Kyal Van Der Leest
Appearances
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
You do not want to have adiposity, excess adiposity. People can do all these things to try and increase their lifespan with NMN and NR and NADs, but just reduce your body fat percentage and that'll go a lot further.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, in naturopathy, healing is a consequence of improving health. It's not like directly going after a disease isn't kind of how we do it. We try and restore all of the systems of the body, all the ones that need it the most. And usually the symptoms tend to resolve or the healing tends to happen.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
But you're doing it from the perspective of we're going to improve this person, not treat this illness. so that's why i love naturopathy that's why i'll never ever give up on the tendencies of that and you apply it as best as i can with these products like there's a term that they throw around in naturopathy called school called green allopathy where you basically just become
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
an alternative to a pharmaceutical by just throwing supplements at people and making sure they take them every day as symptom management. And that's never what I want to do with Level Up. Like every one of the products that I have created with the brand are interventional and are things created to restore homeostasis.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And then once you're there, it's up to you whether you think you need to take it or
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
not it's not like take it forever and you know jump on our subscription model right that's not how i run the business that's not how naturopathic principles work so giro pair is a perfect example of that any of the other products like tudka for example that's one that we sell that i know you you probably used yourself it's a bile acid it's fantastic if you've got liver issues but if you keep pushing it then you'll end up pushing too much bile and creating problems
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
NAC can be the same thing. Like every single ingredient has a happy medium, a golden point for how much to use and how long to use it for. And yeah, that's just my philosophy and what I recommend people do.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, 100%. And as you mentioned, mold in your environment, I had infinite supply. I'm the owner of the brand. I had infinite supply of all the gut healing stuff and naturopath. I had my access to as much of everything that I wanted. None of it made a difference when I had high levels of mycotoxin in my circulation, my gut was still distending. I still had leaky gut. I still had brain fog.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
My testosterone crashed, histamine issues, liver enzymes elevated, homocysteine, all of the things that no matter how perfect my diet was, no matter how much I forced exercise because it was going to help It didn't matter until I got out of that environment. And for people, it might be mold.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
For other people, it might be you're living too close to some industrial waste plant or something like that. Or you might be in a sick relationship, one that's constantly keeping your cortisol elevated, too close to cell phone towers and huge EMF environments. There's plenty of that in the world at the moment. So those are all of the things that kind of supersede the gut health.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Like we say, gut health is, I think, naturopathically, interventionally, the first part.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
that you can give something to help improve but the free stuff is just all the other things like your your sleep cycles your stress management your relationships your purpose all those other things sort of supersede that too because if you're as you knew know from 2021 your gut health was ruined because of the stress that you're under with scrutiny through covid so
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, like a good adrenal support is not something we offer, but supplementally, I think that can indirectly help your gut health and your thyroid health and all of the other systems of the body too.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Sure. So neuro, I developed for two reasons. One, because living in mold gave me horrible brain fog and pretty much all the ingredients, the naturopathic ones at least, that I used while there were my life jackets to make sure my brain actually worked when I had to work and when I had to do podcasts while I still had ridiculously high levels of mycotoxin in my body.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Kind of just like caffeinate yourself and push through, take a little methylene blue and you can make it work.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
but um also the other reason is my my oppa being dutch my granddad he died of dementia so it's pretty near and dear to my heart um that condition seeing how horrible it was and how he just wasted away and lost himself my father started to develop memory issues and repeating himself. And I'm like, oh, I need to do something about this as quickly as possible. I'm going to support his brain health.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
I'm not going to target dementia. But when you look at all of the things that go into it, they call dementia type 3 diabetes. So you're going to look at metabolic syndrome. You're going to support mitochondria and glucose disposal, healthy insulin levels. So cleaning up his diet and using things like berberine or dihydroberberine.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
supporting using anti-inflammatories that can actually get in your brain like PEA is an amazing anti-inflammatory that has an affinity for fatty tissues i.e. your heart so it helps people with heart inflammation which may
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
may not be pretty prevalent from things that have come out in the past and neuroinflammation which is a big problem at the moment because when gut health is compromised like it is in so many people you don't just have a gut barrier you have a blood brain barrier too which is equally susceptible to zonulin which is one of the primary drivers of hyperpermeability
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Well, thanks for having me. And thank you for the compliments of I definitely have developed them to try and reduce the barrier to entry for peptides for people because for bringing the public consciousness to peptides. We'll take it and we'll run with it. And yeah, hopefully the products can help people, your audience. They'll hopefully all like them and yeah, keen to discuss them all.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
that can cause permeability of the brain. And then all of the toxins that are getting through your permeable gut, like lipopolysaccharides, endotoxins, can then go into your brain and cause deep neuroinflammation. And that's what I dealt with.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And I know that's what Dave Asprey dealt with and what basically sparked his whole journey into biohacking and to bulletproof, bringing his brain back from, I think he claimed that on a brain scan, it showed severe brain damage and he had like an eight year old's brain from mold. Well, Probably not as bad as Dave, but I still had that happening. I had mold colonized in my sinuses.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
So in the sinus cavity, pretty much trickling directly into my brain, I had mold toxin going in there until I managed to clear it out with sinus flushes and grapefruit seed extracts and all the other things that you can do. Even a little bit of a knack in a sinus cleanse, which I recommend you do very cautiously because it burns, but...
