Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / Unlocking the Secrets of Kidney Health - Episode 296
Transcript
- 0:28Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
- 0:31I'm your host, Dr.
- 0:32Jeffrey Gladden, and we're here answering life's biggest questions.
- 0:37Things like how good can we be?
- 0:38How do we make 100 a new 30?
- 0:41How do we live well beyond 120?
- 0:43How do we live young for a lifetime and how do we develop a 300 year old mind?
- 0:48And today I'm going to be joined by a physician from Hawaii, Robin Rose, whom I've met.
- 0:55couple of years ago and we've had several conversations.
- 0:58She's really a fascinating person.
- 1:00You're gonna love this conversation about kidney health.
- 1:03She has her own story of kidney cancer and nephrectomy, very compromised kidney function, complete restoration essentially of her kidney function.
- 1:13And uh it's a fascinating story.
- 1:16She's involved with some really, really interesting bioregular peptides and I think you're gonna really enjoy
- 1:21it.
- 1:21this podcast.
- 1:23Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
- 1:26I'm your host, Dr.
- 1:27Jeffrey Gladden.
- 1:28And as previously mentioned, I'm going to be joined today by Dr.
- 1:32Robin Rose.
- 1:33She's a woman that I've looked forward to speaking with on the podcast for probably over two years.
- 1:39So don't know why it took us so long to get together, Robin, but welcome.
- 1:43Welcome to the podcast.
- 1:46So, yeah.
- 1:50yeah.
- 1:50It took a while, but you know.
- 1:52Hehehe
- 1:53good things happen.
- 1:54So she's coming to us from, uh, the beautiful, beautiful Island of Molokai, uh, in the Hawaiian islands.
- 2:01And, uh, you can't see her background, but it's, uh, it's quite stunning.
- 2:06So, um, so tell us a little bit about, um, how you got into being, uh, focused on the kidney, which is obviously, uh, you know, with the kidney damage I had when I was five
- 2:17from post-drop chlamyral nephritis, uh, is,
- 2:22sort of near and dear to my kidney as well as my heart.
- 2:25So how did you get intrigued by optimizing kidney function?
- 2:30Well, I'm a family physician and knew as little about kidney as I found out most of my non-nephrology colleagues know.
- 2:40um getting older in my practice, I kind of had slowed down, um had a number of utterly crazy life events.
- 2:52You when you add up all those points, it was awesome.
- 2:57Terrible, actually, but...
- 2:59you know, many stresses.
- 3:00And to make a long story short, I tagged myself, Health Food Hannah.
- 3:06How does Health Food Hannah get kidney cancer?
- 3:10All of a sudden, after being on Molokai for about five months, we ended up buying our house, planning to go back to Oregon.
- 3:19I practiced in Aslan, Oregon for many, many, many years, holistic practice.
- 3:23And
- 3:24started spiking blood pressures of 220 over 110.
- 3:27Like, uh-oh, what?
- 3:31And, you know, with a baseline of 90 over 50 blood pressures for years and concerningly too low at times.
- 3:39And so I was clear, I want this out, had an infractomy, no problem.
- 3:45You can live with one kidney was the meme.
- 3:49So just take people through the steps.
- 3:51So your blood pressure spiked and then you got worked up and they did probably an MRI scan.
- 3:56Is that what it was?
- 3:57uh
- 3:59I like to tell this story is I went to see a physician who was a pulmonologist who had done Andrew Wiles integrative medicine program.
- 4:09And I thought, okay, you know, we can, we can have a bigger platform.
- 4:14And I realized that those who have not had primary care training and education may not understand that
- 4:23what walks in your office is vague.
- 4:27You don't know.
- 4:28A specialist gets it all packaged up.
- 4:30At least you know what body system you're dealing with.
- 4:33But we don't.
- 4:34And so I saw this woman who, first of all, started going, have you ever considered meditation?
- 4:41I've been teaching meditation for probably 50 years.
- 4:44OK, that was a little bit of a red flag.
- 4:46And then got in my face, and this was two people.
- 4:49I've told you about the other one.
- 4:51Repeat after me.
- 4:52I am healthy, I am healthy, over and over in my face, like almost spitting in my face.
- 4:59And I was like, used that word and said, either you order the CAT scan or I'll order it myself, thinking I had an adrenal tumor actually.
- 5:07And so I'd visualized exactly the right place.
- 5:11was a left upper pole renal cell carcinoma, a rare one, but neither here nor there.
- 5:18acting crazy, mean, knew physiologically I was not normal.
- 5:23And so, you know, I saw various people who were like, you know, you should go see some healer in Portland or blah, blah, blah.
- 5:30I like, want an nephrectomy.
- 5:32I was really clear.
- 5:33I just want this out and then I'll do the work.
- 5:37And what I learned, this was 2013.
- 5:42Okay.
- 5:43So.
- 5:442013, somewhere right around now, I started acting crazy and finally went in and was like, I need to figure this out.
- 5:52So just put that in perspective for the audience.
- 5:55So GFR, which is glomerular filtration rate, which basically is a measure of kidney function.
- 6:01And ideally your kidney would be filtering.
- 6:03It's really a measure of kidney filtering, if you will, filtering capacity.
- 6:07um And it should be above 90 milliliters or cc's equivalents, milliliters and cc's are equivalent.
- 6:15So 90 mls of
- 6:18blood should be filtered every minute.
- 6:19We consider between 1690 to be kind of stage one or kidney disease, if you will, although a lot of people are well, OK.
- 6:30to 90.
- 6:30And I, because it's a platform that I have, which I've been going stage two is not normal.
- 6:37you can, you can, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but traditionally stage one would be considered above 60.
- 6:44Um, and then it drops off under that.
- 6:47people really kind of start to consider dialysis, if you will, when they get down to a GFR of around, you correct me if I'm wrong, around 10 or 12 is kind of maybe get on a
- 6:56transplant list, but people at 14, 15, or maybe getting dialysis, things like that.
