132. Nathalie Niddam: Reverse Aging Signals with Bioregulators and Peptides

Most people assume fatigue, low energy, and age-related decline are unavoidable. What if supporting your body, optimizing recovery, and enhancing longevity were about activating the right systems, rather than chasing symptoms? In this episode of Extend, we sit down with Nathalie Niddam, holistic nutritionist, longevity educator, and host of the Longevity Podcast with Nathalie Niddam, to unpack how bioregulators, mitochondrial peptides, and targeted nutritional strategies can support cellular health, improve energy, and enhance resilience over time. We also explore how bioregulators influence DNA expression, how mitochondrial peptides restore cellular function, and how small, consistent interventions in nutrition and lifestyle can amplify overall vitality and longevity. Nathalie Niddam is a longevity educator and holistic nutritionist who hosts the Longevity Podcast, where she shares science-backed strategies, biohacking insights, and practical tools for optimizing health, energy, and long-term performance. What We Discuss: (00:00) Why Aging Isn't Inevitable and How Bioregulators Work (06:12) The Russian Origins of Bioregulator Research and Key Studies (13:45) How Bioregulators Support Organ Function and Longevity (21:30) Integrating Bioregulators with Peptides for Maximum Benefit (29:10) Mitochondrial Health: SS31, MOTS-C, Humanin, and Phospholipids (36:55) Testing and Optimizing Fatty Acids and Deuterium for Cellular Energy (44:40) Practical Protocols: Stacking Bioregulators for Liver, Cardiovascular, and Metabolic Support (51:25) The Role of Lifestyle, Stress, and Nervous System in Aging Reversal Thank You to Our Sponsors: NextHealth: Your destination for cutting-edge health optimization—from IV therapy to hormone balancing. Explore at https://www.next-health.com/https://www.next-health.com/ Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram:@darshanshahmd https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Nathalie Niddam: Instagram: @nathalieniddam https://www.instagram.com/nathalieniddam/?hl=en Website: https://www.natniddam.com/ https://boulderlongevity.com Linkedin: Nathalie Niddam https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalie-niddam-78b5891/?originalSubdomain=ca

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world renowned experts offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Today, we're joined by Natalie Niddam, a holistic nutritionist, longevity educator, and host of the Longevity Podcast with Natalie Niddam. Natalie is known internationally for her deep expertise in peptides, health technology, ancestral health, and especially bioregulators, cutting-edge compounds that help awaken the body's natural repair systems. In this episode, we're going to unpack the future of personalized health, from functional medicine testing to understanding what's happening under the hood before symptoms ever show up, to the emerging science of peptides and bioregulators. Natalie breaks down what they are, how they work, why the Western world is so late to the party, and how they may help restore cellular function as we age. We also get into immune resilience, mitochondrial

• 1:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  health, and organ-specific rejuvenation, and why stress management remains one of the most powerful longevity tools that we have. If you're curious about the next era of preventative health, this episode is a masterclass. Let's get into it.

• 1:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Natalie, I'm so honored you came here all the way from Toronto to join us in Los Angeles today.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I'm honored that you've invited me. This is so exciting. I mean, not to mention the fact the weather here is on, like it's, first of all, it's a beautiful setting where you are.

• 2:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  And it's a gorgeous day, you know, leaving the cold.

• 2:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I was gonna say, what was it like in Toronto this morning?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Gross. At 5:30 a.m. when I got in the cab, it was, it had, yesterday, we were, we got that snow that was supposed to be rain and then it flash froze. So it's

• 2:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's the worst. I know. I remember, I remember when I lived in Minnesota.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That happening.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  There's a reason why people live in this part of the world. Anyway, it's just weather, as they say, and I get to do amazing things like this.

• 2:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, I was so, um, first of all, I was honored to be on your podcast. So thank you so much for having me. I had a great, we had a great conversation.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't wait to release that.

• 2:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, thank you. And I'm so glad that you're here to be on mine because you are, I mean, you've been talking about this world of longevity for a long time now. And one of the original people that kind of, you know, got the, some of the newer thought process around longevity out there to the public, I think. And so tell me a little bit about your story. How'd you get into this world and how'd you start talking about it on social media?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's funny, as somebody asked me the other day, you know, so how'd you pivot to longevity? Because, you know, I started off in the, I started off as a holistic nutritionist and then I moved into the biohacking space. And then I pivoted to longevity and they're like, well, how'd you start in longevity? And I said, well, a big part of that is just getting older. And you start to focus on different things. And, and you know, and to be, to be perfectly honest, like biohacking is this, you know, it's kind of a hot and cold thing, right? And it's amazing and it's short sighted sometimes and sometimes it doesn't go deep enough and it doesn't, and it's, of course, it's always going to be about the person who's really talking about it. The longevity space for me was an opportunity to pull back from biohacking. And we get to put our arms around so many other things.

• 3:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Right?

• 3:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's why I love it so much.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we're bringing in functional medicine because if functional medicine isn't part of that, it doesn't lay the foundation for biohacking. You're spending a lot of money and doing all kinds of things that A could be wasteful, B could be harmful. You know, it's like this whole idea of if people are not spending time removing toxins or clearing out their system or removing trauma or whatever the case may be, you can bring a lot of these biohacks in. They're either not going to land or they're not going to do what they're supposed to do.

• 4:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely. It's so true. I mean, I think people want to jump to the quick, easy fix right off the bat. Like, what cold plunge should I buy? I hear that question all the time. Like, you have a lot to do before you buy a cold plunge. Let me say.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yes, you're hanging out on the ceiling.