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yes, exactly right. But yeah, neuro is my attempt to, A, bring my brain back, restore any potential brain damage, which probably occurred from being in three years of mold, and then to help my dad out. And again, using the naturopathics, Lion's Mane, BDNF booster, Gotocola, Ginkgo, Bacopa, all blood flow enhancers help get oxygen and nutrient delivery to the brain and waste removal.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Use a bit of dihydroberberine to stabilize the blood sugar. And what I love doing, my biggest passion is finding ingredients that work better than what the mainstream are aware of. Like NAC has gained a lot of popularity. For good reason, it's the precursor to glutathione. But there are other forms of NACs. There's also forms that are sort of downstream of NAC converting through to glutathione.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
You can use NACet, which is an ethyl ester form of NAC that has substantially better bioavailability. And it's also capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, so increasing glutathione levels in the brain. It's often called neuro NAC.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
The other one you can use is GGC, which is on the three steps of conversion through to glutathione, the middle step, NAC being the first, GGC is the second, and then it just converts directly through to glutathione. I like the precursors more than I do glutathione unless it's like a really good quality liposomal one. at increasing glutathione levels than taking it.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
So yeah, including Nasset in the neuroformula was pretty important and terastilbene, two really good antioxidants, anti-inflammatories for your brain to help with that neuroinflammatory cascade that I believe is probably one of the few causative reasons why neurodegeneration occurs. And then sort of rectifying it with the peptides.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Again, we come back to combine the naturopathics with the powerful modern scientific cutting edge peptides like dihexa, like P21 and C-max. All of these peptides have been shown in animal studies, granted, hopefully the human studies come, to increase BDNF, increase NGF, nerve growth factor. These peptides...
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
work on so many different growth factor cascades that all ultimately result in improved brain function. And that's why I love this product. But one thing that I need to caveat is when you boost BDNF, some people, especially when they like lion's mane, people might say this, for example, they get a little bit brain foggy from it.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Because when you boost BDNF, it actually is quite a metabolically taxing process to grow new neurons or to remyelinate or to undergo neuroplasticity. So you do end up with a little bit of inflammation from that. So by using the things like the nasa, the terastil beans, the ginkgos and bacopa, you're sort of quenching that inflammation that can occur when you really push BDNF.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
My personal anecdotal experience having used it is every time I'm on it, it's like increased mental focus, increased verbal fluency, and also skill acquisition. That's a big thing that BDNF is beneficial for. When you're young, your BDNF levels are much higher than when you're older. I think before you're seven, it's ridiculously high. That's why kids just pick up everything straight away.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And learning a new language is so much easier when you're younger than seven than it is when you're older. But since taking it, I've managed to and this is like a chicken or an egg thing. Did I start to do these things because I knew when I took dihexa and P21 that I needed to probably get the benefits by learning a skill, but I have managed to pick up piano.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Not great, but I'm starting to learn that and it's finding it pretty easy. I've managed to learn how to serve a tennis ball, and I'm getting significantly better at basketball. Just obviously, if you practice things, you get better. But I'm finding comparative to when I did all those things before, it's much easier for me now because of that BDNF boost.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And from my understanding, you do need to actively work on skill acquisition when you're boosting it too. So that's what I've been doing and liking.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
I don't know about you, but my kind of order of operations for healing people is work on adrenals. Yep. Then gut, then liver and detoxification and elimination.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
then hormones and then you can sort of do all the extras wherever else like if it's kidneys are still not functioning they can go after them if it's neuro brain fog all that sort of if that's not already resolved from working on those prior ones then you can bring in things like neuro and then the additional things oh i want to like slow my rate of aging i want to use nmn i want to boost mitochondrial function too that kind of plays in wherever you kind of wanted to as an add-on on the side
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, they're a fantastic circuit breaker or a spiral reverser. If you're stuck in a downward spiral, sometimes you just need to get pulled out. And if a GLP-1 or a BPC or whatever it is pulls you out, even if it's a pharmaceutical, I'm not opposed to them if they're going to long-term get you to your health goal.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Like an SSRI, God, I definitely cannot say I'm a fan of them long-term, but short-term, they might be the exact thing you need to start doing the interventional, the lifestyle, the mental things to get yourself off of them in the future and get yourself in a better state of health.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Absolutely. A big reason I like the oral peptides is you can dose up and you're not going to make the mistakes that you can with reconstitution. And you don't have to worry as much about... We still have incredibly high purity. We always test on our stuff. But if you're to inject a peptide that's contaminated with LPS or heavy metals...