- 7:01So you were at 30 is what you said.
- 7:0330 and felt like stuff that comes out of the dog.
- 7:07I mean, it was really interesting because I was getting, on one hand, don't be surprised if you lose 5 % a year.
- 7:14At GFR of 30, in my mind, is about 25 % function.
- 7:20Lose 5 % a year, that gave me a five-year death sentence.
- 7:24And I, at my age, absolutely had no interest in dialysis and I was being told I wasn't really eligible for a transplant.
- 7:31Okay.
- 7:32give me something.
- 7:35there are papers written about this that as soon as a kidney comes out, that's chronic kidney disease.
- 7:42You go behind doors in an exam room and it was kind of alarming to me the lack of insight about what do I do?
- 7:52Doc, what do I do?
- 7:54What do I do?
- 7:54Over and over I saw five nephrologists and got
- 7:57really useless information from you're going to die or or don't worry.
- 8:03Yeah, it's looking at it through the disease lens, right?
- 8:07So looking at it through the disease lens, well, you don't need dialysis, so what are we gonna do for you, right?
- 8:12Come back when you need dialysis, right?
- 8:14So that's looking at it through the disease lens, but looking at it through the health optimization, life optimization lens, it's like, no, what do I need to do to actually
- 8:23improve my kidney function?
- 8:24So you're asking a different question than they were focused on answering a question, and they're in lay the disconnect.
- 8:31That being said,
- 8:33You were disappointed in that, but that wasn't the end of the story because you obviously, that was the beginning of the story.
- 8:39So, so take us down the path of what you figured out.
- 8:43Leaned over my table, picked up a Townsend letter.
- 8:46opened it to an article by Jenna Henderson, the naturopath who's only working with kidney.
- 8:52Called her up.
- 8:54She was amazing.
- 8:55mean, she asked a gazillion questions, incredible history, and then basically offered me a pathway to recovery.
- 9:04And she herself has had a transplant, has been on dialysis, you know, so she got it.
- 9:11And I sat here and just started looking stuff up.
- 9:14I mean, my...
- 9:15potassium was elevated.
- 9:17All right, what do I do?
- 9:20I learned an incredible amount, you know, in this decade of doing this.
- 9:25And so I started doing changes in diet.
- 9:28I understand the role of protein.
- 9:32wanted 0.8 grams of protein per kilo of optimal body weight, which meant I was too skinny.
- 9:40I based it on 100 pounds instead of the 82 I was weighing.
- 9:46I started learning about safe supplementation, safe botanicals, kept going until I got my GFR up to 51 that way, basically the nephrologist, the last nephrologist I saw told me,
- 10:11Hmm.
- 10:13Yeah, but the numbers are improving, right?
- 10:15Exactly.
- 10:15Yeah.
- 10:16I what I'm doing.
- 10:17Would you like references?
- 10:18No, you're going to hurt yourself.
- 10:20So, you know, I had to I really was on my own and found some functional medicine folks who at least would have the conversation with me.
- 10:28And then at that point, I discovered peptides.
- 10:32I heard about BPC and nitric oxide is something that goes very askew with kidney disease.
- 10:41And of course, we know.
- 10:42know, the endothelial damage in CKD causes the heart disease that kills most kidney patients.
- 10:48And so ultimately I ended up using BPC, falling in love with it, and then continuing on learning about other peptides.
- 10:57And then I learned about the bioregulator peptides, which led to, I can't help it, putting this book together, which we'll talk about.
- 11:06So she's just held up a book called Renology Peptides, which is very cool.
- 11:11So BPC 157 is body protection compound 157, which we make, we actually all make it in our gut.
- 11:19And when we, when we inject it, it basically sets off a healing cascade inside the body is the way I tend to think about it.
- 11:26Whereas pharma goes into kind of interrupt a biochemical pathway.
- 11:30Peptides actually
- 11:31set off a cascade of dominoes to kind of bring forward healing.
- 11:37And they, are a number of different peptides, they kind of line up at different points at the head of the domino stack, so to speak, but they all have a tendency to want to push
- 11:48healing forward.
- 11:50so BPC157 is the one, probably that's most
- 11:55recognized as the most overall general utility of almost any peptide and it combines, it plays well with others also, right?
- 12:04So you were using BPC157 and were you doing that on a daily basis or?
- 12:10At first, at first I did it for, I don't even remember at this point, it's been some years now, probably a few months, and then started spreading it out.
- 12:20And the thing that I really wanna say for people to understand is there is no pill for ill with kidney disease.
- 12:29It really is about having, first of all, belief in healing.
- 12:33Do you believe you can get better is the first question to ask.
- 12:37Are you willing to do what it takes?
- 12:40And because we don't have, you know, the magic elixir for kidney, it really takes willingness to find out what for me is healthy.
- 12:50there's diet is an enormous conversation, exercise, unremitting.
- 12:55are high protein diets.
- 12:57Just so you know, for the audience, they're hard on the kidneys.
- 13:00High protein diets are hard on the kidneys, Excuse me.
- 13:06each person's unique, so it kind of takes figuring out what is this person in this moment of time.
- 13:13But my list, and I call this harvesting the low-hanging fruit from the kidney tree of lifestyle.
- 13:20Because that's first.
- 13:23Peptides and other things are placed on top of that.
- 13:26If you eat bad,
- 13:28You're not sleeping, you're stressed, you're toxic loaded.
- 13:32And none of this stuff's gonna work.
- 13:34Yeah.
- 13:35foods that are high in phosphorus, potentially high in potassium, and even sodium.
- 13:40You've got to keep track of your electrolytes a little more carefully.
- 13:43You also have to make sure, because the kidneys are responsible for sending out a molecule to the bone marrow to tell it to make more red blood cells, you need to make sure that
- 13:51you're not becoming anemic as well.
- 13:54So there's lots of interplay here.
- 13:56And then nitric oxide production.
