A little bit about how I got into peptide therapy. Essentially, peptides changed my life. I progressively became increasingly ill during medical school and residency.

I was barely able to function with profound fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, cognitive problems, panic attacks, inability to handle stress. I was really wiped out with any physical or mental stress.

I went to every specialist that you can think of without benefit. Standard tests were revealed nothing. They were all normal and nothing seemed to help.

I was an an ardent follower of being an evidence based physician. I take pride in that. But, you know, it's ingrained in students and residents that anything taught outside of the university that doesn't conform to the standard medical dogma is quackery.

Thus, I really delayed looking for therapies that weren't considered to be so-called standard of care. I over had, however, had to do something different because I couldn't function and no one was helping me.

So I really went off and snuck off, didn't tell anyone, and went to tons of so-called integrative alternative functional medicine. I was blown away at most of these conferences were more evidence based and years ahead of what standard medicine and what they were teaching in medical school and residency again.

So the opposite was true. These so-called alternative integrative functional medicine were more evidence based than the way you're taught in universities and the old dogma that's being taught.

When you're resident, and, and the problem is all these standard dogma, societal guidelines basically don't change for 20 years. And but it was so exciting to me because, you know, new therapies were coming out all the time, you know, with literature reviews, new evidence coming out.

It was a new way to practice medicine. And I really embraced it was I was very excited, about it. And, the thing was, in standard medicine was moving so slow while so-called alternative medicine, which, you know, I was always told, means no evidence.

Now, I mean, it's the opposite. I think. And people ask, you know, what kind of medicine do you do? I think we do standard medicine, just better. So after spending a year of investigating potentially beneficial, therapeutics for my condition, I implemented a multi-system, therapeutic, regimen that resolved most of my severe symptoms and was able to go back to work.

I felt like a new person. And with, the many innovative I get multi-system treatments, including immune modulators and hormone optimization. Despite my labs being so-called normal, you know, straight T3, which is a passion of mine.

We started the National Academy of Hypothyroidism, a nonprofit, really was a key component of changing my life. So thyroid optimization with T3 was hugely beneficial.

But a lot of other treatments, were, certainly beneficial as well. But what happened is subsequently, I went through a stressful divorce, which resulted in just a huge flare.

And I offered a lecture on how stress is a major player and the, perpetuation of chronic illness. And it left me mostly bedbound for months with severe fatigue.

Anxiety and panic attacks were worse. Just drenching sweat, severe sleep disorder is never slept for again. Profuse sweating, neuropathies, really complete inability to handle stress.

I guess. The phone rang and I would just jump out of my skin at Alla Geneva, which people couldn't touch my skin. I couldn't have a blood pressure cuff and just had a ton of symptoms.

And then I went into heart failure and intermittent AFib. I couldn't stand upright. I couldn't walk up stairs. I developed autoimmune kidney disease, Antifa, awful lipid syndrome.

I knew I had a chronic infection, likely Lyme disease. But my blood was so thick from immune activation of coagulation that you could not even draw it out.

When I was on high dose anticoagulants with the most massive needle, it was just like sirup. Ultimately, the Lyme disease, test came back, were were confirmed, with specialty testing, you know, the standard tests were negative until I fix my immune system.

And then they all turned positive. I also had BCL, which probably the worst bug to get, and Bartonella causing all that anxiety and cognitive dysfunction and lots of reacting, viruses and mold toxicity.

So I had the whole the whole gambit. And I also believe that I got it, basically from birth. So I know it's going to be one of the toughest patients. And it wasn't going to be an easy fix.

I tried massive doses of antibiotics, doing four, seven intravenous antibiotics at the same time. At many times, the maximal doses or doses I would never give to a patient due to the due to the risk and but I still was no better after four and a half years of of doing this intense therapy.

My immune system was so bad. So my natural killer cell function, which is the cell that monitors your body for intracellular infections and also cancer, was basically nonexistent.

It ran between 0 and 3 normals above 30, which is why the antibiotics never worked. You can't take enough antibiotics to kill a bug. You have to have an immune system to take over.

But with no immune system, you just then you can just take antibiotics till the cows come home and they won't work. I remember being in the ICU with sepsis, so blood infection and the nurses outside, I could hear them through the little drape.