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
100% of what you inject ends up in circulation, and then your body's got to deal with that. That's why it's important to really source your injectable peptides, especially from compounding chemists. Knock on wood that Kennedy makes them all available again if he can do that.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Or if you do an oral one, then it's not good to have LPS ingested nor heavy metals, but at least the barrier of your gut is going to selectively... not let 100% of it into circulation. I believe heavy metals in a normal gut, only 0.1% of things like aluminum and mercury actually end up absorbed, which over time can definitely accumulate and become a problem.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
But if you're taking a capsule, for example, you're not going to end up with 100 micrograms of of aluminium or mercury in your body. If you did it orally versus injectable, you will.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And there's so many people who detox heavy metals and yet will take peptides that are cheap and nasty and end up putting them back in potentially if they're getting them from really unreputable sources of which unfortunately, because of what you mentioned with the FDA, It's been plenty of them spawn up in the last sort of two years or so.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
I would have thought Nat Nidham might have introduced you because she's a great personal friend and she's a huge advocate for peptides and she knows so much more about bioregulators than I do. I kind of stick to the peptides and she's the bioregulator queen of the podcasting space. So yeah, I'm glad that they're coming to the public knowledge.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And I think with people like Joe Rogan and the UFC and Gary Brecker and everyone's sort of talking about them now, it's fantastic. And even Eterna Health has started getting a lot of feedback what am I going to say, mainstream recognition for using them with celebrities, the Kardashians, like them or hate them, they're all using them.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And, you know, the LP1s are the gateway to them using all the other ones. So, you know, great. This is so much better to be using these compounds than pharmaceuticals or surgeries or, you know, medications that come with a plethora of side effects that lead to further medication necessity. And that's the Western model that I really hope and I'm optimistic that's starting to come crumbling down.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And that's kind of... Why I started Level Up is if something is going to come crumbling down, it needs to be replaced by something better. And Level Up, I'm hoping, will be one of the businesses, one of the companies that provides that better option or at least inspires another company or inspires the FDA or drug companies to go in that direction.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And I think we're already seeing that with peptides starting to be patented and used by pharmaceuticals. They know that these things are good. and are trying to make them proprietary property to keep their businesses alive.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
But when things are naturally occurring like BPC, like the thymic peptides, most of the peptides, there's some synthetic ones, GLP ones are patentable because they aren't naturally occurring. They're modified from nature. The ones that are found naturally can't be patented.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And that's why the studies are really lacking because no one's going to spend two to three million dollars studying something that every single other company can be like, thank you. We're just going to use your data and make money out of it and be three million dollars better in budget to do so.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
So but with people in, you know, in positions of power now, hopefully government spending will be a lot more targeted to things that can actually help public health.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yep. So as you mentioned, I studied naturopathy in Australia. It's... different to America. We don't get the little ND title or the doctor title. They kind of stripped that away from the Aussies, which is a bit of a shame. But yeah, that was of all the courses I studied, because prior to that, I was studying human nutrition.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
is 100 a lot of these ingredients too i really respect and love the bodybuilder community because they're kind of guinea pig things for themselves and like it goes wrong quite a lot in them but they're the ones who are willing to take um that are in the park you the risk for their reward and we can learn a lot from biohackers who push it too much like i'm guilty of that in my 20s i was like i'm gonna do everything it doesn't matter
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
i'm young i'm fit i can do it and then i end up with adrenal burnout it's sort of like oh okay now i've learned my lesson i can then be wiser and not do that later on but um like all these peptides even small molecules like psalms like five ten years ago was so popular everyone was pushing and promoting things like rad 140 and m k677 and some of them might still have benefit for some people but
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
The risk of these things and what we've seen, not in animal studies, but just in repeated blood work, people's testosterone levels after RAD40 plummeting as if they'd just taken exogenous testosterone. Yeah, short-term benefit, long-term absolutely tanked T levels, and it might take you six months to restore it to half of what it used to be prior to taking it. Was it worth the risk? No.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Should you have asked more questions? Definitely. But that's like... regulations and government restrictions on compounds, I tend to be like, oh, that's really annoying. But at the same time, when there's very clear risk profiles to things, like they clearly have reason for it, that's good. But when peptides naturally are growing things, like in Australia, they made BPC-157 prescription only.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And their justification was because of its increased popularity, we are regulating it. Yep. Not because of risk. Yep. Popularity was their reason for scheduling it. And that is a ridiculous reason when something that's naturally made in your stomach acid that is healing everyone unanimously pretty much says that it has helped them in some way, shape or form.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