- 13:57And importantly,
- 13:59There's a longevity protein that's made in the kidneys called Clotho that actually keeps the kidneys healthy as well as the blood vessels, as well as your heart and your brain.
- 14:08So these are all things that need to be considered.
- 14:12So I'm curious beyond the BPC 157 and the lifestyle changes that you made paying attention to nutrients and total calorie input, muscle mass, et cetera.
- 14:22I'm curious what other peptides you
- 14:25discovered were particularly useful for you or other regenerative technologies potentially.
- 14:30mitochondrial support important, so the mitochondrial peptides.
- 14:36SS31 has been my go-to.
- 14:39I used ModSC at first and then started reacting to it.
- 14:43The other interesting thing is, um, senescence is something that I heard about but really leaped into because it's a cool thing in a way.
- 14:54It's like our bodies...
- 14:56are trying to protect us from getting cancer.
- 15:00So there's this strategy that cells actually just become what they call zombie cells.
- 15:05They stop doing what they're supposed to, but continue eating.
- 15:08And unfortunately, those cells become toxins and start putting out cytokines to the neighboring cells.
- 15:15And all of a sudden, an organ is working poorly.
- 15:18And there's a lot of strategies for senolytic
- 15:25repair, some of the peptides do this, but there are actually specific senolytic strategies and so that needs guidance from an educator existing.
- 15:36Yeah, I think we've been looking for ways to measure senescent cell burden.
- 15:42And there's a molecule called beta-galactosidase that can be measured, which is interesting in and of itself.
- 15:50There's a new test that we recently got a hold of.
- 15:57uh It's made, it's called SAPIR, S-A-P-E-R-E, SAPIR P16.
- 16:04And it's looking at another marker of senescence essentially, particularly in the immune system.
- 16:09I recently had it done and very interesting to see that my immune system was so young.
- 16:14So that was encouraging, right?
- 16:16Because immunosenescence loss of immune cell function is, or immune system function is.
- 16:21is difficult, but I was really like a 30 year old, someone in their thirties, right?
- 16:25So that was, so that was great.
- 16:28So there are senolytics.
- 16:29So testing to understand the point is testing to understand what your senescent cell burden is becomes important.
- 16:35And then you can modulate it with things like Fisatin, Desatinib and Cursatin as a combination individually.
- 16:43They don't do as much as they do together.
- 16:45There's a peptide called Foxo for DRI, which is actually quite expensive that will take a senescent cell and instruct it to actually kill itself, right?
- 16:53Undergo apoptosis.
- 16:55So these things are out there.
- 16:56And then it's come out that uh SGLT2 drugs that are used now for diabetes that cause us to not reabsorb glucose through the kidney actually, you excrete it out through the urine.
- 17:10Turns out they have a benefit of lowering senescent cell burden also.
- 17:14which is interesting.
- 17:16then, right, so let's talk about the bioregulators.
- 17:21I'm just going to add in there that spermidine also as a molecule tends to impact virtually all the different hallmarks of aging, including senescence by improving
- 17:30autophagy and things like that.
- 17:32And then of course, NAD becomes important for maintaining cellular integrity, DNA repair, energy production, which you need to have.
- 17:40So there's a lot of interplay here around the different hallmarks and senescence.
- 17:46And now let's talk about the bioregulator peptides.
- 17:49So.
- 17:50Great.
- 17:50So first of all, I want to say I was told by my integrative oncologist, don't use the word failure.
- 17:58You're not in failure.
- 18:00So that's an important limbic system piece of it.
- 18:04And so I saw evidence that nephrology was saying, we don't want to use the word renal anymore.
- 18:10People don't know what it means.
- 18:12So I said, I'll take it.
- 18:14So that's where I took the word renal, coined renalogy.
- 18:19Mm-hmm.
- 18:20the art and clinical science of kidney success.
- 18:24Okay.
- 18:25love it.
- 18:26how the mind changed just saying that.
- 18:28I mean, it's really important.
- 18:29so bioregulators come along in that conversation.
- 18:34And that's why I call the book Rhinology Peptides, because it really is kidney success with bioregulator peptides.
- 18:40And so basically, they're tiny little molecules.
- 18:44Proteins are big, huge things.
- 18:47But bioregulators are two to four, basically sometimes seven amino acids.
- 18:53That's teeny weeny weeny.
- 18:55If you take them orally, the stomach doesn't break them down.
- 18:58It's already broken down.
- 19:00And so they are able to get into the cell without a whole bunch of mechanism that most things need to get in the cell.
- 19:08They just have easy transport.
- 19:09They can get into the nucleus and they also then get into the DNA and stretch it open and hook up to the histones and influence the methylation so that
- 19:22That which has been damaged by life, epigenetics, the genes are there, but life can kind of tweak them.
- 19:29And so what's happening is reverse to factory settings.
- 19:36And which peptides do you like for this?
- 19:38Well, the whole conversation of the book is the whole array of bioregulators have a role in the syndrome of chronic kidney disease.
- 19:48Sometimes I like to call it chronic kidney decline because disease also kind of, you know, it's like I, and just for the audience, by the way, at this point in time, my GFR is up to
- 20:0168.
- 20:02Nice.
- 20:03I love that.
- 20:04my paradigm, stage three is 30 to 60.
- 20:08A lot of pathology starts happening.
- 20:11That's when, okay, we better start calling this kidney disease and do something.
- 20:16In my mind, stage two is already a lot of down-regulated pathways.
- 20:23There's dysbiosis, there's endothelial damage, there's mitochondrial damage, there's...
- 20:30chemical toxicity susceptibility, the kidney tubules are starting to decline and they're the discernment.
- 20:38In other words, what do I keep and what do I excrete?
- 20:41And when that's broken, there's a lot of distress on all the systems.
- 20:46I mean, you mentioned, you know, like the bone marrow gets affected because there's anemia, the brain function goes down.
- 20:52I mean, the cardio renal conversation is enormous.