• 4:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. We need to have, you know, nutrition optimized. We need to fix your metabolic health. We need to, you know, regulate your nervous system. And if you start cold plunging prior to that, it can cause more harm than good for some people, right? And so there's a lot of nuance to biohacking. And you mentioned that functional medicine can serve as a foundation for this journey. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Because I say that all the time, but I'd love to hear your perspective on it.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's because functional medicine allows us to get insight into what is happening in the body right now. Right? So we need, we need several different perspectives. We need to understand where are we at this time? We need to look at even things like genetics. Genetics fits into functional medicine. And not that genetics, you know, genetics has been misused and abused so much over the years. The truth of the matter is, it is an important foundational piece of information for us to have. But it also doesn't mean, like, you get all these people running around saying, oh, I have MTHFR, or I have this, or I have that. And it's like, okay, but is it showing up? Is it expressing? Because there's so much about genetics, we don't know how, how those genes

• 5:47Speaker 01

  are expressing. Because, you know, in all that supposed junk DNA that we have, my suspicion, and I think it's played out, is that there's, there are a lot of redundant pathways in the body. The human body does not rely on a single pathway to get anything done.

• 6:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  It's far too smart for that. And so. A good genetic panel gives us a great backdrop, but then it has to be overlaid with labs and blood work and functional testing like you're doing. You know, I just had the pleasure of getting a tour of your clinic here. And you're doing all this functional testing to really understand where are you now?

• 6:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Right? And then understanding a person's toxic load

• 6:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  is going to be critical as well. Like, do we need a TPE? Do we need EBU? How much of that do we need? So as we're and as the regenerative medicine is really coming into its own, all of this laying of the foundation is going to be critical because, you know, renovating a kitchen in a house that's about to fall over might not be the best investment. Resources.

• 6:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's so true. I mean, I think that to your point, we discover so much in the testing that we do that is definitely not evident to the patient because they're not seeing symptoms. Symptoms are so lagging

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  in what's really going on under the hood, but also not evident to practitioners like physicians as well, looking at the patient, because once again, like you can only see what you can see, right? And so the amount of testing that that we do gives us so much more in-depth knowledge about what's going on. And there's so much more testing coming out over the next year. In fact, you know, we were just talking the last podcast episode I did about deep cardiovascular analysis. We're doing full body toxin testing, like you were talking about, testing for over 100 different toxins. And we discover all sorts of stuff that you would have never known.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exposure to glyphosate and other, you know, environmental toxins that are definitely proven to be associated with things like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's disease, et cetera. And yeah, you're not going to know unless you go looking for it.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  No, and then, but I think what's really exciting alongside the testing is that there's so much more we can do about it.

• 8:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  And that's where and that's where conventional medicine isn't equipped.

• 8:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Right? Because they're not trained and the and the system that they are functioning within is not enabled to get into the to the into doing anything that isn't showing up as a symptom.

• 8:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  And so by the time symptoms Are showing up, as we both know, this has been going on for a really long time. I mean, that is a credit to the genius of the human body.

• 8:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Right? How much it can kind of cobble together.

• 8:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And, and keep going and keep going. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul, but you're still doing what you're doing. And by the time you, you feel it, the wheels have come off the bus. And so it's so important for people who really want to live a long, vital life to get access to this, looking at what's happening, what's brewing under the hood. Never mind what's happening. It's what's brewing under the hood.

• 9:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, absolutely. And to your point, functional medicine is so important because, you know, I had Jeffrey Bland on this podcast and he basically described functional medicine many years ago, all of these things are brewing because of some root causes that we know what they are. And you can test for them now and you can do things about it. And that's going to prevent all sorts of problems in the future. And so it's, it's so important to understand where your biology is now and not wait for the Western medical system to start treating every symptom with a pill or with a surgery. It's just, you know, that system was built for a reason. It's to get you out of a disastrous situation, like an overwhelming infection. It was all built out of infections and antibiotics, right? That was kind of the root of that, of the Western medical system. But there is a new system developing, one where we optimize

• 9:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  health at this moment. And that's a completely different system. And that's the one that you talk about a lot on your podcast and you've become an expert on, which is using natural biological signals that we've used since the dawn of humanity, that over our extended lifespan now are not as powerful as they used to be because of aging, right? And so can you, can we talk about some of those signals? And, you know, what are the different categories of these signals as you look at them?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  So we're talking about peptides and bio-regulators now, right? So, so you know, this is, this is a fascinating area that has really, I mean, it's been around for a long time, right? The bioregulators were, if you will, discovered, studied and expanded upon over the last three to four decades in Russia. And so the thing is, you know, Russia and the Western world are not always the best of friends. We don't, you know, the, the flow of information is not super smooth all the time. And so they're over there doing their thing. The Western world is over here doing its thing.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  And it, it, it, it's a whole area of health optimization that's really evolved separately from everything that we're aware of here. The other aspect are peptides, which are these other small molecules that also have been around for quite a long time. The bodybuilding community probably were the first. The ultimate biohackers.

• 11:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is the third podcast today that we've talked about the bodybuilding community because they did.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  They stop at nothing.