When that ingredient is banned, yet paracetamol is still something you can buy. Sorry, acetaminophen is still something you can buy from our supermarkets. And Supplements that have horrible forms of zinc, sorry, iron that cause bleeding of the gut are prescribed by doctors still. Ferrous sulfate and ridiculously high doses.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And prior to that, I was actually a graphic designer until my mom ended up being diagnosed with cancer. And then I thought, oh, crap, I better actually do something about this and learn how to sort of empower her and myself with learning about diet and learning how we can actually treat cancer or help mitigate the effects with proper clean diet.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
There's just so many things that are allowed and prescribed and perpetuated by the medical system, yet peptides are the ones that come under scrutiny. It's a bit ridiculous. And then
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
schedules and things that have been pushed across the masses is a huge shift in consciousness happening i'm so happy that it's happening because i think that was our wake-up call the last few years and that's you know peptides are now coming out biohacking's become popular there's netflix documentaries with extremists that get all the traction but at least they might be a gateway to people
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
They might follow the extreme thing of, I want to live forever, but then find their happy medium point, sort of like what I did when I started. My extremity came from desperation. I tried everything biohacking on myself before using it on my mum to try and help her with her cancer.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And what worked for me and didn't ruin my health or take from it, I'd have her do, like the hyperbaric oxygen therapy, the red light therapy, all the mitochondrial enhancing and supportive supplements, all the B vitamins, using every type of B vitamin to see which form resonated better with my body, which form worked. Folic acid, no. B6, HCL, no. Those ones ruined me.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
But the correct bioidentical forms, I had to learn the hard way. I didn't have to, but I did learn the hard way about you know, naturopathic medicine, nutritional medicine does still have its risks and it does still have potential problems for people if they don't use it appropriately or use it too long. For example, like you can get vitamin A toxicity and all these other things.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, I definitely am very happy to see the future of medicine is looking a lot more naturopathic. So let's hope the momentum keeps going. And podcasts have been fantastic for that, too. So keep doing what you're doing with your show, Tina.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And so I went and studied nutrition for four to five years. I can't remember how long it was specifically. And that left me really short of useful information to actually help people. It basically was a food accounting course, which was quite annoying and very outdated talking about food pyramids, except they call it the healthy eating plate in Australia.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Oral or injectable, it also depends on the pharmacokinetics. Where do you want the peptide to go? If you have a disc injury in your wrist, for example, or a broken finger, injectable BPC every day of the week versus oral. The challenge with oral peptides is they do need to get into circulation, which... Really, it depends which peptide you're using. Some of them, the chain length is just too long.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Insulin is a perfect example. If they had an insulin pill, there would be no diabetics injecting themselves or in a pump. It's too large of an amino acid to be absorbed orally. So you have to inject it. Unlike ones like KPV, that's an antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory gut peptide. That's three amino acids long. That does not need to be injected.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
That can be taken orally, provided it's protected with something like a delayed release capsule. The things that'll break it down are proteolytic enzymes and acid. So the delayed release capsule will get it through the acid.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And things like bicarbonate or sulcoprosate sodium will prevent the acid as well, but also allow it to get through digestion and get distally through the gut where it needs to be to have that effect. A lot of people take our BPC for injuries and they notice it doesn't work immediately. And that's likely because you've got a lot of gut inflammation.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
It's working locally exactly where you've administered through capsule.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
let the gut inflammation subside or work on your gut health and then try it again and then maybe that 500 micrograms of that peptide that was all being used by your gut actually will get more more of it will get in circulation and then you might break through that plateau that you need to actually start healing that injury in your elbow but be it golfers or tennis elbow or in your foot if you've got a bit of arthritis down there going on or some some issue distally
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