- 20:56the cardio renal metabolic, you there's a risk for diabetes and the pancreas is affected.
- 21:02So basically what I've done with this book is look at every single body system in its axis with kidney decline.
- 21:11And so sure, you want to do the, the, the kidney bioregulator.
- 21:15I'm in love with that molecule.
- 21:17It's an incredible tool.
- 21:20Again, if you're eating stupid and you're sleeping bad and you're not
- 21:24hydrating and yada yada, it's not really going to help.
- 21:28So it's a synergy that we're looking for.
- 21:31Yeah, that's a good point.
- 21:33That's a really good point.
- 21:34If you these peptides as powerful as they are, can be superseded by, you know, let's call it poor lifestyle choices.
- 21:41um They can't they can't rebuild you while you're actively tearing yourself down.
- 21:46All right.
- 21:48They can they can be a major asset when you're constructing an environment that's also a constructive environment, let's say.
- 21:56So that's that's really a key piece.
- 21:59That being said, they add something to lifestyle can that's dramatic.
- 22:05Because if you, like in our world, what we've become big fans of is actually doing plasma for recess for people.
- 22:11uh Because it enables us to sort of clear out the senescent associated inflammatory markers that tend to make it very difficult for the body to regenerate.
- 22:23The body can't regenerate in a toxic soup environment.
- 22:26And when there's kidney function, that's not optimal yet.
- 22:31That in itself adds to the toxic soup of the body because it's not clearing out the toxins that normally does right.
- 22:38In addition to the senescence, cell formation, et cetera, et cetera.
- 22:41So clearing all that out, my point is along with the lifestyle changes, now you put in the peptides or other rejuvenation factors.
- 22:49Now they have their best opportunity to work.
- 22:52Um, so yeah.
- 22:54And so, you know, I look at it like what's happening.
- 22:58Blood vessels are very much at risk with the kidney decline.
- 23:04Many molecules, TMAO and ADMA and homocysteine are things we can measure, then you know, uh-oh, something's going on.
- 23:12More people die of heart-related kidney disease than kidney-associated changes.
- 23:20In other words, the statistics
- 23:22from stage three to stage four is dramatic.
- 23:26And so, you know, so I like to use the heart bioregulator and the blood vessel bioregulator.
- 23:32You mentioned phosphorus, which in the cardio conversation is an enormous thing.
- 23:38I mean, I personally have had an elevated phosphorus, partly because I had damage to my distal colon from my surgery.
- 23:48Okay.
- 23:49And so, you know, there's a gut kidney conversation that's enormous.
- 23:56But the phosphorus thing is huge and diet can improve that.
- 24:02Alkalinizing the diet in many ways does, but it can help with phosphorus.
- 24:07There's so many strategies to help with that.
- 24:09But Bono Thirk, which is the parathyroid bioregulator, they're funny Russian names.
- 24:16actually helps with this calcium-phosphorus balancing.
- 24:20And so it's the parathyroid bioregulator.
- 24:25Okay, got it.
- 24:26And so that, to me, that has a really important place.
- 24:30Those who have glucotoxicity with kidney issues, there's a pancreas bioregulator.
- 24:38And these aren't things you take constantly.
- 24:41You know, there's, it's personalized.
- 24:44Some people, I might give them a bioregulator for three months and then start doing it every few months for 10 days a month.
- 24:51With some people, it's just 10 days every three months.
- 24:55It's personalized every time.
- 24:58So do you use these bioregulators sequentially or use them congruently or how do you typically orchestrate that?
- 25:08They call them bundling them.
- 25:10So you bundle them together and it makes sense.
- 25:13mean, if you think about it, kidney, the Russians have done a lot of research with this kidney, isn't just kidney tissue.
- 25:20There's actually a hundred different cell types in the kidney.
- 25:24And so there's cartilage.
- 25:26So there's the cartilage bioregulator.
- 25:29There's blood vessels, there's nerves.
- 25:31And so we address all of that so that the organ itself can...
- 25:35and reclaim its ability to hold its homeostasis.
- 25:41Right.
- 25:42And where do you get the, where do you get your peptides from?
- 25:45Do they come out of Russia or out of the Europe someplace or where are you able to get?
- 25:49My preferred source is through a company called Profound Health.
- 25:54out of England.
- 25:56The pharmacist from that particular company wrote a book with Professor Hovenson, was the one who discovered all of this.
- 26:06And so I trust that there's purity.
- 26:10And that's something is, I mean, you can find cheap bioregulators all over the place online.
- 26:15But do you know what they've done to cleanse heavy metals, which is an issue, or prion diseases?
- 26:24Because a lot of these are animal-based.
- 26:26And so that all matters, whether you're adequately purifying them.
- 26:31And there are a few companies out of Russia as well.
- 26:34Right.
- 26:34So I pulled up some things from your book.
- 26:38You have a Pylotax kidney specific peptide, Vent-Fort microcirculation peptide, an Endolutin circadian antioxidant master peptide, Glandacort, Superfort, and then BPC and
- 26:51occasionally KPV is kind of what came up.
- 26:54It sounds like you're kind of stacking these in.
- 26:57I'm just curious, was there a trial and error for you to figure out how to
- 27:00fit these together or how did that work out?
- 27:03Well, you know, there's a fellow who was an attorney who saw all of his family aging and dying in their 50s, went off and got a PhD in nutrition and somehow managed to navigate
- 27:18himself to Russia.
- 27:19And he's doing a study to replicate their longevity.
- 27:26aspect of using these bioregulators because there's the longevity aspect and there's treating pathology.
- 27:31Personally, I see it.
- 27:33If you treat pathology, longevity is one of the benefits.
- 27:37But anyway...
- 27:38I actually think that the antidote to all diseases is staying youthful.
- 27:44Yeah, exactly.
- 27:45And so the longevity aspect of these really offers reversal of damages that cause pathology and vigor and vitality that gives you the energy to do the things that you would
- 27:59have done in your 20s.
