Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
iHeart Podcasts. Hear more Kiss Podcast playlists and listen live on the free iHeart app. Finally. Okay, we got this guy. He's a doctor based in Sydney. He's a German-Australian medical practitioner specialising in qualifications of orthopaedic and trauma surgery.
extensive experience in regenerative medicine longevity medicine which is peptide treatments and a lot of folks are on these now i'm no fan of getting them off facebook but if you do it the right way and it's under medical supervision and it's working for you who am i to say yay or nay let's meet the doctor now uh who we got there nat
Dr Dominic Schaffner.
Hello, Doctor. Thanks for coming on. A lot of chat about this. Hi, Carter.
Thanks for having me.
You're very welcome. So the peptide world, a lot of people are on them. There's a lot of Facebook stuff going on here or people buying God knows what from wherever in the world. What's your opinion on the peptides? And obviously it should be done under the watchful eye of a medical expert. Is that correct or am I all wrong here?
Before we dive in, Kyle, I just want to flag that I'm here today as an expert in regenerative and longevity medicine. So everything I share is general education, not personal medical advice, of course.
Okay, so just information.
So what do you think? So look, peptides are a hot topic at the moment. Everyone is talking about them. They are, you know, influencers talking about them. They're very hyped in the press.
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Chapter 2: What are peptides and why are they popular right now?
They're very hyped in social media. Yeah. And peptides have been around for a long time. In fact, insulin is a peptide, for example. Right. So peptides regulate pathways in our body. They're messengers that tell our body what to do. Our body makes make peptides and peptides are naturally occurring in nature. Now, this hype that is currently happening is certainly deserved in some way.
But in saying so, as you correctly said already, it's highly important to not think about this as a golden bullet, right? Or TikToks that you can take, you know, and be great from it. Because at the end of the day, they're heavily regulated substances. And they need to be implemented as part of a greater framework of longevity medicine with medical oversight.
Okay, so some people are doing this under the watchful eye of their medical experts and others are just getting it online through some sort of underworld or some sort of unregulated delivery system. Natalie, I'm accusing her of being on the peptides because she's looking good and she's... She's very aware of what's going on.
I've just been fed a lot of information about them. So I do want to ask about one particular one that's really popular at the moment, and that's Retta or Retta Truide. What's it called? It's Retta or Retta Truide. So basically it's a weight loss peptide that people are now using as opposed to using Ozempic or whatever.
And influencers are pushing this online and then ā
Or they're showing their before and afters going, look how good I look after being on RETA for X amount of time. So I want to know what's the difference between RETA and Ozempic? How does it work in your body differently?
Okay, so these drugs are part of the GLP-1 family, which are glucagon-like peptides. In saying so, they regulate your satiety, they regulate your insulin and your bowel movements and passage, essentially, right? So what they do is they cause a delay in your stomach emptying. And in saying so, you feel... your satiety levels are higher for longer, right?
Now, semaglutide or Sempic is a GLP-1 medication that is primarily designed to be an anti-diabetic, but has also weight loss properties. It works via one receptor. GLP-2, like Giuseppatide or Mocharo or Vigovi, works via two receptors. And Ritaltrutide, that everyone is talking about at the moment, works via three different receptor pathways.
Now, in saying so, Ritaltrutide is currently still in phase three clinical trials. So it's not on the market and it's not available. It's not available. There's a patent application on Ritaltrutide at the moment, and it's still undergoing rigorous clinical trials.
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Chapter 3: What should you know before using peptides?
So there's a whole category of peptides classified as research-only peptides. These are the peptides that you can just order in a web store that is potentially run by someone who saw a niche in the market, not a medical expert. So this is highly critical because these substances don't undergo any testing. Best case scenario, you're just getting saline.
Worst case scenario, you're getting a peptide that is contaminated with some form of microorganisms or heavy metals, which is terrible news, right? And in saying so, you should never default back to using anything from a web store. Peptides are clearly classified as prescription-only medications. Yeah.
And in fact, they're part of a path that is called special access scheme that is only accessible to qualified medical professionals with expertise in the sector.
Do you as medical professionals, do you think, gee, you'd think these social media companies would not allow these companies to advertise? They're making money and advertising to a broad worldwide community. hey, buy these things that aren't necessarily regulated, checked, or God knows if they're even the correct item.