• 11:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They stop at nothing and they did the experiments on themselves. They were the first biohackers, right?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 11:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And we've learned so much from them, right? Mandrelone, peptides, even like, we were talking about using EPO and some of these other citrulline and arginine for blood flow enhancement. They were doing all this stuff decades ago.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, it's what to do and how not to do it sometimes, right? From the body, I mean, those guys, you got to tip your hat to them. Them and the elite athletes, right? Another, these are populations of people who the stakes are so high, they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. And it has at times turned around and bitten them in the butt. I mean, there aren't too many centenarian bodybuilders floating around, which is actually in and of itself, a very interesting comment on what it really takes to be, live a really long time.

• 12:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so true.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  It's a different topic. But going back to the peptides and bioregulators, so they've been around for a long time. They've really been bubbling up into the mainstream. And I would say bioregulators, if we talk, not even mainstream, but like the, the early adopters of mainstream, it's been the last couple of years. Like I've been talking about bioregulators now for. Not even that long, but let's say four years.

• 12:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  When I started talking about them, hardly anybody knew. Now, every time I turn around, somebody's talking about bioregulators.

• 12:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, that's probably because of, you know, what happens is you get into this field of what you're talking about. But I could tell you, like, I feel that probably very few people that listen to this podcast have heard about bioregulators. And so I learned about them through you, brand new, even just like a year ago. So I'd love for you to just define what is a bioregulator, first of all.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  So, so let's define a peptide and then we'll define a bioregulator because they're kind of, they're related.

• 13:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Right? So peptides are small proteins. And the peptides that people may have heard about, the BPC15, you know, those beautifully named compounds, the BPC157, or the TB500, or the thymosin alpha 1, GHKCU is another one, MOC is another one, people. So these are all tiny proteins. They're 50 amino acids or less, and they are signaling proteins that, that bind to receptors on your cells and initiate cascades. Very often, they are native to the body. So they are, they are fractions of proteins that are naturally occurring in the body. GLP-1s are peptides. Insulin is a peptide. So we've all heard of peptides.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  The bioregulators are a subset of peptides in that they are at most four amino acids long.

• 13:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So they're tiny, tiny.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Two to four amino acids long. Your other peptides can be as long as 50 amino acids long. And I mean, it depends who you talk to. Some people will say, no, well, anything under 100 amino acids, potato, potato, whatever. There are bigger, small peptides, and the bioregulators are the tiniest, small peptides.

• 14:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and it seems a little bit arbitrary how they came up with the 50 number. Is that right? Because it's really...

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't really know how they came up with it. And you know, there's, now there's, there's something that's saying anything under 40. I think it's going to get into regulatory space where they're like considering this a biologic and not... So that's muddy waters. I don't even want to go in.

• 14:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  But to answer your question about the bioregulators, so we're talking about two to four amino acids. So the tiniest of the tiny proteins, and they... They don't act on receptors on the cell. They actually are able to cross the cell membrane, cross the nuclear membrane and bind to your DNA and affect the way your DNA expresses.

• 14:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  That is, it is the ultimate epigenetic switch. And what it does is it restores your DNA's ability to produce certain proteins as it did in a more youthful expression. So we refer to it very often as regeneration at a cellular level of tissues, glands and organs. Now, is it a magic bullet? Are you gonna take this bioregulator and all of a sudden your heart's gonna be the heart that you had when you were three? Heck no.

• 15:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Because what the bioregulator, the way that they work is they work to, to bring the body back to homeostasis. So it's not looking to reverse your age, although we are saying, depending on the test you're using, we are seeing some biological age reversal using the bioregulators. But what they can do is they can help to restore function back to the system. So I've seen things like liver enzymes normalize. I've seen thyroids come back into balance. But always, always, when we're also doing everything else. So again, no silver bullet, but somehow, sometimes that missing piece that allows the body to kind of recover in a different way.

• 15:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So these are molecules that are so tiny, they can go straight through the cell membrane, right into the nucleus and bind to the DNA and turn on certain DNA like methylation does?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  So they have, so, so the way this all works, right? You know, you've got your, your amino acids and they have a partner, right? And so it somehow affects the histones so that the DNA will unwind and present a binding site.

• 16:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Right? It's, it's really fascinating. And the Russians did like incredible computer modeling around this when they first figured this out. What, what Professor Cavinson, who discovered these, talks about is when he first kind of got his eyes on these things or figured this out, he noticed that they occur in every single life form. Mother Nature carries things through every single life form. There's usually a reason that it's pretty important.

• 16:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  So the bioregulators are essentially naturally occurring even in foods.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  And a lot of people will argue, I just had a comment on a YouTube video I recently released was like, well, you don't even bother taking them because peptides can't be taken orally. And I'm like, well, actually, that's not true. Here's the way the body breaks down proteins. The enzymes don't go in and just indiscriminately chop everything up into single amino acids. There are sequences that are respected. And that's because of the the terminal ends around them so that the cleavage sites are predetermined, right?

• 17:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  And so there are peptide transporters in the gut lumen that are specialized for pulling these peptides out and bringing them from the gut into the circulation.

• 17:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I see. Okay, so these are oral?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  So they can be.

• 17:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They can be oral. They can be injected as well?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you've got, so bioregulator, so we have bioregulators. Now let's separate them out.

• 17:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  We have the natural bioregulators that have been extracted from animal tissues and organs.

• 17:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And then we have the synthetic version.

• 17:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  So this is where that amino acid chain has been identified, the one that does the most work, let's say, and it can now be recreated or resynthesized in a lab. And it's really interesting because when you get to the world where you only have two to four amino acids to work with, it turns out that they're actually really hard to synthesize.