- 28:00So anyway, this is Dr.
- 28:03Bill Lawrence, who I hopped on his study.
- 28:07He was doing it at that point with just health professionals.
- 28:11And so I learned
- 28:13how he sequenced.
- 28:14takes a medical history and then sequences them.
- 28:17And so by doing that, I got a sense of it and then started offering similar consults for patients who were reaching out to me.
- 28:26And so for my own self, now I kind of do it intuitively because I'm done with the study.
- 28:31They told me, oh, you know, your longevity markers are showing you in your 30s.
- 28:36Yay.
- 28:38When you've gotten a death sentence in your 60s, it's nice to know.
- 28:41OK, I have.
- 28:42I have stability here.
- 28:44And so basically, you know, I take a very thorough history and I'm doing that with myself as well.
- 28:52What's going on?
- 28:53You know, and all of it has, has a place, you know, there's a stomach bioregulator, there's I, there's thymus and pineal, which to me are two exquisite contributions of
- 29:06peptides to medicine because
- 29:09We don't, you know, what do we talk about the pineal?
- 29:12And yet it's a huge piece of staying well and healthy and youthful as is the thymus and they're both influenced by kidney.
- 29:21gland because you you think about the pineal gland, it uh calcifies as we age.
- 29:26It's a source of melatonin and circadian rhythm control.
- 29:33The melatonin actually keeps stem cells alive in the walls of the third ventricle of the brain that are responsible for sending out exosomes to keep us young.
- 29:42And so all those are interrelated.
- 29:45It's also the, uh you know, in uh spiritual traditions, the pineal gland is the third eye, right?
- 29:51It has a spiritual construct associated with it as well, right?
- 29:55So I'm just curious, tell us a little bit about the pineal gland from your perspective.
- 30:00We know that kidney decline is associated with a melatonin decline.
- 30:09As in the melatonin decline is causal to kidney function loss or kidney function loss accelerates melatonin or they're intertwined or how does that work?
- 30:17kind of one of those vicious cycles, but uh you know, the final packaging of melatonin happens in the kidney.
- 30:24there's actually, I need to research this a little bit further, but there's this specific renal melatonin.
- 30:31And I don't want to address it too much further than that's really interesting to me because there's some unique stuff with kidney.
- 30:39I I call it a quirk because people with CKD end up having
- 30:47circadian upside down.
- 30:49I found this out personally.
- 30:51My blood pressure was fine in the morning.
- 30:54I was like, great, 120 over 70, I'm good.
- 30:57One evening I didn't feel good.
- 30:59Around 11 o'clock I took my blood pressure, 160 over 90.
- 31:04Like, that's weird.
- 31:06Started taking it more regularly and found out there's this thing called non-dipper blood pressure.
- 31:12That's typical in CKD.
- 31:15Do we tell people to take their blood pressure at 11 at night?
- 31:18We need to.
- 31:19Worth it.
- 31:19Because now I'm addressing that more aggressively, more intensively anyway.
- 31:26And so there's also other stuff.
- 31:28Sleep gets very messed up.
- 31:33You're thirsty not during the day, thirsty at night.
- 31:37How many times do you have to get up to pee at night?
- 31:40I'm not doing it during the day.
- 31:42crazy.
- 31:43And so you add some pineal support and some of that balances back out.
- 31:48And I still encourage people to supplement melatonin when they have CKD for the immune system, for the brain function.
- 31:56You know, it's not a sleeping pill as it's been marketed, but it does help with sleep.
- 32:01you know, so there's that aspect to it.
- 32:05And in combination with thymus, I mean, the Russians have done
- 32:09lots of studies looking at the combination of these two bundled.
- 32:13you know, cancer rates were way less and, you know, sense of well-being and, you know, cardio status way more controlled.
- 32:22And so, you know, it doesn't make sense to ignore it.
- 32:26You know, from a wellness perspective, it's not we're treating kidney disease like pill for ill.
- 32:33And yet, to support all of the tissues affected by the downstream decline in filtration is an important thing.
- 32:40And we really fail in stage two to address what's happening with those tubules.
- 32:46And tubules to me are spiritual because discernment.
- 32:50What do I do in my life?
- 32:52We discern what's okay and what isn't.
- 32:54And that's exactly what the tubules do.
- 32:56And as that declines, a lot of chaos can happen.
- 33:00emotionally as well as physiologically.
- 33:04I've just started ordering beta-2 microglobulin for people to recognize tubular damage when the GFR and or cystatin C, which is another way to monitor kidney, are perfectly
- 33:20normal.
- 33:23And yet, you know, wait a minute, I don't think this person has normal kidney functioning, yet the numbers aren't supporting my opinion.
- 33:31Beta two microglobulin, and I'm seeing some of them showing up abnormal.
- 33:35It's like, okay, let's now look at how we can support the tubules.
- 33:40And that's a whole nother conversation and lecture that I've actually been preparing to do.
- 33:47interesting.
- 33:47So we haven't really talked about how to measure kidney function.
- 33:50We talked about GFR early on.
- 33:53We should probably mention creatinine and BUN, blood urea and nitrogen and creatinine.
- 33:58Creatinine is a muscle mass dependent measure of kidney function.
- 34:04Creatinine is basically released from muscles.
- 34:06And it turns out the level is a function not only of muscle mass, but muscle utility.
- 34:10And also if you take creatine, you can bump up your creatinine without actually impacting your GFR.
- 34:17And then there's cystatin C, which is a muscle mass independent measure of kidney function, which we measure in every one.
- 34:24And then there are 24 hour urine collections where you can look at protein and you can look at a regular blood sample or urine sample.
- 34:32You can look at microalbumin creatinine ratios, which is a good measure of.
- 34:36integrity of blood vessel function and also kidney function, but then you can measure macroscopic amounts of protein in the urine and collect it for 24 hours and see how much
- 34:46is being lost.