You need to get over that barrier first of fix the gut health. Like as we said, start all health begins in the gut.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
I mean, again, we're not treating conditions here, but autoimmune. community, like if 80% of the gut is hanging around the barrier of your gastrointestinal tract, if you can do anything you can do to reduce gut inflammation, reduces these endotoxins, not mycotoxins, LPS and endotoxins from entering circulation, it calms down your immune system.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
The soldiers on the other side of your barrier can chill out finally. They don't have to be hyper vigilant, hyper responsive all the time to this low level of leaky gut or hyper permeability. once they have calmed down, then the whole immune system can calm down.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
So after graduating nutrition, I went and got my first job, which was a blessing because it was in a hyperbaric oxygen facility, which amazing place to begin your career as a health coach or a practitioner, but also humbled the hell out of me. Having only that human nutrition degree at the time.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
It can fight off things, other pathogens, other things like dormant viruses, all those other things that people might be dealing with that just kind of get put on the shelf because they're so busy dealing with that gut inflammation. the inflammatory cascade does need to be, that spiral needs to be broken somehow.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And if you have got inflammation, really bad hyperpermeability, that inflammatory cascade is not going to get broken. You can take all the immunosuppressants you want, like you can't do that indefinitely. And when they wear off, it's going to just be ready to go again, unless the gut health is fixed.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, so that's called Total Recomp, and that's my attempt to create a healthy weight loss, one that supports thyroid function, one that supports stable blood glucose levels, blood sugar, insulin levels. They're called glucose disposal agents, things like Gymnema, which is a naturopathic herb. If you've ever used it, put it on your tongue. It completely numbs your... taste to sweet things.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
It's quite an interesting experiment if you've ever got your hands on it to see and taste and all the chemicals and other things that are being hidden behind the sugar. But chromium is another critical cofactor we put in it. Alpha lipoic acid, vitamin B1, all focusing on metabolic health, blood sugar support. But then yet again, harnessing peptides using DNF10, which is a satiety peptide.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
It has GLP-1-like effects. It's not comparable. Nothing's comparable to injectable GLP-1s, but it has appetite suppressant effects. It actually acts on peptide YY as well, which is with reduced hunger. So it's not just GLP-1 that the DNF10 peptide works on. So there's two mechanisms for that one.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And then there's a new, not peptide, but people think it is, called SLUPP332 that we included in that formula. And that is basically being called exercise in a pill. It's like an amazing weight loss one that works on the estrogen receptor alpha pathways to help increase fat loss. And it actually has mitochondrial enhancing effect, too. It increases ATP synthesis.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
I did not really know how to help people who come in with cancer or Lyme disease or some demyelination condition or even like professional athletes would come in as well. And my nutrition degree wasn't really cutting it. So while working there, I just sponged as much information off the patients who were their biggest health advocates. They're the ones who had these conditions for ages.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
using that with things like fat burners like alkanatine like gbb the precursor to alkanatine albaba which is a mitochondrial uncoupler so that increases your metabolic your um your body temperature it's a thermogenic because instead of pushing through the hydrogen ions in the electron transport chain to atp it uncouples them and sort of creates inefficiency in it but that inefficiency is released as heat so that actually is part of what's called um
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
thermogenesis and part of fat burning dihydroberberine is another one we use for blood sugar support so this is like my attempt because having lived in mold i gained weight it was just an unfortunate inevitability no matter how much i lifted no matter how much i restricted carbs or tried different diets it just happened because it completely breaks it causes leptin resistance essentially your hormones go all out of whack
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Estrogen goes through the roof as a man, which is not good. Testosterone plummets. Cortisol is always high because you are constantly being poisoned by these highly toxic mold toxins called mycotoxins. And the thyroid goes to crap and iron levels can often plummet as well. So mold was one of these things that was a great teacher. It was horrible to live through, but
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
With every system that it ruins, it created an opportunity for me to learn about them all. And fat loss was one of the ones that vanity, but also overall health. You do not want to have adiposity. Excess adiposity is fine.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
People can do all these things to try and increase their lifespan with NMN and NR and NADs, but just reduce your body fat percentage and that'll go a lot further than taking those things, in my opinion.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
filling up with toxins and now that's a that's a i see this with hair stylists i see this with people who work in toxic fields like that's a tough one to get over so keeping that adiposity low you took the words out of my mouth often people go straight to sauna and then they start they do like a nice and flush or they go through this extreme weight loss and then they end up very sick end up with
