23 and mes or, you know, we’ve used Illumina for a while, to get full genome sequencing on it. And I I I ageing it’s useful and not useful Because the whole epigenetics is so changed that, you know, like, everybody who you know, I’ve I’ve patients who saves been in my practice now for 17 years, And, you know, they’ve forgotten everything I told them about their genetics. Right? Well and we’ll go refresh it. And, you know, honestly, I I I think it’s hard because, really, it’s more that metabolomic profile. So remember your genes, go to your epigenetics, go to your, you know, your your proteomics, and then your metabolomics. So for a while we’re therapy, we switched our word joint looking Proteomics, we’re using SomaLogic, and we’re looking at proteomics. Nick now I think the big key is metabolomics. So it’s one of the things I like about nutrages test is it it you know, the nootropics test is it looks at metabolomics.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:00:14]:
So now we code say what genes are actually stress, You know, what are they doing? That said, the ones the tests I’ve gotten on in the metabolomics, I’m, like, well, I actually probably code figured this out just by some simple lab tests. You know? Like, the things that turned out abnormal, I kinda could saves predicted were gonna be abnormal based and stuff. So I I think there’s some value in terms of, okay, Am I at risk for some cancer, some weird cancers, things like that? But I I think that probably looking more to the the, You know, there’s so much variability in what happens with those genetics that it’s not nearly as cell, and we were way into what we did on everybody. And I just didn’t find it to be the bang for the buck that you know, especially now as I’ve gotten been in practice a long time.

Nick Urban [01:01:02]:
Well, Well, that’s good to know. It it’s one thing to know what the theory and logic behind it, like why it makes sense, why it wouldn’t make sense. It’s another to see how it actually fares in practice. So I’m glad You code that insight. We will start to wrap this one up for today. If people want to work with you, to follow you on socials, Mind your website. How do they go about all that?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:01:23]:
So Boulder longevity.com, and if you’re interested in seeing us about anything, you can stress set up a consult or, or just ask for more information, motion somebody will call you. So boulderlongevity.com. One of our big things is, like you, is trying to educate people Because, you know, your doctors don’t know this. You can’t rely on your doctor to know this. It’s hard to find doctors who know this stuff. So we’re actually trying we we spend a lot of times we have called Human Optimization Academy, which people code become become members of, and we try and teach, like, we think physicians should learn just from scientific data and reviewing Sure. A new literature, we teach people how to read their labs NMN, and so there’s a whole bunch of courses within therapy. And then you can So there’s a bunch of free stuff where you can join, and then we have these cool q and a sessions.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:02:05]:
There’s a lot of physicians involved in that too, but there’s people of Every level, and the questions that get asked in these q and a sessions, I have to tell cell, they’re they’re mind boggling. People are really smart, and they ask me some really challenging questions. So those are really fun. We do those every month. So but we real I try Mind, like, if there’s new literature, I try and go through the literature. I try and I really try and teach people so you could make your own decisions about what’s what right, what’s wrong. You know, you can’t really you can’t really listen to Instagram influencers. You’ve gotta be able to learn from scientific data.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:02:34]:
So that’s what we try and do is sorta Teach you, like, in a medical school Mind of environment. So Human Optimization Academy, if you just go to BLI Academy actually, it’s bli.academy, or bliacademy.com. That’s the place that you go sign up for that. It’s really fun, actually. It’s really cool, and my and people love it. They really you know, we We get a lot of positives on that. And then just follow me at doctor Yurth on Instagram. I try there too just to post little articles that I come across and critique them for you.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:03:00]:
So

Nick Urban [01:03:00]:
Well, thanks for that. I will put links to all those in the show notes for this episode along with everything else we’ve discussed so far today. And I do have a final question for you. That is if there was a worldwide burning of the books and all knowledge on Yurth is lost, but you get to save the works of 3 teachers. Who would you choose Mind why?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:03:23]:
Well, number 1 being in the medical field would be Hippocrates because cell cow. I mean, isn’t that ever amazing when you look at his quote? It’s everything we try and teach, like Like, let’s say, everything in exosomes opposed to nature. Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food. You know, Cure often, you know, or was it cure sometimes, treat often, prevent always. You know? So he had these these really profound Statements that medicine has completely lost sight of, but that, you know, you and I try and preach that it all comes down to some very basic things, including, you know, First off, do no harm, which we really aren’t very being very successful about medicine. So I I love reading his quotes. I I’m always just down when somebody puts up a quote of Hippocrates. I’m like, oh my god.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:04:06]:
This guy is so far ahead of his time. You know, I I I fall very much into, like, Gandhi and Buddha principles, I love this whole, you know, Buddha’s sort of teaching that, you know, we all need to be in synergies Mind with each other and the world around us and Yurth. You know, I think that that’s a concept that we’ve lost sight of, in you know, so I really like that philosophy. I very much buy into that philosophy. You know? And you look at even his metaphysical research and things like that, again, you know, some really compelling stuff there that will will much withstand Anytime. From a book perspective, literature perspective, you know, NMN one of my sons is the most avid reader. He has read every single book in in in, Like, he he literally reads a book a day. He’s amazing.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:04:54]:
But we were talking the other day about the the, Doctor. Huxley’s book, Brave New World, because if you go back and look at it, oh my Body, it’s incredibly you know, it’s this utopian future where, You know, humans are genetically bred, and pharmaceutical, ACL that’s, you know, sort of change, and it’s exactly what’s happening. And it’s completely frustrating that this book was written in genes 31, and we’re seeing it come to, you know, to to reality today. It’s terrifying because everything he sort of says in that book is going on today, and then you can see what the outcome is of it, you know, which is not good. So so I think we need to go back and look and look at some of this literature. I mean, 1931, and he already had this utopian future, was not a good idea. And it’s really what we’re doing is relying on, You know, our government should give us the next best vaccine for something, and, you know, what are we doing in terms of the long term of the world? We don’t know.

Nick Urban [01:05:46]:
I had no idea that book was written in the thirties. How would you like to leave people today? If there’s 1 takeaway you want them To make sure they walk away from this episode with, what would that be?

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:05:57]:
I mean, honestly, I guess number 1, just because I’m trying to preach this, is remember osteoarthritis. Arthritis joint injuries Our disease states they’re not just wear and tear. That’s number 1. Number 2 is bioharmonized homeostasis. You know, do not Take massive amounts of a supplement continuously. You need to cycle supplements. You need to use lower doses of supplements. People are really screwing themselves up with these massive dosing of things, And you don’t know what you’re doing.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:06:23]:
Remember, your cells are really smart, and they need a little help here and there. They don’t need you to massively throw a bunch of crap into them all the time, and have people really come to me with a 100 supplements they’re taking continuously, you know, not good and not needed. So I really want people to start thinking more homeostasis, Balance cycling.

Nick Urban [01:06:42]:
Perfect. That is a great way to wrap this episode together today. Thank you for joining me on the Body Peak Performance Podcast.

Dr. Elizabeth Yurth [01:06:51]:
Thank you, Nick. Nick really appreciate

Nick Urban [01:06:54]:
Health 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 links, meet me on my website at mind Body peak .com. I appreciate you and look forward to connecting with you.