- 34:46And that translates into the level of kidney disease and also the need for at least amino acids to help build protein back for the individual.
- 34:55But the beta two macroglobulin is interesting.
- 34:59That's one we're not measuring currently.
- 35:02It's new to me and here's the caveat.
- 35:07Again, I've just recently started diving into this.
- 35:10There is tubular protein urea that is different than glomerular protein urea.
- 35:17Not everybody with kidney disease has protein in their urine.
- 35:21So, gee, you're fine.
- 35:23in the tubules, it is low molecular weight proteins, smaller things that get through.
- 35:31It's registered on the urinalysis.
- 35:34So there are three molecules that I found, beta-2 microglobulin, which is more readily available.
- 35:41There's alpha-1 microglobulin, another low molecular weight protein, and retinol binding protein.
- 35:48Those are three things that you can use to ascertain that this tubular discernment is not working.
- 35:58Okay, so you think if you're finding those that you're actually finding tubular proteinuria if you find those?
- 36:05Okay.
- 36:06And so, you know, again, this is something that is more likely to be happening in stage two, which, like Dr.
- 36:15Robin says, is not normal.
- 36:17You know, and what I was told is, well, we don't really have a drug for stage two, so we'll just, you know, we'll wait.
- 36:23And, you know, my Jersey girl, when I was really sick, was like, what are you waiting for?
- 36:29You know, I mean, like what?
- 36:31What are you waiting for?
- 36:32Let's get on with this.
- 36:33There must be something to do and there is.
- 36:36And there really is.
- 36:38I I first learned that...
- 36:40you find different peptides address the tubular protein area as opposed to the glomerular?
- 36:46And we haven't talked about the structure of the nephron for people either, right?
- 36:50How the blood comes in through the glomerulus.
- 36:53And the glomerulus, think of it as a goblet with blood sort of flows through the goblet.
- 36:58tubes that go in there and through that the blood is filtered into the stem of the glass and those are the tubules and it's in the tubules at different ions are exchanged some
- 37:07things are reabsorbed things some things are concentrated and Excreted out into the bladder so you can have a problem at the at the glomerulus Which is the goblet of the
- 37:17glass so to speak and also you could have a problem in the stem of the of the glass where and that's what we're differentiating between are you losing protein?
- 37:26up top in the glomerulus or are you losing it along the stem of the glass, so to speak?
- 37:31exactly.
- 37:32And one of the things that I've learned is almost all kinds of kidney disease, and there's many approaches to get there, many causes, start in the tubules.
- 37:43Even diabetic nephropathy doesn't start in the glomerulus.
- 37:48Although we consider it a glomerular disease, it actually is starting with tubular dysfunction.
- 37:53And so that's become a bit of an obsession for me.
- 37:57looking at how you do that.
- 37:59And to answer, I think using the bioregulators offers repair at all of these levels.
- 38:05And no, I haven't taken the effort or had access to doing, I mean, it would be an interesting study to see if tubular dysfunction alone is repaired by using this array of
- 38:20bioregulators and peptides.
- 38:22would be super interesting.
- 38:23um Well, that's a really nice differentiation.
- 38:29I appreciate you sharing the beta 2 microglobulin, alpha 1 microglobulin.
- 38:34I think it was retinal binding protein.
- 38:36Yeah, so we'll check that out for sure and see.
- 38:41um
- 38:43one of the things that you think about is because of this abnormality in the tubules, there becomes a status of oxidative stress in many of our conversations, which then leads
- 38:56to inflammation.
- 38:58And that leads to fibrosis, meaning these delicate little structures of kidney become scarred, at which point they're really way more dysfunctional.
- 39:10The party line is you cannot reverse that.
- 39:12don't agree.
- 39:13think that you can.
- 39:15Whether it's easy, that's another conversation.
- 39:18you know, understanding that there's a process and that if you step in and do some things, you know, an anti-inflammatory diet, supplements, know, resveratrol and CoQ10, I mean, you
- 39:31there's a whole long list of stuff that I've been told I take too many things and...
- 39:36I still take them and have found myself better and better.
- 39:40You know, I mean, it really is deciding, do I believe I can get better?
- 39:46Yeah, think, well, I think, you know, we, we stress the fact that it comes down to the questions that you're asking, right?
- 39:52If you're asking, how do I manage my kidneys until I need dialysis?
- 39:56And those are the answers you'll get.
- 39:57But if you're asking the question, how do I actually have normal kidney function so I can live my life free of kidney dysfunction?
- 40:04Well, those are the answers that you'll find.
- 40:06Right.
- 40:06So really.
- 40:09Yeah.
- 40:09Just have to be sure what questions you're actually asking, because that's, that's those are the answers you will get.
- 40:14So.
- 40:14Yeah, so that's that's super, super cool.
- 40:17Yeah, very, very interesting.
- 40:18And so apart from the peptides, have you used other things, any things related to exosomes, stem cells, placental or core blood tissue or any of these kinds of things for
- 40:29rejuvenation in the kidneys or not so much you haven't needed them?
- 40:32I recommend it to other people where I live It's not it's not a reality to say to say the least and so and and Personally, I realized I am better when I don't Which is which is
- 40:48which is why you know, I have a book that I should be promoting at conferences I'm doing it this way with with podcasts.
- 40:54I
- 40:55I saw myself and my mother-in-law was still alive.
- 40:58We were going back and forth to see her.
- 41:01Every time I didn't feel good and it really is that commitment.
- 41:05I am getting rid of what's toxic to me.
- 41:07If it's banging on me and I have a choice, God willing, I will make the choice to support myself and my health, including getting rid of some people who were toxic to me.
- 41:19Every time I engaged, I would get alarmed.
- 41:22My blood pressure would go uh-uh.
- 41:25You know, and so, you know, it really is quite an adventure.
- 41:29And one thing to know is there is what I call the kidney-demic.
- 41:33The statistics are alarming and they only start at stage three.