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
thyroid issues, you can see really dark circles under their eyes and their liver health goes to shit. I was actually going to ask you, do you think adiposity is just toxin storage? But you said it before I asked because it was put to me in naturopathic school that adiposity is a result of toxin accumulation, which That's the world we live in nowadays.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
It's a very annoying reality that when we do all the things right, that we can live in a house with an off-gassing couch or we can live under a flight path or whatever. drink the water from the public pipes and end up with issues. It's a very frustrating thing. And again, I'm putting a lot of hope in Robert Kennedy to try and remedy some of this sort of stuff.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And I would ask them, hey, what are you doing? What are you taking? What's working for you? And the Lyme disease people were the ones who really interested me and the cancer people
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
But, you know, there's a lot of things and it's a very expensive thing to do. But whole house water filtration goes a long way, especially showering. The amount you will absorb through your skin is a bit ridiculous. eating organic food as much as possible.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
The dirty doesn't stay away from them because glyphosate, something my partner, she was a really good teacher for me because she's a lot more sensitive to things than I am. I'll push myself and it's only once I push things to 11 that I break versus her. She has about a threshold of a three out of 10 before she starts to notice things.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
When we were living in mold before I really knew it was a problem, we're like, hey, it's parasites. I'm just going to do a parasite cleanse. And then I ended up making a bed ridden for two months from chronic fatigue and burnout. I'm like, oh, crap. Sorry.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
were ones who really interested me too because they were going to really extreme lengths they'd try anything they wouldn't just go to the chemist or to the health food store and a supplement they'd seek every avenue to find ways to bring back their health basically and from there from that clinic i learned about peptides a lot of the people who were coming in were using peptides because you know universe works in funny ways opposite across the road was a compounding chemist in um
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
It's funny you say the sniff test when we're looking at homes in New Zealand. We went into one and my partner literally looked like a St. Bernard or a beagle going through the carpet.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And the real estate agents are like... She's like, sorry, this one's had mold. And then later on, we found out it was flood damaged in the past. Yeah. You know, you Yeah, they are, yeah.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Could not agree more. My mum ended up dying of cancer and on her deathbed I swore to make a difference and change the Western system that failed her and ultimately it was the system that killed her, not the cancer. So that's what Level Up has spawned from her passing, unfortunately.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
it was funny the timing of it it basically began like a month after she passed the business began and i think bigger than you know just uh if there's bigger forces that are at play in the universe i feel like the business came to me at that time to sort of pick up the fight that i'd lost with her and sort of start dealing with the issue way way way before it gets to that point where you've got that big diagnosis that you know keeps you constantly in a fight or fight response and makes all of the things doing all of the things right so much harder when you
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
have been told that, oh, you're probably going to die or, you know, you've got X, Y, Z years to live. So, yeah, getting people to a state of health where it's not likely that that will progress or, you know, getting those toxins out of your body. Like when I was looking at what causes it, because I was pretty shocked that my
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
healthy former triathlete, former gym instructor mother ended up with cancer. But she grew up in an agricultural area. She rode horses and got sprayed on by planes glyphosate all the time. And her levels would have been through the roof. We never tested them because it was like, well, what's the point? We'll just get rid of it now.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
But heavy metals, aluminium deodorants, the toxic soup that would have accumulated in her body whilst also being incredibly stressed her whole life. It's like, well, little wonder. So You know, naturopathic medicine, same as you, was a necessity for me to learn it because it's like one of the only chiropractics too.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
naturopathic medicine philosophies are the future, even if the tools aren't there yet, which I think they're getting there, if not already are there. The philosophy just needs to be applied to Western medicine. If they took their tools with our philosophies, then they could actually do good things.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
And there are functional medicine docs using pharmaceuticals like cholestyramine or ivermectins or low-dose insulin-potentiated chemotherapies even have their place. Use all of the tools if they work and they're not harming people. We don't need to be
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
in victoria where i worked so they would tell me all about bpc and all these thymus and peptides that they use and i'll be like wow okay i gotta try these out so i did and at the time i had a bit of burnout i had brain fog and i had some gut issues and yeah bpc was the first one i tried in oral capsule and it worked phenomenally so much that when the opportunity came to actually make it myself begin the business of level up i took it and it has been an amazing five years since then