• 18:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Why is that?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Because it's the way that they're oriented on a 3D plane. So you can have two bioregulators that are the same two amino acids, but they will act completely differently because of the way that they're arranged geometrically.

• 18:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  It's really fascinating. I mean, it's really fascinating, right? And so one of them in particular, I think it's Vilon, V I L O N, is really tough. And yet it is one of the most powerful, Cavinson called them geroprotective compounds out there. So Vilon is an immune compound. And he did studies on on transgenic mice.

• 18:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  That were prone to develop HER2 breast cancer, so mammary tumors.

• 18:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  And he did experiments with using epitetalon.

• 18:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Which is the pineal gland bioregulator and Vilon.

• 18:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So epitalon is a bioregulator as well?

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 18:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Because I've always heard of this as a peptide.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  It's well, it is a peptide, but it's a bioregulator.

• 19:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a small chain.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Two, no, it's four amino acids.

• 19:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Four amino acids. Okay, got it.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  So it is a bioregulator. It is the synthetic version of the pineal gland bioregulator. We're gonna have even more fun with names in a minute, but before I do that, with those transgenic mice, what he discovered is that both epitalon and villon reduce the number of tumors, and when they did get tumors, they would be smaller. Now, he never got to the point where he did, repeated those experiments in humans, but just really interesting that in mice, they were so powerful and had real powerful anti-tumor effects. And epitalon, we know, has major effects on the immune system, and villon does as well.

• 19:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay. And so we know that through human studies or through?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  So we know, so here are the other studies that he, so he did a lot of human studies. So here's the, well, so here's the cool thing, right? When you're a 20-year-old, 20-something-year-old guy in the army in Russia, and you're, the big guys come in one day and say, look, here's the thing. The cosmonauts are coming back from space, a hot mess. The nuclear submarine guys are coming back from their missions, a hot mess. And we're really worried about all these weapons that other people might develop. So you need to figure out a way to regenerate people. And here's the deal. You get as much money as you need. You get as much lab animals as you need, and when you're ready to test on humans, we have factories filled with people in Siberia.

• 20:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  And so he did. And so some of his most seminal studies, and these are studies you could never, like, nobody would have the budget to do them again, right? But he literally had a couple, one study where he used a form of the pineal gland bioregulator that is called epithalamen. So here's where we have fun with names.

• 20:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Every bioregulator has at least two names. And the name determines the form.

• 21:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  So Epitalon is the synthetic version of the pineal gland bioregulator.

• 21:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Endolutin is the name of the natural form of that very same pineal gland bioregulator.

• 21:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Epithalamin is now yet a third version of the pineal gland bioregulator. This is an extract from pineal glands of animals.

• 21:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  That's been prepared for intramuscular injections.

• 21:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  You couldn't find that outside of Russia. I don't even know if they still make them.

• 21:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Right? But that is the form that he used in his studies on humans.

• 21:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it, got it.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  So he had a control group of people that got a shot of polyvitamins, they call them. So they got a vitamin shot. And then the other group of people got the pineal gland.

• 21:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Epithalamin.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Epithalamin.

• 21:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  And so what he found is that after 12 years, he had about a third the mortality rate in the epithalamin group than he did in the

• 21:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  in the polyvitamin group.

• 21:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  He then, and these were, these people were, I want to say they were 55 to 65 years old. He then upped the ante and went to an older population, so 75 to 85 year olds. And now he only studied these guys for six years.

• 22:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  And he did, he had three groups. He had his control group. He had his group that got the epithalamin. And now the third group got epithalamin and they also got thymalin, which is the thymus gland bioregulator.

• 22:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Now, we both know that a dysfunctional immune system is fundamentally what's going to take us out.

• 22:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely, right.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Whether it takes us out young or old, it's the failing of the immune system that, that leaves us open to all the things that happen. And that group of people, and I may have my numbers messed up, but I'm pretty sure that that last group of people, maybe they're the ones that had the third mortality. The people that only got epithalamin had half the mortality.

• 22:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Of the control group.

• 22:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Huh.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  The control group, 88% were dead at the end of the six years.

• 22:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  These were older people.

• 22:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So it was actually better to just have only the epithalamin by itself?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  No, the epithalamin with the thymus.

• 23:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  With the thymus, okay, got it. So those two bioregulators together.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Our magic.

• 23:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  And he was looking at mortality, right? He couldn't look at longevity.

• 23:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Because you'll never finish that study.

• 23:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Finish the study, right, exactly.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  So, so he looked at mortality. And he had those, the people with the epithelium, who got the epithelium and the thymulin were just live, didn't die as fast.

• 23:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so what is the mechanism from why they did not die? Was it less chronic disease? Was it, what was geoprotective about that combination?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good question. So certainly on the epithelium front, and actually, I had a presentation where I had a whole table where we presented this, their immune system was better, their sleep got better, their melatonin production was normalized. That's one of the hallmarks of the pineal gland bioregulator is it normalizes melatonin production. Now, notice it normalizes, doesn't increase.

• 23:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  It brings it back to, kind of like that of someone who's about a middle age.

• 24:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Right? Their bone health was better.

• 24:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Now, the other thing that the pineal gland bioregulator does is it activates telomerase. Well, if we help to restore the length of those telomeres on the other DNA, that fundamentally increases our Haiflick.

• 24:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, limits.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Limits. And so our body can rejuvenate better. So, and the epithelone, the pineal gland bioregulator, we also know has effect on the immune system. Now, the thymus gland bioregulator, if it helps to restore function to the thymus gland.