They said, oh, this is the Aids patient that keeps coming up negative HIV negative for HIV. Well, I knew what it was, but, I had so many HIV tests, but, of course they're all negative.

The infectious disease doctors were very disinterested. They flat out told me that they don't believe in chronic Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and they refused to address any issue other than that acute infection.

I said, okay, let's get rid of all that. Just tell me what I have. And but nope, they weren't interested. And that's what we find, unfortunately. I was discharged, decided that I really had to do something.

I had to make a choice. So I decided to really go around the country, around the world to find new therapies that could potentially help this condition that I really could not live with, especially when you have anxiety and fatigue and then heart failure.

On top of that. It just I had to do something that just I couldn't continue. And I really don't think people understand how bad someone feels with chronic Lyme and all of these chronic infections.

It's more horrible than I think someone could ever imagine. Who hasn't, who hasn't had it? And they can't truly understand. Even though I felt so horrible and struggled to walk and were trying to make a plane flight, just walking, just sweating, have bent over, just having a constant panic attack.

And just was ready to give up so many times. And oh my God, if there were stairs. It was, it was horrible. Sitting in the plane seat, just profusely sweating and everyone looking at me, but so it was an adventure and, but I went really anywhere where I heard someone who would, you know, had good evidence and were getting people better with these complex illnesses, you know, chronic Lyme and Sears and went around the country and around the world.

I really felt I had no choice. I knew the infections were killing me. While many treatments were somewhat helpful, no doubt I still struggle to a bed every day and I remained in heart failure.

My cardiologist said that he expects that due to the damage to the heart, I might get 10% better in about ten years with aggressive physical therapy. And that is just very depressing.

And then while in Europe, I had a life changing event. I discovered peptides, which I never heard of at the time, but they ended up saving my life, after hundreds of different treatments with marginal benefits, including, again, the four and a half years of I. V.

antibiotics, I was still severely disabled. However, after being on peptides for just a few weeks, I felt something was changing. And by six months, I'm like, I'm a different person.

And to the astonishment of my cardiologist, I walked into his office upright, and then was shown to have a normal, echo. Less than a year later. Again, he said our own improved 10% in ten years.

He said I'd never seen such a recovery. And I also found other therapies that were very synergistic, which we find with peptides. So a lot of things work like with peptides.

So they make other therapies work even better, including, other peptides and also T3 ozone and stem cells, exosomes and immune modulators, mitochondrial booster.

So again this is a tool to put in your toolbox. But it's a major tool. It's it's your go to guy. Problem was peptides were not available in the US. So I could not prescribe them to my, patients.

Even though they'd saved my life, that had no side effects due to the FDA regulations of using products made outside the US. Be it Europe or elsewhere.

Despite the fact it killed me because I knew it would help so many patients that were just really struggling. And then one day at a conference, you know, still going to just tons of conferences.

Lo and behold, there's a compounding pharmacy that was making injectable and oral peptides for use in the US. I became their first physician speaker. I've lectured at numerous conferences and trained physicians on the use of peptides.

And, you know, I just, they helped me so much, I was, like, so excited to share my newfound knowledge. Peptides quickly became the core treatment for the physicians in our centers.

One point, we had 22 centers around the country and the nine franchises. And the doctors that embraced peptides had by far the best outcomes of of any other doctors that didn't have these, this tool.

They were dramatically able to improve outcomes that we tracked. And we've actually published our outcomes, showing that people saw, we did actually the first 500 patients that had seen, on average, 7.2 physicians without any improvement.

And then by the fourth visit, almost 90% got significantly better and about 65% really dramatically better by the fourth visit, after not having, any any luck with, 7.2 physicians.

Now, I think it's about 15 physicians. They see me for seeing us. And also, the nice thing is we're able to drastically reduce the use of many standard therapies that are often ineffective.

Or have significant side effects. I remember, one doctor the first time and, who is, also spoke for us was early on, doctor Tringale came to saw me at a conference, and she was just so excited.

She basically came to me and said, oh my gosh. BPC 157 it makes everything work better. And, and those things that you just really remember because it's true.

It just, can help so many different patients.

How Peptides Saved My Life

Kent Holtorf, MD

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