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
compartmentalized in i'm a naturopath i'm going to use herbs or i'm a doctor i'm going to use pharmaceuticals or a nutritionist i'm going to use food use everything that works provided it's not harming people and you're seeing improvements in their health and that's the tenants and the idea behind level up is combining nutrition naturopathy and advanced science and medicine basically which you know i think peptides i'm going to call medicines based on how well they work they're comparable in their effects and the differences they can make
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
except they probably don't harm people or have the side effects. So that's my mission behind it, my why behind the business. Yeah, I hope it resonates with people and it's good to see there's people out there doing their work and have their mission aligned with mine, like yourself.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Only through breaking down the old systems can a new better one be rebuilt. So I really, someone told me Trump isn't good, but he's a wrecking ball and that's what's needed at the moment. So bring it in, light it on fire.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
We're restocking everything quickly. Annoyingly, everything sells out really fast, which is a good problem to have. But yeah, I think the histamine product with DAO in it and all of the mast cell stabilizers that I use during mold, I think that's the only one that's out of stock at the moment, but everything else is in and yeah. I'm going to try to keep it that way.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Thanks, Tina. Appreciate it. Thanks, everyone.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, it does so much that I don't know many people who would take it and not get some level of benefit. They might take it for gut health and yeah, it'll work for that. But then they might notice a nootropic effect or improvement in their sleep because it helps with GABAergic tone and increases deep sleep.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
um or you know that might have niggling injury that all of a sudden oh that's that's disappeared since taking it so it's yeah as you said a perfect Gateway peptide for people um to understand the power of peptides and now the new wave of glp-1s are Gateway peptides as well that you know if someone can lose 100 pounds off glp-1s and that shows the power of these of these molecules and shows why everyone's calling them the future of medicine
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Yeah, well, I formulated it about four years ago for a housemate of mine who had IBD. She had Crohn's disease and was almost at the point where they were going to
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
do a surgery and she'd be on a stroma bag it was that bad and tried all the infliximabs tried all of the immunosuppressants was losing her hair and i'm like oh my goodness surely there's something that can work anyway i developed that product but she was a nurse and knew better and didn't want to take it so from that gi repair was created and since then it's helped
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Countless people, I think we sold almost 100,000 units of it to date, which is amazing. And the feedback's been phenomenal. And I'm just so glad it exists because it's designed for pretty much any gut issue. There's something in it for every part of the gastrointestinal tract, whether you've got a stomach ulcer or a H. pylori, the zinc carnosine and the BPC will work on that part.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
Ben Greenfield described it when we spoke as a shotgun formula for your gut. There's just something for every part of it.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
tributyrin the bioavailable butyrate to directly fuel the enterocytes the cells of your gut lining which goes a very long way towards healing the gut if they have energy energies like the um currency for your cells to do all the other things that needs to do including healing so by combining the
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
things like quercetin and a more bioavailable form called emiq that helps with histamine quercetin directly seals the gut lining by combining all these things i learned about in naturopathy and while studying functional medicine while living while working at the hyperbaric place
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
combining those with these potentiators, these accelerants, which are peptides, they make the naturopathic things work so much better. The nutraceutical things work so much faster. Like you could take L-glutamine and L-overa for months and get a fraction of the results as if you just took BPC for like a week with the same ingredients. So that's why I love peptides.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
I know you yourself as well, you use them. I love them. Use them to boost and accelerate the healing process and just get people better as fast as possible. And as far as I can tell, short of things like stem cell injections, there's few things that work as fast as peptides.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
absolutely and I always tell people these are interventional things not daily things if you're going to take GRPA every day of the year the receptors are going to burn out and not be as that it's just not going to work as well you need to take breaks from these things no matter what peptide it is be it a neuropeptide a GLP-1 like these are bursts like at most you'd ever do is two months if you got severe like
The Dr. Tyna Show
Peptides 101: Unlock Optimized Gut, Brain and Recovery | Kyal Van Der Leest of LVLUP
intestinal inflammation and then you take a break. I usually recommend like for every month on you take at least a week off of the peptides just to make sure super cautiously that you don't end up with receptor downregulation.