• 24:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Is going to put it, so bottom line, they had a better immune system, they had better quality of life overall, they just were healthier.

• 24:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So these Russian studies, they were published in Russian, from what I've read, and they weren't really ever translated into English.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Some were. So now there's more and more that have been translated. And what I want to say is a lot of the studies that he did, he would come out the other side saying, wow, this is amazing, and we need to do more work to develop these into drugs.

• 25:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Right? Because these are, if you will, a very, like, it's a low potential of what this could potentially bring.

• 25:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, it's like the first.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  I think even he had very few. But but there's um, they have an institute in St. Petersburg in Russia called the Institute of Gerontology and Bioregulation. And there's a branch of that institute that works with people with eye diseases. And one of the eye diseases that they address is retinitis pigmentosa. Now going back to our genetics at the beginning, this is a genetic condition where your field of vision narrows and narrows and narrows until you eventually become blind.

• 25:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Well, they can stop it. They actually can even reverse it to a point.

• 25:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  So using now, I will say they're using bioregulators. I'm sure they're using lots of other stuff as well, but the bioregulators are central to that therapy.

• 25:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, interesting. And so are these bioregulators, so this is one category of them, right? Like the pineal gland bioregulators?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  So there's twenty one.

• 26:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Twenty one different bioregulators.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it. What are some of the other ones? Some of the other?

• 26:08Speaker 01

  So we have, let's see how many I can rattle off in ten seconds here. We have the one for the thyroid, the adrenals, the ovaries, the testes, the liver, the pancreas, the stomach, the heart, the blood vessels, the brain and central nervous system. Bone marrow, cartilage. Cartilage is fascinating because we need elastin and collagen in every single tissue of our body.

• 26:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Right? Your blood vessels can't be healthy. If you stop making collagen, they get stiffer.

• 26:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Right? Cardiovascular disease, kidneys, bladder, bones. I think bone marrow.

• 26:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So basically like every system of the body.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Organs.

• 26:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay. And the idea of taking a bioregulator is to rejuvenate these organs?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Essentially. So it's to it's to drive rejuvenation of the organ, right? And so the way that the bioregulators are taken is not in perpetuity. Because remember, it's a signal. So we will take it for anywhere from ten to thirty days. Depending on our age, stage, and state of health, we might repeat that every three months. We might repeat it every six months.

• 27:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  We might take it for two months. A lot of the studies that he did also was side by side with conventional medicine. So they would find that, for example, there was one with COPD patients. Where the COPD patients, some of them would get just the conventional treatment. And then the others would get the conventional treatment with, I think it was the lung. And maybe the blood vessel. I don't remember the exact combination. They found that the people who got the bioregulator with their conventional treatment had better results and lasted longer.

• 27:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Are they doing new studies now on some of these bioregulators here in the United States?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  So the only person I know of who's formally doing this study, now I will say that there's some of the big schools, like Stanford has done some research on on bioregulators and they they've done a really cool research study on GHK, which is not a bioregulator, but another peptide. But there's a guy by the name of Dr. Bill Lawrence, who was working with Cavinson hand in hand until he passed away about two years ago.

• 28:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, he just passed away two years ago?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And he, and you would think of a very ripe old age, but he got very sick. And so, you know, lots of theories around that. We're not going to go there, but anyway.

• 28:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Typical Russian conspiracy theories.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  I don't know, you know, just not even going to go there. But but bottom line is Bill was doing, he was doing age reversal studies. So he, the first study he started was he had 100 people and all they did was give them bioregulators for about a year. Nobody was told to change anything or do anything differently than normal. And he was able to show that after a year, with the exception of maybe three people, everybody's biological age got better.

• 28:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  As determined by their telomeres.

• 28:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it. So he did telomere testing for all of them?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  He did telomere testing. He then went on to continue and do DNA methylation testing as well, as well. But the three people, and this will go back to the beginning of our conversation, the three people who did not see a reversal in their age as determined by the telomere length were people who were under severe stress.

• 29:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, interesting.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  The power of the nervous system is really another one. It's right up there with toxins, I think. It'll, it'll undo the best therapies that you've got.

• 29:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right.

• 29:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This episode was brought to you by Nex Health, a health optimization and longevity clinic located in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and soon to be opening in Montecito, Nashville, Miami, and many other cities in the United States and Canada. Nex Health is the Apple Store of wellness, where you can optimize your health span and lifespan using cutting-edge technology. I actually founded Nex Health eight years ago to give my patients a place to go get extensive biomarker testing done and provide them with all the tools that I use to get my health in order. The longevity circuit in Nex Health using hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, cryotherapy, and LED light is a game changer. In addition, the doctors at Nex Health measure thousands of biomarkers and put into place

• 30:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  a longevity optimization plan using advanced tools like ozone, plasma exchange, and peptides. Go to www.nex.health to check it out.

• 30:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So these new studies that are being done, you said they were done here in Stanford?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  No. So Bill's studies are essentially, it's like, I don't know what the proper term would be. Like, this isn't a controlled.

• 30:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Randomized controlled trial?

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Randomized controlled trial. This is people who've come to him and who are willing to basically.

• 30:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Use bioregulators over like every month, month in, month out. Like, I was in that study for a year, and we cycled me through the bioregulators for a whole year. Wherever I had weaknesses, if you will, in my system, we would kind of lean into those systems a little more heavily. So, for example, for me genetically, I'm predisposed to things like type 2 diabetes, right? I've got a predisposition. My job is to make sure it just never happens.