- 41:37So if you include stage two, which I'm saying is, okay, you don't have to call it disease, but you know, we deal with pre-angina, we deal with pre-diabetes.
- 41:48I want to deal with early kidney because we can reverse it.
- 41:53That's right.
- 41:53I think it's a great point.
- 41:54So what we're talking about here is above 60, GFR above 60, between 60 and 90 is a time to actually start diagnosing what's going on, using some of the more refined markers we just
- 42:07discussed here.
- 42:08And then also, you know, looking at all the lifestyle factors that could be impacting it.
- 42:13And then also,
- 42:14leaning into some of these peptides.
- 42:16That's kind what I'm hearing.
- 42:18And one of the things that we haven't addressed that I have this story, I've been ridiculed.
- 42:23I was ridiculed about thinking phosphorus mattered and it does.
- 42:26I have a big chapter on it in the book.
- 42:28um It's toxins.
- 42:31yeah, massive.
- 42:32Yeah.
- 42:32I mean, I've been ridiculed.
- 42:33was part of the Facebook physician community.
- 42:36I talk about toxins and I would get ridiculed.
- 42:40Where'd you go?
- 42:41To Google University?
- 42:42And I'm like, hello, remember toxicology?
- 42:45Did you like skip out on those lectures?
- 42:47And with kidney, it's an enormous conversation.
- 42:50And so.
- 42:51detox organ, right?
- 42:52The liver, the kidney and the skin.
- 42:54Those are basically your three primary.
- 42:58And I guess the colon or the intestine, right?
- 43:00So those, that's it for detox pretty much.
- 43:05Well, and the mind.
- 43:07Yeah.
- 43:07No, that's well, I love that.
- 43:09Yeah.
- 43:10So completely the mind.
- 43:12Yeah, I get that.
- 43:13Yeah.
- 43:14you know, I mean glyphosate in our food.
- 43:17I mean, my next blog post I'm working on is about this unappealing stuff called a peel that is being dumped on our food.
- 43:25And you can't even hardly tell that it's there because the labeling obligation isn't being followed.
- 43:31And so, you know, all of these.
- 43:34get good organic food wherever you are on Molokai?
- 43:36I would suspect there's agriculture going on over there.
- 43:40know there's cattle and stuff.
- 43:41I don't know about if they're growing.
- 43:44there's a big move on Molokai.
- 43:46have a food hub and you order online and then you go get it.
- 43:51so local growers who have committed to not using toxins, we fly in food from Maui from Whole Foods, which I'm now a bit alarmed because they're supporting a peel.
- 44:02It's called Organapeel.
- 44:04Okay, it's a little bit less toxic oils that they're using for the organic versus the non-organic.
- 44:12It's wax.
- 44:13It's basically di and triglycerides that are dumped on your food.
- 44:17you know, read my blog post, it'll probably come out in the next week.
- 44:21It's nasty for the gut.
- 44:23It's nasty for the blood vessels.
- 44:26You know, there's heavy metals in it.
- 44:27It's like, what is this craziness that we've allowed to happen?
- 44:31And so it really takes this fierceness, you know, this like, I am not going to allow this.
- 44:37I mean, I'm a bit of a wimp, so I've had to be like, I'm not going to let this happen to myself.
- 44:44Water needs to be pure.
- 44:46You need an air purifier if you're in a moldy, toxic situation.
- 44:52Being in nature with your bare feet on the ground, mean, there's so much that we can do.
- 44:58And you don't have to be perfect.
- 45:00That's a piece of it.
- 45:01have to be perfect.
- 45:02You don't have to be perfect.
- 45:03And I think it's impossible to be, it's actually impossible not to be exposed to toxins.
- 45:08It's literally impossible.
- 45:10Right.
- 45:10And so it's probably always been the case.
- 45:13Yeah.
- 45:14favorite things since I've gotten into all of this is carnosine, not carnitine, which I think actually shouldn't be used with CKD because of the TMAO that harms blood vessels.
- 45:27You can get a blood test to know that.
- 45:30But um carnosine.
- 45:32is an amazing detox.
- 45:34And every time I look up, does it work for this?
- 45:37Does it work for that?
- 45:38Does it help with mold?
- 45:39Yeah.
- 45:39Does it help with heavy metals?
- 45:40Yeah.
- 45:41Does it help with, I had an ozone specialist staying at my house, yelling at me for using iron cookware.
- 45:49I said, take some carnivore and you'll be okay.
- 45:52It actually, you know, somewhat chelates or helps you eliminate these things.
- 45:57You know, so there's ways to be imperfect.
- 46:00that's right.
- 46:01corticine is amazing molecule.
- 46:03also, decreases senescent cells and muscles, and it also, um, decreases glycation where sugar, either exogenous sugars, the ones you eat or endogenous sugars, the one that your
- 46:15body manufactures attached themselves to protein.
- 46:19and that's a sign of aging also.
- 46:21Um, so, uh,
- 46:23with, you know, we recommend people are plant-based in their protein.
- 46:28Well, carnasine comes from meat.
- 46:31So right away, that's a knee-jerk for me.
- 46:35And if I'm going to tell somebody back off on the animal food you're eating, add carnasine.
- 46:41The idea of backing off on animal food is actually kidney disease leads to an acidic body.
- 46:49metabolic acidosis is so common.
- 46:52you look on your lab and CO2 is actually bicarb and the higher it is, the better.
- 47:01I'll see people who are like 21, 22.
- 47:03Okay, it looks like the normal range, but it isn't, not with kidney.
- 47:0825 to 30, closer to 30, safer.
- 47:11It lowers potassium that's elevated.
- 47:14It helps with phosphorus, uric acid, parathyroid hormone, all things that get
- 47:19messed up with kidney decline and have serious consequences of suffering.
- 47:26So we step in.
- 47:27a minute about TMAO.
- 47:29Talk to us about TMAO.