Are you surprised that these social media companies are allowed to just advertise anything, even if it's dangerous?
I am very surprised about this. I believe there is some drive in cracking down on this. Now, the problem is that a lot of influencers just talk about it, right? And most of the marketing is influencer marketing in this regard, right? So they get away with saying things, you know, obviously, but also...
Like an opinion rather than medical fact. Oh, it worked well for me. Look how good I am. And that sort of flouts the law to some degree.
Correct, and it does, but it also is very misleading because, one, they don't have the medical expertise. They don't understand that this, if at all, is a secondary pathway that is implemented, right? It's never a first-line treatment. And no treatment ever starts with just organizing something off the black market or ordering from an online store, of course. You have to start with some testing.
You have to understand the biology, right? then you have to come up with a treatment protocol that is optimized for someone's biology to actually understand. Anything else but that is not scientific and has no evidence attached to it at all. In fact, it's dangerous.
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Chapter 4: How do peptides regulate bodily functions?
Like 10 years, 15 years upwards, that's data, right? So we don't have that data right now on peptides, right? There's some promising research at the moment that shows incredible results, right? But there's no long-term data. And I don't think it's going to be like smoking.
But we have to be very careful step by step and assess this in accordance with our frameworks and the TGA and the best evidence we have.
So this is going to take quite a long time. Would anyone like me, middle-aged, overweight, brain aneurysm, chest aneurysm, would a peptide fix me or I'm just still on the downward slide?
No, you aren't, Kyle. Look, we would have to assess this based on the merits of your case, right? So a full comprehensive longevity assessment, right? That then also may entail peptides, right? But in saying so, right, there's much more to it, right? You have to assess medical history, biomarker testing, full longevity panels, right?
And then, yes, there can be a place if all other avenues have failed, right? There can be a place for peptides, but certainly it's no golden bullet and has to be assessed by the right expert team.
Right, right. So a lot of assessment. You can't just think this is the miracle cure. You buy it off the internet, you start enjoying it. It could be very dangerous. I really appreciate that. We could talk for hours about this, but we've only got limited time. But it's very surprising. And thank you for some clarification. So it does appear at this early stage that this has some sort of benefits.
Correct. Longer research, longer time. It's going to be a decade until we can get some proper tracking on this, but so far it seems so good, right?
Yeah, correct. So the main advice really is to see someone with expertise in peptides or longevity medicine or regenerative medicine and undergo a full clinical assessment before starting starting any treatment and being informed about everything properly.
A proper assessment from a clinical professional, not the guy who runs hot yoga. That may not be your clinical expert. Or the influencer. Or the influencer selling tan mitts.
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Chapter 5: What is the difference between RETA and Ozempic?
Right. Because, for example, if you get it over the post, it's probably sitting in some hot bloody warehouse for a month. Yes, God knows where, right? Yeah, exactly. And plus, they know through testing a lot of these things that there's a lot of impurities and therefore a lot of danger from them.
Right, you don't want to... things into your body where you don't know that this has been kept under the right conditions. It's got the correct juice in it or whatever you call it.
Yeah, but that aside, I have a question, and this may be dumb, Dr. Kearse, but remember when COVID happened and we got this vaccination and people were opposed to it because they're like, how could they test that vaccination so quickly and then pump it out to the public?
Yeah, yeah. And then later on they realised, oh, some people's heart sacs were nearly killing them. Remember all the people whose heart sacs swelled up?
So what's the difference between these peptides? And we're saying they need thousands of people to test on and years and years of research. However, we didn't have that with the COVID vaccination.
Yeah, that's not actually true. And with the risk of flaring up all of the anti-vaxxer kooks out there, there was actually a lot of background research that was going into those particular types of vaccines. Plus, also, we have this unbelievably massive amount of information and evidence about vaccines across the board. So that's actually not true.
There was evidence on putting that vaccine together that it was predominantly, majoritarily safe.
Well, even remember, Kyle, it was Donald Trump who was saying that he was going to fast track the vaccines. And by doing that, he put so much money into the study. So that's what a normal peptide study. They don't have the money, but they did because it was such a worldwide thing. So they were able to do all the research. tests one after another. They didn't just dismiss tests.
No, they did them all.
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