• 31:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  And so if I'm going to do that, then I'm going to change the way I eat. I'm going to make sure that my lifestyle is dialed in. I'm going to watch all these things. And I might cycle through the pancreas bioregulator and the liver bioregulator a couple more times than the average bear.

• 31:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I see. And Bill, you mentioned, what's Bill's last name?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Lawrence.

• 31:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Bill Lawrence. And so where can someone work or see Bill Lawrence and his studies?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  And so I just outed you, Bill. I'm really sorry. So he's a tough guy to reach. He now only really takes people on kind of on a concierge basis.

• 31:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  And we can talk about it offline if you want.

• 31:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it, got it. I'm just super interested in diving deeper into the research on this just because I feel like it could be a really powerful other tool in the toolbox. And I just wonder, number one, what are the studies that are being done? What are the side effects of something?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  None.

• 32:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's what I was gonna say is like, a lot of times when we have natural biological signals, there's no side effects or minimal side effects, right?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  There's, I, so I'll tell you that I've been, I've been witnessing this in my communities for the last four or five years.

• 32:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  It is, I could count on one hand, the number of people who say that they've had a side effect. We, it just doesn't really happen.

• 32:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting. And where can people find bioregulators?

• 32:36Speaker 01

  So the natural bioregulators, there's definitely a few purveyors. I would say that there's one source in Europe that's producing the raw material. And then you've got a couple of companies that have gotten their hands on them.

• 32:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  So the place I get them from is a, is a purveyor called Profound Health. They're based in the UK.

• 32:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  They're about to start distributing out of the States in January.

• 32:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it, got it.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  And they, and the good news with Profound Health is they've got, you know, that whole epithelium and endolutein, epityl, they got rid of that. If the box says pineal gland bioregulator.

• 33:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I see.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Liver bioregulator.

• 33:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So they have all 21 of the ones that you mentioned?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  They do.

• 33:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, good. Okay, good. So if someone is struggling with like their liver health, this could be an adjunct to their.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  That's exactly the way to put it, right? And the other thing is the way that we use the bioregulators is very often in stacks.

• 33:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  So if I'm having, let's say, an issue with my liver, I'm gonna wanna make sure that the blood vessels are, are being taken care of. I might stack the pancreas on there at the same time. If I am working with someone, for example, who has a cardiovascular issue or they're struggling with blood pressure. So I'm gonna sit there and think, okay, well, what are the systems that are involved here? Well, we've got the blood vessels, we have the heart. We'd be silly not to include the kidneys, right? And we may pay attention to the central nervous system a little bit.

• 33:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, yes.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Right? So we start to, to build. This this protocol alongside all the other things that you're doing to help support the body in doing the work.

• 34:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So bioregulators, you're probably combining them with some peptides as well.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Sometimes.

• 34:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sometimes you do.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And bioregulators are probably easier just because they're oral.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Well, they're nutritional supplements.

• 34:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  nutritional supplements, right?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're using the naturals.

• 34:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. Most peptides are injectable. So and I feel that, you know, people are already on a lot of supplements, but these are more on the treatment side of things. Is that kind of have you think about it?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, or, you know, you can almost position it as a nutritional strategy. Like, if you, you know, let's, let's think about how, if you go back in time, how humans would, and frankly, any animal eats organs.

• 34:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Those organs is where these bioregulators come from.

• 34:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I see. Got it.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  There's a reason organs are probably the most nutritionally dense food that we can get our hands on, right? And so there aren't, that's where they're getting the bioregulators from. So if we eat liver, now, are you going to get a therapeutic dose? Not so much. Most of us aren't going to eat liver often enough. It might not be healthy for us to eat that much liver.

• 35:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Or you just can't stand the taste.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Or you can't stand the taste. But you know, if you look at, very often, when we look at these websites where they're selling these, those desiccated organs that have been encapsulated.

• 35:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I've taken those before.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  You're going to see stories of like transformational health.

• 35:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Well, what's in there?

• 35:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Right? You have the bioregulators, you have bioavailable vitamins and minerals in a form that the body can absorb.

• 35:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I think there are so many cool studies that could be done to really get a handle on what's happening here. But I think that what's, what's fascinating to me about the bioregulators is as a nutritional supplement, if they're leveraged properly and they're integrated in with a solid functional medicine plan, you can just start to see how the body responds to this in a different way. And I, I have a couple of, a few now, functional medicine providers that are weaving these bioregulators in their protocols and are getting really nice results.

• 36:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting. I love this. Are, do you still see patients yourself as well?

• 36:10Speaker 01

  So I'm not a doctor.

• 36:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, but as a nutritionist.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  As a nutritionist, I only have clients, just so you know.

• 36:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Clients, right.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  I haven't, I kind of stopped a couple of years ago and I'm, I'm starting to itch a little bit. I don't know, I might, I might be getting back into the game any, sometime because there's just so much that can be done.

• 36:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  And you know, as I interview people like you and learn more and, and just in, in, in the world of collaborations, right?

• 36:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And seeing what we can bring to both sides.

• 36:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. The reason I ask is because, you know, we see a ton of patients here at our clinics and a lot of times we will put them on everything that we have available to us. And then they still hit a brick wall sometimes. And thinking of one, you know, we've talked a lot about liver health, I mean, one in particular that is coming very close to, you know, maybe needing a liver transplant. Because they're just not making any headway with everything that we're doing. We're doing peptides, we're doing, you know, metabolic health programs, really regulating their blood glucose. And I, I just feel like this is maybe another piece of the puzzle that we might be missing.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  I have an idea.