- 47:31I know a few things about TMAO, but I'm curious to get your take on it.
- 47:36It really is a consequence of uremic dysbiosis.
- 47:41So what does that mean?
- 47:42know, dysbiosis we all know these days, know, the intestines have an enormous population of bugs that either hurt us or help us.
- 47:55And so having a healthy microbiome means that vitamins you need and...
- 48:04hormones and molecules that are necessary are being produced.
- 48:07And the ones that make you sick need to be dealt with.
- 48:12And there's lots of ways to do that.
- 48:13But when kidney disease comes along, there's a uremic dysbiosis.
- 48:18So there's unique, weird things like different toxins that are consequence of
- 48:27the metabolism of some amino acids.
- 48:30So again, here we go.
- 48:32Plant-based protein theoretically helps with that, but a lot of people have gut damage, me included.
- 48:39mean, the surgery messed up the way my bowel was shaped.
- 48:44So all of a sudden on a lab test, see a high TMAO and what, so what?
- 48:52Atherosclerosis, heart attacks and strokes.
- 48:55not trivial and the incidence of these cardiovascular outcomes is somewhere between 30 to 100 times riskier when one has chronic kidney decline.
- 49:07That's a big deal.
- 49:10it's tied together to nitric oxide production, the glycocalyx being destroyed that keeps arteries healthy, et cetera.
- 49:18Yeah, TMAO can also be lowered with, I remember reading previously, could be lowered with high quality extra virgin olive oil and also balsamic vinegar can lower TMAO.
- 49:29So if you're listening to this and if you can...
- 49:32dressing.
- 49:33Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- 49:34And so you can take that into account as well.
- 49:37Well, really fascinating.
- 49:39I congratulate you on having a GFR in the high 60s, right from I don't know if the if the listeners really appreciate that.
- 49:46to go from 30 to 68 is it's it's almost unheard of, quite honestly, particularly with one kidney.
- 49:54Right.
- 49:54You only have one kidney.
- 49:56Right.
- 49:57And so that's really remarkable.
- 49:59I think it's fabulous.
- 50:00Yeah.
- 50:00Really great stuff.
- 50:02So if people want to learn more, where do they go to learn more about you?
- 50:06I have a website now, I'm a bit of a newbie, I'm still learning how to drive it.
- 50:10It's called, all one word, Rhinology is KidneySuccess.com.
- 50:16There's a way to reach out to me.
- 50:18Okay, Rhinology is kidney success.
- 50:21um
- 50:23right in your face, which was how come we started this.
- 50:28And this is gorgeous.
- 50:30The artwork is from a Ukrainian artist and I love this artwork.
- 50:36I didn't, I'd like to have one like you have behind you.
- 50:39I would love that.
- 50:41He just sent it to me as a graphic online.
- 50:43And so I have started doing blog posts.
- 50:47The book is not cheap.
- 50:49It's close to 800 page.
- 50:51Reference book really and so I still look stuff up in it and I'm not doing it as an ebook I just decided, you know, I'm old-fashioned textbook, but I'm writing blogs as I'm
- 51:04thinking of things and so they're basically as free content and there's Every time I do one of these talks those are on there slowly learning how to add some you know resources
- 51:17the resource for how to find the bioregulators is there and
- 51:21I'm happy to dialogue with people.
- 51:23not doing a load of patient care.
- 51:27I'm actually looking for other doctors who want to be Rhinology associates so that we can guide people.
- 51:33There's so many people who need this help.
- 51:37And what I encourage people to do is start looking at yourself.
- 51:43What am I eating that's stupid, basically.
- 51:46I grew up in New York and New Jersey.
- 51:47That's like, what are you doing?
- 51:49That's stupid.
- 51:50You know, it's self-serving to diagnose yourself.
- 51:56You know, I'm eating too much chocolate.
- 51:58You got to get rid of sugar, soda, you know, any kind of packaged foods.
- 52:04Uh-uh.
- 52:05You know, simple, simple, simple.
- 52:08you know, everybody's different, whether you get kidney disease because of an autoimmune problem, whether it's from cancer, diabetes.
- 52:17high blood pressure, all these things lead to some vicious cycles.
- 52:21know, the high blood pressure gets worse, the kidneys worse.
- 52:24It keeps going round and round until you make a decision to change it.
- 52:30And, you know, it's really about choosing and choosing lovingly.
- 52:34There's a self-love involved in this.
- 52:36You have to love yourself like you would your little baby.
- 52:39You know, what would I do if my baby was sick?
- 52:42And so we, we
- 52:44We tend to be sloppy in our culture.
- 52:47What's that going to hurt you?
- 52:49And I got really strict about it.
- 52:52I go to people's houses.
- 52:55I bring my own food.
- 52:56I hardly go out to eat anymore.
- 52:58don't know what inflammatory oils I put in.
- 53:02There's always too much salt.
- 53:04And I'll bring food and order a salad.
- 53:07And I really believe organic food is absolutely essential.
- 53:12I'm putting it in Google, Renology is kidney success.com.
- 53:17I love showing off my book cover.
- 53:19Okay, there it is.
- 53:20Maybe I misspelled something and it just popped up.
- 53:22Okay, great.
- 53:23So it's R-E-N-O-L-O-G-Y is kidney success.
- 53:29All one word, Renology is kidney success.
- 53:31Okay, great.
- 53:32That's Rose Garden Medicine.
- 53:34So beautiful.
- 53:35All right.
- 53:35I just want the audience to be able to access your book because you're, you you're not on every platform.
- 53:41So this way they can get to you.
- 53:42Well, thanks, Robin.
- 53:43I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.
- 53:45I know you had to get up a little bit early in the morning to do it, but thank you for that.
- 53:50Yeah.
- 53:50Glad the dogs.
- 53:52Yeah.
- 53:52A beautiful Friday.
- 53:54Beautiful.
- 53:55All right.
- 53:56Well, enjoy your weekend there.
- 53:57Thank you so much.