• 37:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  I mean, definitely the bioregulators, but there's another, have you ever come across a guy by the name of Siggy Clavins?

• 37:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  He, he, this patient's already on.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  He's already on Deliverance. Well, then I, so I've talked to Siggy about this. I've said that, you know what, I wonder if we layered the liver bioregulator on, if those stubborn ones might move. I don't, I don't know the answer.

• 37:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not saying that it will. I'm just saying that it would be really fascinating to.

• 37:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It'd be fascinating to try.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  And there's no, there's no downside.

• 37:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's the other critical piece of this is, it's not like a drug that we're giving them, that there could be a downside to it. So, yeah, it's really, it's super interesting, this whole world of, um, what's potentially out there. And I've been hearing about bioregulators now through you for quite a while now. And then when you look into the, the studies all being done in Russia, they have like a mystery around them.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Which is not always that appealing to people.

• 38:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, exactly.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  In your business.

• 38:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's the key.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Mystery's not so nice.

• 38:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, right. But it's definitely a major, I would say, point of research for people to look into. So I'm so glad for you to kind of bring this to people's forefront of their knowledge. I don't hear a lot of people talking about it, so I'm so glad that you're talking a lot about it. Now, you also have a level of depth of knowledge about peptides. You mentioned a few. What are some of your favorite peptides that you like to talk about?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  I mean, look, BPC157 is probably.

• 38:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's your go-to?

• 38:37Speaker 01

  It's, it's one of the, but it depends, right? Like, what are you dealing with?

• 38:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Are you dealing with musculoskeletal issues? Then it's going to be BPC157, maybe thymus and beta 4, maybe, you know, growth hormone secretagogues. If you're dealing with immune issues, well, I'm switching teams. I'm moving over to thymus and alpha 1.

• 38:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  So I think peptides, like anything else, the question that people will ask me this a lot, like, what's your favorite? Or what's your desert island? I'm like, well, it depends. Did I break my leg getting on the desert island?

• 39:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Or did I catch a cold on the way?

• 39:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. Yeah, I've talked a lot about those particular peptides. But one group of peptides that I find very interesting that I've not talked a lot about is the mitochondrial peptides.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  I knew you were going to say that.

• 39:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, moti, SS31. Can you give us kind of a break? Are those the two big ones, moti and SS31?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  The two biggest ones, there's also humanin.

• 39:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And humanin, right?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Right, so they're, they're like a triad. So SS31 is the one that is reparative to the mitochondria, right? It restores the cardiolipin on the mitochondrial membrane. I think the thing about mitochondrial peptides that is becoming much more discussed now, which I'm so excited about, is that if you're not also doing work to restore the mitochondrial membrane, like providing the phospholipids, like making sure that that membrane has what it needs to be healthy.

• 39:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  You're gunning an engine that's not ready to be gunned, right?

• 40:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How do you provide the phospholipids to the mitochondrial membrane?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  So I like the body bio PC oil, right? Fatty 15 is another really interesting fat. I don't, I mean, it sure sounds like it's an, it's a big piece of the puzzle. If someone is deficient, the cool thing is that you can test.

• 40:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Right? Like, there's, there's a really inexpensive fatty acid test that you can do that'll give you your omega 3 to omega 6 ratio. It'll look at your C15 amount. So if you're.

• 40:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What's the name of this test?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, as you, I was hoping you weren't gonna ask me. It's on the tip of my brain.

• 40:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We'll put on the show notes.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  It's like a $50 test. It's not even that expensive.

• 40:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it's available direct to consumer, right?

• 40:42Speaker 01

  It's direct to consumer. Easy peasy. Get the more expensive one, which I think is $55. I don't know. Like, it's really, I did a podcast with him a couple of years ago, and I, it's just fascinating to me how accessible this is.

• 40:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  And how important it is.

• 40:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But also fascinating that it's available direct to consumer. The solution is there, and no one really knows about it.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  And it's over the counter.

• 41:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's over the counter, right?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Again, phospholipids, it's not expensive.

• 41:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  You're not gonna go wrong with it. It's easy.

• 41:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, so you, you have mitochondrial health issues, which almost everybody has as we age. It's a part of normal aging, I would say. And SS31 is a peptide that you can use to restore the lipid bilayer in conjunction with taking a phospholipid supplement, something like BodyBio or Fatty15.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, BodyBio and Fatty15 are two different things.

• 41:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Two different things, right?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  So what you wanna do is give the, the membranes the healthy fats that it needs to be as flexible as possible, to let in the good stuff and to release the bad stuff. The last thing we want is a stiff membrane.

• 41:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And, I mean, why am I telling you this? But, but ultimately, it's about having healthy membranes to allow the body to do what it needs to do. The other piece that I think that's really interesting with mitochondrial health is something that not a lot of people talk about, and this is actually a test I'm gonna be offering in my membership community. We're gonna do a little experiment.

• 42:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  And this is with deuterium.

• 42:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, tell us about this, yes.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  So deuterium is a heavy proton, and we, we can accumulate it, and think of, like, if the way that your mitochondria work is, think of it like, they're so fascinating, right? You've got this crazy little rotary engine in there that's rotating two, was it 2,500 times a second or something? Spitting out ATP, these protons or these heavy hydrogen atoms can gum it up.

• 42:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  So they get in the way. And where we see deuterium being more of an issue is people with cancer, for example. But the rest of us walking around may inadvertently have relatively high deuterium levels. Certainly as we age, is it possible? So there is a test that you can test your deuterium levels.

• 42:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I didn't know this.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  And if you could test your deuterium levels and you happen to be high and you could drink deuterium depleted water for a couple of months. And lower that level and get your mitochondria healthier and do the membrane work. And then we might do a Motsi, for example, to kind of rev up the engine.

• 43:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Does, yeah, so Motsi, that allows that engine to function more optimally?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, and look, I'm being simplistic here. I, you know, it's, it's, there's more complexity to it. But that's kind of, those are the buckets I put those peptides into.

• 43:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  And so Motsi has been used by a lot of people. They say that they use it for fat loss, they use it for performance, the whole nine yards, but I've seen too many people rushing out to buy Motsi and to do that as their one and done. And it's like everything else, you know what, guys? Make sure that the body is ready for this.

• 43:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Even if your, your mitochondria are not working properly because of any number of reasons right now, let's make sure that we follow the steps to bring the body along so that now you can finally tap into these tools that are so powerful. And SS31 just got given orphan drug status, right?

• 44:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It did, right.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Which is going to make it both better and worse, like.

• 44:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. Harder to get, but at least it's now FDA approved and so.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, for some things.

• 44:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For some things, right? Exactly. Which is incredible. I mean, that shows that there's enough science behind this that shows that it works, that the FDA actually approved it. And I mean, how incredible that it works at a mitochondrial level, like a drug that works at the mitochondrial level is mind blowing to me.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So SS31, Motsi and the human use, that was the last one. What's the mechanism of human?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  So humanin, I'm not as familiar with, but I, but the thing that's always stuck with me on humanin is that the reason it's named humanin is the researcher that discovered it tested it out, he, for whatever reason, was testing it with people who had Alzheimer's.

• 44:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  And they became more human.

• 44:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  It enabled them to function better.

• 44:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  It's like it brought back their humanity. And so he named it humanin.

• 44:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Incredible.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  So it's again, it's part of that triad. And so your knowledgeable peptide practitioner is going to understand how to layer these peptides and how to bring them in in order so that you're not putting the cart before the horse.

• 45:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Because like everything else, there's an order of operations here.

• 45:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Right? And if you do it in the right order.

• 45:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You get it right.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Right. And if we go back to bioregulators, if your mitochondria aren't working and you're pounding the bioregulators, you're not going to get the best results.

• 45:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, that's true too.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  So this is where functional medicine comes in. It's understanding all the many layers.

• 45:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  So that the body can do what it can do.

• 45:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, what are the layers, what are the order? And and having the tools available for you.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  The advantage of the bioregulator is it's not, you're not going to do harm. I don't know that that's so true with the with the mitochondrial peptides sometimes.

• 45:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For sure.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  I think there needs to be a certain degree of caution and knowledge.

• 45:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, people have adverse reactions with Motsi and other of these peptides. So you have to be very careful. I always say start with a low dose, go slow. Now I'm going to look into more of the bioregulators as part of the overall story. Yeah, it's it but it's an incredible world we live in now. And there's so much more available to us.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, yeah, it's crazy.

• 46:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it really is amazing. Well, this has been an incredible conversation. Hopefully it's part one of many conversations that we have in the future.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 46:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm so. I was really, really excited to have you here. So thank you for joining us.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure and an honor.

• 46:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and I would love for people, I mean, this is just to whet people's appetite. They can hear a lot more from you, from your podcast and your YouTube. So can you tell people how to access that information?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Sure. The podcast is Longevity with Natalie Niddam. Finally renamed it a couple of years ago.

• 46:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it's one of the top podcasts on health and wellness in Apple Podcasts. I see it there all the time, way up the top.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah, it does well in the nutrition category. I stayed out of the medical, I figured, I leave the medical category to the doctors. I'll kind of hang it over here. So that's the podcast. My YouTube channel is Natalie Niddam. And I have a membership community where we talk about a lot of these things. I might even be able to get like an expert like you to come in and answer some questions of my very curious people. And yeah, so all that is natniddam.com is the website. So

• 47:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fantastic.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Where you can get all the things.

• 47:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for joining me today.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

• 47:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Here are my top five takeaways from that incredible episode with Natalie. Number one, functional medicine shows what's brewing before symptoms appear, sometimes decades before. Deep testing, genetics, labs, biomarkers, let us catch dysfunction early and actually correct it long before traditional medicine would take action. Number two, peptides are natural signaling molecules with diverse therapeutic uses. They're fragments of proteins that the body already makes. And different peptides support everything from injury repair, like BPC157, to immune function and mitochondrial health, like MOTC or SS31. Number three, bioregulators are compounds that may help restore organs at the DNA level.

• 48:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  These are ultra-short peptides that enter cells, influence gene expression, and help tissue to return to a youthful, balanced state. They've been studied for about 30-plus years in Russia, but are now finally entering Western longevity medicine. Number four, stress can derail even the best longevity protocols. In biological age studies, those who didn't reverse their age were under extreme stress, a reminder that cortisol regulation and lifestyle matter as much as any therapy. Number five, peptides require expert guidance. While bioregulators show no known side effects, peptide dosing can be risky without oversight. Working with a trained practitioner is essential for safety and personalization.

• 48:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for joining me on this awesome episode of Extend Podcast. If you know anyone who's curious about peptides or bioregulators, please forward this episode to them. Thanks again.

• 49:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.